Jay's Technical Talk » Books

The freaks are winning – The Inner Swine Collection by Jeff Somers

Jay — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 20:22:06 +0000

What would happen if the Indian contract writers who churn out The Punisher were to read Neuromancer and try to duplicate it? The Avery Cates series of books by Jeff Somers:

The Electric Church (2007)
The Digital Plague (2008)
The Eternal Prison (2009)
The Terminal State (coming)

I had read the Digital Plague (I think it was a gift? or I found it in a trashcan…I don’t remember exactly how it came into my possession…) and decided to order The Electric Church via PaperBackSwap.com. When I did, I also requested “The freaks are winning – The Inner Swine Collection” which is a book collecting articles from the zine that Jeff has been writing since 1995.

The Avery Cates books were fast paced, and not bad enough that I stopped reading them, but I don’t think I’ll be requesting the next two in the series. The inner swine collection was good bathroom reading, in that each article was short, and not interesting enough to give you hemorrhoids by making you sit on the toilet longer than you really needed to. A few gems stood out, which I will list here in case you want to skip to the good parts:

Mr. Mute’s Guide to Making a Zine, and Dance with a Hand in My Pants (How I produce 60 pages of Quality Shit for Cheap) are both good articles that give a honest view of the zine production process.
You can safely skip all of the Pig in Shit editorials.
Most of the American Wedding Confidential articles are worth reading, and some of them are downright funny.
Cheerios, Taters, and a Big Bowl of Ice: The Single Woman’s Guide to Economic Food Shopping (by Karen Accavalo) – the only article not written by Jeff is a definite must read.
If you read the Everybody’s Talkin’ at me: Reviews, Letters, Legal Threats section you will find that Jeff will publish any review of The Inner Swing that includes his name, (Jeff Somers), which is one of the only reasons I mention this section.

Varying quality aside, the fact that Jeff has been churning out three to four issues a year since 1995 is impressive. If you want to get them for free, go to The Inner Swine website.

Book Review: Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier

Jay — Sun, 20 May 2007 00:25:38 +0000

Cold Mountain, by Charles Frazier tells the story of W.P. Inman, a wounded civil war deserter who's only wish is to make it back to his home in Cold Mountain and his beloved Ada. Unfortunately for Inman, the civil war has blighted the South, and although he meets many compassionate citizens as he trudges west to Cold Mountain, the war has also brought out the worst in others. Ada, abandoned with a farm but not the skills to work it by her Father's death, is simultaneously on her own path of discovery and learning.

The novel paints a strikingly believable, but bleak, picture of the south near the end of the war. It was a very compelling read, but like so many people's real life civil war stories, it doesn't have a particularly happy ending.

Literary Quality: 9/10

Enjoyment: 8/10

Book Review: The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell & Dustin Thomason

Jay — Sat, 19 May 2007 13:44:26 +0000

The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason follows four friends through their last year of college. The plot follows Paul as he attempts to unravel a centuries old mystery hidden in The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, a book more rare than the Gutenberg Bible. Are the secrets it contains really worth killing over? But the story is really about friendship. How it is forged, how it is strained, and how it is lost as people drift and are pulled apart by their separate drives. I found the book to be very enjoyable and interesting.

Literary Quality: 9/10

Enjoyment: 9/10

Book Review: Writ of Execution by Perri O’Shaughnessy

Jay — Sun, 13 May 2007 12:59:01 +0000

Writ of Execution by Perri O'Shaughnessy is a cross between a Grisham legal thriller and an Evanovich Stephanie Plum novel. Nina Reilly, attorney, gets naked on page 13, but due to a fast moving plot doesn't get any for the rest of the book (427 pages worth). The book revolves around a 7 million dollar jackpot that's won by a girl on the run. A string of murders follow and it's a race to solve the murders and get the girl her jackpot.

