Building a Meal

Building a Meal is a little 120-page book by French chef-slash-chemist-slash-molecular-gastronomist Hervé This. I received it along with some cookbooks and kitchenware as a themed gift from my aunt and uncle last Christmas, and those two are total foodies, so I knew the book would at the very least be informative and interesting. Unfortunately, that's all it was; there was no coherent purpose to the book, and it barely seemed able to wander its way through six poorly-defined chapters filled with little anecdotes, histories, science experiments, pictures, and footnotes. This (which is the author's last name, no matter how much it looks and sounds and feels like the singular proximal demonstrative) decides from the beginning to explore six simple courses over six chapters and to look at what chemical processes go into the creation of these dishes. It starts off well and good; he spends the first twenty pages talking about hard-boiled eggs - their history in European cooking, their chemical structure, several myths regarding how to cook them - without the subject ever getting boring. A brief discussion on how to make mayonnaise had me jonesing to go beat an egg yolk with some vinegar and oil in my own kitchen. (Thankfully, I did not follow through on this very inspired idea.) But This gets more and more sidetracked as the book progresses, spending less and less time on the chemical processes of food preparation and growing ever more sidetracked and generic. We eventually reach the inevitable "well-prepared food is a token of love" cliche, and then the final twenty pages seem to revolve around innovation in the 21st century kitchen. It's clear that This has a deep well of knowledge on the many subjects he brings up, as well as a strong passion for cooking and "culinary constructivism" in general. Ultimately, this is what saved the book from being a stinker. The book ended before the author's directionless could really wear on me, and I definitely learned a thing or two, and more importantly, will likely have a new outlook on cooking going forward. I can't recommend anyone go out of their way to read this, but I enjoyed it all the same.

A Storm of Swords

Well, that was awesome.

Heading into the third installment of George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, I had a few reasons to be wary. For one thing, this would be the first book I'd be reading without having seen the corresponding HBO season of television beforehand; what if I found it more difficult to follow certain plot points? I'd found the first two books engaging and easy to read, but perhaps that had only been because I was already so familiar with the material at hand. For another thing, it was this book, of the five that have been written to date, that most fans hail as the greatest and best. The HBO series will spend two seasons covering this book, a full twenty episodes where each previous book had been covered in only ten. I've often pointed out on this blog how great expectations and massive hype can yield disappointing returns. Why should this book have been any different? And for a distant third reason, this was one long-ass book. Clocking in at 1128 pages, it's the second-longest book I've ever read, falling short only of Les Misérables, and being just the third thousand-pager I've read to date. Sure, the previous two books hadn't been brief at 800 and 960 pages, respectively, but this one was an absolute monster.

Yet here I am, just ten days after first opening the book, absolutely raving about it. A Storm of Swords delivered on all the hype and left me completely in awe. Simple number-crunching says I averaged 113 pages a day on this bad boy, and my short term memory reminds me that 500 of those pages came this weekend alone. I don't know what to say about the plot that won't be considered a spoiler, and I know I've done my best to pitch the series so far in previous posts. Let me try once more.

Plenty of components contribute to the greatness of these books and this overall story, but the one I'll focus on here is how wide open and all-inclusive Martin has been at "world building." The man has created and painstakingly described dozens of families and more than a hundred locations scattered across two entirely fictional continents. And by narrating from the limited third person point of view - and more importantly, switching points of view between ten characters or so each book - Martin manages to tell a number of smaller individual stories from a number of different perspectives. In this way, he allows A Song of Ice and Fire to be more than just a "fantasy epic" or some other vague catch-all; instead, each of the individual stories contributing to the overall narrative belong to different genres. One major character is hellbent on conquest, building an army and intending to retake the throne that was usurped from her father. Another is simply trying to make her way back to her mother and siblings after having been kidnapped. One character is a close relative of the king, and deals mostly with politics, tactics, and strategy, arranging marriages and alliances or planning traps to defend his city. Another character is a dishonored smuggler looking for redemption. Another has journeyed off to a far-away and hostile land to infiltrate an enemy's camp. Another is tormented by strange dreams and seeks clarity on what they could mean. And then there's the guy torn between allegiance to his biologicial father and to the man who raised him, each of them firmly rooted on opposite sides of a conflict. This doesn't even round out the characters whose points of view are written from, and there are scores more characters, most of them compelling and interesting in their own right.

