My Imagination Is Power

Almost half of this book has shown up on This American Life in some form or another, so it wasn't as fresh to me as her other books I've read. I don't really care all that much about Frank Sinatra, so having to read through her story about him a second time wasn't so thrilling. The stories also lose something when you don't hear her reading them. But then again, maybe having heard her read them made them better, knowing her inflections and timing. It was like listening to the show IN MY BRAIN!

One of my favorite bits (since I do it so often myself) was this:

"The phone rang. It was Dave, a writer friend. We talked for over an hour, mainly about punctuation. He has big plans for the ellipsis. He's mad for ellipsis. I tell him, yeah, I have a similar affection for the parenthesis (but I always take most of my parentheses out, so as not to call undue attention to the glaring fact that I cannot think in complete sentences, that I think only in short fragments or long, run-on though relays that the literati call stream of consciousness but I like to think of as disdain for the finality of the period)."

I've been reading Daily Kos since close to the beginning of the Iraq War, FIVE YEARS AGO. It's my shot of outrage before I head to work in the morning. The site covers politics in general, but the founder, Markos Moulitsas got into it because of his interest in elections. I've never been that interested in the inner workings of elections too much, other than being upset at why Democrats couldn't do better. Starting the book, I figured, having read the site for the last 5 years, I'd have heard about pretty much everything that was in there, and for the part I was right, but there were a few bits that surprised me.

For one, the Democratic Party was in serious trouble of disappearing completely after the McCain/Feingold act. Democrats, up to that point, had raised most of their money from big donors. They'd concentrate on a group of people who would contribute millions of dollars to their cause. Republicans, on the other hand, had millions of people, on mailing lists, in churches, etc. that would contribute. McCain/Feingold cut off the Democrats big donors completely. They were in serious trouble.

Fortunately, with the internet and sites such as Moveon.org, dailykos.com and many others, small donors, regular people, all contributing amounts $2000 or less, the Democrats began raising more money than they ever did with the big donors.

But that meant listening to the people. And with a leadership stuck in the 70s, when Democrats had a large majority, they weren't too happy to start to listen to the little guy. Markos and Jerome outline this, and many other reasons why the Democrats were losing, and what they can do to turn this around.

Mostly, it's about being right on the issues, and standing up for what they believe in. There's millions in this country that would support them if they just stood for SOMETHING, instead of being just "not Republican". I think we began to see that in 2006, and hopefully, with the overwhelming turnout at the primaries (Democratic turnout is blowing Republican turnout out of the water, even in states where the Democractic primary doesn't count for anything) we'll see it again later this year.

Fingers crossed.

No, I take that back, THIS is how it started! This one was definitely better than the last Halo novel I read. This one focused on Halo's Sgt. Johnson, who, up to this point, was to Master Chief as Sgt. Apone was to Ripley. Kinda.

This filled in a little bit of his back story. Told us how he knows what the ladies like. Showed us that even meeting real life aliens for the first time, he's a trained soldier, and will kill said aliens in every way possible.

It also went into some of the back story behind the Covenant Prophets and how they got to be the evil heads of state that they are. Much political backstabbing abounded.

I really enjoyed how Joe went back and forth between 3-4 different storylines, often jumping right in the middle of an action piece, only later to tell how the characters got to that point. He used it a few times, and it was always effective. "Holy cow! Why are they fighting! That's awesome! Oh yeah, here's why...." At least it wasn't completely linear standard sci-fi fare.

And again, one of the coolest parts was heading to work and asking the guys who helped him flesh out the Halo details why things were the way things were. Seeing as Joe is one of the lead writers at Bungie, this is probably the first book that every bit of it is official Halo canon.

There's a couple scenes that got me wanting to do some illustration. Just have to break out the sketch pad now...

Ohhh, so THAT'S how it started! I hadn't had any real interest in reading the Halo novels until Halo 3, when it became obvious they were drawing on them a bit more than the last two games. It's actually not all that bad. I went in thinking it was mostly poor pulp sci-fi, and by the end I got over the fact that it wasn't Asimov, Bradbury, or Herbert.

It helps that I can go into work and ask about why things were done the way they were, or why certain parts didn't make any sense. (Bungie mostly ignores those parts.) Another neat element was seeing coworkers names used for one-off characters, or space ships, or ports in the book.

Not bad. I've been warned against First Strike, but I've started on Contact Harvest, the first novel by Bungie writer Joseph Staten. It covers the origin story of Sgt. Johnson. Hopefully it'll flesh him out to be more than just a copy of the Sergeant from Aliens.

