Books for nerds

Perhaps it is just further proof of what a hopeless nerd I am, but the most compelling book I’ve read in a long time is about the Oxford English Dictionary. I don’t think it is just my quirky interests that made The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary a compelling read. Simon Winchester is a brilliant author in telling the story of how the dictionary was compiled and the brief history of dictionaries. There’s wonderful definitions from the OED at the head of every chapter and a detailed defense of the plural “protagonists”. But best of all, and the real focus of Winchester’s story, are the eccentric and, in one case, mad characters who did the actual writing and research for the OED. He is at once straightforward in telling us about their lives and quirks, but it tempered with an warm and genuine affection for them. It is a delightful and fascinating combination.


There is yet another nerdy reading choice to report. I loved Packing for Mars. I had put off reading it because I assumed that with all my hours watching NASA-TV, I knew most everything about astronaut training and space ship design. That was a silly assumption -- I apparently knew nothing! It could have easily been a very dry read, but Mary Roach’s science writing is at once clear, interesting and very, very funny. I was sitting in the waiting room at the doctor’s, reading the section on the research of bodily waste issues in zero-gravity, and got a serious case of the giggles -- not just because I have a scatological sense of humor, but because it was so very funny! It is extraordinary the things people do for a living, researching issues things that are a serious matter in the business of space flight.




Fellow nerd and author AJ Jacobs enjoys poking fun at his own foibles and OCD tendencies, and invites his readers to laugh along with him. His Year of Living Biblically could have tipped over into pure farce, but he was earnest in learning as much as possible and fleshed out his experiment with many interviews with both serious Biblical scholars, rabbis and ministers and with some of the more fringe religious elements. I also enjoyed The Know It All, an account of his reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica, in pure alphabetical order, in a year.

Happy Birthday, Dorothy Sayers!!!

It is a happy coincidence that I'm currently reading Clouds of Witness.

January reading

My reading has gotten off to a very slow start, partly due to life, partly that I haven't had a page turner in my hands so far this year.

Terry Pratchett's Discworld series continues to be a staple of my audio book life. I read Thief of Time in January, with its riffs on quantum mechanics and string theory and time made it tie in quite nicely with all the Fringe episodes we've been watching. My current "car book", which is what I turn to when on the freeways, is Nightwatch. It is another Discworld time travel book but this time featuring my favorite character, Sam Vimes caught in the ol' Star Trek paradox of being stuck back in time but having to be careful to not change history.

Someone asked me where to start with the Discworld books, and I have to say I think the best starting place is Going Postal, a book about bringing the mail service back to life in the Discworld city of Ankh Morpork. It has all the best Discworld elements: terrific characters, very funny writing, and a terrific story that you want to finish. Discworld is, well, I'll let Terry Pratchett's cite explain what it is.

Bridge of Birds was the first book of the year for a virtual book club organized by a friend. What a delightful discovery! It is an epic fairy tale set in a "China that never was". The story follows the epic quest of Number 10 Ox and Li Kao who must find the cure for the children in a small village. It is a Chinese epic, rather than a Western one with the hero who discovers he has unknown skills and gifts. The elements of the story are all based in real Chinese myths and stories, which for me with my Chinese Studies background was so much fun. One thing or another would seem familiar, would niggle loose a memory from college classes, and I'd have to put the book down to research the Chinese word or story to refresh my memory. It is one I'm going to have to re-read in order to simply enjoy the story instead of treating it like a comprehensive exam.


I've been re-listening to Bill Bryson's At Home when I just need something to fill few minutes. It is as great the second time as was the first, and as it is so packed with information you pick up something new each time you listen (or read.)

2010: The year in books!

This is the year of Discworld. My 15yo reading buddy and son was having too much fun listening to and reading all the Discworld books, so I finally took the plunge. They are filled with dry humor and some laugh out loud humor and often have great characters and compelling stories. I think I’ve read 9 of them:

Lost Continent -- surreal visit to the Discworld version of Australia. Some of the funniest lines.
Going Postal -- perhaps my favorite. The story of the post office in Ankh Morpork
The Truth -- The story of the Newspaper in Ankh Morpork. Not as good as Going Postal
Guards! Guards! -- the beginning reads like a Monty Python skit.
The 5th Elephant -- more Sam Vimes and the Night Watch
Thud -- Where’s My Cow? I loved this book and the previous 2.
Jingo -- rather unmemorable
Reaper Man -- Death takes a holiday. What can I say? It is silly and funny.
Unseen Academicals -- just read this one. Good characters, but not a favorite.

I should have known it was going to be an odd year of reading as my first book of 2010 was Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy!

I read some classics this year, too.

