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I really enjoyed Audrey Niffeneger’s first book, The Time Traveller’s Wife, so much so that I named it my favorite book that I read in 2006. So it’s kind of surprising to even me that it took me so long to got around to picking up her sophomore novel, Her Fearful Symmetry, which tells the story of two (almost) identical twins who inherit a London flat haunted by their aunt’s ghost. No, seriously. Unfortunately this book isn’t nearly as good, mainly because it tosses about as much drama, weird plot twists, and inexplicable behavior as a daytime soap opera.

To be fair, The Time Traveller’s Wife did a lot of this as well. The marriage on display in that book is maudlin and overwraught, with gushing emotions and breathless dialog more suited to a romance novel. But I enjoyed The Time Traveller’s Wife DESPITE all that, because Neffiniger did such an awesome job twisting the time travel threads around the lives of these people. But Her Fearful Symmetry has no such hook, and what we’re mostly left with is some heavy handed themes about freedom and identity. Julie and Valentina, the two aforementioned twins in their early twenties, move from America to London to fulfil the inheratance requirements of their aunt’s will. Their aunt and mother happen to also be identical twins, but are estranged for some reason that’s not revealed until late in the book, by which point it’s actually both hysterically stupid and contrived. Their aunt’s ghost is haunting the apartment where the twins live, and they are also visited by their aunt’s long-time lover Robert, who lives downstairs. In a particularly icky plot line, Robert falls for Valentina, which is a little skeezy when you think about the substantial age difference, really skeezy when you consider that Robert and Valentina are for all intents and purposes uncle and niece by marriage, and super skeezy when it becomes apparent that Robert is only interested in her because she’s the spitting image of her aunt. Who, you know, is watching all this happen as a ghost. And encouraging it.

So yeah, it’s kind of crazy. I get the feeling that Niffeneger was trying to write some kind of romantic thriller, what with all the vulnerable girls, twins, coming of age, rocking the cradle, weird sex, and death. The plot reaches a climax with a series of decisions that no rational person –even an immature girl– would pursue, and which no reasonable adult would condone much less participate in. I actually thought that the author had done something mind blowing with this when it seemed that her characters had more nefarious intentions than we had thought, but she backs down from that twist in the next chapter. Niffeneger had a plot to wind, so there we went. Like I said, the rapid fire series of reveals, twists, and betrayals made me think that I was watching an episode of Guiding Light written by Stephen King.

So if I were to recommend one of Niffeneger’s books, it would still definitely be The Time Traveller’s Wife. It’s much better and has a better hook.

The Best of Dinosaur Comics 2003-2005 AD (subtitle: Your Whole Family is Made Out of Meat!) is a collection of a webcomic strips that by any reasonable analysis really should never have gotten to the point of having enough strips to be collected. Author Ryan North basically took six panels of generic dinosaur clip art and just changed the words to make a new comics every weekday. Not the pictures, just the words.

Here’s what he starts with every time he makes a new strip:

Then he just writes words. What’s amazing: he’s been doing this since 2003. What’s even more amazing than THAT is that Dinosaur Comics is totally, inexplicably awesome. You should at least check out a few strips at www.qwantz.com.

The strip features just three dinosaurs plus the occasional off-panel character like God or The Devil. The strip’s star is T-Rex, who is a force of pure id in that he’s constantly amazed by his own awesomeness, utterly enthusiastic about everything that involves him, and oblivious to the implications of his hijinks. Yet you can’t help liking T-Rex –even loving him– because while he’s a bit narcissistic, his zest for everything that crosses his fever-dream of a consciousness is contagious. He’s a bit like a more thoughtful and intelligent Homer Simpson. In one strip T-Rex may be expressing his irrational fear of cephalopods or how much he enjoys stomping on things, but in others he may be discussing philosophy, the etymology of obscure phrases, or novel applications of fields like economics, statistics, or literary criticism to problems your non-dinosaur brain never thought of.

