Got my computer back, so I might as well do my book post.

Things I Read During May

So, my note-keeping system is a bit of an odd duck, and if I’m sleepwalking, I can sometimes tell it to put a single review in a completely different file. So here’s a lost sheep from March:

Gordon Korman – Beware the Fish! (3/13)

Another of those Korman books I was on about. This one is from 1980, and it is riotously funny. A boarding school is running out of money, and its most infamous pair of students start scheming to save it. They also start accidentally terrorizing the countryside with televised warnings about “Operation Popcan” and “Operation Flying Fish.” Hijinks ensue, as do the Mounties. Props to a book that both 9-year-old Nick and 26-year-old Nick can laugh at.

Oh, but someone really should have fumigated this one for saidbookisms. What is it about kids’ books that makes these acceptable? Editors in every other category stomp ’em like roaches, but I remember them being just part of the fabric of kid-lit.

…so then I went on a short story binge on the Tacoma bus.

Sarah Monette – “Sundered” (5/1) – Liked it. A story about aloofness and siblings and friendship and the wickedness of fangirls.
Leonard Richardson – “Mallory” (5/2) – This one was fantastic! Glitchy, energetic, maybe a bit mannered (Cory at BoingBoing described it as “[reading] like the first three paragraphs of Snow Crash”), but in a lot of ways, it was exactly what I want from a story. It spoke to me, man.

Although it ended way before I wanted it to—I can see why he did it that way, and it was a good choice, but… I actually really wanted to find out what the GAME was trying to do, and maybe witness the accomplishment of that goal.
Jessica Reisman – “Flowertongue” (5/2) – No one writes letters like this anymore. It seems a loss.
Will Shetterly – “Taken He Cannot Be” (5/2) – Doc Holliday and the unicorn. I’ll assume you already know whether you want to click that. It didn’t do a whole lot for me.
Mary Robinette Kowal – “Death Comes But Twice” (5/2) – You know what this reminded me of? Those old-time radio compilation shows they used to have on KIRO late at night. They were filled with short little antique-feeling horror tales like this one, and I couldn’t get enough of ’em.
Mary Robinette Kowal – “For Solo Cello, op. 12” (5/2) – YIKES. A brutal and rather sickening little fable. Well-executed, but, well, ugh.

Cory Doctorow – Little Brother (5/10)

This book put the righteous wrath in me. More wrath than I’ve probably felt since I was 16. And since that seems to be what Doctorow was aiming for, I say kudos.

Dr. Peter D’Adamo – Eat Right For Your Type (5/10)

This book came up in a conversation with Kathleen before she went east — a relative of hers had gotten significant benefit from following some or another nugget of counterintuitive advice from it, which sort of thing is perfect grist for our style of shit-shooting. Anyway, I thought the premise sounded too weird to ignore, so I checked it out from the library.

Basically, D’Adamo says that your blood type determines (or is at least the primary influence on) your metabolism and your ability to digest specific foods, and follows with a rather detailed rundown on how you should be eating. He backs this edifice up with his personal clinical experience (presented as a series of anecdotes dispersed throughout the text) and some extremely dodgy anthropology that reminds me of nothing so much as the Jakeskin from Templar, AZ. In terms of references to peer-reviewed studies demonstrating the mechanisms he postulates, well, not so much. (And he lets slip once or twice that he advocates homeopathy. Red flag!) So I was skeptical. But honestly? I found myself wanting to believe what he was saying. Mostly because of this feeling that ABO blood types have to be good for something besides transfusion complications and manga character taxonomy. Really, why shouldn’t the, you know, very makeup of your humours affect your digestion? And this, friends, is probably why the book managed to become such a big hit.

Anyway, like I said, I checked it out. Apparently, as a Type O (The mighty hunter(/gatherer)! Roaming the African Plains in search of MEAT! Never mind that most of the protein in the appropriator diet seems to have come from bugs), I should be eating approximately the diet that my Type A (The vegetarian farmer! GRAAAAIIIIINNNZZZZ!) sister eats, while she in turn ought to be craving the pseudo-vegetarian diet that comes naturally to me. Reductionism and uninstinctiveness aside, I still couldn’t, at the end, see any reason to be eating the diet he advocates — it’s all just his word, with nothing concrete to back it up, and the outlook gets even worse when you google “blood type diet” to find out what holes the critics have been poking in D’Adamo’s research/lack-thereof. The plural of “anecdote” is still not “data.”

