"City of Ambition"

City of Ambition: FDR, La Guardia, and the Making of Modern New York (Mason B. Williams)

I feel bad giving this book a negative review, but I found that my attention kept drifting while reading it. It's a little difficulty for me to put why that was into words, but it seems to boil down to the book's main theme getting quite muddled. The opening material, sketches of FDR and La Guardia, is pretty interesting, and I enjoyed the book during this part, but when the author starts running through a detailed history of the politics of New York state in the interwar years, it's just not very gripping. I would suggest the author either needs to take a higher level overview of this material or dive in even deeper and really fill out the history; as it is, the level of detail has the reader see a lot of characters come and go without making much of an impact, and it turns into kind of a muddle. It also stirs the dreaded "Why am I reading this" feeling - I can't help but feel that a lot of the pages in the book could be condensed down to "La Guardia was in the political wilderness for a few years" without following the fruitless narrative thread about what the ultimately meaningless mayors and governors of New York were doing at the time.
For all that, though, I don't think this is really a bad book - it's just one I didn't personally enjoy. It's a bit tough to recommend; if your local library has it, I'd try the first hundred pages (I made it to 125).

Grade: :/

"The Greenlanders"

The Greenlanders (Jane Smiley)

I feel bad not being able to get into this book; it's got excellent reviews, but when it came time to actually crack it open, I barely made it ten pages. I've read that it's supposed to be in the style of a Norse saga, but for me I just found it to be horribly dry, written in snore-inducing this happened, then that happened style. Here's a little taste (page 233):

Another thing that happened after this hunger was that Bjorn Einarsson Jorsalfari declared his intention of remaining year round at Thjodhilds Stead, which was in Kambstead Fjord, at the back of Hvalsey Fjord, instead of spending part of the year at one farm an part of the year at the other, for he hadn't enough men to make something of both farmsteads, and he preferred the location of Thjodhilds Stead, for it gave his ships easy access to the sea but also to Gardar and Brattahlid. For this reason it happened that Gunnhild Gunnardottir would be within a day's walk of her own home when she went to stay with Solveig for the summer...

Did you follow that? I didn't, because I fell asleep halfway through it. Maybe I've just read too many fast-paced novels, but it takes so long for anything to happen that I couldn't stop my attention from drifting away. I'm sure a more patient reader can find a lot to enjoy here, but for me it's going regretfully in the donation pile.

Grade: D

"Snow Crash"

Snow Crash (Neal Stephenson)

I really hated this book; it has the William Kennedy style of writing where it sounds like an annoying person at a party you can't escape yammering nonsensically at you, with Stephenson's twist being that it sounds like you've been cornered by a 10 year old boy who can't shut up. Here's a quote from the first ten pages, talking about the hero's car, which goes, like, a billion miles an hour:

The Deliverator's car unloads that power through gaping, gleaming, polished sphincters. When the Deliverator puts the hammer down, shit happens. You want to talk contact patches? Your car's tires have tiny contact patches, talk to the asphalt in four places the size of your tongue. The Deliverator's car has big sticky tires with contact patches the size of a fat lady's thighs. The Deliverator is in touch with the road, starts like a bad day, stops on a pesta.

I made it through maybe 15 pages of this crap before it was hurled into the donation pile with great malice. I don't know that I have much to add beyond that horrible quote. I guess I would say - do not buy this book; do not check out this book; do not recommend this book; do not read this book.

Grade: F-

"The Diary of Edward the Hamster 1990 - 1990"

The Diary of Edward the Hamster 1990 - 1990 (Miriam & Ezra Elia)

I guess I didn't get this book; it's about a sad hamster who (spoiler alert? I can't even tell, it's in the title) dies at the end. It's not funny or entertaining; it's puzzling and depressing. The whole book I was like "Is this supposed to be funny?" and then I got to the end and went "What?" and then "Was this supposed to be funny?"
Don't even bother getting this one of the library.

Grade: F

"1491"

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (Charles Mann)

I feel a little deceived by this book. What I was expecting was a book all about the people native to the Americans before Columbus. There is some of this material in the book - and these parts are quite good - but more than half of the book is a history of white people's understanding of the history, not the history itself.
This is not exactly what I wanted. I understand that some material about the way that modern people think about the subject can be useful, but there's just too much for me, and it really started getting on my nerves reading page after page about it. I want to hear about the history; I don't necessarily find it so interesting to be hearing about the theory and ways of thinking about the history. (It also has the effect of once again making the story about white people.)
Ultimately, I just found that there was too much of this material in the book. What parts of it that there are about the Americas before Columbus are quite good, but there simply isn't enough of this to make this an easy recommend. Check it out of the library and just read the parts that are directly recounting the history.

