Book Review: Eifelheim – by Michael Flynn

Dietrich, the main protatonist, is a Catholic priest in the small village of Oberhochwald in medieval Germany. In the summer of 1348, just before the Black Plague ravages Europe, a spaceship crashes in the nearby woods, setting off an electrical storm, lightning and fires. Some aliens are wounded, but most survive.

The aliens are adapted enough to earth’s atmosphere that they can exit their craft and survive. They are lanky beings, their heads smaller than human heads with huge yellow bulging, insect-like eyes and antennae. Their mouths are wide and they have soft front lips and horny side lips. With long arms and legs they are between five and over six feet tall. When they haunch down and sit, they hug their legs and their knees extend above their heads. They communicate by creating hissing and chirping sounds out of their side lips and by rubbing their serrated forearms together. To medieval Germans, they look like giant grasshoppers.

Of course, to medieval Germans, who are deeply steeped in religion, they also look like demons. Fortunately, the aliens have universal translating machines and head harnesses that they and humans can wear which do the translating. The translation software has to learn the vocabulary, and it gets built over time. This capability of the aliens saves them, since some of the humans quickly figure out that there are a lot of advantages that come with advanced technology. For instance, the aliens have flying harnesses. They have weapons with bullets, explosives, cameras, medical tools, all of which come in handy when you have to defend yourself against crooks and neighboring war lords.

The story plays in 1348 and 1349, but there is also a frame plot that plays today, where a historian and his physicist girlfriend figure out that there were aliens through a complex set of circumstances. This makes it a book with complex material, and that is confusing and distracting at times.

Flynn writes extensively about medieval lifestyle and history, and you really get immersed into that long-ago world.

He knows a lot of languages, and he shows off his Latin, Greek, German and French, sometimes without translation. I was able to get most of it, but the average American reader would simply not be able to follow. His language is stilted, and people talk unnaturally, or perhaps they really talked that way in the 14^th century, and it just seems unnatural to me.

He uses an abundance of German, with German names of people and places, expressions, exclamations, all intended to make it seem real. Sometimes I wondered why he didn’t place the story into medieval England or Ireland. The spacecraft could easily have crashed there. He could have accomplished the very same goal, but with less confusion, because he could have remained in the English language, alas, he could not have shown off his German.

He waxes extensively about advanced physics and cosmology. This book would have been just fine with a little more focus on the real story and leaving out the modern physics. It simply didn’t connect.

Did he want to write a book about cosmology, the plague, medieval Germany and medieval religion? Maybe. He did write a book about what might happen if an advanced technological and completely alien race were to be mixed up with a feudal, pre-industrial society. That’s the part that kept me reading to the end. All the other stuff was interesting, but distracting and took the story out of focus.

Rating: *

DarwinCatholic: Here is another good review with a theological angle.

Book Review: John Adams – by David McCullough

Every now and then I read a book that changes my life, meaning I read different books from that point forward, or I change my views, or I take up new activities. McCullough’s Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece, John Adams, is such a book. A tour de force in storytelling, McCullough starts unfolding the life of John Adams on January 24, 1776:

In the cold, nearly colorless light of a New England winter, two men on horseback traveled the coast road below Boston, heading north. A foot or more of snow covered the landscape, the remnants of a Christmas storm that had blanketed Massachusetts from one end of the province to the other. Beneath the snow, after weeks of severe cold, the ground was frozen solid to a depth of two feet. Packed ice in the road, ruts as hard as iron, made the going hazardous, and the riders, mindful of the horses, kept at a walk.

This very first paragraph in the bookstore roped in my attention and the book never let go of me.

Since it’s a fairly big and thick paperback, I put it aside a few times when I picked up other books more suitable to put into my briefcase for travels, finishing those, and then coming back to it later. So it took longer to read than some other books. I just finished the book yesterday before going to sleep, and I found my dreams thrashing between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

It tells the story of John and his wife Abigail, an American revolutionary family and a love story quite unlike any in history. I got to know and love the man and the times, and often driving down the road or sitting in an airliner I found myself wishing I could sit next to John Adams and show him the world and the country that he helped create.

