The Devil in the White City, or Nonfiction so Good it Isn't

Simply put, the Devil in the White City by Erik Larson is one of the best books I've ever read. Done.

Except... its also nonfiction! It is the best nonfiction book I've ever read. It details the simultaneous rise and fall of the Chicago World's Fair and America's first home-grown serial killer H. H. Holmes. First of all, its historically accurate. Any passage in the book within quotations comes from a direct source. However, the mind-boggling best part about the book is how Erik Larson weaves history into a beautiful and compelling narrative. There were moments when I couldn't wait to read what happens next and... (here's the cool part) I kept reading. Instead of performing a simple Google search I chose to remain immersed in the narrative.

The Devil in the White City is an amazing read no matter what genre you enjoy. Knowing exactly what happened, I'd read it again in a heartbeat.

Being Wrong

A while ago I read this book, Being Wrong, of which the title is pretty self explanatory. I thought it would be a fun read, due to an NPR interview I heard with the author (Kathryn Shulz). What I did not expect was how much this book would influence my view of the world and the people in it, and how much I would end up underlining.
Although this might be an oversimplification, the book can pretty much be divided into 3 parts: Why we hate being wrong, what is is like to be wrong, and why we probably shouldn't hate it. All the parts are good, and I have really tried to remember it when having discussions with others, especially with disagreements.
One thing that really struck me was her point about why it is important that we can be wrong. She makes the point that if we did not constantly overestimate our own abilities, we wouldn't try (or succeed) at half of the things we do.
This might be the best nonfiction book I have ever read, which is kind of hard for me to say because of books like Born to Run and Yes Man (both of which everyone should also read).
So as a summary, I think this is a book that everyone should read to better understand people and themselves.

The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry, or Recursive Storytelling

I just finished a two day half-marathon read of The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry by Jon Ronson. That's a little misleading - I'll try again.

I just finished a two day half-marathon read about an author telling the story of how he wrote the story he called The Psychopath Test. The author doesn't write about a psychopath test so much as he writes about him writing about a psychopath test. And it just gets worse. He begins with what seems like an anecdote about a book given to various academics - and it remains an anecdote! It hardly matters to the rest of the book.

So yes, there is a psychopath test, but you don't hear about it until about page 60 (of only 191), and if there was a "journey through the madness industry" then it was intereupted in the telling by so many random stories, self-recriminations, anxiety attacks, and various junk that it gets completely lost. He ends up attending this seminar about a check-list used to identify psychopaths and subsequently uses what he learns (in a three day period) to diagnose people he knows and people he meets as psychopaths. It comes across as ludicrous. Eventually he reasses the use of the test, and does some actual journalism but by then I was so lost in the recursive storytelling that I didn't care.

The only reason I kept reading were the vary sparse instances of actual journalist merit. There were some interesting stories about alternative treatments for psychopaths done with LSD in the 1960's, and there were a few interesting stories about Scientology and psychologists. Done. It could have been an under the page column in a small town newspaper. A small town High School newspaper. You'd get better prose.

The White Luck Warrior, or Epoch Epicness

R. Scott Bakker's The White Luck Warrior is the second book in the second trilogy of a trilogy of trilogies. Got that? If not, its the fifth book in a series of nine. The first three books were mind alteringly awesome. They follow a Holy War and the rise of a messianic figure who, in the fourth and fifth books, unites mankind against the threat of a second apocalypse.

If you haven't done so, read the first trilogy. It has monks who are bred for intelligence and agility, sorcery, wars on an epic scale, and a background story that both spans millennia and influences current events intimately. It literally spans epochs and is epic.

That being said, the second trilogy is a little more muddled as a whole, and more polished in a few specifics. Bakker commands adverbs, adjectives, and proper nouns as if he's conducting music. Just listen. Here a small band of scalpers are fending off an attack.
"He does not fight as scalpers fight, matching skill against ferocity, hammering strength against wild velocity. Nor does he dance as Pokwas dances, trusting ancient patterns to parse the surrounding air. No. What he does is utterly unique, a performance written for each singular moment. He throws and snaps his body. He moves in rings and lines, so fast that only inhuman screams and slumping bodies allow her to follow the thread of his attack."

