Today, I bring you fur­ther proof that a book should not be judged by its cover. I’m cur­rently read­ing Yucatan Deep by Tom Mor­risey. I don’t remem­ber where I picked the book up, but it was most likely at a thrift store or a used book shop. I do remem­ber that is was cheap (prob­a­bly no more than two dol­lars), and that I bought it because it seemed to involve a num­ber of things that inter­est me: cav­ing, div­ing, and pos­si­bly archae­ol­ogy. I’d never heard of the book or the author before, but I fig­ured that it would be good for a quick read, even if it was a fairly ter­ri­ble novel. Lit­tle did I know what I was in store for…

A cou­ple of days ago, when I was about sixty pages into the book, my mom e-mailed me, won­der­ing why I was read­ing an evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian adven­ture novel. “A what?” I thought. I fig­ured that she must have looked at the Ama­zon page for the book, which is linked in the “Now Read­ing” sec­tion of my side­bar. I man­age my read­ing list with Media Man­ager, which auto­mat­i­cally gen­er­ates the Ama­zon links. I gen­er­ally don’t visit the linked pages until I’m done with a book, if then. So, after get­ting the mes­sage from my mom, I checked Yucatan Deep on Ama­zon. This is how the “Edi­to­r­ial Reviews” sec­tion begins:

Cave div­ing is a rel­a­tively unusual topic for an evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian adven­ture novel, and this debut novel by Mor­risey is chock-full of inter­est­ing char­ac­ters and cliff-hanging suspense…

Crap.

I had no idea that there was such a thing as an evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian adven­ture novel, much less that I’d pur­chased one. The blurb on the back cover didn’t clue me in to the book’s true nature (it con­tains only a sin­gle pass­ing ref­er­ence to ‘faith’), nor did the first six­ty­ish pages lead me to believe I was read­ing any­thing other than a mediocre bit of escapist fiction.

On page eighty-five, it hit. There are three par­al­lel plots, one of which cen­ters on a young mechan­i­cal engi­neer and surfer, named Elvis, who has decided not to join his father’s respected surf­board busi­ness. We don’t find out what his new career path is until page eighty-five. Elvis has decided to become a mis­sion­ary and plans to min­is­ter to small Cen­tral Amer­i­can Indian tribes who have had lit­tle to no con­tact with out­siders. And he reads the Bible cover-to cover more than once per year. This book should not, as the back cover kindly sug­gests, be filed in FICTION/GENERAL/SUSPENSE.

I don’t mean to offend any of my Chris­t­ian friends, so I’ll just say that I’m not exactly the church-going type. I feel kind of tricked by the pub­lish­ers of this book, and I may not be able to read all the way through. I’ll let you know what I think if I man­age to fin­ish it (although, I’m at least ten books behind in post­ing reviews, so it may be awhile).

Next Michael Crich­ton
Harper­Collins 2006World­Cat • Library­Thing • Google Books • Book­Finder 

In this, his lat­est novel, Michael Crich­ton addresses a num­ber of aspects of cut­ting edge genetic engi­neer­ing and research. As usual, he focuses on the pos­si­ble prob­lems that this rapidly devel­op­ing sci­ence could cause. The dan­gers his posits are not the vicious prod­ucts of the tech­nol­ogy itself, à la the dinosaurs of Juras­sic Park or the nanopar­tic­u­late swarms of Prey; rather, they stem from the moral and legal issues sur­round­ing its application.

Should genes be patentable and own­able? Should genetic pre­dis­po­si­tion for a dis­ease be grounds for denial of insur­ance cov­er­age or child cus­tody? What rights should peo­ple have regard­ing their own genes and tis­sues and any prod­ucts derived from them? At what point does a trans­genic organ­ism tran­scend its orig­i­nal species des­ig­na­tion and become some­thing else (espe­cially if the added genetic mate­r­ial is human)? Crich­ton weaves these ques­tions together through the use of mul­ti­ple con­cur­rent (and some­what inter­con­nected) sub­plots. He keeps the excite­ment high through­out, as usual, which makes the book hard to put down. I barely did; I read it in a day.

Next lacks the foot­not­ing present in State of Fear, and is less preachy, too. Crich­ton does how­ever include an author’s note at the end, in which he offers his con­clu­sions about the moral and legal impli­ca­tions of genet­ics and what needs to be changed about cur­rent laws and prac­tices. He also sup­plies a fairly exten­sive bibliography.

This isn’t my favorite of Crichton’s nov­els (I can’t help but be par­tial to those that include some of my boy­hood fas­ci­na­tions — dinosaurs, knights, and Vikings), but it’s well worth a read.

The World Accord­ing to Garp John Irv­ing
Bal­lan­tine Books 1990World­Cat • Library­Thing • Google Books • Book­Finder 

Irving’s novel tells of the life of T.S. Garp, from his uncon­ven­tional con­cep­tion to his tragic death. Garp’s life is any­thing but ordi­nary, in no small part because his sin­gle mother is an early leader of the nascent fem­i­nist move­ment. He con­stantly finds him­self in the shadow of his famous mother, but he does man­age to make a bit of a name for him­self as an author. Garp’s work draws heav­ily on his own per­sonal expe­ri­ences, although he denies that any of it is auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal. At a num­ber of points in The World Accord­ing to Garp, the reader is treated to lengthy sec­tions of Garp’s writ­ing. I enjoyed this sort of fic­tion within fic­tion; it works quite well here.

