The Twits, The Minpins & The Magic Finger

The Twits, The Minpins & The Magic Finger by Roald Dahl

The Twits (1980)

The twits are a cruel couple who seem to always be fighting and playing mean jokes on each other.

The Minpins (1991)

Billy lives a controlled life. He ends up discovering the Minpins and then helps rid them of their enemies, making him well respected.

The Magic Finger (1966)

A girl has a "magic finger" which causes things to happen to people she is upset with. She has little control of the finger does. She sees some neighbors be cruel to animals as they are hunting them. When they get magic-fingered, they turn into the ducks and the ducks move to inhabit their house. After he experience, they get greater respect for animals and stop hunting for sport. At the end it is implied that another family will soon get the finger.

Magic Finger was my favorite of the books in this series. I got a little lost with Minpins.

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Book 2

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Book 2 by Douglas Adams

The second Hitchhiker's Guide book is comedy couched in nihilist philosophy. The earth has been destroyed just before it produced the question for life the universe and everything. (The answer was 42.) The gang are traveling around with some bizarre gadgets (including glasses that make things go black to help avoid bad things). The paranoid android continues to be negative, but can help them get places. They are hungry and end up at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. There is some time travel involved, so people can go, watch the end of the universe and then return back home. The restaurant includes animals that are bred to be eaten. The cow comes out and asks people what part of them they would like to eat. 

The gang ends up stealing a totally black ship and eventually end up on early earth. They run into primitive cultures, as well as a culture that has formed bureaucracy before innovation. (They need market research before producing the wheel.) There is also a group of "unneeded" people that were sent away from their planet under the guise of being the first to inhabit a new world before their planet is destroyed. The book includes some humorous explanations for hard to grasp processes (like the beginning and end of the universe.) There are plenty of funny moments as well as parts of interesting observations of the silliness of people, especially in the context of a vast world.

Cold Nights of Childhood

Cold Nights of Childhood by Tezer Özlü

Mental illness as told by somebody experiencing it. Some periods all is going well. Other times, she is in a hospital and suffering. She sees there are problems. Yet, she dreads the treatment. She feels she has finally been "cured" via the treatment - not because it worked, but because she so dreaded going back.

She grew up in post-World War II Turkey. Things were not stable. Things were fairly westernized, yet still Islamic. There seemed to be a mixture of challenges from both sides. An upbringing in an Austrian convent school helped encourage some of the interesting experiences. Sexuality was explored, with marriage and friendship. There is a longing for something, though it is difficult to see what it is. The voice is very open and non-judgmental. Stylistically, words are placed on the page as needed to tell the story. There may bullet points or long run on paragraphs. It all works very well in this short "read in one setting" novel. It is like the "good part" of Hemingway. The seemingly autobiographical work paints an interesting picture of the "western" life in Turkey.

A People's History of the United States

[August 2009] This provides a few anecdotes of "revolutionary" history of America. In the introduction, the author proclaims he is providing a history of the individual people, instead of the common focus of the important names and dates. However, the actual focus is on people involved in left wing causes (with the focus often an key players in these rolls.) While this does provide a good background of socialist causes, it is primarily a history of liberal students and the poor that associate with their causes. (He even attempts to show a more 'broad' support for an issue by saying that in addition to the college towns, San Francisco passed a similar anti-war resolution.) The goal is obviously an attempt to paint social revolutions as being more broadly representative of the people. However, this leaves out many other things that could be interesting. The first person approach used for much of the narrative also makes it feel more like propaganda than history.

The reading of the audiobook also has something to be desired. Matt Damon's delivery is fairly well done, but very slow. Howard Zinn's comments manage to be even slower. Make sure you can play it at faster than normal speed!

