Armada, by Ernest Cline

Despite having basically the same plot as the excellent Ready Player One (video game playing awkward teen stumbles into a massive intrigue, meets and falls for a beautiful ingénue, and then becomes the hero of the world) I couldn't put this book down, and in fact read it in one sitting! Cline fills it with not only references to classic video games and science fiction movies, but manages to make them seem fresh rather than derivative. The basic plot closely resembles The Last Starfighter, but instead of being ignored Cline embraces this (and all alien invasion tropes) by saying that these exist to prepare the populace for the reality of extraterrestrials. I love that he also tosses in other pop culture references to movies like Firefox and Red Dawn but doesn't explain them—either you get them or you don't. I'm sure I didn't get them all, but I liked the instant memories the ones I did brought to mind. I haven't met anyone that didn't like this book, from my fellow 1980's kids to my own kids!

First Sentence:

I was staring out the classroom window and daydreaming of adventure when I spotted the flying saucer.

The Wright Brothers, by David McCullough

Wilbur and Orville Wright are two men that exemplify what it means to be an American inventor. At a time where most of the world thought heavier-than-air flight was a fool's errand at best, they took their lives in their hands in order to conquer the skies. Neither had a college degree, but Wilbur was a genius and Orville was one of the best mechanical minds of his age. By close examination of birds, careful reading of the work of fellow scientists, and daredevil experimentation they were the first people that safely flew a powered aircraft.

McCullough is an excellent writer and does a great job of telling the story of the brothers lives and their quest. They kept their aircraft and experiments largely private, so even after their initial successes most of the world remained skeptical. After finally holding public demonstrations in Europe and the US proving their accomplishments, the brothers became global heroes. Ironically, their flights to show the world were some of the last they ever made. Wilbur died of typhoid fever less than five years later, and Orville spent the remainder of his life fighting patent infringements and lawsuits. Despite this less than audacious end, the brothers names and accomplishments live on today, with possibly the coolest tribute being the fact that when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, he carried a swatch of muslin from the wing of the brother's 1903 Flyer.

First Sentence:

In as strong a photograph as any taken of the brothers together, they sit side by side on the back porch steps of the Wright family home on a small side street on the west end of Dayton, Ohio.

The B Side, by Ben Yagoda

My mother loves the theater and my father loved movies, so I grew up with the sounds of Broadway and Hollywood in the house. I'm as familiar with the music of Cole Porter, George M. Cohan, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, and Duke Ellington as I am Kris Kristofferson, Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. The B Side traces American song craft in the early 20^th century, including the rise of ASCAP and BMI, the payola scandal, and the shift in prestige from writers to performers. It is sometimes difficult to read a book about music; words are for the eyes, but melody is for the ears (and both nurture the soul). This story often contains long lists of titles, such as "Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)," "I Got Rhythm," "Always," "Stormy Weather," "They Can't Take That Away from Me," "You're the Top," "Sophisticated Lady," "Swinging on a Star," and "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)." I find it virtually impossible to see these names and not pause to hear the tune in my head, making this a very long read, albeit an enjoyable one.

One critique is that the author clearly has a distain for rock-and-roll that often seems arrogant. In places this comes across as broad overstatements such as "the pop music of every era offended and mystified the older generation;" while more true than not, I'm certainly an exception as are many of my friends. In other places, the sentiment is imperiously haughty: "But it isn't possible for [songwriters such as Willie Nelson, Brian Wilson, Smokey Robinson, or Paul McCartney] to write a standard—or, as Keith Jarrett found out, it is possible, but really hard." I believe "Yesterday" and "The Tracks of My Tears" are every bit as good as "Night and Day" or "Puttin' on the Ritz." Yagoda's point is that in his opinion rock is less musically and lyrically sophisticated than a standard, but he seems to have deliberately forgotten that beauty is in the eye of the beholder—or in this case, the ear...

First Sentence:

While not quite on the level of a Richard Rodgers, a Cole Porter or an Irving Berlin, Arthur Schwartz was certainly in the top echelon of American songwriters.

A Room with a View, by E. M. Forster

I sometimes find it easier to relate to pure fantasy or science-fiction novels than I do those set in the Victorian or Edwardian eras. People are very concerned with their status and appearances, and class warfare is subtle but real. Sexism is rampant, and as always, puzzling. "It was not that ladies were inferior to men, it was that they were different. Their mission was to inspire others to achievement rather than to achieve themselves." The plot here is largely driven by a young woman raised in this world, but awakening to modern modes of thought and behavior. She starts the novel on a well-chaperoned trip to Italy, but a chance encounter with a free-thinker starts her on a journey that leads to a tough decision: expression versus repression, ardor versus apathy, life versus lethargy. Not my favorite novel, but an illuminating look at an opaque world.

