Landscapes

The Digital SLR Expert:  Landscapes /Tom Mackie, William Neill, David Noton, Darwin Wiggett, and Tony Worobiec, Cincinnati: David and Charles, 2008 (144 p.)

This is the fourth photography book that I have reviewed as part of the Missouri Book Challenge.  When I read the introduction my initial thought was “Finally, a book by Canon shooters,” since the other three books were by Nikon shooters.  I also thought that this book should be a fairly quick read since it was only 144 pages and about 2/3 of the book was taken up by photographs.

I was somewhat disappointed on both counts.  First, once I had read the introductory materials, there was little reference to photography gear other than in the technical notes accompanying each of the photos.  Second, while the material presented in the book was fairly complete, each set of two-three pages addressed an individual topic or technique and there was little or no segue between these groupings.  As a result, I found it difficult to read more than five or six pages at any one sitting.  This was further complicated by the extremely small font used throughout the book (younger readers may not find this problematic but my eyes just aren’t what they used to be J).

While I found the overall body of the book difficult to follow, there were small hint blocks scattered throughout the text which many will find helpful.  The book itself is divided into five chapters with one chapter written by each of the authors so you do get different perspectives as you move from chapter to chapter but it might have been more useful had the views of two authors been shared in each of the chapters.

Many of the sections include tips on how to use PhotoShop.  The unfortunate thing is that because the book was published in 2008 these techniques are geared toward PhotoShop 3.  The same techniques are possible in PhotoShop CS5, and presumably in 4, it may take some searching to locate the specific tools or techniques referenced.

After struggling through this book, I would probably give it 2½ to 3 stars of 5.  It is definitely not a book for a beginning landscape photographer.

Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy / John le Carré. New York: Alred A. Knopf, 1974 (p. 355)

"Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy by John le Carré is an inaction-packed suspense novel about a high-level mole in British intelligence and one man's mission to uncover the traitor and take him down.

The heart of the novel is more about the men in control of British intelligence during this period. The men who were "trained to empire, trained to rule the waves," but found it "all gone. All taken away." That's the interesting part of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. How did England adapt to its new place in the world? What was the realization like for the English as they saw their power diminish?"

Read the entire review here.

D. C. Dead

D. C. Dead/Stuart Woods, New York:  Putnam Adult, 2011 (304 p.)

I finished this book in mid-January but have held off writing a review because of really mixed feelings about the book.  In my mind this is not one of Stuart Woods’ stronger works but still it does have some good points.

D. C. Dead is identified as part of the Stone Barrington series written by Woods but it could just as easily have fit in one or two of his other series.  While Barrington, a New York attorney, and his best friend, Detective Lieutenant Dino Bacchetti, appear throughout the book their roles at time seem almost minor.  They are simply included but aren’t making a strong contribution to the story line.  With this in mind, hard core Woods fans may find the book somewhat disappointing.  On the other hand, for the casual reader this book is an easy, quick read requiring minimal investment.

As a mystery, I found the book less appealing.  First, the story line seemed highly implausible.  With access to a wide variety of law enforcement and other government agencies it seems unlikely that the President would call in a New York attorney and detective to investigate a murder at the White House.  Second, unlike some of Woods’ other mysteries, I had identified the killer by the time I was about half way through the book.  My only reason for continuing to read was that I had not determined the motive.

A minor problem for me with all of the Stone Barrington series is a personal perception that I developed the first time I was introduced to Detective Bacchetti.  For whatever reason, I immediately identified him with Paul Guilfoyle (Detective Jim Brass on the television series C.S.I).  With this in mind, I often find other scenarios less plausible.

Unlike some other reviewers, I’m not ready to give up on Woods and Stone Barrington – at least not yet.  But I really hope that future volumes will return to the stronger writing seen in both the Stone Barrington series and the Holli Barker series.

The Rope

The Rope /Nevada Barr, New York: Minotaur Books, 2012 (357 p.)

