A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

What to say about what may be my favorite series? This is not the first time I have read A Game of Thrones, and may not even be the last. My plan is to re-read all four existing books before book 5 is released in July of this year. (YAY) This is timely also because in April the Game of Thrones TV series will begin on HBO. I am so excited about that! It stars Sean Bean and also has Peter Dinklage and Lena Headey (Sarah Connor!!!).


A Game of Thrones is the first book in Martin's amazing epic fantasy series, referred to as A Song of Ice and Fire. It is set in a world where seasons last years and vary significantly in length. Winters are apparently pretty intense! A Game of Thrones is all about characters, politics, loyalties and ambitions. You won't find hero's journey type quests in this series, or elf armies battling uruk-hai knock offs, but it does not lack for adventure, action or even violence.

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

The Tipping Point is about how ideas take root and trends start small and get huge. It's about the forces necessary for ideas to spread and, to an extent, ways to help them spread. It goes through a bunch of really interesting case studies and sort of ties them together in terms of the small factors that cause major change.


I wish I had read this book ten years ago. It was first published in 2000 and is a tiny bit dated. I still feel like it's a relevant and important book, just some concepts don't seem as new as they might have back then. And, a lot issues relevant to the book have changed since 2000. For example, Facebook.

I thought the in-depth case studies were by far the most interesting part of the book. Lots of detailed explanations of important psychological experiments and successfully spread ideas, such as Sesame Street and Hush Puppies shoes. He talks about classic psych experiments like the Zimbardo Stanford prison experiment, (which was old news a long time ago I'm pretty sure) and newer (then) research such as on how children learn. I eat this stuff up.

There were several instances in the book where he suggested that X caused Y when it *seemed* to be showing only a correlation. I know he is too smart to mistake correlation for causation in this book, but the context made me wonder. There are points when he seems to leap to conclusions when they really require more proof in the text. For example, he cited a study showing that the number of "high-status" professionals living in a neighborhood is highly related to teen pregnancy rates and high school drop out rates. The way it's written makes it clear he means that the presence of enough high status professionals CAUSES teens to stay in school and not get knocked up. Maybe, but there are certainly several other factors that affect BOTH the number of high status workers and the drop out/pregnancy rates in a neighborhood. Is some third factor (really awesome teachers, for example) causing both? The reader is left unsure from the book. There are a few bits like that in this book. Not necessarily wrong, just in need of further clarification.

One thing in this book that I am pretty sure is incorrect is his description of the murder of Kitty Genovese. She is famous in psychology for supposedly being murdered while several neighbors watched and didn't bother to call the police. He uses the incident to describe how important context is in human behavior. It's certainly been proven that people are less likely to help someone in need if there are lots of other people around. The thing is, the story about Ms. Genovese's neighbors doing nothing while she was murdered has been largely debunked. Superfreakanomics has a much more plausible and well-cited explanation.

Another issue I took with the book was the teen smoking chapter. It talked about teen smoking, and how that trend took root and why teens keep starting smoking. The emphasis was on how it might be possible to get fewer people addicted to cigarettes. OK. The problem I had with the chapter was that it discussed another horrifying "trend" infecting teenagers in some areas: suicide. It went into research on how the idea of suicide is contagious, and news coverage of suicides appears to inspire other similar suicides. He used the lessons learned by researchers in the areas of suicide "trends" and attempted to apply them to teen smoking. This raised red flags for me. I realize teens getting hooked on cigarettes is not ideal, but it seems like a very small issue compared to teens taking their own lives! I wish his emphasis had been on keeping people from killing themselves, not arguably trivializing research on suicide by attempting to apply it to cigarettes.

Despite a flaw or to, and being a teensy bit outdated, I would recommend this book to someone interesting in psychology, economics or marketing. I think it still has a lot of useful things to say, and really interesting case studies. Assuming what is in the book is most correct, I feel like I learned a lot!

4/5

The Humanoids by Jack Williamson

The Humanoids is set in a universe in which humans have colonized an unknown (and apparently high) number of proximate planets, and have access to interstellar flight. At some point, capable androids (the humanoids) were created to protect and help people. The problem is that they do it too well! The book follows the human resistance to the humanoids. This review contains minor spoilers, but nothing to obviate the book!


I was initially prepared to be disappointed by this book. I immediately noticed that some of the language was dated. I don't tend to like classic science fiction as much as newer stuff, a lot of it seems heavy on the science and light on things that make for good fiction, like character development. This might have been the case here to a limited extent, but I still really enjoyed the book.

Dead Enough by Cathie Cameron

Dead Enough is a suspense/thriller novel about a woman torn between her abusive past and her future. There is an exciting twist ending that I won't spoil, but most of the book is about the main character's turmoil over her family.


The story is really engages you, worrying about what will happen with Charlotte and her horrible family! It's a very quick read, fast-paced and never dull. It gets into a little bit of detail in the Charlotte's abusive childhood, but nothing too disturbing or nightmare-inducing I didn't think.

I think the most interesting part of the book is the take on dementia, old age, and family roles in caregiving. It's an interesting perspective on all of that, it seemed pretty realistic to me.