I'm on quite a zombie kick lately. It was probably triggered by Katrina and the realization that there's not much separating us between our current, comfy society and a total meltdown. I've been catching up on all the (mostly horrible) older zombie movies, like Return of the Living Dead and the like. I knew Robt McLees, from work, has always been into zombie-like characters, having helped create Dark undead characters in Myth and the Flood in Halo, so I introduced him to the Walking Dead series of comics I've been enjoying. In return he lent me World War Z.

Max Brooks wrote the Zombie Survival Guide, and followed it up with World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. The Survival Guide was fairly dry, and filled with obvious tips to surviving a zombie attack, and I came away somewhat disappointed. I felt he went too far in describing why people became zombies and didn't leave it nebulous enough. World War Z on the other hand was a perfect telling of a zombie outbreak that took over the world, and how mankind retreated to strongholds, and eventually took back the world.

The interview format of World War Z works perfectly. Instead of it being told as a work of narrative fiction, it becomes much more of a first hand account of life and war, and comes across as more realistic. I definitely enjoyed it.

Simon Pegg, writer of Shaun of the Dead, wrote an afterward for one of the Walking Dead collections that I felt summed up the zombie infatuation perfectly:

Metaphorically, this classic creature embodies a number of our greatest fears. Most obviously, it is our own death, personified. . . More subtly, the zombie represents a number of our deeper insecurities. The fear that deep down, we may be little more than animals, concerned only with appetite. Zombies can represent the threat of collectivism against individuality. The notion that we might be swallowed up and forgotten, our special-ness devoured by the crowd.

Oddly, those rotten bastards also give us hope. The undead may be tenacious, single minded and as relentless as lava, but they are also stupid and slow; ineffectual and inept. Anyone with a pulse can step up. As long as you keep your head, defeating a zombie is not an insurmountable task. It is perhaps this combination of hope in the face of terror, that makes the zombie so attractive to us. The idea that we could ourselves, beat death. Beat it until its brains come out of its ears.

Often, as in some of the best zombie stories, the ghouls themselves are merely bit part players, a context in which to play out the human story. Our real concerns are for the people that remain, for their future and by proxy, our own.

I finally finished this one up. I'm just keeping track of when I read these now, I don't really have much to say on it.

I finally finished this one up. I'm just keeping track of when I read these now, I don't really have much to say on it.

This was really good, and the movie complimented it well. I love how the book, the movie, and the original Bride of Frankenstein all meld with each other when viewed and read with in a short time frame. Very satisfying.

I'm on a new kick of reading books that were later made into movies. First off, Empire of the Sun, later turned into...Empire of the Sun, by Steven Spielburg. Featuring Christian Bale as Jim, and a screenplay written by Tom Stoppard. The book is based on JG Ballard's actual experience growing up in Shanghai during the Japanese occupation. While not knowing exactly how much actually happened to him, you definitely get a sense as to why he's now known for writting books dealing with the inhumanity of man and it's technology.

One of the more interesting aspects of the book are the moments when you realize it's all from the perspective of a child. The narrator, while speaking in a mature voice, often makes observations through the eyes of a child. He won't understand a situation and will convey it as he sees it, not as it's actually happening. It's not until Jim realizes what the situation is before the narrator conveys it.

I had seen the movie years ago, long enough that I couldn't remember any of it with any clarity. Going back and watching it after I finished the book, I realized that, while it adapted the lines and the events fairly accurately, it didn't capture any of the intensity or mood of the book. Jim (a young Christian Bale) seemed way too old for the part. This kid should have known a lot more than he did, and the sense of innocence found in the book was lost on a kid as old as he was. The movie also seemed to skip over some of the major hardships they had while in the prison camps, from having to boil all the water they drank, to stealing potatoes from the dead. It was barely touched on in the movie, but the book really drove it home.

With my never ending quest for short story collections (as well as my Palahniuk obsession) I couldn't wait for Haunted to come out. I had heard an audio recording of Palahniuk at a book signing reading his story "Guts", collected here. It was pretty disturbing and gross, the best parts of any Palahniuk story. I figured the book would just be a nice collection of his most twisted short stories. It didn't turn out that way though.

