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This post written by Clint The Devil’s Teeth: A True Story of Survival and Obsession Among America’s Great White Sharks
by Susan Casey
[cover name=thedevilsteeth]
If you sail about 27 miles west of San Francisco, you’ll reach the Farallon Islands. They are home to hundreds of thousands of birds and quite a few sea lions, and every year around September, the great white sharks show up. Nobody knows why great white sharks – the same ones every year – spend a few months in the Farallones. Of course, there’s a lot we don’t know about great white sharks. However, Peter Pyle and Scot Anderson are working to change that. They have been working in the Farallon Islands for the last ten years. They know all the sharks by name.
Susan Casey, the author, spent eight weeks with Peter and Scot. The Devil’s Teeth is about her experience there. We get to know Peter and Scott, as well as Cal Ripfin, T-Nose, Spotty, Mama, Betty, or the Cadilac (a few of the local sharks). We also get to see what life is like on these desolate islands just off the coast of San Francisco.
You can read some of it online at Google Books.
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This post written by Clint Bad Monkeys
by Matt Ruff
[cover name=badmonkeys]
Jane Charlotte is arrested for murder, but when she tells the police that she is actually a member of a secret organization dedicated to fighting crime, they put her in the psychological ward. Jane claims to be part of a division nicknamed the Bad Monkeys, who are supposed to track down and kill really evil people who have managed to escape justice. Apparently, this secret organization has access to all kinds of nifty stuff, like the NC gun, which kills its victim through natural causes. If you believe Jane (and the police don’t), this secret group hides tiny security cameras in pictures of eyes on posters, dollar bills, etc., and their operatives communicate through the Daily Jumble (that puzzle in the newspaper where you have to unscramble words).
Bad Monkeys is the story Jane tells a psychologist who is trying to find out if she is crazy or just lying. It is part thriller, part science fiction, and part satire. You don’t know if Jane is crazy, if she’s telling the truth, or if she’s crazy and telling the truth until the very end.
If you want, you can read the first chapter online at the author’s website.
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This post written by Clint A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
by Ishmael Beah
[cover name=alongwaygone]
Ishmael Beah grew up in Sierra Leone during its civil war. He and some of his friends have their own rap and dance group, and one day, they all go to another town to take part in a talent show. While they are out, their home town is attacked and destroyed. Ishmael is twelve years old at this point. He and his friends think about going back to find their families, but instead they end up on the run and try to make their way to some safe part of the country. Ishmael is eventually separated and forced to join the army. They brainwash him, give him drugs and an assault rifle, and let him and other children loose on the rebel army and anyone else in the way. Eventually he is released and take care of by UNICEF, but he has seen and done a lot of really bad stuff, and he doesn’t know how to be a normal person anymore. One volunteer finally reaches him through his love of rap music, and he finally begins to recover.
This book has a lot of violence, but it is more about the author’s recovery. It is also written to draw attention to the tragedy of child soldiers – Sierra Leone is not the only country where children have been used this way.
There has been some controversy about this book. Some reporters say that Beah’s dates are wrong, that certain events probably didn’t happen, and that it is unlikely that any one person could have experienced everything that happens in this book. I don’t know the whole story, but you can read about all of this on Wikipedia. Even if this book isn’t the literal truth of what happened to Ishmael Beah, it’s still a moving description of the kinds of awful things that children face in many civil wars.
You can read some of it online at Google Books.
You can watch Ishmael Beah on the Daily Show.
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This post written by Clint The Dog is Not a Toy: House Rule #4
by Darby Conley
[cover name=thedogisnotatoy]
Get Fuzzy is a comic strip about a fairly ordinary guy named Rob, his slightly evil cat Bucky, and his lovable but stupid dog Satchel. Bucky is usually rude, insulting, and destructive, although every once in a while he’ll do something nice for Rob or Bucky. He is constantly coming up with crazy schemes that never work. For example, he has tried designing tee shirts, writing books, and making music, but he isn’t really smart enough to do any of it well. Satchel, on the other hand, is almost always in a good mood and likes nearly everybody. The only way he can live with Bucky and still be in a good happy all the time is to be a little simple, but we love him anyway.
One of the really impressive things about Get Fuzzy is that almost every panel is funny. A lot of cartoons use the first panel or two is used to set up the one joke in the strip, but Darby Conley usually manages to make the setup funny, too. Even when nobody says anything, you can probably find something funny in the picture. Bucky’s facial expressions are priceless – they combine arrogance, hostility, and total cluelessness. Rob has a very good “WTF? Why did I even get up this morning?” expression that he has to use a lot around Bucky and Satchel.
