The Drifters James A Michener I was born in 1955, and therefore was a kid and young teenager in the sixties. (OK, Boomer.) In past years I frequently met up with people my age who who would tell me how they missed the sixties. I have never felt this way. I found them painful, at the time and equally so in memory. Yes we had the Beatles and civil rights legislation. And Vietnam and Four Dead in Ohio. It seemed like everyone was constantly angry and in a state of loudly expressed outrage, and a truly desperate and sincere feeling that those other folks were bringing us to destruction. In fact, no time in my experience was as upsetting and unpleasant as the sixties, until Donald Trump became president of the USA in 2021. Since then life in the USA has become miserable, but familiar. This is what the sixties felt like to me. I preface my review with that explanation because  The Drifters  portrays the way the sixties felt to a kid or teenager (or, at least, to me) better than any ...

One of Our Thursdays Is Missing Jasper Fforde This installment of  Jasper Fforde 's  Thursday Next series  features a new main character. Actually, she's not quite new -- we met her in  First Among Sequels . She is Thursday Next - 5, the fictional Thursday Next in an unsuccessful fifth Thursday Next book promoted because Thursday, the Real World Thursday, was unhappy with her own portrayal in the series. This introductory scene from  First Among Sequels  will give you a pretty good idea of her personality But I did bring you some breakfast.’ ‘Well, in that case . . .’ I looked into the bag she handed me and frowned.‘Wait a minute – that doesn’t look like a bacon sandwich.’ ‘It isn’t. It’s a crispy lentil cake made with soya milk and bean curd. It cleanses the bowels. Bacon definitely will give you a heart attack.’ ‘How thoughtful of you,’ I remarked sarcastically. ‘The body is a temple, right?’ ‘Right. And I didn’t get you coffee because it r...

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass Lewis Carroll, John Tenniel (Illustrator) I believe I was about seven years old when I first read  Alice  under the mistaken impression that it was a children's book. I didn't much like it. I came to appreciate it more when I was a college student. It is not, in fact, a book well-aimed at young or middle-grade kids. Charles Dodgson, who wrote the two books of  Alice  under the pen-name  Lewis Carroll , was a well-known Oxford mathematician and philosopher.  Alice  is full of logic tricks and clever word-play. Consequently  Alice  is much beloved of mathematicians and such-like degenerates (among whose company I now count myself). Indeed, mathematics writer  Martin Gardner  annotated an edition ( Alice's Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass ), and in  Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid  mathematician and artificial intelligence research...

Their Vicious Games Joelle Wellington What have we here? Let's take a look at the publisher's blurb... "searing thriller that’s Ace of Spades meets Squid Game with a sprinkling of The Bachelor". Later we have "Because the ... stakes aren’t just make or break…they’re life and death." OK, so we already know the plot. A group of contestants are going to compete in some weird artificial game-like thing in which most of them are expected to die, leaving only the winner standing at the end. What about the characters? Well, most of them are people who are, in the words of  Crazy Rich Asians , "richer than God". And they are awful. You already know them. You met them in  Crazy Rich Asians  and  Knives Out , and for that matter, Squid Game. Adina Walker is the grain of sand in this oyster, the Seong Gi-Hun, the Katniss Everdeen of these games. As the book begins she is a student at the tony Edgewater Academy. Edgewater is owned or subsidized or something by...

Nine Princes in Amber Roger Zelazny Roger Zelazny  was, in my opinion, one of the greatest fantasy and science fiction writers of all time. He was especially good at short stories, which he enjoyed writing more than novels. Somewhere in his works he admits that he writes more novels than stories because, word for word, novels pay better. He adds that this is not as bad as it sounds, because he also enjoys writing novels. It's OK,  Roger ! You really don't need to apologize for doing what folks will pay you to do! Most of us live our lives that way. As you might expect of an author who prefers stories to novels,  Zelazny  was not a great writer of series.  Goodreads lists  five series by  Zelazny . Now, you're looking at that page and saying, "Wait -- I see eight series listed. No, you do not. You see  The Chronicles of Amber  (ten novels), three things that are just subsets of  The Chronicles of Amber , followed by four much shorter seri...

