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reviews

Something(s) to read, 2011: Prose

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Up here above the 42nd parallel the weather is such that I’m staying inside and reading more, and you might also plan to spend extra time indoors in the next few weeks. Or months. So in case you wondered, here are the best books-without-many-pictures I read in 2011, complete with my brief notes to myself about them. They’re in no particular order; they’re all good and some are even better than that. I hope you find something here that you like!

Non-fiction

Stuff of Thought
Pinker, Stephen
Full of interesting ideas, examples, and facts, but I didn’t understand the throughline and don’t think it held together as a complete thesis. Maybe it wasn’t intended to, and maybe it’s an affect of it being an audio book, so I may need to read this again. It was certainly more fun than I anticipated.

Stiff
Roach, Mary
Excellent, as usual, though I got a little tired of corpses. I read it while eating, mostly, though, so that might contribute to that feeling. It’s her first book, and you can see her style and sense of humor develop and mature through the course of it.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma
Pollan, Michael
The best book about food, in all its aspects, that I expect I will ever read. Well written, researched, and lived. In the top five I read all year.

Proofiness
Seife, Charles
Though too fond of trying to coin new words, this is a good book about how math and numbers (not just statistics) are misused, particularly by politicians. His bias is clearly against the conservatives, but I didn’t mind that. He’s particularly harsh on Scalia.

The Making of the The President 1960
White, Theodore H.
The writing, and some of the ideas and attitudes, is dated. But this is still much more fascinating than I thought it would be, and the chapter on television and Kennedy’s speech on religion are classics.

Sleights of Mind
Macknik, Stephen; Martinez-Conde, Susana
The neuroscience of magic. Entertaining and light, but also interesting. It inspired me to want to learn more about magic.

Martian Summer
Kessler, Andrew
Detailed and interesting (though narcissistic and disjointed as well) account of the Phoenix mission to Mars. If anyone needed convincing that doing science via robot is hard, this would do it. The 90 (Martian) day mission could have been done in about 10 minutes by a human. It’s a tough job. The description of NASA’s weak P.R. ability is probably the most telling, and damning, thing about the book.

Radioactive: A Tale of Love and Fallout
Redniss, Lauren
Beautiful book — it might be a graphic novel, but it probably isn’t. Regardless, from font to the texture of the cover it’s terrific.

The Writer’s Tale: The Final Chapter
Davies, Russell T.; Cook, Benjamin
Writing successful TV clearly requires a great deal of ego, but there’s a great deal of insight into creativity (and work ethic) in the book as well. If nothing else, it prompted me to watch Dr. Who, which is a feat.

How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming
Brown, Mike
Crisp and entertaining and informative. It even has some skullduggery and suspense and some educational and confessional parts to. All in all, excellent. And…sorry Pluto! (And Xena, etc.)

Quantum Man
Krauss, Lawrence M.
The best introduction to Feynman’s technical achievements I’ve read. I need to read it again (and again).

Feathers
Hanson, Thor
Excellent book on the natural history, uses, and evolution of feathers. Feynman is up against this in the SB&F awards, and if it loses I won’t feel bad. Well, not too bad, anyway.

Lost Detroit


Austin, Dan; Doerr, Sean
Amazing stories of the ruins of the city, and the photographs are even better. “Death is the mother of beauty,” as Wallace Stevens said. Just wish there was less architectural death in the Motor City.

Fiction

The Summer Book
Jansson, Tove
Quiet and lovely; I can’t figure out why the father says only the one line and it’s that one, but that’s the only odd note in an unwonderful way. The rest of the notes are wonderful.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Shaffer, Mary Ann; Barrows, Annie
Better than its title by a long, long stretch. Nothing shocking, or even mildly surprising, but a pleasing story, well told.

The Final Solution
Chabon, Michael
A fine novella about an unnamed, late in years, Sherlock Holmes. Rich writing.

Olive Kitteridge
Strout, Elizabeth
Unsparing, and wonderfully written. It won’t make you feel good, but it will make you believe in all of its characters, no matter how briefly they appear.

True Grit
Portis, Charles
Spare and excellent. It was hard to get the movie images out of my mind, but the movie was so faithful and well-acted that it wasn’t a problem. An excellent book.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
Carver, Raymond
Concise and harsh.

Science Fiction/Fantasy

The Windup Girl
Bacigalupi, Paolo
Terrific near (?…hope not!) future science fiction with fully realized characters, settings, conflicts. Genetic engineering gone awry, and our messing with the world’s seedstock comes home to roost. Really really good.

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
Yu, Charles
Innovative and well done sf, playing with the genre in literary terms reminiscent of Never Let Me Go, though by no means as dark or dour. Excellent.