By my count this is the seventeenth book in Barr’s Anna Pigeon series.  For some, this should have been the first book since it introduces the reader to how and why Anna Pigeon came to work for the National Park Service and decided to become a full-time park ranger.

Like most of Barr’s books, The Rope combines mystery with the beauty of our National Parks and those who have travelled to the parks where the stories are based will recognize both the geography and many of the specific locations that Barr includes.  In this book, Anna has abandoned her life in New York City and moved to the Glen Canyon/Lake Powell area where she is serving as a part-time summer worker.  While initially living in a shell of self-imposed seclusion, after her life is threatened Anna is forced to become more open and develop friendships with those who will help find the culprits.

I have enjoyed most of the Barr books that I have read, including this one but I agree with others who have indicated that this book is a bit dark when compared with others in the Anna Pigeon series.  It seems like Barr must be going through a change in her writing style because the other recent work of hers that I’ve read, 13 ½ was extremely dark.  Hopefully Barr will move back to the more traditional story lines if she continues with the Anna Pigeon series.

Even though the book is a bit lengthy and dark, I would still recommend it, particularly to those who have followed Anna Pigeon’s National Park Service work at other parks around the U. S.

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die / Chip and Dan Heath. New York: Random House, 2007 (p. 323)

"How do ideas stick in our minds? What is it about those ideas that makes them so hard to shake? In Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, Chip and Dan Heath answer these questions and more in a way that's entertaining and easy to understand.

In the introduction the Heath brothers lay out the keys to making ideas stick. Ideas need to be simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional, and contain a story. Each chapter that follows focuses on one of those topics."

Read the complete review at my blog.

Reamde by Neal Stephenson

Reamde  / Neal Stephenson.  William Morrow Press, 2011. (1056 p.)

CALL #   PS3569.T445 R43 2011

It’s been close to a decade since I’ve read a Neal Stephenson novel, so when I picked up Reamde I expected something tech-heavy, gritty, and decidedly cerebral. What I found was still recognizable as a Stephenson novel – it’s smart and moves between the virtual and ‘real’ worlds much like Snow Crash—but with characters complex and interesting enough to engage the reader for just over a thousand pages. The fast paced narrative winds together an uber-wealthy video game designer (and former drug mule), teenage Chinese hackers, an M16 operative, a Welsh-born Muslim-convert terrorist, and, among others, an East African refugee adopted by a gun-loving anti-government family in Idaho. Where many writers of stories as long as this one get mired in detail, Stephenson’s newest novel is engaging enough that I lugged it around with me rather than forego the chance to read a few extra pages here and there. The ability to make such a madcap adventure nearly credible is the mark of a master author.



Middlesex / Jeffrey Eugenides. New York: Picador, 2007 (544 p.)

"Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides reminds me of a gilded mirror with intricate details swirled along the frame. The novel is a mixture of family history, coming of age, and gender identity. The mirror metaphor works, because the narrator, Callie/Cal Stephanides, spends so much time exploring who s/he is. That's a difficult enough question for most teenagers and adults, but how does that question change when a person's body seems to mislead them? While the narrator focuses on their identity, the novel suffers at times by diverging into the past and getting lost in details. It's obvious Eugenides loves language, but it comes at a cost in terms of rhythm and pace."

If you'd like to read the complete review, please visit my blog.

Freedom / Jonathon Franzen. New York: Picador, 2011 (608 p.)

"Freedom is a wonderfully rich novel. The characters are complex, interesting, and the writing is superb. This book is definitely one to read."

Read the complete review at my blog.

Wildlife Photography: From Snapshots to Great Shots

Wildlife Photography:  From Snapshots to Great Shots/Laurie Excell, Berkeley:  Peachpit Press, 2012 (229 p.)

This is the second book in the series “From Snapshots to Great Shots” series by Laurie Excell.  I found the information here to be in more detail than her book on Composition (reviewed February 1) and believe that this book will appeal to a wider, although more specialized, audience.  This book also serves as a good companion volume to Moose Peterson’s Captured (reviewed February 16).  While Peterson’s book is written in a more folksy manner, Excell’s book is more of a “how-to” volume and, being much shorter, is also a quicker read. 

