How the Hippies Saved Physics, by David Kaiser

Hey, look, I finally finished this book, first mentioned on the blog back at the end of July. I had to return the book pictured, but then found the audio version on OverDrive, so I couldn't help but listen, right?

Right.

Okay, so. First of all, this book is not exactly about how hippies saved physics. The title is based off of some study called How the Irish Saved Civilization, and the hyperbole is intentional, so I guess I'll let it slide. It is about hippies, and about hippies doing physics, and about hippies doing really weird things with physics, so if you're into that sort of thing you won't be disappointed.

On the actual surviving physics side of things, there's a lot of info in the book about quantum physics and how absolutely insane it is, with entangled particles and the double slit experiment and quantum encryption and of course Schrödinger's cat, which is probably still causing (and not causing) Schrödinger endless amounts of frustration.

I majored in physics, so mostly in this part I was like yeah yeah whatever none of this is really new or interesting.

BUT THEN.

Soooooo it turns out that more than one physicist in the 60s spent some time doing research into extrasensory perception, on the government's dime. And then some more on other people's dimes. And that is really the selling point of this book for me, because WHAT. Apparently there were some physics dudes and chicks totally into that Uri Gellar guy and other people who claimed to be able to see the future or see the other side of a playing card or whatever, and the U.S. government was like, well, we'd better play it safe and pour some money into this research just in case the Ruskies get there first. Fantastic! And even when said government stopped pouring money in and most people were like, eh, whatever, probably not, there were still physicists who were like, but MAYBE.

And I am a sucker for a crazy person story, so I liked this part of the book, and the part where Kaiser goes off about one of the non-government money-pouring people who totally turned out to be a murderer. WHAT.

Also, I love the guy who narrates the audiobook (he also did The Disappearing Spoon), whose delightful voice got me through all the boring parts just fine. I totally want to go find a list of his work and see if he's done any other books I'm interested in reading.

Recommendation: For those who need some crazy science-related anecdotes to throw around at parties.

Rating: 7/10

Wreck the Halls, by Jen Yates

Hee hee hee hee hee! I love Cake Wrecks, and also Cake Wrecks, and really just cake wrecks in general. I love stopping by the cakes on display at Publix and hoping one of them might be terrible enough to go on the internet, but also hoping that none of them are.

Unlike the previous general-wrecks book, this one is particularly focused on the end-of-year holidays. And Star Wars. Obviously. There are phallic poo-turkeys and a Super Bowel cake, really terrifying Santas and gingerbread men and Care Bears, and the last cake on this page that made a finals-addled husband of mine practically pee his pants laughing. It's not that funny, but law school is apparently very difficult.

There's also the patented Jen Yates patter, which here includes some re-written Christmas carols and several pun-laden paragraphs, which I would reproduce for you here except I do want to you keep reading my blog. Let's just say there's some fantastic wordplay involving bread and also poo, because this woman cannot stop talking about it.

Someday I will get that coffee table and then I will purchase this and its predecessor and any future Cake Wrecks books and scare people away from my home with them. And you should, too.

Rating: 8/10

Geek Girls Unite, by Leslie Simon

Hokay. So. I mentioned in my last post that I had picked this book up for no real reason but that it looked interesting and name-dropped some people that generally intrigue me. It is possible I did not even crack it open to look inside, just said, ooh, pretty purple cover and went for it.

Because prooooobably if I had looked inside I would not have brought this home. See, what I thought I was getting was a look at "geek girl" culture and, per the cover, how these girls are "taking over the world." Well, I did get that, I guess, but I also got a lot of stuff I was not expecting.

The book is set up so that each chapter covers a specific style of geek girl, starting with a quiz on your knowledge of the style (spoiler: all the answers are C and the A and B answers are often ridiculous), providing a stereotypical description of such a geek girl, giving a history of awesome girls who fall into the category, naming some current "geek goddesses," describing people these geek girls shouldn't be friends with and boys whom they should date, and offering up required reading/listening/clicking/watching/etc.

The parts with the historical context and the current "goddesses" are interesting, because they give me cool people and things to look into and are, like, factual and stuff. But all the other parts were either just okay or kind of lame, and I think it's at least partially because Simon and/or her publishers don't seem to know what audience this book is for.

Is it for girls who want to find their geek clique? Well, they won't be able to tell from the quizzes, since the right answer is generally very obvious even if you haven't figured out that it's always C. Is it for girls who want to read about themselves and their chosen clique? Maybe, but when I turned to what I thought would be mine, the "Literary Geek Girl," I found out through the "character sketch" that I'm going to have to become completely immune to fashion and popular music and also go back in time to undo all that Cliffs-Notes-ing I did of really terrible books, and I'm just not willing to do that. Is it actually for boys, considering the "geek love" sections seem directed at the boys (very specifically boys, too) who want to win over a geek girl's heart?

I don't know. I wish the book had been less segmented and more about the generally geeky girl, and I wish there had been more factual stuff and less Seventeen filler, but I suppose that wasn't meant to happen here. And so I am disappointed by my own high expectations. But I give Simon props for using actual geek girls as primary sources for the book and giving me scads of new books and albums and websites and movies to procure and devour, and really any book that's going to get people interested in new things is good by me.

Recommendation: For the girl who has always wanted to be a [insert geek style here] Geek Girl but never knew where to start.

