Review: The Call of the Wild

The Call of the Wild by Jack London

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



My dad tried to read The Call of the Wild to me as a bedtime story when I was five. I told him it was too scary and made him stop. I'm twenty-eight now, and I've finally finished it. I cannot believe he wanted to read it to his five-year-old, but it's an excellent story.

I've read too many things by Jon Krakauer and others like him to take Jack London's pictures of northern frontier life completely at face value, but London's voice makes the northland a magical place. All through the book, I had the distinct feeling that London understood people rather better than he understood dogs, and had truer things to say about them.

Listened to Gene Engene's reading -- very nice. He does great voices, and clearly enjoys the book he's reading to us. He mispronounces a few words, but seems to know what they mean, if that makes any sense.





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Review: Triggers

Triggers by Robert J. Sawyer

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Read this one serialized in Analog. What a wonderful, yet frustrating story! I certainly always wanted to know what happened next, and the Big Idea of the novel -- what happens at the hospital -- is really interesting. But the ending just wasn't tight enough to do the rest of the book justice. The solution to the mystery element of the plot was revealed to the reader fairly early on, leaving me frustrated that none of the characters could seem to figure it out. (Wait, but did they ever talk it out onstage? Maybe Sawyer is giving us readers more credit than I'm assuming.) The snowballing conclusion feels right as long as you suspend disbelief, but the science just doesn't seem to work the way it does in the rest of the novel.

It's not that it's not good -- it is good. But it left me hoping for better.



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Review: Mistborn: The Final Empire

Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



Is there anyone in the target audience for Mistborn who hasn't already heard of it?

Amazing, fresh, careful worldbuilding; a great take on some fantasy tropes; the kind of clear, earnest storytelling I tend to associate with Mormon authors, although it's not like I've done a careful study.

Highly recommended!

(Re-read; first read October 2008, again in November 2008?)



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Review: Hot dish

Hot Dish
My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Possibly our first family meal inspired by a video game. (Probably not the last, though.) Husband learned about the traditional Minnesotan hotdish from Puzzle Agent, which seems to be where a considerable portion of the internet learned about it too.

Husband started with a hotdish recipe from the awesomely titled 9 x 13: The Pan That Can, but he made several modifications to suit what we had in the pantry and fridge. The result was a southwest/Tex-Mex sort of casserole with potatoes as the main starchy component. It was fantastic.

Not the prettiest thing in a bowl, but completely delicious. The potatoes really made it. I love potatoes.

Review: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I've read mixed reviews of this book -- I think some people were expecting more out of it than is there. It's a wandering meditation on running in one man's life. Sometimes his attitudes seem very typically Japanese, especially in their perfectionism; sometimes they don't. Wow, just like he's a real person or something! As a quite new runner myself, I enjoyed reading about what running feels like to someone who's run much farther, and for much longer, than I ever have. Still, even though Murakami's taken his journal entries and other meditations on running and polished them up so that they'll fit nicely together and shine, it's only a journal of a fairly ordinary runner's running. It's not gripping or intense, but it keeps on going, and you keep noticing or re-noticing things along with the author. Which is enormously satisfying, and very much like day-to-day running really feels.



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