Book 50. The White Plague by Frank Herbert

If someone gave you a book by the author of Dune, what would you expect?  It sure as hell wouldn’t be this staggeringly awesome social scarestory in the vein of Dr. Strangelove.  To say it blew my mind would be an understatement. 

John Roe O’Neill, a molecular biologist doing research in Ireland, watches from a second story bank window as his wife and twin children are decimated in an IRA bombing.  He goes insane — developing an alter ego and selling off all the vestiges of his old life — and creates a supervirus that instantaneously kills every woman who comes into contact with it.  He unleashes the plague, called the white plague for the spots it causes on the skin, in Ireland, England, and Libya.  What’s fascinating is that we are on the side of the terrorist in this, feeling that his reaction isn’t necessarily tragic.  

What follows then is a riff on the Irish civil war, world government, religion, and science, all deftly wrapped up in this brutal Armaggedon foxtrot.  From the Pope to the President, nobody is safe from the satirical saber of Herbert.  Having never read Dune, I didn’t know what to expect from this novel, but Sweet Mary McCrae, was it fucking spot on.  It manages to blast everyone, attacking science and religion, the IRA and the British, government and the common folk, each with equal blows.  

Written in 1982, it’s frightening accurate and plausible, in the wake of 9/11 and more aptly the Oklahoma City Bombings.  All it takes is one mad scientist to poison the well, and the world is thrown into chaos.  Feminist treatises could be written on the entire novel — particularly the shocker ending.  Well, not so much a shocker, as a viciously black comic goose.

Book 49. The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan

Food is good.  But where it comes from isn’t. 

That’s sort of the message of the frightening tome by Michael Pollan, where he explores the state of farming and agriculture in America.  Essentially, Pollan tracks four meals through different means, exploring different ways of procuring foods.  

The first is a study of fast food and by dint, factory farming.  Corn is KING!  If you didn’t know this, you do now.  Corn is responsible for 65-80% of all goods in grocery stores.  From by products produced from corn and corn derivatives, to feed corn stuffed unnaturally into ruminants (thems cows) or chickens and pigs to make meat, to petroleum, corn is in EVERYTHING.  You gotta love a guy who stuffs a McDonald’s meal into a mass spectrometer to figure out how much corn went into the making of a not-so-happy meal.  

By now, saying factory farming is disgusting is like trying to preach Jesus to people.  Either they believe it, or they just don’t care and don’t want to hear about it anymore.  Having been a recent convert to the world of organics, it was the second portion of the novel, where he talks about the lie of organic foods, that was stunning.  While there are genuinely some farms that produce completely organic foods — without any illicit chemicals and without destroying the earth — the USDA has pretty much set it up so that Whole Foods is a ponzi scheme for stupid hippies (sigh, like me) who fall for the supermarket poetry on the labels.  For example, while many eggs and chicken breast say “free-range”, according to current standards, this could mean they were also raised in a tiny shed with cramped quarters five months, and then given two weeks of an open door leading to a tiny yard before they are slaughtered.  Many free-range animals never see the light of day.  

I loved reading about Polyface Farm in Swoope, Virgina, where they essentially practice organic farming in the truest sense.  Grass is grown naturally, which the cows then eat.  The cows poop and leave.  Then chickens are let in to eat the bugs and stuff out of the cow patties, as well as the remaining grass the cows have chewed down to their levels.  Then the grass regrows, even more lush and nutrient rich than before, thanks to the nitrogen in the chicken poop.  Circle of life.  Except where the chickens are slaughtered in an outdoor open-air slaughterhouse.  

The last portion of the book deals with Pollan trying to procure an entire meal himself through hunting and gathering.  Aside from being virtually impossible and overly complicated to do on a daily basis, it was pretty fascinating reading about him hunting wild boar to make boar proscuitto (tell me that doesn’t sound like the best damn thing you will ever eat) as well as gathering fresh mushrooms and harvesting his own garden for produce.  

Almost everything I read these days smacks of “big government is bad” and how much they are hurting the common man in the name of big corporate kickbacks.  What was refreshing about Pollan was that while he’s absolutely advocating this lifestyle of seasonal menus, local farm support, and more responsible agriculture, he also recognizes that this isn’t something that is easy to accomplish or reasonable without a nation/worldwide change in behaviors.  

