How I Conquered Your Planet

by John Swartzwelder
You won't find Swartzwelder's goofy-ass novels at your local Barnes & Nobles. They're self-published, with bland covers and big type, and they're not exactly high literature. They are, however, written by the guy who wrote more Simpsons episodes than anyone else, and his brand of so-stupid-it's-genius comedy is immediately recognizable. There are so many laugh-out-loud moments in How I Conquered Your Planet that I became the crazy guy on the bus, randomly bursting into mad giggles. Sorry, fellow bus riders.

The absurd plot involves a bus driver / private eye named Frank Burly, who is not, shall we say, all that bright. When the Martians arrive, disguised as magicians, and work their mind-control upon him, Frank is recruited, against his flimsy will, into the Martian military. Most of this seems to be an excuse for Swartzwelder to brilliantly play with time-honored cliches in several genres. Not an easy book to recommend, but if you enjoy clever, absurdist, stoopid-funny writing, definitely check this out.

X Saves the World: How Generation X Got the Shaft but Can Still Keep Everything from Sucking

by Jeff Gordinier
When the media stops talking about something, does it cease to exist? How about something as big as a generation of Americans (albeit a small one)? How can we talk about members of Generation X "saving the world" when they think the whole concept is cliché and overblown? (And please don't call them "Generation X", that's so 90s.) Jeff Gordinier, after plenty of apologies about terminology and generalities, does somehow manage to show that Generation X, though permanently in the shadow of the Boomers and drowned out by the Gen Y/Millenials, is still in existence, and in fact, whether they like to talk about it or not, saving the world.

Any book this jam-packed with generalities and personal anecdotes, of course, has to be taken with a grain of salt. But a lot of the writing was really brilliant, and I found the book encouraging and inspiring. With all the 24/7 hoopla about the wonderful continuing adventures of the Boomers, it's easy to forget that those of us who are, say, 31-48, have had a distinct and valid culture that's worth talking about.

Little Brother

by Cory Doctorow
Part Young Adult technothriller, part polemic and part how-to, Cory Doctorow's latest novel was one of the most gripping page-turners I've read in a while. What happens when Marcus, a kid who loves to wrap his mind around solving puzzles (like, how do I sneak out of school when there are technologies in place surveilling my every move?) finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time after a terrorist attack, and ends up being questioned by the Department of Homeland Security? "Am I under arrest?" he asks, still under the impression that he has a constitutional right to speak to a lawyer. But no, he's definitely over his head. And when he's at last returned, shaken, to the streets, one of his friends remains in custody, possibly never to be seen again. And the DHS lets Marcus know he'll be watched. Marcus makes a vow that he's going to bring his friend back.

Little Brother is one of those stories that feels just around the corner from today. We've all heard plenty of arguments about privacy vs. security, but, for many of us, it's easy to feel that, if we have nothing to hide, we're not going to spend a lot of time worrying about our freedoms being taken away. Doctorow shines a bright light into the problems with this thinking, and vividly illustrates what happens when national security stops serving us and becomes another form of terrorism. Buy it for yourself and any smart young people you know.

Pump Six

by Paolo Bacigalupi
Paolo Bacigalupi (pronounced "Batchy-Galoopy") has a sick fascination with humankind's abuse of technology. Rather than blurting out, at some merry social gathering, the latest disturbing news about endocrine disruptors getting into the water supply, as I have been known to do (sorry, everyone), Bacigalupi spins it into a world, a future whose inhabitants can barely remember anything different. Dystopian visions are, of course, a staple of science fiction, but these stories feel fresh -- rather than imagining those picking up the pieces after humankind has nearly destroyed itself, Bacigalupi often asks what happens after we've "perfected" ourselves, solving food shortages, conquering aging. While advances in technology seem able to solve almost any problem (with, of course, the help of our glorious corporate overlords), we are still humans; long-term thinking has never been our forté.

Bacigalupi presents these short stories in the order in which he wrote them -- a courageous choice that allows us to see his writing evolve over time. The first couple stories, though well written, were not my favorites, and I'd encourage anyone picking up Pump Six to read on, deeper into these darker worlds.

