This book takes place in the 36th century. Mankind has colonized
the entire solar system; the vast bulk of humanity lives not on Earth,
but in two massive orbital habitats, the Hive and the Aerie, which
occupy the L4 and L5 positions 120 degrees before and after Earth in its
orbit. Our hero, Jak Jannika, is a somewhat shallow, callow, and
feckless youth who has just graduated from the equivalent of high school.
When his girlfriend is kidnapped at a nightclub, he is sent by his Uncle
the social engineer to go rescue her. Which all sounds somewhat romantic,
but it isn’t really.

It’s hard to know what to make of this book. The cover touts it as a
mixture of Robert A. Heinlein and
Harry Harrison, with some justice; in some ways it
also appears to be a spoof of Iain M. Banks‘ “Culture” series.
The science is tolerably hard (or at least pretends to be), while the
tone ranges from deadly seriousness to cartoon lunacy. The two extremes
don’t fit together very well.

But it was not a bad read, and more enjoyable than I feared it might be.

During the course of Drake’s Lord of the Isles we learned of
two wizards each trying to find the throne of Malkar, an artifact that
would either one nearly absolute power–for a while, until it destroyed
them. Garric puts paid to one of them, the Hooded One, in that book; in
this book the chief enemy is the Queen of the Isles, “wife” to the
ineffectual King Valence of Ornifal whom she has nearly supplanted.

The more I ponder this series (and though I’ve only gotten around to
reviewing this book today, I’ve already started the fourth book), the
more impressed I am. The typical fantasy epic–Richard Jordan’s
“Wheel of Time”, say–features some great Evil Overlord which our heroes
must defeat against all odds. No matter how many volumes go into the
series, the quest against the Evil Overlord is the unifying element. And
that means that somehow our heroes must defeat the overlord again and
again and again until we’re almost past caring. That’s the
problem with the typical Big Story–you get the Skylark effect in spades.

The Lord of the Isles series is a Big Story, but it’s anything
but typical. The story isn’t about the defeat of some Evil Overlord;
rather, it’s about a heroic attempt to maintain–and advance!–the
civilization of the Isles in the face of a thousand-year peak in the
tides of evil magic. There’s no one Evil Overlord; instead, there might
be dozens, all competing against our heroes, and against each other. And
on top of that there are the basic human-level politics of the Isles.

Thus, whereas a normal fantasy series must escalate the threat and the
response to it with each book, taking our suspension of disbelief to ever
higher and more tenuous levels, the Lord of the Isles books
each concern yet another problem that our heroes must overcome. The
problem might or might not be more severe than that in the preceding
book; but it’s certainly different.

All in all, I’m finding the whole series most refreshing.

This is a children’s history of the California Gold Rush; it’s published
by Scholastic and is written for kids aged 7 and 8. It’s meant to be
simple enough for the kids to read to themselves. But David saw it at a
book fair at his school, and since we’d recently read a book that takes
place during the Gold Rush (By the Great Horn Spoon), he
grabbed it and I read it aloud to him over four nights (one per chapter).

On the whole, I’m impressed by this little book. Though it’s written for
kids, it isn’t dumbed down; in particular, it speaks in specifics rather
than in vague generalities. The illustrations include many photographs
and engravings from the Gold Rush era, including a couple of fascinating
advertising broadsheets. All in all, it packs quite a bit of information
into 48 pages in large type (there’s even a glossary and an index).

I don’t expect that many of my readers will ever be in a position to buy
this book, let alone read it; but if you need such a thing you could do
much worse.

This is yet another early Matthew Scudder novel; it’s interesting mostly
in that this is the book where Scudder first begins to admit to himself
that he has a drinking problem. He has a couple of blackouts, and does
some seriously dangerous and stupid things, and almost–but not quite–
persuades himself to go to an AA meeting. The mystery itself serves
mostly as background for Scudder’s own story in this one.

This is a dry, dusty, obscure, scholarly book, and while I wouldn’t call
it a compelling read, I did manage to read the whole thing over the
period of about a month, and I’m not sorry about it. What that says
about me, I’m not sure, because This Is Not A Book For The Mass Market.

This is a book about the wave of emigration along the California and
Oregon trails in the middle part of the 19th century, and in particular
the understanding of law by the emigrants themselves, and in particular
of law as it relates to private property (as, after all, most civil and
criminal law does).

One gathers from a variety of snide (if exceedingly polite) comments that
Reid makes in the text that there has been the tendency among historians
to make one of two errors regarding the Overland Trail and the California
mining camps. The first is to see them as “lawless”, places where the
usual societal norms didn’t apply, and therefore places where every human
impulse, no matter how base, is given free rein. This is (I paraphrase)
utter hogwash. During the course of this long book, Reid builds a
compelling case that the emigrants brought the law they had known in the
east with them as they travelled west–despite knowing full well that
they were travelling far beyond the bounds of any kind of coercive authority.

The Overland Trail was a place of great hardship. What with short water, short
food, burning heat, bad water, disease, freezing cold, there was
something bad for everyone. In such a desparate situation, we’d
expect to see the have-nots stealing from the haves, and murdering if
necessary to get the food and water and other supplies they needed.
But Reid has surveyed the many diaries of the trip–and there
were hundreds, at least, written by men and women from all classes and
levels of education–and the picture is clear. Property rights were
respected on the Overland Trail. There was remarkably little thievery.
People bought what they needed, often at exorbitant prices, from other
emigrants, or from the trading posts that sprang up. Basic honesty is
taken to a surprising degree; emigrants finding a stray horse or ox or
mule and taking it into their train would freely return it should the
owner come and recognize it.

