Book reviews

Writing A Novel with Ulysses III by David Hewson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I have no idea why the Kindle edition identifies this book as Writing a Novel with Ulysses III as there is no version 3 of the program (it’s at version 2.7 as of March 2017 and the book is based on version 2.6. The differences between these versions have no impact on the advice offered). That aside, David Hewson’s book–more of a booklet, really–is a fine guide on covering the basics and some of the specifics in using Ulysses to write a novel. As a bonus, he also includes a chapter on how to use the program to write a screenplay or radio script, too.

Ulysses bills itself as a “pleasant, focused writing experience.” It’s a minimalist writing program, using plain text with markdown to provide a very clean writing environment. As with similar programs like WriteMonkey, it is meant to be a distraction-free way to write, where almost all formatting is handled separately from the actual writing, through an export process done after the project is complete.

Ulysses is not a complicated program. In use, it is rather the opposite and intentionally so. It wants to get out of the way so you can just write. The value in this book is in how Hewson concisely covers its features while offering enough specific tips to further smooth the experience without having to search forums or other resources for information. The combination of his writing experience and familiarity with the software work well to provide advice that is of immediate usefulness.

He peppers the book with general writing advice while also encouraging writers to use their own approach if their methods don’t match his own. You may organize your manuscript, research material, and other notes differently, but Hewson’s suggestions in regards to Ulysses remain useful.

Overall, this is a quick, useful read for anyone interested in fiction writing and has chosen Ulysses for the task. It has helped me to better organize and tweak my writing projects.

(Ulysses is only available for macOS and iOS.)

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Fifteen Dogs by André Alexis
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a fine story and an interesting idea–what would a group of dogs do if suddenly given human intelligence? The problem comes not in the quality of the novel but in terms of my expectations of it.

(Minor spoilers follow but they reveal nothing the reader won’t encounter in the first few pages.)

The framing device of the story is that the gods Hermes and Apollo place a bet on whether a group of dogs, given human intelligence, would be happy at the time of their deaths. Occasionally Hermes, Apollo, Zeus and other gods step in to interfere or complicate matters further for the dogs.

I found this a little too twee and it also saps much of the emotional depth of the novel, since the author has a literal set of gods that can and do change things on a whim. Just as the reader becomes immersed in the struggles of the dogs to balance their canine and human selves (one dog creates poetry, even as he still craves to eat poop) another scene comes along that reads like a smirking college paper interpretation of the Greek pantheon, employing a droll sort of wit that wears thin quickly.

My other problem with the story is the strong tone of the author’s voice. With (god-like?) omniscience, the author often explains precisely what every character is thinking, whether they are right or wrong, what consequences are to come and so on. At times it feels more like reading a detailed summary of events rather than vicariously experiencing them.

Still, these are deliberate style choices and while they didn’t work well for me, it is very much a matter of personal taste. The meat of the story still holds up so anyone who appreciates the framing will simply appreciate the novel all the more.

Given the unique subject matter and the way the author Alexis commits to the dogs’ perspective, I would still recommend Fifteen Dogs, just be aware of what you’re getting before jumping in.

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The Guy Who Pumps Your Gas Hates You by Sean Trinder
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Sean Trinder’s The Guy Who Pumps Your Gas Hates You is part of NeWest Press’ Nunatak First Fiction Series. As stated in the introduction, these books are “specially selected works of outstanding fiction by new western writers.” This is Trinder’s first novel, and though the author draws heavily on his own experience and background (“write what you know,” indeed) he does it with a sure hand, authentically (and as the title makes clear, humorously) capturing the angst of suburban youth.

The short novel tells the story of Brendan, a 20 year old living in the small Manitoba town of Oakbank. Brendan is at that awkward age between teenager and adult, where life is open to possibilities and the fear of making the wrong choice–or sometimes any choice–can lead to paralysis and inaction, dooming yourself to a life of mediocrity and failed ambitions.

As the story begins, Brendan acknowledges that he is quite good at pumping gas, then admits that no one should ever become quite good at pumping gas. From there he details his daily life, which consists of working at the gas station, getting into regular arguments with his father (his mother having long-since divorced and moved to Toronto), hanging out with his friends, smoking, drinking, and yearning to have a career as a writer. Also, more smoking. Lots and lots of smoking. Export Gold is almost another character here.

Brendan grows increasingly frustrated by his life, feeling trapped in his hometown, and seeks escape by taking an evening writing class. There he meets the “older” woman Anne, who is 27. When you’re 20 every adult approaching 30 seems old. They hit it off and become friends and then start dating. There are ups and downs.

The same happens with Brendan’s friends. They enjoy spending their weekends drinking, smoking pot and drinking more. They insist it is normal and proper for guys in their early 20s to do these things, but Brendan begins to bristle at the routine.

Eventually everything comes to a head–the relationship with Anne sours over a revelation, a party with his friends goes sideways, a fight with his father ends with him wondering if he’ll be kicked out of the house.

