City of Bones

Posted on May 13, 2011 by smellincoffee

City of Bones
© 2002 Michael Conelly
464 pages

High in the Hollywood hills lies the body of  a young boy, buried for two decades, whose bones bear the scars of a lifetime of abuse. When a dog finds the bones, Hieryonymous Bosch and the LAPD are drawn into a disturbing case that will haunt their minds and cost the men and women in blue the lives of one of their own. While a twenty-year old murder seems a tough prospect to resolve, Harry has two leads: a convicted child molester living nearby, and the boy’s own broken family.

I keep returning to Connelly’s series out of affection for the main character (who, in my head, takes the form of Liam Neeson in Taken), the loose-cannon detective who lives to make a difference and piss off as many politicians as he can in the process. Connelly spins a good yarn, but City of Bones is more emotionally intense than any of the other Bosch novels I’ve read. The story of the victim and his family are disturbing enough, but as the case wears on, more innocent lives are lost and Bosch is faced with a personal crisis. The case reveals that everyone has skeletons  waiting in their own closets…and some are not pleasant to unearth.  I’m hoping my library carries Lost Light, the next novel in the series, so I can see what will come of Harry’s unprecedented and unexpected decision in the novel’s endgame.

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Welcome…back?

Posted on May 13, 2011 by smellincoffee

The past couple of days have been a little strange, not being able to read any blogs. While I don’t post every day,  there are a number of blogs (book-related and otherwise) I visit several times a day. Since Blogger’s status page also inaccessible, I received updates from their twitter page. I only lost one post (which has since been restored), though there were a couple of comments lost as well. I don’t think an outage like this has happened before, at least not in my years (late 2006) using it.  I am not too disgruntled: accidents happen.

I forgot to mention yesterday that I’ll also be finishing The Sea Wolf by Jack London, which I started a few days ago.  Now that blogger is back up and running there are a couple of book reviews I hope to publish tonight or tomorrow. I’m also going to look into backing the blog up on my hard drive. Since I already have a wordpress address reserved (mostly to prevent another blogger from using the name and thus getting people confused — that has happened), I may use it as a mirror one day. Currently they are no posts there — I have not developed it at all.

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This Week at the Library (11 May)

Posted on May 11, 2011 by smellincoffee

My home library sits next door to City Hall on Selma’s downtown thoroughfare of Broad Street. Today I parked closer to City Hall than I usually do, and looked up at a lamp post to see a peculiar sign hanging on it. I’d first spotted the sign back in December, when taking photos of Selma during Christmastime, and it baffled me. Was murder sanctioned to one side, and forbidden on the other?   I decided to ask the librarian, who had heard inquiries before. To the best of her memory, a mourning father had put it up after the death of one of his children — but she wasn’t sure. I suppose City Hall would have more information. I wonder if every city is littered with objects like this with strange stories to them?

Today I returned a few books unread — Catholics and the Holy Bible, since I’ve gotten tired of the subject:  The Middle East and The First Salute because I wasn’t as interested in them as I thought I was (I’ll probably return to Salute in July, as part of my usual Independence Day reading), and Evolution and Society. While a collection of essays from scientists applying the idea of evolution — change through time — to their various disciplines appealed to me, the first few essays were very dry and I never got into it. For some reason I’m in the mood to read stories, so most of this week looks to be fiction.

  • To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee. I’m not sure how I managed to get out of high school without ever reading this, a classic of southern literature, but I did and so I have no idea why people keep praising Atticus Finch. But I’m going to find out.
  • Guns, Ed McBain. For some reason I’ve been enjoying cop stories, and this fellow is apparantly famous for his 87th precinct series. I don’t know if this is connected or not, but it had a fairly straightforward title.
  • Sharpe’s Tiger,  Bernard Cornwell. I think this is where Sharpe saves Wellesley’s life and begins to rise in the ranks.

And because all play and no work makes smellincoffee a vacuous boy,…

  • Earth Science Made Simple, Edward F. Albin. This series is usually pretty good, so I’m hoping to bone up on my rocks and weather.
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The Undiscovered Country

Posted on May 10, 2011 by smellincoffee

Star Trek VI:  The Undiscovered Country
© 1992 J.M. Dillard
Adapted from the movie, © 1991. Screenplay and story by Leonard Nimoy, Denny Martin, and Nicholas Meyer.

