Between the Bridge and the River by Craig Ferguson

Great book. Hysterically funny, witty, can't put it down book. A mixture of Hunter Thompson, Douglas Adams, Kurt Vonnegut - pretty high praise for a first time author. For a transplated Scotsman, he nails Americans, good time religion and the entertainment business right to the wall. Ferguson flies his creativity just as the bumblebee flies.

From the book:
Apologia: This story is true. Of course, there are many lies therin and most it did not happen, but it's all true.

In this sense it is deeply religious, perhaps even biblical.

History: Nine of the first thirteen signatures on the American Declaration of Independence were from Scotsmen or men of Scottish descent.

Confession: It is a sacred rite enhanced by allegory, exaggeration and lies.

Time: Is only linear for engineers and referees.

Science: The laws of physics state that given the mass-to-wingspan ratio of a bumblebee, it is impossible for the creature to fly. But it does.

Ferguson takes a pair friends from Scotland and a pair of brothers from the Deep South in America and shows you their separate yet divergent paths to success and their downfalls. Sex, love, drugs, religion, alcohol, mass murderers, Carl Jung, the Soul and short stories within the story make appearances.

It's not often a comic, an actor can successfully crossover to other media's, Ferguson does where Chris Elliott doesn't.

Added info: This book is not for the Gentle Reader. It is not sanitized for your protection.

Timothy; or, Notes of an Abject Reptile by Verlyn Klinkenborg

Terry's book club selection. I started it today while waiting for an xray.

From the perpective of a tortise who lives in a garden in England. His ponderings about humans, life and life in and out there. This is what I got out of the first 23 pages. Almost victorian prose.

Will post a review later.

It's later. I finished it last night. You have to be a gentle reader to totally enjoy this book. I am not a gentle reader. I enjoyed some of it but overall it was slow and stylistically it drove me crazy.

The characters are real. Gilbert White, a 18th century curate who wrote, "The Natural History of Selbourne" kept Timothy (who he thought was a male tortoise but in reality a female) for over 40 yrs in his garden. He journaled his every appearance and disappearance from hibernation. The book uses Whites journaling as a vehicle to show what the world (a small plot in Selbourne, England) encompassed; using Timothy as the protagonist.

Faintly interesting, times were more difficult; the living harder. The people much the same as today. I didn't learn all that much, although there is a glossery in the back for reference. Many of the flora and fauna needed to be explained in American english for those of us on this side of the pond. One learns about rooks, chaff, ewes, asparagus, the ponderous actions of a tortoise in a strange land. Timothy is not native to England, has come to England via a sailor some where off the coast of Turkey. (S)he speaks of the frailty of humans, God and our inability to see.

Sentence and paragragh structures made it tedious to read:

"The painstaking paradise of this garden. Adjoining fields. Plotting and measuring and planning. Cutting vistas. Raising obelisks and oil-jars. Touching up poor Hercules. Timming hedges. Amending this bit of earth and that bit. Mining chalk to spread on the filds. Digging basins to fill with black malm. Burying rank, stiff, wheat-bearing clay under loads of ashes and manure. Under marl, lime rubbish, peat-dust, soot from the malt-house, old rotting thatch. Woolen rags to be dug into the ho-garden. Half a barrel of American gypsum on the fourth ridge of Timothy Turners wheat."

Compelling isn't it?

Some of it was beautiful, some of the introspection spot on, but overall, the prose has a flow that gives fleeting moments, not fully realized moments. Makes me wonder why I need more than three word sentences of descriptions, but I don't wonder long.

In The Ruins (Crown of the Stars, Book 6) Kate Elliott

Ho hum, the 6th book of this fantasy series. Read it, didn't care. 624 pages of don't really care for it. The worst part of it is the author split this book in half, the other half is still to be published. I suppose I'll have to get the last book just so I know how the series ends.

Basically court intrigue, who survived the cataclysmic changing of the world and who's betraying whom.

It is the trouble with long series thats for sure. I think I prefer trilogies that end at the end of the third and if that series is successful start a new trilogy from a different perspective if one must.

