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The Stars Blue Yonder by Sandra McDonald is third in a series that begins with The Outback Stars and is continued in The Stars Down Under. Tor Books schedules its release for July 21, 2009, and this review is based on an Advance Reader's copy.
Time travel is a well established theme in science fiction. H. G. Wells, sometimes called 'The father of Science Fiction', wrote his famous classic The Time Machine over a hundred years ago. He would probably appreciate the sophisticated twists in McDonald's premise on time travel, which dominates this book in the trilogy.
My preferences in science fiction are action and adventure, discovery and military, and alien culture. Personally, I do not enjoy encountering time travel in any literature, so I am not the best person to provide an unbiased review of a novel full of time travel. With that caveat, I will stipulate that McDonald's time travel premise is well done, and if I didn't have this personal quirk I'm certain I would have liked it more. Time travel was a minor consequence in the first two books, so I didn't see this coming.
In book three, McDonald develops relationships from the first two books, and I found the ending to be very satisfying from that perspective. I frequently had a sense of the kind of magical realism found in writing by Charles de Lint, for instance. But isn't that the case, when life suddenly goes sideways or upside-down (whether it is magical or science) that everything and everybody seems perfectly ordinary - until the unexpected bursts into the scene. In fact, I find real life to be just like that.
I greatly enjoy the fact that McDonald doesn't permit her characters to be stereo-typical heroes. They have aches and twinges and bruises and pratfalls. They make mistakes and have misapprehensions and fail themselves and each other. In other words, they muddle through, very much like real people tend to do. They seem just like people I might meet anywhere, and then they make the hard decisions and I understand they really are heroic, in a boy-next-door sort of way.
I don't usually write reviews that include story or plot summaries, which are available from the publisher's comments and at Amazon and elsewhere. I think there is a story-within-the-story here, and both story lines are resolved in book three to my satisfaction. Other story threads, of aboriginal myths and of the struggle of indigenous peoples also tie the three books together.
I am fascinated with Australia and its people, past and present, and these are the first science fiction books I've read that give the country and the people the main roles. For that reason alone I would recommend this series, and there is much more to appreciate as well. I can't think of another novel I've read, sf or otherwise, where the female protagonist is pregnant for most of the story. Considering how much time women spend being pregnant, that suddenly strikes me as a biased oversight, which I was greatly amused to see corrected in The Stars Blue Yonder.
Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures (subtitled: A True Story From Hell on Earth) is not a long book, by my standards, but I didn't know if I could finish it. I couldn't put it down, and I couldn't keep on reading. I couldn't pick it up, and I couldn't stop until the end. It took me a week to finish it, but now I think I will never be finished with it.
What do you get if you take a doctor, a lawyer and recently divorced secretary and put them together in the middle of worst atrocities of the late twentieth century? No, that is not the start of a joke, it is how Emergency Sex came to be written by three of the most idealistic, courageous, tenacious, compassionate and brutally honest people I have ever encountered.
Not that they trumpet their virtues, indeed, the opposite. Ironically, in revealing what they perceive as their failings and faults, they reveal more than they know, and only their iron standards keep them from seeing what any reader can perceive - ordinary people in extraordinary situations doing the work of saints and angels while reviling themselves for not achieving better results.
They all worked for the United Nations, and between them, jointly or individually, worked in every hell that the '90's had to offer: Cambodia, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Rwanda, Liberia - if there was a place on earth where man's cruelty and inhumanity bloomed, the United Nations sent them there, to heal, to guard, to document the atrocities. In the process, they lose friends and companions in the violence, they lose their naivete, they lose their youth, and occasionally come close to losing their minds. But what civilized person could endure what they experienced and remain the same as before? I could not even read about it and remain the same.
Do not read this book if you want to be entertained and not think too deeply about our world today. Do not read this book if you want to keep the opinions you already have formed on the United Nations and the work they do.
The authors shed light on the proximate reasons for Srebrenica and other horror stories, but they leave it to the reader to form their own conclusions about what should have, could have been done instead. Like the stories they tell, my conclusions are layered and nuanced, but one thing I believe - we could not afford isolationism in the time of Wood Wilson, and we cannot afford it now.