Around 24 short stories, he created a story about a group of would-be-writers going away to writer's retreat. Each person was the supposed writer of each short story. At first this was the least interesting part of the book, just a bunch of unknown characters locked in a theater, writing sick and strange autobiographical stories. But as I progressed through the book, I found I was racing through the short stories to find out what was going to happen with the writers. Even though their story stalled for a while near the end (Palahniuk seemed to have more short stories to tell than framework-story to surround it by) I'd say it wasnt...his worst book...but it was at least one of the most disturbing.

Ahh, after my first Sarah Vowell book, I wondered if her writing just wasn't quite as witty as she was during her appearances on different tv shows. Assassination Vacation definitely proved me wrong. This was really good. It probably helped that she stuck with her best subject, American history, instead of jumping around through history, pop culture, biographical and back. The title refers to her travels around the country visiting historical sites pertaining to three presidential assassinations, Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley.

One of the more interesting concepts she comes up with is comparing her travels to religious pilgrimages. Instead of having our own Saint's toe or holy sliver of wood, we have political relics, Lincoln's hair, Garfield's bloody sheets, etc. My family took many trips to see many a'civil war fort and I suppose they became the closest thing we have to visiting Notre Dame; Fort Griswold Basillica. Ahh, the brown informational plaque. These military and political sites are America's widest spread cultural monuments. We don't have quite the religious history that Europe does. Puritans weren't exactly big "cathedral" people.

Vowell makes quite a good travel guide for presidential artifacts/locations. It would almost be fun to follow one of her treks to some of the spots she highlights in the book.

Hmm, finished this one over a month ago, about time to make a write-up for it. Again, with the sci-fi collections. Turns out Frank Herbert can write short non-complex scifi. There was very little political intrigue type stories, nor was there anything that even touched on the epic scale of Dune.

One of the more interesting setups was a government agency of sabotage. If any part of the government started passing laws and changing things too quickly, a governmental saboteur would step in and throw a wrench in it (in this case attaching a bionic tentacle thing to the back of a senior government official to make him look like a fool.) Luckily our own government, even when entirely run by one party, seems to have trouble passing hardly ANY bit of legislation. (Invading and destroying two foreign countries, easy! Welfare reform...hmmm...)

Another interesting story was about two women scientists studying a newly found alien race. They were trying to figure out how they reproduced, since they seemed to be all one sex. They encouraged the aliens to let them watch their mating ceremony. After the ceremony (which involved some sort of singing) they realized that by listening to the song, they became impregnated with new little alien babies. Oh, and the song was broadcast live to millions of women around the world. Oops.

One of the more unique stories was an escapee piloting away from a prison planet. They were all implated with a pulling desire not to leave, so they had to force themselves hard to keep flying away. Apparently nobody had gone further than a certain nebula. He eventually made it past and found an alien planet. Captured by the aliens, they wiped his mind, implated a desire to stay away from their planet. So it turns out it wasn't a pull back to their home planet, but a push to stay away from an alien one.

Anyway, just another collection of interesting concepts, short setups and strange last-minute twists.

Yes, three books posted in a row. It's either books, or a post about San Andreas (I've discovered a lot of old school rap that I missed in highschool.) So, I'm a sucker for the short story. Makes for easy reading before falling asleep at night and I don't have to think that far back as to where the story has been.

Lots of good early sci-fi in here. Bradbury, Clarke, and quite a few that I hadn't heard of, but were still interesting little stories. All of them very Twilight Zone like. One of the strangest is J. G. Ballard's Souvenir. It is one man's view of what happens in a town when a giant human washes up on shore. First seen as a curiosity and a jungle gym, it eventually deteriorates and is used for parts and meat.

Oh, and I learned if you ever get a job for the UN as an authorized sales agent for surplus, second-hand equipment and installations, don't sell the Earth as a joke to a bum, no matter how much he offers. The bum might turn out to be an agent for aliens looking for prime acquisitions.

This is the first non-fiction of Palahniuk's that I've come across, and it was only half bad. Being in a series of what amounts to "city guide books" it ended up filled with lists of things to do and events to attend, with little commentary by the author. Having never been to Portland, and not that curious about all the little novelty shops and strange people that live there, those sections didn't exactly catch my interest. The best parts of the book are when Palahniuk relates stories of things he's done in the city. It was quite amusing hearing about the anarchy society he's part of, and how they would get hundreds of Santas to march on Portland (and subsequently get arrested. I'll have to remember to grab this whenever I get down to Portland. Some of the little shops he's mentioned might be worth a visit.