Fall of Frost

by Brian Hall
Brian Hall has once again pulled off another high-wire feat of empathy. His meticulously-researched book taking us inside the minds of the Lewis & Clark expedition, I Should Be Extremely Happy In Your Company, remains one of my very favorites, and he returns to this form with Fall of Frost. This time he's primarily inside one man's head, though that head is old and white and tends to dart back and forth in time. Though we often travel back to Frost's youth or early adulthood, it sometimes seems as if we're still with Frost in his old age, traveling through his own history, making sense of his past while occasionally reshaping it into legend as needed. After all, in his later years he's a celebrity, often interviewed about the life that brought the world such beloved poetry. Frost's public doesn't necessarily want to hear the grimy truth, and neither does Frost want to talk about it. He is both a painfully solitary man and a constant cultivator of attention. There are countless detailed biographies about Robert Frost, but Hall lets us be there, with him, as he stops by woods one snowy evening. Beautiful.

The Count of Monte Cristo

by Alexandre Dumas,
translated by Robin Buss
After doing a few calculations and realizing how many years it would take me to read all the books I had on my current "to-read" list, I started to think maybe I wanted to be a little choosier about what I spend my time on; I'm not a fast reader, after all, and I had recently read some real duds. So I started paying more attention to people talking about their all-time favorite books. For my friend Andy Sherman, it was The Count of Monte Cristo. What the heck. I checked it out of the library. To my chagrin it was 1243 pages; I could read 3 or 4 books in that amount of time! I resolved to give it the 50-page test, and wasn't disappointed; it's an exciting story.

For those unfamiliar, this 1840 novel concerns a young sailor from Marseilles, Edmond Dantes, who has a beautiful fiancee, a great job, and a father who's proud of him. Unfortunately, there are those in town who are rather jealous of Dantes' good fortune, and their envy is whipped up, by the smartest of the lot, into a conspiracy. And the fragile political environment (Napoleon has been exiled, but is rumored to be planning a coup) only makes things worse. Dantes ends up, without a trial, being thrown into a dungeon to live out the rest of his days alone, with only the memory of the life he should have had. After nearly going insane, he establishes contact with another prisoner, who helps him figure out the identities of his antagonists. He vows that if he ever gets out, he will have his revenge on these men.

Dumas has a breathless, melodramatic writing style that takes a bit of getting used to, but can be very entertaining. He was paid by the line, and he made the most of this by writing a lot of dialogue, which, coincidentally, makes his writing all the more digestible to the modern reader. There are chapters, especially during the middle of the book, that I felt could have easily been trimmed from the book, but my main frustration was with character; at times the Count of Monte Cristo seems to be a god (a fact not lost on those around him) and one almost wishes he were a bit less all-powerful. His overuse of his powers do eventually seem to catch up with him, but Dumas seemed to like his character too much to give him any real regrets. Strangely, the Count reminded me of Batman, who almost seems like an evolution of the same character: the poor unfortunate who grows into a worldly manipulator, dealing out vengance to those who would abuse their power.

Robin Buss's translation was a joy to read, and taught me that a well-translated 19th century French novel could actually be more of a page-turner than an untranslated 19th century English novel. Must keep this in mind.

The How of Happiness

by Sonja Lyubomirsky
I love popular science books. For instance, Daniel Gilbert's Stumbling On Happiness was a fascinating look at the reasons so many people are bad at finding happiness. But Gilbert was very clear: this was not a self-help book, and was not designed to actually help the reader find happiness. Okay... So.... And then there are hundreds of self-help books out there, full of enthusiastic advice and dozens of anecdotes to back it up: "If it worked for Suzy Peterson, it just might work for you!" Actual scientific research rarely enters the picture.

Along comes Sonja Lyubomirsky, a respected scientist who has unashamedly written a self-help book. As a research psychologist and University of California professor of psychology, she has tested thousands of people to determine how much of our happiness is within our control (as opposed to hereditary or circumstantial) and what, exactly, we can do to become happier people. Some of her book will be familiar to those who read Gilbert's book; she talks about what happiness is, and what it isn't, and why it's important. But then she goes on to present 12 "Happiness Activities" that have been rigorously tested. Most of them are nothing new: keep a gratitude journal, get regular exercise, savor life's joys, commit to your personal goals, etc. But what's new is the "How." She stresses that not every approach works for every person, and helps you to customize your happiness program to fit your personality and lifestyle. And, because she's tested all this, she can get very specific; for instance, writing in a gratitude journal once a week is much more helpful for most people than doing so once a day. Lyubomirsky seems to sincerely want to share her research findings with the general public, and with very good reason: it's important stuff. Highly recommended.

