A Door to the Real World

Book Review: The Door in the Forest by Roderick Townley

"Behind an invisible door lies an impossible secret."

When my son first started reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (he was 11 at the time), I asked him what the book was about. He told me it was about a boy whose parents had been killed and who lived in a closet under the stairs. I'm sure the look in my eyes must have broadcast my misgivings, because he quickly added, "But its REALLY good Dad!" A few years later I read it myself, and had to agree.

"The Door in the Forest" takes you into that same space that Harry Potter occupied right after the first book - before the rest of the series, before the movies, before the world of Hogwarts was made full and real. Yes, there were lots of gaps, and some serious suspension of disbelief. Was Sorcerer's Stone anything the less for that?

As an allegorical tale The Door in the Forest works on a number of levels: confronting childhood and adulthood, good and evil, life and after life (or afterlife). The three central characters make their first tentative steps into adulthood, confronting the often confusing duality of "good" and "bad". The boy who couldn't lie becomes the man who can be relied on to tell the truth, and catches a glimpse of the impossible secret that is his life.

Author Roderick Townley gives us a surfeit of uncertainties, but what young person doesn't have those? Heck, what adult doesn't have them? Life isn't all laid out neatly in black and white. I am not too old to remember how the world was a magical, mysterious place where anything could happen - even white leopards. Thanks to Townley, I got a chance to revisit it. He has crafted a fun and fast-moving story.

(ed. This review was originally published May 4, 2011)

The Ultimate Treehouse!

Book Review: Ravenwood by Andrew Peters

For every child that has ever had a treehouse there comes a moment when the thought crosses their young mind: "What if I LIVED up here?" Author Andrew Peters takes that moment of young credulity and builds a world from it. Finding the world at ground level inhospitable, mankind has returned to the trees, building not just tree houses but cities in the treetops.

That we would ever have trees such as these, where we would live in trunk and along branch, using the trees own plumbing to supply water high above the ground. Complete with fields and even roads in the leafy canopy, the residents of the treetop settlement Ravenwood live a quiet, peaceful existence. But as it happens, the good citizens of Ravenwood can't see their forest for the trees. Forces both within and without would see the trees fall, and the kingdom along with it.

Peters successfully builds a complete world that branches off into many different directions -- we are not left up a tree, but taken down to the roots of Ravenwood, and even deeper. We fly above the treetops and even get a glimpse of the outside world, the appropriately named land of Maw which wants to devour Ravenwood. Will technology overcome the simple agrarian society (whose origins were not so simple)? Can man live in harmony with nature? Can a young sewer worker named Ark save the kingdom?

Written with just the right touch of tongue in cheek, Ravenwood does not answer all of the questions it poses, but earns points for posing them at all. Ark finds the answers are not all simple, anymore than the problems we face in the real world today. Too many solutions are trade-offs, he sees, and the choices are not easy.

Well-crafted and smooth reading, Ravenwood strikes the right balance of fantasy and reality, action and humanity. Targeted to grades 4-9, the vocabulary and style may be a little advanced for the lower end of that range. A fun read, it will give young readers some things to think about as well.

Emotionally Detached

Book Review: The Two Hotel Francforts: A Novel by David Leavitt

I try to approach my reading of a new book with a clean slate. Other than certain expectations I have of any book (like some level of coherency), I really attempt to set aside any preconceptions of what the author has in store.

I do not set out with the idea that all of the characters I will encounter will be likable, or that they will share my emotional, ethical, or philosophical views. Part of the function of literature is to expand those horizons.

Virtually all of the characters we are introduced to in David Leavitt's The Two Hotel Francforts suffer from emotional detachment. This extends to not only their dealing with each other, but even with themselves. Lost souls, they seem to be striving to find something, anything to attach to - but invariably fail in the attempt.

Given the setting, I can understand that. Stranded in Europe in 1940, in the early stages of World War II, the world they had come to know had collapsed around them. Their lives were suddenly de-railed; left without a compass in a strange land, their reaction is not too surprising.

The difficulty I had with Two Hotel Francforts was not that the characters didn't seem to care about anything, but rather that I simply didn't care about them.

By the time I reached the somewhat forced conclusion of the story, I really didn't give a damn whether they made it home or jumped off a building. Apathy and ennui in your characters is one thing, but an author needs to be able to inspire more than that in his readers. In the end I was not expecting them to find redemption, I simply wanted the story to be over.

(ed. This review was originally published September 18, 2013)

"Grade A" Writing on an Unpopular Subject

Book Review: Straphanger: Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile by Taras Grescoe

In Straphanger, author Taras Grescoe gives us an excellent overview of mass transit in cities around the world. He has a keen eye for what makes a functional, transportation consumer friendly system.

While he admits a fondness for rail-bound solutions, he also gives us insight into dedicated bus networks. Grescoe thoroughly covers the subject as he takes us through mass transit in the United States, Europe, and Asia - what works, what needs work, and what isn't working. Even better, Straphanger is anything but dry; by making this a story of his personal explorations it reads more like a travelogue than a study of urban transportation.

The subtitle of the book is Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile, and here is where Grescoe (and many other transportation engineers) come up a little short. He recognizes that it will take more than a "if you build it they will come" attitude to lure Americans out of their gas-swilling, carbon-spewing automobiles. He sees that the suburban sprawl of our cities (actually started by the early transit companies) contributes to the perception that one must have a car to get around. He admits that the automobile is endemic to American culture, that cars are part of the American identity.

But our love affair with the internal combustion engine goes much deeper than that. Having a car is not just a part of the American identity; for many people it is a part of their personal identity. It is an extension of themselves - in some cases pathologically so. Every commute to work is their own little Daytona 500, a chance to feel better about themselves as they drive to their menial job. They are not going to part with this visible sign of their self-importance, and they will (sometimes literally) kill anyone who tries to cut in on their turf. Mass transit? We'll drill every inch of this country before we let that happen.

