Summer Reading 2015 (5(a)): The Crystal Cave (Mary Stewart, 1970)

Summer Reading 2015, #5a: ‘A trilogy’, part 1

It’s time for Merlin!  Well, young Merlin.  The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart is the first Arthurian tale I’ve read in... longer than I care to admit.  Especially given my background in such things.

I’ve been a fan of different takes on the Arthurian mythos since a very young age.  Admittedly, part of that is just the fun of the romanticized medieval setting that usually comes with it.  As a child, it absolutely caught my attention, something that certainly wasn’t hurt by a gift I was given for my eighth birthday, an Arthur-themed pop-up book that features no shortage of excitement in its pages.  The Sword in the Stone may not have been my favorite Disney film growing up (that would be Robin Hood), but that didn’t stop me from being fascinated by the story of the boy king.

(As an aside, my aunt, who gave me said pop-up book, never ceases to remind me that at the time, I was reading The Hobbit, and it made her feel kind of bad about giving me a pop-up book.  I always remind her that quite honestly, it's the only pop-up book I had as a child that stuck with me into adulthood quite that way.  Part of it may be the way it doesn’t bowdlerize the content; the illustration pictured here features those weapons plunging into and through the combatants, and the arms make plunging motions as the pages open and close.  My aunt was unaware of its presence in the book.)

So, on to this one.  The Crystal Cave is the first of Mary Stewart’s books dealing with the Arthurian themes, and focuses solely on the early life of Merlin.  Arthur only puts in two appearances, both in visions of the future.  Of course, Arthur’s childhood is the theme of the next book, so that can be better-explored next time.  Merlin is positioned as being the grandson of a Welsh king, the bastard son of Ambrosius, the cousin of Arthur, and rather than the Disneyesque wizard that he might be depicted as in many conceptions, comes across almost as a variation on Leonardo da Vinci, much of his magic being simply a sharp mind and the ability to take poetic metaphor and drag usable knowledge from it, then apply that knowledge to his works.

From the start, Merlin is an outsider, the sort who is far more interested in learning how the world around him works than in learning the ‘traditional’ male things of the era.  Even as he grows up and is drawn into travels outside of his native Wales, he’s always in that mindset, devoting his energies to a combination of learning engineering and mysticism from the chain of teachers he learns from over the years.  And these skills are put to good use; by the end of the book, Merlin has used the know-how he’s developed to get a large stone moved from Ireland to Amesbury to serve as a centerpiece to Stonehenge, here positioned as being already ancient but with the stones having fallen, a problem that he remedies as well.

Stewart absolutely knew what she was doing here; even though she calls herself out on the historical inaccuracies in an appendix at the end, it’s largely a matter of language used, not technology or politics, erring on the side of ‘recognizable’ in the sense of saying Cornwall instead of Dumnonia every time.  Honestly, I see no problem with this; one doesn’t read Arthurian lit for historical accuracy.  She also provided, as the first appendix to the book, the passage regarding Merlin from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae, which she drew from in order to construct her narrative.

Of course, the story of Merlin is, almost by definition these days, inextricably linked with that of Arthur.  And as good a read as this was, it really does leave you wanting more, not least because of how it sets itself up, from the introduction but especially in the last section of the book, as being the first part of a longer tale.  Speaking of which, on to The Hollow Hills.

Summer Reading 2015 (4): The Great Beanie Baby Bubble (Zac Bissonnette, 2015)

Summer Reading 2015, #4: ‘A Nonfiction Book’

Thank you, public library new book shelves, for letting something cut in line.  Merlin a little later on, as I’ve allowed The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute by Zac Bissonnette to slip in ahead of it.  Two-week checkout limits on new books will do that.

So, to start with, I suppose I should begin with what led me to pick this book up at all.  It’s somewhat eye-catching on the shelf, with the title on the spine matching the coloration of the title on the front.  And let’s face it, a book in 2015 about Beanie Babies is going very, very much against the grain, and seems rather outside of its era.  I mean, Beanie Babies haven’t been relevant since their value tanked fifteen years ago.  But that was enough to get me to pick it up and take a look... and then the jacket flaps went and mentioned the Tulip mania and yup, I’m going to pick it up and take a look, because that makes perfect sense.

For those who weren’t conscious of what was going on at the time, Beanie Babies were... possibly the most bizarre example of a collector’s frenzy over anything in my lifetime.  Let’s face it, when the popular wisdom around a line of exceedingly play-friendly plush toys becomes ‘don’t let children touch them at all’, something has gone horribly wrong.  But that, in and of itself, wouldn’t make for a particularly interesting book.  And this is where Zac Bissonnette hit on a rather more interesting way to handle his book: more than anything, this is a biography of the business life of Ty Warner, from his beginnings as a salesman for Dakin, through the start of his own company (initially specializing in plush cats), all the way up to (and past) his 2014 conviction for tax evasion.

