One for the Books by Joe Queenan

Published by Viking on October 25, 2012

Joe Queenan is a columnist/journalist/writer/reviewer.  He describes his regular work as “ridiculing nincompoops and scoundrels.”  To some extent, One for the Books is a collection of funny, book-related stories that do exactly that.  He ridicules the inept security guards who detained his bag in a library, the luncheons he has attended to honor writers because “they are still breathing,” and the book store employees who treat him like dirt because he isn’t searching for their favored titles.  More significantly, One for the Books offers an amusing glimpse at the life of a dedicated reader.  The last few paragraphs in particular are a wonderful tribute to reading.

Although reading has collateral benefits, Queenan is convinced that most book lovers read books “to escape to a more exciting, more rewarding world,” a proposition with which I completely agree.  Queenan reads every day and would read more if he could.  He reads enduring literature and he reads trash (although less of the latter as he ages).  He sometimes reads “the types of books that thirtyish women devour at private swim clubs, often to the dismay of their drowning children,” but only years after they have lost their trendy bestseller status.  He forms relationships with his books and often prefers their company to the bozos he knows.

Queenan is equally fervent about the books he has read and those he refuses to read, ever.  He names names.  Yet, for all the titles that Queenan drops (typically several on every page), this isn’t a work of literary criticism.  He may or may not mention what the book is about or his impressions of it, but when he does, he rarely employs more than a few words.  One for the Books is about Queenan’s experiences as a reader and feelings about reading more than it is about the books he has read.

Queenan is something of a book snob and he makes no effort to disguise his snobbery.  Rather, he revels in it.  He expresses his opinions forcefully, in the manner of a curmudgeon.  Books about businessmen and politicians “are interchangeably awful.”  Detective novels are “piffle.”  He would rather have his “eyelids gnawed on by famished gerbils than join a book club.”  He ridicules the questions prepared for book clubs that can be found in the backs of books and on websites, and contributes (mockingly) a few of his own.  He does not want friends to loan him books and cannot understand “how one human being could ask another human being to read Look Homeward, Angel and then expect to remain on speaking terms.”  He doesn’t like to discuss books with people who don’t love serious literature because they always set the conversational agenda, which tends to focus on current bestsellers, but he enjoys pulling a book from his shelves and reading “striking passages to baffled dimwits who have turned up at my house.” Although he frequents a variety of bookstores and finds some of them alluring, he is acerbic in his description of their employees (particularly the “Irony Boys”).  He complains about readers “upon whom the gift of literacy may have been wasted.”  He thinks book critics are “mostly servile muttonheads” while blurb writers are “liars and sycophants.”  He refuses to read books about the Yankees and their “slimy fans” or books written by Yankees fans (Salman Rushdie included).  He will not read books with ugly covers.  He does not read digital editions because they make reading “rote and mechanical,” stripped of its “transcendent component.”  He is no friend of the Kindle.

Although we’re often on the same page (so to speak), about equally often I disagree with Queenan’s opinions.  This is, after all, a guy who cavalierly dismisses two of my favorite novels, Catcher in the Rye and Catch-22.  His decisions about books he will not read are often capricious.  That’s fine.  Agreement with Queenan is irrelevant because he writes with such passion and conviction and humor that it is impossible not to be entertained, and occasionally moved, by his words.  Besides, as Queenan points out, people who care about books are willing to get into knife fights to defend their beliefs.  I appreciate that he cares so much, even if I might sometimes be inclined to tangle with him using sharp blades.

Other than a long list of books ranging from The Iliad to the obscure, is there anything Queenan actually likes?  Shockingly enough, he claims to admire Amazon book reviews, at least the snide ones written by courageous reviewers who hide behind the bushes, fire their muskets and run away.  He even offers (mockingly) a few Amazon reviews of his own.  They are hilarious.

Queenan would hate this review because I have nothing nasty to say about his book.  My only complaints about One for the Books are (1) its haphazard organization and corresponding (albeit occasional) tendency toward redundancy, and (2) a chapter that is largely devoted to the visits he has made to towns and homes and graves of dead writers bogs down in stream-of-consciousness triviality.  Otherwise, I have to say sorry, Joe, but I really enjoyed your book.  Fortunately, someone else will come along and trash it, providing him with the kind of review he admires.

