People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks (4 stars)

This has been on my to-read list forever, I thoroughly enjoyed March, and Year of Wonders was also pretty good. Like Year Of Wonders the historical aspects of the novel are great: and we get to sample all sorts of different time periods following the history of the haggadah.

So why had an illuminator working in Spain, for a Jewish client, in the manner of a European Christian, have used an Iranian paintbrush?

Also, like Year Of Wonders, it suffered from over-dramatisation, in this case in Hannah's modern-day story. A fairly implausible love interest jumps into bed, a big family secret is revealed, and there is a serious car crash, all of which felt like flashy over-played distractions getting in the way of the great historical vignettes. Towards the end of the novel it descended into farce: Hannah is pressured into a completely implausible spy-style mission that involves smuggling items through an airport in a suitcase with a custom-built secret compartment, and then performing a Mission-Impossible-style museum heist. blech.

In comparison, the short stories of the haggadah are fantastic: moving, heart-breaking, and inspiring.

...I have spent many nights, lying awake here in this room, thinking that the haggadah came to Sarajevo for a reason. It was here to test us, to see if there were people who could see that what united us was more than what divided us. That to be a human being matters more than to be a Jew or a Muslim, Catholic or Orthodox.

4 stars.

Dad Is Fat by Jim Gaffigan (4 stars)

Raising my two kids isn't even in the same ballpark as Jim Gaffigan's herculean task of raising five in a two-bedroom apartment in NYC, but I definitely still related to this book in many ways. It made me laugh out loud plenty of times, and I've found myself quoting bits of it to my wife days after finishing the book. If you're a dad, or going to be a dad, this is a great book to read. If you're not, it's probably good birth control. Here's some of my favourite quotes:

As a dad, you are Vice President. You are part of the Executive Branch of the family, but you are the partner with the weaker authority. In your children's eyes, you mostly fulfill a ceremonial role of attending pageants and ordering pizza.

...it wasn't just Jeannie and me; there was a midwife there, which means we believe in witchcraft. Actually, a midwife is a certified medical practitioner. She is not your "extra wife" and will not make you breakfast. I learned this the hard way.

Babies are the worst roommates. They're unemployed. They don't pay rent. The keep insane hours. Their hygiene is horrible. If you had a roommate that did any of the things babies do, you'd ask them to move out.

Nothing in my life has ever been as important as pushing the elevator button is to my three-year-old.

If you're a Jim Gaffigan fan you'll definitely already know some of the material. I watched one youtube video of his standup and recognised quite a few of the jokes. But in-between the jokes, the book is partly a love letter to his wife, and partly thoughtful reflection on parenthood but still in an irreverent style.

Failing and laughing at your own shortcomings are the hallmarks of a sane parent.

4 stars.

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury (3 stars)

Another sci-fi classic. Except this is less sci-fi, and more social commentary in a series of loosely-linked vignettes that happen to occur on Mars. Some of my favourite moments:

• The Earth Men must be the most unusual human-alien contact story I've ever read, where telepathic Martians frequently project hallucinations about being men from Earth, making it extraordinarily difficult for real men from Earth to be taken seriously.
• The anti-censorship message in Usher II where having read Edgar Allen Poe would have saved various overzealous sensors from death in a recreated House of Usher was a darkly humorous criticism that obviously later grew with Bradbury into Fahrenheit 451.
• In There Will Come Soft Rains I loved the idea of the automated house bravely plugging along after all of humanity has departed. It made me think of NEST Protect giving the smoke warnings, and brave little Roomba's trying to clean up ash even as the house burns down.

I found the idea that every single person on Mars would immediately pack up and depart for Earth after Earth had an entire continent and major cities obliterated by nuclear weapons just preposterous. Bradbury really wanted to show that greed, self-interest, and the worst parts of human nature eventually destroyed both planets, but he needed a better story for the Mars side.

