Kait
Inventions are invariably a tricky business. With very few exceptions, not many things sprang forth fully-formed from the minds of one (or two, or whatever) people. Even Isaac Newton reminded people of the ideas of those who came before him, when discussing his genius. This is not to diminish those inventors, but to point out that Ford didn't invent the automobile, Edison didn't invent the lightbulb, and if Bell was the first to crank out a telephone, it was by maybe a month. Tops.
The computer is no different. A number of different people were working in the space of electronic calculating machines, to various degrees of “electronic” and “actually having it work.” The two main inventors of the ENIAC machine, Mauchley and Eckert, have been (in the author's view — I haven't read around enough to make a judgment, though Wikipedia backs him up) relegated both in terms of their invention itself (pre-empted by a “digital computer” called the ABC that could only do one operation and, by the way, never actually worked) as well as their role in it, as various collaborators and hangers-on strove to take the credit.
McCartney goes in for a deep dive, sourcing journals, interviews and various papers to restore the Digital Dyad (terrible name for a superhero team) to their rightful place in history. He traces them from their nerdy, tinkering roots through the creation of the ENIAC (and its voluminous red tape) through to the (understandably slightly bitter) ends of their lives. Eckert, for one, always hoped that history would prove to be a more fair arbiter of their role in computing history; this book is a good step in that direction.
Sarah Vowell always manages to take what should be dry, boring sections of history and enliven therm far beyond what I could reasonably expect.
This time the subject is the history of Hawaii, and I can confidently asset that prior to starting this book the extent of my knowledge in that area amounted to “it didn't used to be a state and now it is.” I know much more about how all this came to be, and the only emotion I can muster is sadness.
It's a tight narrative arc, the American interaction with the islands. It took less than a century to get from religious do-gooders genuinely concerned about the Hawaiians to a cabal of businessmen deciding their profits outweighed all other concerns and forcibly overthrew the elected government. I'm sure
The more history I learn, the more I suspect that I don't (and, in many cases, can't) know about any given topic. There are so many layers, characters and narratives swirling around any event that to discover one only inevitably leads you to several more. This is not a reason to discourage such pursuits, merely a reminder about their ultimate lack of finality. Still, the best we can get is closer, and the only way to do that is to keep trying.
This book was ... difficult. It's well-written, with great voice, but it's just ... fucked up. That's really the only way to say it.
Art can be rough. Art can be scary. Art can be dark. It doesn't make the art bad, but it certainly doesn't make for a pleasant experience.
If I'm quite honest, I'm not sure what I got out of reading the book other than sort of the same type (not exactly the same, vis a vis scale and reality) of feeling as your 9/11 attack, or your Paris attacks (Charlie Hebdo or the nightclub campaign) — this is a thing that is possible. These are events and feelings that exist in the world, and from now on whenever I try to take a thought or an idea and skin it around my particular conceptual framework of How Things Are, it will forever have this sharp corner jutting out. The book's not reality (it's fiction), but the things that happened in it are not conceptually or practically impossible. They're barely even improbable, in some respects.
If you plan on making your way through this novel, make sure you have a nice chaser book prepared for after.
In answer to the eternal question, I don't honestly know whether it's better than the movie. It's definitely more helpful for those of us not steeped in the Star Wars lore, but I cannot deny a lightsaber fight that “lights up the forest like an explosion” works better on the big screen than my Kindle.
That being said, the novel puts motivations and connections in better order than the movie did (at least on one showing), and the writing quality paints quite the picture. Definitely a worthwhile read for those who are even tangentially interested in the Star Wars mythology.
Richard Nixon was a legitimately terrifying human being. Triply so because he was president. I never figured him for a super great guy, but the Nixon depicted in this book is clinically paranoid, petty and far more vindictive than he has any right to be. You need a little background for this book, which is the only reason I left off a star - it's an accounting of the secrets that have come out of Nixon's presidency only in this millennium as the secret tapes and documents have been made public.
In a weird way, Nixon was right: It's far better for the United States that the things he did, said and thought were kept from people. However, the ultimate tragedy (for Nixon, sure, but for the rest of us as well) is that it's only true because Nixon was given power - if he weren't so awful, we wouldn't have needed the secrecy.