Rating: 7/10

The Postmortal, by Drew Magary

Dudes. Dudes. How did you let me not read this for so long? I picked it up because a) it has to go back to its library home soon and b) I hadn't read anything in a week and it looked like it would go quickly. You should pick this book up because it turns out to be pretty fantastic!

I guess there are some caveats to the fantastic, as you kind of have to like a few different kind of things to get into this story. For one, it's a semi-dystopia — "semi-" because the world isn't ever really advertised as utopia, but it's definitely got that dystopian/apocalyptic air to it. Two, it's written as a series of blog posts, which I of course think is delightful but maybe you read enough blogs already? Three, for a book about quasi-immortality, a lot of people die in it, and not very nicely at that.

So. Yes. The background to the story is that some ginger guy invented the cure for aging instead of the cure for gingerness (sorry, Mary!) and everyone is like, "I gotta get me some of that." And that's kind of the story itself, too. We follow this guy John's blog posts as he guides us through 60 years of almost no aging, from right before The Cure is legalized to everyone getting them some of that to those who aren't everyone beating up/throwing lye in the eyes of everyone to some people deciding that cure, whatever, it's time to die if that's cool to government-sponsored bounty hunting to government-sponsored murder. It's pretty intense. And of course the whole time the population is increasing like crazy and all the countries are freaking out at each other and a plane ticket costs $12K because there is no oil left and the lines just to get on the highway (in your plug-in, of course) are hours long because America still won't get behind useful public transportation.

That last is probably (and sadly) the little detail that makes this story ring most true to me, but there are plenty of those little details in Magary's story. This whole book, although it's told as John's story and follows his generally poor handling of all the crazy going on in the world, is really about those details and how on earth the Earth is going to handle a population that suddenly can't get old. And Magary does a great job of showing every facet and really making you think about how this universe is going to play out.

And I really like the blog conceit, which exemplifies the intense nose-to-smartphone social media obsessiveness that Magary predicts will only increase in the next seventy years (right, the book starts in 2019, which is not that far away oh no!). There's a brief intro at the beginning that sets up the story as coming from a hard drive on a discarded old smartphone, with the entries in this book selected to construct a narrative, so right away a couple levels of unreliable narrator, which is excellent. But also I like the blog posts because they convey the right tone for the story, which is this sort of personal-but-one-level-removed, kind of journalistic, kind of diary-ish tone that, and this is key, doesn't really allow John to go exposition crazy because he's nominally writing for people who know what the hell is going on. It would be so easy to go exposition crazy in this kind of story (see Torchwood: Miracle Day, which I would compare and contrast to this except it would end in me yelling), but for the most part Magary avoids it (except for a stray "as you know," which, yelling).

It's not a perfect book, and I found myself super-annoyed with John at many points in the story, some of which were probably not supposed to make me annoyed, but on the whole I found it quite intriguing and thought-provoking. In fact, I had to stop more than once along the way to play "what-if" with my husband, who was trying to play a video game and is probably now trying to figure out how to get one of those cycle marriages all the fictional people are talking about, only maybe five years instead of forty because he's not going to live forever.

Recommendation: For enjoyers of dystopia, sad truths, and a little gratuitous violence (not too much).

Rating: 9/10

Before I Go to Sleep, by S.J. Watson

Facts about this book: 1) I put it on hold right when it came into my library in the middle of June, got it quickly, and then proceeded to forget to read it before I had to take it back. But by then people were saying good things about it, so I immediately put it on hold again, on August 1, and it finally came in on November 2.

2) I thought I'd have a minute to start it while waiting for a haircut, but I only got maybe three sentences in. Those three sentences, and the many many following, had me finishing the book in less than five hours after I got home and cracked it open a second time.

Seriously, this book is pretty fantastic. Dennis Lehane apparently thinks that it's "Memento on crystal meth" but, I mean, Memento was already on crystal meth (and AWESOME) so I'm not sure what he's trying to say here.

It is sort of like Memento, though, because our protagonist, Christine suffers from some weird memory problem that only lets her form new memories as long as she's awake, and then once she goes and has a REM cycle her memories are poof gone. So she wakes up every morning thinking she's some single young thing in bed with some old man, except it's her husband and he's actually younger than she is. Oh dear.

But, unlike Memento, we're seeing Christine's world from a very limited perspective — that of a journal she started keeping at the behest of a doctor, with neither the journal nor the doctor known to her husband, Ben. And the journal says not to trust Ben. Suspicious!

So it starts off with Christine getting her journal back (as written in a second journal, or something), and then there's the journal proper, which we go through in chronological order along with Christine, and the facts start piling up on each other and disagreeing with each other and Christine disagrees with herself often and it's all very very very intriguing. And obviously, the journal says not to trust Ben from the beginning, so when Ben turns out to be less than trustworthy it's not surprising, exactly, but I did not quite correctly call the ending and so I declare it a success.

I liked this a lot, just as I liked Memento a lot, because I am such a sucker for unreliable narrators (though Christine is more reliable than Leonard, really). I also thought it was fantastic to watch Christine change her opinions about things slowly but surely as she gets more and more of her backstory, and how also she was very consistent about things she didn't remember. I thought the book was well-paced and didn't go on for longer than it should have (or could have), and that the wrap-up was sufficiently informative and still interesting — it's really easy to throw on the exposition when the character you're expositing to is practically a blank slate, and I think Watson found a good balance there. The only problem I had with the ending was that it was fairly predictable (if not down to exact details), but, I mean, there are only so many ways this kind of story can end and I'd rather it end this way than another.

