Sunbeams illuminating a coastal forest in Port Orford, Oregon

Chuggnutt!

Category: Books

  • My Douglas Adams year

    A few weeks ago I turned 42, which prompted my friend Paul to declare I was entering my “Douglas Adams year.” (Though somewhat worryingly, one of his other analogy-years was 33, because that’s how old John Belushi and Chris Farley were when they died… Douglas Adams died at age 49. Hmmmmm.)

    Bend Beer: A History of Brewing in Central Oregon2014 was an eventful year, primarily because I wrote a book! The contract was signed around December of 2013, and I began researching and interviews in earnest in January, with a deadline of mid-July. Meaning, I had about seven months in which to complete it—pretty quick, by publishing (and writing!) standards. Following the submission of the manuscript were rounds of edits and proofing, with a publish date of October 21—at which point the rest of the year was a whirlwind of signings and publicity, including the Big Time—a talk and signing at Powell’s Books in Portland!

    So now I am the authority on Bend beer and its history, for better or for worse. But that’s okay, because now I have a published first book under my belt, from a real publisher, which opens doors to a second, and third, and more books. For which I already have ideas.

    But 2015 is (mostly, since the majority of the year I am 42) my Douglas Adams year, which means I need to be well on my way to figuring out the question to the question of life, the universe, and everything. Or at least inventing a computer to do so. Hopefully that means 2015 will be eventful too!

    (So far, so good—mostly with events stemming out from the beer writing, which is a good thing!)

  • Shakespeare turned 450 years old today

    William ShakespeareI don’t quite know how I’d missed this until the latter half of the day—I’m actually surprised Google didn’t do a doodle on this today—but William Shakespeare was born 450 years ago today (April 23).

    (Okay, to be fair, nobody actually knows for sure that Shakespeare was born on April 23; however he was baptized on April 26, 1564 so the 23rd is as good a guess as any. It also holds an appealing parallel to the date of his death: April 23, 1616.)

    But 450! That’s a milestone. Only 50 years until the big 5-0-0. It’s pretty amazing to think of the influence on the English language for so long—and no end in sight—that Shakespeare had. And I’ve said it before, but if you’ve never seen Shakespeare performed live—at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland would be my top recommendation—then you really should; it’s eye-opening and will change whatever opinions you might have about his works.

  • Sherlock Holmes

    At some point back I’d picked up an older hardcover copy of The Complete Sherlock Holmes, and since I’ve found myself watching (and enjoying) the series “Elementary” on TV (no, I’ve missed BBC’s “Sherlock” thus far but I’m quite sure I would love it)—as well as thoroughly enjoying the Robert Downey Jr. “Sherlock Holmes” movies where he plays Sherlock as basically autistically dysfunctional—I decided I needed to properly read the original stories. (I had previously only ever read two or three at most.)

    They are as enjoyable as you’d expect, and I have to say, I can quite see where the “modern” interpretation of Holmes comes from: he’s (mostly) able to function in society, but Sir Arthur Conan Doyle pretty well nails the combination of bipolar/manic depressive behavior combined with the savant-level of genius that’s borderline dysfuntional. And he’s a cocaine addict. (Which I knew.)

    It’s good stuff, but I have to adjust my mental model to account for the fact that (in the early stories, at least) both Holmes and Watson are no older than their early 30s. Which, to my mind, makes the Downey Jr. Sherlock movies actually… pretty true to form.

  • Robopocalypse

    RobopocalypseI recently read the novel Robopocalypse, a science fiction-y thriller about the, er, robot apocalypse—the uprising of robots and technology and the attempt to wipe out humanity, and overall I quite enjoyed it: a good “popcorn” book that entertaining and mostly plausible if you don’t think about it too hard. Definitely movie fodder, and I see that Steven Spielberg is indeed attached to direct the movie that’s coming out next year.

