Birds of Thailand

#591
Title: Birds of Thailand
Author: Roland Eve & Anne-Marie Guigue
Publisher: Times Editions
Year: 2004
178 pages

Beautifully illustrated; not a field guide. The text emphasizes habits, especially feeding, nesting, and migration, but rarely field marks or other means of identification. The birds depicted are eclectic rather than representative. There are some translation and typography errors. The introduction includes some interesting information but ends abruptly. 

The Men Who Stare at Goats

#590
Title: The Men Who Stare at Goats 
Author: Jon Ronson 
Publisher: Picador
Year: 2005
240 pages
Audiobook

The audiobook narrator reads a lot like William Shatner, which doesn't really detract from the telling. Unfortunately, he does anyone who espouses any holistic or non-mainstream point of view with a goofy voice, which does detract and draw this reader, anyway, away from the book.

Ronson dives right in to his history of  shadowy, weird, and/or obsessive behaviors by the CIA and other intelligence agencies; the lack of set-up, context, or introduction heightens the bizarreness of what is to come.

Leviathan (Leviathan #1)

 #589
Title: Leviathan (Leviathan #1)
Author: Scott Westerfeld
Publisher:  Simon Pulse
Year: 2009
440 pages

Steampunk versus genepunk, a.k.a. Clankers versus Darwinists. This delightful young adult novel introduces and alternative World War I history in the form of a boys' book with fabulous and amusingly captioned illustrations. Strong male and female adolescent protagonists.

Burmese Days

#588
Title: Burmese Days
Author: George Orwell
Publisher: Time Reading Program Special Edition
Year: 1934/1962
279 pages
Audiobook

Wry and a bit overblown with thickly-strewn symbolism. A lot of the action related to the mores and manners of British colonial culture looks silly from the current perspective, and is already faintly ridiculous to Orwell. It is interesting and useful to see that keeping and saving face matters as much to the British as to the Burmese.

Flory's penultimate action is histrionic and does not ring true. It seems to be driven more by the plot than by Flory's previously-described actions and character.

Zero History

#587
Title: Zero History 
Author: William Gibson
Publisher: Putnam
Year:  2010
404 pages

Although I like most Gibson, I'm less compelled by this "Where's Waldo?" of trousers. As with most newer Gibson, I experience the story as a house of mirrors, not just in terms of distortions and echoes, but its slick, cold, ultimate inaccessibility.

Gibson increasingly reads like an ad for iAnything crossed with a bridal column: "Hubertus Bigend, the behind-the-scenes, Oz-like micromanager, was resplendent in International Klein Blue...." I might care more if I had a sense of Bigend really wanting this, or even of watching with dispassionate curiosity to see what happens as the action unfolds--the clothing as proxy or catalyst for a cultural shift would make Gibsonian sense.

I liked the return to aspects of Pattern Recognition, but would have liked it even better if it had been more tightly woven into the narrative (obligatory textile joke).

The Story of India

#586
Title:  The Story of India
Author: Michael Wood
Publisher: BBC Books
Year: 2007
256 pages
Audiobook

An engaging history of the subcontinent, emphasizing points of overlap, borrowing, and congruence between its cultures (as well as the inevitable conflicts). India is too broad a topic for one brief book, but Wood seems to have picked his areas of focus and events to examine well. I liked it enough to order a print copy and look up the BBC videos as well.

New book blog

I'm having too much trouble with my LiveJournal book review blog, so I'm starting the next set here.

First book blog: http://shoshanapnw.livejournal.com
Books of the world challenge: http://shoshana-world.livejournal.com
Meta-book blog: http://shoshanabooks.blogspot.com