In short, it's been just a fantastic series so far, and I'm thrilled to find out what happens next. I'm not sure I'll jump straight into the fourth book, though; Martin has claimed that the first three books and the last three (of a planned seven) are two separate trilogies, and that the fourth and middle book serves as a piece that links the two together. I'll know for myself once I get through it, but many fans claim that lacks a number of the characters and storylines that made the first three books so memorable, and that it introduces a lot of new characters and plots that don't really bring much to the table. I'm not saying I'll be taking any sort of substantial break from this series, but after banging out its first 3,000 pages in just over a month (in addition to like a thousand by other authors) it may be time for me to take a well-earned vacation from reading in order to focus on some movies and video games, neither of which I've logged anything of for forty days.

Player Piano

Player Piano is not Kurt Vonnegut's best novel, but it's his first, so it has to be at least a little important. I actually went in expecting it to be terrible, and while it is probably my least favorite of his books I still didn't 'hate' Player Piano as I expected to. For those who don't know, Vonnegut is known for a writing style that is fun and humorous, qualities which are not present at all in Player Piano, which Vonnegut admits is really just a rip-off of Brave New World. It reads like a pretty generic dystopian novel and doesn't give any hints as to the type of writer Kurt Vonnegut would become. Basically at some point in the future more and more jobs have been automated to the point where people who would normally make their money doing menial labor have no options, and engineers are wildly successful. Actually, I think I know many engineers for whom this would be a dream come true. Still though, while some might short-sightedly think that a society that bases itself on intelligence unilaterally resulting in success (few things are more frustrating than seeing stupid people with tons of money), Vonnegut sees danger in that direction. I've said in previous posts that it's tough to separate Vonnegut the author from his protagonists, and this might be the closest the two come. Dr. Paul Proteus is head engineer at his namless global company's Ilium, New York branch; as I read in And So it Goes, this is really just a stand-in for Kurt's time working at General Electric. He seems to have some understanding that his company's constant innovations in technology are actually putting lots of people out of jobs, and slowly but surely he starts to turn against the industry that's made him such a success, and joins in an anti-technology revolution. The thing is, aside from some quick points about possible impending class warfare, the book doesn't do much to villainize the idea of technology- the books end with people smashing phones and machines and speakers and all different forms of technology, but it was tough for me to empathize- surely there's another solution to make everyone happy and create jobs without starting over back at square one? I admit the further I got the book grew on me slightly, maybe because I wasn't giving it much of a chance in the first place, but overall it's just not a particularly interesting read and should only be attempted under the circumstances I'm in right now- when you've forced yourself to read every book Kurt Vonnegut has written.

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns

Ah, the Batman... so badass. As Frank Miller's return to the Gotham City, this bit of artwork serves as the cover to part two of a four part series. I think this one appropriately sums up the tone and attitude of the entire story. Utter badass-ness. Here's the premise: It's the future (even though a Reagan look-alike is President and we're at war with Russia... Ok, so it was made in '86) and Gotham is in a state of complete disrepair with Batman being gone for something like 30 years. Essentially, Bruce Wayne decided long ago to retire, as did most of other the super heroes of the DC world. Wonder Woman went back to her home planet. Green Lantern did something of the same. And everyone else just plain got too old for the crime-fighting life. Everyone but Superman. Clark, still looking young and chiseled as ever...

The man hasn't aged a day in over 30 years.

...where he now basically serves the US government with absolutely loyalty and acts without question. Meanwhile, Wayne carries on with his own life in complete depression. It's clear that he has a warrior's heart. One night he's jumped by a couple of thugs belonging to a local gang call "The Mutants" (the name is based on the members' allegiance to some giant mutant-thug-neanderthal). After beating the shit out of them, Bruce decides the it's time Batman made his return. As Batman takes back to the streets - with a new (girl) Robin at his side - his presence revives a comatose Joker locked away in Arkham and eventually leads Gotham and the US into an entirely new state of chaos and destruction. 

This story is amazing and sheds a completely new light on Bruce Wayne/Batman complex. It basically explores what would happen to a man who's devoted - sacrificed - his life to fighting evil at all costs. Sadly, with very little to show for it. It's made abundantly clear that Bruce is borderline suicidal and probably just as crazy as the Joker is or any of his other foes. No, he might not believe in killing the innocent - or killing in general, as has always been his philosophy - but he realizes that despite his aging, fragile body, he can't let go of his urge to fight against any evil that threatens his city. This is why I chose the art work above (of the four I had to pick from) as the main icon for this story arc. It just represents Batman as a fucking outrageous warrior that rivals the legendary Spartans. Even in his older, weaker state... there is no backing down.