RECOMMENDED

The Dark Winter by David Mark

Published by Blue Rider Press on October 25, 2012

Some novels about serial killers challenge the reader to discover the pattern that links the murderers.  The Dark Winter is not one of those.  The pattern will become clear to the reader about a third of the way through the novel.  The police, who are a touch slow to see the obvious, figure it out by the novel’s midway point.  The more challenging puzzles are the killer’s identity and motivation.

Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy of the Humberside Police responds to a scream that turns out to be the last sound made by an adolescent girl named Daphne before she is hacked to death with a machete.  Born in Sierra Leone, Daphne was adopted after her parents became victims of genocide.  McAvoy would like to lead the investigation but he is instead assigned to tell Barbara Stein-Collinson that her brother Fred has been found dead in a lifeboat off the coast of Iceland.  Fred Stein had survived the sinking of a trawler at the same location more than thirty years earlier -- one of four that sank during the Black Winter -- and Fred had returned at the request of a documentarian to lay a wreath in the water to honor the dead.  Although Barbara believes that Fred committed suicide, we know from the novel’s prologue that Fred was knocked unconscious and thrown into the lifeboat.

Fans of crime novels will immediately suspect that the two killings are related.  The link will be clear to the savvy reader when a third killing occurs, and McAvoy eventually figures it out.  The real question is the killer’s identity.  The answer, of course, depends upon unlocking the killer’s motivation for following the pattern.  In that regard, the resolution of the mystery is at least plausible (by thriller standards, anyway) and modestly clever.  The novel’s conclusion, however, is a contrived attempt to add a final “thrill.”  It doesn’t detract from the story that precedes it but it doesn’t deliver the payoff that David Mark must have intended.

Mark writes fast moving prose.  Short sentences.  Omits pronouns.  When he isn’t doing that, he’s actually a decent wordsmith with some literary flair.  I’d like to see more of that in the next book.  It’s more appealing than strings of two word sentences.

Although this is Mark’s debut novel, McAvoy comes with the sort of baggage that most series protagonists accumulate over the course of a half dozen books.  His face and career are scarred by an incident that took place many months earlier.  Although he is mildly obsessive, a bit neurotic, and harbors an unhealthy passion for his job, he has the orderly mind of an accountant -- a trait that has condemned him to a desk job, managing databases.  He is therefore an unhappy cop, one who is burdened with the self-doubt that victimization can instill.

Half the story -- the better half -- focuses on McAvoy’s conflict with police officers who are more keen on making an arrest than on finding the guilty party.  McAvoy, who is also burdened with a conscience, wants the job done right, statistics be damned.  This makes him an interesting character, someone I’d welcome meeting again.

RECOMMENDED

Bowl of Heaven by Gregory Benford and Larry Niven

Published by Tor Books on October 16, 2012

Larry Niven has often worked in collaboration, and it's good to see him working at all, given his age. Not many writers born in 1938 are still kicking out science fiction. Gregory Benford might have manned the laboring oar but, having been born in 1941, he's not much younger. Ignoring the trendiness of modern sf, Benford and Niven have crafted an old-fashioned story of space exploration and first contact. Unfortunately, while I have enjoyed much of Niven's writing and at least some of Benford's over the years, Bowl of Heaven does not match the best work of either author.

The story begins as a promising (albeit conventional) "scientists journey to a new world" story. In the prolog, they are preparing to leave on their newly tested starship. As the novel begins, Cliff Kammash is awakened from an eight decade sleep, well before the ship is scheduled to reach the planet they have named Glory. Cliff, a biologist, thinks it odd that he has been awakened to opine about an unusual star the duty crew have observed -- odd until he realizes that the star is partially surrounded by a hemisphere, an object that was clearly manufactured. For reasons they can't explain, their ship has been losing velocity, and the knowledge that they aren't going to make it to Glory alive prompts them to investigate the bowl-covered star. The bowl is actually a vast (and literal) starship, using the star as its source of propulsion. Once they are inside the bowl, Cliff and his buddies discover an ecosystem the size of the inner solar system.

