Review – Stiff: The curious lives of human cadavers by Mary Roach

This review was originally posted on Goodreads.com and reviews.wheelerc.org on Sept. 9, 2014.

I wanted to like Stiff. I wanted Mary Roach to be an entertaining writer. Alas, she is not.

She’s judgmental and annoying. She writes too much about too little. She goes on long, pointless tangents.

Most damning of all (for me, as a journalist), are incongruities between what she’s written as either the truth or a semblance of the truth and the truth I’ve read from more credible authors. Meaning, she’s lying or being lazy or a combination of the two.

Once the first hole is poked in Roach’s credibility, I have no faith that her work is not riddled with holes.

At this point, I should put some caveats in my review: I am not easily grossed out. I’m a little bit morbid. While I do not deal with dead bodies extensively, I deal with death and the grieving on a regular basis as a cops and courts reporter for a newspaper.

This appears to be an issue for some reviewers. I did not find the book to be particularly gross.

Show me the money
First, my biggest problem with the book. Roach writes a little bit about the history of the body market, but not that much. When it comes to the modern body market, she writes, a costs $500. Who knows how much it sells for.

That’s it.

One single reference.

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Reno’s got film: This is Martin Bonner

I may begrudge Santa Fe a lot of things: the lack of a Costco (marinated artichoke hearts by the three quarts), the over-all expensiveness, the lack of decent things offered on Craigslist and the subsequent over-pricing of thrift stores and ridiculous costs of things offered. Everyone seems to think torn-up couches are worth hundreds of dollars. Thrift stores, especially Good Will, think that coffee makers that cost $8 new at Walmart are worth $12-15 used.

That and the old white people. Going through Trader Joe’s is always some kind of terrible gauntlet, yet, I love Trader Joe’s, the wine, the tahini sauce, the pita bread. The gin.

All those gripes aside, Santa Fe has a pretty incredible movie scene, especially for a town so small. Hell, even for a large town. One movie theater is situated inside the university, another is a “United Artists” inside of a mall, yet a third was revamped and now owned by George R. R. Martin, although the screen is smaller than many in-home projections. And there’s another, one I have yet to go to, is the Center for Contemporary Arts.

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About me

Landau in der Pfalz 1-16-2011 6

My name is Wheeler Cowperthwaite. I’m a graduate from the University of Nevada, Reno, with a bachelor’s in print journalism and political science.

I’m a journalist. A photographer. A writer.
Mensch.

I’m a journalist and a reporter at the Patriot Ledger in Quincy, Massachusetts. I’m the former cops and courts reporter (official title: staff writer) for the Rio Grande SUN in Española, New Mexico.

I take photos. Most are on Flickr. They’re also featured in the newspaper I work for. Almost all of the photos I don’t take for work are licensed under a Creative Commons attribution/share-alike license. Feel free to use them with attribution.

I have a photography portfolio. I have a photo blog, updated daily.

I write food columns and make videos about cooking. I write a blog about food, and other things, called “Put some cilantro on it!“

Feel free to contact me at cowperthwaite@gmail.com or follow me on twitter, @WheelerReporter.

I speak German (passable fluency) and have an affinity for both the signature East German mustard, Bautz’ner Senf (mittlescharf,) and for (dry) German wine.

Review – Project Pope by Clifford D. Simak

This review was originally posted on Goodreads.com and reviews.wheelerc.org on Sept. 5, 2014.

Project Pope, while enjoyable, plods all the way to its final moments, which plods itself.

Robots are looking for the gods, or God, and have a computer to do the searching. A couple of humans bumble in, have some adventures, there’s some intrigue. Unfortunately, a good portion of the book is padding. Entertaining padding, but padding nevertheless.

On Goodreads

Review – Madame Picasso by Anne Girard

This review was originally posted on Goodreads.com and reviews.wheelerc.org on March 25, 2015.

Madame Picasso is . . . Cute. It’s enjoyable. It is not deep. It does not leave a lasting impression.

It is well written and a quick read but it does not rise above the mediocre. I do not doubt it was never meant to rise above the mediocre.