As I am writing about this I am literally overwhelmed by how much I have to say, to share, to elaborate on, just to talk about this one book, and I realize that I cannot do what I want to do simply because it would take another 700 pages, another book, and that’s just not my place.

To give you a feeling of what reading John Adams did to my thinking, I will share thought vignettes and hopefully you get the gist. I will publish those in a series of posts following this one, each titled “American Revolution Vignette” and focusing on a different subject, contrasting our time to the days of the founding of our country. Take it as a miniseries of book review posts. That’s the best I can do.

Besides the story of John Adams, I also got to learn much more about Thomas Jefferson, who was Adams’ contemporary, albeit seven years younger. Only 32 years old at the time, Jefferson was the “pen” of the Declaration of Independence, while Adams was the “voice.” They shared a lifelong friendship, which was at its peak while they were together as envoys in Paris and London in the years between 1780 and 1785. From friendship they transitioned to seeming arch enemies while they were both presidents, first Adams, then Jefferson. After many years of little or no contact, they resumed their correspondence after retirement. For another 20 years, even though they never saw each other again, they corresponded frequently and intensely for the rest of their lives.

On July 4th 1826, 50 years to the day of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson died at 1:00pm at his home in Monticello, Virginia, and Adams died a little after 6:00pm in Quincy, Massachusetts. Neither man knew about the other’s death. Jefferson was 83, Adams 90. An epoch in American history ended that day.

And now that I am done reading the book, I am allowing myself to order the HBO miniseries based on this work, and that will be another  review.

Let me say that reading David McCullough’s John Adams has me interested in reading biographies of all presidents, and having read one of Teddy Roosevelt and with another book on Franklin D. Roosevelt on my nightstand, I have about 41 to go.

Inspired am I?

Rating: ****

Book Review: Ignore Everybody – by Hugh MacLeod

Hugh MacLeod is a cartoonist and blogger, who started his career as an advertising copy writer. This book started out as a series of blog posts, and eventually publishers pursued him. Ignore Everybody is addressed to aspiring artists, starting with cartoonists, of course, but going on to writers, painters, sculptors, actors, musicians and any other creative professional that needs a good whack on the side of the head.

MacLeod’s blog is Gaping Void and his art form is drawing cartoons on the back of business cards. Who does that? Well, MacLeod does, and he does it well.

This is one of those books that can be read in an hour or so, definitely during one flight, but I did buy it at the Ontario Airport on my way to Virginia a few weeks ago.

It spoke to me. I am a frustrated writer.  After struggling with fiction writing for 40 years I decided a few years ago that I should stop beating myself up about it. I really don’t like fiction writing. I am a painter who loves to put color on canvas, but I never want to do it for a living. I am a dabbling poet but only when I am in deep emotional struggles. So yes, I am an artist above all, and I think and feel like an artist.

Ignore Everybody’s message is to ignore everybody. Don’t listen to their advice. Don’t ask for their feedback. Not regarding your work, nor about your plans, and certainly not about your career.  Do your thing for yourself, because you love it, and for no other reason.

To use MacLeod’s final words in the book:

If I had to condense this entire book into a line or two, it would read something like, “Work hard. Keep at it. Live simply and quietly. Remain humble. Stay positive. Create your own luck. Be nice. Be polite.”

I was inspired.

Rating: ****

Book Review: The Little Book – by Selden Edwards

Imagine, if you will, that you find yourself transported from 2009 to Vienna in 1897. Don’t ask how it’s possible. Just assume you are there. You go to the train station and take a train outside the city a couple of hours, and you get off in a small town named Lambach. It’s early afternoon on a weekday, and you wait in front of a nondescript house in a quaint neighborhood for a boy to come walking home from school. Here he comes. A skinny boy, darkish hair, fair complexion, a bit shy, with a book bag on his back. You let the boy pass. He greets you “Guten Tag” and you greet back. You know the boy’s name: Adolf Hitler.

You know that the boy would eventually grow up, enter politics, and through a series of maneuverings and sheer luck take control of Germany and bring about the death of upward of 10 million people, Jews in concentration camps, civilians on both sides killed, soldiers on both sides killed by the millions. Would you strangle the little boy right there on the sidewalk and save those 10 million lives and change history?