    From a storytelling standpoint, it’s structured in much the same way as World War Z: a history of the robot apocalypse, from various records and recollections, from the initial incidents through the finale of the war. This is a good, logical and easy-reading structure to adopt and as a result reads pretty quickly. And, it’s good at building suspense: even though the conceit is you’re reading a history—something that’s already happened and resolved otherwise you wouldn’t be reading it—you’ll keep turning the page to see what will happen next and how it all comes together.

    The main quibble I have is the presence of a couple of “deus ex machina” (heh) plot threads that become key elements in the climax and resolution (one of which has a bit of a Matrix quality to it). Yes, I know it’s set in the (near) future and it’s sci-fi, but really that makes this type of thing even more jarring if you think too hard about it.

    Otherwise it’s a good read, and of course there’s enough wiggle room to allow for a sequel. Because really, you can’t get enough robot apocalypse!

    Further reading in case you’re interested.

  • Reamde and Bill Cosby

    No I’m not entirely sure how those two things go together: one is the latest novel from Neal Stephenson which had me riveted all the way through the 1000-odd pages, the other is the comedian best known for his influential TV series from the 1980s. I suppose it’s a pop cultural thing, but I’ve been trying to figure out what theme might be running through both topics in order to produce something profound out of a blog post.

    Instead, well, here we are. The “theme” if any is that both were things I experienced in July, and it now being the end of July I figured I’d get it written down.

    Reamde is a terrific novel that I nearly couldn’t put down; it weaves high-end World of Warcraft-style MMORPG cyberpunk er, nowpunk(?) with straight thriller style shoot-em-up almost seamlessly and so adeptly that you have to keep turning the page. I loved it and it occupied the better part of my mind while I was reading it, and except for one nagging minor plotline that never got addressed by the end, it’s nearly a perfect read.

    Seeing Bill Cosby live in Central Oregon was, despite its significance for Central Oregon, an event I was less excited about. Mostly because it took place on a Sunday afternoon (during a kid’s birthday weekend) out at the Deschutes County Fairgrounds—not exactly the ideal venue for which to see a comedian (seriously, the Tower Theatre would have been much better) but my wife won free tickets so what are you gonna do? The performance itself was fine, not entirely the caliber of his earlier years, and despite several issues with the handling of the venue and event itself (not Bill Cosby’s fault), it was an entertaining hour and a half.

    So what does one have to do with another? Well nothing really, but there’s an interesting contrast between stories of a childhood framed by an era very few of us can understand (Cosby was born in 1937), and the modern future-is-now headspace of works like Reamde from authors like Neal Stephenson. And it seems like there should be something profound in that.

  • November wrap-up

    Much of November was uneventful—it mostly consisted of the usual routine for the first few weeks minus a kid’s birthday—but for the week of Thanksgiving we visited Burbank to spend the holiday with my brother and his family.

    That trip started out slightly awry, as we tried to leave town on Friday the 18th, right after work, and only managed to travel all of 50 miles or so to Crescent before being stopped for several hours only to learn that the road (Highway 97) was closed entirely. See, that was the night of the big statewide winter storm that dumped snow and ice everywhere. So instead of getting to Redding that Friday night we ended up turning around and coming back home (after about 5 hours on the road) and left again the next morning. That was more successful; there was still snow on the roads but it was daylight and the road was open, and once we crossed over into California the roads were pretty much cleared up.

    So we drove all the way through to Burbank (north of Los Angeles) in the one day. Which isn’t as bad as all the way to San Diego in one day (we’ve done that one too) but still makes for a long drive all in one sitting.

    The rest of the holiday week was good; we drank a lot of good beer, toured the Warner Brothers Studios lot, checked out Burbank and the area a bit, and had a nice Thanksgiving.

    Coming back was easy in some respects—as far as the drive went as we split it out over two days—and hard in others (whaddya mean I gotta go back to work?). We got back Sunday relatively early which left time for unpacking and cleaning and such but not a lot of decompression time before going right back into the routine.