T-Rex is joined by Dromiceiomimus and Utahraptor, who often act as his foils, but who just as often go along with his debates, discussions, and proclamations simply because doing so makes life more fun. You get the feeling that North is a really smart guy whose interests are far flung, and he is somehow able to use these six panels of clip art to talk about whatever thoughts happen to cross his mind. The strip is blessedly bereft of your typical pop culture or subculture references, instead opting to create its own weird amalgam of quasi-intellectual absurdity. The fact that North has been able to do so for so long and to make it so consistently entertaining is really astounding. Go to www.qwantz.com to see examples of what I’m talking about.

The Name of the Wind is the first in a planned trilogy of high fantasy novels by Patrick Rothfuss that follow the adventures of the improbably named Kvothe. At the beginning of the novel Kvothe is a young boy traveling with his minstrel parents and their trope. Ha ha, sorry, I meant “troop.” Bit of a Freudian slip there. Regardless, Kvothe soon finds himself homeless and scrounging to survive on the streets of a large city. The lad is gifted, though, so he weasels his way into University where he sets about learning magic. Only Rothfuss thinks he can trick us by calling it “sympathy” and talking about it like it’s a science, but we’re not fooled –it’s magic. Anyway, the bulk of the book follows Kvothe through his rapid but trecherous rise within the school’s student ranks. Also, there’s a girl.

I liked The Name of the Wind pretty well as pure entertainment and an example of the genre. It’s a little offsetting that Kvothe is a bit of a Mary Sue character, in that he’s super smart and mature beyond his years from the offset. He learns an entire language in a matter of hours, for example, and more than once he easily grasps advanced academic subjects for the sake of moving the plot along and letting Rothfuss engage in some quick world building. But in the end Kvothe is flawed enough to avoid falling into this trope entirely and he faces his share of genuine adversity. Most of the conflict in the book comes not from swordplay or spell slinging, but from the young student’s struggles against his poverty. He’s constantly living on the edge of destitution and scrambling to not only make ends meet, but save up enough to pay for next term’s University tuition. He works multiple jobs, borrows funds from a convivial but nonetheless dangerous moneylender, launches a career as an entertainer, and scrounges wherever he can. Kvothe is also a bit of a prig and despite his best intentions to make friends and influence people, he can’t help making enemies of a few people in positions to make his life difficult. This was a novel source of conflict for a high fantasy book. You’re used to seeing the youths in these books fight bandits and slay monsters, not pinch pennies and eat out of garbage cans. So if nothing else, it’s unlike other stuff in the genre and it’s very readable even if we do catch ourselves rolling our eyes at Kvothe’s improbable aptitudes.

And while we’re on the subject, don’t let anyone tell you that this book is “like Harry Potter, but for adults.” It’s nothing like Harry Potter except that they both feature young boys learning magic at a school. Past that, there’s nothing alike, neither in character, larger setting, or tone. The Name of the Wind isn’t exactly dark, but it’s not the imaginative, fanciful romp that the Harry Potter books are at their best. I also get the feeling that Kvothe isn’t going to stay at the University once subsequent books are released. And while we’re on the subject, if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t like the prospect of waiting years before a series is complete and available for reading, you may want to hold off on this one; as I mentioned, it’s only the first of a trilogy, and we all know that those have a habit of blooming into quartets, and then five or six book series, and then so on until the author finally dies. Yes, I’m looking at you, Robert Jordan and George R. R. Martin.

Still, Rothfuss is a snappy enough writer and an imaginitive world builder that I was able to look past Kvothe’s “I’m an orphan but I’m totally noble in spirit and can do anything really super effectively” pastiche. As a character he’s kind of “meh” but I’m hoping that Rothfuss moves past that in subsequent volumes. At any rate, I’m along for the ride if he can get them to me before the close of the next decade.