To ruin the rest of the story for you all, please continue reading. As the story comes to its second half, a nuclear missile is deployed by Russia. Superman is successful in diverting the blast - almost dying the in the explosion - but the side effects from the bomb send an electromagnetic pulse through Gotham wiping out all electric devices sending it into some sort of dark age. From there... without cars... ummm, I think the photo will suffice...

 Batman rides like a fuck'n pro.

As the city begins to fall into chaos, Batman rises to save the day. With him are a bunch of former Mutant gang members, reformed and determined to follow him as their new leader (earlier in the story, Batman risks everything to fight and destroy their leader... after he barely wins, most of them take Batman to be the new Alpha-Dog). The groups take to the city stopping all the riots and chaos that have flared up because of the blackout and the fear of another World War. But it's the follow-up that's truly the best part of the whole story.

Batman fights Superman. 

In what you would take to be a total wash of a fight, Batman does more than just hold his own. He pummels Superman into the ground. However, you may be asking yourself, "Why would these two 'good guys' want to square off in the first place?" After the bombing crisis, the US government makes Batman the scapegoat. From there, Superman is ordered by the US government to take him out. Bruce realizes this and gears up for the fight sporting a giant metal suit that's ready to kick ass and take names.

Despite what this page from the comic gives away, I won't spoil the final ending. Just keep this in mind: Miller still has one more Batman tale left - The Dark Knight Strikes Again. Make what you will of this ending, but Batman can clearly never be stopped. 

Fantasyland

Along with most of my fellow Back-Bloggers, I play fantasy baseball, as Stan introduced us to the meta-game a few years ago. It's an addicting game where you basically just try to pick players who will deliver the best stats, thus making you a sort of virtual general manager of your team. Actual baseball skills are meaningless; fantasy sports tests your analytical abilities. Also there's a whole lot of luck involved (Last season was especially disappointing for me in that regard, but I'll hold off on whining). Fantasyland by Sam Walker makes for an interesting introduction to fantasy baseball as Sam, a long-time baseball writer who managed to avoid any sort of fantasy sports for his entire career, decides to dive head-first into the most competitive league there is- Tout Wars. I've honestly never heard of Tout Wars, but Walker explains it as basically the most important one out there- fantasy experts and writers are invited to compete in 12-team AL-only and 13-team NL-only leagues. The year is 2004 and Sam talks his way into the AL Tout Wars league. Along with tons of backstory on the history of fantasy baseball (which is unsurprisingly boring) we follow along with Sam's team throughout the season as he tries to prove that someone without any analytical skills can still succeed by other means- in Sam's case, working closely with baseball players on a daily basis. He has chats with David Ortiz, Jose Guillen and Mariano Rivera about what they can do to improve his team, and somehow he manages to get answers that aren't "I don't care; please leave me alone." Now earlier I said that this book makes for a fun introduction to fantasy sports, but at someone with a few years of play under my belt it just becomes hard to get too invested. Walker does a good job of pumping up the drama and trying to make things interesting, but after playing for a few years you start to realize his 'drastic actions' are really par for the course. I mean, after one particularly bad week he talks about swallowing his pride and coming to a harrowing conclusion- it's time to make a trade. Except in some leagues, trades happen all the time. I feel like my league had six of them in one day before. There are a few interesting moments as the season winds down, particularly a protest outside Angel Stadium demanding to 'Free Jose Guillen' from his team-ordered suspension, but it's tough to take the drama too seriously. Honestly most of the tension for me came from whether Walker would lose a bet and have to eat an entire stick of butter at the end of the season. Does he? Find out in... Fantasyland!

Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

After reading through two collections of Klosterman essays and one and a half attempts at novels, I thought I had Chuck Klosterman figured out- he can't really tell much of a story, but works best at short-form essays that examine pop culture and the mundane. Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story throws a wrench in that idea though, because while it feels very different from anything else I've read, it has quickly become one of my favorites of his (although really Downtown Owl is the only book of four that I haven't liked). We join Chuck during his early days at Spin magazine, when he's tasked with a somewhat morbid cross-country journey- Chuck will visit and report on most of the locations of music's biggest deaths. The Allman Brothers' plane crash site, the hotel room where Sid Vicious probably killed his girlfriend, the greenhouse where Kurt Cobain made himself a legend- Chuck visits all of these and more on an assignment to determine some sort of meaning to all this death, with a particular focus on why dieing is such a great career move for musicians. Killing Yourself to Live however is not the article Chuck wrote for Spin, and might not be even close. The book does go into some detail on Chuck's encounters with these sites of rock-n-roll death, but really just chronicles whatever he thought about on those long drives and stops in small towns. It turns out Chuck considered himself in three different relationships at that time which were less 'open' and more 'unfinished', and the main focus of the book is Chuck trying to figure out whether he had experienced true love or if it was worth trying to mend whatever had gone wrong. It was quite a change of pace to see such open and very human writing from Klosterman; I'd say the biggest flaw most of his articles have is that they come off pretty robotic. I guess that will happen when you're writing about something as vapid as pop culture can be sometimes. Chuck doesn't shy away from his quick music anecdotes though, but here he can seamlessly work them into the story as a whole. Most famously Chuck discusses the impact of 9/11 on people's lives, and then jumps into why Radiohead's Kid A syncs up well as a soundtrack to the day. Overall it's not quite as smart and fun as Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs but I found this on-the-road narrative much more enjoyable than, um, On the Road.

A Clash of Kings

A Clash of Kings is the sequel to A Game of Thrones and also serves as the basis for the second season of the HBO show based on the books. I've raved about both the first season and the first novel recently on this blog, but the second season of the TV show just felt like it came up a tiny bit short of the first season's greatness. As such, I was worried that this second book, even longer than the first, would also be slightly less engrossing and exciting than the first. Fortunately, this wasn't the case. While the first season of the HBO show played out about as faithfully as one could expect of a ten-hour page-to-screen adaptation, the second season, I can now confirm, diverged just a little bit from the book's narrative. Fortunately (for the book - not so much for the TV show), it seems like just about every place in which the show differed from its source material was a place where it was worse off for doing so. In other words, every complaint I had about the second season of the show - and truly, there weren't many at all - ended up being specific to the show and not to George R. R. Martin's Game of Thrones follow-up itself. I'll share no specifics for two reasons. One, in a book so full of characters and plots, no brief overview can do any part of the story any justice. Two, I don't want to spoil anything for anyone reading this, because, seriously, everyone reading this post right now should get into this series. The books, the show, preferably both. Take it for a spin and it won't disappoint. Now, after finishing the first two books in 25 days, you better believe I'm jumping headfirst into the third one, A Storm of Swords. But don't expect a post here any time soon. For one thing, the third book is long as hell. It's usually split into two separately sold paperback books because it's well over a thousand pages long. I think, though I won't verify it today, that it'll be the second-longest book I've ever read, bested in length only by Les Misérables. And making it far longer will be the fact that I haven't yet seen the TV adaptation for this third book. In these first two, I rarely had to go back and re-read a paragraph, worried that I'd missed something, because I was already familiar with the characters and the story. The third book will be an entirely new story for me, so in the interest of full comprehension I may find myself slowing the pace a bit. At any rate, this was another excellent effort from Martin, whose series I've come to thoroughly enjoy so far. What else is there to want?

Timequake

Joseph Heller's final two novels were Closing Time and Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man. The former was a slightly messy mixture of autobiographical nostalgia, whimsical fiction, and the attitudes and philosophies of an old man. The latter was a half-assed collection of story ideas Heller had never been able to make into actual stories. Its protagonist was a clear stand-in for the late Heller himself, an old man with writer's block just trying to whip together one more decent story before dying. I mention Heller's final two efforts not just because Heller and Vonnegut go hand-in-hand when it comes to twentieth century literature, but also because Vonnegut's final novel, Timequake, reads almost exactly like a blend of those two books. Though, this also just serves as evidence that the two authors are cut from the same cloth. It's cyclical, I guess.

