Fundevogel's Shelf Relief 2014

So 2013 was the first year since I started tracking that the total number of unread books in my possession was lower at the end of the year than the beginning. Down by seven to be precise, and two of those new ones are dictionaries (which I am using the pants off of) that shouldn't really count towards my TBR pile. So yay! Here's hoping to continue the progress in 2014.

I'm listing all the year's reading here for convience, but books that aren't from my shelves will noted in the reviews and italicized in the main list.
As always I'm counting books acquired and read during the year as off the shelf. They're still off the shelf, even if they haven't been there long.

Pre-2014 Inventory:

listing as of 12/30/13

Sorta arranged by category. Dates are included when its acquisition date is known. I think this is complete, I'll update it if I find something I've missed.

Various Works of Fiction

Devil on the Cross - Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
The Annotated Huck Finn - Mark Twain (gift)
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers
Losing Battles - Eudora Welty
Water Music - T. C. Boyle
Macbeth - William Shakespeare 1/5/12
The Cry of the Sloth - Sam Savage 10/12/12
The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories - H. P. Lovecraft 9/?/13 (gift)


Various Works of Non Fiction

The Italian Boy - Sarah Wise
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee - Dee Brown
The Boy Who Would Be Shakespeare - Doug Stewart
Freak Show - Robert Bogdan (gift)
Guns, Germs and Steel - Jared Diamond (gift)
Burton on Burton - Mark Salisbury (gift)
Kingdom Under Glass - Jay Kirk 1/31/12 (gift)
A Bright and Guilty Place - Richard Rayner 2/1/12
Bloody Foreigners - Robert Winder 2/6/13 (gift)
The Sun and the Moon - Matthew Goodman 3/2/13
Just the Facts: How "Objectivity" Came to Define American Journalism - David Mindich 7/1/13
The Handbook of Good English - Edward Johnson 7/1/13
The ABC of Relativity - Bertrand Russell 10/31/13


Medicine

The Blank Slate - Steven Pinker
Charlatan - Pope Brock
The Knife Man - Wendy Moore 4/12/12


Religion, Myth & Folklore

The Golden Bough - James George Frazer
Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia - Jean Bottero (gift)
Wayward Puritans - Kai T. Erikson (MIA)
The Dead Sea Scrolls - various
The New Annotated Oxford Bible - various
Forests of the Vampire - Charles Phillips


Boxall's Batch

The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
A Handful of Dust - Evelyn Waugh
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon
The Monk - M. G. Lewis
The Stranger - Albert Camus
Animal Farm - George Orwell
Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel García Márquez
Fanny Hill - John Cleland 1/7/12
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency - Douglas Adams 2/28/12
The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks 11/21/12
Naked Lunch - William S. Burroughs 3/21/13

Poetry

Laxdaela Saga - unknown
Collected Poems 1947 - 1997 - Allen Ginsberg

Biography & Memoir

This Boy's Life - Tobias Wolff
All Over but the Shoutin' - Rick Bragg
When You are Engulfed in Flames - David Sedaris
Dead Men Do Tell Tales - Byron De Prorok
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain
The Autobiography Of Bertrand Russell: The Early Years - Bertrand Russell 11/4/13


DIY Reference

CSS in Easy Steps
Web Publishing with HTML and XHTML
The Animation Book
DVD Authoring with Adobe Encore
Essential ZBrush
The Art of Rigging
The Prop Builder's Molding & Casting Handbook - Thurston James
Apocalypse Cakes: Recipes for the End - Shannon O'Malley 12/25/12 (gift)
Complete Maya Programming: An Extensive Guide to MEL and C API - David Gould 5/14/13

Russian Language

Basic Russian Vocabulary
Аня в странѣ чудесъ - Lewis Carroll (translated by Vladimir Nabokov) 7/12/12
ты только прислушайся - Phillis Gershator 7/31/12
501 Russian Verbs - Thomas Beyer Jr. Ph.D. 1/28/13
Master the Basics Russian - Natalia Lusin, Ph.D. 5/29/13

Books acquired in 2014:
Books purchased, won, swapped for or gifted to me.

1. Dear Sir, Drop Dead! - Donald Carroll 1/11/14
2. Norsk Folkemuseum - 1/13/14
3. The Sixth Gun, Book 1: Cold Dead Fingers - Cullen Bunn (gift!) 2/5/14
4. The Remedy - Thomas Goetz 2/12/14 (ER)
5. The Mystery of Lewis Carroll - Jenny Woolf 2/24/14
6. Grendel - John Gardener 2/24/14
7. The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon 2/26/14
8. Señor Peregrino - Cecilia Samartin 5/1/14
9. Webster's II New Riverside Dictionary-Revised Edition - Websters 5/24/14
10. Getting Schooled - Garret Keizer 5/24/14 (ER)
11. HarperCollins German Dictionary - HarperCollins 6/16/14
12. Mastering German - A.J. Peck 6/21/14
13. Applique - Pauline Brown 6/30/14
14. Crewel Embroidery - Erica Wilson 6/30/14
15. Kakerlakkene - Jo Nesbø 6/30/14
16. Working With Plastics - Time-Life Books 7/2/14
17. Aesop's Fables - Aesop 7/5/14
18. German Grammar - Erik V. Greenfield 7/14/14
19. Essentials of German Grammar - 7/14/14
20. El Túnel - Ernesto Sábato 8/4/14
21. Dr. Mütter's Marvels - Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz 8/6/14 (ER)
22.Beginning Norwegian - Einar Haugen 8/26/14
23. Dark Mirror: The Medieval Origins of Anti-Jewish Iconography - Sara Lipton 9/4/14 (ER)
24. Весёлые зверята - Художник В. Бастрыкин 10/21/14
25. The Russian's World: Life and Language - Generva Gerhart 10/21/14
26. English Grammar for Students of Russian - Edwina J. Cruise 10/21/14
27. Stage Costume Techniques - Joy Spanabel Emery 10/21/14
28. Horrorstör - Grady Hendrix 10/21/14
29. From Barnum & Bailey to Feld - Ernest Albrecht 11/10/14 (ER)
30. The Reporter's Handbook - John Ullmann 11/17/14
31. German in a Nutshell - Henry Regensteiner, Ph.D. 12/3/14
32. Righting the Mother Tongue - David Wolman 12/25/14 (gift)

Books read in 2014:
This includes all books read, not just the ones from my shelves. Books that don't come from my shelves will be italicized.
I'm counting books acquired and read during the year as off the shelf. They're still off my shelf, even if they haven't been there long.

1. Debt: The First 5,000 Years - David Graeber 1/8/14
2. Dear Sir, Drop Dead! - Donald Carroll 1/15/14
3. Broke, USA - Gary Rivlin 1/24/14
4. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks 2/3/14
5. The Sixth Gun, Book 1: Cold Dead Fingers - Cullen Bunn 2/9/14
6. The Dyer's Companion - Dagmar Klos 2/11/14
7. The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories - H. P. Lovecraft 2/13/14
8. The Sixth Gun, Book 2: Crossroads - Cullen Bunn 2/18/14
9. When You Are Engulfed In Flames - David Sedaris 2/19/14
10. The Remedy - Thomas Goetz 2/28/14
11. Hellboy Library Edition, Vol. 1 - Mike Mignola 3/7/14
12. A Handful of Dust - Evelyn Waugh 3/9/14
13. The Cry of the Sloth - Sam Savage 3/20/14
14. Hellboy, Vol. 3: The Chained Coffin and Others - Mike Mignola 4/1/14
15. Hellboy, Vol. 4: The Right Hand of Doom - Mike Mignola 4/2/14
16. Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia - Jean Bottero 4/4/14
17. The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon 4/11/14
18. Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka, Vol. 1 - Naoki Urasawa 4/21/14
19. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers 5/17/14
20. Freak Show - Robert Bogdan 5/27/14
21. Grendel - John Gardner 6/3/14
22. 30 Days of Night - Steve Niles 6/3/14
23. Getting Schooled - Garret Keizer 6/20/14
24. Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse, Vol. 1 - Ben Templesmith 6/21/14
25. Welcome to Hoxford - Ben Templesmith 6/26/14
26. Disposable People - Kevin Bales 6/26/14
27. Raven Girl - Audrey Niffenegger 6/27/14
28. The Dead Sea Scrolls - various 8/8/14
29. Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life - Bryan Lee O'Malley 8/10/14
30. Dr. Mütter's Marvels - Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz 8/22/14
31. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World - Bryan Lee O'Malley 8/26/14
32. The Knife Man - Wendy Moore 9/10/14
33. Animal Farm - George Orwell 9/11/14
34. Scott Pilgrim & the Infinite Sadness - Bryan Lee O'Malley 9/30/14
35. Dark Mirror: The Medieval Origins of Anti-Jewish Iconography - Sara Lipton 10/12/14
36. The Prop Builder's Molding & Casting Handbook - Thurston James 10/15/14
37. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon 10/18/14
38. Aesop's Fables - Aesop 10/25/14
39. Horrorstör - Grady Hendrix 10/27/14
40. The Amazing Screw-On Head and Other Curious Objects - Mike Mignola 11/8/14
41. The Go-Giver - Bob Burg & John David Mann 11/15/14
42. The Annotated Dracula - Bram Stoker 11/16/14
43. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency - Douglas Adams 11/29/14
44. The ABC of Relativity - Bertrand Russell 12/10/14
45. The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities - Ann VanderMeer 12/14/14
46. MacBeth - William Shakespeare 12/17/14
47. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - J. K. Rowling 12/24/14

