Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

 "You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell."

Probably some of the most philosophical ontological words ever written in Pulp literature.  That's what I like about Raymond Chandler, as opposed to Dashiell Hammett.  Chandler is a philosopher, connoisseur, while Hammett is just a bare craftsman.   Marlowe is refined in his own way, thinks about life, the meaning of it all, his place in the universe.  Spade is a lowlife brute, who couldn't tell Plato from a platoon. 

This time around I read the written book, as opposed to the last review when I read the audiobook while commuting to work and much of the finesse was lost in the jungle and jumble and rumble of public transportation. Luckily, since the Pandemic, I am 100% remote and no more commuting for me. I think I'd like to keep it that way permanently.  It is just too much of a wasted time, even though it gets me out of the house.  As a Project/Engagement Manager I found out I can be just as successful without ever meeting the clients in person, and sometimes not even seeing them on video.  Voice is enough. Fuck the extroverts. Let them crawl up their extroverted rectums.

Anyway, this is still one of my favorite books. Not just detective, pulp or noir books, but books in general, in any category.  One day I'd like to make my own version in film.  I love Bogart, but his version has plot that leaves a lot of out, especially towards the ending.  I'd be the script writer, director, producer, editor and casting.  I know exactly how I want it.  It will be rated M for mature.  No family movie, this one. 

Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

 A quick and flowing read compared to Carrion Comfort by Simmons! Not everybody's cup of tea. Sam Spade's attitude towards women (even those he claims he loves) is decidedly mysoginistic by today's standards, and by a long shot.  There are three developed female characters (plus G's daughter, who only appears on a couple of pages), but they seem to be very stereotyped, and not much real humans.  Miss Wonderly (to use her first alias) is the caricature of a femme fatalle, who uses her physical beauty and sexual favors to manipulate and conquer men to use for her own purposes, while not shying from putting a bullet in their brains when they are of no more use to her.  Iva Archer is the stereotypical suburban housewives whose feelings for her husband died off long time ago (if they even existed beyond her imagination and wishful thinking) and now wants to reinvent herself and get a chance for a fresh start with an affair with her husband's business partner.  Effie is the gregarious secretary stereotype, who is street smart but still has deep feelings, especially for men in positions of authority, like her boss. 

Hammett has a quick and flowing style, especially well crafted dialogues, quick proceeding plot and interesting twists, however his descriptions of every detail of people's clothes and the expressions in their eyes or the twisting of their lips - becomes way too much already after the first 1/4 of the book.  There is an interesting twist in the end when Spade tells out who killed his partner Archer, but the preceding part of the book reads more like an adventure novel (plus hard-boiled) than a detective one. The way the Falcon just "walks" into Spade's office is a real letdown, and doesn't give the anti-hero any chance to prove his professed detective qualities.

If people are looking for a likeable character with whom to identify or "feel for" in books - then this one is definitely not one of them. There are no likeable characters. All of them are flawed, nasty, mean and sleazy in completely unlikeable ways.  Spade, even for an anti-hero, is completely unlikeable. He is a brute, bully, misogynist, homophobe, racist, liar, swindler and many more choice epithets.  However, he is a successful detective and a good reader of people's personalities (summary: they are all rotten).

Although, I appreciate the effort Hammett put into creating Spade, and since Hammett was a private dick himself for a number of years and this would be how an ideal "real-life" gumshoe looks like, I still prefer Philip Marlowe, who is more thoughtful, more introvert, more philosophical, a bit better with women (not bedding the, but treating them) and definitely more fully developed.

The movie is also good, but the Spade there is different from what Hammett wrote in the book (John Huston rewrote many parts for his script for the movie).  From the physical side Spade is supposed to be over 6 feet, blonde, scheming, with a sly smile on his face at all times.  Bogart is 5'6'' (with shoes) , dark, direct, and with a poker face most of the time. Spade in the book calls all his women "angel", but Bogart in the movie calls all of the "sweetheart". 

Anyways, a good book, and a perennial classic, but I am going to re-read "The Big Sleep" again.  By the way, Bogart plays exactly the same character in "Maltese Falcon" and "The Big Sleep" although they are two different detectives.  Well, to come to think about it, Bogart plays exactly the same character in every movie he's been - himself.  

Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons

Yes, it took 2.5 months to read this book. It is very long.  Also it is not overly interesting or readable.  I had such quite expectations from the Hyperion Cantos, which are one of my favorite Sci Fi books, plus I enjoyed the Olympus/Ilium duology, however this book falls below both of those.  I have no idea how this book could win an award when it is so average, artificially prolonged and just plain pretentious. 

First of all, I was expecting a horror book.  This is not a horror book, unless you count the descriptions of the different character's face distortions and lots of blood and murder.  Blood and murder does not make a horror.  It could be called a thriller, but definitely not horror.  The book is also not a Sci Fi book either, since nothing scientific is really described.  Probably we can call it Speculative Fiction, at best, but still mostly a very prolonged, very slow-burn thriller. 

The BS with the FBI agents being 'conditioned' to work for Brother Christian and all past American presidents being in cahoots, event landing US Navy destroyers to guard Brother C.'s personal island, is just too far fetched.  Such thing has never happened in the history of the US, and, in all probability - never will. 

One note - this book was written in the late '80s, so some things that were acceptable then, are not really acceptable today in 2022.  First is racial slurs.  The N-word is peppered all over, and although I get it that the bad guys are using it - it still feels like too much.  Also, the description of rape (by Tony), and I mean physical rape, not just the mental one, and the description of the fear and humiliation the women experience during, was also a bit too much.  I get it, again, it is the bad guy doing it and he is a piece of shit, but less graphic and disturbing descriptions would benefit the plot just as much if not more. 

The best part of the book is Saul Laski and the Holocaust descriptions, the Warsaw Ghetto, and the murder of millions of innocent Jews by the Nazi monsters (Willi being an exaggerated example).  Saul is the only character I found interesting and could feel for.  The other characters were paper-thin marionettes, with no real existence.  Especially ridiculous is the Southern Sherriff who dies half-way through, without having any impact, neither on the first nor the second half of the narrative, but being a kind of caricature which has no meaning attached to its existence. 

The "mind vampire" concept is novel, to be sure, but I fail to see how "Using" is the same as "Feeding" and to what extent? It seems that the "Ability" is independent of any "Feeding" as it stays at the same level/strength and although there is some rejuvenation and life extension for the mind-vampires - that seems to be marginal, and far from the "immortality" of the actual vampires in literature. 

