I purged a bunch of stuff off the shelves. Of course, not everything I got rid of is something I didn’t like — I just figure it can remain part of my virtual library without having to take up real space. And of course, some of the stuff I got rid of I’ve already forgotten and hope to never think about again. Here are a few that stay in the virtual library.

*** Walter Gropius – The New Architecture and the Bauhaus. I took a modern architecture class in college, for which this was one of the textbooks. I love modern architecture, both the good and the bad, both the successes and the magnificent failures, and I love the Bauhaus. I kept this so long mostly as a reminder of that.
*** Julian Barnes – Talking it Over. This was the book that taught me terms like “crepuscular” and “rebarbatively quotidian”. It’s also one of the first “unreliable narrator” books I remember really noticing and appreciating. Its Rashomon-like structure makes for some very funny bits. I may even want to reread this one again someday (though I somehow never connected that much with other of his books), but had gotten kind of tired of it.
** Milorad Pavic – Dictionary of the Khazars. One of the few books that survived the wax and wane of my interest in experimental fiction. I read a lot of gimmicky books for a while there, and this was one of the few in which I thought the gimmick (story told in a series of encyclopedia entries in multiple conflicting encyclopedias, and the user must do his own cross-referencing) had something to it. Though as often happens, the decent gimmick was somewhat wasted on a story that wasn’t itself that compelling (see e.g. Timecode).
*** Roald Dahl – My Uncle Oswald. I love Roald Dahl, but Uncle Oswald isn’t really one of his better inventions.
*** Dorris Dorrie – Love, Pain, and the Whole Damn Thing. I really liked this book sometime in the 90s (and the lovely Edward Gorey cover on my edition), but I just didn’t think I’d want to read it again.
Leo Marks – Between Silk and Cyanide. Already reviewed.
Charles Yu – Third Class Superhero. Already reviewed.
Patrick Neate – City of Tiny Lights. Already reviewed.
Patrick Suskind – Perfume
Jeffrey Steingarten – The Man Who Ate Everything
Georges Perec – Life A User’s Manual. I mostly enjoyed this. It was left behind by an ex-girlfriend.

** Matt Ruff – Sewer, Gas, and Electric
*** Michael Moorcock – Elric (the original six novels)
*** Wendy Pini – Law and Chaos
*** Jim Thompson – The Grifters

I really enjoyed Sewer, Gas, and Electric the first time around. This time it just felt like someone trying too hard to throw a bunch of “funny” stuff into one book in order to create the best-sounding back-cover blurb. Giant killer sharks in the NYC sewers! A shark named after a beer!!! Etc! It was an okay time, but eh.

Michael Moorcock is not a bad writer. Or so I’m told — I don’t feel like I can judge very well, since I read most of his stuff when I was much younger and perhaps not a great judge of writing quality. However, the Elric books are really not that well written. There’s a lot of the cardinal sin of telling rather than showing — we’re often told things are evil or unnatural or whatever, and we have to take it on trust. It’s all fairly trashy — and yet, I pretty much sped through the entire six-book series (six thin, lightweight books, I admit) at full speed, compelled to see the whole thing through. So he’s got something going for him. Anyway, Elric is a lovable hero, the tortured emo anti-hero, doomed to kill those he loves and agonize about it to the uncaring gods. Plus, he looks cool.

Having finished the Elric books off, I decided to dig out Law and Chaos, Wendy Pini’s book of drawings from her never-realized animated Elric movie. I’ve had that book about as long as my Elric books (and going back to when I read ElfQuest and may even have admitted to reading it in public), and so her images are inseparable from Moorcock’s words in my head. It’s probably been 20 years since I even looked much at that book, and many of the scenes were still perfectly familiar. The art isn’t great — it’s a little too elfish/fey for Elric perhaps (not surprising from a very young-at-the-time artist who would go on to create ElfQuest) and it certainly doesn’t shy away from the emo aspect of Elric (again, not surprising), but it’s mostly a good fit for Moorcock’s character, and anyone who likes Elric would probably appreciate it.