We all live together on a small blue marble isolated in the vastness of empty space, and what affects one country affects all of us eventually, whether it is pollution and global warming or poisoning the air and water with ruthless manufacturing, or an arms race that spreads volatile weapons and death throughout the planet.
I like books with happy endings, and the lives of Andrew, Ken and Heidi prove that hope overcomes fear, compassion overcomes hate and truth is more powerful than lies. In this book, that will have to be a happy enough ending for me.
Published in paperback format in 2006, this book will be relevant to the decision-making of President Obama in 2009, as the story never ends, just the scenery changes.
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(2 of 3 readers found this comment helpful)
My Early Reviewers copy of Fit at 50 and Beyond, extruding a dozen colorful markers, creased along its thin spine on the front cover, stained with juice on the lower edge and stocked with gritty black and white photographs of people over 50 exercising, is not a pretty book. It is the kind of book that one lives with, not the kind that sits unread on the coffee table.
The text, like the rest of the book, is plain, straightforward and lacking any kind of gimmicks. I love it. At just 168 pages, Fit at 50 and Beyond is an exercise book on a diet - all facts and no puffery. This is a book for people who think Ms. Senior America is someone special, and she does in fact appear in some of the pictures.
I have fifteen books tagged "diet" in my library, but this one is unique. Dr. Gloth is not selling anything - not a sports drink, or special exercise equipment (one picture is of a man lifting a chair - "chair curls" - hah!). He is not pushing expensive pre-packaged diet food or memberships in anything. I felt throughout the book as if I could trust him to give me the unvarnished scientific facts of diet and exercise. For example, some books I have claim that all calories are equal. Now I understand that is an over-simplified approach. Dr. Goth explains how carbohydrates, fats and protein are metabolized differently in the body, and how that affects weight gain or loss.
He also gives tips such as the best time of day to exercise and why, and what to eat after exercising and why. I was born asking "Why?" and I like it that Dr. Gloth's explanations are clear and concise.
Dr. Gloth, like a good coach, includes all the effective diet and exercise pointers I am aware of, some that I didn't know before, and doesn't waste my time with silly alternatives. I wish someone had given me this book when I turned 50! But as he points out, it is never too late.
The main part of the book is devoted to exercise, with pictures and tips on good form and not causing yourself injury. There are short and sensible chapters on healthy eating, what to do to prevent a lapse in your program or if you have a lapse, how to maintain diet and exercise when traveling, and more.
Thanks to Rudy Speckamp, C.M.C. this handy little book includes recipes from an award-winning chef, at the end of chapters like a treat for your progress, and a whole chapter of them later in the book.
If you or someone you know is turning 50, this book would be a useful gift, but it could help any adult design their own effective diet and exercise program.
Daoud, a man born into the Zaghawa tribe of Darfur, has a story to tell. It is such an important story that he has walked with death as his companion, over and over again, to be able to tell it.
"I am dead, I am dead, this is how I died, it is not so bad, I was thinking, afraid to look down at my body because too many bullets were flying around for me still to be okay." (Page 56)
I have no story to tell here, only to convey to you if I can, why reading Daoud's story may be the most important thing you can do today, or this year. You may ask yourself, as I did, how could anyone possibly live with imminent death, and scenes of death around them. Hari gives a hint of it:
"The gun muzzle was hot against my temple. Had he fired it recently, or was it just hot from the sun? I decided that if these were about to be my last thoughts, I should try some better ones instead. So I though about my family and how I loved them..." (Page 8)
Daoud has an exceptional gift for showing the reader his world as though they were walking in his shoes. His simple words struck so deeply into my heart, that I could only travel with him a few pages at a time. He committed himself to fight for the lives of his people with words at a time when his peers were trading their possessions for guns and joining a militia.
