A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin (4 stars)

Book 2, and apparently the clashing of the five(!) kings was obvious enough without Martin having to get his characters to say it every few pages as he did for Game of Thrones. This novel continues on with the epic plot arc, I believe this was about 1000 pages, although it is hard to tell on the kindle, and felt very similar to the first book. Most reviews I have read seem to regard this as a weaker book. I have some bones to pick but it was still a very impressive and a worthy sequel.

For such a long novel, I was amazed that I was never bored. I was however, confused many times. Who is this Reek guy again? Where is the Dreadfort? Which army is this? Martin expects a lot of the reader - too much on some occasions. When Jojen's prophesy comes true to prove to Bran that he has the power of foresight, Martin expects us to remember the exact cryptic details provided by Jojen hundreds of pages earlier and doesn't bother with any sort of recap.

It wasn't a supper like you said. It was a letter from Robb and we didn't eat it, but-

Martin also does the same with Jojen's later prophesy about the sea breaking over Winterfell. More broadly, being able to hold together all the story threads, which are continually broken by point-of-view changes, is difficult (but still realistic unlike The Savage Detectives). It is probably the most complex plot, in terms of sheer number of characters and the intricacy of their interactions, I have read and still enjoyed. Keeping track of armies and lords in a bewildering array of different castles would be a lot easier with a geographic map. Is it just the kindle edition that is missing maps?

I loved the battle for Kings Landing on the Blackwater river, it was very well written and fascinating to watch the trap sprung. That is, until Tyrion suddenly becomes a dwarf warrior powerhouse cutting down knights and leading a battle charge. This was completely out of character and pretty ridiculous when you consider the reach and strength advantages Stannis' knights would have had on a highborn dwarf who never trains for combat.

Almost as implausible is the fact that all of Tyrion's wildling fighters stayed in his service after they got paid for their efforts in the first novel. Would a bunch of proud, blood-hungry savages with necklaces of human ears really have been happy to sit around in a castle on guard dog duty for a rich lord?

I found Dany's encounter with the warlocks' hallucinogenic maze highly entertaining because it reminded me of a physical challenge or amazing race detour. Although there was another prophesy involved, and no doubt Martin expects me to remember details like this 2000 pages later:

A tall lord with copper skin and silver-gold hair stood beneath the banner of a fiery stallion, a burning city behind him. Rubies flew like drops of blood from the chest of the dying prince, and he sank to his knees in the water and with his last breath murmured a woman's name...

When I say I was never bored, that isn't quite true. I got sick of boring royal history like this:

Aemon took his vows and left the Citadel to serve at some lordling's court...until his royal uncle dies without issue. The Iron Throne passed to the last of King Daeron's four sons. That was Maekar, Aemon's father. The new king summoned all his sons to court and would have made Aemon part of his councils, but he refused, saying that that would usurp the place rightly belonging to the Grand Maester. Instead he served at the keep of his eldest brother, another Daeron. Well, that one died too, leaving only...

I'll end this with some of my favourite quotes. This zinger is from Renly, who I think was a great character, it's a shame he gets killed off:

Stannis studied her, unsmiling. "The Iron Throne is mine by rights. All those who deny that are my foes."
"The whole of the realm denies it, brother" said Renly. "Old men deny it with their death rattle, and unborn children deny it in their mother's wombs. They deny it in Dorne and they deny it on the Wall. No one wants you for their king.

There was some great stuff from Sandor Clegane, including this dig which seems to be aimed partly at other fantasy novels that shrink from violence. Clegane is also starting to seem like less of a bad guy through Sansa's possibly-Stockholm-syndrome eyes:

What do you think a knight is for, girl? You think it's all taking favors from ladies and looking fine in gold plat? Knights are for killing.

The whole section of dialogue between Catelyn and Jaime in the dungeon was brilliant - we saw the true nature of their characters at their most candid moment. This quote from Jaime sums his arrogance up perfectly:

There are no men like me. There's only me.

Onward! Winter is coming.

4 stars.

A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin (4.5 stars)

Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series has been on my list for a long time. A desire to watch the HBO series finally pushed me into picking up the first weighty tome, well figuratively anyway, this is yet another very heavy book I was happy to carry around digitally on my kindle, and as an aside, the typographic complaints about the kindle edition are all out-of-date, I didn't notice any problems.

I'm not a huge fantasy fan, but this novel grabbed me with its dark tone and intricately constructed characters. There is no clear good and evil here, no perfect shining knights who take the moral high-ground at all costs and always win the day, and no fundamentally evil Sauron-style bad guys either. Martin constructs characters that face tough moral choices, make both good and bad decisions, and die. Yes, main characters actually die, and not just the ones on the evil side of the fuzzy moral divide. I think Tyrion is my favourite character so far.

Of course to allow for the deaths of important characters you're going to need quite a few characters to carry the story. Martin uses about 8 different character points of view, and introduces a huge cast of characters throughout the novel, both in the central plot line and while filling in the history of each of the houses. There are a lot of houses, and despite the house-symbol mnemonics, I struggled to keep track of all the minor players, especially when the various lords 'called their banners' to gather their armies. I also got fairly sick of reading about dire wolves and dragons embroidered onto tunics or painted onto armour.

I felt like this novel was mainly build-up and stage setting for a truly epic tale, which is fine, although I certainly found myself wishing for some more action in the first two thirds of the novel. The first two thirds was mainly court intrigue, political machinations, and the occasional I'm-going-to-be-a-ninja-later-just-watch-me training montage from Arya. By the way, I'll be very impressed if Martin kills off Arya before she gets to unleash her fighting skills on the Lannisters. Oh, and if Martin manages to not mention 'a clash of kings' every few pages in A Clash of Kings, that would be great too - it reminded me of this youtube video.

While I'm at it lets get a few other minor things out of the way. Martin went to great lengths to create an impregnable fortress, and in the process made the Eyrie a ridiculously impractical place to live. You basically need to do a day's worth of exposed rock-climbing up a cliff past many fortifications to get there. I'm all for impregnable fortresses (I'm sure this one will get taken by deception, not force, in later books), but a castle like that is somewhere you retreat to as a last resort, not somewhere you live day-to-day, hold court, receive guests etc.

I loved Martin's description of the iron throne constructed from swords, I hope the HBO props department did a good job of it.

Sansa's naivety and selfishness (such as forgetting to even ask about her sister Arya) after the capture of her father was very well written and the culmination of her character construction up to that point. Eddard was naive in many ways himself, and I was glad to see that things didn't magically pan out for him just because he's a good guy.

