In England, some authors are asking why people appear to be buying books but not reading them.
What’s a Little Looting Among Friends?
Did you see the news that looting reports in Southern Iraq were fabricated, exaggerated, or otherwise untrue–I’m sorry, I mean inaccurate? Well, M.A. Orthofer of the Literary Saloon was in Iraq several years ago and saw some of the places reportedly looted. He suspects that some, maybe a lot, of art and history destruction occurred just because we’ve been fighting over there. Armies break things. Better to break something and save a life than avoid breaking it while failing to save that life.
Orthofer’s main point is that the first press reports of this did not link readers to the original report, from which Orthofer quotes. Make your judgment on that report, but I think we could easily read that quotation as a confession of the surveyors desire to confirm that looting did occur, despite their lack of evidence.
Market Pressures
If this story is true, it’s a good example of the need for Christianity around the world. Africans in the Congo and Rwanda are fighting over control of a mineral used to make certain electric capacitors which are used in Sony Playstations. Children are reportedly being sent into the mines to collect a mineral that has increased in price 500% due in part to demand for Playstations. It is just as unacceptable for the miners to abuse themselves and their progeny for this as it is for Sony to refuse responsibility for helping to create the situation. Everyone must do what he can reasonably do to love his neighbor as he would himself. Though Sony is the big name in this story, everyone in the market handling this product is responsible to understand what’s going on to the best of his ability. But I’m not telling you anything new.
Throw Them From the Balloon
So Homer, Austen, Voltaire, and Wodehouse are in a sinking hot air balloon, arguing over who needs to be pitched in order to save the rest. What is this world coming to, I ask you? (via Books, Inq.)
Repost: The Animal Hour, by Andrew Klavan
(I’m bummed tonight. I stopped for groceries, and not only has my usual store rearranged the sections again [for the sole purpose, I’m convinced, of trying to get us to look at stuff we’ve already decided we don’t want to buy], but Banquet TV Dinners appears to have discontinued their Yankee Pot Roast meal. The things that made the Yankee Pot Roast irreplaceable were not only that it tasted surprisingly good, but it was only 210 calories. Oh yeah, and it was cheap. I’ll never stay on my diet now, and it’ll be all Banquet’s fault.
(Another Klavan review, this one from June, 2006. It has the distinction of being the only book of his that I’ve panned. It’s a stinker.)
I’ve been gushing over the books of Andrew Klavan recently (found one I hadn’t read in the store tonight—hurrah!). However, I feel obligated to warn you about one of them.
I finished The Animal Hour the other day. It’s one of Klavan’s earlier books, and I get the impression it was a kind of an experiment.
In my opinion, the experiment didn’t succeed.
It starts out with a great hook. A young woman in New York City goes in to her job and starts to settle down at her desk, when another woman comes into her office and asks her what she’s doing there. The conversation becomes a confrontation, and soon a number of employees have gathered. It quickly becomes clear that no one there has ever seen her before.
That’s a terrific start. Unfortunately, at least to my taste, the rest of the book doesn’t live up to it.
The mechanics of a great thriller are all there. Suspense mounts, and mysteries abound.
The problem is with an element that’s usually Klavan’s strong suit—the characters. There were very few characters in this book who raised my sympathy much. Most of them were creepy in one or several ways.
Also the gore level was high.
Also Christianity didn’t come off looking very good.
I’d skip this one.
Sniffing Pastry Makes You Nicer
A book claims to have researched the details into the moods we have while smelling good and bad aromas. Prep for the smell test.
Ho, Ho, That’s a Good One
Author Jim Holt talks about the subject of his book, Stop Me If You’ve Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes.
Discovery: Snow-like Formation Covering Cave Floor
In New Mexico’s Fort Stanton Cave, surveyors have discovered unique formations. “The few who have walked on the formation say they’ve seen nothing else like it. Early studies point to its uniqueness: Already, some three dozen species of microbes previously unknown to science have been uncovered,” reports Susan Bryan. Though it may be closed to the public, I hope they have some photographs taken.
Yes, blast it, something’s in a name
In these troubled times, I don’t often have good things to say about judges anywhere in the world.
Judge Rob Murfitt of New Zealand is an exception.
One small candle in the cultural night.
Repost: The Scarred Man, by Keith Peterson (Andrew Klavan)
(My original plan was to repost all my previous Andrew Klavan reviews before addressing Empire of Lies, but I got carried away. So I’m picking up the reposts now. This is second in the series, and like the previous repost, comes from May 2006.)
Oh, by the way, I forgot yesterday the first Andrew Klavan novel I read (actually it was written under the Keith Peterson pseudonym)–The Scarred Man. This is a psychological thriller with one of the best hooks I’ve ever read.
I love a great “book hook.” Perhaps my favorite is the beginning of The Man Who Wasn’t There by Roderick MacLeish (a much underappreciated novelist). That book (as I recall–I don’t have a copy) began with the main character, who was something of a celebrity, being recognized by a stranger sitting beside him on a plane. Instead of admitting to his identity, he played a trick he liked to play in such situations, claiming to be his own (non-existent) non-famous twin, whose story he made up on the spot.
The next morning he got up and read in the paper that this imaginary twin brother had been killed in a plane crash.
That’s a great book hook.
But the hook in The Scarred Man is almost as good.
Michael North is a young New York reporter who accepts an invitation to spend Christmas in Connecticut with his boss. There he meets the boss’s daughter, Susannah, and falls hopelessly in love in about a nanosecond.
To entertain themselves, the party members agree to tell ghost stories (I thought of you here, Phil). Michael makes up a story on the spur of the moment, telling a tale of a murderous, undead psychopath with a scar down the center of his face.
Susannah goes hysterical, shouting “Stop it! What are you trying to do to me!” She flees back to school before he can discuss it with her.
Later, when he drives up to Susannah’s college to talk to her, he pulls into the entrance and sees, in his headlights–the scarred man. When he finds Susannah, she tells him she’s been having nightmares about this man all her life.
The great thing is, this isn’t a supernatural novel.