Lock In

by John Scalzi

I'll admit, I was a little skeptical about this book. I love Scalzi and am willing to read just about anything he writes, but I have to say that, at first glance, my impression of this book was "meh". Books about epidemics aren't really my thing.

Then Scalzi was on Twitter promoting his novella Unlocked which was his precursor to Lock In. He entertained me so much just by promoting the book, that I had to buy it. Plus it was only $1.99 for kindle. So I bought it and read it and I actually really liked it. It was written as a kind of documentary of Haden's Syndrome and the style was very different from what I had seen from Scalzi before. So I was willing to give Lock In  a try.

If you liked Redshirts, you'll enjoy Lock In. It's a mystery with a major conspiracy behind everything, and the characters are as enjoyable as Scalzi's characters always are. Speaking of which, I have determined that Scalzi only has one main character that he uses for all of his stories. Personally, I am OK with this.

The premise of the book is that there was an epidemic of a particular flu virus. It was much more deadly than the normal flu strains and has one nasty side effect. Some people got the flu and were fine a few days later and that was that. Other people got sick, got better, and then experienced a second phase of the disease, which manifested similar to meningitis. Once that happened, a fraction of the population experienced what became known as "lock in": they were completely paralyzed. They were still conscious and aware of everything going on around them, but they could not move or speak. Major bummer.

Technology to the rescue! So they created a computer that they put in these people's brains that could control a robot (technically called "Personal Transport Units" but more commonly known as "threeps" after C3PO). By using these robots to get around, people with lock in could experience most aspects of a normal life.

Of course, nothing is ever that easy. When someone looks like a robot, are you going to treat them like any other person? Of course not! That would be way too rational. So there's loads of prejudice and hate crimes and all the political ramifications that always go along with it.

The book is told from the point of view of a Haden (which is what they call someone who has lock in), so the reader gets to experience all the pros and cons of living life mostly as a robot. I was pretty impressed with Scalzi's attention to detail and the way he foresaw the future if something like this ever happened. Everything from the prejudice of those without Hadens Syndrome to the different functions of threeps to the technicalities of having to use a machine to get around. It was pretty cool and Scalzi is as entertaining as ever, so if you like reading his stuff, I definitely recommend reading this one.

On a related note, Lock In has already gotten a TV deal and this was Scalzi's reaction to the news.

Colorless Tsukuru Tasaki

And His Years of Pilgrimage

by Haruki Murakami

I only recently heard of Murakami and wanted to give him a try. I think his IQ84 sounds interesting, but I wasn't willing to devote 900 pages to a writer I might hate, so I started with Tasaki instead. Turned out to be a much better choice because, not only is it much shorter (386 pages) but the pages are pretty small too, so it was a quick read. I blew through it in two days.

As it happens, I really liked this book. It's about a guy named Tsukuru who has no friends. He had four very close friends when he was in high school and they were the only friends he had. Then one day, in the middle of his sophomore year of college, they collectively decided that they no longer wanted to see, or hear from him ever again. They gave him no explanation. They just said, "Think about it, and you'll figure it out."

Of course, Tsukuru never did figure it out. He could not think of a single thing he had done wrong and everyone had acted normally the last time they had seen him.

It turns out I can relate. I had something similar happen to me when I was the same age. Not as drastic, of course, but I can absolutely empathize with Tsukuru spending the next six months just wishing he could die.

Now it's sixteen years later. Tsukuru is 36, still has no friends to speak of, but he has a job he likes and he's had a stream of steady girlfriends. Now he has a girlfriend he really likes (Sara) and he tells her all about his four friends from high school and I how they cruelly rejected him. He has never talked about this before to anyone, not even his parents, but Sara wants to know about his childhood and so Tsukuru finds himself opening up.

Sara insists on getting to the bottom of what happened. She asks Tsukuru to give her the names and last known addresses of these people so she can hunt them down. She's convinced that it's all just a big misunderstanding and that Tsukuru needs to find out what really happened so he can get past it and move on with his life. She thinks that he still bears some serious emotional scars that need to be dealt with. Given that he still has no friends, she may very well be on to something.

Sara tracks them down via the stalker's best friend that is the Internet and strongly urges Tsukuru to find and talk to the three of his four friends that are still living. He does, and it turns out that the group fell apart not long after he was shut out. It was a misunderstanding that led to cutting him out, but I won't spoil it for you.

