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Beach weekend continued

Beach weekend

A Coffin for Demetrios by Eric Ambler; Delirium by Laura Restrepo

Excellent psychological thriller. Great detail, interesting characters, and an absorbing plot that builds to a fantastic climax.
Charles Latimer, a mystery writer, learns of the death of a shady man named Demetrios though his acquaintance with a member of the Turkish secret police. In an attempt to impress on the protagonist that real murders and their deeds are less neat and far more senseless than in books, the colonel shares Demetrios' dossier with him, even going so far as honoring a request to see the body down at the morgue.Taken by morbid curiosity, Charles starts off on his own journey to map out Demetrios' sordid dealings, moving from one country to the next, following the trail of crimes. He discovers the various schemes of this very nasty individual and meets the people he worked with along the way.

A very absorbing look at an episode of madness as manifested by Augustina, a rich Colombian woman living with her husband, Aguilar. Aguilar comes back from a business trip to find her in a hotel room experiencing a more protracted and intense delusional episode than she's ever had before. He sets out to find out what caused it.
The book has several viewpoints. One, the husband describes her mental state and the care he and her Aunt Sofi give her, how he goes about dealing with the situation, and a little bit of his history with her. Two, an old friend of Augustina recounts a story  about a bet gone very wrong and an offense against a drug lord that leads up to the event that causes the psychotic break. Three, descriptions of the madness of Augustina's grandfather. Four, Augustina herself telling the story of her family and her relationship with her little brother, Bichi.
Her writing style seems to be influenced by Jose Saramago only she's actually worked with it rather than used it to bludgeon her readers. It flows, lyrically along, sweeping up the reader and leading from one sentence to another.Saramago just puts one sentence after another, one piece of dialogue tacked onto the with no distinction apart from capitalization. Where his style makes his text artificially difficult to read (and incidentally makes trite subject matter and bad characters seem literary) hers plunges the readers into the stream of consciousness of life and delirium. She respects the need for the occasional dialogue tag or description to orient the audience.

The Windup Girl ch. 17

Chapter 17:
                              Jaidee sits in his cell, shaven and dressed in a novice's robe, contemplating life and Buddhism. He gives up on the idea that his wife is still alive surprisingly fast and comes to terms with the fact that life is change. He meditates under a painted Bo tree and we learn that many species of tree have become extinct due to "Ivory Beetle".
                            "Who would have thought that the calorie companies would attack figs? The farang have no respect for anything but money." p.169. I really have no idea who Paulie is trying to appeal to here except those juvenile, self-righteous little shits who think it's cool to tell everyone why they're horrible and short-sighted in order to make themselves feel superior. It ain't aimed at Thai people because it's terribly unflattering to them as well. It isn't kind to anyone and maybe that's the point? Except no, because I think we're supposed to at least like, Jaidee. The whole, the companies can do whatever they want to the detriment of the whole world with no interference from any government, is shallow and silly. But I'm not a cynical twit.
                          Since his wife must be dead, he decides he can do as he pleases. He walks out of the monastery (this is a punishment, you'd think there'd be guards) and goes to find Kanya. He asks for a gun.
                             Akarrat (trade) is his enemy (environment). Well, it only took half the book to consciously get what Bacigalpi was doing. Oy. The morally repugnant against the maybe-not-as morally repugnant but still kind of asses. Isn't there some way for the two to co-exist? The set-up is too simplistic. There are greedy bastards who will ruin anything for a buck or power against...the world? Thais? Everyone else is down-trodden? Fundamentalists are evil as well; Green Headbands commit massacre and the Grahmites, arson. Is there no room for middle ground?
                            "How can one fight their money? Money is their power...We are fighting money." p.170.
                      Lots of lights for a land with no oil. Ah, coal. Cheshire cats. A rich girls party favor. I haven't mentioned them before because they're basically a side show meant to how illustrate the spoiled West brought ruin by being arrogant and privelieged. Jaidee and one of his former men, Somchai, break in to the Trade Ministry to find the file of the man who had been watching them when they burned the cargo at the airfields. He was also at Jaidee's demotion so that means he had something to do with the wife's kidnapping/murder. His file is curiously empty. They kill a couple of guards (guards always are expendable non-human entities) who try to arrest them for trespassing. Then the mystery man shows up, a battle ensues, and they are captured and brought to the roof. (Spring guns apparently fire blades.) Akarrat shows up with palace bodyguards. The Mystery Man works for the palace! Oh goodie. Jaidee kicks Akarrat, his muay thai background giving him +10 damage, and he's shot off the roof.
                     Notes: This book combines disgusting '70's plot and sexual politics with a smug, snotty 21st century overlay.
                        He continues to be incapable of showing rather than telling about the slums, poverty, food shortages, and world chaos.

