On Rewatching Star Trek: Voyager - Season 5

Season 5 highlights:

"Night" - Voyager is basically becalmed in a seemingly endless region with no stars. The ending falls apart a bit with some preachiness (remind me, Janeway, why it's okay to kill polluters?), but the setting is an unusual one for the show (until Season 7's excellent "The Void," anyway).

"Once Upon a Time" - Neelix cares for the young Naomi Wildman when her mother goes missing on an away mission. Neelix's own emotions about the deaths of his family members influence his decision not to tell Naomi the truth right away.

"Nothing Human" - Creating a realistic-looking non-humanoid alien on a TV budget is tough. But creating a tricky moral dilemma - that's what science fiction was created for. I still don't know if I agree with the Doctor's decision at the end of the episode, but I think the moral quandary he faces is one worth considering.

"Counterpoint" - Captain Janeway gets laid less than any other Starfleet captain, which is a real shame. Here, she falls for a sexy jackbooted thug, and their chemistry makes the story work. I buy her falling for the flirtatious Inspector Kashyk (Mark Harelik), who has the advantage of not being a member of her crew. I also buy her being far too smart to let her emotions get the better of her.

"Bride of Chaotica!" - Okay, so I complain about the holodeck being used in too many storylines. But in this case, seeing Janeway swan around as the Queen of the Spider People makes it all worth it.

"Course: Oblivion" - This episode pays off "Demon," and gives us our only glimpse of the Tom Paris/B'Elanna Torres wedding. It's very sad.

"Think Tank" - Jason Alexander is wonderfully oily as a member of a mercenary think tank that sets its sights on recruiting Seven of Nine. (Also, do we buy the claim that they cured the Vidiian phage? I like to think so.)

"Someone to Watch Over Me" - It's pretty funny to watch the normally self-possessed Seven of Nine awkwardly pursue a cute and hapless crewman. I appreciate, too, that Robert Picardo (the Doctor) is smart enough to call back to this episode on occasion, with just a trace of longing in his eyes.

"Equinox, Part I" - What if Voyager's Year of Hell was their main experience of the Delta Quadrant? We get to see the answer to this question when Voyager makes contact with another Federation ship that's seen better days and is under attack by aliens.

Season 5 losers:

"Extreme Risk" - Ugh, poor B'Elanna and her inability to process emotions. The Klingons have never been my favorite species, because often they are trapped in situations like this one. I always sympathize with B'Elanna, but I also think she needs a good therapy session. (Doesn't that holodeck have therapists programmed into it?)

"Gravity" - I've never been a fan of the single-episode romances. The character of Noss is a little too irritatingly cute and quirky for my tastes, and Tuvok's attachment to her makes zero sense.

"The Fight" - Poor Chakotay. He always seems to get trapped in these god-awful episodes. His character is often such a blank that it's no wonder the writers don't give him good material. (Seriously, they should have just put him and Janeway together briefly so he'd have something interesting to do in later seasons.)

"Juggernaut" - The Malon are a dead-end species, storytelling-wise. The story of nasty, illogical polluters has just been done to death. And the fact that early episodes made it clear that Voyager has a magical cure for disposing of theta radiation makes the Malon seem incredibly dumb and short-sighted.

"11:59" - I get the sense that Kate Mulgrew twisted some arms to get this episode featuring a distant ancestor of Kathryn Janeway made. It's an okay story, but it's not a Voyager story.

Year of No Clutter

Year of No Clutter by Eve O. Schaub

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Stories of hoarders have always fascinated me, and like Eve O. Schaub I find the ideals of Marie Kondo's philosophy deeply appealing but unreachable. I also am a fan of A&E's Hoarders. I have a history of reading books about hoarding/decluttering. It comes from a personal place of dealing with someone close who has hoarding tendencies. Also, since I've moved in the last year, I really appreciate the philosophy of decluttering. (I'm obsessed with tiny house shows, too!)

This book practically leapt into my hands when I saw it on the shelf of my local library. Schaub is a "serial memoirist" like A.J. Jacobs. (I haven't read her previous memoir, Year of No Sugar, mostly because the premise sounds like something MY mother may have tried when I was a kid.)

Schaub is a funny, relatable, and breezy writer. I thought she managed some interesting revelations about her relationship to the clutter of the single room she tackled for her year, which she had named the Hell Room. (I definitely took away an interest in a company she uses to help organize her kids' art projects, Plum Prints!) In short, it was a funny read with a bit of depth to it - perfect poolside material.

So Quotable:

"There's nothing wrong with keeping things that other people deem strange because it's. It the things that make you a hoarder. What makes you a hoarder is whether it takes over." - 167

"I've been attempting to wrap my mind around another realization for some time now - objects are mortal. They have a life and a death much like people do." - 171

Other titles on hoarding I've read over the years, listed in order of how much I liked/learned from them (Year of No Clutter would go into the middle somewhere):

1. Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things by Randy O. Frost
2. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo
3. The Hoarder in You: How to Live a Happier, Healthier, Uncluttered Life by Robin Zasio
4. Stuffocation: Why We've Had Enough of Stuff and Need Experience More Than Ever by James Wallman
5. Mess: One Man's Struggle to Clean Up His House and His Act by Barry Yourgrau - Not recommended, at all.

On Rewatching Star Trek: Voyager - Season 4

Season 4 highlights:

"Revulsion" - Occasionally Voyager attempts a good old-fashioned horror story, and this one of a murderous hologram is just the ticket.

"Scientific Method" - The crew of Voyager begin suffering mysterious symptoms, and it's up to the Doctor and Seven of Nine to discover the sinister cause. The extremely sinister and self-righteous cause.

"Year of Hell, Part I & II" - Voyager faces continual disaster for months, losing life and limb before learning that the cause of the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day(s) is a genocidal monomaniac with a ship that can alter time. I like to think that Chakotay's willingness to cut the guy (Kurtwood Smith!) some slack is a reflection on the Commander's endless devotion to his own Captain Ahab, aka Captain Kathryn Janeway. Kathy gets her crazy on in these episodes, and as usual wins the day.