There are a few different approaches to comedy memoirs. You can go with the actual story of your life (with jokes), a la Amy Poehler: This requires you to a) have an interesting life, and b) be funny. You can try for the structured set approach: You set the book up as a connected strand of narratives, each one with its own theme, and riff as you go. This is the most common approach, at least as practiced successfully: Patton Oswalt's Zombie Spaceship Wasteland, Jim Gaffigan's Dad Is Fat and Tina Fey's Bossypants.
All of this is by way of saying that David Spade could have really used a thoughtful approach here. The book's a bit schizophrenic: The first part is a pretty straightforward narrative of his life coming up in comedy. It's not peppered full of jokes, but memoirs don't need to be — it's about the person's life, and in Spade's case that life is worth reading about.
He of course covers Saturday Night Live, where most people know him from, and it's a worthwhile addition to the numerous full books that have been written about the show from Studio 6H. He also touches a bit on his most-well-known partner, Chris Farley, which I mention only because I've read him in other places talking about the emotional bond between the two. There's plenty of Farley information (with new stories), but Spade doesn't delve as deep into himself and his own feelings as he did in the beginning, so it winds up feeling a little bit like fanservice. Which is understandable — maybe he didn't want to linger too much on Farley (whether because of genuine emotion or not wanting to be eternally Farley's sidekick is immaterial) yet knew there would be an expectation for it — but it's noticeable, nonetheless.
But then it gets weird. We hear a genuinely terrifying about attempted murder, a pretty egregious theft by his housekeeper and ... Spade's thoughts on women? The general reader might not know it, but Spade possess a fairly sizable filmography post-Farley: Joe Dirt, Joe Dirt 2, Grown-Upses, Just Shoot Me, Emperor's New Groove, Benchwarmers, Dickie Roberts ... These get name-checks, at best. I'm not saying a memoir has to include absolutely everything that's ever happened (that's what the sequel's for!), but in this case the latter half of the book is just random stories. Personally, I would have much preferred jettisoning it entirely (except where it made sense in the narrative of his life) and gotten more about his work rather than what sounds like rehashed standup material.
He's no Mick Foley, but Chris Jericho can definitely write (and wrestle, I suppose). A wide-ranging biography — from a geographic and emotional perspective — you get a front-row seat to the rise, rise, rise, plateau (WCW) and rise of Jericho up until the time he his the WWF(E).
He's lead an interesting life, and though a bit over-fond of poop jokes and the like, knows how to tell his story in a compelling way. It's not exactly one of those “so good you'll like it regardless of your background” bios, but if you're into (or were into) wrestling at all, this is definitely worth a read.
A classic coming-of-age tale of aliens, boners and pizza. It's mire than slightly weird and a little bit wound too tightly around itself, but any minor flaws are more than made up for with the most entertaining sidekick this side of a Marvel comic.
You'll get some of the standard stuff (love, relationships, teenagers being unreasonably angry) along with a heaping helping of Weird (time measured in distance the Earth has travelled in the universe, a horse falling off a bridge, etc.). Recommended for anyone who's not offended by swearing and has a sneaking suspicion they live inside a book.
A marvelous, reality-centric look at bullying at the onset of the 21st century. I'm quick to add the time qualifier not because this book lacks anything, but because a) bullying certainly has changed with the advent of the internet and cell phones for everyone of all ages, and b) the constant change/evolutional bent of technology means that it can't possibly completely on top off everything.
But the author is on top of the several cases she portrays, including a bunch of old favorites you'll a little bit hate her for reminding you of. The Irish girl in Massachusetts who was bullied to death, and the woman who created a fake MySpace profile to “get back at” the girl next door in retaliation for what the girl did to her daughter - both are explored in depth here, and may surprise you with the details.
The author takes pains not to blame any specific person, institution or group as the cause or chief complaint. Much like with all things, there's enough blame to be spread around for everyone, and the “solutions” (such as they are) stick mainly to the lines of “everyone should be nicer and pay more attention to things.” While that sounds like brushing it aside, it's not - there is no one-shot, quick-fix program that miraculously fixes things. It is, as with all interpersonal relationships, about viewing/treating people as people, giving others some slack, and stepping in when you see someone abusing someone else.
