Little Brother

Long point short (e.g. less than the 3000 words I wrote last night), I think, even in light of the many and varied positive reviews Doctorow has received, this book will disappear into the aether of oblivion within the next couple of years and only people like me who remember odd titles like this will remember what Doctorow wrote. All-in-all, Little Brother is a completly, and rightfully so, forgettable book and should be avoided. And, if this is the kind of things I can expect to read from author’s who all seem to rotate in the same literary circles, I may need to find other literary circles to read about and explore.

The only positive thing I can or will say about this book is I am glad I didn’t pay for it.

Real Heroes Fly ]]> http://www.johnhattaway.com/2009/02/generally-speaking/feed/ 0 http://www.johnhattaway.com/2009/01/angus-thongs-and-full-frontal-snogging-something-though-not-neccessarily-a-review/ http://www.johnhattaway.com/2009/01/angus-thongs-and-full-frontal-snogging-something-though-not-neccessarily-a-review/#comments Sat, 31 Jan 2009 02:46:15 +0000 smokingpen http://www.johnhattaway.com/?p=1684 I started and finished reading Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging yesterday. Wait! That is not entirely true. I started it a couple of days ago, didn’t really find the time to work on reading it, started it last night, and a handful (or less) of hours later I finished it. And with that, I have to say it was rather vacuous. With that said, the book has been, actually, rather popular. In fact, the entire series of books has been rather popular. More, the girl who checked me out at the bookstore (in Provo, UT) thought I was purchasing the book for Erin (who may have been holding Camper at the time) and I had to correct her. At which time she said, “You can get your husband to read books like this?”

Erin said, “I don’t have to make him read anything.”

The girl said something else and then gave a glowing review of the books. I looked at her. She was on the portly side. Noted the kind of girl and attitude and then left a little upset because, well, I read a lot of different kinds of books and don’t like being lumped into a single genre category. Sure, I have some of everything sitting around and am currently reading (because it was bought for me and I feel a small measure of obligation) Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother with the intention of going through at least one book on the backlist of titles before reading The Explosionist (by Jenny Davidson) (Erin ordered it for me the other week). The point to all of this being that I am as likely to read a lot of different things from classics (hello, The Jungle Book anyone??? and War and Peace and a lot of others) as well as non-fiction and general popular fiction and unpopular fiction and a whole host of other things. It is what I do.

However, getting back to the book at hand, Erin read it some weeks ago. She was not impressed. Honestly, we have similar enough tastes that if I think a book is REALLY good she will most likely think the same thing. However, if I am reading a book for the pleasure of reading the book then chances are she won’t make it very far into the book. I did read The Sparrow, which was okay and I have taken a piece of the book and used it in explanation on relationships (because, I mean, come on folks, Mary Doria Russell, though not my favorite author, has her stuff going on even if I don’t personally enjoy her writing). The point to all of this is that Erin didn’t give Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging the highest marks and as a result I’ve not too eagerly placed it in my queue.

With that said, I was expecting Cycler to be an enjoyable book and found it to be poorly conceived.

After reading Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging I have to say that the book was shallow, without thought, the characters were not all that interesting, Georgia, the protagonist (and whose journal we are following) is shallow. She thinks people should just defer to her. She also thinks she is ugly and has a big nose. And yet, the Sex God (her words) finds her attractive and ignores the fact that, according to Georgia, she has a snoz the size of Wisconsin. In this case, though, she is in the UK and her friends all agree that her nose is not her best quality while her teeth are her best quality. I have to say, I don’t think I want people telling me my best feature is my teeth. Of course, I am weird and not a fourteen year old girl and I don’t have to read this for any other reason than to critique it and, quite frankly, Erin had me read The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle entirely to see what a male author should be doing when it comes to writing about a female character. Not that Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging is necessarily a good reference about the female experience. It is a book with a female point of view, a female protagonist, and set in the female thought process. As a result, (and I am assuming this is a generally useful rule) all women find parts of their bodies completely unattractive and become unreliable narrators when dealing with body parts.

