Tag: books (Page 2 of 5)

River of Gods by Ian McDonald

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In August in 2047, in the city of Varanasi in the country of Bharat in central India, nine people converge on one singular event that changes everything for mankind. For some, it’s an asteroid containing the alien relic the Tabernacle. For others it is chasing down AIs. And for others, it is about finding themselves in the midst of a water war when the monsoon rains no longer come and the Ganga runs dry.

The good: River of Gods does very interesting things with the arc of the growth of computers and computing into every corner of life. Even the very popular soap, “Town and Country,” is completely computer rendered with fake AI actors having fake AI-based weddings and entire “People Magazine”-like publications fawn over the imaginary private lives of the AIs inhabiting the rendered soap opera. Everyone has a cellphone-like device, even the most poor. Everything is wired together. And AIs (called aeais in the book) fill every corner of existence — driving cars (but apparently not the taxis), running heating and cooling systems, injecting themselves into medical devices, everywhere. One of the main themes of the book is hunting down rogue AIs, those who have somehow “evolved” through illicit programming or through happenstance to become “Generation Three” AIs, those AIs that have developed full native intelligence. The question the book grapples with is not only how these beings come about and flow through the interconnectedness of all computers, but how they see existence and how their consciousness is represented by copying millions of copies of themselves. The other is how humans react to the super intelligent AIs, hunting them down, and “excommunicating” them with huge EMP pulses and destroying all the copies hiding in the machines.

Another bit of good comes from grappling with how humans are forcing their own evolution through selective breeding, gene therapy, and remaking themselves with extensive surgery. From this comes a shortage of women, strange children who age at 1/2 the rate of regular human beings called Brahmins who have no empathy for the human race, and nutes — a group of people who have surgically removed all gender. The reaction from normal humans is revulsion but the book implies this is the forward trajectory of humanity and the normal people will soon be an out-bred relic of the past.

The bad: I generally like books with multiple viewpoints but River of Gods has nine and it felt overdone. The themes of the book were focused over the actual characterization of the characters. Only the nute Tal really stood out as a distinct personality. The rest of the characters tended to flow together into one amorphous mass. All the characters _do_ get a different view of the actions during August 2047 to give a perspective on how the whole plot comes together in the end — with a little bit of Science Fiction Plot Device thrown in.

The science fiction is a little too precious at times. Sometimes it wants to be Arthur C. Clarke and sometimes it wants to be Blade Runner with just a dash of the original Philip K Dick and it doesn’t seem to know which is which.

The Hindi sprinkled through is not much of a challenge. However, the kindle version of the book lacks bookmarks so looking up terms in the back of the book is a major challenge. Also, the kindle version is sprinkled throughout the text with enough typos for it to be called out.

The ending is about middling for a science fiction book. It’s not awful. It’s no Sphere. It’s not a total collapse like Snow Crash. The book ends very definitively.

River of Gods by Ian McDonald is an awful lot of book. It’s big. In parts it goes on and on and on and on. Some of it drags in places when it goes BEHOLD MY INDIA OF THE FUTURE! For an easy comparison on pure word count, it’s about 1 Red Mars. Figure out how long it took to read Red Mars, add a tax for having to look up all the words in Hindi in the appendix in the back, and that’s about how long it takes to get through River of Gods.

So, not bad. I made it all the way through. It definitely does have some good ideas and it is one of the better science fiction novels floating around. It’s in the “pretty good” category but it’s not Childhood’s End or anything. It’s a decent read but it’s not one of those science fiction novels that lays hooks in your brain that lie there and fester until they get disgorged in some argument one day. I give it about a 3.75 stars but the rating system isn’t that fine grained so I round it up to a four. It’s not quite a four star book. It’s very much a 3.75 star book.

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Cocoa Programming: A Quick-Start Guide for Developers by Daniel Steinberg
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I usually don’t read tech books cover to cover. Typically, they’re used for reference — looking up something here or there, finding a technique and reading the chapter, or just giving up because the book is written so badly the more advanced sections are completely impenetrable. This was an exception. I read every chapter, did every exercise, and came out feeling I actually learned enough to be dangerous.

"Cocoa Programming: A Quick Start" is not for beginners. It assumes from the outside the reader has had years of C and C++ experience, is familiar with all of the standard programming techniques and the standards OO development techniques and, near the end, has a good grasp of threading and functional programming. The idea is not to teach /programming/ per se but to get a professional software engineer from 0 to building useful MacOSX, iPhone and iPad apps in a relatively short about of time. Projects begin with the very simple, no code required application using widgets all the way through to writing somewhat complex applications using threading and queuing with all the very important pieces — delegates, notifications, memory management, persistence, introductions to core data — in between.

