Book Review: Greenstar Season One

as per Amazon review 4 out of 5 Disclosure: I received a review copy of this book. Comedy be hard. Even the best writers can be a hit and miss. I would not be a regular reader of either sci-fi or humour books, so this review is probably more relevant to other people who would not be fans of the genre. A lot of the Star Trek and Buck Rogers stuff probably passed me by. It reminded me of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" books and also of the first Hal Space Jock, which would be the total of the humorous sci-fi books I have read. I could add the Discworld novels, but as they are more fantasy and a different brand of humour, and somewhat more sophisticated, I don't think there is any comparison there. I give this four out of five, marks for effort and I read to the end and I enjoyed it mostly and would be interested in trying another book by the authors, or books by either of the authors. Episode one – slow start to the first chapter, it was fairly dead-pan and I was wondering where the humour was going to come from. It picked up in the second chapter, and continued to get better, I did actually laugh several times before the end of the episode. I particularly liked Topik the AI, who is a darker version of Marvin in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Overall I found the humour is similar. One of the episodes wandered off into the weeds, the whole episode was about a simulation of along the lines of the holo-deck in Star Trek the Next Generation (I loathed the holo-deck in STNG, so you can tell I wasn't thrilled by this). It had very little humour or relevance although it did show the authors capable of writing straight action, and maybe foreshadowed skills used by the characters in a climactic battle later on. The culmination at the end was quite straight and exciting as well, with just an ironic joke at the very end. Again, I'm sure I missed a lot of the jokes, there were some references to famous authors and sci-fi characters that I picked up but you probably have to be steeped in the culture to get the most out of those jokes.

Book Review: The Briar King by Gregory Keyes

three stars This was published 2003. It suffers in comparison with A Game of Thrones which came out a couple of years before. I wouldn't be a fantasy reader by any stretch of the imagination but it feels more old-fashioned. It is quite similar in some ways, same type of fake mediaeval fantasy setting with knights etc. Compared to Game of Thrones it is a bit thinner setting wise (not a bad thing in itself for a shorter read). Greg Keyes is a fencing instructor by profession and some of this comes out, one of the characters introduced later in the book is a sort of fake Italian Renaissance fencer type bravo and this seems a bit out of place in the mediaeval setting. Overall it kept the attention and is a good three star book well written, plotted reasonably well, but otherwise hard to get excited about, if you are not into fantasy it would be hard to see why anyone would recommend you to read it. Only reason I came across it was because AJ Abbiati used a sample of it in his breakdowns, and the scene he chose from early in the novel shows Greg Keyes is a skillful writer. But again hard to recommend it unless you were already into fantasy

Book Review - Scene and Structure by Jack Bickham

Scene and Structure by Jack Bickham three stars very good, three and a half to four star book. The techniques and tools that he discusses are very useful and the explanations are very helpful. One or two of people who had reviews were saying that his examples from his own work were ridiculous and to a certain extent this is true, there is stuff from a comedy western he did which seems very dire and wouldnt encourage you to go out and buy the book, and there is stuff from some other book about a girl falling down a mine shaft which his explanation makes seem like writing by numbers and is ridculous but his explanations even in these cases of why he wrote what he wrote and the reasons he had for handling the scenes in the way he did and what he was tryiing to achieve, which is the whole point of the exercise is very good and followin along and understanding how certain decisions were made, and maybe not even at one time or in one draft but to see how certain decisions were made and how certain ways things can be written was very useful. And also his whole theory, taken futher by AJ Abbiati or the whole natural order of the rhythm and syntax of scenes (which I presume comes form his own mentor Swain of The Techniques of the selling writer) and they are universal stuff, so that as there are three or five acts, there are also natural rhythm and syntax of scenes and even withing scenes, thinking, acting , acts and reactions – he is quite strong on this and as a way of supplying techniques where when writing you might have got lost with your experience of being a reader more than a writer where you have subconsciously absorbed techniques but wouldnt be able to consciously articulate what you were trying to achieve and not be sure what has gone wrong So wehre painters get a technical training where somebody not trained would not see the tecnhique whereass soimebody who has even a few art lessons will be able to understand how it was done, also musicians would have a technical traiining. Thatre there is a lot more than just learing the notes, and that there is a lot more to writing than just ging blah blah blah and the way that Jack bickham provides techniques and walk throughs of how to break down a scene is very useful indeed

Book Review: Iron Kingdom - the Rise and Downfall of Prussia 1600 – 1947 by Christopher Clark

