Little Toy Robot

Declare, by Tim Powers
Air, by Geoff Ryman
Hidden Camera, by Zoran Zivkovic
Blood of Victory, by Alan Furst
Captain Alatriste, by Arturo Perez-Reverte

Not a stellar month for me. More books abandoned than finished. It started out promising, though: Declare was big, deep, moving, frustrating, rewarding, and exhausting, as many good books are. It left me in the mood for spy novels of a certain kind, but I couldn’t really put a finger on it, so I couldn’t find what I was looking for. An exception, however, was Furst’s Blood of Victory, which I couldn’t put down for some reason.

Air was interesting, a sort of precautionary fable about the singularity, without being like so much science fiction these days that practically shouts, “I am about the singularity!”

Hidden Camera was a lot weaker than Zivkovic’s other fiction. It was a disappointment. Captain Alatriste was barely palatable, full of digressions and thin characters, and really weak on plot. Not half as satisfying as the author’s puzzle thrillers like The Club Dumas.

After today’s news that Google is censoring its search results in China, many sites are discontinuing AdSense in protest. This includes my absolute favorite baseball blog, Baseball Musings. I think it’s great that people are making their voices heard and hitting Google where it hurts to draw attention to this.

Speaking of baseball, I’m very excited about Kenji Johjima and am looking forward to seeing how the first full-time Japanese catcher does in the Majors. This story on Yahoo describes some of the challenges he faces. If he’s successful offensively, he could put up numbers like Ivan Rodriguez did in his prime. Here are Johjima’s Japanese stats.

Two new albums came out yesterday that I can’t wait to check out: Jenny Lewis’ first solo album and Cat Powers’ latest.

It’s PEANUT BUTTER JELLY TIME!

New episode of Lost tonight.

I’m in a bit of a funk in terms of reading fiction these days. I’ve been reading some Queen & Country comics, Time magazine, Entertainment Weekly, and some fantasy baseball predictions because I am determined to win every single fantasy baseball league I’m involved with this year. I am currently obsessed with what the move to the Nationals is going to do to Alfonso Soriano’s power numbers - not to mention what a move to the outfield might do to his fantasy value.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Seriously, I nodded off a few times on my couch to this. Maybe I’ll give it another try - it’s on my TiVo, after all - but only after a serious jolt of caffeine.

The comic book anthology based on Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, perhaps my favorite book of all time, has been cancelled. And thank god for that. Despite Chabon’s involvement and some industry awards, I haven’t really been impressed by the eight issues. Officially, it was cancelled because of poor sales, but I really think the sales reflect the fact that it’s something of a vanity project which would have been better served as a one-time thing.

A new storyline, authored by Brian K. Vaughan (yes, the Y and Ex Machina guy) and drawn by Steve Rolston, is going to continue as a regular monthly mini-series. The first installement in issue eight actually showed some promise, because it genuinely approached the source material in a different way, so I’m glad it will get a chance.

I know I’m a picky reader. I need to be, otherwise I’d lose the will to do anything but read, and live in a world of fiction.

So I have a few “stop words” and now “stop phrases” that can make me put a book down. For example, any time I read a book that uses the word “faery,” spelled with the “ae,” I know I’m swimming in undesired waters.

Same thing with the word “magick” with the “k” at the end. Astute LTR readers will know that I made an exception with Matt Stover’s Heroes Die last month. This was acceptable because the deliberately anachronistic spelling of the word actually made sense in the context of the narrative. OK, it irked me a little, but it was an exception.

Last but not least, and this is what sparked this post, I’m always nervous about Sci Fi in which a character has a barcode tattoo. The phrase “barcode tattoo” is the stop phrase. I made that mistake with Jennifer Government, when I realized that the barcode tattoo was just a kind of lazy science-fictional shorthand for corporate overlordship (OK, I made that word up). It just seems so ridiculous, so out of date as a trope, that I can’t take it seriously. C’mon, people! Get a little creative! If you’re going to have anything to say on the subject, implant RFID chips into your characters or something.

This time around it was Richard K. Morgan’s Market Forces. But I’m still reading the book.

