Book Log 2017 #7: Green Earth by Kim Stanley Robinson

This is an edited-down version of the Science in the Capital trilogy, which I decided to pick up as I had read 40 Signs of Rain and really liked it, but never got to the other two books (mostly because I'm too cheap to actually buy books).

While I generally liked the book I wasn't a fan of some of the major choices made by the author, between a lot of attention going to who I thought of as a supporting character (including a weird romantic subplot that I didn't care for at all) and the way in which the youngest child of the family that I thought of as the main characters is used as some sort of spiritual pawn. But I do like the idea of using climate change for a realistic sci-fi novel of how government may (or may not) address the issue, what a changing climate might look like, and how we can try to remedy the problem.

I don't think the issue here is the revision - Robinson thinks the single volume flows better than the three novels (as he says in this discussion of condensing the trilogy), and I can't say he's wrong - but is more of personal taste. So if you like Robinson's work I do think this is worth reading.

Book Log 2017 #6: Conclave by Robert Harris

Taking a break from historical fiction, in this novel Harris depicts the inside workings of a papal election, from the ceremony surrounding the process to the dirty laundry that makes leading candidates for the office fall by the wayside.

Cardinals are not allowed to talk about conclaves, and while details inevitably come out the lack of public information presents a mostly blank canvas for someone writing about a fictional one. Harris uses this canvas fairly effectively, though there are times where the book heads out towards Dan Brown territory, not always to its benefit.

There are several surprises along the way, with the largest surprise at the end of the book (one that I kind of suspected, though wasn't fully convinced). I won't say more than that about it.

Out of all of Harris's contemporary novels this is probably the one I liked the most, though I tend to like all of his historical fiction better.

Book Log 2017 #5: Champion of the World by Chad Dundas

I'm not much of a wrestling fan, and even after hearing an interesting piece about this book on the NPR sports radio show Only a Game I wasn't thinking too much about picking it up. But then I hit a patch where everything I wanted wasn't available on Overdrive, so I decided to give this book a try.

I'm glad I did. While it's set in the world of wrestling, you do not need to have much of an affinity for it to get into the story, which is really about things like redemption and adapting to change in order to secure a future for yourself and your loved ones.  It also doesn't hurt that the characters and settings are extremely colorful. Of course, if you do like wrestling then the book is going to be just that much better.

Book Log 2017 #4: Surrender, New York by Caleb Carr

I am a huge fan of The Alienist and The Angel of Darkness, and had been waiting patiently for another novel in the series while Carr wrote other novels (generally good, but not as good as the two mentioned above) and all sorts of publications for his day job as a military historian. A couple of decades pass, and then this book, set in The Alienist's universe, comes to light.

It's not really a sequel in conventional terms. The main character is a criminal psychologist who fell out of favor with the NYPD and moved to a farm upstate, where he teaches online criminology courses with a fellow NYPD refugee and trace evidence expert. They get brought back into the fold of detective work when the local sheriff asks for their help in the killing of a teenager, which appears to be linked to other teen deaths. The pair - working together and with their students - begin the process of investigating the case (and the related cases), with the main character applying the theories of Laszlo ­Kreizler (on whom he is the world's foremost authority) to help identify the killer. 

Even with the application of these old theories, the case (and novel) are decidedly contemporary, and asks some pointed questions about the use of forensic evidence like DNA (refuting the idea that such evidence is the "gold standard") and the general administration of justice, policing, and youth services in present-day America. 

It's a good novel, very suspensful and loaded with the sort of detail and diversions that made the earlier Kreizler novels so great, but I admit to being let down that it wasn't set in the turn of the 20th century world of those other novels. It's unfair to this book to put that sort of expectation on it, but I can't help it. 

It's very much worth reading, if you can be a bigger person than I and judge it strictly on its merits. But if you're like me and wanted a novel narrated by characters like Sara Howard or Cyrus Montrose, it's back to waiting.

Book Log 2017 #3: Arcadia by Iain Pears

So I made a comment about not reading a lot of fantasy works when talking about The Library at Mount Char. I should probably remove it, as I jumped pretty heavily back into fantasy with this book, where a former intelligence agent is writing a novel set in a Tokeinish world, only to find that a neighbor girl, while chasing his cat, runs through a portal in the basement that takes her to a world very much like the one he's writing about. The book then progresses through various worlds, from the present to the world of the book to a dystopic future to earlier and later versions of the present. It's not as confusing as it sounds.

Pears is an excellent writer who avoids genre classification - most of the books I've read of his are contemporary art crime stories - though he did display a knack for this kind of writing with An Instance of the Fingerpost, which is a Rashamon-style retelling of a murder in 17th century England. Both books are well worth reading, but give yourself ample time, as both are long and will require concentration (just because I said it wasn't as confusing as it sounds doesn't mean it's not confusing at all).

Book Log 2017 #2: The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore

What causes two people with similar backgrounds to grow up following very different paths? That's the idea behind this book, where the author Wes Moore tries to figure out how he grew up to become a Rhodes Scholar and successful author and entrepreneur while the other Wes Moore, also born in Baltimore and raised in a single-parent household, would go on to life in prison for murder.

I'll admit to not remembering many of the details about the book (having read it 10 months ago), but there were a couple of differences that stood out to me:

1. The author Wes Moore did have his father in his life until his father died unexpectedly when Moore was three. You can argue about what amount of impact his dad was able to exert upon Moore in that short amount of time, but I do think there's a positive benefit to knowing that you had a dad who was involved and in the picture

2. When times got tough for the author, there were people there to make tough choices and stick with them. I'm thinking here primarily of Moore's mother's decision to send him to military school, and the leaders at the school who put up with Moore's initial bad behavior and gave him the chance to mature and grow.

Lack of detailed memory aside, I did like the book.

Book Log 2017 #1: League of Denial by Mark Fainaru-Wada

Part of me thinks I really should finish the 2016 entries before moving on to 2017, but then there's the other part that says if I don't start 2017 now I probably won't get them done before the end of 2018.

Anyway, seems fitting that I started off the NFL playoffs by reading this comprehensive - and frustrating - account of how the NFL tried to keep the concussion crisis at bay.  It's an interesting combination of PR and (willful?) ignorance on many parts, which will often have you wishing that the league would be razed to the ground... but not if it means the games would stop. I share complicity with fans everywhere who would love to see the NFL get hammered for their role in downplaying this problem, but can't stop watching (even though may are watching less, myself included).

A less noted but also interesting subplot of the book involves the researchers, and how they battle each other to get access - to players, families, funding, former players' brains - and primacy in the research world around concussions and CTE. Working in academia this didn't surprise me, but seeing it play out on the page was a good reminder that the researchers aren't dispassionate observers in this whole thing.

This is very much worth reading, especially for football fans.