The Reality Bug (Pendragon Book 4)

#123
Title: The Reality Bug (Pendragon Book 4)
Author: D. J. MacHale
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Year: 2003
Genre: young adult, fantasy & science fiction
375 pages

It's heartening that this series is improving over its run. This book borrows from some of the traditions of cyberpunk, though there's a countdown at the end that makes one wonder why the Veeloxians don't compute in binary. Ah, well. Maybe it's hexadecimal. Bobby steps more clearly into his role as lead traveler and Mark and Courtney play a bigger role in the narrative as we learn more about the acolytes who support the travelers.

There are still some internal consistency problems. For example, Bobby's journal is presented through a holographic technology that doesn't exist on Earth Two, which is forbidden. Mark frets about this for a few sentences, then, without resolving the problem, ignores it. There are, as always, other large continuity/consistency problems. At the end of the book, an enormous number of earlier-threatened deaths are made no mention of. Amusingly, a large portion of the book takes place in a virtual reality where internal consistency matters and is discussed by the characters.

Saint Dane suffers from complex villain syndrome; his plans to kill Bobby and destroy territories are needlessly byzantine. Near the end, we learn that there are 10 territories, making me wonder why Earth is three of them (Earths One, Two, and Three). Ten seems lonely in the vastness of time and space, but perhaps we will learn more about this seemingly low number as the series progresses.

The Italian Secretary: A Further Adventure of Sherlock Holmes

#122
Title: The Italian Secretary: A Further Adventure of Sherlock Holmes
Author: Caleb Carr
Publisher: St. Martin's
Year: 2005
Genre: mystery, Holmesiana
340 pages
If you must read every modern Holmes tale, then you'll want to read this one. As a person who enjoys both classical and comtemporary Holmes, I found it slightly below "okay." While Carr (whose work I've enjoyed) hits the tone and language right, the narrative never quite gets off the ground. It's plodding and Holmes has no sparkle. The events almost hang together, but don't quite cohere. Holmes's conclusions often aren't based on facts known to the reader, making this a passive mystery. Holmes's speculations about supernatural phenomena are no less jarring simply because the anthology for which this was originally intended had ghosts and Holmes as its premise--it's a weak idea, not well-rooted in Holmes canon. Finally, perhaps I'm dense, but  I don't know who the perhaps-Gaelic-speaking hunchback who runs off toward the end is (surely not the ghost of Rizzio; why would an Italian speak Gaelic?). Nor do I know why Watson and Holmes show so little interest in him. I had to struggle to finish this novel, which feels too long for its contents. I did enjoy the coincidence of reading two books in a row that both included discussion of the use of siege engines to fling plague-ridden bodies over the enemy's battlements, but that is not a sufficient reward for the difficulties this book presented.

The Last Siege

#121
Title: The Last Siege
Author: Jonathan Stroud
Publisher: Miramax
Year: 2003
Genre: young adult
297 pages

A delightful and well-delivered young adult novel from the author of The Bartimaeus Trilogy, The Last Siege plays with the conventions of fantasy while lightly skirting the genre. Stroud's characters are believable, which is important to the reader's experience, since they are not always credible. Indeed, a major strand of the novel involves the characters' evaluation of the others' reports about their own trustworthiness and experiences. The situation into which the teens are drawn is made plausible by Stroud's shaping of the narrative, and all three characters are largely sympathetic. Stroud may be forgiven a continuity flaw or two (early on, Emily's sled simply disappears from the tale). He picks his details well, and if you're not cold and exhausted by the end, you're not reading attentively enough.

The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible

#119
Title: The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible
Author: A. J. Jacobs
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Year: 2007
Genre: memoir, religion
389 pages
I was pleasantly surprised by Jacob's documentation of his year of biblical literalism. When I began, I had a number of concerns, based in part on his last book, The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World. The Year of Living Biblically addresses some of the concerns I had in both instances about a rather mechanistic approach to a year-long, self-imposed, all-encompassing task. I'd have liked to see a more explicit discussion of the reality that by the time the Bible was redacted, much editing had occurred and the documents already reflected past practices that even then were functionally unknowable. (Having proofread upward of 25 volumes of Jacob Neusner's Talmud and Mishnah translations and commentaries (e.g., this kind of thing), I am all too aware of the multi-page disputes that one verb could provoke even hundreds of years ago). Jacobs does say a number of times that even biblical literalism involves interpretation and picking and choosing (he gives the example of not actually plucking one's eye out if it offends one), but it might have been useful for him to discuss in more detail that there was no period in which all of the laws found in either testament were actually followed simultaneously.

