Book reviews

Shattered Glass by Dani Alexander
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is one of my “what the heck, it’s on sale” impulse purchases.

Shattered Glass could also go by the alternate title Biting Lips because the characters bite their lips enough for it to be an obsession (of the characters and/or author). The main character, 26 year old police detective Austin Glass, frequently points out these biting lips, particularly those of a 20 year old hustler, the red-headed Peter, a volatile young man who has a shady past, a shady present and perhaps a shady future (in the ground) if he’s not careful.

Part police procedural and part coming out story, Shattered Glass begins with the Glass, a rich trust fund baby, preparing for his upcoming wedding. The story is narrated by him and he quickly demonstrates then confirms and re-confirms that he is a cheating, self-serving, smart-mouthed jerk. He also has daddy issues. And mommy issues. And then gay issues as he thinks back to all the signs that he was repressing who he really was when growing up. The planned wedding goes up in smoke. He begins a vision quest. Well, he gets drunk.

It comes to a head (and lips start getting bitten) when he and his grizzled veteran partner (yes, who woulda thunk it?) investigate a scheme that leads to a murder, arson and other fun stiff, all centered around the inscrutable yet angry yet distant yet tender but always smouldering hot Peter. Within a week Glass has fallen hard for the guy, despite constantly referring to him–usually to his face–as a whore. That could be the other alternate title for the story: Whore. You see the word a lot. Maybe Whores Biting Lips would be the best alternate title, although it perhaps suggests a different type of story than police procedural.

The two constantly fight, occasionally fool around a bit (the sex scenes are brief and would probably get an R rating if translated to screen, depending on how creative the camera angles were) then go back to fighting as the investigation gets increasingly complicated and dangerous.

The character of Glass reels off a constant sarcastic patter and I loves me some sarcasm, but it does wear after awhile. The story as a whole feels padded out, too, and yet still comes up short on dealing with the various relationships as the police procedural and “figuring out the gay” constantly vie for attention. Strangely, even though Glass ultimately come to terms with being gay, he doesn’t seem to experience any real growth as a person. He starts out an argumentative jerk (you know, one of those people who has to say something smart, no matter how ill-advised) and basically ends the same way, except in an allegedly committed relationship. It left me feeling like there were parts missing from the story, despite the aforementioned length of the novel.

Overall, though, this is a decent effort and though it wobbles a bit when trying to juggle the competing plot lines, I remained invested enough to stay with it to the end.

I’ve just discovered this is the first book in a series of Glass novels, though lamentably, the author elected not to give subsequent books awful glass-based puns for titles. Perhaps Glass experiences more growth in these additional books. Given the abrasive nature of the character I’m not sure I’d want to find out. But…maybe.

View all my reviews

The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction by Matthew B. Crawford
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Crawford draws on theories and ideas from Kant to Freud to Nietzsche and more, both favorably and negatively, as he makes his case for how we in the western world are suffering from distractions both insidious and incidental, all of which collectively diminish what we can achieve by working to make us conform, to comply, to passively listen and not question. Crawford isn’t talking about the people walking down the sidewalk with their eyes glued to their smartphones–though he touches on such digital distractions–but rather bigger and more encompassing things that work to grab our attention, usually because some corporate or other vested interest has deemed our eyeballs and ears too valuable to leave alone. We are fed muzak in public spaces with no option to turn it off. A children’s TV show (Mickey Mouse Clubhouse) presents life as a no-risk endeavor where every potential hazard can be overcome with miraculous devices and conflict is smoothed over quickly, if it ever happens (he contrasts this with the earliest episodes of Sesame Street where characters regularly fight and yell at each other). Slot machines (machine gambling) are carefully engineered with newer technology to maximize their addictive quality, at the expense of those that fall victim to the addiction. We are pushed to know a little of everything and away from specialization.

