Fear and Loathing..., Under the Black Flag, The Time Traveler's Wife
And the second set of drug-/pirate-/time-travel-themed books books (although unlike the last post, in this case they're three separate books):

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Hunter S. Thompson): I saw the movie version of this as the midnight movie a couple weeks ago. I knew it was based off a book, but after watching the movie I had no idea how that could be, so I had to read and see. And, wow, it turns out to have been a shockingly faithful adaptation. It doesn't hurt that the movie had heavy doses of narration straight from the book, but in addition it preserved the plot exactly as in the book, with the exception of a few minor incidents and then the ending.

I guess this gets back to the theory I mentioned a couple posts ago that short stories make the best movies; this isn't quite a short story, but it's a novella at most. The major difference between the movie and the book was one of tone, I think. The book's overriding vibe was paranoia: do I look strange, are those people getting suspicious, is the universe out to get me. The movie, on the other hand, was about hallucination and savage excess. There's a part in the book where the guy thinks the people in the bar have all turned into fighting lizards and the floor is covered with blood; it's one thing to read about it and quite another to see in a movie where they do indeed all turn into dinosaurs and start tearing each other apart. Similarly, you can give the essence of wandering through Circus-Circus on ether in a page and a half, or in five seconds with a series of quick visuals.

Anyway, the book is good but thematically it feels kind of of-its-time. Yeah, it's sad about the hippie 60's turning into the hard-ass 70's, it's sad that the government is jerky, it's sad that Las Vegas is a wretched hive of scum and villainy. But I knew all this stuff already, and while the details are brilliant it somehow manages to not feel like anything new*.

*Of course, seeing the movie a few weeks ago probably contributed to that feel.


Under the Black Flag (David Cording): This guy's job is apparently to be an acclaimed expert on pirates, which seems like a pretty good gig to me. The book is a popular history of pirates, with emphasis on contrasting fictional and non-fictional portrayals, and covers most of the stuff you'd expect: buried treasure, walking the plank, torture, Port Royal, Captain Hook, female pirates, black pirates, Blackbeard, Captain Blood, etc. It is pretty scattered but it has a lot of good stuff, and I assume you can tell by now if you are interested or not (and if not, what the heck's wrong with you). As a side note, if you're wondering about it as a writing/RPG reference, it's got about two chapters that would be good for reference: they have some good details about typical crew/ship/cannon sizes, articles of enlistment on pirate ships, pirate life, size of treasure hauls, etc.


The Time Traveler's Wife (Audrey Niffenegger): This is the sort of sf book that feels like it's written by someone who doesn't read sf, and I mean that (at least this time) in the best possible way. Like, the typical sf novel* about a guy who occasionally finds himself traveling forward or back in time would focus on exploiting his power to win the lottery, other people trying to take advantage of it, cryptic statements that only get explained later, figuring out the details of paradox, teaming up with yourself to fight crime and so on. This book contains that stuff, but the things it's actually interested in are these: how interacting with your partner changes you; how to deal with someone you love who's away and in danger a lot; the difference between waiting and waiting for; and, ultimately, how you become the person you become. In other words, the typical sf book focuses on time travel itself; this book uses time travel as a mirror to reflect on other things.

The other atypical thing about this book is suggested by the title. The standard sf treatment would focus almost excusively on the time traveler himself. This book spends just as much time on his wife, and even the parts that don't contain them both are still very much about their relationship and how it works (though what with the time travel, sometimes it's how it will work or did work or might work). It's weird to me that I liked this so much, because even though the time travel isn't the center of the book, I wouldn't have been nearly interested in a book like this with no sf element. But I guess if it didn't have the time travel, it'd have something else, since it's not like you write a book about "relationships" -- you write a book about people, and the relationships come out from their interactions.

Anyway, this is probably the best book I've read this year; it is definitely the best book I've read that was recommended by the Today Show's book club.

(Also, when I was young and finished reading a book I really liked, I'd sometimes sit down and read it again immediately afterwards. I wasn't quite up to that here, but I did go and read the first chapter again. It seemed only appropriate for this book.)

*And yeah, I know there is lots of character-driven sf out there, and anyway I'm not saying this is not sf. But the treatment of the material is pretty different than the usual thing I see -- Replay, say, where the life experience stuff is there to support the gimmick exploration and not the other way around.


Next up: uh, more books. Of some kind.

(Actually, this posting's been delayed long enough that I have already finished The Demon and the City, the sequel to Snake Agent, so that is what you will see next.)