Author: Goodreads

No Safety in Numbers by Dayna Lorentz
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Remember a few months ago when Slate sparked a minor controversy among book lovers? That article about Young Adult fiction, and why adults who read it are lazy and stupid? You can probably guess which side of the debate I was on: pro read-whatever-you-want. Read Harry Potter, read Hunger Games; hell, read Twilight if you want to.

So here’s me, a copy of No Easy Way Out in my hands, thanks to a friend who gave me a stack of books to read. This was a ‘thanks’ and a returned favor for when I gave her a stack of books during her pregnancy. But wait—No Easy Way Out is a sequel. I’d better read the first book in the series, No Safety in Numbers. (Grabbed it from the local library.)

I’m telling you all of this because I want no one to think I am judging that friend of mine in the least when I say, wow, No Safety in Numbers is terrible.

It’s not the plot: a bunch of people trapped in a mall that’s been quarantined by the national guard. I’m fine with the main characters: mostly teens. Government conspiracy? Count me in. Chaos and the slow decay of humanity? Check.

But the writing. Implausible situations, very hard to swallow. Inaccuracies that were laugh-out-loud funny. And the word-choice- ugh. The word “butt” occurs more often than can be justified. This reads less like a YA novel and more like a teenager’s fever-fantasy. I’m all for adults writing things that teens can relate to, but I’m not for writing in what one assumes is the idiotic manner in which teens think.

Because they don’t. Stereotypically, on TV and in movies, teens are histrionic and aloof at the same time. IN real-life, not so much. Me, I expect more from narration. No one witnesses murder and mass death with that kind of casual, almost flippant attitude.

I guess what I’m trying to say is: the reason we adults like Young Adult novels now and again is because when it’s written well, the only thing that makes it YA is, usually, the characters. But when YA is written this poorly, it’s not fit for anyone of any age.

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BioShock: Rapture by John Shirley
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Bioshocks ranks as one of my favorite video games of all time, if only for the artistry. I dig that decayed art-deco look it has going, the juxtaposition of hope and doom that offers an excellent tension to the game play. As well as the look and feel of it, the game’s a decent little shooter, tells a good story, and, for a several hours experience, entertains quite well. When I came I across this novel in the book store, I dutifully filed it away under “to be read.”

So far, books based on video games have not offered up very good reads, and alas, this one doesn’t either. Oh sure, it gives lots of background on the personalities one encounters in the game, which was enough to get me to download it and try for a replay. But the writing is fairly flat, for my taste. The anti Ayn-Rand sentiment is fairly shoved down the reader’s throat, at the cost of any real character development, or plot for that matter.

I mean there’s “plot” in the sense that we see the how the city of Rapture goes from a bad idea to a haunted graveyard, but everything along the way is fairly hack. The characters are a bit cartoonish. The scientists who too gleefully experiment on human beings, the murder and torture that cause passerby to stare in shock—then move on and forget.

Of course, that’s kind of the video-game way, isn’t it. You play a violent game, you kill people, (bad guys) and there’s no real remorse or regret. I guess I want more from novels than I want from games. The irony here is that I know better, but I was seduced by the artistry of the game, and I thought the novel could live up to that depth.

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The Men Who Stare at Goats by Jon Ronson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was part way through The Men Who Stare at Goats and I was thinking: “This is early Ronson. He gets better in his later books.” I just thought this early Ronson was a little bit silly. Not irreverent exactly, but… I don’t know. Just not taking things very seriously. Which is not to say that later Ronson is overly somber or serious or even academic.

But I was wrong. This early Ronson is every bit as good as later Ronson. I learned quite a bit from The Psychopath Test and Lost at Sea, and I learned maybe even more from Men. And even though the book is now 10 years old, it’s still very relevant, given new talk in the media about the CIA and torture.