My goal in life is to move to a nice piece of property where I can grow my own orchard and garden.  To the point where my girlfriend and I have discovered the website “fallenfruit.org”, which maps out all the public fruit trees you can harvest thanks to the legal principle of usufruct — which basically means if a tree falls on public property, all its’ fruit can be harvested by anyone.  And since it maps Sherman Oaks, we’re pretty much making free fruit salads.

Book 48. The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

I knew nothing of this novel.  Strangely enough, it’s in a genre in which I find myself somewhat of a scholar: religious speculative fiction.  I’m not talking about your Left Behind (through every dreadful tome of which I’ve borne the cross of cynicism and emerged a bound remnant of the Rapture) or Ted Dekker “Boo! Devil’s gonna getcha, sinnah!”.  I mean, fiction which takes a religious view without proselytizing.  This book was a mashup of Shadows of the Hegemon by Orson Scott Card with elements of Kurosawa’s Rashomon, A Canticle for Liebowitz and Junot Diaz’s Oscar Wao.  It’s a marvelously stunning study of the meaning of faith that’s entertaining and harrowing.  

The story jumps back and forth from the not-so-distant future and several years after the return of the Father Emilio Sandoz, the lone survivor of a pilgrimage to a distant undiscovered planet.  The story is almost Brechtian in that we know the journey is doomed, and yet we are still privy to its happening.  The story moves from Sandoz’s interrogation by the Jesuits as to the events that happened on the planet and the doomed voyage from inception to destruction.  Knowing these characters are doomed to perish doesn’t make their deaths any less startling.

In fact, it is in the characters that the story delivers it’s most joy.  These are not pious priests, but they still hold a massive devotion to the tenets of their order and their faith.  They are joined by a group of non-denominational folks, among whom exists my favorite character ever conceived: Anne Edwards, who pretty much embodies the late governor Anne Richards.  The interplay between these charming folks alone would have been enough to captivate me, but then we add in the journey to Rakhat, and the study of the alien civilization. 

As the voyagers interact with first the new landscape and then the alien society, the novel becomes almost an ethnography.  Every aspect of the creatures’ lives, and those of their human counterparts, are explored through the glass of religion.  It’s pretty interesting how much faith comes into the story.  The novel is always sliding towards a dark path, and we as readers are trying to figure out how the shining and genuinely loving Emilio of the pre-voyage becomes the bitter and hollowed out shell of a man after his experiences.  He is a pariah, viewed with degradation by the brotherhood and by general society, since the exploits of the journey have long been made public.  Space travel takes 17 years there and 17 back, so the events have been stewing for 17 years when Emilio is asked to account for his actions on Rakhat. 

I cannot recommend this novel enough.  I guarantee you will adore the characters, and Russell has earned all the awards that have been heaped upon her.  But it’s the sobering study of the question of God’s place in the universe for one priest that kept me enraptured.  It was just as thought provoking as the broad comedy of Christopher Moore’s “Lamb” or James Morrow’s brilliant Godhead Trilogy: “Towing Jehovah” — where God dies and his two mile long corpse falls into the ocean, “Blameless in Abaddon” — where God is brought up on charges for Humanity’s woes by a plucky Pennsylvanian lawyer, or “The Eternal Footman” — where God’s death has brought on a plague of death-awareness.  Except while those novels use humor and conjecture to put forward thought provoking concepts, Russell uses natural humor and companionship to make you love these people before horribly destroying them.

Book 47. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski

I’m not much of a dog person.  I was bitten when I was younger, by my grandmother’s little Scottish terrier, and it garnered a huge distrust of pretty much all animals.  Most people tell me, “Don’t worry about my dog, he’s so friendly!”  And I’m usually the first person the dog ever snaps at or tries to bite.  I walked a dog for the first time in my life in November of last year, when I was 30 years old.  My brother wanted a puppy when he was younger.  I was scared.  We ended up with a rabbit.  

I am not a dog person.  But I am a Shakespeare person.  And I love when people do derivations of his work.  Macbeth as a mafia epic?  Sign me up!  It doesn’t get much better than Julie Taymor’s Titus.  Hell, I even kinda dug the Ethan Hawke Hamlet.  And the Gibson.  Just not the odious O, but I give them an E for effort and a S for shitty.  

Edgar Sawtelle is an interesting take on Hamlet.  Edgar’s a seriously flawed protagonist, and Wroblewski manages to make the landscape a major character in the novel, which I think is a flaw of most modern works.  Stephen King does well with his Derry, and the ayuh’s of New England beyond the pale, but Wroblewski loves

Book 46. Rule by Secrecy by Jim Marrs

Do not read this book. 

