"Fooling Houdini" by Alex Stone

I picked this up on a whim, but I'm glad I did.

I have updated various bits and pieces around the blog, including the description, the info in my profile (which now links to my Goodreads account) and some of the attributions in the older posts.

Also: There are four new posts below this one. 

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    The subtitle to Alex Stone’s Fooling Houdini reads “Magicians, Mentalists, Math Geeks & the Hidden Powers of the Mind.” Just as stage magic inaccurately portrays reality to achieve success, so does this subtitle. Contrary to what seems obvious, this is not a book about the psychological and mathematical theory behind various magic tricks and effects—which is a shame, really, because I absolutely adore that sort of thing.   

                Instead, this book reads like a memoir. A really good memoir. In a conversational, lighthearted and surprisingly engaging voice, Stone chronicles his journey through the world of stage magic; he begins as a dropout at the Magic Olympics and ends with the development of a trick that can fool the greats of the magic world. 

                That is not to say that science is entirely absent from the book, however. Throughout this journey into the world of magic, Stone also studied physics as a graduate student at Columbia University. He brings a scientist’s perspective to the world of magic, explaining in his writing the scientific principles that undergird many of the building blocks of famous tricks—without, of course, actually revealing the method behind the entire trick. The science is present, but it is not the focus. Stone explains it as it becomes relevant, but the narrative concentrates more on his quest to grow as a magician. 

                The word “quest” might seem pretentious applied to a nonfiction book, but in this case it is perfectly appropriate. Stone could be a terrible writer and still manage to lend a sense of mysticism to his exploits. They simply tend in that direction naturally. Stone’s first and most important teacher was Wes James, a grizzled and taciturn old man revered in the magical community who frequents the same pizza joint all day every day, barring weekends and holidays, holding court with younger magicians seeking to speak with him or pick up his tricks.

Stone also meets Richard Turner, arguably the greatest cardsharp in the world. He can count the ridges on the edge of a card, consults for the United States Playing Card Company, and was once hunted by the mob for his skill at the gambling table. He is also blind.

                This feels like magical realism, like something Neil Gaiman or Gabriela Garcia Marquez would write. The idea that science and magic are less opposite ends of a spectrum and more opposite sides of a coin comes to us courtesy of Stone’s study of both. The fantastic original trick he develops relies almost exclusively on math, but baffles both his teachers and any audience to which he shows it.

I’m not going to explain the trick here—that would be telling. Read the book instead; it's worth it.  

4.1/5

"John Carter" vs. "A Princess of Mars"

Cinema buffs may disdain me for liking John Carter, but hey, I was entertained.

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A version of this story originally appeared in the March 2012 issue of the George C. Marshall high school newspaper Rank & File.

Edgar Rice Burroughs worked as a clerk in a stationery company in 1912 when his first novel, A Princess of Mars, was published. Little did he know that the book and its sequels would make him one of the grandfathers of science fiction.

A Princess of Mars did not simply help invent science fiction; it single-handedly introduced audiences of the time to the subset of sci-fi known as planetary romance. Planetary romance typically takes place on one non-earth planet and prominently features swashbuckling adventure. Because what Burroughs wrote was completely new, he assumed that the reader would take nothing for granted. This caused him to painstakingly describe the alien society, the way Mars was slowly dying and everything else bizarre about the setting.

Does Disney’s movie adaptation of A Princess of Mars—named John Carter after the titular character—do justice to such a revolutionary novel? Well no, not entirely. But that is all right. Disney has an advantage that Burroughs did not.

Disney’s advantage and the reason it could successfully compress this complex narrative into two hours is the growth of viewers’ familiarity with science fiction. When one of the antagonists says “Mars is dying,” the viewers do not need a multi-page explanation of the phenomenon. They accept it as a convention of the sci-fi genre and move on.

This effect allowed the screenwriters to cherry-pick most of the interesting, emotional and awesome scenes from the novel and string them together in order with a more linearized and driving plot. The result is very entertaining indeed.

Would I still recommend reading the book? Yes, it is a completely different experience. Does the movie need to be a carbon copy of the book to be good? After a 100-year wait, the answer is no.

"The Fault in Our Stars" by John Green

John Green also runs a tumblr where he answers questions about this book: http://onlyifyoufinishedtfios.tumblr.com/

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A version of this review originally appeared in the January 2012 issue of the George C. Marshall high school newspaper Rank & File.