Excell considers Peterson to be one of her mentors so you will see many parallels between their books with regard to equipment, locations, etc., but Excell does not put as much emphasis on using photography as a component of wildlife studies.  Instead, she focuses more on photography rather than projects surrounding the photography. 

As in her other book, Composition, each chapter contains practical exercises to help photographers develop or fine tune their skills.   Excell closes this book with information on two specific wildlife photography excursions, photographing bears in Alaska and photographing birds in Texas.  I found these two chapters were easy to read and gave photographers a better idea of what to expect should they decide to take one of these trips.

Peachpit Press rates this book as a “Beginner” level volume which is probably accurate although I believe it offers useful information to the more experienced photographer as well.  My only lingering question is whether I would recommend that a photographer read this book before or after Peterson’s Captured.

How It All Began / Penelope Lively. London: Peguin Books. 2012. (247 p.)

This latest book by Penelope Lively was highly rated by the NY Times. It was my first Lively read and she was a Booker Prize winner in 1987 for Tiger Moon. Her latest novel centers around the lives of eight characters whose emotional, intellectual, and/or physical lives are intertwined in some fashion. This work is beautifully crafted. I do appreciate a story which is about the lives of people whose ages span middle years to elderly. However, for this reader the character development and story lines were a bit too restrained. How It All Began lacks a visceral quality that I find necessary to a good read. Having said this, I am still willing to go back to some of her earlier works. Read How It All Began yourself and see what you think.

The Truth about Forever / Sarah Dessen. New York: Puffin, 2004. (374 p.)

Macy Queen is not looking forward to her summer. Her "perfect" boyfriend wants to take a break while he is off at brain camp. She is stuck working at the local library circulation desk with two judgmental classmates. Her mother won't take vacation from her 24/7 real estate job. All this happens in the wake of her father's unexpected death.

Her summer quickly changes with the chance to work at Wish, a disorganized local catering company with a motley crew of characters, and her new friendship with the mysterious local artist Wes.

I read a lot of young adults books. This book was a welcome escape to one summer with Macy and her new friends.

Captured: Lessons from Behind the Lens

Captured:  Lessons from Behind the Lens of a Legendary Wildlife Photographer/B. Moose Peterson, Berkeley:  New Riders, 2010 (396 p.)

Having heard anecdotal stories about Moose Peterson and looking at the title of this book, I approached it with some trepidation.  I wasn’t sure whether this was going to be a chest pounding treatise on how “good” Peterson’s photography is or a book so technical that I would put it on the shelf after reading the first chapter.  After reading it from cover to cover, I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised with the content and would recommend the book to most wildlife photographers.

There are some concerns with the book so let’s get those out of the way first:

1)      If you are looking for a step-by-step instruction book, this is not it.  Technical details and “rules” are not the emphasis of this book.  Some material also assumes some basic knowledge which may make the book less than optimal for a beginning wildlife photographer.

2)      The book contains lots of photos but is printed on a matte paper which, for some, detracts from the photo quality.  Personally I did not find this to be a problem because I purchased the book for content, not to use as a coffee table book

3)      Peterson is a Nikon shooter so if you use equipment from another manufacturer some of the details will need to be translated into what fits your equipment.  Again, I did not find this to be problematic since equipment options from Nikon and Canon are similar.  At the same time, several pages are devoted to screen shots of Nikon menus which are not useful to people who do not use Nikon equipment.

Having that out of the way, I found about 90% of this book to be highly enjoyable.  Peterson is at his best when telling stories of projects he has worked on and describing events and the environment.  Interspersed with these folksy tales are bits of technical wisdom that wildlife photographers may find highly useful (I have already made a couple of changes based on ideas he presented).  Where the book does not shine is when he attempts to go deep into theory or technology.  Luckily, Peterson warns you about this in the text.

