perfidy

It's well known that we do things our own way around here.

(Actually sir, that's not so well known. Nobody reads this blog. And you're about to do something that everybody's doing. Not to mention you're ripping off Kaus. -ed.)

Well, whatever. Since I've been reading at the steady clip of about three books a weeks for the last few months, I thought I'd share some recommendations.

• Jarhead, Anthony Swofford. Is to the Gulf War what The Things They Carried was to Vietnam, in every way possible, including being much easier to read.
• Founding Brothers, Joseph Ellis. Joe Ellis might be a liar and a cheat, but his history is good. For all of my degree-having and claimed expertise, it was this book that really made me begin to understand the men who shaped the United States' destiny.
• The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakame. The only points of comparison I have are Thomas Pynchon, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and perhaps Milan Kundera. Wierd, masterful, and breathtaking.
• The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler. I read this book about once a year. I still don't know what the plot is, but what is plot when the writing is this beautiful?
• Everything on Buckethead's Science Fiction List. I'm almost through it, and have not been disappointed yet.

And finally, beautiful irony. I think Buckethead likes more than I do science fiction written by scientists and science-advocates, e.g. Gregory Benford, Jerry Pournelle, Charles Pellegrino. Their writing tends to share a certain cant, much as police procedurals, outbreak novels, and spy novels do. It doesn't appeal to me too greatly, but I read it for passages like this one, from a point in the Pellegrino/Zebrowski novel "Killing Star" after the aliens have found Earth and tried to wipe it out but before anyone knows why:

"Got it!" he announced triumphantly. "The Intruders seem to be rebroadcasting what remains to this day the loudest, most highly synchronized electromagnetic shout ever sent out from Earth. On April 5, 1985, as part of a publicity effort to bring aid to the starving children of Africa, every radio and television station on every continent began brodcasting the same message at the same moment-- a composition called "We Are The World," by one Michael Jackson. I'm not trying to sound ironic, but I think the Intruders are trying to tell us what first drew their attention to our species."

"So this Michael Jackson became the first definitive sign of intelligent life on Earth," Sargenti said acidly. "And the Intruders are throwing it back at us. Whatever for?"

"To mock us?" General Stoff asked. "But of course that can't be true."

"So what did they do all these years?" Sargenti said. "Just wait around replaying this tune to themselves until they could build starships and come finish us off? They must be insane!"

"Or very determined music critics," Isak said.

I appreciate cruel symmetry wherever it exists.