He laments that classrooms are largely comprised of students sitting at desks passively listening to a teacher presenting information that may or may not be relevant to them, and counters with examples of people engaged in occupations that make use of skills that are learned from other craftspeople/masters as well as drawn from the lessons of those who came before them in the same field, putting together a picture of how we can become more individualistic not by rebelling or isolating ourselves from others, but instead acknowledging and working with the people around us and our society.

He turns to examples ranging from efficiently multi-tasking short order cooks and, in greater detail, an organ shop that restores and builds church organs, to illustrate how focused craft and skills can produce more productive and engaged citizens, while criticizing the trend toward general, non-specific (shallow) knowledge. The loving detail to these examples and his own affection for building and working with tools is alluring. You may not want to assemble a motorcycle or build a church organ when you’re done reading, but you’ll probably want to make something with your hands.

The writing itself may be challenging for some, falling (sometimes awkwardly) between casual and academic. The footnotes alone are more than 40 pages. This is not a self-help book or one with quick fixes or bullet point lists of easy solutions. Instead it is a meditative exercise on where we can (or should) go as a society and the dangers of continuing along our present course. There is a lot to chew on here and I suspect I will return to this book from time to time to re-read key passages, while carrying the central message that the individual, crafting and building, is a wonderful thing.

View all my reviews

Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances by Neil Gaiman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you ever talk to someone who’s read The Lord of the Rings books, it’s inevitable that you get to that question: Did you read the songs?

For me the answer was not a straightforward “no” because I did read some of them, then I read fewer as I worked my way through the story, then I just plain stopped. But I still had a great time reading The Lord of the Rings.

The same can be said of Neil Gaiman’s latest collection, Trigger Warning, which intersperses a few poems–the equivalent to Tolkien’s songs–in among the short stories. In his second collection, Fragile Things, he describes the poems as “bonuses for the kind of people who do not need to worry about sneaky and occasional poems lurking inside their short-story collections.”

I read some of the poems, then read fewer of them, the just plain stopped. But I still had a great time reading Trigger Warning.

This is a hodgepodge of stories, covering everything from modern horror to high fantasy, all of it presented with Gaiman’s usual dry wit and depiction of the world as a place both dark and beautiful.

I enjoyed all of the stories but being who I am, the ones I enjoyed most were the Twilight Zone-esque “The Thing About Cassandra” in which imagined loves are perhaps not so imaginary, “Orange,” which uses a question and answer format to show the transformation of a young, tanning-obsessed woman into something rather more cosmic and “The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury,” which paints a chilling portrait of a man who forgets words, with more impact than one might expect. Stories based on Dr. Who and Sherlock Holmes are well-executed and the final and original piece, “Black Dog” features Shadow from American Gods, in a story about murder, ghosts and the power of the mind to both protect and destroy.

This is an easy recommendation for anyone who enjoys Gaiman’s writing, but I feel there is enough variety here to entice those unfamiliar with his work.

View all my reviews

Brother Odd by Dean Koontz
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Brother Odd is #3 in the Odd Thomas series and finds the titular character hanging out at an abbey in the California Sierras. When a few bodachs appear (smoky entities that only Odd can see that are harbingers of death) Odd knows trouble is a-coming and he works to protect the mentally and physically handicapped children under the care of the abbey’s monks and nuns.

While Odd remains a wonderfully self-deprecating character that Koontz could probably write in his sleep, the story this time is more out there, dealing with the quest to scientifically prove the existence of God and what happens when you start messing around with life on a quantum level (bad things, as it turns out). This may sound a bit odd (ahem) given the setting of the book, but it’s explained early when one of the monks in residence is revealed to be a former physicist who has bequeathed a fortune to the abbey and secretly continued his work while praying and meditating with his fellow monks.

As the number of bodachs grows, a blizzard sweeps over the mountain, effectively trapping everyone as the potential hour of doom nears. While it serves to increase tension, I was left with a feeling that the story has holes in it you could probably drive a monk-filled SUV outfitted with a snowplow through. Ultimately this only minimally detracts as Brother Odd is, despite its subject matter, not the kind of story you will ponder deeply afterward. It’s an entertaining popcorn read, exactly as I expected.