War and Peace

Seriously, this is one of the best books I have ever read. The characters are compelling, the battle scenes dramatic. It is long, but my philosophy about longer books is that you get to know the characters very well. Also, when you consider how many trilogies and series some of us have read, it isn't that different. I found that I couldn't put it down. An especially sublime section was the siege of St. Petersberg by Napoleon and then the long march home, when so many of his troops died or deserted during the harsh Russian winter.

I had to read it for a class called The Epic Novel. All of the books were long. But this one actually seemed to go by quickly.

My only advice is that there are certain parts you could easily skip. One is the chapter where Pierre is initiated into the Masons. Then, whenever Tolstoy starts philosophizing about the movement of troops during war, skip that too.

"The Cyberiad" by Stanislaw Lem

above: Trurl the Constructor.

(Polish author Stanislaw Lem was one of the great writers of Science Fiction; Best known for his novel "Solaris", he could always find new ways of looking at things, and had a wry sense of irony and politics. He died on March 27, 2006 at the age of 84. (more on Lem's death here.))

""Not far from here, by a white sun, behind a green star, lived the Steelypips, illustrious, industrious, and they hadn't a care: no spats in their vats, no rules, no schools, no gloom, no evil influence of the moon, no trouble from matter or antimatter - for they had a machine, a dream of a machine with springs and gears and perfect in every respect."
- The first sentence of "The Fifth Sally or Trurl's Prescription".

Lem's"The Cyberiad" delivers to my tastes better than any other book I've read. Subtitled "Fables for the Cybernetic Age", it is set in a universe (possibly the distant future) where most sentient creatures are machines. Carbon-based life exists, but it is rare to the point of being mythological. The book is a series of short stories (or fables) primarily concerning the doings of Trurl and Klapaucius, two "constructors" who are able to build just about anything, from a machine that can create anything beginning with "n" to a poet which can create poetry from almost any set of requirements. Instructed to create a "Poem about a haircut! But lofty, noble, tragic, timeless, full of love, treachery, retribution, quiet heroism in the face of certain doom! Six lines, cleverly rhymed, and every word beginning with the letter s!" the mechanical bard recited:

Seduced, shaggy Samson snored.
She scissored short.
Sorely shorn,
Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed,
Silently scheming, Sightlessly seeking
Some savage, spectacular suicide.

Their creations are not perfect, however. For example, Trurl creates a stories-tall calculator which not only thinks two and two are seven, but is arrogant about it. He ends up chasing the constructors into a cave after ransacking a village looking for the constructors. Another time, Trurl tries to help an exiled king by giving him a tiny "model" of a society. The king, a despot, creates a religion with the king as a god. Later, Klapaucius convinces Trurl that he modeled the world too well, and that the "people" in the "model" suffered as much as everyone. Trurl went back to take it away, only to find... well I won't spoil it.

Lots of great, fun adventures, written masterfully, telling meaningful stories. I just can't recommend it enough, although I don't expect anyone to enjoy it as much as I have.

Credit for the beautiful prose (and poetry) in this book should be given not just to Lem, but to his translator, Michael Kandel. To maintain the meaning, humor and poetic structure of Lem's writing while moving it from Polish to English must have been quite difficult. Since I don't read Polish, I can't actually say that it gained or lost anything in translation, but the result is (to me) extraordinarily amusing and beautiful.

A few of mine

Jim had a great idea, post a list of favorite reading. My list here is all Sci-fi/Fantasy. That's not to say I don't read other things but this genre is one of my absolute favorites.

Much of the sci-fi/fantasy I read is more memorable (for me anyway) by author. So this list might be by author or by title. Many of these are either series or pretty long 600 –1,000 pages. Like I said, I prefer complex epics. There is a mixture of both Sci-fi and Fantasy, some cross disciplines yet are sci-fi at the end.

A Door Into Summer: Heinlein. A novella having to do with time travel and it’s problems. Short, light and entertaining reading as is almost all Heinlein.

Time Enough for Love: Heinlein again. Epic and like Stranger in a Strange Land ultimate Heinlein.