Soon I Will Be Invincible

by Austin Grossman
In the evolution of the comic-book superhero/supervillain, it's become increasingly common to attempt to really get inside the heads of the characters, rather than just watching their larger-than-life exploits from a distance. What's it truly like to pull on a pair of tights in the morning and vow that today's the day your evil plan will, at last, be complete? With Soon I Will Be Invincible, Grossman dispenses with the graphics altogether and uses literary fiction to explore the lives of Dr. Impossible, a supervillain, and Fatale, a cyborg superheroine. He strikes a wonderful balance between gently spoofing the comic-book world and celebrating it. At one point, Dr. Impossible muses, "I decided it was time to stop punishing myself. And start punishing everyone else."

The Invention of Hugo Cabret

by Brian Selznick
Selznick's book is like a treasure box full of early twentieth-century delights: magic lanterns and mechanical men, clockworks and secret histories. It's also somewhere between a graphic novel and young-adult literature: the two forms are beautifully integrated and both essential to the storytelling. Hugo Cabret is an orphaned boy carving out an existence in the walls of a Paris train station, continuing his dead uncle's job of setting all the clocks twice a day. If he fails to keep them running, the station master will discover that his uncle had died, and Hugo will evicted from the timekeeper's apartment. With his resources nearly exhausted, Hugo's fate becomes intertwined with those of a mysterious shopkeeper and his granddaughter. The plot is full of exciting twists and turns, some of them revealed only through the moody, atmospheric drawings. Despite its 500 pages, it's just long enough for one breathless night. In the morning, you'll think you dreamed the whole thing.

Away

by Amy Bloom
Lillian Leyb has come a long way. Something nightmarish has happened to her, far away in the Russian village where she grew up, and we learn of it just that way, in her nightmares; she's reluctant to talk about it with anyone. She's got a new life now, in New York City, and things seem to be going well. With only a very bare-bones English vocabulary, she charms her way into employment, and then into a plush life as mistress to both a handsome star of Jewish theatre and his father. But when a voice from the past gives her a bit of heart-wrenching news, she knows her journey has only just begun.

But of course, Away is not the sort of book you read to find out what happens next. For the reader, as for Lillian, it's all in the journey. Bloom finds the magic and the heartbreak (and, often, the humor) in every situation, and Lillian's hope and despair bleed into us. Away feels somewhere between a novel and a sequence of linked short stories, but she uses her skills to flesh out whole lifetimes in brief, brilliant, flash-forwards. No one Lillian Leyb touches remains unaffected.

The World Without Us

by Alan Weisman
Weisman has done a crafty thing here; he's written a book capable of inspiring environmental action in its readers, without invoking the usual fears about human survival and quality of life. Starting with the premise that humans have already died off, he imagines life on Earth continuing without us. This can have a strange effect on the reader. First, one is a little embarrassed at how shoddily humankind's seemingly permanent structures and systems were constructed; very little, besides plastics, nuclear waste, and a few bronze sculptures, can last through the ages without constant human maintenance. What does this say about us? It's both disconcerting and reassuring to know that, even if we succeed in making the planet uninhabitable for ourselves and hundreds of other species, we still may not be leaving much of a mark. Weisman takes the reader on a tour around those rare spots on Earth that have been abandoned, including a disputed resort town in Cyprus, the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea, and the area Chernobyl, and we marvel at the speed and strength of nature reclaiming the land. As calm and attractive as an Earth without humans seems, one is mainly left with the sense that there has to be a happy medium; if humankind could reduce its relentless consumption of our planet's resources (especially by slowing or stopping our population growth), we would very swiftly be rewarded with a resurgence of all the beauty our planet has to offer. We haven't rendered the planet terminally ill, we've only endangered ourselves. Let the healing begin.