"Waking Moments" - Mostly I love the nightmares you see in the first ten minutes of the episode. Do Vulcans dream of impassive sheep?

"Message in a Bottle" - The crew gets a chance to use alien technology to contact home, and for voodoo reasons they can send the Doctor to Starfleet more easily than a Facebook poke. Still, we get to have fun watching the Doctor interact with a more advanced EMH (Andy Dick!) in the Alpha Quadrant.

"Hunters" - In struggling to download the messages that Starfleet has sent after the Doctor's away mission, the crew encounter the Hirogen hunters and struggle with mixed emotions about hearing from home. (But seriously, why is Starfleet communication tech so terrible? They are eternally buffering!)

"Living Witness" - I debated whether to put this in the highlights or the losers category, but in the end decided that its storyline is a bold standalone. The Doctor is entertaining as always (his assessment of Tom Paris, for instance), and I love a good Rip Van Winkle storyline, plus evil crew doppelgangers! My only hesitation about this ep is that if you try to cast the Kyrian/Vaskan conflict in an American setting it is problematic, to say the least.

"Hope and Fear" - Voyager's chickens come to roost in a way. The gift of a magnificent new starship, apparently from Starfleet, is such an obvious Trojan horse that Janeway is rightfully skeptical. I liked this episode for asking the question that was avoided in Scorpion, season 3.

Season 4 losers:

"Nemesis" - The ending is the only redeeming part of this slog through some alien conflict I don't care about. It's very difficult to get invested in one-off characters, even cute little girls with bad haircuts.

"The Raven" - Seven has PTSD from her time with the Borg, and it manifests in unusual ways. Unfortunately, in boring ways.

"Concerning Flight" - Again with the lame holocharacters. I couldn't care less about Fake da Vinci's existential crisis, and wish the Captain had just turned him off and put the mobile emitter in her pocket.

"Retrospect" - Suffers from the same problems as "The Raven." Am I the only one who finds it uncomfortable to have Seven make a false accusation of being "violated"?

"Demon" - This story isn't compelling, but it does directly tie into to the later, heart-wrenching "Course: Oblivion", which keeps it from complete ignominy.

On Rewatching Star Trek: Voyager - Season 3

Season 3 highlights:

"False Profits" - The Ferangi are obnoxious uber-capitalists, and that's why I like them. This episode also ties neatly into a Next Generation episode "The Price".

"Future's End, Part I & II" - Sarah Silverman is adorable, and a highlight of this show where Voyager makes a pilgrimage to Earth in 1996. It's funny when the Captain and Commander are more appalled by Venice Beach than they are by any alien culture they've encountered.

"Blood Fever" - When Voyager gets sexy! Of course, this means the idea of sexual tension is dialed to eleven - actually lethal to characters if left unresolved. What would we do without the Pon Farr and those hyper-repressed Vulcans? Tom stays noble as B'Elanna tries to jump his bones....it's a charming story to tell their grandchildren someday. Also, in the tag scene, a chilling reminder of enemies to come!

"Macrocosm" - Janeway goes all Rambo on Voyager against disgusting giant viruses that sound like bees. One of my favorites.

"Rise" - This episode is great for Neelix's devastating takedown of Tuvok's supercilious attitude. Tuvok, normally so wise, comes across as arrogantly blind to his own defects, and is finally called on it. Which is exactly how it should be, though without a permanent payoff.

"Displaced" - Alien takeover of Voyager by unusual means. I love sneaky alien plots that prey on that old Federation optimism. It's fun to watch.

"Worst Case Scenario" - Someone's designed a holodeck program that tells the story of a Maquis mutiny aboard Voyager. Unfortunately for the crew who are fans, it's unfinished. Fortunately, the show writers find a great way to add a twist. And to bring back sightings of the inimitable Seska.

Season 3 losers:

"The Swarm" - Two half-baked ideas do not make a compelling episode. I love the idea of a species that has a language the Universal Translator can't handle, and wish that the mystery had been solved in a more satisfying way. It's also touching to see Kes caring for the Doctor as he suffers computer dementia.

"Warlord" - An interesting idea hindered by a poor performance of its lead. Kes is adorable, but "Warlord" proves that Jennifer Lien is best at being whispery and wise, not brutal and powerful.

"Darkling" - Mostly I ding this episode for its casual shrug-off of Kes and Neelix's long-term relationship. Basically we find out in scene two that they're over. They were always a mismatch, but the show invested quite a bit in their relationship. It would have been nice to see some reasons for their breakup.

"Real Life" - When the Doctor creates a Leave It To Beaver-perfect holofamily, B'Elanna is quick to make sure the experience is as effing depressing as possible. I'm sorry, I just can't care about annoying, cliched holocharacters that are programmed by a hologram: there are too many levels of unreality in that scenario.

"Distant Origin" - A REALLY heavy-handed Star Trek take on the plight of scientists from Galileo to Darwin. The reptilian alien design is pretty cool, though, and a nice change from the Weird Nose and Coral Headed species Voyager usually encounters.

Honorable Mention:

"Before and After" - Because of the reference to the "Year of Hell" episode.

"Scorpion" - The idea of a species that scares the Borg is compelling. It's also the first time we meet Jeri Ryan's drone Seven of Nine. The Borg are probably the single greatest idea Star Trek ever had. My only hesitation with this two-parter is that Janeway and her crew never even consider allowing the Borg to be destroyed by their new enemy.

On Rewatching Star Trek: Voyager - Season 2

Season 2 highlights:

"Twisted" - There is a great moment at the end of this episode where the crew is literally backed into a corner by a potentially lethal anomaly. Seeing the crew forced to stop fighting for survival is unusual, and it's nice to put an end to the technobabble. It's also fun to see the crew wander lost around Voyager throughout the episode, unable to reach the bridge to even figure out what's gone wrong.