This zombie craze

                   The Walking Dead convinced me that I should pay a little more attention to the Zombie genre. That's not why I bought Dead Island; that was because it was 10 bucks on Steam but it is why I watched Berlin Undead (Rammbock) on Netflix. Netflix has some weird stuff. Like that French zombie movie The Horde I wrote about a while ago. This German movie, sort of like that one, is only so-so.
                      We've got Michi (Michael) going to return a key to his girlfriend of seven years who recently left him and moved to Berlin. It's basically a McGuffin, I can't remember what it's for. She's not at home although the plumber is, angrily banging away at a radiator and it's quite obvious he's going to turn into a zombie. His assistant Harper shows up, the plumber goes apeshit and Michi and Harper end up locking him out in the hallway. Then the raging horde invades the apartment courtyard.
                  Technically we aren't dealing with zombies per se but rather people infected through bites with a disease that makes them foaming mad with an urge to bite (though not eat) anyone in sight.Their eyeballs go milky white and their skin gets all veiny, so, sort of zombies.
                       The tenants of the apartments can confab across the courtyard through their windows. Let's do endtime rollcall, shall we? We have Michi and Harper. We have a muscled, tattooed guy named Manfred who has obviously been bit. (He never says a word and he dies halfway through. He is my favorite character.) A weaselly dude who has "I am going to betray you as soon as you give me a chance" stamped on his forehead. Metaphorically, of course. A man who's wife has been bit. ( He's been keeping her sedated to stop the change.) Thorsten and his sister. (Of these two, if you think the named character is the one who makes it out alive, nice guess, but no.)
                       Thorsten foolishly wades into a horde of not-zombies in an attempt to close the courtyard gates. He fails and they have a zombie infestation.
                        Harper immediately starts planning to kill some bitches (I love that his first response to the zombiepocalypse is to fashion medieval death implements from cutlery) and Michi frets about the phone he dropped on the hall stairs. Someone has been attempting to call him and he worries it might be his ex Gabi. The two make a foray out to get it, Harper's homemade weapon turns out to not be zombie deterrent (seriously, there needs to be a spray), and they lose ground when they're forced to retreat to the bedroom. It is not Gabi on the phone.
                         Bit-Wife_Man offers them food (they lost the kitchen) if they get him sedatives from the crazy lady's apartment next door. Michi looks at a picture of Gabi and remembers her wearing a bear suit. He continues to fret and Harper falls asleep. When the next morning dawns Harper wakes up to Michi lying next to him wearing the bear suit complete with head. I am honestly unsure if this is an attempt at humor or sentimentality. Either way, if I were Harper I'd find that more terrifying than the zombies.
                         They break the wall so they can get into crazy druggie lady's apartment to scavenge sedatives but who should be there but crazy druggie lady herself. And guess what? She's now a not-zombie. More not-zombies rush in and Michi hides Harper on top of a wall and then scrambles into the attic. Who should he find up there but Gabi and her new man, son of crazy druggie lady. Michi throws a hissy fit because it turns out Gabi was probably cheating on him and Gabi and friend freak out because they mistake a scratch on Michi's arm for a bite. In the end they hand him sedatives and shove him out onto the roof. Michi briefly contemplates suicide before noticing a rowboat on the river. He can hear a horn out on the harbor and realizes there might be safety close by. Meanwhile, Harper has discovered that his camera flash is not-zombie kryptonite. An accidental discovery right up there with Pasteur's and Newton's I'm sure.
                     Michi makes his way to Bit-Wife-Man's place to give him the sedatives. Bit-Wife goes bonkers regardless and Michi immediately offers to brain her with a candlestick. Bit-Wife-Man declines and instead tricks his wife into tackling him off the balcony where they plummet to their death. Harper shows up driving all the not-zombies before him with his camera flash and locks them out of the courtyard.
                       The survivors gather. They only have a few scraps of food from Bit-Wife-Man's apartment because in the last day and a half everyone ran out apparently. They plan to use flashing lights to get to the river to use the boat Michi saw. Predictably, weaselly guy makes off with their supplies in the night. Michi goes after him and returns with a few lights and a fresh arm wound in the shape of teeth-marks. Sucks. He rigs a bicycle with lights so Harper and Thorsten's sister can make their getaway.
                           Michi stays in the courtyard to contemplate his future as a cuckolded not-zombie. He isn't alone for long because crazy druggie lady's son runs screaming in with crazy druggie lady attached by the teeth.Not-zombie Gabi shows up soon after and Michi hugs her to him while she paws at his back looking perplexed. Harper and Thorsten's sister make it out to the harbor where a ship honks at them, signifying rescue.

