The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick

The Man in the High Castle
by Philip K. Dick

This is one of those classics of science fiction that I've been meaning to read but didn't get around to it until now. The Kindle edition is on discount so I decided to give it a try. The book posits an alternate history where the axis was victorious in the second world war seizing territory in North America. The West Coast is controlled by the Japanese while the east is by the Germans with a small buffer state in between. The book follows the lives of a half-dozen characters all of which are affected by a novel inside the novel which describes an Allied victory.

After reading this I can see why it's considered a classic but I find myself more respecting it and actually liking it. Part of the problem is the ending which lands with a thud. Yes I understand the point he's trying to make and he apparently in an interview in the 1970s admitted there wasn't much of an ending and he was working on a sequel but that never happened.

Considering my background in military history I can also quibble over the victory he describes of both the forces in the novel as well as the novel within the novel but I'll let that slide.

Recommended as a signpost in science fiction.

Shooting Victoria: Madness, Mayhem, and the Rebirth of the British Monarchy by Paul Thomas Murphy

Shooting Victoria: Madness, Mayhem, and the Rebirth of the British Monarchy
by Paul Thomas Murphy


 This book covers the eight different attempts by seven individuals to assassinate Queen Victoria. It alternates sections between what the queen was doing at the time and her various assassins. All of the attempts except for one involved pistols of varying quality and a majority were found not criminally liable due to insanity. More than just a history of the attempts the book also covers treatment and legal changes that took place during the 19 century. There's also a good dose of general British history as well as analysis how each attempt help shape the modern monarchy.

The style is more on the popular history side as opposed to academic. He does tend to go into mind reading mode at times which normally I find irritating but there is a charm about the text which meant I was less annoyed and I usually would be. The meandering narrative reminds me of Jan Morris books which is perhaps why I'm giving a pass here. Political motivation appears to have been lacking with all of the attempts which is perhaps why in all my other meetings on Victorian history I've only come across one of the attempts. At this stage it's where for me to find a new set of historical events so that was good.

Recommended.

Wolfhound Century by Peter Higgins

Wolfhound Century
byPeter Higgins

It seems like these days if you want to get a book published in genre it has to be a mashup of two others. For instance here we have a detective story based roughly in a Russian setting combined with folktales which are presumably Russian as well. I'm not particularly familiar with Russian folktales but I think I was able to keep up. It doesn't help that much of the narrative is around dialogue some of it purposely obscure. The writing is on the literary end of the spectrum. Basically the plot involves an investigator brought in by the head of the secret police to investigate a criminal. Things are not of course as they seen in this book is evidently the first in a series. I received this as a review copy I would've been unlikely to pick it up otherwise but I did enjoy it. Even though it took a bit to get used to. I'm actually looking forward to the next book in the series so I hope it gets published.

Recommended

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 Book was part of LibraryThing's early reviewer program.-

The Slaves' Gamble: Choosing Sides in the War of 1812 by Gene Allen Smith

The Slaves' Gamble: Choosing Sides in the War of 1812
by Gene Allen Smith

 A different book on the war of 1812. It deals with the decision of slaves to either find their freedom with the British or stay with the Americans. It also covers the attempts on both sides to arm them. There's also coverage of the conflict with Spain over parts of Florida. The fear with narratives such as this is that they turn into a list of anecdotes but fortunately that is not the case here. His conclusion that the success of the armed free man for the Americans and runaway slaves for the British increased southerners fears of a slave rebellion in the era between the conflict and the Civil War. Causing more restrictions to be put in place Makes sense.

Highly recommended.

Book was part of LibraryThing's early reviewer program.-

Daytona 500 and the Oscars

Because at this point I'm just too lazy to do two posts so we're going to do this in one. Although I will actually put them in separate paragraphs so feel free to skip to the one you're interested in.

Without Denica or the Toyota engine fiasco the commentators would of had absolutely nothing to talk about in the Great American Race. Driving around in a single line for 180 laps or so isn't what I call racing. If things are this bad at the intermediate tracks then this is going to be one very long season.

The Oscars I wasn't a big fan of who one. Being a  Canadian I'm annoyed by Argo's creative use of history. Certainly not the first time Canadians were cutout of the historical record. Life of Pi also annoyed me as well. Again for the same  Canadian reasons.