The action/fight/battle scenes are just way too long.  It seems like an inexperienced writer tried his best to write the most epic battles/fights and it ended up being forced, verbose and boring.  Although Simmons has a lot of disdain in the foreword for the Goth Girl Editor who told him to cut the book in half - that advice is definitely valid for the fight scenes, as they are the most boring part of the book, and include descriptions of materials, expressions, sounds and thoughts that are completely superfluous and boring.  Sure, make it "sensory", but within limit; use some common sense. 

So, after 800+ pages and 2.5 months of daily (nightly) reading, I don't feel much richer, neither intellectually, nor life-experience-wise.  I think I am going to give reading the rest of Simmons' books a pause.  A long pause.  A very long pause. 

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

 One word : overhyped.  Two words: nothing special.  Full sentence: The most overhyped, nothing special, self-aggrandizing, intentionally complicated for no reason, chaotic, mostly boring with few good parts, definitely no horror (at least for 85% of the length), some kind of weak love story, so-called book.

I don't get one thing: how can anyone call this book scary or horror? The house and the "monster" are complete bull, not good enough even for a low-budget B movie. What is scary in the book? The claw mark next to Zampano's body?  The weird shifting interior of the house that eventually dissolves into nothing? Give me a break! I found Bram Stoker's Dracula more scary than this book, even though it is written 150 years ago, and in that insufferable British long-winded style with way too much verboseness for no good reason. 

I spent almost a month and a half reading it, and not actually because it is too long (yes, it is too long, almost 800 pages with bunch of appendices, BS notes, excerpts, quotes, etc), but because it is so effin boring! Yes, there are a few good parts, the initial discovery of Zampano's body, the five and a half minute corridor appearance, even Johhny's obsession with Thumper, however those parts are nested amongst hundreds of pages of BS, academic quotes from hundreds of made up books, most with no relevance to the story.

I get it that Danielewski wanted to get a revenge on the academic community that rejected him, however why should the reader suffer through all those hundreds of academic-format quotations which add absolutely nothing to the story, but only exist to keep reminding us how boring and stiff the academic world of writing is.  Well, some of us abandoned our academic career for similar reason, but we don't go writing an 800 page book to get back "at them". 

And the random excerpts at the end of the book definitely look cute and "original", but add nothing to the excitement about the story or make the novel more interesting. The author wanted to be very original and post-modern/experimental, but that only takes you part of the way.  You still have to have a good story, develop a plot, interesting characters and have interesting twists. 

I am not even sure with Johnny Truant, the narrator? I mean does he exist at all, since it is implied he is the baby with "holes in his brain" that died shortly after being born.  Then who is writing all these experiences with Zampano, the book, Thumper, Lude, etc.? Even if that is imagined, then who is the mother in the crazy house writing all those letters to? Give me a break!

Don't waste your time with this overhyped pile of steaming BS.

Enchridion by Epictetus

 This book consists of 53 chapters, each only a few paragraphs long.  It was meant to be internalized, rather than just read.  Epictetus, the famous Stoic, concocted this small volume as an extract for everyday use from his numerous and voluminous Stoic writing. 

The Stoic philosophy is simple: only worry and fret about the things that are in your control, which are very few, mostly your own thoughts, words and emotional responses.  Everything else you just take as a given, without complaining, bitching and moaning.  It is useless.  You cannot control the world anyway, so it is a waste of time and energy.

It s a very simple philosophy, but very difficult to implement. It requires enormous control over one self which cannot be achieved over night.  One has to start with small things and build toward larger ones.

Still, a very good volume to have in your library and remind yourself once in a while. 

Children of the Sky by Vernor Virge

 Second part of the "Fire Upon the Deep", written 20 years later, so thankfully not a trace of the deeply annoying and unimaginative Usenet posts disguised as and "Interstellar" Net (with 200Kb bandwidth - that's huge!).  Also no sex scenes, thanks God, Vernor realized that he is just a CompSci geek, so he is nowhere near having the proper experience to write proper sex scenes.  The few kisses described are more than enough.

The book describes a period 10 years after the first one. The Children have been woken from Cold Sleep and they are 10 years older, meaning Johanna is 24 and Jefri is 19.  Ravna is still 35 since she received an aging treatment in the "High Beyond" that should allow her to live for 500 years or more.  This is also a part of the envy of the other children, since they grow old much faster and will die sooner, since they are stuck in the "Slow Zone" where advanced technology doesn't work.  So a rebellion occurs, lead by the fork-tongued boyfriend of Johanna - Nevil, who actually murders quite a few people throughout the book, especially at the end with the beam, but everyone seems to be OK with just letting him leave and start another 'revisionist' colony - very strange and unrealistic.

The rest of the book is more like a medieval adventure book, rather than a science fiction one. There is almost no technology mentioned at all beyond the Tines' medieval level one. The book is full of twists, betrayals, double-betrayals, but it is all character-based, not really anything to do with science fiction.  As a whole it is a weaker book than the previous one, and especially since the Tines we came to love in the previous tome, like Pilgrim and Woodcarver, barely have any page-time in this volume.

The new big-baddy is Vendacious which apparently develops an entire empire, together with Scribers brood-brother Tycoon, relying only on the "Dataset" he stole from Johanna, pretty much the equivalent of an iPad with downloaded offline Wikipedia on it.  Pretty unrealistic.

Anyway, he does get punished at the end, pretty appropriately, but not enough gloating in his death, especially since he gouged eyes, cut limbs and murdered freely throughout the book.  We don't learn too much more about the Tines than in the previous book, but things introduced there are further developed here. The "Tropical Choir" is an interesting mega-hive-mind concept, but reminds too much of Clarke's "Childhood End."  And I really hoped for more page-time for Greenstalk who gets only a couple of pages (out of 500), which is total loss, IMHO.

Oh yeah, and to emphasize once again, Vernor, buddy, there is no such thing as "Technological Singularity" and there will never be one.  There's that.

Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Virge

I keep writing this guy's name as Vernon.  I guess he would be pissed if he ever knew. But he won't, so there's that. He is a stuffy computer science professor who (somehow) became a writer, and a pretty good one.  Of course, as a stuffy computer geek, his sexual experience is minimal, so all the sex and love scenes (including the dialogue) in the book, are veritably cringeable. At least these science geek writers can follow the example of Dr. Isaac Asimov and remove any sex or love scenes or plots from their science fiction books.  Just concentrate on what you know best. You are not Murakami.