Why is this important?

Good question. One of my protagonists is a woman. Well, a girl. About the same age as Georgia. So, it follows that reading what a woman would write about a girl of an age is worth reading . . . at least, worth checking out.

The difference between this and, say, something else entirely is that understanding the why as well as the what allows me to be a more conscientious writer. Of course, most of what I’ve been reading of late has been written in first person limited. This, of course, is not necessarily the way I want to write most of what I want to write: third person limited is a bit more fun (for me) and as a result, when I do write first person it’s because the tone of the story calls for it. Not very often.

As an aside, I wonder if I will look back at my writing in twenty years and see that I’ve written a disproportionately large number of stories in the first person. Heck, this was the reason I picked up Kim Harrison’s novel Dead Witch Walking and discovered a rather remarkable story teller. The point in all of this is that the nature and tone of Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging, though written as a journal or diary, is still first person and as a result we cannot trust what the narrator has to say about anything.

Along with that, I find it interesting to note that books for teenage girls have to be filled with characters who have unique and very odd names. In real life, and I mean this and I wish author’s would listen, people don’t have odd names. They don’t have cutesy names. When they do, they get beat up and made fun of, or do the beating up and making fun of other people with strange and/or unusual names. As a result, I find it difficult to follow books like this. What this does not mean (for those keeping some kind of score) is that I am not going to read these books in the future. It does mean I won’t be going out and buying them. I think this is one of the exceptions to the library rule.

Someone out there might ask: What is the library rule? I might share that someday.

Anyway, I didn’t find a lot of enjoyment out of reading Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging. It was definitely a quick read. Didn’t require a lot of thought. I started and before I knew it I was almost all the way through it. In that sense, I am pretty certain the author did a great job. However, when I read I want to get something out of it. All I got out of this is that Georgia doesn’t respect her father. She isn’t a good friend. She is selfish, self-centered, and doesn’t listen. Sure, that is all teenagers. But in this case, the teenness of the story is taken to an extreme.

Unless you are a teenager and are in need of passable teen chicklit, I’d avoid this book.

Real Heroes Fly ]]> http://www.johnhattaway.com/2009/01/angus-thongs-and-full-frontal-snogging-something-though-not-neccessarily-a-review/feed/ 0 http://www.johnhattaway.com/2009/01/cycler-by-lauren-mclaughlin-review/ http://www.johnhattaway.com/2009/01/cycler-by-lauren-mclaughlin-review/#comments Tue, 20 Jan 2009 01:16:49 +0000 smokingpen http://www.johnhattaway.com/?p=1656 Since finishing college I’ve spent a lot of time a) reading and b) applying for jobs. The job front had some positive movement over the past few days, and more positive movement this morning. However, on the reading front I’ve gone through John Zakour’s The Flaxen Femme Fatale, Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, Ally Carter’s I’d Tell You I Love You, But Then I’d Have to Kill You, Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, and now Lauren McLaughlin’s Cycler. Of the previous books, I reviewed Zakour’s Flaxen Femme Fatale. I still need to sit down and do something with the other books; though, admittedly, I am waiting on Gaiman’s book until I’ve read The Jungle Books so that I have a better understanding of where Gaiman got his inspiration. However, I don’t have to wait very long to write the review of Cycler and will do so presently.

First off, I ordered the book because several authors on a variety of blogs gave positive reviews of the book. Scott Westerfeld, author of Uglies, Pretties, and Specials, has this blurb on the back of the book:

“Artfully fractured and wickedly smart. A brilliant screwball comedy about love, self-knowledge, and the secret identities inside all of us.”

