Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

Rating - 2: not worth reading (skip it)

Another book I decided not to finish. I was excited to read Neil Gaiman and was looking forward to liking it. I did not like it.

"Fat Charlie" Nancy has no particular luck but can console himself with a dreary existence. His father has been embarrassing him his whole life, and he manages to do so again by dying as Fat Charlie prepares for his wedding. Things only get odder as Fat Charlie discovers his father was a god, and his unknown brother inherited the divine powers. Spider certainly makes Fat Charlie's life a different shade of horrid.

Fat Charlie is instantly not likable. He has a few sympathetic characteristics, being an utter milquetoast who can stand in for any insecurity you might have. Whoever you are, you could feel better about yourself for not being as pitiful as him; if you do, you should pity yourself for needing to go this far to find something to make you feel better about yourself.

Fat Charlie's purpose is to suffer. He will suffer some form of physical and/or psychological torment in every scene. If you watched American Pie 3 because you needed new ways to watch Jason Biggs be sexually humiliated, Fat Charlie may be the greatest thing you have ever found. If you physically need another movie in which Ben Stiller gets hit in the crotch, Fat Charlie is a godsend.

The destruction of Earth was perhaps the best thing that could have happened to Arthur Dent, since he lost everything immediately and all at once. There was no lingering suffering as his life was shredded one bit at a time. He would have become an annoying character, wandering about Islington wishing for tea while Ford Prefect acted strangely on the side. Fat Charlie is that tedious, earthbound Arthur Dent.

At what point did the book fully lose me? A little less than half way through, there is a bit where Fat Charlie has been kicked out of his life and is (literally) magically unable to take any steps to improve it; his boss has framed him for embezzlement and is planning to flee the country safely with a pile of money; and his brother is basking in how nice life is now that he is using mind control to rape Fat Charlie's fiance (who was saving herself until after her wedding). 'Cause hey, his brother is a lovable and charming amoral rogue.

There were many moments where things could have turned around. There were prospects of it. I guess those existed just to make it that much more satisfying when things got worse for Fat Charlie instead.

I assume the suffering of the innocent is great entertainment for some. Many, even. I instead learned that you show someone to be deserving of abuse before you let him have it; if the antagonist smacks Harpo around in the first act, all the Marx Brothers can let loose on him for the rest of the show. At the very least, you show the great laid low and let them fight to protect or regain what they have/had. It does not work to start with an unsympathetic loser and hurt him until things get so bad he ineffectually struggles and ends up making things worse.

If suffering nebbishes are your cup of tea, go buy the book now. I had hoped for so much more. At least there were some worthy sentences.

PTN book club discussion of Anansi Boys

Amazon link

Prayers for the Assassin by Robert Ferrigno

Rating - 3.5: worth reading, parts worth re-reading (borrow or buy it)
Rating - 4: worth reading multiple times (buy it)

I feel completely incompetent to review this book. It is not a fiction genre with which I am familiar, so I may just be feeling a rush of newness with a substandard member of its category. That disclaimer aside, I really enjoyed the book and I will be returning to it at some point.

[Update: upon two years' reflection, I was overcome by the rush of newness. Also, I don't think I had the *.5 ratings at the time. This will be fun to go back to and skim, re-reading the better scenes, but there must be better books in the genre.]

Set in the Islamic Republic of America, we follow Rakkim Epps, a former covert ops soldier with the American Fedayeen. He seeks to find and protect the love of his life, Sarah Dougan, niece of the State Security director and cultural historian. She disappeared while working on a secret book, researching whether Israel really did nuke NYC, DC, and Mecca, precipitating the war that destroyed Israel and shattered the USA. Forces seek to reveal the truth or destroy the last evidence of it.

Spy thrillers are not my usual fare, but Prayers came highly recommended and rightly so. It is well written, thoughtful, and dynamic. It successfully presents a different worldview in a way that is entirely comprehensible to a modern American. The flaws in the book can generally be glossed over or else excused as a part of the genre.