The plot then follows two branches as half the landing crew is captured by feathered aliens while the other half escapes. Both branches morph into wilderness survival tales as the two groups investigate the planet. For the most part, the story is bland and uninspired. Slightly more interesting are the underlying questions that the humans must confront: what is the origin of the bowl, where did it find its star, where is it going and why? One of the groups improbably stumbles upon a museum that provides helpful clues, furthering my impression that life inside the bowl is just a little too easy for our friends from Earth, a flaw that hurts the story's credibility. Eventually the humans discover what the reader learns much earlier: other aliens from other worlds are trapped in the bowl, in much the same predicament. The question then becomes: Why are the Big Birds who seem to be in charge rounding up and "assimilating" intelligent life forms from other planets?

The human characters lack distinctive personalities -- or any personalities. They are as bland as the story. They engage in random quarrels about points of science that have precious little to do with their survival, and a couple of them engage in hanky-panky, but for the most part the characters are interchangeably dull.

Bowl of Heaven works best when the focus shifts from the humans to the aliens. The Big Bird we encounter most often is Memor, who is charged first with understanding the humans and then with destroying them. The most interesting Bird chapters concern the aliens' attempt to understand the humans -- their speculation, for instance, about the evolutionary significance of facial gestures and human anatomy -- and the political consequences of Memor's repeated failures to bring them under control. The payoff comes when the reader meets a not-so-assimilated species that actually seems alien -- the politics of revolution comes into play -- but that doesn't happen until the novel's final chapters: too little and too late to redeem an uninspired plot.

The story hearkens back to an earlier, simpler era of science fiction in its conviction that humans, while not as technologically advanced as aliens, are clever and scrappy and so have the capacity to outwit their superior foes. Of course, it helps that the Big Birds are shockingly inept in their confrontations with humans.

Most disappointing is that the story ends abruptly -- not really a cliffhanger but leaving everything unresolved -- as the reader is encouraged to pick up volume two (Shipstar) to see what happens next. I'm sufficiently indifferent that I might not, but mildly curious about the unanswered questions noted above so maybe I will.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Stonemouth by Iain Banks

Published by Pegasus on October 10, 2012

With the addition of a middle initial to his name, Iain Banks writes immensely entertaining science fiction novels, with fast-moving action and tongue-in-cheek attitude. Without the middle initial, Banks writes novels that have the heft, characters, and prose of serious literature. Stonemouth is one of the latter, and it is a small gem.

Stewart Gilmour returns on a Friday to Stonemouth, his hometown in northeast Scotland, for the funeral of Joe Murston, an elderly man he befriended in his teen years. Stewart had been run out of town five years earlier by the Murston family for reasons that are only hinted at until the story is two-thirds done. His safe readmission to Stonemouth requires him to make nice with Joe's son Donnie, one of Stonemouth's two resident crime lords, who warns Stewart to leave no later than Tuesday and to stay away from Donnie's daughter Ellie. Stewart, of course, harbors the distant hope that it isn't quite over with Ellie and can think of nothing except seeing her again.

Stonemouth is a weekend journey of discovery. Stewart reviews the past and rethinks the present as he visits old friends and lovers. He learns the full truth (or as near to it as he will likely ever come) about the incident that caused his banishment from Stonemouth. The novel's early chapters alternate sly and amusing and tragic observations about the perils of being young with moments of unexpected tenderness. The later chapters give Stewart the chance to come to terms with his mistakes as he decides whether to let go of his past or to make it the foundation of his future.

The principle characters, and Stonemouth itself, are skillfully developed. Stewart and Ellie are particularly nuanced, but even the minor characters have personalities that transcend the stereotypes they could easily have become. Stewart has changed since leaving Stonemouth (not always in ways that suit him); Ellie is changing; the male Murstons, like the town of Stonemouth itself, resist change with the force of ... well, stone. It is the conflict between the inevitability of change and the intractability of family tradition that animates the story.

An atmosphere of danger hangs over the novel as Stewart goes about his business: a chance encounter with Ellie's flirtatious sister; a brutal encounter with Ellie's brothers; a tense encounter with a thug in a pool hall; an obligatory visit with the town's other crime boss, Mike MacAvett, and with Mike's daughter Jel, who represents a different sort of danger. Banks deftly juggles the gentleness of a love story with sudden bouts of violence, letting tension build intermittently until the story reaches a thundering climax.

