Stories of your life and others - Ted Chiang

Jo Walton reviewed this on Tor recently. I'm not usually wild about short stories, I often feel like I'm missing the point or that I don't quite have enough time to empathize with the characters. But her comments about Chiang being good at getting the story arc exactly right so that you know the things you need to know at exactly the point you need to know them made me hopeful that I wouldn't wind up feeling frustrated by these stories. And it was a good choice - they were all awesome.

What he does a lot of is looking at weird worldviews as if they were real. He asks a lot of "what if" questions. What if the world really worked like this? What if they really had built the Tower of Babylon? What would the engineering challenges have been? What would they have found? What would happen if someone found a simple and elegant proof that mathematics is inconsistent? What would happen to someone who didn't see time as linear?

The stories are fabulous. The ideas behind them were all interesting. I never had that horrible feeling that I had entirely missed the point of the story. The characters were engaging (I didn't really like the super-smart guy, but I think that was kind of the point) and the stories all made sense in a very satisfying way.

The one about the mathematician who discovered a basic inconsistency was awesome. It was as if she had woken up in the Matrix, except the Matrix wasn't being run by evil beings out to get us, it was just the way things are, always have been, and always will be. When she explains this to other people, the ones who understand it at the level she does get horribly upset and depressed, but only a very few are really capable of that. Everyone else mostly just ignores it. Either they have a theoretical understanding of the situation but can mostly just get on with their lives, or they simply cannot grasp that this in any way affects them. I found her reactions, her colleagues, and her husband to be fascinating.

This is exactly what a book of short stories should be. Totally engaging, satisfying the first time you read it, with enough depth to make you want to re-read.

The visual display of quantitative information - Edward R. Tufte

I was pointed towards this book by Information is Beautiful, a wonderful blog devoted to making beautiful, useful, and truthful info-graphics. Since this is something I also need to do professionally, I'm pretty fascinated.

The book was excellent. For one thing, Tufte practices as he preaches. The graphics and the text flow together beautifully. His points are all very well illustrated. There is lots of white space which makes it much easier to read everything. The examples are all clear, and pretty, and often entertaining (my favorite was the graph that was so cluttered, that when it was reproduced in another publication they managed to leave out the data without noticing).

I'd highly recommend this for anyone who ever has to put together a presentation. Even just as a book to read, it is quite entertaining. The horrible things people have to do and with graphs are just hilarious.

Boneshaker by Cherie Priest

I heard about this book in several places, but it was this "Big Idea" write-up that really made me want to read it. Most of the reviews I had read focused on the plot - which seemed entirely ok but not something I was running out to go read. The Big Idea write-up was Cherie herself explaining how she had tweaked all the historical elements to ramp up the level of technology available, and the number of people living in Seattle around the time she wanted. Also not something that particularly intrigued me. I'm quite able to suspend disbelief, and I'm not a history geek, so this didn't grab me. What made me decide I really needed to read the book was the introductory quote she decided to use:

In this age of invention the science of arms has made great progress. In fact, the most remarkable inventions have been made since the prolonged wars of Europe in the early part of the century, and the short Italian campaign of France in 1859 served to illustrate how great a power the engines of destruction can exert.

From (and I am not making this up, this is the book’s full title): History of the Great Rebellion. From its commencement to its close, giving an account of its origin, The Secession of the Southern States, and the Formation of the Confederate Government, the concentration of the Military and Financial resources of the federal government, the development of its vast power, the raising, organizing, and equipping of the contending armies and navies; lucid, vivid, and accurate descriptions of battles and bombardments, sieges and surrender of forts, captured batteries, etc., etc.; the immense financial resources and comprehensive measures of the government, the enthusiasm and patriotic contributions of the people, together with sketches of the lives of all the eminent statesmen and military and naval commanders, with a full and complete index. From Official Sources. By Thomas P. Kettell.

Yup, it is the fact that she decided to use a quote where the title of the book was longer than the actual quote as the introductory quote for her novel. This was the point at which I realized I loved her sense of humour, which meant it was very likely I would love the book. And I did. I inhaled it practically in a single sitting. The two main characters (Briar and her son Zeke) are great. The folks they interact with are also great. She really got things right about how young teenagers make their decisions compared with how adults make decisions - and who they decide to trust, and why. The setting was a lot of fun. The zombies were awesome (which I wasn't expecting, I'm not really crazy about zombies). The supporting characters were pretty great. And the underlying mystery (why is Briar so absolutely convinced that her husband died during the disaster?) was very well handled. It was a great story and very well told.

Agyar - Steven Brust

I picked up Agyar after reading this review by Jo Walton.

What I love about this book is the way it is written. Jack has found an old typewriter and is simply writing to help pass the time while he waits for something to happen. He used to write a long time ago, but is very out of practice. And he is writing with a typewriter, so you are getting a totally unedited first draft. I'm really impressed that Brust managed to write something that feels very unpolished and fresh off the typewriter, and yet make it a story that moves along so nicely and with interesting character development. I think it must be really hard to do this style of thing, when too much action is happening, obviously the main character is not spending as much time in front of the typewriter. When he's sitting around bored, he has lots of time to write, but not nearly as much to say. Very much like a blog.

Spoilers ahead.

The thing which originally intrigued me about this book was the observation by Jo Walton and many of her commenters that this is the sort of book where you don't figure out quite what is going on until near the end, which means that the first time reading it is very special, and re-reading leads to a very different experience. I love this sort of thing, although unless it is done extremely well it is quite frustrating. Now possibly just knowing that there was something more going on made me pay extra attention. Or maybe, like one person commented, the cover of the book gives you a significant hint, but I figured out who & what Jack Agyar was after only a few pages.

