Category Archives: Book Log

Book Log – Please, Mr. Einstein (abandoned)

Posted on by

Please, Mr. Einstein by Jean-Claude Carriere (abandoned)

This was a book I put on my wishlist, though I can’t remember why, now. A recommendation from someone? Dunno.

And someone got it for me for Xmas. Which really makes me want to read it and enjoy it, because I said I wanted it through my wishlist. The thing about asking for something for Xmas is that while people sometimes feel a little uncreative for resorting to what you asked for instead of surprising you with something you didn’t even know you wanted, they get the consolation of being “guaranteed” to have gotten you something you will enjoy. Boy, that’s a convoluted sentence.

At any rate, I didn’t enjoy this book. So much so, I just can’t finish it. I sloughed through 2/3s of it… that’s all I can handle.

The premise is, a young, nondescript girl from modern day walks into an office because she somehow knows that Albert Einstein will be there. There is a waiting room, filled with folks like Isaac Newton, all waiting to see Einstein. The girl gets in, and Einstein talks about his theories with her. He can open doors, and they walk into different parts of space-time. There is no explanation (though the girl wonders at how this could all be), it is just a convention we accept for the purposes of allowing Einstein to describe his theories to us, and some of his feelings on political situations and results of his theories.

Basically, it’s dumb. And annoying. And not very interesting.

It was done much better (though not great) in the 1982 play Insignificance by Terry Johnson, with the bonus that that play also includes Marilyn Monroe, Joe DiMaggio and Joseph McCarthy as characters. Also, it’s kind of funny.

Book Log – Leave It To Psmith

Posted on by

Leave It To Psmith by P.G. Wodehouse

Another much appreciated loan from curt_holman, this was both the final Psmith novel chronologically and the last one left for me to read.

I stumbled across a very good Wodehouse book chronology, which clears up some confusion I had in titles…

1909: Mike: A Public School Story, a two part novel, the first later revised and published as Mike at Wrykyn and the second revised and published twice as Enter Psmith and Mike and Psmith.
1910: Psmith in the City
1915: Psmith, Journalist
1915: Something Fresh (in the U.S., Something New), not a Psmith story, but the original story taking place in Blandings Castle, the setting for…
1923: Leave It To Psmith

I read on a website that Leave It is not on Project Gutenberg because, due to its later publishing date, it is somehow included in the extended copyright as fallout from the “Disney rat” copyright extension stuff that went on.

Were I an English major or some such thing, I might take the time to track recurring plot elements in stories such as flowerpots, stolen valuables, obnoxious poets, etc. in all Wodehouse’s works. You could probably set up a family tree and track the mix and match use of such things through the stories.

The first Jeeves and Wooster book of short stories was published in 1919, I believe from a series of magazine columns. In a way, I imagine Wodehouse taking the Psmith character, who begins as a member of the idle rich and ends as a gentleman’s personal secretary, and splitting him in two: Jeeves the gentleman’s personal gentleman taking the impeccable style and high intelligence, and Wooster the idle gentleman taking a propensity to talk incessantly and turn a nice phrase.

An excerpt, dialog between Psmith and his fiance Eve, shortly after becoming engaged:

[Eve] ‘When I met Cynthia at Market Blandings, she told me what the trouble was which made her husband leave her. What do you suppose it was?’

‘From my brief acquaintance with Comrade McTodd, I would hazard the guess that he tried to stab her with the bread-knife. He struck me as a murderous-looking specimen.’

‘They had some people to dinner, and there was chicken, and Cynthia gave all the giblets to the guests, and her husband bounded out of his seat with a wild cry, and, shouting “You know I love those things better than anything in the world!” rushed from the house, never to return!’

‘Precisely how I would have wished him to rush, had I been Mrs. McTodd.’

‘Cynthia told me that he had rushed from the house, never to return, six times since they were married.’

‘May I mention — in passing –‘ said Psmith, ‘that I do not like chicken giblets?’

‘Cynthia advised me,’ proceeded Eve, ‘if ever I married, to marry someone eccentric. She said it was such fun… Well, I don’t suppose I am ever likely to meet anyone more eccentric than you, am I?’

‘I think you would be unwise to wait on the chance.’

If I had read that before performing the ceremony for my brother-in-law’s wedding, I might have worked it in to the script. Probably best that I didn’t.