I wasn't exactly a fan of  Seth MacFarlane hosting. He has his standard half-dozen or so comedic bits and I wasn't sure they were going to mesh well with the telecast. Yes the boobs song was funny. I see that the left-wing indignation machine has ramped up. I expect this sort of nonsense from the right. Twist something around out of context then turn it into a strawman then pound away at it for a while. It just means in the future I won't be taking these people seriously. Cry Wolf et cetera.

The Clooney joke was not about the little kid. I repeat that it was not about the little kid. It was about Clooney's tendency to dispose of his "arm candy" which do tend to be quite a bit younger than him but legal. If anything I would have thought that feminists would've been applauding the joke not complaining about it.

There also seems to be quite a bit of rage that many of the reporters couldn't pronounce Quvenzhané Walli's name. This is not all that unusual. There's a tendency to do this with any name that's outside of the usual Anglo family. Do we really think that if say an actress from Ukraine had been up for an award they would've been pronouncing her name flawlessly? Heck during the red carpet show I had a miserable time pronouncing Kristin Chenoweth. Yes they should've done their homework and practiced it that's being a professional but to somehow extend this to racism/misogyny seems a bit much.

Nebula ballot and "girly" fantasy

From what I can tell the latest Playmore in the science fiction and fantasy community was started off by two anonymous comments from here. That being said I fully expect that the next week or so is going to be taken up with all sorts of earnest posts about gender and genre including reading lists and the like. There is an aspect of this which comes down to don't feed the trolls but I don't think that's going to be taken into account. I've seen this play out many times online often within this community. I'm just tired. When it burns itself out in a week or two no one is going to be satisfied. I'd rather use my energy reading.

Bringing Mulligan Home: The Other Side of the Good War by Dale Maharidge

 Bringing Mulligan Home: The Other Side of the Good War
by Dale Maharidge

This book describes the authors relationship with his father. Troubled as it was by the events of World War II. After his death he did what he could to research his unit and why he was affected. The research is pretty much the narrative of the book. We do get discussions about military actions but they are fragmentary and he doesn't bother coalescing them into one larger narrative. Since I usually read more traditional military history I found this to be frustrating.

Clearly Maharidge has quite a bit of anger most of it leveled at the decision-makers in the Pacific campaign. He finds Admiral Nimitz personally responsible for his dads PTSD. Intellectually I think this is a hard case to make. In the section on PTSD he doesn't acknowledge that the research shows that everyone has a breaking point at some point.

I found the research impressive and the writing is very good. If you treat this more as a memoir and biography that a military history then you'll get more from it.

Recommended for anyone interested in the effects of the war on the generation that followed.


This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.

My Life in Politics by Jacques Chirac

This is as the title would suggest the political memoirs of the French President. For North American readers the section on the lead up to the invasion of Iraq will probably be the most interesting. There isn't much new added here although some of the behind-the-scenes communication between the forces allied against invasion was interesting. My knowledge of French modern politics is pretty limited i was however able to follow the earlier sections of the book which layout his career.

One unfortunate thing which I'm not sure if it's the fault of the translation or the original text is that much of this reads like a summary. He wants to rush quickly through his early life to get to the presidency. This means that several important events including at least one constitutional crisis gets very limited coverage. I realize the book is a political memoir but the occasional vignettes about his family life are a times much more enlightening than his thoughts about to us in North America obscure politicians.

Miley recommended.

This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.

The Great Escape and Revisionist Drivel

So according to this article the Great Escape was militarily reckless and shouldn't have been attempted. I realize he's trying to sell his book controversy being what it is. However the argument on its face value is ridiculous.

Setting aside the obvious that the first duty of prisoners of war is to try to escape the idea of well the war was going to be over so just stay there doesn't pass the smell test. Even if it did when exactly would this sort of logic "be acceptable"? After 1943 or maybe 1942 after the Americans entered?

USMC Professional Reading List

A new one of these was just released this time by Commandant Gen. Jim Amos.  One of those projects I always thought about doing never got around to it was reading through the contents of the various lists.  Last considering it about five years ago but after reading the Air Force list at the time I gave it up. The list is quirky. I'm amazed that On War doesn't appear anywhere. Much of it would be picked up secondhand from the other books but it's so central to western military thought that even people who disagree with it still have to name check it. There's also a smattering of pop history nonsense particularly the Tuchman and Hanson.