With that blurb out of the way, author Lauren McLaughlin writes a book about a 17 year old girl who, once a month for four days, coincidentally through her menstrual cycle, turns into a boy. The girl’s name is Jill, the boys name is Jack. The combination of Jack and Jill makes me wonder if the initial conceptualizing of the book was not more in answer to the question, “What if Jack and Jill were the same person?” However, in reading early author reviews and with the idea behind the book (e.g. what happens when a girl becomes a boy and how does she cope?) I was a little excited to read it. In my mind, the author would’ve meticlously looked into the psychology of boys, gotten some inside scoop on how 17 year old boys think and feel, talked to her husband and friends, run the book by men (especially the Jack chapters as the book is divided into Jack and Jill chapters) and then written something that, though not perfect, was a better approximation of what it means to be a girl that becomes a boy. To me, interesting in concept. However, disappointing in execution.

For starters, the book begins with Jill turning back into herself from Jack and the pain that is involved in that transformation. Incidentally, the book (pretty much) ends with the same transformation. However, once Jill becomes Jill again she goes through a meditative and self-hypnosis cycle to block out any of the memories that happened while she was in Jack form. This is an interesting conceit in the book, Jack knows all about Jill and uses it to his advantage, while Jill blocks out any knowledge Jack may have acquired and all of Jack’s memories and experiences. This is called Plan B.

Plan A, by the way, was to erase Jack altogether. Get rid of the transforming. And to move on as though Jill never became Jack. Plan B is Jill forgetting Jack for approximately 28 days and then locking herself into her room while in Jack form. On top of this, Jack is a pervert. What does that mean? Well, according to one of the conceits in the book, all men and boys look at porn. And in Jack’s case, he continually asks for porn, magazines and DVD’s to entertain himself while he remains reclusive in Jill’s room. However, what Jack has discovered, and as the inciting incident of the principal plotline, is that he is in love (or more accurately lust) with Jill’s best friend Ramie. Have to admit, I have no idea how to pronounce that name and here McLaughlin does what a lot of authors are encouraged not to do. She describes an attractive girl with an odd name and an odd personality and then expects her audience to believe that this person could be real. And here we find ourselves deviating from real into unreal. Well, the entire book sits in the realm of unreal and it is the author’s job to make sure it is grounded in enough reality to be believable. McLaughlin pretty much fails at every step.

Now, I can get behind the unlikely plot point of Jill becoming Jack. It is, after-all, one of the reasons I decided to buy the book. What I cannot get behind is a lot of other things. For starters, Ramie is unbelievable. The dialogue is awkward and doesn’t follow conventions of speach for teenagers. And, the gay-slash-straight meaning bi-sexual love interest of Jill’s, in the form of Tommy, isn’t a compassionate or believable character. On top of which, Daria, as a best friend and confidant, is introduced into the book as though we should trust she is already this and yet the reader never gets the sense that Daria is more than a foil meant to allow parts of the story to move forward and to offer comic relief (that wasn’t funny) at other points in the story.

Starting with Ramie. It doesn’t take a PhD in psychology to know two things. First, teenagers don’t have the capacity for what teenagers do in most young adult novels, or in that spirit, in most movies, TV shows, or in anything that is meant to be popular media. Instead, teenagers are often adults of about 26 written as teeangers. As a result, you get teens with more ability than they should have, though that ability is only slightly outside of the realm of possibility. A teenager, a la Rorie Gilmore from Gilmore Girls fame, would be capable of writing a paper that a graduate student would envy complete with conclusions that graduate students aren’t in a position to draw, and that is believable, but only slightly so, because we want to believe that Rorie is someone who functions outside of her age group. In real life, she doesn’t exist. So, we deal with Ramie and she is one of those poeple who, somehow, functions outside of her age group. Secondly, Ramie is a dumb name. Where does it come from? How is it pronounced? And why did McLaughlin decide to go with a completely awkward name and then, on occasion, switch it up with the more familiar Rames? Makes me think that my initial decision that Ramie is pronounced with a soft “a” as in cat rather than a hard “a” as in hate and as a result every time I came across that name is confused me.