"I was looking for Earthian logic, common sense, good government, peace and responsibility."
"All that up there?"
"No. I didn't find it. It's not there any more. Maybe it'll never be there again. Maybe we fooled ourselves that it was ever there."

Time and publishers have been unkind to this novel. I have two complaints about the kindle edition I read. First, the dates in the chapter headings have been advanced 30 years from the original. According to wikipedia this change occurred with publication of the 1997 edition, ostensibly so that the future was still in the future. I couldn't think of anything more pointless.

More sinister and worrying, the story "Way in the Middle of the Air" was replaced with another, according to Wikipedia because the original story was "less topical in 1997 than in 1950". The original story (which I found and read online) was about African-Americans freeing themselves from racism and servitude in 1950s USA by fleeing to Mars en masse to start again. Replacing it is whitewashing of the worst kind, and couldn't be more ironic in a novel with a strong anti-censorship message.

Definitely some nice ideas here, and an important piece of sci-fi history, but reading it today is more an exercise in understanding the origins of the genre than anything else.

3 stars.

Best of 2013 as read by G

A whole year of sci-fi! Last year China Miéville became one of my favourite authors, Hugh Howey finished the Wool saga strongly, and I dipped my toe into the world of Gene Wolfe, which I didn't exactly enjoy but the stories still seem to be haunting my brain almost a year later.

I read quite a few sci-fi classics last year, but many have aged very poorly and I didn't enjoy them, so I'm done with that and heading in an as-yet-undecided direction for 2014.

The best (5 stars):

• Altered Carbon: A Takeshi Kovacs Novel by Richard K. Morgan
• Embassytown by China Miéville

Special mentions (4.5 stars):

• Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand
• Shift Omnibus and Dust by Hugh Howey
• Old Man's War by John Scalzi
• Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
• The City & The City by China Miéville

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury (3.5 stars)

"By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes". Such a great title. More dark fantasy than horror, I was put off early in the novel when Bradbury tries way too hard to make sure you know the carnival is evil, and really scary....mmmmmkay?

So the maze waited, its cold gaze ready, for so much as a bird to come look, see, and fly away shrieking. But no bird came.

NO BIRD CAME. But anyway, it actually recovers and does get creepy, once some events have caught up with all the foreshadowing. Bradbury's writing is often poetic:

Times come when troughs, not tables, suit our appetites.

quite surrealist:

Outside, a weather of stars ran clear in an ocean sky.

and occasionally I just found it nonsensical:

Why are some people all grasshopper fiddlings, scrapings, all antennae shivering, one big ganglion eternally knotting, slip-knotting, square-knotting themselves? They stoke a furnace all their lives, sweat their lips, shine their eyes and start it all in the crib. Caesar's lean and hungry friends. They eat the dark, who only stand and breathe.

WAT? I dig weirdness and don't mind being confused while reading, but this type of thing broke the flow of the story for me a few times.

The father, Charles Halloway, has all of the best dialogue, which is not surprising since the two protagonists are children. His heart-to-heart with Will in the library where he tries to impart some wisdom in terms the kids will understand was quite moving, and my favourite part of the whole novel:

Could he say love was, above all, common cause, shared experience? That was the vital cement, wasn't it?

My favourite creepy moment was Will's encounter with the Dust Witch's balloon over his house:

...he saw her squinched blind-sewn eyes, the ears with moss in them, the pale wrinkled apricot mouth mummifying the air it drew in, trying to taste what was wrong with his act, his thought.

Overall, creepy carnival just seemed a bit too cliche to me: perhaps if I'd read this in 1962 I wouldn't be quite so jaded. I also took issue with Jim and Will's first encounter with the carnival: they 'killed' Cooger and got away far too easily given how powerful Dark and the Dust Witch are later in the novel.

A couple of reviewers mentioned they thought the movie (screenplay also written by Bradbury) was actually much more impressive than the novel. I'll have to check it out.