I’ve mentioned before how big a fan I am of the guys who make the Penny Arcade webcomic, so you can imagine that when the book tour promoting their new volume, The Splendid Magic of Penny Arcade, came to my hometown I went to see them. And it was a really fun event! They got up on stage for about an hour and a half, during which Mike (the artist) sketched on a computer that was projected in front of the crowd (80% of which were wearing black tee shirts, I’d estimate) while Jerry (the writer) ran a question and answer session. They really knew how to work a crowd and afterwords I was able to get my copy of the new book signed.

Speaking of which, the first thing you should probably know about The Splendid Magic of Penny Arcade (subtitled either “The 11 1/2 years anniversary edition” or “Nearly 12 years of bullshit” depending on if you look at the dust jacket or the actual hardcover) is that it’s not just another collection of the webcomic fixed in a paper medium. They have those for sale if that’s what you desire, or you can just go read the website for free. Rather, this new book is split evenly between reprints of favorite/relevant strips and big delicious blocks of text describing not just the comic, but the entire Penny Arcade enterprise. There’s a biographical recounting of how Mike and Jerry met and eventually got around to creating the comic, there’s articles about the Child’s Play charity they created, and there’s photos and stories about the Penny Arcade Expo that has quickly risen to claim the crown of “Best Public Expo For Nerds Who Like Gaming Ever.” There are even harrowing tales of how the PA guys ran afoul of the law, almost went out of business, and floundered at almost every step of the way. Almost all these pieces are written by the PA staff (most usually Mike, Jerry, or their business manager Robert Khoo), so while they’re not exactly impartial and obviously aim to leave you with the impression that Team PA is totally awesome, they do get you a lot of inside information and are surprisingly frank about things that the creators and their collaborators did flat out WRONG. So if you’re a fan of PA and are looking for a little more biographical information on everyone involved to date, the book should satisfy.

I should mention that despite all the words in the book, its graphical elements are also outstanding. Some of Mike’s best artwork is scattered throughout the book to give it the right flavor, and the layout and typography make the book a lot of fun to just flip through. Coupled with the brief nature of all the stories contained within, this makes it an ideal coffee table book of the kind that friends may just enjoy opening to any page and starting to peruse. I can’t guarantee what they’ll think of you afterwords, though.

I really liked Frank Herbert’s classic science fiction novel Dune when I first read it a few months ago –so much so that I named it one of the best books I read that year. But upon finally getting around to the sequel, Dune Messiah I’m pretty disappointed. It’s really boring.

Don’t get me wrong, I can see some of the impressive literary clockwork that Herbert assembles in the book. Where Dune told the story of Paul Muad’Dib’s rise to the Emperor, controller of the universe’s only source of the coveted super spice “melange,” and general badass dude, Messiah tells the story of his downfall. It also follows through on one of the more interesting concepts introduced in the first book: Paul’s spice-induced ability to foresee the eventual species-wide extinction of humans and the hard choices he has to make in order to steer history towards a lesser evil. Indeed, Messiah fast forwards to a point where Paul’s fanatic followers have propagated a holy war that has destroyed entire planets and left over 60 billion people dead in just a few years. By those measures, Paul is the worst monster history has ever created, yet he has to bear the mostly private burden of knowing that he’s killing all those people to save the race as a whole while simultaneously trying to outmaneuver his political opponents and crafty assassins. Angst!

The problem I have with Messiah is that it suffers acutely from a kind of talking head syndrome. It’s not until the back sixth or so of the book that anything interesting happens. Dune had sword fights, skirmishes, Paul and his mother tromping around the deadly desert of Arakis meeting and learning about the Fremen, and all other kinds of adventures. Messiah devotes literally dozens of pages at a time to sitting in a room listening to conspirators talk to each other. And then talking about what the talking means. And then thinking about what the talking about the talking means. It’s terrible and jarring to see how Herbert has switched gears so abruptly from fascinating adventure and world building to stark exposition and naval gazing.