Now this was more like it. Strange and often disgusting short stories by Chuck Palahniuk. Stranger than Fiction is a collection of his short stories which have been published elsewhere. There's a few articles where he just covers a subject; amateur greco-roman wrestlers, American castle builders. While curious, they weren't too gripping. Then there's a section with biographical works about celebrities. Again, a little interesting, but nothing spectacular. The best part was when he was writing about events in his own life (much of what made A Walk in Portland interesting.) He tells a few stories of the making of Fight Club, and how his friend just HAD to see Brad Pitt. Most disturbing is his family history. His grandfather killed his grandmother while his father was in the house. Then, years later, his father is killed by his girlfriend's jealous ex. No wonder Palahniuk's stories are as messed up as they are. If you stuck the story of his life on a shelf along with his books you wouldn't be able to pick out which are fact and which are fiction.

This book was nice, and all, but it came across a little phoney. I hate it when books try to act smart but just come off phoney. Sometimes, things like this, you just need to be in the right mood for. Most of the time that boy Holden was depressing as hell. Just listening to him go on and on about the world and people. It only got interesting when he was reacting to the women around him. That sort of stuff always kills me. I wasn't too crazy about the book to tell you the truth. It was an easy read and all, but just really phoney.

Yes, I'm a sucker for a good Hellboy story. Wait, make that ANY Hellboy story. This collection was pretty good. It didn't have anything that compared to the creepiness that Odd Jobs had, but it had some pretty disgusting stuff in it. Fire-hellhounds burning villages, a demon ripping a dorm room to shreds. These horror writers sure know how to describe some gross stuff. One of the more interesting stories involved Hellboy going after this serpent demon only to find out that she was the daughter of his "father". Couldn't kill her then, could he! I wonder if it's possible to run out of myths and legends to stick Hellboy into...

Well, after reading what amounts to a comic book in prose form, I'm moving on. Up next: Catcher in the Rye. 1/5th of the way through and I don't get why it's a highschool "must read". Maybe someone dies in a sledding accident later. Or gets abused by his schoolmates. Or has to feed a dying man from his teat. Those usually seem to be what turns them into "classics". But don't tell me! It's actually nice (and suprising) not to know anything about one of the "classics".

• On the Arizona Hills (I wonder where it starts out)
• The Escape of the Dead
• My Advent On Mars
• A Prisoner (Guess he gets captured)
• I Elude My Watch Dog (Guess he escapes)
• A Fight That Won Friends
• Child-Raising on Mars
• A Fair Captive from the Sky (A lady friend?)
• I Learn the Language (Remember, these are before the chapter, so the actual text of the chapter is pointless after it.)
• Champion and Chief
• With Dejah Thoris (Ahh, the lady friend is Dejah Thoris!)
• A Prisoner With Power (Crap, he's captured again!)
• Love-Making On Mars (Unfortunately, not what you think.)
• A Duel to the Death (Unfortunately, not the main character.)
• Sola Tells Me Her Story
• We Plan Escape
• A Costly Recapture (I guess the planned escape didn't work out)
• Chained in Warhoon
• Battling in the Arena
• In the Atmosphere Factory
• An Air Scout for Zodanga
• I Find Dejah (This is after losing her. Not so much suspense when you know she's actually not dead, as hinted previously)
• Lost in the Sky
• Tars Tarkas Finds a Friend
• The Looting of Zodanga (So the army you learned was going to attack Zodanga is apparently successful.)
• Through Carnage to Joy (Happy ending.)
• From Joy to Death (Wait, what?)
• At the Arizona Cave (Where did we start? That's right.)

"So", you say, "Another Tom Clancy book? I thought you didn't like the last one so much." Well, yeah, but once again the para-military SWAT sequences made most of the book worth it. Unfortunately the "evil bad guys" of the book were environmentalists. While their overall scheme was pretty evil, they did have the right ideals. But that didn't stop every single other character in the book from bagging on them constantly.

Some choice John Clark quotes come at the end, after the Rainbow team has destroyed the jungle complex that the antagonist group was using for shelter (and then leaving them there to die):

"Okay, but let me get this right. You were willing to kill nearly every person on earth, to use germ warfare to do it, so that you could hug some trees?"

"We humans learned how to [make knives out of flint rocks] about half a million years ago. You want to be in harmony with nature. Go harmonize."

Thus ends my Tom Clancy phase. Not just because the book slammed environmentalism as often as it could, but also because everything in between the action was fairly boring.