First Sentence:

"The signora had no business to do it," said Miss Bartlett, "no business at all."

Mr. Hornaday's War, by Stefan Bechtel

I had no idea who William Hornaday was before reading this book. Turns out not only did he found the National Zoo and run the Bronx Zoo, but he was basically the father of the modern conservation movement as well. Hornaday spent his early life traveling the world collecting (and hunting) animal specimens while becoming one of the leading taxidermists in the country. Taxidermy led him to realize that the American Bison had been virtually made extinct; this realization is what pushed him into the forefront of wildlife conservation. His tenacity in the face of hunters, the gun and feather lobbies, and the general apathy of the public led to the first strong national laws protecting animals being passed, and preventing the extinction of the bison and the fur seal.

The author is clearly sympathetic to the cause of wildlife preservation; the tone is one of condemnation towards those not firmly in favor of the conservation movement. He uses terms like "waking up" to describe joining the movement, and calls those not involved the enemy. Hornaday clearly held these opinions, but the same phrases and attitude pervade the narrative even when not quoting Hornaday directly. The biased writing didn't harm the story or make things any less interesting, but I did find it a bit jarring at times. Still, overall this was a well-researched biography about a very interesting man.

First Sentence:

On the fair spring morning of May 6, 1886, an intense-looking young gentleman with eyes that burned like meteors and a jet-black beard vaulted up the stairs of a Pennsylvania Railroad westbound train, which was steaming at the platform in Union Station, near downtown Washington, D.C.

what if? by Randall Munroe

Randall Munroe is the author of one of my favorite web comics, xkcd, and so I was excited when what if? was chosen for our book club. And for good reason: this is the funniest book I've read in ages. I read it while traveling recently and my wife kept looking at me oddly when I'd literally laugh out loud! The concept here is that Munroe gives "serious scientific answers to absurd hypothetical questions," heavily laced with his trademark humor and cartoons. "Absurd" is certainly an appropriate word, with the book including questions such as "From what height would you need to drop a steak for it to be cooked when it hit the ground?" "How fast can you hit a speed bump while driving and live?" and "What would happen if you were to gather a mole (unit of measurement) of moles (the small furry critter) in one place?" The author then examines the questions with a scientific bent, albeit often ridiculous as immortal people and bullets with the density of a neutron star are theoretical at best.

It is hard to pick my favorite vignette; they were all fantastic. "Periodic Wall of the Elements" discusses the possibility of building a periodic table where each block is actually made of the respective element. "The sixth row would explode violently, destroying the building in a cloud of radioactive, poisonous fire and dust. Do not build the seventh row." "Relativistic Baseball" examines a baseball being pitched at 90% of the speed of light, ending with "everything within roughly a mile of the park would be leveled, and a firestorm would engulf the surrounding city. Major League Baseball Rule 6.08(b) suggests that in this situation, the batter would be considered “hit by pitch” and would be eligible to advance to first base." And "Machine-Gun Jetpack" has possibly my favorite cartoon (included here) with the caption "Actually, what I'm confused about is how."

On top of the humor inherent in the questions and answer themselves, there is a constant stream of comedy throughout the narrative as well. Pop-culture references abound, with Gremlins, Furbies, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Dragon Ball Z, and Firefly making common appearances. At one point Munroe gets int an argument with himself in the footnotes about the proper capitalization and attribution of "Lego." And one of my favorite running gags was the use of [citation needed] for patently obvious items: "After all, the Empire State Building sits on a base like that, and it's more than a few days old^{[citation needed]} and hasn't disappeared into the ground.^{[citation needed]}" Even the book jacket was funny, with the flip-side showing a map of "the world after a portal to Mars opened at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, draining most of the oceans."

I can't say enough good things about this book. Funny and educational; everyone in my book club liked it, as did both of my sons. Munroe gathers these questions from his website, so hopefully a sequel is in the cards!

First Sentence:

Q. What would happen if the Earth ad all terrestrial objects suddenly stopped spinning, but the atmosphere retained its velocity?