For someone dedicated to working through the book, I found it takes about three weeks to get through all of the tutorials. The tutorials must be completed — no skipping steps — because the next chapter often builds upon the first. The text is clear and I found all the code samples in the book to be pretty bug-free. The concepts move pretty fast. Only a few paragraphs are spared for a new concept before jumping in feet first. Since I’m one of those people who "learn by doing" this worked for me. After typing in the tutorials by the end of the book I was comfortable with the Objective C MVC models, I understood how connections and bindings worked, and I could see how to extend my own controllers with new messages to make new event-driven models. I was surprised how many applications fall into CRUD models (create/read/update/delete) but also pleasantly surprised how easy it is to work with Core Data to make data-driven applications.

I only have really two issues with the book. The first is mechanical: the text applies to XCode 3. XCode 4 was a major revision to the GUI interface of the iDE so many of the hot keys and screen shots no longer apply. This was incredibly confusing for the first few chapters until I learned where everything was. The second is finishing the book leaves me with a "what now?" feeling. There’s a few days of failing while ideas about projects coalesce.

I would and do recommend this book to seasoned adventurers who are looking for a brave new world to conquer. Objective C, once one gets past the mildly bizarre Simula-based syntax, isn’t that bad and there’s lots of cool things to build. "Cocoa Programming" is a pretty strong place to start to get oriented and get going causing app-based havoc.

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Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"Nothing to Envy" is the most depressing book in the world.

Following the lives of six ex-pat North Koreans who, through luck and perseverance, managed to get out through China and to South Korea (where they are automatically citizens), "Nothing to Envy" chronicles the rise and fall of the last Soviet Communist State who has managed, somehow, to hang on when dictators world over are falling. At first, Kim Il-Jong’s make-believe Communist Paradise, established in 1958 and propped up by the Russians, looked like a Korean Miracle. Built on top of left behind Japanese trains, electrical lines, factories, and roads, the Communist experiment looked, from the outside, to actually work: the per capita of those in North Korea was higher than South Korea as South Korea went through its post-Korean War growing pangs. Sure everyone in North Korea was pigeon-holed based on the allegiances of their grandparents and their opportunities in life granted or removed based on some superficial caste almost as harsh as found in India, but the people were fed, everyone had health care, people had jobs and school, and the trains ran on time.

Then three things happened: the Soviet Union fell, Kim Il-Jong died, and Deng Xiaoping’s capitalist reforms in China caused China’s economy to rapidly expand. North Korea never was anything more than a puppet state; it never made or sold anything itself. The moment the money dried up and North Korea’s allies became more interested in money than a Communist experiment, North Korea began to starve. Everyone starved. Hundreds of thousands died. And the government never relented to feed its people, all for ideology.

The six very personal stories chronicles the period of intense starvation and the re-discovery of capitalist markets in North Korea from 1991 to the present day. All of the people featured in the book, some young and some old enough to remember the Korean War, are all survivors, tough enough to survive the famines, cross the border into China, and sneak all the way to South Korea. "Nothing to Envy" chronicles extreme poverty under crushing 1984 conditions where, even while starving, a stray word against the government meant a trip to the Gulag. Televisions are fixed to only one TV station, radios only get the North Korean State station (but easy to hack), cellphones banned, no computers, and the people are sealed in a hermetic bubble. It doesn’t matter, though: electricity is so rare people steal the copper out of the power lines to sell for black market rice. The electricity hasn’t been on in twenty years. Cities crumble, trains die on the tracks, and the factories sit idle. There aren’t any cars. North Korea is a wasteland.

After reading this book, it’s unclear how reunification would work. North Korea is a poverty-stricken nation stuck in the 1960s and reunification would mean retraining some 23 million people in how to exist in the 21st century. Estimates are between $800 billion and $1.3 trillion to rebuild North Korea to a livable, workable standard. It’s not the de-brainwashing as much as the sheer rebuilding.

"Nothing to Envy" is a very sad book about a very sad place run by a madman who would rather his country be ideologically pure than his people eat. It’s unlikely North Korea will survive another change of hands considering how China is leaking in over the northern border and running North Korea’s black markets — the only source of food they have. But when it does happen, it will be a real mess. North Korea is a humanitarian disaster.

Recommended for anyone interested in what life is like in North Korea.

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The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What do I say about this book?

The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest the Return of the King of exceedingly trashy thriller novels. Conspiracy! Fraud! Illegal Wire Tapping! Chase scenes! More chase scenes! Good cops! Bad cops! Evil cops! Hacking! Hot heroic women! And, of course… MURDER. Oh, and don’t forget the sex, the yugoslavian mafia guys, the biker gangs, the evil government officials, and the Heroics of Mikhael Blomqvist and Lisbeth Salander and the Millennium crew! When I say "trashy" I don’t mean it in a bad way. Trashy is good. Trashy is often great! But art it is not and boy is this novel trashy. It transcends cheese and right out the other side into glorious, glorious trash.

