The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made

This was a pretty big disappointment -- mostly because I couldn't care less about many of the properties involved, but also because there's a large amount of gossip that's only hinted at. Most of the pull quotes are pretty far from juicy. It certainly doesn't help that several of the projects that were stuck in Development Hell.

Wouldn't recommend except to those who are very into inside Hollywood, and maybe not even then.

The Spanish Civil War

I was recommended this work by a poster on a baseball forum, which I suppose is as good a place as any to get history recommendations. Recognized (not just by baseball enthusiasts!) as a comprehensive place to begin study of the Spanish Civil War, it's long(ish), detailed, heavily footnoted, with an extensive bibliography, and revised several times (most recently in 2011) to ensure that it reflects the most up-to-date scholarship on the subject.

Am I enough of an expert on the Spanish Civil War that I can say whether or not this is the best introductory work on the subject? No, of course not. Thomas doesn't trip my bullshit detector, for the most part (which is worth something in a conflict that still arouses strong feelings among late era partisans), and he generally does try to puncture some of the myths told about the conflict. Where he does appear to get a lot of criticism is for glossing over the Spanish Revolution (the anarchist movement in Catalonia, among other places), but I feel he covers this in a decent amount of detail. (Although I will reserve further judgment until I've read some more).

I'd recommend this, potentially to another reader on a baseball forum.

Island on Fire

Island on Fire is a fun little book that shows the importance of good primary sourcing. Witze and Kanipe draw very heavily on the diary of Jon Steingrimsson, a parish priest at the time of the eruption of Laki.

This is where I hear "Laki? I don't know of a volcano by that name," which is true for the intended audience of this book. Laki being a volcano that erupted in 1783 in Iceland, having a devastating effect on the community served by Jon (as our authors call him), and serious effects on the climate of both Europe and the Northern hemisphere as a whole.

From the community overview we move to Europe and the rest of the world, finishing with a look at Iceland today and potentially disruptive volcanoes around the world. It's a short, easy read, and a fun pop science look at something most of us are unfamiliar with.

The Iowa Baseball Confederacy

I wish I'd read this book when I was 16 years old -- it's the kind of book that can make a fantastic impression on a kid. Unfortunately, reading it later in life takes out some of the unbridled joy that I think I would have felt reading this as a kid. I wonder if there's a better novel lurking in here -- one where Kinsella shows, rather than tells.

Not that this was unenjoyable, I just think this could have been more than it was.

The Trial

The Trial reads like a nightmare or a joke, and for some time, our protagonist is convinced that fun is being had at his expense. Kafka is often read (to the chagrin of the writer of the introduction) as allegory, but this can be read straight.

There's a feeling of inevitability here, as the machinery grinds on Josef K until we reach our conclusion -- he's never as in control as he seems to think he is.

My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me

I was pretty skeptical about this anthology, but it was no more uneven than most others, and there were some standouts here.

Alissa Nutting's "The Brother and the Bird" gives the volume its title, Brian Evenson's "Dapplegrim" is a compelling take on a story with which I was until now unfamiliar, and Aimee Bender's "The Color Master" was a quite evocative.

It was really interesting to see a lot of stories that I was not familiar with, even in the European tradition, and see several disparate takes on the same tale.

Worth paging through, at least.

Angelmaker

Angelmaker isn't anything groundbreaking, but it's a lot of fun. A story of a man rebuking his father's criminal past by living a straight-and-narrow lifestyle, of an aged former spy trying to stop a Doomsday Device, and a mysterious order of monks.

Nick Harkaway names his protagonist "Joe Spork," and then never comments on the name further, other than to lay out Joe's ancestry (father, career criminal, mother, joined a convent within the past ten years, grandfather, a clockmaker and artisan, grandmother, mysteriously absent.) Joe's ancestry sets up a tension that's central to his chapters: his repudiation of his father's criminal ways, and his embracing his grandfather's honest living, makes it tougher for him to deal with the problems that crop up throughout the course of the novel; what to do when you need information, and your best sources of that are from a past where your father was a notorious gangster?

Unfortunately, this dilemma is more or less all the characterization we get on our protagonist, who is overshadowed by supporting characters, such as the elderly former spy, her cartoonish nemesis, and an underworld figure or two. We even get a love interest who's nearly as much of a blank slate as Joe is. Luckily, this isn't a deep, psychological novel where that would be a killing blow; it's pulpy fun, and that's merely a minor negative here.