That’s the question Wheeler Burden had to ask himself in this magnificent story of time travel and history.

Somehow Wheeler and his father Dilly Burden end up transplanted in time, for reasons they themselves cannot understand, to Vienna in 1897. At that time, Vienna was at its pinnacle. It was a leading city in the arts, science, philosophy, music, writing and politics. Kaiser Franz Josef of Austria was still in power, and the Hapsburg empire was still thriving. Nobody but a few intellectuals realized that the empire would collapse within decades and practically disappear. Vienna, at that time, was very much the center of Europe.

The Burden family, starting with the matriarch, Wheeler’s grandmother and her husband Frank, is a prominent Boston society family that somehow descends on Vienna to make history. The plot is so intervowen and so full of surprises, that it’s difficult to describe. Let me just say that besides Adolf Hitler, there are other well known characters that participate in the story, including Winston Churchill, Sigmund Freud, Gustav Mahler, Richard Wagner (in reference only) and many more minor characters.

Wheeler is an American hero, a star student in secondary school, a Harvard graduate, a super baseball player, a rock star, a writer, a philosopher, a liar and impostor, and a time traveler. His father Dilly is just as illustrious. The entire Burden family is unreal. You wonder how the 20th century could have happened without them. But it’s a novel, so you accept it.

When you read a book you learn a lot about its author. To enjoy this book, you have to be interested in European history at the turn of the previous century. Edwards certainly know his history. I imagine he went to Harvard, since the university is too omnipresent in this story. He loves Vienna, its language and culture. He is definitely a baseball player. He knows a lot about psychoanalysis. And he is probably a snob. He worked on this book for over 30 years and it’s his debut novel. He does a good job, and there will be other books, if he can do another one before 30 more years go by.

Rating: ***

Book Review: Judas Unchained – by Peter F. Hamilton

This is the sequel to Pandora’s Star, another 1008 page book with small print. After reading Pandora’s Star, I didn’t think I would read the sequel. Too much work and detail, not enough action. Then a business associate told me that it would be better than the first book, so  I went for it.

The first half of the book was slow, and I once again found myself paging over entire sections that just didn’t capture my attention. Hamilton is meticulous about crafting entire thought universes with incredible detail. He is a master at creating political undercurrent and intrigue inside a science fiction story. But there is always too much of it. I want the action, and I don’t want to deal with the political alliances.

Reading a Hamilton book is serious work, if you want to do it right.

I am not sure why the thing is called Judas Unchained. Perhaps I missed that in the pages I skipped over. The Prime aliens (MorningLightMountain) attack again and wipe out billions of humans on dozens of planets. Sheldon invents some superweapons and star warships and the Commonwealth strikes back, eventually neutralizing the Prime as well as the Starflyer. Ozzie finishes his journey with the Silfen and then hijacks a starship for some more mavericky stuff that he is known for.

Entertainment? Yes. Do I have time for another Hamilton book? No. Would I read a sequel to Judas if he wrote one? At this time, probably.

Rating: **

Book Review: Her Fearful Symmetry – by Audrey Niffenegger

As a blogger who had reviewed Audrey’s first book, I had the privilege of getting an advance reader’s edition of her second major novel – Her Fearful Symmetry. I loved The Time Traveler’s Wife and as fate would have it, today was a Niffenegger day. At about 12:30pm I finished reading Her Fearful Symmetry, and at 2:30pm I was in the movie theater watching The Time Traveler’s Wife, the movie. I will review that next.

Audrey Niffenegger has a gift of picking an unusual premise, something off the wall, like time travel, and throw it at ordinary people with ordinary circumstances that we can all identify with and make it work in a story. Once you accept the possibility of time travel, no matter how remote or improbable that is, and you agree to put some arbitrary limitations around it, then the rest of the story works.

So it is with Her Fearful Symmetry. It is essentially a ghost story. Without giving anything away I can tell you there are ghosts, and the things the ghosts can do (and can’t do) and the effects the ghosts have on us mortals, are about what you’d expect. There is some good-natured haunting going on in this story. After you accept that there are ghosts, and you throw them in with ordinary characters, you have yourself a story, or do you?