Grade: B-

"A History of Future Cities"

A History of Future Cities (Daniel Brook)

I knew I was in trouble with this book right from page three:

Orient is both a noun and a verb - the noun means east; the verb means to place oneself in space - but its two meanings are intertwined. An individual lost in the wilderness can place herself in space (orient herself) because she knows the sun rises in the east (the Orient). The disorientation imparted by St. Petersburgh, Shanghai, Mumbai and Dubai results from their being located in the East but purposefully built to look as if they are in the West. Their occidental looks are anything but accidental.

What we have here is a misleadingly titled book comprised of four not terribly well written, hyperbolic, boring histories of "pop up" cities - the aforementioned St. Petersburgh, Shanghai, Mumbai, and Dubai (putting aside that Shanghai is over a thousand years old and Mumbai may have been continuously inhabited since the Stone Age). I'm gonna be real here: This is a book not only without a central premise, but as I hope is demonstrated from the snippet above, soaked in nonsense. The actual histories themselves are, and I know I said this already but it bears repeating, not well written and boring. I can't recommend not reading this book enough.

Grade:
F-

"Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom"

Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War (Stephen Platt)

I've got two books about the Taiping rebellion, and I think I should have read God's Chinese Son first; I didn't realize from the subtitle that Platt's book is all about the Western view of the Taiping rebellion. This is a very strange choice to make - Platt ends up super fast-forwarding through the entire first half and the last bit of the rebellion, instead focusing on the stretch of the war when the Western powers interfered. This makes for a searing indictment of England's misguided intervention, but as a actual "Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War", well, no, not really. I guess I could recommend this if you've already read a nice book about the conflict and are looking for another perspective on it, or if you're writing a research paper on the subject of foreign intervention in Qing China, but otherwise, take a pass. Very disappointing.

Grade: D
Bonus: Link to Amazon review that sums up my feelings pretty well.

"Straight Man"

Straight Man (Richard Russo)

I really don't know what to make of this book. I think that it's supposed to be funny, but the jokes were so feeble that I honestly couldn't even tell when the author was trying to make me laugh. Russo's picked out an area that should be full of comedic potential (our protagonist is an aging literary professor struggling with his colleagues), but does nothing with the concept; The author's other characters are paid a compliment if they are described as being barely one-dimensional stereotypes, and we just end up following our hero around on a boring, lifeless, pointless, tedious journey filled with boring, lifeless, pointless flashbacks and asides. At least this book isn't filled with the sad flop sweat of a truly painful unfunny comedy book, so it's boring instead of actively repulsive. Not much of a compliment, I know, but I'm trying to say something nice, and at the end of the day, this isn't repulsive, just a boring and forgettable lump of mediocrity.

Grade: D+

"Betrayer"

Betrayer (Aaron Dembski-Bowden)

It's finally happened: ADB has written a book that isn't an instant masterpiece. In a way, I'm relieved; I was running out of praise to heap on the guy, and it's nice to be able to present a more nuanced review.
None of this should imply that the book is bad - it's just very good instead of great. This novel is a follow up to both Know No Fear and The First Heretic, centered mostly on Angron and the World Eaters. I'm not sure why ADB isn't able to give the World Eaters a rehabilitating coat of nuance as he did with previous legions, but for whatever reason it never quite gels; for all that the World Eaters are painted as tragic figures who willingly subjected themselves to getting brain implants that mimics the one Angron has (which has reduced him to a total wreck), they still come off as rather interchangeable guys who get really angry. Angron himself is more interesting, and him and Lorgar of the Word Bearers have an fascinating, complex relationship which carries the book with an able assist by ADB's usual awesome action scenes. To sum up, this book is easy to recommend, just be aware that you're getting a B+ instead of an A. (Spoiler alert!)

Grade: B+

"Titanicus"

Titanicus (Dan Abnett)