Two dragons breastfeeding from a human woman is one of the stupidest things I have ever read.

Yes, I have started on the next book :)

4.5 stars

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (3.5 stars)

It's clever, very clever. Comedy in the form of a novel is one of the toughest gigs around. Getting someone to laugh with just the written word, without the benefit of the body language and expression that comes with images or a live performance, requires a special talent. Heller has that talent, although I confess the best he got from me was a few 'heh's.

Heller wields absurdity, irony, and hypocrisy as weapons to expose the absurdity, irony, and hypocrisy of war and military bureaucracy. In effect it feels like a really, really long Monty Python skit written down in words. Clevinger's mistake in asking the audience for questions after a briefing would also fit perfectly as a Blackadder scene, with these responses:

"Who is Spain?"
"Why is Hitler?"
"When is righ?"
"Where was that stooped and mealy-colored old man I used to call Poppa when the merry-go-round broke down?"
"How was trump at Munich?"
"Ho-ho beriberi."
and
"Balls!"
all rang out in rapid succession.

Heller brings his acid touch to a wide range of subjects from the meaningless military pennants awarded for meaningless activities:

Like Olympic medals and tennis trophies, all they signified was that the owner had done something of no benefit to anyone more capably than everyone else.

to the agricultural subsidies that benefited Major Major Major's family (and yes, he is promoted in the novel to Major, making him Major Major Major Major), which pretty much fits exactly with the republican position on US corn subsidies:

Major Major's father was an outspoken champion of economy in government, provided it did not interfere with the sacred duty of government to pay farmers as much as they could get for all the alfalfa they produced that no one else wanted or for not producing any alfalfa at all.

The plot is complex. It dives down tangent after tangent and continually introduces new characters while jumping all over the place. Despite all that confusion it is in fact highly structured. Early in the novel Heller writes as if the reader is intimately familiar with a series of events which have not yet been described. These story threads are eventually explained and tied back in much later in the novel, finally providing the context for a joke that was already told.

And of course the novel gave birth to a phrase that is now common vernacular. Not many novels can claim such an obvious effect on popular culture:

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions.

The characters are excellent, and you come to realise that despite some unusual behaviour (such as perching naked in a tree to watch a funeral), Yossarian is extremely rational and entirely sensible to be trying to avoid getting killed.

A country is a piece of land surrounded on all sides by boundaries, usually unnatural. Englishman are dying for England, Americans are dying for America, Germans are dying for Germany, Russians are dying for Russia. There are now fifty or sixty countries fighting in this war. Surely so many countries can't all be worth dying for.

Heller's portrayal of Milo's black market empire and the market forces that eventually bring him to bomb his own troops is absurd and masterful.

Towards the end of the novel we are brought roughly into the horror of war as Yossarian has a dream-like walk through a Rome soaked in violence and we finally witness Snowden's death that pushed Yossarian over the edge. This is the section I liked the least. The final chapters lose all comedy and become a series of long discussions, such as the one between Yossarian and Major Danby, that seem very direct and out of character. It's almost like Heller got to the end and decided: quick, drive the point home!

This was my second time through this novel and it isn't an easy read. I'm giving it a fairly low score to match my level of enjoyment, but I think it is definitely worth reading.

3.5 stars.

With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa by E.B. Sledge (4.5 stars)

Could there be a better surname for a marine? This book got onto my list because it has one of the highest positive ratings on amazon - almost every one of the 466 people who reviewed it gave it 5 stars. It is a great read.

Sledge is a talented writer, and gives us a very heartfelt insight into what it was like to be a marine in the Pacific theatre in WWII. He doesn't talk himself up unnecessarily, give a dry history lesson, or attempt to give all american soldiers hero halos. He recounts some grisly mutilations performed by both sides on wounded enemy soldiers, this one by an American marine:

He put the point of his kabar on the base of a tooth and hit the handle with the palm of his hand. Because the Japanese was kicking his feet and thrashing about, the knife point glanced off the tooth and sank deeply into the victim's mouth. The Marine cursed him and with a slash cut his cheeks open to each ear. He put his foot on the sufferer's lower jaw and tried again. Blood poured out of the soldier's mouth. He made a gurgling noise and thrashed wildly. I shouted, "Put the man out of his misery."

It wasn't simply souvenir hunting or looting the enemy dead; it was more like Indian warriors taking scalps.

The Japanese version of this practice was even more grisly so I won't recount it here, but Sledge says that after he saw it:

From that moment on I never felt the least pity or compassion for them no matter what the circumstances.

Sledge puts you into his miserable, stinking, trench-foot-infected boots. His descriptions of the battlefield and his state of mind are compelling, you can feel his fear as the first beach landing approaches:

I broke out in a cold sweat as the tension mounted with the intensity of the bombardment. My stomach was tied in knots. I had a lump in my throat and swallowed only with great difficulty. My knees nearly buckled, so I clung weakly to the side of the tractor. I felt nauseated and feared that my bladder would surely empty itself and reveal me to be the coward I was.

Sledge is fiercely proud of the Marines (including the Gunnery Sergeant that scrubs his genitals with a shoe brush) and their 'esprit de corps', but also acknowledges the skill of the Japanese on a number of occasions for creating sophisticated mutually supporting defensive positions and their excellent fire discipline. Actually, my only criticism of the whole book is the overuse of the terms 'esprit de corps', 'defense in depth', and 'mutually supporting defensive positions'.

I had marked many quotes about the horrors of war, including a great one about having to dig a defensive position through mud and maggot-ridden corpses, but instead I will leave you with something more thought-provoking but equally depressing.

But something in me died at Peleliu. Perhaps it was a childish innocence that accepted as faith the claim that man is basically good.

4.5 stars

Update:I watched the HBO series The Pacific, which is largely based on this book. At the start of each episode is a 5-10 minute mini documentary that gives the historical context for the episode. The series is fantastic and does a great job of re-creating the horrific events recorded by Sledge.

Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell (4 stars)

Woodrell is a talented writer. He paints for us the bleak world of the rural poor in the Missouri Ozarks. The main character, Ree Dolly, at 16 is left in an incredibly tough situation by the disappearance of her meth-cook father, who vanishes, leaving her with a mentally ill mother and two younger siblings to look after. Ree attempts to navigate a sinister and violent world to find out what happened to her father.

