Reflections on the blog

This weekend is my four-year anniversary of blogging. I started over at Yahoo360, which is now defunct, and later moved here to Blogger. The nature of the blog has changed over those years. For one thing, Yahoo360 was more of a social networking site than a pure blogging venue, so mostly my posts were seen by my friends. Here at Blogger I seem to be posting less about my personal life than I did over there. I'm not sure if this is because the setting is different, or if it's because I doubt the big wide internet is particularly interested in my personal life.

I seem to have stopped posting much except book reviews. I rarely even post photos of my finished knitting projects any more, mostly because I'm too lazy to photograph them. And yet, even though last year I read more than ever, I made fewer blog posts. I don't blog about every book I read, by a long shot. Usually it's just because I don't have anything particularly interesting to say about the book. This is quite common with mysteries--my generic review would say something like: "Description of murder and characters. The police step in, investigate, and solve the crime. It wasn't brilliant, but kept me entertained for a few hours, and that was all I asked of the book." Which really isn't particularly insightful, so I usually don't bother. On one occasion last year, I decided not to review a paranormal fantasy because I didn't really like it, but it was the author's first book and I didn't see much point in ruining her day. I didn't hate it enough to bother to slam it in great detail, but it really wasn't very good and I couldn't give it a good review. So I kept my mouth shut.

Those who read this blog are certainly aware that I don't usually pull my punches when I don't like a book. (And yet, I did recently with Grimspace by Ann Aguirre. It wasn't good, but I couldn't summon the energy to explain all things that were wrong with it. Maybe I'm getting kinder with age? Or maybe just lazier?) I am not trying to be a serious critic, I am merely recording my thoughts on what I read, and a large part of that is whether or not I enjoy the book. Sometimes a book is very competently written, but just isn't really my thing, and I try to make that clear in the reviews I write of those books, if I even finish the book. Often I just abandon competent books that don't float my boat, and never mention them here. I am not one of those readers who feels the need to finish every book they start. Life is too short to slog through books you're not interested in.

However, I think I was just being lazy last year. There were books I could have reviewed, but didn't because I didn't have much of interest to say about them. But if I'd sat down and reviewed them, perhaps I would have thought of more than I expected. That sometimes happens--writing about a book makes me think about it more deeply, and thus I am getting some value out of blogging about my reading. And that's important--readership of this blog has never been very high, so I'm really not doing this for anyone but myself.

This year I intend to try to be less lazy, and write about more of the books I read. Well, except for the paranormal gay romances--I still don't care to share my thoughts on those with the world at large. (Though that might be an interesting topic to think about--why are there so many gay werewolf romances? Really, are all werewolves gay or what?) I may even try to post about things other than books. I'm looking forward to reading a lot of good books in the next year, and I look forward to sharing my thoughts on them. I hope you enjoy it, too.

The Stranger by Max Frei

The Stranger is the first in a series of fantasy novels that have been wildly popular in Russia. It was translated into English last year, and sounded sufficiently interesting that I had to track down a copy. The main character, Max, tends to stay awake at night and sleep during the day. When he sleeps, he dreams of wondrous places, and in his dreams he befriends Sir Juffin Hully. Sir Juffin invites Max to move to his city of Echo and become the Nocturnal Representative of the Most Venerable Head of the Minor Secret Investigative Force of Echo. In other words, he is the night shift of the magic police.

Max settles quite comfortably into Echo. It's a pleasant city, where people enjoy their food and enjoy soaking in their multiple bathing pools, each kept at a different temperature. To explain Max's accent and lack of knowledge of Echo, Juffin tells everyone that Max is from the Barren Lands, far from Echo, and therefore a barbarian. Max was recruited because Juffin senses that he has considerable magical talent, and most of the time he picks things up very easily. It lowers the tension of the story sometimes to know that Max can handle damn near anything, even if he's never tried before. But the story is entertaining enough that I was usually willing to forgive that.

It's hard, with translated works, to know how much of the voice I'm reading is the author's and how much is the translation. The language of this novel is kind of blunt, a bit simplistic and imprecise. I'm not sure whose fault that is. For that matter, Max himself is simple, in both senses of the word--both uncomplicated and sometimes rather stupid. This is sometimes annoying, and it was a tremendous relief when he got over his childish crush on his sole female coworker. Anyway, the text: it's hard to explain, so let me just give an example. Here is a scene from early in the book, when Max has escaped harm from something powerful that should have destroyed him. He is explaining to Juffin what happened:

I thought...I didn't want to die in the company of that monkey. Dumb, wasn't it? And when the candlestick flew at me, I finally got furious--at the stupid piece of iron, at the monster in the mirror, even at you, for some reason. And I decided, no way, I'm not dying here! And that's about it.