“I give you a toast: to the undiscovered country — the future.”



Some nights I ignore the bed for the floor, and a few mornings ago I awoke resting in front of one of my bookcases, having scattered some of its contents across the floor during the night. The Undiscovered Country was laying beneath my pillow,  and I decided to see how J.M. Dillard treated my uncontested favorite trek movie. Dillard has done Trek movie novelizations before, to good effect, and my fondness for this movie saw me tuck in rather greedily . The Undiscovered Country is the last movie to feature the whole of the original-series cast, and it gave them a proper send-off with a topical plot, focusing strongly on the characters and providing viewers with adventure, action, mystery, humor, and meaningful reflection in bounds.

The plot, topical for the early 1990s when the Soviet Union had finally collapsed and put an end to the decades-old Cold War,  is primarily one of politics. A devastating environmental disaster threatens to destroy the Klingon empire unless they divert their resources from the military, and thus end the long-running ‘cold war’ between themselves and the Federation. This is the perfect opportunity for two idealists (Spock and the new Klingon chancellor, Gorkon) to propose a radical initiative: peace.  Spock volunteers his friend and captain James T. Kirk for the duty of escorting Gorkon to Earth to work toward peace and disarmament, but things go awry.  There are those on both sides who balk at the idea of sudden change, and then Gorkon is assassinated at the hands of individuals in Starfleet uniforms, Captain Kirk and Doctor McCoy are imprisoned. Spock must endeavor to unravel a conspiracy before the fragile opportunity for peace is destroyed.

Dillard is an old hand at Trek novelizations, and here she presents the story of The Undiscovered Country near-flawlessly, ironing out a few wrinkles from the movie and enriching the overall experience by fleshing out characters who the movie ignored for the sake of time and giving various scenes additional depth. While movies have to be expedient in choosing which characters to develop and which scenes to incorporate into the plot, a story in novel form is allowed to be more deliberate. The novel  is supportive of the movie, allowing readers to see more into the story — to see into Kirk’s emotional conflict, as he struggles against bitter hatred against the Klingons who killed his son.  Dillard also tells the story of the Klingon’s point of view and puts the spotlight on Valeris,  Spock’s protégé and potential successor. Her background and point-of-view chapters make her an especially intriguing character to experience.  I imagine it’s a tricky thing to depict a conspiracy from the conspirator’s point of view without giving too much of the plot away for the reader, but Dillard walks the line impressively: there’s only one odd little inconsistency when a character appears to be oblivious to something he had to have known.   This is scarcely noticeable overall, though, and I’d declare this novelization a triumph, fulfilling my high expectations.

“Course heading, captain?”
“Second star to the right — and straight on, til’ morning.”

Tor.com recently did a Star Trek movie marathon, featuring reviews and comments of the Trek movies by Trek authors. A.C. Crispin, author of Sarek, covers The Undiscovered Country here.

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Teaser Tuesday (10 May)

Posted on May 9, 2011 by smellincoffee

Teaser Tuesday again, from Should Be Reading.

The past had a way of coming back up out of the ground. Always right below your feet.

p. 199, City of Bones.  Michael Connelly

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The Coming

Posted on May 8, 2011 by smellincoffee

The Coming
© 2000 Joe Haldeman
217 pages

2054. Earth. The future isn’t what it used to be. The seas are rising — Florida cities are frantically trying to build seawalls for protection — and the outlook is deteriorating.  The United States is led by a perky but depressingly imbecilic woman named Carlie (who may or may not be able to see Russia from her house),  the eastern hemisphere is increasingly dominated by large, hostile alliances like “The Eastern Bloc”, and Germany and France are on the brink of war. And then down in Gainsville Florida,  astronomer Aurora Bell picks up a signal. Confirming its existence with Japan’s station on the Moon, she realizes to her shock that it’s in English.

“We’re coming”.  Repeated sixty times.  Something from outside the solar system, using an unbelievable amount of energy, is coming — and Earth has three months to be prepared. What is it? Aliens? Jesus? The revolt of the urban proletariat?  While the potential for contact with alien lifeforms would seem to take precedence,  it recedes into the background after an initial surge of interest. While the clock ticks down, people live out their lives.  In Gainsville,  a man is being blackmailed by the Mafia, who threaten to make public his homosexuality —  now a crime in the United States. His wife, meanwhile, tries to keep the president from leading the entire world into oblivion. No, Madame President, it may not be the best time to launch supernukes into orbit at a time when France and Germany are blowing up each other’s parliaments and playing chicken with their tanks on the border.  As the date of the coming approaches, tension reaches crisis level, and then —

Have you ever witnessed a small child trying to blow bubbles? Clutching a slippery bottle filled with the soapy fluid in one hand, and grasping the plastic bubble-blower in another, she carefully fills a pocket of the solution with air. It grows bigger and bigger, and you know it’s going to be a beautiful, big bubble when it escapes, and then — it pops.