The story is 600 pages of chase novel. It opens with Lisbeth Salander in the hospital after being shot in the head (!!) and then the quest to clear her of All Wrongs and her eeeevil father, the ex-Soviet military spy and defector to Sweden, just down the hall plotting her horrible demise. Meanwhile, a super secret government group called the Section comes out of retirement to deal with their wayward spy, cover all their tracks, destroy Millennium before evidence is published, and bury Lisbeth Salander forever in a mental institution. No one is going to keep Mikhael Blomqvist from getting the story — and along the way a girl — about something as scandalous as a bunch of old Cold Warriors who will do anything to keep an old Soviet Spy who has moved into sex trafficking a secret.

And then everyone runs all over Sweden — except Lisbeth, who spends 80% of the novel lying in bed in a hospital hacking. The Girl who Kicks the Hornet’s Nest is the book where Stieg Larsson figured out how to write. The scenes are short and breathless. The chapters are laid out day by day so while Horrible Things happen one day you just have to know what happens on the next. Despite having an enormous cast, the plot moves along at breakneck pace. It’s a fun read! And surprisingly, fairly well plotted.

Most of Lisbeth’s hacking actually manages to pass the smell test. It’s a little exaggerated in places simply through time compression but otherwise its likely plausible enough. My only true quibble with this book is the Erika Berger B plot which seems to serve no purpose other than for Erika to leave, run around, whine, and then return to Millennium older and wiser and having learned a Valuable Lesson. Perhaps I simply do not like the Erika Berger character, but I found the B plot to be a little tedious and pointless. Otherwise, I enjoyed most of the second fiddle characters — the Milton Security guys (and gal), the Constitutional Protection Police in SIS, the regular cops, and, overall, the bad guys who, to their credit, are immensely bad.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest firmly earns its 5 star rating by bringing the story to a complete conclusion. The very end is a tad rushed but it ends. The trilogy concludes. I feel comfortable walking away from Lisbeth Salander and Mikhael Blomqvist and all their friends and enemies. The story has been told.

I feel comfortable recommending the series after the conclusion of the Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. I know, you’re probably looking at the books and going: "Man, these books are everywhere. Should I really read them?" My answer: yep. The third book is all payoff, baby.

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The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"The Girl who Played with Fire" has middle book of a trilogy syndrome. It doesn’t have all the setup and introductions and background and exploration of character that the first book has and it doesn’t have the resolution of a final book. It is the Empire Strikes Back of the Millennium Trilogy — neither an opener nor a closer, but with plenty of "I am your father, Luke" moments. This leaves the book feeling a little bit at loose ends.

My biggest issue with "The Girl who Played with Fire" is that nothing of plot consequence happens for the first full third of the book. It opens with a big "meanwhile" where Lisbeth Salandar does stuff for a while and Mikhael Blomqvist does stuff for a while and the magazine does stuff for a while and really, people do stuff for a while. There’s some good old fashioned lesbian sex, some regular straight sex, and lots of people sitting around drinking and talking. Then people get shot up real good and blood splatters and the book becomes enjoyable. We demand blood splatters! Give us dead bodies or go home!

The book tosses in characters who are so numerous it gets hard to follow after a while: cops, bikers, a professional boxer, the staff at Millennium magazine, the people at Milton Security, some dude named Zala, a big blond giant who goes around hitting people with his fists, government flunkies… and they all have names that end in "… berg." It becomes an exercise in being cross-eyed after a while. The story becomes /super/ exciting when it involves Lisbeth Salandar (our autistic heroine) or Mikael Blomqvist (our intrepid reporter) but then stalls a bit when it flashes to this secondary character or that secondary character. Well, I guess those characters need to have lives, too. Then there are fights — one thing I can say about Stieg Larsson books is the guy knew how to write an exciting fight scene — and implacable villains who are implacable and villainous and an absolutely amazing final 10% of the book full of, to put it bluntly, Empire Strikes Back moments with Big! Gasping! Revelations! GASP! Read that passage again! GASP!!!!

Except Lisbeth Salander gets to keep her hand. Sort of.

For the final 10% I bumped my review from three stars to four simply because the payoff is worth the slog at the beginning. For the most part, "The Girl who Played with Fire" is a three and a half star book. It plods in the beginning and bogs in places where the cops run around coming to incorrect conclusions. It is not as tightly plotted or as cleanly written as "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo." It isn’t as enjoyably trashy, either — sure, it has a lesbian sex scene but it is a bit on the tame side and Blomqvist doesn’t sleep with /everyone/. It is trashy, sure, but it is not quite as trashy as the first book. In places it even feels a little conservative. The closing scenes, though, are worth the price of admission.

