The War of the Flowers, Tad Williams

 

The War of the Flowers by Tad Williams is a book about which I knew nothing when I bought it.  I had recently met Tad Williams at a book signing and had enjoyed his Memory, Sorrow, and Thorne series.  The dude is awesome.  Even his cat books.

Started:  2/17/2016

Completed: 5/23/2016

Recommendation: strongly recommended

Recommended By:  Nobody

Words for which I sought help:

chirurgeon -- archaic form of surgeon

dobber -- a person who secretly tells someone in authority that someone else has done something wrong.  It is also slang for male anatomy.

Review:

Early in the book is a simile that suggests hospitals are like T.S. Eliot poems.  I was not able to find a poem that embodied this imagery, but I did not look very hard. 

This book is truly an epic tale and a short review of a few paragraphs seems trite.  I like the general idea that magic has rules at that concept is explored in this book.   I also like the unwitting or anti-hero.  Finally, the idea of effectively the unstoppable force meeting the immovable object also peaks my interest.  This book has all that and the most delicious character, Applecore.  

Amongst concepts and imagry that frequently exceeds  imagination, the author exposes the gritty underbelly of Fairy in a journey to a place that is impossibly real with issues just as horrifying as those in the mortal realm.  

It is a good read with well crafted prose, some fantastic story lines, and a glimmer of hope for those who cannot imagine the hero within.

Arms of Nemesis, Steven Saylor

Arms of Nemesis: A Novel of Ancient Rome by Steven Saylor is part of the Roma Sub Roma series which I have enjoyed.

Started:  2/6/2016

Completed: 2/17/2016

Recommendation: Highly Recommended

Recommended by:  Nobody

Words for which I sought help:

desultory --lacking a plan, purpose, or enthusiasm

encaustic -- using pigments mixed with hot wax that are burned in as an inlay

Review:

Great, just great.  I could hardly put this book down.  Each evening as I sat and read this book, I had to decide it was time to stop.  There was no good stopping point, no good pause, nothing.  Just a great book all the way through.  I usually don't like mysteries because they are almost impossible to decipher, but all the data was there all the time.  It was fantastic.

I also enjoyed the detail (both good and bad) about ancient Rome that littered the book like the detritus of a triumphant battle.  What a great author.

The Tale of Genji, Lady Murasaki

The Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki as translated by Arthur Waley is traditionally identified as the world's first novel.  It was written in the 11th Century.  I have no idea why I picked it up.  The cover and back cover do not encourage me to read it now, so there must have been some other reason I chose it.  Perhaps it is a revisiting of classical literature that one might have expected to have read in high school.  I have no other explanation.

Started:  1/29/2016

Completed: 2/6/2016

Recommendation: Not Recommended

Recommended By: Nobody

Words for which I sought help:

augue -- malaria or some other illness involving fever and shivering

blue-stocking -- a derogatory term for an intellectual or literary woman

censorious -- severely critical of others

coquetry -- flirtatious behavior or a flirtatious manner

effacement -- to wipe out; do away with; expunge

loggia -- a gallery or room with one or more open sides, especially one that forms part of a house and has one side open to the garden

lugubrious -- looking or sounding sad and dismal

parlous -- full of danger and uncertainty; precarious

plashing -- splashing

postilion -- a person who rides the leading left-hand horse of a team or pair drawing a coach or carriage, especially when there is no coachman

preponderant -- predominant in influence, number, or importance

prosody -- the patterns of rhythm and sound used in poetry

viand -- an item of food

Review:

This is a story of court intrigue and basically follows Genji's effort to bed every woman of beauty in the land.  There are a few interesting sub-plots but the structure of the story is more of x happened then y happened without a lot of insight into the how or why behind it.  There was a huge amount of poetry exchanged (which must have titillating in its time), but, for the most part, the story was rather base.  At some level there seems to be a deeper meaning that love (or lack thereof) can kill, but that meaning is so well concealed in allusion and secondary reference that it is not well substantiated.  I read the book, but I did not enjoy it.  It was not so horrible that I had to stop reading, however.  The prose was interesting, stilted and yet somehow poetical as well.

Buddha's Brain, Hanson, Mendius, and Siegel

Buddha's Brain:  The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, & Wisdom by Rick Hanson, Richard Mendius, and Daniel J. Siegel is a book that talks about the neuroscience behind the practice of meditation (as well as some other aspects of being a Buddhist).  I picked this up at the library (and later bought it) because I wanted something to hear in the car and I am beginning to understand the value of meditation.

