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Impressions on Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang Grrr—I wrote up a big list of impressions, and Newspro deleted them. I'm sure it's not Newspro's fault, but I'm pretty frustrated. At any rate: I'm more than halfway through Kate Wilhelm's Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang. It's well-written and interesting, but slow-paced. I have a minor problem with one of the premises of the book—that some sort of telepathy ties cloned brothers/sisters together—but Wilhelm does a pretty good job of making that plausible. The book is also not emotionally gripping enough to keep me up at night. Part of the problem is the book's episodic structure: the first two parts of the book are basically two independent stories, although I'm hoping the third part (the longest of the three) will tie the two parts together. Still, it's a pleasant (and short!) read. I should have a review up in a few days. Spraining my wrists with A Suitable Boy On Ali's suggestion, I've decided to start reading (at some point) Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy. I didn't realize before I checked it out that this bruiser is a 1,300-page novel—and it's supposedly something of an Indian soap opera too. Now, 1,000+ pages don't daunt me, but 1,000+ pages of soap-operaish romantic escapades is a little bit scary.Ali suggested Seth's book in a long discussion we had about the different fantasy/sci-fi novels we read as kids (and more recently too). Reading those books is such an abiding passion for me that it's always good to find somebody else who enjoys them so much. In the same discussion, Shuko urged me to continue reading A Prayer for Owen Meany despite my ongoing reservations about the quality of that book. Supposedly "everything comes together in the end." And, once I'm done with that, I'm supposed to read Irving's The Cider House Rules, as suggested by Ali. Of course, that'll depend both on whether I liked A Prayer for Owen Meany and whether A Suitable Boy turns out to be pretty good—but Ali and I seem to have pretty similar tastes (dislike The Chronicles of Amber, like The Earthsea Trilogy), so it looks like there's more Irving on the horizon. New Review: Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep ADDED a review for Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep. Quite a fun book—though it wasn't as mind-bogglingly good as I remembered. If I recall correctly, the reason I used to think it was so fabulous was that I wasn't expecting much out of it and ended up being highly entertained. Now, with my expectations so high, it didn't seem quite so good; but it's still a fun read, and highly recommended. Next up, a shorter book: Kate Wilhelm's Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang. Orfeo and Alex Kuo Today, I went with Tammy, Steve S., Ben, and Nina to see Monteverdi's opera, Orfeo, at the New England Conservatory's Jordan Theater. I've been listening to the music from that opera a lot since it's one of the five pieces we study in First Nights, but seeing it in person was such a different experience. Personally I didn't think some of the singers were as skilled as the singers I hear on my CDs—the notes, particularly the ornamentation, were articulated less well—but simply being able to tell who was singing what was a big help. No reading today I didn't get a chance to actually read any fiction the last two days (today and yesterday); hence the lack of news. While I was at work today, though, I found that Netscape doesn't seem to display my page correctly. The table looks strange, but, most importantly, it doesn't interpret "—" as an em-dash, so the text looks riddled with "—"es. Well, the page looks fine in Internet Explorer and Opera, and those are the browsers I use most often, so Netscape users will just have to feel neglected for now. New hard drive! Woohoo! I've installed a new 40-gigabyte hard drive on my computer. Installation went smoothly—although there was some brief panic before I realized I had to fdisk it first—and now I have four times the amount of space I used to have. In reading news, my problems with A Prayer for Owen Meany persist: meandering storyline, dull characters, and thinly disguised lectures on political and religious matters. On the other hand, I'm very much enjoying A Fire Upon the Deep. I'm about three-fourths of the way through that one. Although it isn't literature by any means—or even deep science fiction—it's a rollicking good ride and a lot of fun to read through. Still reading A Prayer for Owen Meany Slowly progressing through A Prayer for Owen Meany—I'm about one-eighth of the way through at this point. Irving's meandering style is really beginning to annoy me. And today's reading contained some particularly pretentious bits, including a contrived set of parallels (between the armadillo, an Indian wise man, and a dead woman) as well as a thinly disguised rant on America's foreign policy in Vietnam. But there was also at least one bit from today that made me laugh out loud (for those who've read it, it's the episode where Owen thinks he's seen an angel). I guess my problem with the book so far is that the meandering style really takes away any sense of urgency in the narrative, and the narrator talks about himself so little that he's really nothing more than a tool for the author (although he does keep mentioning some major spiritual transformation that I guess is coming up pretty soon). Even the character of Owen Meany is, so far, nothing more than a collection of character quirks and plot contrivances (for instance, he serves as a mouthpiece for the author during the critique of Vietnam bit that I mentioned earlier). About the only character who is getting interesting at this point is the narrator's mother. But even she hasn't yet gelled in my mind. At this point I'm far enough through the book that I'll be sticking with it to the bitter end, but it seems a shame for a novel that so many people esteem to be only fitfully amusing (a phrase I've already used many times) for me. Updated Books I Plan to Read Updated my Books I Plan to Read page with a couple of heavy