I like your attitude (off the shelves is off the shelves)! And congrats on the progress re: unread books (wish I could say the same).

Interesting inventory! Good luck with this year's challenge! :)

Agreed - for me it's off the shelf once it's read, regardless of how new an acquisition it may be :)

I like the idea of tracking acquisitions too - I've never done that, and might give it a go.

Looking forward to hearing about this year's reading!

Thanks guys. Not counting new acquisitions always seemed a bit punative and counter productive to me. I'm not going to stop getting books so not counting them just ignores my overall goal of reducing my total unread books. And tracking my acquisitions does help me keep a realistic idea of where my shelves are heading.

1. Debt: The First 5,000 Years - David Graeber 1/8/14
from the public library

Given the breadth and depth of the book's content there is simply no way for me to properly address it my little reveiw. There is just too much. What I can gladly explain is this is an unapologetically anthropological history of human debt and its systems of calculation and payment. There is more than a little criticism of the received wisdom of economics, and given the context provided in history, it seems fair.

Graeber simply does not truck with the presumed universality of the wisdom of economics. The problem with it is it isn't really science and therefore, rather than being based on observation of history and growing to incorporate the economies of various times and cultures it presumes the universality of the sort of economy that it was born within : Capitalism. This becomes even more of an achilles heel as Graeber points out that the creation myth of capitalism is just that, myth. That old chestnut that captialism, indeed money itself, sprung inevitably from the prohibitively unweildy system of barter is simply fancy. Speculation straight from Adam Smith. Of course the man had a right to such intellectual noodlings, but Graeber reminds us that ultimately the common knowledge of captialism and economics come from an idea about what could be, not what has been or what is. Adam Smith's idea, the dream of a self-regulating market, prices set by the will of God.

The point is capitalism is just the most recent economic system used on this planet. And comparatively, it hasn't even been in use all that long. Graeber wades through thousands of years of human exchange from all over the globe, and if one thing is glaringly apparent it's that that people have had nuanced and effective systems of exchange of all sorts as long as we have history for them. One of the things Graeber is careful to point out is that you can't presume all of human exchange boils down to the expectations of capitalism and dyed in the wool economics. Because ultimately exchange isn't about the relationship between people and money or people and goods or whatever. A person can't really have a relationship with a product or currency. A person can only have a relationship with other people regarding goods and currency. And that, what currency and goods mean in terms of people's relationship to eachother, is a product of culture.

Honestly, it's fascinating. More fascinating than I expect anyone ever expected of an economics books (if you even want to call it that). The sheer variety of exchange culture in history is eyeopening and a good way to get perspective on our own exchange culture. This book does go to some pretty dark places as the relationship between war and finance has always had a way leading exchange to dark places. The volume of content on the commodification of people and the economic role of slavery in various times and culures is profoundly disturbing, but too important to ignore. And heads up, that includes contemporary slavery and capitalism.

That sounds fascinating (if also slightly intimidating). I have a degree in archaeology and did a module on economics (and my undergrad thesis on European Dark Age economics), so it's right up my street - if I get my brain properly switched on anyway ;)

I bet you'd enjoy it. And for what it's worth a full quarter of the heft is endnotes and index and such so it isn't quite as bricklike as it may first seem.

2. Dear Sir, Drop Dead! Hate Mail Through the Ages - Donald Carroll 1/15/14
Off My Shelf

This is just a quick one, read mostly because for the last year (and probably longer) my reading's been pretty dire non fiction. Needless to say a steady diet of history books about people being shit to one another has a way of dampening one's spirits. And for the most part this was a pleasant relief. There's passion and humor and hyperbole here thankfully, as well as some tragical spelling, grammar and just plain misuse of the English language from some less able letter writers.

But it isn't all jollies, sadly. Madalyn Murray O'Hair contributed a sizable collection of her hate mail which was pretty nasty stuff, people fantasizing about her death or otherwise doing violence to her. I suspect the editor might not have included all that if the book had been published after her murder rather than before. More typical letters were from enraged customers to offending businesses, unpaid authors to publishers with a sprinkling of pointed correspondence from famous people. There was one from Lincoln to General George B. McClellan I'd encountered before that merits repeating, "If you don't want to use the army I should like to borrow it for a while." I wouldn't exactly call that hate mail, but then there are more than a few letters included that I could say the same of.

I think one of the more interesting functions of this book is as a time capsule. Originally published in 1979 it comes from an era where hate mail and the ranting of private citizens was almost exclusively private. Nowadays of course we've all seen this sort of thing aired publicly on the internet in all of it's glory, both the well written zinger and the cringe-worthy squall. And I suppose the most relevant thing I can take away from the book is that regardless of if hate mail is composed for a single target or aired for all the world to see hate mail is hate mail and the passions behind it seem largely unchanged by how public or private the letter will be.

12> it is interesting how people embraced the internet to make hate mail public in the form of trolling (and how early - even when the web still had restricted usage, the trolls abounded). Hate mail always felt more personal, more pointed to me - maybe I just think it takes more effort to post a letter than to flame on a forum - but the impact of any of it can be devastating for the recipient (and when I see the horrific stuff that gets posted sometimes, I'm appalled).

In a bizarre family twist, lore has it that my great-great-aunt used to send hate mail to my great-grandmother. They lived opposite each other in a small coastal mining town, and it appears to have been common knowledge that she was doing it, so I have to wonder how this played out in public! (did they talk? not talk? have rows in public? It's so long ago now that those who might know are long gone)

Yeah, there's nothing like the internet to teach you that some people just aren't worth listening to. I don't waste my time with it when I stumble into a particularly foetid comment section.

That's some serious dedication and spite to maintain a chain of hatemail like that. I'd be curious and trepidatious about such letters in my family.

It does speak volumes about character, doesn't it? Our family letters haven't survived, which means I put a pinch of salt on the story - my great-grandmother was a bit of an odd one by all accounts (it seems to have run in her family - I should probably worry about that ;) and it wouldn't surprise me to find she'd made the story up to discredit her sister. Either way - serious dedication and spite!

3. Broke, USA : From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc. - Gary Rivlin 1/24/14
from the public library

A long hard look at predatory lending, it's strategies, consequences and the people that fight it. Checking cashing, pay day loans, subprime morgages, refund anticipation loans, pawnshop loans, rent to own--it is staggering the number of ways persons of few scruples have found to extract large profits in exchange for dodgy if not downright poisonous "financial services". Rivlin's focus is on the personal consequences and actions at play and, as a book constructed primarily from interviews, he has a lot to draw from the victims, former employees, lobbyists, activists, and yes, the men that run these businesses. It's a dark story-- engrossing and edifying.

My only complaint is that Rivlin seems compelled to put a black or white hat on everyone he talks to playing up their likability or contemtability with entirely irrelevant tidbits about their appearance or bearing. It really hate it when writers do that. Just let actions speak for themselves, don't condescend to pull transparent tricks on the reader.

4. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks 2/3/14
Off My Shelf

At this moment I'm having a hard time commenting on The Wasp Factory in any further detail than to declare it "bloody madness". I have read a fair few of pretty messed up novels and I have no problem ranking this one as a good fit for that company. But I haven't really figured out what I actually think about it yet.

