September 2004: Book Reviews

This is an archive of my shorter book reviews and notes, which historically have been posted over at the 50 Book Challenge on LiveJournal, but which I’m starting to move over here. I’m posting them with altered date-stamps, but they might show up in my LiveJournal cross-post anyway. Bear with me, please.

Note: Many of these books also have full reviews available in the book review podcast (RSS).

#41:

This collection of short, personal essays was okay and witty, but I didn’t think it was the height of humor that other critics have portrayed it as.

#42:

The Reptile Room (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book 2), by Lemony Snicket

The second in the Series of Unfortunate Events. The poor Baudelaire children go to their uncle’s home. Uncle Montgomery (Monty) turns out to be a herpetologist specializing in snakes (Snicket does a nice side-step of the inevitable Monty’s Python pun and only uses the word “python” once in the whole novel). Of course, the evil Count Olaf, their nearest living relative and nemesis, has not forgotten the Baudelaire children and hatches a wicked plot to kidnap the children and get his hands on their inheritance.

#43:

Yes, a change of pace from the others. I read this to gain some insight into our political climate. I found it chilling. I also decided that you just couldn’t write a book like this on a computer. No one would put up with the novel rather abruptly changing in little, insidious ways….. (unless that was deliberate? It may have been!) I’m referring, for example, to the hierarchy of the Party, which for the first hundred pages or so is not described. It’s not that it’s described one way and then changed. Rather, it’s vague. And then it’s as if Orwell shouted “Eureka!” and the Inner Party and the Outer Party were born. By the end of the novel, the classes are so stratified, Orwell can write a whole political tract on them…. and does.

#44:

At the end of the Callahan Chronicals, Callahan’s Place is no more, but the gang decides to open a new bar with a similar theme. The Callahan Touch is the first novel set post-Callahan’s. It’s more coherent than the previous novels, largely because it was written more or less all at once (whereas the Chronicals were a series of short stories). There’s a novella to start out, then the rest of the novel proceeds from there. A cute bit of work, always a pleasure to go back to old friends. I worry, though, because the bar Jake opens (Mary’s Place) is described and set almost exactly as Callahan’s, and the point was… this isn’t Callahan’s. I’d have liked a little more difference (beyond a couple of high-tech toys, that is).

#45:

The next in the series, and the last for Mary’s Place. Here, Jake’s new love Zoey is 9 1/2 months pregnant. The whole novel takes place in about a day’s time, which is pretty speedy for a Callahan novel. We get to learn how Doc Webster, Long-Drink McGonnigil, and Fast Eddy all ended up at Callahan’s. I worry, though, because already I can see problems with the presence of the baby in the storyline (baby is 2 minutes old and already playing on the computer? I don’t think so….) The birth of a baby is a tell-tale sign of a storyline that really needs to be closed down. And, in fact, Mary’s gets closed down at the end of this novel (about 2 weeks after it opened). I wonder if Spider isn’t getting a little tired of the Callahan’s crew, perhaps? Maybe closing down all the bars is a bit of a hint, folks? Let the poor man work on something fresh!