Wraeththu Histories: Storm Constantine: You’ve got to go to the link to see the comprehensive summary. I cannot do it justice. Incredible work. Epic. Apocolypic world, human males change into something different. A mixture of both sci fi and fantasy. Extreme sexual content. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wraeththu

Jack L. Chalker: Midnight at the Well of Souls series: Many worlds accessed thru a well. Nathan Brazil, the protagonist who’s adventures in all the worlds keeps ya interested. I read this in my early 20’s, who knows if it would have the same appeal now. I used to have Dune on my favorites list…until I read it again last year. Now it seems simplistic and less complex than I thought decades ago.

Robin Hobbs: All of her books: Start out with Assassin's Apprentice. All of her books take place on the same world, although each series is set in a different part of the world and don’t really cross over to each series until the most recent books where some types of peoples from other books are mentioned but not characters. They are books of magic and adventure.

Tad Williams: he first appeared as a fantasy writer (Tailchasers Song and The Dragonbone Chair) and a very good one. I recommend ALL of his books but my favorite is The Otherland Series; sci-fi. Set in the future on earth, children are disappearing; not their bodies but their minds. And once caught they eventually die. Where have they gone? Gone into technology by playing online adventure reality games. The protagonist goes inside the technology to save her brother and finds whole fantasy worlds.

JV Jones: The Bakers Boy: another fantasy epic series. Four kingdoms, magic, an unlikely hero.

Dan Simmons: Ilium series. Set in the far future, in a far galaxy: Sentient robots, humans who can fax themselves to different places, regeneration, chroniclers who chronicle Gods and Goddess on Olympic Mons. Sci fi with a fantasy twist, but it’s totally sci fi.

A Few of My Favorite Light (and not-so-light) Reading Books

For most of my life, I have read a little bit every day; mostly at bedtime to distract me while I fall asleep. And since I've been such a nerd, my tastes tend toward the light, short, and anthropological; science fiction, a little bit of fantasy and everything else. Since it's been hard for me to dig through large tomes while falling asleep, I've read a lot of short stories.

In the near future, I plan to post some short reviews of my favorite books, but in the meantime I think I'll give you a short list of some of the books that I've enjoyed the most. I wouldn't generally call these great literature, but they've all amused, distracted, or informed me in some way. Many of them were pretty popular at one time, but a few are obscure. So, without very much description (for now), here are some books that I liked a lot. Your tastes may vary, but I'd be interested in your opinions on any that you have read.

(I've put asterisks (*) next to the books that are not-so-light reading.)

"The Cyberiad" by Stanislaw Lem (who died last month) - a collection of short stories set in a world (future?) where machine-based people and creatures are common, and carbon-based life is mostly just the stuff of myth. Brilliantly translated by Michael Kandel, with a few fun illustrations by a Polish artist, this is the book that I've kept at my bedside for over thirty years, and have re-read countless times. Occasionally it's laugh-out-loud funny, and humor and lightheartedness permeates the book. Subtitled "Fables for the Cybernetic Age", it truly delivers on something like the Brother Grimm fables; Lem operated in then-oppressive Poland and at the time had to cast his political messages in metaphor and mythology. That, combined with his sense of humor and poetry, created a new genre in this book. I don't know what to call it, but maybe someone else who reads it will. The first half of the book largely concerns the activities of Trurl and Klapaucius, two "constructors" who are robot engineers with close to god-like powers, solving problems (and sometimes failing to solve them) while traveling around the universe. The second half is a bit weaker (at least to me) partly because Trurl and Klapaucius are not as present, but any weak sections are more than compensated for by the strong sections. Written as a collection of short stories with huge injections of humore, this is my favorite book and I highly recommend that you read it if you haven't and you enjoy sci-fi.

"City" by Clifford D. Simak - a book aggregated from several related short stories about the future of man. The plot is about how man's actions lead to the end of man on Earth, talking smart dogs, self-sufficient robots made to serve mankind but with none left to serve, ant societies that use technology (and are otherwise pretty much unfathomable by mammals), and the culture and mythology of the smart dogs. This book operates on several levels, including as a metaphorical warning about the consequences of our actions (think "butterfly effect").

