Distant Star

Roberto Bolaño's Distant Star is a novel I'd been looking for for some time. It's an expansion of a short chapter at the end of Bolaño's earlier Nazi Literature in the Americas, although the name of the pilot changes between the two stories (for the worse in my opinion).

Like quite a bit of Bolaño's work, Distant Star focuses on poets and poetry. Our narrator is someone like Bolaño, a Chilean exile who has bounced around over the years. (As mentioned by Bolaño in an author's note, this is most likely Bolaño's alter ego, Arturo Belano). Narrator first encounters the poet/pilot in a poetry workshop, which he (Carlos Wieder, the pilot) had been attending under an assumed name.

I've seen Distant Star called a companion piece to Bolaño's By Night in Chile, in other reviews, as they both deal with the post-coup literary scene. Of course, while this is true, they're quite different works. The paranoia and irrationality of O'Ryan (whose obsession with Wieder drives much of the novel) pales before that of our priest in the latter novel. (Not to mention that the pacing is significantly different. A deathbed rant as opposed to a fugue.)

Recommended, as with all of Bolaño's work that I've come across. (Although I'd prefer the chapter in Nazi Literature in the Americas, to this.)

Monster of God

David Quammen’s Monster of God is an ambitious work in which he attempts to link both the fate of several species that prey on man (lion in India, crocodile in India and Australia, the brown bear in Romania, and the tiger in Siberia) as well as the effect they have on humans. While other species will occasionally kill a human, these are a few of the predators that see man as prey. (Others include the great white shark, and the Komodo dragon, and related species of shark, felid, or reptile.) Quammen coins a term for these animals – “alpha predator”, that is one animal that will stalk, kill, and eat a human, rather than kill a human out of territoriality or fear.

Probably the most interesting part of Quammen's work here is what the Amazon.com review calls "[his] peripatetic mind", as he jumps from topic to topic -- the lions of an Indian nature reserve lead him to another nature reserve (for crocodiles) in another part of India, to a lurid work on crocodiles in Africa written during the 1970s (titled Eyelids of Morning, one of many references to God's description of Leviathan in the Book of Job herein*) , back to India, and finally to the saltwater crocodiles of Northern Australia. Quammen is also prone to digression, as he spends time late in the work discussing the Alien franchise, as well as cave paintings in France. This is not a problem, unless one is unable to keep up.

While Quammen does provide a fascinating survey of a variety of subjects, and has clearly done a significant amount of fieldwork (or at least tagging along with biologists while they are doing fieldwork), his overall attempts at tying everything together are a tad weak. Not that this is not a fascinating book -- because it certainly is. Just I feel he fails to live up to the latter part of the subtitle of the book -- the man-eating predator is well covered in the jungles of history, but Quammen's foray into the jungles of the mind falls short. Still recommended.

*One of my favorite of Roger Zelazny's works is "The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth", which also takes its title from that part of Job (Chapter 41, verse 14-19, King James 1769).

Who can open the doors of his face? his teeth [are] terrible round about.
[His] scales [are his] pride, shut up together [as with] a close seal.
One is so near to another, that no air can come between them.
They are joined one to another, they stick together, that they cannot be sundered.
By his neesings a light doth shine, and his eyes [are] like the eyelids of the morning.
Out of his mouth go burning lamps, [and] sparks of fire leap out.

How Would You Move Mount Fuji

William Poundstone's How Would You Move Mount Fuji? is a quick and easy read. Focusing on the hiring process at Microsoft, and the interviewer's use of puzzles and brain-teasers to weed out the most desirable candidates, the book offers a shallow overview on interview preparation, before getting to the interesting part: puzzles and Fermi problems, as well as the answers.

The insights and anecdotes detailing the Microsoft interview process are neither particularly illuminating or useful for anyone other than a potential interviewee, and even then, it's doubtful they'd be of much use. This book is more like an overview of typical coding interview procedure, which is at least a little interesting from a cultural anthropology standpoint.

Of course the highlights are the puzzles included here. Some of which are relatively straightforward and well-known ("How would you weigh an airliner without using scales?" "Why are manhole covers round?") Others are a little more esoteric: ("You're in a boat in the middle of a perfectly circular lake. There's a goblin on the shore who can't swim. He wants to eat you. And he can run four times as fast as your boat. How do you escape?") Most aren't quite so weird, but worth puzzling out. Since these are the kind of problems designed to be solved in an interview setting, they're pretty quick. The book closes with recommendations on how to interview, both as a prospective employee and as a hiring manager, but they're not exactly groundbreaking.

The Billionaire's Vinegar

Benjamin Wallace's The Billionaire's Vinegar has an unusual structure in that it unfolds like a mystery, with our author slowly peeling back onion-like layers. Unfortunately, he has to go slow, as the big reveal isn't much of a payoff. Still, this is an engaging look into high-end wine drinking and collecting.

Wallace's narrative focuses on two characters: Michael Broadbent, an English oenophile and auctioneer, and Hardy Rodenstock, a German wine collector and aficionado. Our story opens with Broadbent auctioning off bottles of what is allegedly some red wine from the 18th century, supposedly from the cellars of Thomas Jefferson. This was immediately doubted by Monticello, as Jefferson had kept meticulous records, and did not have record of those specific vintages. Broadbent went ahead with the sale, as the bottles did appear sufficiently aged.

The Billionaire's Vinegar mainly concerns itself with Rodenstock's adventures and wine parties/lavish meals, although there's a fair amount of information on aging wine, the various chateaus in France, and trends in wine tasting and collecting. The reveal at the end isn't quite as complete or satisfying as I had been hoping, but it's a worthwhile read.

Gun, With Occasional Music

Jonathan Lethem's Gun, With Occasional Music has a fun, if not entirely original, premise -- it's a detective story set in a not-quite-dystopian future. The premise succeeds, in that the story is entertaining, depressing, and featuring a whodunit where the perpetrator is not immediately obvious. Our protagonist is a hard-boiled private eye in the classic mold, and the dialog is quite snappy. As a pastiche, it works fine. However, that's not all that's going on here.

Sci-fi writers often seem to make choices solely to set up a cheap gag or to make an obvious point. However, much of Lethem's choices (the drug 'make', the evolution therapy allowing 'babyheads' and speaking animals, the role of the secret police) both advance the plot and allow for commentary -- the world post-Metcalf's wakeup is very different from the (messy) world he previously inhabited.

I'm glad someone finally wrote a novel with a kangaroo as a villain.