So, if you're still in RIP mood like I seem to be, this is not a bad way to go! Also, I totally need to go watch Memento again.

Recommendation: If you don't like unreliable narrators, just ignore this book and move on. Otherwise, I don't know why you haven't read this yet!

Rating: 9/10

Full Dark, No Stars, by Stephen King

So I was gonna say I haven't read much Stephen King lately, which is technically true, but then I realized that this is my third King book this year! Is it possible I'm coming around to King again, after many many years away? I think it might be.

I had heard of this book but wasn't interested in picking it up, because it's newer and I have this prejudice against "new King" that I picked up around the time I read and was greatly disappointed by Cell. I was like, King has stopped being creepy and spooky and interesting and is instead some crotchety old man and pfft whatever. This may not be a correct assumption on my part, but it's stuck, and so when I saw that this was next up for my book club, I was equal parts "ohhhhh this is going to suck" and "hey, maybe it won't be so bad."

And it wasn't so bad! In fact, I would go so far as to say that this is one of my favorite books out of King, and it is definitely my favorite of his collections (of which I have read not very many). There are four novellas included, though one is like forty pages and seems a little short for that category, and I found all of them to be awesome. And even better, I found all of them to fit in with each other in some way or other, which is a fun thing in a collection — I learned from this one that King has a thing against librarians, a thing for biting, a thing for people getting away with murder, and a thing for making me think a story will go one way and then totally not doing that. Fantastic.

I don't want to say too much about the stories proper, because they are short and I found that the descriptions I read after the fact just did not live up to the stories themselves and I don't want to fail you guys! But if you need something to get you started, I'd summarize the stories as follows: 1922 is a rambling confession letter, Big Driver is the story of an author's trip gone horribly terribly wrong (and then horribly terribly wronger), Fair Extension offers up an interesting way to deal with cancer, and A Good Marriage is about, well, a good marriage that's suddenly not.

Oh, I should also mention that there is rather a lot of violence and horribleness, especially in Big Driver, and so if you are not inclined to appreciate or tolerate such things, I would recommend against this collection. I have to admit I almost quit Big Driver more than once, and at least one person in my book club did give up on it. But in general I don't think it's too much worse than Misery, if that gives you a reference point.

Recommendation: For fans of awful things that aren't happening to themselves and awful people they hope they'll never meet.

Rating: 9/10
(RIP Challenge)

The Lantern, by Deborah Lawrenson

So, in case you haven't been paying any attention to the blog lately, I just finished up a read-along of The Lantern (first week here). If you want my as-they-happened, totally-spoilerful thoughts, you should go check those posts out. If you don't, or if you want to know how I felt about the book as a whole, read on!

The Lantern is not really a story I'd have picked up on my own. It's one of them gothic novels, except set in the present-ish day, and I have not always been a fan of the melodrama and the sekrits and the falling-apart houses. But I think I've read enough of this type of novel to at least sort of know what to expect, and that certainly helps. But but, I have not read Rebecca, which is apparently the basis for this book. Sooooo I may be missing a lot of stuff here.

But but BUT, I still managed to really like this book. It has two narrators, which I love, and goes back and forth in time, which I love, and starts at the end, which I love, and has an entirely unreliable narrator, which I love. It's also got a sensory theme to it, which I am starting to like, and lots of spookyness, which I appreciate. Not terrible, right?

And the stories proper are quite interesting, too. The primary narrator, who is nameless but sort of goes by Eve, meets a guy and sets off on a romantically romantic adventure, moving to the French boonies and fixing up an old falling-apart house, and it's all delightful except that he won't talk about his ex-wife, like, at all. Not a whit. And Eve thinks that's all suspicious and stuff, and so does one of her new neighbors who has at one point met said ex-wife and... misses her? I guess, and then some even more suspicious stuff happens and Eve is like, oh boy. The other narrator, Bénédicte, is from the past and lived in the falling-apart house before it started falling apart. And her brother is insane and her sister is blind and her parents are not terribly good parents and Bénédicte does her best to take care of everyone but you know from early on that they're all haunting her in her old age and she's sure she deserves it.

Quite good, and as of the end of the fourth of five parts, I was like, greatest book ever? It was wonderfully compelling and spooky and interesting and things were quite exciting. But then things kind of derail as the slow build of the book turns into a lot of exposition and explanation, and I think if I had been prepared for this I might not have been so irked by it, so I am telling you now! And certainly with the book a few days in my past now, I'm feeling much better about the ending, but oh my goodness while it was happening... whatever! Moving on!

So I can't give it my endorsement of absolute awesomeness, but I can definitely say that it's worth a read, especially if you can talk about it with others who will pick up on all the things you didn't, like those darn Rebecca parallels. And it is totally perfect for a cool fall evening and a cup of hot cocoa. Mmm, hot cocoa. If you need an excuse to drink some, this is a good one!

Recommendation: For lovers of the Gothic, the spooky, ghosties, and hot cocoa.

Rating: 9/10
(RIP Challenge)

The Unwritten Vol. 3, by Mike Carey and Peter Gross

Nooooo I forgot to pace myself and now I have to wait some unknown amount of time for the next volume! Nuts! But my husband got his hands on it and he's the type of person who accidentally spoils things on a regular basis, so really I had to read it. Had to.