While the book is long (396 pages, not the 312 shown on Amazon’s site), there are few, if any, pages without one or more photos.  Peterson uses these photos to compare “good” with “better”.  While admitting to not deleting “bad” photos, Peterson also says you will never see the “bad”.  These photos also make this book one that you can pick up and browse for enjoyment without reading a word of text other than the photo captions.

As I said earlier, I would recommend this book to almost anyone interested in wildlife photography.  My only caveat would be that the beginner looking for a “how to” guide may be disappointed.

I wanted to like it... it just seemed so good but it wasn't

IQ84 by Murakami, Haruki; Rubin, Jay (Translator); Gabriel, Philip (Translator), Knopf; First Edition edition (October 25, 2011)

I want to like IQ84. It is chilling and mysterious. There is a lady assassin in love with a man who is a mathematician by day and a fiction writer by night. There are twists and turns of a parallel universe which keep the lovers apart. It has rightful vengeance and a clever detective. But for me, it ended with a fizzle of huhs.

The two main characters, Aomame the assassin and Tengo the writer/mathematician alternate narrating the details of a their long lost love and trying to find each other in a parallel universe by a religious cult and little three centimeter people who channel back and forth between worlds through passageways of dead dogs and lambs. Huh? Make sense yet? No, and unfortunately the book doesn’t try to make sense out of all the fantastical elements that are spun into the plot. And, that is too bad because these odd mystifying elements are, satisfyingly curious. In the beginning, you eagerly follow along the fantastic plot that strings fascinating vignettes into one large convoluted plot web. Who and what are these little people and why did they snatch away a zombie girl from a rescue house? Who is the ugly detective with looks so gross and that he can’t risk undercover work because everyone remembers his ugliness. How can the religious cult leader’s runaway daughter be a conduit for the star crossed lovers? Or, is she human or just a zombie copy of what she was. Lost yet? Well, now you know how I felt at the end of the book- puzzled and annoyed at reading 1,200 pages of murky plotting.

Anyway, I did love the small vignettes of the different characters lives: Aomome, the diligent assassin working to right the wrongs of the world… Tengo’s weekly visit to his father’s deathbed in a cat filled town and many more few page scenes that kept me curious. But in the end, all the terrific scenes just sputtered out.

Reviewer’s note—IQ84 is the first book I’ve read by Haruki Murakami and I’ve been told that some of his other works are better, much better.

Letters from a Cat / H.H. (Helen Hunt Jackson)

Letters from a Cat: Published by Her Mistress for the Benefit of All Cats and the Amusement of Little Children/ H.H. (Helen Hunt Jackson). Boston: Roberts Brothers 1880. (89 p.)

I can't resist a book written from the animal's point of view. If the animal tells the story, I figure he's unlikely to die in the last few pages. But the introduction of Letters from a Cat is written from a human's perspective, and unfortunately it reveals the sad post script to the cat's letters.

Except for the introduction, Letters from a Cat is exactly that: Letters from a cat to her child guardian who on a trip with her father. The voice of the cat, Pussy, is endearing in its Victorian formality. Through her cat's eyes, Pussy is a keen observer of the human animals around her.

The White Queen

The White Queen / Philippa Gregory. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009. (464 p.)

To be completely honest, I don't usually like books by Philippa Gregory.  She takes a little too much authorial license with historical fact for my taste, though she does admit she's not a historian and doesn't go digging to make sure that she gets every detail correct.  However, I was surprisingly amused by The White Queen.  Partially, this is because I know little of the time period, and partly because, when it comes down to it, Gregory is a good writer.

This is the first of two books (so far) of the Lancaster/York wars for the English throne in the mid 1400s.  The White Queen is Elizabeth Grey (a Lancaster supporter), who weds the new York king, Edward IV, and the story is told from Elizabeth's point of view.   This novel was a fairly quick read, but in a good way.  If you like British historical fiction, I would recommend you read The White Queen.

The Secret History/Donna Tartt, New York: Vintage Books, 1992 (559 p.)