The link to Dakin surprised me somewhat; as a child, I had a downright ridiculous number of Dakin-made Garfield plushes (along with a few Applause-branded ones after the companies merged).  But they weren’t terribly play-friendly, as I recall; the traditional plush as created by Dakin was very, very full of stuffing, so they tended to stick to a specific pose.  That, as noted in this book, was the big trick to Ty Warner’s success: by understuffing the plush as a whole and filling a few strategic spots with PVC pellets to add weight, the Ty plush could be easily posed and played with, and he absolutely used that as a selling point.  Additionally, Warner has hand-designed almost every single plush that his company has ever marketed, and his attention to detail is definitely noticeable.

That said, the rise and fall of Beanie Babies as a valuable commodity was only partially related to the attention to detail.  That aspect of the bubble is explored as well, when the book reaches that point in the timeline, along with an examination of how the mania spread geographically.  The whole book is filled with original research the author did, interviewing as many people involved in the mania as he could; he even reached out to Ty Warner, who declined the offer, but Warner’s personality absolutely shows through, both the positive and negative aspects of it.

It’s absolutely a fascinating read, this.  And let’s face it, speculative manias on the scale of Dutch tulips, Dot-Com stocks, and Beanie Babies are one of those things that one should be aware of, if only to have an idea of how to avoid getting caught up in one.

Next up: Merlin stuff (again, for real this time)

Summer Reading 2015 (3): Horrorstör (Grady Hendrix, 2014)

Summer Reading 2015, #3: ‘A book based entirely on its cover’, Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix.

So, I have no clue why Amazon threw this into my ‘you might like’ list, apparently based solely on my having read something by Mark Danielewski.  It has very little to do with anything Danielewski has written, other than the haunted house aspect and the smattering of extradiegetic documents provided every few chapters.  That said, the cover grabbed my attention immediately, and I almost ordered it on the spot (only holding back due to the public library having a copy). It was a fun read, if rather unapologetically living in the ‘guilty pleasure’ category.  Fine literature this is not.

The one thing that helped me the most in reading this was having actually, finally, *been* to an IKEA store earlier this year.  I’ve been to one of the things exactly once, but that was enough to make sure that every description made perfect sense to me.  After all, that’s the core concept at work here: a haunted IKEA ORSK, positioned as an American knock-off of the big blue box.  Every box is ticked: two-story atrium with escalators to take you inside, upstairs showrooms to let you see what the ORSK-furnished lifestyle is like, incomprehensible names for everything in the place (featuring plenty of characters not on English-language keyboards), impulse-buy space downstairs, followed by the fifty-foot-ceiling flatpack warehouse... 

But this book is wearing its nature on its sleeve; IKEA is name-checked before the first chapter is even over, and the narrator herself isn’t afraid to compare her employer with the Swedish original and find ORSK wanting.  But that’s really not what the book is about, and it doesn’t hesitate to jump straight into its central premise: IKEA and similar stores with ‘guided experiences’ lull consumers into a nigh-hypnotic state of shopping trance, such that your will to resist the merchandise in front of you is reduced.  This ends up being a recurring theme throughout the book, even after it first toys with being a somewhat generic ‘unseen intruder’ thriller (someone is in here at night, vandalizing the place!), then turns into a full-blown haunted house horror novel.

This particular ORSK, you see, was inadvertently built atop the former site of an 1830s prison of the Panopticon model, wardened by a deranged psychiatrist who was convinced that literally working his inmates to the point of physical breakdown in sisyphean menial tasks was the proper way to shape them into obedient members of society.  This becomes a problem when an ill-advised seance in the ORSK store (note: this book contains a blatant idiot ball plot, in that none of the people involved stop to consider whether this is a good idea, given the other events up to that point) results in said psychiatrist’s spirit being given a body to inhabit... and the spirits of all his dead inmates rising up as his personal army, intent on helping drag the hapless wageslaves into the same hellish afterlife they’ve been trapped within.

Of course, as a satire, the book also isn’t afraid to pepper the whole thing with plenty of jabs at corporate culture and cults-of-personality, a general theme being that the characters have been targetted by the warden because they are, in some way, deficient and need to be ‘fixed’ through his sadistic, cult-like methods.

As an aside, the writer is clearly not the sort of person you want to be locked in an IKEA with at night.  Some of the implements bodged together from flat-packed parts in the second half of the book are decidedly unsettling, especially when paired with the chapter openings, which feature line-art drawings of IKEA-esque furniture and catalog descriptions... which change to show the very devices being used on the characters during the later part of the book.

Which then, I guess, brings me to the design itself.  The book is consciously shaped and sized to appear like an IKEA catalog, featuring a store map on the inside front cover, and the pages in the immediate front and back are designed to look like company copy that you’d find in such a catalog.  The colophon is even hidden in a page that is designed to look like an order form.

I absolutely tore through this book.  From when I first got my hands on it at the library through to when I finished reading it, it was less than 30 hours.  But then, that’s just a sign of a good thriller: it grabs you, and doesn’t let you put it down until the last page is over.