In short, Ramie is an awkward character that acts outside of what would be acceptable writing patterns for young adults in popular media and as a result remains unconvincing. Especially when Jill, as Jack, sneaks into her room and she allows it. At no point in the book has McLaughlin created a solid enough character to allow me, as a reader, to believe that Ramie is going to allow Jack into her room and then have sex with him. Every instinct tells me that Ramie is a fictional character, which makes sense since the book is fiction, and that she can’t be trusted when she speaks.

Next is the dialogue. For the most part dialogue is dialogue. People have a tendency to use it as a means of moving the story forward. As an aside, the book is told in the first person from Jill, and by extension Jack’s point of view. We don’t get to know what Ramie or  Tommy or Daria think without having it filtered through Jill/Jack. More, the book is written as though this happened a few years ago and Jill/Jack is writing it as they remember it rather than it happening right now. As a result, I am not certain we can trust Jill/Jack as narrators and since we are expected to, I am also pretty certain that this is a drawback from the book. However, what McLaughlin does with this book is to create slang for her characters. Most noteably “mal” and “deeply”. My first problem is that I don’t know what I am supposed to derive “mal” from. Is it a derivative of malady, malaise, malevolent, or something else? As a result of my not understanding what is supposed to be meant by the use of the world, it comes across as awkward and difficult when I read it. With the outcome being that I was confused by it’s use. More, when “deeply” was thrown in as an adjective, it was actually easier to drop the word and read the sentence rather than trust that anyone actually speaks using deeply as a modifier in a sentence. It would’ve been easier, for me, to throw some other word in like, oh, I don’t know, “like”.

Sociologically, the word, “like,” is used among teenagers as a way of separating theselves from the event they are describing. This is pretty universal among English speaking teens. And as a result, when used in a conversation where the teen actively participated in something but wants to remain separate from it, the word, “like,” is the functional separator verbally. Teens also drop the word when they don’t want to separate themselves. All of this is a functional part of language and, when creating replacement words, have to follow similar rules to work. McLaughlin does not make this work.

The reason I shared Scott Westerfeld’s comment earlier is because he is the author of several books, many teen novels, specifically the Uglies series of books. This is a distopian future where his female teenage protagonist has enough knowledge and ability to assist the Smoke in taking on the establishment. As a result of that, he creates a slang dialogue for his characters and then has them use it as they converse. This dialogue was done correctly and followed appropriate patterns. The problem, though, may be that Westerfeld does not understand the rules of dialogue sufficiently to know when they are not being used appropriately. For him, this may be instinctual and if so, he does it well. McLaughlin, however, decided that her characters would not be typical teens with typical speaking patterns and attempted to created new patterns and failed in the process.

Now, it has become, let’s say . . . popular for author’s to write a book with a gay or homosexual leaning male character in it. Sometimes these are supporting charactes, at other times they are primary characters. In either case, the gay character, whether male or female, seems to be a neccessary role in books. What makes this interesting to me is that, like red heads, there aren’t enough gay or lesbian people, let alone teenagers, to account for the number of characters in books or to statistically support the idea that someone like Jill would even crush on someone like Tommy and then have Tommy be gay or bi or anything but heterosexual is, honestly, a statistical anomally. The truth of the matter is that Tommy, like Ramie, is not believable or real. People in their teens don’t due what Tommy does. As a result, Tommy as a bi- is not believable which means that either (as an author) McLaughlin is lying to her readers or Jill/Jack as narrator is lying. Since I don’t believe Jill/Jack and since the feeling of the book is “this all happened in the past” the outcome is quite literally that as narrator, Jill/Jack are not telling things as they really happened. What’s more, people aren’t strictly bi-. They lean in a specific direction. For Tommy to state that he doesn’t she men or women and only sees people doesn’t work either. Again, as a teenager, he wouldn’t think that way. His explanation would have to be different and since McLaughlin DID bother to find out what gay first encounters are like and then to write them very accurately, the idea that a 24 year old hitting on a teenager as a positive thing (entirely removing gender) is disgusting. We as a society do not allow relationships between adults and minors and have laws that protect the minor. The problem is that Tommy becomes unreliable as a character because of this experience and because this experience clouds all other experiences. The reader cannot trust that Tommy only sees people. This is further evidenced by Tommy telling Jill that he is a gay virgin but he’s had sex with girls. Can this change? Yes. McLaughin didn’t bother to finish telling her story under the misguided guise that she was creating a cliff-hanger. Honestly, there is nothing to hang off of since the story she was telling has nothing to do with the reason she left her audience hanging.