The Dolly clan is characterised by violence, drugs, and hate of outsiders and the police. In many exchanges the violence simmering underneath the words is palpable:

I said shut up once already, with my mouth

Woodrell captures a heartbreaking acceptance of this existence in, at times, brilliant lyrical prose that reminded me of Cormac McCarthy:

Love and hate hold hands always so it made natural sense that they'd get confused by upset married folk in the wee hours once in a while and a nosebleed or bruised breast might result. But it just seemed proof that a great foulness was afoot in the world when a no-strings roll in the hay with a stranger led to chipped teeth or cigarette burns on the wrist.

If there is a weakness in this book, it is the plot. I kept waiting for the impending disaster to happen, and the climax when it finally came, was just not climactic. It seems Woodrell was more interested in writing the rough sketches of a story to hang some brilliant characters on, than producing a gripping plot line. His characters certainly were impressive: the steely determination of Ree (reminiscent of Mattie), and the contradictions in violence and love from Uncle Teardrop were well presented.

I'd read more Woodrell, and now I need to see the movie.

4 stars.

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen (4 stars)

This story is told in a series of flashbacks or dream sequences by Jacob Jankowski, a 93 year old man living in a nursing home. Usually with this style of narration I find the present-day a boring, cardboard prop for narration of the story, however this book is different. Jacob's character gives us a real insight into the trials of growing old, losing independence, and having any sign of independent thought be interpreted as the complaining of a cantankerous SOB.

But then in your thirties something strange starts to happen. It's a mere hiccup at first, an instant of hesitation. How old are you? Oh, I'm - you start confidently, but then you stop. You were going to say thirty-three, but your're not. You're thirty-five. And then you're bothered, because you wonder if this is the beginning of the the end. It is, of course, but it's decades before you admit it.

I saw some of Jacob in my own grandmother as she aged: the difficulty she had in recognising her own family members, and the increasing need to supply more of the conversation as her days became less active and provided less fuel for conversation.

My platitudes don't hold their interest and I can hardly blame them for that. My real stories are all out of date. So what if I can speak firsthand about the Spanish flu, the advent of the automobile, world wars, cold wars, guerilla wars, and Sputnik - that's all ancient history now. But what else do I have to offer? Nothing happens to me anymore. That's the reality of getting old, and I guess that's really the crux of the matter. I'm not ready to be old yet.

But old Jacob is really only a small part of the story. Most is taken with his time spent in the circus after a final year exam freakout due to the death of his parents. It is a rocking read, with plenty of colourful desperate characters set against Depression era poverty and exploitation. Larger circuses mop up smaller bankrupt ones in a ruthless manner: cherry-picking the best animals and 'freaks', as Uncle Al calls them, and disposing of unwanted employees by throwing them from the moving circus train during the night.

Some reviewers have complained of lack of character depth, but I don't think this was a huge problem. I thought August's character was interesting with his ability to be completely charming and completely ruthless, and Jacob's noble-sounding love of animals, that he frequently compromised to keep his job and avoid conflict with August, rang true for me.

I'll leave you with another poignant quote:

With a secret like that, at some point the secret itself becomes irrelevant. The fact that you kept it does not.

4 stars.

Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov (3.5 stars)

The final book in the original trilogy. I enjoyed this one more than the other books since there were more elements of suspense: who are the Second Foundationers, and where is their home base? My money was on the Second Foundation being distributed across many planets to enable maximum control, but I won't tell you if I was right. I picked some of the surprises, but I think it suffered from trying to be too clever in twist after twist.

There were some great technology predictions in this 1950s novel. I liked this one:

Actually, it was a complicated computer which could throw on a screen a reproduction of the night sky as seen from any given point of the Galaxy.

In today's world we don't really have a need for that since we're not trying to navigate through deep space using star references, but I think asimov would be amazed at seeing google sky on a mobile phone. It's funny that another prediction he makes, the death of the keyboard as an input device in favour of voice recognition:

Nobody but some old drips would use key machines

just hasn't happened to any significant extent. In the same example he has Arcadia dictating a complete document from a printed first draft, which is something that has changed significantly. Being able to jump back and forth in a document and make continual improvements is very different from running through a series of complete drafts, typewriter style.

There are some logic puzzles presented in the text that I loved:

"Have you a defense in case I am [calling you a traitor]?"
"Only the one I presented to the general. If I were a traitor and knew the whereabouts of the Second Foundation, you could Convert me and learn the knowledge directly. If you felt it necessary to trace me, then I hadn't the knowledge beforehand and wasn't a traitor. So I answer your paradox with another."
"Then your conclusion?"
"That I am not a traitor"
"To which I must agree, since your argument is irrefutable."

Hardly best all-time series, but a good read. Not sure if I'll continue with the later sequels and prequels.

3.5 stars

Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov (3 stars)

Opinion seems to be divided on the relative merits of each of the foundation novels, but in my mind, this is definitely a weaker novel. The story is less fractured, but even though we have more time to get to know the characters, they turn out to be far less interesting than those of the first book, such as Salvor Hardin and Hober Mallow. Bayta and Toran just bob along in the tide of history and the only interesting feature is the mysterious Mule. I hope he sticks around in the third book so we can get to know him better.

Honestly this book felt like a filler device: necessary to flesh out the historical details and introduce a great conflict between the Mule and the Second Foundation.

There were however a few pieces of dialogue that stuck with me. I liked the irony in Ebling Mis' swearing using the word unprintable

...taking care of every little piece of their unprintable lives.

and could just picture him busting out a frustrated:

Ga-LAX-y!

I also loved this characterisation of Mayor Indbur, it reminded me of a former manager of mine:

Mayor Indbur, third of his name, and second mayor of Foundation history to be so by right of birth, recovered his equilibrium, and lifted another sheet of paper from the neat stack at his left. It was a report on the saving of funds due to the reduction of the quantity of metal-foam edging on the uniforms of the police force. Mayor Indbur crossed out a superflous comma, corrected a misspelling, made three marginal notations, and placed it upon the neat stack at his right. He lifted another sheet of paper from the neat stack at his left...

3 stars.

Foundation by Isaac Asimov (3.5 stars)

The hugo for "best all-time series"? Seems a little prematurely awarded in 1966, given how young science fiction was, but hey it beat lord of the rings, so I had better read it.

Asimov creates a grand plot arc where 'psychohistorians' can make long and accurate predictions into the future about immensely complex systems - the political and economic interactions of millions of worlds populated by humans scattered throughout the galaxy. I was willing to suspend disbelief on that actually being possible and get into enjoying a plucky group of scientists defending the intelligence of the galaxy through an age of barbarism, but I found the writing style took some of the shine off what could have otherwise been brilliant.