The last time I read a Dan Abnett book, I was, uh, not exactly enthralled, so I admit I was a little scared going into this one. Luckily, this book is much improved and very entertaining, albeit marred with some pacing issues. Actually, that may be a little too kind; this book is entertaining but bloated, weighing in at 600 pages, and containing three absolutely pointless story threads (a old crazy guy watering his garden, a toymaker who, um, makes toys and nothing interesting happens to, and a dockworker who happens to be the husband of another, slightly less pointless character). There's also one story thread that really has nothing to do with anything else in the book that could probably be dropped, all the more so as it's one of two threads about desperate PDF troopers behind enemy lines. (Also, the star of this story thread is the "slightly less pointless character" alluded to above - so if you cut this thread you might as well cut his as a bonus).
So the book's too big and has too many characters, half of whom nothing interesting happens to, but it's also the really only bad thing I have to say about the book, and I guess a novel titled Titanicus being too big at least makes some kind of sense. There are other little issues - the book wraps up way too quickly, which I chalk up as a symptom of having too many characters. Considering some of the terrible endings I've seen for W40k novels, this could be much worse, as it does at least wrap up the big plot threads competently  Also, this is not a book for 40k beginners; I recommend reading Mechanicum first, or you'll be lost trying to keep straight if a Warlord or a Reaver class Titan is larger. (Spoiler: It goes Imperator, Warlord, Reaver, Warhound. I can tell you're impressed!)
To sum up, if you skip the needless storylines and you've got a great book; as it is, it's entertaining but flawed, which is still good enough to earn a solid

Grade: B

"Dragon Keeper"

Dragon Keeper (Robin Hobb)

I tried with this book, I really did. This is another free Kindle e-book, a genre which I have not exactly enjoyed in the past. In this case, I tried to make it 50 pages (this is not easy to measure with the Kindle's "location" system), and after three and a half chapters I just couldn't stand it anymore. Reading this book is like wading through hip-deep mud: It's slow, heavy, turgid, and your mind constantly wanders to something more interesting. The book opens badly, starting with a bunch of dragons cocooning themselves, but they're all weak and dazed and half of them die, and it's so ham-handedly GUYS THIS IS SAD that it becomes silly; I couldn't help but imagine these dragons drunkenly bumbling around to comical music.
Then we switch to focus on a deformed harpy girl and her dad, and nothing happens, and while reading this part I was missing the dragons stumbling around. After a bunch of pages of nothing of interest happening we switch to focus on Alise, our mary sue who LOVES DRAGONS GUYS, and while reading this I was somehow missing the earlier parts about nothing happening to a deformed harpy girl. At this point (I was reading the book in the bathroom) I would have rather just listened to the various gross sounds coming from the next stall than continue reading this book, which I guess is very mean to say, but there you have it.

Grade: F

"The Founding"

The Founding (Dan Abnett)

This is a omnibus containing three Gaunt's Ghosts novels, Gaunt himself being a Commissar in the 40k universe. Collected here are First and Only, Ghostmaker, and Necropolis. Since it took me so long to read, I don't feel bad reviewing each novel one by one. Suck on it, libs!

First and Only: According to the introduction, at one point this was the best-selling book published by Black Library. I get the sense this book came out quite early in the Black Library's run. It's entertaining enough, but it's marred by some weird issues - The Guard is all male, Chaos Space Marines are killed with single shots from a Guardsman's laser rifle (!!), and there's a deformed psyker commissar (!!!!) who "atomizes" an entire city when he dies (?!)
There's also just weird careless details: Gaunt's bolt pistol becomes a laspistol becomes a lasgun becomes a boltgun. On top of that, some of the writing is, put charitably, clumsy (a character's reaction when he realizes he's just been decapitated: "Only when his headless body fell onto the deck next to him he realized that... his head... cut... bastard... no.")
So with all that, is this book worth reading? Well, it's not bad, but the above mentioned issues make it rather difficult to recommend. I'd probably only suggest this book if you either love military-style novels (which this is at heart), or are looking for a friendly introduction to the 40k universe. Otherwise, it's perfectly serviceable, but I can't really recommend going too far out of your way to track it down.

Grade: B-

Ghostmaker: This is a short story collection that meanders around giving different Ghosts some time in the spotlight. I applaud the idea - up until now they've basically been cardboard cut-outs whose personality is no more fleshed out than "medic", "scout", "heavy weapons guy". In fact, the Ghosts themselves have less personality than the Team Fortress 2 characters who are literally named Medic, Scout, and Heavy Weapons Guy. So giving them some personality is a very welcome idea, but the actual execution unfortunately sinks the entire enterprise. What do we learn from a spotlight on Mkoll, the silently-moving scout? Turns out he's a scout, and that he can move silently. The author seems either unwilling or unable to flesh out characters  If they're good, they're tough, blue-collar, gritty heroes, and if they're bad, they're either deformed chaos monsters or blue-blooded elitists sipping coffee while our heroic, blue-collar, gritty heroes get the job done. Maybe I've been spoiled by other w40k novels. I'm bumping the grade up because I appreciate Abnett's efforts to imbue the Ghosts with a personality, but it's a cringing failure, and I only got like an eighth of the way through it.