The best part of the book is the Tine's World society of ratdogs which have a pack-mind, several steps below a hive-mind, but a big leap above a singleton mind.  I don't get it why the cover artists keep drawing the Tines as German Sheppard dogs, when it is clear in the books that they should be half way between rats and dogs with a neck like a snake's.  That's not exactly dogs, or at least as we know them, but the characters in the books use mostly dog-like terms to interact with them, probably because we don't have too many terms for interaction with rats or snakes in the English language. 

The worst part of the book is the Net, the communication network linking millions of inhabited and technologically developed worlds in the Milky Way (which in itself is a ridiculous notion if we take the pessimistic interpretation of the Drake equation). This Net reminds of Usenet of the '80s or a BBS ran over a dial-up modem, which was the current technology when Virge wrote the book in 1992, however to assume that such primitive and nerdy/clunky technology would survive for any length of time is simply myopic.  As we see with the current YouTube and Instagram influencers, technology gets adopted and maximized by the coolest segments of society, not some nerdy geeks typing away in a text based browser like Lynx or text email client like Pine.  The stuffy CompSci professors of yore should have understood that such primitive and uncool modes of communication would never last beyond stuffy academic circles. 

Further he names the interstellar UseNet groups on the Net with similar stuffy nomenclature that was used on the Usenet in the '80s (I am old enough to have used them and still remember them) like "Interest Groups", which even to a 12 year old me back then sounded so hilariously prudish, stuffy and nerdy.  As if any "normal" people would use that abomination once the tech became unibquitious.  That's why nobody (but stuffy academic types) uses UseNet today, even Google Groups died, and Yahoo Groups were reset back to nothingness. That's why IRC died as well and TikTok rules the world nowadays.  Coolness evolves. Stuffiness perishes. 

I gotta give it to Virge that he is very vague about the FTL technology that is used in his ships, talking about "automation" and "ultradrive spines" while never really describing them.  That is smart, since no human today could imagine the tech of tomorrow in any realistic terms, and we have to be embarrassed reading Asimov's "Atomics" from the 1950s in otherwise pretty good novels he left behind.  Although, if we exclude both the Net and the Ultradrive from Virge's universe (as mostly Bull), I don't really see what is left from "Hard" science fiction? It becomes more about the functioning of the Tine society, which is more akin to Ursula Le Guin's "Soft" science fiction. 

Another thing that is really ridiculous is how the entire Galaxy is full of high tech civilizations which have existed for millions of years and eventually reach Singularity and become "Powers."  Firstly, "Singularity" is not a thing.  There is no way any species will reach singularity because simply it is not possible to achieve sentient AI and even less possible such impossible AI to merge with organic sentient beings.  Sentience is a non-material phenomenon.  Maybe Orson Scott Card got the closest to describe it as is, an independent spiritual existence that incarnates in this physical universe.  Bull like sentience arises when enough complexity is achieved is just wet dreams of CompSci types.  Otherwise my Threadripper 2990WX would have achieved sentience already.

Secondly, the amount of civilizations that achieve space flight in Virge's universe is simply bonkers.  Drakes equation tells us that at any given point in time, only two (2) civilizations in the entire galaxy would achieve technology level to perform interplanetary flights, mostly in their own solar system.  These two would be so far apart in the Milky Way that they would never ever meet.  That's why aliens have never visited Earth.  Because they don't exist.  They either destroyed themselves after 50-60k of existence (which is a blip on Galactic time scale) or simply died out from depopulation, disease and madness.  Galactic life like in Star Wars or Star Trek does not exist.  The Galaxy is probably more like in Arrival, Interstellar or Annihilation. 

The Zones of Thought are just a silly crutch for Virge to justify his completely unrealistic views on life, sentience and the universe.  If he didn't set the Zones of Thought then the "Powers" would consume the entire Milky Way in no time. Luckily for us (here on Old Earth in the "Slow Zone") there are no Powers, there is no Beyond, there is no Transcend. It is all one huge, empty, boring universe.  Except Black Holes. Black Holes are cool.

So why did I spend so much time reading this really large and really verbose book? For the Tines! It is an amazing society and individuals (packs), imagined in a great way, including their psychology, motivations, emotions, etc. The rest of the book dealing with Virge's wet dreams of his own immortality are just a boring filler to drudge through, just to get to the good parts about the Tines!

Redemption of Time by Baoshu

 This is a fan fiction that got the approval of the original author Cixin Liu to be published as a fourth volume of his "Three Body Problem" trilogy.  Baoshu, the author is a science fiction writer himself, so it is not overly bad, but it is not very good either.  Most of the book (three parts) is characters talking and explaining what happened in the first three books, mostly things that are in the gap years between the different narratives.  The explanations are good, though they could have been better. There is really no plot or action in this book, as it is mostly narration. The characters are from the first three books, but sound really boring in this one.

The book being boring is the first issue. The second issue is this whole overarching story, in a pure Christian Metaphor, of the eternal fight between the Master, and his/her nemesis (child?) the Lurker, who destroyed the original Paradise (the 10 dimensional universe) and is trying to destroy and collapse all of this universe into zero dimensions (right now we're at three, so much more work to be done.  If I wanted to read Christian moralistic book, I wouldn't choose Science Fiction, though Orson Card has done a pretty good job in his books, much more believable.  Of course there is so much talk about Supermembranes on which countless of universes exist, though it seems to me that the author does not understand String Theory very well; mostly from sci-pop point of view.

The third issue I have is with the ending where the author of the original trilogy Cixin Liu is made to be the main protagonist of the trilogy, only reborn in the "next" universe with 5kg of mass missing, so it is a little bit different.  For example, Baoshu describes how Mao Zedong ("tall, old man"??? wtf?) decides to build a nuclear power plant instead of the original Red Coast observatory looking for aliens.  And it just happens that this is the power plant where Cixin Liu worked while writing the original trilogy. Oh, come on! It is cheesier that a barrel of cheddar!

Anyway, it is interesting take on how the things would have ended, although not exceptionally good, still it is entertaining because it is very easy reading of much lower writing quality and much more simplistic that the originals. 

Burning Chrome by William Gibson (collection)

Burning Chrome is a book collection of short stories Gibson wrote until 1986, but also the title of the short story that comes last in the book. This review is about the entire book.  These are early Gibson stories, some dating back to 1977, when he moved from Toronto to Vancouver, after dodging the draft in his native United States. The first story, or almost a novella, is Johnny Mnemonic, but I already reviewed that one separately. 

