One can never heap too much praise upon a good public institution, such as the Multnomah Country Library system. Without depleting their own bank accounts, those given “library cards” can keep up to date on the latest fiction and nonfiction stories publishing houses have mass-produced in antiquated hard-bound sheafs of paper called “books”. These books, or “analog Kindles” as they are more commonly known, are conditionally lent out to readers. Unlike a pay service in the vein of Netflix or GameFly, the borrowed books are expected to be returned to a physical location within a set, albeit negotiable, time frame, so others can read them. As far as plots to enslave the American people under communism go, this is one of the least pernicious.
Henry Ford remains one of the most fascinating figures of the twentieth century. The legendary automaker wore many hats: industrialist, pacifist, visionary, anti-Semite. One of the strangest episodes of Ford’s career, though, has been obscured by time. Author Greg Grandin dusted off that curiosity, and gave over nearly 400 pages to writing about Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City.
It’s not just that Ford founded an ill-fortuned outpost in the middle of the Brazalian Amazon for the purpose of harvesting rubber. He Fordized it, designing it in such a way that it reflected his neurotic idiosyncrasies. With little respect for its jungle environment, Fordlandia was modeled after an idealized Midwestern town. In essence, it was a no-holds-barred cage match between the Ford way and reality, with reality, as it so often does, coming out on top.
Reading Fordlandia has the peculiar effect of making you feel like there’s more history in the last century alone than can ever be known. If you’re intent on trying to catch-up, there’s no better place to start. —Robert Starvation
Going Bovine was a literary acid trip – which is strange, considering it’s a Teen/Young Adult novel, but definitely true. It started out sounding a little too Diablo Cody-ish and I was almost turned off by it, but I continued reading because the overall story intrigued me and I was really starting to like the main character, self-proclaimed nerd Cameron, and Gonzo, the video game playing dwarf/midget (for clarity’s sake) with an over-protective mother.
The ending was not exactly what I was expecting, but definitely honest to the situation that Cameron found himself in near the beginning. Without giving too much away, all I can say is that the human version of Mad Cow Disease is pretty harsh, yet entertaining. To read about, anyway. Also, I can’t forget to mention the lawn gnome incarnation of Baldur, the viking god, son of Odin. Seriously. —Sam Pagan
Half-Minute Horrors is a compilation of horror stories written by children’s authors. Designed to take roughly half a minute to read (no story is longer than a page and a half), it’s a good investment for anyone who was a fan of the Goosebumps and Scary Stories series. HMH features some of the gods of children’s literature—RL Stine (author of the aforementioned Goosebumps books), Lemony Snicket (A Series of Unfortunate Events), and Jon Scieszka (The Time Warp Trio and The Stinky Cheese Man) as well as a mix of authors better known for their adult works, such as James Patterson and Joyce Carol Oates.
As with the majority of short story collections, Half-Minute Horrors is a mixed bag. Some stories will make you chuckle. Some stories are on the creepy side. Some are downright disappointing. Some are thoroughly disturbing, regardless of your age. Lemony Snicket’s Something You Ought to Know, about the man with the knife who watches you sleep each night, is enough to make any child (and probably several adults) sleep with one eye open. Or M.T. Anderson’s An Easy Gig, about a family who “punishes” their child in a shockingly unconventional way. Even if you’re one of those readers who feels like you’ve outgrown children’s literature, Half-Minute Horrors is still worth having a look. At the very least, it will only take 30 seconds to decide whether or not the book is right for you. —Jessica
The Strain could not come any sooner. Not because I think Guillermo should be making 10 movies a year, and not because translating any of his stories to book form is just as much an experience, but because we are at a critical time where a lot of people out there view vampires as emo, sparkly little whiners who don’t have fangs and think marriage is sacred. Thank the gods for Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan, who can write about vampires that scare the crap out of you before you are even properly introduced to them.
