The Girl in the Spider's Web

The fourth book in the “Millennium series” was enjoyable, a good read (if you like the series), and the new (though controversial) author did not disappoint.

The only point that annoyed me about this book was that there was too much time with Mikael Blomkvist being in “woe is me mode” and feeling sorry for himself. I mean, I guess he’s entitled to a midlife crisis but it did not make for particularly compelling reading.

That said, initially I had my doubts that I would enjoy David Lagercrantz taking over for the late Stieg Larsson. While this book was overall somewhat more toned down and perhaps a bit less graphic than some of its predecessors.

I really enjoyed the subject matter having worked in IT myself, living in a world of ever decreasing privacy (where encryption is important), and currently working in the intellectual property field. So a book hovering around the topics of encryption and industrial espionage was a very entertaining read for me.

You probably do not want to read this book unless you’ve read the rest of the Millennium series as you would be missing a lot of important back story and context. Chances are if you have enjoyed the previous Millennium series books this one will not disappoint you, and you have likely already read it.

I’m looking forward to the series continuing and getting even more story, and perhaps (possibly bloody) resolution to the fight between Lisbeth and her sister Camilla.

The Night Circus

This is another of the books suggested by my Great Aunt for me to read as it is outside my normal realm of science fiction.

Erin Morgenstern wrote a very enjoyable story. The details of the story, in terms of the visuals and how the story is told, are very lush, deep, and thick despite the less colorful spectrum of the book being heavily focused in red, grey, white, and black.

Chronological order of events has very little to do with how the story unfolds, the sequence of chapters, or the sections. But while one is jumping through the timeline throughout the book there is an overarching logical flow to the telling of the story.

If I were to compare this book to another I think it is a more adult and toned down Harry Potter, closer to 5, 6, or 7 in tone and darkness but a lot less dramatic on the whole. If you like the Harry Potter series you would probably like this book.

Overall, I would suggest this book to others who like rich fantasy, enchanting, or magical settings. It was a  very good and compelling read.

While I really enjoyed the book overall I was not a big fan of how it concluded.

WARNING: below here there are spoilers!

The conflict is resolved by both the protagonists, Marco and Celia, by removing themselves from the normal plane of existence thereby ending their competition without either having to leave the other behind. The reason this annoys me is that it is the easy, everyone wins, way out.

Earlier in the book Celia discusses how her father removed himself from the normal plane but had trouble manifesting himself in the world because he bound himself to the world as a whole and therefore was not particularly well concentrated anywhere. She theorizes that if someone were to bind themselves to specific objects or locations they might not have the manifestation issue and while being “dead” (or no longer on the normal plane) they would still exist and be able to better interact with the world as more than a mere apparition. This was a neat idea in terms of a resolution to the “game” which drives the plot as it would allow either Marco or Celia to avoid their death (as the normal resolution to the game) and would both be able to be together going forward, though with one as a more ethereal presence than the other.

I like this ending because it is not your typical happy ending, is a loophole to the “game”, and is both happy and sad at the same time. It would have been complex, but then, so is life, and so is the circus, especially how it has been affecting its founders.

Instead the author opted for the “we ‘die’ together” approach. I found this less compelling. It also necessitated a “save the circus!” tangent which felt rushed and forced and put an otherwise interesting character in a very pre-destination-esque role. To me it made a character that was being developed and had good depth into a shallower version of who he was previously presented as having potential to be.

A Mercy

I read this on a suggestion of my great aunt who thinks I need to read more than science fiction and fiction. So I read this novel. It’s pretty short, I think around 100 pages or so.

Again, I’m not going to go much into plot. This book is written from at least six different perspectives. Normally this would not be an issue or particularly confusing if there was some decent chronological semblance to it all. The problem is that the perspectives tend to include a brief autobiography, a section that is most likely concurrent with the previous chapter, and then a section that may actually progress the story chronologically. This is probably more confusing than I was really signing up for because basically each chapter has a section that predates the preceding chapter, a section that is concurrent with the preceding chapter, and perhaps a section that progresses the story line beyond the preceding chapter. Granted not all books need to be linear but I would say in this case it was very jarring and not particularly well executed and therefore was less interesting and more distracting and detracting from the overall reading experience.

In conclusion if you want to read a book that involves the perspective of northerners in pre-revolutionary United States as well as their servants / slaves I suppose this is a good book but be prepared for a temporal dissonance induced headache.

To Kill A Mockingbird

After managing to somehow escape childhood, adolescence, law school, and adult hood so far without reading this book I thought it was about time.

I’m not really going to go over the plot at all because chances are you’ve read it, and if you have not, it is probably worth a read.

I did have trouble reading a book written from the child’s perspective, even a precocious and smart one. I found it a frustrating perspective to read a whole book from. There are some books that I have read in the past two years written from a very smart child’s perspective during some sections but they were not the primary or sole voice / perspective in the book.

What struck me most about reading this book is how applicable it is today in light of recent police actions (or at least my greater awareness of them) and imprisonment and so on that appear to severely disproportionately affect some races more than others. The racism present in “To Kill A Mockingbird” is in many ways alive, well, and viewable today. And it was rather striking and off-putting that a book published in the 1960s and taking place in 1933-35 can have the words and scenario be nearly as relevant today as they were then. It’s not comforting to read a book, be able to so readily draw parallels and see how little progress has been made.

All that being said I plan to read the sequel and see where the story goes from there.

Mein Kampf [The Ford Translation]

Growing up learning about the Holocaust and World War II always left me with a bit of a fascination and desire to understand what was going through Hitler’s head. “Mein Kampf” being both an autobiography, political party history, and political manifesto provides some understanding.

The political analysis and motivation of people analysis is very well done and I would say quite good. It was also lacking. I found it interesting that Hitler would look at the media of the time and point at the editors as the primary motivators for tone. And perhaps he was right to only look there. But Hitler never seemed to question who owned a given paper and whether they might have an agenda they were pushing on their editors and writers (which I would say is fairly common practice now especially in the 24 hours news networks).

I found that my education regarding pre-war Jewish life is perhaps lacking. On the one side we have the portrayal of the ghetto, self-segregation, and the shtetl. On the other side we have owners of expensive pieces of art, factory owners, fine artisans, and people with strong media or political influence. My education focused on the former. Hitler focused on the supposedly subversive and nation ruining aspects of the latter.

I don’t really have much to say about this book though. I’ve read it. Hitler was smart and charismatic and had a strong sense of how to run a focused movement (though I don’t think it would work as well today now that communication is easier). But he also had a deep seeded hate for the Jewish boogeyman without seemingly doing due diligence regarding the forces behind them.

This books was a tough read for me. It took me well over a year to actually finish it. And, befitting the autobiography of one of the more notorious killers and megalomaniacs of known history I read most of his books while on the toilet and taking a crap.