Daoud explains his motivation to keep on working to show the world what is happening in Darfur in the introduction to his book:
"If the world allows the people of Darfur to be removed forever from their land and their way of life, then genocide will happen elsewhere because it will be seen as something that works. It must not be allowed to work." (Page x)
Let Daoud explain in his own words why the atrocities in Darfur matter to you. He cannot fulfill his mission without you, his reader. Once I read The Translator, A Tribesman's Memoir, I saw that it is not happening "to them" "over there". It is happening here, to us.
We are all Zaghawa now.
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(6 of 10 readers found this comment helpful)
The day before Christmas, a package arrived from The Random House Publishing Group: an Advance Reader's Edition of Mary Doria Russell's new novel - Dreamers of the Day.
At 255 pages, it was the perfect length to fit in between preparations and celebrations. (But I'm a speed reader.) I cruised the story as slowly as possible, savoring the characters and the setting. What do you get when you put Rosie the Dachshund, Karl the German spy, T. E. Lawrence and an Ohio schoolteacher in Cairo, Egypt? Why, an enchanting novel, full of explorations and discoveries - of foreign places, of famous people, even of the self.
There is so much I want to tell you about Dreamers of the Day, but I won't diminish the charm you will find in discovering them for yourself. My only complaint at the end of this book was that it was over too soon. Perhaps that is also good - an author, like a party hostess, wants to always stop while people are still asking for more.
Already I have revisited the story and its protagonist, Agnes Shanklin, in my mind, considering certain scenes, turning them this way and that in the light of retrospection, to see if they maintain their purity. Yes, Russell's writing shines with originality. Although her work and her acknowledgments show her to be a careful craftsman of history, she weaves real events and famous people into her story with a light touch, producing a fresh perspective.
The ending was a total surprise, yet fit the rest of the narrative perfectly. This is a book I will read more than once. Very highly recommended.
Mary Doria Russell also wrote A Thread of Grace, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
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(3 of 6 readers found this comment helpful)
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The Stars Blue Yonder by Sandra Mcdonald
April Dauenhauer, May 17, 2009
The Stars Blue Yonder by Sandra McDonald is third in a series that begins with The Outback Stars and is continued in The Stars Down Under. Tor Books schedules its release for July 21, 2009, and this review is based on an Advance Reader's copy.Time travel is a well established theme in science fiction. H. G. Wells, sometimes called 'The father of Science Fiction', wrote his famous classic The Time Machine over a hundred years ago. He would probably appreciate the sophisticated twists in McDonald's premise on time travel, which dominates this book in the trilogy.
My preferences in science fiction are action and adventure, discovery and military, and alien culture. Personally, I do not enjoy encountering time travel in any literature, so I am not the best person to provide an unbiased review of a novel full of time travel. With that caveat, I will stipulate that McDonald's time travel premise is well done, and if I didn't have this personal quirk I'm certain I would have liked it more. Time travel was a minor consequence in the first two books, so I didn't see this coming.
In book three, McDonald develops relationships from the first two books, and I found the ending to be very satisfying from that perspective. I frequently had a sense of the kind of magical realism found in writing by Charles de Lint, for instance. But isn't that the case, when life suddenly goes sideways or upside-down (whether it is magical or science) that everything and everybody seems perfectly ordinary - until the unexpected bursts into the scene. In fact, I find real life to be just like that.
I greatly enjoy the fact that McDonald doesn't permit her characters to be stereo-typical heroes. They have aches and twinges and bruises and pratfalls. They make mistakes and have misapprehensions and fail themselves and each other. In other words, they muddle through, very much like real people tend to do. They seem just like people I might meet anywhere, and then they make the hard decisions and I understand they really are heroic, in a boy-next-door sort of way.
I don't usually write reviews that include story or plot summaries, which are available from the publisher's comments and at Amazon and elsewhere. I think there is a story-within-the-story here, and both story lines are resolved in book three to my satisfaction. Other story threads, of aboriginal myths and of the struggle of indigenous peoples also tie the three books together.
I am fascinated with Australia and its people, past and present, and these are the first science fiction books I've read that give the country and the people the main roles. For that reason alone I would recommend this series, and there is much more to appreciate as well. I can't think of another novel I've read, sf or otherwise, where the female protagonist is pregnant for most of the story. Considering how much time women spend being pregnant, that suddenly strikes me as a biased oversight, which I was greatly amused to see corrected in The Stars Blue Yonder.