Unsettlingly, there was a whole bunch of what seemed like genuine insight interspersed with the arrant nonsense—Type Os are supposed to have a particular affinity with broccoli and kales, and boy howdy do I ever—but I ultimately have to write it off as a cognitive artifact. The brain wants patterns, and it will damn well have them, whether or not they’re there at the start.

No, I didn’t actually try the diet. For all I know, it may really be the key to a happy and healthy life. I’m still calling this book a loss.

On the other other other hand, it did provide some inspiration to try giving up wheat for a few weeks, which seems to have caused me to get noticeably thinner with no further effort. So there is that.

(Wait, do you still have an other hand free? In the tiny blood type fortune-telling section at the end of each division of the book, he refers to some historical personage as “the penultimate gambler.” Mister, I am pretty sure that does not mean what you think it does. Just saying.)

Susanna Clarke – The Ladies of Grace Adieu, and other stories (5/11)

Clarke is not a prolific short story writer, so I’d already read three of these, in various anthologies dating back to the ’90s.

Mostly, reading this reminded me why Strange & Norrell was such a great book. Decent enough short stories from a superlative novelist. (Next book? Soon?)

Elizabeth Bear – “Shadow Unit: Overkill” (5/13)

Eew, giblets.

And finally finally finally, we get to see Chaz do something that couldn’t be done by any extremely clever “normal” person. Well played.

Lou Anders, ed – Fast Forward 1 (5/19, remaining stories)

Yeah, I finished reading this.

Robert Charles Wilson – “YFL-500” – Had this story ended in any way other than the way it did, it would have been irritating as hell. But it didn’t!
Justina Robson – “The Girl Hero’s Mirror Says He’s Not the One” – This one was just kind of strange. The incluing was very skilled, so I got the general picture without having read the novel that set up its world, but what I still don’t really get is how any story taking place in such a world can really matter. The story of how such a world came about is probably fascinating (again, haven’t read it), but it seems to me that once you get there, there’s really nothing more to say. Anything written there has to speak primarily to something other than a human, which is, well, a problem.
Paolo Bacipalupi – “Small Offerings” – JESUS. Majorly harsh.
Kage Baker – “Plotters and Shooters” – This was hilarious in several different ways.

You know, I’ve decided I rather like Kage Baker. Except I always mentally pronounce her name as かげ. Same problem as with Neko Case.
Louise Marley – “p dolce” – 19TH CENTURY MUSICOLOGICAL SCIENCE FICTION ABOUT BRAHMS AND CLARA SCHUMANN? WHY YES I WILL, THANK YOU FOR ASKING.
Mike Resnick and Nancy Kress – “Solomon’s Choice” – I do not for even a second believe that something like this situation didn’t come up at least once before. C’mon. And I also have a nagging feeling that they were somehow cheating on the way the memory transmission works.
Ian McDonald – “Sanjeev and Robotwallah” – Possibly the best deconstruction of Gundam I’ve yet read — which is saying something since Gundam tends to deconstruct itself, but this adds several very welcome layers and a really impressively-rendered setting, and all that with a more-than-worthy prose style. Nice.
Pamela Sargent – “A Smaller Government” – Okay, cute.
George Zebrowski – “Settlements” – Undoubtedly the worst story in the bunch. Seriously awful prose, didactic as all hell, and just plain boring. Please skip.
Paul Di Filippo – “Wikiworld” – A bit mannered and hyperactive. (The narrator is a crappy writer. I can’t tell whether Di Filippo is any good.) And the plot was kind of pointless — really, it’s just a silly exercise in Wikipedian absurdism. Which, okay, fine.

At any rate, Lou Anders has proven himself an editor to watch out for.