Mansfield Park -- a very different Austen book.
Pride and Prejudice -- from cover to cover for the first time since my teen years
Jane Eyre -- I really liked this and it prompted me to read a biography of Charlotte Bronte
Wuthering Heights -- I couldn’t finish. Catherine and Heathcliff annoy me to no end.
Moby Dick -- I didn’t hate it, in fact it was an enjoyable listen. Not always compelling, though.
Heart of Darkness -- it almost seems cliche, but it was the first “evil white colonialist” book

Other older titles that I enjoyed were The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, which was an unexpected joy to read and The Sign of Four, one of the Sherlock Holmes novels. The plot for Sign of Four is now confused in my mind with The Moonstone as both stories deal with stolen goods from India.

My son and I both loved At Home by Bill Bryson. It really brought so much of 19th century England to life, the details from all that British literature I read now are not something I gloss over but actually describe something tangible. A couple of other titles from same time period was Remarkable Creatures, a historical fiction about Mary Anning's life and The Fossil Hunters, a biography -- poorly written -- of Mary Anning. (She is the woman who sold sea shells by the sea shore in Lyme, and discovered the ichthyosaur and plesiosaur fossils.)

I listened to The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, based on my son’s love of the book. It made for a great car trip as we wound up talking about politics and Heinlein’s libertarian leanings. Far North was the most evocative book I read, I think. The landscape and situations are still vividly real in my imagination. Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn series was entertaining fanstasy, but not memorable.

I haven’t read all the books I bought at Comic-con, but I thoroughly enjoyed the one I have read. The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss has a terrific protagonist, someone who is NOT the chosen one, NOT going to fulfill his destiny. That alone is refreshing!! But the setting and the plotting are refreshing too. His second book comes out in March, and my son and I are clearing our calendar for that one.

All in all I read 55 books this last year, though admittedly a few were put down somewhere in the 2nd half and I only skimmed the end. I've got a stack ready to go for next year, including a few more Discworld titles...

52 Books in 52 weeks: More Moby Dick and some reviews

My reading list continues to be very eclectic -- a few “great books”, some good books and fluff and some non-fiction. I’ve slowed down a bit thanks to Moby Dick, which I’m still enjoying but isn’t quite the page turner of an epic that I thought it might be. But I’m past that “wall” that marathon runners describe, that point where you feel too fatigued to go on and realize the end is still so far away. At least now the end is in sight, the white whale is almost in sight and I’ll have a terrific sense of accomplishment when it’s all done.

But I was going to write about what else I’ve been reading.

First up, some light but entertaining fantasy. A friend lent me a copy of Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson promising it to be a fun read, and indeed it was. Fantasy is one of those hit or miss genres, too often a miss for my taste. Mistborn started off leaning toward the “miss” category because of the expository rush at the beginning of the book. There is nothing that kills a sci fi or fantasy novel like heavy handed explanations -- the world should be revealed through the story. But, the exposition wasn’t too clunky and the characters and plot soon caught and kept my attention.

My son and I attended a reading and signing with Sanderson just last week, and in a serendipitous coincidence he happened to mention Moby Dick, describing it as a kind of fantasy novel. I liked that analogy. What my son and I find quite amusing is that Sanderson’s newest book, in audio format, clocks in at a whopping 45 hours! Moby Dick was only 24, and is a self contained book whereas Sanderson’s book is the first in a planned 10 book series!!! 10 books! I can’t imagine a story that warrants 10 books of 400,000 words each! And yet the author was engaging, Mistborn was readable, so the 45 hour marathon may be worth a try.

Another recent read was Moonstone, a Victorian detective novel by Wilkie Collins. What a delightful read! The story is told from several viewpoints, each of which is a very distinct and entertaining character. The loyal and funny servant and the fundamentalist spinster aunt are the two best, but the detective and secondary characters are fun too. There are some terrific red herrings and a solution that works even though it defies reason.

I had never heard of Wilkie Collins until some of the ladies on the Well Trained Mind high school forums started talking about his books. I looked him up either on Wikipedia or Sparknotes (can’t remember which) and was surprised to find out he and Dickens were great friends. I assumed he is an author slipping into oblivion (because, of course, I hadn’t heard of him!) only to discover there is an essay contest for teens sponsored by Penguin books on the Moonstone, and a local bookstore’s book club is discussing the book later this month.

It seems the more I learn the more ignorant I feel! There are clearly more wonderful titles and authors out there that I’ve never heard of and so many literary references that still go over the top of my head.

Moby Dick!

Call me astounded.

Moby Dick is epic, and I don’t mean in just in the literary sense of the word. It is epically over the top, full of terrific lines that have been adopted into the geek lexicon thanks to Star Trek. It has grand characters, unexpected detours, and, eventually, a whale of an adventure tale.

That there will be an adventure story I’m taking on faith as so far -- and I’m not quite half way into it -- the action can be summed up in a couple of sentences. Ishmael meets Queequeg, they join the crew of the whaling ship Pequod and sail out of Nantucket. Ahab announces he wants to hunt a particular whale. I’ve just summed up over 300 pages!! No wonder people give up on reading this book.

