Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, published in 1968, is amazing. This book is the basis for Blade Runner, but the movie and the novel seem very separate to me and are masterpieces in their own way. The book takes place years after most of Earth has been destroyed by radioactive fallout from World War Terminus. To encourage people to emigrate to off-world colonies such as Mars, a special incentive is that each emigrant will receive an adroid (andy) as a servant.

Electric Sheep follows bounty hunter Rick Deckard, based in San Francisco, as he tries to track down renegade androids who killed their masters in Mars and have assumed human identities on Earth, and J.R. Isidore, a man who has suffered brain damage (considered a “special”) who lives in an abandoned building and comes in contact with the androids.

This book brings up a lot of questions on whether or not androids with such advanced technologies can have souls. What is the human condition? The novel is fast-paced and takes place all through one day where Rick Deckard even finds himself empathizing with the andys. At one point Rick finds himself in what seems to be an alternate universe, a self-sufficient police station that is run by androids and has his own identity as human or andy questioned.

This book is a three hour read tops. Personally, I happen to like the tone and pacing of the book more than Blade Runner, but I think they both have their merits. Having not seen Blade Runner in years, while reading Electric Sheep you didn’t even feel like you were that far in the future.

Anyway, incredibly thought-provoking.

Side note. Total Recall (starring our good friend Arnold Schwarzenegger) is based on Philip K. Dick’s short story ‘We Can Remember It For You Wholesale’ which I would like to read soon.

From Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger:

The Great Indian Rooster Coop… Here in India we have no dictatorship. No secret police.
That’s because we have the coop.
Never before in human history have so few owed so much to so many, Mr. Jibao. A handful of men in this country have trained the remaining 99.9 percent– as strong, as talented, as intelligent in every way– to exist in perpetual servitude; a servitude so strong that you can put the key of his emancipation in a man’s hands and he will throw it back at you with a curse.

So I’ve read a few India books lately, Shantaram and Sacred Games. Both of those books are behemoths and extremely comprehensive- they gave me so much context that it made me feel that The White Tiger was a little bit lacking. The White Tiger deals with some similar concepts as the other two, but is considerably smaller and more focused, straight-forward.

That being said, Adiga’s novel is a fun read and chronicles the story of Balram Halwai, who through a series of letters to the Premier of the State Council of China, tells how he went from taxi driver, to business entrepreneur, and killed his master. Balram’s voice is great, and he comes off like a real asshole, but somehow at the end, I didn’t feel the same kind of honesty that I felt after Shantaram and Sacred Games. I think I may have liked this book more if I hadn’t read the other India books first. This may have been a better stepping stone into the other ones because it’s such a fast-paced read.

From Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra, Bombay bhai Ganesh Gaitonde:

I knew I was going to die, I was going to be killed. There was no escape for me. I had no future, no life, no retirement, no easy old age. To imagine any of that was cowardice. A bullet would find me first. But I would like a king. I would fight this life, this bitch that sentences us to death, and I would eat her up, consume her every minute of every day. So I walked my streets like a lord of mankind, flanked by my boys.

From Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield:

For myself, I confess the horror of it  nearly overcame me. Though I had loaded up double with two packed quivers, twenty-four ironheads, the demands of fire had come so fierce and furious that I was down to nothing before I could spit. I was firing between the helmets of warriors, point-blank into the faces and throats of the foe. This was not archery, it was slaughter. I was pulling ironheads from the bowels of still-living men to reload and replenish my spent stock. The ash of a shaft drawn across my bow hand slipped from its notch, slimy with gore and tissue; warheads dripped blood before they were even fired. Overwhelmed by horror, my eyes clamped shut of their own will; I had to tear at my face with both hands to drive them open. Had I gone mad?

Wow, Gates of Fire rules. This is an awesome piece of historical fiction that retells the Battle of Thermopylae in 280 B.C. through the voice of the captive Xeones, a Spartan Helot, and recorded by the Persian historian, Gobartes, to King Xerxes. Pressfield does an amazing job of portraying the Spartans military valor and really gets deep into the warriors’ mindset. This is a really powerful book and I love the way the story is told. In between the ‘recorded words’ of Xeones are brief interludes from the Persian historian, who comes to care for their captured foe in the course of hearing his story. It’s interesting to me that Pressfield is also the man who wrote The Legend of Bagger Vance. Anyway, if you are interested at all in the Spartans, I suggest you toss your 300 DVD into the garbage and go read this. Not that I don’t love 300, actually it’s pretty sweet, but this book gets so deep it tugs at the heartstrings. Oh, and the battles are pretty nuts too. It rocks. Go get it now.