The problem with this story is that the characters are not ordinary. There isn’t a character in the story that you’ll be able to identify with, not one. First, there are two identical twins, Edie and Elspeth, who grew up inseparably in England and then had a tragic and lifelong falling out, Edie moving to Chicago with her husband Jack, Elspeth staying in London. Then there are two more identical twins, Julia and Valentina, Edie and Jack’s daughters, who are carefree American teenagers in Chicago when the story starts. In London, there are Martin, an extreme obsessive compulsive crossword puzzle designer and exotic language translator, and his wife Marijke, also a polyglot, both with a peculiar set of problems. There is Robert, Elspeth’s eccentric lover and a historian studying cemeteries. When Elspeth dies from cancer, the American teenagers inherit her estate, but only if they live in her apartment for a year, along with a set of additional incomprehensible strings attached.

In a novel, characters have to be extreme and colorful to be interesting. But in this novel, the characters are so colorful, I couldn’t get the sense that they were real. Have you watched the movie “The Mask” with Jim Carrey? The masked character is a human, with a green head, and completely exaggerated acting and dialog, a human cartoon. As I read this novel, Martin, Marijke, Elspeth, Edie, Robert, Valentina and Julia were all cartoon characters to me like The Mask, with exaggerated actions, huge foibles, unreal handicaps and driven to implausible actions. Reading through 400 pages I never felt part of the story. I felt like I was watching a cartoon with all the colors, the soundtrack and the improbable action. It was never real.

Her Fearful Symmetry is broken down into three parts, each about a third of the book.

During the first part I had to force myself to keep reading. If I had not received the advance reader’s edition and given my implied commitment to read the book, I might have put it away and filed under Books, not finished reading. During the first part, the book did not keep my attention, probably because the author was busy introducing the characters to set up the story, but there was not one character in the book that I could identify with, that was not cartoonish, that I wanted to get to know further. I kept asking myself where the action was. Nothing much was happening, except the characters feeding off their own weirdness.

In the second part of the book we get introduced to the ghost in the story. This was more interesting, since it was the unusual premise that I started talking about earlier. Ok, a ghost, let’s see what’s up with that. I started turning the pages, wondering what the ghost would eventually do and how it would fit in.

The action happens in the third part of the book. The ghost gets really involved. I enjoyed the third part and I was glad I lasted through the first and second to get there. The plot was so far-fetched, albeit ghostly, that like the characters, it almost seemed cartoonish by then. But nonetheless, the twists of the plot were well crafted, with a little bit macabre, a little bit of ghoolishness, and some sick twin hangups sprinkled in to add to the surprises. The last hundred pages went by quickly and I loved the story.

Her Fearful Symmetry, while all Niffenegger, is not in the same league as her first book. I called her first book delightful. This was not delightful, but it was entertaining. Shall I say “cute?”

I can’t help it, but I need to say it: It will work well as a screenplay and somehow it seems that the author might have had this in mind when she wrote this book in the first place. It’s got to work as a movie.

I am looking forward to going to the movies in 2013 or so to see Her Fearful Symmetry. I’ll write another review then.

Rating: ***

Audrey Niffenegger’s Next Book

If Audrey Niffenegger’s debut novel hadn’t been about time travel, I probably would never have picked it up. But it was, and of all the time travel books I ever read, it is one of the best. As a result, I wrote this blog entry.

Niffenegger’s Literary Agency, Regal Literary, contacted me and sent me an Advanced Reader’s Copy of her next book to be released in September, titled Her Fearful Symmetry. Now here is the benefit of being a blogger and doing book reviews. Your favorite authors send you free books ahead of the market! Thanks Regal Literary.

Of course, this caused some shuffling on my reading shelf. Hamilton’s Judas Unchained, a 1000 page science fiction tome that I started reading on the flight back from Boston to San Diego on Friday, is now on the back burner, and I am two chapters into Her Fearful Symmetry.

Always Looking Up – by Michael J. Fox

In 1983,  I worked at Engineered Systems, Inc. in Tempe, Arizona as a programmer. I often stayed late, working on the shop floor programming petroleum distribution systems. There were always techs around, at workbenches, assembling electronic components. As I would walk by, I’d see them watching sitcoms during breaks. At that age, I literally didn’t watch TV at all, save perhaps 60 Minutes on Sunday night. So I had never seen Family Ties until I saw it on the shop floor. But I remember getting drawn in when I stopped to watch a minute or two, and Alex Keaton was the one to pull me in.

