Mad Times

I heard about this book after seeing Bolte Taylor’s talk for TED. At that time the book was self-published, but it has since been released by Viking Penguin Group.

Bolte Taylor is a brain researcher who volunteers as an advocate for NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness. One day before work she had a stroke. The book is a step-by-step account of that experience from her point of view both as the victim of the stroke and as a brain scientist explaining what was happening at each step. She also talks about the process of her recovery following surgery.

The insight beyond the mechanics of the stroke experience is from the effect the damage had on her. The particular effect she got was like the enlightenment from advanced meditation, a kind of peace and freedom from worry and concern with an overarching joy in life and the world. The message she’s sharing following her recovery is that that state is there in our brains available for us to tap into. It’s a little woo-woo, but it’s clear that she had a life-changing experience and it’s fascinating to read about it from such a unique perspective. Definitely worth reading for anyone who has had or knows someone who has had a stroke.

Moore and Gebbie reimagine the stories of Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, and Peter Pan as the sexual awakenings of their respective female characters, Alice, Dorothy, and Wendy. The retellings are tantalizingly plausible as real world sexual experiences that could have been hallucinated, rationalized, or repressed into the fantastic stories we know. The book feels like Victorian erotica with its heavy paper, three large volumes and slip cover. The sex is steamy and widely varied providing something to arouse or offend nearly everyone.

While I waffle over whether or not to post reviews of sexually explicit graphic novels on a blog that my mother reads (Just one of many neurotic reasons why I’m months behind in posting book reviews. This blog isn’t called “Mad Times” for nothing. ;-), you can get your book review fix over at Goodreads where Becky has been reviewing up a storm.

Here’s a sample, her review of Isabel Allende’s Zorro: A Novel:

I’m a Zorro fan, but not to the extent of obsessiveness. I remember watching Tyrone Power late at night on my grandma’s black and white TV, and I’ve seen George Hamilton, Antonio Banderas, and probably some other actors in that role, but I haven’t sought out everything-Zorro. When I saw Allende had written a novel about Zorro, I was thrilled. I even waited for a good time to read it. It tells the story of how Zorro became Zorro–a sweeping tale that is both chilling and fun, just as it should be.

Lots more behind the link up there. There’s even an rss feed for updates.

God and the Devil make a wager over whether the Devil can corrupt God’s chosen champion with the fate of the world as the stakes. The good news is that God cheats. Or at least interprets the rules creatively. Joby is a little boy obsessed with King Arthur. Joby is God’s chosen champion. The book follows Joby through three periods of his life, grade school, college, and early adulthood. In each he faces new challenges. The book is way too long, especially in the late section where Joby finds his way to a little corner of Eden that God has hidden away on the north coast of California. Ferrari is obviously a little too enamored of his characters and setting and the resultant stretching of the story feels overindulgent.

This book appeared on my chair at work one day. I later found out it landed there because a friend found it in the company cafeteria, started it and didn’t like it. It wasn’t bad. It’s the third book in a series about a guy who’s part alien and uses his secret powers to find missing persons. There’s lots of violence and lots of sex and lots of car (and motorcycle and boat) chases. Basically a men’s adventure novel with some scifi thrown in for flavor. I got the first two books from the library but other stuff looked more interesting until they came due and I returned them unread. Probably won’t try again. If it sounds like your thing it might be your thing.

Wilson won the Hugo for best novel for this book. If you’ve read any of his other books you know the basic structure of this one: baffling technology indistinguishable from magic mysteriously appears throwing society for a loop with the story told by a person conveniently placed to learn more about it than the general public. The remarkable thing is how much better each successive telling of Wilson’s story is. In Spin he has struck a fine balance among interpersonal, political, and alien influences resulting in a novel of a future stranger than we could imagine but still somehow familiar in a way that feels almost nostalgic. This is science fiction that pushes the buttons that made me a fan. It bent my brain quite agreeably. I just learned while writing this that there is a sequel out and another on the way, but Spin stands alone just fine.

This is a young adult fantasy loosely based in the Arthurian tradition. I finished it back in February and my recollection of the details is dim. A female member of Arthur’s family fled or was banished to an island where she rules as queen over a small population. The book is from the point of view of her daughter who for reasons that become clear in the course of the book has one finger that looks like that of a dragon. Dragons being nasty peasant-eating creatures, she hides this fact from all but her mother. The daughter goes through a hero’s journey coming-of-age kind of plot line. Dragons are involved. Also dashing young men. But while the basic shape of the story is almost boilerplate, Carey does enough interesting things with the texture and details to make the book rise above the conventions.

If Spook Country were a blog it would be Boing Boing. If you’re not aware of it, Boing Boing is subtitled “A directory of wonderful things”. It primarily covers topics that appeal to geeks. Gadgets, intellectual property, fringe art, pranks, institutional fuckups, all the ways real life has become stranger than the strangest science fiction.

So it’s no surprise that Gibson’s SF novel set in the present day reads like a week of Boing Boing. It’s full of the arcana of the collisions between the worlds of art, geolocation, pop culture, and espionage. The protagonist is Hollis Henry, one-time member of a pop punk band, now a freelance journalist. Her job for a new magazine turns out to be something more than she bargained for. Gibson is doing really good work with these last couple of novels that basically take a science fiction sensibility and apply it to a present-day thriller.

Another Endeavour book. Set on a distant human colony planet. The book has a refreshing depth of backstory. The colony is recovering from a war with a second colonizing group. It turns out that the first group is sort of backwards in their denial of genetic progress in the human race. The second colony is made up of heavily modified people with abilities far beyond the unmodified humans. This setup would tend to imply that one side or other would be the clear good guys, but that’s not the case. The book opens well after the war has been won by the humans who have repelled the enhanced colonists. The book is told from the point of view of one of a handful of enhanced children who were left behind the retreat and have been raised by the humans.

The children start to come into their enhanced powers in the course of the book and the friction this causes with the human colonists opens all sorts of interesting questions about progress and heritage and tolerance. Pretty meaty stuff handled deftly.

Jake Mendoza is growing up in a national park/nature preserve/research institute. The park exists to preserve a large, rare, and dangerous species: dragons.

McKinley writes the book from Jake’s point of view as he looks back on the exciting events of the past year or so. It’s an intimate breezy style that bears a striking resemblance to that of McKinley’s blog on livejournal (though the book doesn’t have footnotes (or footnotes with footnotes)). I liked the book well enough, but it’s not one of her best.