There could be a movie. The book reads quite a bit like a summer movie, although one may be hard-pressed to fund a summer blockbuster in which the entire side of the angels (such as it is) explicitly supports America as a Muslim state. We are used to heroes who are hard-edged killers who have nigh-supernatural capabilities, but not Sarah's view that we need a better, more modern Muslim theocracy. Then again, you can skip most of the politics and philosophy in the movie version.

Darwin is a great villain, although he has his lapses into a stereotypical freakshow killer. He has the good moments we want from our enemy, and he does his job very well (both his character's job and his role in the story). He is the sort of evil you raptly watch with a tang of revulsion, rather than the sort you turn away from. He is interesting, refined, coarse, diabolical. He is a good character.

Sarah is another interesting character. She is a devout Muslim of the modern school, a university professor who believes the fundamentalists really do not know their Koran. She is as liberated as any modern American heroine, headstrong and assured. She is the character closest to the present-day reader, in a way that makes her similarities to and differences from the typical American female stand out starkly. Then again, perhaps she is not entirely dissimilar to some current American Muslim women; my circle of acquaintances is not a fair sample size, and she could fit pretty cleanly.

Rakkim remains a blank in many ways. Isn't the hero often a simple, potentially unsatisfying role? He is a sort of Captain America for his time. He is most interesting in the way that others play off him, as well as being an element of story development. It is hard to be both an action hero and a character.

The minor cast is variable. They have their uses. The difficulty of being a minor character is that you can come across as quite two-dimensional, with details just filling out an obvious role. I don't think the Old One is an entirely successful character.

The outlines of the story are nothing unusual. You have seen some variation on this plot before. There are some novels twists and scenes, and the story unfolds well. I respect good storytelling.
I guess that is what it really comes down to: good storytelling. In a book with many unique elements, the best parts are good versions of standard story elements. If it were Hamlet set in a near-future Islamic America, the real question would be, "Is this a good version of Hamlet?" This is a good story, told well, with interesting creative elements.

High return for the time and effort invested. If this were a movie, you would not be averse to seeing it again sometime. Be not averse to reading this again sometime.

Amazon link

Ida B by Katherine Hannigan

Rating - 3: worth reading once (borrow it from a library)

A good book with a likable narrative voice but not a lot of heft to it. It is a quick read that places few demands on the reader, and it presents good prospects for a series of Ida B books. While Ida B is a potentially winning character, she does not have room to do much within the span of this story. It gives enough for the time spent to be worth reading.

Ida B. Applewood lives an idyllic childhood, a homeschooled lass who fit loves life and is full of plans to make it even better. She lives with her parents, their dog, and the trees in the orchard. When her mother begins cancer treatments, though, life goes from nearly perfect to a million miles from right.

Ida B is our narrator, and she has a wonderful way of expressing things. I am not sure that it is the right voice for a nine-year-old, maybe someone younger, but something certainly feels right about it. Ida B expresses herself and describes the world clearly and from a distinct perspective. There is no attempt to smuggle anything in that does not fit Ida B's view of the world.

The individual chapters are good. Read the first chapter, and if you like that, it is a great example of what is to come.

The limitation on these two is that the story is relatively small. We have our establishing shots when life is perfect, then things get bad, then they get better. Okay, at that level of specificity, I just described half of all fiction, but that is about as complex as the actual story is. There are no twists or turns, nothing unexpected, and the range is limited. Ida B expresses her emotions beautifully, but she has a narrow range of emotions to express. Each chapter is good, but they do not build to something greater than themselves. There is not much there there.

It is a sweet and touching little book, as far as it goes. Ida B is a lovable and expressive character, an authentic person. As much as the book is, it is good.

The intended audience is much younger than I, and I suspect they will like it more. The writing is clear, and they may not see anything wrong with a very simple stories. Indeed, there are many good simple stories.