Whoa, you say, torture? I saw the movie, what’s this about torture? Yeah, you see: like I said, I was wrong. Ronson’s not silly or something like irreverent—he was just setting me up. As I read more, and as I finished the book, it just got darker and darker. There’s the goofiness of conspiracy theories, there’s the smug satisfaction in rejecting them, and then there’s that terrible, dark place, the root of truth from which these theories are born. That’s where Ronson goes. Torture, ritual mass suicide, government-sanctioned murder.

What a like about Ronson, along with his engaging writing style and gung-ho approach (as opposed to ‘gonzo,’ if you’ll forgive me) is how he inverts cognitive dissonance. Human beings have a way to dismiss the terrible things that make up every day existence, and Ronson gets in there and lays it all out—accept it as terrible or call him a liar. There’s no dismissing the truth.

I can’t say that “fans of Ronson will enjoy The Men Who Stare at Goats” only because I’m pretty sure that fans of Ronson have already read it. I will say that newcomers to Ronson should read it. And those who don’t like Ronson, or haven’t read Ronson? What is wrong with you people?

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Shooting Star/Spiderweb by Robert Bloch
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Sometimes I get a craving for mac n cheese, and I mean, nothing fancy. Just a box, a boil, a stir, and eat it straight out of the pot. Fiction can be like that too. Sometimes I just want to read. A plot, some characters, an ending. Nothing too complicated or meaningful.

These Hard Case Crimes reprints are starting to fulfill that need. That need for a few hours of reading, that need to actually finish a book. I’m like a lot of you. I start way more books than I finish. If my eyes are too big for my stomach at the buffet, I guess my brain is too big for my pocket watch at the bookstore.

Don’t like the metaphors? Don’t read Hard Case Crime books. Don’t read Robert Bloch’s Shooting Star/Spiderweb (it’s two novels in one binding). Not that he’s given, as such, to these kinds of metaphors. But cheesy writing? You know how we like to make fun of an over stylize the mannerisms and speech patterns of certain time periods? Talk about cheesy. But I’m pretty sure, at the time of original publication date, Bloch was one-hundred percent sincere.

But that was then and I read this in the now. Cartoonish characters, implausible scenarios, a plot taking out of Plotto. And imagery that, I’m sure, was supposed to make the reader queasy, nervous, scared: titillated. Nowadays it borders on camp.

And yet, for all that: an okay box of mac n cheese. I’m not going to say “fun” or “good,” because, when the pot is empty, resting on my protruding belly in my chair, I can’t say I had fun and I don’t exactly feel good. But the craving’s been satisfied. The book’s done it’s job. That’s always can ever ask of pulp fiction.

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Think Like a Freak: The Authors of Freakonomics Offer to Retrain Your Brain by Steven D. Levitt
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Was waiting in a bar for a friend to show up, so I sipped a beer and read a bit of Think Like a Freak. I had already read what I thought was half of it—and then suddenly the book was done. I had been fooled by the page count, not realizing that the end notes would take up a quarter of the pages. A bit of an anti-climax.

Which is sort of what this book is overall: anticlimactic. Not that it’s bad. But after the “cool” factor of Freakonomics and Superfreakonomics, Think Like a Freak was a bit thin. Like a good broth—a good broth can be very delicious, but not after a buttery baked potato and a thick steak.

The writers do offer a few examples to illustrate their lessons on “thinking like an economist i.e. consider people’s motivations” which are fun an interesting, and would make the book a decent bathroom read or something to pick up for a few bucks off the remainder shelves. But not nearly worth the full price I paid.

I don’t know if “publish or perish” is a compelling motivator for non-fiction writers like these, but that’s what this book felt like: something they needed to put out there so their names stay relevant and they get more folks listening to their podcasts. I know writing isn’t their full-time job— and Think Like a Freak feels like it.

This is a gimme, a side-bar, perhaps a fat appendix at the end of the of the SuperDuper Freakonomics Compendium. Read it if you’ve got disposable income and nothing better to do. Or you want to kill an evening. But don’t, like the other books, think of this as an investment at all.

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