What I Am Reading - Life of Pi

Life of Pi

Yann Martel

Read it in Paper-back at 319 pages.

I'm not sure what really made me pick this up.  I generally don't think I am a fan of cast-away stories, perhaps I just have not read enough of them.  They always seem kind of boring and especially so if it's on a boat.  I think what did it was a trailer for a movie I saw in which a young boy is pictured standing upon a small boat is holding an oar and keeping a large Bengal tiger at bay when suddenly a flight of flying fish interrupt the melee and both combatants begin attempting to catch or eat the fish mid-air as they leap over the boat.  The premise seemed interesting and I knew it was based off a book.  That book being 'Life of Pi.'

'Life of Pi' follows a small boy whose name is Pi (for short) throughout the early part of his life.  He lives in a zoo, in which his father is the primary zoo keeper.  Some things transpire and the zoo is to be moved and sold off as the family moves to Canada.  As they are underway the ship flounders and sinks leaving young Pi with a menagerie of fellow animal castaways.  From there on the story follows a typical castaway's story set upon the desolate expanse of the Pacific with no hope, no food, and the qualms of day to day survival, but with a bit of a twist.

From everyone I have talked to, it's about the ending and themes of the book.  While Yann spent two years reading and researching stories of castaways and it shows in the writing, the book pivots on the end.  Some people liked it, others did not.  I am one such who did enjoy the ending, very much so.

What I Am Reading - Collapse

Collapse

Jared Diamond

Read it in paperback with additional Afterward, 560 pages.

Sometimes you have to just bear down and read something academically stimulating, this is one such book for me, and a test if you will.  Jared Diamond is perhaps best known in the literally world for 'Guns, Germs, and Steal', which I was not able to complete (much to my dissatisfaction and why this was a test) and details how some societies progressed faster and what contributed to their abundance or decline, so on and so forth, ad naseum.  Wiki states that Diamond has a list of fields including, Physiology, Biophysics, Ornithology, Environmentalism, Ecology, Geography, Evolutionary Biology, and Anthropology.  Diamond also has a A.B. from Harvard and PhD from Cambridge while currently teaching at UCLA.  He is a busy and educated man that loves birds.  So educated and well-meaning that he has earned an award from somewhere for something for nearly every year since 1984.  It's a long list of accomplishments for Mr. Diamond and he means to be taken seriously.

So seriously that he decided to write a book about collapse and aptly titled it so.  In Collapse, Diamond looks at the decisions and factors of societies no longer with us and present societies big and small who Diamond believes are showing signs of future collapse.  It's all nitty-gritty and scientific with a little cultural flavoring provided by Diamond.  It's really a simple formula for each collapse but peppered with death throes of the culture experiencing the collapse.  Admittedly the soup always seems to end with cannibalism. 

When reading this, all I could think of was soup because the best way to think at a burgeoning society in my brain is much akin to soup.  When the pot goes to boil everyone starts throwing things in, you got your water, your soil nutrient levels, your expected seasonal changes, etc.  But as the pot goes to a simmer you realize that maybe cutting all of the trees down to heat the pot was a bad idea because now you have erosion and those pretty carrots go out the window.  You wanted pork in your stew?  Too bad the pork didn’t make it, and they also managed to increase erosion rates.  Oh well it's hardly anything to scoff at there is still so much to throw into the soup, unless you don't get enough volcanic ash fallout which means everything was only going to grow once but you ruined that.  Inadvertently your soup is a meager brown syrup with no fortification and this awful salinization taste, and you still have a lot of hungry people expecting to eat soup.  The guests are so angry in fact that first they start fighting with themselves and when that still fails to satiate there hunger they start eating each other.  All because your soup was lousy.  Should have put the pot to boil somewhere else I suppose but such is the cards dealt in soup.

The book starts with The Bitter Root valley in Montana and details so of the challenges facing it in the near future.  Challenges that other societies current and past must also have faced.  Some of the examples given include Easter Island, The Mayan States, the Medieval Norse and their troubles in Greenland and Iceland, and The Anasazi.  After carefully digesting each in turn you are shown modern institutions that could see collapse in terms of China, Australia, Rwanda, and Haiti.  Again, it's all perplexingly interesting and scientific.

