'Great House' by Nicole Krauss

Great House, Nicole Krauss (3.5)

It isn’t until the last 20 pages that you understand why this book is titled ‘Great House’. Those pages also bring together the four distinct stories interwoven throughout the book. The stories span 50 years and 2 continents and each tells of love and loss in different ways with a mystery that you sense will unfold at the end. The one tying feature throughout is the presence of an antique writing desk. Ms. Krauss has an enviable poetic writing style that almost makes the desk another character in the book. I enjoyed the process of reading this book, even as I was rushing to finish and uncover the mystery. Her characters are unique and interesting, though all sad in their own way. I suppose they would likely not be as interesting if they were happy. The somber theme may have kept me from rating this a 4.0.

'The Casual Vacancy' by J.K. Rowling

The Casual Vacancy, J.K. Rowling (3.0)

I was very curious to read this book, Ms. Rowling’s first adult novel. The Harry Potter series had great characters and a compelling story line, so I wondered if she would remove the magic elements, but keep those features. I think she did that, but unfortunately there was another important element missing from this book – any likable characters. I would describe it as a story about a town filled with the miserable ‘Dursleys’, Harry’s muggle aunt and uncle, a family with virtually no redeeming qualities. The story starts with the death of a town councilor from a brain aneurism. As we meet the various town members, everyone is in conflict with someone (parent, spouse, peer) and everyone is miserable. The overarching conflict is within the town council, where the deceased had fought to keep a low-income housing group within the town limits and a larger faction was working to cede it to the neighboring town. The topic is important and you can see Ms. Rowling’s background (as someone who has both benefited from welfare and contributed largely to taxes in Britain) in the points of view of the various characters. She uses enough foreshadowing and her writing style encourages swift reading – so I wanted to get to the end to see what happens. My biggest complaint is that it was a very depressing book and I finished it more from curiosity at the outcome than investment in the characters.

'Oath of Fealty' by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (3.5)

Last week C and I attended a Sci-Fi writers’ symposium at UCI. It was very interesting. There were 5 writers there to discuss their books, the craft of writing and why California often is the setting for Sci-Fi novels. ‘Oath of Fealty’ was one of the books discussed at length due to it’s setting of a vertical city in the middle of Los Angeles in the year 2020. Larry and Jerry wrote the book in 1981 and they discussed the number of concepts in the book that have come true over the years. It was amazing to hear the actual authors discuss how they came up with ideas and what they intended.

Oath of Fealty, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (3.5)

Set in 2020 (future for the writers in 1981, near future for us), Los Angeles has had a terrible fire and a corporation has constructed a self-contained city in the location. The people of Todos Santos have security and safety – but at what cost? Their location can always be tracked via electronic ID cards and there are video cameras everywhere. The Angelinos think of it as a termite hill or hive, but the residents think of it as sanctuary from the degradation of nearby Los Angeles.  When a group of teenagers infiltrate Todos Santos and appear to be terrorists, the city must fight back. This causes even more enmity between Los Angeles and Todos Santos. Add to that the economic successes of the city-building and the technological advances (they introduce computer to brain interfaces for the most wealthy in the city), and it is quite a powder keg. The technical concepts and plot in this story are interesting, but I tend to find character development choppy with multiple authored books. I didn’t find any of the characters very likable and they seemed almosd superfluous. They represented functions, rather than true characters. Despite that feeling, the book is worth reading for its concepts – both technical and sociological. I admired that it was agnostic towards which was the best model. Neither author’s political proclivities (and we found Mr. Pournelle definitely had them) came through in the writing.

'Catch-22' by Joseph Heller

Catch-22, Joseph Heller (3.0)

Unfortunately this was another divisive choice for book club.  The good news is that we all wanted to ‘experience’ this book.  Sadly, the experience was painful for some of us. As Mr. Heller mentions in his afterword, throughout the years this book has had rabid fans and strong detractors.  The story is set in WWII and was described accurately by V. as a series of corny jokes told by an annoying Uncle who won’t stop.  The main character desperately wants to leave the war before he is killed.  He tries many techniques, but runs up against multiple catches (all oddly named ‘Catch #22’), such as ‘anyone who wants to get out of combat duty by being crazy isn’t really crazy’.  That type of double-speak is the main style of prose throughout the book. With a large number of characters and a time-jumping plot, it was difficult to feel amity with any specific character. Despite the frustration of getting through the Dr. Seuss-like language, we agreed that, for it’s time, it was a groundbreaking look at the absurdities of war.