Max grows more ridiculously overpowered as the book goes on, and yet I still really enjoyed the story. I enjoyed the setting, the other characters, the problems they encounter--for all of its faults, this book is just a hell of a fun read. I hope that the next volume is translated soon, because I'm dying to read it. Highly recommended.

Yellow Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts

Yellow Blue Tibia is a science fiction novel set in Russia in 1986. Konstantin Skvorecky was a science fiction writer who, along with several others, was tasked by Stalin in 1946 with inventing an alien invasion that could be falsified to unify the people. The plan was never used, and Skvorecky got along with his life and forgot about it. But forty years later he is reunited with one of his fellow writers, who informs him that the invasion they imagined is actually happening. He then meets with some UFO enthusiasts, including an American nuclear engineer who tells him that something is going to happen at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine. The engineer is killed, and Skovercky has improbable adventures as he runs from the KGB and tries to prevent the end of the world, although he still does not believe in the aliens.

It took me a while to realize what a funny novel this is. The scene in which they meet the Scientologists was amusing, but it wasn't until Skvorecky is being interrogated by a Russian policeman who keeps threatening to cut off his balls that I "got" the tone of the book, after which I began to enjoy it enormously. It is a very funny book, in a dark, Russian sort of way.

I also really enjoyed the setting. It had me dredging back into my memory of my Russian history classes, and trying to decipher the Cyrillic occasionally used in the book. I once knew that stuff, but have forgotten a lot of it, and it was stimulating to have it brought up to the forefront of my mind again. I was really ridiculously pleased when I remembered enough to translate ИОСИФ СТАЛИН as Josef Stalin. Yes, I'm a geek.

Yellow Blue Tibia is a really unusual work, and therefore quite refreshing. I really enjoyed it, once I'd got past the first part and figured out how I should be reading it. It might not hold quite the same delights for someone less interested in Russia than I am, but still this is a work that deserves more attention than it has received. This one may make it onto my Hugo nominating ballot. Recommended.

Retribution Falls by Chris Wooding

I should have written this review earlier, because I find my memories of it are already a bit hazy. This is a swashbuckling adventure with pirates and smugglers and running from bounty hunters. It features Frey, captain of the Ketty Jay, and his lovable crew of misfits, most of whom are on the run from their former lives.

Frey and crew are hired to rob a particular ship that will be passing a particular place at a particular time. It is a setup, though, and things go very wrong, leaving them running from the law and from bounty hunters. After hiding for a while, Frey gets mad and decides the only thing to do is track down who was really responsible and clear his name. This involves gunfights, arson, and ex-girlfriends. Meanwhile we get to know more about his crew, most of whom are trying to escape something from their prior lives, except Pinn, one of their pilots, who is an idiot and provides the comic relief.

The setting of Retribution Falls is strange. They have aircraft, and space ships, but otherwise the level of technology is pretty low. Fighting takes place with pistols and cutlasses, and some places don't even have electricity. It doesn't really make sense, and I didn't see much of an explanation. John Brunner, in his fixup work Interstellar Empire, noted that he wanted to write sword and spaceship stories, but it was hard to come up with a way for such a thing to exist. Here we have something similar, without any reason I could figure out. That doesn't prevent me from enjoying the story, but the setting just didn't actually make sense. I also admit to being a bit confused about the geography of the story. It isn't entirely clear to me (and I read it quickly, so perhaps I just missed it) if all the places they visit are on one planet, or if they're traveling between planets. The Ketty Jay seems to be a spaceship rather than an aircraft, but if so it doesn't make sense at one point when they are overcome by noxious fumes from outside, because wouldn't a spaceship be airtight? So I guess I will just observe that the setting didn't really make sense to me.

The adventures they have are certainly entertaining, and the crew are mostly interesting. There are funny moments, many of them provided by Pinn, the idiot. But I couldn't shake the feeling that I was reading an episode of Firefly. For many, this may be a good thing. It's a fairly fun read with a lot of action. But I didn't like it quite as well as I felt I should have. Perhaps I just wasn't in the right mood.

Wise words about blogs

Stomping on Yeti posted a very good list of things that are bad about (some) blogs.