At times the story almost reads like a diary, with Brendan’s first person voice providing a level of intimacy beyond just telling what happens. You find out what size his penis is, which comes out of his confession that he doesn’t like talking about sex. It sounds weird, but it works.

As a coming of age story, The Guy Who Pumps Your Gas Hates You doesn’t do anything especially new, but the tone is consistent and witty, and though Brendan occasionally has, you know, opinions, he never comes off as obnoxious or unlikable. The spartan scenes work surprisingly well in sketching out the life of the protagonist as he reaches a crossroads.

My only real complaint is that some of the bones here could use more meat. A number of plot elements hint at more–such as the increasingly shady behavior of the drug dealer contact–but are left unexplored.

Overall, though, this is an entertaining and engaging debut. I’m jealous. My first novel was a half-baked piece of science fiction. Not even half-baked. Maybe one-quarter baked, then dropped on the floor when I took it out of the oven, after which the dog ate it, threw it up, then ate it again.

As someone who was once an angsty 20 year old myself, I related to Brendan’s struggles, even if my own path involved a lot less sex, drugs and rock and roll. I’m not entirely sure how well someone who was not an angsty 20 year old guy would appreciate Brendan’s trials and tribulations, but it’s ultimately a sweet story. Recommended.

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Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What would Steve Jobs think of me waiting over five years to read his biography, patiently waiting for it to go on sale? Judging from what author Walter Isaacson writes, Jobs would probably yell at me, call me a bozo, cry and then the next day tell me how smart I was for waiting.

Or something like that.

Switching back and forth between his career at Apple (and Pixar and–briefly–at NeXT) and his personal life, Isaacson uses quotes from Jobs’ family, friends and workers, along with a generous supply of quotes from Jobs himself gathered from numerous interviews to assemble a portrait of a driven, intense man who apparently had none of the inhibitions or controls that keep most people at least relatively polite. Jobs would hurl insults and blast designs, products and people alike when he saw them as lacking. He analyzed others with an unsympathetic eye and then used his relentless verbal assaults to demand what he wanted–and often got great results.

But not always.

The quest for perfect design and end-to-end control of products led him and Apple to create amazing and well-crafted consumer devices–the Macintosh, the iPod, the iPad and the iPhone. But the same forces that drove him to be so demanding also blinded him to stick with designs that didn’t work (hello, original iMac mouse), to be needlessly cruel to employees and create distance with members of his own family.

He indulged in offbeat diets–long fasts, periods of eating just a single type of fruit, while also eschewing personal hygiene, believing that the diets would keep his body clean and pure. How he could not detect his own body odor after not showering for weeks at a time is perhaps an example of the “reality distortion field” he projected, even on himself.

It was his devotion to odd diets and alternative medicine that delayed proper treatment on his cancer for nine long months and ultimately contributed to his death at 56.

Isaacson portrays Jobs as a genius but also an immensely flawed person, often correcting assertions Jobs makes in the interviews spread throughout the book. In the end, I was left with a picture of Jobs as someone who had an excellent eye for design, an almost insane drive for perfection and both the charisma and chutzpah to woo and wallop people as he saw fit (and he often wooed and walloped the same person, sometimes on the same day). Any admiration you might have is tempered by his often odious personality.

One disappointment with the biography is how it ends. There is a coda that lets Jobs speak about his legacy in his own words and a list of his achievements but, perhaps because the book was rushed to press shortly after his death, there is little that touches on his final days or the events and reactions following his death. In that sense, the biography feels a bit incomplete.

Still, this lengthy examination of Jobs’ life presents a vivid portrait of a distinct personality and how that personality forged one company into a massive success by fully engaging on his strengths. Some at Apple–notably Tim Cook–claim that the treatment of Jobs here is unfair and inaccurate and there is a sense that a certain amount of cherry-picking to highlight the narrative is taking place, but at the same time it’s clear that Isaacson is on the mark on all the major aspects of Jobs.

Recommended.

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Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Dan Ariely is an academic who writes in a very accessible manner, drawing on anecdotes and personal experience to flesh out the numerous case studies he has conducted in his pursuit of trying to explain why people often engage in irrational–yet predictable–behavior. Although some of the humor misfires a bit when he assumes the reader is at the same station of life he is for maximum effect (straight white male) it’s never ill-intended so I was able to roll with it.

Ariely’s methodology is not to simply analyze the case studies of others but to conduct numerous experiments of his own, using people drawn from the public (both willingly and sometimes more covertly), particularly university students. In these experiments, he demonstrates the principles that drive us to make decisions, ranging from what people order in a restaurant or bar based on what others order first, to how enticing free money (with no strings attached) is to an increasingly distrustful public. He also covers the placebo effect and other behaviors that have no apparent rational basis.