Other than his writ­ing, the book really focuses on Garp’s life — his suc­cesses and fail­ures, his rela­tion­ships with his fam­ily and close friends, the events that shape his con­cep­tion of the world around him. This is not an easy book to read. It is at times very dark, and is punc­tu­ated by a num­ber of bru­tal and tragic events. By the end, I felt a lit­tle like the lit­er­ary equiv­a­lent of being punch-drunk — it was maybe a lit­tle more harsh than I would have wanted. That said, the book does con­tain many light, funny, and charm­ing moments, and I liked it over­all. It’s a pow­er­ful novel, and well worth read­ing if you’re will­ing to deal with some heavy stuff.

The Thir­teenth Tale A NovelDiane Set­ter­field
Atria 2006World­Cat • Library­Thing • Google Books • Book­Finder 

Mar­garet Lea lives in a world of books. Her father owns an anti­quar­ian book shop, in which she learned to read and write, and where she has worked ever since. Her hobby involves read­ing the diaries of his­tor­i­cal fig­ures who have fallen into obscu­rity and con­dens­ing them into short biogra­phies. Her nor­mal read­ing fare con­sists of books by authors like Jane Austen and the Brontë Sis­ters. Thus, Mar­garet is taken aback when she receives a let­ter from Vida Win­ter, the best-selling author of all time.

Win­ter, of whose fifty-six nov­els Mar­garet has read pre­cisely zero, is an enig­matic fig­ure. Almost noth­ing is known about her life, due in no small part to Winter’s prac­tice of telling inter­view­ers woldly dif­fer­ent sto­ries about her­self and actively dis­cour­ag­ing would-be biog­ra­phers. This is the strangest thing about Winter’s let­ter — she seems to want Mar­garet to write her life story.

Despite her unfa­mil­iar­ity with Winter’s work, Mar­garet knows that this oppor­tu­nity is not to be missed. Still, she is some­what incred­u­lous. Why her? Why now? She trav­els to Winter’s coun­try home, which seems as cut off from the world as the author her­self. Win­ter begins telling her story to Mar­garet, but refuses to answer ques­tions or tell any part of the story out of its proper order. Mar­garet grudg­ingly accepts these con­di­tions, but begins inves­ti­gat­ing on her own. She wants to fill in what she sus­pects are omis­sions or mis­lead­ing ele­ments in Winter’s tale. The deeper she digs, the more she unrav­els the mys­tery of Winter’s fam­ily and the rea­sons for her reluc­tance to tell the whole story.

I enjoyed the man­ner in which Diane Set­ter­field weaves her tale within a tale through a mix­ture of sto­ry­telling and detec­tive work. I also liked the lit­er­ary bent of the novel — a story about an author telling her own per­sonal story, with time spent in libraries and book­shops, and ref­er­ences to clas­sic lit­er­a­ture through­out. The Thir­teenth Tale is a pretty good read, and a refresh­ing change from crime– or Knights Tem­plar-based mysteries.

Cor­rupt­ing Dr. Nice John Kessel
Tor 1998World­Cat • Library­Thing • Google Books • Book­Finder 

In a world in which time travel is not only pos­si­ble, but exists as a pop­u­lar tourist activ­ity, oppor­tu­ni­ties for con artistry abound. August Fai­son and his daugh­ter Genevieve are pros in this field, hav­ing run suc­cess­ful cons at var­i­ous places and times in his­tory. Shortly after arriv­ing in Jerusalem, 30 C.E. to plan a new job, the Faisons meet Dr. Owen Van­nice, a young pale­on­tol­o­gist. Owen is some­what naive, and is a mem­ber of one of the rich­est fam­i­lies in the world. He’s also trav­el­ing from the Cre­ta­ceous era with an ani­mal, which he claims is a dog. These facts com­bine to make him a per­fect mark for the Faisons.

But, as the father/daughter team schemes to relieve Owen of his “dog,” trou­ble is brew­ing in Jerusalem. A group of his­tor­i­cals (as the time trav­el­ers refer to the locals) are plan­ning a revolt. Although the time trav­el­ers have brought them help­ful tech­nol­ogy, espe­cially in the areas of agri­cul­ture and med­i­cine, these his­tor­i­cals feel that their cul­ture is being destroyed by tourism and the intro­duc­tion of things like motor vehi­cles, firearms, and tele­vi­sion. They plan to smug­gle in weapons from the future and drive the time trav­el­ers out by force.

From this com­plex and some­what bizarre set-up, John Kessel’s tale unfolds with equal mea­sures of humor and social satire. I found this book to be very enter­tain­ing. It can be clas­si­fied as sci­ence fic­tion, but isn’t bogged down by the long expla­na­tions of futur­is­tic tech­nol­ogy, alien races, or invented lan­guages that some­times mar the genre. Kessel’s use of time travel — while inte­gral to the plot– is not the focus of the book. It merely serves as a tool for Kessel to set up the cul­tural and his­tor­i­cal jux­ta­po­si­tions that make the book so inter­est­ing. Cor­rupt­ing Dr. Nice is a good, quick read, and I very much enjoyed Kessel’s quirky sense of humor.