Obviously there is a lot of hideous stuff happening, but the writing is good and I don't think it's just just the parade of pointless violence and gore that some denounce it as. You can't quite take it seriously as the bizarre characters and outrageous crimes go just far enough to be fantastical, and, in a really twisted way, occasionally beautiful. Seriously, the way Frank murders Esmerelda and the sheep's demise at the end are down right cinematic, and not in a torture porn sort of way either, just really cinematic. The wasp factory itself sounds like something out of an animation by Svankmeyer or the Quay Brothers.

If I had to write a paper on it I'd need to re-read some or all of it. I'd be paying closer attention to how concepts of masculinity and gender are represented. In terms of the actual writing my only real criticism is that the voice in the last chapter didn't ring true. It reminded me of the last chaper of Brave New World where Aldous explains what his painfully obvious metaphor of a book meant. Whether or not there was a moral to this story, it definitely wasn't one of Aesop's Fucking Fables so he really should have just left that off. You don't put a bow on The Wasp Factory.

It's been a very long time since I read The Wasp Factory. I remember being caught between admiration for the writing and distaste for the characters (and generally bewildered). Peculiar stuff, but I can see myself revisiting it the way you go back for a taste of something peculiar tasting, when you lose all certainty of whether it's funny-good or funny-bad.

I know what you mean. The main reason I review so much is to help me retain my impressions of the books.

5. The Sixth Gun, Book 1: Cold Dead Fingers - Cullen Bunn 2/9/14
Off My Shelf

Today I am lazy. So here we go: on a two point scale I liked this (as opposed to not liking it which is the only other option on a two point scale). The art is good, not so lush as the art in High Moon but still a good bit more satisfying than the style that seems most common in my limited exposure to published comics. I was warned this was quest-y by a friend who knows my distaste for the genre (I hate it when writers try to pass off "Go here! Talk to that guy! Get the thing!" as actual plot and motivation), but there is enough going on that the questiness is more of a through line than the main push.

The strength is without question the creative, and appropriately horrific supernatural elements. I've too often been rubbed the wrong way by fantasy/horror writers relying too heavily on existing myth. It just feels like lazy writing when the whole of your story is basically just repackaging myth, history and/or whatever suitably genre literature has passed into the plundered hunting grounds that are the public domain. But not here. There are nods to these things, the most obvious being the four horsemen of the apocalypse, but then it moves on and becomes something else. It's refreshing to see writing that is able to honor such things without degenerating into poor imitation or wholesale theft.

And look at that. I didn't say a goddamn thing about the plot or the characters or anything. Shrug. It's a horror/western graphic novel and I have already requested volume 2 from my library. I do love a subgenre.

6. The Dyer's Companion - Dagmar Klos 2/11/14
from the public library

Just doing some research. More and more my art projects are leading to math and chemistry. It tickles me.

7. The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories - H. P. Lovecraft 2/13/14
Off My Shelf or Loaner From Friend?

Gah. This may not have been so bad if forces beyond my comprehension hadn't succeeded in lifting H. P. Lovecraft on to a pedestal of horror literature. I can appreciate bad old genre writing. But it's like camp movies. But the charm has to come from it's clumsy missteps and endearing overreaching. It sorta loses it's chance at that when you enter into The Empereror's New Clothes territory and every page makes you wonder what unwashed miscreants could mistake such bloated, overbearingly purple prose and transparent plots for good writing.

In interest of clarity and brevity here is a non-exhaustive list of things H. P. did to piss me off:

1. His dogged instance in writing "shew" and "shewed" rather than "show" and "showed". You're a 20th century grown-ass man. You aren't making your writing seem more archaic eldritch by consistently misspelling one word. It just makes you look like a pretentious idiot. Yeah, I said it.

2. Half the time his "twist" is obvious within the first quarter or third of the story....and yet it keeps going and going and going. Paid by the inch much?

3. All the while he's using a puling mouthpiece/straw skeptic to let us know that even though he hasn't written anything vaguely horrifying or mindblowing, this story is totally making the narrator piss himself with terror. And also he really is reluctant to believe such outlandish events but ultimately he is powerless to deny them. Seriously, H. P. had such a neurotic boner for the unknown. Sorta like J. J. Abrams, who also gets on my nerves. That's great that you get off on mystery, but at some point it stops being mystery and is just a sorry excuse to get out of actually writing something. I want substance not hand waving.

4. And honestly, H. P. has a serious issue with race, class, gender and so on. It's painful read the naive bigotry that sweats off his pages.

5. Occasionally H. P. has a story that actually could have been pretty good, if only he could manage to get it on the page without doing the above (he couldn't). It really is a shame. I can respect that there were germs of good stories in some of his stories, they just couldn't really bloom under his forced writing. It's too bad.

6. The Necronomicon. There's just something really lame about inventing your own evil tome written by a mad Arab and then name-dropping it in all your stories. It's like name dropping your imaginary friend. I know you just invented the whole thing and you simply can't impress me by telling me that I should be. I don't care how many times you stuff your poor characters' mouths with lamentations about rueing the day they ever scanned it's vile pages. I can guarantee I've read many books infinitely more disturbing than anything H. P. could imagine and I've never rued a one of them, in between fainting spells or otherwise.

Honestly the coolest thing that happened reading this book was when I encountered a word I didn't know, and since my Norwegian dictionary was in arms' reach, I turned febrile into febrilsk and looked that up in my Norwegian dictionary instead. Turns out they both mean feverish. Fist pump for learning English definitions from Norwegian dictionaries.

22> you made me grin. Totally with you on the Emperor's New Clothes. I was told off recently for not cutting classic fiction more slack, but I think I'm increasingly of the view that something can have a cachet for having been original in its day without being worth reading now. Original in its day doesn't actually imply any good; nor does influential.

And hurray for looking up words in another language! I approve :)

23> Exactly. I'm totally willing to give a nod for breaking new territory but that certainly doesn't mean said work necessarily holds a candle to contemporary literature and all it's benefited from the progress of writing that's come before. Though in H. P.'s case it's hard to even give him that as he is most often classed with Poe, but, Poe was an influence to him from the previous century and still a better writer. I had a similar bitch fest when I realized Spinoza a far more advanced writer, and I would argue philosopher, than Kierkegaard despite having lived two centuries before the Dane.

8. The Sixth Gun, Book 2: Crossroads - Cullen Bunn 2/18/14
from the public library

So, now that I've read the second book of the Sixth Gun series it's time to talk just a little about the story. Or the part of the arc I've read anyhow. The series follows Drake Sullivan and Becky Montcreif who, with varible amounts of intent on their own part, end up linked first to a set of six pistols with evil supernatural powers and consequently to eachother. Drake is the anti-hero with a mysterious and less than honorable past who is secretly a hooker with a heart of gold. Becky Montcreif is the well intentioned and capable young woman that never asked for this trouble, but is too noble to walk away from it despite her poorly fleshed character and ruthless efficiency in providing male characters an opportunity to save her comely figure from fill-in-the-monster.

I hate to sound harsh cause I do quite enjoy the comic, but it's certainly not a very character driven piece. Nope. What I'm here for is the clever details, gothic americana and that brand of supernatural horror that may not be high art, but has the decency and craft to genuinely entertain without making me roll my eyes at hand-waving woo or derivative wraiths conjured from more establish myths.

My library system seems to have a most if not all of the series so I'm going to keep with it.

9. When You Are Engulfed In Flames - David Sedaris 2/19/14
Off My Shelf

This one isn't as funny as Me Talk Pretty One Day, but it's still a treat to spend a little time every day hearing about David's affections for a house spider or the human skeleton in his bedroom endlessly telling him, "you will die" or just how profane it is for a mother to have guinea worm or the voids in his Japanese vocabulary involving blow jobs. There's just something so wonderful about how relatable David is and how unexpected the events in his life are.

10. The Remedy: Robert Koch, Arthur Conan Doyle, and the Quest to Cure Tuberculosis - Thomas Goetz 2/28/14 (ER)
Off The Shelf

Medical history is undeniably one of the topics I am drawn to in books over and over. So while I have zero proper medical learnin' I think it's fair to say I'm not a true lay person either. so after finishing this book I would say I know more about Robert Koch, Sir Conan Doyle and tuberculosis now, but there weren't any terribly illuminating revelations about them, the disease or medicine either. I was underwhelmed by the connection between the two men which seemed too small a point in each of their lives to be the ostensible basis of the book. It's more of an interesting footnote that for a moment links their stories tangentially. Honestly, it adds far more to Doyle's story than Koch's.