 I have actually reviewed some of it here. Links go to my reviews. I liked Supplying War:Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton by Martin Van Creveld and War Comes to Long An: Revolutionary Conflict in a Vietnamese Province by Jeffrey Race I wasn't a big fan of On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society by Dave Grossman. There are some here that I've read that haven't reviewed. Could be worth taking them out particularly the Slim and Rommel.

The New New Rules: A Funny Look at How Everybody but Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass by Bill Maher

The New New Rules: A Funny Look at How Everybody but Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass
by Bill Maher

 At this stage I doubt many people need an introduction to Bill Maher, rabid left wing atheist and famously a pothead.  He is very left wing.  Even more so than me (yes dad me).  So what we get here are the usual topics in fast short essay form.  War is bad, Health Care System horrible, republicans really bad and Tea Party members worse than Satan, if he existed.  There were times when I did laugh out loud.  Interspersed through these are short one liners the "new rules".  Think of them as equivalent to stand up jokes.

I'm not sure how they read on the printed page.  I had it in audiobook form.  Even though he's not using a live crowd to work off of his timing is still excellent.  I'd probably recommend the audiobook although the link down below goes to the print version.

Recommended.

Is this thing on?

Well time to fire this thing up again.  For the record only read 54 books in 2012.  No real point in doing a best of post.  Looking back on the list nothing really jumped out as being mind blowing.  As for the reason behind the low number well let's just say there been a few distractions over the past year.  So to a better 2013.

The Million Death Quake: The Science of Predicting Earth's Deadliest Natural Disaster by Roger Musson

The Million Death Quake: The Science of Predicting Earth's Deadliest Natural Disaster
by Roger Musson

This is a quick, breezy but surprisingly jam packed book discussing earthquakes.  I don't have much of a science background since I stopped taking those sorts of classes in high school but I was able to follow the clear explanations of terms and concepts.  It actually reminded me of some enthusiastic professors I've had over the years.  Musson is clearly fascinated by the subject and wants to share his interest with the rest of us.  The book contains a quick history of earthquakes as well as their detection and explanation.  The book concludes with sections on government policy and what people should do.  The chapter on building standards was fascinating.  I'll never quite looking at a large lobby in a hotel the same way again.

Highly recommended!

Note this book was provided for review by the publisher.

Fantasy Sexism and History

There are times when even I have to actually get off my butt and do some blogging. One of those was a column like this. Basically to summarize fantasy based on history shouldn't be sexist because history is all sexist nonsense anyway.  Well...  OK.

At least there is reference to social history.  It does deal with more pro feminist discussion.  However it's not made clear that at least in North America social history is the dominant field of study since the 1980s.  If we're going to study evil sexist military history than in Canada there are pretty much only two civilian choices University of Calgary and university of New Brunswick.

Do you really wanna go down a road where it suggested that the entire written record is corrupt?  All right fine but guess what that means you're reduced to archaeology and that's about it.  Kind of hard to discuss all those powerful women working behind the scenes if all you've got are some ruins and remains of pottery.

The comments are chopped up with all sorts of fail as well.  Circular logic and strawmen [strawpeople?].  My favorite is pointing out Eleanor of Aquitaine as a powerful woman in her own right.  Sure but not exactly typical of your average peasant woman living to 35 and dying in childbirth.  Which actually nicely ties in with the "big man" view of history which of course the social historians despise.  So it's a bit of a garbled mess.  Or the shock amongst shock memoirs from women who dressed up as men and fought in the American civil War.  The reason why these memoirs are so famous is because they are unusual.  Yes women fought in the Viet Cong know they were never near 50%.  Also see the Night Witches from WWII.  But again unusual.

When I was explaining this to my dad he rightfully pointed out.  This is fiction right?  If there's a demand it'll sell.  He's right and don't rush down to comment and tell me that the New York publishers are a bunch of sexist jerks.  In an era of crowd sourcing and electronic publishing if everyone in that comment thread that is so enraged chipped in the price of a hardcover you'd have one very well funded small press.