And it is so fantastic. Even if you don't want to read this series, track down this volume at your library and find the page with the amusingly terrible rip-off of His Dark Materials. And then flip forward to the other page that looks like that one and that gets in a dig at George Lucas with a reference to "meta-condrians." Totally worth it.

Other things that are totally worth it: one of the issues that makes up this collection is a Choose Your Own Adventure. Did I mention FANTASTIC? My husband and I proved our perfectness for each other by choosing the exact same path through the story (we apparently are fans of evil evilness), but I also went back and read through a few other iterations and a) they were all interesting and b) some paths made sly winks at other paths that you wouldn't notice except if you read them all. Oh, AND, the whole point of the choosing of your own adventure is to make the point that you, you know, get to do that with your life. Hands-on morals? How intriguing.

Story, you say? There is one, but why aren't you just reading it? Seriously. Okay, fine.

Our friend Tom is presumed dead but still on the run from the Shadowy People. Someone has written a terrible fourteenth (yes, fourteenth) Tommy Taylor book and even though the publishing house knows that it wasn't Tom's dad, they're totes willing to make a jillionty-twelve dollars off of it. It includes the aforementioned scene with Lord Gabriel explaining Powder to Tommy Taylor. Oh, yes. It turns out that the SPs wrote it to bring Wilson Taylor out of hiding, which may or may not end up working. Also, we find out who Tom's mum is and we sort of find out what Lizzie Hexam's deal is ("sort of" because part of it is the CYOA). And if they're giving away all this information now, I am very interested in finding out what they aren't telling me!

I'll just wait here, impatiently, until I can find out.

Recommendation: For people who don't mind parodies of beloved children's fantasy series, people who like to choose their own adventures, and fans of the garrote.

Rating: 9/10
(RIP Challenge)

The Unwritten Vol. 2, by Mike Carey and Peter Gross

I held out as long as I could, but after The Unwritten's super-intriguing start, I just couldn't stay away! And it's still super-intriguing and also baffling and also heartbreaking.

So last time there was Tom Taylor, the namesake of a bigger-than-but-basically-a-ripoff-of-Harry-Potter book franchise who is either not actually his father's offspring and therefore not worthy of the Tommy Taylor franchise or actually Tommy Taylor and therefore an unknown-to-himself Man Wizard. Which is still pretty much where we are, sort of.

Now, at the end of the last book someone murdered a whole bunch of people and Tom was the only one around to take the blame, so this story arc takes place in a French prison overseen by a governor who is not sympathetic to minor celebrity. But the prison thing isn't really important, what's important is all the people in it. Tom makes unlikely friends and allies with some of the inmates and makes a huge enemy of the governor for what seems at first to be no reason at all. Except that then we go look at the events from the governor's perspective and you find out that he has these kids who are obsessed with Tommy Taylor to the point of believing in his real and actual existence, and the governor is not pleased that Tom has effed things up big-time. Oh, and then those shadowy people from the last book decide to burn down the prison. No big.

Also, a trip to Nazi Germany via magical doorknob and an... interesting meeting with Josef Goebbels. Also, also, in the non-Tom comic at the end, an adventure with a foul-mouthed rabbit in a sort of Winnie-the-Pooh land. It's all very delightful, really.

I think the best part about this series so far is that even with the ridiculousness and insanity, it's all very literary. It loves literature and references it, in the form of the aforementioned Pooh spoof and an extended riff on the Song of Roland and of course all of the Harry Potter/fantasy-in-general allusions. It is also way more than its premise; sure, there's adventure and potential wizardliness, but there's also a lot to think about in terms of the role of media, the effect of childhood heroes on children and the adults who love them, and the magical power of attention. That middle one is what leads to the heartbreak in this volume, big time, as it does in real life.

I am definitely in for the next volume, and almost definitely for getting off my duff and patronizing my local comics shop for the issue-by-issue comics when the time comes. It's good stuff.

Recommendation: Yeah, you'd better have that strong stomach for some of the violence in here, and also a strong heart. A love of the f-word can't hurt, either.

Rating: 9/10
(RIP Challenge)

Packing for Mars, by Mary Roach

Ah, Mary Roach. It's been awhile. How you been? Oh, you've been gallivanting around the world talking to astronauts and wannabe astronauts and chimponauts and people who pretend to be astronauts for SCIENCE? Tell me more!

And she does! There is much more than I would have guessed to tell about space, that final frontier and whatnot. Some of it I had heard before, like the bit about how a certain president was not a fan of lady astronauts, and oddly some of it I heard on a podcast referencing Packing for Mars after I had started the book but before I got to the part they referenced. That was odd.

Other bits I had not heard but made sense, and were kind of intriguing, like the whole chimps in space program and how it totally ruined the start of our space race and how at one point there was a human testing a spacesuit to see if it was humane for chimps, except that the point of the chimp wearing the spacesuit was to see if it was safe for humans. Oh, science. And the part where she goes off to Japan to visit their astronaut training camp or whatever and you find out that Japanese astronaut candidates have to fold 1000 paper cranes for luck and psychological testing. On that basis alone, I am not cut out to be an astronaut.

And, of course, in true Mary Roach fashion, there were also bits about sex in space and poop in space that I didn't know I didn't need to know until I knew them. Darn her! Suffice it to say that it is difficult to do both, and so NASA at least tries to avoid them when at all possible. Also, you shouldn't talk about your poo problems on a live microphone. For your sake AND everyone else's.