Voice of Crow

by Jeri Smith-Ready
My wife and I couldn't wait to read Voice of Crow. The book takes up where Eyes of Crow left off, evolving from a coming-of-age story into a more expansive tale that follows many characters and many twists. The fragile happy ending that Rhia, Marek and others earn in the first book comes under threat as they face inevitable internal and external conflicts following their battle with the Descendants.

Smith-Ready introduces new levels of complexities, including prisoners of war on both sides and a journey into the very heart of enemy territory. As the Asermons and Kalindons learn first-hand about the strange land to the south, there's a growing sense that the Ilion attack may have only been the beginning.

Voice of Crow introduces some wonderful new characters and relationships while continuing to follow those we grew to love in the first book. Smith-Ready does a marvelous job of keeping the characters real, while adding depth and scope to the story. Part of that depth comes from including some characters who don't fit perfectly into their given societies, and we were impressed with the book's skillful and sympathetic exploration of issues like homosexuality, disability and post-traumatic stress disorder. We can't say more, for fear of giving away surprises. Great stuff!

Thirteen

by Richard K. Morgan
A few years ago, I attended a talk by Richard Wrangham about the origins of human violence. He proposed the idea that we humans had been domesticating ourselves, over tens of thousands of years, much the way a group of wolves domesticated themselves into dogs. Richard K. Morgan seems to have latched onto this idea, and it led to his latest novel, Thirteen, taking place in a world dealing with the fallout of rampant genetic modification. Turns out that mucking about with human DNA maybe wasn't such a great idea, and most of the products of those experiments have either been killed off or relegated to the margins of society. Carl Marsalis, whose genetic modifications were sponsored by the military, is a "thirteen," created to be a throwback, undoing thousands of years of human domestication. This doesn't make him an evil person, but he has no compulsion to fit into society, and no hesitation about using violence to solve problems. This doesn't endear him to many human beings, most of whom either want to see him dead or to use him for their own purposes. Towards the beginning of the book, he's sprung out of a Florida jail to help hunt down a serial killer -- another thirteen. I don't read a lot of books that are this action-packed and suspenseful. A great ride, with a thoughtful premise.

The Arrival

by Shaun Tan
For many of us who grew up in the USA, it's not easy to imagine the immigrant experience. When we travel the world, we often see signs in English, posters for American movies, American restaurants or at least American foods. Shaun Tan, whose parents immigrated from Malaysia to Australia, has created a beautiful analogy in his new graphic novel, The Arrival. Using no words, but 120 pages of breathtaking pencil drawings, Tan creates a world completely foreign to the reader, and brings his hopeful immigrant into it. The writing is unfamiliar, but that's just the beginning. The city, the birds and animals, the food, the local customs, everything the immigrant encounters is strange, daunting, but also wondrous. We watch as he slowly makes his way, registering with the state, finding shelter, finding work, making friends, saving money to send home to his own family, in hopes that they will soon join him. It's an old and universal story, but Tan has brought it home beautifully.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

by Junot Diaz
What first grabbed me about Diaz' novel was the voice. This is the voice of a friend of yours, telling you about a friend of his. It's immediate, slangy, spanglish, and full of sci-fi references. Besides the voice, you learn little about the narrator until later in the story; all you know is that he can spin a great story, and that he loved Oscar Wao. Oscar is a 400-pound sci-fi fan from the Dominician Republic, living in New Jersey with his mom and sister. Though Dominican men have a reputation as being especially good with "the ladies," Oscar is a hopeless case, as his friends and family often remind him, unless he changes his ways. Years go by, and he still hasn't had his first kiss. As the novel delves into the family history, you start to understand that maybe there's something more sinister at work. Could Oscar just be the latest victim of the family curse? How could Dominicans, who live on the first place Christopher Columbus set foot on in the Americas, NOT believe in curses? How could Oscar's family, who barely survived one of the bloodiest dictatorships in history, start a new life, scot-free? The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, with its mix of hipster style and melancholic magic realism, knocked me out.

An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

by Brock Clarke
"I, Sam Pulsifer, am the man who accidentally burned down the Emily Dickinson House in Amherst, Massachusetts, and who in the process killed two people, for which I spent ten years in prison and, as letters from scholars of American literature tell me, for which I will continue to pay a high price long into the not-so-sweet hereafter." So begins one of the most laugh-out-loud tragedies I've read in a while.