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This post written by Clint Oishinbo
by Tetsu Kariya and Akira Hanasaki
Oishinbo is a series about food. The main character, Yamaoka Shiro, is a journalist whose father is a famous gourmet. The newspaper Shiro works for is about to celebrate its 100th birthday, and as part of the festivities, the publishers would like to create the “ultimate menu” that features the absolute finest examples of Japanese food. Somebody figures that since Shiro’s dad is a food expert, Shiro must be the perfect person for the job. Well, maybe.
There are a few potential flaws in the plan. First, Shiro and his dad hate each other. Second, Shiro is kind of lazy. Plus, he’s often a jerk. Of course, when you meet his father, you see that being a jerk runs in the family.
Fortunately, Shiro does know a lot about food, so (with the help and encouragement of some of his colleagues), he sets off to find all the pieces for the ultimate meal.
A lot of Japanese food manga are based around cooking duels, and Oishinbo has plenty. These aren’t always formal cooking competitions, but each episode usually requires Shiro to outwit, or help someone else outwit, his father. Along the way, we learn a lot about Japanese cuisine, and we get to see several of the important themes for Japanese food. Taste isn’t the only sense in Japanese cooking. The appearance, scent, and even the feel of the food in your mouth are all important. Fresh ingredients are vital. Also, local ingredients are taken very seriously – in Japan, pretty much every town has its own special ingredient that either can’t be found anywhere else or is way, way better than what you find anywhere else. There are also a couple of recipes at the start of the book, and there are a lot of notes in the back, just in case you want to know more about Japanese culture and food.
Oishinbo is a very long series in Japan, but when it was published in the United States, Viz decided not to release the whole thing. What we get instead are volumes that each focus on one specific topic. The first one looks at the fundamental ingredients of Japanese cuisine. Others focus on sake (rice wine), rice dishes, and ramen and gyoza (potstickers), among other things. This means that some of the story is missing, but the individual episodes all share a common theme.
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This post written by Clint The Soul of a New Machine
by Tracy Kidder
[cover name=thesoulofanewmachine]
The Soul of a New Machine is not about a machine. There are plenty of machines in it, but it is really about people who happen to be designing a new computer called the Eagle. The small group of people who designed the Eagle put their hearts into their work. They put their souls into it. They worked long hours for a project that hadn’t even been approved by their company, so even if they did an amazing job, the company might just throw everything away. They weren’t working for money, or even for the chance to make the world’s next popular computer. They were doing it for the pure joy of creating something.
In the 1970’s, not everybody had computers at home or on their office desks. A minicomputer could be bigger than a couch. Microsoft and Apple weren’t the biggest names in the industry back then. They were just getting started.
The Soul of a New Machine tells the story of people who work at Data General Corporation, based in Massachusetts. Data General makes minicomputers. They have a series called the Eclipse, and they have just opened a new R&D lab in North Carolina. The people who work in North Carolina are asked to design the new series that Data General will start selling, while the people still in Massachusetts are left to keep tinkering with the old Eclipses. This doesn’t make the Massachusetts people happy. They want to create something, too, so their manager, Tom West, gets them going on a new project. He didn’t really get anyone’s approval to start this new project. He’s kind of unofficially asked if the president of the company would be okay with it, and he’s kind of unofficially gotten an answer: yes, but it needs to run the same programs as the old Eclipse machines did, and it can’t have a mode bit.
What does this mean? Well, you can’t just copy a program from your iPhone to your PC and expect it to run. Back in the 1970’s, pretty much every time you got a new computer, you had to throw out all your old software and get new stuff. This new computer that Tom West’s people might be allowed to build has to run all the old programs that the old computers could run.
The “mode bit” is basically an easy way to make this happen. It’s a sort of switch. Flip it on, and the new computer works just like the old one. Flip it off and the new computer gets to run like its new, awesome, shiny, super-fast self. If Tom’s group had any chance of getting their project approved, they had to find a way to make their computers run old software without this little switch.
So off the engineers went, working hard on a project that might not even be approved. They called their new machine the Eagle, and they were darned proud of it.
The Soul of a New Machine talks about their struggles. Corporate politics was part of it, but they also had to deal with tight deadlines, try things nobody had tried before, and push themselves hard to make the best computer they could possibly make. The book is also about the people themselves: their personalities, their quirks, and their hopes and dreams. You get to meet some really amazing people this way.
The time they spent on the Eagle project isn’t all hard work. You can’t work as hard as these people doand not take breaks, so we also get to see a bit of computer geek culture. One of the games the engineers play is called Adventure, and it’s pretty famous. You can play it online if you want to see what all the fuss was about.