Dead Island

                      So. Dead Island. Bad accents and bad character modeling galore, but that's okay. I'm also seeing elements of Bioshock but that could just be me. Lots of searchable containers and drinks and snacks for health lying around that are consumed as soon as they're picked up. A voice over the intercom that tells you what to do. Crazy attack mobs. Steam has a surprisingly heartbreaking trailer for the game that shows the deaths of a vacationing family. You can see the couple in their room in-game.
                The action takes place at a resort on the island of Banoi in Papua New Guinea so the scenery is quite pretty and relaxing, only spoiled somewhat by the ravening undead. You can play as one of four characters, two male and two female. Their stats don't seem to differ much though and even if you play a woman the NPCs still refer to you as "him".
                       The game opens with a cutscene where your character barrels their way, drunk, through a party, completely oblivious to the signs of the impending zombiepocalypse. Somehow your character manages to stumble into all four of the playable characters which would suggest this is actually someone else but when you wake up it's in the same hotel room with the spilled bottle of Jack Daniels from the end of the opening cutscene.
                     Let's see who we have to play. First we crash into a failed American football star named Logan. Next we attempt to take the stage from one-hit rapper Sam B from New Orleans who is apparently used to this kind of behavior from his audience because pushing you back into the crowd doesn't break his stride in the least. This is where you meet Officer Purna, from Australia, in difficulties due to her shooting of a child molester. She offers her sneering take on your state of affairs before two helpful security officers attempt to take you back to your room. They, however, are unceremoniously jumped by the undead and, unfazed (or just plastered) we trundle off to the ladies to wash the blood off the camera lens that passes for our eyes. There we find Xian Mei, a Chinese spy (obviously) working undercover as hotel staff, trying to rouse a blood spattered woman. She scolds us for being in the women's restroom (which is seriously confusing if you've decided to play as a woman) so you swipe some pills off the floor to wash down with your JD and head on to bed.
                        I decided to play as Xian Mei because I like quick, agile characters and I was intrigued by her skirt which looks sort of like a sarong with an extremely ineffectual belt. I ultimately chose her because when you get to her character selection screen she narrates her entire life story at you and you can't scroll ahead and there was no way I was listening to another three sorry sack tales.
                        You wake up to the sweet sounds of chaos. It's the same room you passed out in which means you met yourself last night and not in a lifetime movie sort of way. I'd say it was the pills but you didn't down those until right before you blacked out which seems sort of a waste because they were a pretty red color. Once, when I was little, I took pills of my mother's because they were a pretty blue color but then she freaked and called the doctor. Anyway, maybe the zombiepocalypse is your fault by way of a time paradox, so it makes sense you get stuck doing the other survivors' scut work because you know you will.
                   Your first instinct in an emergency is apparently to loot everyone else's luggage for cash, soap, deodorant, and alcohol which I know I would be doing only I'd also pull candy and porn. Your second move is to follow the instructions of a disembodied voice as it guides you through the hotel with its endless supply of abandoned bags.
                I still might be imagining the resemblance to Bioshock. I mean, in that game you're led through a luxurious ruin piled with loot able containers and enough snacks to feed a soccer team by a man who can miraculously track you wherever you go but in this game he's Australian.
              This particular disembodied voice isn't as helpful as Atlas because almost immediately he nearly gets you killed by both an elevator and a horde or zombies. A group of survivors saves you and drags you to their safe house on the beach. You have to assume you've been bitten because a seriously hysterical man purposes to do devastating things to your head with a boat oar. Another man, this time with a wicked facial tattoo and his very own terrifying accent, gives you the zombie or not-a-zombie test which you pass with flying colors by nodding your head whereupon the threat of having your anatomy re-arranged is removed and, indeed, everyone seems to lose interest in you completely. You learn that this means you're immune to the zombie-virus and everyone expects you to put yourself back in the way of anatomy-rearrangement to do their errands. They do have a bottomless supply of cash with which to reward you.

Ghost Stories - Train

When I was younger my friends and I liked to tell each other ghost stories. One, specifically, I don't remember the particulars of, sticks in my mind. There's supposed to be ghost trains that travel, lonesome, through the night at times and places where they shouldn't be. They ride forgotten tracks across the country and blow through deserted stations, sounding their whistle like a warning or a plea.
 In my bed, in New Jersey, with my sister sleeping nearby, the train whistle across the street was a natural part of the world and it didn't frighten me.
But in a tent up in the mountains that same keening sound was remote and so much less familiar. Where were the tracks that held that train and where was it going? Who were its passengers?

 I imagined a great, tall man driving that train, grin like a skull, pushing on through forever and his cargo in the cars, hands and faces to the windows hollow-eyed, watching the speeding landscape, mouths open like pits. What are they thinking? Are they thinking? Or are they past that now and left only with an instinctive wanting. A wanting for home, a wanting for an end to their journey, a wanting for whatever happens to be on the other side of that glass. And they continue to race by the overgrown stations of rust and rot, staring out into eternity and taking this slap dash race to nowhere like a punishment. But what do I know, I've never seen any.

Killing time

There are somethings in the wall. There are many different stages of sleep.
 She hasn't quite figured out what they are yet but she's sure they're there. They mumble while she sleeps. They form a soundtrack for her dreams. They want something from her and until she figures it out she won't be able to leave.