Iron Kingdom - the Rise and Downfall of Prussia 1600 – 1947 Christopher Clark rough draft of review three stars I would give this three and a half stars if it was possible. I really enjoyed reading this book for the most part, there were a couple of niggles, of which more anon. The premise of the book seems to be to show that there was more to the kingdom of Prussia than jack-booted officers twirling their moustaches and mindless militarism. And Mr Clark succeeds in showing this, from the modest beginnings of a small collection of scattered territories centred around the state of Brandenburg at the end of the middle ages into a great power capable of forcing a united Germany in the late 1800s. It is interesting to read of how the country land-owners resisted the central government. And how the peasants had certain rights and were not shy about standing up for themselves. How women had a good deal of power and freedoms in early modern Germany (the idea of the woman's place is in the home being a recent invention in historical terms). How the Brandenburg army was so weak that the Swedish army could ravage the countryside and massacre the people in the Hundred Years War, and how they were of so little account that the Austrian army could come along shortly after and do the same, whether Brandenburg was on the Austrian side or neutral. How the succession of three brilliant kings Frederick William, Frederick William II and Frederick II (The Great) gathered together a kingdom with so many contradictions that it contained the seeds of its own destruction. I was very interested to see read about Frederick the Great in particular and how he made Prussia a place of religious tolerance and somehow made a country where Poles, Polish speaking Germans, Lithauanians and (sometimes) even Jews could make a home and not feel threatened. Sadly of course, this didn't last for ever, with first the Culture Wars against the Roman Catholics and waves of anti-semitism down through the years. I also was surprised to learn of the strange gentleness of the Prussian penal code compared to the British and even French ones of the same era – captial punishment was very rarely used. and even little snippers like that fact the Berlin was a minor backwater of a city set in marshland. The niggles – the book seems to end somewhat abruptly, the time of the First World War and beyond is galloped through and I felt that after the set-up he didn't fully deliver on his thesis that the success of Prussia was the key to its own downfall. A fuller explanation would needed to my mind. Occasionally he is a little bit too right-on, twenty-first century academic and determined on viewing the past through a 2000's liberal arts lens. The past is a different county. I get that. And when dealing with the history of an actually different country, the similarities may be more important to hold onto than pointing up the differences

Book Review: (total take-down of) Dialogue by Lewis Turco

Dialogue by Lewis Turco one star If it was possible to give a book minus stars, this would be the one. It is written in the form of a Socratic dialogue – which is fine in the hands of the master himself, Plato, if you can come across a good modern translation, but this is about a writing book and Socratic dialogues in modern times just come across as boring and pretentious, and that would be ok as just a useless book delivered in an annoying format. I bought this many years ago a part of a three book bundle “How to Write a Million” and if you were getting a three book bundle like that where the price of the three was less than the price of the other two books individually I would say don't be put off by Dialogue being included, but if the three books were on sale individually as a three for the price of two, I would save my money and just buy the two. This one isn't worth the effort of carrying it home. Over the years I tried to read it several times but got bored and frustrated enough each time to give it up. The reason I think it should be award minus stars is just in case some determined soul gets value out of it and tries to apply the lessons there-in, and unconsciously absorb the dreadful use of dialogue in the Socratic dialogues themselves, I used to feel bad until I saw somebody else review it and say that the dialogues themselves break all the rules and good guidelines being explained within the text. I understand Mr Turco is a famous modernist poet, so perhaps the whole book is a massive joke? Sadly I cant find the other review, which also alleged that the book was written at speed to fill a gap when the originally intended author couldn't deliver a book on dialogue on time. Most writing books, you could get something positive out of, this one –avoid at all cost, it is bane to writing.

censored by Amazon!

My review of Inside Out (link) came bouncing back. Not sure why. It probably wasn't ready for prime time anyway. I will just keep posting them here, they are rather rough and overly long and more for my own use to explore why I like certain books and don't like others. But feel free to read if you happen upon them.

Book Review: The Detachment by Barry Eisler

The Detachment by Barry Eisler three stars This was better than Inside Out, at least. A three star book, just about. It goes along well enough, and there are some interesting situations, but also some ridiculous ones. We are expected to believe that the treacherous Colonel Horton, who we know any normal person would not trust to tell them the time of day, is able to convince these canny survivor guys to actually forget all about security and congregate in one hotel room in a known hotel on a known date where the CIA can get at them? I think not Senor Eisler! The first few chapters are great though, download the sample. Not enough to save the book, but classic John Rain.