A Hunger of Thorns Lili Wilkinson Don't you really want to hear more about evil and dark magic from the evil witches who choose it as a career? After all, Satan (AKA Lucifer) is the most compelling character in  Paradise Lost , and Darth Vader is a pretty cool dude, when you think about it. Surely  the Wicked Witch of the West has something to say for herself ? So, yeah, Wicked Witch point of view has been done. But not with this kind of conviction. Maude Jenkins, the main character of  A Hunger of Thorns  is a witch, as are her two grandmothers and as was her late mother. Are they wicked? Well, some people think they are. They don't see themselves as evil, but then the evilest people never do. These witches are no innocent nature-loving Wiccans. If you're addicted to the same pop culture trash as I am, think  Elizaveta Arkadyevna , or  Dark Willow . Maude and Mam and Nan are dark, powerful, and dangerous witches. They sometimes hurt people, although only r...

Arrowsmith Sinclair Lewis I read  Arrowsmith  as a high school student, probably in the late 1960s or early 1970s. It was for some years one of my very favorite books -- certainly I would have rated it five stars, if we were rating books that way in the 60s. I have not re-read it in many years, and have no real desire to do so. In retrospect the things that made it a favorite when I was a teenager are things I would dislike now. At that time I knew that I wanted to become a scientist, and I had very little concrete idea of what a scientist actually does. In  Arrowsmith   Sinclair Lewis  ( Paul de Kruif  also deserves credit/blame for  Arrowsmith , as it was from him that  Lewis  got his ideas about how science worked) presents his protagonist, Martin Arrowsmith, as a hero scientist. Furthermore, he is the kind of hero all scientists like to imagine themselves to be. Scientists, like artists and politicians and businesspeople, like to think of...

I Hate Men Pauline Harmange First, an apology. Although I read  Moi les hommes, je les déteste  in French, this review will be in English. Of the languages I understand well enough to read a even a short book in, French is my weakest. I could not possibly write more than two sentences in French. I do not regret the choice to read it in the original. I often felt that  Pauline Harmange 's French expressed subtleties that would not easily be conveyed in English. Furthermore, there is a thing that happens when you read in a language you command poorly -- you think hard about the meaning of every word. This pays dividends. Besides, I learned new French words, including many that my high school French teacher unaccountably never taught us. I was surprised to find that, despite the title,  je les déteste  is a reasonable and well-reasoned essay. It is also passionate. There is no contradiction. Let us dispense immediately with the absurd fallacy that logic and passion...

The Painter of Trees Suzanne Palmer I read only The Painter of Trees, by  Suzanne Palmer . At the beginning, this seems a very straightforward story of colonization and of leaders who describe themselves as cogs in a gear, who are determined to look only forward, never back. The difference between progressives and conservatives is smaller than it seems. The story ends with a twist that I didn't see coming, that throws some doubt into ones understanding of what happened. But there is no question of the tragedy. Amazon review Goodreads review  

Nameless in the Winged Court Rowenna Miller I read only  Nameless in the Winged Court , by  Rowenna Miller . This was one of the stories reviewed by  @Hirondelle  in her month of reading a story a day. It's an odd story of a fairy who grew up in the North under the care of a giantess whom she called Mother, became a servant to a field mouse, then fled the the Winged Court with her friend the swallow to escape an arranged marriage. At least, that was the idea. The story mostly recounts her sojourn in the Winged Court, where, not to spoil too much, things are far from wonderful. This recalls the true old fairy tales, the Alpenmärchen, that were always more genuinely horrifying than the Disneyfied versions we now tell to children. Amazon review Goodreads review  

The Old Lion: A Novel of Theodore Roosevelt Jeff Shaara A book recounting the life of  Theodore Roosevelt  could be one of (at least) two things: a biography (including in that category autobiography --  these exist ) or a novel. The subtitle of  The Old Lion: A Novel of Theodore Roosevelt  makes it clear which of these author  Jeff Shaara  was aiming for. And his "To the reader" note explains that choice The best way to describe this book is perhaps to describe what it is not. This is not a biography (and there are many), nor is it an academic examination of the man or his political policies (and there are many of those). Consider that the definitive biography of the man, by Edmund Morris, covers three volumes and totals more than 2,400 pages. Morris’s admirable work is essential to anyone seeking the most minute details of Roosevelt’s life. I did not have the means to expand this story into three volumes, nor would I wish to. What I have tried to do ...

