"Yesterday's Tomorrows"

Yesterday's Tomorrows: Past Visions of the American Future (Joseph Corn and Brian Horrigan)

After finishing a book but before writing a review, I like going to Amazon and reading the reviews there to sharpen my own thoughts. Most of the time this helps me distill down what I want to write, but sometimes the Amazon authors sum it up so succiently that I'm thrown for a loop. In this case, the top rated Amazon review for this book is titled "Fun but not enough", and that really does sum the whole book up in four words. This book was written to accompany a museum exhibition, and as a result it's stuck inbetween two poles - it isn't just photographs of old visions of the future but neither is it a comprehensive history of the idea, and ultimately it fails to succeed totally on either level. It comes closer with the photographs, which are quite nice but there aren't enough of; the accompanying text gives enough information to whet the appetite but not much else. There's two other minor complaints I have, one being that the book is a little unusually shaped and hurt my arm after holding it up for two chapters (rest it on the sofa!), and the second being that the book came out in 1983, so there's one section that reads like "Will Xanadu foam houses catch on?!" (Spoiler alert: lol, no.) To be fair, neither of these are big complaints - the book's shape isn't that out of the ordinary for an art book, and being old happens to all of us eventually. Added all up, this is probably not the book you're looking for unless your collection must have every book about the retro future, in which case you don't even need to read this review, so, um.

Grade: B-

"The Riddle of the Sands"

The Riddle of the Sands (Erskine Childers)

I have to give this book credit: It takes real confidence to apologize, around page 70 of your 250 pages, for the book being boring up to that point. This is not a good sign, and yet I still finished this book. I'm not sure if you can chalk this up to me being a glutton or punishment, or (more likely) the fact that this is a weird, interesting little historical curio. This is an "invasion" novel (and I guess a well-known one as it's mentioned on the wiki page about them), a book written in 1903 about a imaginary German plan to invade England. This genre is usually mentioned offhand in history books, and I have to admit I've always wondered about reading one. The problem with this one is that it's full of a lot of yachting stuff. This is a book either for big history nerds (cough), or yachting fans, and I don't know that either group is going to be  entirely happy with it.
As for how I liked it - well, I finished it; I can't really recommend it unless you belong to one of the above groups, as it just moves too slowly and has too much sailing in it. The most entertaining parts, I dare say, are in seeing some of the ways that language and society has changed since the book was written; The subtext between our hero and his friend with the yacht, I'm sure, was meant to be two bronzed Anglos sailing around doing ultra manly stuff, but comes off as a bit, umm, hmm. Let's just say that towards the end of the book when the narrator is re-united with his pal and is felt up in the dark with his big knobby hands, it certainly adds some subtext to the earlier scene where our hero sees his friend's "wistful face on the quay" and then "heard his grim ejaculation". To be fair, this is very juvenile, but the author isn't helping with his steady stream of what I'm sure is meant as perfectly harmless patter ( "'Mud-holes!' he replied, with a contemptuous laugh." "'Pull it out,' said Davies"). All I'm saying is these guys really love sailing.

Grade: C-

"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 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+

"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-

"China Marches West"

China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia (Peter C. Perdue)

When you read as much history as I do, you tend to start looking for the parts that are glossed over. A visit to your local bookstore will show shelves overflowing with World War 2, but finding a good book about the history of central Asia from the 1600s to the 1800s as the Russians, Chinese, and Mongols struggle for supremacy is a rare find. China Marches West can be a little intimidating, both because of its sheer size and scholarly tone (about as rip-roaring as it gets is on page 342 where we're told "We now turn to the material details of agrarian production"). The book demands your full attention, but in return it's quite interesting. The first half of the book is a narrative history of, well, you can probably tell from the title, with the second half being a more in-depth breakdown covering anything you could possibly want to know about trade and agricultural practices on the frontier. The second half is drier, and I admit I did start skipping a fair amount of pages, but it's weird how fascinating reading about Chinese military granaries can be.

Grade: B+

"The Brothers Bulger"

The Brothers Bulger: How They Terrorized and Corrupted Boston for a Quarter Century (Howie Carr)

This is one of those good books that's hard to recommend. It details how, well, I guess you can tell from the title. Our two villains are Billy Bulger, the politically minded brother, who gets less ink, and his criminal brother, the notorious Whitey Bulger. Most of the book is about Whitey and his astounding corruption of multiple FBI agents and his getting away with murder for dozens of years (until he finally ran out of competitors to rat out and ended up on the FBI's most wanted list). It's tough to read - the book is very well researched and readable, but how corrupt the FBI was is truly stomach-turning, and this book is one of those stories where if I saw it on an episode of Law and Order, I'd be yelling "Oh, come on!" at the TV. Maybe it would have helped if there was a updated version released after Whitey was caught (spoiler alert), but as is, this is difficult to recommend without reservations.

Grade: :(

"Habibi"

Habibi (Craig Thompson)

This book really frustrated me. Thompson's art is gorgeous, and the story and setting contained within is absolutely top-notch, but the first half the book drove me bonkers with the way that Thompson kept cutting back between three different periods in the heroine's life from page to page. One page she's a teenager living in a boat in the desert, two pages after that she's a grown pregnant woman in a harem, and two pages after that she's a child at a slave market. Not only did this prevent the story from building any kind of momentum, but it also serves to drain any tension from the two chronologically earlier story segments. You'll have a visually exciting, kinetic chase scene with guards yelling "Kill her!", but you already know what's going to happen, because a page ago you were reading about her in ten years.
Luckily, this is only the first half, and once the book switches its focus to the titular Habibi, it also proceeds in chronological order, and - what a shock! - not knowing what's going to happen actually allows for some, you know, shocking and surprising moments. Overall, the story and art are good enough to make this easy to recommend; Just don't let the irritating first half's mish-mash put you off.

Grade: B+

"The Nth Doctor"

The Nth Doctor (Jean-Marc Lofficier)

Nerd alert. The original Dr Who TV show was canceled in 1989 and got a not terribly successful made for TV movie in 1996. This book covers the various written and discarded screenplays prepared for the movie, and while I found it quite interesting, it's probably only for Dr Who supernerds. I could have done without the "Script Review" section of the book as each script is praised highly, even the one I had trouble keeping awake though (I was more of a fan of the insane script where the Doctor goes around throwing people into vats of acid and killing them with karate chops). Also, I'm still not sure how a human and a Gallifreyan can have a kid given all the regeneration energy in a Time Lord.

Grade:
If you understood the last sentence: A-
The other 98% of the population: Skip

"Bushwhacked"

Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush's America (Molly Ivins & Lou Dubose)

I love how when you go to the Amazon page for this, it screams
Only 5 left in stock (more on the way).

I mean, I don't want to be rude, but is there a really huge demand for this book? To sum it up in one word - one devastating word, in the world of politics - it's (bum bum bum bum bum bum)

Dated. 

It's well written and entertaining, but let's be honest here: No matter how big an asshole move it is, do people remember old W as one of the worst presidents because he refused to ratify Clinton's workplace ergonomics legislation? I'd say no, and this book was published before the epic, presidency-destroying bungles of, say, Iraq's disastrous occupation, and eating birthday cake while New Orleans was destroyed. Going back and reading this book now, the two things that leap out are Enron, and the very start of the Iraq war. Everything else, horrible as it is, seems like small potatoes compared to what W ended up doing before we got a responsible adult in the white house again (wow - more like bite size political opinions.blogspot.com! -ed). 
So should you read it? If you find it for free like I did, sure, but given the age of the material, this is hard to recommend otherwise.

Grade: B? Yeah, let's go with that.