Ten Things I Hate About You(r Blog)

I don't usually post links to other blogs, but I'm making an exception because this list is spot-on, and I am in complete agreement. Though I do wonder if I am guilty of number 8. Any thoughts?

Child of Fire by Harry Connolly

Child of Fire is a paranormal action novel set in the modern world. Our protagonist, Ray Lilly, is a former criminal now working for a demon-hunter named Annalise. She hates him, with good cause, and has made it clear that he isn't going to survive very long. But for now he is working as her driver as they track down something that is causing children to spontaneously combust.

They wind up in a small town in Washington state. It has always been a company town, and after the timber business went bust the local magnate opened a toy company, where many of the locals work. The toy company's main mission appears to be employing and providing for the townsfolk, and they are fiercely protective of the company's owner, to the point that Ray is physically threatened whenever he asks about the mysterious Charles Hammer. In the meantime, he witnesses children exploding into flame and disappearing, and yet none of the locals seem to notice it. He and Annalise set about investigating, and he has to do most of the leg work after she is injured.

Child of Fire is Connolly's first novel, and it is a very strong debut. The writing is solid, the story is compelling, and it was a hell of a lot of fun. Ray is a remarkably fearless protagonist, and I'm not sure I entirely buy that, but it was certainly fun running around with him. Also, if I were to be critical, the action scenes were really over the top, but I didn't really care because I was having such fun reading it. I am not much of a fan of urban fantasy, but I thoroughly enjoyed this one, and will be buying the sequel, Game of Cages, when it comes out. Highly recommended.

Grimspace by Ann Aguirre

Hoo, boy. Not good.

The Devil's Alphabet by Daryl Gregory

It is nearly time to submit my Hugo nominating ballot, and I am trying to get caught up on the works of 2009 so that I can nominate knowledgeably. I picked this one up because it has gotten some good reviews. Without the reviews I certainly wouldn't have read it, because the cover art is grotesque and a turn-off. I usually don't let cover art affect my reading choices, but once in a while I see a cover that makes me avoid a book, and this is that sort of cover.

Anyway, The Devil's Alphabet is set in Switchcreek, Tennessee. About fifteen years previously people of the town underwent a change. Their bodies shifted into new shapes, and many people did not survive the transition. Those who did make it were dubbed argos, betas, and charlies. The argos are toweringly tall, gray-skinned and unable to have children. Betas are smaller, red-skinned, mostly female, and reproducing like rabbits, and charlies are hugely obese.

Paxton, our protagonist, was a skip--the change skipped over him, and he remained in an unaltered human shape. He left Switchcreek soon after the changes took place, and has only now returned for the funeral of Jo Lynn, one of his best friends from childhood. He is uncomfortable with the town and his memories, and plans to return to Chicago following the funeral. But he gets sidetracked by issues with his father's health, and decides to stay in Switchcreek to deal with them.

The Devil's Alphabet is very original, and the writing is good. It's an absorbing book, and mostly had me guessing until the end. The transformed townspeople really can't leave the town, because where would they go? Many people fear that whatever happened to them may be contagious, and it's easier to live among people like themselves, with whom they share the experience. But the culture of that little town stinks. The betas are increasingly dominated by creepy teenaged girls, and the charlies have an unsavory drug culture, as well as most of the ones we meet appearing to be dumber than rocks. The central question of what caused the town to change is never answered, though theories are discussed; and the secondary question of whether Jo Lynn was killed, and by whom, seemed rather obvious to me, though Paxton never figured it out on his own.

I have mixed feelings about The Devil's Alphabet. It is very well done, and seemed quite original to me. On the other hand, the tale itself is kind of creepy and unpleasant and at the end of the book I sort of regretted reading it. Likewise, Paxton is not a character you can respect. He's dense and does a lot of stupid and immature things. As I noted above, there isn't much resolution--the central question of why they changed is unresolved. The lot of the townsfolk doesn't improve. Paxton doesn't become a better person. I finished the book feeling unsatisfied and grumpy. I had kept reading, despite Paxton and the general yuckiness of the town and the situation, in the expectation of an ending, and Gregory did not provide one that satisfied me. And yet this is a book that I think could be very interesting to discuss with others who have read it, because there's some real substance in this work.

Snow Blind by P.J. Tracy

This is the fourth mystery novel written by the mother-daughter team who write as P.J. Tracy. I originally tried one of their books on the recommendation of a friend. They are set in the Twin Cities, near enough to me that I recognize some of the places and landmarks they mention, and that's always kind of fun.