3.5 stars.

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand (4.5 stars)

Unbroken has been on my reading list ever since I was completely surprised by how much I loved Seabiscuit, not to mention it is also one of the all-time highest rated books on amazon. In fact, it was Hillenbrand's research for Seabiscuit that led her to discover Louie Zamperini, whose story was all over the 1950s newspapers she was reading for Seabiscuit.

Zamperini's story is simply amazing. I was expecting a fairly normal life story before getting to the piece about flying in a bomber in WWII, but Louie's story is fascinating even from childhood. He stages a mind-boggling number of practical jokes and pranks in his youth, goes on to break a series of running records, and competes in the 1936 Berlin Olympics where he meets Hitler and steals a German flag off the Reich Chancellery! All of this before we even get to the main part of the story.

A standout for me from the section about Louie's pranks and criminal activities during his youth was when Hillenbrand mentions eugenics and Louie's realisation that he was in danger of sterilization or worse:

Louie was never more than an inch from juvenile hall or jail, and as a serial troublemaker, a failing student, and a suspect Italian, he was just the sort of rogue that eugenicists wanted to cull. Suddenly understanding what he was risking, he felt deeply shaken.

I found this deeply shocking as I was completely unaware of America's extensive eugenics movement, sterilization laws, and influence on Nazi eugenics.

Another section that fascinated me was the description of WWII defences in San Francisco. Having lived in the area for a number of years it is amazing to think of mines at the entrance to the bay, a submarine net, and trenches along the coast.

In America, invasion was expected at any moment. Less than an hour after the Japanese bombed Hawaii, mines were being laid in San Francisco Bay....In coming days, trenches were dug along the California coast, and schools in Oakland were closed.

Also surprising was hearing about the significance of Nauru in WWII, known recently to all Australians as a hell-hole of an immigration detention centre. The Japanese took it in August 1942, mined the rich phosphate for munitions, and used it as a base to launch air strikes. Louie has a miraculous escape after bombing Nauru, returning to land with 594 holes in his airplane, some larger than his head.

No less astonishing is Louie's tale of survival on a life raft adrift in the Pacific. He survives simultaneous attacks from sharks and strafing from a Japanese fighter by diving under the raft and punching the sharks. No kidding. They also beat off sharks with the raft's oars and stab one in the eye with a pair of pliers.

Four more times the Japanese strafed them, sending Louie into the water to kick and punch at the sharks until the bomber had passed.

Honestly there were a number of moments in this book where I felt like it may have been exaggerated a little, the above is one of them. While I think the book was very well researched, large parts would have been based solely on Louie's descriptions and essentially impossible to verify.

But overall it is a fantastic read, and one of the most amazing stories to emerge from WWII. Louie's treatment in various POW camps is beyond horrible and yet he, somehow, remains unbroken.

Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen. The stubborn retention of it, even in the face of extreme physical hardship, can hold a man's soul in his body long past the point at which the body should have surrendered it. The loss of it can carry a man off as surely as thirst, hunger, exposure, and asphyxiation, and with greater cruelty.

4.5 stars

I, Robot by Isaac Asimov (2 stars)

Like a number of other Sci-Fi classics I've read recently, it's an impressive piece of history and a testament to Asimov's imagination and foresight, but it isn't a fantastic read compared with modern Sci-Fi. I, Robot, is a series of meditations on the now famous 3 laws of robotics that are well-known to all Sci-Fi fans.

In each short story Asimov probes the edges of the rules, looks for cases of ambiguity, and establishes test cases where the laws are pushed to their limit. It's more thought-experiment and test suite for a set of rules to make robots safe than thrilling fiction. Those who enjoy critical thinking and attempting to poke holes in a hypothesis will probably enjoy the stories, those looking for something along the lines of the hollywood blockbuster should not bother.

I appreciated its place in history, and respect the imaginative talent, but it just isn't a particularly good read.

2 stars.