Not for everyone but enjoyed much by me despite it being a relatively dry read.  3.5 rounding up to four for Goodreads.  If you're interested in such things by all means take a shot, if you are not then under no circumstance should you read this as you won't get through it.  

What I Am Reading - Tom Clancy's Endwar

Tom Clancy's Endwar

David Michaels

Read it in paper-back, 416 pages.

Oh book club, you make me read things I would normally not touch with a ten foot pole.  Not because I hate books based on video games but because I have never come across or encountered a book that I rated highly that is from video game stock (any game really) and thus generally do my best to ignore that juncture all together.

With that said, there is a steak dinner on the line.  No time for coddling.

Tom Clancy's Endwar, deceptively not written by Tom Clancy but instead David Michaels, tells a futuristic hypothetical about the middle east blowing itself to nuclear bliss and the resulting power struggle between big red mother Russia and the prideful but capable heroes of America, the United States, in an effort to secure the remaining petroleum reserves of the world.  We are dropped in at some point during this war and the vodka potato eaters have nearly defeated the forces of Europe.  Fear not though for the stars and stripes are here and at the juncture in which we the readers are thrown in, the double down world war champs have just secured a valuable resource and uncovered a Russian plot that will determine the fate of the war and maybe even the world.  Only the United States can stop them and once again the fates see us squaring off with big red.

This is your queue to be excited.

The book unfolds much like a video game.  Lots of characters, no character depth or building, erratic location movement, streamlined high energy plot and chalk full of stereotypes.  It's ridiculously easy to read and I finished it roughly five hours.  It was exciting and left me wanting to pick up a first person shooter and shank people in the neck, see the pink mist, and destroy a detachment with a grenade.  It's that action packed, the entire way through in fact…it reads as a video game plays.  No surprise there.

-Potential Spoilers Below-

Eight people finished but only seven sent me their details/showed up. So our list is missing one and I will ridicule him below.

For the most part peoples favorite moments were those of intense action, surprise, again the whole book is action; but I digress and some of these favorite moments included, a sinking or a Russian fleet by a submarine, an aerial battle in which a pilot shoots down a ridiculous amount of (formerly) commies, the climbing of a Calgary tower against hard opposition, an escape of a pilot through the tundra, and some landmines that can do the boot scoot and shuffle. Evan provided me no details.

Least favorite moments were actually far between but generally involved the prime minister of America's top hat being a total D-bag.  Again, Evan failed to weigh in despite what I am sure would have been colorful commentary.  Perhaps we got no feedback because this selection did not feature an Albino villain? 

Out of ten, one being the worst, OLT book club members scored it as follows:

Dust: 5

TomB: 6

David-dilla: 6

Th3ee: 4

SS: 4

AndyCoug: 4

Hylen: 5

Eleach: 4 (pulled from your review)

OLT average of: 4.85

What I Am Reading - 11/22/63

11/22/63

Stephen King

849 pages, read it in Hardback

July was for my mother, as I finished another reference from her prior to picking this up, and this tomb was suggested by her last November or so.  She enjoyed it so much that it ended up in my Holiday pull.  I never complain when I receive a book, especially not a good one.  As is the way, it ended up in my stack until I could appropriate it into the 'currently reading' bracket.  That came and passed and it was devoured in turn.

Stephen King of course has a long litany of books, good books, scary books, and even a few books on how to write books, books.  The guy cranks out work, and most would argue very quality work.  So good in fact that Mr. King has received the Bram Stroker Award, World Fantasy Awards, British Fantasy Society, the Nebula Award, a Medal for Distinguished Contribution of American Letters, and the World fantasy Award for Life Achievement.  Also a whole list of other awards.  Sadly, Mr. King was struck by a car in 1999 and all writing halted for some time while he struggled with his injuries and thoughts of retirement.  Well, lucky for us fans, King decided not to retire and instead begun writing again.  This novel being one such novel dubbed 'post-accident'.

Jake Epping is from Maine (of course) and he lives a pretty standard life, recently divorced, and is a teacher.  On the side Jake teaches a night time GED class in which he encounters an essay from one of his students, a janitor at the school, and despite being grammatically incorrect, the essay is so moving that Jake passes him anyways.  In celebration Jake takes the student to dinner at his favorite diner that most of the town ignores for fear of what the low cost means for the contents of the meat.  The diners owner is a man named Al that Jake only knows from the diner and when all eerily summons him one night to the diner Jake is intrigued and shows up only to find Al on death's doorstep.  As Al's last wish he asks Jake into the back of the diner to show him something fantastic, mysterious, and mind blowing.  Not wanting to disappoint Al's dying wish, Jake discovers the rabbit hole and is invariably introduced to a life and world changing event.

