Book Log 2015 #28: Seveneves by Neal Stephenson

If you ever wondered what would happen if the moon suddenly broke into several large pieces, this book is for you.

As it turns out, having the moon break into several large pieces would be a bad thing. The large pieces, as they collide with each other, would create smaller pieces, and at some point in that process the smaller pieces would start to fall to Earth. And not stop for several hundred years (if not longer). In this case, the people of Earth have comparatively little time - two or three years at most - to figure out the best way to save whatever remnant of humanity it can.

That takes up a majority of the book, with the eventual plan threatened at every turn by the venality of politicians and the dangers of living and working in space. Orbital mechanics is involved. A lot.

Move forward 5000 years. A new human civilization (or, maybe more accurately, seven new human civilizations) based in space is beginning to reinhabit an Earth. But it's not going as smoothly as it appears, as seen when a landing party investigates what's behind some mysterious sightings in one part of the planet.

It's an epic work on an epic scale (what was the last book Stephenson wrote that was under 800 pages?), and it is very entertaining. Still not sure I fully buy how things turned out in the future (that the seven Eves of the title would lead to seven human races with noticeable distinctions between the seven), but the combination of genetic engineering and time (and Stephenson's imagination) doesn't put that out of reach. Probably his best book since Cryptonomicon.

Book Log 2015 #27: The City Under the Skin by Geoff Nicholson

Women in an unnamed city are being kidnapped, tattooed with cryptic markings, and then let go otherwise none the worse for wear. This draws the attention of one of the city's leading criminals, a killer with a map obsession who sees the markings as related to both his work and his hobby. He recruits a low-level hood trying to make good to get these women for him, a process which winds up bringing a rare map store clerk and a mysterious woman together in investigating just what these women represent, and how much danger everyone is in.

The book is a perfect marriage of Nicholson's crime fiction past and his interest in urban decay (prior to this novel he wrote the non-fiction book Walking in Ruins). Each character is compelling without being overly complex or unlikely, and the story does a great job of blending the personal aspects of the mystery with the larger, more common themes of crime fiction (the politics of organized crime, political corruption, etc.).

I really enjoyed this book, and look forward to delving into the author's previous works.

(Popsugar Reading Challenge: a book chosen based on its cover)

Book Log 2015 #26: The Alphabet House by Jussi Adler-Olsen

This departure from the Department Q novels is set during World War II and the Munich Olympics. In the first part, we follow a pair of British airmen who, after being shot down, escape from their pursuers by jumping on a train. It turns out to be a medical train, and the duo survive by pretending to be patients, almost all of whom are catatonic. Their ruse proves too good, and they are both sent to a special medical facility - the Alphabet House in question - for the treatment of psychological cases. The pair take very different routes in trying to maintain their ruse while avoiding the patients who are also faking, and will do anything to protect their secrets.

The story moves ahead to the 1970s, when one of the pair sets out to find his former mate. This descends into a longish game of cat and mouse with those other patients who are now part of German society and are still willing to do anything to protect their secrets.

Both sections of the book feel over long - the 1970s section in particular, which reminded me of The Marco Effect a little bit with action padding the story. On the other hand, this is a bit of a labor of love, as Adler-Olsen got the idea for the book in part from his parents and their discussions of psychology.  I didn't care for this book as much as the Department Q novels, but it is a different sort of war novel (the author goes so far as to state that it's not a war novel at all in the preface), so it could be worth a look if you're looking for a WW2 novel with a different approach.

Book Log 2015 #25: The Fear Index by Robert Harris

This book takes one of the growing trends in the financial sector - the use of algorithms and AI in tracking markets and making trades based on automated predictions - and takes it to the place where Michael Critchton would have taken it were he still alive.

Alex Hoffman is a world-renowned scientist who teams up with an investment banker to create a fund that makes everyone rich. But when they move on to the next level, trying to create a system that will use an actual fear index - one that reflects insecurities in the market - things start to spiral out of control.

The main drawback for me with this book is that it was much clearer to me what was happening than it was to anyone in the book - even the main character.  But I was also expecting something dramatic, so it's not like I was approaching things from the same mindset as the characters.

It's well-written, but I do prefer Harris' historical fiction more than his contemporary novels. Still, if you're a fan it's worth a read.

(Popsugar Reading Challenge: Read a book where the main character isn't human. I'm counting this here given the role the AI plays in driving the plot.)

Book Log 2015 #24: Lost at Sea: The Jon Ronson Mysteries by Jon Ronson

I needed a book at the end of a vacation, and found this for five Euros at a souvenir shop. It was easily the best five Euros I spent on that trip (non-Guinness division).


The book is a collection of stories that continue Ronson's quest to understand life and the fringe and how people cope in extraordinary situations. The stories are grouped into rough thematic sections ("Rebellious Lives," "Everyday Difficulty," etc.), though I would have just as happily read the stories if they were just thrown in there in chronological order.

Some of the stories have an investigative quality (most notably the title story, about a young female staffer on a cruise who apparently killed herself by going overboard, and the cruise line's apparent stonewalling of family and law enforcement), while others are more out there (for example, attending a UFO convention with the apparently dedicated UFO believer Robbie Williams). There's even an example of Ronson becoming part of his own story in coverage of a pedophilia trial involving a well-known British music producer. Also highly recommended is a story about Stanley Kubrick and his voluminous archives.

The collection is probably more in line with Them or Out of the Ordinary than The Men Who Stare at Goats, but it very much worth perusing, even if you only read selected stories.

(PopSugar Reading Challenge: A book of short stories. I know they probably meant fiction, but I'll take it).

Book Log 2015 #23: Jar City by Arnaldur Indridason 

This is the third book in a series following Icelandic detective Erlendur Sveinsson, who is the stock representation of a police detective in Scandinavian noir fiction. In this case he's trying to solve the murder of a seventysomething man which apparently has links to a 30-plus year old death of a young girl.

I can't say I was too taken with this book. Erlendur is too much the bedraggled, world-weary murder cop, and the complicated relationship he has with his junkie daughter doesn't help. I also found the dialog pretty stilted, which I assume is an issue with translation. Finally, I found Elendur's approach to solving the crime - fart around for a while, and then have a hunch made out of seemingly nowhere pay off - to not be that rewarding. Again, maybe there was some nuance lost in translation, but in my reading things seemed to wrap up more or less at random.

The name of the book refers to a collection of unique medical samples that had gone from storage at a hospital into the hands of private collectors. This is treated as a pretty serious breach of trust, but I had a hard time mustering the same level of outrage (I suppose Iceland doesn't have a Mutter Museum). There's a sample that plays an important part in solving the case, which Erlendur has to recover for genetic testing. I've read that the genetic testing aspect of the book was a critique of biotech firm's attempt at creating a genetic database of Icelanders as part of finding ways to use genetic information to cure diseases. I didn't get that, but I also live in a country whose pluralistic nature is obvious. Were I from Iceland, and convinced of having a certain genetic solidarity with other Icelanders, I would likely have taken more away from Jar City on this front.

In any case, not a series I'll be racing to keep up with, though it does generate some interest by being set in Iceland if nothing else.