Banks' strength as a science fiction author is his ability to tell an engrossing story. His strength in Stonemouth is his ability to tell an engrossing story with literary flair.

RECOMMENDED

The Hydrogen Sonata by Iain M. Banks

Published by Orbit on October 9, 2012 

The Gzilt are about to transition from the Real to the Sublime, where they will live a blissful existence in dimensions seven through eleven. In most instances, an entire civilization must enter the Sublime at the same time to retain individual identities, and this is what the Gzilt are preparing to do in 24 days. When a ship from the Zihdren-Remnanter attempts to deliver a message to the Gzilt -- a message that could undercut the very foundation of Gzilt society and possibly affect the civilization's readiness to join the Sublime -- a Gzilt ship blows it to bits. Ever watchful, the Culture dispatches Caconym, one of its Mind ships, to join an advisory group that is responding to the incident. Caconym is a logical choice since it shares its structure with another Mind that has actually been to, and returned from, the Sublime.

Other than various Minds, the central character in Iain Banks' latest Culture novel is a Gzilt named Vyr Cossant, who added two arms to her body so she could play The Hydrogen Sonata on the elevenstring. Because she once met an entity (sometimes humanoid, sometimes not) named Ngaroe QuRia who has lived for thousands of years, Cossant is recommissioned as a lieutenant commander and ordered to find QuRia. QuRia is thought to possess the information that the Zihdren-Remnanter were attempting to deliver to the Gzilt. Also making an attempt to find QuRia is his former lover, Scolliera Tefwe, whose consciousness has been stored on a Culture ship for the last four hundred years. As the Gzilt countdown to the Sublime continues, Cossant and Tefwe and a number of Culture Minds race to uncover the truth about the Gzilt before the civilization makes its collective journey, a task that is impeded by some Gzilt political/military folk who would prefer that the information remain buried.

There is, of course, quite a bit more going on: political scheming to determine which race will become the rightful heir to the worlds and possessions the Gzilt leave behind; political quarrels among the Culture Minds; military maneuverings leading to explosive confrontations between the Gzilt, the Culture, and others. All of this adds up to a fun, intelligent, fast-moving story.

If this abbreviated plot summary is confusing, you probably haven't read any of Banks' Culture novels and are therefore unfamiliar with the ancient, droll, sarcastic, pedantic, and sometimes mentally ill Artificial Intelligences known as the Minds.  Don't worry.  You can read The Hydrogen Sonata as a stand-alone novel and it will all make sense to you before too many chaters have gone by.

The best thing about The Hydrogen Sonata is that it is wildly imaginative without becoming too silly. From the descriptions of alien beings to the wonders offered by other planets, Banks creates a fully realized environment. He effectively conveys a sense of the age and vastness of the universe, plays with theories about other universes/dimensions that might exist, and peppers the story with a wonderful array of gadgetry. Not all of this is original, of course, but Banks often uses technology and theory in original ways.

I particularly like Banks' playfulness: the amusing names the Culture gives its ships; the banter between ships' Minds; the quirky personalities the Minds develop; the nettlesome nature of inter-species politics; a dirigible that hosts a five-year-long going-away party prior to the Sublime; an avatar whose head is made of alphabet soup; the fact that audiences other than academics and Culture Minds regard The Hydrogen Sonata (which may or may not be a musical representation of the periodic table) as unlistenable; the snarky pet Cossant wears around her neck; an android that mistakenly believes it's in a simulation as mayhem surrounds it; some truly bizarre sexual escapades ... and more.

The novel concludes with an intriguing moral equation. Members of the Culture learn that a shared belief critical to Gzilt civilization is false. Should the Culture reveal the truth on the ground that it is always best for the truth to be known? Or should the Culture keep quiet to protect the Gzilt from the social disruption that the truth might cause? An interesting quandary, but this isn't the kind of science fiction that lends itself to deep thought. It's meant to be fun and exciting, and it achieves that goal admirably.

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