From the rest of the stories I really liked "Hinterland" which has a bit of Lovecraftian feeling of "Cosmic Horror" that I enjoy (cannot stand slasher/gore "Horrors").  In alternate future where USSR won the space and economic race, a cosmonaut accidentally discovers a type of wormhole from where ships and people go into another universe.  The people mostly come back dead or crazy, committing suicide soon after return.  However, some, but not all, astronauts come back with amazing technological advances, which seem to be from a science and technology that is fundamentally different from ours in its very concept.  One example is a metal ring which has magnetically encoded information on how to cure every kind of cancer.  Another example is detailed diagrams and schematics of constructing molecular-based computers which are microscopic and yet as powerful as the best available at the time.  This reminds of the "Cargo Cult" in the Pacific Ocean during World War 2, where the less developed tribes living on the islands would create altars and worship the technologically advanced Allied planes and people, who would sometimes leave them some piece of technology that helped the tribes-men's lives immensely. 

"New Rose Hotel" is also interesting, albeit quite short, but already set in "The Sprawl" universe that Gibson uses for his later Cyberpunk classics.  "Winter Market" is another story that I really liked, not because it has a very interesting plot (it doesn't), but because it happens on Granville Island in Vancouver, BC, with Kitsilano, False Creek, Downtown, West End and other landmarks being central to the story.  Even though I don't live in Vancouver anymore, the 7 years I spent there are still full of fond memories for me, and the city has a soft spot in my heart.

The titular story is very alike Gibson's best known work "Neuromancer," although the characters are different.  It is set in the Sprawl, Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Area (BAMA) with the technology and social elements as in the novel. The Cyberspace is described similarly, though no computer scientists has figured out yet why should Big Data be represented with 3D geometrical objects and figures. Also no tech executive has figured why should Big Data be accessed with "decks" that hook up to one's skull and work directly with the vision center in one's brain. Anyways, at the end the girl turns out to be a Meat Puppet because she needed money - maybe a forerunner of Molly Millions who (unfortunately) does not appear in the story.

Tales of Ordinary Madness by Charles Bukowski

This is the first volume of the split collection "Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions, and General Tales of Ordinary Madness", the second volume being "The most Beautiful Woman in Town" which I actually read first. And it was better that way! The first volume if very underwhelming. The stories are not as disturbing as in the second, but they are not as good either. Both volumes contain anecdotal, semi-biographical stories (he always exaggerates and makes himself the hero of every story), but the events described and the characters described are not as interesting.

Probably the best story in this volume is "Animal Crackers in my Soup" which is made even better by the hydrogen bomb falling in the very last sentence.  I guess in today's world of #metoo the "Rape! Rape!" story would elicit quite a heated discussion. Of course, the story is mostly fiction, probably based on some fragments of truth that Bukowski exaggerated and fantasized. 

Several stories deal with how bad career writing is, and especially writing of poetry.  He complains that while his books are taught in universities, he barely makes $500 a year, and has to do shit jobs just to pay his rent (and his alcohol, which is the main expense).  He also advises that all other writers and poets are either assholes or complete wrecks which "die in steaming pots of shit." His perfect life, as before, is described as being alone in a small room with a lot of alcohol, cigarettes and a typewriter, while listening to classical music.  Not too much to yearn for, one would say?

Most Beautiful Woman in Town and Other Stories by Charles Bukowski

I just read that this is volume 2 of the reprint in 1983 of the 1972 short story collection printed by City Lights "Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions, and General Tales of Ordinary Madness."  I am reading volume 1 as well.  What can I say, Buk is Buk.  He is one my favourite writers because of the raw honesty of his writing.  He doesn't beat around the bush. He calls a cunt a cunt. He calls a cock a cock.  No Latin terms, no euphemisms.  He describes his morbidly fat characters as morbidly fat, not overweight or anything lighter.  He describes the crazies as crazies, not victims of society with unfortunate upbringing.  He describes the whores as whores, the murderers as murderers, the sadists as sadists, the pedophiles as pedophiles, exactly as the garbage that they are, no punches pulled.

However, I have to say that some of the stories in this collection traumatized me.  The Murder of Ramon Vasquez is horrible in its direct description of homosexual rape, extreme torture and murder.  It is even worse knowing that it was based on a real event of a silent movie actor.  The Fiend is absolutely traumatizing description of a rape of a 6 year old girl by a pedophile.  I get the honesty and the direction, but - still traumatizing. I wish I never read it. The White Beard is also disgusting, partly because of the 13 year old hooker and partly because the eating of a watermelon mixed with cum.  A Drinking Partner describes a horrible attach on a pregnant woman, where the fetus dies, and then a murder of her husband. I get that these things happen and there are such monsters out there, looking just like the rest of us, but one of the reasons I stopped watching the news is exactly these kinds of stories.  I just don't want that information in my brain.  I know it exists, but I don't want to have it in my memory banks.

Of course that there are many good stories in this collection that did not traumatize the reader like the ones mentioned above.  Life and Death in the Charity Ward describes the cruelness and banal evil of the 'free' hospitals in the United States and the people (?) who work there.  The title story is touching narrative about a suicide. My Big-Assed mother is hilarious in its honesty and description of rotten cops.  I don't care much about his horse racing stories, as I always found that kind of gambling the most boring of all possible forms of gambling, but there is some very detailed advice given by Buk. Good literature, but not something to read while eating.

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

 I have to admit I only read 40% of this book, but it was becoming a torture to continue, so I had to abandon it. It is too boring.  I never thought I would say that, since I loved Dawkins' previous book "The Selfish Gene", which I still think is one of the best books ever written and every human being should read it to understand what is driving them.  However this one is too boring.  Dawkins kind of gets back to all his adversaries who insulted him in the past and makes the arguments against their arguments, but it is not very interesting to read.

Hitchens was much more interesting read on the same topic.  Yes, Hitchens has a bombastic and self-aggrandizing style, but it still makes for an interesting reader, if not literature.  This book by Dawkins is neither.  Maybe I should have finished it, but I realized that I was just going on out of respect for his previous book, "The Selfish Gene" and although I found this one mildly interesting, I just didn't want to waste my precious time on this planet finishing it.  I would rather waste my precious time watching silly shows on Netflix. At least they hypnotize me for a while.