Not that some of the ideas aren’t interesting. The way that Paul must grapple with his precognition and how he has to grasp at things to try and leave humanity on the path to survival in the wake of his inevitable fall is a complex and fascinating idea, for one. And I liked the idea of how his strengths are the things that ultimately do him in –sometimes literally. It’s just that I wish Herbert had found ways to make this story less tedious in its execution.

Is the third book any better? I’m on the fence at this point.

Men at Arms is Terry Pratchett’s fifteenth …woah, really? This is the fifteenth Discwordld book? And I’m not even HALFWAY done with the series yet? And he’s still writing them? That’s AWESOME!

Anyway, in Men at Arms returns to the metropolis of Ank-Morpork, specifically the Night Watch charged with preventing suicides, such as suicide by strolling through the wrong part of town or saying the wrong thing to any of its inhabitants. Captain Samuel Vimes is relegated mostly a B-story for most of the novel, allowing Pratchett to focus more on the new recruits foisted on the Watch by the city’s new affirmative action. But since on the Disc Black and White live in harmony on account of their ganging up on Green, the race relations here have more to do with dwarfs, trolls, and the undead being added to the Watch’s ranks. Pratchett has a ton of fun with this concept, playing both sides by skewering the idea of affirmative action in employment while simultaneously lampooning people who are biased against other races without even really being aware of it.

Of course, that’s not all. There’s also some fun stuff about detective novels, investigative police dramas (Corporal Carrot of the Watch does a great Columbo impersonation), charismatic leadership, gun control, clowns, and the domestication of dogs. Speaking of which, Men at Arms gets bonus points for including Gaspode the Wonder Dog, the talking mongrel who only survives his many diseases (including Lickey End, which you only get if you’re a pregnant sheep) because “the little buggers are too busy fighting among themselves.”

All in all, another great book in one of my favorite settings with some of my favorite characters. Pratchett really shows that he’s more than a simple satirist, he’s actually a good writer capable of including characters that are subtle and nuanced while still standing in as proxies for larger concepts that the author wants to lampoon. I don’t imagine that it’s easy to do something like that.

With my tepid reaction to recent Stephen King books like Just After Sunset, Duma Key, Cell, and Lisey’s Story, I was kind of prepared to be vaguely disappointed by Under the Dome. I wasn’t. In fact, it’s one of my favorite King books to date, because it harkens back to a lot of what I loved about his earlier work. It also does some stuff that’s new for King.

This epic novel (the print version is over 1,000 pages long while the audiobook version took me 35.5 total hours to listen to) tells the sad tale of what happened when the town of Chester’s Mill is suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an inexplicable, dome-shaped force field. There’s relatively little supernatural or sci-fi to the story beyond that, as what King seems really interested in is examining how the social fabric of a small town ripples, strains, and eventually tears when Chester’s Mill becomes insular to an extreme. At the center of society’s startlingly rapid deterioration is the opportunistic and sociopathic politician James “Big Jim” Rennie, a town Selectman and –I kid you not– used car dealer. Big Jim takes “dome day” as an opportunity to seize and consolidate power in Chester’s Mill, building a ruthless police force and deftly manipulating public opinion in his favor. Opposing Rennie is Dale “Barbie” Barbera, a drifter and ex-Army Captain who had worn out his welcome in town but becomes trapped there by the dome. Barbie and his cohorts do their best to counter Rennie’s machinations, but they have to swim against the tide of apocalyptic hysteria and mob mentality created by the dome disaster. That and the fact that things seem to break Big Jim’s way at every turn.

The concept of a small Main town alienated from the rest of the world and preyed upon by sinister forces is one that King has worked extensively with before. It’s the central theme of both Needful Things and Storm of the Century, plus it shows up in other works like The Tommyknockers, and Desperation/The Regulators. But King explores the concept a lot more thoroughly and a lot more convincingly in Under the Dome, if for no other reason that he shows how the people of Chester’s Mill are responsible for their own doom moreso than the dome. The dome is just there. It’s the people, and the mob they form, that freaks the hell out and turns to Jim Rennie for help. It’s the people who blindly believes in Big Jim to the point of savaging each other and tolerating his abuse “for the good of the town.” The town cracks along the fault lines of human nature, and with Jim Rennie in charge things get really bad astonishingly quickly.