In Snow Blind, a couple of corpses turn up packed inside snowmen in Theodore Wirth Park. Detectives Magozzi and Rolseth were on the scene when the bodies were found, and so it is their case. The corpses, when dug out, are discovered to be two policemen, so Magozzi and Rolseth turn their attention to a criminal the officers were due to testify against. The criminal's street name was the Snowman, so they suspect it may be a very unsubtle message. But then another body turns up in Pittsburgh, and another in a small town north of the Twin Cities. They go to investigate the Minnesota corpse, and discover that it is a parole officer, probably killed by the ex-con he had an appointment with.

And so begins a manhunt for the ex-con, who had been in prison for nearly killing his wife. They assume he is going after his wife next, but have no idea where to find her. So they ask the zany computer geeks at Monkeewrench to track her down for them. Monkeewrench are a firm of eccentric computer programmers who do everything from security systems to children's games. They met Magozzi and Rolseth in the first novel of the series, called Monkeewrench. It turns out, of course, that things are darker and more complicated than originally thought.

I was pleased that Snow Blind was more about the cops than the computer people, as frankly I don't have a lot of use for the computer people. There are certain similarities in the themes of this book to those in the other two Tracy novels I've read, but I'm not sure there is enough of a pattern yet to call it a trend. However if I read another of their books that features women living in fear as a major plot point, that will be the last Tracy novel I read. They did a good job of describing winter, and the relationship many of us have with it. I think that people from warmer climates really don't understand what it's like. (I once read a romance novel written by someone from Texas that had the characters skinny dipping and making love under the pine trees. In Wisconsin. In February. Idiot.) Overall, this is light but fairly entertaining, and that's all I expected of it.

A Romance on Three Legs by Katie Hafner

A Romance on Three Legs is subtitled Glenn Gould's Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano. It talks about Gould, and about Verne Edquist, a blind piano technician who maintained Gould's pianos, and about grand pianos in general, especially those made by Steinway. It is a surprisingly fascinating book.

Glenn Gould was a Canadian pianist, known for his unusually clean playing style and his eccentric personality. Hafner spends some time describing Gould's youth and career, which is fairly interesting. Glenn Gould had great dexterity, and a very light touch on the keyboard. Some pianists strike the keys very hard as they play, while others do not. Gould had a light touch, and liked a piano that was very responsive to very light pressure. His favorite piano was an old Chickering that he used at home as his practice instrument. But for performances a larger piano was required, and so he wanted to find a concert grand with the same level of responsiveness.

At the time Gould was performing (from the 1950s until his death in 1982), Steinway and Sons was the purveyor of the pianos used by most of the top concert pianists. Hafner takes us through the history of the company, how concert grand pianos are made, and how they made it company policy to sign on all the top pianists to perform on Steinway pianos. They lent pianos to the pianists, as well as having a supply of pianos on hand in most major cities that the musicians could use when they were on tour. The book read, for a while, like a commercial for Steinway, explaining how innovative the company was in its early history, how each piano was hand-made, and why Steinway pianos were better than the competitors. Fortunately Hafner later drops the idea that Steinway is the pinnacle of piano greatness.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the book, for me, was simply about grand pianos. I've played the piano since I was five years old, but never really gave much thought to the actual workings of the instrument, other than the basic mechanics of hammers striking strings. A grand piano is a very delicate instrument, something I only really became aware of in the last few years, now that I work at a facility with several grand pianos on site, and hear some of the comments from our tuner about what we're doing wrong. They are not only large and heavy, but consist of thousands of parts, need to be kept at a steady level of humidity, can be fairly easily damaged, and can start going out of tune within hours of being tuned. They also deteriorate with age, usage, and general wear and tear, and performance instruments have a limited life.

Gould spent many years exhorting Steinway to find him or make him a piano that suited his needs, without much success. He eventually found an old Steinway in storage at a Toronto department store, fell in love with it, and had it modified to suit his particular quirks of playing. He loved that piano, and used it for years for his performances and recordings. The piano was, unfortunately, essentially destroyed when it got dumped off a loading dock while being transported. Gould sent it to Steinway to be rebuilt, and sent it back again for more work, but its character and sound were too compromised, and he never again found a piano he liked as well. When he went on a search to find a piano for his last recordings, he bought a Yamaha.

I found A Romance on Three Legs to be a very absorbing read. I came away liking Glenn Gould less, and with my enthusiasm for the piano reinvigorated. Recommended.