An unusual and entertaining trilogy. Recommend.
Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures: A True Story from Hell on Earth by Kenneth Cain
April Dauenhauer, May 17, 2009
Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures (subtitled: A True Story From Hell on Earth) is not a long book, by my standards, but I didn't know if I could finish it. I couldn't put it down, and I couldn't keep on reading. I couldn't pick it up, and I couldn't stop until the end. It took me a week to finish it, but now I think I will never be finished with it.What do you get if you take a doctor, a lawyer and recently divorced secretary and put them together in the middle of worst atrocities of the late twentieth century? No, that is not the start of a joke, it is how Emergency Sex came to be written by three of the most idealistic, courageous, tenacious, compassionate and brutally honest people I have ever encountered.
Not that they trumpet their virtues, indeed, the opposite. Ironically, in revealing what they perceive as their failings and faults, they reveal more than they know, and only their iron standards keep them from seeing what any reader can perceive - ordinary people in extraordinary situations doing the work of saints and angels while reviling themselves for not achieving better results.
They all worked for the United Nations, and between them, jointly or individually, worked in every hell that the '90's had to offer: Cambodia, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Rwanda, Liberia - if there was a place on earth where man's cruelty and inhumanity bloomed, the United Nations sent them there, to heal, to guard, to document the atrocities. In the process, they lose friends and companions in the violence, they lose their naivete, they lose their youth, and occasionally come close to losing their minds. But what civilized person could endure what they experienced and remain the same as before? I could not even read about it and remain the same.
Do not read this book if you want to be entertained and not think too deeply about our world today. Do not read this book if you want to keep the opinions you already have formed on the United Nations and the work they do.
The authors shed light on the proximate reasons for Srebrenica and other horror stories, but they leave it to the reader to form their own conclusions about what should have, could have been done instead. Like the stories they tell, my conclusions are layered and nuanced, but one thing I believe - we could not afford isolationism in the time of Wood Wilson, and we cannot afford it now.
We all live together on a small blue marble isolated in the vastness of empty space, and what affects one country affects all of us eventually, whether it is pollution and global warming or poisoning the air and water with ruthless manufacturing, or an arms race that spreads volatile weapons and death throughout the planet.
I like books with happy endings, and the lives of Andrew, Ken and Heidi prove that hope overcomes fear, compassion overcomes hate and truth is more powerful than lies. In this book, that will have to be a happy enough ending for me.
Published in paperback format in 2006, this book will be relevant to the decision-making of President Obama in 2009, as the story never ends, just the scenery changes.
(2 of 3 readers found this comment helpful)
Fit at Fifty and Beyond: A Balanced Exercise and Nutrition Program (Diamedica Guide to Optimum Wellness) by Michael Gloth
April Dauenhauer, May 17, 2009
My Early Reviewers copy of Fit at 50 and Beyond, extruding a dozen colorful markers, creased along its thin spine on the front cover, stained with juice on the lower edge and stocked with gritty black and white photographs of people over 50 exercising, is not a pretty book. It is the kind of book that one lives with, not the kind that sits unread on the coffee table.The text, like the rest of the book, is plain, straightforward and lacking any kind of gimmicks. I love it. At just 168 pages, Fit at 50 and Beyond is an exercise book on a diet - all facts and no puffery. This is a book for people who think Ms. Senior America is someone special, and she does in fact appear in some of the pictures.
I have fifteen books tagged "diet" in my library, but this one is unique. Dr. Gloth is not selling anything - not a sports drink, or special exercise equipment (one picture is of a man lifting a chair - "chair curls" - hah!). He is not pushing expensive pre-packaged diet food or memberships in anything. I felt throughout the book as if I could trust him to give me the unvarnished scientific facts of diet and exercise. For example, some books I have claim that all calories are equal. Now I understand that is an over-simplified approach. Dr. Goth explains how carbohydrates, fats and protein are metabolized differently in the body, and how that affects weight gain or loss.