I didn't really mind the title and blurb overplaying the connection between the two men though. Both stories were interesting and reading them in tandem did add a lot of context to Doyle's story. Koch's on the otherhand could have done with a bit more background on related medical history and figures. Considering how important Koch was to establishing scientific methodology in medical research I could have benefited from a closer look at prior and concurrent lab practices. I also thought vaccines deserved more attention given their role in the story. Sadly I had to rely on what I learned from Paul Offit's Vaccinated since Goetz didn't address how vaccines are produced, developed or how they work at all. And yet, he referred to the inventer of the smallpox vaccine a few times as if he was a housegold name. Even having read Offit's book I'm not so familiar that I know what vaccine is being referenced just by it's discoverer's name.

11. Hellboy Library Edition, Vol. 1 - Mike Mignola 3/7/14
from the public library

I really enjoyed the two stories here. The art is among the best I've seen in comics and the characters have real verve. I appreciate the time Mignola gives the villains so we get a feel for what they're about rather just having them serve as throwaway antagonists. It's neat that this is a book that can end on dead Rasputin having an existential crisis with a supportive (but not exactly comforting) Baba Yaga and, most amazingly, that such a scene is written in a way that feels very genuinue, sympathetic and unpretenious.

This book also makes my earlier reading of H.P. Lovecraft feel like less of a waste as this owes an obvious debt to Lovecraft in general and especially to At the Mountains of Madness, a story I particularly loathed. Funny how something that irritated me should be so honored is something I find worlds superior.

12. A Handful of Dust - Evelyn Waugh 3/9/14
Off My Shelf

This is so far from the sort of thing I usually read and not at all what I expect from British upper class social drama. For one thing it was really easy to read and for another the customs and behavior were so bizarre I might as well have been reading sci-fi. It was all so alien. The thing is since I'm not at all familiar with that culture and it is a satire I literally have no idea where reality stops and parody begins. I find it unbelievable that husbands would hire detective to watch them conduct a sham affair in the name of acquiring an a divorce, but I've actually run across the "spare man" (a fellow that makes a job of accepting invitations to parties to ensure the number of men and women is matched) before so who the hell knows what's too rediculous to be a real thing.

The people and their actions are unfailingly pointless and rediculous which I suppose makes reading this a bit like watching a train wreck. Albeit a fairly bloodless, literary one. Waugh is a capable writer with a knack for sliding sly humor in when you're not expecting it. It might sound bats, but the book I'm most reminded of reading this is American Psycho. It might lack the bloodshed, but it has that same ruthless view of the vapid, aimlessness of class and culture defined by wealth.

Also the bits in South America are pretty racist.

It's interesting to note that this book was written about the same time as Tropic of Cancer, but while the people and events of that book felt strangely contemporary, this book could have easily been taking place in another galaxy for my ability to comprehend the culture and characters.

13. The Cry of the Sloth - Sam Savage 3/20/14
Off My Shelf

The Cry of the Sloth purports to be the complete final writings of one Andrew Whittaker, aspiring writer, ostensible founder and editer of a small literary magazine, impotent landlord, etc. His creative writing makes up a relatively small amount of the writing, but it is notable both for it's amateurish awefulness and it's way of exposing the thoughts and desires the writer clearly isn't willing to admit are his own. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Andrew Whittaker is a man whose faith in his own greatness is surpassed only by his fear that it is misplaced. He knows that there is a great writer inside of him, but in those rare moments he finds for fiction all he seems able to write is self-conscious crap. And yet, Andy is consumed by writing. Mostly letters. Letters to contributors of shitty poetry, letters to deliquent tenants, letters to contributors of good poetry, letters to his ex-wife, a series letters to a contributor of shitty poetry that also happens to be jailbait, falsely attributed letters to other magazines and papers defending and praising Andy as a man and an editor, falsely attributed letters responding to his previous falsely attributed letters, lickspitting letters to more successful acquaintances of the distant past, shrill letters to the same more successful acquaintances now dating his ex-wife...it goes on and on.

It's almost as if as Andy Whittaker, realizing he has failed at being the writer he dreamed, has given up on writing on the page and instead plunges madly ahead composing his magnum opus through the tragical comedy that used to be his life.

14. Hellboy, Vol. 3: The Chained Coffin and Others - Mike Mignola 4/1/14
from the public library

Another wonderful collection of Hellboy stories. As always: beautiful art, wonderful writing.

>30 fundevogel:: Sounds interesting. Did you enjoy it?

>32 littlegreycloud: I did! Though my take on it is really just one way of deciphering the book. It's a bit like House of Leaves in that it doesn't give you a linear story to follow, it just dumps a bunch of documents in your lap and leaves it up to you to figure out what is going on.

What makes this particular book interesting is that despite the fact that all of the writings are the work of one man, the writings themselves, while surely biased, don't actually present a consistent character. Andy presents himself radically differently depending on the purpose and audience of his writing and, debateably, on his ability to hold it together. That's what made it so fascinating to me. He's certainly an unreliable narrator, but he's so unreliable you can't actually be sure that his being so isn't a conscious literary choice on his part. I'm probably making this far more mindbendy than necessary, but since this book is as much about what the reader brings to the page as what is on it I feel within my right.

:)

15. Hellboy, Vol. 4: The Right Hand of Doom - Mike Mignola 4/2/14
from the public library

Ok guys. I've been burning through Hellboy books this year and not really reviewing them beyond brief declarations of their awesomeness. I expect that's not going to stop. However, I would like to take the time to explain why I love them so much.

Argueably, Hellboy fits into the superhero genre. He's a demon! Raised by The Good Guys! And he fights evil/monsters! But that's not what gets my panties in a bunch. Under all that, the occult machinations, the fish monsters, the prophesies, Hellboy isn't a story about a hero, it's about a working stiff. Sure, beating up demons and thwarting madmen might be sound more exotic than your job, but it is a job and that's what it is to Hellboy. He's good at it, and he knows it, but it never seems to occur to him that his efforts amount to anything more than a job well done, and further more, no one else really does either. He's like the plumber of superheroes.

Further more Mignola handles various occult themes and religious lore without ever seriously invoking the ever annoying hand-waving woo that almost always accompanies such things. Yes, there is magic. Yes, there is a certain debt to Judeo-Christian myth (and others). But, it's never put on some sort of otherworldly pedestal. This goes hand in hand with the I've-got-a-job-to-do to tone of the books. The supernatural isn't something to oooh and awww over it's just something else to deal with, usually because some jackoff is using it against you.

My favorite bit of this de-throning of magic and so on is the complete disregard for the idea of destiny. At various times characters (usually adversarial ones) invoke Hellboy's origin and demonic pedigree, which does involve a literal prophesy. The forces of hell want Hellboy to be the demon he was destined to be. Secretive organizations worry that Hellboy must ultimately fullfill the infernal purpose that is his birthright.

Hellboy says:

Screw that.

Honestly, we need more heroes like this. Pull those other bastards off their crosses and show some respect for old-fashioned hard work, determination and making yourself what you want to be rather accepting what other people tell you are, good or bad.

As for the art, you can use your eyeballs to see that it's beautiful.

>33 fundevogel: the more you tell us, the more intrigued I become!

>35 imyril:: Me, too. Definitely adding this to the list, although I have to admit that I haven't read House of Leaves yet. (After all, I only bought it a few months ago.:)

>35 imyril: and >36 littlegreycloud: House of Leaves makes you work harder than The Cry of the Sloth. They are both very dependent on reader interpretation. With House of Leaves it demands you step up and play by it's rules. But The Cry of the Sloth takes the opposite tack, it can be read reasonably straight, but it makes more sense and becomes more interesting when you look for the story not in the text, but in the writing of the text.

I'd love to hear what both of you think of it if you end up reading it. There are just so many ways to read it.

Oh, I will definitely read it. I didn't make the connection before but I already have Firmin by the same author which I bought because who would not want to read a book about a rat in a bookstore???

16. Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia - Jean Bottero 4/4/14
Off My Shelf

Meh. It's been a while since I've read up on Mesopotamia, but this honestly seemed rather dry for the subject. And strangely devoid of mythological content. I found myself relying on what I could remember about Sumarian myth and history to help fill in the gaps. It does get into the nitty gritty when it comes to religious practice (arguably bogged down), but it still has a tendency to feel somewhat shallow. That may have been unavoidable, this is history from thousands of years ago afterall. I guess maybe more of my issue would be that the author seems to be making some large assumptions about what these people thought and their culture that simply couldn't be verafied with the narrow artifacts and documents we have from them. If nothing else you can't extrapolate the inner thoughts and attitudes of the illiterate commoner from the writings of elite. So I've got serious issues with him making broad statements about the political satisfaction of a demographic that left no record of their thoughts.

It was neat getting a down and dirty look at what magic and religion meant in practice to a civilization with no other means of understanding their world. It does not much resemble the magic we see in movies today. Turns out it's more like going to the exorcist when you have a toothache, because clearly there is a demon in there.

And apparently sometimes the priests dressed like carp? Holy carp? That seems like it must be a mistranslation, but that's what Bottero said.

17. The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon 4/11/14
Off My Shelf

Somehow, despite my love of books and Halloween I have never had a book-based costume. But that ends this year! This year I will be a Trystero courier, or maybe even the potsmaster.

I added this book to my queue after one of the other readers here, upon completing the book wrote simply, "what did I just read?" That comment excited me, here I could expect something unusual. And this is true. I'm not really sure how proper it would be to call this a novel (or novella if you prefer). It is fiction and it's page count would make it one or the other of those if these things were defined by their bindings. It just doesn't follow the rules.

On starting the book I immediately had to adjust how I read. Apparently there is an element of natural anticipation of English sentence structure that Pynchon does not conform to. Expecting a normal structure and then tripping down a Pynchon sentence meant subjects and verbs were often well divided with clause upon clause. You come to the end disoriented and unsure how you got there. There were some sentences I gave up trying to make any grammatical sense of whatsoever (though this was rare). And yet, it wasn't actually hard to find Pynchon rhythm. By the end of the first chapter I almost never had to double back to follow the text.

As for the content of the book...it almost doesn't seem proper to disclose as the book itself seems in extricable from it's themes regarding the power held by those that facillitate communication and information dispersal and those that would undermine or usurp such power. Fittingly the book gives us a merry and circuituous chase and a boatload of bizarre narrative of undetermined legitimacy. Is it a conspirary? A hoax? What does this say about history, public, private, secret and revised?

Pynchon is clearly not a man interested in simple answers, and I expect he's not a man that even believes there is such a thing as a simple answer. And I approve. If there were a war waging secretly for control over the movement of information there is a deftness in his witholding all certainty in how Oedipa's discoveries should be taken.

Lot 49 seems particularly relevant in these days of the internet and concerns about net neutrality. Honestly, we could use a Trystero to Comcast and Timewarner's Thurn and Taxis.

In the meantime, report all obscene mail to your potsmaster.

18. Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka, Vol. 1 - Naoki Urasawa 4/21/14
from the public library

It's hard to evaluate this one as it's only the very beginning of a story. Generally it's well put together, but it's undercut by bits of extravagant melodrama.

19. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers 5/17/14
Off My Shelf

Above all else, this is a compassionate book. It has no clear protagonists or antagonists, just a whisper of a plot but what it has in spades are characters, convictions and the hard life. They wander through their lives, each consumed by the private truths that both define and isolate them. There is a certain narcissism in their passions, that they somehow are beyond the understanding of their peers. Over and over the reader is allowed to see people misread and ignore people they'd do well to know. Ultimately, the only person any of them are able to connect with is a deaf-mute. The irony being that as a deaf-mute he serves merely as a mirror of themselves, too polite and too voiceless to admit his confusion or disinterest in their obsessions. He is merely the shape of a person, a receptical for all of the characteristics and opinions they wish him to have. As ugly as it sounds, in making a saint and a god of the mute they chose a selfish and cowardly facsimilie of friendship over the real thing.

This had been on my shelf because of my appreciation for southern gothic literature, but it doesn't feel anything like the others I've read. There is brutality here, but we aren't really ever allowed to know any real villains. The world is harsh and cruel, but while Carson ruthlessly shreds the exploitation and cruelty wrought by capitalism and racism their existence is too pervasive and its crimes common place to the point of invisibility. These are crimes of cultural systems and it is impossible to put a human name or face behind the villainy. As such the book lacks the harsh judgement and accusing finger so often aimed at characters in southern gothic literature. There is just sadness and frustration in knowing the problem and being powerless to change things. Couple this with the unfailing compassion McCullers has for her characters and it feels darker than Faulkner's most twisted tale.

20. Freak Show : Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit - Robert Bogdan 5/27/14
Off My Shelf

This is the sort of book I was hoping for when I read Punch and Judy in 19th Century America last year: a solid academic look at a branch of long gone low brow entertainment. That book did not satisfy, but this one was quite good. It's interest was in the business and the sociology of freak shows, specifically American freak shows in the 19th and 20th centuries, and how thet related to and played upon the predjudices and expectations of the day.

There is some pretty nasty stuff as often exhibits, particularly of non-westerners and persons with mental disabilities, were portrayed as sub-human, savages and missing links. But then there were also persons that made a good living and gained status exhibiting themselves as freaks. Though the manner of display is too simple a test to determine the quality of life of a given showman. The Hilton Sisters were shown in a flattering light, but were in fact slaves for much of their career.

More interesting was Bogden's defense of the freak show as a business, and criticism of the the medicalization of "freaks" that ultimately killed the freak show. According to Bogdan, and I agree, to be a freak is a matter of identity and showmanship, not deformity. To paraphase, the difference between a tall man and a giant is attitude. The existence of freak shows and freak culture opened up new occupations for people who often had few prospects. Certainly as elements of the public began to condemn freak shows as shameful exploitation, plenty of freaks had no problem talking right back at the do-gooders that seemed to think eliminating their livelihood would do them a favor.

Medicine on the face of it might seem like a more kind frame for persons with physical irregularities, but there are a few things worth noting. First, while the title of freak was generally adopted by choice by the performer the medicalization of human irregularity was issued by medical figures indifferent to the social implications of such labeling. To be a freak was to be part of a tightknit culture, one that offered work. Being diagnosed just made you a patient, labeled you disabled or got you shipped off to live out your days in a medical institution. And there was definitely a eugenics angle in there at the time.

Ultimately Bogdan is neither a cheerleader for freak shows nor their oppostion. They were guilty of the same sins and virtues you encounter in businesses of that era and others. And, as everywhere else, some were better than others and some were far worse.

21. Grendel - John Gardner 6/3/14
Off My Shelf

I wanted to like this. I was interested in what Gardner could bring to the story of Beowulf's legendary foe and what might be done literarily in relation to such ancient source material. It just doesn't deliver though. At every turn there are literary pretentions and self-important philosophizing, but ultimately these are just delusions of grandeur. The book simply feels like an adolescent puffing himself up with adult airs. It might almost be acceptable as Gendel is himself portrayed as a hopelessly puffed up and deluded child, except that to be played as such and remain readable would require a defter touch than Gardner has.

It would be an accomplishment were this the first novel of a very young writer, but otherwise It's far too blunt and artless to live up to its pretentions.

>44 fundevogel: ah, that's a shame. That could have been an intriguing premise!

22. 30 Days of Night - Steve Niles 6/3/14
from the public library

I think my best appraisal of this graphic novel is that it is a simple story executed with panache. Gorey, blood-spattered panache. It's characters are ultimately cannon-fodder, but the writing treats them with dignity. We don't learn enough about them to really know them, but we get enough to know that these are people, not red shirts. The art is well tailored to the content with it's rough edges and striking coloring meshing seamlessly with the chaotic violence and confusion of the story. The introduction it's self notes that the soft focus and minimalism of the frames eliminates unnessary distraction, drawing the focus to the most key elements. In doing so it maintains a fairytale-like vagueness. Here are heroes and a villains defined by the immediate action of the story. They are well defined roles, but they are never overwhelmed by more concrete detail. I appreciate the breathing room this level anonymity grants the story.

23. Getting Schooled: The Reeducation of an American Teacher- Garret Keizer 6/20/14
Off My Shelf

For whatever reason when I requested this book I had it in my head that this would be a critical/academic look at the theory, practice, strengths and follies of the American education system. I don't exactly know why I expected that other than that was the most interesting book I could project from the blurb. This is more of a diary. Most certainly composed based on journaling during the course of the school year. There are observations, musings, rants and vignettes, but it isn't really assembled to any purpose beyond collecting the author's thoughts and experiences.