Parsing the surrounding air? Its beautiful, and at times heartbreaking. With his command of the language when Bakker writes about evil it really feels... evil. Very, very evil. Which is a problem in the White Luck Warrior because there is a lot of it. All characters are moral shades of gray or black - so who's the good guys? After finishing the book, I was left with the feeling that we are. The readers. We are the ones who are still able to judge right from wrong. This is incredibly important because the way Bakker writes makes it imperative that we judge or the book loses meaning. The entire series is very cerebral - it deals with intense and often dark themes. There are times in the White Luck Warrior where out of 10 pages, 7 will be internal narrative which gets a little tiring.

To sum up, the White Luck Warrior was good. There was a little too much internal monologue, and often I came away from a particularly harrowing narrative feeling almost guilty for reading. However, when Bakker writes about action or the few times that unequivocal good triumphs it is downright beautiful.

The Quantum Thief, or Anthology Mining

Anyone with a PhD in mathematical physics who works in String Theory deserves several high fives. In the case of Hannu Rajaniemi (who also has the imagination and ability to pull off science fiction that makes you want to invent descriptive words like "Fantasticlese" or "Awesarmony") hive fives would have to be followed by stunned silence.

When I don't have a good novel, I mine anthologies. What's the best way to disover new authors? Read something they've written! That's how I discovered John C Wright. After encountering the Server and the Dragon, by Hannu Rajaniemi in Engineering Infinity, I knew I'd read whatever else I could lay my hands on.

I just finished reading his first novel, The Quantum Thief. It begins in a prison, with an old fashioned, game-theory infused, Mexican Standoff between Jean le Flambeur (the thief in question) and an outdated AI warmind. In a virtual prison. In Space. Excited yet?

Its gets better. The Quantum Thief is the type of story I love. I believe any good story, no matter the genre, is based on defined rules. The rules don't have to be revealed to the reader (although a few hints are always appreciated Mr. Erikson), but they need to act like the border pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. They define what is possible in a good story. In a great story, they redefine what the reader wishes was possible. The Quantum Thief pulls it off. It wraps a mystery around amazing characterization, and even better world building. The story takes place in a future that feels as if it could be easily extrapolated from the present... if the reader is a self proclaimed/aware geek. If not, then the science sounds more like magic, but if taken on faith then it still works. Hannu Rajaniemi chose a set of rules and conditions and extrapolated an amazing future.

Ok. If you haven't decided to read and appreciate it yet listen to this:

Space prisons. Tech Angels serving AI Gods in spaceships created by singing. An awesome thief. Evolved MMORPG guilds. Mars. An amazing and lovable savant detective. Check it out.

Lois McMaster Bujold

Miles is not your standard hero. He is about four feet tall and hunchbacked. His head is too large for his dwarfish body. One leg is longer than the others, and his bones are so brittle they break at the slightest provocation. The son of royalty on a backwards planet, at home he is a mutant, and abroad he is a genius. Miles runs circles around governments, bounty hunters, assassination plots, rebellions, and mercenaries.

Lois McMaster Bujold is that rare thing, a science fiction author whose characters form the center of her stories. The space ships and replicators function much like the cars in the Flintstones; they shape society, but they do not define it. I could tell you about the hugo and nebula awards she has won, I could discuss the cultural and social aspects of her work, I could praise her offbeat and adored characters, but instead I will simply thank the man who first introduced me to Miles and Lois and Barrayar.

Thanks Al. I owe you one.

The Card Dilemma

High hopes are required for great disappointment. It was, then, inevitable that Orson Scott Card would fall in my personal regard, as he had for so long held its highest estimation. Ender's Game captured my heart. It is one of the best books I have ever read, and, I believe, ever will read.

I cannot think of reading Mr. Card's latest Ender novel without an aversion bordering on revulsion.

I am not alone in this. I have read, even liked, the previous sequels to Ender's Game. I have read half a dozen of Mr. Card's other works. The majority of them - Pastwatch and Songmaster come to mind - have impressed me. But while Mr. Card has demonstrated his ability to tell a beautiful story, he has also demonstrated his ability to wreck one. By the sixth book in the Alvin Maker series, motivations and limitations essential to the story in the first books were twisted or had disappeared altogether by the last. I no longer knew the principal characters. Herein lies the underlying fear of the Card dilemma; I love Ender. And I do not want to see him ruined.