hitters—a change in pace from my usual science fiction and fantasy. I've made another dent in A Prayer for Owen Meany. Again, more amusing anecdotes told in Irving's nonlinear and rambling style, but, although the characters of the protagonist and of Owen Meany are steadily being built up, it still isn't gripping me. I just find it pleasant, but it's all too easy to put down for the evening. On the other hand, reading A Fire Upon the Deep is a nice change of pace from A Prayer for Owen Meany; I think I picked two good books to read concurrently. Blog 10/21/01 I'm progressing through A Prayer for Owen Meany. It's really, really slow—John Irving takes his time describing things in a very nonlinear fashion. But it is fitfully amusing, and Irving writes well (even though, at times, his style is a bit too contrived). It hasn't drawn me in yet, but I'm not very far into it. Plus, it's easy reading so far, so I think I'll stick with it to the bitter end. On other fronts: Newspro is really an amazing, amazing program. It has this thing called a glossary function, where it will scan through the text that you post and replace phrases that you define with other text. So, for instance, I have it search through this text and replace any instance of a book's title with a link to the appropriate page. Amazing. More comics...and ruminations I'm about half-way through A Fire Upon the Deep, which is not much progress since last time, and I haven't really gotten started with A Prayer for Owen Meany, so not much in the way of reading in the last few days. Instead, I've been busy getting recommendation forms ready for various people. Elections for the Harvard International Review also finished just two days ago; ask me about it some time. On the entertainment front: I visited The Million Year Picnic in Harvard Square for the first time yesterday. It's a comic book store with everything that you would ever want from comics—but it's small, and I'm not sure if they take kindly to people going in to browse. I'm thinking of reading the famous manga Ghost in the Shell some time soon, though. You may notice that I've reduced the list of books in "Currently Reading." I figure that that section should be an accurate reflection of what I'm accurately reading, and I wasn't able to make much progress with anything other than the two books currently on the list. So there. Book review site changes I've made two programming changes to this site. First, I've created a php-script that will automatically generate the source code that I need for my book reviews. Second, I've found an amazing program called NewsPro that, by using CGI, allows me to update my news automatically from the web. It also automatically keeps an archive of old news posts. Now I can update my site from anywhere! And when I finally start doing foosball news, NewsPro will make that easier too. Whoever is responsible for this program is an absolute genius. New Review: Orson Scott Card's Shadow of the Hegemon ADDED a review of Orson Scott Card's Shadow of the Hegemon. Again, a disappointment compared to Ender's Game; you can read the rest of my review for my other unflattering criticisms. I expect I'll be churning along with A Fire Upon the Deep at this point, but, in addition, I think it's high time I read John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany, which will be one of the first high-brow novels to be reviewed on this site. Also, I checked out the first volume of Katsuhiro Otomo's famous manga graphic novel, Akira: The Beginning. The scope of this thing is insane; all six volumes take up a total of over 2,000 pages of tightly drawn manga. Should be fun. New Review: Art Spiegelman's Maus ADDED a review of Art Spiegelman's Maus (graphic novel). It was good, but I had some reservations. I hope to finish Shadow of the Hegemon in a few days, with A Fire Upon the Deep following shortly afterward. From Hell will likely take me somewhat longer. I really, really have to get all my apps done this week, so my fun reading will definitely be cut down a lot. Blog 10/14/01 Not elation—but at least a quiet contentment. At any rate, I went to Lamont today and checked out both volumes of Art Spiegelmen's Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel, Maus. This book basically established the comic book as a legitimate art form, and it arguably paved the way for other underground comic books like Daniel Clowes's Ghost World. I'm really looking forward to reading Maus, so I should have a review for it up in a few days (despite all the other reading I have lined up!). Blog 10/13/01 Depression, for more reasons than one. But, among those reasons: no time to read today, which means that I still have a long way to go on all the four books that I was planning to read for fun, as well as all the other stuff I have to get done. I wish that I could just get stuff done, rather than feeling like I'm flailing around trying to get things accomplished. Bleargh. Plus I'm a terrible conversationalist. Anyway, I've updated the Books to Read page. Blog 10/11/01 And, the last binary day until 11/01/01 (after which will come 11/10/01, 11/11/01, and not again until New Year's Day, 2010). Barely read any of A Fire Upon the Deep, and only minimal progress on Shadow of the Hegemon, as my work is beginning to bear down on me. I'm only reading a chapter or two of Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius each day, so that should take me a good month or two to actually finish. And, as if I don't already have enough recreational reading to do (not counting my school reading) I've decided to start reading Alan Moore's famous graphic novel, From Hell. This book has been getting a lot of press recently since they're moving a movie out of it, starring Johnny Depp and directed by the Hughes brothers (who also directed Menace II Society, if I recall correctly). Since I don't exactly own From Hell, I can only read a little bit of it at a time before the employees at the bookstore start looking at me askance, so don't expect a review of that for a while. In other news, yesterday was my father's birthday. I'm not sure how old he is, but it's under 50 (I think). Happy birthday, dad!