The story is broken into a series of short stories along lines such as "The Encyclopedists", "The Mayors", "The Traders" etc. which has the effect of removing any meaningful character development and introducing fairly jarring shifts between time and groups. I think if I had known beforehand that it was originally published as a series of short story serials I would have been more forgiving.

The central problem seems to be trying to cover many centuries of time and events without digging into the real details. I think if you described the set-up, a futuristic fall of rome, and some of the ideas presented in this book such as: presenting technology as a religion to enable central control, and conquest through trade in trinkets, to another author, it could be re-written into a fantastic book.

As it stands I enjoyed the book, but I doubt the series will get my 'best of all time' award.

3.5 stars.

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink (3.5 stars)

This novel begins strongly - Schlink paints detailed pictures as they are frozen in the young Michael Berg's brain: Hannah pulling on her stocking, riding her bike. As Michael's interest in Hannah dwindles with his increasing interest in his peers, my interest also dwindled, where was this leading? Lots of spoilers ahead...

The story soon switches gears and Schlink places the contrast of Hannah's previous life as a SS guard in the concentration camps over Michael's image of her as a lover. In Michael's struggle to both understand and condemn Hannah's crime, Schlink raises the dilemma of the post-WWII German youth: wanting to point the finger in shame and anger at their parents' generation and yet understand and love them as family at the same time.

I wanted to pose myself both tasks - understanding and condemnation. But it was impossible to do both.

Michael struggles with a new picture of someone he thought he knew well. Faced with the evidence of her having Jewish children read to her before sending them to the gas chambers he questions their entire relationship - what sort of person is she?

Would she have sent me to the gas chamber if she hadn't been able to leave me, but wanted to get rid of me?

And given he had chosen her, what sort of person did that make him?

But the finger I pointed at her turned back to me. I had loved her. Not only had I loved her, I had chosen her.

I found this section of the book intriguing as it was a subject I had wondered about myself after visiting Auschwitz and then Germany. However, while it was interesting I didn't find it particularly moving.

At the end of the novel we discover that Hannah has spent much of her time in prison first learning to read and write, then learning about the Holocaust. To me this felt a little disingenuous and a ploy to try and make the reader sympathise with Hannah. I also thought her suicide before Michael had to deal with the reality of interacting with her and caring for her was a huge cop out.

Thought provoking. This is also one of the rare instances where the movie is almost as good as the book.

3.5 stars.

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (3.5 stars)

The Poisonwood Bible follows the Price family missionaries into the Belgian Congo jungle in 1959. The story is in two halves with the first being an amazing clash of cultures where neither understands the other, despite the best efforts of some of the locals to act as interpreters and cultural guides.

The Price's arrive wearing most of their clothes with boxes of Betty Crocker cake mix taped to their bodies to get around the weight restrictions on the flight. They soon find that converting the villagers to Christianity is a complex process - most of their congregation are the lower rungs of Congo society looking for an alternative god 'Tata Jesus' to try out. This half of the book was interesting, and despite the annoying malapropisms from Rachel, I enjoyed as a great 'clash of cultures' story and a transport into jungle life in the Congo.

The second half of the story after the family leaves the jungle is more problematic and less enjoyable. Leah brings what seems to be a very one-sided view of history to the struggle for independence, which made me doubt a lot of the historical accuracy of the rest of the novel. Basically her message was that the Congo was doing fine until America came and screwed it up. Real life is never that simple.

Rachel becomes an arrogant white-supremacist who doesn't leave the bar of her upscale hotel, and despite a short journey through what seemed to be a made-for-TV miracle cure, Adah barely features at all.

The picture of the Price family in the jungle will stay with me, but the rest of the book is fairly forgettable. I don't think it deserves its position on many top 100 lists.

3.5 stars.

How to feel manly in a minivan by Craig Boreth (3 stars)

As Boreth says, "could there possibly be any market more saturated than parenting books?". I don't plan to review a whole bunch here, but I thought this one was noteworthy since it was fairly entertaining.

I was happily surprised that I shared a love of Just In Time with the author - he applies it to gaining baby knowledge only when you need it, and buying baby stuff only when you need it, not ahead of time. I'd agree although there are some basics you want to have when you get back from the hospital.

The most interesting thing I took away from the book was a recipe for chocolate salty balls. The tenuous justification for including it in the book was that they could satisfy sweet and salty pregnancy cravings at the same time...

Makes 12 balls

8 oz semisweet or bittersweet chocolate
1/4 cup olive oil
3/4 cup heavy cream
Salt (flaky, preferably Maldon)

Coarsely chop the chocolate, and place in a bowl. In a saucepan or in the microwave, heat the cream just until it comes to a boil. Pour the cream over the chocolate. Gently stir the mixture until the chocolate is melted and completely combined with the cream. Put it in the fridge until firm. Scoop about a tablespoon of the chocolate and roll it into bals. Drizzle olive oil over the top and sprinkle with salt.

I also learned that:

If your baby is cranky or crying, and someone tells you what you should do about it [say]:

"Don't worry, he'll be fine once he sobers up."

And if someone touches your baby without asking:

"Ooh, I hope you had pelican pox as a child. 'Cause if not, you've got it now. You should probably call your doctor immediately. Sorry."

3 stars.

The Revolution: A Manifesto by Ron Paul (4 stars)

I've been meaning to read this since the 2008 presidential race, and finally got around to it just as Ron Paul is running for the republican nomination for the 2012 election. The book, particularly at the start, is fairly ranty and there are plenty of cavalier sweeping statements that raise a big 'citation needed':

Dissenters who tell their fellow citizens what is really going on are subject to smear campaigns that, like clockwork, are aimed at the political heretic.  Truth is treason in the empire of lies.

I agree with his position of reducing military spending, and overseas military commitments, as a huge cost saving and a pissing-off-other-countries saving. I was fascinated to read an intelligent quote along these lines from, George W. Bush's campaign in 2000, a sentiment that obviously changed drastically after 9/11.

"If we're an arrogant nation, they'll resent us. Our nation stands alone right now in the world in terms of power, and that's why we've got to be humble." We should be "proud and confident [in] our values, but humble in how we treat nations that are figuring out how to chart their own course."

I've read a few books about the Iraqi war, and Paul Wolfowitz' statement that

...the ousting of Saddam would allow the United States to remove its tropps from Saudi Arabia, where their presence had long been a major al-Qaeda grievance.

was news to me.