Likewise, King does a pretty good job of showing how the voices of reason, like newspaper owner Julia Shumway and physician’s assistant Rusty Everett, have their work cut out for them. And in the last few chapters of the book everything goes to hell (as it always does in King’s stories) and people are fighting just to stay alive, sometimes without success, in a poisonous and polluted environment. This part was pretty effectively done and evoked genuine despair in me.

You may be thinking, “Hrmm. That makes me think of Iraq. And global climate change. And the Bush administration.” To which I would say, “Yep, pretty much.” Under The Dome is clearly King’s most nakedly political (or allegorical, if you prefer) work. Big Jim Rennie and his easily manipulated First Selectman Andy Sanders are CLEARLY stand-ins for Dick Cheney and George Bush, respectively. The rapid deterioration of the air and weather inside the dome is CLEARLY global warming writ small. The town’s rapidly expanded and sadistic police force CLEARLY embodies the deterioration of civil liberties in the last decade. This is not subtle stuff, people, and you wouldn’t have to hunt very far to find King going on record with it. But at the same time it clicked for me, and Under the Dome becomes not only King’s most exciting book in a while (it has an amazingly peppy pace for such a long work with a whole town’s worth of characters) but also perhaps his most insightful and relevant examination of human nature.

The full title here is Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness, and between them the two authors, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, can claim a substantial amount of expertise in psychology, economics, law, and public policy. The stated goal of the book is to take lessons from these four areas and squish them into a concept that the authors dub “libertarian paternalism.” The idea is that as libertarians the two believe in free information and free choice in all things public and private, but as students of behavioral economics and psychology they know that most people, most of the time, simply make bad decisions on account of our human nature. This is a book about how to fix that. Or at least improve things relative to the status quo.

Specifically, Thaler and Sunstein propose a series of “nudges” that spring from the way that choices are presented, framed, and informed. Early on they give the example of Carolyn, a fictional director of food services for a public school. Carlyn wants the students at her school to eat healthy, but she has limited control over menus so she can’t just ban unhealthy food –nor does she necessarily think she should. But what she can do is nudge children into making healthier choices by changing how food is presented and what information kids are given about their choices. Putting carrots at eye level while chips are relegated to the bottom shelf, for example, would translate to more carrots being eaten. Or including milk with the value meal by default, even if kids can request to substitute soda for free. It’s not a matter of forcing (read: legislating) students to eat their damn carrots, but rather creating what the authors call a helpful choice architecture that encourages the students to make better decisions on their own by side stepping (or even capitalizing on) well known foibles in human decision-making.

After a few introductory chapters to explore these foibles (think anchoring, framing, availability heuristic, loss aversion, status quo bias, etc.), Thaler and Sunstein run with the idea by showing how to create choice architectures that favor their libertarian paternalism approach to public policy and personal choices in everyday life. Specifically, they show how to nudge people into saving more money for retirement, investing money better, choosing a better prescription drug plan, increasing organ donation, protecting the environment, choosing the right school for their kids, and more. I have to admit that I enjoyed the early chapters on psychology and behavioral economics more than the later chapters, which became more nakedly political, but there are a lot of really solid ideas in here, even if they are of varying levels of practicality.

The authors also have a great style. They keep things friendly, funny, and engaging, with the occasional vignette, figure, or photograph to illustrate their points as needed. I was rarely bored, even when talk turned to traditionally tiresome subjects like 401(k) savings, prescription drug plans, and fuel economy. And the book is full of thoughtful insights on how human psychology plays into everyday decisions and, more importantly, how to avoid those kinks in the human brain that often lead to poor decisions about things that really matter.