"Maneuvers" - I would watch an entire show based on the adventures of Seska as she schemes her way to power. She's more cunning than the rest of the goody-two-shoes Star Trek crew, and she's a match for Janeway's fanaticism. (Unfortunately, she's mostly pitted against Chakotay, which is less interesting.) Unfortunately, the Kazon are totally sexist or Seska would have conquered the Delta Quadrant.

"Prototype" - A creepy expressionless robot is found floating in space (the design is basically a silver version of the famous Metropolis 'bot). B'Elanna's story arc, moving from intellectual curiosity and a desire to help an artificial species survive to horror at what she's created follows the classic scary-robot story, but is no less effective for it.

"Death Wish" - Love seeing Q, and the moral dilemma is a solid one. I've always thought that boredom would be the worst part of immortality.

"Deadlock" - You'll see this on a lot of best of lists, because it's about as dark as Voyager gets, with an unexpected ending.

"The Thaw" - Yes, this is my nightmare. A tacky, multi-colored world with squawking evil characters intent on holding hostages.

"Tuvix" - This might be one of my favorite episodes. Every time I see it I feel queasy at the fate of Tuvix. The way the crew, who liked him, turn away and leave him to his fate simply because he isn't "one of them." It's chilling, and I wish there were more episodes like this one.

"Basics, Part I" - Remember how much I love Seska? This is why.

Season 2 losers:

"The 37" - This episode pisses away a brilliant question: What if the Voyager crew decided to settle? The fact that they decide to leave a human colony of 300,000 without even trying to recruit anyone seems short-sighted to me, considering that with a 70-year journey they'll become a generation ship. Surely there were some capable doctors with a sense of adventure on that planet! Also, I'm not as in love with Amelia Earhart as everyone else is. Sorry. (Now if this had been about Bessie Coleman, on the other hand....) Still, the last scene where Janeway and Chakotay speculate on who may have chosen to leave Voyager is touching - for Janeway, a validation of her unwavering commitment to going home.

"Projections" - Another promising premise killed by a too-short run time. The resolution feels extremely arbitrary. Maybe the rest of the show is set in the Doctor's hallucination! (It is nice to see Barclay, but he isn't given much to do.)

"Threshold" - One of the WORST Star Trek episodes ever. Extreme ick factor.

On Rewatching Star Trek: Voyager - Season 1

I was too young to appreciate Next Generation when it was on air. Voyager was my Star Trek, watched weekly with my family until its finale.

The Voyager crew is cast adrift, alone, stranded in a strange portion of the universe. It will take 70 years to return home, and that's without investigating every anomaly, culture, and distress signal along the way. With one ship and no Federation backup, they have to rely on their wits and each other to survive. It's a fabulous premise.

However, there a flaws - plenty of them. There is WAY too much technobabble, a lot of sermonizing (but less, I think, than we got from Picard), and a plenitude of holodeck malfunctions, time travel, and too-human aliens. Every other week, they seem to run into Alpha Quadrant cross-pollination that strains credulity.

Still, for all of its short-comings, I will always love Voyager and the inimitable, indomitable Captain Kathryn Janeway. Here's a few reasons why.

Season 1 highlights:

"Caretaker 1" and "Caretaker 2" - The 2-part premiere that sets up the Voyager's plight and introduces the main crew. A very promising beginning for a new kind of Star Trek story. The "lost in space" premise wasn't always used to its best effect, but when it was, the show sang.

"Phage" - First contact with the Vidiians goes VERY badly for Neelix. The super-advanced but plague-ridden Vidiians are a great addition to the Star Trek species canon. I also like it when Star Trek characters face suffering without a trace of heroic stoicism. (It's a more interesting story than the priggish and hyper-enlightened officers we normally see.)

"Emanations" - Not for the first time, Voyager stumbles across another species in a damaging and bewildering first contact, even as they try to do no harm. I appreciated the respect given to religion and afterlife myths, particularly Chakotay's story about the sacred stone he once pilfered.

"Prime Factors" - Do you continue to respect the traditions of a hospitable culture when they stand in the way of you getting what you desperately want? For Janeway, yes. Other members of her crew have a different answer.

"Faces" - B'Elanna's interspecies (read: interracial) ancestry is explored in an intriguing way, and the Vidiians reach maximum creepiness here when a scientist experimenting on the fully Klingon B'Elanna borrows parts of another Voyager crewmember that are...recognizable. Shudder. The flaw in the story is its treatment of the Klingon half as Other instead of as an option equal to following her bland human side.

"Jetrel" - An episode that smartly highlights the difficult situation that Voyager is in. When they meet the homeless Haakonians, a race at war with the aggressive coral-headed Kazon, there may be a chance to forge an alliance to save the ship and restore the fate of a species. But Federation's high ideals forbid such an alliance. Can the unbending Janeway leave behind the Prime Directive to achieve her prime goal? (The final moments unfortunately undo all of the moral complexity and Janeway comes off as smug and preachy, but it's still a pretty good episode.)

Season 1 losers:

"Parallax" - Your first episode experiencing the Delta Quadrant with a newly integrated crew, and the story is that Voyager is literally going nowhere? Not a strong start.

"The Cloud" - A boring episode, and silly. Makes the Voyager crew seem both absurd and interfering as they try to repair damage they've unwittingly done to an unusual life form.

"Ex Post Facto" - Didn't Riker go through this story in Next Generation? Repeating a weak idea doesn't make it better. At least "A Matter of Perspective" had some Rashomon references to improve it. And Tom Paris is no William Riker!

"Heroes and Demons" - Ugh, the first dumb holodeck malfunction episode. Tell me again why I care about fake characters? Though I do like the forefronting of the Doctor! His journey over the course of the seasons is one of my favorites.

Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny

Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny by Holly Madison

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


So Hugh Hefner is a dirty old creep. Raise your hand if that surprises you - that an 80-year-old man who dates multiple blond 20-somethings at the same time is at all immature, controlling, or predatory. No one? Okay then.

Holly Madison has a lot to tell in her tell-all, and almost no one is spared her critical eye. She knows we're reading to get the dirt, and she serves it up by the spadeful. Madison paints herself as an fairly passive innocent swept up into the Playboy lifestyle, aspiring to a cover of her own and centerfold spread. Considering that her entire career has sprung from seven high-profile years at the Playboy mansion (and starring in The Girls Next Door), this is definitely biting the hand that fed her.

Still, there are some great revelations here. Madison writes that "Hef holds the Guinness Book of World Records for largest scrapbook collection at over 2,000 volumes"? According to Madison, Hefner compulsively records everything, writing about himself in third person and grading Polaroids of every woman who enters the mansion.

And "People may find it surprising that Hugh Hefner is nothing more than a tenant renting his room at the mansion, but that's exactly how it is." He rents rooms for each girlfriend, too, except for his "main" one, who lives in his room without privacy of her own. He doesn't have to pay for unoccupied rooms. And you bet each woman knows exactly the price he pays to keep her by his side.

Madison talks about the mansion's many schemers, an international prostitution ring, the photo shoots, and the less-than-glamorous realities of catering to Hugh Hefner's tastes. (Don't try wearing red lipstick, apparently.)

It won't take you long to read this memoir, and the true "rabbit hole" for me was looking up the names and backstories of the people Madison mentions in passing. Just don't use a work computer to do it! The second half of the book dealing with Madison's post-Playboy career is much less bizarrely fascinating than the first (and again, no surprises in her assertions that ex-boyfriend Criss Angel is also a turd).

Hefner, unfortunately, is a lasting part of American culture, one that won't seem to go away. While I find his lifestyle repellent, I also don't believe in slut-shaming the ambitious young women who see his bedroom as a ticket to fame and fortune. It's pure poetic justice when users glom onto each other. Though the women of Playboy are incredibly young in comparison to the Playboy editor (born in 1926!), he isn't a pedophile. No one comes out of the deal smelling like a rose, and there are countless stories told by his former girlfriends and Playmates.

Not a must-read, but certainly a fascinating look into a peculiarly American heart of darkness.

So Quotable:

"Hef was a notoriously lecherous 70-something man offering me Quaaludes that he referred to as 'thigh openers.' Are you kidding me? Why didn't I run for the nearest exit? It doesn't get much creepier than that." - 47

"Of course, to keep myself from really losing it, I was completely ignoring the fact that anyone who was part of an old man's harem and treated like a brainless idiot would be depressed." - 156

"We were like a typical old married couple. The only difference was, only one of us was actually old." - 175

"Just as I had been, seven years earlier, Crystal Harris was 22, thin, blond, a bit plain, and so much shy." - 232

To clarify, this is the "plain" Crystal Harris (later Crystal Hefner):

"Everything else that came from [the Playboy mansion] was laced with darkness, a hefty price tag, or an eventual knife in the back." - 322

The Great Zoo of China

The Great Zoo of China by Matthew Reilly

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


The comparisons between Matthew Reilly's The Great Zoo of China and Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park are inevitable. But Jurassic Park is smart, well told, and gripping. The Great Zoo of China is...not.

The story is about a American herpetologist, Dr. Cassandra Jane "CJ" Cameron, who is invited to tour a brand new zoo by the Chinese government. CJ is joined by her photographer brother and several other American bigwigs. CJ specialized in the study of large reptiles until one ate half of her face, leaving her permanently disfigured.

As expected, the minute Chinese start showing off the inhabitants of their zoo - dragons! - everything goes kerflooey. Turns out that winged, 9-foot tall carnivores aren't that easy to control, especially when they exhibit uncanny intelligence and cooperation. Oh, plus the ones that are 9 feet are the small end of the scale.

The dialogue is laughable (the NY Times writer is basically there to infodump and mansplain to everyone), the assertions about Chinese global ambition condescending, and the character development nonexistent. (As soon as shit hits the fan CJ - a veterinarian - turns into Rambo - and she's the only one with good ideas or half a brain, eyeroll.)

I might have been able to overlook all of that - after all, I'm not one to read a thriller about a dragon zoo expecting a modern masterpiece - except the writing is so terribly, terribly awful. There are exclamation points and italics everywhere. Not to mention shifts in tense and other clumsy errors. It reads like a story written by someone with the skills and interests of an 8th-grade boy. There are over 20 redundant, badly drawn maps. And I lost count of how many times Reilly wrote "Chinese" as a modifier when it was so unnecessary. We're inside of a super-secret zoo deep in the heart of China. We KNOW all of the workers and soldiers are Chinese.

Finally, my last gripe: the side characters. They are crushed, disemboweled, and torn to pieces without a flicker of empathy. All but two named Chinese characters die horribly, while only two American characters die. There is a little girl introduced just to have a cute kid in peril to tug at our heartstrings. All of the characters are so wooden and dumb that it's impossible to care. I wanted the dragons to win, because they seemed so much more interesting than every human in this book.

Reilly's explanation of how dragons could plausibly exist and have remained unknown to modern science is a fun one, and in the hands of a competent writer the story could have been fantastic. Sure, it's a Jurassic Park ripoff, but I loved Jurassic Park. All I wanted was to read a zippy story about badass dragons eating people who thought they had everything under control. Was that too much to ask?



View all my reviews

Touch

Touch by Claire North

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Most humans are defined by the one body we get. We change ourselves only through the slow agony of dieting, exercise, plastic surgery, etc. Or we experience the dark drawbacks of the physical body - from overeating, injury, chronic illness, drug abuse. Whoever we are, the grass is always greener in someone else's body.

