In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, Pollan. Non-fiction. This is an expansion of Pollan’s essay “Unhappy Meals” (which I talked about some time ago), in which he gives some reasoning that I find rather compelling for why we’re in the diet/health mess that we (the western world in general, but especially Americans) are in, and some suggestions for getting out of it. The latter are summarized (as in his earlier essay) as “Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
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I think I’m just going to admit defeat on these two professional development books. I suspect part of my downfall is that they’re probably more intended as reference works than reading material.
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JPod, Coupland. No. While I didn’t hate this book, and indeed by and large enjoyed reading it, it’s ultimately so masturbatory that I don’t believe I gained anything from the reading. I should note that my librarian insisted I read it, despite suspecting I would not want to have read it. Turns out my librarian knows my taste pretty well.
On a technical note, the only error I noted was where the book read, “North Korean president Kim II Sung.” This error is hard to spot in a sans-serif font (I’m letting the lack of a hyphen slide), but the book was not set in such a type. I suppose I have to thank whoever made the error, though, in that I likely would not otherwise have learned that—despite his death—Kim Il-Sung is still the president.

Fundamentals of Object-Oriented Design in UML, Page-Jones. Non-fiction. More professional development. Continue reading →

King George: What Was His Problem? Everything Your Schoolbooks Didn’t Tell You About the American Revolution, Sheinkin. Non-fiction. This was a very quick read that I picked up on the recommendation of my librarian. Sheinkin has apparently contributed to several textbooks, and textbook editors weren’t interested in what he considered the most interesting quotes and anecdotes he found while researching, so he’s making them available in a series of non-text history books. It reads a little younger than middle school to me, but that may be an effort to broaden its appeal to more than just the readers (i.e., those who read for pleasure). I now know far more about the War of American Independence than I ever have. It won’t last long, but it was pleasant to get there.

Design Patterns in C#, Metsker. Non-fiction. Not merely non-fiction, but professional development, so even less interesting than the customary non-fiction reviews.
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The Man with the Strange Head and Other Early Science Fiction Stories, Breuer ed. Page. Yes. When I first put a hold on this, I missed that all the works were by the same writer. I don’t know whether that would have changed my decision to read it, but I’m glad it turned out as it did. The stories were written between 1927 and 1940, with well over half prior to 1932, making this pretty early indeed as modern sf goes. One of the “stories”, Paradise and Iron, is a novel in its own right, and one of my favorite works in the volume. Several of its themes are revisited elsewhere in Breuer’s work, but it was a creditable piece for a time before Colossus, much less ENIAC.
I was forced by its sheer tedium to skip Page’s introduction, though I did refer to it to see what he had to say about the history of each story. I was interested that he described a Breuer story as “less bigoted” in its treatment of immigration/integration panic than some other works of the time (Page doesn’t seem certain whether the story is using alien invasion as a metaphor, but it sure seemed like it to me). I’m a little tempted to see if I can find any David H Keller, to see what would be more bigoted than this:

The Earth women liked the Martians, who though weak, were good-looking and certainly had an effective way with the ladies.…

or

“I have the highest respect for the individual Martian gentlemen whom I know personally.… But such Martians are exceptions.”

or

“The children of these bi-racial unions are the worst outcasts of all, accepted by neither race.… They are physically unfit for labor and are not accepted among the intellectual classes; they sink into the utmost depths of degradation. I shudder to think of them. What shall we do with them?”

The dialog, of course, expresses a character’s view, but nothing in the narration challenges that view.

The Code: Baseball’s Unwritten Rules and Its Ignore-At-Your-Own-Risk Code of Conduct, Bernstein. Non-fiction. I can’t say I’m surprised, though I am a bit disappointed, that sports writing seems to be far more about the sports than about the writing. If I never see the phrase “For whatever the reason” again, I will never again be irritated by it (first, it’s pleonastic: it adds no content to the sentence. Second, it’s ungrammatical: it should be “For whatever reason” or “Whatever the reason”). It showed up in both Bernstein’s text and the interviews, so either he re-wrote his subjects or everybody in sports talks similarly. Really, it could go either way. Complaints aside, though, the book does a reasonable job with its topic—and now, back to the complaints—though it could have accomplished its job in many fewer pages.

Surveillance, Raban. No. This is the first (to my knowledge) Publishers Weekly starred review recipient I have given a “No.” For much of the reading, I thought I would go the other way with the verdict, but (doubtless due to my own lack of sophistication) on reflection I must conclude that Raban has merely wasted my time.

Mine All Mine, Davies. No. Davies seems to want this to be Soon I Will Be Invincible, or at least Bad Monkeys, but it’s just not. At the same logical point in the plot where I settled in to finish Half a Crown, I could very happily have set Mine All Mine down and thought of it almost never again. Davies is a decent writer, but he’s simply not good enough to succeed at the level of cleverness he attempted. Footnotes are especially not recommended.
Addendum: Turns out I hadn’t even finished the book; I was about a third of the way through the last chapter, and the book demonstrated its put-downability by letting me put it down and imagine I had finished it (I realized my misapprehension only when I was packing it up to take it back to the library and wondered why the bookmark was still in it). I think I like the ending I imagined it had better than the one it actually has.