[Book Reviews] Sundry rogues and rogue agents

Nov 28, 2014 17:26

Sooooo behind on book reviews. These are substantially from my summer's flurry of book purchases concerning Scotland and Iceland, or by authors from the same.

I really wanted to like "School of the Moon: the Highland Cattle-Raiding Tradition", but "really wanted to like" a book is rarely praise. Mr. McHardy has a collection of stories of various cateran raiders, and makes a case that they were the last holdouts of the Jacobite mountain men after the defeat at Culloden. Frankly, I don't know enough about the details of Culloden to judge his historical assertion on its merits. But as a martial artist I'd been hoping for more details about the cateran techniques, and what you get in this book is basically "they knew the mountains very well and snuck through them faster than their pursuers". That was pretty disappointing; having expectations makes it easier to be disappointed if they don't get fulfilled. There were some stories that were individually interesting, but on the whole the set of collected stories is substantially repetitive and also substantially depressing. Two stolen cows out of five.

On the other hand, I totally loved Ian Hamilton's "Stone of Destiny: The True Story". I loved it so much I had to buy a second copy for ilcylic, and if the bookstore had had a third copy, I probably would have bought that too. (I like having keeping copies and lending copies of my absolute favorites; that way if one fails to return home I am only a little bit sad.) If you like caper or heist plots, this is well worth reading it, and if you're in political sympathy with the author, doubly so... which made it a really interesting read on the eve of the Scottish independence referendum. But the author is charming, his narration occasionally dry and always hilarious, and there's a fair degree of "I can't believe that even worked" to the whole thing. It's definitely a story that gains from being true; four and a half lifted giant blocks of masonry out of five.

Also on the list of books I loved, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's "Americanah". I have been meaning to read her "Half of a Yellow Sun" for ages, but when one of my friends reviewed "Americanah" so favorably, I picked it up first. I'm so glad I did -- she's *hilarious*, her characterization is excellent, and the journeys her characters go through as they travel between countries and cultures often echoed my own experiences and made them highly relatable. Between my family, my travels, and my partners, there were little aspects of the experience of learning somewhere new, losing somewhere old, regaining the old place you thought you'd always be that really resonated. And unlike many of the immigration/emigration/remigration generational remix stories from my own ethnic heritage, this one didn't end up with absolutely everyone being completely miserable or starving to death, so hey, there's that. It's nice sometimes to have relatable characters whom it is okay to love, and Ifemelu is a thoroughly lovable protagonist. I'll definitely go pick up the rest of her work now; new favorite author. (I also have a fondness for short stories, so "The Thing Around Your Neck" might edge out "Half of a Yellow Sun".) Five tricontinental families out of five.

A conversation with varina8 led me to check out Ruth Ozeki, and indeed, I did love her. Like Adichie, I didn't start out with the very latest and highly praised book she has out, I went back and picked up her earlier work. "My Year of Meats" was the same kind of culture-spanning delight as "Americanah" -- I was initially surprised that Ozeki could write the Japan/America business culture collision trainwreck as well as she did, being Canadian, but apparently she's spent enough time here too to nail it. (I think I've been at some of those late-night meetings at a steakhouse where all the salarymen are drunk and maudlin, auggggh.) Jane was also a protagonist that I could root for, and seeing her struggle with trying to have some artistic integrity while answering to a job that really wanted to grind people up uncaringly for the sake of advertising well was grimfacedly familiar. Ozeki's clarity in illustrating her frustrations there contrasts impressively with the lighthearted way Jane handles the writing home portion of her assignment. I admit that I didn't have the same sympathy for Joichi/John that the author herself does, but, well. There are some terrible things in the book near the end, so fair warning if you don't want to read about terrible things, but overall I still found it a really good read and will keep reading away at her more modern works. [grin] Four visitors by train out of five.

My favorite of the various Iceland books that I read was Andri Snaer Magnason's LoveStar; it's an excellent near-future Icelandic ludicrous dystopia novel. Magnason does a brilliant job of writing satirically believable outcomes from popular yet ridiculous premises... this is one of my favorite things for science fiction to do, to highlight the absurdity of social trends in a way that makes you think. So the book is tragic at points and hilarious in others, but masterfully framed throughout with a shaping conceit (from page one, so, this is not a spoiler) of LoveStar counting down the moments until his death. I particularly want CEOs and the like with a fondness for science fiction to read this book... I appreciated the handling of LoveStar in some ways seeing what he had set free by his determination to head his company as he did, but in other ways not understanding the price others paid for it. That kind of selective blindness is very hard to eradicate, even among people who think about these things deeply, and I appreciated its treatment here. But LoveStar himself is only half the story, and while the romance is the other major plot here, it was the secret hosts and how poisonous it is to be one that really caught my imagination. (I was kind of reminded of my previous review of "The Circle", with that.) I am tempted to shelve LoveStar between "Little Brother" and "The Circle"; it's that kind of book. Four unfortunate re-entries out of five.

Also in the Icelandic literature category but less beloved by me: Arnaldur Indridason's "The Draining Lake: An Inspector Erlendur Novel". I think I'm just a hard sell on crime novels... I picked this one up at Third Place after Indridason was recommended, and I was interested by the World War II tie-ins of the plot. (I had no knowledge of Iceland being involved in World War II at all, so I figured that if there were some historical background to the mystery then I might learn something about it.) It's a very atmospheric kind of mystery, understated but moody, with relatively spare prose. It's not poorly done, it just wasn't as approachable as I would have liked. The inspector was a perfectly reasonable kind of fellow, but there wasn't a ton that made me want to get to know him better or be very interested in his personal life. The crime was definitely cold-case (kinda literally), and the historical flashbacks were by far the best part of the story for me. So it was a perfectly serviceable airplane book (and indeed, that's where I read it), but I doubt I'll bother to go seek out more of the author's work. Three uncovered bodies out of five.

A rare review-in-process... I am reading Iceland's Nobel Prize in Literature-winning "Independent People", which I have been meaning to read for several years, and I *hate it*. I'll finish, I nearly always do, but OOOOOH. It is a beautifully crafted boring novel about sheep, dogs with lice, and a series of people who have endless stupid arguments and never hear each other at all. There is not one sympathetic character thus far. The protagonist is emotionally inept, so stubborn that he rarely sees and rarely cares how he bruises the feelings of the wife he has acquired as a marker of success. Everyone is far too stubborn to be budged from their position of wanting what they want and to hell with anyone who's not going along with that plan. Obviously you should want what I do. So let's not talk about it. When we do, we'll make sure to talk at each other in short sentences and then pathologize the other person. Arguments. Misunderstandings. Unkind stoicism. Poverty lice tapeworms sheep sheep sheep diarrhea sheep poverty stubbornness sheep. Argh. He's like Faulkner. (I hated Faulkner too.) Go read LoveStar instead. One very well crafted sheep full of lice out of five. I might change my mind after finishing the rest of it, but arrrrrgh.

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immigration, mysteries, book reviews, history, crime, sci-fi, japan, scotland, iceland, security, canada, travel

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