    Let’s see, what else went on in November… read a good book that I’d recommend, Ready Player One, which has its flaws but is a fun, clever, engaging read. It’s essentially a caper novel masquerading as a near-future/video game/pop-culture/MMO sci-fi adventure, set some 30 years in the future and mostly taking place in an online game/virtual world. And it heavily mines the pop culture of the 80s (and 70s to a lesser extent), particularly that of music, movies, and videogames, which makes it catnip to the contemporary Gen X geek who spent a lot of time playing with computers and videogames during the 80s.

    Hmm… is it bad when that’s all I have for the highlights for the month? The rest has been filled with work, and the family stuff—a school concert and other school functions, birthday parties, the usual kind of things.

    But! We’re going into the Christmas season, which is one of my favorite times of the year. That always livens things up!

  • Top 10 books lost to time

    Just ran across this Smithsonian.com article: The Top 10 Books Lost to Time. Neat read, rife with possibilities; every link I’ve seen pulls a quote from the #4 selection, Inventio Fortunata, which does have a bit of a Piri Reis-sounding mystery to it; but the “lost” Shakespeare work of Cardenio interests me more:

    Cardenio has been called the Holy Grail of Shakespeare enthusiasts. There is evidence that Shakespeare’s company, the King’s Men, performed the play for King James I in May 1613—and that Shakespeare and John Fletcher, his collaborator for Henry VIII and Two Noble Kinsmen, wrote it. But the play itself is nowhere to be found.

    And what a shame! From the title, scholars infer that the plot had something to do with a scene in Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote involving a character named Cardenio. (A translation of Don Quixote was published in 1612 and would have been available to Shakespeare.)

    Kind of sounds like the ultimate Elizabethan-era crossover.

  • New books

    Got some new books from Barnes & Noble that came last week (online order via gift card):

    Also a set of three “cahier” Moleskine notebooks—the pocket-sized ones (in black). And I’m waiting on two more books to arrive: Brewing with Wheat (Stan Hieronymus) and Yeast (Chris White and Jamil Zainasheff).

    Yes, there is a certain irony in the fact that I’m linking to the Amazon pages for all of these items, despite purchasing them all from B&N. What can I say, I have an Amazon affiliate code—if you click through I might earn a few cents.

  • Zombies!

    Over the past week and a half I read through two zombie novels: Monster Island and Monster Nation, both by David Wellington. Now I’m the first to admit that I’m not a true aficionado of the zombie genre; aside from Stephen King’s Cell, I can’t think of any other books I’ve read, and I’ve only seen a handful of movies. That being said, I really enjoyed both books. They’re well-written and entertaining, real page turners. If you don’t mind the squick factor involved with the cannibalistic undead, of course.

    But then, you know, zombies. If you pick up a book subtitled “A Zombie Novel”, I’m guessing you don’t mind that so much.

    But the more interesting aspect to the novels were what drew me to them in the first place: the author first published them online on a blog, in serial format. In fact, he’s publishing all of his (recent) novels online first, in the same way; it was based on the success of these blog novels that he landed a brick-and-mortar publisher to put his words to paper. That’s cool. That’s really cool.

    More and more, that seems to me to be the future of publishing.

    Oh, and Wellington just had the third novel in his zombie trilogy published: Monster Planet. I’m debating whether to read it online first, or wait for the library to get the hardcopy in.

  • Pop culture segue

    Don’t let the title completely fool you, this entry is a rant, as much as anything else. And don’t think that I’m some sort of pop culture otaku; I’m usually behind the curve when it comes to such things, especially music.

    But I seem to consume a fair amount of it anyway, and so here we are.

    What do I really have to say about pop culture? Read on…

    TV: American Idol

    Yes, I’m watching it, yes, you can make fun of me for it.

    Overall, I think the finalists this season are really weak, and at least half of them should never have been chosen as finalists in the first place. It’s a freakshow headed up by Sanjaya. Seriously, what were the judges thinking when they chose him for the final 24?