That’s when I first heard about Michael J. Fox.

Over the years, being a time-travel buff, of course I watched the “Back to the Future” movies, and I still enjoy those to this day.

When I heard about his diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease, I remember being sad for him. Eventually he faded from the limelight, as you would expect. I picked up this book because it seemed to me I was feeling sorry for myself one too many times, and I needed a pick-me-up. That’s exactly what I got.

In Always Looking Up, Fox tells about his humble beginnings in Canada, growing up in a military family of little means. He talks about his family, his own family, as well as his parents and siblings, always through enjoyable anecdotes and side plots. He outlines his relationship with Christopher Reeve and other activists, and he tells us about his political activism in favor of stem cell research.

There are many aspects of Fox that I knew nothing about, and now I feel like I do. Fox is a great writer, and he tells his story with nonchalant humor and inspiring optimism. I got to know him better than I ever did through all the TV and movies, and I must say I like the man. If I were to run into him on the street, we’d get along fine. He is a talented man with an indomitable spirit. I was inspired.

Rating: ***

The Shack – by Wm. Paul Young

The book “The Shack” with the subtitle “where tragedy confronts eternity” was a challenging book to read and it’s going to be more challenging to review. According to the cover, there are more than three million copies in print and it’s a #1 New York Times bestseller.

I didn’t  pick up the book myself, since it advertises its religious content, and I am generally not much interested in the subject in fiction. A dear friend gave me the book, though, and said it was excellent and I’d really enjoy reading it.  So I did.

First, the author’s short bio on the back cover caught my attention:

Wm. Paul Young was born a Canadian and raised among a stone-age tribe by his missionary parents in the highlands of what was New Guinea. He suffered great loss as a child and young adult and now enjoys the “wastefulness of grace” with his family in the Pacific Northwest.

Clearly, there is an indication of first a very different viewpoint, one that most of us cannot even fathom, and second, some deep struggle to explain severe adversity and possibly evil when there is presumably an all-loving God, particularly when your parents are missionaries and presumably deeply religious.

If you were a devout Christian and had something horrible happen to you, and you needed to come to terms with it, you’d write “The Shack.”

The story is quite simple: a family loses a small child to a deviant repeat abductor and murderer. We never get to meet the criminal, but from the evidence of his deeds we can conclude that he performed unspeakable atrocities before eventually killing the child. The rest of the family has to live with this and they all try to blame themselves for what happened. After years of grief, Mack, the protagonist, receives a note that he cannot explain other than that it came straight from God. His instructions are to come back to the shack, the location of the heinous crime years before.

He arrives alone, and indeed meets God. There are as many interpretations of God as there are religions and subreligions. For Mack, God shows himself as three people. Papa is God, the father, who is first a large black woman and later an aging hippie with a long grey pony tail and a goatee, in jeans and hiking boots. Jesus is God, the son, a stocky Middle-Eastern looking man in his early thirties, who is a handyman around the place and likes to build things with his hands. The Holy Ghost is Sarayu, a middle age Asian woman who likes gardening and is restless, flitting about and sprinkling wisdom around. The three spend the weekend with Mack, going on various walks, hikes and activities, talking and giving lessons. Mack is enlightened and eventually returns home.

I won’t tell you any more than this, lest I spoil the story and enjoyment. It’s an intricate plot, a well crafted and almost engineered story line. The author tries to make things come alive in front of you, but I don’t think he succeeds. I am constanly reminded of the fact that I am reading a book I was asked to read, and I make myself turn the pages. When Steven King tells of a group of good old boys sitting around in the lobby of a Texas gas station on plastic chairs, popping open cans of Bud Light, you can smell the beer, feel the Texas heat, smell the gasoline fumes and see the greasy fingers of the attendant. You are there. When Young elaborates on a point that is irrelevant to the plot but he makes it to paint the picture, you see just that, he’s painting the picture, and you wish he got on with it. There are several places in the book where Jesus or Papa tell Mack to “grab a bite” in the kitchen before they embark on something. The vision of “grabbing a bite” simply does not make things come alive for me.