As such feel ill prepared pass judgement. How does one grade a diary? Keizer might have an answer for this as journal assignments seem to have been a staple in his class, but I suspect it's just a completion grade. I have sympathy for the challenges he relates, but it's hard to take eveything at face value as we've only got his perspective and despite his apparent efforts to fight the good fight, it's hard to accept that after ten years out of the classroom he has the practice and insight he would have us believe. I cringed when he talked placidly about assigning work with no apparent purpose beyond giving out completion grades to raise student averages. You would think that someone so sure that standardized testing and the school's overwhelming data-collection gets in the way of teaching might notice something troubling about work that serves no end but the grade.

Ultimately I can respect the experiences and observations shared here, but at the end the only thing I've really been able to add to what I know about today's education system is that now there are more gadgets. Ultimately I wanted an argument, a thesis, something about the practice and efficacy of modern schooling...but it seems wrong to hold the lack of a central thesis and cohesive argument against a diary. The cruel part of me opines if I graded this according to Keizer's own rubric he'd be awarded full points for turning his work in complete and on time.

24. Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse, Vol. 1 - Ben Templesmith 6/21/14
from the public library

This was written and drawn by the artist for 30 Days of Night, but I found this one much stronger on all fronts. The writing was as charming and inventive as a wry horror comic teeming with Lovecraftian demon paracites could ever hope to be and the art was lush and lively. Though it was technically similar to the art in the 30 Days of Night the rendering here felt more indulgent and more fully developed, like the artist was constantly pleased as punch to be drawing exactly what he was drawing. I've heard this is the privilege of artists that are their own authors...I will definitely be reading more.

I did a double take when Moloch made an appearance and I thought, "wait, I just read about jars of burnt babies sacrificed to this dude, where in the world did I read that?" Getting Schooled. No seriously, what are the chances?

25. Welcome to Hoxford - Ben Templesmith 6/26/14
from the public library

Like 30 Days of Night this is essentially a simple story well executed. I prefer this one to that, mostly for the art, but I prefer Wormwood to both of them by a significant margin.

26. Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy - Kevin Bales 6/26/14
from the public library

It is most profitable to extract as much labor from a worker for as little pay as he will do it for. With slavery the maximum return is acheived. Slavery exists today, though, on the books it is illegal in every country. Enforcing the law is another matter entirely. Bales takes a close look at the systematic use of slaves in various industries in different parts of the world. He assumes that the reader does not need to be convinced of the evil of slavery and instead focuses on how systems of slavery work, their relationship to the cultures they function within and how they can be fought and overturned.

Much of it is devoted to debt-bodage. An insidious practice where in people are tricked into surrendering themselves or their children into the employ of slavers and then told that they have incurred astronomical debts for cost of transporting them to the jobsite. In some cases parents are given a loan against their children and the children are expected to work it off. That's right, this is slavery where the slavers have the gall to kidnap and and enslave people and tell the slave that they owe them. If the slaves run away they are guilty of theft from their masters for failing to repay their debt. Take a moment and be disgusted.

It's a stultifying book and one dearly needed in a world where we are so sick on money. Because while slavery may seem a remote problem of distant and backwards lands, in a global economy it's pretty much a given you have reaped the benefits of slave labor without ever knowing it. This is the harsh reality of the profit-driven forces of captialism. In business the best choice is invariably the most profitable one and slave labor has a way of cutting the cost of production like few things can. Add a little indifference and a lot of ignorance (willing or otherwise) and you have a recipe for disaster.

Highly recommended. And maybe try and think less about finding the lowest price in the store and consider if maybe the cost of such a product was lowered by all that wasn't reinvested in those whose labor was extracted for it's production. Food, medicine, schooling, a wage, their freedom.

27. Raven Girl - Audrey Niffenegger 6/27/14
from the public library

Hans Christian Anderson understood fairytales, but his are a rare example of successful single author fairytales. Most people who try to write their own simply don't get it.

Audrey Niffenegger sadly seems to one of these people. She knows just enough to hang herself with it. She starts with the fairytale type "Animal Husband." I appreciated this choice initially, as it is a classic that is rarely seen in modern use (Beauty and the Beast barely counts). However this trope is merely used to explain the birth of the Raven-Girl. The very idea that such a birth needs to be explained is questionable. The introduction of an explanation approaching genetic heredity is a further slap in the face to the usual unquestioning acceptance of the impossible in fairytales. Metaphors need no explanation, and neither should fairytales. For comparison, in Snow White, the girl's attributes are explained by her pregnant mother wishing for a daughter with skin white as snow, lips red as blood and hair black as I-can't-remember-what.

The worse crime though is the modern detail. And I don't mean mention of modern technology. I mean all the random detail meant to add depth. You can bring depth to a work inspired by fariytales, but fairytales themselves need broad characters and uncluttered plots. Unable to chose between the simple fairytale and its fleshy descendants Niffenegger cuts the baby in half. Invariably her broad fariytale characters and unembellished fairytale language collapse in a sloppy mess under the weight of the pointless detail she piles on top. It's a fairytale too burdened by minutia to know where it's going and nevermind getting there. Apparently for Niffennegger getting there was acheived with the sudden arrival of a Raven-Prince to marry the Raven-Girl. A laughable outcome when one considers that in fairytales that end with marriage, the hero's quest consciously moved them toward such an ending and none of the action of the Raven-Girl has anything to with finding a partner.

>51 fundevogel: oh that's disappointing. I'd had my eye on that for a while, but I don't think I'll bother based on your review - it rather sounds like Niffenegger has killed the magic.

As an aside, I have a feeling Snow White had hair as black as night :)

>50 fundevogel: sounds like essential reading of the sort to kill any lingering regard for humanity. I remember reading about the outragess passed off as fair employment in various of the Emirates (slavery by any other name) - but they're the tip of the iceberg. It never ceases to amaze me that people can race to the likes of Primark and not for a second consider the economics of how you can make, ship, market and retail an item of clothing for £3. We're far too quick not to think about it when it works out better for us.

28. The Dead Sea Scrolls - various 8/8/14
Off My Goddamn Shelf

So, it turns out long lost ancient scrolls discovered in caves are still that same old boring, ass-backward bullshit. And now I have exactly zero interest in apocryphic religious texts.

"When you approach a city for battle, offer it terms of peace. If it accedes to the terms and opens its gates to you, then all the people found therein shall serve you in forced labor...But in the cities of the peoples that I am giving you for inheritance, you shall let live nothing that breathes. No, you shall utterly exterminate the Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Hivites, the Jebusites, the Girgashites, and the Perizzites as I have commanded you, lest they teach you to do all the abhorrent practices that they have done for their gods..."

Clearly a few divinely mandated genocides is a small price to pay rather than pick up the abhorrant practices other peoples commit for their gods. Some days I'm so close to joining the Satanic Temple. They understand irony.

>52 imyril: I only agree with you 100%. It's shameful the the cruelty allowed in this world by ignorance and indifference. It's that £3 shirt, people can't see past their own noses and recognise that the actual cost of the shirt is being paid for out of people's lives and bodies.

>54 fundevogel: I'm currently reading Collapse by Jared Diamond, which isn't improving my impressions of humanity any. I am more forgiving of historical human stupidity, but the chapters on modern American self-interest just make my blood boil. The author is far more forgiving and balanced than I am ;)

>55 imyril: I don't see much difference between the modern culture of consumption and that ancient Mexican city-state that consumed itself to ruin. The shortsightedness is staggering.

The trifecta of mindless human greed, indifference and ignorance practically seems institutionalized at this point. I fantasize about cultures that support their own humanity rather than endlessly calculating how the most product and profit can be extracted from others at the absolute least cost.

29. Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life - Bryan Lee O'Malley 8/10/14
from the public library

Both adorable and kick-ass. How does that even work?

30. Dr. Mütter's Marvels - Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz 8/22/14
Off My Shelf

Medicine, in case you don't know, is a pretty new thing. That's not to say that there haven't been doctors for thousands of years, just that until very recently they have been almost useless when they weren't actually making things worse. Arguably modern medicine started taking it's first staggering steps in the 19th century. It was a brutal world rife with disease and crippling dangers for which the medical community was ill-prepared to face. Medically the biggest strike against them was a fundamental ignorance of the cause and transmission of disease and infection. But in terms of consequence it was probably the trade's elitism and proud conservatism that held them back the most. It was this that kept doctors proudly leeching, bleeding and blistering patients even as they raged at the suggestion of cross infection of patients by doctors working with dirty hands and tools in the blood-stiffened smocks they proudly wore. If this was the greatest sin of the medical community Thomas Dent Mutter practiced its corresponding virtue.