If you haven’t, then read this novel and maybe you’ll experience that feeling. While the premise fascinated me, my enthusiasm never caught. There was nothing for it to catch on. Haldeman employs an interesting style of writing here: the novel is presented in a relatively seamless succession of viewpoint characters. They’re a diverse lot, with varying roles to play in the story. Some don’t even play a role in the story, they just exist because, hey — wouldn’t you want to know how pornography is filmed in 2054?  This viewpoint succession threw me off at first, until I realized that the new character was someone already in-scene, and all I had to do was make a slight jump — switch trains of thought, as it were. The problem, though, is that the trains of thought speed up and slow down at random, and often arrive at the station in rapid succession. At one point there were three jumps in two pages, and one character only had a paragraph, leaving me feeling very disoriented.

It doesn’t help that all this jumping has little bearing on the plot, if there is one. While this is advertised as a science fiction novel and bookended by the announcement and arrival of The Coming,  what science there is in here is limited to technology — three-dimensional television, interactive pornography, and semen-based  drugs. The plot consists of the announcement, people living their lives for three months, and the ending. It’s not coherent. It left me wondering, “This is it?”   There are five-star reviews for this book on Amazon, and most of them focus on the characterization and presentation of how the world might look in fifty years. I found the people and predictions to be bleak, though there were a couple of characters who I hoped would make it out all right. While the off-beat ending was unexpected (and a little disappointing), and the writing took some getting used to, the book’s central weakness for me is that so much of it is utterly relevant to the presumed plot. This is not about The Coming. This is about people living in 2054.  That may be of interest to you — it was in part to me — but don’t pick this book up expecting Contact.

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These Weeks at the Library (20 April – 4 May)

Posted on May 5, 2011 by smellincoffee

The last two weeks have been rather enjoyable, reading-wise. I’ve been reading from the lost books of the Septuagint — books which were in the original Jewish and Christian canons, but discarded by Martin Luther —  and  finding them interesting looks into the Jewish mind as it grew through the centuries.  I also continued in Asimov’s Empire series and returned to the Sharpe books by Bernard Cornwell, but the most memorable book from this period has been Joe Haldeman’s The Accidental Time Machine,  which borders on absurdist science fiction. Haldeman is an SF author whose work I’m just starting to explore.

Those enamored of the good doctor Isaac Asimov may be interested in reading a series of posts by literary agent and author Frederik Pohl, who knew Asimov growing up and remained friends with him throughout his life.

Selected Quotations:

Late in the cruise I discovered that Carl Sagan (the well-known astronomer from Cornell) did not take kindly to the swaying of the ship. At once I told him, in full and moving detail, of the exact matter in which the various ship’s motions failed to affect me, attributing my immunity to nausea to superior genes and a ready intelligence.
Carl showed no signs of gratitude. 

p. 206, The Tragedy of the Moon (Isaac Asimov)

Do not let your passions be your guide, but restrain your desires.  If you indulge yourself with all that passion fancies, it will make you the butt of your enemies. (Ecclesiasticus 18: 30-31)        

A hasty argument kindles a fire, and a hasty quarrel leads to bloodshed. Blow on a spark to make it glow, or spit on it to put it out; both results come from the one mouth. (27: 11-12)

This next week..