The Trail was a dangerous place, certainly, but the dangers did not
include, for the most part, one’s fellow man. And the emigrants
recognized this: when the evitable need to lighten the load became
extreme (everyone overpacked), one of the first things to go as being
of no use were the guns.

Well, you might ask, what about murders for other reasons? Certainly
there were some, though it seems to be have uncommon. Reid has written
another book on that topic, Policing the Elephant, which I’ve
not yet gotten to.

The other error historians have been prone to make is to see the Overland
Trail as a place where the dictum, “From each according to his ability, to
each according to his need,” would naturally hold sway. But there is no
Marxist paradise, and in fact even those in the deepest degree of need
expected to pay (in money or in kind or in labor) for what they needed.

The conclusion seems to me to be inescapable. The emigrants were decent,
God-fearing folk (and they were, too) when they left the east; they
remained decent God-fearing folk as they travelled west. They brought
their moral compasses with them.

I don’t know what it says of historians that they seem to think that,
once away from the coercive power of state and society, the emigrants
would turn into slavering beasts with all the morals of, well, modern
academics. But they didn’t.

This is the third Matthew Scudder novel; it’s better than the first one,
The Sins of the Fathers, and Scudder’s always interesting to
read about, but otherwise it’s nothing special.

This short novel by Peter Lovesey is a variant on the “Strangers on a
Train” theme. It’s set in England in the late 1940’s, a few years after
the end of World War II. Two woman, friends in the WAAF during the early
part of the war, meet on the street after a parting of some six years.
One had married a heroic RAF wing commander only to discover that heroism
takes you only so far in civilian life; the other had married a wealthy
engineer only to find that money wasn’t everything. Both think maybe
they’d be better off without their husbands.

But this isn’t an account of how the police crack what could have been
the perfect murder. It’s the story of the two women, Rose and Antonia,
and the steps they take to gain their ends.

As usual for Lovesey, the characters are clearly drawn,
three-dimensional, and compelling; the plot is convoluted and surprises
are many. Plus, his depiction of the post-war years has such detail and
immediacy that Jane (who also read it) was quite shocked to find that it
was published in 1989.

Though compelling, I wouldn’t call this a delightful book; while not
gruesome, it was nevertheless like watching Humpty Dumpty fall off of the
wall in slow motion. You know he’s scrambled for good, and yet you can’t
help watching.

Brian
Daley now has an official web
page, put together posthumously by those who knew him. Check it out!

This is a “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” book that Dave got at a book fair
at his school. It’s all about people and animals that escaped certain
death in a variety of unlikely ways. There’s the woman who bit a pit
bull terrier in the neck to make it let go of her dog; the woman whose
life was saved by her potbelly pig; various people picked up and carried
improbable distances by tornadoes only to land safely; people rescued
from volcanoes; et cetera, et al.

I got to read all of this aloud to Dave over the last five nights. It
was less tedious than some things we’ve read, but it isn’t going to win
any literary awards either. I think this one will recede into blessed
obscurity on David’s shelf until the day when he can read it to himself.

I like Dickens’ books. Some call him long winded and tedious but I have
never found him to be so. James Joyce’s Ulysses is long winded and
tedious. Dickens is just… extremely Victorian. His plots are complex,
his descriptions are voluminous and his characters are cartoons rather
than rounded people. Nevertheless, I almost always find something
relevant in his books. He creates a world that I find immediately
familiar, understandable and amusing.

The skeleton plot of Bleak House revolves around the story
of two young
litigants, Ada Clare and Richard Carstone, in a long and hugely involved
Chancery suit called Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce. The case is hopelessly bogged
down in legal mumbo jumbo, the lawyers are eating all the money up in
court costs and the whole process of waiting for resolution has driven
the people involved to madness or suicide. On the opposite side is John
Jarndyce who, in an effort to repair the damage done by the suit, takes
the pair under his wing as wards and provides them with financial support
and a beautiful home called Bleak House. He also takes in a young woman,
orphaned and raised by an aunt, to act as a companion to Ada. Esther
Summerson, the young orphan, becomes his housekeeper.

Now, all of that is very nice, if a little dry. What makes the book so
much fun to read is all the side characters Dickens throws in as well.
Usually, it’s his long winded descriptions that are so amusing.
My personal favorite is Mrs. Jellyby, who uses all her time in
philanthropy for the people of Boorioboola-Gha and completely ignores her
household affairs. Her children are filthy and wild, her servants drink,
the house is a pig sty and her husband comes home to say nothing and lean
his head against the wall. However, she has a Mission and it’s to raise
money for the poor Africans, not tend to the minor facts of her home
life. She is something right out a Monty Python sketch. She does
illustrate well the thematic elements involving charity and
philanthropy that runs thru the entire book. Mr. Tulkinghorn, the
personification of the evil lawyer, is another well drawn character. He
hears everything, sees everything, feels nothing, loves no one.
Fortunately, Dickens kills, oops, sorry. Anyway, he lives up to every
lawyer joke I have ever heard. And, of course, there is the poor little
street sweeper, Jo, who has the audacity to be orphaned, ignorant,
homeless, hungry and always being told to “move on” though he has nowhere
to go, like the dust he sweeps from the sidewalks for the rich.

If you haven’t read a Dickens novel, start with a shorter one like Great
Expectations. But if you are not new to the world he creates and you are
willing to read slowly and digest, this book is certainly one of his more
rewarding and amusing books.