Grade: D+

Necropolis: I was hoping that these novels would improve with time as Abnett became more familiar and comfortable with the setting he's working in, but unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the case. Although the writing isn't as clumsy in this book, it's still full of distracting, careless errors. On page 669, a character is Trygg in the first paragraph and Trugg in the second. A character is hit by a lasrifle shot and bleeds out in a matter of minutes, even though the author has pointed out numerous times that lasrifle wounds are self-cauterized because of the weapon's heat. At the book's climax, Gaunt himself is shot by a bolt in the heart, but lives because he's wearing a steel rose on his shirt. This is dumb and cheesy enough as it is, but is nonsensical because a "bolt" is basically a rocket-propelled explosive. This is like surviving a hit from a RPG because you have a steel plate in your chest pocket; Gaunt would either be a mess on the floor or have had his steel rose punched straight through his body, but then I guess there couldn't be any sequels. Oh, and people also use "gak" as a swear word, and all I could think of was Nickelodeon Gak.
In short, this is not a good book. Some of the military action is exciting, but combined with Abnett's carelessness, lame characters  and annoying habit of cutting away from the actual important parts of the book to follow needless sideplots that don't go anywhere, this is a slog far more often than it is an engaging story.

Grade: C-

So in sum, I can't really recommend this at all. Even if you're looking to dip your toe in 40k, I'd suggest the much better Caiphas Cain omnibuses, which not only actually get the details right, but are actually, you know, enjoyable to read.

Grade: D-

"The Joy Luck Club"

The Joy Luck Club (Amy Tan)

My wife told me I wasn't going to like this book. I hoped she was wrong - hey, I loved Spring Moon! - but is as usually the case, she turned out to be right. My big problem with this book is that everything interesting happened to the narrator's mother. Out of the 20 pages that I read, 2 pages were interesting stuff happening to the main character's mom, and the rest was the main character farting around playing mah-johngg, watching people cook, and reflecting on her own, comparatively boring life. What separates this book and Spring Moon is that in the latter we're seeing directly the interesting parts, and in the former we're just hearing little bits of the interesting part told to someone else. Unfortunately, this also separates a book I couldn't put down to one I couldn't stop myself from flipping through.

Grade: C+

"The Catiline Conspiracy"

The Catiline Conspiracy [SPQR II] (John Roberts)

I liked the previous book in this series well enough, but this one kind of fell flat; I think the problem is that this book has even less of a climax than the previous one. (I don't want to spoil it, but you might want to skip past this sentence if you're worried: The ending is basically "I informed the guys in charge and they took care of it" which is very realistic but not very exciting.)
To be fair, this book is very realistic and accurate, and while I enjoyed all the meticulous attention to detail in the setting and knowing what was going to happen from reading Roman history, for some reason this time to lack of a climax really bugged me. Maybe it's the fact that our main character never really felt that important to what was happening, or the way that his love interest has nothing to do with the rest of the plot, but whatever the reason, this is tough to recommend unless the rich, detailed setting is enough to make you happy. As for me, I'm going to try one more book in this series and see if it feels a little narratively tighter.

Grade: B-

"The Infinite Wait"

The Infinite Wait and Other Stories (Julia Wertz)

When this blog started waaaaaay back in April 2011, Wertz's previous book Drinking at the Movies was the sixth review published. I only wish I'd started this blog before reading her first two books (the wonderfully named "Fart Party" volumes 1 and 2). Drinking at the Movies is a fairly straight narrative, and I think The Infinite Wait suffers slightly in comparison to it, both because some of the material is re-hashed, and because it's separated into three non-connected sections of Wertz's life. I enjoyed this book, but given its re-telling of some of the same parts of her life, I almost wonder if Wertz either needs to have more stuff happen to her before her next book, or start doing non-biographical work. In any case, I don't want to give the impression that this book is bad; it's merely got a few issues holding it back from greatness. It's also the best comic book I've read in 2013 (disclaimer: only comic book I have read in 2013).

Grade: B+

"A History of the Roman World"

A History of the Roman World: 753 to 146 BC (H.H. Scullard)

What do you say about a book that devotes as many pages to neolithic and pre-historic Italy as it does to Rome under its seven kings? Well, in my case, I say that I didn't finish it, and that I didn't like it very much, and that everything in the book I either knew already or had a hard time caring about. The consensus seems to be that this is an old but good book, whereas I just found it unreadable - not only because of the author's weird choice of what to cover, but also because it's devided up by theme instead of chronologically. Sometimes this works, but here it doesn't. I guess all you need to know was that I was already skimming within the first ten pages of how the old stone age turned into the bronze age. Skip.