Timequake is a lot of things, but it is ostensibly and superficially a story about an inexplicable event that sends everyone on Earth back in time by ten years, only to live out that same ten year period a second time exactly as before. This is really an interesting concept. Imagine reliving the last ten years of your life with perfect knowledge of every misstep you'd make and every bad thing that would befall you or your loved ones. Maybe you'd have to re-endure a great amount of physical pain or some terrible social embarrassment. But you'd probably also get to spend time again with an old friend or a recently deceased family member. Ultimately, you'd be reliving an awful lot of mundane stuff. Reading the same books you've already read, seeing movies for the first time in spite of already having seen them, putting in countless hours at school or at work. The timequake doesn't offer anyone any second chances. It only allows and forces people to repeat the last ten years of their lives. What would you take away form an experience like this? Would you be numb, the second time around, to tragedies and celebrations? Or would certain conversations and events carry added emotional weight if you knew something terrible and unexpected were going to happen to someone? Would you cringe at some of your own previous misdeeds, and take personal pride in accomplishments or small favors you;d done for others that you'd long forgotten about? Would you view the ten-year rerun as a gift, a ten-year extension on your life, and an opportunity to revisit the past? Or would the experience leave you much more apathetic to the entire human experience? Furthermore, once you regained free will when the ten years had run their course for a second time, how would you react to life suddenly being a series of unknown events happening to you in "real time" once more?

Vonnegut never really gets around to answering any of these questions or even really attempting to explore them. That's too bad, and it definitely feels like Timequake missed some major opportunities to be Vonnegut's deepest and most philosophically complex book yet. But then again, that was never Vonnegut's style. It was probably very challenging for him, or anyone else, to cram so much humanity into a brief and humorous book. So instead, Vonnegut spends most of Timequake talking about some of his life experiences and his relationships with different family members and colleagues and mentors. He also spends a lot of ink talking about "Kilgore Trout," a fictional writer who has appeared in many of Vonnegut's works who here more than ever serves blatantly as Vonnegut's own alter-ego. The "plot" gets very sticky very often. The book is narrated by its author, but this same narrator is another character who endures the timequake, so we're left with "Author Kurt" writing openly and honestly about this own real life stories but also writing about going through the timequake. And then we've also got Kilgore Trout, sort of a "Fictional Kurt," going through the same process and then interacting with "Narrator Kurt" at the book's conclusion. But the plot hardly mattered, even more so here than in most Vonnegut novels, and the real meat of the story - or non-story, really - was found in all the brief several-sentence sections which composed the book. The whole thing very much felt like an old man's final nuggets of wisdom and parting words. It was the only novel Vonnegut wrote between 1990 and his death in 2007, although the guy was very active and engaging in all kinds of interviews and essays during his final years, hardly a Salinger-like recluse.

I'll obviously have to read the last four Vonnegut books in my backlog before I can pretend to understand his entire literary trajectory, but this book felt like a suitable end to his career as a novelist. Like everything he's written except for Player Piano, it was light and easy to read, shining all sorts of light on the follies of humankind with a very slightly sorrowful apathy. But it also felt much less cynical and depressing than his darkest material, and it left me wondering if the writer had found something to be hopeful about or thankful for in his old age. I'd love to read through those four Vonnegut books with haste, but that's never been my approach toward these first ten, and I think I'd do myself a disservice by packing six books by the same author into a month's time. I'll finish off the Vonnegut portion of my backlog soon enough, I'm sure, but for now? It's time to look elsewhere.

Final Fantasy VII

Final Fantasy VII must be the most hyped game I've ever posted. The impact that this game apparently had on the childhoods of all my friends seems to be bigger than every other game combined. It tops "Best Game of All Time" lists; it made the PlayStation a viable alternative to the Nintendo 64; it contains the biggest, most heart-breaking twist in the history of gaming. While I'll at some point post a similarly hyped game, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, I've played significant portions of that game, but went into FFVII without any previous playtime. Yes, I had a small bit of familiarity with the story, the worst-kept secret twist in video games (aside from maybe "The Princess is in another castle!") and the characters, but there was so much for me to discover. What the heck was 'materia' all about? What makes Midgar so much cooler than other towns in other Final Fantasy games? Why is Sephiroth such a memorable villain? And most importantly, could it live up to the hype? While it's impossible for this game to have the same effect on me that it did my peers, mostly because I'm a grown man and not 11 years old, I can confirm that Final Fantasy VII is a very, very good game. It continued the science-fiction-oriented trend of Final Fantasy VI, taking place in a futuristic society on the brink of discovering a new form of energy. Protagonist Cloud Strife, a former government (SHINRA) soldier (SOLDIER) defects and joins forces with a sorta terrorist group (AVALANCHE) who believes Shinra is seeking the energy for some nefarious purposes; in their attempts to stop Shinra, they meet up with a few more characters and eventually come to realize an even greater enemy is trying to blow up the world in an attempt to sorta claim the untapped energy resources for himself- Sephiroth. What I liked about this story was that it felt very 'complete'- every location, boss fight and character (except maybe Yuffie) truly felt like it served a purpose in the grand scheme of the story and not just a random mish-mash of insanity that plagues many other Final Fantasy installments. Even though I already knew the huge twist (hint for those who don't know: one of your party members doesn't make it to the end), the game actually delivered a few good ones after that too and every character feels fully fleshed out; even the lesser ones like Cait Sith get a significant backstory and play a major role in the story. In addition to the great storytelling, there's fun gameplay to back it up. I love the idea of materia- basically you can find spells on the ground in the form of 'materia', and now they're suddenly easy to level up and switch around instead of being attached to one character. If you're looking for a really deep level of customization FF VIII, X and XII may be better, but I can see why Final Fantasy VII makes for a great introduction to the series. And yet here I am, playing it nearly last- only XIII remains for me in the numbered series. I don't expect to be getting to it for several months, maybe a year, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Star Wars: Heir to the Empire