I really don't get what Dawkins has against Agnostics, but he is very hostile towards people who say that we will never know for real about the existence of God.  He says he has more respect for a religious fanatic, or, obviously, for a militant atheist like himself, than for people, as he perceives them, who cannot decide either way.  He doesn't seem to perceive that agnostics are not sitting on the fence, and cannot decide between the two sides, but they've decided for themselves that neither of the choices is worth of their time.  They are not waiting for some final proof from the atheists that God doesn't exist, or the same from the religious in the other direction.  Agnostics have decided, after serious and prolonged thinking process, that neither side will ever produce a proof that will be irrefutable, simply because our human brains, the few pounds of blood and grey/white matter that gives us sentience, will never be able, and was never meant to understand something so outside its scope of capabilities, like an Infinite God.  We simply do not have the instruments.

 

God is not great by Christopher Hitchens

I've heard a lot about Mr. Hitchens and his brand of atheism/anti-theism, so I wanted to read at least one of his 30 books, and this one came highly recommended in reviews, and is one of the last writings he published before his untimely death in 2011 at age 62.  His biographers said that he was heavy smoker and heavy drinker since his teenage years, so it is possible that such lifestyle could have contributed to his esophageal cancer.  Or, it is also possible that it was completely unrelated, as we've all heard of people who smoked like chimneys all their lives and lived into their late 90s.  

The book is well written, though Mr.Hitchens' style is quite bombastic, and he seems to enjoy hearing himself speak.  The arguments are solid, that is, the anti-theist arguments, not the the title of the book, however most or all of them have been presented before and in other publications in a more scientific and less sensational way, which appeals more to me.

One thing that Mr. Hitchens seems to want to prove is that nothing good ever came out of any religion.  I would have to disagree with that postulate.  Of course, many, many bad and even horrible things came out of most known religions, however, even if we adopt a very harsh and objective attitude, some positive traits are undeniable.  

As Freud said, to paraphrase, as long as humans are dreadfully afraid of their final death and indulge wholeheartedly in wishful thinking fantasies - religions will continue to exist.

After the Quake by Haruki Murakami

This is a collection of several short stories, all of which have loose connections to the earthquake in Kobe in 1995. I was a freshman in college in 1995 and have vague memories of the quake on TV, most of the news in the area I lived in being taken by the genocidal wars stemming from the break-up of Yugoslavia.  I am not a fan of short stories. I like to write them, because it is easy, but I do not like to read them, because they finish before they started.  All the short stories I've written were because I was too lazy to develop them into novels, or at least chapters of a novel.  It is much easier to hold the plot and characters of a short story in your head than the plot and characters of a novel (assuming at least 300 pages, as the publishers today seem to extort).

"UFO in Kushiro" is about a good looking guy who marries an ugly woman who then ends up leaving him because she says he is empty inside.  He goes to Hokkaido and another woman wants to make love to him but he is too depressed to get an erection.  He thinks on the meaning of life at the end. As if there was one to be had.

"Landscape with Flatiron" is about a runaway girl, who suspected her father wanted to have sex with her, but he never did, and lives as a grocery cashier with a young punk who thinks he know everything.  The only thing going for her in her life is meeting with a middle aged painter and making bonfires on the beach.

"Thailand" is about a Japanese doctor going to Bangkok to relax and having as a driver an immaculately groomed man in his 60s who is obviously gay and former gay lover of a Swedish gem dealer who apparently passed away from old age.  The doctor carries pain inside her and an old fortune teller from Thailand tells her how to get rid of it.

"Super Frog Saves Tokyo" originally published in GQ (why won't they publish me??) is about a giant frog fighting a giant worm below Tokyo in order to prevent and earthquake.  Also a tax collector without any life gets some hallucinations, but survives.

The last story "Honey Pie" is the longest and is again about the same theme Murakami keeps digesting, a young sensitive boy in love with young sensitive and beautiful girl, but the boy is too afraid to express his feelings because his self esteem is nil (for one reason or another, it doesn't really matter anyway).  The girl eventually finds a macho man to pound her, but eventually the macho either dumps her or she leaves, so she goes back to the sensitive boy who waited and tortured himself all these years for her.  And they live happily ever after.  No they don't.  Stories with characters like that usually end in separate asylums in real life.

South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami

 This is yet another book where the main love interest of the main character (named for a change!) commits a suicide!  Wow!  Murakami would have probably been censored today because so many of his leading women commit a suicide (one way or another, even if it is not explicit stated, it is strongly implied both here and in Sputnik Sweetheart). I wonder why this pattern in his works.  Maybe he had someone in his life whom he loved and who committed a suicide?  Or maybe he is killing off his leading ladies so he doesn't fall in temptation himself to leave his wife - sacrificing them and his own feelings symbolically. 

This is a great short book, in line with Murakami's personal writings on life, love, sex, growing up and finding one's places in the world.  Hajime and Shimamoto are hanging out as 12 year old children, although Shimamoto has one leg shorter than the other because of Polio.  They go to different schools and Hajime is too afraid to contact her and he has another girlfriend in high school Izumi, who doesn't want to have vaginal sex, although she is OK with HJs and BJs. Hajime eventually has a wild sex with Izumi's first cousin, and when Izumi finds out she breaks off all contact with him and isolates herself.  Later in life she becomes a scary spinster of whom children are afraid and she sends Hajime invitation for the funeral of her cousin who died young and unmarried. 

Hajime goes on to marry Yukiko after college, a daughter of a wealthy developer and shady speculator.  They have two children and Hajime opens two Jazz bars which become famous, but he has never forgotten about Shimamoto, and he follows a beautiful woman who is lame on the same leg one day, until an older man accosts him and offers him 100,000 yen to forget about the woman he followed. Eventually Shimamoto visits one of Hajime's bars, but never tells him anything about her past or how she makes money, although it is obvious that she lives in luxury without doing any work. 

Although Hajime cheated on his wife quite a few times, they were all physical, but with Shimamoto it is emotional too.  Shimamoto goes with Hajime to spread the ashes of her premature born baby in a river that flows to the sea, and then they spend one night in Hajime's cottage, making love and telling each other everything they wanted since they were kids.  Hajime promises Shimamoto that he will leave his family, children and everything for her.  The next day she is gone, and the allusion is that she committed suicide so that she doesn't ruin Hajime's existing life.  Yukiko first rejects Hajime and has him sleep on the couch, but eventually takes him back by the end of the book.