 It was a whim. Coming here to this big, old place to take pictures. The outside is broken and being overtaken by kudzu but the house is still stately and the decay has given it a hint of sinister elegance. The windows, surprisingly unbroken, looked Every lowered voice is whispering about herdown over the warped porch from under lowered lids. The first time she approached the place it struck her as one with personality. A home that influences its occupants, for better or worse. Probably that second one, she's finding.

She keeps moving from room to room because the constant sense of being watched is making her back teeth ache.There is also a girl in the basement. Dark voids for eyes that look at her and want.The air is filled with an unsatisfied presence and smells like mold. She's been here almost twenty four hours and she's getting hungry. If she could get to a door she could get out but they're never where she expects them to be. She's tired and dazed because this can't be real and if she wakes up maybe things will make sense again so she sleeps.
 As she dropped down through the thickening layers of sleep the whispering somethings reached out and kept her from penetrating that last barrier to oblivion, leaving her mostly unconscious but slightly aware, until a particularly sharp voice from the crowd would bring her rocketing back up into her own senses, leaving her painfully alert to try and start the whole process over again.
 There was a rusty old key hidden in the flowerpot at the bottom of the porch stairs. The whole house was like that, like the owners had just left on a trip and meant to come back. Faded furniture collected dust and a fifty year old newspaper withered on the kitchen table. There were dishes in the sink but, curiously, no spiders. She took pictures of everything. She didn't know what else to do. She understood now that people weren't really afraid of the dark, just of the things that might be in it. It's a fear of possibilities.

More photos - little project I'm working on

Hey Anonymous

If you all want to make a point, why don't you shut down the Internet on a weekday so I don't have to work? You know, if you absolutely have to censor the internet in order to protest...What the hell do they protest? I'm sick of people telling me they have to do annoying or reprehensible things for my own good. If anonymous does "shut down the internet" then they are no better than people who censor or make offensive rules based on their own personal beliefs and objectives. Just a bunch of jerk-offs who have power over me and have the ego to jerk the chain. I have enough of that from my boss.

So I need a new job

So I've finished a number of books since I last wrote here. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers was one. Nineteen Seventy-Four by David Peace was another. A Coffin for Dimitrios by Eric Ambler and Delirium by Laura Restrepo were two more. More on that later.

I'm working on The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif and it is bad. It was a Booker finalist so I bought it 3 for a $1 at the library in my quest to read supposedly good literature but it is only reinforcing my realization that the people who give these prizes out don't have any better taste than anyone else. This book is a mess. It's basically an excuse for the author to show her historical research and jerk off about her (idealized) culture and it's political situation.

So we're in Egypt, right? And this woman Amal has a long lost American cousin Isabel who found a trunk containing her great-grandma's stuff. Isabel is in love with Amal's brother Omar who puts the two in touch so Amal can translate the papers in the trunk. See, Anna the great-granma was married to Amal's father's uncle 100 years ago. So part of the book is Amal's diary from 1997, part is Anna's diary and letters from 1901, and a few segments are from Isabel's point of view although she's not really very important. Don't worry, the change in perspective with a century dividing them doesn't leave you with whiplash; none of these characters have a personality.

Anna was widowed when her husband died from, I don't know, malingering, because it turned out war is bad, so she goes to Egypt. There she is kidnapped by rebels because she had dressed as a man and they take her to their master's house and she meets a gorgeous pasha who insists on taking her sightseeing. And if this sounds like something out of a third rate romance novel that's because it is and, no, Ahdaf, slyly winking at the audience about it doesn't make it okay. If you're not going to rise above cliches it's still eye-roll worthy no matter whether you acknowledge it or not.

In 1997 Amal takes Isabel around to see things and meet people though this is somewhat complicated because Isabel is *an American*. In these segments we learn Amal is, for some reason, no longer with her husband and she came back home from England to become a recluse and this thing with Isabel is finally drawing her out of her shell. She muses how Isabel is just starting in life and how her life is just ending. People treat her like an old lady. The family tree at the beginning of the book makes it clear she's 45. I can no longer take this character (or author) seriously.

Amal and the author get to expound at length about politics and other really boring stuff. The worker's are mistreated! The Egyptian people are always beset by evil outside forces like the British and now the Americans and the Jews (oh, excuse me, I mean the Israelis)! The government is controlled by the Americans! We have our victim hat firmly in place oh yes we do! Power to the people! Then Amal takes Isabel to her country mansion where the peasants who farm her land bring her offerings of goods and food while she graciously serves tea. All of her loyal servants love their dear mistress so, so much, she's such a fine lady. Won't she solve all her problems for them? (That noise in the background is me gagging.) (Also, I mean no disrespect but Ahdaf's writing is so English it hurts.)

There's a glossary in the back so you can look up all the Arabic phrases and words she slathers on the text. There are a few anti-Semitic mini rants that I'm saddened but not surprised to see have mainly gone unmentioned in critic's reviews.