It also has no resolution. It’s a middle series book. No opening and no closing. Luckily one can get "the Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest" from Amazon and it downloads right to the Kindle…

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Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"When Egypt Ruled the East" by George Steindorff this book is not.

I have read many books on Egyptian history all the way up through the Ptolemies who, somehow, through some sort of rhetorical magic, were made to be as dry and dull as dead leaves in winter in "Cleopatra: A Life." I have read many history books. I consider myself a bit of a connoisseur of the genre. I even inhale historical fiction. Some of these books have been utter and complete crap. I have manned up and finished books that would defeat a lesser soul simply because it might have a tidbit, a _fact_, a grain of something cool lurking inside.

But wow does this book need an editor. I cannot tell if Stacy Schiff was covering for being far more interested in the Romans than the Egyptians, or simply having more knowledge of the Romans, or just seriously not liking the Latin language or what, but this book is so padded with passive tense that I cannot be certain that she is speaking authoritatively on anything. It comes off like: "Cicero who MAY HAVE somehow sort of rubbed against Cleopatra who MAY HAVE spent some time in Rome with Julius Caesar MAY HAVE said something bad about her but WITHOUT SPEAKING HER NAME so WHO KNOWS." Now read 384 pages like that. You get the general idea. Toss in paragraphs that are overwritten and that’s the whole book.

I will openly admit that the sheer terribleness of this book defeated me in mortal combat. I didn’t make it to the end. After a while, I didn’t care any more. I wanted to throw the book against the wall — except that would have broken my Kindle and I would have been sad. And this is me with a book on Egypt. Anything Egypt. Me. Egypt. I will drag people across oceans to stare at dead people from the sands in dusty museums and I couldn’t finish this book! That’s how bad it is.

Some little bits of this book actually had a little sparkle. When it stumbled aimlessly on a topic where Schiff knew enough to speak authoritatively, it was kind of interesting. Contrasts between Alexandria and Rome. Contrasts in Greek Alexandra vs. Egyptian Memphis. Some comments on trade. This bought the book an extra star and kept it from the one star trash can. Every once in a while there is a ray of hope among the rhetorical trash. But then it fades away and I was sad in snow.

But for the most part? Blech. Avoid. This book is a massive disappointment.

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The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There’s bad, there’s cheesy, and then there is trashy. This book is full-on trashy.

I don’t mean that in a bad sense. It’s difficult to attain truly trashy. It goes beyond bad and beyond tawdry, through cheesy, and out the other side. It embraces its trashiness. This is a book that knows it is just outright stupid, grabs it with both hands, and hugs it until the bad pops out and leaves only the shining goodness behind. It’s the sort of trash that takes work to attain. It takes planning. It’s trashiness is awe-inspiring.

It goes something like this:

Mikael Blomkvist is this super hot financial reporter with a smoking hot but married girlfriend with whom he runs a super hot financial rag called the Millennium. He got a tip off from a friend about this crooked financier and somehow the story was turned back on him and he ended up being convicted of libel. With his career in ruins, he gets a call from yet another bigwig, Henrik Vanger, who hires him to find out the truth about what happened to his niece, Harriet, in 1966. Henrik Vanger is convinced she was horribly murdered but he has no proof, and it has eaten away at his soul for decades. He must know the truth! Along the way, Mikhael Bloomkvist is hooked up with Lisbeth Salander, a smoking hot (in a different way) Aspergery super-hacker covered in piercings and tattoos. Then they uncover a tale of — yes, you can take it from here — deceit and lies and _murder_ and, oh hell with it, yes, Nazis.

There’s sex. There’s lots of sex. Mikhael is smoking hot himself and he radiates "can sleep with any hot chick" in a 40 foot radius. And he does! God, that man sleeps with everyone. He’d sleep with the dog if there was one in the plot somewhere. There’s also rape, too, and although there’s Glorious Vengeance the rape scenes are, fair warning, pretty graphic. That alone makes it difficult to recommend to friends who may be uncomfortable with such things. On the one hand, utter ridiculousness. On the other hand, graphic rape scenes. Milage may vary.

The book has a solid three star plot but the writing kicks it up to an extra star. Stieg Larsson knew instinctively the Elmore Leonard maxim: "Do not write the boring parts." The book does plod in a few spots, especially toward the end where it is all Glorious Vengeance Upon Enemies Of All Stripes — of course, it has to be — but he very very rarely wrote the boring parts. The book is all about "Oh come ON…. /now/ what happens?" I completely understand why this book has sold a million billion copies. It is one of the most head-eatiest, brainwormiest books I have read in a long time. It is compulsively readable, even in the dumb parts.

Are the Swedish names a problem? No, not really.

Will I read the next two books? Most certainly.

Can I recommend it? It’s a fun, trashy thriller. But it has some scenes that may be upsetting. I lean toward yes with a caveat that it might not work for everyone.

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