The Bourne Identity

A mysterious man washes ashore without any memory. He finds people trying to kill him and manages to somehow keep living. In the process he manages to take a woman as a short turn hostage, and she ends up becoming his love interest. He gradually uncovers bits of his true identity, thinking he is a master hit man, then discovering that he is actually an undercover agent trying to trap another master hitman. He has plenty of run ins with bad guys, and people around him all seem to die, but he has the skills to evade them. And he does this primarily in Switzerland, France and New York City. It seems like the standard plot for a modern hollywood action adventure. The big wonder, is why it took Hollywood 22 years to finally make the movie. (Even the TV movie after 8 years seems like a slow reaction.) The book is long and engaging. Believable? Nah, but who would expect that out of a "popcorn" book. (Things always seem to happen "just in time", never too early or too late. And of course, he manages to do most of his fighting after getting injured.) The ending also sets things up for the perfect sequal - a further manhunt for the killer, Carlos. (I was expecting him to be captured in this book, but I guess you have to keep the suspense going.)

The Selected Stories of Philip K Dick Volume 2

This collections contains the following stories:
Colony
Upon the dull earth
The short happy life of the brown oxford
Faith of our fathers
The days of perky Pat
The variable man
I hope I shall arrive soon

Many of the stories deal with a post-apocalyptic world.  The Variable Man is the longest. In it, earth is planning to use a special faster-than-light bomb to defeat some intergalatic overlords.  The leaders depend on an odds machine to calculate the chance of winning. Unfortunately, another experiment accidentally brings a man from the early 1900s to the current day. This throws the odds all out of wack. The leaders try to have him destroyed. However, the scientist in charge of bomb-making "saves" him to assist him in the effort. Unfortunately for earth, this causes the bomb to fail to detonate, and the earthlings lose the battle. Fortunately, this also unlocked the key to faster-than-light travel, and now the earthlings can span the universe.


In Perky Pat (1963), most of the earth has been leveled, with a few people left. The adults spend all day playing a "doll" game, Perky Pat.  Some people discover that a nearby group has a different doll. They compete and win, but from that they are shunned out of town.

In Colony (1953), a planet is seen to be perfectly benign. Then inanimate objects start to attack. A local lifeform disguises itself as these objects to then consume humans. They think that the solution is to either annihilte themselves and the planet or try to escape without any inanimate objects. Since they will be naked, they ask for an unmanned spaceship to rescue them. It comes earlier then expected and they all board. Later we hear of the real ship coming and not finding anybody.  (And we wonder - did the lifeform sneak back to earth on the ship?)

"I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon" (1980) deals with a man who cannot fall asleep during a long-distance space journey. He becomes tourmented with his childhood memories of persumed animal cruelity.

"Upon the Dull Earth" (1954), a girl is "taken" too soon. She comes back, but then consumes everyone else, destroying her universe.

In "Faith of Our Fathers" (1967), the great leader turns out to be an alien form that most people see as an old man. The main character takes an anti-hulucinatory drug to see him as who he is. It is not pleasant, and he thinks of him as good and evil.

In "The short happy life of the brown oxford" (1954), an "animator" is used to turn inanimate things alive. A shoe is turned alive, and then uses the machine to turn a girl shoe alive for it.

While the stories seem to espouse many sentiments of the time they were written. However, the stories provide some interesting fodder for thought - especially in the realm of human relationships.

Songmaster

Songmaster centers around a group of "singers" that sing songs that can greatly accentuate feelings. The hero is an empathetic young boy who becomes attached to the emperor of the universe. He is part of the palace intrigue that leads to the peaceful succession of leadership, and eventually to himself assuming the position of empire for a long time.

His character is quite similar to Ender and other Card "youth heroes". He always seems to know what people need at any point in time and is able to do it. (His only major self-inflicted problem is caused by showing compassion towards a bisexual man. This character gets built up, but then quickly dies. ) Eventually, he returns to the home of his youth in an attempt to return to attempt to regain the childhood that was "lost" in ruling the empire.

Music today is an extremely powerful device for altering emotions. It is not far fetched to see it be "amplified" by a group of wise gifted people. This makes for an intriguing premise. However, the novel has a number of lose threads that could be better developed. The fact that the "hero" was kidnapped from wealthy parents (and these parents are known) was not built up, but then dropped.