Having said all that, some of his ideas I don't agree with, such as stopping all foreign aid (his reasoning is that it props up failed governments), and some seem downright naive, such as pledging that if he was president he would never use executive orders. Given how dysfunctional and adversarial congress is, executive orders are one of the few tools a president has to actually get things done. I also objected to his horrific example of an abortion of a 2 lb baby to promote his pro-life stance. It is completely disingenuous - no sane pro-choice supporters are in favour of late-term abortions.

Paul is completely against centralised federal government power, apart from a small number of exceptions such as the Departments of Justice and Defence. If he got his way and had most powers delegated to the states he claims that:

We wouldn't have to worry that a social policy of which we disapproved would be imposed on our neighborhood at the whim of the new president and his court appointees, or that more of our money would be stolen to fund yet another government boondoggle.

but provides no evidence as to why he thinks state government would be any more efficient, likely to make better decisions, or even overcome the obvious inefficiency of 52 times the government they have now. I do however agree that government has become bloated and inefficient, the federal budget was 40% larger in 2007 compared to 10 years ago, but I would contend that it is bloated at all levels - city, state, and federal. He proposes abolishing income tax, but provides no justification for how this would improve the economy or even offset the thousands of government job losses it would require.

He rages against the 'welfare state' and offers up the thought experiment that if there were no government (federal or state) welfare programs, people would be more likely to volunteer and make donations themselves. I contend that lots of people are selfish, and a little pro-bono work by lawyers or a few hours of volunteering by an unskilled general populace is not going to be anywhere near enough to replace the efforts of full-time trained and paid social workers.

His position on health care is similar, and interesting since he is an obstetrician, and has been around long enough to see the system break down:

As a physician I never accepted Medicare or Medicaid money from the government, and instead offered cut-rate or free services to those who could not afford care. Before those programs came into existence, every physician understood that he or she had a respobsibility toward the less fortunate, and free medical care for the poor was the norm. Hardly anyone is aware of this today, since it doesn't fit into the typical, by-the-script story of government rescuing us from a predatory private sector. Laws and regulations that inflated the cost of medical services and imposed unreasonable liability standards on medical professionals even when they were acting in a volunteer capacity later made offering free care cost prohibitive...

I can see how this would work when most patients could pay. What about poor neighbourhoods where most people can't pay? What doctor would work there for free?

Interestingly, apparently the government is to blame for the crazy coupling of employment and health insurance:

...the HMO Act of 1973 forced all but the smallest employers to offer HMOs to their employees. The combined result was the illogical coupling of employment and health insurance, which often leaves the unemployed without needed catastrophic coverage.

This review is already gigantic, so I'll just finish by adding that his stance on legalising marijuana to relieve court and prison systems seems sensible, and backing the US dollar with gold is an interesting idea, but I need to know more about macroeconomics to decide if it is a good one.

Overall, thought provoking and interesting. It's also really short, so not a hard read.

4 stars.

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes (4 stars)

This book seems an unlikely candidate for a science fiction award, but it won both the Hugo (as a short story) and the Nebula in its longer novel form.  The story follows, in first-person perspective, the experience of a mentally retarded man whose IQ is drastically increased by an undescribed medical operation. It doesn't feel much like science fiction, as the focus is on Charlie, self-discovery, and his changing perspective and personal relationships.

I thought Keyes did an excellent job of capturing Charlie's thoughts, his realisation that his childhood 'friends' were often mocking and cruel, and his terror at losing all his knowledge as the effects of the operation begin to reverse.  Charlie finds difficulties at both ends of the IQ spectrum, when he is a genius his emotional age has not grown with his intelligence and he finds himself being arrogant and insensitive.

Keyes also explores the strain that a mentally retarded child places on the parents and siblings.  On the birth of a 'normal' daughter, Charlie's mother switches from obsessively trying to push Charlie's abilities toward normal, to being overprotective of her new daughter at the cost of any love she had for Charlie.

Some reviewers have described the novel as a tearjerker, but I found it strangely lacking in pathos.  I'm not sure why.  It was definitely sad, but not powerfully so.  The book was made into a movie in 1968, I'll check that out and update this post.

4 stars.

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (3.5 stars)

"Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!" This book is the defining work of the pirate genre, and I think of it as a the sort of novel Tom Clancy or other modern action/thriller writers would have written if they were alive in 1883. It is a rollicking, action-packed tale that is great for kids, with a young adventure-seeking boy as the narrator.

Long John Silver is a great character - totally charming, ruthless, and self-interested. The writers of Pirates of the Caribbean borrowed much of his character for Jack Sparrow.

A couple of things I thought were a little ridiculous. One was when young Hawkins decides to go on the treasure hunt. He intends to follow a map that a bunch of pirates have killed a number of people to get their hands on, including very nearly Hawkins and his mother themselves. But there was no word of protest from the mother about him going on this journey. Maybe parenting standards were lower in 1883? Or treasure hunting was a more accepted vocation? This could have been solved by a simple paragraph about Hawkins running away.

The second thing that annoyed me was that Stevenson made it completely obvious that the clueless, foppish, squire had hired a bunch of murderous pirates and their leader Long John Silver to crew the Hispaniola on its treasure hunting mission. Couldn't he have left a bit more suspense and intrigue here? It was completely obvious that all of the crew were pirates and would turn on the good guys.

I hand you a black spot, and on the reverse it says:

3.5 stars

American Gods by Neil Gaiman (3 stars)

Just kind of meh.

I have read some of the Sandman graphic novels, and Good Omens, but this is my first Gaiman-only novel and I don't really have much to say about it. I liked the premise of the old gods with dwindling followings slowly losing power to new gods of Media, Internet etc. As an aside, the image of those new gods was well chosen - a sophisticated impossibly beautiful Media woman and a fat, arrogant pimply kid as Internet. I think this quote gives you a picture of the Internet god:

Tell him that we have fucking reprogrammed reality. Tell him that language is a virus and that religion is an operating system and that prayers are just so much fucking spam. Tell him that or I'll fucking kill you

But overall, while I enjoyed reading the book I felt no sense of urgency. The climax was non-existent and I found myself working through it like the character Shadow - plodding from one strange experience to the next, never questioning, never getting particularly excited or reacting to the events around him. Could there be a less interesting, vacuous protagonist?

Given the premise, this book could have been a fascinating look into an alternative world, but it just felt lacklustre. There is some humour, I will leave you with part of a two-page rant from Sam ("you have no idea what I can believe") but nothing in the league of Good Omens.