It’s great.  It’s outstanding.  But you might not be prepared for it.  I don’t say that as some sort of dare.  This is not a challenge or slight against your intellect, or some doubt against your capabilities.  You might not be prepared to accept what the book’s talking about. 

Rule by Secrecy deals with conspiracy theory.  It was written in 2000, so it’s before the events of 9/11.  (I can imagine Mr. Marrs has quite a bit to say on that topic.)  It basically tracks the history of Freemasonry, the Illuminati, and the Priory of Sion, and it’s influences on world events through secret organizations and behind the scenes dealing.  It’s sinister and frightening, because it’s all plausible.  In fact, it presages the whole depression that were going through now.  

Essentially, the wealthy control everyone.  They are playing all sides, often against each other, and they’ve been doing it forever.  It makes me never want to vote, to take all my money and move to a farm in Montana.  

It tracks back to the Da Vinci Code territory — Jesus and Mary Magdalene and the Merovingians, crossing paths with Pagels and Baigent et al, and the other folks I’ve been reading.  This is primarily what I mean when I say this might not be the entry to your study of the world.  Not that you aren’t ready to believe the stuff.  Because it gets further out there.  

Towards the end, it gets into biblical study, and the origins of life on the planet.  This part deals more with extraterrestrials.  I’ve read less into Mu and Atlantis than I’d like, but Marrs puts forth the most intriguing premise of how we got here.  

It’s kind of a depressing book, because at the end, it makes you think to yourself, why bother?  Life is pre-ordained and out of your control.  Major media, government — worldwide and in the Americas, religion — it’s all controlled behind the scenes by banking and secret societies.  And though Marrs is hopeful that by getting the word that will be enough to combat, by virtue of what’s been going on since the book’s release, it makes me feel less like there’s a point to fighting back.  

I just hope Obama is a symbol that they don’t hold all the strings.  But the last president that escaped their control was Kennedy.  And…yeah.

Book 45. The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks

I really think this is labeled humor, because it defies category.  It’s assuredly hysterical, but only because it takes itself so incredibly seriously.  It’s just what the title suggests: a handbook on how to survive a zombie uprising.  

But, my God, it’s literally an in-depth study on the history of zombies and zombie attacks.  It goes into different categories of zombie outbreaks, the virus that causes zombie infection (Solanum), and a listing of the pros and cons of various weapons and environments.  It also breaks down a pretty intensive list of necessary supplies for surviving.  The book wraps with an account of various zombie attacks through history. (Which is my favorite part of the book by far.)

Brooks favors the shambler zombies — the category I support as a Romeroist — and he builds and conforms to an incredible mythology.  His commitment to the material is what makes the survival guide work so well.  At no point is he joking.  At no point is he making clever winks or aside.  It’s almost like the conspiracy theorist novels I’ve been reading.  What he speaks of is vaguely outlandish, but entirely plausible, and he handles it seriously.  

I am really anxious to read World War Z now, because Brooks has already built his world, so now I get to see his methods in action.

Book 44. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

Brilliant.  Just a fucking brilliant book.  It’s the only Chabon I’ve read, but I’m immediately a fan.  What blows my mind is, this book almost follows the same general narrative structure you’d find in those odious three hour melodramas that pass for Oscar Winners, something like a “Benjamin Button” or “English Patient”.  At the barest bones of course.  It’s about two cousins who change the face of comics during the era of World War II, and about the woman they both love. 

But that’s where Chabon leaves all the other saps behind and breathtakingly layers his story.  There’s so much going on here, any single narrative thread could have made for an outstanding novel of its’ own accord.  Josef Kavalier was chosen by his family to be the one to escape to America from Prague, and he ends up enlisting the help of his magic teacher and an ancient Golem.  Sammy Klayman, shortened to Clay, lives with his mother after he’s been essentially abandoned by his carnie father, who’s a traveling circusman.  It covers homosexuality, radio, Houdini, magic, the sweat shop era of early comic investing, art, and so much more.

The boys ended up getting in on the ground of the emerging art form of comic books, blending their skills to create The Escapist — a Nazi battling Superman.  Kavalier and Clay acts as a partial history of comics.  But this is blended effortlessly with the World War II thread, as Joe Kavalier uses his pen to battle the Germans.   As many stories as there have been that involved WWII, this one manages to again delve into fresh territory, not pushing into the war so much as the effects it has on the people living in New York at the time.  

