SXSW Party

Last night I attended a party at the Lucky Lounge hosted by Palo Duro Records. Both Morrison-Williams and Two Tons of Steel performed and we all had a great time. We picked up the Morrison-Williams CD at the bar and I just ordered Transparent and Live at Gruene Hall from Two Tons. MW has a great tune called My Girl Friday, but their rendition of Cover of the Rolling Stone was my favorite of the evening. Two Tons is a fantastic band to hear live; they have an infectious sound (think Brian Setzer Orchestra) and attitude that had us dancing at the bar. I believe they are going to be at the Continental Club in April; hopefully we will be able to catch them again. A great evening for us all; check these bands out if you get a chance.

Gunpowder Empire, by Harry Turtledove

I really enjoy alternate history stories. Harry Turtledove is the current master of these, so I was pleased to find the first of a new collection. This series is more like Sliders (exactly like Sliders, actually) that the typical What If... style, which will hopefully have future tales visit multiple alternate worlds. This book was okay, but not fantastic. It focused on two modern high school kids and their trying to stay alive during a siege in Roman times. A great setup, but the kids were a bit preachy for my tastes: the boy (Jeremy) is sickened by people wearing fur, and the girl (Amanda) can’t understand why the slaves don’t all revolt. Delving into their reactions to bloodshed and primitive medical help was much more satisfying; Jeremy, after being raised on modern videogames, was believably shaken when confronted with the violence of an actual war. This wasn’t as good as Turtledove’s Guns of the South, but then nothing is!

An interesting thread that wasn’t pursued was that of religion. In the alternate Earth our characters visit, Christianity has a status closer to what we expect of the Church of Scientology here, Judaism has a smaller following than that, and Islam doesn’t exist at all. There is a line in the novel about how the group that controls the portals between worlds has a strict non-interference policy (think prime directive from Star Trek) and therefore religious customs (slavery, sexism, ...) are off limits. From what I’ve seen of zealots in our world, however, a simple policy isn’t going to stop many of them from trying. Hopefully a future story in this universe will examine the politics around the beliefs of the alternate worlds.

First Sentence:

When Jeremy Solters found a note from his mother in his lunchbox, he started to laugh.

Cube Farm, by Bill Blunden

I thoroughly enjoyed this book! It does a fantastic job of humorously describing the world of software development at a large(ish) company. I can’t count the number of times that the author described something that I’ve seen at my company! His depiction of the Web Group versus the Illuminati (code names for two groups within the author’s firm) is a scary parallel to BMC’s PATROL Express versus PATROL battles over the past few years. In addition to telling a very entertaining story, he calls out lessons in each chapter that we should take away from his tales of woe; again, BMC could learn from many of these: “Physical separation can facilitate rivalry;” or “Managers will often ignore a problem to make it go away;” or “If your boss substitutes consensus building for leadership, be afraid;” or “It sucks to live in Minnesota, unless you enjoy ice sports.” Well, maybe not that last one so much. If you are a fan of Office Space or Dilbert, then you’ll enjoy Cube Farm.

First Sentence:

In December 1992, after four years of intense study, I completed an undergraduate degree in physics from Cornell University.

Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism, by Ann Coulter

This is one of those books that when I mention I’ve read it people either laugh or groan. If you aren’t familiar with Ann Coulter, she is the exact opposite of Michael Moore: as conservative as he is liberal, thin instead of fat, well-groomed instead of scruffy, you get the idea. What they do have in common, though, is a seeming belief that offending your opponents is more important than having your message heard. Treason is no exception; there are several interesting points in his book but the manner in which they are presented is so offensive that they almost don’t register. For instance: Coulter writes, “Whether they are defending the Soviet Union or bleating for Saddam Hussein, liberals are always against America. They are either traitors or idiots, and on the matter of America’s self-preservation, the difference is irrelevant.” There is some truth in this; Roosevelt was friendly with Stalin (the man who conducted purges that killed and imprisoned tens of millions of USSR citizens), and there is no shortage today of people that feel that we should not have gone to war in Iraq despite the massive human rights violations overseen by Saddam. However, Roosevelt was friendly because he honestly believed that this was the best way to obtain a post-WWII peace, not because he was an idiot. Calling modern peaceniks traitors because they don’t fully support the Iraqi war isn’t fair either; you can certainly protest the war without committing treason. (One could argue that causing internal conflict over the issue is traitorous in itself, but doing so seems to go against our basic freedom of speech. I liken this to flag burning—very unpatriotic but not outright treason.) This book overflows with exaggerations and hyperbole just like this example.