But I’m not reading it in print form. I’m listening to a wonderful recording of it as read by, actually performed by, Anthony Heald. Talk about epic. (And I’m not just referring to the 24 hours of audio!) He can take the most clause-choked sentence and make it sound natural. Make it interesting and worth listening to. Melville’s writing is made lively and brilliant. The Shakespearean nature of Ahab’s speech comes to life, lines that the average reader would miss because his eyes had glazed over suddenly pop out in all their poetic drama. Even the chapters detailing whaling life or the natural history of the period are a good listen. It is simply brilliant.

I find myself taking notes, looking things up on the internet, pulling out the print copy to reread a particularly interesting passage. And I’m getting a kick out of all the literary and mythological references that I now get thanks to all the reading of classics my kids and I have done while homeschooling.

My 15yo son is also listening to Moby Dick and loving it. I often hear him in the next room chuckling over speech by Ahab, not because it is comical, but because it is unexpectedly familiar. We are constantly asking each other “have you read the part yet ....” and comparing reactions. He keeps saying, “This is soooo much better than the Iliad!!” Sorry Homer, you just don’t make the cut!

Summer Reading

I’ve managed to read at least 15 books since mid-June, putting myself ahead of the book a week pace after being behind for so long. Here’s a brief summary of the hits, and luckily, no real misses.

The happy new discovery of the year for me and for my son Mike, has been all the Discworld books by Terry Pratchett. I know we’re late to the party as everyone else seems to have read them already, but we’re awfully glad to be here! I’ve only read 4 of his books so far as I’m also reading other genres, but Mike is on a steady diet of the things, impatient for me to get to certain titles. I love the dry humor, the absurd situations, the colorful characters, but I especially love that there there is a story that draws me in keeps me turning pages.

I finally got to Laurie R. King’s 2 most recent installments in her Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes mysteries, The Language of Bees and The God of the Hive. I also went back and reread the first from the series, The Beekeeper’s Apprentice. Maybe I’m outgrowing these books, because while I like the writing and the pacing, I’m starting to find them a little too fan-fictiony. Mary Russell is a good character, and her meeting Sherlock Holmes in the first book makes perfect sense, but the books could have been just as strong with her as the only detective and without her marrying the man. I also tried Laurie R. King’s other detective series, The Art of Detection, that happened to have a Sherlock Holmes tie in. Really good mystery, good characters, a real police detective book. Nice to know there another series by this author I can turn to now.

I’ve finished the 3rd Temeraire book by Naomi Novik. The Napoleonic Wars! With Dragons! It sounds bizarre, but it works, and she manages to weave in some interesting themes, such as the issue of slavery, making these especially good reads, I think, for teens. Fantasy loving adults have lots to enjoy too.

Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco was terrific, but depressing as could be. His realistic depiction of Medieval life was just a tad too much for me -- I couldn’t focus on the mystery as I was too upset by knowing a poor girl was going to be burned at the stake. I came to realize that I prefer a more romantic version of olden times than a realistic version, hence my enjoyment of fantasy lit.

Simon Tolkein’s The Inheritance was a great page turner suspense/mystery.

My favorite book of the summer, though, is one I picked up at Comic-Con. The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss is a terrific beginning to a fantasy series. The prose is lovely, the characters are slowly revealed in a clever manner, and the world is believable. There is none of the clunky exposition that bogs down many fantasies. The passages where he puts us inside the mind of a musician transported when making music are poetic yet realistic. A dragon getting high on opiate trees is a funny adventure romp. It isn't an epic hero quest, but there is an epic hero whose story we are learning almost in a backwards fashion. Now I have to wait until March for the next installment.

Comic-Con 2010

Comic-Con, the annual pop culture extravaganza in San Diego, has one more day to go, but I think I’ve had my fill for the year. My nightstand and wallet can’t quite take anymore book purchases! Comic-Con has nearly been taken over by the Hollywood marketing machine such that comic book artists, writers and retailers are an after thought, shoved into the far corners of the exhibit hall. But interestingly enough, book publishers such as Penguin and Del Rey have a fairly strong presence and bring in many well known genre writers for signings and panels.

I sat in on 4 of these discussion panels, and was as always entertained and wowed by how interesting and intelligent these authors are. Well read, as you would hope, and articulate, as you would also hope, and full of interesting opinions and a passion for their favorite genres.