I feel like I should disclose that I know the author of this book and am totally biased! I really did enjoy the book though, I highly recommend you check it out.

Don't Vote by P.J. O'Rourke

Do you ever find reading things makes you physically uncomfortable? Reading rape scenes in books usually does that to me. So did this book, oddly. The spun out half-truths and fallacies made me a little ill. Needless to say, I didn't care for this book too much.


Don't Vote is O'Rourke's attempt to humorously describe all kinds of facets of politics in America. His main message, other than pushing his political bias, is that government is too big and full of flawed people. This book won't teach you anything, I didn't find it remarkably entertaining, and it is full of spite and spinning of the truth.



O'Rourke has a formula for his humor, at least in this book, which is the first and last thing of his I am planning on reading! He takes analogies really far. That's it, that's the humor in this book. It was mildly amusing to me at first, but got really old once I had noticed the formula.

I bought this book after hearing about it on NPR. O'Rourke came on the show and read the chapter on climate change. It's about a page long and I found it to be mildly amusing and fairly insightful. As far as I can tell, it's the most/only insightful part of the book. I recommend you read this by going to your bookstore and reading the climate change chapter (starts on page 149 in my copy) and not actually buy the book.

Here are some fairly representative samples of things that made me go, "wait, what??" while reading this book. I could elaborate, and these don't touch on his major fallacies.

...terrorism is not... just a product of left-wing politics and its offshoot fascism. (p 181)

Gun ownership is crucial to the preservation of American freedoms. We may have to shoot Democrats. It happened in 1861 and it could happen again. (p 165)

So if you think analogies taken really far are hilarious, and the quotes above amuse or comfort you, you might actually like this book. I did not. My brief foray into reading political books ends now.

Emily pointed out to me that leaving out what this guy's political position is makes it harder for any readers of this blog (are there any readers of this blog?) to judge whether or not they would enjoy it. OK, he's a libertarian/conservative. He complains about tea-baggers, republicans, etc. but mostly about democrats.

Vampire Empire Book One: The Greyfriar by CLay Griffith and Susan Griffith

The Gryefriar is set in steampunk, vampire ridden earth. The planet previously had a vampire uprising, and vampires inhabited the colder regions of the world with human civilization clustered around the equator. The princess of a major human empire is taken by a vampire clan, and all kinds of factions are determined to get her and use for their own purposes.


The Greyfriar is marketed as a steampunk book. It's sort of hard to see why that's the case, as steampunk is a fairly minor element in the setting that has little impact on the plot or characters. There are things and people with old-timey sciency names, and characters wear goggles and travel by blimp. That's about the extent of the steampunk in it.



I feel fairly ambivalent about this book. It is pretty generic and nothing struck me as overly original. The little surprise that wasn't quite a twist was immediately predictable to me. But I really enjoyed reading it. Somehow, despite the vanilla plot and questionable writing, it drew me in and kept me very engaged. But I think what makes me like it most is that it surprised me at the end with a really touching event that made me cry my brains out after I finished the book.

I find the third person, universally omniscient perspective really distracting. I am used to books where the perspective changes from chapter to chapter (probably my preferred narrative style), but not sentence to sentence. I find it incredibly confusing and distracting when the author is describing multiple characters' thoughts and perceptions all mixed in together. It seems clumsy or somehow unrealistic. It just doesn't make sense to me and literally trips me up every time I encounter it. I realize it's a style choice, arguably as valid as any other perspective, but it really diminishes my enjoyment of books. Even first person or second person (it exists, it's weird) is less 'unnatural' to me!

I sort of hate to say this, but The Greyfriar would probably appeal to the twilight crowd. Spunky princess. Mysterious vampires in cool outfits. Unlikely love. Drama at a very teenage level... It definitely appealed to the lovelorn 13 year old in me, more than the cynical 25 year old!

Despite the horrible things I am saying, I really inexplicably enjoyed this book and would recommend it to fans of light fantasy who don't mind plots centering around spunky princesses and love stories. I definitely am not going to be recommending it the the steampunk enthusiasts I know, because that is a marketing gimmick for the series more than a legitimate plot element in my opinion! The second book in the series isn't out yet, but I will probably be reading it when it arrives.

Breaking the Spell by Daniel Dennett

I don't even know what to say about this book. It took me a month to read, and just almost put me off reading in general for ever. I had wanted to read Dennett for a while, as he was the only one of the "four horsemen" that I hadn't read. This book was my book club's selection for February, I didn't even come close to finishing in time. So here we are.


Breaking the Spell is supposed to be an examination of religion, including its causes and results, maybe looking at whether overall religion is a negative or positive impact. Dennett is a notable atheist, but in Breaking the Spell he sort of tries not to write in a pro-atheism manner. It's not very convincing. He pretended to be unbiased, but it was abundantly clear throughout that the book was not a disinterested analysis of religion, but largely for its demise.