Anna. Beautiful, understanding Anna. She of the golden hair and violet eyes. The progressive woman who feels liberated when she travels wearing a veil. She's so kind and not at all afraid when she's kidnapped. She can't tell what the aloof and distant pasha thinks of her but his seeming indifference bothers her and she's not sure why. She gets along wonderfully with his sister. They're so lucky their society has no problems outside of what the big, bad foreigners bring. Isn't it fantastic that none of the characters have any sort of conflict at all?

Huuuuuurrrraaaarrrrggggghhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!

A few photos I'm working on

The Windup Girl chapters 15 - 16

Chapter 15

 Emiko gets dinner from a street vendor and thinks about her situation. She's been sleeping with Anderson (Sigh. Of course) and has been examining her feelings about the free New Person enclave. She feels revulsion at first because she was raised to think of her kind as unnatural, 2nd class beings but the thought of being with others similar to her excites her as well. Interestingly she wonders who she would be able to have sex with there (the many armed workers? the created killers?) and whether she could stand sleeping with anything like that. I don't know if this is because she's programmed to feel she has to have sex with someone or because the Bac-man is kind of backwards in his thinking (or so we can learn that engineered workers have 10 arms. Of course these reasons could all exist together). I just find it odd that for someone who's sex life has consisted almost entirely of forced encounters, some quite brutal, this would be one of the main concerns she would have about her new life.

White Shirts (ministry men) come along to get food and assault the reader with exposition about Jaidee (he finally paid off his men with the stolen money) and she freezes so they won't see her jerky movements. She has no import license and will be "mulched" if caught.
 "...they bump against her with a self-confident maleness, though one white shirt's hand is touching her neck, as though accidentally pressed there..."
"The man who has his hand on Emiko's neck speaks [to the food vendor], caressing her idly." p.156

The Future! This just screams privilege. Male privilege or job privilege? Hard to say as the behavior of the white shirts is kind of nebulous. Other than Jaidee (who steals, commits arson, and beats up factory owners)we haven't seen them do anything. I think this scene is here to create tension. The White Shirts could discover Emiko at any moment! One of them is even touching her! Oh no! Tune in next time for the thrilling conclusion! But it's interesting that Paolo decided to write this scene in such a skeezy way. Considering what I've read so far I'm not surprised.

Also, the use of the Thai word "Pla" instead of just writing fish. It's fucking tilapia, man. Stop it. I understand that using foreign words where there is an English equivalent creates an artificial distance between the subject and the reader (based on language rather culture). It accentuates the otherness of the land and people we're reading about, setting them in a space separate from our experience. This is constant reminder of the difference between the people being portrayed and the target audience. However, it also puts the language difference on the same level as the actual cultural differences. It is more effective (and subtle) to leave simple words alone and let the actual culture stand out. The "Wai" and "Khrab" have no real equivalent in English as far as I can tell and serve more of a reminder that attitudes and mind-sets are often culture-bound. Pla just means fish. Fish is fish. I can relate to fish. I like being able to at least somewhat relate to characters in the books I'm reading. It's hard to understand why the author is trying to make tilapia (something I often have for Thursday dinner) exotic.

Emiko goes to work and asks Raleigh about going North to the Windup village. He's not interested in talking about it but she presses him. She no longer wants to act like a servant or a dog. He tells her she needs to earn more to pay the bribes she'll need to make her way there. We get this lovely exchange. Enjoy!

"Even though he is old, Raleigh is still gaijin, born and fed before the Contraction. He stands tall...His bony hand fumbles at her breast, seizes a nipple and twists...His pale blue water eyes watch her like a snake's." (I think it's funny that all the Western foreigners are whites with blue eyes.) "...People in Japan might value a windup. Here, you're just trash." p.159

 Chapter 16

Goody, back to Hock Seng. He sits at his desk, forging a ledger, "reconciling the money he skimmed from the purchase of a temporary spindle" as he contemplates how to get into that danged safe. It's always locked and closed! Imagine that. That devil Lake doesn't trust him! I wonder why.The Dung Lord will become impatient! Maybe you should have gone to him after you had an actual plan. He's considering having Anderson murdered when the girl Mai comes to tell him there's a problem.

Two worker are ill. Hock Seng is afraid it might be the algae tanks that caused the sickness and that the foreign devil will use it as an excuse to close the factory. He bribes a rickshaw driver to take them to a hospital while thinking that it might just be easier to kill both them and Mai.

Yeah I'm giving up on The Windup Girl

     I've ended up reading everything but Paolo's "steampunk" novel. I can no longer renew it as some poor fool has a hold on it. It's so boring! I have several more chapters I've read and written about so I'll post them eventually but I can't go on right now. I have no interest in the trade and politics, the cynical premise and stereotyped characters, or the 70s setup. I don't care what happens to any of the characters. On to better books!