Bangkok 8

A mighty leap causes the wooded house to shake and ends with the knife stuck in the panel and his visor clopping back over his face. Compared to my own problems, his next decision is hardly taxing: whether to wrestle the knife out of the wall with visor up or down? I watch fascinated while he attempts both at the same time, pushing the annoying visor up with the left while he pulls at the knife with the right. That thrust of his was quite something; the knife is stuck so fast between planks he needs a foot to press against the wall to pull it out, which requires two hands; whoops, that visor again. I have the feeling that things are not quite as urgent as I had thought, but decide to try a charge anyway.

That was a pretty long quote, but I think it gives you a good idea the tone of this book. Bangkok 8 is a fun read that centers around the Thai Buddhist detective Soncahi Jitpleecheep, the son of a prostitute and a farang (White person) and his quest for vengeance after the calculated murder of a U.S. marine leaves his partner dead as well. This book doesn’t really play like a murder mystery, our narrator, Sonchai, himself states, “This isn’t a whodunit, is it? More like a whatwillshedonext.” It’s an interesting read as Sonchai’s constant meditations lead to figuring out the “who’s” early on, but not the “why’s.” Lots of talk about the jade trade, prostitution in Thailand, corruption, even gender identity. This is also one of those books that just has a really satisfying ending. This is a fun crime thriller infused with a bit of dark humor and I recommend that you go ahead and read it!

Now… on to Gates of Fire…

Between crime novels I decided to read Adam Cohen’s The Perfect Store, a really fascinating book on the history of our favorite online auction house, eBay. The book, published in 2002, explores how Pierre Omidyar’s pet project AuctionWeb, founded in September of 1995, would go on to become eBay, one of the most important online marketplaces and all the steps it took to get there. This book is really inspiring. It describes a time of incredible entrepreneurship, when everyone was trying to jump on the dot-com craze, and how eBay managed to survive on the basis of being a totally virtual business supported by its most important asset, its community.

This book is super comprehensive, touching on many key players in eBay’s rise to a public company (‘becoming too corporate,’ and upsetting many users) including the founder, early employees, the CEO, and many members of eBay’s online community,  both sellers and buyers. I truly recommend reading this for anyone interested in internet business. This book is a fun read! I must say, this book is from 2002, and I’m curious as to what has been going on in the past 8 years.

The US Postal Service is releasing a few stamps this July to commemorate some honorable comic strips, one of these being my all-time favorite: Calvin & Hobbes. This comic strip has honestly been an important part in the growth of my imagination. Beautiful art, amazingly well-written and as funny and powerful now as when I first read it (if not more so).

Bill Watterson recently offered some brief words to John Campanelli, of The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, the first interview granted since 1989.

Here’s a strip just because it’s so cute.

I finished reading the late Stieg Larrson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and I have to say, it was pretty awesome and impossible to put down. The original Swedish title was Män som hatar kvinnor, “Men That Hate Women,” a far better and more appropriate title. Also, let’s be honest, the name  The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is pretty lame. I think the name Men That Hate Women is also much better in setting the general tone for this book. Regardless..

This is a really complex novel that seems to be part finance, business, political, crime thriller, and does pretty well on all parts. I will try to give a brief overview of the book. The book opens with our hero, Michael Blomkvist, losing a libel case to an accused industrialist Hans-Erik Wennerström, putting his magazine at serious risk of collapsing. The disgraced journalist is hired by a wealthy old former industrialist, Henrik Vanger, who offers Blomkvist a huge sum to spend a year writing the Vanger family chronicle and attempting to solve the murder mystery of Vanger’s niece, Harriett of which there have been no developments in 40 years. The ensuing tale goes crazy.

That’s basically it. At times the language is a little clunky, I can’t tell if that’s the translator, Reg Keeland, to blame, or how Larrson intended it, and there are some almost masturbatory extended descriptions of Apple computers that seem a little bit unnecessary. Regardless, this is a super fun read and I’m sure you’ll tackle it within a week. There’s some messed up stuff in this book! Recommended reading. I will be reading the second one in the series after I get through some other books I have lined up.

By the way, their making a movie (actually made in Sweden, not a bastardized US version just yet), and I’m not sure what to make of it. As a movie, it looks a little bit corny… I feel like you can get away with more things in a novel, but once you start seeing them it’s a little meh…. but either way it looks interesting and I’m sure I’ll watch it at some point.