*"Stranger in a Strange Land" by Robert A Heinlein - Okay, I have been described as an aging hippie, but I read this book in the 4th grade, and it had a huge effect on my perspective on life. Since it's been around in the popular culture for the last 45 or so years, I'm not going to describe in detail, except to say that it provides one answer to the question
"what would happen if a human raised in an entirely alien culture were suddenly placed into American culture?" With interesting political, religious and social observations, it leads to some surprising (at least to a 10 year old boy in the mid-sixties) places. I doubt it has the potential to change your life like it once did mine, but it's still very interesting. Some say it gets too long-winded towards the end, but for me it was a fun read all the way through. When Heinlein originally wrote this book, his editors thought it needed to be cut by about 30%; although that may have made it easier to commit to and finish, I think it made it more confusing in the middle. After Heinlein died an unabridged version was released, which I believe is the best version to read, even though it's longer.

"The River Why" by David James Duncan - a very funny book about fly fishing, the inner journey, and twinkies. If you haven't read it, well, put it on your list!

*"Eon" by Greg Bear - Epic science fiction about man, and a way that the universe might work; almost religious, since it is at the heart a creation story.

*"The Foundation" series by Isaac Asimov - Another sci-fi epic; I think it's one of Asimov's best. Psychological, sociological, and far-reaching.

"Childhood's End" by Arthur C. Clarke - What would happen if our children evolved into another, more advanced form?

"The Tao of Pooh" by Benjamin Hoff - A fun, simple description of the fundamentals of Buddhism, set in the world of Winnie The Pooh. I wouldn't describe myself as a Buddhist, but I think that America would be a better place if all Americans knew a little bit more about it. This book is about education, not conversion and clarity, not dogma. The only "religious" book I have given to both of my kids. A very quick read.

"A Fine and Private Place" by Peter S. Beagle - A beautiful story about "life" in a cemetery, where the main protagonist hangs out and interacts with the dead and a Raven. Somehow, it brought a deep inner peace to me the first time I read it. I don't know why, though... I see it's been made into a musical currently in production (until mid-May 2006) in New York.

The "Discworld" series by Terry Pratchett - Really funny, easy-to-read (written for kids, I guess) fantasies set in a parody fantasy word. Full of british humor and baby boomer cultural references, they're really quite charming. They really hooked Lindsay and me a few years ago. If I had to compare them to anything, I'd say they're kind of like the "Hitchiker's Guide To The Universe" books crossed with the "Harry Potter" series. Try the first book, "The Color of Magic", and see if you like 'em!

I've run out of time for now, so I'm going to post this much for now; let me know what you think.

Wise Blood Flannery O'Connor

Wise Blood is in a collection of short stories: the other 2 are: The Violent Bear It Away and Everything That Arises Must Converge.

Wise Blood runs 120 pages, and each page was tough for me. Let me go back to the beginning of the WB experience. There is a foreword by Sally Fitzgerald, basically giving O'Connors background and then an analysis of each story evolution. It's runs some 34 pages and after about 25 I went straight to the actual story because I only have the one version, not the many versions Fitzgerald mentions and frankly it means nothing to me until after I read the story.

It took me 3 days to read it. THe story centers around Hazel Motes who runs from his religion but in turn actually turns him deeper into religion. There is a small cast of characters, each one as creepy as the previous. I didn't like the characters, didn't like the tone. As BABoR said in an earlier post, it'll leave you depressed.

Ah yeah. The writing reminded me of Rand, the period is similar, the setting reminded me of Capote, the characters reminded me of Steinbecks. But I can see where O'Connor is a writers writer not the publics writer. Rand always has some goodness, some grandiosity to her descriptions, her characters, even if they are basically seen as mean or evil. Capote gives one a sense of sympathy to each of his characters, a pathos that the everyman can see. Steinbeck's characters have more depth to them (as I see them) because there are differences in how the characters analyse and react to their circumstances.