I admit I wasn’t sure about Eko. In general, I am not friendly towards any of the people from the back of the plane. The show had a big enough cast as it is; I hated the way the whole flow of the plot was put on hold at the beginning of season 2 to introduce these new folks.

But that said, how cool was it when Eko stared down that black smoke? Because black smoke is scary! At least when it’s accompanied by violent sound effects and ominous music.

Now, how the fuck did that plane get from Nigeria to some remote South Pacific (?) island? This is a little more concrete than, say, Jack thinking he saw his father.

Another thought: What’s with Walt typing this?

Can’t talk long. They’re coming back soon.

Who takes the time to type that out if there’s really a problem? Just tell him what’s up, little guy!

Last year was the year I fell in love with television. I was always a casual television watcher. My brothers and I would always fight to stay up late and watch Letterman. In college I subsisted mainly on late-night Seinfeld reruns and Space Ghost Coast to Coast, and after college, of course, I went through the obligatory Buffy thing like all good geeks did. With a few exceptions (cartoons, Jon Stewart), I haven’t been much into television until 2005.

I am not, I hope you realize by now, a snob. I just didn’t watch much tv.

What brought me back? Lost. I caught it in reruns after the regular season ran, and then I rushed out to buy the first season on DVD to plug in some holes (the reruns skipped a few episodes over the summer) to be prepared for the beginning of the second season. I love the masterful manipulation of the show, the way the plot tramps on without mercy, the deep insight into the histories of the characters, and of course the obsessive fandom shared among friends, coworkers, and all those people out there on the Web.

And Lost opened the door, along with recommendations from friends, shows like Veronica Mars, which sort of carries the torch of Buffy on UPN, and Alias, which should be no surprise, because it shares the same creator as Lost. Also, while I still have no patience for sitcoms, I have discovered Scrubs, and think that there’s nothing funnier in the universe than a good episode of Scrubs.

Lost is back tonight after a hiatus. I can’t wait.

(The title of this post comes from a Robyn Hitchcock song, from his latest album, Spooked)

We all get enough spam as it is - why accept it when it comes from a source you can get to stop?

The next time you have a technophobic relative forward you a suspicious email, refer them immediately to Snopes.com, the urban legends site. They can also check this other Web site called “Google” (it can be found at www.google.com).

I just got one of those emails that warned against, among other things, putting plastic water bottles in the freezer, according to a newsletter from Johns Hopkins University. My normal reaction is “What the fuck?” followed by deleting the email and forgetting about it. But this time I decided to fight back, so my reaction was “What the fuck?” and then I decided to write poor Uncle L. back. It took me about two seconds to find this.

OC&PA: What do you make of this recent email warning that claims dioxins can be released by freezing water in plastic bottles?

RH: No. This is an urban legend. There are no dioxins in plastics. In addition, freezing actually works against the release of chemicals. Chemicals do not diffuse as readily in cold temperatures, which would limit chemical release if there were dioxins in plastic, and we don’t think there are.

Source? Johns Hopkins University.

I have an iPod, and I walk to work, so I listen to podcasts every once in a while. Here are some that I like.

Coverville: Probably the first podcast I found that I like. The song selections are hit-or-miss, but there always gems like a bluegrass version of “Comfortably Numb” that transitions into a massive heavy metal guitar solo (by a group called Copper Box). The show is produced a little too often for my light podcast-listening schedule, so I don’t listen to every show.

The Ricky Gervais Show: Who are they kidding? This show is all about Ricky’s bizarre friend (?) Karl Pilkington. I can’t really explain Karl, you have to listen to him to get it. The first episode had me laughing so hard during its (now regular) monkey news section that I honestly couldn’t breathe.

Slate Magazine Podcasts: I don’t know how I ended up subscribing to these, but I like the little 5-10 minute, bite-sized podcasts which are nothing more than people reading Slate articles. Which is good for me, because I don’t read Slate regularly. And if my subscriptions plops something into my iTunes that looks dull, I just ignore it.

this WEEK in TECH: Leo Laporte is a pro, and John C. Dvorak is such a crank that he’s delightful. I could live without the rest of the cast, but it’s always great to listen to Leo’s even-handed thoughts on technology and Dvorak’s no-BS view on everything.