If you are worried about having to read computer mumbo jumbo, you can relax. Yeah, there is some. The author generally does a good job of explaining it in terms that normal people can understand, but you can skip it if you want. The book isn’t about technical details. It’s about the people.
You can read some of it online at Google Books.
If you are interested in the history of computers, you might want to check out the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.
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This post written by Clint Vagabond
by Takehiko Inoue
[cover name=vagabond]
Miyamoto Musashi was one of the most famous swordsmen in Japan. Modern Japan’s idea of the model samurai is based on Musashi. He was a master swordsman who invented a new way of fighting. He was involved in many famous duels, although he did not want to fight. He was also an artist, philosopher, and writer (he wrote The Book of Five Rings).
Vagabond tells a story of Musashi’s life, starting from age 17. At that point in his life, his name was Takezo, not Musashi. The story starts just after the Battle of Sekigahara. Takezo and his friend Matahachi picked the wrong side in that battle and are left for dead, but they are rescued by a young woman and her mother. Soldiers from the winning side of the battle are on the lookout for survivors, so Takezo and Matahachi have to hide. During this time, Takezo discovers that he is pretty good at fighting (something he didn’t realize as he was getting beaten up in his first battle). He seems to think that hitting people in the head with his wooden sword is a good way to solve his problems.
Soon Takezo decides to return home, but Matahachi stays with the mother and daughter. Unfortunately, Takezo is still a wanted man, and the people from his village try to capture him. Eventually a wise old priest and Otsu, Matahachi’s fiancee, manage to lure hm out of hiding and convince him that killing people isn’t the best way to solve his problems. Takezo changes his name to Musashi and sets out to travel Japan and become the best swordsman he can be. He is still looking for fights, but now he wants to learn from them rather than to kill people.
Most of the rest of the series focuses on his quest, where he becomes not only a better swordsman, but a better person. However, several volumes of the series focus on Musashi’s arch-rival, Sasaki Kojiro, and we also see a lot of several other major characters.
Musashi gets into a lot of fights, and a lot of people get maimed or killed. Also, there is some nudity and sex.
How historically accurate is Vagabond? Well, it’s rather loosely based on the novel Musashi, by Eiji Yoshikawa. Musashi is partially based on history, partially basd on the many legends about Miyamoto Musashi and partially made up, so Vagabond is a manga based on a novel based on legends. Still, it”s a good story, and it’s got at least some real history in it.
For those of you who are interested in Japanese history and culture, Vagabond starts at the beginning of the Edo period. The man who won the Battle of Sekigahara, Tokugawa Ieyasu, soon controls all of Japan. Basically, just as Musashi finds out he’s a really awesome swordsman, over 150 years of war and rebellion end and peace breaks out. People like Musashi aren’t needed anymore, and because of his skills and his reputation, the government sees him as something of a treat.
At one point in the series, Musashi goes to the city of Edo, which doesn’t look that great and is built on a marsh. Edo is just being built, though. The new government, the Tokugawa Shogunate, needs a new capital, and Edo is on its way to becoming a major city. In 1868, Edo is renamed Tokyo.
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This post written by Clint The Lies of Locke Lamora
by Scott Lynch
[cover name=theliesoflockelamora]
Locke Lamora is the best thief in the city of Camorr, a city that is kind of like a fantasy version of Venice. As a young child, his parents are killed in a plague. When the city guards come to round up survivors, Locke steals one off their purses. From there, he was sold to a man called the Thiefmaker, who trains orphans to be thieves. Locke’s work is just too much for the Thiefmaker to handle, but rather than kill Locke, the Thiefmaker sells him to a priest named Chains.
Rather than trying to turn Locke into a decent citizen, Chains teaches Locke to be an even better thief. Eventually, Chains assembles a team of outstanding pickpockets, burglars, and con artists. Locke and his friends Jean, Bug, Caldo, and Galdo, are masters of disguise and deception. They can convincingly impersonate nearly anyone, from a priest of the god of death to a nobleman.
Thieves in Camorr must follow a few simple rules set by Capa Barsavi, the crime boss of the city. Among other things, they must give him their allegiance, pay him a portion of their earnings, not draw too much attention (Locke is really bad at this part), and leave the nobility alone (Lock is really, really bad at this one). In return, the city guard pretty much leaves the thieves alone. This is called the Secret Peace,and it works pretty well for the nobility and the thieves, but not for anybody else.