The problem with Daria is that the audience is never given enough about her to understand why she was included in the story other than to be a foil for the obnoxious things Jill and Ramie are doing. Daria is the reason the school knows Tommy is bisexual. Daria was the lookout when they decided to encounter Tommy on the ski slopes. Daria is an idiot and Daria doesn’t add anything to the story. And yet, Daria is (after the first quarter) everywhere.

Along with all of that, Jill’s dad, a successful lawyer, decides to practice meditation and, about the time Jill starts turning into a boy, disapears into the basement. Since it is through her dad that we find out that all men love porn, all men look at porn, and women should just get over the fact that men look at porn, one would think that Jill’s dad would have more of a role than Daria. In reality, he doesn’t. In general, someone doesn’t become a successful lawyer by being a wuss. And yet, this man is described this way. He is submissive to Jill’s mother and has been cowed into the basement, made into a fool, and not considered by anyone who matters as a viable individual who can do or accomplish anything.

Since pornography and sex are the two central themes of the book, and since this is a story meant for teenagers, and since we are meant to believe that this book is supposed to relate to teens, the outcome is that it is not a teen novel. McLaughlin would’ve done a better job had she just written an adult novel with gender swapping as the central theme. And at no time does her conclussions or assertions ring true in my ears or, for that matter, most other people’s. The outcome is that she is writing another book that I will never read. This one wasn’t worth it and she missed her target audience in so many ways I can’t believe RandomHouse published her. Missing the guy side is understandable, but her problem is bigge: she missed the girl side as well.

Utlimately, if you are looking for a well written but badly executed piece of Y/A fiction that misses its audience, this is the book for you. Otherwise, don’t waste your time. There is nothing to be gained in the book. And if you want a frank discussion on sex and pornography, go find Dr. Drew or watch MTV, you will get more out of it and it will probably be better geared for the intended age group. As for me, I am listing this book for sale and praying I don’t get caught up in author hype on another book like this again.

Real Heroes Fly ]]> http://www.johnhattaway.com/2009/01/cycler-by-lauren-mclaughlin-review/feed/ 1 http://www.johnhattaway.com/2009/01/the-flaxen-femme-fatale/ http://www.johnhattaway.com/2009/01/the-flaxen-femme-fatale/#comments Sat, 03 Jan 2009 01:26:15 +0000 smokingpen http://www.johnhattaway.com/?p=1619 So, a little over a month ago I walked into Borders and purchased a copy of John Zakour’s The Flaxen Femme Fatale. Unfortunately, my priority at the time was to finishing up coursework at school and as a result it got set aside with the highest post-college-course-work reading priority of all the books I have to read. As a result, when I was done with college and had my family moved all the way across the country, I was able to pick up the book and start reading it. For those that don’t know, or haven’t been introduced to my opinion of this series of books, I really enjoy them. They are, effectively, cotton candy in the reading category (for me) and as a result, I have a tendency to run out and purchase Zakour’s books when they are released. One of the reasons for this is because I know that many publishing companies base future books off of initial and early sales and as a result, in order to keep my favorite authors publishing what I like to read I have to buy their books. This is also the reason I purchased many of the other books on my To Be Read list and why they are on a shelf to be read. In short, I like what I like and want it to continue and in some cases change and improve.

