What I'm listenning to (and reading)

We take you now to Grovers Mill, New Jersey.
The War of the Worlds
by H. G. Wells
as performed by
Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre on the Air

I had been anticipating the new season of Radio Lab for months, and I am loving it now that it's here. An early standout is the War of the Worlds episode, which was performed live. I've heard the Orsen Wells story many times, but I had never heard what happened when a radio station in the Equadorian city of Quito decided to do their own production in 1949.

I'm also catching up on episodes of This American Life that have been accumulating on my iPod. The episode "Nice Work If You Can Get It" includes an excellent piece with John Hodgman telling the story of his rise to fame.

As for audiobooks, I've just finished the third in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, and I'm really starting to enjoy them. The first two were read by Tim Curry, but the rest are read by the author. Sometimes an author isn't the best person to read their own work, but in this case I think it's an improvement.

Also read well by the author is Neil Gaiman's Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders, his second short fiction collection. I expect people will have varying opinitons about each of the stories and poems, but I you'll find it hard to dislike "A Study in Emerald." If you don't have time to pick up the whole book, this story is available online here. In fact, if you've only listened to it, you should check out the PDF just for the illustrations and format.

Knowing little beforehand, I listened to Lauren Groff's The Monsters of Templeton. If you've read Everything is Illuminated, you would be inclined to classify Groff as a female Jonathan Safran Foer. That's not really accurate, but comparisons are difficult to escape completely. I'm also pretty sure that if I'd read more James Fenimore Cooper, I would have caught several references and in-jokes in the book. That said, I enjoyed the story, especially the final chapters.

An actual book that I'm actually reading is Tolkein's The Children if Hurin. I've been reading a chapter here an there, and I'm almost done. The chapters stand somewhat on their own, being true chapters in the lives of the characters. Each chapter mostly resolves it's own smaller story arc, so it lends fairly well to this casual style of reading. It's certainly not a pager-turner, nor is is inteded to be. At the same time, I am reading the Lord of the Rings with my oldest. Every now and then I come accross a name from The Children if Hurin, which takes place thousands of years before LotR, so it is sort of like reading ancient history.

By the way, reading LotR again is great fun for me. I really look forward to each night when we read. Having read it so many times already, and reading it aloud, I am noticing many subtlies and tidbits I'd either missed or forgotten. It's nice to know you still find new things in even the most familiar old favorites.

Spook Country

Getting there is half the fun.
popular idiom

I really like author William Gibson, and I was excited when Amazon told me about his latest novel. (Amazon knows how much I like Gibson.) Titled Spook Country, it follows in the footsteps of his previous novel, Pattern Recognition. Unlike Gibson's earlier work, which is set in the future, these novels are set in the present. Spook Country is not really a sequel, although some characters do recur. Rather it is more like a second story occurring in the same universe. I finished it just last week, and I was not disappointed.

My wife Sharon observed that Gibson is not out to write page-turners. Reading one of his novels is less like watching a movie and more like watching someone paint a picture. His plots are often devoid of the cliffhangers and surprise twists you often find. He takes his time with the narrative. Instead of propelling you forward, he reveals the story carefully. There is no problem stopping along the way to admire the view or smell the flowers. It is as much, if not more, about the journey than about the destination.

In recalling another Gibson novel, All Tomorrow's Parties, Sharon noted she might not remember exactly how the action unfolded, but she will never forget the cardboard box in a Tokyo train station that one of the characters lived in. Gibson's settings have always been memorable, and Spook Country continues that trend. Recalling it now, I cannot think of a location that was in any way mundane. He creates exotic places, like an impossibly priced flat in Vancouver with a magnetic levitation bed. Yet even locations as unexceptional as a Best Western motel room become noteworthy through the eyes of his characters.

And characters come to life in equal measure. The story is told from three points of view. First is Hollis Henry, an indie-rock star turned journalist (a little reminiscent of Cayce Pollard, the main character in Pattern Recognition, but only a little). Next is Tito, the young member of an underground family of spies-for-hire, and one of the more inventive characters I've encountered. Finally there is Milgrim, a drug addict held captive by a quasi-government operative; his observations and musings throughout the book made him my favorite. Like the book itself, each character is a portrait that reveals itself carefully as the story progresses. I don't want to say much more about them, lest I spoil the experience.