The Algebraist
Banks, Iain M.
Huge ideas here, and well developed (see e.g. Stephenson’s latest). It felt long, but I started to feel immersed and interested before I got frustrated with the apparent digressions and slow speed. Which was on purpose, I’m sure, given the presence of the Dwellers. A good Culture novel, so thanks to Gina and Leland M. for recommending it.

The God Engines
Scalzi, John
A lot of story packed into a few words. Terrific atmosphere of horror and failure. One of his best, I think.

Young Adult

Dead End in Norvelt
Gantos, Jack
A fun book to read on a summer’s day. (And that’s what I did.)

The Implosion of Aggie Winchester
Zielin, Lara
A page-turner. Teen melodrama, and not meant for my demographic, but I enjoyed it.

Sports

Sandy Koufax
Leavy, Jean
Makes the case that he’s the best pitcher ever, and from the other things I’ve read it’s probably true. It certainly makes me wish I’d seen him play.

56: Joe DiMaggio and the Last Magic Number in Sports
Kennedy, Kostya
Provides a glimpse at the setting and context (personal, local, and international) of the hitting streak. As often is the case, I find myself doubting some of the interior dialogue/thinking Kennedy attributes to the various main characters, but they do enrich the texture and mood. The asides as they relate to modern thinking, e.g. about the statistical likelihood of streaks like this happening, are good.
 

Audio

When You Are Engulfed in Flames
Sedaris, David
More somber than I expected, but still laugh out loud funny often. Read by him is the only way to go, so…

 

Feynman in the New York Review of Books

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NYRB-14July2011.png

A review of our Feynman book appears in the current issue of The New York Review of Books.*

That this exists at all is wonderful in and of itself. What makes it more wonderful is that it’s a positive review, made apparently without reservation by its writer, who said (among other things that made me blush): “These images capture with remarkable sensitivity the essence of Feynman’s character.” and “The Ottaviani-Myrick book is the best example of this genre [graphic novels] that I have yet seen.” 

But what blew the top of my head clean off is what you already figured out by looking at the cover…the reviewer is Freeman Dyson. If you don’t know who that is you can look him up now, or better still pick up a copy of his book Disturbing the Universe and dig in. Because even though he appears in our book too, you shouldn’t wait until August to read more about him.

Anyway, wow.

* Note that I don’t think you can read all of the article for free online unless you subscribe (or are at a library that subscribes) to the NYRB.

Something(s) to read, 2010: Prose

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Up here above the 42nd parallel the weather is such that I’m staying
inside and reading more, and you might also plan to spend extra time
indoors in the next few weeks. Or months. So as a public service, here
are the best books-without-many-pictures I read in 2010, complete with my
brief notes to myself about them. They’re in no particular order;
they’re all good and some are even better than that. I hope you find
something here that you like!

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The Blind Side
Lewis, Michael
I wouldn’t have guessed I could be gripped by the evolution of pass rushing in the NFL, or yet another story of a kid rescued from poverty and unrealized potential. But I was. Lewis is a great writer. (I read others by him this year, and they’re all good, but this is my favorite.)

Big Bang
Singh, Simon
Spot-on overview of the development of the big bang theory. Well written and informative…the illustrated bits are terrific.

Team of Rivals
Goodwin, Doris Kearns
Fantastic account of Lincoln’s presidency and how he made it work. Worshipful at times (Lincoln never makes a mistake that lasts longer than a paragraph, often not even a couple of sentences…suspending habeus corpus at the very least should merit more), but convincing in describing his genius. Civil War history could be taught out of this book to give a balanced and exciting picture of what was at stake, what was done (and compromised; Lincoln’s caginess about emancipation is enlightening), and what was said. It would engage everyone in a classroom.

Packing for Mars
Roach, Mary
Breezy and fun and a great closing statement. I’m a sucker for the subject matter, sure, but this is terrific even if you aren’t. She’s a great writer.

Seven Days in the Art World
Thornton, Sarah
A peek into the world of high/fine art. Fascinating (there are still some new ideas — Takashi Murakami is commercial but fun and interesting) and depressing (ugly commercialism and posturing are rampant) at the same time.

Fiction

Plainsong
Haruf, Kent
Spare and understated, the mood and emotions of the story creep in as you read it. I can barely describe any of the characters physically, but they’re all believable and feel real.

The Night Gardener
Pelecanos, George
Tightly woven and tautly written. You can see where The Wire comes from.

Mystic River
Lehane, Dennis
The journey is its own reward, since the writing is so good. But the ending is even more amazing. Apparently this was a movie, and it couldn’t have been very good — or had to be a different story with the same name — because the depth of characterization here would be almost impossible to achieve in less than a 12 part miniseries with writing and performances on par with The Wire. (Which Lehane wrote for. Yes, I think that show is brilliant.)

Science Fiction

Feed
Anderson, M.T.
Very good, and grim, dystopian future. The progress of the characters was predictable to some extent, but the book was well-crafted and tight — the subtle hints about the world itself added to the realism, as Anderson left just enough to the reader’s imagination.

