The Big Money

The Big Money by John Dos Passos

In Big Money, common people experience the roaring twenties. Like the other books in the USA trilogy, this book intersperses the fictional narratives with brief accounts of historical figures and rapid fire "mass media". It works well in an audiobook. The characters and plot are rather forgettable. What stood out most to me was an interest in aviation stocks and praise for Detroit. Some characters seems to get placed in positions above their capabilities, while union conflicts were still an issue.

1919

1919 by John Dos Passos

1919 is an interesting amalgamation of stuff. There are a few stories of characters. Most of the focus is on the working class characters with an attraction to Marxists. They live their lives. They don't tend to do anything special (though they may show up near significant events.) There are interspersed factual events and "multimedia dumps." Stylistically, it feels ahead of its time. There is enough attention to detail to the locations to make it feel accurate. I felt enough sympathy with the characters to want to continue to read their escapades, but not enough to want more.

Election

Election by Tom Perrotta

A school president election is about to take place. Tracy Flick has been trying for this for all of her life. However, a smart jock has also decided to enter the race. Then at the last minute, his sister enters. However, she seems to be more interested and getting suspended and going to a Catholic girls' school. There are a whole bunch of affairs. Tracy also manages to unintentionally get a couple teachers fired. Stylistically, it is great as the book rapidly takes us into the minds of various characters. The characters themselves are all really messed up. 

Infinite Jest

Infinite Jest is a long novel that takes place in a time somewhat similar to our own. Years no longer are known by numbers, but instead by their sponsors. Most of the book takes place in the Year of the Depend Undergarment. Things are somewhat different. It is part alternate history and part futuristic work (that is now in the past.) 

A good chunk of the book takes place at a youth tennis academy in Arizona. The people there play war games on tennis courts, takes various mind alternating substances and explore many aspects of their life.

A significant section of the book also takes place in Boston. We also hear a long discussion about Alcoholics Anonymous in Boston.

Parts of the book feel based on his experiences. Some parts are quite good. Other parts are offensive. The book is in the "future" but very rooted in the 1990s when it was written. Some parts of culture were carried to their absurdist limits (corporate naming rights for everything), while other parts seem to still be stuck in the 90s. It feels like something that would be fun writing, just not so fun reading.

Too Like the Lightning: Terra Ignota, Book 1

Too Like the Lightening is set in a futuristic world. A general peace is established with various "clans" that have differing views of the world. A high-speed transportation system is available that lets people go just about anywhere. Religion is taboo and having three are more people talk about religion is considered a church. Gender is considered archaic with most people considered gender neutral. Sexual activity is still a thing and the mere concept of gendered talk or dress is often found to be sexually promiscuous. The past is well respected in this world and the story is told often from an 18th century style of language. There are also computer-like people that are more machine than man.
While this utopian dystopia of a future world is built up in great detail, the story itself is somewhat confusion. There is a murderer who kills people in various ways. There are some conflicts between the groups. There are toy soldiers that are animated. Killings of seemingly insignificant people are used to alter the course of world events through their association with others. (In some ways it seems similar to current events.) It gets confusing.

Pale Fire

Pale Fire is written as a scholarly annotated poem by a dead poet. The "author" (Charles Kinbote) is a scholar neighbor of the dead poet, Shade. It consists of an introduction by the author, the 999 line poem and the commentary of the poem. The introduction gives you a clue that there is something else going on here. The "author" is very full of himself, and feels overly impressed that he is friends with Shade. The poem itself is a very basic, juvenile work. Nothing that would be really "good" on its own.

The commentary seems to have nothing to do with the poem. The "explicator" uses minor bits of information in the poem to go off an a tangent about something totally different. There are a few main stories. One is about a King that escapes a fictional country. Another is about an assassin that is attempting to kill said King. The third tangent is somewhat more related to the poem and involves the life of Shade and his family and the relationship of Shade to Kinbote. The stories gradually become more intertwined, leading to some possible interrelations. Perhaps Kinbote is actually the King. Perhaps the murderer was trying to kill the King, rather than Shade. Maybe Kinbote is just a crazy stalker who has been much too obsessed with Shade and unable to accomplish significant scholarship on his own.

On one level, the work can be seen as a deep satire of academia. The Kinbote takes himself way too seriously and comes up with detailed interpretations that would be hard to justify based on the merits of the text. (Many long bits of commentary are related only in that Shade had written bits of the poem at the same time another event happened.) Even sections that may be somewhat justified are more highly influenced by the life of the commentator than the actual poet.

On another level, the use of a poem provides an innovative way to tell a "hypertext" story. Different sections can be followed back and forth to unearth the intertwined tales. They are a fiction wrapped in another fiction, making it open to many possible interpretations. I am not sure weather the fictional country is "real" in the universe of the story or if it is in fact made up in the mind of the "author." This opens many possible interpretations of the work.

The Dark Talent

The Dark Talent by Brandon Sanderson

The Dark Talent is the final book in the Alcatraz series. I had loved the earlier books in the series and had been eagerly anticipating this conclusion. Alas, it did not live up to my expectations. Perhaps it was due to the long wait. The story had plenty of good parts. However, it felt more forced than the other books. The unsatisfying ending also seemed to open more questions rather than resolve them. I was wondering where the rest of the book was. Perhaps the next "final" book in the series will preserve the magic.