But it is always the story of Joe and Sammy, and their personal experiences.  It’s cinematic and vast, mind-blowing simple and yet incredibly complex.  It’s an intense story, and well worth jamming through.  It does the same tricks as Forrest Gump, mixing real famous figures with fiction, but instead of feeling hokey and gimmicky, it’s entirely natural.   I will assuredly be picking up Mysteries of Pittsburgh and Wonder Boys.

Book 43. Lost Light by Michael Connelly

Another solid turn out from a series that I’ve fallen in love with.  It’s so deep in this series, it’s practically stupid to explain any of the plots, because this is a series that you want to read from book one.  What’s always been astounding about the trials and tribulations of Harry Bosch, detective of the LAPD, is that the story ages and changes with the landscape of L.A.  The stories started before the Northridge earthquake that leveled part of the city, through the Rodney King riots, and now post 9-11.  Never once are these pivotal events ever paramount in the story, but rather their effects are felt.  Bosch’s house is condemned from potential earthquake damage.  One of the cases involves the court system, a jury forever warped by LAPD beatings.  This book delves into the anti-terrorism effects of the Patriot Act on the police system.

I didn’t read the first one until I came out here, and so it’s kind of fascinating to know all the locations referenced.  But most of all it’s Bosch that I’m drawn to.  Though Clint Eastwood played a different Connelly character in “Blood Work”, Bosch is a relic of the time of Dirty Harry.  He drinks, he smokes — or did — and he barely understands how to use a computer.  He’s the eldest of the old school.  Connelly still uses the Bosch character, with a few more novels in the series, but now he’s blended him with Mickey Haller, the Lincoln Lawyer, a shifty attorney, and he’s meshing all of his characters together.  Being a fan of Preston and Child, I dig when authors do that. 

Bosch is investigating an old case, involving a young girl’s murder four years ago, and the theft of 2 million dollars from a movie set.  Connelly’s extremely adept at intersecting the different storylines, and carefully meting out the plot.  What I like about Bosch is that he’s human.   He fucks up, he makes mistakes, he remembers stuff later, he does the wrong thing — and it almost kills him.  

Again, I’m not really keen on writing a review of a book eight or so deep in a series, so all I can recommend is reading The Black Echo, which is the first Harry Bosch novel.

Book 42. The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith

I had been meaning to read this series since it came out.  I had a slew of older women customers who would come into Barnes and Noble looking for a good read, and I was constantly on the look out for something for them.  If they dug violence and sex, I would send them to Harlen Coben or P.J. Tracy, for some fun stuff.  It’s the pub burger to Patterson’s McDoubles.  But I could never find anything that wasn’t too racy.

Well, here it is.  It’s a charming mystery, that I can only describe as quaint.  Mma Precious Ramotswe is a fat, happy woman running a detective agency in Botswana.  I have no idea how accurate the descriptions of Africa are, but it’s nice to read something that’s not about slavery, political upheavals, or kidnapping.  It almost reads like a series of small events in her day rather than one uniform book with one mystery.  It weaves back and forth nicely between her personal affairs and the cases she’s chooses to undertake.  There’s no swearing or brutal violence.  Everything can’t be all machete mauling and baby making, Julie.

As I said, the easiest way to describe it is quaint.  It reminds me of the old women who sell quilts at the flea market.  Sure, she might be the grandmother of a pederast who turned her basement into The Last Chuck E. Cheese On The Left.  Sure, she might be using the money to fund abortion clinic bombings.  Sure, she might be secretly weaving Levitticus passages in knit and perl morse code in her craft projects.  But, in the here and now, she’s a sweet old lady selling handmade goods and services.  That’s what this novel is like.  There are moments where the old-fashioned attitudes of female servitude and the scenes involving Precious’s husband Note that are horrifying, but delivered in the same sweet cadence that Smith uses when describing her making bush tea.  It’s jarring but fascinating. 

This is the next series getting televisionized by HBO, and having read the first novel, I’m kind of a little excited about it.  Jill Scott is supposed to play Precious, and frankly she should be the go-to girl for casting zaftig black women.  She’s been strong in just about every project she’s been in (which has been limited, so I’m anxious to see if she can carry a lead role), plus, she’s just a pleasant person.

Jorb: The Uninvited

The Babysitters Club Presents: Look, More Dead People

Oh boy, oh boy.  Another Asian horror remake!  You know, for kids!  Except the part where they find their stepmother’s vibrator and take the batteries out.   You won’t find that in The Boxcar Children!  You will, however, find it several times in The Hardy Boys.