Gibson's stories always delve into new and intriguing concepts. A common theme is the impact of technology on our culture. This book explores the confluence of technology and art in the form of locative art. It also contains astute commentary on the Bush administration's policies and execution of the Iraq war. However, these insights are never presented overtly; they lurk below the surface and quietly filter up through the story. Thus it never feels like Gibson is preaching. I found this to be one of the most impressive aspects of this novel.

Suffice it to say, I really enjoyed this book. It was a pleasure from start to finish, and I was disappointed when I was done. If you get a chance, I recommend it highly.

What's in the box?

Mama always said life was like a box a chocolates, never know what you're gonna get.
Forrest Gump

There's a box in my office. It's been left on my chair. I can see it from my web cam. It looks like it's from HP. I have no idea what it is.

I wonder what it could be. I won't be in the office until Friday or next week. In my mine I'm accumulating book and movie references with boxes....

• Forrest Gump - as quoted above.
• Se7en - you knew what was in that box.
• Pulp Fiction - Briefcase instead of a box, but close.
• Spook Country (by William Gibson) - just finished that, and it has a box.

There's got to be more....

Update: Turns out the box wasn't addressed to me! I'll never know what's in it!

Book to the future

"Do you ever read any of the books you burn?"
He laughed. "That’s against the law!"

Fahrenheit 451
by Ray Bradbury

It occurs to me just now that Kindle is a pretty ironic name. You normally don't want to evoke fire imagery when dealing with books. Nonetheless, that's what Amazon.com is calling its new electronic book reader. Maybe somewhere deep in their product design offices, someone really does see the death of paper books.

Last week I read Newsweek's article on the Kindle, and I've been trading long argumentative comments with Rob on his post about the Kindle. You should read his post, but I'll go so far as to say he thinks the Kindle is not the right product for reading books electronically. I'm not certain that it is the device, but I think it's a lot closer to the mark than Rob. I find the whole prospect interesting on several levels.

First, I think the E-ink or digital ink technology is really cool. It's very efficient, requires no back lighting, and once the image is rendered, it no longer needs power. That last feature is particularly intriguing. Currently graphics processors everywhere spend countless cycles painting and repainting a screen thousands of times each second. A digital ink display opens whole new windows of possibility.

Second, I like the some of the ideas brought forth in the Newsweek article about the paradigm shift that can occur with eBooks (regardless of what device they're on). Possibilities like the automatic distribution of corrections and additions is cool. Imagine a new appendix suddenly appearing in your book. Also, books are never truly out of print. Bits take up a lot less space than books in a warehouse. I also imagine stuff like the newspaper you see in Minority Report, the one that changes on the fly with breaking news.

Finally, it will be interesting to watch the continuing evolution of our everyday electronic devices. I remember when a phone was not a ubiquitous handheld device. I remember when a personal music player held one and only one album at a time. I remember when calling up satellite imagery in the palm of my hand in the middle of New Hampshire was the stuff of science fiction. I wonder if I can even imagine what will be commonplace to my children.

Anyway, I'm interested in what other people think of this latest attempt to digitize one of the last mechanical mediums left....

Seven clues that Dumbledore was gay

You know, Minister, I disagree with Dumbledore on many counts... but you cannot deny he's got style.
Phineas Nigellus Black
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

From the L.A. Times comes the best analysis of the Dumbledore revelation. Apparently all the clues were there.

I like #2 best.

Listenning Center: The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell

This is a true story. You can tell because it makes your stomach turn.
John Crawford
The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell

A comment on Audible.com said the following of John Crawford's The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell:

To me it was very depressing and negative. I understand that war is not fun and games but the author was so negative that is was miserable to listen to. I quit about half way.

This is somewhat ironic. A little after the point this person quit, Crawford writes that no one in America is interested in stories like the ones he tells - they just want the CNN version. The commenter is right, though. This book is very depressing and negative. As the author points out, that's how you know it's true.

The book tells the story John Crawford's tour in Iraq. Newly married and one semester shy of graduation, his National Guard unit was activated. The chapters, each an almost self-contained short story, capture the fear, boredom, dark humor, pain, and horror that Crawford went through. It proceeds quickly, almost rapid-fire, switching from one emotion to another at a moments notice. It is also a very gripping story that you will find it hard to walk away from. The audio production I listenned to was very well done.