As I am sure you can tell from the title and cover of the book, Jake is delivered to a point in time before the assassination of the 35th president, John F. Kennedy with the responsibility and mission to avert the national disaster if able.  As if it wasn’t complicated enough the past is obdurate and fights change based with fervor equal to the gravity of the change being attempted.

Overall the book was fantastic and I really enjoyed it but at times, on par with all of King's work, can be overly wordy and redundant but there are some nice prizes in this piece.  Furthermore, it's obvious that King did his homework and this particular book also doubles as a time piece stitched together with what the early sixties felt, smelled, sounded, and what the overall atmosphere of the period was like.  All of which are really impressive when you read it.

Also, King wrote an alternative ending which was posted to his blog, I think, and is worth finding.  Keep your eye out, because if you are familiar with some of King's other more famous works there are some nice throwbacks and references.

Beware of the Jimla and good luck with this monster of a book!

What I Am Reading - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Mark Haddon

Read it in paper-back, 226 pages (easy read)

I picked this up as a suggestion from some readers on Goodreads and my mother in particular.  She is also part of a book club (not mine), and has been for some time, and this was one of their past reads.  I don't like saying no, especially to my mom and quite frankly I needed a break from what I was reading at the time (and still need to finish).

This little gem is written by Mark Haddon, a resident of England with a lengthy experience of teaching and writing child's books. 'The Curious Incident' is probably his most attractive and prized book, earning him both the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize Overall First Book Award.

'The Curios Incident' is written from the perspective of a child (Christopher) with Asperger Syndrome who comes across a neighbor's dog slain with a pitchfork in the middle of the night.  The discovery of said dog spurns Christopher's quest around discovering who and why his neighbor's dog was killed.  Throughout his quest he explains his day and events of his life as well as informs the reader why he is simply a "mathematician with some behavioral difficulties" and what those difficulties are.

After reading this book I have a much greater appreciation for those that rear the especially gifted and difficult youth for whom this book seems dedicated.  It's hard when so much of the thought process eerily makes sense from the point of view and logic of the main character.  Everything should have an explanation and a truth, which explains why Christopher's favorite subject of math.

I would highly recommend this to anyone, especially of those looking for perspective on what it's like and the difficulties of raising a child with Asperger Syndrome.    

What I Am Reading - The Celestine Prophecy

The Celestine Prophecy

James Redfield

247 pages, read it in paper-back

Oh how to begin on our June selection.

The story, isn't really a story I guess.  After all we don't even have a name for the main character and little if any build up for the characters that we encounter through our quest.  Each chapter in the novel is used to wrap an insight.  These insights stack upon each other so that by the end you are meant to have a full understanding of Redfield's spiritual guidance and direction.  Each chapter usually starts with a bit of setup, an explanation of an insight, a 'test' of the insight and then buildup to the next chapter which is rinsed and repeated with a new insight.  Some of the insights are of value for anyone who is interested in or looking to see the world differently than how they are currently but I can say that none of the insights had polarizing effects on how I live my life.

This is actually the second time I have read this book.  The first time I was much more fond of it and I struggled to get through it again, despite the fact that it had been several years later.  I think this book (in correlation with the first insight) is good for people going through a change in their lives and since most people are in a stage of displacement Redfield is able to appeal to a larger audience. 

I have heard that Redfield gained a large amount of success with this book which was turned into a motion picture (which I have not seen), a sequel, a national tour, and apparently a third book in the works as well.

A key to reading this book is an open mind and a relative neutral stance on religion, be they new-age or old school.  Without that fundamental tolerance I doubt you will find much value on the pages printed before you.

Overall the books scored pretty low in book club despite a high level of completion.

Out of ten, being the best,  our individual scores:

Gee Funk: 6

Tom: 5

Th3ee: 4

Hylen: 7

Dust: 1

SS: 1

AndyCoug: 1

Eleach: 1

Lucid Book Club Average: 3.12