Burr

Aaron Burr has always been a sort of favorite of mine.  Not in the sense that he was a role model or anything like that; a man who is, by many accounts, a traitor and a sore loser doesn't seem suited to that sort of favoritism.  Instead, I liked him because he was a quirk of history, he managed to interact and work with many of the founding fathers of America, without ever being considered one.  It seems he was a skilled lawyer and politician but he burned the wrong bridges (and shot the wrong people) and ended up on the wrong side of history.

These were the things I was thinking when I saw Burr by Gore Vidal among my grandmother's books.  After a quick google which told me that it was the first of a 7 book series (as always if I can help it, I read the series in historical order rather than publication order (Burr is second in publication order)), I shelved it for some years until I was in the mood to read something longer.  When I finally hit that point, I was delighted at how good it was.  Gore Vidal was just a familiar name to me before I started this series but now he is an author I respect.

The book is historical fiction and follows Burr in the twilight of his life recounting adventures from his younger years.  As you might expect from the title, it generally puts him in a sympathetic light.  After reading the rest of the series, I've determined that Vidal is somewhat of a historical contrarian.  If history says someone is good, Vidal probably portrays them less kindly in his books and, to Burr's benefit, someone history frowns upon gets a more positive spin.  This makes for a particularly interesting read for someone like me who generally goes after the breadth of history rather than the depth of particular parts.

The book is highly enjoyable: the characters are engaging, and while the plot is mostly a frame story, it makes history interesting.  It is not the best book in the series (that honor probably goes to Lincoln or Empire) but it is in the top half of a set of seven good books.  Plus, it makes for the perfect gift for anyone who is annoying you by singing Hamilton lyrics too much.

Overall, I would give this book a 90%.

What If?

First let me start by saying that Randall Munroe's what if blog is one of the treasures of the internet. If you have never heard of it, he does back of the napkin calculations for generally silly questions. Some of my favorites include
1) How many BBs would it take to stop a speeding train: http://what-if.xkcd.com/18/
2) How to build a jetpack out of downward firing machine guns: http://what-if.xkcd.com/21/
3) Changing the color of the moon with laser pointers (which contains the phrase

Unfortunately, the laser energy flow would turn the atmosphere to plasma, instantly igniting the Earth’s surface and killing us all.

But let’s assume that the lasers somehow pass through the atmosphere without interacting.

Under those circumstances, it turns out Earth still catches fire. 

): http://what-if.xkcd.com/13/

Anyway, this book is a collection of his posts and some original content.  It is interesting when things people are giving away for the free on the internet (webcomics, blogs, and the like) transition into money making in the physical world.  It is interesting to see what twists the author puts on their product to make it worth buying rather than reading for free on the internet.  In this case, it is some new questions and answers.  However, honestly they are (in my opinion, duh) some of the worse ones of the book.  They are still good, but definitely not in my favorites.

If you want to know the real answer to questions like "How many BBs can stop a train?", this isn't the book for you. The math is generally back of the napkin style and many of the concepts are oversimplified to the point of being unrecognizable by an expert.  However, if you want to think about interesting questions with reasonable simulacra of the answers, this is exactly the book for you. The author has a humorous tone and is clearly having fun researching and writing the answers.  As such, the book is best suited to someone who wants to have fun reading it (and honestly, it is hard not to),

While this is a great concept and a fun book, if you are even moderately internet savvy, you can get 90% of the enjoyment from this book simply by reading the blog.

Overall, I would give this a 90%.

Horns

Horns was a book that spiked in popularity last year due to a movie based it that starred Daniel Radcliffe.  I didn't actually see the film but I read the book because a friend had and wanted to discuss it.

The basic plot is that the protagonist wakes up one morning with, you guessed it, horns.  He quickly realizes that these horns have powers that affect the people around him and much of the book is an exploration of those powers.

Horns' protagonist, while not fundamentally unlikable, generates a lot of pity.  He has lived a rough life and, as such, doesn't use his powers in the best possible way.  However, he shies away from being completely evil, avoiding my complete disgust,

The book was billed as a horror story but there isn't really very much scary stuff going on.  Instead of keeping you up at night worrying someone will come after you with a hacksaw, you are more likely to be kept up wrestling with the worst of human nature.  (Despite what I said about a lack of actual scary parts, there is one place where the reader is reminded that the brain is a physical object that can be damaged without being destroyed, a concept that always troubles me.)