Literary Quality: 7/10

Enjoyment: 8/10

Book Review: Wicked by Gregory Maguire

Jay — Fri, 11 May 2007 00:29:56 +0000

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire begins decades before Dorothy falls into the scene, with the birth of a strangely green baby girl who has unusually sharp teeth. We follow Elphaba as she grows up, attends university, and falls into the political turmoil behind the scenes at the Emerald City.

Maguire paints a detailed background of the realistic politics that shape Oz into the country it is when Dorothy arrives. The Wicked Witch of the West may be a tortured soul, but for different reasons than you had previously thought. The book is perfectly understandable even if you have never seen the movie or read the original book, but several parts are much funnier if you have. The end of the story can drag on if you are not interested in introspective psychological monologues, but flipping past a few pages of internal commentary can speed the story along.

Literary Quality: 8/10

Enjoyment: 8/10

Book Review: Pleading Guilty by Scott Turow

Jay — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 22:52:44 +0000

Pleading Guilty by Scott Turow is easier to read than Filth by Irvine Welsh, but the self-destructive protagonist still got on my nerves. I enjoyed the book more when I started skipping paragraphs of internal dialog to get back to the action. Mack is an ex-cop, washed-up lawyer, and recovering alcoholic. When a partner at his firm goes AWAL (with 5.6 million dollars) the managing committee shanghais Mack into looking for him. Or rather, the 5.6 million, because it turns out that very few people at the firm care much about the missing partner.

Literary Quality: 6/10

Enjoyment: 6/10

Book Review: Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson

Jay — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 23:43:32 +0000

Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson tells the true story of two American wreck divers who discover a sunken U-boat off the coast of New Jersey where the historical records say none should exist. Over the course of several years they risk death (at least three other divers die while exploring the U-Boat) and their marriages searching for the identity of the U-Boat, both underwater and in historical archives.

Robert Kurson makes this historical narrative an exciting story in addition to being a very well researched piece of true history. If you are interested in WWII or Scuba Diving I strongly recommend this book.

Literary Quality: 8/10

Enjoyment: 8/10

Book Review: The Lobster Chronicles, by Linda Greenlaw

Jay — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 21:30:08 +0000

The Lobster Chronicles : Life On a Very Small Island by Linda Greenlaw, picks up where The Hungry Ocean leaves off. Linda has decided to give up her life of 19 years as a swordfish boat captain and move back in with her parents on the Isle Au Haut, off the coast of Maine, trap lobsters for a living, and look for a mate.

The book isn't so much the story of a lobster season as a series of biographical sketches of the islands inhabitants. The book does a very good job of describing "life on a very small island" (the subtitle) and the peculiar inhabitants who like living there.

I found this book to be very interesting reading, and enjoyable, but I was disappointed when I reached the end. Like reality, the book didn't come to a strong conclusion.

Literary Quality: 6/10

Enjoyment: 6/10

Book Review: The Merchant’s Partner by Michael Jecks

Jay — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 13:32:06 +0000

The Merchant's Partner by Michael Jecks is the 2nd book in his "The Knights Templar" series. Set in the Medieval West Country of England, it follows the local bailiff Simon Puttock and Sir Baldwin Furnshill, Keeper of the King's Peace, as they attempt to solve the murder of a local midwife, widely believed to be a witch.

Jeck's historial setting is dead on, and the story is much more engaging than the first book in the series (The Last Templar). If you enjoy historical fiction you will like this book, but as a murder mystery goes, it's relatively cut and dried.

Literary Quality: 7/10

Enjoyment: 7/10

Book Review: Linda Greenlaw’s The Hungry Ocean

Jay — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 01:08:04 +0000

Linda Greenlaw's The Hungry Ocean: A Swordboat Captain's Journey is the true story of a one month Sword-fishing trip interspersed with stories from other trips that Linda has captained. Although this trip is not much different from every other sword-boat trip, the tale still makes exciting and very interesting reading. It paints a detailed picture of the stresses and exhaustion that a fishing crew faces for the possible reward of the big haul. Although I didn't want to quit my job to become a sword-fisher, the book gave me a very good understanding of why some people wouldn't choose any other job.

Literary Quality: 6/10

Enjoyment: 7/10