    The top three are Melinda, LaKisha, and Blake. My pick to win is Melinda; she’s simply the best of them, and she’s humble about it. I would’ve picked LaKisha earlier on, but she started getting arrogant and too full of herself.

    Contestants aside, the show really, really needs to let Paula Abdul go. This season is really bringing home how worthless she is to the show. All she does as a “judge” is simply parrot what the others have said or make pointless comments about how well the contestant has dressed, and her drunken-slash-stoned antics are simply embarrassing. Her time is done. They need to bring in someone who’s not an assclown.

    There’s really not much more to be said, other than some snarky comments about some of the others…

    • Haley (who was mercifully eliminated last week) only got as far as she did because of her skimpy, revealing outfits. I’m surprised that even got her as far as it did; she’s simply a terrible singer.
    • Phil—dude, the bald look doesn’t work on you. At all. Combine that with the pale, deathly-ill look you seem to be sporting… let’s just say the initials for the nickname I have for him are “C.P.” Plus, he’s a terrible singer also.
    • Chris Sligh—wow, I’ve never seen anyone look like Sideshow Bob in real life before. Except for the weight part.

    TV: 24

    This season has turned out to be weak. Not as weak as the third season—I’m not sure they can get that low again—but coming off the success of last season, it just doesn’t hold up. Which is too bad, since the premise, previews, and first episode all seemed promising.

    But I just can’t buy into the premise that Jack, who was incarcerated and tortured in a Chinese prison for the past (nearly) two years, can walk off the plane and step right into such a physically demanding role and leadership position of CTU as if no time at all had transpired. It should simply be physically impossible.

    Also, the season is largely a retread of season two (which was strong, perhaps the strongest of all of them): the threat of nuclear bombs by Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. One even goes off. Jack reappears from an absence to save the day. Nefarious forces at the White House attempt to remove President Palmer from power. Et cetera, et cetera.

    TV: Lost

    I’ve avoided doing any more extended ranting on “Lost” since last fall, mostly because I don’t want to become a cliché of myself. (Not to say I’m not already, but that’s a different blog entry…) Also because the quality of the season picked up since the terrible first six, but also because I’m getting increasingly frustrated with the series in general.

    After last week’s episode, just a few of the things that are bugging me:

    • Why did they neuter Jack? He sucks these days, and he had some of lamest lines ever. “She’s under my protection.” What?? Who says stuff like that? Is this some weird reversion to Middle Ages feudal dialect? And the end, when he’s babbling about trusting Juliet, “looked into her eyes” etc.—extraordinarily lame, and I was going to comment that he’s a fool to trust her when sure enough, they cut to the Juliet-as-traitor-betrayer flashback. Jack sucks.
    • Speaking of Juliet, can’t the writers make up their minds about her? They seem to be trying awful hard to make her a sympathetic character to the viewer but then they blow it. We all know she can’t be trusted, ever. So why waste screen time on it?
    • Sayid is the smartest person on the island, and he’s always right. Isn’t it about time (after nearly three seasons) that they start working that angle rather than just ignoring him? They need to kill off a bunch of losers and let Sayid take charge.

    Basically, I’m to the point where my suspension of disbelief has come crashing down. While I’ve enjoyed the season more than when it started, I think the producers and writers have dropped the ball big-time and have a convoluted mess that keeps getting compounded with bad writing.

    TV (General)

    Everyone keeps telling me how I should be watching “Heroes” and “Battlestar Galactica.” Apparently those are perfect for the geeky/sci-fi kind of person that I am, and they’re really good. I think I pretty much missed the boat on “Battlestar,” but maybe I can catch up on “Heroes” during summer reruns…

    Comics: Y: The Last Man

    The coolest thing I’ve discovered about the Deschutes Public Library in the last six months is that they have a decent collection of comic trade paperbacks; I’ve been going through and reading comic series that I missed the first time around.