 Five college students at a fictitious small liberal arts college in Massachusetts in the 1980s fall under the spell of a charismatic classics professor. (A suspension of one's disbelief for sure!) The students form their own little society of Greek enthusiasts and engage in some unusual rituals. The plot is really rather simple but the character development is complex and extraordinarily well developed. Myself, I do not think it qualifies as a psychological thriller though it is definitely a morality tale. This said the obsessional qualities of the characters and their rich inner lives makes for a good read.

Covert Warriors/ W.E.B. Griffin and William E. Butterworth IV

Covert Warriors/ W.E.B. Griffin and William E. Butterworth IV. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, c2011 (372 p.)

Covert Warriors is the seventh in Griffin’s Presidential Agent series and the second co-written with his son, Butterworth.  This series focuses on a group of “special operators” from the military, the CIA, and the FBI, along with two Russian defectors (also former espionage agents) and a few civilians under the leadership of Retired Lieutenant Colonel Charlie Castillo.  The story begins with a relatively isolated kidnapping which would present few challenges for Castillo’s group and then proceeds to get more complex as Castillo seems to have as many enemies in the U.S. government as he does in other quarters.  The situation even becomes more complex as questions arise about the mental stability of the President.  Unfortunately none of these threads seem to get Griffin’s full attention and much of the action present in Griffin’s earlier books is missing here.  In the end, there are almost as many questions as there are answers.  For the hardcore Griffin fan, this book is okay, if not spectacular.  For new readers, I would recommend any of the books in Griffin’s Brotherhood of War series over this book. Bill Fryman

Creative Landscapes: Digital Photography Tips and Techniques

FRIDAY,  FEBRUARY 3, 2012

Creative Landscapes: Digital Photography Tips and Techniques/ Harold Davis. Indianapolis: Wiley Publishing, Inc., c2011 (240 p.)

I finished Davis’ book with mixed feelings.  The book contains a great deal of information for all levels of photographers.  It also contains examples on almost every page along with lens and exposure information and either a description of the subject, a description of technique, or both.  Unfortunately, because of the wealth of photos I found myself wanting to go back and forth between text and descriptions and photos which made keeping focus difficult.  The first third of the book concentrates more on Davis’ landscape philosophy and the final part of the book focuses more on technique.  Probably not the best book for the point-and-shoot or smart phone photographer, I would recommend this book to SLR and medium format photographers with an interest in landscape photography. Bill Fryman

The Night Circus

The Night Circus / Erin Morgenstern. New York: Doubleday, 2011 (387 p.)

Imagine a circus that travels the globe. It arrives unannounced and only opens its gates at night. But when you go in, you're greeted with tents filled with magic and mystery. Welcome to the Night Circus. While the plot centers on a strange competition between two magicians, the book's strength lies in the author's skillful and colorful description of the circus, its performers, and magical tents.

The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games/ Suzanne Collins. New York : Scholastic Press, 2008. (374 p.)

I just finished reading The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. The Hunger Games is an annual televised event in the dystopian country of Panem. In these games, adolescents compete in a fight to the death. It is the ultimate reality show except the “reality” is manipulated by the Gamekeepers to keep the event, which lasts several weeks, exciting to viewers. So really this reality show is not much different from The Bachelor or American Idol; it’s just that the stakes are higher. In this bleak world, even the glimmers of hope are tainted, but the hopelessness of the story is simultaneously compelling and repellent.

Composition:  From Snapshots to Great Shots/ Laurie Excell. Berkeley: Peachpit Press, c2011, Simon and Schuster, c1991 (251 p.)

For the beginning digital photographer Excell covers the full spectrum of composition from equipment selection to patterns to spatial relationships.  Her work is complemented by chapters contributed by four other photographers focusing on specific subjects like black and white photography and sports.  For the more advanced photographer, the book serves as a refresher on skills that are sometimes overlooked in the rush to get that “magic photo”.  The chapters also include practical exercises that can be used to further reinforce the materials included in the book.  I would recommend this book to all but the most experienced photographer. Bill Fryman