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.

Best of 2010 as read by G

The best (5 stars):

• Pillars of The Earth by Ken Follett
• A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Special mentions (4.5 stars):

• The Stand by Stephen King
• John Dies @ the End by David Wong
• No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
• Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Baghdad's Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran
• Magician by Raymond E. Feist
• The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
• Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth (3 stars)

I saw this book reviewed on the First Tuesday Book Club, and was intrigued, as the comments were positively glowing from all the reviewers. 'Fantastic' and 'genius' were thrown around! I have to say I was a little disappointed, but I'm glad I read this 274-page stream-of-consciousness rant. The fictional definition of Portnoy's complaint at the start of the book sums things up quite nicely:

A disorder in which strongly-felt ethical and altruistic impulses are perpetually warring with extreme sexual longings, often of a perverse nature.

The book begins with a sex-obsessed Jewish boy living with his overbearing parents and using every possible opportunity to masturbate. He even pretends he has diarrhea, so as to visit the toilet more often to 'pull his putz', all while his mother stands outside the door screaming that she wants to see his stool! From there the reader follows Portnoy's complaint through a series of terrible relationships and graphic sexual encounters. I can imagine this book was fairly controversial when it was published in 1969.

The writing is impressive, but also quite irritating. It feels like you are being yelled at by a narcissistic arsehole who loves the 'C-word'. Having said that, Roth does a great job of creating Portnoy and building his character.

3 stars.

The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates by Wes Moore (2.5 stars)

This book has an interesting premise - two boys share the same name and grow up in the same rough neighbourhood in Baltimore. One becomes a Rhodes scholar and works on wall street, the other goes to gaol for shooting a cop in a jewellery robbery. Why?

Moore examines his early childhood, and that of his namesake. Some of the early passages were cringe-worthy with Moore giving a Brady-bunch portrayal of arguments between his parents:

"Wes, he needs to learn what is acceptable and what is not!" My father agreed, but with a gentle laugh, reminded her that cursing at a young boy wasn't the most effective way of making a point.

But for the most part, Moore describes both upbringings, their choices and key events, well. The author claims to not know what made the difference between his life and the other Wes, but it is fairly obvious - the upbringing, education, and (relative) wealth of his mother. When author-Wes was heading down the drugs/gangland path his mother moved neighbourhoods, worked two jobs, and eventually pooled together enough money to send him to an expensive military academy. After some initial rebellion author-Wes settled into academy life, and excelled.

In contrast, the other Wes looked up to his drug dealer half-brother, and his mother was powerless to stop his slide into dealing and violence.

An interesting book, and a pretty good first book, but it felt a little lacklustre. The author also put me off side with a self-centered brag about his travels and achievements at the end of the book:

I've climbed Mount Kilimanjaro and felt how quickly the dense Kenyan heat at the base of the mountain transforms into the chill of its snowcapped peak, where deep breaths are hard to find. I've worshiped with thousands of other Christians in the Yoido Full Gospel Church, the world's largest Christian congregation, in Seoul, Korea. And I've...

2.5 stars