Culture from the darker side

I admit, I have a weakness for British Humour, there is something rather attractive to me in the way brits see the world. Maybe it has to do with the fact that they once had an empire and lost it. If you don’t have anything to defend your view on the world tends to be a different one than when you still try to cling on to something.

To that end, let me introduce Tom Holt, if you don’t know him yet. I came across his books a few months ago, but only know did I find time to finally read one of his fine writing. The best way I could describe his stories is “funny fantasy”. In “Earth, Air, Fire and Custard” Tom Holt continues the story of Paul Carpenter who happens to work for J.W. Wells, the magic firm from The Sorcerer by Gilbert & Sullivan. I admit, I didn’t realize that this was the fourth book in a series, but it really didn’t do anything to dampen the humour in the book.

In Earth, Air, Fire and Custard Paul finds out that custard is definitely in teh eye of the beholder. And that it really stings. Okay, now the last one was adapted from the back of the book. Essentially (without trying to tell too much of the story) Paul falls in love, falls out of love, visits an alternate dimension (Custard Space), gets two parts of a living sword and visits the Bank of the Dead a few times, only to realize that he really really doesn’t want to be dead (just yet), all the while discovering that not everything is as it seems, or maybe it is, but who knows?

Tom Holt has a subtle sense of humour, one can identify with Paul’s plight (though I have never been to another dimension to the best of my recollection) and feel for the rather (obscure) challenges that it brings. Holt isn’t really slapstick humour, rather it is this little undercurrent that swells over the pages and then bursts with laughter. It is not a Monthy Python in it’s absurdity, but it clearly is cut from the same cloth, albeit a few more muted patterns.

If you enjoy “off the center” humour without the gross out factor that things like “Jackass” provide Tom Holt’s your man. I will definitely try and find the other books.

Rating: 4/5

Perfume is based on the novel of the same name by Patrick Süskind.

The story revolves around a strange young man born in 18th Century Paris, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, whose prodigious gift of an incomparable sense of smell and inexplicable lack of a personal scent isolates him from society. Obsessed with the rich sensory world he alone inhabits, his single objective in life becomes the preservation of the perfect scent: the skin of young, beautiful virgins.

The challenge for the movie clearly was how to show scent in a visual medium, which by itself does not possess any scent. According to several sources it seems many directors didn’t believe it could be done, but Tom Tykwker (of Run Lola Run fame) took on the task and….. succeeded.

The movie is long, almost 2 1/2 hours, but one can sympathize, both with the victims and the murderer, with the victims because they do not deserve to die, and with Grenouille, because he is driven by something that he perceives as larger than him. He initially doesn’t try to kill them, but his attempts to save the essence off of a living woman (a prostitute) fails as she considers him weird, so he kills her, and then choses it as the easier / only way to accomplish his goal.

The movie has no winners, everybody loses, even side characters die once they have met him…..

The movie is cruel, but not obviously so, it isn’t crude.

The women are beautiful, though more in a 21st century kind of way, not in a 18th century France kind of way.

I now want to read the book:

5/5

Technorati Tags: books, Movies, Reviews

American Psycho was a good reflection on the 1980s, a highlight clearly was the “business card duel” in the middle of the book, highlighting the obsessiveness of the main character, not to mention his analysis of the brands everybody was choosing.

In the 1990s in Germany I started to notice a trend where brand names became part of the design, and in fact you had to start wearing certain brands to be “in”. As I never was “in” I never bothered and actually I didn’t care.

In 2004 Pattern Recognition was published and it had a strong “anti-brand” message in the midst of a story about Branding.

But in 2003 a book was published that brought our consumer culture to a somewhat logic conclusion: Jennifer Government.

Jennifer Government is set in the not to distant future, and Max Barry doesn’t pull any punches. Most of the world is part of the US now, by proxy more or less. The Government has been privatized, no more taxes and companies “rule” the world. There are two groups fiercely competing for market-share, the US Alliance and the Team Advantage loyalty programs.

At the core of the story a handful of individuals that by coincidence get drawn into the battle, Violet a “freelance” Programmer who thinks she is making the deal of her lifetime only to realize that if you swim with the sharks you better be one; Jennifer Government a former Ad executive who now works as a Government Watchdog and who has to find her financing before she can go after the bad guys; Hack Nike, a guy who works in Merchandising who one day makes the fateful decision to get a cup of water from the Marketing floor only to be drawn into the plot by a Marketing executive John Nike who has big plans for a new shoe that Nike is going to introduce, even if it means he has to kill people to give the shoe some cred. Then there is Billy NRA who just wants to go skiing in New Zealand only to find himself employed as a killer with the NRA and US Alliance, despite the qualms he has and then there is Buy Mitsui, a guy who is at the wrong time at the wrong place and after seeing a girl die after buying some brand new Nike’s finds his life changed forever.