View all my reviews

The Super Natural: A New Vision of the Unexplained by Whitley Strieber
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This one is kind of bonkers if you think the world and the universe around it are pretty much known things. If you’re less certain (just what is dark matter, anyway, and why is there so much of it?) then the you may find the ideas presented to be intriguing, even as the authors make no absolute claims on any of the evidence they bring forward.

The premise of The Super Natural is that the various unknown phenomena reported around the world–everything from UFOs to alien abductions, apparitions, implants, strange lights and more–are real and explainable, and point to a larger reality that most people lack the perception and skill to interact with in a meaningful way, or even at all. Further, they suggest the possibility of parallel universes that may intersect with ours at times. On top of that, there’s a lot of theory on what happens after you die and whether or not the soul exists. Finally, there is a common belief between the authors that some kind of intelligent plasma energy may be behind most of this.

Pretty bonkers, right?

Whitley Strieber is well-known for his books about what he calls the visitors, starting with Communion. His experiences have been largely ignored by mainstream media or openly mocked (he expresses regret for coming up with the phrase “rectal probe”, two words that have launched a thousand jokes over the past thirty years). His chapters largely consist of him recalling and expanding on experiences he has previously described, as well as bringing in some new ones. He offers theories but is very careful to commit to none of them, keeping his mind open to other possibilities. He doesn’t think the visitors are aliens from another planet, a common misconception people have with his experiences.

Jeff Kripal is a historian of religions and his chapters focus more specifically on the theories behind what may be going on, with different techniques offered as part of a “toolbox” for examining and cataloguing the unknown.

In a few instances the authors disagree on specifics but overall they present a united front in believing the likeliest explanations of all this weird stuff lies in intelligent plasma energy that exists perhaps in a dimension outside of ours and may be trying to teach those who are receptive what lies beyond our physical form and physical dimension. There are suggestions that these other beings live outside of normal space and time and to them we seem pretty primitive with our living and dying and not being able to fly around as spooky balls of energy. But the good news is they consider us teachable.

There are no good explanations on why these more advanced forms of life want to teach us or why they are being relatively coy about it (I say relatively because there are thousands of UFO sightings, for example, and even well-documented cases rarely get reported by conventional media, so while these various phenomena may be unknown, they are not exactly rare). Perhaps we’re just really slow learners. Maybe our nukes scare them. They still kind of scare me.

Kripal in particular also goes into detail about what is real versus fictional or imagined and how we may essentially make our own reality. One example he recounts is about an academic colleague who was making blueberry muffins (mmm). He finished mixing the wet ingredients then rinsed out and set the empty honey jar on the sink counter to dry. He went to get a tin of flour off a shelf and, surprised by how unusually heavy it felt, dropped it on the floor. He sifted through the spilled flour and found the honey jar, caked in the flour. He looked at the counter. The jar was no longer there. It had moved on its own. Neat! And weird.

Kripal explains:

Apparently, that is what the human mind-brain does when it is participating in a dimension of reality that is quite beyond our primitive “mental” and “material” categories of thinking (and our primitive science, which assumes the same division to work at all). It tells itself a story that involves otherwise impossible things and then acts out that story with physical objects. If those objects are available in the immediate environment, it uses them as props, like Dan’s honey jar. If they are not, it creates them “out of nowhere.”

He goes on to say these odd events happen to “mess with us” (that is a direct quote), to shake up our view of the world as one in which the mental and physical are separate things. It’s all very trippy, like trying to count to infinity.

In the end a skeptic is unlikely to be convinced by the evidence presented by Strieber and Kripal, but their ideas are interesting and entertainingly presented. The way they both hold back from making absolute claims seems less a dodge and more a genuine admission that they–and us–really don’t know for sure what it happening out there. But something certainly seems to be.

Meanwhile, I can’t even get the TV remote to teleport into my hand. If the mental and physical are really one, I wouldn’t mind at least a few perks before evolving into a super-intelligent ball of light.

View all my reviews