The theme here and in many other novels and stories (honey pie in After the Quake) is that a sensitive boy is in love with a beautiful and sensitive girl since they are children or teenagers, but doesn't do anything to tell her about his love, although he feels that she loves him too but is too afraid to lose what he has with her in case of rejection.  Eventually the beautiful and sensitive girl gets tired of waiting and goes off with the next guy who proposes to her, who is usually powerful, rich or otherwise blessed with societal success.  Then eventually the girl realizes that the power guy is not for her, or he dumps her for the next one, and then she goes back to her original love, who by now has spent most of his life pining for her and suffering and eventually they get together, in some way.

All of the above could have been completely and utterly avoided if the sensitive and beautiful girl expressed her love for the sensitive boy FIRST, and be the one who made the first move.  However, such idea seems to be a taboo nearing sacrilege in Japanese culture and psyche. Oh, well.

Johnny Mnemonic by William Gibston

 This is a short story and I might say, quite short, but still miles better than the movie with Keanu Reaves.  I have no idea why would the director of the movie ignore the grit and bile of the actual story and instead go for cheap tropes like making Lo Teks some kind of fighters against oppression when in the story they are just another criminal gang in Nightcity. 

The story starts when Johnny cannot get the information unloaded from the wet implant in his brain because the dealer that usually uses him for shuttling information realizes that it belongs to the Yakuza and he is more than happy to let Johnny take the fall instead of him as the Yakuza have another wat-grown ninja on the trail.

Johnny goes to the dealer to straighten things out, but the dealer and his bodyguard use nerve arrester which freezes Johnny until Molly Millions come along and kills the former two.  The Yakuza ninja is still on the trail so Molly takes Johnny to Nightcity where Dog Lo Teks, basically humans with dog implanted fangs and other parts, have their own society, part of which is fights in an arena of net of cables sprung out between tops of buildings.

The Yakuza ninja finds them here and Molly fights him in the arena, and although the ninja is maximum-enhanced for reflexes, strength and endurance, Molly manages to kill him, and he dies with an expression of surprise and disbelief on his face. Johnny stays with the Lo Teks and becomes one of them, his new bulldog fangs grafting just nicely in his jaw.

So much better than the movie.

Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote

 This is a novella by Truman Capote, and since I was a fan of the film and Audrey Hepburn - I wanted to read the book.  It turns out the book is much better than the movie, even for Hepburn fans. I didn't understand from the movie that Holly is actually a call girl/high end prostitute, in a way, merging that role with a socialite.  Also I didn't realize that she was supposed to be 20 years old, as Hepburn was older when she played the role.  Capote said that his model for the character was blond, and he preferred if Marylin Monroe got the part.

Capote says that Holly Golightly is not a prostitute, but an American Geisha, though that distinction is largely lost in the 21st century.  Holly mentions that she slept with 11 men by the age 19, and that's without counting what happened before she was 13. 

Capote's language is beautiful, flowing, simple, yet conversational and full of slang and color.  I had to look up some terms, as the 1940s were a long time ago.  Completely opposite of the language William Gibson uses, so sparse and technical. 

The book perfectly describes a geisha, from a small town in the South, starving as a child, getting married at 14 to a much older man, but having sex before that.  Eventually she ends up in Holywood, being "sponsored" by O.J., a producer who wants to make an actress out of her and teaches her French.  She elopes for New York City where she becomes a "cafe girl", basically living off the tip money given to her by older, wealthy man, who claim to be in love with her.

The unnamed narrator lives in the same brownstone with her, and becomes her helper and confidant.  Eventually there is a scandal where she was transmitting information from a mobster in jail and she loses her Brazilian sponsor.  She goes to Brazil anyway and months later she sends the narrator a letter from Buenos Aires where she is "accompanying" an old rich man who is married and has seven children. After that the narrator doesn't here anything about her.

The novel is much more realistic and life-like than the movie, which changed several major plots and completely removed some others.  The narrator never ends up with Holly in the end like in the movie and his love is unrequited, which is one of the themes of the novel.

Hear the Wind Sing by Haruki Murakami

 This is a very short book, and I can see why Murakami didn't want his first two books translated into English, as, besides short, they are also not very structured and the plot is all over the place.  This book is even shorter than Pinball, 1973 and it doesn't have to do much with wind, except one random conversation.  The book happens while the unnamed narrator is back for a summer holiday from Tokyo at his seaside town.

Here he drinks at J's bar with "The Rat" who is from a rich family, older than the narrator and apparently has a fixation on an older woman.  The narrator remembers the three women he has slept with and the last of them committed a suicide, although nobody knows why.  He also finds a passed out woman in J's bar bathroom (seems bathrooms in Japan are unisex, who would have thunk it?).  He takes her home and notices she is missing the pinky finger on her left hand.  She strips naked while drunk and the narrator stays in her apartment to keep her from harming herself.  When she wakes up she accuses him of having sex with her while she was passed out and throws him out.

Eventually he finds her as a clerk in a record shop by the shore and they start seeing each other until one night she disappears and when he sees her again she told him she had an abortion.  He never sees her again after that night. 

The Rat wants to write novels, but he says he will not put sex or fights in his novels.  The narrator doesn't understand why not to include sex and fights when those are some of the most important events in human's lives.  

The narrator eventually moves to Tokyo permanently and gets married, while The Rat writes novels and sends him a manuscript each Christmas.

Pinball, 1973 by Haruki Murakami

This is the second book Murakami ever wrote, although for some reason I thought it was the first. Hear the Wind Sing is the first one and it is even shorter than this one, while both are shorter than even the shortest Murakami novel I've read so far - After Dark. 

As usual with Murakami, the novel is narrated from a first-person perspective by an unnamed narrator, however this is the second book of the "Rat Trilogy" so the Rat was already introduced in the previous book and in this one he is sleeping with a girl that he bought some stuff from, but is actually infatuated with another girl who lives in an apartment next to a beach and gets beach sand in her balcony.

J is also here, the Chinese owner of a bar where the narrator and the Rat go often. J is in his forties and usually doesn't volunteer information about himself, seeing as non-Japanese Asians in Japan cannot become citizens.  

The narrator works as a translator with a friend of his, him doing the English translations and the friend doing French.  He drinks often and sleeps with girls, eventually waking up in between twin girls who stay in his apartment for the duration of the novel, but whose real names we never learn.

The narrator start playing pinball on this very specific machine that he calls Spaceship, but eventually the arcade place is closed and the machine taken away, but he spends years trying to track it until he finally succeeds.  He tracks a collector who bought the machine from scrap and has it along with over 50 others in an abandoned chicken refrigeration warehouse on the outskirts of Tokyo. When he finally finds the Spaceship, he just talks to her as if to a woman, but doesn't play.