     I finished Fred Vargas' Have Mercy On Us All. Good book, gets kind of dark when it goes into the plague spreader's reasons but the melange of backstories and damaged characters makes a pretty, tangled mess. I'll have to continue reading the series.

     I also read Ice Moon by Jan Costin Wagner. Wagner is German married to a Finnish woman so the story is set in Finland with one character from Germany. This book was eh. The main detective's wife dies of a long illness in the beginning of the book and this colors his perceptions of the investigation into a series of deaths by smothering. We get chapters from the serial killers perspective which seem to consist entirely of single sentences as paragraphs. There's a number of chapters from the POV of one of the victim's summer flings who flies to Finland when he learns that she's dead and he inherited her apartment. The woman is portrayed as energetic, special, happy, and bright but her focus on some guy she met years ago and never saw or heard from again is just a tad creepy. The one thing I found interesting was how surprised other people were at how easily she talks to strangers. I think this might be a cultural thing because striking up conversations with people you don't know is practically taught from birth here. Also, the main character muses a couple times about how one of his colleagues is so cheerful he's hard to take seriously because upbeat people are seen as superficial and stupid. Apparently smiling = dumb and frowning/neutral = serious. It's a decent, short read but it's kind of repetitive.

      I also read The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney, a first novel by a screenwriter. It takes place in 1867 in the Northwest territory. A man is murdered and a woman's teenage son goes missing and a whole bunch of people stomp off into the wilderness to go find him. The writing is generally good though she has a bit of trouble with tenses changing not just in the middle of paragraphs but also in the middle of sentences. She also seems to forget that we can't see who's talking or what facial expressions they're making. There are too many characters. Line, the Norwegian woman who runs from the religious community that took her in, is entirely without purpose. One of the main characters, Daniel Moody, basically does absolutely nothing and people just generally seem to have a 21st century mindset, especially about religion. Basically none of the plot points are resolved and a seemingly important thread about a bone tablet goes absolutely no where. However, the writing was atmospheric and descriptive and the main character, Mrs. Ross, was sympathetic and strong so it was a pretty good read despite the problems.

      I'm about to finish A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers which is absorbing and obnoxious by turns. More on that later.

The Windup Girl chapters 13 - 14

Chapter 13:

Jaidee remembers meeting and courting his wife. Then he goes to the Ministry to make an apology for being a thieving, destructive jackass. The punishment is harsher than I expected but actually more in line with real-life consequences. He did, after all, accept bribes (even if he didn't keep his end of the bargain) and destroy private property. (He also beats private citizens up.) Most of the cargo he torched was legit. He's sentenced to nine years doing penance as a monk while his children are relegated to Ministry care.

The most appalling facet of his public apology? Foreigners are present.
"Foreigners inside the Ministry compound. Traders and factory owners and Japanese, sunburned sweating stinking creatures, invading the Ministry's most sacred place." P.142.

The horrors! And yet I really think we're supposed to like this guy. Honestly, I see what he's trying to do but when it's offensive with one set of races it doesn't magically become okay when you flip things. At least I hope he's trying something that intelligent rather than trying to accurately portray Thai people because that would just be offensive. I mean it's already offensive but...Let's move on.

Chapter 14:

The aftermath of Jaidee's demotion from Anderson's POV. The foreigners who lost cargo have been paid reparations and one of them acts like a drunk idiot. Anderson talks with Carlyle and meets with Trade Minister Akkarat. Akkarat has a rivalry with Jaidee's boss, Pracha. Anderson and Akkarat talk about a possible deal: support from Anderson's company in exchange for samples from Thailand's genetic seed bank.

"Your people have tried to destroy mine for the last five hundred years."

"Ever since your first missionaries landed on our shores, you have always sought to destroy us. During the old Expansion your kind tried to take every part of us. Chopping off the arms and legs of our country...With the Contraction, your worshipped global economy left us starving and over-specialized." P.150. 

Somebody, either Akkarat or Paulie, has a very tenuous grasp on history and logic. This is just...silly. He's conflating Americans with all Westerners which is a very simplistic and unfair way of viewing things. Not all Americans have a white, Christian, European background and we certainly have nothing to do with anything that the Europeans did. Also, I missed the part where our country has done bad things to Thailand or forced them to specialize. Agency, remember? God forbid countries be held accountable for their own decisions. I mean, somebody pull out the tiny violin. And again, the imputation that free trade is evil. WTF?

Okay. I also read Andrea Camillieri's The Snack Thief. Montalbano gets a case where a man is knifed in the elevator of his apartment and this leads him to a shooting on a fishing boat, a Tunisian cleaning woman and her four year old son. The plot was a bit confusing but at the end there's one of those "Let me sum up" speeches which helps immensely.