As I Lay Dying

I've realized that I just don't like Faulkner. I want to like his work because of the style in which in writes. However, I just don't like the content. The characters are mostly dysfunctional southerners who live a type of life I can't relate to. The language of some can be even more annoying. I just can't get arouse much sympathy or even hatred for the characters - just annoyance.

In this novel, the characters plan on the fulfil the wishes of burying mother in a nearby town. Each chapter is told from the view of a different character, and each seems to have their own ulterior motives. This leads to all sorts of bizarre and comedic things happening as they try to get mother to her proper burial spot.

Special Topics in Calamity Physics

Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl 

D'oh. I typed a bunch and then it seemed to disappear. Uggh. Lets try again. I had initially thought this book was science fiction. The title seemed science-ish, and the narrator of the audiobook narrates many of Orson Scott Card's science fiction books (hmmm... probably since he is her father.) When there was a statement about someone feeling they were a 70 foot tall tree, a took that literally and was looking for some outlandish space travel. I totally missed the part about the death of a teacher.

The book is written in the style of a college course (with a final exam.) The chapters have titles of literary works, and there are plenty of annotations throughout. It is a great, innovative style that keeps things interesting without distracting from the work.

The narrator of the book is smart girl that loves books and movies, but has very little social experience. This is her coming of age story. Her mom died when she was five and she had lived with her dad, an itinerant college professor. Her senior year in high school, her dad finally agrees to let her settle down in one place, "Stockton, North Carolina."

The one peeve I had with the book is the pseudo-place names. There are abundantly quoted "real" works of literature and movies. However, almost all the names of places and universities are made up. (I even tried to look some up.) I prefer to have my places "real" or non-existent. Having "almost real" places is just annoying.

She tries to fit in with a group of drama nerds that hang around the film teacher. She does stuff with them, and they all have experiences together. At one point, they sneak into an "adult" party, and see somebody die by drowning. This brings the first significant tragedy to the group. Later, the group goes on a camping trip with the favorite teacher. During the trip, the narrator discovers the teacher hanged, and the others get lost. This destroys the balance of the group, and narrator finds herself outcast and looking for answers to how and why. The police deem it a suicide, but she doesn't buy that. Her quest eventually leads her to uncover a link between the teacher, a crime organization, the early murder and her father. After she shares this with her father, he disappears in the night, never to see her again. It turns out that the university work, though real, was cover for her father's work with the organization. She even knew many figures in the organization. She never did find out who had killed the teacher, but she did find out a lot about herself during the course of events.

The style keeps the book interesting. The pacing could use a little work. The start of the book mentions that it is about the murder of the teacher. However, it spends a long time getting there. Once it gets to that point, it quickly zooms to the crime conclusion. There is almost no time spent going down false paths or building up suspense. It seems as if it is a coming-of-age tale that just had to have a murder tacked on to allow it to be a "mystery". This final bit is also the key point that completely changes her relationship with her father (and thus alters her life.) I am fine with the sudden ending, but would have liked to see it balanced with less exposition. (Or if keeping all the earlier parts, it would be nice to balance the ending by exploring the relationships in more detail.) Luckily, the style (and constant literary allusions) kept it interesting, even when the substance slowed down.

Six Characters in Search of An Author

This is a play about a play. Characters talk with the people that they are playing and with others. Who has the real existence? Are the characters more real than the people. It is an interesting, fun play. The libravox recording was quite well done.

How to live safely in a science fiction universe

The protagonist is a time machine technician whose father had helped to invent time machines. He is interested in finding more about his father. They inhabit a world that is kind of like are world, but is also a science fiction world. They also know it is a science fiction world. It seems like a cool concept. As a repair guy he gets a lot of work from people that are trying to change their past. However, they can't do that, and all they usually do is relive the worst events of the past. On one visit, he gets out of the time machine, sees a future version of himself and shoots him. He is now worried that he may be stuck in a time loop, and much of the book is spent trying to come to terms with himself and his family and figure out the message from his future self. Eventually he writes the book that he has written and comes to terms with his family. And then he comes to the event where he will get stuck in the "loop". But it turns out he didn't die after all, and he can go on with his life.

I wanted to like this book. I loved the "self-aware" science fiction approach. The characters are often quoting from a book "how to live safely in a science fiction universe." The world they inhabit can be at time just like ours, and other times a totally unique science fiction world. All of this had great potential. However, I had trouble getting engaged with the characters and the plot. The people and the things they did seemed to be just a mechanism for holding together the thoughts and insights. It almost worked.

A Visit from the Goon Squad

As I first started reading A Visit from the Goon Squad, I was confused. It started out being told from the perspective of one character, but then it seemed to be a different character in a different time. I finally realized that they really were different different characters having different experiences. The book is more a collection of intertwined short stories than a novel. It centers around a bunch of loser characters involved in the music and entertainment industry. Each story is told from a different perspective and a takes place in a different place in time. Each story has some relation to another story (though sometimes it can be to just a minor character). It can take some back and forth action to catch the relationships. Luckily, one reader has constructed a timeline of the main characters in the book.

Stylistically, the book is a marvel. Stories are told from first person or third person or even via a powerpoint. We get viewpoints for different characters in their different episodes. The stories are very senfeldian in nature. The characters waste away their life and grow old. Eventually, most characters find some contentment in their old age, often different than what they had expected. There is not much of an overall story arc. Some of the stories are disturbingly vulgar, while others are told from a young child's point of view. With a little more interesting content, this could have been great. As it is now, it is another case of style over substance.