All of her characters seem to be retarded. One could maintain well, this is the south and none of these people are all that educated but I'm of the mind even the uneducated are smart, eduction isn't anything without some deductive reasonsing. All the characters are base, crass and oblivious to anything but some unnamed psychological muck. I suppose living in this age one looks for reasons why people behave in certain ways and nobody in this book reasons well enough to understand why they do/say the things they do. I felt all the characters were despicable. I got no joy, no leap of resolution by any action of any character. Ok, maybe one minor character who told his young (underage) daughter that he was going to leave and he did. It was practically the only action that happened because he stated he was going to do something. Everything else was just done without reason given even in hints to the reader.

I think this is more of a writers story in that there is no satisfaction for the reader. The main characters had no satisfaction so why should the reader? The characters were well drawn but without understand the reasoning behind the characters it was if they were drawn to practice the worst in a character. Each character is a tragedy in toto.

I went back to read the foreword, all of it. I found it odd because Fitzgerald mentioned numerous times that O'Conner was a comic writer. Ah, I never got one iota of comic, comic antics, or lightness that one usually relates to a comic writer. Unless what she means is tragedy is comedy, then it's a real kneeslapper. I was lost in understanding the symbolism, my own fault I'm sure as I know the Bible ok but was not, in the reading of the book able to correlate Hazel Motes actions to any specific persons or situations from the Bible.

It was worth the read, just so I don't take for granted the skill in which writers today hone characters with more depth, more factors to understand behavior in characters. It teaches me that I am not comfortable with characters no matter where they are set that seem stupid to me. I mean it, the characters all seemed to have IQ's of barely functional levels.

I'm going to end up reading the other stories, would like to see how she evolves over time. Maybe I'll like the other stories. Maybe I'll see a bit of comic in her writing. Maybe I feel just as tortured. I don't know.

Life Interrupted - Spalding Gray

yet another book from Bill's pile o books.

Spaulding Gray is one of those people that I always associate with New York performance art, along side Laurie Anderson. The first time I came across him was via Swimming To Cambodia the video. A few years later I read it. I always made it a point to watch Letterman when he was on.

I thought he was handsome (in a similar way to Sam Sheppard), deep, dark, witty, wry, hysterically funny. But never in an In Your Face way. Swimming to Cambodia had this cadence that drew you in and tossed you around the entire time. He makes you think, he impells you you follow along and you can't help but follow where he leads.

So why haven't I picked this up until now? I don't know. Bill read it a long time ago, he loved it. But today I did. I've only read about half of it before I took a nap. Throughout the entire reading I had this odd mantra circling behind the words. Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead.

It made me sad to read Life Interrupted. I stopped at the first Obit (Laurie Anderson). He was so fucking there in his monologues that just knowing he's absent is profound to me. How trite of me to say that it feels like he's a friend who's allowed me to see how he sees, but wierdly thats how it feels. It's the human condition I suppose. We're so bombarded with television as a model that one often believes everyone but you lives life by the rules of what I'd call mass domestic hysteria.

More later as I finish the book.
1:34 am: Finished the book. The break midway, the interruption is sort of an intermission. Because seeing Spalding Gray thru the eyes of those who knew him gives both collaboration and illuminates more of him.

A must-read but after reading some of his other works.

The Tipping Point

Can we trace the tipping point of a specific event or trend? Yes, says author Malcolm Gladwell. So far (I'm about 1/2 thru the book) it's fascinating.

Identification of 3 types of communicators: Connectors, Mavens, Salesmen. Non-verbal facial cues and the dance we do with others while verbally communicating, is pretty familar to me but not to the nth degree he writes about. Errr, maybe I know it instinctually but never really have been able to articulate it other than to say, Yes, I read people pretty well.

Conceptual Stickiness: What keywords, key things make things stick with people. The whole chapter is sometimes obvious (like toddlers wanting/needing repetition) and sometimes not so obvious.

Contextual Power: Changing the environment thru context.

Some very interesting info on suicide, smoking and stickiness.

More later as I read. Ok, it's 1:24 am and I finished the book. Whooooooo. He lists his website in the last portion of the book: Click here to read about The Tipping Point


I highly recommend this book, it helps you understand how we humans frame and reframe our environment.

Good night, off to bed now that it's 1:31 am!