Recent reads (in brief)

The Red Tent, by Anita Diamant

The fictionalized saga of several women from the Old Testament, as narrated by Dinah, the daughter of Jacob and Leah. A better read than most "bestsellers" and book club selections.

Bear Flag Rising : the Conquest of California, 1846, by Dale Walker

The U.S. of the nineteenth century was about as aggressive and acquisitive as they come. Walker tells a tale of hypocrisy, greed, and ambition.

Celtic Lore, by Ward Rutherford

An extensive but somewhat unfocused collection of examples of Celtic lore and customs that have survived in European culture. The author's thesis seems to be that the Celts had a greater cultural impact that is usually attributed to them.

Metaphors we live by, by George Lakoff

Lakoff's writings on politics and communication have been highly recommended on DailyKos and elsewhere. However, I wasn't particularly impressed by this book. He seems to expend a great deal of effort proving that much of the English language and the thought processes that underlie speech are made up of metaphors. No duh, Sherlock. Perhaps Don't Think of an Elephant will carry the analysis a bit further.

The Atrocity Archives, by Charles Stross

H.P. Lovecraft meets cyberpunk, courtesy of a secret government organization called The Laundry, which spends its time making sure that theoretical physicists, computer programmers, and "stoned artists from Austin, Texas" don't accidentally create energy patterns that will release the demonic beings that dwell "at the bottom of the Mandelbrot set." Great geeky fun.

The Double Shadow, by Clark Ashton Smith

This is a slim collection of otherwise hard-to-find CAS short stories recently collected and republished by Wildside Press. They don't quite hit the mark established by Smith's Averoigne stories, but they're pleasant enough. The Voyage of King Euvoran seems imitative of Dunsany. The Double Shadow is reminiscent of a Lovecraft story filtered through CAS's exotic fantastical settings rather than HPL's haunted New England. The other four stories are typical CAS exercises in literary decadance, in which plot is less important than the creation of a langorous and exotic atmosphere. The Maze of the Enchanter is atmospheric and disturbing, if a bit predictable to anyone who's read CAS's other tales of self-absorbed and self-indulgent sorcerors. The Willow Landscape is an uncharacteristically gentle story of an unusual enchantment. Not bad, although for those unfamiliar with CAS, Arkham House's collection A Rendezvous in Averoigne is a better place to start.

Recollections in black and white, by Eric Sloane

A slim collection of pen-and-ink drawings of historic buildings, with Sloane's commentary on their significance and his techniques for portraying them. I always enjoy glancing through his work, whether he's describing buildings, or old tools, or any other aspect of American life in days gone by.

Voelker's Pond : a Robert Traver Legacy, by photographer Ed Wargin, with essays by James McCullough

This book was given to me when I left the Queen City of the North. It's largely a collection of color photographs and personal recollections of its namesake, the private fishing camp of John Voelker. Voelker was a prosecutor and judge from the Upper Peninsula who, under the pen-name Robert Traver, wrote tales of courtroom drama such as Anatomy of a Murder and odes to troutfishing such as Trout Madness. His prescription for warding off the pestilential insects of the northern forests may be of particular interest to Fiend: "If you are hardy enough, smoke Italian cigars. They smell like burning peat bog mixed with smoldering Bermuda onions but they're the best damned unlabeled DDT on the market; all mosquitoes in the same township immediately shrivel and zoom to earth. {Fellow fishermen occasionally follow suit.}"

The Eye of the World, by Robert Jordan

I really can't put my finger on exactly why I haven't enjoyed this book. The characters are fairly well-drawn and sympathetic, and unlike some "best-selling" authors, Jordan does write coherent sentences that more-or-less make sense from one chapter to the next. But for some reason I just can't seem to get interested enough in the story to enjoy it.