...I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe...

3 stars.

PS. Rock City is actually a real place, and the barns advertising it from miles around do exist. I just added it to my list of things to see in the US!

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (4 stars)

The United States of America is reduced to a suburb-state within its previous geographic boundaries; millions live in palaces in a virtual reality Metaverse while their bodies sit in 'houses' in former storage garages subdivided into a concrete ghetto; the mafia delivers pizzas, and being a pizza delivery driver (a 'Deliverator') is a high-risk superstar occupation like being a formula-1 driver of decades past:

When the Deliverator puts the hammer down, shit happens. You want to talk contact patches? Your car's tires have tiny contact patches, talk to the asphalt in four places the size of your tongue. The Deliverator's car has big sticky tires with contact patches the size of a fat lady's thighs. The Deliverator is in touch with the road, starts like a bad day, stops on a peseta.

Stephenson creates a fantastic cyberpunk world, with a good eye for forward-looking technology advancements, given it was penned in 1992. He has a wry sense of humour and witty writing style that pervades all parts of the book, including our hero protaganist 'Hiro Protagonist' and offsider 15-year-old Your's Truly or 'Y.T.':

"Y.T. Where are you?"
"In the parking lot of a Safeway on Oahu," he says. And he's telling the truth; in the background she can hear the shopping carts performing their clashy, anal copulations.

Everything is a franchise: countries, crime, the mafia, religion. Compton is still a dangerous place, run by managers following instructions from a three-ring binder that tells them how to run their Narcolombia franchise. I loved the description of Fed-land where penny-pinching is taken to the extreme such that employees need to establish toilet-paper communal funds to stock bathrooms.

Snow crash is wreaking havoc on the Metaverse, and the real world at the same time. Cue the incredibly boring, ridiculous explanation of verbal viruses based on Sumerian ancient texts and other religious historical research in worse-than-Dan-Brown format.

"Deuteronomy is the only book of the Pentateuch that refers to a written Torah as comprising the divine will: 'And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, from that which is in charge of the Levitical priests; and it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the LORD his God, by keeping...

yawn. It is a tragedy that Stephenson wrote these passages where Hiro has lengthy discussions with the Librarian. They destroy the flow of the book, and seem to only exist because Stephenson spent a lot of time doing this research and wanted to include it in the final product. The book would have been far better with no explanation, or a limited summary such as Hiro gives to Mr. Lee and Uncle Enzo. It cost you a star Mr. Stephenson, I'm sure you're crushed.

4 stars.

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch (4.5 stars)

The Lies of Locke Lamora has been on my to-read list for a long time. I tried to find it in book stores a few times, and it was never in stock, so I was very pleased to see there was a kindle edition.

It is different from most fantasy novels in a couple of ways: there is a lot of swearing that seems strangely modern, i.e. suited for the times of guns and cars, rather than swords and horses where the novel is set.  In a way that also fits with the other difference, the presence of 'elderglass' skyscrapers left behind by the planet's previous alien inhabitants and occupied by the current generation of  less technologically advanced humans.

The dialogue is often very witty, and Locke is written in a hilarious sarcastic and irreverent style.  This passage where he completely ignores Chains' advice about how to treat a Bondsmage (sorcerer) with respect is a great example:

"Sorcery's impressive enough, but it's their fucking attitude that makes them such a pain.  And that's why, when you find yourself face to face with one, you bow and scrape and mind your 'sirs' and 'madams.'" 
"NICE BIRD, asshole," said Locke.
The Bondsmage stared coldly at him, nonplussed.

Lynch also seems to have a particular interest in food - he treats us to detailed explanations of food that Locke and the other Gentleman Bastards prepare, and makes the culinary arts a particularly unlikely part of their con-artist education. His description of the Duke's banquet "The bullock's head with the body of a squid, he was happy to avoid" was like something straight out of Heston's feasts.

I thought Lynch could have spent longer with Locke in the dank underground caverns with the Thiefmaker, that community and life was fascinating and very Dickensian. And while I enjoyed the racing plot line of the climax, the switch to James Bond-esque thriller and Locke's sudden growth of a social conscious didn't fit well with the rest of the novel.

Despite these minor flaws, I loved it and will be reading the sequel Red Seas Under Red Skies.

4.5 stars.

Rocket Boys by Homer Hickam Jr. (3.5 stars)

This autobiographical book was the inspiration for the movie October Sky (an anagram of Rocket Boys): a story of a kid growing up in a West Virginian mining town who beats the odds to pursue his dream of becoming a rocket engineer. The pictures of life in Coalwood were well-drawn, but I felt disconnected from most of the characters. This surprised me since it is written as a novel, rather than a completely historical account. I found myself liking Quentin a whole lot more than Sonny - not only did he have pretty much all the brains, he often provided the drive and motivation.

I enjoyed reading this book, but I can't think of much to praise or criticise, and it isn't a story that will stick with me for a long time. One reviewer mentioned this book is one of those rare breeds where the movie is better than the book. I'll have to check out the movie and see if I agree.

3.5 stars.

The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss (5 stars)

This is the second in the Kingkiller Chronicles, sequel to The Name of The Wind, which was one of the best books I read last year.  I was keen to read this and see how Rothfuss would follow his impressive debut.

The book continues to lay out the life of Kvothe, our ridiculously over-talented protagonist, through his adventures at the university and thankfully, in this book, breaking the Harry Potter mold to venture out into the real world for some adventure.  Kvothe certainly adds to his real-world experience: gaining favour in a royal court, leading a band of mercenaries, and training with the Adem super-ninjas. 

The sections of the book where he lives with Felurian and the Adem felt a bit like obligatory "skilling up" in a computer game.  Those sections seemed to be about "+10 experience with women" and "+10 combat skills", getting Kvothe ready for book three.  At least they were entertaining training montages.

In the first book I loved Elodin, but I think his character sucked in this one.  His "classes" were supposed to be ridiculous, but I found some of the comments and humour better suited to college jocks than to Elodin's eccentric and mysterious academic character:

Uresh.  Your next assignment is to have sex.  If you do not know how to do this, see me after class.

At times Rothfuss used some bizarre time compression, like his description of the entire boat trip from the university:

In brief, there was a storm, piracy, treachery, and shipwreck, although not in that order.  It also goes without saying that I did a great many things, some heroic, some ill-advised, some clever and audacious.