A new month. And with a new month comes new posts... We'll new posts on old reads. It's hectic time for me with my move and job transitions lurking around the corner, but I'm trying to keep up on the back-blogging as best as I can. So, let's jump in. 


Star Wars. A franchise worth over $30 billion freakn' dollars! Hard to believe something so successful came from something so abysmal - I'm alluding to Lucas' first draft of the Star Wars screenplay. I strongly urge anyone to read this early draft of what would become the most lucrative Sci-Fi story of all time (excluding maybe Avatar). It's worse than awful and hardly bares any resemblance to what we now take as the first movie (aside from the name Skywalker being thrown around here and there). If you can take anything away from it's, it's... I don't know. Maybe Lucas paid someone to write it for him? I only say this because there's a wealth of imigination and creativity from various contributors within this franchise that - I imagine - has been generated entirely outside of Lucas' influence. Aside from the movies, television shows, video games, trading cards, and toys; there's giant library of published (and I'm sure non-published) fan-fiction that builds on the original story.

That brings me to this novel: Heir to the Empire. Taking place a few years after Return of the Jedi concludes, this book shows our heroes as they struggle to get the Galactic Republic up and running again with the Rebels having ruling control. Now, even through Vader and Emperor Palpatine have been knocked out of the picture, the Empire still exists. Stationed on the far outskirts of the galaxy, they are now ruled by Grand Admiral Thrawn...

...this guy (artist interpretations may vary).

Unlike the series' other villains, Thrawn has no connection to the force. Instead, he's just suppose to be a brilliant military commander. On top of that, he has the ysalamiri. What's a ysalamiri you ask? It's a small snake/salamander-like creature that's capable of blocking out the force around it. Thrawn is on his search to find a Dark Jedi to in his effort to restore the Empire and uses the ysalamiris' unique abilities to subdue any Jedi tricks. It becomes useful when he enlists an insane Dark Jedi clone named Joruus C'baoth to tag along for the sole reason of finding the only other Jedi still alive, Luke Skywalker. Wikipedia explains that author Timothy Zahn had the idea that C'baoth was suppose to be a clone of Obi Wan, but there's no evidence of that anywhere in the book - cool idea though; Luke's old master suddenly becomes he most powerful foe. 

Speaking of Luke, what have our heroes been up to all this time since the last film? Well, Han and Leia (now starting in Jedi training of her own) are now married with twins on the way while Luke is working to finish up the last of his own Jedi training - Obi Wan has appear in a dream indicating that he and the other Jedi apparitions are leaving for good (not sure where else they can go, but whatever); he's now completely on his own. The story builds as the gang (more specifically Luke and Leia) find themselves being hunted down by a mysterious race of bounty hunters still loyal to the Empire. Throughout these conflicts, the gang gets separated as Luke finds himself imprisoned by Talon Karrde (a smuggler similar to Han in his old days) on a jungle-planet covered with ysalamiris. Needless to say, Luke is completely without the force during his stay. While there another character is introduced, Mara Jade - Talon's second-hand man... er, woman. She's got a serious grudge against Luke while their rivalry is put to the test as they find themselves stranded out in the jungle as an attempted escape from by Luke from Talon's imprisonment goes awry. 

