Forbidden Area

Forbidden Area

A while ago my reading list included Pat Frank's class post-apocalyptic novel, Alas, Babylon. It was better than I had expected, and had the interesting factor of having been first published in 1959. If you want to get a good idea of the kind of thoughts that were going through Americans' heads during the cold war, Alas, Babylon is an excellent resource.

Forbidden Area is more of the same. It was published a few years before Alas, Babylon and is not quite as good a novel. In this book, the Soviet Union has planted sleeper agents in the U.S., with a sabotage plan that will make possible the conquest of America by nuclear weapons. One of the characters in the book at one point asks what on earth they would want with a continent covered with radioactive waste. "Maybe they'll just put a fence around it with a sign saying 'Forbidden Area'," is the answer.

This isn't a very long book, but I felt at time that I was never going to finish it. There are a lot of characters, few of whom have particularly distinct personalities, and eventually I just gave up on keeping most of them straight. (It's pretty clear what the role of each character is, anyway, so I just treated them as though I was meeting them for the first time whenever I encountered the name. It didn't really matter, in terms of understanding the book.)

I was in elementary school during the '50's and '60's, and I found this book to be pretty indicative of the attitudes of the time. I had pretty much forgotten how frightened we were of the USSR in those days, but this brought it all back. It's an interesting look at a slice of the past, and I recommend it for historical perspective if nothing else. As a literary piece, it leaves a lot to be desired.

Some Kind of Fairy Tale

Some Kind of Fairy Tale

No matter what you might think, I'm not actively looking for novels about girls who disappear. Although this book would appear to have quite a similar plot line to The Uses of Enchantment (reviewed previously), the fact that I've read two such novels in the same month is purely coincidence.

I picked Some Kind of Fairy Tale up off the New Book shelves at the library. I read the introductory paragraphs, found them rather intriguing, and decided to give the book a try. I was actually more attracted to the language than the plot line.

Good thing, too, because the story wasn't all that much. In a nutshell: 16-year old Tara Martin disappeared from the Outwoods, an old, old forest in the heart of England, 20 years ago. No one ever knew what had become of her. Now she has come back.

Tara has scarcely aged at all in the time she's been gone. To anyone at all acquainted with English folklore, it's perfectly obvious that she's been stolen away by the fairies ("Don't call them that! They don't like to be called that!" she keeps insisting to everyone.) Her family, however, flat out doesn't believe her.

The story had promise, but ultimately it doesn't really go anywhere. We have flashbacks into her time in Faeryland (which put me in mind of a 60's hippie commune). We have interviews with her psychiatrist. We have discussions about how her disappearance effected her brother, her parents, her boyfriends. And we have a whole lot of shifting around of points-of-view. None of these aspects of the novel are really anything to grab the attention. It's not a terrible book, but it's not a terrific one, either.

Yes! Energy

Yes! Energy

Really, it's nothing you haven't read before.

Believe in yourself. Change your self-talk. Capitalize on your strengths. Delegate. Trust in a Higher Power.

Loral Langemeier's Higher Power wants her to have a new car in the driveway and more time on the slopes. And this is where things start to get questionable.

If you google the author's name, you'll find lots and lots of complaints about her organization. According to Loral Langemeier, these websites are paid Google advertisements designed to steal traffic away from her and direct it toward her competitors. And, she says, they're put up by Eastern European Extortionists in an effort to extort funds from her. (If she pays up, she says, they'll take the websites down.)

Except they're not. They're definitely not Google ads, and they're not directing traffic to anyone else. And they sure look like actual reviews to me. Which is something I can't say about all the glowing 5-star reviews of her book on the Amazon Website.

If you really want to read this mediocre and not-very-helpful rehash of all the old money-making platitudes, I urge you to borrow the book from your library. Or, if you must buy a copy, get it from Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Do not, under any circumstances, consider buying it from her website, or from doing anything else there that would involve Loral Langemeier and her minions from getting your credit card number.

Because, according to those East European Extortionists, that might land you in a sea of grief.

The Elements

The Elements

Before I begin discussing this book, I'd like to make a little detour and explain a literary allusion that seems relevant here.

There is a character, in Dickens' classic David Copperfield, named Mr. Dick, who is attempting to write an autobiography, but keeps running into a problem. Mr. Dick is a gentle soul, and a little crazy, and he is obsessed with the matter of the head of King Charles I. The subject keeps finding its way into his manuscript, no matter how hard he tries to keep it out. The phrase "King Charles head" was picked up by other writers, and by the end of the 19th century it was a common expression for an obsession that keeps intruding into matters where it's not relevant.

Now, back to the The Elements. The author, Theodore Gray, has a bit of a King Charles' head, and that head is his aversion to incandescent lighting. You would think that in a book that covers, literally, every thing in the world, he could find other things to write about. But no, he is thoroughly and enthusiastically opposed to incandescent lighting. It is bad.