While I agree with a lot of the underlying points the author was trying to make, this book felt a few chapters too long. At first I found the style amusing, but as the diatribe continued it began to wear on me. Reactions to this book are going to be very predictable: if you lean to the right, you will probably enjoy this attack on everything left (I did) and if you lean to the left you will be offended and march to your nearest lawyer demanding that somebody be sued for libel.

First Sentence:

Liberals have a preternatural gift for striking a position on the side of treason.

Dragon’s Kin, by Anne McCaffrey and Todd McCaffrey

I’ll admit it: I’ve been a fan of the Pern universe since coming across Dragonsong as a kid. At first glance this looks like a straight fantasy universe, but bits and pieces of a long lost high-tech society become recognizable as time goes on. We start with pure fantasy letting us soar with dragons, then slowly work our way to pure sci-fi showing us how the planet was originally colonized and the dragons were gene-engineered. This captured my imagination 25 years ago and to this day tales of alternate history and lost civilizations remain my favorites. Whenever I see a Pern book I haven’t read, I grab it!

This read more as a young-adult novel than some of the more recent Pern outings, but several of the early tales did as well so that isn’t a huge distraction. In fact, I seem to recall that the Harper Hall Trilogy was all YA targeted as well; I didn’t see any such markings on this book but it certainly fits the bill. We’ve seen a lot of the story in previous volumes: the race against time to prevent a disaster, the arrogant old-timer who threatens the hold (or mine in this case), the outcast who becomes the hero, and a rediscovery of forgotten lore (the watch-whers see in infrared). While I would have preferred a more original storyline, the Pern saga certainly isn’t devolving into the mess that other long-running titles sometimes do. (Think Robert B. Parker’s Spenser or Kinky Friedman’s ... well, Kinky; I love both of these characters but the later books in both series got harder and harder to read. Kinky at least realized this and killed himself off in his latest effort!) The repetition of old themes didn’t hurt my enjoyment, though, and I found the exploration of the abilities of watch-whers fairly interesting. I suspect that there will be a future companion tale that tells for what purpose the watch-whers were originally bred and engineered, and when it comes I’ll happily read it.

First Sentence:

Kindan was so excited that he practically bounced as he ran up to the heights where Camp Natalon kept its drum, fire beacon, and watch.

The Jester, by James Patterson and Andrew Gross

I like historical fiction, so I was very disappointed when I finished this book. I picked it up at the library on a whim; I’d read Patterson before and while no Elizabeth George he is usually pretty entertaining. Not so much here. The tone and style of the writing is so simple that I believed at times it was written by the fictional jester (most of it is written in the first person) instead of a professional author. In fact, if it wasn’t for the graphic torture, sadistic violence and rape, and the occasional venture into soft-core porn, I’d have thought this was a young adult novel! The characters were flat and uninteresting. The plot was unbelievable and undeveloped. The anachronisms come early and often. Besides that, though, ...

One point the author did (unintentionally, I believe) make was how petty religious beliefs can be. This story is set during the Crusades, a time where people that believed in one religion invaded, killed, pillaged, and raped those that believed in another religion, all in the name of God. Furthermore, most of the depicted violence in The Jester is committed over the spear that was used to prove Jesus was really dead, the Spear Of Longinus. 500 pages of violence, all over an ancient weapon with supposed mythical powers. The power of devout belief (not only with religion, but in politics, race, patriotism, etc.) is amazingly strong, but when taken to an extreme becomes difficult for me to understand.

First Sentence:

The church bells were ringing.

The Magic Shop, edited by Denise Little

The theme of this collection of stories revolved around (wait for it!) magic shops. With the exception of Mel Odom’s Serpent of the Lakes, I liked every tale in it. The Assassin’s Dagger by Kristine Katheryn Rusch has the most interesting setup: corporations are taking over traditional magic shops across the world, but not all these places are happy about it. There were no fantastic adventures here, but none truly awful ones either. The Fairest by Von Jocks was my favorite of the bunch, but they were all readable.

First Sentence (from the introduction):

Magic is a subject that fascinates us all, no matter what our personal beliefs.

Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut

Why do people like this book? I’m more of a hawk than a dove so that may color my perceptions, but this was awful. I’ll admit, it does a great job of describing the horrors of war, and I get the (not so subtle) irony of having Billy be an optometrist—a profession that traditionally helps others to see. The tale simply isn’t very interesting, though. If I hear, “So it goes” one more time I may puke! I rarely stop reading a book before I’m finished, but I was sorely tempted here.

First Sentence:

All this happened, more or less.