Next in the reading order will be 'A trilogy’ (+1 +2, huh, didn’t realize there was a fifth in here) : Mary Stewart’s Merlin trilogy.

Summer Reading 2015 (2): The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925)

More summer reading!  Checkbox #2 down... let’s call this one ‘A book that became a movie,’ several times over (though if I’d just sat down and gone at it, its 180 pages (in my copy) would’ve filled my ‘A book you can finish in a day’ spot)...  The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

At 31 years old, I actually feel kind of awkward about not having been familiar with the details of this book before now.  I’d heard the final line quoted a few times, and I fear I was spoiled as to the ending before reading it, due to an interview on Fresh Air that I caught on the drive home from work in September of last year.

That said...  I’m not sure what to make of this story, exactly.  It’s clear from an early point that the narrator is unreliable; he opens the book by saying he doesn’t judge other people, then judges everyone around him incessantly.  He seems purposefully drawn in as vague a manner as possible, showing little interest, at least so far as the plot is concerned, with actually interacting with what is happening around him in anything resembling an active manner.  

Honestly, there didn’t seem to be any particularly likable characters in here at all.  Every one of them is flawed in ways that are focused upon in the narration, bringing out the negative traits and submerging the positive.

Don’t think that I’m putting down the book as a whole here, though.  The prose is excellent, and while the characters may not be likable, they’re well-described and have clear motivations behind what they do.  The feel of the setting (admittedly simply ‘present day Long Island’ at the time of its writing) comes through in every passage, and the recurring motifs (especially the ever-watching eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg, Oculist) stand out in a way that only helps to add to the setting.

As a final aside, I find it absolutely wonderful that the current printing of the book shares the same cover artwork that graced the first edition.  Kudos on the publisher for that.

Next on the list... has already been read.  So on to the next post.

Infinifactory (Zachtronics, 2015)

So, I started on Infinifactory last night.  It’s an entry in a genre of puzzle games that I particularly enjoy, which...  I’m going to call this something akin to programming, actually.  Basically, what any game in this genre does is give you a set of tools, an input of some kind, and task you with using your tools to construct a way to take the inputs and make the outputs it wants.

Usually, though, these games task you with placing things in a 2-dimensional array.  Moving things around is generally a factor of preventing objects from crashing into each other, making sure the right parts go the right places, and so on.  As far as I can tell in Infinifactory, the part where things can’t crash into each other doesn’t appear to be an issue.  Rather, the game actively encourages it, even using one of the (rather brilliantly designed) tutorial graphics to show that it’s something you’re allowed to do.

One of the things that I’ve consistently loved about the titles released by this developer, Zachtronics, is that the in-game scoring is done in a way that promotes creativity in solutions. If your solution completes the task asked of it, you’ll be scored based on three metrics.  There will be a speed score, which looks at how many turns have to go by, a score that looks at how many objects you placed, and a score that looks at how much space is taken up by your solution.  Typically, a solution that excels in one of these might not do so well in the other two, so there’s plenty of reason to revisit puzzles, and a player can decide after finding a working solution initially that they want to find a better solution in one particular way.  In addition, there are no leaderboards; rather, you’re shown a histogram that tells you where most players’ solutions fall, and where the outliers are, so you can always tell if your score is above or below the average, and by how much.

As an aside, I love that this game lets you generate animated images of your contraptions hard at work.  The previous game from the same developer, Spacechem, allowed for videos of solutions to be uploaded to YouTube, but they were typically somewhat hard to make heads or tails of if you didn’t view them full-screen, and certainly if you didn’t know what you were looking at.  His most recent title, TIS-100, is... quite literally playing with assembly programming, and videos are thus rather dry to look at.  This one, though...  It’s pretty easy to tell what you’re looking at.  Boxes!  On conveyor belts!  Being moved around!  It’s great!

OK, yes, boxes on conveyor belts are kind of dry, too.  But that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the game.  

Summer Reading 2015 (1): The Familiar, Volume 1 (Mark Z. Danielewski, 2015)

Decided to storm this thing over the summer, after seeing that a bunch of the employees at the local bookstore are doing it publicly.  Helps that mom gave me a summer reading list that ought to take down most of this as I tackle it.

First checkmark down: A book published this year, The Familiar, Volume 1: One Rainy Day in May by Mark Z. Danielewski (release date May 12, 2015).  This... feels about like what 1/27 of a massive literary undertaking should feel like.  I think.  Interesting read, though not easy; there’s nine different ‘narrators’, each of whom has been given a totally different writing style.  And each has different sorts of textual hijinks involved, too.

I’m definitely hooked; can’t wait for Volume 2 to hit in October. That said, I’m only going to recommend this with caveats; Danielewski is a master of ergodic literature, and while The Familiar requires a lot less effort than, say, House of Leaves, it’s still not a straight-forward read.  That said, I can’t help thinking this is going to be very rewarding in the end.  All, um... 25,000 pages or so that it’ll be when it’s done.

Next: something a bit less avant-garde, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.