Just as an aside, the P.G. Wodehouse Quote generator

Book Log – Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return

Posted on by

Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return by Marjane Satrapi (via The Complete Persepolis)

A hearty thank you to curt_holman, who loaned me his Complete Persepolis that I might enjoy the second book in Ms. Satrapi’s story of growing up in Iran and other places.

The story is engaging, witty, fascinating and almost1 impossible to put down. As I mentioned in my log of the first book, it is particularly compelling to consider we are of similar age, she being just 6 months younger than steakums. Thus, when she mentions a year, I can’t help but think of what I was doing at the time. In 1991, while she was accusing an innocent man of obscenity to avoid arrest and prosecution for wearing makeup (ultimately condemning him to an unknown fate and racking herself with guilt as a result), I was making silly videos about paper airplanes.

Now, on recommendations of everyone who’s seen it, I’m going to have to put the movie in my netflix cue.

curt_holman, I have your book ready to return. I’m keeping it out of crayon-reach, in the mean time.

_______________
1 Really, you can put any book down if the alternative is allowing your 1.5 year old to continue to eat crayons.

Book Log – Sense & Sensibility

Posted on by

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen (courtesy of Project Gutenberg)

I had started Sense a long, long time ago, and misplaced it about halfway through. Since some 20 years had passed, enough attrition of memory had occurred to allow a read from the beginning with only the vaguest sense of deja vu.

The toughest part of suspending one’s disbelief in a Jane Austen novel is to allow oneself to believe that it really is tragic that a Person of Quality should lose their Means, or not gain as much Means as is thought to be “deserved”. I can do it easily in a Wooster story, because the primary purpose is comedy, and usually at the expense of the idle rich.

It is much more difficult for a “serious” novel (albeit with humor), meant to evoke sincere sympathy for our heroines, all of whom possess good looks, intelligence, education, and enough money to live more than comfortably (with servants, no less). Sure, loss of love is a tragedy for anyone, but really I have trouble mustering up sympathy in the same way I don’t feel too bad for Jennifer Anniston.

Really, though, suspension of disbelief or concern for the characters is none too necessary because the appeal of Jane Austen is the language. They can go on and on about the same topic and I’m just fine with it. Unlike, say, Tolkien.

Book Log – The Little Warrior

Posted on by

The Little Warrior by P.G. Wodehouse

Another fine Wodehousian tale of a riches to rags to the stage to riches.

Apparently, in the early 1900’s, it was nothing to just walk into a Broadway show and get a part. At least, Wodehouse would have you think so. I suspended my disbelief, as is often necessary in a typical Wodehouse tale where in all of New York and London there are only 8-10 people who keep running into each other in preposterous situations.

Quote I liked:

“Fibs, my dear,—or shall we say, artistic mouldings of the unshapely clay of truth—are the … how shall I put it? … Well, anyway,they come in dashed handy.”

There were a couple others I bookmarked, but they just don’t translate out of context.

Book Log – Persopolis: The Story of a Childhood

Posted on by

Persopolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi

This is a graphic novel about a woman born in 1969, growing up in Iran during the tumultuous times since. Full of tragedy and humor, this is a great and all-too-quick read. It really hits home given that she is approximately my age. Making comparisons between her life and mine in 1979 is very sobering.

I’m somewhat embarrassed that it takes what is essentially a comic book to get me to better understand the history of that region. But, hey, whatever works.

This book works. I look forward to the sequel. Hurry up with that, won’t you PaperBackSwap.com?

Book Log – Mike and Psmith

Posted on by

Mike and Psmith by P.G. Wodehouse

I believe the first Psmith novel, where Mike and Psmith meet at a small private high school that they’ve both been “sentenced” to for separate reasons.

From the introduction by Wodehouse:

This was the first appearance of Psmith. He came into two other books,Psmith in the City and Psmith, Journalist, before becoming happily married in Leave It to Psmith, but I have always thought that he was most at home in this story of English school life. To give full play to his bland clashings with Authority he needs to have authority to clash with, and there is none more absolute than that of the masters at an English school.

I think you had to have gone to an English school, because I liked the Psmith, Journalist and Psmith in the City better. Not to disparage this one, as it was a fine read as well. The main reason I clipped that is to remind myself that Leave It to Psmith exists out there somewhere, though not on Project Gutenberg.