On the Media from NPR/WNYC: A weekly wrap-up of media industry news, though I think it has a wider appeal. Bob Garfield’s pieces are always smart with a helpful dose of humor.

What to read? That’s a common question. When to read it, though, is just as important. Maybe I’m just moody, but for me, finding the right match at the right time is the recipe for a successful reading experience. I finally realized how fussy and particular I can be this weekend.

I was flushed with excitement after finishing Tim Powers’ massive and profound Declare, at the same time that I am going through a phase of watching Alias on DVD, so I set myself up to read some good spy fiction.

Alan Furst comes highly recommended, and all his books seemed equally appealing. I picked up The Polish Officer, which was indeed as well written and exciting as promised. I even have a special interest in the time period and location of this historical espionage thriller. But for some reason I found that I couldn’t abide reading about World War II in Europe, so I decided to shelve the book for later.

Then I attemped Charles Stross’ The Atrocity Archives, a Lovecraftian-espionage mashup that sounded interesting. It only took about ten pages, however, for me to realize why I should not have picked up this book, and why I’m not too fond of Stross’ writing (the only book of his I’ve read is Singularity Sky). I know other people enjoy his writing style, but it’s too digressive, arch, dense, descriptive, and uninspired for my liking. I’m no snob; I think it’s just a matter of taste.

So what’s a nerd to do?!? I picked up a book which I have been meaning to read for over a year, Geoff Ryman’s Air. I’m in the mood for something roughly contemporary (the book takes place in 2020), something about the relationship between technology and people, something well written and imaginative but not over-ambitious from a stylistic viewpoint. I think I’ve found a match.

I use del.icio.us a lot. It’s a social bookmarking service. When I see a page I like, instead of bookmarking it in my browser, I activate a del.icio.us Firefox extension to add it to my del.icio.us page (which is del.icio.us/ltr). I can tag the page with descriptive words. Simple as pie!

There are a lot of cool, subtle things that can come out of this. You can subscribe to other peoples’ bookmarks. You can see what other people have bookmarked for a specific tag, like pirates. You can tag things to recommend them to other users. And a bunch of other things which are so simple but so great. I just wanted to point out that I added a little WordPress plugin to the ride side of my main page so you can see the 10 most recent things I’ve added to del.icio.us. It’s a good snapshot of what I’m interested in at any given point.

Click on “more” to go straight to my del.icio.us page, or “feed” to subscribe to my bookmarks as an RSS feed.

I was born in New York, grew up mainly in Florida, went back to New York for college, and it looked like I’d be there all my life. But then someone lit a fire under my ass and I made a quick move to Atlanta and then on to Chicago.

So now I’m in Chicago.

“Little Toy Robot” is a nickname I made up around the time my brother got in trouble with his employer for blogging under his own name. I like robots.

I love to read. Some of my favorite authors are Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, Jeff VanderMeer, China Mieville, Mervyn Peake, M. John Harrison, Kim Stanley Robinson, Cynthia Ozick, Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, Bruno Schulz, Zoran Zivkovic, Vladimir Nabokov, Witold Gombrowicz.

A list of my favorite books would place these three near the top: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, by Michael Chabon, The Years of Rice and Salt, by Kim Stanley Robinson, and The Enquiries of Dr. Eszterhazy, by Avram Davidson.

My favorite nonfiction writer is Lawrence Weschler. My favorite comic book author is Alan Moore.

Music is a huge part of my life, despite being partially deaf in one ear. All-time favorites include: Uncle Tupelo (and its offspring), Big Star, Pavement, Silver Jews, XTC, The Flaming Lips, Beulah, Jellyfish, Yo La Tengo, The Decemberists, Quasi, Velvet Underground (and both Lou Reed’s and John Cale’s solo work).

I love baseball. I also love playing fantasy baseball. I am a Yankees fan. When I was growing up, the Yankees weren’t a good team and Don Mattingly was my hero. I am sympathetic to teams in cities that I’ve lived in, such as the Florida Marlins and the Atlanta Braves.