The twins eventually decide to leave and the narrator continues with his life. People call this kind of novel "a slice of life".

Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami

 This is also one of the shorter Murakami novels, although he mostly writes very long ones, like his last one Killing Commendatore.  At around 200 pages it is just a little bit longer than After Dark, which was so far the shortest novel I read by Murakami.  Sputnik is related to the Russian satellite, but also on mispronunciation of Beatnik by Miu, the love interest of Sumire, a college-age girl who realizes she is a lesbian, or at least in love with an adult women, as Miu is near 40, if the two can be equalized.

 The unnamed narrator in first person, as usual with Murakami, at least we have the first letter of his name - K, tells the story of the book, mostly about his unrequited love for Sumire.  They went to college together and although K became a teacher, a reasonable job with a future, Sumire dropped out and wanted to become a writer, living in a tiny old apartment, with nearly no possessions or clothing or food.  Sumire calls K on the phone almost every night at 3am and they talk until the morning.  K wants Sumire sexually and romantically, but she has never shown any sign of such interest in him, only platonic, though thorough friendship.

Sumire falls in love with Miu, who is Zainichi Korean, which is significant for those who know the background.  They travel around the world, K wondering how to come physically closer to Sumire (while sleeping with other women), while Sumire wondering how to start a physical relationship with Miu, who in turn had something unnatural happen to her 14 years ago which left her with her hair all white and unable to have sexual desire or physical sex. 

The novel is about loneliness and the transformation of that loneliness into something less painful.  Loneliness can be present even when one is surrounded by other people and doing all the social activities and relationships a "normal" human is expected to be doing.  

Sumire eventually disappears on a small Greek island the night after she makes a physical advance towards Mui whose body rejects her.  K goes to the island to help Mui where she tells him her story and Sumire's story while they were together. Nobody can find Sumire or her body anywhere and eventually both K and Miu go back to Japan.

The book emphasizes that even when great events and great pain and loss happens in people's life, eventually they still go to the everyday routine and try to forget or ignore the pain as best they can, looking outwardly normal and well-adapted.

Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami

 This is the last book Murakami published (2017) and is one of the largest he wrote. It is more on a meta-level having to do with Ideas and Metaphors (and the scary, dangerous Double-Metaphors).  Descriptions of the book insist on relating it to "The Man in the White Subaru", but that is just one of the side threads, and these people who wrote the descriptions either did not read the entire book, or didn't understand it. 

The main character is a painter who makes a living painting commercial portraits for executives, which require very little creativity.  His wife of 6 years leaves him for another man and he moves out.  First he drives around Northern Japan, where he meets The Man with the White Subaru and the skinny girl who wants him to choke her during sex.

Eventually he settles in the abandoned house on a top of a mountain of the great Japanese painter Tomohiko Amada where he discovers an unknown painting of his called "Killing Commendatore." After hearing a bell at night and excavating a Buddhist pit on the property, he is visited by an Idea in the form of 2-foot Commendatore who eventually has the main character kill him in front of the near-comatose Tomohiko Amada (who was tortured by Nazis/SS in Austria during the Anschluss).  

There is a Menshiki character involved, who lives in a huge white mansion across from the main character, drives Jaguars and has some kind of a shady past.  He bought the mansion to observe a 13-year old girl living across the house, Mariye, who might or might not be his biological daughter.  Menshiki joins the main character in exploring the pit, and then having him paint his portrait and the portrait of Mariye, in order to get closer to her. 

Things get hairy with lots of twists and turns, as in most Murakami books, there is even a fantastic trip underground through the "Path of the Metaphor", however eventually many things get unresolved.  We never learn who is the Man in the White Subaru or the girl in the love hotel who likes choking during sex.  We never learn what happens with Menshiki and Mariye, and the main character getting back with his former/estranged wife Yuzu who had a child by another man is very unpersuasive. 

It seems that the book is more of an exploration of Ideas and Metaphors and the creative process, rather than a book about characters and their lives.  The best parts are those that remind of the Wind-Up bird chronicle, like the pit and the going through the tunnel to be reborn in the pit itself.  It is quite a long book and some parts are really meta to such a level to be almost unreadable, which is very rare with Murakami's books.

After Dark by Haruki Murakami

 The best thing about this book is that I got introduced to Curtis Fuller and his amazing composition "Five Spot After Dark".  I also listened to other albums by him, and although the completely Free Style Jazz is not exactly my style, he has some amazing compositions like his rendition of "Besame Mucho" which sounds amazing on a trombone and "Autumn Leaves" which is also great.  I never knew that Jazz Trombone could sound this good, and I thank Murakami for introducing me.  Murakami owned a Jazz cafe in Tokyo for many years, and his depth and breadth of knowledge of Jazz, but also Classical, Opera and Rock classics like Bruce Springsteen is mind-boggling.  I learned more about American and European music from Murakami than from any other American or European author.

This is one of the shortest books Murakami wrote, and arguable one of the weakest one, content-wise.  The plot is very undetermined.  It all happens during one single night in Tokyo, every chapter happening at a different hour of the night.  Two sisters, Eri and Mari are the main characters, so to speak.  One is a beauty while the other is a nerd.  One is asleep during most of the book and some weird things happen with the TV in the room which is not her room, while the other is spending the night around Tokyo, waiting for the first morning trains to start running.

There is a love hotel manager, who is an interesting character, but too little time is spent on her.  There is an aspiring trombonist who practices most of the night, a 19 year old Chinese prostitute who gets beaten up and Chinese mafia in Japan involvement with a night office worker (salariman) who has a secret life on the side.  The parts about the sleeping Eri are probably the weakest. The perspective is not first-person, as in most of Murakami's books, but more like a movie expositions, with descriptions of the camera movement and angles, which, although new, did not work for me.

Ultimately, the book is a love poem to Tokyo at Night, the city where Murakami spent most of his life, although he was born in Kyoto.  The characters are much more forgettable than in his other books, but if one takes Tokyo to be the main character of the book, than things make more sense on a certain meta-level.

Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling

 Two Americans writing a novel about 19th century England.  So much Victorian slang that you'd need Websters and Wikipedia on quick dial.  It is like they purposely chose all the obscure words that are not used for one and a half century now.  When you look up the words they use in Websters, almost always there would be a note next to it of "obsolete", "archaic" and "dated".  Of course, they want you to feel authentic in their invented world, but it makes for extremely tedious and burdensome reading.  Definitely not a "light reading".