I'm wondering if my lack of love for Spook is content-based or narrator-based, because the woman who narrates this one also did Bonk and I liked the latter equally as much as this current one. I think this narrator has an excellent blend of "Wow, did you know this?" and "Wow, did you need to know this?" and sometimes, "Wow, you definitely don't need to know this but it's written down so I'm gonna have to tell you anyway," like when Roach writes about her lack of knowledge about body odor in the crotchal region, not for lack of trying ew. Sorry. I heard it, so you have to, too!

I promise most of the other fun facts in this book are actually fun, and it's about space! I really don't think you can go wrong.

Recommendation: For lovers of SCIENCE and crazy people who write about science and obscure factoids disguised as science.

Rating: 8/10

(What's in a Name Challenge)

Space space wanna go to space yes please space. Space space. Go to space.
Better buy a telescope. Wanna see me. Buy a telescope. Gonna be in space.
I’m in space.

The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern

I don't want to talk about this book. I want to snuggle with it. Snuggle snuggle snugg—ow, those are some pointy edges! Okay, book, you can just stay over there a minute.

Okay, so, this book. I heard some folks bein' real excited about it earlier this year, and I was like, magicians? Circuses? Secret plots OF DOOM? I am so in. And so I put a hold on it at the library, some ridiculous amount of time in advance. And then in the intervening weeks this book seemed to get ALL the publicity, showing up on lots of blogs and in newspapers and on NPR, and everyone was like OMG THIS BOOK IS TEH AWESOMEST and I was like, ohlord. Because I've read those books before, and I have not liked them.

But as you can tell, this book I liked a ton, possibly because all those things that drew me into the story, and that made me worry that they would not be as good as everyone was shouting about, were really not that important. Yes, there are magicians. There is a mysterious contest so hush-hush that even the competitors have no idea what the contest is or how to win it. There is intrigue and subterfuge. But what I cared about was the circus.

The circus is this nearly completely black-and-white affair, with dozens of little tents with your usual circus fare and a few tents with really magical things — a magician disguised as an illusionist, a labyrinth, a wishing tree, a landscape made entirely of ice but still realistically aroma-ed. And what makes the circus truly special is that the author makes sure you know exactly what everything looks like and smells like and feels like and all those other sensory things. About a bonfire:

"As you walk closer, you can see that it sits in a wide black iron cauldron, balanced on a number of clawed feet. Where the rim of a cauldron would be, it breaks into long strips of curling iron, as though it has been melted and pulled apart like taffy. The curling iron continues up until it curls back into itself, weaving in and out amongst the other curls, giving it the cage-like effect. The flames are visible in the gaps between and rising slightly above. They are obscured only at the bottom, so it is impossible to tell what is burning, if it is wood or coal or something else entirely."

Morgenstern intersperses short sensory passages like that throughout the novel, but she writes all of her scenes in a similarly opulent way. At first I was a bit put off by this seemingly over-verbose writing, and in a few places it sort of gets away from Morgenstern, but in general she makes it work fantastically and it is absolutely my favorite aspect of the book. I really want to get my hands on the audiobook so that this writing and Jim Dale's voice can make beautiful babies in my brain.

Ahem.

If you're more of a story person, I'm not sure you'll be as enamored with the book; the plot is fairly simple, starts off quite slow, and ends abruptly AND with a not-declared-as-such-but-it-totally-is-and-can't-deny-it epilogue, but though I found myself saying more than once "If this goes one step farther I'm calling shenanigans," the book managed never to take that step, at least by my measurements.

I wrote on Twitter the other night that "I've read through the last page of The Night Circus, but I'm certainly not finished with it..." and that holds true today. I spent more than a week reading this book not because I didn't have time to devour it in one sitting but because I didn't want to. I wanted to savor that writing and put off leaving the circus as long as possible. And I'm not kidding about the audiobook. My library doesn't have it yet but when they do, you'll be seeing another post about The Night Circus right here.

Recommendation: If you like shiny pretty things or magic or clown-less circuses, you'll probably be happy here.

Rating: 9/10
(RIP Challenge, A to Z Challenge)

Doctor Cerberus, by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa

Okay, so, not technically a book, but it's audio theatre, and if I read a play, I'd post it, right? Ah, who cares about rationalization! There is Simon Helberg to be had!

That's really why I picked this recording up. It came down the line with Simon climbing out of his television at me, and I just knew it was meant to be. And the description, which says things about a nerdy teenager who's way too into those Saturday night horror movies... I'm not that nerd, but I love that nerd.

Also, the recording is like two hours long, since it is a play and all. You don't even have to put that much effort into listening!

So, the story: there's this nerd, Franklin, and he's way too into those Saturday night horror movies, and has a sort of crush on Doctor Cerberus, the host of said movie nights. He also has a real crush on his older brother's best friend, who happens to be the high school quarterback. He also has low self-esteem and weight issues. I'm sure you can identify with something here! Anyway, Franklin's uncle shows up to live with the family for a bit, and he turns Franklin on to the idea of being a horror story writer, and this makes Franklin's life awesome, except then his uncle goes away and his parents don't know what to do with him and it's all a dysfunctional mess. And then it gets better, as all lives tend to do.

It's an adorable little recording, and there was a lot of on-the-nose dialogue from all of the characters, all of whom you enjoy and hate at various points during the play. They're not exactly fully realized, there being only two hours of them, but certainly none of them end up exactly where they started, or even where you expect them to end up. And I like that.