Locke and his friends ignore the secret peace. After all, stealing from the nobility has three huge advantages over stealing from anyone else.
- They’ve got the money.
- They’d never expect it.
- Many of them deserve it.
However, Locke and his pals aren’t the only people breaking the Secret Peace. Thieves are being murdered, but nobody has the faintest idea who is doing it. This throws the criminal underground into chaos just as Locke, Jean, Caldo, Galdo, and Bug are in the middle of the con of a lifetime.
The scams Locke and his friends use in this book are just amazing. They are works of art. This is like Ocean’s Eleven, except much more clever. However, the story is also a lot grittier and more violent. There’s a lot of swearing, and a fair amount of bloodshed. Locke isn’t much of a fighter, but Jean is a big guy who fights with a pair of axes, and he gets to use them on more than one occasion.
The setting for The Lies of Locke Lamora is really elaborate and creative. Scott Lynch has put a lot of detail into the city and the many different cultures of the world. This is a fantasy novel, and while there aren’t a lot of people who can cast spells, there are still plenty of fantastic elements. Another race of creatures ruled the world before recorded human history, and they left amazing artifacts behind. Much of the city is made out of a special material known as Elderglass, which is indestructible and glows just after the sun sets. The towers on the cover shown above are the five main Elderglass towers of Camorr, where the rich and powerful live. Of course, since nobody alive can really work with Elderglass, and since whatever ancient devices once moved people from one floor to another have long since broken down, the nobles of Camorr get around these giant towers in crude wooden elevators slapped onto the sides of the towers.
Alchemy, a fantasy version of science (plus a little magic) is also an important part of the world. Alchemists make poisons and potions, but they also make lights, cooking stones that heat up when you pour water on them, and many more nifty things. Alchemists also help develop new kinds of plants – alchemically enhanced fruit and wine are popular treats among the extremely wealthy.
I haven’t really mentioned the characters yet, but they are really well done. Pretty much everybody is interesting and has a twist and a surprise or two hiding inside. Locke, of course, always has a trick up his sleeve. Jean is a big, chunky, axe-wielding accountant with a soft spot for romance novels. Capa Barsavi was a famous scholar before he took control of Camorr’s underworld. There are too many twists and surprises for me to spoil, but I’ll leave the rest for you.
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This post written by Clint The Night Birds
by Thomas Maltman
[cover name=thenightbirds]
The year is 1876, and Asa Senger lives on his family’s farm in Minnesota. Asa’s parents generally avoid talking about family history, but Asa learns far more than he expected when Aunt Hazel comes home from an asylum where she was held for many years.
The Sengers are unwilling to talk about the past because their family has been right in the middle of some really ugly events. They had to flee Missouri because of an argument about the abolition of slavery. Life in Minnesota was very challenging: nature was not nice to settlers, but then, settlers weren’t really nice to nature, either. The Senger family, especially Hazel, made connections with the local Dakota Sioux tribe, and they were involved with the Dakota uprising of 1862. All of this is news to poor Asa, who has never thought about his family like this before.
The story bounces back and forth between Hazel’s past and Asa and Hazel’s present. Part of it is family history, part is Asa’s life in 1876, and part is Asa’s coming to terms with his family’s turbulent past.
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This post written by Clint The Spellman Files
by Lisa Lutz
[cover name=thespellmanfiles]
Isabel “izzy” Spellman works for her family’s business. This might seem okay, but her parents run a detective agency out of their house. Working for her parents isn’t that bad. The real problem is living with detectives. Her parents run credit checks on her older sister’s boyfriends, and they bug all their kid’s rooms. Her younger sister does “recreational surveillance,” which is a nice way of saying she spies on random people for fun. Her uncle Ray works for the business, but he has a nasty habit of taking extra-long weekends and forcing the rest of the family to track him down.
Izzy has lousy taste in boyfriends. She dated one guy primarily because he owned every episode of her favorite TV show on DVD. Then she meets a normal guy, Daniel. He’s a dentist, and he doesn’t have to worry about his family members picking the locks on his room and either planting hidden cameras or cutting his hair while he sleeps. Spending time with him makes her reconsider her lifestyle – she likes the detective business, but she realizes she doesn’t like being a detective. She eventually tells her parents she wants out, but they will only agree if she takes one last case…
As you might guess, this is a mix of comedy and mystery. It’s certainly funny, and it does contain a mystery, but the first part of the book is all background. The background is amusing, but the real mystery starts later. Also, her family is a bit over the top, so if you don’t like that kind of humor, you probably won’t enjoy a lot of the book.
If you want, you can read some of the book online at Google Books.
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