The audience Dennett thought he was writing for is incredibly unclear. It certainly wasn't for well-read atheists or anyone who has read more relevant things about the origins and effects associated with religion. Dennett claims that the book is written towards religious people, hoping they will read it and step back and really look at their religion. Somehow I don't see this happening. You wouldn't even have to be very dogmatic to automatically reject Dennett's ideas in this book, his writing makes it almost necessary to reject what he says, somehow! A typical, "unbiased" passage from Breaking the Spell:

It might be that the best that can be said for religion is that it helps some people achieve the level of citizenship and morality typically found in brights (atheists)." (page 55)

His little hypothetical judgments were not very helpful, and certainly reflected his views, regardless of how disinterested he was trying to come off. So many things in this book are well suited to driving away anyone not already in his camp.

This book was also very rambling, repetitive and boring. It never really got anywhere, it mostly just kept saying, "this is what I'll show" without showing much. This was not a conclusive, persuasive treatise on why atheism is better than religion, although maybe that's what Dennett wanted it to be. There were many, many times I finished a paragraph (or page, or chapter...) and realized I didn't remember the point of what I had just read. It was written in such a way that the point of many parts of the book was really unclear.

In summary, this book is a big meh. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, religious, atheist, or whatever. It's just an epic waste of time that would probably really irritate a religious person for no good reason!

Test of Metal by Matthew Woodring Stover

I am not sure what I expected this book to be like. Stover is one of my very favorite authors, his Heroes Die series is really amazing. Test of Metal is a Magic the Gathering novel, which are notoriously terrible literature. So I guess it averages out. You can read Bret's summary of Test of Metal here.


Test of Metal is about a powerful creator of machines, Tezzeret, who falls under the power of a malicious dragon and is forced on a quest. It takes place in two time frames, one immediately after the other, with lots of switching in between. This was pretty confusing since it wasn't immediately obvious to me what was going on when characters were going back and forth between different situations.

Stover really excels at a certain type of story. A badass character is placed in a situation that shouldn't be survivable. All kinds of stuff is trying to catch him, kill him, eat him, whatever. (I use the male pronoun because the character is male in Test of Metal. It should be noted, however, that the main badass character was a woman in Iron Dawn and Jericho Moon) The badass character's only significant goal is survival. He is just such a badass that he fights his way out of the impossible situation. Barely. So Tezzeret is a slightly less interesting version of Stover's other characters. (mostly Cain from Heroes Die and Barra from Iron Dawn)

Surprisingly, I didn't feel like I was missing out by not having read previous Magic the Gathering novels. I tried to read one once, but it was too stupid to even tolerate. Test of Metal explained the setting, characters, magic, etc. sufficiently that it was not a problem to jump into the middle like I did here.

This book was what it was, and it did that ok. It was probably one of the better Magic the Gathering novels, because it had a Stover plot and Stoverized characters, but was still in a setting that makes no sense and has overpowered characters. I would really only recommend this book to someone who was crazy about Matthew Woodring Stover anyway, and then with hesitation. It wasn't a terrible book, but it was confusing in parts and not that groundbreaking or exciting.

Burning Alive by Shannon Butcher

I did it, I read a romance novel. No one can say I haven't given the genre a chance now. It is not an experience I care to repeat!


This is not a G rated review, because it is about an adult book.


Burning Alive is a fantasy/romance story set in modern America. It might have given a year and a city that I failed to notice, even. It follows Helen, a woman who has had a vision her entire life of burning alive while a tall, dark and handsome man observes and smiles. When she sees this man, Drake, he turns out to be one of a dying race of super-powerful, ancient, beefy demon-hunters. Turns out, earth is the battlefield on which these beefcakes and demons are waging a war. Drake and Helen have all kinds of brain orgasms when he touches her, and he goes into convulsions or something when she pulls away so he drags her around for a while until they solve that problem. Of course, they are both instantly irresistibly attracted to one another despite Helen's fear and physical and mental deficiencies. That's about enough of that plot.

I don't know if this is normal in romance stories, but I was a little weirded out by it. The men in the story were domineering and overbearing, and pretty much did what they wanted to the female objects of their affection. Which the women liked. I take issue with the idea that women want to be controlled and basically forced into things, even if the ultimate goal is all kinds of explosive orgasms. Drake was literally dragging Helen around for most of the book and throwing her onto beds or holding her in place BY HER THROAT! How is that ok??

My other problem with this book, which I actually think might be true of most romance stories, is the characterization of the main character. She was really, really weak. In all ways she was this feminine ideal of powerlessness, kindness, and hormones. Not exactly a role model. She kept needing rescued, kept screwing everything up because she freaked out. And woke up in Drake's strong, comforting arms, blah blah blah. I think she was written this way so that, in theory, the reader could insert herself emotionally into the story. Or maybe I am just a misogynistic cynic to think so poorly of my fellow lady readers!

I don't know if I should condemn all of the romance genre based on this one book (which, incidentally, I read because it was my Scifi/Fantasy book club's pick once) which may not be representative of the entire genre. There are probably better romance novels out there, maybe even ones with strong female characters and incontrovertibly consensual sex! I don't really like reading about sex though. I would rather read a good story that isn't obligated to talk about people's erections straining their jeans, or their nipples hardening every few pages. So I think that's it for me and romance!

I would be very interested to see a defense of the genre, or better yet this book from someone else who has read it. I just don't get it!