Right now I'm reading Have Mercy on Us All by Fred Vargas. I read The Chalk Circle Man and enjoyed it once I realized it was almost a parody of police procedurals. The main character Adamsberg relies more on intuition than interviews or forensics. He lets others handle that. There is much more philosophizing and musing on the meaning of life and things but it's engrossing all the same. In both books the crime starts with odd but non-criminal things that disturb Adamsberg enough to look into them. Inevitably they both turn into something deadly. The book I'm reading now has a guy pretending he's releasing the plague on Paris, complete with disturbing messages and preventative symbols painted on doors.

It's a good thing that Vargas was on my list of authors to read before I read Patrick Anderson's review of her most recent book to be translated into English. Here's what he said: "Although Vargas is hugely popular in Europe, she remains largely unknown in the United States, a discrepancy I must attribute to the high degree of intelligence, sophistication and perversity that informs her fiction."

Lines like this reveal a hell of a lot more about the people who write them than about the subject of the sentence. Pat is either trying to shame people into reading the book by telling them they're too dumb to like it or he's congratulating himself and others who already read the books for being smart enough to appreciate them. The first isn't going to work. I don't know why critics seem to think that telling people they're stupid heathens will get them to read things the critics like but it doesn't allow for personal taste. "You don't like it? Well, I guess you just didn't understand." *Sigh* I encountered this attitude so much during the time I worked in the museum that I'm immune to it now. It's silly and childish. There's a difference between understanding something and liking it. If someone doesn't like something you enjoy it isn't a personal attack on you. And really, you don't need other people's confirmation that a book or work of art really is good before you enjoy it. Telling people they aren't intelligent if they don't like something is mean-spirited.

 The second reason he could have included that sentence can be summed up by a line from The Princess Bride: "Yes, you're very smart, now shut up."

 (I was always amused when tourists would ask me if I "got" Mark Rothko. What they were really asking me was, "Is it all right if I don't like Rothko?" I would explain Rothko's color fields as best I could with the disclaimer that I don't personally like them. People sometimes need reassurance that they aren't philistines if they don't like something considered great. Acting all snobbish about it will just push people away since they won't want to reveal themselves to disdain and then they have no incentive to learn anything new since the work will just bring feelings of shame and embarrassment.)

The Windup Girl Chapters 12

Chapter 12:

 Anderson yells at Hock Seng over the loss of their equipment at the airfield because somehow Jaidee's douchey behavior is the fault of his employee. Something about not paying bribes. Hock Seng continues to be a conniving jackass. Dog Fucker takes Hock Seng to meet the Dung Lord, a Thai with influence of some sort. The Dung Lord made it possible for the Chinese Malayan refugees to be in Thailand in the first place. Hock Seng offers him a deal; stolen kink spring wonder formula (from that danged safe) for a ship to restart his trade empire. Yeah, everything is run by spring. You wind them up and get power from the conversion of "calories to joules". Algea is involved in some way.

 It turns out Hock Seng murdered the yellow card who had the factory job before him. "You were starving. There was no other way. p.136. Really? I guess I'll just have to take your word for it considering we're never shown anything to support or refute your rather hysterical claim. This is a problem with the book in general. Paolo isn't very good at showing. He says the food supply is decimated, people starve, the world is in turmoil but all he shows us is people eating. Coffee, whiskey, noodles, rice, crab, laab mu, gaeng gai, salad, gaeng kiew wan, octopus, "markets full of vegetables", snack sellers, som tam, nam plaa prik, chile-laden pork, bamboo tips, rice beer. These and other references are scattered throughout the text. Nobody is shown having difficulty getting food. This gives the impression that people are indeed getting enough to eat. The same with the yellow cards. Yeah, we take a walk with Hock Seng through the slums but we don't see much more than a depressed area with people going about their daily lives, not well-off but getting along. You say they're all on the edge but I'm not convinced. Also, this book is boring and soulless.

 In other news I just finished Murder at the Savoy by Wahloo and Sjowall.

I liked this book like I've enjoyed the other ones but the ending and moral was a bit odd.

A businessman named Palmgren is murdered by a man who calmly walked into a hotel dining room, shot his victim, and then escaped through a window. Investigations show that Palmgren was kind of a jackass (to put it mildly) when it comes to his business dealings. He trades in arms with African dictators (this book came out in the early '70s), he ruthlessly managed his factories by closing down nonproductive ones rather than retooling them, and he was also a slum lord. Possibly. There wasn't much description of the conditions his tenants lived in actually.

Anyway, to give away the plot of the book, it turns out he was shot by a former office worker in a factory that was shut down two years before. The man took to drinking and started getting into fights with his wife. The building manager reported him to various civic authorities for noise violations and possible child endangerment and he was brought before the temperance board several times for his drinking. Times had changed since he'd gotten his office job 12 years before and he no longer had the training to get a "real job", as his wife puts it. Which means he was turning down jobs he thought were beneath him rather than taking one and getting the training he needed to find something better.