Have you read Looking for Alaska? You really should. As soon as possible. I say that to everyone I talk to about books, regardless of the topic of the discussion. It is my way of recognizing the quality of John Green’s writing; it is worth recommendation no matter the context. Green, who specializes in teenage slice of life/romance, has a rare gift: he can accurately write teenage characters in the first person.

In The Fault in Our Stars, Green spins a tale of love, life and loss from the point of view of a hormone-riddled 17-year-old and makes it sound real. Unlike so many current teen and young adult authors, Green avoids the first-person pitfalls of the excessively angsty, characterless or just plain shallow narrator.

In general, Green’s plots can be summed up as “quirkiness with a gimmick.” An Abundance of Katherines is “quirky boy meets quirky girl with math.” Paper Towns is “normal boy meets quirky girl with a twist disappearance.” So it is with Fault, Green’s newest novel that incorporates elements of his previous unfinished work, The Sequel.

Fault begins as “normal girl with cancer meets quirky guy with cancer” and, after Green’s three previous books, that opening feels stale. The main characters are Hazel, who has a deep relationship with an obscure book, and Augustus, who acts like a clown pretending to be a poet but is in truth something of both.

It should be noted, though, that this is not a book about cancer. As Hazel herself puts it, “Cancer books suck.” This is a book about people who happen to have cancer. And fortunately, the quirkiness does not persist. These traits become part of Hazel and Augustus’ characters, rather than mere idiosyncrasies that make them interesting. That shows definite maturation in Green’s writing.

As Hazel and Augustus’ respective cancers continue to menace their lives and the relationship between them grows, the quirkiness is shooed out, replaced by the duo’s quest to find the author of Hazel’s book and have from him a “proper” ending. The book, a first-person fictional account of a girl with cancer who Hazel strongly identifies with, ends mid-sentence.

Their journey is by turns idealistic and cynical, and absolutely beautiful. While that by itself is not unique to Fault, seeing Green develop his characters on a deeper level than merely highlighting and elaborating their surface traits is new and refreshing. Green's characters have always been dynamic, but now they're round as well. Or perhaps the other way around. Regardless, some of the later scenes in the book are tearjerkers, and what they reveal about Hazel and Augustus is just as sad as the events themselves.

This is a book wherein the creeping weight of cancer has caused our heroes to mature much faster than the average 17-year-old. The power of the book lies not in the cancer, but in what Hazel and Augustus do with their maturity, fatality and “why wait” attitude.

4.5/5

"America By Heart" by Sarah Palin

Fun fact: The original headline on this review was "Palin's heart in right place; brain MIA."  

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A version of this review originally appeared in the December 2010 issue of the George C. Marshall high school newspaper Rank & File. 

America By Heart, Sarah Palin's memoir-cum-manifesto is wearying, to say the least. The first half of the book is a diatribe on the correctness of political conservatism, and the latter half is a torturous discussion of the power of prayer in the United States.

The conservative section is seeded with arguments on how the U.S. is "exceptional," while the power-of-prayer portion is laced with anti-abortion messages every other page. For better or for worse, Palin's voice comes across very strongly in her writing. It is difficult to focus on the content of a book when said content is mentally delivered in the grating voice of Sarah Palin.

On the other hand, Palin does express some ideas that are reasonable at their root. However, she generalizes enormously and applies her opinion to the U.S. as a whole. The very survey Palin cites to support her claim that the "influential academic and legal elite" are out of touch with prayer and by extension the people, states that more than 40 percent of Americans don't pray at all.

This trend stretches throughout the narrative. The book is essentially Palin presenting her own take on conservative ideology, and while many disagree with conservatism, it does have a certain amount of grounding in logic. This logic transfers to Palin's dialogue, but fails when she tries to stretch it further than it can reach.

Palin's disconnect between the perceived and actual severity of an issue affects both her social and political views in the book. She uses phrases such as "the left" and "the liberal media" like blunt instruments. In this sense, Palin's writing is couched in black and white. She by turns ignores the possibility that she could be incorrect and acknowledges issues that put both the Republicans and Democrats in the wrong. The middle ground, however, is rarely discussed.

But enough about political bias. Stripped of politicization, many of Palin's thoughts have merit. Should we respect our troops? Yes. Does the US have great potential for enacting good in the world? Yes. Does faith create morality? In most cases, it does not hurt.