From The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larrson (translated by Reg Keeland):

Somehow she had always had this gift.

Her reports could be a catastrophe for the individual who landed in her radar. Armansky would never forget the time he assigned her to do a routine check on a researcher in the pharmaceutical industry before a corporate buyout. The job was scheduled to take a week, but it dragged on for a while. After four weeks’ silence and several reminders, which she ignored, Salander came back with a report documenting that the subject in question was a paedophile. On two occasions he had bought sex from a thirteen-year-old child prostitute in Tallinn, and there were indications that he had an unhealthy interest in the daughter of the woman with whom he was currently living.

After finishing the awesome novel that is The Alienist I am on to yet another detective-story-thriller (this new one adds a financial drama element). I’m only about 60 pages in but it’s quite interesting so far save for having to deal with all these Swedish names! I ran into two people in the subway reading the book and nodded in approval as they saw me on the task of starting it… a good sign! Intriguing – and even though it’s a translation, it feels pretty honest (unlike when I read Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore, which had a very meh translation) and I’m definitely about to get engulfed in this one…

From The Alienist by Caleb Carr:

And then all hell broke loose. With the speed and precision that only years of professional training can breed, an ape of a man leapt up and over the inner promenade fence and crushed Connor’s gun-wielding hand with a stout section of lead pipe. Before the other two things could react several lightning combinations of blows from two enormous fists laid them both out on the promenade. The howling Connor soon shared the same fate. Then, just for good measure, the newcomer- his face hidden under a miner’s cap- leaned over each man’s head in succession and delivered a series of resounding blows with the lead pipe. It was a clinic in violence that was awesome to behold- but my joy at the attack faded considerably when the performer stood up and finally revealed himself.

I feel bad for any book I read after having recently read Gregory David Roberts’ Shantaram, but Caleb Carr’s The Alienist is a worthy read. This book is a historical-fiction crime novel that takes place in 1896 New York City and follows then-Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt and the controversial Dr. Laszlo Kreizler along with their investigative team in their attempt to catch a killer of boy prostitutes using new and unorthodox methods dealing with psychology and fingerprinting (when it was not yet a proven standard of evidence).

This book is painstakingly researched to be true to the time period and is a fun and thrilling read. In The Alienist’s afterword, Carr states that his intention with the novel was to create a story that revolved around two men, a murderer and a man who catches such murderers, both from abusive backgrounds, and “illustrate critical personal moments in a life (or lives) that steadily build and reinforce character and thus become the building blocks of action…”

It’s a thrilling adventure as the investigative team “reverse-engineers” an understanding of their killer by using his murderous rituals to establish his context.

Interesting fact, Caleb Carr’s father, Lucien Carr, stabbed and killed his scoutmaster when he made a move on him in the summer of 1944. Lucien Carr disposed of the evidence with the help of Jack Kerouac.

Anyway: Great story, characters, and the believable use of historical figures make this something you should definitely read.

From Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts:

And Nazeer raised his assault rifle, and fired as he ran, and I saw Mahmoud Melbaaf firing ahead of me, on my right, where Suleiman had been, and I raised my weapon, and pulled the trigger.

There was a horrible,  blood-freezing scream somewhere very close. I suddenly recognized it as my own, but I couldn’t stop it. And I looked at the men, the brave and beautiful men beside me, running into the guns, and God help me for thinking it, and God forgive me for saying it, but it was glorious, it was glorious, if glory is a magnificent and raptured exaltation. It was what love would be like, if love was a sin. It was what music would be, if music could kill you. And I climbed a prison wall with every running step.

I just finished Shantaram yesterday and I must say, it is easily my favorite novel. This book is an amazing piece of autobiographical fiction. In an interview with CNN Talk Asia, Roberts mentions that all the events are real but the characters are imagined, leaving us with a psuedo-true story piece of literary genius. Roberts’ story is fascinating. After his marriage broke down and he lost custody of his daughter, Roberts turned to heroin, and committed a series of robberies with an imitation pistol, eventually leading to a 19-year conviction in Australia’s maximum-security Pentridge Prison. He escaped to become one of Australia’s most wanted men and spent ten years as a fugitive in Bombay where he established a free health clinic while living in the slum, became involved with the Bombay mafia, working as a counterfeiter, smuggler, gunrunner, and street soldier, and went to war in Afghanistan to fight with the mujahedin.

Eventually, Roberts was recaptured and served out his sentence and finished Shantaram, of which the first two drafts (600 pages of work) were destroyed in prison.