Through and through, I enjoyed this story. It was fairly entertaining and it was nice to revisit the old gang I loved so much as a child. However, this is not my favorite Star Wars story. Aside from this book, I've read one other Star Wars novel: Shadows of the Empire. I believe this might have been adapted to be one of the launch titles that came out with the N64 - sad to say that was a long time ago and really can't remember (I know I could just look that up on Wiki, but I'm lazy goddamit!). Anyways, this story exist to fill in the gap between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi as Luke, Leia, Lando - and maybe Dash? - try and chase down Han's frozen body. I won't make this posting a full review on that book. Just take the recommendation that if you are ever curious in reading a Star Wars novel, I would side with Shadows. 

But stayed tuned... Heir to the Empire is only part one of the Thrawn Trilogy. Excited to see how the other two books turn out.

PS - Blogger is being a dick about formatting - hence why this post's aesthetics look a little screwed up. I'm too lazy to fix the HTML, so just deal with it. 

Deadeye Dick

What, you thought we were all done with Kurt Vonnegut here? We were just taking a little four-month break. That break ended somewhere over the Eastern Seaboard earlier tonight when I finished Deadeye Dick, a lesser known Vonnegut novel from the later middle portion of his novel-writing career. I'm left without much to say, other than to more or less repeat what I said about the last Vonnegut book I read: that it was quintessential Vonnegut, through and through. I understand how uninventive and douchey I sound, describing a book by using the author's last name and expecting it to suffice as an actual adjective, but if you've read a lot of this man's works then you know exactly what I mean. Nonetheless, I'll attempt to redeem myself with an explanation, which may seem superfluous to those who completely understand what "Vonnegut" means when used to describe a work of fiction. It told a fictional man's life story, more or less chronologically, but not without skipping back and forth a great deal. Most pages have multiple section breaks, and the narrative consists mostly of extremely brief anecdotes and straightforward depictions of events. Tragedy abounds, but it does so with a tone you can't help but find humorous. There are oddly specific absurdities and yet huge events - the nuclear bombing of an American city, for instance - go largely undescribed. The entire novel carries a very slight and yet undeniable sense of apology and guilt, as though the narrator or the author is really embarrassed about some of humanity's lesser qualities. Vonnegut uses gentle and simple motifs for heavy concepts like life and death, referring to the latter as a person's "peephole" closing. Most plot developments are outright given away ahead of time thanks to the book's very bouncy sense of time and the way it passes, and at the end of the book it's not as though some great story has been told, but you're glad to have spent 250 to 300 pages reading about these memorable and quirky characters and their utterly bland lives. Here are some highlights, which I'd normally consider spoilers, but, again, it's Vonnegut, so he goes right ahead and tells you every major event that'll happen before it happens anyway.

• The narrator's father spent a lot of his formative years as a very close friend of Hitler's. This made World War II an especially awkward time for the main character, as whenever he would invite friends over, his father would go on at length about Hitler not really being so bad a guy.
• The narrator's mother eventually dies from cancer caused by radiation poisoning. The source of this radiation was her own fireplace's mantle, which had been made from re-purposed cement that had once been used to store plutonium during the Manhattan Project.
• The narrator, while cleaning his father's rifle as a twelve-year-old, fires a bullet off into the sky. It hits a pregnant housewife in the forehead, killing her, on Mother's Day.
• Again, the narrator's hometown ends up being destroyed by a nuclear bomb. Or, more accurately, all of the people in the town are killed by the bomb, whose blast is purely radioactive, or something, and thus leaves all the buildings in the town perfectly intact. Although it kills a hundred thousand people, the story is "old news" within a few days since the only stuff everyone else cares about - namely, material objects - is left unharmed. That's KV Jr. for you, subtle as a brick, yet endearingly straightforward.
• The novel's final words are "You want to know something? We are still in the Dark Ages. The Dark Ages - they haven't ended yet." If this were the moral, the ultimate takeaway, of Deadeye Dick, I'd have to call it the darkest and most depressing yet of the Vonnegut novels I've read. But the bulk of the book feels too nostalgic and charm-driven for that depressing outlook.
• Perhaps a better-suited quick and effective summing up comes with the following: "If a person survives an ordinary span of sixty years or more, there is every chance that his or her life as a shapely story has ended and all that remains to be experienced is epilogue. Life is not over, but the story is." Vonnegut was 60 when this novel was published; this line comes close to, but not at, the end of the book. To me, the book even drags on a bit at the end and loses some steam around the two-thirds mark. Still, based on that quote, this is almost perfectly fitting. The book is not over, but the story is. (Also, the book's epilogue is longer than any other chapter.)