Psmith, on being introduced to Mike:

“Do I look as if I belonged here? I’m the latest import. Sit down on yonder settee, and I will tell you the painful story of my life. By the way, before I start, there’s just one thing. If you ever have occasion to write to me, would you mind sticking a P at the beginning of my name? P-s-m-i-t-h. See? There are too many Smiths, and I don’t care for Smythe. My father’s content to worry along in the old-fashioned way, but I’ve decided to strike out a fresh line. I shall found a new dynasty. The resolve came to me unexpectedly this morning. I jotted it down on the back of an envelope. In conversation you may address me as Rupert (though I hope you won’t), or simply Smith, the P not being sounded. Compare the name Zbysco, in which the Z is given a similar miss-in-balk. See?”

Book Log – Psmith in the City

Posted on by

Psmith in the City by P.G. Wodehouse

The character of Psmith grows on me, but I fear that I’ve run out of Psmith books.

Rupert Psmith of the Shropshire Psmiths (he added the silent P himself to the family name to start his own dynasty) is a wealthy force of nature, overwhelming adverse circumstances through sheer force of personality. In this novel,Psmith and his Watson-equivalent Mike Jackson take on early 1900s commerce in the form of a Bank in order to exact revenge on one of upper management for interrupting their game of Cricket some months prior.

Excerpt from Psmith’s first encounter with his boss:

‘Work,’ said Psmith, with simple dignity. ‘I am now a member of the staff of this bank. Its interests are my interests. Psmith, the individual, ceases to exist, and there springs into being Psmith, the cog in the wheel of the New Asiatic Bank; Psmith, the link in the bank’s chain; Psmith, the Worker. I shall not spare myself,’ he proceeded earnestly. ‘I shall toil with all the accumulated energy of one who, up till now, has only known what work is like from hearsay. Whose is that form sitting on the steps of the bank in the morning,waiting eagerly for the place to open? It is the form of Psmith, the Worker. Whose is that haggard, drawn face which bends over a ledger long after the other toilers have sped blithely westwards to dine at Lyons’ Popular Cafe? It is the face of Psmith, the Worker.’

‘I–‘ began Mr Rossiter.

‘I tell you,’ continued Psmith, waving aside the interruption and tapping the head of the department rhythmically in the region of the second waistcoat-button with a long finger, ‘I tell _you_, Comrade Rossiter, that you have got hold of a good man. You and I together, not forgetting Comrade Jackson, the pet of the Smart Set, will toil early and late till we boost up this Postage Department into a shining model of what a Postage Department should be. What that is, at present, I do not exactly know. However. Excursion trains will be run from distant shires to see this Postage Department. American visitors to London will do it before going on to the Tower. And now,’ he broke off, with a crisp, businesslike intonation, ‘I must ask you to excuse me. Much as I have enjoyed this little chat, I fear it must now cease. The time has come to work. Our trade rivals are getting ahead of us. The whisper goes round, “Rossiter and Psmith are talking, not working,” and other firms prepare to pinch our business. Let me Work.’

I just like the way he talks.

Book Log – Fragile Things

Posted on by

Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman

A collection of short stories akin to Gaiman’s Smoke and Mirrors which I read about a year ago.

I remember being wowed by Smoke and Mirrors. I enjoyed this book, but I’m not walking away with a “wow” feeling. Is it because it’s more of the same? Is it because these short stories aren’t quite as awesome as the last one? Am I reading it in a different mood, less receptive to this mode of storytelling? Dunno.

Fairly or unfairly, this one wasn’t as memorable but still enjoyable. Of course, a more positive spin would be “almost as good as that awesome Smoke and Mirrors book!”

Possibly, there just weren’t enough short vampire stories in this one, though there were a few.

Book Log – Coyote Blue

Posted on by

Coyote Blue by Christopher Moore

Christopher Moore enjoys the metaphysical… demons, gods, Jesus, etc.

This book is his foray into Native American mysticism, the impact of the sudden appearance of the god Old Man Coyote on a modern native american’s life. Witty, silly and full of large characters in extreme situations, which pretty much sums up Christopher Moore in general. Not that that’s a bad thing.

Now I just need to get Moore’s The Stupidest Angel back from steakums and find me a copy of You Suck, and I will have completed the Moore oeuvre.