"Traveler" - Ron McLarty

Listened to this on CD at work; coworker loaned it to me. Interesting read; simultaneously a murder mystery and a meditation on friendship, loss, loyalty and family ties.

"The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan

Finished it. Fabulous book. In the final chapter he describes a meal which he has grown/harvested/killed/prepared entirely himself. What a marvelous experience and voyage.

Further thoughts on "The Risen Empire"

I was thinking about the fact that the main characters, the protagonists of this novel, are citizens of the Empire, and yet in retrospect it is their Empire (and Emperor) who are guilty of the greatest violence, the most terrible acts. The Rix, who are presented as "the bad guys", and the computer intelligences they serve, are viewed by our protagonists as desperate evils. And yet when the computer intelligence successfully deploys and occupies the entire planetary net, business goes back to normal. The computer "lives" in harmony with the systems that support human lives. And in fact there seem to be computer intelligences (at least one) within the Empire that coexist in harmony and even work to serve the humans.
It is a more subtle and complex novel than at first it seems. The moral quandries are interesting.

"Victory Conditions" - Elizabeth Moon

The concluding volume to her epic "Vatta's War" saga; I perhaps ought to put "epic" in quotes, because in the greater scheme of things it's not really so. Some didn't like the first book; I thought it did some things quite well. It established the character of Kylara Vatta and gave her some obstacles to overcome that felt real and genuinely challenging. I've always been a fan of Elizabeth Moon, though I'd be the first to admit that she's had her highs and lows. Her first trilogy "The Deed of Paksenarrion" remains one of my alltime faves, despite being not quite consistently excellent. "The Speed of Dark" is a more recent novel of hers that stands out, addressing issues of life as an autistic.

I think I've read the "Vatta's War" series in part because of my loyalty to Moon. It is not superb; she has never handled romantic relationships well and this series is no exception. The plots, especially of this final novel, feel very rushed. Her feel for dialogue is sadly lacking. I feel I have to read it to finish off the series but I'm not getting much joy from the process.

"The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan

I've been listening to this on CD at work; fine research on Michael Pollan's part, and a devastating critique of the American industrial food complex. Not done with the book yet, but so far it has given me additional impetus to REALLY try to not eat fast food, and reduce my intake of highly processed snacks if possible. This will be hard, because I LOVE really processed snacks. Ah well.

"The Walton Street Tycoons" by Jim Lesczynski

This work is a fine piece of Libertarian rhetoric disguised as a juvenile novel. It succeeds as a promotional manual for Libertarian ideas; not so much as a piece of fiction. The central problem lies in the portrayal of 12-year-old Mark Hoffman, a smart-alecky kid who ends up running a vastly successful desserts business, employing his mom and numerous other kids, twisting the metaphorical arm of the city council to allow him to not pay taxes, carry a gun, and pay his underage employees whatever he pleases.

The author does a pretty good job in setting up the framework for this business success, although the likelihood of any middle school anywhere becoming such a hotbed of entrepreneurial fervor seems vanishingly small. But Mark almost never comes across as a 12-year-old boy - the main failing of the novel. His thought processes and words are those of a sarcastic 20-something Libertarian. His penchant for making out with his girlfriend seems like the actions of someone 4 or more years his senior, as do his determination, focus and parental attitude toward his brother. The few moments of brotherly banter that do seem appropriate for kids of their age seem shoehorned into the story.

The ease with which the boys overcome all obstacles strikes me as quite unrealistic, and I'm not just saying this because of the Libertarian bent of the novel. I've read my share of YA books, and a more genuine struggle makes for a better read. It's hard to take the writer seriously when all it takes to defeat the school bully is a single dose of laxative brownies.

Not a great work, but I'd be happy to read something similar that was executed better.

"Out Stealing Horses" by Per Petterson

This most profoundly Norwegian of novels is taking me on a strange, dreamlike trip through a different life and mind. Per Petterson does a remarkable job of capturing the state of mind of Trond, the protagonist, both as a young man and as an old one. The essence of Norway pervades this book, both in the details of the surroundings and in the language. The sentence structure fairly breathes of the language and the mindset of the people who speak it.

The story that unfolds slowly, an odd, mysterious layering of events and events seen with the wisdom of later years, has to do with relationships, with things said and unsaid. I'm actually within a few pages of the end, so there may be some final event that brings something into focus.

"Divisadero" by Michael Ondaatje

Read this because Sara recommended it, and because Michael Ondaatje is an upcoming author on mpr's "Talking Volumes" - always a good show, always an in-depth conversation with the author. Kerri Miller rocks; she seems to be following in the footsteps of Terry Gross, researching her subject with passion and asking apt and interesting questions.

The novel was interesting; my first by Ondaatje. A spare, clean telling of a tale. The story of three young people (Anna, Claire and Coop) who are so close in childhood and then ripped apart by tragedy left me reeling. Actually it's been a little while since I read this, and my feelings have moderated. I found the prose to be beautiful but the material to be obtuse... the lives of these people were portrayed rather beautifully, but I found it hard to care very deeply about them.

"A thousand splendid suns" by Khaled Hosseini

I listened to this book on CD at work, and it was a difficult, moving experience. The author writes of his native Afghanistan with such deep affection and grace. I had read his previous work (The Kite Runner) and appreciated it, but this one hit me harder. Certainly this was due in great part to the female characters at the heart of this book; Mariam and Laila live very different lives, grow up in very different worlds in their country. Mariam is an illegitimate child, growing up in poverty with her troubled and resentful mother, and is married off at fifteen to an abusive husband. Laila lives a happy, middle-class life until the communists are driven from Kabul by the warlords, at which time her family is destroyed, her world crashes down around her and she is forced into Mariam's household as a second wife to Rasheed.

I'm not going to recap the plot; suffice it to say that the plight of these women cut me to the core and made me deeply, deeply grateful for my easy and happy life. I know that, all over the world there are women who suffer greatly in ways that I can't even imagine. It just seems like I'm coming across stories more often recently, or noticing them more, and being affected by them more... There was a piece in the City Pages about a documentary about the plight of women in Africa - I don't remember which country in Africa - who suffer terrible problems after childbirth; perianal fistulas and such. Augh, it makes me shudder just to think about it. And on public radio a piece about women in the Congo being raped, and the men having this horrendous, callous, lawless attitude of ownership and fatalistic acceptance. Not even fatalistic; they simply believe that it's OK to take sex when they want it, and for other men to take sex, even from the wives of others.

I'm disgressing. The book is so worth reading.

"The Risen Empire" and "The Killing of Worlds"

Ross and I both recently polished off this SF duology by Scott Westerfeld. These books are space opera on a grand scale; interplanetary empires spanning 80 worlds and vast distances, a ruling caste of immortals, grand space battle, intelligent machines, loads of future tech... but he handles these science fiction cliches with ease and a clever touch. He introduces a mysterious plot element early in the first book and maintains the suspense throughout the two volumes while also jumping between past and present, multiple planets and spaceship.

Good work; his handling of the suspense and the tension between the various factions never falters (the risen dead - brought back to life via a symbiant, the Rix, a tech-loving culture who promote computer intelligences, the pinks - pro-life and anti-death). I appreciated the extent to which threads were left untied at the end of the book; there are certain to be great changes in the Empire, but we are left to imagine what they might be.