And what's up with naming every single street in downtown London? I really don't want to know which street Mallory or Oliphant turned into, crossed to, made a turn onto.  Who cares? It doesn't make it authentic - I can open Google maps and look them up, but why? It is just unnecessary detail that doesn't add to the story or experience at all. I've been to London many times, and never paid attention to any of the street names.

The parts with Sybil Gerrard are the best parts of the book, and I bet Gibson wrote them.  The parts with Timothy Oliphant are the worst parts of the book and I bet Sterling wrote them.  They exchanged floppy disks between themselves, writing from Vancouver and Austin. 

This is the "original" Steampunk novel, although the authors never intended it so.  There is lots of "engines" and "ordinateurs", basically early computers run on steam according to the ideas of Charles Babbage.  In the real world Babbage never constructed his machine.  In this alternate world he did, and made England superpower who intervened in the American Civil war and kept the North and the South (and Texas) from uniting, so North America is in a perpetual state of warfare, with thousands American refugees streaming into Europe.

There is lots of brass and wooden handles, and spinning cogs and wheels, however at the end of the day, the book is more of a novelty than real literature.

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki by Haruki Murakami

 Murakami is my favorite writer and he doesn't disappoint here too! Although there is no magical realism in this book, it is still perfectly written and even the most mundane moments like making tea are made interesting.  It starts with Tsukuru trying to find out why his four best friends cut him off many years ago when he was still a student.  His older girlfriend Sara wants him to clear things before they can move to a serious relationship, so Tsukuru takes vacation from work (he builds Railway Stations) and goes on a pilgrimage to find the truth.

When he speaks to the color-ful friends, the two male ones tell him that one of the girls said he raped her, so they all had to cut contact with him.  This, of course is not true, and Tsukuru eventually finds the fourth girl in Finland (the third girl, who said she was raped by Tsukuru was murdered six year prior) and she told him that the third girl had mental health problems and that someone indeed raped her, but she blamed it on him because she needed to blame someone.  

Tsukuru eventually goes back to Japan to see Sara, but she is seeing another older man, and she gives her a choice to make in three days between him and the other man.  The book ends when Tsukuru is waiting for Sara's call on the third day.

Although the ending is unsatisfying, and there are several threads left unfinished (like with the Death Mark), it is a very deep and interesting I-Novel, in the Japanese and Murakami tradition.  Definitely worth the read.

Ancilary Justice by Ann Leckie

 I really don't understand what the hype is about here? This book won all the sci-fi awards and for what? It is a very boring story of Empire - bad, individual - good.  Throw in some AIs that are ruling the world and have many bodies (ancillaries) and that's pretty much the whole book.  Oh, yes, the AIs don't understand human gender, so everyone is a "she".  So what? Is that supposed to be new, cool and original? There are better AIs in Dan Simmons' Hyperon Cantos. The ancillary bodies are better done in Altered Carbon.  The "she" aspect of gender is way better done in the "Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula Le Guinn.  So, what is special about this book at all?  Why all those awards? 

The characters are bland and completely unrelatable.  The writing is dry and distant, no attachment possible.  Plot is pretty much non existent.  The final twist (spoiler) that different sub-personalities within the main AI personalities are fighting each other is completely unoriginal and uninteresting.  Again, the question: how could this book win all those awards? On what merit?

Rabbit, Run by John Updike

This book and this author have received so much praise (and a Pulitzer!) that I had to check it out.  Very disappointing.  This is another of those books which were considered "revolutionary" when they came out (1961), but look decidedly unimpressive from the point of view of 2022.  Thomas Pynchon is another of those authors whose books were "revolutionary" in the 1960s, but are the most boring drag to slag through nowadays.  So what is exceptional about this book, "Rabbit, Run" which apparently took its title from a WW2 popular song, as if anyone today in 2022 would have even heard it?  

Well, the language is interesting, pretty much like a "stream of consciousness" but limited only to paragraphs and pages.  There are some paragraphs which are two-pages long, and only consist of Updike's random memories, loosely and barely tangentially related to the story and plot, while using obscure, made-up words and terms, which probably sounded cool in 1960, but today are just a bore.  You can pretty much skip all the paragraphs that don't have a dialogue, and still get the full story, without the ancillary garbage.  

The story is boring, already seen a million times before, and nothing to write home about.  Harry Angstrom, whose nickname "Rabbit" seems to serve absolutely no other purpose in the entire book but to add "flavor" and "spice" and "recognition" - is just yet another mid-western man with little to no education, dead-end shitty job, shitty marriage to a woman he only occasionally feels like fucking (and who drinks barrels of alcohol while pregnant? what kind of child brain development will that result in?), until one day he just doesn't feel like he'd ever want to fuck her again.  So, he does what every average, under-educated, under-achiever would do, and leaves her and his son, and goes to live with a part-time hooker, whom he also manages to get pregnant (praise under-educated sperm!).

Then it gets into melodramatic bullshyte, like his drunk wife drowns the new baby in the bathtub and then goes crazy, and this extremely annoying protestant preacher just yaps his gobbler the entire book with all this sanctimonious bullshyte, which really means nothing in the end.  Pretty much describes every sticks and boonies backwater town in America.  Thanks, but I have better things to do with my time.

Mysterious World by Arthur C. Clarke

 "Mysterious World" by Arthur C. Clarke, and the other two guys, who actually wrote 95% of the book, but pretty much never get credit anywhere, was the first book from Clarke I ever read, and it got me onto reading his entire (sci-fi) bibliography.  Reading it again now, it looks pretty non-impressive, however for my 9-year old mind, all these "mysteries" (many of which were not), were the most magical, most exciting thing I'd ever known (in my first 9 years of life).  Although I still have the original book (in Croatian translation, and looking pretty shabby 35 years later, although the initial seller cheated me and sold me a damaged book for the price of new, but hey, it is my own fault, right?), I actually re-read a PDF from the web of the original British mail-order edition.

I was not impressed.  From my "middle-aged man with multiple graduate degrees" point of view, the book is pretty disappointing, just another cash-grab to follow the (mediocre) series from 1980 on Yorkshire TV.  But hey, my childhood memories are still fresh and brilliant, and this book is an indelible part of them, so there's that.

I do still credit this book for getting me onto the next "real" Clarke book, "Against the Fall of Night",  written when he was 29, and much better than the later "re-work" (basically, another cash-grab) "The City and the Stars".