It's not that Mutter didn't have pride, but that his confidence was in the future of medicine and his own work ethic rather than the misguided orthodoxy that had passed for medicine for so long. He understood the stakes his patients faced and that successful treatment was about them, and not the authority or status of himself or his profession. Aptowicz tells the story of a compassionate, forward-thinking surgon fighting the good fight for his patients and medicine at large in an era rife with suffering. And it's not for the faint-hearted. There was no such thing as anesthetic until halfway through his career. As a rule patients had to be held down to keep them from leaping up midway through a surgery and running away screaming. And even that wasn't always enough to prevent a patient from escaping. It was just hard for most people to find the cure preferrable to the disease when the knife started its work.

Under such conditions it's not hard to imagine how surgons earned the epitaph "saw bones". It was a grimm business that demanded a swift hand and an unshakable contenence. What set Mütter apart was how closely he allied himself with his patient before, during and after his surgeries. You see, Mütter's field of choice was cosmetic surgery, and cosmetic surgery was a whole other beast in the 19th century. Mütter helped person's suffering disfigurement so drastic they were unable to live normal lives. People that at the time were still commonly identified as monsters. These people knew the consequences of their conditions and this knowledge gave them the courage and determination to suffer through the pain and danger of a 19th century surgery. Working together with his patients Mütter spent time leading up to the surgery walking his patients through what would happen to prepare them mentally and massaging the appropriate areas to help them become acclimated to his touch. The level of investment Mütter put into his patients would be admirable in any age, but it is especially touching knowing that he still had to cut like any other surgeon and he wasn't depersonalizing the situation and desensitizing himself to its brutality.

There's alot here to praise, both in the writing and its subject. Honestly, Mütter comes off like a goddamn hero, and you might be surprised how often that doesn't happen in medical history. And yet, this is the book that brought me closer to fainting than any book ever has. It probably wouldn't have happened if I wasn't reading while standing in line at an under-air-conditioned DMV, but in any case, if I ever start an Industrial Revolution themed metal band I'm calling it Phossy Jaw.

31. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World - Bryan Lee O'Malley 8/26/14
from the public library

I have a way of giving comic books short shrift when it comes to reviews. It's not that I enjoy them any less or take any less seriously. I think I just can't quite get my head around writing a properly considered review as the time and effort involved would come just too close to the time and effort it took to read the thing. I just don't like the time and energy I invest in reviewing to overshadow the actual reading. And so, what I have to say about this second Scott Pilgrim comic is this:

I liked it. I liked the first one enough to read this one and I like this one enough to read the next one. If you are interested in reading a quick moving graphic novel about the perils of young romance taken to fantastic levels I recommend you take a peek. It doesn't take long to figure out if you're on board.

32. The Knife Man: Blood, Body Snatching, and the Birth of Modern Surgery - Wendy Moore 9/10/14
Off My Shelf

Where Mütter was a patient's doctor, John Hunter was a scientist's. Unfortunately for him the rest of medicine was still clinging feverishly medical orthodoxy as practiced in the Medieval period and largely based on Ancient Greek theories. It's barely an overstatement to say those doctors never met a disease they didn't bleed. And so Hunter's life work consistently pushed him into practices and stances that kept him dancing a trecherous line between social pariah and esteemed professional. He wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty and he reaped both the rewards and the penalties of it.

He started off as an anatomist under his older brother's tutelage. This was still a profession of dubious standing. It's study was propelling medical understanding forward in measurable ways, but there was still that nasty business with corpses. At the time Christian thought asserted that at the end times dead Christians would experience bodily resurrection. And so, the consequences of human dissection were to simply to horrible to consider for most people. Except in the case of criminals. Because there was demand for human cadavers from anatomists and because the thought of being dissected was so horrifying the government began allowing anatomists to dissect executed criminals, hoping such a fate would act as a deterant. Whether or not it did it could not meet the need for cadavers among anatomists. And so graverobbing and body-snatching became a booming enterprise inextricable from the anatomists and, of course, entirely illegal.

While body-snatching makes up a relatively small part of the book it is representative of Hunter's indifference to public opinion and dogged commitment to scientific study. What he cared about were results and discoveries, and that was that. And that is both admirable and off-putting. It's great to read about Hunter's refusal to be stymied by the expectations of respectable society or the machinations of the conservative medical establishment. On the otherhand I couldn't help cringing at descriptions of surgical experimentation on animals or the fad of selling poor people's teeth to rich people for transplants (it doesn't work by the way) or the possibility that Hunter intentionally infected himself with syphilis for study.

Ultimately the book paints a compelling picture of a fascinating man and a complicated time in medical history.

33. Animal Farm - George Orwell 9/11/14
Off My Shelf

Ubiquity means I don't feel obligated to say much about the content about this one. But I will say, that that same ubiquity in no way took away from the effectiveness of the book or its enjoyment. It does exactly what needs to be done. The fairytale structure is executed with a skill and panache I have rarely seen in modern efforts in the genre, especially in a text so much longer than the typical fairytale. Of all the books I've read that have a history of appearing on school reading lists none is more deserving of its place than this one.

34. Scott Pilgrim & the Infinite Sadness - Bryan Lee O'Malley 9/30/14
from the public library

Another Scott Pilgrim I enjoyed the pants off of but am still too lazy to review. That's on me, not the book.

35. Dark Mirror: The Medieval Origins of Anti-Jewish Iconography - Sara Lipton 10/12/14
Off My Shelf

I am not in a position to assess the veracity of Sara Lipton's conclusions. But I was not convinced by them. Their presentation and defense is simply too narrowly argued and tediously repetitive to boot. Ultimately this ought to have been a book that explored the social and cultural relationship between Medieval Christians and Jews and how that was represented in and influenced by depictions of Jews in art. Instead there is almost no discussion of actual historical relations.

The book seems to be composed almost entirely based on conclusions drawn from looking directly at pictures without further investigations into the world that produced those works. It sounds dangerously like the sort of overwought BS spun in college art crits where teachers are more concerned with how much can be fluffed up out of thin air than actual technique. I won't begrudge her for her proposals, but a proposal means very little without sound evidence. There is some logic in her arguments that often depictions of Jews in Medieval imagery served to support the story that Christianity wanted to tell, rather than represent Jews as they existed at the time. However she gets into treacherous territory as depictions of Jews became more and more hateful. Continuing an argument that minimizes the connection between grotesque depictions of a minority group and what the authors and audiences of those depictions thought of that group is both baffling and irresponsible.

Frankly, it's just unbelievable that, with as much time as we spend hearing about the shape of hats and who's wearing what kind of hat, we don't get any credible discussion of what Christian and Jewish relations were actually like at the time.

36. The Prop Builder's Molding & Casting Handbook - Thurston James 10/15/14
Off My Shelf

This is a good survey of moldmaking and casting techniques, but it's not the Bible. Some of it is pretty dated and other parts are dangerously vague. It's a good place to start in terms of figuring out what sort of material and techniques are appropriate, but I would definitely look into more in depth instructions for whatever materials you go with.

Especially when James says things like that silicone doesn't need any release. Believe you me, silicone may not bond with many things, but forget to seal a porous surface and knowing it's a mechanical lock rather than a chemical bond will be a poor comfort.

37. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon 10/18/14
Off My Shelf

This was an easy enough read but I liked it less and less the more I read. And that was because the character grew less and less sympathetic as the story went on. At first it was interesting seeing events through a lens and logic pretty removed from my own. But ultimately it's just so hard to sympathize with someone so helpless when the scope of their relationships with other people seems limited to dependence, fear, anger and indifference.

I just can't handle people who are their own worst enemy. And seeing how destructive they are not just to themselves, but to those that try to help them is wretched.