Sam is a self-described bumbler, who would probably be a bit behind everyone else even if his adulthood hadn't been artificially delayed by his years in prison. At the age of 18, his life, and possibly his parents' lives, have been ruined by his mistake. After his prison stay, he sets out to begin a normal life, whatever that may mean. His parents seem adrift and resentful (mom's an English teacher and dad's in publishing), even as they go through the motions of being supportive parents. Dad has a cache of letters written to Sam during his prison years, many of them threatening, but, disturbingly, a few from people who'd like to see other author's homes burned down. Then the son of the couple killed in Sam's fire shows up at his door. And soon other writers homes, all of them nearby, start to go up in flames.

This was that odd combination of page-turner and literary finesse; it seemed to be about much more than Sam's story: the weight of history, the fragility of intention, and the secrets that burn us up.

Eyes of Crow

by Jeri Smith-Ready
Rhia is a young woman growing up in a tribal society a thousand years after our own. In her village, everyone grows up with a strong connection to a spirit animal. Her mother is an Otter, which gives her the power to be a masterful healer. Her brothers are Wolverines, which makes them excellent fighters. Rhia, who spent most of her childhood sick and close to death, finds herself coming to grips with her own powers: she is destined to become a Crow, which means she will help people cross over to the Other Side when they die. This is, of course, a very important position to hold in her community, but also a heavy burden to carry.

Smith-Ready has created a believable world, not too far from our own, in which the magic is subtle, spiritual and natural. Her characters are rich and multilayered, completely relatable. I can't wait to read the next book in the trilogy, Voice of Crow, which comes out in October.

The Pesthouse

by Jim Crace
Once while I was reading Jared Diamond's Collapse and staying in a resort hotel, my subconscious was apparently seized with the imbalance of the modern world and I had an early morning post-collapse vision; the hotel was in ruins, picked clean, abandoned and overgrown with weeds. Jim Crace's novel takes place in that world, a thousand years after life as we know it has collapsed. Franklin is a tall young man, traveling with his brother to the east, where they hope to sail across the Atlantic to a better life. Along the way, Franklin meets Margaret, who has been left to die (or to heal) after showing signs of the flux, a plague-like disease. Franklin and Margaret end up sharing their journey, through strange hamlets and the rubble of cities, meeting other travelers as well as those who profit by leading travelers astray. Unlike McCarthy's The Road, The Pesthouse is somehow hopeful, believing in the beauty of the American spirit, even after all our works have been reduced to weeds and ruin.

Un Lun Dun

by China Mieville
Not being a huge fan of conventional fantasy, I was curious to hear of China Mieville's effort to turn its conventions inside out with his first young-adult novel, Un Lun Dun. His protagonist, Zanna, travels, along with her wisecracking friend, Deeba, into a strange, topsy-turvy London, where she finds out her destiny: she's the only one who can save this world. So far, nothing new. But, as so often happens in Un Lun Dun, things quickly turn upside-down and backwards and inside-out, leaving the prophecies in tatters and the Chosen One un-chosen. Can the quirky sidekick become the heroine she was never supposed to be? Mieville populates his bizarro London with dozens of bizarre personalities, some adorable, some ridiculous, some truly frightening. A fun and imaginative ride, with some very memorable moments.

The Handmaid's Tale

by Margaret Atwood
Offred is a "handmaid" in a society very different from ours, but potentially only a few years away. Her only purpose in life is to bear a child for the Commander and his wife, who, like so many, can't conceive a child. Once a month, she's the center of the Ceremony, when the Commander's wife holds her and the Commander does his best to impregnate her. Offred remembers a different life, though, when she had her own name (not "of-Fred"), a loving husband and daughter, a job at the library, where she was allowed to read, to vote, to make her own decisions, travel wherever she wanted, use birth control, wear makeup, use her voice.

With The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood accomplished not only a staggering work of speculative fiction, but also a great literary thriller. It chills me to the bone, and reminds me to keep an eye on fundamentalists, no matter what their religion. Long live our hard-won bill of rights.