A total of 127 books this year. But look: 19 in March, and just three in September! I’ll be nowhere near this number in 2006.

January
Nevermore, by William Hjortsberg
The Lost World, by Arthur Conan Doyle
Nymphomation, by Jeff Noon
Altered Carbon, by Richard K. Morgan
Not Quite Dead Enough, by Rex Stout
Barnum (graphic novel), by Harold Chaykin, et al
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (new annotated collection), by Arthur Conan Doyle
Gun, with Occasional Music, by Jonathan Lethem
Empire of Bones, by Liz Williams
Kiss Me, Judas, by Will Christopher Baer
Broken Angels, by Richard K. Morgan
The Return of Sherlock Holmes (new annotation collection), by Arthur Conan Doyle
Natural History, by Justina Robson
Penny Dreadful, by Will Christopher Baer
After You With the Pistol, by Kyril Bonfiglioli
The Inimitable Jeeves (collection), by P.G. Wodehouse

February
Hell’s Half Acre, by Will Christopher Baer
Jennifer Government, by Max Barry
Mr. Timothy, by Louis Bayard
The List of 7, by Mark Frost
The 6 Messiahs, by Mark Frost
Very Good, Jeeves! (collection), by P.G. Wodehouse
Falling Angel, by William Hjortsberg
The Prestige, by Christopher Priest
Jigsaw Men, by Gary Greenwood
Infernal Devices, by K.W. Jeter
His Last Bow (new annotated collection), by Arthur Conan Doyle
Brittle Innings, by Michael Bishop
Hellblazer: Rare Cuts (graphic novel), by Garth Ennis, et al
Hellblazer: Dangerous Habits (graphic novel), by Garth Ennis, et al
The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, by Nicholas Meyer
The Magician’s Study, by Tobias Seamon

March
All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories (collection), ed. Moles and Lake
Legacies, by F. Paul Wilson
What Rough Beast, by H.R. Knight
Pavane, by Keith Roberts
Right Ho, Jeeves (collection), P.G. Wodehouse
Top 10, book 2 (graphic novel), by Alan Moore, Gene Ha, Zander Cannon
Hellblazer: Fear & Loathing, by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon
The Reluctant Spiritualist: The Life of Maggie Fox (nonfiction), by Nancy Rubin Stuart
From Hell (graphic novel), by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell
The Alienist, by Caleb Carr
Inamorata, by Joseph Gangemi
Pashazade, by Jon Courtenay Grimwood
Home Land, by Sam Lipsyte
Norton Vyse: Psychic (collection), by Rose Champion de Crespigny
The Limits of Enchantment, by Graham Joyce
Hand to Mouth (nonfiction), by Paul Auster
Squeeze Play, by Paul Auster
When Gravity Fails, by George Alex Effinger
Some Buried Caesar, by Rex Stout

April
The New York Trilogy, by Paul Auster
The Irregulars (graphic novel), by Altman, Reaves, and Dazo
Sebastian O (graphic novel), by Grant Morrison and Steve Yeowell
A Fire in the Sun, by George Alex Effinger
The Angel of Darkness, by Caleb Carr
Paul Auster’s City of Glass (graphic novel), by Paul Kasarik and David Mazzucchelli
Under the Banner of Heaven (nonfiction), by Jon Krakauer
Kings of Infinite Space, by James Hynes
Perfume, by Patrick Suskind
One Day the Ice Will Reveal Its Dead, by Clare Dudman
The Innocence of Father Brown (collection), by G.K. Chesterton
Smax (graphic novel), by Alan Moore and Zander Cannon
The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco
The Devil in the White City (nonfiction), by Erik Larsen

May
Ex Machine: The First Hundred Days (graphic novel), by Vaughan, harris, Feister
Stories of Your Life and Others (collection), by Ted Chiang
Pattern Recognition, by William Gibson
Larceny and Old Leather (nonfiction), by Eldon Ham
The Fifth Head of Cerberus, by Gene Wolfe
Wordcraft (nonfiction), by Alex Frankel
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick
Borges and the Eternal Orangatan, by Luis Fernando Verissimo
Lint, by Steve Aylett
The Shadow of the Torturer, by Gene Wolfe
The Claw of the Conciliator, by Gene Wolfe
Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Real Thing: Truth and Power at the Coca-Cola Company (nonfiction), by Constance L. Hayes