The Grifters was good stuff, makes me want to read more Jim Thompson.

*** Denise Mina – Deception
*** Willa Cather – Death Comes for the Archbishop

Deception is a sort of thriller/mystery, with a sometimes unlikeable and pathetic narrator, Lachlan. His wife has been convicted of murder, and as he tries to find evidence to exonerate her, he instead learns more and more about the deceptions that underlay his marriage. In the end, the book is more a psychological portrait, of Lachlan and of the relationship of these two people. I found it interesting for its story and characters, but also to the extent that anyone who’s been in a relationship can identify somewhat with what goes wrong in this one. Anyway, this was my first Denise Mina book, and though it’s apparently nontypical, I’m looking forward to reading more.

I don’t feel like I really “got” Death Comes for the Archbishop. It was good, and I found the character of Latour fairly interesting, but on the whole I didn’t find the book that compelling. I felt like there was a certain amount of distance maintained between the reader and the characters, partly because large portions of their lives were sort of skipped over. For example, for much of the book Latour wants to build a cathedral, and it seems like it may become part of his big life’s work, a major focus of the book. But then the book skips ahead a bit, the cathedral is casually mentioned as having been completed, and that’s the last we hear. I also kept wondering why Willa Cather wanted to tell the story of this guy and what I the reader was supposed to get out of it. Of course, sometimes one wants to tell the story of an ordinary person, but in most books I think there’s some core character trait or story that the author feels compelled to draw out and present to readers. In this book I kept wondering — why does Cather care, and why should I?

**** Philip K. Dick – Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
** Arthur C. Clarke – 2001: A Space Odyssey
*** Dashiell Hammett – The Glass Key

The similarities between “Do Androids Dream…” and “Bladerunner” are enough to recognize one as an adaptation of the other, but otherwise they are so different as to make the comparison meaningless, I think. Androids is a good book; Bladerunner is a good movie. But even though the basics of the story are the same, the details are so different and the overall emphasis is so different that it seems meaningless to consider them together and ask, for example, which one is better. I’ll leave it at that.

On the other hand, I was under the impression that 2001 was adapted from the book, but it turns out, I guess, to be the other way around, or at least that they were developed together. The book therefore follows the movie pretty closely, but elaborates on some things that are easy to do in books but not in movies (i.e. the inner thoughts of pre-homo-sapiens apes). It made for an interesting read, and made some aspects of the story clearer and more explicit, but I’m not sure it added much to the story overall. For example, in the movie I think it’s unclear how much affect the monolith actually has on human evolution; I’d always interpreted it as giving a nudge. In the book, however, the thing basically creates the human race, rather than giving a nudge. The entire mythos that involves the hyper-intelligent race of pan-dimensional beings or whatever is a little too explicit and leaves humanity with not enough self-development to be very satisfying. A bit of mystery was better.

I had thought I’d read every Dashiell Hammett, and I’ve actually owned The Glass Key for a while. But either I never got around to reading it, or I did and then forgot it entirely, because it did not ring a bell. I think I’d never read it, but it’s not impossible I just forgot, because I didn’t find it that memorable as Hammett stories go. But then, I think the continental op is his best stuff, and most of the rest pales in comparison.

*** Shan Sa – The Girl who Played Go
**** David Wingrove – The Broken Wheel
*** David Wingrove – The White Mountain
** Charlotte Bronte – Shirley

The girl who played go is set in China, during the Japanese conquests of the 1930s. It provides a good view into life in that place and time. I didn’t feel that it so much followed a clear story as much as established a mood/emotion or took a snapshot of a time and some people — it was almost more poetic than novelistic in its overall impression. I enjoyed it, though didn’t get as into the details of the story as when I read Shan Sa’s “Empress” in April.

These are books 2 and 3 (of 9, I think) of Wingrove’s “Chung Kuo” series, set in a future where the world has basically become a giant city housing billions of people and Chinese culture has conquered all. I liked these two as much as the first book, and look forward to continuing the series.