Hell and Good Company, by Richard Rhodes

Before reading Hell and Good Company pretty much all I could have told you about the Spanish Civil War was that it occurred between World Wars I and II and Hemingway wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls based on his experiences there. Rhodes only lightly touches the military and political aspects of the war, instead concentrating on the innovations that were made real during this time. I was shocked to discover that frontline blood donations weren't commonplace before Spain, and the practice of sealing open wounds and compound fractures with plaster to keep them clean and immobile finally gained medical acceptance at this time, too. Hard to believe that before the late 1930's a broken leg was usually amputated on the battlefield in order to save the soldier. Military tactics also saw a lot of advancement during this time; air power truly came into its own, resulting sadly in prominent, purposeful civilian targets and the first war with a city bombed into literal rubble.

Rhodes has a sophisticated writing style; readable, but with an impressive (and occasionally off-putting) vocabulary: "In pursuing a latter-day, reverse reconquista he was less a fascist than an aggrandized martinet." One chapter in particular I found difficult to finish; the author discusses the creation of Picasso's Guernica, explaining in excruciating detail how the painting changed with each small step in the artistic process. Oddly, there isn't a rendering of the entire finished work included, so much of the included minutia was severely lacking in context. This literary wandering was an anomaly, though, and the book itself was both engrossing and appealing, and I recommend it to anyone interested in this time in history.

First Sentence:

Barcelona, 25 July 1936: In the glare of Spanish summer, the first witnesses to the igniting civil war are leaving to tell the world.

The Mammoth Book of Steampunk Adventures, edited by Sean Wallace

As I've said before, steampunk isn't my favorite genre. When it is good it can be great, but often it isn't good at all. This collection is much the same, following the expected pattern. My favorite was Benedice Te by Jay Lake; it is an exciting tale of espionage set in the Texian Republic in 1961. Ticktock Girl by Cat Rambo was another good one, the tale of an android superhero told through memory logs. The rest were average to poor. If you are a huge fan of the genre then this book may be for you, but if not, I'd look elsewhere for entertainment.

First Sentence (from the Introduction):

What more can one say about steampunk that hasn't already been said?

How To Shit in the Woods, by Kathleen Meyer

First, a story about how I came to have this book. My bookshelf at the office has a lot of appropriate texts for my job, such as Collaboration Explained, Manage It!, Working Effectively With Legacy Code, and Java Puzzlers. To see who paid any attention, I also have a copy of Young Stalin which causes the occasional raised eyebrow. (When asked, I just say it describes my management style...) A friend thought this was hilarious, and obtained a variety of out of place entries and peppered my shelf with them. How to Shit in the Woods is one of these.

I was surprised to discover that the title of the book is quite literal. Written by an avid outdoorswoman with a high concern for the environment, this is a guide to safely eliminating human waste when away from civilization. Considering the topic, there is a lot of humor here: "In some terrain, the high water line can be as elusive as the other sock — the one that went into the drier [sic]." Also somewhat irreverently funny are the descriptions of particular excretion failures, from a misaligned squat that unknowingly deposited the scat in the hood of a jacket resulting in the serious need for a shower, to "the unequivocal misery of being nailed by a bumble bee smack on the family jewels." While these stories were interesting, much of the thin tome is devoted to lists of holding tanks, decomposers, and other sanitary aids; while clearly useful to backpackers and wilderness enthusiasts it wasn't very interesting to the casual reader like myself. While not my usual reading fare, this book was anything but... shitty.

First Sentence:

In the mid-1800s in the Royal Borough of Chelsea, London, an industrious young English plumber named Thomas Crapper grabbed Progress in his pipe wrench and with a number of sophisticated sanitation inventions leapfrogged ahead one hundred years.

Coreyography, by Corey Feldman

All I really knew about Corey Feldman before reading his memoir was I liked several of his early movies —Gremlins, The Goonies, Stand By Me, and my favorite, The Lost Boys — and like many child stars, he fell into a well-publicized spiral of drug abuse and unfounded arrogance. After reading Coreyography, though, Feldman comes across as a somewhat tragic figure. Yes, drug abuse is self-inflicted and not usually worthy of much empathy, but abusive parents and sexual molestation make the descent into addiction somewhat understandable, an escape from what must have been a horrible reality. His father was largely absent in Feldman's earliest days, leaving him in the care of his untreated schizophrenic mother and a family that looked at him like a paycheck rather than a person. Later, when his father returned to run his career, an assistant hired by his dad began molesting Feldman, starting a cycle of exploitation that lasted for years and included a couple of half-hearted suicide attempts. When Corey turned 15 he legally emancipated himself from his family, but he had already been introduced to cocaine and sadly found himself with his only adult role model being his friend Michael Jackson. Jackson was still a few years out from his own downfall, but still a long way from what I'd call a positive influence. Two failed marriages and a couple of stints in rehab later, Feldman appears to have gotten his life together and the book ends on a hopeful note, Feldman bonding with his son. This is a surprisingly personal and revealing memoir; I'd expected braggadocio and rationalizations, but instead got an honest look back over an amazingly unhappy life.