Sounds to me like his editor told him to take out an unnecessary plot line, but he didn't want to completely remove it.  And this was only one of a number of times that Kvothe loses absolutely all of his possessions except his extremely expensive lute which somehow miraculously survives each time.

Another character incongruity that bothered me was after Kvothe left the Adem he seemed to throw out all the psychological lessons they taught him and turn into a bloodthirsty arsehole.  Within a few pages he was killing a whole heap of people and saying things like:

And if you ever do anything to either of them, I'll know.  I will come here, and kill you, and leave your body hanging in a tree.

Oh, and I haven't read such ridiculous sexual tension as when Kvothe and Denna are bathing in the stream near Imre since the Twilight series.

Having said all that, I really did like this book, and it was pretty much impossible to put down.  The world Rothfuss has created is fascinating.  The branches of magic: sympathy, sygaldry, naming etc. are well presented, and semi-scientific.  I love the Chandrian, so dark, myseterious, and powerful that even speaking their true names can be a death sentence. 

Now for some spoliers and plot guessing.  I suspect that Bredon is an Amyr - he is too involved in the story to not show up again.  He may also turn out to be Mister Ash - Denna's patron, or her patron could be one of the Chandrian.  I think there are also more surprises coming about Bast, and I'm sure Kvothe's little Adem training friend will save his life at least once.

Update: I originally gave this 4.5, but decided I was being too harsh. 5 stars!

The Passage by Justin Cronin (4 stars)

The Stand meets I Am Legend meets The Road, what's not to like?

Cronin's venture into apocalyptic vampire fiction is unusual in that he covers both pre and post apocalypse in significant detail.  I think a lot of authors would have just started immediately after the viral outbreak, or even later after the survivors have been living behind the walls of The Colony for a number of generations.

The result is a huge break in the story almost exactly one third of the way through the book when the virus is released.  Many of the central characters die and are replaced by completely unknown, but even more important, characters.  This break in the story is quite unsettling, but on reflection I think it is something I like about the novel.

I was less impressed with the switches between Sara's journal epistolary style and the regular third person - it just seemed like a lazy way to fill in travel time, and much of it was boring: got food here, water there.  There were also some ridiculous coincidences sprinkled throughout the book, like when they find an orchard in Utah(!!) just after they had run out of food, followed by an Outdoor World when they really needed equipment and weapons.  Just as an aside Outdoor World would be my first stop for post-apocalyptic shopping :)

I'm a sucker for post-apocalyptic survival stories, so I liked descriptions of The Colony's daily life: watches, battle training, power maintenance, lights.  Hiding the horrors of the real world from the kids until they were 8 seems like a strategy that, while well meaning, could result in some serious psychological damage as their safe world crumbles.  What is worse?  Knowing or not knowing?

There are many parallels to The Stand: Auntie is very close to Mother Abagail, Vegas for the bad guys and Colorado for the good guys, and the apocalypse is caused by a virus that escapes from a military facility.  Having said that, The Passage is much less mystical/religious than The Stand.  The vampires/virals/smokes seemed to be directly lifted from I Am Legend.

Many people on amazon have described the book as horror, but it didn't read like horror to me.  However, it could be made into a fantastic and really scary movie.

I'm not sure how this will go as a trilogy - I thought Cronin tidied up more loose ends than were necessary, making for a ragged ending that dragged on for quite a while after the climax.  There are plenty more original virals to hunt down, so he has left himself plenty of story.

4 stars.

Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy (2.5 stars)

I was ready to love this book. The Road and No Country for Old Men are both fantastic books, and many reviewers on Amazon claim this is McCarthy's best work. I don't agree.

Like most McCarthy books, it is often difficult to tell who is speaking and what is going on, but I was ready for that. What I wasn't ready for was the rambling dense prose, often waxing philosophical, so different from the punchy and intense dialogue of The Road and No Country:

Whether his history should run concomitant with men and nations, whether it should cease. He'd long forsworn all weighing of consequence and allowing as he did that men's destinies are given yet he usurped to contain within him all that he would ever be in the world and all that the world would be to him and be his charter written in the urstone itself he claimed agency and said so and he'd drive the remorseless sun on to its final endarkenment as if he'd ordered it all ages since, before there were paths anywhere, before there were men or suns to go upon them.

BUH??  I feel like one day McCarthy is going to say "Surprise! I wrote that with a computer program that looks up random words in a thesaurus!". A reviewer on Amazon summed it up perfectly with:

It's the kind of book everybody wants to have read, but few enjoy reading. As such, it naturally elicits a certain kind of intellectual pretension in those who have slogged through it.

Unlike other McCarthy books I can't even say the characters were great. The judge is a horrible character that commits seemingly random acts of violence, a sort of wild west version of Mark 'Chopper' Read. But we never really know him deeply, or indeed at all, and instead are left to wonder at the horror of his actions. The Kid, notionally the central character, is also bereft of any deep development.

The story McCarthy tells is of a band of American misfits on the wild west frontier. They become killers tasked with collecting scalps of Apaches and other Indians, before turning their hand to collecting scalps of pretty much anyone: Mexicans, settlers, and their own. All of this happens in a dream-like landscape alternating between gore, complex descriptions of the desert, and philosophy.

2.5 stars.

The Silmarillion by JRR Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien (0 stars)

The Silmarillion is now officially the worst book I have ever read, easily beating out The Savage Detectives.  I have to admit to not really knowing what I was getting myself into with this book - it feels very similar to reading the bible.  Thousands of years are covered in its pages: epic battles are described with single sentences, and hundreds of characters and places are introduced and immediately discarded.  It's not quite 'Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat...', but it isn't far off either:

The Feanturi, masters of spirits, are brethren, and they are called most often Mandos and Lorien. Yet these are rightly the names of the places of their dwelling, and their true names are Namo and Irmo.

Namo the elder dwells in Mandos, which is westward in Valinor. He is the keeper of the Houses of the Dead, and the summoner of the spirits of the slain. He forgets nothing; and he knows all things that shall be, save only those that lie still in the freedom of Iluvatar. He is the Doomsman of the Valar; but he pronounces his dooms and his judgements only at the bidding of Manwe. Vaire the Weaver is his spouse...

If you think this is just background, and the real story is coming, think again. I can see that Tolkien wanted to create a mythology and a world for his language to live in outside of the timelines of LOTR and The Hobbit, but did it have to be in such a boring format? Even if he had gone into some detail about the battles, or life in the elvish cities it might have held my interest. I'm bailing at page 248.

0 stars.

Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein (3 stars)

Starship Troopers is a classic of the Sci-Fi genre.  It won the Hugo in 1960, and was made into a movie in 1997 by a director who, rumour has it, didn't even finish reading the book.

Having seen the movie first, I was quite surprised to find this book was as much about the war with 'the bugs' as Animal Farm is about animals on a farm.  Heinlein uses the futuristic war as a minor plot device to present his philosophy on government, crime, and punishment.  He essentially blames the crime problems of the late 20th century on bleeding heart liberalism that avoided harsh punishments for minors.  In Heinlein's society all crime is sorted out quickly with a good flogging (literally).

Heinlein's crime-free society of the future is governed by veterans - only those who have served a term in the military are 'citizens' and have a right to vote.  Unlike most cases in history where a small class of people have reserved the right to vote and make decisions, the rights of those who can't vote have been perfectly preserved and the 'citizens' haven't sought any advantage for themselves.  Hmmm...

The implausibility doesn't stop there.  While I liked the sentiment of reducing the number of armchair officers in the army and deploying every single person into battle, I just don't think it would work as presented by Heinlein.  If your most senior generals and strategists who are running the war can 'buy a farm' all at once in a fight on the ground, as easily as a private, it is going to be pretty difficult to maintain cohesion and long term strategy.  Not to mention that the senior leadership holds the most valuable information and would be equally as prone to capture as the most junior grunt.

In any case, I found the book interesting, but probably would have liked it a lot more if it actually was a Sci-Fi novel, not a philosophy discussion with a Sci-Fi framework.

3 stars.

The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe (5 stars)

1980s GREED in New York! The main character in The Bonfire of the Vanities, Sherman McCoy, is a brilliant depiction of 1980s greed: he has a multimillion-dollar income as a bond salesman at Pierce and Pierce on Wall street, a huge apartment on Park Avenue featured in Architectural Digest, a complete inability to describe what he actually does for a living, and a stupendous ego and arrogance as a self-described 'Master of the Universe'.

Sherman comes to strife in the Bronx with his deliciously evil mistress, and the reader follows as his life unravels and he rides the rollercoaster down into the territory of the downtrodden Bronx legal system. This arc brings him into contact with great characters like sleazy criminal defense attorney Thomas Killian, and Larry Kramer who believes his best chance at getting chicks is to impress female jurors with a showy TV-style trial manner and strong sternocleidomastoid muscles.

As Sherman's star falls, Peter Fallow, the epitome of unethical tabloid journalism, rides his story to success with the help of the morally dubious Reverend Bacon. I loved the description of Fallow's life before his big story, and his attempt to bury the monster of his shame in alcohol (preferably paid for by someone else):

Something had happened last night. These days he often woke up like this, poisonously hung over, afraid to move an inch and filled with an abstract feeling of despair and shame. Whatever he had done was submerged like a monster at the bottom of a cold dark lake. His memory had drowned in the night, and he could feel only the icy despair. He had to look for the monster deductively, fathom by fathom.

Wolfe's writing is masterful. I enjoyed his depiction of Sherman's social failure, 'a social light of no wattage whatsoever', at the high-society Bavardages' dinner party amidst the 'hock-hock-hock' and 'haw-haw-haw' of fake laughter from the society automatons. The description of Sherman and his wife's transport to the party captures the ridiculous lifestyle of New York's extremely rich. Having discounted taking a cab as too low-brow, and not even considered walking, the McCoys (remember this is 1980s dollars):

...had hired this car and this driver...who would drive them six blocks, wait three and a half or four hours, then drive them six blocks and depart. Including 15 percent tip and the sales tax, the cost would be $197.20 or $246.50...

I loved this book. I was going to complain about the abrupt ending, but somehow it seemed fitting to have Sherman 'dressed for jail' and completely embracing the loss of everything in the midst of the mob.

5 stars.

Seabiscuit: an American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand (5 stars)

I came to this true story with a fair degree of skepticism, since I have a complete disinterest in horses and horse racing. So how did I come across this book? Hillenbrand's Seabiscuit is at number 11 on Amazon when you rank all books by average customer review. This is pretty amazing, considering Harry Potter is at #1 and #2, followed by some self-help books.

At the start of the book, Laura Hillenbrand delivers you into the early 1900s to witness the first troubled steps of the auto industry, led, in San Francisco, by Seabiscuit's future owner Charles Howard. Automobiles were considered such a menace to horse traffic that:

The laws of at least one town required automobile drivers to stop, get out, and fire off Roman candles every time horse-drawn vehicles came into view.

You follow Seabiscuit through the atmosphere of the 1920s and 30s and learn lots about horses, jockeys, and racing along the way. I have much more respect for jockeys as sports-people, and really had no idea of what they put themselves through to make weight:

To make weight in anything but high-class stakes races [where imposts were higher so jockeys could weigh more], jockeys had to keep their weight to no more than 114 pounds [52 kg]...Red Pollard went as long as a year eating nothing but eggs. Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons confessed that during his riding days a typical dinner consisted of a leaf or two of lettuce, and he would eat them only after placing them on a windowsill to dry the water out of them. Water, because of its weight, was the prime enemy, and jockeys went to absurd lengths to keep it out of their systems...For jockeys who were truly desperate, there was one last resort...you could get a hold of a special capsule, a simple pill guaranteed to take off all the weight you wanted. In it was the egg of a tapeworm.

I also found the on-track racing tactics and strategies fascinating: the need for split-second timing, positioning, and an innate feel for the horse and its capabilities.

Seabiscuit's story is one of the classic underdog: he was short, knobby-kneed, and totally underrated by the news media and racing professionals, but adored by the public. At the height of his fame after his classic battle with War Admiral (the race of the century), and before finally claiming the Santa Anita Handicap, Seabiscuit was drawing crowds of 40,000 just to see his training sessions. Seabiscuit was more than a household name, he was a superstar in a great East-coast vs. West-coast battle with War Admiral:

A study of news outlets revealed that the little horse had drawn more newspaper coverage in 1938 than Roosevelt, who was second, Hitler (third), Mussolini (fourth), or any other newsmaker.

Hillenbrand has done a fantastic job in bringing Seabiscuit's story to life. I'll skip the Shirley Temple film The Story of Seabiscuit, described by Hillenbrand:

Hollywood took the tale of Seabiscuit's life, deleted everything interesting, and made an inexcusably bad movie..

in favour of the 2003 version, but I don't expect it will be able to hold a candle to this book.

5 stars.