 So, yeah, just an all-around treat once again from Kurt Vonnegut. I've now read nine of his novels and the final five are on my bookshelf and in my backlog. Let me mimic Sweeney's recent Saramago post and give a preliminary cut of my overall Vonnegut novel rankings:

1. Slaughterhouse-Five - nightmarish and depressing depictions of war and one man's utter apathy toward all the death and suffering around him, in addition to non-chronological time flow, make for one of my favorite books of all time

2. The Sirens of Titan - an engrossing and whimsical space-based adventure from cover to cover

3. Mother Night - managed to keep taking the "major plot twist" trope one step further by playing fast and loose with character identities and allegiances

4. Deadeye Dick - got bored with this one once the ending came, but was great up until then

5. Cat's Cradle - very bored with this one until the ending, but what a great ending it was

6. Bluebeard - definitely liked it when I read it, but can't recall much aside from the basic plot and a few characters

7. Breakfast of Champions - a real treat to read but I remember next to no plot details or characters at all

8. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater - this lawyer story just never clicked for me

9. Player Piano - probably not a terrible book, but there's no flavor at all to the text, the characters, or the plot, and that left me bored as hell by the third chapter or so

Hey, that's two lists in one post. How sloppy of me. Whatever. Happy Friday.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

I've got to give this book credit. I abandoned it about three weeks ago when I was less than halfway finished with it in order to begin the 800-page epic A Game of Thrones. I forced myself to finish reading this book before beginning the second Song of Ice and Fire book, but I had lost track of the narrative and was very tempted to just skim my way through to the ending. But the book did not allow me to do that, simply by being an engrossing and interesting read. Kudos to Stieg Larsson.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest is the third and final book in the late Larsson's Millennium trilogy. Its title doesn't make much literal sense, but neither does the original Swedish one, which translates to The Castle of Air That Was Blown Up. Unlike the way the first book concluded and the second book began a whole new series of investigations and adventures, this third book begins exactly where the second one had ended on quite a cliffhanger. A number of plots emerge and get resolved, but the principle arc in this third and final book is the trial of Lisbeth Salander (the titular girl with a dragon tattoo who played with fire and "kicked the hornet's nest," whatever that may mean). The book concludes with far more closure and resolution than remaining questions, and as such, it makes for a great final book in the series. Ironically though, the book wasn't supposed to be the last one in the Millennium series at all. Stieg Larsson died unexpectedly in 2004 and his three famous books were discovered on his laptop as finished manuscripts. A fourth manuscript involving the same characters as the other three was three quarters finished, and an outline for a fifth book was discovered as well. It became clear through his notes that Larsson had actually planned on making ten different books in this series. In that respect, he clearly intended to write them in a rather episodic fashion, introducing new threats and plots and challenges in each book, but resolving them within a novel or two as he'd done so far. It's too bad we'll never get to see where all of this was ultimately heading, but at the same time I doubt this little trilogy would have risen to international prominence had it extended to be five, eight, or ten books.There is, after all, that law of diminishing returns. We may in fact someday see that fourth novel, either published unfinished as it was or brought to completion by Larsson's girlfriend.

I'd struggled a bit after reading the first two books when it came to deciding if they had lived up to the hype. I think at this point, having completed all three, I can safely say that I understand just what the books were really about and what made them pretty unique. They weren't just murder mysteries, nor were they courtroom dramas or spy thrillers. They were a well-made mix of all of those things with dashes of computer hacking and anti-misogyny thrown in there. They provided the Western canon with a totally unique and unforgettable character in Lisbeth Salander, and they were critical of several flaws in the Swedish legal and judicial system. It still doesn't make a ton of sense to me that these three books became the most popular reads in the world a couple of years ago, but then, a lot of trends don't make much sense to me. The series was a good one, well-written throughout, and I'm definitely glad I read these three books. I think that the first one was my favorite and that this third one was my second-favorite. This isn't to say that I disliked the second one, but it's interesting that the two people I'd spoken to before reading the series both said they liked the second one best and the first one least. Clearly there's no consensus opinion, which only suggests that the different books have different strengths. I look forward to the eventual release of the final two English language movies.