Old Man's War

by John Scalzi

I read this book after having it forced on me by my brother who loved it and asked for the whole series for Christmas. Both my parents have also read the first book and enjoyed it. I've also been hearing good things about Scalzi lately and I've been meaning to read more science fiction so here goes.

I enjoyed it. I didn't love it. It didn't change my world. But it entertained me for three days. It was truly a fascinating concept and I liked Scalzi's main character. The book had humor scattered throughout and that was due largely to the main character and his way of viewing absurd events and I liked that, too.

Throughout the book I was constantly amazed by Scalzi's ability to predict odd but believable reactions to inconceivable situations, such as an automated voice popping up in one's head. Scalzi's main character describes being thrown by it at first (obviously) but then, not only did he get used to it, he actually reached a point of getting annoyed when having to directly ask something of voice in his head (which he named "Asshole" by the way). I loved that part so much because it shows how humans adapt to strange situations and how quickly they become ordinary. It's not unlike people these days freaking out over losing their cell phone who didn't even own one ten years ago (I may or may not be one of those people).

Overall it was a fun, light read with an interesting concept and great characters. I would definitely recommend it.

Joseph Anton

by Salman Rushdie

Here's the thing: Salman Rushdie is my favorite living writer. And all of the things I love about his writing are present in this book: namely his astounding command of the English language and his sense of humor. His writing is simply beautiful and I have learned a number of new words by keeping a dictionary on hand while reading his books. I particularly loved a passage where he discussed a press conference for which he was advised to keep it simple. To dumb it down for the rest of us. Of course this led to a full paragraph of wondering how he was supposed to change who he was since, as a writer, he considered himself to be defined by his words. I loved that paragraph because I could see why he was being given that advice, but I also understood his dilemma, especially considering how distinctive his writing is.

I also loved learning about the fatwa. I was not even two years old when the fatwa was first announced and I knew nothing about it (or Salman Rushdie for that matter) until I got to college. Even then, as I grew more familiar with Rushdie's works, I still only had a vague sense of his having had a death threat against him after he published The Satanic Verses (which, of course, was most of my reason for wanting to read The Satanic Verses, which I loved, by the way).

Having finished Joseph Anton, I'm really glad that I read it. Not just for the historical reference but because Rushdie describes how and why he continued to fight for his book and for the right to freedom of speech. I really loved that discussion and I 100% think it's a discussion worth having and a fight worth fighting.

Which is why I found it all the more appalling to discover that much of the British public at the time was against him, having labeled him a "troublemaker". It sounded to me like a classic case of blaming the victim. While I understand why people do that, it still makes me sad when that happens.

As far as his personal life, Rushdie doesn't come off too well, at least not in the realm of marriage. But it comes off as sounding like a very honest and fair portrayal. While he never takes on all of them blame, nor does he ever claim to be blameless. He owns up to his faults without shrinking from them and that must have taken an incredible amount of bravery to be able to do that so openly and publicly.

Then there's always the fact that hindsight is 20/20. One relationship in particular he wonders how he could have ever been so blind, and haven't we all felt that after the end of a particularly bad relationship?

My only real problem with the book was his insistence on writing it in the third person without using proper nouns. While Rushdie was always referred to as "he" throughout the book, he was never referred to as "Salman" or "Rushdie" or "Joseph Anton". This made it quite confusing when he went from talking about one person, to talking about the writer, all the while using "he" to discuss both people. This was aggravated by the fact that Rushdie doesn't feel the need to use paragraph breaks when a different person starts speaking.  There were several times I had to re-read a section to determine who said what.

While I appreciate that writing this in the third person allowed him to maintain some distance on a deeply personal work, I wonder why he refused to use names when referring to "him". Given the book's title, I would have expected him to refer to himself as "Joseph Anton" or some derivative thereof  to refer to himself.

The Casual Vacancy

by J. K. Rowling

I loved this book. I'm not sure why it's gotten so many negative reviews. I do know that Rowling said she wouldn't be surprised if Americans didn't like it because "it's a very British book." Well, with all due respect to the author, I beg to differ. Yes, in some ways, it is very British. There were definitely times when I wanted to enjoy a good cup of tea with this book (and there were times when I did) but I don't think of this as a book about England, or about small towns. I think of it as a book about people.

Magic and flying brooms weren't the only things that drew us in to Harry Potter: we fell in love with the characters. Rowling is excellent at building characters and she is in top form here. These characters come right off the page and, while there are some that I loved, there were also some that I truly, deeply loathed. However, even the characters I hated had redeeming qualities and the characters I liked had flaws. There were definitely times when I was thinking "OK, I love you, but you're being a total douche right now!" and, in some cases, I could even completely understand and relate to their douchiness (see angsty teenagers). Not to say that that put them in the right, it just helped to make them very real for me.

The one real problem I had with the book was her point-of-view (POV) switching. In Harry Potter she wrote in third-person limited almost exclusively and, for the most part, I think that worked really well. There are times when I would have liked to see scenes that Harry wasn't around for but, overall, I think she used that particular POV very effectively. In The Casual Vacancy, Rowling switches from one character's head to another indiscriminately. While I think she makes the switches well, she does it too often - frequently multiple times on a single page. While I enjoyed getting a look at every character's innermost thoughts and, while that helped immensely with her awesome character development it definitely got confusing. There were several times when I had to stop and back-track in order to regain my bearings in terms of which character was being discussed in which paragraphs.

Although the book takes place in a small English town and the politics are British politics, there were several political discussions which I think could have been had (and probably have been had) in America almost word-for-word. Only the names of the town and a particular clinic would need to be changed (and those are fictitious anyway). I think Rowling has underestimated, not only how similar British and American politics are (we did, after all, base our government on theirs, when we were breaking away from them and had little else to go off of) but I think she also underestimates her own abilities in writing a work that's so inherently human. It's about people dealing with grief, and life; fear, and power struggles of all sorts (however insignificant they may be in the grand scheme of things) and all of those things are pretty universal.