Fantasy

The Wee Free Men
Pratchett, Terry
Great kids book, with an interesting cast, clever dialogue, and a plucky heroine who’s just right. I fear the next books might break the spell, but I’ll read them anyway.

The Line Between
Beagle, Peter S.
I enjoyed this very much, with the possible exception of the last story, which was slightly (though only just) less interesting than the others to me. “Two Hearts” was fantastic, even though I’d not yet read The Last Unicorn. (Which I then did, and enjoyed.)

Audio

A Slight Trick of the Mind
Cullin, Mitch
A sad novel of Sherlock Holmes’ later years as his mind begins to fail him. Moody and evocative and emotional, it’s an unexpected look at lost love and opportunity.

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
Bryson, Bill
Charming reminiscence of growing up in 1950s Des Moines. It’s hard to believe that all the things he said and did happened to him, but even if they didn’t, in just the manner he describes, he had a wonderful childhood and knows how to tell his own story.

Something(s) to read, 2010: Graphic Novels

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Up here above the 42nd parallel the weather is such that I’m staying inside and reading more, and you might also plan to spend extra time indoors in the next few weeks. Or months. So as a public service, here are the best graphic novels I’ve read (so far) in 2010, complete with my brief notes to myself about them. They’re in no particular order; they’re all good and some are even better than that. I hope you find something here that you like!

General

Chew
Layman, John; Guillory, Rob
Almost completely fresh in its feel, great big-footy art, and some snappy dialogue and writing.

Criminal: Bad Night
Brubaker, Ed; Phillips, Sean
Fine, fine noir.

Afrodisiac
Rugg, Jim; Maruca, Brian
Terrific parody of all sorts of things, with no redeeming social value. Wonderful.

Moving Pictures
Immonen, Kathryn; Immonen, Stuart
Strong and moody, with a particularly solid middle section (where many books, including mine…I think, sometimes, maybe…sag). The art is terrific, displaying Stuart I’s versatility and composition. I’d be curious to see the script for this as well, since there’s a lot of subtlety in staging and pacing here.

Mysterius the Unfathomable
Parker, Jeff; Fowler, Tom
A lot of fun, and the art is terrific. I want this to be a series.

Trickster: Native American Tales
Dembicki, Matt (ed.)
Mixed, as with all anthologies, but most of the stories are very good.

Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour
O’Malley, Bryan Lee
How about that — a satisfying ending. Hard to do with a series like this, but done and done well! I re-read the whole thing before getting to the last volume, and had a ball. (p.s. The movie was good too, but not as good.)

George Sprott
Seth
Melancholy and regret as beauty. Wonderfully put together and presented.

The Outfit
Cooke, Darwyn
Better than The Hunter, and more inventive as well. The style is full of, well, style and the art and editing are a great match Stark’s/Westlake’s prose.

Superhero

All-Star Superman
Morrison, Grant; Quitely, Frank
Re-read, for book club: Wonderful, as in full of wonder.
 
Young Adult
 
Smile
Telgemeier, Raina
Charming, and spot on for its demographic. And for me as well, it turns out.
 
Prime Baby
Yang, Gene
Slender and hilarious. Very sharp humor.

Mercury
Larson, Hope
Very strong and evocative. The cartooning and storytelling are so strong that they carried me through some parts that seemed predictable. (Here again, I’m not the book’s demographic, so that predictability is probably just fine in context.)

The Secret Science Alliance and the Copycat Crook
Davis, Eleanor
Excellent, densely packed, and funny.

Manga
 
Twin Spica
Yaginuma, Kou
Surprising! I liked this a lot; a nifty little fantasy about a girl who aspires to space travel, presented with more depth and promise than I expected. I look forward to the next volumes.

Comic strips
 
Cul de Sac Golden Treasury: A Keepsake Garland of Classics
Thompson, Richard
The title is tongue-in-cheek and also true. The best daily strip out there.

Review — Where the Wild Things Are

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I just saw the movie. (Thanks to 826Michigan.) You should too.

The New York Times reviews T-Minus

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T-Minus coverWow. I couldn’t be happier* with this review in the New York Times. I’m told that T-Minus is also an Editor’s Choice for the week, which is also wonderful.

(*I’m even happy that the reviewer found an error. Not that I’m happy about the mistake…I groaned when I confirmed it, but deep down I knew that even though we checked the manuscript about three zillion times, a few would escape our dragnet. So I compliment his eagle-eye: In the margin of page 53 I have Friendship 7
launching in 1961. We got it right with the “T-Minus 7 years, 5 months”
caption on the same page, but somehow I messed up in the lower right
corner. It should say “20 Feb 1962” down there. So…apologies to John
Glenn, thanks to Jack Shafer for pointing it out, and I’ll do my best to get it fixed in the next printing!)

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