The book also has a quote that I really enjoyed. "When the world comes for your children with its knives out, it is your job to stand in the way.  Everyone knows that."  This quote, while it comes at a trying time in the book, is representative of the parent I want to be when taken out of context like this.

To summarize, while this book has an interesting concept or two, there isn't really that much special there,  It sits squarely in the no man's land between good and bad, without making huge leaps towards either side.

Overall, I would give this book an 81%.

Kalki

I picked up Kalki a while back because I had always heard that Gore Vidal was a good author and that this was the most science fiction like of his books and it was described as something akin to Mad Max meets Hemingway.  If that doesn't pique your interest even a little, I don't know what will.

Before I get into this book, I just want to say a quick thing about gendered nouns (it is at least tangentially related, I promise).  I generally don't like gendered nouns, they seem a little archaic and slightly sexist.  However, on occasion I will come across a word that is just plain cool, and I have to love it regardless of its other qualities.  This book introduced me to one of those: aviatrix.

As I said above, this was my first read by Gore Vidal and, frankly, I was blown away.  I'll admit the plot was not that interesting, perhaps I am a little jaded for apocalypse stories, but the lower level sentence and paragraph constructs were excellent.  I found myself repeatedly enjoying individual sentences because they were exquisitely crafted.

I found it a little difficult to emphasize with the protagonist because she (the aviatrix) makes a lot of frustrating and questionable decisions and in general seems a little blind to what (to me, the jaded reader seemed to be obvious) consequences her actions would have.  Vidal also repeatedly emphasizes the fact that she is a woman who cannot reproduce and that she is attracted to other women which are both perfectly fine character traits but seem strange for repeated emphasis.

Overall, I would give this book an 86%.

Tatja Grimm's World

I picked up Tatja Grimm's World after I read Vernor Vinge's short story collection because at that point it was basically the last piece of his fiction bibliography that I hadn't read.  It had lackluster reviews but it was also short, so I figured I owed it to the author of A Deepness in the Sky and Across Realtime to complete my collection of his work (mentally and physically).

The first part of the book is a barely changed version of a short story in the collection I read.  Which was honestly what drew me in to the story.  Tatja is a very smart woman in a world of normally smart people and the viewpoint characters for a couple parts are book publishers who love books which obviously immediately endeared them to me.

However, the book itself is one of the author's first works.  Comparatively, it lacks depth and cohesion and if you look closely you can see a lot of ideological ties to his later works.  Things that he hadn't quite worked out how he wanted them to go but knew he liked the concept of.  In addition, it is hampered by basically being a few stories hammered together in an attempt to make a novel and some of the jumps are a little jarring.

Basically, if you like Vernor Vinge and his work, you should read this.  It is pretty short and definitely in his style, but come at it expecting short stories set in the same universe rather than a novel.  However, this should definitely not be your introduction to Vernor Vinge, for that I recommend either Deepness in the Sky or Fire upon the Deep (depending on if you believe in reading things in chronological order or the order in which they were published).

Overall, I would give this a 81%.

Ready Player One

Ready Player One  is a nerdy, sci-fi love letter to the 80's.  I don't mean that it is written in the style of 80's science fiction stories but that the book is full to bursting with blatant, deliberate references to 80's pop culture.

The basic setting of the book is a near future where Earth is decaying.  Instead of fixing their problems, people retreat inside their virtual worlds to escape.  This makes it sound like the book is preachy, but it really isn't.  For most of the book, it just sort of treats this as the state of the world without much comment.

Further, the book doesn't take itself particularly seriously and, as such, makes for a light, fun read full of nostalgia.  I imagine it would be an even better read for someone who was actually a nerdy teenager in the 80's but I still enjoyed it with my moderate grasp of 80's geekdom.  The whole book is designed to make the reader exclaim "Oh yeah, I remember that!"  Everything from Zork to a Joust arcade machine to a specific Dungeons and Dragons handbook makes an appearance.

The book feels a little like a low budget Snow Crash that attempts to make up for its short comings with nostalgia.  I don't want to say that it completely failed because I enjoyed it, but it was definitely a beach read (which is where I read it).

Overall, I would give this book an 82%.