Palin's opinions are polarizing, to say the least. Nevertheless, underneath all the controversy and idiocy there is some respectable content worthy of being known by heart.

That doesn't make it a good book, though.

1.85/5

"The Patterns of Paper Monsters" by Emma Rathbone

This is the very first review I did at the Rank & File. The next three posts are all from the Rank & File as well. Now that I've graduated, I thought I should go back and find any reviews from there that I hadn't put up yet.

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A version of this review originally appeared in the November 2010 issue of the George C. Marshall high school newspaper Rank & File.

           In her debut novel The Patterns of Paper Monsters, Emma Rathbone delves into both the slightly twisted mind of a teenage boy and the depths of a juvenile detention center in Northern Virginia. The book, narrated in the first person by 17-year-old inmate Jacob, provides humorous but incredibly dry running commentary on those who excessively relish a little authority and the nature of communication in a disinterested system.

            Jacob’s narrative vocabulary far exceeds that of a typical high school student. Words like “palliative” (relieving or lessening without curing) sprinkle his thoughts, yet he comes across as a natural character. Despite the occasional obscure word thrown in, Jacob’s thought processes never seem contrived. The writing flows, stutters and jumps in a very human manner.

Jacob’s descriptions of the detention staff are depressing to the point of comedy. However, Rathbone is not crafting an effigy of bizarreness for all of us to laugh at. Rather, she is finding the most irritating—but real—aspects of the human condition, and saying: “Isn’t this ridiculous?” In a way, the technique brings to mind Napoleon Dynamite.

Of course, Napoleon Dynamite never involved a plot to burn down a building and kill dozens of people. The antagonist, David, is both twisted and fascinating. He never rants about his intentions or reveals his motives like a cliché villain; he just smiles evilly and sets to work. This provokes the majority of the drama in the novel, and emphasizes the humanness of it. We are used to omniscient viewpoints in stories, observations that point the reader at exactly what is going to occur. Not so here. Jacob’s thoughts on David are refreshingly limited, keeping the reader in just as much suspense as Jacob.

By contrast, Andrea, Jacob’s love interest, is largely comedic. Jacob’s thoughts of her split between sex and romanticism in a fantastic parody of the hormone-addled mind of a stereotypical teen. Her relationship with him after she is released from the detention center manages to be both one of the most poignant and funny moments in the book.

The Patterns of Paper Monsters is characterized by dry, subtle humor and muted sorrow, but that is not how it should be recognized. It is a stunningly accurate depiction of the human condition, complete with all of its small, subtle comedies and flawed tragedies. 

3.92/5 

"Inheritance", Christopher Paolini

'lo everybody. I'm not quite dead yet! (Senior year is pushing me pretty close, though.)

I'm aiming to next review "The Night Circus" by Erin Morgenstern, which is a fabulous book that everyone should read. It's probably gonna get higher than a 4.

I, of course, am making no promises as to when this review will go up. In the meantime, please find attached a review of one of the most-anticipated fantasy books of our generation. :3

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A version of this review originally appeared in the November 2011 issue of the George C. Marshall high school newspaper Rank & File.

It took Christopher Paolini a full three years to finish Inheritance, a culminating novel that no one, least of all Paolini, originally planned for. I'm not sure if it was worth the wait.

Paolini’s ascendance into the spotlight of the high fantasy genre began at the age of 15 with the 2003 publication of Eragon, a tale of a boy named Eragon and his dragon Saphira.

Eldest followed Eragon two years later and Brisingr followed Eldest two years after that. Paolini’s immature writing in the first book left the archetypical framework upon which the series is based—the hero’s journey—exposed, drawing the ire of critics, who accused him of borrowing ideas from Star Wars and Lord of the Rings.

Regardless, the 509-page Eragon was an impressive feat for a high school freshman, and the writing and content of Eldest evinced a maturity and depth that belied Paolini’s youth. Unfortunately, Inheritance possesses neither of these merits.

Inheritance concludes Eragon’s journey and resolves most of the remaining questions of the series, yet the entire ordeal feels alternately rushed and bogged down. In the first two novels, Paolini had clarity of purpose in his writing: Eragon had a very specific goal he was trying to achieve, and the majority of what Paolini wrote consisted of Eragon either trying to achieve or failing to achieve his goal. In contrast, much of what Paolini writes in Inheritance describes how Eragon comes to be in a position to pursue the main conflict, rather than what he actually does about it.

