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.