Also, Simon Helberg. Come on.

Also also, I'm kind of liking this idea of plays on audio, because maybe I'll actually get around to "reading" some. And L.A. Theatre Works knows how to sell its stuff — Macbeth with James Marsters? I'm gonna need my library to go buy that right now.

Recommendation: For nerds, nerds-at-heart, people who root for nerds.

Rating: 7/10

Go the Fuck to Sleep, by Adam Mansbach

Sorry for the swearing, up there, but what can you do? Actually, since I read this book while I was, um, cataloging it, I know exactly what you can do — the catalog record offers up a second title of Go the Fok to Sleep because the cover has a convenient moon in the middle. And maybe people don't know what it really says?

But I do! Oh, I do, because after all the internets hullabaloo about this book I couldn't help spending a couple minutes paging through this before sending it out to be processed. That's right, a couple minutes. I was thinking about not even writing up for the blog, but I realized that I could maybe save a few of you those couple minutes that you could use to, like, sleep in a bit one morning, or something.

Yes, indeed, this book is not nearly as exciting as the internet made it out to be. I can hear your shock from all the way over here!

You've probably heard the premise of the book, but if not — it's in the style of a kids' rhyming book, and ostensibly of the go-to-sleep genre of such. I've seen it compared to Goodnight Moon, but it's not quite the same tone. I would say it's trying very hard to be more Dr. Seuss-y or somesuch, but Seuss is a way better poet.

And maybe that's a weird thing to be picky about, but, I mean, the book is like ten pages long and it's entirely made up of these little poems, and the poems are not very good! Mansbach forces words into patterns where they do not fit, and I found myself having to really think about how to make a line go "ta dum dum ta dum dum" more often than I'd like.

Unrelatedly, I just tried to Google some of the lines to show you what I mean, and I discovered that Google won't let me see the results for "go the fuck to sleep," though it will allow "go the f to sleep." Anyone know how to fix that?

Right, anyway, some of the rhymes were off, and also, for as short as this book is, it seemed like Mansbach ran out of steam after the first few poems, because they become increasingly nonsensical and also more "angry" than "tired and frustrated and irritated," which is how the book begins and ends, so I'm not sure what happened in the middle there.

Now I've spent more time writing this book up than reading it! Nuts! Uh, sorry, I guess I didn't save you any time after all!

Recommendation: If you're gonna read it you're gonna read it. At least it's quick!

Rating: 5/10

The Disappearing Spoon, by Sam Kean

My favorite element is antimony, for the most arbitrary of reasons — Sb are the initials of both antimony and a nickname I had in high school. That's it. That's all I knew about antimony before reading this book. Now I know two important things about it: a) there used to be people who liked antimony more than I do, to the point where they were willing to dig it out of feces, and b) it's used to make the strongest known superacid. I hope you can figure out which of these I appreciate more.

If you have a favorite element, or if you want one, you should pick up this book, because it will tell you everything you never knew you wanted to know about the periodic table.

There are element-specific facts, like those about antimony, and scientist-specific facts, including long passages about Mendeleev, the Curies, and various other scientists I can't remember off the top of my head. There are also bits about alchemy, of course, and how aluminium (which is really annoying to hear over and over on the audiobook) became so amazingly devalued, and how Tycho Brahe may have had more than one fake nose, because you always need a good one for the fancy people.

And, I mean, that's the whole book, really, is facts, which is a fun time and leads to a lot of me going, "Oh! Did you know that Paul McCartney got a rhodium record for making all the music, because rhodium is apparently awesomer than platinum?" at dinners with people who liked me better five minutes ago. But there's nothing wrong with that!

Recommendation: It appeals to the science nerd and trivia nerd in me, so if you've got one of those, go for it!

Rating: 8/10
(A to Z Challenge)

The Dark and Hollow Places, by Carrie Ryan

I just... I... hmmph. Pout. Frustrated dance. Etcetera.

I shouldn't have picked up this book. I really shouldn't have. I quite liked The Forest of Hands and Teeth, but I did not like The Dead-Tossed Waves, and I knew that I was not going to like this book but I had to give it a chance, right? And when I saw the audiobook sitting on the shelf, just waiting there for me, knowing that I lots of time for listening to audiobooks at work... well, I couldn't resist.

True story: I listened to probably the first three or four hours of this book before realizing that it wasn't still about Gabry of the previous installment. I was very very confused and wondering how I had managed to forget all this stuff that must have happened, and then finally I figured out that it's actually from the point of view of Gabry's sister, Annah. So I gave up and started over, and things made so much more sense then. Well, comparatively.

Right, so, Annah. She's living in the Dark City (no, really), and she's been waiting for her boy-thing to return from the army-type-thing for several years now, but with all the zombies and the really crappy living conditions she's like, okay, fine, I'm out of here. Except then she sees herself, and by herself I mean her twin sister, and she's like, oh, how interesting, considering the last time I saw her I was leaving her to her doom in the woods. And so she heads back into the city to find her sister and, you know, catch up.

But, if you've read the other novels, you know that Gabry doesn't remember a thing about Annah, and also she's trying to run from some zombies and army-type people herself, oh, and also, she's madly in love with Annah's boy-thing. And he's pretty in love with her, too.

And so there is love triangle-age, no, love square-age because another fella is there who was once in love with Gabry and who is now thinking about being in love with Annah, like, seriously? And there is also danger because said fella has this immunity thing to the zombie-ism and the army wants him. And then they get him, and also the other boy fella and also the twins and they aren't very nice and they show Annah that the world has really gone all to crap and so isn't it okay if they leer at her and abuse her? Of course it is.

It's... uncomfortable.

So, yeah. The book doesn't have much of a discernible plot, that I could tell, unless you count making me hate Annah so hard as a plot — if I have to hear one more time about how no one loves her or how her scars make her unlovable or how she uses her hair as a shield or how she once associated a certain affectation with her old boy-thing but now it's totally her new boy-thing's affectation, I may scream a little. I did actually say "I KNOW." out loud a couple of times, at my desk, while listening to this. Frustrating.

I'm not sure how this series went so off the rails (in my opinion, as I've seen many people loving on this book) after this first book — I think part of it is that the protagonists have gotten progressively weaker, and also the fact that the love parallelapiped has gotten progressively more important to the story. Whatever it is, I'm giving this book a solid MEH.

Recommendation: I guess if you're looking for a love story with zombies, you could read the last two books of this series.

Rating: 3/10
(A to Z Challenge)

Anya's Ghost, by Vera Brosgol

I heard about this book over at the NPR a couple weeks ago, which makes this an incredibly fast turnaround, for me, for hearing about, ordering up, and reading a book!

It almost didn't happen, though. The first few pages of this graphic novel are all, "Wah, wah, I'm an immigrant child and I don't wanna be, I wanna be AMERICAN and get skinny by eating LOW FAT POP TARTS and I have crush on a guy with a GIRLFRIEND and I get so little allowance I can only buy ONE pack of cigarettes a month, wah wah," and then Anya falls down an abandoned well and I am like HAH YOU DESERVE IT THE END. And I closed the book, and was like, well, there's that then, but then I was like okay, fine, I'll stick around at least 'til the ghost. And then I didn't stop reading.

So, yes, there's all the immigrant stuff, which is rather like the other First Second book I read, American Born Chinese, and really, I shouldn't have doubted, because also like that book Anya gets hers for all the whining and becomes a much better person by the end. Spoilers? Probably not.

What happens is, she falls down this well and finds a skeleton and then finds a ghost, who is all, "I've been trapped down here for 90 years and really, couldn't you help me see the world a bit?" at first, and becomes very slowly more creepy and then menacing and the art is wonderful because you can literally see this change happening. And, as in all good horror stories, the creepy and menacing parts of the ghost are really just exaggerations of Anya's own life and potential future.

And even if you're not into finding-yourself stories or ghosts or whatnot, there's plenty of horrible high school stuff you can look nostalgically back on, like tests you haven't studied for and showing your British-style pants in gym class and finding out that the hot guy at school is a total loser, actually, and did I say nostalgically? I meant HOLY HECK AM I GLAD I AM NOT IN HIGH SCHOOL ANYMORE.

Recommendation: Right, so, yes. Give this one a chance!

Rating: 9/10

Regarding Ducks and Universes, by Neve Maslakovic

How could I not read this book, with a title and cover like that? Impossible.

It also helps that the book is a bit of a sci-fi romp, a biiiiit like Shades of Grey or The Android's Dream with the science and the touch of satire and the all-around amusement the author obviously has with his/her own book. I'm a fan.

The fun science here is a bit baffling, but once your head gets around it it's pretty cool. Basically, in the late-ish 1980s of an alternate history (I mean, already alternate before this crazy thing happened), there was a Mad Scientist type who managed to split off the universe into a Universe A and a Universe B that share a timeline and population up to said split, but then anything that happens after the split is one-universe-only. So if this split happened tomorrow, there would be a You A and a You B who are exactly alike tomorrow, but in thirty years maybe one of you is a movie star and the other is not, or one of you lives in Iceland and the other in California, whatever. Awesomely, the Mad Scientist (I think, it could have been someone else) also invented a transporter thing that allows for people from the two universes to travel between them, provided they don't go seeking out their alters (i.e. You A seeking out You B) without permission from said alters.

Are you confused now? Good!

Because of this crazy science, the book is pretty exposition-heavy at the beginning, which is slightly annoying. But then you start getting into the plot part, and that's pretty darn interesting too. Here we have a Felix Sayers (who totally wishes he were related to Dorothy) off to visit Universe B ostensibly for funsies, but actually because he's just found out that he's really Felix A and that his parents lied about his birthdate for some unknown reason. He'd like to figure out why the lying, of course, but he'd also like to make sure that Felix B hasn't gone and written the mystery novel that Felix A has been meaning to get around to, someday, you know, maybe. Things only get stranger when two competing research teams start following Felix A around and he finds out that he might already be a bit more important to history than he ever hoped to be.

I had a lot of fun with this book. There's confusing science, of course, but there's also a healthy dose of vintage mysteries with Sayers and Christie, and some social commentary on environmentalism and social media and e-books that is amusing in small doses, though Maslakovic goes a little too far every once in a while. But! Anyway! Otherwise delightful. Also, there are fun side stories including some corporate espionage, violations of the Lunch-Place Rule, and illness by almost-dog. You know, normal stuff.

"There is something to be said about being unreachable, especially when you are trying to avoid being prodded by your boss to engage in regulation-breaking activities of the sourdough kind."

Recommendation: For fans of the sci-fi romp, Agatha Christie, and sourdough bread.

