Monday, January 31, 2005
8. Smoke Detector by Eric Wright
Eric Wright is a Canadian mystery writer, whose main character, Inspector Charlie Salter, works for the Toronto Metropolitan Police. This is the first one I've read, but he's published tons and has a great reputation. The mystery was light, about an antique dealer who died of smoke inhalation in a suspicious fire in his shop. It was well put together and had some interesting characters. What kept me into it more was the Inspector and the life around him. This is a pretty common set up in mysteries, where the detective solves a different mystery each book, but his or her own life follows a greater story arc that keeps the reader hooked. In this case, Salter is on the outs with the force because he doesn't follow the politics well. He also has two boys, including a teenager with whom he can barely relate. He's old school and kind of funny about it. I wouldn't recommend that you run out and buy this book, but I'm going to be keeping my eyes open for any others in the series if I have nothing to read. It's also cool that they take place in Toronto, because I knew a lot of the locations.
7. The War of the Worlds
The narrator and his story about being separated from his wife is basically a very thin vessel to hold Wells' speculation on what an invasion from Mars would look like and how it would effect Victorian England. The first half of the book is very similar in structure to many apocalyptic classics, where civilized people first remain ignorant of the danger, then don't take it seriously, then get worried, then totally freak out and revert to a more and more savage state. Wells describes this process by showing small vignettes that he or his brother witness during their escape: crowded train platforms, looting, horses and weapons being confiscated by self-empowered local militias, etc.
Wells is ultimately a scientific moralist and this book fundamentally rests on the notion that man is in no way ethically superior to any other creature. We just happen to have an intelligence that privileges us with perspective. Referring to the martians, he discounts any rancor towards them:
And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?
Constantly, he compares himself and other humans when they encounter martians to how animals must feel when encountering humans.
It's a short book and an engaging read. Wells is a great writer. His sentences are strong. He writes with some of the complexity of the english of his period, but you always sense a direct honesty behind it. War of the Worlds was written in 1898, when they didn't have phones or planes, which makes the details and consistency of his vision even more astounding. His science fiction barely dates.
Monday, January 24, 2005
6. Ces Enfants de ma Vie par Gabrielle Roy
The second part is almost a novella and more complex. Here she goes into her relationship with the oldest boy in the class, Mérédic, a wild rebel who rides a horse to school when he does come and causes nothing but trouble. As she learns about the source of his problems, she begins to sympathize with him and they end up getting very close. He's 14 and she's only 18 and there is a lot of erotic and romantic tension. He is half-native and shows her the natural world while she tries to get him connected to studying. There are some incredibly beautiful descriptions of the prairie landscape.
Ces Enfantt de ma Vie has been translated into english as The Children of my Heart and I'd recommend it to anyone, but especially teachers.
Thursday, January 20, 2005
5. The Thought Gang by Tibor Fischer
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
4. Sur le Seuil par Patrick Senécal
Monday, January 10, 2005
3. Bangkok 8 by John Burdett
Thursday, January 06, 2005
2. Put a Lid on It by Donald E. Westlake
1. The Crystal World by J.G. Ballard
Credit due to the Lantzvillager for turning me on to these.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)