He forgets the name of his date, his initial interaction with Jill isn't just slick, it is downright predatory. His awareness of the animals on the street as they walk to Jill's house, and his pause on the doorstep to be formally invited into the house. To me this explains things very nicely, and in a way that I find particularly appealing. I like being led to a conclusion, being given all the clues I need and having things made fairly obvious, without having my nose rubbed in it. If the book were to start with the line "Jack was a vampire" then all the extra details would just be annoying, sure he's world-weary, has supernatural senses, needs to be invited in. Instead you get to have a gradual realization that he isn't entirely normal, then not entirely human, and then you start to see some stereotypical vampiry things. Maybe Brust intends for people not to figure things out until later in the book, but to me he made things blatantly obvious in the first chapter. Which is totally fine by me. I don't think it would be especially fun to read this through without knowing that Jack is a vampire...but maybe that's because I haven't tried and won't get to.

Silence of the Grave - Arnaldur Indriadason

This showed up at my house one day. I think the library somehow mixed up my request for some Chekhov with this book. Or perhaps the person with the same last 4 digits of their library card wound up with my book instead. But this book is small and light, which meant it was a good size for reading-on-the-bus and it came with me one day...and I was hooked. It is a murder mystery set in Iceland, but deep down it is really a story of all the different ways a person can be broken - with a touch of hope that sometimes it is possible to get past the brokenness and live a life with love in it.

A skeleton has been discovered on a construction site, and 3 detectives work to figure out who it might belong to and how it wound up there. This story is interlaced with the story, set in the past, of a family who is obviously connected to the skeleton in some way. Also interlaced are the personal stories of two of the detectives with varying degrees of problems in their personal lives. It is very black without being depressing, and very lovingly put together.

Unlike most murder mysteries, it isn't a whodunnit. You don't know anything at all about the person who is dead, except that they died about 50 years ago and were not buried in a graveyard. You don't even know the gender of the dead person. There is no forensic evidence, no murder scene, no list of suspects in the traditional way - since anyone directly involved is likely to be dead by now. It is obvious that the skeleton either belongs to someone from the family story, or was killed by someone in that story, and I found myself contemplating all the possibilities as I read - obviously it would be best if the skeleton belongs to the abusive father, but discovering that might have horrible repercussions for someone still alive - but it if belongs to the abused mother, then that would have had horrible repercussions in the past, and is probably worse - what if it is the disabled daughter? - or what if the father murdered someone else, what would that have done to the family? I love stories that give me this extra little tidbit of information from the future, and you keep trying to figure out how it is going to fit in. I find that very different from a strict narrative, and far more enchanting.

Not at all the sort of thing I would usually choose to read, but mysteries really pull you along and that can be really relaxing sometimes. Especially cool are the Icelandic names. They are so totally unfamiliar to me: Sindri Snaer, Erlendur, Mikkelina, Grimur...

Green - Jay Lake

I read Mainspring by Jay Lake, after reading some enthusiastic reviews, and while I liked his writing well enough, I wasn't terribly drawn by the story and had to force myself to finish. Green had me from page 1.

It is written as a retrospective account by the main character after all the action is finished. She tries to go back and explain the world as seen through her own eyes, beginning at age 3 when she is sold as a slave. It is so beautifully written, the book doesn't spend any extra time clubbing you over the head with explanations of how the world is, and why people do the things they do. The story unfolds very simply and lets you see the world through the eyes of a very intelligent, very well-educated girl, who is looking back over her whole life and trying to make some sort of sense of it all. She is "rescued" from her life of abject poverty by being sold to people who train her to be the consort of a king - but while this new life gives her access to much better food, clothing, and education than she would otherwise have had, all her freedom has been taken away from her, and along with that, any form of love or even affection. She sees this as horribly evil, while most of the other characters in the book seem to think they have made a dramatic improvement to her life. Mixed in with the varying viewpoints on the treatment of children, is a fascinating examination of religion.

This is not a simple book. There is no black or white. There are no right answers. The writing is beautiful, and the story is fascinating.

Beauty - Sheri S. Tepper

I'm a big fan of fairy-tales re-told. I was drawn to this by the description "A time-travelling Sleeping Beauty!" which just seems totally awesome. In fact, this book was even better than I was expecting. Sleeping Beauty is not the only tale that gets wrapped into this story, she's just the heroine. Tam Lin puts in an appearance, Cinderella, Snow White and the Frog Prince all show up, and it doesn't even feel contrived. Beauty is a wonderful character, there is a science-fictional element to the story (she accidentally winds up very far into a dystopian future) which sets the scene for her quest to save the world. She winds up spending a few years of her late teens living in our modern day world and studying literature at university, which allows her to have a very feminist perspective back in the 14th century, as well as allowing her to recognize all the fairy tales ("I watched Disney after all") and be as shocked as the reader is when she starts recognizing bits of them. The story is written as her journal, and contains lovely little interjections from the fairy who originally cast the sleep curse (who is actually on Beauty's side, sort of, and definitely trying to save the world) who is reading Beauty's journal as she writes it and is often quite miffed at Beauty's misunderstandings. It is a coming-of-age novel, as well as a coming-of-old age novel. It is a love story with no happily ever after, just some deeply happy and satisfying moments. It is about the love (or lack thereof) between a mother and child, but mostly it is about trying to make the world a better place, and failing that, trying to save the bits that can be saved, and living with yourself and the choices you have made. It gets very black and scary at points, but the story has some very beautiful moments. I loved it and plan to read it again.