Shirley was kind of an odd book. The blurb and first few chapters make you think it is going to focus primarily on the political/economic unrest of the time, when the gradual industrialization of mills in northern England was putting workers out of jobs and stirring up riots and unrest. But then it seems to become a sort of cliche and rather dull love story. But then the title character comes along (halfway through the book?) and suddenly you think it’s going to be very interesting after all. Shirley, though unquestionably feminine personally, has the swagger of a young nobleman, thanks to a father who’d wished for sons and raised her almost as one and to having inherited the estate and title. The relationship that develops in this part of the book between the sweet and innocent Caroline and the dashing Shirley is one of the best I’ve read in a long time, and I was hoping Bronte would go the unconventional route and have them end up together. Of course, I didn’t think they would be avowed lesbians or anything, but given the disappointments of the book’s romantic stories at that point, it was conceivable that they’d settle down together in a way that would have been wonderful. Alas, the conventional had to creep back in and the book ends as many do, with a couple of weddings. The men involved are not at all bad characters, but the love story happy endings seem honestly fairly cobbled together. The Shirley/Caroline ending would have been much better. I almost put the book down in boredom sometime during the early dull romance part of the book, but I can recommend sticking through that part to enjoy the middle and, to a lesser degree, the end. The politics and economics that form the background, as well, were interesting to read about.

**** Patrick O’Brian – The Fortune of War
** A. J. Jacobs – The Year of Living Biblically
*** Shan Sa – Empress
*** Jane Austen – Sense and Sensibility
*** Georges Simenon – A Man’s Head

These reviews are way overdue by now, so let’s just get it done. Another good O’Brian book, as usual. Of course a good Jane Austen; I love Jane Austen.

The year of living biblically was amusing in some of its details but overall sort of rambling and eventually annoying. One thing that really bothered me is that he waits until about halfway through the book to reveal that he is seriously OCD (like compelled to touch things a certain number of times OCD, not like when people “I’m so OCD” and just mean that they wash their hands regularly), which I mean kind of sheds some light on the whole “following lots and lots of very picky rules” aspect of following the bible for a year. It just felt like cheating to save it for a mid-book reveal. And then I just could not stop thinking about how annoying the whole thing must have been for his wife. Poor woman. Finally, it just feels like he sort of does all this stuff and then at the end, no big breakthrough. He learns a few things, has some laughs, maybe gets a little religion, but in the end it just feels like he did a big stunt, wrote his book, and that’s that.

Empress was a reimagination of the life of China’s Empress Wu, who rose to become empress in the 7th century, told as a personal memoir. In history, she is mostly viewed as a power-mad dictator, willing to do anything to gain and hold power, but here we get her side of the story. The result is a fascinating book, with a compelling central character and lots of interesting detail about life in 7th century China.

I’ve read one or two other Simenon books, but long ago. This one was pretty good, interesting enough to want to read through quickly, though fairly throwaway once I was done. I will probably try some of his other books as well.

**** Charles Dickens – Our Mutual Friend
** Dava Sobel – Longitude
**** Patrick O’Brian – Desolation Island

Our Mutual Friend was very good. Interestingly, compared to Bleak House, which we’d just seen in miniseries form (and which I read a long long time ago), this one felt a lot less exaggeratedly comical/tragic. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it realist though — there are still a lot of hidden identities, crazy plot twists, and mad passions. I’ve read only a smattering of Dickens over the years, but watching Bleak House and reading this have definitely decided me to read or reread more of him.

