Rob Larsen

Archive for the 'booklog' Category

Books 2011 #1 V.

I'm never going to get tired of reading Thomas Pynchon's books. Sure, they can be tough, but the payoff is always well worth any effort it takes to work your way through the incoherent bits of madness. Actually, V., an earlier work, was surprisingly coherent throughout. Of course, there are jarring shifts in tone, characters are introduced at the drop of a hat and the book soars off on 10-15 page tangents with very little warning (one noteworthy one was about nose jobs), but compared to something like Gravity's Rainbow (which at times felt like reading the incomplete contents of an acid trip), this was like a young adult novel.

Not that you'd want to introduce many young adults to Pynchon. I'm not sure what he would do to their malleable brains.

Anyway, V. I enjoyed it. It's interesting how set in his ways Pynchon was from the start. You'd think someone as ornate in style as Pynchon would take a little while to find his voice. Nope. While his books did crank it up a notch in terms of complexity, the basic elements were all in place here in his first novel. Of the later novels that I've read, this most reminded me of Against the Day, but there are hints here of what was to come in several other books as well.

It's taken me a few years (I need a break in between them,) but after having read this I'm nearing the end of my Pynchon journey, with just Vineland and Mason & Dixon to go.

Wish me luck.

Books 2010 #19 The Fall

I'm not a sexy vampire fan. Good thing there are no sexy vampires in The Fall. Nope, instead it's full of gross, vomiting vampires. Have I mentioned blood worms? Blood worms.

Enjoy.

Books 2010 #18 The Strain

There are no sexy vampires in The Strain. These are Lovecraftian-space-virus-throbbing-blood-worm-parasite vampires and pretty much everything about them is creepy and disgusting.

Hell yes.

Books 2010 #17 Moonlight Mile

While I enjoyed Dennis Lehane's Moonlight Mile it felt, almost from page one, that he was writing this book to really put an end to the Kenzie/Gennaro novels. Clearly, things had changed for them to the point (a kid, 'nuff said) where they fit awkwardly into a world they once naturally inhabited.

On the one hand, it was a natural evolution for the characters who had grown older and had more than a few life changing experiences over the years. On the other… it made another book in this series seem entirely, completely, utterly pointless.
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Books 2010 #16 The Grand Design

I'm no physicist, and even I know that The Grand Design is a little premature. It's also a little bit of linkbait owing to the examination of the need for a creator to set the universe in motion ("ZOMG, Hawking said there is no GOD!!!!!1111!!!")

Still, it's interesting, a little bit funny and if you keep up with popular distillations of cutting-edge physics it's not impossible to wrap your head around.