In the beginning of The Strain, everything builds up to one moment, and when that moment appears it just gets worse – but in a good way. The tension and the anticipation of what the big reveal is, what is really going on, and how everyone ties into it is done so well. I cannot wait for the next book in the series to give me the kind of spine chills that I haven’t felt in a long time. —Sam Pagan
As Jake Adelstein learned the hard way, it’s not a good idea to anger the top brass of the Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan’s largest Yakuza family. Adelstein, a Missourian Jew in Japan reporting on the vice beat for the Yomiuri Shinbun, the world’s largest newspaper, dealt with a lot of morally questionable sources in his twelve years of reporting, and even had a Yakuza contact or two. But when he started investigating a Yamaguchi-gumi boss’ mysterious trip to America for a liver transplant, he found himself in deep over his head, quitting his job and relocating to his homeland for the safety of himself and his family.
Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan is so much more than a chronicling of eastern organized crime families, however; Vice gives an elucidating glimpse at an insular society, the social institutions and the darkness just beneath the surface. There is much going on in Japan that buck our sexual mores so completely (hostess clubs, blow job parlors, sexual slavery of foreign women), that they would be unbelievable if they weren’t corroborated by fact. Adelstein’s prose is honest and unpretentious, as much an autobiography of a foreign reporter as a primer for the realities of being a gaijin in the Land of the Rising Sun. It’s easily one of the best pieces of non-fiction in any format I’ve read all year. —Robert Starvation
I borrowed Eve: A Novel of the First Woman from my local library on a whim, because I’m a sucker for retellings of all sorts. Whether it’s C.S. Lewis putting a new spin on Psyche and Cupid in his novel Til We Have Faces, or Anita Diamant’s bestseller The Red Tent (which tells the story of Jacob’s daughter, Dinah), I like to hear new takes on old favorites. So when I saw a novel that was a retelling of the Adam and Eve story, I decided to give it a shot.
All in all, it was a bit of a mixed bag. Eve was Elissa Elliott’s first novel, and something about it had that “first novel” feel to it, and not in a good way. Some parts were written in first person. Some were written in third person. The book focused not only on Eve, but on three of her daughters as well, and was narrated by all four women, collectively. In my opinion, having so many characters fighting to be in the spotlight was borderline chaos, and it didn’t help that I utterly despised two of the characters: Eve, oddly enough, and her eldest daughter Naava. In the same breath, I can admit that I adored the other two girls, Dara and Aya, who were well-developed characters likeable enough that their mistakes were easily forgivable. I loved Dara and Aya as strongly as I wished Naava would be sacrificed to the gods.
Another reason the book didn’t bomb completely was that Elliott did some rather extensive research on the book of Genesis, so she knew what she was talking about. She had some incredibly thought-provoking theological opinions, and did a phenomenal job addressing the question “if Adam and Eve were the first man and woman, where did all the other people come from?” (Even if she didn’t necessarily have an answer). Elliott paints a beautiful picture of mankind’s early life, and love them or hate them, every character had a unique personality.
So, should you run out and buy it? No. However, if you’re a fan of retellings, even remotely religious, or just interested in how the old story was spun for a new era, I do recommend grabbing it from your library and giving it a read. —Jessica
Reading The Infernal City was nothing like playing the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion video game. For instance, all the characters talk and have a set personality, not to mention that the story is driven by this one force, and all the characters need to come together to do their part to defeat what is known as Umbriel, the floating city of destruction. The game is loads of fun, let that not be mistaken, but it’s really refreshing to read a novel within the universe because things stay constant.
In the game you can pick and choose missions, talk to people about any random thing, steal from them, kill them… almost with no penalty, especially not if you do it right. In the book, there are repercussions and all of the characters are aware of this. It’s hard to explain why this book is a fun read, maybe it’s being able to ’see’ how the actions in the main storyline of Oblivion affect the people 40 years later, being able to really hear the accents and mannerisms thanks to the examples given in the game, and also just having an extension of the game that can also be read separately as a stand-alone story.
As a fan of high fantasy and the game it’s based off of, I enjoyed this book a lot. There was never a dull moment or a line that made me roll my eyes. Greg Keyes, already a well known fantasy author, really did the universe justice, and I look forward to the second Elder Scrolls novel with anticipation. —Sam Pagan