Book Review: Inside Out by Barry Eisler

Inside Out by Barry Eisler (3 stars) I'm a great fan of the John Rain books, and as this was the second book in another series, I was hoping for interesting things. I was disappointed. I'm giving this book three stars for effort and accomplishment but I'm thinking it really only deserved 2.5. The fun thing about Barry Eisler's other series the John Rain books is that even though Rain is a cold blooded border-line psychopath with thirty year PTSD problems and I squirm every time he describes his latest killing in detail, he is charismatic. Sometimes he babbles about coffee or whiskey or jazz or goes off on Travis McGee style rants that derail the story, but he is likeable to an extent that you stick with it. He's an ass-hat, but he's a stylish ass-hat. Not so Ben Treven. Ben is just an ass, and maybe just a donkey. He is presented from the outside and without the entertaining inner monologues of John Rain, all we have is the messed up out-side of a not-very-nice ex Special Forces guy with a chip on his shoulder and lots of issues. Apparently the sales of the non-John Rain books are much less, and I think I know why now – Ben Treven. The subsidiary characters are more interesting although the FBI woman didn't convince me and without giving away the spoiler, the author's efforts to foreshadow the surprising twist may explain some of the awkwardness. Larison the mysterious defector and Colonel Horton and their interactions with Treven are entertaining and provide a lot of the suspense, as does Treven's clever pursuit of Larison. The cross-author inclusion of Joe Konrath's cartoon Harry Glade private investigator was a very bad idea, and even though the buffoonish character traits are absent, I had to wonder what Eisler thought he was playing at. There is sexual tension between Treven and the FBI agent, but as I disliked Ben to the extent that I really didn't care too much if he got killed, I seriously didn't give a flying fiddler's whether on not he was going to get laid. Add a fairly ridiculous sex scene, which left me wondering if it was plausible either physically or psychologically. I'm not an American and I would pretty much come from the same position as Barry Eisler in relation to the “War on Terror”, but even if the book was not intended as a heavy-handed treatise on the ills of US foreign policy disguised in parable form as a thriller, it sure as hell reads that way. Being lectured to, even by a guy you agree with, gets old fast. Disclaimer here, I understand the US Government have their go-to thriller guys who churn out propaganda for the other point of view, but I've never read any of those so far. What is totally bewildering about this is that previously in the later John Rain books, the activities and thoughts of renegade agent Jim Hilger cover the same ground in a way that is naturally woven into the plots of the books and it isn't so preachy then, even though the author's position was clear. And then at the end it just meanders on for what seems like an age, giving a pure political rant when the story is definitely long over and putting in place the set-up for “The Detachment”. Which is another review, probably more positive … I think the book could have benefited by being about fifty pages shorter, it would have zipped along and the things that put me off would not have been so obvious. It's interesting, writing a negative review seems to be harder. I find it much easier to write at length about why I liked a book.

Book review: re-reviewing The NORTAV Method for Writers: The Secret to Constructing Prose Like the Pro