  • Michael Connelly’s City of Bones
  • Joe Haldeman’s The Coming, which opens with the discovery of a signal from space
  • Possibly reading The First Salute by Barbara Tuchman, which is not — as I thought — a story of naval warfare during the American Revolution, but one addressing the political influence of the Revolution in Europe. She seems have written a fair bit about the Dutch, which pleases me given how little I know about them and how significant a role they played in European history in the age of enlightenment and discovery.
I also have Bernard Lewis’ The Middle East, which I might explore at some point in the week.
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The Tragedy of the Moon

Posted on May 4, 2011 by smellincoffee

The Tragedy of the Moon
© Isaac Asimov 1978
224 pages

The Tragedy of the Moon collects seventeen sundry Asimovian essays  which will prove a delight to most Asimov fans.  The essays were originally published in Fantasy and Science Fiction, but have been edited and arranged specially for the book. This is one of his more diverse collections: while science is a common element of most of the essays, only two are pure or ‘hard’ science. The rest combine science and culture, as when Asimov writes on the history of calenders and the week in western culture. I’d never really wondered why the week has seven days, at least not enough to look up the answer.  As Asimov deftly explains in “Moon over Babylon”, it comes from lunar festivities which occurred every seventh day. This also has some bearing on the Jewish ‘Sabbath’, and this essay is rich in history and etymology. While the good doctor’s nonfiction output is generally fascinating, I liked this collection most for including more of Asimov’s informality:  some collections tend to be staid and to the point, but Asimov’s winsome personality shines through the pages here as he constantly kids and charms the reader, both in-text and in footnotes.
If “It’s by Asimov!” isn’t enough for you, the list of essays follows.
  1. “The Tragedy of the Moon” Asimov reflects on how the absence of a moon rotating the earth may have sped up humanity’s acceptance of heliocentrism and hastened the growth of scientific progress in general.
  2. “The Triumph of the Moon” examines how the moon has been a boon to humanity, though his three triumphs listed are more indirect than I’d imagined. 
  3. “Moon Over Babylon” concerns the history of the week as a timekeeping period, and is one of my favorites.
  4. “The Week Excuse” sees Asimov argue for a more sensible calender (and make a terrible pun, for he is “not ashamed of myself in the slightest”).
  5. “The World Ceres” is both explanatory and speculative, as Asimov ponders how humanity might use Ceres for mining and tourism
  6. “The Clock in the Sky” regales the reader with the story of how humanity figured out the speed of light.
  7. “The One and Only” focuses on carbon’s unique suitability for becoming the backbone of life.
  8. “The Unlikely Twins” tackle two very different manifestations of carbon: graphite and diamond, and explain how they can be so different and yet consist solely of the same element.
  9. “Through the Microglass” focuses on the discovery of microscopic beings like bacteria and their importance in the fields of medicine and biology.
  10. “Down from the Amoeba” struggles with the concept of “life”: are viruses, sperm,  and red bloodcells ‘alive’?
  11. “The Cinderalla Compound” builds on this and addresses the discovery of nucleic acid and DNA. 
  12. “Doctor, Doctor, Cut my Throat” features Asimov reducing his surgeon into a laughing fit and lecturing on hormones.
  13. “Lost in Translation”, which also appears either Gold or Magic, is an interesting departure from the rest of the book,  stressing the importance of social and cultural context when translating or reading literature from eras past. He uses the Book of Ruth as his prime example, seeing it as not just a love story, but a triumphant endorsement of universal brotherhood. 
  14. “The Ancient and the Ultimate” sees Asimov slyly defend books while pretending to lecture on the supremacy of cassettes (heh) in the future of communication. 
  15. “By the Numbers” addresses both hypocrisy — people complaining about technological societies and taxes while freely enjoying the benefits of both — and the need for a society in which computers manage things. (Such societies often appear in Asimov’s works, often using a global computer  called  MULTIVAC.)
  16. “The Cruise and I” relates the story of Asimov’s cruise off the Florida coast, where he watched the last Apollo takeoff — which happened to be the first nighttime launch. Asimov usually avoided travel, so I relished this humorous take which ended in splendor as humanity reached out for the moon yet one more time.  Carl Sagan was on that very same cruise, and he appears in the essay twice.
  17. “Academe and I” sees Asimov look back on his careers as an author and professor of biochemistry, giving a minibiography of himself along the way.

I for one enjoyed myself tremendously reading this.

My own copy, purchased in used condition (obviously so) last week. 


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Teaser Tuesday (3 May)

Posted on May 3, 2011 by smellincoffee

April showers (and tornadoes) bring May flowers (and Teaser Tuesdays).