With all of that out of the way, I decided that Zakour’s The Flaxen Femme Fatale would be my first post college read. I was excited for the book. I am excited for the next book and if you are interested in some of Zakour’s thoughts on the process, you can go over to his website and read about it.

However, I would like to state that there were inherent problems with the book. Not in the story telling, but more in the proofing of the book. In many cases, much of the syntactical structure of the story was reversed or completely left out. I read slowly because I enjoy the taste of the words on my brain and in my mind and as a result I notice when adjectives and adverbs and connectors are reversed or out of order. The reason this is important is that the book, in theory, should’ve been proofed by several different people and as a result I think the publishing errors were egregious enough to have been caught and corrected before publication. Because Robert Jordan was one of the first authors I really tried to follow online (though the current Wheel of Time communities were never of much interest to me as I don’t care for the discussion among fans in relation to where they want the story to lead), I found myself interested in his comments about finding mistakes and having them fixed and what printings have what fixed. With all of that said, I think that later runs of the book (most likely combined with another of Zakour’s books) will have most of the problems fixed. Even with that said, it was a distraction for me.

Other than publishing mistakes, I enjoyed the story though I don’t necessarily feel that it rose to the level of writing that Zakour had with his writing partner Lawrence Ganem. Even with that said, I also think that Zakour has taken his protagonist, Zachary Nixon Johnson, in a direction that increases the depth of the storytelling while keeping the nature of the series of books light and easy to read. In this installment, as the story opens, Zach Johnson is visited (in his dreams) by a flaxen haired woman (Natasha) who tells him not to get involved in finding her. From that point throughout the book, Zach is left chasing her from one tourist trap to another starting in Las Vegas and ending in space. The outcome is… well, pure Zakour. It is a kind of mix between optimistic idealism and plainly unrealistic. I am not sure which one, but it felt good.

Feeling good is one of the elements of these books that I really like. In this book, Zach discovers more of the truth behind HARV, his cybernetic assistant as well as the role he plays in the safety of the world. Why this is important is because it marks a distinctive shift in the focus and direction of the books, on top of which Zakour appears to be taking the character and storylines in a new direction. More specifically, he has built a sub-plot of conspiracy and governmental control as a means of advancing his story and as the principle reason his characters are doing what they are doing. I bring this up not to share what you can expect with the story, but more to illustrate that Zakour as sole writer wrote a book that is a sudden and (impossibly) subtle shift away from where it has been going. The basic plot of most of the books has Zach Johnson being approached by someone to help them (often a hot woman) save the world from some other (often hot woman) person who is bent on taking over the world or destroying it. To help him, other than HARV, he has Randy, HARV’s creator, his assistant (and one of the most powerful psi’s on the planet) Carol, his fiance Electra, and GUS (his gun). In most books, Zakour has a cast of supporting characters (often hot women) who step in to help out in their odd and disturbed ways because, as hot women they are also very powerful. In most cases, this book is no different from his other books in that the world is being saved from a hot powerful woman who was cloned from (though slightly altered) Carol as the most powerful psi in creation. Because she is so powerful, no one can do anything to stop her. This does not stop other characters from other books from trying to step in and assist in this and as a result of that assistance several familiar people end up dying.

What’s more, Electra’s mother, a politician, is interested in gaining more power. A General Wall (female, powerful, not necessarily attractive though also not unattractive) has enlisted Zach’s help and does a lot more to advance not only the agenda of her employers (e.g. the World Council), but also her own agenda. We are led to believe that she is a mastermind, though admittedly, I am not certain Zakour effectively introduces the idea of genius into this work to allow the reader to sufficiently follow the logical progression of Zach behing hired to Zach taking down the bad guy. On top of which, there are a sufficient number of red herrings to distract the reader from the principle plot line (e.g. Zach is public enemy number one, Zach goes to Comic-Con, to Zach spends time with his fiance). Eventually, Zach realizes everything he’s not supposed to realize, helps the victim, and then returns home to end yet another adventure