Rating: 9/10
A to Z Challenge

So Much Pretty, by Cara Hoffman

Here's another book that I didn't start reading until right before it was due — except this time it wasn't on purpose! I even had to pull a little fancy library trickery in order to return the book and get it back again so that I could keep reading it... and it was totally worth it.

At first, I wasn't sure. The book starts out with a narrator (the book has many) being all like, "Oh, I know you've heard the stories and know all about this HORRIBLE TERRIBLE TRAGIC EVENT that happened, which I had a hand in and which I totally regret and now I'm going to tell you the true story." And I'm like, "Right. That event. Yes, totally. What was it again?" And the narrator is like, "I'll get to that."

So, basically, the reader knows absolutely nothing about this something bad that happened for, oh, the first half of the book. And then? Well, then the reader knows what the bad thing is that has happened, but not why or how it relates to all these other narrators' story lines that have been woven in and these weird police evidence report things and strange interviews with people that make no sense until they start making sense and then the reader sees what's coming and is like, "Oh, hell," but there's no stopping it now. Well, that's how I saw it, anyway.

And so, necessarily, I don't want to give too much away, but I think it's safe to tell you that the first and somewhat primary narrator is a reporter from Cleveland (yay Cleveland!) who has up and moved to the sticks of upstate New York chasing down some big environmental story. Other narrators include a couple of neo-hippies from New York City who move out to the same sticks for some tree-hugging reason or another, and their young daughter who grows up learning trapeze and various philosophies — and whom you learn pretty early on is somehow involved in the Big Bad Thing.

It's a really well-put-together story, and even though I was struggling through the first half, once the story started to show itself I could not put the book down. There are a few bits that I found odd or irksome after finishing the book, but since they made reading the book super-interesting I will forgive them.

Recommendation: Not for those who need a solid grip on a story from the beginning. Definitely for those who like a multiple-narrator, back-and-forth-in-time, what-the-heck-is-happening-here setup.

Rating: 9/10

A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan

I saw a LOT of this book when it first came out, with all these wonderful glowing reviews, and so of course I ignored it because I am nothing if not contrary in the face of hype. I figured I'd let the excitement die down before checking this one out, but then it won the flipping PULITZER and I was like, "I should probably read this now while I still have a chance of getting from the library" and immediately put it on hold. I got it quickly, but then I let it languish for my six-week lending period and found myself preparing to power through it last week so I could finish by the time it was due back.

In fact, I didn't so much "power through it" as "not stop reading it because it's so darn good." I can see why it won the Pulitzer; I am going to have to buy my own copy and read it like sixteen more times before I can even pretend to understand everything Egan's got going on in here. But I so want to.

Very generally, what you've got here is a set of short stories about a set of characters who interact with each other in various configurations over a long period of time.

But each story has its own narrator and voice, with first person chapters and third person chapters and a second-person chapter and a chapter written as a magazine article and a chapter written as a PowerPoint.... And the stories jump around in time and space and Egan does a LOT of reader-trusting by not just giving you the time and place but expecting you to figure it out based on your prior knowledge and also expecting you to remember details from those previous chapters that do interesting things in subsequent chapters. And there are so many recurring phrases and themes and it all fits together just so well. Structurally, this book was fan-freaking-tastic.

I did have some problems with a couple of the chapters for being a little long and boring for being so short, or for being overly odd, and I really disliked the conceit of the last chapter though I appreciated the sentiment behind it. But overall I think that Egan has done a beautiful thing, and if you can stand the continual confusion, I think you will like this book. I could say many more things about this book, but so much of what I loved about it was watching everything unfold and I don't want to take that away from you!

Recommendation: For people who like experimental-type things, confusing things, and very intricate things.

Rating: 9.5/10
(A to Z Challenge)

A Red Herring Without Mustard, by Alan Bradley

I don't know what is going on in Bishop's Lacey. You can't seem to throw a stone in this place without hitting a conspiracy and a dead body. Luckily for everyone, 11-year-old Flavia de Luce is on the case. Well, she's interested in the case. And intrusive in the case. And totally holding back evidence until such time as she is forced to hand it over. Maybe it's not such a lucky thing.

After the interminable opening of The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag, I am glad to say that the mystery here gets started within the first sixth of the book, and that the preceding pages are full of Bradley's wonderful writing so it goes by quite quickly. In this go, Flavia sets fire to a gypsy's tent, then attempts to atone by offering the gypsy shelter at her family's estate, then finds an intruder in the house, then finds the gypsy beat over the head and nearly dead. Flavia, delighted by the new mystery, sets off to find the connections between gypsies, thieves, and odd religious sects.

There is also a bit more information about Flavia's dead mum and the slow ruin of her family's estate, and I think quite a bit more insight into the characters of Flavia's sisters and father. I liked this, and I liked the intriguing complexities of this set of mysteries, if not the selective genius of Flavia. It is a lot harder to believe in her 11-year-old-ness in this book and things get awfully convenient for her. But the story is amazingly engrossing and I tore through it in a few hours — though I was able to take a break and have some sleep before getting back to it the next day.

I'm hoping that things calm down around Bishop's Lacey, but if people just want to keep scheming and dying and whatnot, I'm very interested in hearing about it.

Recommendation: For fans of the Flavia and of precocious science-minded child mystery solvers in general. Are there others? I should go find out.

Rating: 8/10
(Global Reading Challenge: North America)