This is a book for readers. ... Even more so than all other books, which kind of by definition are also for readers. There's not a single book, or even publication, that has so drastically blown up my to-read list in the last year or so. Hornby is a person who loves books in the same way most millenials love television — enthusiastically, unrelentingly and with numerous exhortations as to why you should love it, too.
I appreciate that Hornby doesn't assume we've all read the book before he gets around to talking about it. Like a good (regular) book reviewer, he largely avoids spoilers and (unlike most regular reviewers) is forbidden by decree from slagging on those things that don't meet his taste.
Even past the book recommendations, though, are Hornby's insights and quips about reading, life, and other redundancies. His idea that some books are bad but also sometimes they're just not read properly, for example, is one of the best arguments in favor of a “no negative reviews” policy I've ever heard. And even if you hate Arsenal (or don't care about sports in any way), his excuses and slackening reading pace through some months will give comfort to all those who sometimes can't find the time for books in a given month (or two).
I really have no idea what to say about this. It's essentially an absurdist interconnected short story collection? It's a little lot off the wall and some of it doesn't quite make sense, but I'm pretty sure those parts aren't supposed to make sense. It's also full of one-liners that skewer the very core of the human condition, and also jokes. It's entertaining, entertainingly infuriating, and a little bit just infuriating.
Poundstone is someone who's gone in for deep dives on Von Neumann, game theory, Carl Sagan ... and more recently, “Are You Smart Enough to Work At Google?” There's no doubt he's taken on a pop-sci flair of late, and while it's understandable from a marketing/positioning standpoint, a book that promises to be full of ways to “outguess” and “outwit” almost everyone turns out to be a lot of largely common-sense suggestions with some actual science behind them, and one or two genuinely counter-intuitive strategies that (unfortunately) sound like they're straight out of freakonomics.
It's interesting, actually - I loved the first Freakonomics book, perhaps because it forced me to think about things in new ways, but also because it genuinely offered insights into things I wouldn't have otherwise given any thought to. But that type of discovery really only works once, and by the time Superfreakonomics came along (to say nothing of the blog, podcast, etc.), it felt like retreading old ground. Not unnecessary or useless, mind you, but more incremental advances rather than breakthroughs. And frankly, if we're talking about how to win the office NCAA pool and your advice is “use the algorithms you can find on websites but tweak them slightly in case someone else is” seems aimed more at the desperate gambler than your general reader.
So I guess, if you haven't read Freakonomics (or haven't thought about it since it came out), this is a good relatively up-to-date replacement. Everyone else can feel free to take a pass.
I have zero tolerance for zero tolerance — which is to say, you should always allow for reasonable people to extend loopholes and exceptions dependent on circumstances. A zero tolerance policy is a sign of failure, either on the part of those responsible for enforcing the rules (because they apparently don't have the capacity to judge a situation on their own) or those setting the rules (because they didn't hire an enforcer with the capacity to judge a situation).
“Zero Tolerance” is a work of fiction that pretty perfectly mirrors real life: Nobody's completely in the right, nobody's complete in the wrong. Everyone makes mistakes, and the way we live is to work through them and try to prevent them from happening again. This book provides a great lesson for people of all ages.
It's always funny when people try to translate the things they see on the movies and TV into their everyday life.
It's confusing when they do so in the midst of filming a reality TV show. Things get meta, fast.
Pete Crooks is a mild-mannered journalist who's just trying to finish an assignment about a local PI when he gets tipped off that the ride-along he went on was a setup. This draws him far too deeply into the web of intrigue, backstabbing and outright pettiness that almost all of us not there associate with California.
Crooks is an able reporter and a pretty good writer, though his constant jumps in the narrative (I believed this guy, but I didn't know x, y or z) are more jarring than helpful - if you're trying to bring the reader along with you, don't spoil the ending?
Easily among the top 3 epistolary novels addressed to Richard Gere I've ever read - no qualification.
The thing I like about Matthew Quick (having read this and The Silver Linings Playbook) is the realism he brings to characters and situations. I don't think a single one of the people who populate his works could be classified easily via archetype or caricature. Each of them is a living, breathing (FLAWED) human.
It's the kind of writing that can be difficult to read, if only because it seems awkward to be intruding on someone else's life in so personal a way. But it's definitely worth making your way through.