The building manager (this is a Palmgren owned building where factory workers were housed) eventually evicts him. (The detectives speculate that there was a conspiracy headed by Palmgren to get him out so the apartment could be rented out at a higher price. No facts towards this but...no facts towards this.) His wife (described as slovenly and wearing sleazy clothing) separates from him and he gets a lower paying job in another town. Because he obviously has no part in his downward trend (you know, the drinking, the spurning lower paying jobs, the fights, the fact that yes, drunken, argumentative daddy is not good for the kiddies) he's pitied by the detectives who muse how terrible it is that Palmgren's cronies will go on business as usual while this poor, battered man will spend the best years of his life in prison. The main character Martin Beck muses that nobody will miss Palmgren and that he hopes the murderer will get off lightly in his sentencing.

Bull. Shit. I don't care that Palmgren is a jackoff who (inadvertently) helped ruin this guy's life. I hate having to harp on the idea of responsibility and agency but really. The murderer contributed to his own downfall. He did not deal with his misfortunes well. The idea that the taking of a human life is not a tragedy because nobody will miss them is disgusting and more than a little disturbing. Yes, Palmgren is not a good man but that doesn't give anybody the right to decide that he doesn't get to exist any longer. I would argue that killing him is a far worse crime than shutting down a non-productive factory and having a building manager that doesn't like your face. I really hope nobody would argue me on this point but apparently '70s Wahloo and Sjowall would.

The introduction says that this book displays the ugly side of the left at the time and I have to agree. Capitalist business practices can be ugly (especially when gone to the extremes as they have in this book. I mean, gun running?) but what's presented here is only one side and I would still say that cold-blooded murder is worse for society.

Whew. It was a good book. The moral just bothered me a little.

The Windup Girl chapters 9 - 11

Chapter 9:

Emiko wakes and bathes.
 "She's pours a ladleful over her head. Water courses down her face, runs over breasts and ribs and thighs, trickles onto hot concrete. Another ladleful, soaking her black hair, coursing down her spine and curling around her buttocks." P. 102. I only quote this because I question not just the purpose of this scene but Emiko's entire presence in this book. 100 pages and two short scenes.
 We learn that she is routinely raped and tormented in her shared apartment. Yippee. She walks down to the seawall to find out about passage north but no luck. She has to disguise the way she moves because windups without papers are "mulched". A man accosts her. He fought windup soldiers and since she's a windup he tries to kill her. She runs, gets overheated, and is rescued by (of course) Anderson Lake.

 Chapter 10:

So Anderson rescued Emiko and now they ride together in his rickshaw. They talk and then he starts to make out with her while wondering if she wants to or just can't say no. Ask her, you moron!
 This feels like something out of the '70's. Beautiful Asian courtesan/prostitute is rescued by strong, stoic, blond-blue-eyed-white man in exotic location. Gag. Also, is there no oil left? If they can create truly marvelous wonders of genetic engineering why can't they come up with an energy substitute? Okay, Paulie, if oil is a no go for us, (message story, remember?) what are we supposed to do? Also, why Thailand? Or why not a Thai protagonist?

 Chapter 11:

 Jaidee muses on how stupid the Malayan Chinese (no, I don't know why it's not Malaysian) were to not integrate and become Muslim, unlike the Chaozhou Chinese who assimilated into Thai society, taking Thai names. He believes the "yellow cards" are at fault for not anticipating their own slaughter. He thinks about this while assaulting a Chaozhou Chinese for backtalk. Then he gets called to the Environment Ministry over the cargo burning. Someone has kidnapped his wife. His boss says he'll have to make an apology and accept demotion if they want to try to get her back.

 More limited background but still no idea what state the rest of the world is in. I still don't understand how anyone would continue to allow these "calorie companies" such control. Since I'm not a cynical twit I don't actually think any country would allow this or just bend over and take it from another country. How come only Thailand has managed to create new food?

 There's also an anti-capitalism vibe running through this. "We haven't had heeya like this since the last Expansion. Money at any cost. Wealth at any price." P.127. Yes, of course, because if you forcibly limit people's ability to make money they would settle down and devote themselves to artistic pursuits. Wars would disappear! Peace on Earth, goodwill towards men! No one would ever again attempt to gain power or control over others. Really, I'm all for regulation of business and such but come on. Be realistic.

 Also the amount of detail used to say "Look! We're in Thailand! isn't this exotic!" is irritating. Take this sentence: "She wears the same blue pha sin that she had on when she made him a breakfast of gang kiew wan..." P.126. Pha sin seems to be a type of skirt. Maybe, maybe, you can justify the repeated use of the italicized pha sin. But why do we need to know what he had for breakfast except to add a foreign detail? There are a lot of foreign words introduced without translation that obviously have equivalent English words like: fish, foreigner, skirt, sir, yes, ghost, gangster, fun, canal, side street, why, karma, dharma, hot heart... This is silly. Maybe more on this later.