mini book reviews
What I’ve Been Reading When I Haven’t Been Playing SOCOM
Teeth of the Tiger, Tom Clancy. I’ve been reading Clancy novels since I was in high school. I get made fun of for reading Clancy because they’re not perceived to be literary works that you can chalk up as having read, and then show off to your friends at your next social circle gathering. But let’s face it: After a long day of jeetering at your day job, sometimes you just want to come home and be entertained for a few hours. So…bust.
I almost didn’t buy this one because Red Rabbit wasn’t so good. Ever since Rainbox Six, I started to wonder whether Clancy was writing his books just so he could sell film rights - shorter, simplified stories without the depth and intrigue of, say, Executive Orders, which is one of my favorite Clancy novels of all time.
Teeth of the Tiger does nothing to break this mold, but it’s more entertaining than the last three. Characters do not deviate that much from previous works. The good guys are generally well-adjusted people who have no personal issues except that there’s evil out there that needs to be dealt with. I’d like to see, like, one of the good guys get denied on a 2nd mortgage, or develop a coke habit, or something, and then see how that affects the course of the story. The bad guys are pretty straightforward anti-American angry Arabs who drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes and then go commit some terrorism. You might not like this book if you’ve dedicated your life to protesting stereotypes and moving towards new paradigms of race relations, or something like that. Or you could just say, “Hey, this is just a story, the action moves along pretty fast, and it’s entertaining.” And wonder, the next time some white dude calls you a chink or raghead, whether maybe or not that person’s gotten that idea from a book like this.
Semi-spoiler: I’m really, really hoping that the next book isn’t called “Brain of the Tiger.” That’d be lame.
This book is rated: “You’d like it if you’re a fan of Clancy’s earlier work, but it’s probably not worth paying full price for it if you’re killing time in an airport and see it in the bookstore there.”
Telling Lies and Getting Paid, Michael Konik. Konik’s earlier book, The Man with the $100,000 Breasts was recommended to me by a co-worker who happens to be a semi-professional no-limit Texas Hold ‘Em player (you may have actually seen him on the World Poker Tour show on the Travel Channel). This one isn’t quite as good, probably because I don’t know or care that much about sports betting, gin rummy, or backgammon, which is three of the stories. The theme story (which is about 1/2 of the book) is a rather drawn-out description of the author’s repeated attempts to win (and his obsession with winning) the World Series of Poker. It’s somewhat similar to Positively Fifth Street by James McManus, in that I didn’t really like either one.
This book is rated: “You should probably try to borrow this from your local public library, or if you haven’t read Konik before, get the other book mentioned above. If that’s not available, go rent Rounders instead.”
Oh, I Also Saw a Movie Too
I bought the DVD of Hero a couple of weeks ago off of Ebay, shipped from Shanghai. Had really high expectations for this one - directed by Zhang Yimou, cinematography by Christopher Doyle, starring Jet Li, Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung, and Zhang Ziyi. Expectations were too high. Visually this is an absolutely stunning film - like, really, really, REALLY stunning. But fight scenes progress without a real sense of urgency, and the story is kind of like a cross between your typical “you killed my master so I’m out for revenge” kung-fu flick and the plot twists of The Usual Suspects or The Sixth Sense. Kinda cool, I guess.
It looks like this movie ain’t gonna get released in the U.S. like it was supposed to. So your only resort might be to watch it on DVD. Note: the Guangdong Face version that I have, it wouldn’t read the DVD title menu on my Playstation 2, so I just had to make it play the movie only. And about 2/3 the way through the movie, it stopped with an “Unable to read disc” error. Had to switch to my laptop to watch the rest (a.k.a. my $3,000 DVD player that was supposed to be a portable recording setup). YMMV.
Oh, and…
I just remembered that the 2nd season of CSI is coming out on DVD next week. Yes!