The stranded Riflemen might call him the new Lieutenant, and they might invest the word ‘new’ with all the scorn of old soldiers, but that was because they did not know their man. They thought of him as nothing more than a jumped-up sergeant, and they were wrong. He was a soldier, and his name was Richard Sharpe. 

p. 31, Sharpe’s Rifles. Bernard Cornwell

It was a neat column of words: WE’RE COMING, repeated sixty times.
“Well…..by itself, it doesn’t exactly make one –“
“Norman. The signal came from a tenth of a light-year away. In English.”

p. 2-3, The Coming. Joe Haldeman

And the reward for “Most Embarrassing Reason I’m at the Doctor’s” is…

I lay down to sleep by the courtyard wall, leaving my face uncovered because of the heat. I did not know that there were sparrows in the wall above me; and their droppings fell, still warm, right into my eyes and produced white patches. I went to the doctors to be cured, but the more they treated me with their ointments, the more my eyes were blinded by the white patches, until I lost my sight.

From book two of Tobit (The New English Bible).

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Top Ten Favorite Reccommendations

Posted on May 2, 2011 by smellincoffee

This week The Broke and the Bookish are dicussing their favorite books they found through recommendations. Happily I have a ‘reccommended‘ label just for an occasion such as this.

1. Redwall, Brian Jacques (Librarian)

My home librarian suggested this book to me many years ago, and I remember fording the marsh behind my house and finding a quiet place in the woods to read it. As I’ve mentioned before, it was the first time I’d ever read an epic novel, or a work of fantasy, and the idea of exploring this world with its massive history excited me.

2. Sharpe’s Eagle, Bernard Cornwell (Seeking a Little Truth)
While I haven’t yet read most of or even much of the Sharpe series, this book introduced me to Bernard Cornwell. He’s become a favorite of mine the last year: I’m positively wild for his Saxon Stories series which are about politics, friendship, family, and war  during the 800s in England, where Anglo-Saxons and Danes fought to rule Britain.

3. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J. K. Rowling
This book wasn’t just recommended to me, I had a pack of friends who followed me around like ducks, pecking me on the legs and quacking “Read it!”  I avoided it for years because the books were too popular, but in August 2007 I picked up the first novel. I’d read the series through by the end of September, and I re-read them that December. Since then Potterdom has entered into the Holy Trinity of things I am geeky about, along with Star Trek and Star Wars. (Though I guess becoming a Firefly fan has made it a quad…)

4. The Quiet Game, Greg Iles (Sister)
I’ve never read anyone who does thrillers like Greg Iles,  and his usual southern gothic setting is a delight. The Quiet Game started me on Iles, and introduced his oft-used character Penn Gage, a lawyer-novelist turned mayor of his hometown. The Penn Gage mysteries tend to involve criminal mysteries and discussion of social and cultural issues set inside the steamy historic town of Natchez, Mississippi.

5. The Destiny Trilogy, David Mack (Everyone at the TrekBBS)
(Mere Mortals, Gods of Night, Lost Souls)
 I have heard about these Star Trek novels for years.  Ever since their release, every book thread at TrekBBS has mentioned the Destiny trilogy reverently.  Last year I picked them up, and I figured — no way will this live up to the hype. I put it off for a few weeks because I dreaded being disappointed, but once I began to read….they’re glorious.

7. Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman (Sociology Professor)

An incredible look at the ever-increasing domination of society by entertainment, and what that is doing to political commentary, the news, and our worldviews.

8. How Few Remain, Harry Turtledove (University Acquaintance)

How Few Remain is the start of a large alternate-history series which begins with the success of the southern rebellion in the United States, and the establishment of a Confederacy protected by Britain and France. Turtledove follows this new geopolitical scheme ’til the end of the second world war.  While versions of the Great War and World War 2 both feature prominently, they play out very differently. The two American states are on opposite sides of the conflict, which is why I spent twelve+ books cheering on the Prussians and American socialists in their fight against Confederate Nazis,  the Canadian resistance, and Mormon terrorists.

…it’s a fun series.

9. No Ordinary Time, Doris Kearns Goodwin (Friend)
The story of the Roosevelt White House, in which FDR fights the Great Depression, racism, and corporate selfishness in an attempt to righten the American economy, make it a more democratic nation, and fight the Nazi’s

10. Persian Fire, Tom Holland (The Resolute Reader)
The story of the conflict between Greece and Persia. The book is especially helpful for those wishing to understand the Persian mind and that which followed, for Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all have a bloodline that makes them partially related to Persia’s Zoroastrianism.

Honorable Mention: The Know-It-All, A.J. Jacobs…a humorous account of a man who tried to read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica.

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