Book and Movie Reports by Ed

Book report: Pattern Recognition (a novel), by William Gibson As soon as I finished reading this novel, I started back at the beginning and read the whole thing again. I liked it that much. I’m surprised I didn’t read this earlier. I loved Gibson’s “Neuromancer”, and read both sequels, “Count Zero” and “Mona Lisa Overdrive”. “Virtual Light” is one of my favorite books of all time, and I re-read it about once a year. But its sequels, “Idoru” and “All Tomorrow’s Parties”, left me cold. I didn’t connect with the characters, and the plots seemed muddied. But, after hearing Gibson speak earlier this year, I thought I’d get back on track again, and I’m glad I did. The main character is Cayce Pollard, a 30ish American woman with a strange gift-slash-curse: she is acutely sensitive to product logos. On the plus side, she can immediately tell if a new logo “works”, so she is in high demand from advertisers willing to pay her big bucks for her opinion before launching their ad campaigns. Th...

Book report: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, by Gregory Maguire Why is the Wizard of Oz such a compelling story? This modern myth seems to get a new retelling every couple of years, each with a different angle, a different emphasis. Certainly, the 1939 movie version has left an indelible impression on American culture: most people can quote large sections of the movie verbatim, and certain phrases crop up in ordinary speech almost daily. A writer is lucky to come up with a single memorable character in their entire lifetime, but L. Frank Baum created 8 in this one story. By far the most memorable character is the Wicked Witch of the West. Margaret Hamilton’s performance in the 1939 movie is surely one of the most unforgettable film roles ever. I know she scared the bejeezus out of me, and my experience was not unique. That face! Those gestures! That voice! Yet, if you think about it, how wicked was she? She certainly threatened a lot, and put people to...

Book report: Is God a Mathematician?, by Mario Livio First off, this book has nothing to do with God. When scientists – and mathematicians – say “God”, they don’t mean God, they mean something like “nature” or “the universe” or “the laws of physics”. So, the title of this book actually means something like, “Why is the universe so mathematical?” As Mario Livio points out, this question actually has to do with a couple of connected questions. You see, mathematicians split into two philosophical camps: some mathematicians believe that mathematics has a kind of independent existence of its own, and that we discover its pre-existing truths; others believe that mathematics is invented, something that we create as we go along, like the rules of a complex game. So, which is it? Is mathematics discovered or invented? There’s a related question: why does mathematics describe the universe so well? When you took physics or chemistry classes in school, you probably had to learn a jillion for...

Book report: Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson Snow Crash contains at least 7,000 clever ideas, any one of which could form the basis of a personal philosophy, a system of government, a business plan, a religion, a video game, an action movie, a floor wax, or a dessert topping. How can an author include so many ideas within the plot of a novel? Well, he can’t: they stick out of the actual story like Post-It notes on book pages. Neal Stephenson has never heard of the writer’s motto “Show, don’t tell”, so instead you get “conversations” that consist of character X asking, “What do you know about Sumerian mythology?”, to which character Y responds with a 6-page encyclopedia entry. In other parts of the book, the author can’t even be bothered with that meager illusion of story-telling, and simply presents large slabs of information directly to the reader, without bothering the actual characters, who presumably have other things to do. Oddly, there are characters in this book. The hero, ...

Reading Report: William Gibson On Wednesday night, I went with my son and his girlfriend (who I just met) to a reading-with-book-signing by William Gibson, one of my favorite authors. I’ve read his novels Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Virtual Light, Idoru, and The Difference Engine (co- with Bruce Sterling), as well as his short stories in the Burning Chrome collection. Virtual Light is one of my all-time favorite books: I own it on cassette and re-listen to it about once a year. I also name most of my computers Wintermute, after his AI character in Neuromancer. So, yeah, I’m a fan. The event was in the Coolidge Theater in Brookline, an old-fashioned theater with some style and elegance, not like the mall movie theaters of today, which look like they were extruded out of sheet aluminum. He’s a tall, slender guy, obviously both shy and mild-mannered. He looks like someone you might see feeding the birds in the park, or leafing through old magazines on the quiet sidel...

Book report: The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho What are your dreams in life? Santiago dreams of traveling to the pyramids in Egypt and discovering a great treasure. But how can this possibly happen? He’s a young shepherd in Andalusia with no money. He has no idea how to get to Egypt. And yet he has this dream. His dream is enough to induce him to take the first steps of a journey. Along the way, he meets many people, some good, some bad, but their influence – whatever their intentions – helps him on his way. And as to where he ends up – well, it’s not where he thought originally. This story is written very simply, like a parable. I kept having the feeling that certain characters were symbols for grander things, but I’m not clever enough to puzzle it out. There is a fable-like quality about it, a bedtime-story simplicity about details of where the story takes place and when. One of the recurring elements of the story has to do with omens. Omens, in this story, are little signposts th...

Book report: Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, by James W. Loewen First off, this guy deserves a medal, because, to write this book, he had to read TWELVE high school American History textbooks in their entirety, a feat I’ll bet has never been attempted before or since. My guess is that his goal was to read an even twenty, but after he woke up in the hospital with his eyes bleeding, he decided to scale back his plans a little, to preserve his health and sanity. Lowen’s goal is to expose all the information that is incorrect or missing from American History textbooks, which leads to the first amazing fact this book presents: information is incorrect or missing from American History textbooks. My first reaction to learning this was outrage: you mean, they force us to learn this crap and it’s not even true? That’s right, it’s wrong. A lot. My second reaction was: how is this possible? How can you tell people things that aren’t true? Until I ...