Longitude was kind of disappointing. The story, about the search for a solution to the longitude problem, and the competition between astronomical solutions and clock-based solutions was interesting. The guy who solved it and the watch he built are both fascinating. But Sobel spends way too much time focused on a sort of soap-opera view of things, where it’s all about how so-and-so tried to sabotage his efforts blah blah and gives precious little time to the actual engineering or science involved. I mean, she never really even explains how the amazing clock worked (she sort of states the solution to an engineering problem or two but without explaining why that solves the problem). She includes one picture of the clock with a description of one piece of the mechanism. It was incredibly lame, and what I’d really like to do is read a book about John Harrison and the longitude problem by someone who can understand and express complex scientific and engineering concepts, not someone who just wants to make a soap opera out of it.

Patrick O’Brian, as I always say, is great.

* Thomas Mann – Death in Venice and Seven Other Stories

The title story is about an old man, renowned all over for his writing blah blah blah who goes to Venice, falls in love with a 14-year-old boy, and [spoiler alert] dies. I didn’t like it that much. The second story starts with one 14-year-old boy in love with another. I didn’t feel that interested and gave the whole thing up.

I spent the rest of the month on a Dickens novel I didn’t finish until March.

** Georgette Heyer – Envious Casca
*** David Wingrove – Chung Kuo: The Middle Kingdom
*** Soseki Natsume- Botchan

As I understand it, the modern American detective novel arose in part in reaction to all those British puzzle-mysteries (by Conan Doyle, Christie, etc), in which the murder was done in some ingenious way not revealed until the very end, when we learn that it was a rare poisonous snake, a trained rat sent down a convenient drainpipe, or the butler. How Dashiell Hammett would have hated Envious Casca then, in which the murder is not only a locked-room mystery but takes place at an English country manor, peopled by an eccentric cast of etc etc. The writing is good and the characters are fairly interesting, but the mystery is partly predictable (it’s not that hard to figure out, though the character twist is satisfying) and partly gimmicky (the way it’s done is kind of silly, and the clue that gives it away is frankly lame). The book whiled away the time but I probably could have found a better way to occupy myself.

Chung Kuo is an epic science fiction novel, set about 200 years in the future, when the Chinese rule an earth spanned by a single massive city, in which 40 billion people live stacked many levels deep. The rulers hope to prevent change and progress, but a dissatisfied faction agitates for change and starts a rebellion. I love a good epic, and luckily there are seven more books after this one. It took a while to get into the book, and to start being able to remember all the different characters and the bits and pieces of mandarin thrown in, but once I got into it I enjoyed the rest of the book and all the different story threads. One compelling thing about the book is that neither side is unambiguously good or bad. The rebels represent freedom and progress, but also violence and cruelty, while the rulers represent oppression and stasis, as well as culture and philosophy. In temperament, I side with the rulers, but then I remind myself that they basically want to control what everyone does and says and stifle all innovation. So that keeps it interesting.

Apparently Botchan is a popular favorite in Japan, about the misadventures of a somewhat self-centered young man who becomes a teacher at a country school. At first I thought he was just a thoughtless oaf, but he turns out to have good basic principles, and he sticks to them admirably. The story is small and light and the book passes quickly, but it’s a good time with some good values thrown in. I can see why it’s popular.

** Karen Tei Yamashita – Brazil-Maru
**** Patrick O’Brian – The Mauritius Command
*** Rafael Sabatini – Scaramouche
*** Robert E. Howard – Cormac Mac Art

I’ve read a little bit before about the large Japanese community in Brazil, and I was really looking forward to learning more about it from Yamashita’s book. Some of that aspect of the book was very interesting, but I ended up feeling like the story was specific to a particular community, a sort of utopian commune sort of group — which is fine, but I didn’t end up finding those specific people as interesting. The story didn’t stay interesting for me, and the characters didn’t really feel real.

More great O’Brian, I’ve given up on saying much beyond that about his books.

Scaramouche was a great adventure novel, very entertaining.

I’ve been meaning to reread some Howard, particularly the Conan books. I found this one used, but no Conan. It was okay; much of the problem was that some of what’s in the book was actually written by David Drake (who I’ve gotten tired of), and some of what’s left was unfinished (and the book doesn’t really make this clear). That said, I enjoyed the Howard bits and look forward to reading more.