What I think, other than a course change, weighed this story down were a couple of things: first, this was the second book Zakour has done about psi’s and their power. Granted The Blue Haired Bombshell was more overtly about psi’s and the psi ability (and the moon); but this one was designed to set up conflict (me thinks) in the future where the changes that are forced upon the psi’s of Earth and the Moon will play out. More, it seems that almost every villain babe and villain hero have psi power and this book is no different. More, Carol is set up to be very powerful and I think that Zakour is planning something there with her, especially since she’s been growing in importance with every story. Second, Zakour constantly referred to the basic premise of the book, Zach saves the world, and continually points out that the UNIVERSE, about once a year and at about the same time, steps in and places the world back in peril and make it up to Zach to save everything. As a result, this self-recognition of the basic premise of the series felt completely wasted on the audience and drags the basic story down as the audience, in general, doesn’t need to know this information. If a new reader is picking up the book, then the tongue in cheek action will illustrate what is happening and references to other cases as a result of other characters showing up is sufficient to illustrate that Zach has been in this position a few times before; and for established readers (I would like to think I am one of those), there is no reason to re-establish the basic premise since the established reader has been reading for quite a while.

I think the story was well written and since I know that Zakour outlines the entire book before he writes the first page, and since I know that his first chapters are meant to establish a well written book, my only conclusion to the entirety of the story and the way it felt to read was that Zakour was a bit rushed in the writing process. The structure of a really good story exists, but I think that even with the standard elements his execution felt a bit lacking. It feels rushed. I am not sure what Zakour’s process in this book was or what kind of a time frame he had in writing it, but the outcome didn’t feel like past books and even though he has written another good addition to the Zach Johnson universe, the outcome is that I didn’t enjoy the book as much as I have in the past. Truth told, I am now waiting for his next book, Sapphire Sirens, to come out to see what he is doing.

Two things happened in recent months, though. First, my father-in-law told me he really enjoyed The Plutonium Blonde (first book) and borrowed The Doomsday Brunette to read because he liked that kind of book, which, in turn, helps me understand what he likes for when I suggest things to read. Second, Erin picked up The Flaxen Femme Fatale and started reading it. She enjoys the chapter length and (against odds) has been enjoying the book. She might even pick up and read some of the earlier books. As a result, I feel confident in suggeting these books as fun and light reading.

Real Heroes Fly ]]> http://www.johnhattaway.com/2009/01/the-flaxen-femme-fatale/feed/ 1 http://www.johnhattaway.com/2008/09/updated-iotw-5/ http://www.johnhattaway.com/2008/09/updated-iotw-5/#comments Wed, 03 Sep 2008 21:43:55 +0000 smokingpen http://www.johnhattaway.com/?p=1024 I updated In Order to Write with a review of Scott Westerfeld’s book Specials. I enjoyed the book(s) and think if you are looking for something simple and fun to read with a taste of conspiracy, you should check it out.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

Regardless, Erin has been going to work and appears to be doing a little bit better. They (doctors) have her on prednisone and iron. The combination of which seems to be helping her have a little more energy, though going to work has proven to be a bit difficult for long periods of time, sitting in most cars (any car really) is a pain in the back, and she is up every hour (nearly) to do things before getting another hours worth of sleep only to wake up again; and waking up at something like 6 a.m. and then two hours later crawling back into bed with me so I can wake up. And waking up is not fun.

Who likes mornings?

Okay, there are people out there who do, but when you (and by you I actually mean me) spend half the night in the bathroom because of what feels like rather centralized gas pain with the outcome that whenever you lie down the pain actually gets worse and sitting up causes cramps in odd places and reading has actually gotten worse than the pain, well… waking up not exactly the most fun thing you will ever do. Still, work is an interesting distraction until school starts up (full swing) next week and I take four classes with three hundred books each and (ostensibly) a lot of papers to write, the outcome is a little daunting and work may prove to be less of a distraction and more of a distractor.