I guess what irks me the most is the final line.  Telling people to "Make your books better." No sorry you make yours better.  You don't get the judge the quality that's for "me" to decide.  No one gets to take that agency for me.

Although if that comment thread is any judge none of the above matters because the last time I checked I'm a guy.

The casual vacancy by J. K. Rowling

The casual vacancy
by J. K. Rowling

This contains spoilers. So if you don’t want to be spoiled, then stop reading now.

I really need to stop pre-ordering books. That is perhaps the moral of this story, because I am not sure the book itself has one. But, first, let’s try to deal with the plot such as it is. The back cover blurb makes it sound like the central plot of the book will be about an election to replace a council member who died, that this election will divide the community, rich against poor, old against young, et cetera, et cetera. We find out, eventually, that the major political issue of the campaign is whether or not to keep a poor section of the community within its boundaries. Yes, the election does take place. No, the vote doesn't actually take place. No, we never get closure on what happened to the boundary.


So, instead, what do we have here?  Basically we have 500 pages of characters screaming at each other and occasionally having sex, but mostly screaming.  I have no idea who I am supposed to sympathize with. I have read in some places that this book is considered left wing propaganda.  If it is, it fails miserably. Presumably the left wing cause it trumpets is the poor, but it is not as if their portrayal is particularly positive either, dismissed as trapped junkies forced into crime and prostitution, unable even with government programs to escape the circle of dependency.The only character that did actually escape is the dead member of council who we never actually meet.

The rich or, at least, middle class townspeople come off just as badly, petty, small minded, vindictive, manipulative. What I found particularly aggravating was the professionals in the book, the teachers, social workers, doctors appeared to have absolutely no idea what they were doing. Even basic things like confidentiality agreements were ignored when it suited the plot, but suddenly remembered when it was necessary. Perhaps that is the point, that all people are evil and anyone in authority is incompetent. If so, I would have preferred to save my time and my money.

When the book was reaching its climax I paused for a moment to text a friend to tell them that I imagined the author sitting in front of her computer screaming at the top of her lungs, “Adult? I will show you adult.” And she did, if you consider adult to be the following: profanity, sex, teenage sex, drug use, smoking, petty crimes, rape, cutting, possible pedophila and, finally, suicide. 


The book also contains an impressive amount of use of the F-word often in multiple times in the same sentence.  It is like she watched Pulp Fiction one too many times or really had problems making word count.
And the book does drag horribly. She repeats characterization over and over again.  Part of this is necessary because she introduces such a huge cast of characters. Apparently it is mentioned in the Kindle edition that there are over 80.  If she had bothered to focus in on two or three or maybe four, we could get to know them, but we are being shuttled around constantly. Just when we got used to some one we are off to somebody else.

From a technical standpoint the writing itself is occasionally bad, first writing course bad. Basic things like avoid adverbs in speech tags are ignored, is rampant. There is one dinner party scene where I think we are changing point of view every few lines of dialog. There is a reason why you don’t do this. It is because it confuses the reader. Eventually they have no idea whose head you are in. I became lost at least three times.

As was typical in her other books, she likes her figures of speech carpet bombing the text like the RAF on a night raid over Germany, the explosions ripping into the pages.  See how jarring that was, how superfluous? Think of 500 pages of that.  She also gladly leaves the boring parts in. We get a discourse on fake versus real breasts in pornography. As for the idea that a council website would have a forum, but at the same time have it set up by someone totally incompetent who only passed one class is just too ridiculous to contemplate. When a major plot device in your book is that anyone can hack into this forum when I know free forum software that presumably was reasonably secure existed 15 years ago, it makes the author who named drops Facebook and other brand names seem either lazy or out of touch.

I am not sure if I am getting my point across. I was very disappointed with this book. If it had been cut down by at least a third, possibly a half and had only focused on a handful of characters, I could maybe see this working. How a single event can transform the lives of all who experience it. It is an interesting idea, but in the execution we have to be able to cheer for someone, a hero or even an anti hero. I hope this was her big message book and she got it out of her system and that she will go back to writing fun stuff. But I will wait for the reviews to find out. I am not preordering her stuff anymore.

Not recommended!