Started:  November 2015

Completed: 2/1/2016

Recommendation: Highly recommended

Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

It is great to see some of the science that is trying to understand meditation as a practice.  In particular, some of the principal foundations of Buddhist practices (such as sitting straight while meditating) are supported by straight-forward scientific explanations.  The Buddhists have known to do these things for thousands of years and here is an effort to start to understand why some of the practices work the way that they do.  It is very interesting and this book is going to require several visits.  I don't usually reread books, but this one is more of a manual and the volume of material that is presented is substantial.  I have this on audio so that I can listen to it while driving (a practice broadly discouraged by the author as one should focus on one thing), but it is nice to have something that I can start to absorb in the car and then think intensively about when walking to work or waiting in line or some other task.

The Barsoom Project, Larry Niven and Steven Barnes

The Barsoom Project by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes is a sequel to Dream Park which I read as a kid.  This is the second book in the Dream Park Series.

Started:  1/16/2016

Completed:  1/29/2016

Recommendation: Highly Recommended

Recommended By:  Nobody

Words for which I sought help:

Fimbulwinter - From Norse mythology.  The "mighty winter" that precedes the end of times (the Ragnarok).

fugue state - A rare psychiatric disorder characterized by reversible amnesia for personal identity, including the memories, personality, and other identifying characteristics of individuality.

Review:

What a truly enjoyable read!  I loved the mix of science fiction and fantasy that Dream Park brought to the game and The Barsoom Project does not disappoint.  Mixing together a fantasy theme park that caters to all wishes (sort of a mass holodeck for the Trekkies who read this) with the science fiction that makes it happen, this book takes the reader back and forth with ease and pleasure.  Either of the stories could stand on their own (mix in the whole Barsoom Project which is a bit of a red herring) and the read is both fast and pleasurable.  The characters are poorly developed, but one does not crack a scifi or fantasy novel looking for character development--there is enough to carry the story and that is enough for me.  I love the way scientific ideas are explored and enough is left to the concept of "magic" that one really doesn't want to go down and see all the nuts and bolts.  Very enjoyable!

The Eight, Katherine Neville

The Eight by Katherine Neville is a book I picked up in response to a list of "best books."  I can't remember which list or why this one stuck out, but on some list somewhere this book is recommended.

Started:  6/23/2015

Completed: (stopped reading) 1/16/2016

Recommendation:  Not Recommended

Recommended By:  Some list, somewhere.

Words I sought help to understand:

macchia - An Italian word that literally means "stain or spot" but it is also a term in artwork that emphasizes a sketchy way of applying the initial color to a drawing or painting.  I think that within context  it was intended to emphasize a landscape with vigorous growth so verdant that the plants overlap and blur into a sense of color rather than a collection of individual plants.  Pretty cool.

Review:

Despite the occasional turn of phrase that was nice, this book was very difficult to read.  The series of premises required in order for it to be even near believable pressed my considerable ability to suspend disbelief.  I finally just gave up when the heroine in one time period ran into Napoleon after sleeping with Talleyrand.  Frankly, this is just too much.  The initial premise is weakly presented and the current day heroine is portrayed from moment to moment as courageous and weak and ineffectual.  I just finally reached a point where I had to realize that attempting to continue to read this book was more annoyance than pleasure.

Forty Nine, Bruce Holand Rogers

Forty Nine:  A Square of Stories by Bruce Holand Rogers is a book that I helped Kickstart.  Rogers has won several awards and his story samples looked promising, so I thought it made sense to help the author get some of his stories that publishers weren't publishing out into the wild.

Started: September, 2013 (?)

Completed: January 9, 2016

Recommendation:  Mildly recommended

Recommended by:  Nobody

Review:

This book of short stories was supposed to only grace my bedside table for a few days as the stories represent some pretty light reading.  Unfortunately, the book slipped off the bedside table (I wish I could write some great story about how that happened, maybe it was in the throws of passion or perhaps the book felt unappreciated or maybe the dust bunnies got lonely) and was lost beneath the bed until it was moved, about a week ago.

The stories are broadly inventive and the character of Donat Bobet is a masterpiece.  There were seven stories about stories (sort of along the lines of the book feeling unappreciated).  I found these self-referencing stories the kind of thing that might be submitted for a high school English class (the quality is better, but it felt like that kind of assignment).  They did not help the book.  There were two stories that had me laughing out loud to such a degree that I was compelled to read them to my wife.

The author's intent, I think, is to transport the reader to another place or another idea.  There were seven stories about hotels that were quite good and did this rather effectively.  I enjoyed several of the stories in this section, and found one in particular quite insightful into human character (this hotel allowed guests to deny amenities to others,  for a price).

I was hoping for some fantasy or science fiction themed stories as this was the area in which the author has received most renown, but was disappointed in that regard.