Microbe Hunters Paul de Bruif When I was six years old (1962) I decided I wanted to be a scientist. A few years later (1965) the Monod-Wyman-Changeux model of the lac operon convinced me to narrow that down to biochemist. It was not long after that that I read  Paul de Kruif 's  Microbe Hunters  -- let's call it 1966. I loved it. For years thereafter Robert Koch was my hero. That's the first remarkable thing about  Microbe Hunters  -- it's a science book you can give to a highly motivated eleven-year-old with positive results. And it's not fluff! I'm going to insert the table of contents here, because it will give you a just appreciation of the breadth and depth of  de Kruif 's coverage 1. LEEUWENHOEK: First of the Microbe Hunters 2. SPALLANZANI: Microbes Must Have Parents! 3. PASTEUR: Microbes Are a Menace! 4. KOCH: The Death Fighter 5. PASTEUR: And the Mad Dog 6. ROUX AND BEHRING: Massacre the Guinea-Pigs 7. METCHNIKOFF: The Nice Phagocytes 8. THEOBALD SM...

Witch King Martha Wells In 1995 I saw the Film  Ghost in the Shell . It was a formative experience for me. The film was incredibly confusing -- cyborgs and thermoptic camouflage and international plots and sentient net intelligences and wheels within plots within wheels within plots. When it was over I had only the vaguest idea what had happened. But I was mortally certain of one thing: I LOVED it! What I didn't know at the time was that This Was How It Was Going To Be From Now On. Since then all major science fiction and most fantasy novels have been like that. I expect when I read a new one not to know what's going on. (Consider recent reads  Children of Memory ,  Myriad , or grand-prize winner, the entirety of  Tamsyn Muir 's  Locked Tomb Series .) In fact, it is now at the point where, if I understand a new F&SF novel on the first read, I feel cheated. Martha Wells 's  Witch King  does not disappoint in this regard. Hierarchs and Expositors and...

Crazy Rich Asians Kevin Kawn I just hated this, for one very specific reason -- the clothing. I don't much care about the things people wear.  Kevin Kwan  does, and the characters of  Crazy Rich Asians  do, too, possibly even more than  Kwan  himself. There is a plot somewhere in here, and, I suspect, some not entirely uninteresting characters. But they are so buried in long technical descriptions of clothing, and of the culture of high-end expensive clothing. Since I understand French, the word "couture" was not unfamiliar to me -- it is just French for "sewing". But in  Crazy Rich Asians  "couture" is not just sewing -- it is a totally obnoxious culture of snobbery and exploitation around custom-made clothing. Crazy Rich Asians  reminded me of nothing so much as those detective/war/zombie novels in which the protagonists spend an enormous amount of time fondling guns, and every gun is described in loving, almost pornographic detail. I don't...

Dave Barry Turns Forty Dave Barry I think I read  Dave Barry Turns Forty  not long after it came out in 1990. I am a long-time  Dave Barry  fan. (In fact, I have a postcard from him identifying me as a "certified alert reader, who should seek some sort of help immediately".)  Dave Barry Turns Forty  had me literally ROFL -- rolling on the floor laughing -- barely able to breathe because I was laughing so hard. I remember exactly which bit produced this reaction. It was Chapter 11 - Sports for the Over-40 Person, which begins with "Shrieking at Little Leaguers": The object of the game is to activate your child if the ball goes near him, similar to the way you use levers to activate the little men in table-hockey games. Your child will be standing out in right field, picking his nose, staring into space, totally oblivious to the game, and the ball will come rolling his way, and your job is to leap violently up and down and shriek, “GET THE BALL! GET THE BALL!...

The Bone Wars Erin Evan Erin Evan  is a gifted story-teller, but an inexperienced novelist. In  The Bone Wars  she has written a good book. It could be better, and I am confident that her future books will be. The Bone Wars  is principally about four paleontologists, grad student Sarah Connell, her PhD advisor Sean Oliphant, her mentor Derek Farnsworth, and teenage intern Molly Wilder. The story is told in the first person by these four characters, but Molly is the central character. The first thing I loved about  The Bone Wars  was its feeling of authenticity.  Evan  is herself a fossil-hunter. Even if no one told you this, you would recognize it. I was captivated by Molly's account of a long day spent lying on her side, working patiently to free a fossil femur from the rock in which it is embedded. If you have ever done research, you will recognize the peculiar combination of tedium and excitement that accompanies most research. I would have cal...