This was the third time I’ve seen Christopher Paolini at Comic-Con, and once again he was delightful. The topic for his panel was “The Hero in Epic Fantasy”, and the question came up about the trope of the protagonist being a “chosen one” or having a “destiny to fulfill”. The first author to address this, Patrick Rothfuss, enthusiastically proclaimed he detested it, that it was a weak and hackneyed plot device, just a bunch of crock perpetuated by weak writers. Christopher Paolini was sitting next to this guy, and said, “Well, as someone who has invested most of my life now to writing a series about a boy with a destiny, I have to disagree with you,” and then he went on to very eloquently defend the trope. I wish I had taken notes on what he said, but I was really impressed by him, by his bringing up examples from literary history to discussing how and when the trope works.

I did buy Patrick Rothfuss’s book, The Name of the Wind, as he was a riot on the panel and I myself am rather sick of chosen ones in every fantasy book I read. Got him to sign my copy, too!

I was also very taken with China Mieville who was a special guest of Comic-Con. His recent book, Kraken was reviewed in the New York Times Saturday. What I love about him is between his intimidating looks (shaved head, lots of piercings in one ear) and his educational and political background you’d expect his books to be dark, brooding and full of heavy political themes. In reality he is a regular geek who simply lets his active imagination flow onto the page. He was very funny, humble, thrilled he can make a living as an author, and clearly intelligent. I’m really looking forward to Kraken and exploring his other titles.

The one author I wanted to meet but just didn’t get to was Naomi Novik, who writes the Temeraire books. I did get to see her on a panel of authors who mix genres. They talked quite a bit about the challenge of pitching their ideas, of publishers and booksellers categorizing their books. I would have loved for them to talk more about how they research and plan these mixes of genres, but they ran out of time.

I waited in line for a signing with some other fans of scifi and fantasy, and we talked about not having books for authors to sign as we use e-books and audiobooks. We were joking about autographable skins for iPods and iPads and Kindles. As we talked we shared favorite authors, and one woman recommended I try Lynn Flewelling, so I picked up The Bone Doll’s Twin.

I also wound up with free copies of George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones and China Mieville’s Perdido Street Station. I now have quite a stack of books to get to between these new titles and the books already queued up at home such as the rest of the Temeraire books, all the Discworld books my son wants me to read.

When I wasn't in panels or waiting for an autograph, I was busy taking photos of people in costume. I'll post some of those in the next few days.

When to give up on a book.

My son and I both gave up on Galileo's Dream a few days ago. We each really tried to like it, and in fact did like very much the historical aspect of the book. As I wrote last week he brings Galileo, warts and all, to life. But the sci-fi part of the book -- not so much. The characters of the future sci-fi world are one dimensional, not very likable, and their motivation, their reason for intruding into the book, is very unclear. They were so patronizing to Galileo -- I didn't want them to have any influence on him or his work. If that wasn't bad enough, the sci-fi story completely "jumped the shark" into silly and unbelievable territory.

And yet Kim Stanley Robinson is such a good writer that we both kept thinking there had to be something more to the book, something that we just weren't getting. It made us feel dense, as if we were too stupid to see the profound message buried in the story. I finally started reading published reviews of the book, looking to see what exactly we were missing, but it seems the book has many people scratching their heads. The reviewers who did like it didn't convince me that reading to the bitter end would be earth shattering and worth while.

So, we put it down. I'm intrigued with his writing enough that I'd like to try another of his novels. The premise for The Years of Rice and Salt intrigues me, and I'd be reading it this weekend but the copy in my library is missing a huge chunk of pages.

Book Review

Leviathan by Scott Westerfield

I bought this book solely based on the cool map on the inside cover. It is a stylized map of Europe during WWI, with the countries drawn as beasts such as Russia as a giant bear with it's mouth open and giant teeth ready to eat Germany, and Italy as literally a boot. I love imaginative illustrations and there are more by artist Keith Thompson scattered throughout the book.

Leviathan is a young adult, steam-punk adventure novel. It is WWI, but in an alternate universe where Darwin learned to create hybrid creatures that work like machines and the Germans designed enormous walking tanks much like the AT-ATs in Star Wars. This alternative world felt real and plausible and I was immediately drawn into it, and wanted to spend time in this world.

The main characters though are the standard issue for all young adult novels -- the tough and feisty girl who is out to prove herself in a man's world, and the uncertain boy who has a destiny to fulfill. I liked them, but my 14yo gave up on the book about a third of the way through because he said he has had enough of these types of characters, that their story arcs are always the same. While he appreciated the unique illustrations and steam punk setting, it wasn't enough to keep him engaged.

My biggest problem with the book is really a quibble, though. It could have been a stand alone book, but it is of course set up without a resolution because there will be another in the series. Harry Potter at least had a conflict and resolution in each of the 7 books, but this was 440 pages of exposition.

I think this would be a great book for any young lover of fantasy and sci-fi, and for any reluctant reader. It has enough real history for introducing a young reader to WWI, and cool machines and "beasties" to keep them interested. I love the fact that there is a trailer for the book which uses the illustrations to promote the book on YouTube (and imbedded in the author's website.) Check it out here on You Tube.