I like the book, but Murakami is pretty heavy on the similes. Everything is like birds, or water, or rocks. At first I thought it was kind of cool. I thought his similes provided some wonderful imagery for his story and I wondered how he did that.

Then I realized he did that all the time. It started to get to me around page 300 and reminded me of Winter's Tale, which I hated. It makes me think that reading a 900-page book by him might not be such a great idea. Actually, I seem to have lost patience for most books over about 600 pages, so maybe I should just leave IQ84 to the Murakami fanatics.

The other thing that got me about this book was the open ending. I don't like open endings. I know life is full of them, but that's why I read fiction: so that everything can have a definite beginning, middle, and end. Fiction is my escape from life's uncertainty. Tsukuru does settle things with his friends (as much as something like that can be settled after 16 years), but we don't get to find out what happens with him and Sara and that kind of drives me crazy. I like Sara and I think she's really good for Tsukuru and I want him to be happy. I know a lot of people think that the open endings are cool, but personally, I think it's just lazy writing.

13 Little Blue Envelopes

by Maureen Johnson

I read this book because 1) it was on sale and 2) Maureen Johnson is one of my favorite people to follow on Twitter. I love her to pieces on social media, so it makes sense that I would love her books.

It turns out that's not quite the case. Not that this is a bad book, it's just not particularly good. It's a solid "meh".

The premise is that this girl (Virginia/Ginny) has just found out that her eccentric, unreliable artist aunt has just died of brain cancer while touring Europe and left Ginny with 13 blue envelopes. Each envelope contains instructions and Ginny can only open them in certain times and places. Each letter has an assignment like "Find that cafe in Paris that I lived in for a month" and "Ask out an Italian boy". Once she has completed an assignment, she can open the next envelope.

Ginny is also not allowed to take along any maps, guidebooks, or any kind of electronics (including cell phone, camera, and computer) and she is forbidden electronic communication with anyone in America. Only letters and postcards to let the family know she's still alive are permitted. She does manage to find ways around some of these rules, and at one point she flat out breaks one of them, but for the most part I am in favor of these rules.

Ginny (16-years-old) is shy and introverted and has never been away from home on her own before, so to say that this experience is new for her is an understatement. In that sense, this is largely a coming-of-age story as Ginny explores the world and meets all sorts of people and gets to know herself better. She discovers that she can do fun and exciting things without her aunt, and at the same time, she comes to terms with her aunt's death. Despite the slow death that is brain cancer, Aunt Peg was in Europe and out of contact with her family when she got sick, so her poor family never even knew she was sick until she was already gone. One minute she was fine, then she left with no explanation and no forwarding address, then they got notice that she had passed and that they should go to the airport to pick up her remains.

The letters were also kind of Aunt Peg's way of saying good-bye to Ginny. In the letters, she got to tell Ginny about her travels and let Ginny experience parts of them for herself. She also told Ginny things that she never told anyone else, and I think that probably helped her cope with what was coming.

I know that Maureen Johnson has done some traveling. I don't know how extensive, but I do know that she did an excellent job of immersing the reader into every place that Ginny went. She boiled down each city to its most basic elements and presented them to the reader. In doing so, she was able to transport the reader all over Europe with Ginny, without taking away from the story. It was really quite brilliant.

The Primal Connection

Follow Your Genetic Blueprint to Health and Happiness

by Mark Sisson

This is the first book I have ever read by Mark. Up until this point, I haven't felt the need to read any of his books because I read his blog almost every day and I didn't think I could get much information from his books that I wasn't already getting from his blog. This book did kind of intrigue me, though, so when it went on sale for $1.99 for the kindle a few weeks ago, I went ahead and bought it.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Mark Sisson, he is huge in the Paleo/Primal world. His blog is full of wonderful advice about how to eat and exercise in a manner that more closely resembles the way our ancient ancestors ate and exercised, with the theory that this is better for us. He talks a lot about diet and exercise in his book The Primal Blueprint, which I really have no desire to read, because at this point, I think I have that pretty well under control. It's a great resource for those who are just starting on their Paleo/Primal journey, though, and I know it has convinced a lot of people to give up the grains, sugars, and processed foods that make up the standard American diet (SAD).