As an advocate of mass transit myself, I admire the diligence that Taras Grescoe brings to Straphanger, and I can't fault him for not resolving the cultural defects that hinder any efforts to bring usable transportation solutions to this country. He has written a hugely readable book, that I fear will largely go unread.

(ed. This review was originally published July 5, 2012)

On Becoming an American

Book Review: Russian Tattoo: A Memoir by Elena Gorokhova

With rare exceptions, we are a nation of immigrants. It seems to be part of the American consciousness that we conveniently forget that fact within a generation or two.

We forget how our grandparents or great-grandparents struggled to learn a new language, a language full of secret idioms and unspoken meanings. We forget how they worked to fit in with a new and different culture that is itself a mixture of many cultures. We forget how they labored at menial and poorly paying jobs, no matter what their education might have been, because the language and cultural differences threw up walls against them.

Elena Gorokhova's Russian Tattoo serves to remind us of those things that we have chosen to forget on the road to becoming Americans. The twin barriers of language and culture mark the immigrant as clearly and visibly as a tattoo, a label of difference and strangeness that closes the doors of opportunity. Coming to America has given all of us a chance to start our lives over, and that is exactly what is required. Whoever and whatever you were before you arrived: a doctor, a lawyer, a scientist - is largely wiped away and you will find yourself washing dishes or waiting tables, trying to learn English from people who speak louder and slower to make you understand.

Russian Tattoo is the story of this American rite of passage as seen from the inside. Elena Gorokhova's journey is the journey that our own immigrant relatives took, as much as we want to deny it. OUR forebears learned English immediately, and were tax-paying contributing members of society within a month of getting off the boat - or so our romantic notions would have it. The fact is, my immigrant great-grandfather worked in an auto factory, was a truck driver, and English was a second language to his native German. His son - my great uncle - was a United States Marine who served in the Ardennes in World War One. Sometimes it takes a generation or two to achieve American-hood.

With each new wave of immigrants, those of us who are already here inevitably push back against the would-be new arrivals. Russian Tattoo lets us see that from the viewpoint of someone who was on the receiving end; not as a search for sympathy but simply understanding. The road to becoming an American is not an easy one, getting here is only half the battle. We all have our own tattoos, maybe it's time to acknowledge them.

(ed. This review was originally published January 25, 2015)

Blind as a Bat

Book Review: Flying Blind: One Man's Adventures Battling Buckthorn, Making Peace with Authority, and Creating a Home for Endangered Bats by Don Mitchell

As human beings, we like to think that the course of our lives is linear, logical, and to a certain extent, predictable. In other words, we want desperately to believe that our lives make sense, in spite of all evidence to the contrary.

I live in an area where there is a resident bat population. On summer nights, shortly after dusk, I have watched them darting across the night sky as they forage. Their apparently random movements are the antithesis of linear, logical, and predictable behavior. At least so it appears to our unperceptive human eyes.

Like the flight of a bat, Flying Blind dips and swerves, but not without purpose. Cutting down trees requires a chainsaw, the resulting piles of wood require an ATV to haul them out of the forest. These side trips are not extraneous; they are part of the process that is needed to get from point A to point B; "... bouncing from here to there, from one topic to the next without advance warning. Much of life is lived that way, looked at from a certain angle." The bat is not zig-zagging through the sky aimlessly - it is getting dinner. We're simply looking at the bat's behavior from the wrong angle.

Mitchell begins to see the trees within the forest, individuals that are both distinct and yet cogs in a larger system. The trees, the invasive weeds, and the bats themselves each have their own niche. As Mitchell becomes immersed in the interaction of these interdependent parts, he begins to wonder how he fits into the grand scheme; what is Don Mitchell's niche? "Maybe there was a light at the end of this tunnel; maybe my efforts would eventually help the bats." Life is NOT linear, logical, or predictable; our insistence that it is leaves us all flying blind.

Flying Blind is author Don Mitchell's journey to epiphany; a story that begins with him trying to find a way to reduce the property tax burden on his Vermont farm and ending with the realization of his own place in the world.

More Than a Bit Confused

Book Review: Human Software: A Life in IT by Richard W. Bown

By the title - Human Software: A Life In I.T. - I was expecting a memoir, the tale of a fellow software engineer negotiating the trials of corporate culture. The back matter, however, promised a "gripping, vivid must-read", a "thriller whodunit page-turner".
It turns out Human Software is a little of both, giving us the Novel Memoir.

The Prologue is in novel style, so I settled in for a novel experience. And was promptly yanked out of it when the jargon began to appear in Chapter One.

We techies, much like any of a number of specialized workers, love our specialized vocabulary of terms and acronyms. It's kind of a secret handshake, something that makes our fellow nerds smile and nod in our shared knowledge, and makes everyone else's eyes glaze over. To be fair, there is a helpful glossary at the back.

Last summer I read Sarah Wynn-Williams' Careless People, a memoir of her time in the Zucker-world of Meta. The fact that it was my "beach read" should tell you all you need to know: it was accessible and easily digestible. It actually read more like a novel than a memoir. But then Ms. Wynn-Williams was in marketing, not IT.

Genre bending is really not uncommon in literature, it's how we got "romantasy". I have to give kudos to Richard Bown, he actually brought a measure of life and humanity to the world of bits and chips. I don't feel like he quite closed the deal here, but he is on the right track. The story he tells here is important, not only to those of us whose lifetime of work is now food for AI, but to everyone on the planet. I hope he persists.

(This reviewer is a recovering software engineer)