As a literary work, it is not without flaws. Publishers Weekly notes this saying, "Crawford dresses up his story in strained metaphors and tired clichés...." The review goes on to say that, "Despite its pretensions, Crawford's story is not the classic foot soldier's memoir and should provide enough gristle to please military memoir fans." I think they miss the point and underestimate the audience. This isn't just a book for war-story buffs. The book is a very real account of the war in Iraq that will hold anyone's attention.

The story paints a picture our leaders would rather we not see, like the flag draped coffins that come home every week. But, just like those coffins, this story embodies the cold reality which every American should understand intimately before endorsing this war. Even now, I think too many are like the person commenting on Audible, unwilling to face up to the ugly truth of it all. When I finished listenning, I drove on in silence for another twenty minutes feeling hollow and numb.

I recommend this book to everyone, and hope it makes them feel the same.

Joel Stein, you're lame, lame, lame, lame!

Here's what I think: Joel Stein is a ninny.
--*Rob

Rob offered this post about Joel Stein's slamming of adult Harry Potter fans. I read Stein's piece. He's clearly trying to be contrarian. He also talks big for someone who didn't read the books. I began a comment on Rob's blog, but decided to go full-blown-post because, well, I need something. Here are my observations:

He says Judy Blume is a good author, but adults don't read Freckle Juice. Well, my daughter read Freckle Juice. It's, like, 48 pp., so yeah, he's right, adults don't go for books like that. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is 309 pp. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is 672 pp. A little different don't you think?

He also points to the equivalent books of our youth. (His point: we had those books to fill our adolescent needs, leave it at that.) He includes Tolkein's books in there. So he's saying Tolkein is only good for thirteen-year-olds?

Oh yeah, he needs to point out how simplistic the plot is. It's just your basic good/evil story. Surprise, a fantasy story that has a battle between good and evil. How about that. And the story is by no means that simplistic. There are plenty of shades of grey. Take Delores Umbridge. What she does, and why, is more complex than simple a good vs. evil plot. And what about Snape? Talk about an ambiguous character.

Etc., etc., etc. Joel might figure this out a little more, but, as I mentioned, he didn't read the books.

My listening pleasure

A connecting principle
Linked to the invisible
Almost imperceptible
Something inexpressible
Synchronicity I
by The Police

I thought I'd just talk about the audiobooks I've been listening to recently.

I'll begin with Patrick O'Brian's Post Captain, the second in the Aubrey/Maturin series that begins with Master and Commander, which I've also listened to. The motion picture Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World is based on the characters from the series and draws from several of the books. (The movie, BTW, is excellent. If you haven't seen it, you should.) I am really enjoying the books. O'Brian's detailed depiction of the British navy during the Napoleonic Wars is the background for rich characters and an engaging plot. It was also nice to listen to a nautical themed book that didn't leave me wanting to gnaw my arm off like Moby Dick did. Sorry, Melville fans - I couldn't take it.

Next I listened to The Egyptologist by Arthur Phillips. I really liked this. There are two main characters. The first is an Egyptoligist trying to find the tomb of an ancient Egyption king. The second is a detective investigating a case that begins as a missing person but becomes a double-murder. What is interesting is that story is told in the form of journal entries and correspondence from the Egyptologist, his fiancee, and the detective. Each has their own version of the truth and the reader (or listener) is left to figure out what's really hapenning.

Now I'm listening to Clout Atlas by David Mitchell. The book is actually six narratives. Each is interupted suddenly, mid-sentence, as the next begins. I'm only two narratives in, so we'll see how they are wrapped up later. What was funny, though, was that the first narrative has journal entries of a passenger on a late 18th century sailing vessel on the Pacific. It sort of combined the previous two books I'd heard.

Anyway, that's what I'm listening to. Read/heard anything good lately?

Goodbye Dr. Gonzo

As you were, I was. As I am, you will be.
-Hunter S. Thompson

"Saddenned but not suprised" seems to be the prevailing sentiment around the death of Hunter S. Thompson. I guess I share that sentiment, but "disappointed" factors in there somewhere.