The majority of the story is comprised of conversations between Mack and one or more of the personifications of God. They are talking about the original sin, Eve giving the apple to Adam, they are explaining good, evil and free will, they show why Christ died and how this somehow saved the world, and every other Christian theological topic you can think of. Young is obviously a preacher who wants to explain the whole of Christian doctrine in terms that people in 2009 can understand.

If you are a Christian, you will enjoy the new interpretations and answers to questions you may have harbored deep within you for a long time. You will probably interpret some of the dialog as theological discourse. You may find the story as creative and possibly spiritually profound and life changing. Every Christian will enjoy the book and the pages will keep turning automatically, regardless of the at times cumbersome prose and predictable plot.

If you are not a Christian, like me, you will simply be bored, when you realize about one third into the book that for the rest of the story, you will be presented with one interpretation of Christian doctrine after another, neatly packaged in conversations directly with God, speaking through characters manufactured to be likable.

The book is only 250 pages long, and it took me more than two weeks, on a business trip, to read, since I had to keep telling myself I was interested in this and keep turning the pages for that reason. After a few pages I’d fall asleep and I’d start over the next day. Without acceptance of a holy trinity the whole story does not make much sense. In my mind, the trinity was represented by a God father, an old bearded and long-haired man in a throne, Jesus, a guy in a robe with long black slightly wavy hair and a beard, and the Holy Ghost, a white dove. Ok. Now I have a big black woman, a Middle-Eastern man and an Asian woman. It does not help or expand my picture of Christianity.

People of other religions may have similar trouble reading this. The concept of the original sin does probably not filter through to a Hindu, but I am only guessing here. Having Jesus help Mack walk on water might elicit a good chuckle for a Christian, but it won’t invoke the same response in a Muslim.

This is a book written by a devout Christian struggling with the concepts and tenets of his religion, trying to make sense of it, for the audience of all other Christians with the same trouble. That’s why it’s a bestseller.

For everyone else, it’s just 250 boring pages by a mediocre writer.

Rating: *

From Time to Time – by Jack Finney

This is the sequel to Time and Again which I reviewed not too long ago. Si Morley, the protagonist, has returned to the 1880s in New York City to marry Julia and start a family. But he is haunted about “the Project” where he learned time travel in the late 20th century, and he decides, with his wife’s permission, to go back and find out. He makes it back, meets Rube Prien, one of his associates, who wants him to go to the year 1912 and attempt to prevent World War I by manipulating just the right details in history at just the right time. Reluctantly, he decides to do it, and subsequently he spends most of his time in the 1912 era.

In the process of pursuing his mission, he ends up taking a ride on the Titanic from England to America. We all know what happened to the Titanic, so why would he do a thing like that? It was part of the mission. The key figure in the escalation that led to WW I was an aide to President Taft who happened to travel on the Titanic. Si knew which lifeboat would have room so he could save himself.

He also was with a female “companion” named the “Jotta Girl” which I won’t elaborate about here lest I spoil things for you. The two of them know that in order to change history, dangerous as it sounds, they need to make a slight course change in the Titanic’s path,  just a few feet, so it would miss the iceberg.  He and his companion accomplish exactly that by distracting the man at the great ship’s wheel just briefly, and they think they have accomplished it, until 11:20pm comes around on that fateful night.

Well, I can tell you that if Si and the Jotta Girl hadn’t messed with the course of the Titanic, it would have sailed right past the iceberg and arrived in New York a few days later. But the fact is, our time traveler was on board, and without even realizing it, it was he who ended up sealing the fate. The lesson is: don’t mess with history if you are a time traveler.

The neat thing about this story and Time and Again is that time travel is accomplished not by machines and energy, but by self-hypnosis, manipulating the surroundings, picking the exact time and place, and by pure skill. Once it’s described, it’s completely plausible, and as the reader you get immersed into the story accepting that Si can do this incredible thing. That’s where the magic starts.

I loved these two books.

Interestingly, and I didn’t know this until just now, Jack Finney is also the author of the novel “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers” which has me surprised. I just have to pick up a few more Finney books then.

Rating: ****