On the positive side (for me), House and Bones and other totally awesome television shows are starting the new seasons next week. And since we (and by this I mean the TV viewing people) are not worried about another writers strike or actors strike or crew strike since strike season is over (only happens every seven or nine years folks), we might actually get to watch entire seasons of these shows and have plot lines work through to the very end. That would be totally cool. On top of which, some of the plot developments meant for last season, might get pushed to this season and plots that would’ve lasted a couple of episodes and be disappointingly cool could last more episodes, well… as a fan I think the beginning of the new television season with fewer reality programs and more scripted programs is just sho-diggety and sweet.

At the same time I am trying to finish Scott Westerfeld’s Pretties before school starts up. That should be easy to do as I am mostly done with the book. If you have not bothered to read my comments on his book Uglies the review is posted over at In Order to Write. This is the second book of that series and I hope to finish it and write up a review on it at In Order to Write in the next few days or early next week before the horror of my final semester in my senior year at BYU sets in. And in case you missed that, I am done with my bachelors degree in December. You can cheer for me, or send me Amazon.com gift cards, your choice.

Regardless, we (in this case, Erin and I) are excited that codename: CAMPER is almost here. This should prove to be interesting. I’ve heard tales of people who don’t sleep the first months of a newborn’s life, and even though that is not an option (for me) I am interested in seeing how our lives get to play out with the newborn added. How we divvy work. And whether or not Erin is serious about finding some means of attaching codename: CAMPER to my chest whilst I read and write to better help him read and understand… things.

Still, fun things are a happening. The summer (at least non-school portions of it) are almost over (as is the actual summer, though that is like the day before or after or on the day codename: CAMPER is due) and the fall is about to begin. Hold on tight, folks, fun is about to happen.

Oh, and one of the buildings on campus was evacuated and four firetrucks, an ambulance, and BYU Emergency Medical services were outside the building doing… stuff.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

I’ve not been a science fiction reader in several years, like since I was in high school, but this book, picked up on a whim, was probably just what I needed to begin considering this genre of writing as a serious place to read from. However, in a fit for something entertaining, and not something I really had to think about, I purchased ‘I, Robot’ by Isaac Asimov in lieu of going and seeing the movie of the same name; and I purchased the three available ‘Ring World’ books by Larry Niven before ever picking up ‘Red Mars’. Can I just tell you that two of the three authors were enough to excite me about science fiction again that I am now looking for new authors and new books to read.

However, ‘Red Mars’ begins by following the subterfuge of one of the first 100 scientific colonists to Mars. A research team that was set up by the combined efforts of Russia and the United States during the first part of the 21st century. This team included several other nationalities, though were generally only following the Russians and Americans through the story. The main characters, or more specifically the ones whose points of view Kim Stanley Robinson chooses to follow, are Frank – the American leader, John Boone – also known as the first man on Mars, Maya – the Russian leader, Nadia – a Russian who is also an engineering whiz, and Michael – the only non-American and non-Russian whose point of view matters (he’s from Italy and is the psychologist sent with the team to keep them sane). Throughout the book there is deceit, subterfuge, lying, stealing, an entire Mars grown hidden-subculture, and a stowaway on the first ship, the Ares, that all come in to play as the governments of Earth begin to see their populations increase, their precious metals and other minerals decrease, and the potential for a new life on Mars. On top of all this there is even a super villain, or should I call them super-villains, that make life on Mars all that much more difficult with the ending of the book being expected even though it may not exactly have been anticipated.

At over 500 pages, ‘Red Mars’ can prove to be a little daunting and if you are not really interested in learning something new about science and the theory behind the possible colonization of Mars and the steps to begin terraforming, then this book probably isn’t for you; however, if you like a good story that is based in fact – and not someone’s made up logic and science – then ‘Red Mars’ is a good book to pick up, read, and enjoy as you will become enmeshed in the lives and intrigues of the first 100.

Reprinted from: StandingWater Creations, originally published August 11, 2004

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly