Recent books

Ex Libris is a novel by Ross King, the author of the bestselling nonfiction book Brunelleschi’s Dome, which told the story of the design and construction of the basilica on top of St. Peter’s Cathedral in the Vatican. Set in England in the 1600s, Ex Libris is told from the perspective of a widowed bookseller who is asked by a peculiar widow to track down a unique manuscript that her father had rescued from Prague during the Battle of Prague in the Thirty Years’ War. Although King’s attempts to work 16th-century English styles into his prose dragged the novel down at times, the plot was definitely compelling and he managed to strike a nice balance between evoking the time period and grabbing your attention with action sequences, with a nice history of the printed word mixed in. It’s like a Da Vinci Code for non-morons.

The Big Over Easy is Jasper Fforde’s first novel outside of the incredible Thursday Next Series (which started with The Eyre Affair, a book to which he pays backhanded homage in TBOE). Humpty Dumpty – who is in his sixties and is living in Reading, England – well, make that “was,” because he’s been murdered. Detective Jack Spratt and his new assistant, Mary Mary, are on the case, which involves a visit to the imprisoned gang leader Giorgia Piorgia, a sighting of the serial killer The Gingerbread Man, and some magic beans. It’s typical Fforde, broad, farcical, witty, but I will say that it wasn’t as brilliantly madcap as the Thursday Next books. I was at a bit of a disadvantage, since I can’t say I know my nursery rhymes that well, but the society-page description of the wedding between the Owl and the Pussycat was one I understood.

The Catholic Church, by Swiss theologian Hans Küng, was a fascinating read as he broke down the various points in the Church’s history where various popes, emperors, or other power-brokers imposed some of the various rules, practices, and doctrines which still exist in the Church today, and which Küng argues are a major reason that the Church is in disarray. The refusal to ordain women, the opposition to contraception, and the doctrine of papal infallibility all postdate Christ’s life and the founding of what is now the Roman Catholic Church by hundreds of years. He also has a very critical take on the reign of Pope John Paul II (written two years before John Paul died) that runs in stark counterpoint to the hagiographies that greeted that Pope’s death.

Finally, The Invention of Clouds, by Richard Hamblyn, was a very good if unusually conflict-free history-of-science book. I say conflict-free because these books usually involve some massive stumbling block that keeps the protagonist from quickly (or ever) reaching his goal of fortune or fame or just contributing to scientific progress. Luke Howard came up with the first reliable method of identifying different types of clouds, using the same three basic terms we still use today (cirrus, cumulus, and stratus) at the core of his system. The concept was an immediate success and Howard, a quiet, religious family man, became a celebrity in spite of himself, culminating in a correspondence with the German polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The Invention of Clouds is a quick read, mostly well-written and with lots of interesting facts, but that lack of some conflict or foil left the book feeling a little light. One little highlight is the description towards the end of how Howard’s system of nomenclature led to the modern phrase “on cloud nine.”

Note: I’m turning on comments for this thread as a sort of test to see how much I really need to moderate it. As long as it’s not too much work, I’ll leave them on for all book threads and will try to participate myself. Thanks for coming by.

Comments

  1. My favorite part of TBOE was how much of the story came from the Caversham Heights story in The Well of Lost Plots.

  2. I agree – the way Fforde set the whole Nursery Crimes thing up as a natural spinoff of the Thursday Next books was fantastic. Definitely fired up for the fifth TN book in July.

  3. Righteous domain name; ah, for the halcyon days of Bloom County.

  4. Actually, I think that Brunelleschi’s Dome is about the Duomo in Florence, not St. Peter’s. His tomb is actually adjacent to the gift shop there–it’s kind of creepy.

  5. Thanks for the correction, Chris – serves me right for writing this entry on the plane ride home on Sunday. I don’t think I actually went into the duomo the last time I was in Florence, but I’m overdue to go back (and take my daughter to meet her cousins over there), so I’ll have to look for the tomb and the statue of him as well.

  6. I’m in the middle of Fforde’s latest Jack Spratt book The Fourth Bear and I’m really enjoying it. Just like TBOE it’s not quite up to the level of The Thursday Next books, but I think it’s a bit better than TBOE. If you like Fforde’s books, I suggest trying Robert Rankin’s The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocolypse and the Witches of Chiswick. He’s a very prolific author and his books are a little uneven, but these are two of my favorites and they are somewhat similar to Fforde’s work. By the way, I also appreciate the Bloom County reference in your site name. BC was a daily ritual for me in high school in the late 80’s…

  7. Hollow Chocolate Bunnies was awesome. My wife thought it was twisted – which it absolutely is – and my brother-in-law loved it too. There’s a sequel out now called The Toyminator, but I haven’t picked it up yet.

  8. I noticed in your chats that you are a big Harry Potter fan. Have you read Garth Nix’s Abhorsen series (Sabriel, Liriel, Abhorsen)? If you like Harry Potter you will almost certainly enjoy these. Even if you have read a lot of books of this sort, you’ll find a number things that are fresh and interesting and even scary.

    I don’t want to break comment protocol too much, but email me next time you come to Houston. I can help you with excellent restaurant picks in almost any category.

  9. WCE, thanks, no idea how I missed your message last month, but I’ll take you up on the offer the next time I come through.

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  1. […] The Invention of Clouds, by Richard Hamblyn. Reviewed briefly here. Hamblyn tells an interesting story about the amateur meteorologist who came up with the system of […]