Grade: D-

"The Spy Who Came in from the Cold"

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (John le Carre)

The top Amazon user review for this book starts by asking what is to be said about it; I don't know that I have much to say myself, partly because the book is quite short and partly because it's difficult to get in depth at all without spoiling the book's plot. (Cue 150 more words of book review)
What I can say is that for me the book doesn't live up to its reputation as a masterpiece. I think I put this down to a case of Seinfeld is Unfunny - I'm sure le Carre's extremely realistic, drab setting was a revelation when this book was first released to a public fed on Bond novels. Reading it now, though, after this style has become extremely popular, what's left is a well-written but not particularly engaging little story that didn't really make much of an impact on me.  I also was not a fan of the ending, which makes perfect sense given what we'd seen of the characters up until that point, but still came off to me as a bit heavy-handed (I half expected the last sentance to be "It's GRIM, get it??? See what I did there??") Given how short the book is, it's pretty easy to recommend, but I wouldn't pick it up expecting the masterpiece its reputation suggests.

Grade: B+

"At Winter's End"

At Winter's End (Robert Silverberg)

I have a rule that books I read have 50 pages to give me a reason to keep reading; by the time I hit page 20 on this book with nothing interesting happening I knew I wasn't going to finish it, and the next 30 pages just draaaagggggeddddddd. The book's premise is that the Earth was devistated by falling meteors 700,000 years ago, and as it opens, one of the surviving tribes of humans prepares to leave its cocoon. I say "prepares" because this is one of the most slow, boring, ponderous books I've ever read. Maybe Silverberg wants us to really feel that 700,000 years as he meanders around, stopping in to visit with various groups of charecters as nothing happens to them. It's a bad sign when a book you're reading is less interesting than watching your wife play Skyrim, and this book's pacing is so glacial that she asked me to stop reading it to her, preferring to just listen to the grunts and groans of her shooting arrows at bandits. Do not read this book.

Grade: F

"Sheepfarmer's Daughter"

Sheepfarmer's Daughter (Elizabeth Moon)

This book is not what I expected. After looking at the cover (yeah, don't judge it, I know) and reading the back cover, I thought I had a enjoyable slice of 80's fantasy cheese here. And at first, that's what it is - Moon kicks the story off admirably quickly, as our heroine flees her arranged marriage and joins the military in like three no-bs pages. Then follows our heroine's military training, which is more interesting than it has any right to be, and then we get a fifty page medieval fantasy rape trial. (This is where you should drop in the record-scratching sound effect that was mandatory in movie trailers for several years.). I counted, and the rape trial and assorted drama starts on page 33, and was not over when I hit page 83, at which point I gave up. Fifty pages of this was far too much to hold my attention. I found myself wondering who this material was meant to appeal to, and discovered that whoever it is, it isn't me.

Grade: D+

"The Secret Life of Houdini"

The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America's First Superhero (William Kalush & Larry Sloman)

There's two issues I have with this book, one small one and one big one. Let's tackle the small one first: The authors put forth the argument that Houdini worked for MI5 and to a much lesser extent the Secret Service; The evidence here is pretty thin - he wrote letters to the heads of both services, but he also seems to have written a ton of letters period as they're quoted at length. The authors waste a little bit of time on this, and unfortunately it's not very interesting stuff.
But that pales to the second issue, which runs through the whole book and eventually becomes quite annoying. The authors seem to be paranoid that the reader may become bored or distracted, and so every two or three pages there is a paragraph break and the action picks up in a different place. Most of these read like the opening of a book where the author is desperately trying to get you to keep reading, so you may flip a page and read something like "The evil naughty gunman guy advanced on the tied-up detective, clutching his evil naughty gun in his big meaty fist that he used to commit acts of evil naughtiness." Read on a few sentences and it turns out the detective is Houdini and he's just filming a silent movie!!!!!!111!!!!!!!1!1
At first this is annoying, then amusing, then annoying again, and as the book goes on - and it's quite long - it eventually makes it hard to figure out what year we're in; events start blurring together and the book's narrative thread becomes difficult to follow. This is not a desirable trait in a 500+ page book. Most of all, it seems pointless; Didn't Houdini, of all people, have an interesting enough life so that we don't need to bother with annoying gimmickry like this? In the end, this is a frustrating book, and one I'll freely admit I didn't finish. It's easy to recommend getting it out of the library, but given the annoying structure and the sheer length it has to work on you, I can't really say it deserves a permanent spot on your shelf.

Grade: C-