In doing so he draws some conclusions on how we can be better aware of the circumstances that trigger irrational responses so we can better control how we react and offers a warning that collectively we may be teetering toward a level of mistrust with institutions that may be very difficult to restore, the downside of which will be more division, cheating and indifference to the welfare of others as we look out for ourselves.

Although some of the possible conclusions are bleak (and may seem more plausible now in 2017 than when the book was originally published in 2009), Ariely retains a hopeful tone throughout. He clearly loves his work and has great fun in trying to puzzle out what makes people act the way they do. This comes through abundantly in Predictably Irrational, making the book an easy recommendation for those looking to gather some food for thought on behavioral economics and the morality and rationality of people in western culture.

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Finders Keepers by Stephen King
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Perhaps you have heard of Stephen King. He’s had a few books published.

Finders Keepers is the second book in his Bill Hodges trilogy, a thriller in which a high school senior unwittingly faces off against a quite-mad man freshly released after a long sting in prison.

Hodges doesn’t actually appear until about a quarter of the way into the story. Instead the reader is taken back to 1978 where a young Irish man with unusually red lips leads a home invasion of a reclusive author, making off with a load of cash and a collection of notebooks containing work the author has been writing since his alleged retirement years earlier. The young man, Morris Bellamy, is a fan and as King himself once pointed out, fan is short for fanatic and Bellamy is very much a fanatic about the characters the author John Rothstein has created, to the point where he perhaps finds them more real than, well, real people.

When the story jumps forward to the present, Bellamy is just being released from prison, having served 30+ years for a rape conviction. He has spent his incarceration patiently waiting for his release, knowing the stash of loot form Rothstein’s home–cash, but more importantly, dozens of notebooks filled with writing the author has worked on since his alleged retirement–is safely stored in a trunk buried in the woods near his old house. Unfortunately for Bellamy, Peter Saubers, the aforementioned high school senior, has discovered the trunk, used the money to help his family and taken the notebooks, planning to sell them.

The remainder of the story is a series of unfortunate events for Saubers, as Bellamy closes in on the teen, willing to do anything it takes to get back the notebooks he sees as rightfully his. Hodges, along with Holly and Jerome from Mr. Mercedes, enter into the story to aid Saubers before it’s too late.

King effortlessly ratchets up the tension after spending a good while drawing the reader in and while characters sometimes connect the dots a little too easily (I wish I was half as good at making connections as these people), he never cheats. There is no sleight of hand here, just expert play with the cards that have been dealt.

King also sets up the third and final book of the trilogy by having Hodges make regular visits to the hospital where Brady Hartsfield, the Mr. Mercedes killer of the first novel, now resides. It seems that Brady may not be quite as incapacitated as his brain trauma would suggest. Here King broadly hints at more familiar territory, suggesting abilities that go beyond the merely normal.

While the book ends with a set-up for the final volume, the story of Finders Keepers is self-contained and can be enjoyed without having read Mr. Mercedes. It’s a terrific tale of suspense filled with characters that King brings alive with his usual expertise.

Recommended.

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This Year You Write Your Novel by Walter Mosley
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a brief but solid overview on the basics of putting together a first novel. Mosley doesn’t go into great detail, he just lays down some rules, some less-strict guidelines, offers suggestions, often gives the writer the thumbs-up to do something however best it works for him and really, really believes in the idea of rewriting.

His advice comes down to a few essentials, most of which will be familiar to anyone who has read any how-to’s on writing:

•  set up a daily routine:
  • write every day (no exceptions)
  • devote 90 minutes per day to writing (this can include editing or reading drafts)
  • target daily output of 600-1200 words
•  show, don’t tell
• characters should grow and transform, not remain static
• write without restraint
• take about three months for the first draft
• take a week to read the first draft (this counts as the second draft)
• read and if possible, record the entire novel in your own voice to hear how it sounds
• focus on every sentence in rewrites. Every sentence!
• writers write too much. Edit without mercy.
• don’t write things you aren’t sure of; do follow-up research after the first draft as needed
• you can write from a first person, third person or omniscient perspective; third person is recommended for first-time novelists
• you never mention second person perspective because it’s weird and makes you look funny
• to find an agent, write to the publisher of a book whose style you like and get the agent’s info; send a query letter and vitae to the agent
• don’t ever take an agent that demands to be paid directly

And that’s pretty much it. Mosley provides examples of plot, sentence structure and other part of a novel, and the whole thing can be digested in a single sitting if you’re so inclined–all the better to get started on that great novel lurking within.

I can’t really quibble with any of the suggestions, though ninety minutes per day may be tough to manage for a lot of people. But where’s the fun if you’re not suffering for your art?

Given the endless tide of writing advice on the internet, a book like this is probably going to be a tough sell, especially at full price. On sale, it’s a tidy little volume that says what it wants to say simply and clearly. A first-time novelist will find value here, but more experienced (if unpublished) writers may find most of the lessons to be familiar.

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