June
Foam of the Daze, by Boris Vian (tr. Brian Harper)
Mind Wide Open (nonfiction), by Steven Johnson
Fools Rush In: Steve Case, Jerry Levin, and the Unmaking of AOL Time Warner (nonfiction), by Nina Munk
Foucault’s Pendulum, by Umberto Eco
Boggs: A Comedy of Values (nonfiction), by Lawrence Weschler
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, by Douglas Adams
dot.con (nonfiction), by John Cassidy
Flyboy Action Figure Comes With Gas Mask, by Jim Munroe
Bang the Drum Slowly, by Mark Harris

July
Everyone in Silico, by Jim Munroe
The Club Dumas, by Arturo Perez-Reverte
Masters of Atlantis, by Charles Portis
Fancies and Goodnights (collection), by John Collier
Vermeer in Bosnia (nonfiction), by Lawrence Weschler
Everything Bad is Good for You (nonfiction), by Steven Johnson
The Partly Cloudy Patriot (nonfiction), by Sarah Vowell
1602 (graphic novel), by Gaiman, Kubert, and Isanove
Unstable Molecules (graphic novel), by James Sturm and Guy Davis
Angry Young Spaceman, by Jim Munroe
Black Widow: Homecoming (graphic novel), by Richard K. Morgan, et al
Count Geiger’s Blues, by Michael Bishop
Freakonomics (nonfiction), by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

August
Kingdom of the Wicked (graphic novel), by Ian Edgington and D’Israeli
We3 (graphic novel), by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely
Flicker, by Theodore Roszak
Red Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson
The Girl in the Glass, by Jeffrey Ford
Dead Lines, by Greg Bear
Top 10: The Forty-Niners (graphic novel), by Alan Moore, Gene Ha, et al
Green Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson
Promethea: Book 1 (graphic novel), by Alan Moore, et al
Promethea, Book 2 (graphic novel), by Alan Moore, et al

September
Blue Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson
The Search (nonfiction), by John Battelle
The Tipping Point (nonfiction), by Malcolm Gladwell

October
A Million Little Pieces (nonfiction), by James Frey
The Vesuvius Club, by Mark Gatiss
Conspiracies, by F. Paul Wilson
Wicked, by Gregory Maguire

November
The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil, by George Saunders
The Riddle of the Traveling Skull, by Harry Stephen Keeler
All the Rage, by F. Paul Wilson
Database Nation (nonfiction), by Samson Garfinkle
The Red Magician, by Lisa Goldstein

December
Hosts, by F. Paul Wilson
The Google Story (nonfiction), by David A. Vise and Mark Malseed
The Keep, by F. Paul Wilson
Heroes Die, by Matthew Woodring Stover
Demon Download, by Jack Yeovil

Hosts, by F. Paul Wilson
The Google Story, by David A. Vise and Mark Malseed
The Keep, by F. Paul Wilson
Heroes Die, by Matthew Woodring Stover
Demon Download, by Jack Yeovil

Not a big (or exciting) month of reading for me. I spent the first two weeks in Detroit for work, so I scraped by reading an installment of F. Paul Wilson’s Repairman Jack series along with a nonfiction history of Google (to keep my foot in the real world). The Wilson book was a fast, entertaining read, and the Google book was good but not as philosophical or interesting as John Battelle’s The Search.

The Keep is an earlier Wilson novel, a horror thriller that was surprisingly well written and completely different in style and tone than the Repairman Jack books.

Heroes Die and Demon Download were end-of-the-year treats for me. Heroes Die was actually very good, a dense fantasy story with a science fictional premise and a gritty, realistic style that sort of anticipates the writing of Richard K. Morgan (though isn’t as brilliant). As for Demon Download - Jack Yeovil is a pseudonym of Kim Newman, whose writing I enjoy, so I picked this up in northern Alabama during the “holidays” and scarfed it down like candy.