The narrator of Claire North's Touch knows intimately what it means to inhabit another's body. She is a "ghost" who can wear another person's body like a suit of clothes, and has been doing this so long that her original name, gender, and ethnicity no longer really matter. When she slips into another's skin, she can experience the greener grass for a while and avoid the pain of aging or the inconvenience of suffering consequences.

But a ghost also knows human beings more accurately than they know themselves, and to know someone is to love them. Which is why when an assassin tries to kill her and murders her host, the ghost decides to get to the bottom of the shadowy organization that sent him.

The ghost narrator (who goes by many names but is assigned the name of Kepler by her enemies) likes to readjust her hosts' lives. Whether that means taming the reputation of a society flirt, becoming the loving husband to a previously ignored third wife, or throwing away the drug paraphernalia of a teenaged prostitute, Kepler likes to make projects of her hosts and leave them in a better position than before her arrival. Mostly.

North explores the fascinating implications of a consciousness that can flit from one body to another like a communicable disease. Ghosts suspend a host's consciousness and hijack his or her life, operating invisibly. Hosts may wake after minutes, weeks, or years, unaware of any passage of time or their body's actions in the meantime.

There is sadness and moral ambiguity in Kepler's life. She is very good at running, she tells us, and proves it both literally and also by refusing to question the morality of her own parasitic existence. Kepler prefers willing hosts, but mostly for the convenience. She likes those with good teeth because she has an aversion to pain and the ability to endlessly avoid it. She is also fascinated by the hosts she takes, and calls her attachment to them love. It's easy to like her, though when looked at another way it's a little like having the story told by the protean alien menace from The Thing. The idea isn't new (remember The Host by Stephenie Meyer or The Puppet Masters by Robert Heinlein), but North's execution is fantastic.

Touch is a complex, well-told story that moves at the pace of a thriller. I am looking forward to reading more of Claire North's books in the future.

A Life Discarded: 148 Diaries Found in a Dumpster

A Life Discarded: 148 Diaries Found in a Skip by Alexander Masters

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I've always found other people's diaries fascinating in theory, but in practice they tend to be pretty dull stuff. Most people chew over the same ideas with a dreary repetition, or else they only write when they are in a bad mood. The portrait tends to be skewed either way.

The most entertaining diaries present a self who has an idea of who he or she is, but is showing the reader someone quite different. The modest genius who spills gallons of ink on humbly reciting miniscule personal accomplishments. The argumentative person who insists that the real problem is everyone else.

What makes A Life Discarded: 148 Diaries Found in a Dumpster by Alexander Masters (in the British edition, "Found in a Skip") a fun read is that Masters knows all of these things, but the diarist he discovers doesn't. And yet the mysterious diarist also knows plenty the author has no clue of - his or her gender, age, class, identity....

In places, Masters wants to pontificate over his find more than he wants to discover the identity of his mysteriously discarded diarist. This drags the book very slightly (and thanks to his wife for pointing this out to him!), but his narrative voice is one that I immediately liked because of his knack for describing others in a way that makes them seem fascinating and unique. Especially when they are as fascinating and unique as "Dido [Davies] - a historian, and award-winning biographer, author of two sex manuals under the pseudonym 'Rachel Swift' and the only person in the world who knows where the bones of Sir Thomas More are buried" (page 5). You can't beat a real-life character like Dido.

And in spite of a few dumb parts (handwriting analysis woo-woo), I enjoyed the piecemeal reveal of the secret identity of the overly prolific diary keeper. Although the book has left me with the squirm-inducing thought of how a random self-selected biographer in the future might look at my angsty teenage scribblings. Not a pretty picture.

In spite of it all, Masters has sifted a bit of gold from 148 notebooks packed with dross.

Quotable:

"Diaries are terrible liars. They record dramas out of context, encourage paranoia, rearrange facts, are deliberately biased and self self-justifying, blind you with irrelevance, sensor alternative opinion, exaggerate petty complaints into tragic emblems and, in particular, wallow in the fact that any fool can write about dejection, but describing happiness takes determination and skill." - 81

"Most people sound unbalanced in their diaries (if those diaries are honest), because that's one of their purposes: to let out unspeakable things for a little runaround." - 167

"The diaries teach us that it is too much to be inside anybody's head. It is a horrible place. All that repetition; that endless analysis that doesn't analyze, just mulls a point over and over until it drops dead from banality. What goes on in a persons brain is the opposite of what makes a story live." - 198

The Sorcerer to the Crown

Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



The Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho is exactly how I like my fantasy: eccentric, fun, with a touch of romance.

Zacharias is the newest Sorcerer Royal, wielder of the most powerful magic in England after his surrogate father's untimely passing. He's dealing with the slow ebb of English magic, accusations that he murdered his way into power, and the constant racism he faces as an outsider in a world of snobs - he is a manumitted African slave.

These issues pale in comparison with what he faces when he meets Prunella Gentleman. Prunella has ambitions, secrets, and more than her share of magic, which she as a woman is forbidden to use.

Seeing Prunella and Zacharias confront the world is entertaining. Their reactions to growing up in similar circumstances are very different. If there is a flaw in the plotting, it is Zacharias' passivity. He underreacts to everything from insults to murder attempts and political maneuverings. Prunella, on the other hand, is indomitable. But both are intelligent and principled - my favorite kind of characters.

If you are looking for diverse fantasy, this is your jam. I am looking forward to more of Cho's work, especially the continuation of Prunella and Zacharias' story.

The View from the Cheap Seats

There are books that should be read in pairs, and Neil Gaiman's The View from the Cheap Seats and Terry Pratchett's A Slip of the Keyboard are two that belong together. In fact, the introduction to Pratchett's collected nonfiction is the final essay in Gaiman's collection. If you need a third book (because trilogies are in these days), I would say add Jo Walton's What Makes This Book So Great.