And it's amazing in how many places he manages to bring the discussion around to his topic. I mean, I would have expected it under tungsten. But he talks about incandescent light bulbs all thought this book! Amazing.

I ordered this book from the library after reading a review that said it had amazing photographs. Eh. It's formatted pretty much in the manner you'd expect of a junior reader encyclopedia. There's a big picture of element on the left-hand side, and a bunch of smaller pictures of its applications on the right. There's a little bit of text, in white lettering on a black background. The book smells like Play-Doh.

One review I read of this book suggested it was perfect for high school students. Not bloody likely. If your high school student already knows, for example, that diamonds are made of carbon, this book is way too elementary for him.

Or if he already knows about incandescent light bulbs.

Unholy Night

Unholy Night

Seth Grahame-Smith. Really, how can you not love this guy?

Grahame-Smith is also the author of enormously successful books Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Like those two books, Unholy Night is the re-telling of an oh-so-familiar tale.

It's the story of Balthazar, a thief by profession and wise guy by preference, and his adventures during the 1st century AD. Balthazar runs into a little trouble with Herod's soldiers, gets thrown into prison, and meets up with a couple of other career criminals named Gaspar and Melchyor. After their resourceful escape from execution, the trio meet up with a newly-married couple and their new-born son, and help them escape from Herod's forces who, for some reason inexplicable to Balthazar, are routinely slaughtering all the Jewish boy babies in the area.

Get the picture?

It's a clever idea, and adequately carried out. I can't say there's anything especially noteworthy about the execution, however. Grahame-Smith is a pretty decent writer. I was really impressed, for example, with the way he seamlessly blended the zombie scenes into Jane Austen's prose in his better-known work, and I understand that he did pretty well with the archaic style of Abraham Lincoln's "secret" diaries. (Haven't read that one yet.) But here, he's writing, presumably, in his own voice, and I can't honestly say I'm all that impressed. It's a quick read, and altogether understandable, but his writing's a little more expository than I would like. Still, it's a fun read, and it won't take you long to finish.

Silverwing

Silverwing

I read a review of this book that compared it to Watership Down, and that was enough for me. Silverwing is clearly a children's book, and I'm not really expecting a book of the same caliber as Richard Adams', but it could still be very good without rivaling his work. It's apparently about the travels and tribulations of a young bat.


Update:

What a delightful book!

Actually, I started reading this a couple of weeks ago, got into it a few chapters, and then got bored and started reading something else. Last night I picked it up again. And oh, my goodness!

In the very next chapter: Cannibalism! Bad bats! Danger and excitement! Lots of surprises!

I read straight through to the end, and I really enjoyed the ride. There's a whole series of these books (which are technically written for children, but, who cares?) and I'm pretty sure I'll be reading more of them.

Everything He Hasn't Told You

I'm not quite sure what to expect from this. Burton Silver is the author of several amusing books, including Why Cats Paint, Why Paint Cats, and The Naughty Victorian Hand Book. At first glance, however, this one looks more-or-less serious. It's a book of questions to ask your man to get him to "open up to you." Hmmmm, isn't that Cruel and Unusual Punishment for a man?


Update:

Oh, boy.

I once had a boyfriend who, when being asked a simple question, would sit and think about it for a few minutes before answering. It wasn't a difficult question. When I asked him what was up, he answered, "I'm trying to decide what the right answer would be."

Really, I'm not like that. I don't have a hidden agenda when I ask questions. (Most of the time, anyway.) He didn't get this from me, but, yeah, he did have a lot of baggage. And I'm beginning to understand how men get this way.

This book is touted as the solution to all your troubles if your man isn't too communicative with you. Hmmm. If he just isn't communicative in general, I guess you could just try, you know, talking to him. If, on the other hand, he's "uncommunicative" in the sense that he doesn't share everything when you ask "What are you thinking about?", then this might be the book for you.

If you're one of those women who believe that he's your man, and that means you own every little idea that's in his noggin, then I think you'll really like this book. It gives you techniques to mine for all that precious ore that should rightfully belong to you, not him. Even better, there are secrets to translating the answers he gives you into usable data. Oh yes, ladies, there are Trick Questions in this book.

For example, one of the questions gives you a series of situations that men might fantasize about, not necessarily in a positive manner. The situations include being an astronaut, going insane, wearing women's clothing, cannibalism, moving to Canada, and meeting Elvis. You're supposed to ask you man what percentage of men, in his opinion, have fantasized about the experience. The trick is, that since most men probably want to think they're "normal", he will tend to put himself in the majority. In other words, for any experience that he thinks more than 50% of men have fantasized about -- he probably has, too.

This book left a really, really bad taste in my mouth, and it may have been just because I was reading it straight through, one invasive question after another. I thought at one point that it might be an interesting book from the point of view of questions to ask yourself, or -- if you're a writer -- things to think about in regard to a character. But in the long run, I rejected both of those ideas. I get offended when I ask myself all of these questions. And my characters would never stand for it at all.