I originally reviewed this shortly after buying it and gave it five stars under the heading "Lightbulb book" The chapter on Direct Character Experience is worth the price of the book on its own. I am still trying to understand the book because it's not a light read, it's a book that should make you think. I don't agree with everything he says, but I will be using it as part of my writing toolkit in the future. The second half of the book doesn't feel as complete, but this is a small criticism and if he writes a second book covering that part in more detail I would buy it instantly. That was August 2013. I should really have added. "Go to his website first, and if you like what you see there, come back here and download the sample to see the explanation. The sample is long enough that if you 'get' what he is saying you will want to buy the whole book." I haven't changed my mind much in the meantime. I slightly regret the five stars because a) it looks gushy and makes it seems as if I am an OMG Amazetesticles teenager or a fake reviewer either paid by the author or one of his near relations making a misguided attempt to drum up business. The book blew me away at the time I first read it and for that reason alone it was probably deserving of a five star review -- I still haven't decided my own personal etiquette or criteria on what the meaning of each number of starts denotes for a book -- I know some people, especially writers who appreciate the effort in producing even a poor book, think 5 stars is marks for effort and any book that is pleasing should get them and three stars is kind of ho-hum. Personally I am coming to think that 2 out of 5 is ho-hum, three is sixty percent and pretty good if a book is pleasing, and 4 is for outstanding, and 5 is for amazing. I don't think I will be handing out any more 5 stars for now, but it's good to document my thinking process on this. Anyway, back to the book re-review. A small criticism was the lack of references. Jim Abbiati obviously bent over backwards to write a non-academic, non-scary book, but a bibliography at the back would not have gone amiss. He does mention in passing the various previous writers on the subject who influenced him, but so far the only one I have found interesting enough to follow up was Jack Bickham's "Scene and Structure" [note to self, never did the review of that] which is now available as an e-book -- my copy looks suspiciously like a print on demand, which I don't mind but I would have bought the e-book in preference if it had been available at the time. Scene and Structure has become my new "Writing syntax" bible, supplanting The NORTAV Method which would be a reason for knocking a star off as a long-term review. But this isn't the Scene and Structure review yet! I think of The NORTAV Method as a book of Writing Syntax. I have seen College Rhetorics on Writing although I haven't done an MFA myself, so I appreciate what Jim Abbiati is doing when he skirts around the scary subjects of narratology and structuralism and other literary theory gunk, and concentrates on the huge gaps that exist between "The table was sold to the lady with wooden legs" and the higher level topics they teach you about writing in university. He takes Jack Bickham's (I only know this in retrospect) "scene and sequel" idea that in the same way as the sentence above, normal English syntax dictates that if the wooden legs belong to the table and not to the lady, then the wooden legs should be next to the table and not next to the lady -- so in a scene in a story, the syntax of a scene means that events should normally happen in the same action-reaction sequence as they do in real life. This for me was the light-bulb moment that I used as the title of my original review, but there is much more in the book than that. He goes through an impressive and rich list of extracts of stories and books, slowly building up his NORTAV structure of the sequence of building blocks of a story - Narration (tell don't show) Observation (a character sees something) Reaction (the character reacts to the observation), Thought (the character thinks as a result of the previous observation or reaction) , Action (the character again acts as a result of the preceding thought), and Vocalization (the character says something as a result of previous sequence of events). His point is that the normal course of the story will happen in a chain containing all or most of these building blocks and normally in the same sequence. This is to me an extremely powerful idea for when the going gets tough and your imagination has run away from you and you have written something that was exciting at the time but now when you read back it does'nt seem quite right but you can't put your finger on it although instinctively you know something is wrong. I see studying this idea from the book alone as a great gift to writers everywhere. It will be interesting by way of conclusion to go back and read and study The NORTAV Method again in the light of having read Scene and Structure to see if it has lost or gained any power for me. I would be delighted if I get even more from it the second time around.

New push - trying to motivate myself to post more, so book reviews

There are some reviews on Amazon that need to be edited and there is a huge back-log of books I have read bought as Kindle e-books which I haven't got around to reviewing yet. It should be good practice

Kris Writes -- best post ever

I was disappointed to see Kris Rusch has decided to stop her weekly blog post on business -- but she has done everyone an amazing service over the years, and she definitely is making the right decision to concentrate on her fiction, its not as if she has to keep writing about the same stuff, other people can pick up the ball and run with it. In my opinion her best ever post, which is interesting as a writing story and a story in itself but also a brilliant scientific business case study http://kriswrites.com/2013/05/15/the-business-rusch-shifting-sands/

Show trials

They do them differently here. Usually a show trial is orchestrated by a hostile government and their lackeys in the judiciary so that the person is convicted, in Ireland, prominent people are put on trial for offences which it is very unlikely even an intelligent jury will be able to convict -- eg ask the correct leading question to get the correct answer, and even then it is so obscure there is vast room for maneouver for the defence to win on appeal. Its all completely above board of course.

Listening to the words

I have to admit I never really paid attention to the words of the country song "Desperados waiting for a train" but the economy of it suddenly hit me, and at the line "so why is he dressed up like one of those old men" I nearly blubbered, which was really inconvenient because I was driving at around 115 kph at the time

thoughts on hospitals

Had the thought to contrast two hospitals -- have been visiting a bleak public hospital, which is nice enough in a spartan and expected way, and more recently a private hospital, which had a very stuffy and old fashioned feel to it, which I suspect is due to the clientele -- I suspect the customers at the private hospital are mostly old people and they expect their moneys worth -- which is old fashioned furniture which makes them feel 'comfortable' and 'at home' or some nonsense like that. To me on the other hand, I felt uncomfortable and the last thing I want from a medical institution is for it to feel anything like the home of some boring old me-too duffer who has kept up the health insurance payments for forty years and would rather have crappy furniture than a streamlined service.

Spring

I may not have been paying attention last year, but the birds seem to be singing a lot more this year. Very pleasant. And the stretch in the days is very gratifying, although it is still at the stage where I feel a bit guilty going home from work when it is still daylight!