All three collections are from fantasy/science fiction writers who are the best in the game. You will come away with lists and lists of "new" classic authors to check out. (Here's my compilation of Jo Walton's suggestions.)

Here's a short list of the titles and authors I gleaned from The View from the Cheap Seats: Shatterday by Harlan Ellison; The Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker; Billion Year Spree by Brian W. Aldiss; Ghastly Beyond Belief: The Science Fiction and Fantasy Book of Quotations by Neil Gaiman; Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees; Cerebus by Dave Sim; The Innocence and Wisdom of Father Brown by G.K. Chesterton; The 13 Clocks by James Thurber; Votan and Other Novels by John James; Anyhow Stories, Moral and Otherwise by Lucy Clifford; and The King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany.

That doesn't include the authors who are already my favorites: Susanna Clarke, Diana Wynne Jones, C.S. Lewis, Douglas Adams, and so on. In fact, after years of reading fantasy and science fiction, lists like Gaiman's and Walton's make me feel hopelessly uninformed. And it seems Gaiman knows everyone. The literary world must be small!

I'm not going to go into detail about each essay, but there is one that goes with this picture that makes it just priceless.

So Quotable:

"Sometimes fiction is a way of coping with the poison of the world in a way that lets us survive it." - 22

"But then, I don't get only supporting the freedom of the kind of speech you like. If speech needs defending, it's probably because it's upsetting someone." - 74

"Kids censor their own reading, and dullness is the ultimate deterrent." - 85

"What speculative fiction is really good at is not the future, but the present." - 178

"...it would be a poor sort of world if one were only able to read authors who expressed points of view that one agreed with entirely. It would be a bland sort of world if we could not spend time with people who thought differently, and who saw the world from a different place." - 326

"And now go, and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Make good art." - 459

The Secret World of Arrietty

Hayao Miyazaki is a Japanese filmmaker with a genius for interpreting the magic of English children’s literature. As with Howl’s Moving Castle, The Secret World of Arrietty is an adaptation of a book that I adore.

When I say I adore Mary Norton’s The Borrowers series, I mean I was obsessed with it, even more so than with books like The Indian in the Cupboard by Lynn Reid Banks. (This obsession struck me right after my horse phase, and seems as essential a part of my girlhood as anything.)  Riding in the car, I would look out for exposed tree roots and hiding places that would make good Borrower nests. In my bedroom closet, I used pins and string to make it easier for the Borrowers to climb to the top of my shelves. In the backyard, I used leaves and stones to furnish a tiny 'house', imagining what it would be like to see the world from such a tiny perspective.

A teeny tiny jungle of a room - just as it should be

So when I heard that my favorite filmmaker, Hayao Miyazaki, was adapting The Borrowers, I was thrilled. I couldn’t imagine a more perfect imagination to transform this book.

There are beats in The Secret World of Arrietty that seem strange to me: Sho casually telling Arrietty that it’s likely her kind is doomed to extinction (I realize that he is facing his own mortality, but it's still a dick move), the housekeeper’s strangely reckless attitude toward the little people she's heard so much about, and the uncertainty of the ending. Will Sho survive? Will the tiny family? The American version tidies these ambiguities up neatly with narration, but the Japanese version does not.

As with the placid lakeside scenes of Howl’s Moving Castle, Miyazaki is interested in making us feel this world and how the characters live inside of it. The sound of a cat walking through grass is crashingly loud. Crows and rats are menacing, and a human boy’s casual attempts to “help” are disastrously disruptive and terrifying to his tiny neighbors.

Through Miyazaki’s storytelling, I understand why Homily loves her safe, comfortable home furnished with scavenged and repurposed items, and why Arrietty is eager to explore the unimaginably vast world outside. Miyazaki’s films succeed in the realm of fantasy because he is always interested in setting, and worldbuilding is crucial in that genre.

As with any Miyazaki movie distributed by Disney, it can be helpful to watch it twice—once in subtitles with the original Japanese voices, and once with the American dubbing. (Or watch the American dubbing with the subtitles turned.) The versions are noticeably different. For example, Homily Clock, Arrietty’s mother, is considerably altered between versions; her fussiness and nervousness are emphasized for comedic effect in the dubbed, but her concerns seem more rational and less self-centered in the Japanese.

A movie cannot fully match my imagination, but The Secret World of Arrietty transformed my memories and enriched them with Miyazaki’s vision. I love this movie, no matter what its miniature flaws may be.

I am thrilled beyond belief to hear that Miyazaki is planning on coming out of his semi-retirement to expand a short film Kemushi no Boro (Boro the Caterpillar) into a feature-length film. More Miyazaki, please!

A Mother's Reckoning by Sue Klebold

I don't read many sad books, and I think after this one my quota is filled for the next ten years. It may be one you need to read in private so you can ugly-cry.

Sue Klebold's purpose in A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy is not just to tell her side of the story, but also to advocate for brain health awareness, particularly when it comes to depression and suicide. She talks about her experiences as Dylan's mother; what she saw, what she missed, and what she wishes would have happened. I approached this book with considerable skepticism, but the apparent honesty of her narration won me over, as did her emphasis on not justifying her son, but trying to show other parents what she missed in hopes that they could prevent suicide and murder.

Mid-book, Sue Klebold gives a very brief description of what happened at Columbine High School in 1999 when her son Dylan Klebold and his friend Eric Harris murdered 13 of their classmates, injured 24 more, and finally committed suicide inside the school library. The media storm, ensuing financial, health, and emotional crises that she and her family suffered are all recounted throughout the rest of the book based on her journals and research.

There is a tendency after a violent tragedy to blame the nearest person, and that person is most often the mom. I think that Sue makes her case that Dylan Klebold was an intelligent but mentally unhealthy person who chose his own path, and hid his suffering from the people who would have helped him. Hindsight is always 20/20, and throughout the book she mourns the lost opportunities to reach her beloved son, while not excusing herself for mistakes she believes she made.