An oddity of the intended audience is that the books is recommended for ages 9-12. The main character is 9. Usually, the target audience is a few years older than the main character in children's books; children are often more interested in reading about who they are about to be than who they were. Do middle school kids want to keep reading about elementary school kids? I trust the aging-and-staging folks who identify reading levels for books, since I have no expertise there, but I wonder if the ideal audience for this would be a precocious 7-year-old. I may test that someday.

As another note, I saw a comment elsewhere that this would be a good book to read aloud. Ida B even cites reading aloud as a great unitive joy. A book with great chapters but limited development works well for that. Every day's chapter can be good without the worry about where it is all going.

If there is a next Ida B book, it will probably be worth reading, too. I look forward to more from the author, since Ida B bespeaks potential.

Amazon link

The Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell

Rating - 2.5: parts of it are worth reading once (borrow it from a library)

Yes, I needed to invent a new rating level for this book. I had not thought of books of unconnected essays. The .5s now mean "in part." I recommend reading about 1/4 of the book before returning it.

Sarah Vowell tours through American history and presidency. The cynical nerd with a love of Jefferson explores her life along with the darker parts of American history that she so enjoys.

Recommended essays from this title (page numbers are at the front, may vary by edition):

"The New German Cinema," in which Sarah explores being a dark, pretentious film snot. It is a short one.

"Democracy and Things Like That," in which we see Al Gore as a noble idealist, distorted by the media lens. Sarah and some high school students are rather upset when an inspirational comment from presidential candidate Gore is misquoted and taken out of context. This is a good lesson to learn about how politicians or anyone gets portrayed in the media. Interestingly, instead of taking this as a lesson on how to be more fair to people she disagrees with, she takes it as a reason to credit "fake but accurate" stories about people she likes. Because, sure, they misquoted him and put the line in a completely misleading context, but what if that picture is the correct one in a larger sense? I have never heard anyone actually try to justify that perspective; it still does not work, but someone meant it.

"The Nerd Voice: Part 2" is the best essay in the collection. I would rate "Part 1" as a 2, and the essay rises to a 3 then a 4 before dropping a bit in the end. I think it peaks in the comparison of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to the 2000 presidential election.

The basic point of the essay is nerds vs. jocks. That maps onto Gore vs. Bush pretty well, and nerds do not necessarily need sympathy for Gore to feel sympathy for the argument. If you're reading this, you're a nerd, by the way. Knowing things in detail is shameful; you need the right kind of attitude to break the curse. This is the major arc. The point of such an essay is in the details and the way it is written, so I will just recommend that. Also, we like Doug Petrie.

As a follow-up note, with a few years' perspective, Gore has failed to take her advice. At last check, he was trying to look and act like Bush but still sound like himself, which is the worst of all possible worlds. Better luck in '08.

Second tier essays:

"Underground Lunchroom," where a dining hall in Carlsbad Caverns stands for the transition between nature and the man-made world, between the sublime and the fun.

"Wonder Twins," an essay on having a twin. The best part of this one is the absurdity in the juxtapositions with another set of twins who are leading a teenage paramilitary unit. This creates some good lines.

"The Strenuous Life," in which we conclude with Teddy Roosevelt, the anti-Sarah Vowell. Have you ever wanted to go out West and live a rugged life, away from the city and the internet and all that? Okay, have you ever wanted to want that?

The other essays are of scattered quality, and who knows, a stray essay may be exactly the one that strikes you personally. When the glory is in the details, different details appeal to different people.

So Scott Adams gets a 4 and Sarah Vowell gets a 2.5? Remember, our ratings are based on whether it is a worthwhile read. If a comic takes 2 seconds to read and it flops, oh well, there are two more on the page. If an essay is 15 pages long and is unexceptional, that is a lot more investment for little pay-off. "The Nerd Voice: Part 2" gets credit as a 4 because parts of it are worth a 4, which is the case for any book that is worth a 4. The good parts make the build-up worth it. With a collection of essays, we can sever the less worthwhile parts. (With a collection of comic strips, why bother?)