All of these people act in a world in which consumerism is tops and “Old Europe” is seen as archaic, those savages after all still pay Taxes and the Government is standing in the way of corporate profits, now if John get’s his way there will be no more Government at all. After all, without the corporations people would still live in Caves.

“Jennifer Government” is a wonderfully biting satire that takes a shot at today’s consumerism and may be even more true today than it was three years ago when it was first published. The idea that privatization is the answer to everything that ails North America society is still a strong message in the US (and by extend the rest of the world) right now, and it probably won’t go away.

Corporations have taken charge of large parts of our lives, the small companies hardly exist anymore, even brands that we may think of being small probably belong to a larger conglomerate. So Jennifer Government is not only a satire but also a commentary on consumerism without becoming preachy.

Of course the world of “Jennifer Government” isn’t really all that new, the idea exists since at least the earliest notions of Cyberspace (Neuromancer), the omnipotent corporation always being a fixture. The role playing game Shadowrun comes to mind as an example on how the world can be described as segregated between the “corp have’s” and “non-corp have not’s”.

The book is an entertaining, easy read, Barry jumps between the different characters on a regular basis telling their stories in parallel, my only gripe with this is that the time frame in which these events happen is not always clear, at times it feels like just a day has passed, but then references are made that seem to indicate it may have been months.

Other than that: A nice, funny and entertaining read that may give one something to think the next time you see someone decked out in all gear from one company or whooning over the newest merchandise from brand X.

Rating: 4/5

Being on a “trip down the road” I re-read and re-watched the movie:

Movie:

Funny, Johnny Depp, clearly is an amazing actor and he nails the character well… It’s cult for a reason.

Book:

Of course it came first, and yes, it is a weird book but also hilariously funny. It makes one wonder how much of this has really happened and how much was drug induced. He drank, did drugs and wrote…. Maybe this goes in line, looking at some other funny and hilarious authors. i guess one has to go to the edge to have an appreciation for the absurdity of life and the comedy it is.

Rating (for both): 5/5

1491 has the potential to be either loved or hated by it’s readers. A fact that is shown in some of the commentaries on the Amazon website.

In 1491 Charles C. Mann goes back in time and explores the Americas before the white man came in, before the picture of the hapless indian that needed saving by the white man became pop culture. He uses modern archeological finds as well as accounts from historical witnesses to paint an entire new picture of the Americas in a time when we still consider it wild and undiscovered, and what he finds is anything but.

1491 in part is an archeological book about the America’s past as well as a science thriller about the modern western science hard grasp with the fact that we may not have been the domineering culture in the world in 1491. Outright denial reaching late into the 20th century.

What to make of this book? The book dedicates almost 1/4 of it’s 465 pages to references, to say Mann didn’t do due diligence is out of the question. His writing is mostly engaging, though at times I had wished he’d be a bit fast, while at other times I wish he’d gone more into detail. Of course this is a danger in any of these books and as he pointed out himself, there is enough material here to fill more than one book. So maybe it should be seen as a primer, rather than a full blown account of the Americas before 1491 or all of todays discoveries.

Rating 4/5

Neil Gaiman has been one of my favourite writers for quite a few years now. He has the tendency to take reality, tilt it a bit and inject his own reality in it. Not unlike Douglas Adams in his Dirk Gently books.

While in “American Gods” we followed the old an new gods on a conquest to rule the world, in Anansi Boy’s Gaiman went to Jamaica, in a matter of speaking.

We follow the story of “Fat Charlie” who isn’t really fat, but for some reason got stuck with that name on the trip down his families history. As it turns out he not only has a brother he didn’t know about, but his father also turns out to be a God, Anansi.

Then there is his fiance who seems to fall for his brother and his boss who turns out to be a rather bad person in the end and for some reason all of these people seem to be drawn to the same place in the carribean, including a female cop who for some reason likes Fat Charlie although he seems to be a wanted criminal.

The strength of Gaiman’s prose always was the underlying wit that seems to be oozing out of every sentence. He is by far not the only one, it seems to be a trademark of British writers, much like the BBC they are omnipresent and lend some kind of under current to everything they do.

With Anansi Boys Gaiman takes a further step away from his old writings of the Sandman series but a clear step ahead from American Gods. To say he matured as a writer is probably wrong as he has now been around for long enough, but he is a bit “tighter” in Anansi Boys than he was (in my opinion) in American Gods.

It is an enjoyable read, not as funny as “Good Omens” or some of his older works, but deeper in other regards.

Rating: 4/5

Oryx & Crake is, in essence a love story gone horrible wrong.
Oryx & Crake is also a story about science and how it can spiral out of control.
Oryx & Crake is the story of a world that seems like only a step away from ours.
Oryx & Crake is frightening.

Margaret Atwood has created a world in Oryx & Crake that seems entirely possible from today’s scientific view point. Sure, there are some limits on what we can do (engineering animals from the ground up by recombining genes is still a bit off, not to mention the morality of it) but the pieces are being put into place.

But this is only a backdrop of what the true story is: Love.

Oryx & Crake is the story of two boys in love with a girl and in the course of it bringing doom to the entire human race. It is the story of how to friends ultimately become enemies over a woman and the consequences for the entire world arising out of it.

Margaret Atwood hasn’t visited such a world for the first time. In “The Handsmaid Tale” she already went into a dystopian future that at the same time is frightening and scary. With Oryx & Crake she takes a decisively more scientific approach to the gloom and doom. While in “The Handsmaid Tale” science was merely the backdrop for the human drama, science pretty much took center stage for the backdrop of the human drama in Oryx & Crake.

It is not a happy book. It moves in it’s narrative from the not to distant future, where men still rules the earth to the “present” in which mankind has been erradicated and it seems only Snowman, the protagonist is left. It is scary and yet intriguing. I felt at times like when I watched “The English Patiente” and asked myself “Who was the woman in the plane?”.

A similar question comes up in Oryx & Crake: “What happened”? And like all big things in life, the cause is very slim.

It is a tale of morale, humanity and love, and how we need all three or we are doomed. An appropriate statement on the current state of the world I think.

Rating: 5/5

“Proven Guilty” is the 8th Novel in the Dresden File’s series (and supposely soon a TV movie on the Sci-Fi Network in the US). To put it simply: Harry’s back, and he does not have a good day.

The book pretty much picks up where the last one left off, roughly a year later. The White Council is still at war with the Red Court and things don’t seem to be going to well. Additionally Harry, freshly crowned a Warden and now responsible for the greater Chicago area, finds himself in a warehouse watching the Execution of a young Warlock and starting to get into a pissing contest with The Merlin.

But he does not have a lot of time to wonder about the political implications of his new role (or the fact that a Warden’s rope doesn’t seem to get stained by blood” as he soon finds himself in the middle of a magic attack on a Horror Convention and the realization that the oldest child of one of his best friend seems to be involved in all of this. Really not a good day for Harry.

Butcher’s writing is as “loose” and entertaining as it was in the previous seven books, though I cannot help at times and wonder if a bit of the spark of the earlier books is gone. Harry, although still grumpy, seems to be a lot less outwardly so. This is not necessarily a bad thing, characters can and should evolve, but this does not seem to be the case, rather that Butcher is “cutting corners”, maybe due to other commitments (his other book series, the TV show etc.) or because he just doesn’t feel the connection anymore, the book feels a bit less “meaty”. It also appears shorter (though I do not have the other books here right now to compare), it weighs in at around 400 pages in the hardcover edition and has a rather large print (especially compared with something like Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle).

Proven Guilty clearly drives the story foward and can be seen as somewhat of a setup, as larger things seem to be brewing behind the magic curtain, but we only get a very very tiny glimpse of what may lay ahead.

It is not a bad book by any stretch, in the genre it is in it is easy reading, but at $32 cover price for the hardcover edition it is a steep price to pay, one may be better off to wait for the cheaper Softcover version (a regret I didn’t had with the last book in the series, which in my opinion was a nicer read).

Rating 3.5/5

A couple of years ago I bought a bunch of Tom Clancy novels, easy reading I thought. Didn’t expect much. I admit I liked the movies and figured the books may be written the same way.

Oh, how little did I know.

When “The Hunt for the Red October” came out in the mid 80s it was on time, although the movie hit right after the cold war was more or less over and many critics did not fail to point this out.

“The Bear and The Dragon” was published in 2000 and now, reading it almost six years later, I cannot shake the feeling that the book was even late then. In TBATD Tom Clancy looks for another conflict and finds it in Siberia.

In Clancy’s world the Russians first find a large amount of oil in Siberia and shortly afterwards they find even more Gold. Two things that Russia can use to rebuild itself, and things that the US obviously wants.

Enter China (aka the Dragon) stage left. China is a murderous country, no conscience and utterly barbaric. Clancy takes several hundred pages to set up a reason to “force” China’s hand to invade Russia and then another couple of hundred pages before it actuallly happens.

In the process he manages to run up pretty much any stereotype about the Russians and Chinese he can find in order to “further” his story, not to forget painting the US as the saviour of humanity.

The politics in the books at times become so far from what is happening in the world even back in 2000 that one can’t help but laugh.

Politics aside, what is worse is the way most Chinese and Russians are portrait, as automatons, straight out of the 1950s US anti communist propaganda movies in case of the Chinese and as the “nice but slightlly retarded and alcoholic brother” in case of the Russians.

Here’s an example just before things start to “heat up” (I use this loosely, this book has some serious timing issues):

The doctor saw the nurse wave. This one was a man. It was easier on the men, and so they gave most of the “shots” in the hospital. He took the 50-cc syringe from stores and then went to the medication closet, unlocking it and withdrawing the big bottle of formaldehyde. He filled the syringe, not bothering to tap out the bubbles, because the purpose of this injection was to kill, and any special care was superfluous. He walked down the corridor toward Labor #3. He’d been on duty for nine hours that day. He’d performed a difficult and successful Caesarian section a few hours before, and now he’d end his working day with this. He didn’t like it. He did it because it was his job, part of the State’s policy. The foolish woman, having a baby without permission. It really was her fault, wasn’t it? She knew what the rules were. Everyone did. It was impossible not to know. but she’d broken the rules. And she wouldn’t be punished for it. Not really her. She wouldn’t go to prison or lose her job or suffer a monetary fine. She’d just get to go home with her uterus the way it had been nine months before — empty. She’d be a little oder, and a little wiser, and know that if this happened again, it was a lot better to have the abortion done in the second or third month, before you got too attached to the damned thing. Damned sure it was a lot more comfortable than going through a whole labor for nothing. That was sad, but there was much sadness in life, and for this part of it they’d all volunteered. The doctor had chosen to become a doctor, and the woman in #3 had chosen to become pregnant.

He came into #3, wearing his mask, because he didn’t want to give the woman any infection. That was why he used a clean syringe, in case he should slip and stick her by mistake.

So.

He sat on the usual stool that obstetricians used both for delivering babies and for aborting the late-term ones. The procedure they used in America was a little more pleasant. Just poke into the baby’s skull, suck the brains out, crush the skull and deliver the package with a lot less trouble than a full-term fetus, and a lot easier on the woman. He wondered what the story was on this one, but there was no sense in knowing, was there? No sense knowing that which you can’t change.

So.

He looked. She was fully dilated and effaced, and, yes there was the head. Hairy little thing. Better giver another minute or two, so that after he did his duty she could expel the fetus in one push and be done with it. Then she could go off and cry for a while and start getting over it. He was concentrating a little too much to note the commotion in the corridor outside the labor room.

[...] Page 413 in the Paperback edition

Obviously this is Clancy critique on the one child policy in China, but the problem is not so much with criticism on this fact as it is about the portrayal of the doctor in this case, and no, this is by far not the only time that Chinese are portrait in this way. The Russians, as said before, don’t get away much better.

In both cases the Russians and Chinese are pretty much incompetent (in the case of the Chinese also greedy) and utterly inferior to the US of A. At time it does becomes more than laughable, and more than once I had to wonder what world Clancy lives in, and then a moment later I asked myself while I was still reading it.

If he is not showing us the superiority of the american political system, the american leaders, the american banking system, the american “fairness”, the american media etc. etc. he shows us how advanced the american technology is and how much the Russians need Americans in order to be able to defend themselves, and how utterly useless the Peoples Liberation Army is.

I could go on, but I am really not in the mood of wasting any more time (yours or mine) on this “book”, besides the screwed up world view the writing (as can be seen above) is not all that entertaining.

But hey, at 1137 pages it at least makes a nice doorstop.

Rating: 0/5 (I would have given negative, but my scale doesn’t allow for that).

“Dead Beat” is the fifth book in Jim Butcher’s “Dresden Files” Series.

Harry’s back, and life hasn’t gotten any easier for him. Carrin Murphy, one of Harry’s best friend goes on a vacation and no sooner that she is on a plane than Harry get’s a note telling him to meet the queen of the red court of the vampires at a cemetery. He quickly finds out that he has a new job, that is to provide a book to the Queen of the red court or see his friend Carrin go down for something she did to help Harry. He really has no choice and his first trip leads him to the city morgue (my bad, it is now called the “Forensics Institute”), new, nice, shiny, very clinically and as of Harry’s last visit, crawling with Zombies.

The task he was put on by the Queen of the Red Court was to find “The Word of Kemmler”, it is just to bad that he doesn’t know yet what it is. Now with three Necromancers on his tail he quickly gets drawn into an all out battle to prevent a new god from being created and coming to earth. This may even be a bit much for Harry and his half-brother of a vampire Thomas.

As in the previous four books Butcher nails Harry, a sarcastic, cynical and way to “worn” Wizard in the windy City of Chicago. In the past he started a war between the Wizards and one of the vampire clans, got some death curses heaped on him and pretty much stepped on as many toes as he could, while trying to do the good and protect the mere mortals.

Now in “Dead Beat” he seems to encounter his biggest challenge yet and it still reads just as entertaining as the first four. Butcher has found a voice for Harry Dresden and he is in the roll. There is hope that this will continue for some time.

Rating 4/5