It took a full quarter of the book before I realized this was written by Christopher Buckley, not Christopher Moore. Moore is known for his genre/historical parodies - including one of my favorite books of all, Fool - while Buckley is better known for his political/modern satire. I count both Christophers among my favorite authors, but in this case the discovery that it was less than Moore caused me some grief.
Buckley can be funny - I'm just not sure why he chose not to be here. It felt like a first draft of a classic Moore, before the dialogue gets punched-up and the plots intricately woven together.
Perhaps it's unfair to compare, but I would in all earnestness urge you to read “Fool” if you're considering this. Then, if you're still looking for more, you can always swing back around to pick this up.
Sometimes a book just leaves you feeling. I can't say with 100 percent certainty what I expected going into this book (things I knew about it: 1] It was likely literary fiction, and 2] it had something to do with books), but I know that got much more out of it. It's a simple story, in a way, though the plot gets a little convoluted at times. But this one's not so much about the plot, it's about the people, and the way that — like books — we connect with the right ones at the right time. You'll probably get more out of it if you're a reader, but as long you're a human, it's worth a read.
I really wanted to like this book. Despite its subtitle (“the (mostly) true story of the first computer”), this graphic novel is better described as “A (mostly) true romp through Victorian mathematicians.” Which isn't a bad thing! We get a nice little primer on Babbage and Lovelace's Analytical/Difference Engines, and a bunch of whimsical one-offs with historical figures that describe various mathematical functions that I still couldn't explain to you but at least now have an understanding of. Then again, in terms of actual Lovelace and Babbage things ... well, the author's notes about the relatively little time the two had to work on things, Lovelace's illness/untimely death and the general lack of publication by the two can explain the paucity of material, but then maybe don't center your book around them?
I know we're not supposed to mention when books come from the internet because it frequently makes their authors feel bad for some reason, but this book is from the guy behind http://poorlydrawnlines.com/. It's a lot of new stuff mixed in with some of the best stuff, and for people who find cynicism funny, it hits the spot. Wil Wheaton called “the funneist comic I've read since the Far Side,” and while that's probably overdoing it, it's still good for some laughs.
It's a coffee table book about Weird Al ... I'm not sure what else you're expecting? I will admit to hoping for a slightly more critical/in-depth look at his life and career, but it's got some neat art/pictures, and a wide-ranging look at Al's life from the beginning of his career through Alpocalypse.
Overall, this is a well-researched book on the history of the creator of Wonder Woman, his crazy-ass family and the very deep feminist theory that undergirds most of the early comics.
The only knock on the book is that it is by no means a complete history of Wonder Woman. It might better have been titled, “The Secret History of Wonder Woman's Creation,” or, most accurately, “Wonder Woman and Feminism: The Early Years.”
You'll learn about William Marston, the inventor of an early version of the lie-detector test/failed psychologist/failed moviemaker/failed entrepreneur who used his lifelong obsession with women to craft the early tales of the Amazonian Wonder Woman. You'll learn about his wife. And his other wife. And his other other kind-of wife.
You'll be confused by what scholarship/writing should be attributed to whom between the primary threesome. You'll be bewildered by the lengths of the deception that the unofficial wife went to keep Marston's progenitorship a secret from her children. And you'll be slightly weirded out by how closely Margaret Sanger weaves in to all of it.
The book focuses heavily on the early comics (up until Marston's death), then sort of writes off the entire 50+ other years with a “the people who came directly after Marston were chauvinist pigs” which, while not inaccurate, is not exactly meeting the mantle of “history.”
That being said, this book is essential for truly understanding Wonder Woman, her origins and her standing/place in the culture at large.
I'll be quite honest — I didn't expect to like Eleanor and Park very much when I started it. I read it on the advice/orders of my girlfriend, and expected it to be a teen romance novel much in the same way I expected the Maze Runner trilogy to be a teenage dystopian novel — very much of its genre, tweaking only small details, with stories interchangeable to an almost shocking degree. But it surprised me. It didn't invert, contravene and confound the trappings of the teen novel the way some of my favorite genre books subvert theirs, but it really worked for me. I cared about the characters, and I cared about what happened to them.
Read the full review here.