In my library in a prison, we collect books in "reentry" topics. One important reentry category is victim awareness, focused on helping people (who often have trouble thinking beyond their own desires) to see the effects their actions have on others. This book is not only a strong call to action in matters of brain health (Sue Klebold's chosen term), but also one that I hope will make people rethink black and white assumptions about blame and guilt. Finger-pointing may be emotionally satisfying, but it rarely prevents the next tragedy.

If you want a journalistic account of the events at Columbine, definitely read Dave Cullen's excellent Columbine, which Sue Klebold's story largely agrees with. Sue Klebold also mentions a few other books, but one that interested me most was Why Kids Kill: Inside the Minds of School Shooters by Peter Langman. A Mother's Reckoning is a story that will certainly break your heart.

Quotable:

"The death of someone who has committed a great crime may be for the best, but any dead child is some parent's vanquished hope. This mournful book is Sue's act of vicarious repentance." - Andrew Solomon, introduction"

"To the rest of the world, Dylan was a monster; but I had lost my child." - 58

"A friend told me once that the brain 'on grief' is like an older-model computer running a program drastically too complex for its capacity - it grinds and stutters and halts over the simplest calculation. It took great effort just to hear what others said." - 117

"It can be hard to differentiate between someone who is genuinely getting out of a cycle of depression, and someone who feels relief because they know they're going to die." - 217

The Wolves at the Door

The Wolves at the Door by Judith L. Pearson is subtitled 'The story of America's greatest female spy', and I don't think that is an exaggeration. Virginia Hall was born into a well-off American family and could have had a quiet life tending a Victory garden during the war. But she was an intelligent and ambitious woman, so she chose a different life.

Before the start of WWII, Hall worked at several US consulates in Europe, trying to gain entrance to become a Foreign Sevice Officer. Her gender stood in her way, but so did something else: she lost part of her left leg below the knee in a hunting accident in Turkey. Her career hopes dashed just before the start of the war, she volunteered as an ambulance driver in France. Then came the Nazi occupation, and the establishment of the Vichy regime.

Hall's disgust for the invasion of a country she loved made her the perfect candidate for the Special Operations Executive (SOE), a British government shadow body whose mission was warfare by subversion. America had not entered the war, so Hall joined the British. They trained her and posted her in Vichy France, where she recruited Resistance members, aided stranded airmen, and supplied intelligence back to the SOE. Oh, and wrote articles for an American newspaper as part of her cover.

Her work drew the attention of the sadistic Klaus Barbie, a Gestapo intelligence officer known as "The Butcher of Lyon". Posters went up with the nickname 'La Dame qui Boite' (the Limping Lady), describing her as 'the most dangerous of Allied spies. We must find her and destroy her'.

After America entered the war and later the Germans eradicated the zone libre, Hall fled across the Pyrenees into Spain. She didn't tell the men she escaped with about her wooden leg, and kept up a brutal pace. The escape was not flawless, but eventually she made it back to London.

Not content to stay in safety in spite of her new notoriety and the Gestapo hunt, Hall learned how to operate a radio and transferred to the American intelligence service, the OSS (Office of Strategic Services). And went back to Paris in disguised as a frail old lady to hide her limp.

There she continued her activity, reporting troop movements, coordinating nighttime supply drops, and recruiting and directing saboteurs. Her command of French and German helped her along the way, as did her good instincts and discretion. She was recognized with high honors by the British, American, and French governments, but didn't see why doing her job was so special.

The biography is capably written, and Hall's exploits are rarely a slog. There is a brief bibliography - though I am the type of reader who wishes for much more detailed endnotes. I want to know what sources Pearson used to learn Hall's thoughts and feelings, since she was never able to interview Hall directly. In the acknowledgements, Pearson writes that 'Virginia Hall was once asked why she never told her story. Her reply was that she was never asked.' I think it's an example of Hall's innate modesty and perhaps some leftover habits from years of covert operations.

If you are looking for the story of courage, superb judgment and incredible danger, Hall's story has it all. What a person! During the chaos and moral darkness of WWII, people like her were the reason for hope that the world could recover. It is an important story, and I'm glad that it has been told.

Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age

In Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age, clinical psychologist Sherry Turkle talks a lot about the way face-to-face conversation changes the way people think about each other. In her interviews, people tell her openly of their disappointment in being ignored by friends who are focused on their phones.

In my own social circles, I've noticed that while people do pull out their phones in the midst of a group game or conversation, they don't always get away with it. They are often berated for it, in fact, and guilted into re-engaging with the people around them. My phone doesn't ring a lot these days, so for me it's less of a distraction!

I recommend this book to readers who want to hear a clear, balanced perspective on the consequences of constantly divided attention on our society. It will give you a lot to think about, and may start a discussion or two.

Quotable:

"But if we don’t have experience with solitude—and this is often the case today—we start to equate loneliness and solitude. This reflects the impoverishment of our experience. If we don’t know the satisfactions of solitude, we only know the panic of loneliness."

Maximum Security Book Club

This was a book I was curious to read the moment I heard of it, and at the same time hesitant to get into. Fortunately, getting it through interlibrary loan and having a time limit really helps with my motivation. I work in a prison library, and I make an effort to separate myself from anything work-related in my regular life. (That's why after all these years I still haven't gotten into Orange is the New Black or bothered to watch Shawshank Redemption. Too much prison!) But I did choose to read Maximum Security Book Club by Mikita Brottman. It felt like a professional obligation.

First, the good: I love any book about books, about discussions about books, etc. And I am truly grateful to the people who give up their time to enter a prison to provide programming. Volunteers can be like a breath of fresh air, giving an outside perspective into a difficult environment. They provide pro-social opportunities for men who sometimes have trouble with polite interaction with others. They show people who have been send "away" by society that someone still cares for their well-being. They give opportunities for people with few options to learn and grow.