First Sentence:

I am three years old, sitting at the small round breakfast table in our tiny kitchen, eyeing a half-open box of cereal.

So, Anyway..., by John Cleese

John Cleese is hilarious. Anyone that has seen him perform (Monty Python, Fawlty Towers are the best known) has seen his genius, but this memoir shows his true talent is writing. He covers his life from his earliest days right up to the forming of Python; while this is fascinating, it was a bit disappointing as well. Of course I'd love to hear the stories behind one of the funniest shows I've ever seen, but understand that could probably fill an entire book by themselves and that wasn't the issue. The disappointing part was the hints at his life after 1969 that we don't get to see. For instance, Cleese mentions three wives, but is still married to his first throughout the text. That nit aside, this is still a great read.

Cleese has always been known for farce, but I always found his humor very sharp as well, and his wit and wisdom come off well here. I especially appreciated his take on religion: "All the vital questions have been dumped in favour of half-baked, po-faced rituals which are basically a form of middle-class rain dance. Still, it did give me the chapel scene in The Meaning of Life." Cleese nails political correctness as well, saying it "may have started as a kind intention, but was soon hijacked and taken ad absurdum by a few individuals without any sense of proportion—which means, by definition, that they are without any sense of humour either." He believes that if political correctness existed in his early career at the same level it does today, much of the comedy he wrote wouldn't have seen the light of day. Makes you wonder how many laughs we are missing now because comedians are hampered by society's race to mental austerity...

First Sentence:

I made my first public appearance on the stairs up to the school nurse's room, at St. Peter's Preparatory School, Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, England, on September 13, 1948.

The People's Republic of Amnesia, by Louisa Lim

My first trip to Beijing was in the summer of 1988. China immediately captured my attention; I encountered a world unlike anything I'd seen, beautiful and oppressive at the same time. Almost exactly one year later, the Tiananmen Square Massacre took place and captured the attention of the world. Now, nearly thirty years later, Louisa Lim takes a look at the fading legacy of the rebellion.

For me, this was an unforgettable moment in time, in league with the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion or 9/11. The image of an ordinary man standing in front of a column of tanks is as powerful a picture as I've ever seen, and recognized virtually everywhere as the iconic moment of the event. In China, however, only 15% of university students in Beijing recognized it, due to the government systematically blocking and censoring any information related to the event. This sad fact is from where Lim draws her title: The People's Republic of Amnesia.

The author does a great job of interviewing many people about the incident, from mothers of survivors to soldiers that were there, from students at the time to students of today. These varied viewpoints give an in-depth look at both the event then and how it is remembered now—or not remembered as the case may be. In particular, the chapter on Chengdu and the oppressive events that took place there in the same timeframe was eye-opening. It would have been a truly captivating read if I could have shook the feeling that Lim continually patted herself on the back, congratulating herself on writing such a significant book. She may be correct in its momentousness, but the self-aggrandizing tone was irritating to no end. This is an important book, and gives a view into not only Tiananmen, but into the current Chinese government as well. The tone is annoying, but well worth forcing yourself to finish.

First Sentence:

Plumes of smoke from fires frame the Gate of Heavenly Peace, as soldiers pile the students' possessions to burn them.

Crashed, by Timothy Hallinan

Junior Bender is the next in a long line of quirky criminals with a heart of gold. Okay, so heart of gold is a stretch, but Junior is a cross between Dave Robicheaux and Bernie Rhodenbarr with a dash of Spenser thrown in. The plot follows a wide range of shady characters, with the main thread finding Junior blackmailed by a dirty cop into finding a saboteur on a porn set starring a fallen child TV star. The mystery drives the action, but I sometimes miss the old Agatha Christie style where the clues are there for the reader to solve right along with the detective. Crashed follows the more modern style where the hero figures everything out using an observation he keeps to himself. The adventure is the thing, though, and this book delivers that in spades! This initial volume in the series is quite good and I'll be looking for the second soon.

First Sentence:

If I'd liked impressionism, I might have been okay.