I'd also have liked more reflection on the process, a quarterly summing up, for example. Since the structure is chronological rather than thematic, at its worst it reads like a diary of tasks (today I threw a stone at an adulterer--check). Generally , however, Jacobs's narrative moves along at a reasonable clip, is pretty funny (though I do wonder why my local Borders stocks it under "Humor" rather than "Religion"), informative, and good-natured. Though some of Jacobs's actions are bizarre out of context, I imagine that many readers will identify with his ongoing difficulties telling the truth, not swearing, and trying to adhere to dietary restrictions.

Jacobs's account of following Old Testament prescriptions is more successful than his New Testament months, which are less richly detailed. He does talk about his difficulty as a Jew (even an agnostic Jew) in following some of Christianity's rules. I kept wishing he'd taken a full Old Testament year, then spent another year immersed in a religious tradition entirely alien to him. (I must say apropos of this that I don't blame him for not doing so, and his wife is saint enough as things stand).

For more tales of year-long obsessive pursuits, read Jacobs's The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World, Julie Powell's Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen, and Mark Obmascik's The Big Year. Please feel free to add comment with other year-long quests to do some big task. For general obsession, it's hard to go wrong with Stefan Fatsis's Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players. If you'd like to drive a friend or relation to nervous exhaustion, give him or her all of these books at once. Enjoy!

Gun, with Occasional Music

#120
Title: Gun, with Occasional Music
Author: Jonathan Lethem
Publisher: Tor
Year: 1994
Genre: science fiction, mystery
262 pages

It has a kangaroo walking into a bar, see? What's not to like? This was Lethem's first novel and it's just as confident and sharp as the rest. A dystopian noir detective novel of the future, Gun, with Occasional Music hits its tone well and sustains it evenly throughout. Some detail (including the occasional music of the title) is not as well-developed as I'd have liked. The plot develops in the Fahrenheit 451-A Scanner Darkly range, plus the expected Chandler-Hammett twists and complications. The final conceit is a little simplistic and not nearly as effective as the narrator (and perhaps author) seem to think, but if that doesn't bother readers of McCarthy's The Road, neither should it trouble Lethem's fans. If you're planning to read both, read The Yiddish Policeman's Union before this; otherwise, Chabon will be too depressing by comparison.

The Rejection Collection Vol. 2: The Cream of the Crap

#118
Title: The Rejection Collection Vol. 2: The Cream of the Crap
Editor: Matthew Diffee
Publisher: Simon Spotlight Entertainment
Year: 2007
Genre: cartoons, humor
293 pages

A weak follow-up to the first collection. Only one or two of the cartoons included made me laugh. Scatology seemed over-represented (the subtitle "Cream of the Crap" might have been a clue). The cartoonists' self-completed bios were far more entertaining than their rejected cartoons in most cases. Diffee's explanation of the submission-to-rejection process is interesting and his appendix on reasons for rejection is more entertaining than some of the cartoons.

I may have been biased by an interview with Matthew Diffee that I heard on on National Public Radio before reading the book. Diffee explains a cartoon of his, beginning "It's Che Guevara--or however you say his name, I don't even know." "Sigmoidoscope," he says in relation to another cartoon, "I didn't know that was a real thing." In my head, I hear Hermione Granger: "What an idiot." I think less of Diffee after hearing him attempt to explain the cartoons, though his point that it's odd to narrate cartoons on the radio is well-taken. For his part, the interviewer also mangles the word "tyrannosaurus" ("tyrannus rex") and says it has "forepaws," which is rather shocking for Fresh Air. Since none of this reflects on the book per se, I have tried to put it aside.

In summary, the book was mildly entertaining, but for my money, the first collection is better.

The Never War (Pendragon Book 3)

#117
Title: The Never War (Pendragon Book 3)
Author: D. J. MacHale
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Year: 2003
Genre: young adult, fantasy & science fiction
336 pages

This third installment of the Bobby Pendragon series has the usual glitches--for example, as the whole second book made clear, Courtney and Mark are not the only people who know where Bobby is, since Mitchell does, too; Bobby worries briefly that Jinx might be Saint Dane but decides that "nothing about her set my radar off" (119) though his "radar" was highly inadequate in book two, etc. However, there are far fewer of these errors than in the first two books, and higher internal consistency.
In the present volume, Mark and Courtney are almost absent, relegated to just a narrative bracket around Bobby's story. Fortunately, Mark is dissatisfied, too, and at the end of the book begins to explore ways to support Bobby more directly. The conflict this time takes place on First Earth in the 1930's and involves an enjoyable alternate history of the World War II era. Star Trek fans may hearken back to the original series episode The City on the Edge of Forever at times.

Unlike the first two books, Bobby's internal emotional battles seem realistic and genuine. This inspires the reader identification and empathy that have been lacking to this point. The present volume is a bildungsroman. That couldn't be said for the previous two.This makes me cautiously optimistic about the direction of the series, and hopeful about reading further.