And now the caveats.

Brottman has very few good things to say about prison staff, and that offends me as a corrections professional. (Full disclosure: I am proud to work in an extremely well-run prison.) Volunteers come in once a week, a month, or a year and often hear the complaints of the incarcerated. What they don't get to see is the dailiness of life in a prison - the 24/7/365 cycle. There is no such thing as a prison snow day, or a holiday, or any day when everything shuts down. That is never an option. Letting down your guard and overlooking security procedures, which often feel pointless and burdensome (I hear management staff say "good security is not convenient"), is also not an option. Corrections staff deal with incarcerated people who are frequently unlikable, rude, and self-absorbed - not to mention violent, manipulative, and litigious. But no volunteer gets to see that side of the people they deal with - they will see an offender on his or her best behavior.

In short, please cut corrections professionals some slack. In a single day their job may go from boring to frustrating to dangerous and back, and they truly don't get enough credit for what they do in dealing with people that society has decreed need to "go away." (Just look at rates of divorce and early death among corrections professionals to gauge the level of stress that is part of the profession.)

Brottman has a Ph.D. in English from Oxford, and brings in books for her group that are very challenging. She doesn't mention using questionnaires or other methods to assess the education level or reading tastes of the men she works with. Many in prison have not even finished grade school, much less high school. Reading Heart of Darkness may not have been the best choice. Though I am a believer in not underestimating what texts people are capable of dealing with, a little more research and preparation on Brottman's part may have netted her better conversations in her reading group.

Then there is using Lolita as a text. This is an area where more research and better judgment definitely would have helped her. The stigma against child molesters ("cho-mos") and sex offenders ("SOs") in prison is a daily source of conflict. SOs are often targets for violent retribution, extortion, and daily bullying. A book like Lolita (though it is a work of genius, and beautifully written), brings up issues that are taboo in a correctional setting for very good reason.

Finally, Brottman commits an error so great I am amazed that she is still able to continue her group: she has personal contact with the men after their release. In a book group it is natural to feel close to people you are sharing time and ideas with, but every man in a prison is a convicted criminal. It is unprofessional and potentially dangerous to put yourself into compromising situation with an ex-con if you are still volunteering at a prison.

Brottman does get many details of prison life right, and think that she comes into some great insights on human nature. I just think that she could have approached her group differently and gotten greater results.

All this to say: if you are looking for an extraordinary memoir about leading a book club in a repressive setting, try Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi. If you want one that is only average, settle for Maximum Security Book Club.

Quotable:

"Prisoners aren't supposed to have any secrets. Everything is supposed to be open and transparent. Private tastes and preferences are a luxury of the free." - 83

"Over time, however, what was once mysterious and alluring became difficult and confusing, and while I continued to sympathize instinctively with the men, their suffering began to exhaust me, and I realized that rather than learning more about them, I was simply learning how little I'm able to know." - 217

Harry Potter Redux

In looking at this cover, please note the words "Original Rehearsal Script". For those of you dying to read another 600-page Harry Potter novel, this is not it.

Instead, this is the script for a stage play. You can finish it in an hour or two, faster if you're an Evelyn Woods graduate!

This is not the door-stopper I hoped for, but I'm still glad I read it. Rowling revisits her themes of family and friendship, and Harry's tragic past, but with new characters. I was glad that she FINALLY made some sympathetic, non-bullying Slytherin characters. (Yeah, Snape was a bully. Even if his death was heroic, he was still a jerk most of the time.)

I don't want to give away the story here, but it follows Harry's son Albus Severus (poor kid!) and Draco Malfoy's son Scorpius (um, a name a former Death Eater probably should have avoided giving his kid) from the postscript of the seventh book to their own difficult Hogwarts careers. We see all of the familiar characters and places (though as one reviewer rightly pointed out, Ron has been relegated to comedic relief, and that's a disservice to his character), sped up decades into the future.

I got misty, I laughed, and I am still desperately hopeful that Rowling with revisit the wizarding world she invented, even if she never writes Harry's name ever again. There are so many stories she could tell, and I'm the kind of girl who loves me an extended universe.

I am also dying to see the play, just to see how they manage the special effects.

Don't Get Caught by Kurt Dinan

This book combines my two great loves: books about revenge, and books about prank wars.

I suppose this eccentric, very specific set of loves comes from The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart, a top-notch book about a girl proving exactly what she's worth to a boys-only secret society.

Max, the narrator of Don't Get Caught, and four other high-school misfits find themselves set up by a long-lived secret prank society, the Chaos Club. After getting into trouble and becoming notorious, Max and company decide to team up Ocean's Eleven style to get revenge.

And like Frankie Landau-Banks, Max sometimes questions why he's choosing to do what he does. Not that it stops him from pulling off some by turns atrocious and brilliant pranks at his school, in the company of his new friends. Along the way he grows up a bit and learns some stuff, but I was in it for the prank war.

There are some adult themes in this book, as well as some very non-adult, juvenile jokes. Enter at your own risk.

What really bumped this book up to the full five stars is the very last page. It's the best possible way to end this story. I had guessed part of the twist, but I definitely didn't guess how that last scene would go. You'll have to read it yourself to find out.

One Punch Man

If you're a fan of manga, or even if you're not, you should check out One Punch Man by Yusuke Marata. The first book in the series is a collection of short stories featuring our hero, who ticks off a monster ravaging City B (there are cities A-Z, apparently, all monster-prone) by telling the monster he doesn't have a back story. One Punch Man is just there for fun.

Unfortunately for him, One Punch Man's idea of a good time is a good fight, and no one seems able to provide him with one. He's a hero with ennui and a sense of humor.

So this bald warrior isn't really Aang from Avatar: The Last Airbender, but I like to think he could be Aang in his twenties. It's an outrageous, funny comic book. I look forward to reading the others in the series.