    “Y: The Last Man” is one of them—the library has the complete set of trades (though the series is still ongoing). The premise: all the males in the world (technically, all mammals with a Y chromosome) are wiped out in a single day by a mysterious plague. All, that is, but one man and his male capuchin monkey. So it’s a post-apocalyptic type series, following the last man (whose name is “Yorick”) as he copes with being the last, and how that fits in with how the remaining women of the world deal with the crisis.

    It’s really good, utterly non-superhero, and for mature readers only. The trades are all fairly quick reads, but you’ll want to go back and read them again. Excellent stuff.

    Incidentally, the creator and writer of the series, Brian K. Vaughn, was recently hired to be a writer on “Lost.”

    Comics (General)

    “Fables” is a truly excellent comic series, also available in trade paperback form at the library and also an entirely non-superhero premise. In some ways it reminds me of Alan Moore’s beyond-brilliant “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” (not the movie. Never the movie), in that the characters are drawn from the literary (and public domain) world of fable and fiction.

    Pretty much any other comics-related stuff I could say I already said here.

    Books: Cell

    I read Stephen King’s Cell in something like four days. It’s that good and that quick a read. It’s also the kind of book that will make you seriously think about throwing away your cellphone. I won’t go quite that far… yet… but I’m thinking it would be prudent to watch other people to make sure they’re not going crazy on their cellphones before answering mine.

    What makes it especially good is that it’s not one of the marathon-length books King often writes; it’s straightforward, fast-paced, well-plotted, suspenseful, and graphic as hell. Some of his tightest writing I’ve read in awhile. I loved it.

    It’s basically King’s contribution/foray into the apocalyptic zombie genre. Since I followed it up with the “Y: The Last Man” comics, I guess maybe I’m on an apocalyptic binge… maybe I’ll seek out some zombie novels.

    Books (General)

    I’ve currently got three books going: Code by Lawrence Lessig (that link’s actually a cheat; I’m linking to the revised edition, because that’s more relevant, but the one I’m reading is the original edition published in 1999), Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things, and Singularity Sky by Charlie Stross.

    Code is dense and thoughtful and sometimes a chore to slog through. Extraordinary Origins is light and interesting and parceled out into perfect bite-sized chunks; good stuff for the casual history buff. I’ve just started Singularity Sky this weekend but so far it’s promising; it seems to be a post-modern blend of hard science fiction with space opera with post-Singularity stuff (duh, from the title!).

    I keep eyeing my bookshelf, fingering through books I haven’t yet read. Beer brewing books, Vernor Vinge, Patrick O’Brian, Rudy Rucker, Stephen Baxter, Stephen King, some classics… it goes on. A reading binge is imminent now that TV is getting close to winding down, I think. So many books, so little time.

    Of course, if I were sticking to the “pop culture” theme with books, that probably means I’d have to stick to mainstream bestsellers. I think the last time I read a mainstream bestseller other than a Stephen King was a few years ago with The Da Vinci Code, which I reviewed. I wasn’t favorable.

    Movies

    Actually, when it comes to movies, I suck these days. I hardly ever see them in the theater anymore and I’m simply behind on what’s current. What’s worse is that this is a drool-inducing year of movies for me:

    • “300” – which I must make an effort to see while it’s still in the theaters.
    • “Spider-Man 3”
    • “Transformers”
    • “Live Free or Die Hard”
    • “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End”

    Those are kind of the “must see” movies on my wishlist. Other movies which would be cool to see but don’t have that urgency include “Grindhouse,” “Shrek the Third,” “Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer,” “The Simpsons Movie,” and “Ocean’s 13.”

    Yes, they’re all geeky movies and/or sequels. What? Did you think I was gonna go all Pavlov’s Dogs on something like “Georgia Rule” or “Miss Potter”?

    Of course, take it all with a grain of salt. I haven’t even seen “Casino Royale” yet. I suck.

    Music

    What do I know? I mostly listen to the radio and have a handful of CDs (nothing current). If you’re looking for music advice/wisdom/humor/whatever, you’re barking up the wrong tree.