38. Aesop's Fables - Aesop 10/25/14
Off My Shelf

I remember somone around here remarking on how many of the fables don't have a clear meaning. I would add that many of them, while clear in meaning, promote shrewd cynism far more than morality. Hell, one of them actually ended by saying lazy people deserved to die. More than a few cautioned slaves that it was better to serve the master you had than risk the unknown. And despite a self-assured intro by G. K. Chesterton about the necessity of animals in fables I think almost half of these didn't actually have animal characters. Which makes me wonder if Chesteron had actually read the same body of work he was intro-ing. Any who, it reminded me of Epicetus' Handbook which was also easy to read and just as stuffed with stoic life advice of wildly disparate merit in terms of modern morality.

Ultimately I think the best thing to be said of this book is that while it does show alot of common ground between modern and ancient peoples, it also exposes some pretty dramatic differences.

It was nice reading this after having heard both of Aesop's appearences on The Dead Authors Podcast. Multiple times I would finish a fable and hear Aesop declare "AESOP!" before dropping the mic.

39. Horrorstör - Grady Hendrix 10/27/14
Off My Shelf

I wouldn't call this a particularly well-written book. The voice is sorta annoying and there are some pretty radical shifts in tone. I'm split on how much of that was intentional and how much ill-handling, a little of both I think. I respect what the author is saying about labor, particularly the mind-numbing work which rots the soul in return for a wage apparently designed to scorn the physical demands of a body. It's not artful, but it does take an unassuming and silly premise, and without putting on airs says something real and worth listening to.

40. The Amazing Screw-On Head and Other Curious Objects - Mike Mignola 11/9/14
from the public library

Fun, quick and to the point.

41. The Go-Giver - Bob Burg & John David Mann 11/15/14
pushed on me by my boss

"You like to read..."

Giving and loaning books is hard if you actually want the receiver to get what you hope out of a book. People that introduce their offering with the above words are the worst. These are people so unaccustomed to reading they seem to think reading is something some people just like to do. If that were that case I wouldn't laugh like an idiot every time Alec Baldwin declared that The Handbook for the Recently Deceased "reads like stereo instructions!" I've read me some shit books and thankfully many more awesome ones. This is the kind where I can't stop wondering just how stupid the author thinks I am.

The Go-Giver is a business self-help fanasy novel apparently written for people for whom conventional self-help books are too challenging. Unfortunately it's the self-help that's fantasy and the book is entirely void of wizards and unicorns.

In a way the book is sort of an anti-Prince. The Prince has long served as a manual for cold machination and ruthless strategy for dictators, business men and stone cold bastards. The Go-Giver, on the otherhand, preaches selfish selflessness. To put it simply, the revolutionary secret to "Stratosheric Success" is just be a good person. Except, how good can you really be if you're only good because you think you'll get something out of it? The two authors (it took two dudes to write this crap!) actually came up with "Five Laws of Stratospheric Success" but it's equal parts lame and depressing. The laws fall into two categories. The first category is just do the things that any decent person would do because they've got a baseline of human compassion. The second category is stand back and wait for your good behavior to be rewarded richly. Failure to be properly rewarded indicates a lack of "receptiveness" according to the shameless authors.

On the one hand I like that this book is essentially saying, "don't be a dick". But ultimately the complete message is "treat other people with decency and kindness with the expectation that you will get something out of it." That's a sociopathic take on ethics. To make matters worse the book takes the tacit view that success and money are a manifestation goodness, effectively sainting the wealthy. Certainly there are good people that are also wealthy, but there are also an awful lot of very not nice people that are wealthy and successful. It sticks in my craw that the book sets up an implied scale that equates goodness with status and wealth. It also irks me that these two grinning yahoos are no doubt transforming the publicity garnered from their undeserving bestseller into traffic for their consulting business.

In short it's a pile of crap apparently written for wall-eyed idiots by self-righteous con men.

42. The New Annotated Dracula - Bram Stoker 11/16/14
from the public library

I thought that the conceit that the book was a collection of letters, articles and journal entries would make this an interesting read, but ultimately Stoker didn't have the chops for his framework. The voice remains the same no matter who is supposedly writing. The only time he even attempts a different voice is when Lucy or Mina is writing. Ultimately though he doesn't change the voice so much as he opines the piety, virtue and weakness of women in the first person rather than the second. It's really just a first person novel told by various interchangeable characters with diary headings and letter headings jammed in.

The story is painfully drawn out and, despite the tortuously documented planning and scheming, the supposed heroes are infuriatingly dumb. I swear the were three chapters where Lucy was just lying in bed being pale. It reminded me of the "deletions" William Goldman notes making in Morgenstern's Princess Bride. You know, where he cut out 15 pages about the currency of Florin and Guilder and 20 pages about hats and a whopping 40 pages about wedding preparations. That's the sort of puffed up idiocy that makes you root for the monster. Dracula knew how to get shit done. Those other guys were just puff and bluster.

How to kill a Dracula:
1. Put down the journal.
2. Quick stake to the heart.

As for the annotated edition, Neil Gaiman wrote a pleasant intro and Lesie wrote a lot of useless footnotes. First off, keep your fanfic about Dracula being a real guy out of my margins as well as your speculation that the differences between the canon text and the manuscript point to a cover up. If that's your head canon, fine. But it doesn't belong here. Save it for the message boards or write your own book on it, just don't clutter this one. For that matter I also don't need to know what the Victorian train schedule was or every single sentence that was expunged from the abridged copy. It's also pretty lame when you lift foot notes from another author's annotations.

43. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency - Douglas Adams 11/29/14
Off my shelf

Eh. I liked the bit about the sofa being stuck in the hall and how that was resolved. The rest was wildly random and only mildly amusing. I suspect the haphazardness of the plot is meant to reflect the interconnectedness of seemingly unrelated craziness...but it rings hollow when the whole thing has been authored to demonstrate just that. And yet, Gordon Way's phonecall is a pure deus ex machina as there is no reason for him to even know the vital information he shares at the critical moment.

Whew, finally caught up on reviews.

44. The ABC of Relativity - Bertrand Russell 12/10/12
Off My Shelf

There are things in this world I will never really understand. Non-Newtonian physics is number one on that list. As such it was a struggle trying to follow much if the book. This is not a fault of Russell's writing, but a consequence of my own limited senses and the difficulty of untangling seemingly illogical behaviors beyond their perception. On the otherhand, while I'm non in a rush to do any non-Euclidian geometry it turns out that's not as inconprehensible as I had thought. And so reading this book is brain exercise. If I paid very close attention Russell could, momentarily at least, untangle some bit of mindbendy science often with an amusing senarnio to illustrate his point. It's hard to make such counter-intuative knowledge stick, but I am slightly more understanding of the bizarreness of physics than I was and that's fine with me.

"Let us suppose that on a foggy night two brigands shoot the guard and the engine driver of a train. The guard is at the end of the train; the brigands are on the line and shoot their victims at close quarters. A passenger who is exactly in the middle of the train hears two shots simultaneously. But a stationmaster who is exactly halfway between the brigands hears the shot which kills the guard first. An Australian millionaire aunt of the guard and engine driver (who are cousins) has left her whole fortune to the guard, or, should he die first, to the engine driver. Vast sums are involved in the question who died first. The case goes to the House of Lords, and the lawyers on both sides, having been educated at Oxford, are agreed that either the passenger or the stationmaster must have been mistaken. In fact, both may be perfectly right. The train travels away from the shot at the guard, and towards the shot at the engine driver; therefore, if the passenger is right in saying that she heard the two reports simultaneously, the stationmaster must be right in saying that he heard the shot at the guard first."

Rock on Russell.

45. The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities - Ann VanderMeer 12/14/14
from the public library

A worthy anthology of stories and articles assembled following the catastrophic fire that destroyed an unquantifiable portion of the late Dr. Lambshead's collection. It skirts the boundaries of sci-fi, fantasy, horror and more than a little steampunk. For me they were great bedtime stories, but sadly they are probably a bit much for most kids. One of my favorites was presented as a folk story collected by a graduate student that also supplied more personal commentary in the footnotes, often regarding his being underpaid.

46. MacBeth - William Shakespeare 12/17/14
Off my shelf

I really didn't see how some apparently regular dude just starts murdering people. Maybe it would be more believable in a good production.

47. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - J. K. Rowling 12/24/14
Off my shelf

This is a re-read. It's still a lot of fun.

>73 fundevogel: The Vandermeer sounds like a lot of fun - I'll have to keep an eye out for it. I've just picked up the time travel anthology she co-edited with her husband, which also comes highly recommended.

>76 imyril: It's one of the better anthologies I've read. If you enjoy the one you have now I don't doubt you'd enjoy this one.