David Foster Wallace – Consider the Lobster (essay collection)

This one’s still in-progress, but I’ve read “Certainly the End of Something or Other, One Would Sort of Have to Think,” “Some Remarks on Kafka’s Funniness from Which Probably Not Enough Has Been Removed,” “Up, Simba,” and “Consider the Lobster.”

Turns out I still like David Foster Wallace! Yea, I will carry my love of footnote abuse even unto the grave. Believe.

“Up, Simba” was particularly weird to read in 2008, it being an account of a week or two following McCain’s entourage in 2000. Really, I’m still not sure what to think of it all. Did all that really happen? Was that the same person?

Elizabeth Hand – Generation Loss (5/28)

A lovely little confection of dread.

There’s no explicit danger or freakiness for the first three-quarters or so of Generation Loss, but it’s nevertheless steeped in a suffocating aura of menace. The threatening atmosphere rises like steam from the characters’ photographs and the beautifully-rendered descriptions of the Maine landscape. The book has a great narrative voice, and an anti-heroine who attracts and repels in equal measure.

Alas, I don’t think Hand really stuck the dismount—perhaps it’s just that the miasma of evil was so effectively set up that it was impossible to live up to; I don’t know. (And I’m not sure how we were supposed to go on rooting for the protagonist after, well, that.) Still, it’s a more than worthy read, and unlike anything else I’ve read lately.

Also,

…I started to read the final episode of Shadow Unit season 1, but I couldn’t get past the first part. It was just too squicky—when the guy was making Chaz drink out of his hands, I nearly threw up in my mouth. I still want to know what happens, though, so I’ll try again this month.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

nightswatch.livejournal.com

Upon another recommendation, I actually just started delving into Infinite Jest. I tried once before, several months past, and just couldn't do it, but I'm about a hundred pages in now and definitely see myself finishing it, even if it takes the rest of my life. The footnotes are ridiculous.

roadrunnertwice

Oh man, aren't they? Did you run across the one with the filmography yet? Christ.

That book, in its own peculiar and anti-sane way, helped me maintain my sanity during my senior year of high school. (I had the hardback on loan from the library. I carried it around in its own shoulder bag. Also, I think I may have borrowed it without hearing anything about it beforehand, which makes me wonder if I just grabbed the widest book on the Yelm branch fiction shelves or something.)

(Oh, speaking of footnotes--you've read Strange & Norrel, right?)

Hahaha, oh man, I would so not have appreciated that in high school. I'm impressed. And yes, the filmography was pretty much when I decided I like the book enough to finish it.

I have read Strange & Norrel, but it's kind of a blur at this point. About all I remember is the quote about killing a man with magic, and the end where he's stuck in a giant cone of darkness. I don't know, I wasn't a big fan.

I don't know, I wasn't a big fan.

Nooooo! :P

Well, it was an odd-ass book (an ultra-civilised high-Victorian novel with subject matter more appropriate to bombastic, pseudo-Arthurian high fantasy? WTF!), so as much as I love it, I can't really blame anyone for disliking it.

EDIT: ??!??!?!!!??

They HAVE to do the entire thing in the style of one of those BBC Jane Austen adaptations. I've decreed it.

Edited Date: 2008-06-06 04:43 am (UTC)

From: (Anonymous)

Sadly you discount this book to your readers. One quick look at Medline will lead you to thousands of scientific articles/journals that directly relate to Blood type and disease. Dr. D'Adamo has painstakingly poured over thousands of scientic articles that relate to BT and disease for all his books. If you look at the Individualist web page you will see all the references that I refer to, all from peer reviewed journals.
Sometimes when we don't understand something, or it goes against what we want to believe we discount it as false, change is harder then we think. Blood Type O's have a particularly hard time with change.

Sometimes when we don't understand something, or it goes against what we want to believe we discount it as false, change is harder then we think. Blood Type O's have a particularly hard time with change.

I was considering deleting this comment (because everybody loves drive-by scoldings, right?), but this last bit is such a perfect little specimen that I can't resist keeping it around as a decoration.

gyladia.livejournal.com

I think it's creepy that random angry people know your blood type.

Roadrunner Twice