Yet another binary day. Not much progress on A Fire Upon the Deep today. In addition to the two books I'm already reading, I've decided to quickly skim through Orson Scott Card's Shadow of the Hegemon in my copious spare time. Why? Well, it's easy reading, and I might as well finish up the Ender saga. Also, I'm thinking of closely rereading Ender's Game some time soon and keeping a sort of reader's journal, detailing exactly how I feel with each chapter. It'll be hard to do that without letting my preconceptions of the book cloud my judgments, but I am really interested in how Card managed to craft such an amazing novel. Hopefully a close rereading will give me some insights.
About a third of the way through Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep. It's as I remembered: slam-bang space opera without any of the hesitations of good literature. Vinge's book is not mindless entertainment—it has far too many clever ideas in it—but it's not exactly a though-provoking book either, a la Stanislaw Lem's Solaris. I have also decided to start reading Ray Monk's biography of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius. Unlike some other philosophers, Wittgenstein had a fascinating life in addition to a fascinating philosophy. Hopefully an understanding of his background will give me some insight into his philosophy, although his philosophy is abstruse enough that I somehow doubt that I'll ever be able to understand it.
ADDED a review of Daniel Clowes's Ghost World (graphic novel). It's been a while since the last update, but I was helping with the Harvard Parliamentary Debate Tournament the last few days. The site is now more than a month old! I've decided to give up on Master and Commander for now and focus on Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep instead. I read that book for the first time when I was just starting high school, and I only realize now how much I didn't get the first time through. It should be fun to reread it.
I've decided to give Master and Commander only a few more days, at which point I'm just going to give up on it and try it again some other time. At this point A Fire Upon the Deep is looking more and more interesting. Sigh. I sincerely hope, though, that I'm still able to enjoy non-sci-fi or fantasy literature; it would be a shame to be stuck in only two genres.
Updated the Links page. Master and Commander is proceeding rather slowly; although I'm already about a tenth of the way through, I haven't yet been drawn into the world that O'Brian has created. In particular, I'm having a hard time keeping track of all the names that keep popping up: only Aubrey and Maturin are truly memorable so far. And nothing exciting has happened yet: Aubrey is still slowly trying to stock his ship, and Maturin has been mostly absent. Where is the high adventure, the excitement, the wonderful characters and lyrical prose that are supposed to characterize O'Brian's work? Sigh. I'm staring right now at A Fire Upon the Deep, and I desperately want to read that first. But, I'll suffer as best as I can through Master and Commander, so I can see what everybody is talking about (at least). On another note, I've often wondered whether I would be embarrassed if people were actually reading this web page. It strikes me that I might be: I certainly don't want people reading it in front of me, and it's not as if I'm writing deathless prose here. At the very least, I can expect the quality of these book reviews to improve. But ultimately, these reviews are for me, to figure out what I like about the books I read and to encourage me to read more. So there.
(Huh, a binary day.) In another fit of self-indulgent HTML editing, I've added a Books I Plan to Read page (you can reach it through the link at the top of this cluttered table). These are books that I plan to read soon, hopefully in the order that they're listed. If you see some obvious clunkers, or if you think that there are other books that I should be reading first, please email me. |
Steven Wu's Book Reviews |