With Shantaram, Roberts uses elements of his life to craft a thrilling novel about love, life, adventure, friendship, betrayal, exile and freedom. You might think that reading this 933-page book would be a daunting task, but the book is beautifully written and its pages go by all too fast. Read this book.

Gregory David Roberts is a pretty serious badass. I recommending watching the whole CNN Talk Asia interview.

During my novel-hiatus I filled my reading void with a lot of comic books. My renewed interest in comics towards the end of 2007 when Rob Schrab announced that, after 10 years, he would be completing his independent comic book series, Scud: The Disposable Assassin.

I read Scud when I was a kid, and I remember Schrab left the series on it’s 20th issue with a giant cliffhanger. I loved the Scud world and it’s spinoff series La Costra Nostroid and the one-off Drywall: Unzipped.

Scud takes place in a world where people buy weapons from vending machines. Frequently, people buy robot assassins to that self-destruct after killing their intended target. Our hero is a Scud, Heart Breaker 1373 series, who is given a mission to kill Jeff, “a crazy plug-headed mutant armageddon on two legs” with mousetraps for hands and a squid used as a belt. While looking in the mirror, Scud notices his warning label, mentioning that he will self-destruct after termination of his target. He resolves to blast off Jeff’s arms and legs and put her on life support to ensure both of their survivals. The story follows Scud as he becomes involved with the cyborg mafia, killing to pay Jeff’s hospital bills and even falls in love. Anyway, the story gets pretty crazy and it’s all collected in the omnibus entitled Scud: The Whole Shebang.

Also published by Fireman was Douglas TenNapel’s (of The Neverhood and Earthworm Jim fame), a six issue mini-series. This comic follows four cats who hijack a giant robot. There’s robots, insects, dogs, betrayal, legends, and war. This is an awesome little comic series and is now available in color! TenNapel’s Gear was later turned into a a very, very light-hearted adaption called Catscratch which aired on Nickelodeon for 20 episodes.

Jeff Smith’s Bone is another independent comic I read when I was a kid but never managed to catch the entire story until the whole thing was released as a collection. I think Bone is possibly my favorite comic book of all time (to be politically correct for my nerds everywhere – I am referring to graphic novels… comics in general I’d have to hand it to Calvin & Hobbes). The comic spanned 55 issues, running irregularly from 1991 to 2004 and follows the three Bone cousins, Fone Bone, “Phoney” Bone, and Smiley Bone, who are run out of their hometown Boneville and are separated by a swarm of locusts. They end up in a fantasy landscape and follow a story arc with epic proportions that match The Lord of the Rings trilogy. This comic is amazing. I urge you to read this 1300-page behemoth.

My last recommendation here is the Cerebus the Aardvark series. Dave Sim’s Cerebus is another independent comic book and is the longest-running English language comic book by one creative team. The series ran from December 1977 to March 2004, totaling 300 issues (about 6,000 pages). The series has been collected by story arcs in 16 separate bound editions. This comic offers lavish art and really stretches the boundaries of comic book storytelling. Sims was joined by Gerhard from issue 65 onward. Gerhard rendered highly detailed backgrounds from the rest of the series while Sims wrote and drew the characters. The comic book, initially more of a hero fantasy series, moves into an intense political satire and drama. On that note, I haven’t even finished reading this series yet… I’ve made it up to the 10th book. I’ll have to get on that. It’s hard to really sum up what goes on in this comic and there are drastic differences from the first story arc to the next. From the second book Cerebus continues a little more cohesively. Anyway, definitely a work of art- start at book one!

Figured I’d end this one with a Calvin & Hobbes strip that still manages to bring tears to my eyes. Appropriate with our recent New York weather, I’m looking outside a window of my parents’ suburban home to see beautiful untouched snow.

Have a wonderful Christmas!

From Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts:

Their punishment, for fighting about religion, was that each had to learn one complete prayer from the religious observances of the other.

‘In this way is justice done,’ Qasim Ali said that night, his bark-coloured eyes softening on the two young men,  ’because justice is a judgement that is both fair and forgiving. Justice is not done until everyone is satisfied, even those who offend us and must be punished by us. You can see, by what we have done with these two boys, that justice is not only the way we punish those who do wrong. It is also the way we try to save them.’

From Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts:

It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realised, somehow, through the screaming of my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn’t sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it’s all you’ve got, that freedom is an universe of possibility. And the choice you make between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.

Literally the first paragraph.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon.

If you like Prague, New York, World War II, comic books and escape artists – read this. And it won a Pulitzer Prize!