I've seen Sarah Vowell on Conan and the Daily Show, and she's always been hilarious. Her humor is the driest I've ever heard, and it doesn't hurt that she's a nerd (a history nerd). Never will you laugh as hard hearing about the founding fathers as you do when she talks about them. From the title and what I knew of her, I figured this book would be really funny anecdotes about Thomas Jefferson et al.

What it ended up being was a handful of memoirs ranging from Abe Lincoln to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Her humor also didn't translate into text as well, perhaps because you couldn't hear her squeeky, dry delivery. It was still pretty fun, though I'm hoping that Take the Cannoli will be better.

The Hellboy novelizations are pretty fun. I've read both The Lost Army and Odd Jobs and now Bones of Giants (with Odder Jobs sitting on my shelf, taunting me to finish the books I'm reading now). I definitely enjoyed Odd Jobs best of the three, but that was short stories by various authors (and included the scariest freakin story I've ever read).

This one was fun, but wasn't as daring or outrageous as Odd Jobs. It is pretty amazing how, after reading the comics, you can picture everything in that style. A giant 50' skeleton stands up out of the ground, giant trees growing from their ribs, covered in snow... yeah, I want to see that movie now.

Or maybe I'll make it.

So Hellboy goes to the Netherlands to investigate a 15' skeleton found with a giant hammer in his hand. After picking up the hammer, he finds he's slowly being possessed by Thor. That's the basic story, so it involved lots of snow, giants, demon dogs, Norse hotties, and crazy rat-men.

Sure, it was a fairly light popcorn book, but Hellboy is just cool, and these novels do a better job than the movie did at combining Nazi's, demons, crazy myths and evil scientists.

This was the first stumble of my recent book frenzy. Without Remorse wasn't what I expected, but I wasn't finishing it just to get through it, as I found myself doing with How to be Good. Sure there were some interesting parts, but I really didn't end up getting the point of the whole book.

I enjoyed High Fidelity (the movie) and with the rave recommendation for this one, maybe I did expect more. Maybe it's because I've never been a married women with 2 kids. Maybe it's because I was hoping for something a little bit less depressing. Maybe it's because I usually expect stories to get somewhere, to do something, for characters to actually change with their journey. I guess we're past that now though.

How to be good? It's too bad the book didn't follow through with it's title. Oh well. I guess I'm glad I read it cause I wouldn't know otherwise. (And now I know who to trust on book recommendations . . . hehehe) On to the next one!

I really enjoyed this one. Possibly in my top 10 favorite books. It wasn't quite what I expected. I'm not sure what I was expecting really, possibly thought it was going to be a little bit harder read. Some of the concepts, ie: The Metaverse, Avatars, Gargoyles, etc. are pretty amazing for their time. The internet as we know it wouldn't be around for another 5 years.

The discussions about Babel and language was pretty interesting. I get the impression that, as with most Biblical stories, they're just allegories for more complicated things that actually happened. There probably was a tribe or group (that had no idea there were other groups) that split and the languages separated. Though it is curious that Sumerian was never spoken after that time.

I definitely want to know what happens with Raven. He obviously didn't die, because his nuke would have gone off, but it was never exactly resolved as to where he ended up.

Oh yeah, and what (male) reader doesn't come away without having a total crush on Y.T.?

I want a sequel. I'm curious if any of his other books on the same level as this one.

Death by pressure tank is not a way I would like to go.

The story wasn't quite what I was expecting. I had picked Without Remorse and Rainbow Six as my first two Tom Clancy books. I had liked what I knew about the John Clark character from the movies and video games, and I like the SWAT style, small groups combat, mixed with a little bit of spy stuff. It ended up basically being one man's personal vendetta against drug dealers who killed his girlfriend.

Not much of a review, I know, but mostly I just want to keep track of what I've read. Getting old...memory isn't what it used to be.

Since I'm reading so many books now that I've got about 3 hours a day commuting, I thought I'd start keeping track of them.

I'll be making a new entry each time I finish another one, but I wanted to start a quick list now and go back to fill in later.

So far, after starting work at Bungie I've read (in this order):

Without Remorse- Tom Clancy
Hellboy: The Bones of Giants- Christopher Golden
How to Be Good- Nick Hornby
Snow Crash- Neal Stephenson

The last 5 books I've read probably took 4 years, just cause I never made the time to read them. Right now I'm 3 or 4 chapters into Rainbow Six- Tom Clancy. I'll be adding short reviews on these later, and the above will link to them, for easy commenting. But for the most part, all of this is just to keep a record of what I've read.