This difference allows Paolini to introduce a great number of irrelevant scenes into the plot. Some of these are of genuinely interesting and entertaining interactions between the characters, but many are simply egregious.

Roran, Eragon’s cousin and the only major “normal” character in the series, has two significant chunks of the book devoted to him. Half of Roran’s sections could be cut or significantly trimmed without noticeably altering the book.

At the end of the book Paolini, instead of writing too much, rushed things. The chapters in the aftermath are all written in a detached and summarizing style. The ending is one of the most emotionally powerful moments in the book, yet this manner of writing, which populates a departure sequence that lasts for pages with the merest snippets of dialogue, robs it of much of its impact. It feels as though Paolini simply wanted to quickly wrap up all the loose ends in the plot.

Honestly, this sort of criticism is painful to write because Paolini’s writing has such potential. The man has powerful ideas and the writing style to express them. He just remains unaware of proper pacing and narrative structure, and the way a dearth or excess of certain scenes can destroy them.

3.25/5

"Divergent", Veronica Roth

I think I'll cross-post all my reviews to goodreads. It's a very useful site. (And I hope everyone has learned not to trust my promises of prolific output.)

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Honestly, I went into Veronica Roth’s Divergent with high hopes.

That was probably a mistake. The way post-apocalyptic teen novels are now a dime a dozen after the success of The Hunger Games—the same way bookstores sprouted entire “supernatural romance” sections following the success of Twilight—should’ve tipped me off.

But that cover art is just so damn snazzy. Moreover, the premise of the book is a thing of beauty.

Society in decaying Chicago is divided into five factions: The selfless, the wise, the brave, the loving and the honest. Children choose which faction they will belong to at the age of 16, and the faction they choose shapes them physically and mentally for the rest of their life.

Our hero Tris is “Divergent,” meaning she does not fit cleanly into any one faction.

This is a fantastic concept. Everyone in the known world subscribing to one of five preset—and often conflicting—mindsets? One person who is non-conformist simply by virtue of their existence? Brilliant. The idea is ripe with the promise of rebellion against both society and the compartmentalization of humanity. There is an epic tale here that needs only an oppressive and antagonistic society to take flight.

Unfortunately, Roth takes the story in a far more awkward direction. She writes the central conflict of the narrative not as a battle against the system, but as a battle inside it. The conflict stems from the perversion of a functioning system, rather than from an inherent wrongness in the system.

This was a mistake. The reason so many dystopian novels focus on battles against society is that the society needs only minimal characterization and development to make it a menacing foe, leaving the author free to focus on other aspects of the story. Indeed, The Hunger Games was successful partly because it went above and beyond the societal development necessary for the plot without compromising any other facet of the story.

However, when the battle is within society, the reader needs a fuller and deeper understanding of the setting to drive home the impact of the conflict. Roth does not provide that understanding. Though she doesn’t necessarily fail at world-building, she most certainly does not provide enough.

Each of the factions—save the faction Tris enters—receives a rough sketch of a description, a facsimile based upon the most readily identifiable traits of each mindset. Given that the factions are the entire focus of the book, this is insufficient for the type of story Roth is trying to tell.

Additionally, glimpses the reader receives of life inside the different factions seem to indicate that characters do not lop off 4/5 of themselves when they choose a faction. They remain fairly well-rounded human beings, and as such, the concept of someone like Tris, who exists outside faction designations, falls entirely flat. The idea would be much more powerful if Divergence contradicted a force such as brainwashing or indoctrination, rather than a weak societal norm. Its inclusion in the plot feels almost pointless, save to facilitate the tacked-on ending.

That said, Tris is something not often seen in female teen protagonists: Cold and ruthless. She breaks both bones and the genre mold with delightful ease. While I can’t say much for Roth’s plotting, I would absolutely love to see more of Tris. Her character design is a diamond in the rough.

The force of her personality—the book is in first person—glues the events of the narrative together into an engaging package. Save for the ending. Nothing could help the clichéd, kill-half-the-cast-for-drama ending, though it did admirably set the scene for the sequel.

Anyway, as long you don’t read too deeply or think too hard, you’ll enjoy this book. The high adrenaline quotient makes it very readable, if not particularly well-plotted.

Rating: 2.85/5