He also gives tips such as the best time of day to exercise and why, and what to eat after exercising and why. I was born asking "Why?" and I like it that Dr. Gloth's explanations are clear and concise.
Dr. Gloth, like a good coach, includes all the effective diet and exercise pointers I am aware of, some that I didn't know before, and doesn't waste my time with silly alternatives. I wish someone had given me this book when I turned 50! But as he points out, it is never too late.
The main part of the book is devoted to exercise, with pictures and tips on good form and not causing yourself injury. There are short and sensible chapters on healthy eating, what to do to prevent a lapse in your program or if you have a lapse, how to maintain diet and exercise when traveling, and more.
Thanks to Rudy Speckamp, C.M.C. this handy little book includes recipes from an award-winning chef, at the end of chapters like a treat for your progress, and a whole chapter of them later in the book.
If you or someone you know is turning 50, this book would be a useful gift, but it could help any adult design their own effective diet and exercise program.
The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur by Daoud Hari
April Dauenhauer, February 23, 2008
Daoud, a man born into the Zaghawa tribe of Darfur, has a story to tell. It is such an important story that he has walked with death as his companion, over and over again, to be able to tell it."I am dead, I am dead, this is how I died, it is not so bad, I was thinking, afraid to look down at my body because too many bullets were flying around for me still to be okay." (Page 56)
I have no story to tell here, only to convey to you if I can, why reading Daoud's story may be the most important thing you can do today, or this year. You may ask yourself, as I did, how could anyone possibly live with imminent death, and scenes of death around them. Hari gives a hint of it:
"The gun muzzle was hot against my temple. Had he fired it recently, or was it just hot from the sun? I decided that if these were about to be my last thoughts, I should try some better ones instead. So I though about my family and how I loved them..." (Page 8)
Daoud has an exceptional gift for showing the reader his world as though they were walking in his shoes. His simple words struck so deeply into my heart, that I could only travel with him a few pages at a time. He committed himself to fight for the lives of his people with words at a time when his peers were trading their possessions for guns and joining a militia.
Daoud explains his motivation to keep on working to show the world what is happening in Darfur in the introduction to his book:
"If the world allows the people of Darfur to be removed forever from their land and their way of life, then genocide will happen elsewhere because it will be seen as something that works. It must not be allowed to work." (Page x)
Let Daoud explain in his own words why the atrocities in Darfur matter to you. He cannot fulfill his mission without you, his reader. Once I read The Translator, A Tribesman's Memoir, I saw that it is not happening "to them" "over there". It is happening here, to us.
We are all Zaghawa now.
(6 of 10 readers found this comment helpful)
Dreamers of the Day by Mary Doria Russell
April Dauenhauer, February 23, 2008
The day before Christmas, a package arrived from The Random House Publishing Group: an Advance Reader's Edition of Mary Doria Russell's new novel - Dreamers of the Day.At 255 pages, it was the perfect length to fit in between preparations and celebrations. (But I'm a speed reader.) I cruised the story as slowly as possible, savoring the characters and the setting. What do you get when you put Rosie the Dachshund, Karl the German spy, T. E. Lawrence and an Ohio schoolteacher in Cairo, Egypt? Why, an enchanting novel, full of explorations and discoveries - of foreign places, of famous people, even of the self.
There is so much I want to tell you about Dreamers of the Day, but I won't diminish the charm you will find in discovering them for yourself. My only complaint at the end of this book was that it was over too soon. Perhaps that is also good - an author, like a party hostess, wants to always stop while people are still asking for more.
Already I have revisited the story and its protagonist, Agnes Shanklin, in my mind, considering certain scenes, turning them this way and that in the light of retrospection, to see if they maintain their purity. Yes, Russell's writing shines with originality. Although her work and her acknowledgments show her to be a careful craftsman of history, she weaves real events and famous people into her story with a light touch, producing a fresh perspective.
The ending was a total surprise, yet fit the rest of the narrative perfectly. This is a book I will read more than once. Very highly recommended.
Mary Doria Russell also wrote A Thread of Grace, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
(3 of 6 readers found this comment helpful)