The Primal Connection is about incorporating other aspects of our evolutionary history into our lifestyle. The idea is that, if we didn't evolve to eat grains, sugars, and rancid vegetable oils, we certainly did not evolve to spend our days sitting in a cubicle staring at a computer screen. Not that Mark is advocating that we all quit our jobs to walk around in the sun all day (although how great would that be?), but that we need to be aware of the health risks involved in extended periods of sitting inside and what we can do about it.

To a large extent, I was right about the overlap with his blog. There was a lot of information in here that I already knew, but there was also some information of which I was not aware and that alone was worth purchasing the book. My favorite was a section on posture. I was ready to breeze through this section, convinced that the rods in my back are sufficient to keep me from having to worry about that. Turns out that's not quite the case. My rods don't extend to my neck (thank the gods), and according to Mark, the most common form of poor posture is when the head juts forward instead of extending straight up from the shoulders. Of course, because I spend all of my time in front of a computer, a TV, or a book, my head is always jutting forward. Since this book made me aware of what a problem that is (in addition to an injury I'm still dealing with as a result of said poor posture) I have been using the techniques mentioned in this book to straighten my spine and keep it straight. It's a struggle, because every time my mind wanders, my head juts forward again, but I do think that simply being aware of the problem has helped immensely.

Anyone who is familiar with Mark's blog knows that he is not one to say something just because it sounds good. All of his statements are backed up with hard scientific evidence and he is excellent about providing links and references to the science he uses to come to his conclusions. Which means reading this book has provided me with a list of other books on related topics that I now want to read. Just what I need: more books to add to my to-read list :P

Reality Boy

by A.S. King

This is such a beautiful story. King really knows how to tug on the heartstrings.

It's about a seriously messed up boy (Gerald) with a seriously messed up family, and what do we do with messed up families? We put them on television! So this poor boy's life as a five-year-old was broadcast all over the world. Except, as most of us know, it wasn't his real life that got broadcast. It was the stuff that made him look the worst, because that's what America wants to see.

Now that boy is seventeen and that show still haunts him. People recognize him as the little boy they saw on television twelve years ago and they judge him based on what they saw on that. Needless to say, the poor boy doesn't have a whole lot of friends. He is also still trying to deal with his completely dysfunctional family and the fact that his oldest sister and his mom just don't love him. His other sister left the first chance she got and doesn't even bother to call. His dad loves him, but doesn't know how to stand up for him. So the kid is pretty much on his own when it comes to surviving his family, and I mean literally struggling to survive.

But it's all OK because he meets a girl! OK, that's true, but it's not as cheesy as it sounds. Yes, he meets a girl, and yes, she makes him happy, but it's not that simple. This book, like all good YA books, is about defining yourself, rather than letting the people around you define you. OK, that sounds cheesy, too, but I swear it's not. The fact that his five-year-old self was broadcast on national television adds a whole new dimension to idea of not letting others define you. 

I think we've all heard the story of the poor tortured high school student whose family expects her to get straight As and get into Stanford, or whatever, but there are fewer stories of kids whose family expect (even want) him to end up in special ed and in jail. 

So Gerald demands better. This is after his anger management coach has spent the past couple years telling him that he cannot demand anything. Any time that Gerald demands, or feels that he deserves, or should get something, could become a trigger for anger when he gets disappointed. So he doesn't demand anything. He doesn't even demand to to live in a safe place, until of course, at the end of the book, after he and his girlfriend run away from home.

The girlfriend is interesting because Gerald's anger management coach has been telling him that it's not a good idea for him to be dating. Girls are untrustworthy and infuriating, which just made me wonder what makes him think that boys are any better. Turns out the coach doesn't really know what he's talking about. Or maybe he taught Gerald so well that Gerald is now able to handle a relationship, because Gerald totally handles this relationship. It is far from perfect, and of course there are times when the girl (Hannah) infuriates him, because any time you care about someone they will eventually infuriate you. But Gerald and Hannah learn and they get past their differences and they end up running away together.

This is where the demands come in, because they're not just a couple of dumb kids who run away because they think it would be fun. OK, they kind of are, but there is a very legitimate point to them running away. They refuse to come home until their parents treat them better. Hannah might never have been on TV, but it turns out that her life is far from perfect. Her older brother left and both her parents have checked out, so she runs away with Gerald and the two of them come up with a list of demands (as in "I have kidnapped your child and will return said child only after you have met my demands"). After a few hundred panicked text messages, her mom finally gets it and agrees to make some changes. Gerald's dad takes a little more convincing, but in the end, he comes around, too.