Since it seems necessary for a plot synopsis you, the reader, has already read: here you go. Picasso’s one true love, Eva Gouel, from her first time in Paris to her untimely death.

The book’s main problem is its length. It does not need to be 400 pages, short as those pages are. In the middle, it starts to drag quite a bit.

This book was received, free of charge, from the Goodreads First Reads program.
All quotes are taken from an advance uncorrected proof of the book and may, or may not, reflect the final commercial edition.

On Goodreads

Review – Ghouls Rush In by H. P. Mallroy

This review was originally posted on Goodreads.com and reviews.wheelerc.org on Sept. 4 2014.

With a name like H. P. Mallroy, with both her first and middle names obfuscated, one would think she would at least try to live up to the paranormal credentials she is, admittedly, inadvertently throwing out to the world.

Alas, alas, alas, she does not. Rather, she offers up a repetitive, lackluster and ultimately boring romance that isn’t really a romance, but more a story of never-quenched lust dressed up as romance.

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Review – Full Measure by T. Jefferson Parker

This review was originally posted on Goodreads.com and reviews.wheelerc.org on Sept. 4, 2014.

Full measure is the story of a vet who comes back from one of our most recent wars, to his quaint California town, to his father’s avocado farm and his mentally off brother. The novel moves at a quick enough pace, although it has a woefully unethical and unrealistic local-journalist love interest. (Being a small-town newspaper reporter myself, I find the actions the female love interest takes to be: 1. deplorable 2. highly unethical)

(I also find her living situation to be highly unrealistic, especially in California. Without familial connections or inheritance, reporters don’t own nice things and don’t live in nice houses by themselves, especially in California, of all places. Suspension of disbelief: entirely shattered. Just unrealistic.)

The end quite bothered me. I wasn’t sure if the author intended it to be ironic or not. I really hope he did mean a big dose of irony, of the survivors being the true monsters, because that’s what it looks like upon the last reflection.

Without getting into too much detail, the author sadly conflates and demonizes more libertarian movements with the white supremacist (fascist) movement, which seems to do a disservice to everyone. On the flip side, I learned in some places, there is no open carry.

My western naivety showing through. The other reason I left the book unsettled was the trope use of the main character’s brother. He felt far too hollow, felt like far too much of a caricature. And, his voice was incredibly annoying to read.

 

This book was received, free of charge, from the Goodreads First Reads program. All quotes are taken from an “advanced reader’s edition” (ARC) of the book and may, or may not, reflect the final commercial edition.

On Goodreads

Review – A History of Stone and Steel by Christopher Fisher

This review was originally posted on Goodreads.com and reviews.wheelerc.org on Sept. 4, 2014.

A History of Stone and Steel is hard. It comes from a place of hardness, as does its main character, Paul Keppel, which contrasts with his chosen path of getting a history doctorate.

The book has a single flaw which bumped it down one star and almost bumped it down too. Sudden, allegedly divine, intervention into the affairs of men, at the end of the book.

It made no sense for me to suddenly need to suspend my disbelief during the last 20 pages. Although something like this had previously been hinted it, it was just that: hints from a crazy religious man. To have the divine intervention, that was just stupid. It ruined the reading experience.

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Review – The Night Searchers by Marcia Muller

This review was originally posted on Goodreads.com and reviews.wheelerc.org on Aug. 25, 2014.

I don’t normally subscribe to the Marxist camp of literary theory, but this mystery novel grated on my sensibilities until finally, after I finished it, the grating turned into a salient realization:

The Night Searchers is a screed, beckoning the top 10 percent to piss on the bottom 10 percent. The wealthy to lord their wealth and privilege over the poor. Not the super-wealthy, just the normal-wealthy.

I realize this is a vulgar thing to write, but it is an unfortunately true approximation of the book, its themes, its characters, its setting, etc.

We have Mrs. Sharon McCone, private detective, living in San Francisco and married to a man who runs some sort of similar agency.

Both are filthy, stinking rich. Multiple houses in multiple locations. Fancy sports cars. One house in San Francisco, with its bloated rents pushed higher by the likes of McCone. Two other houses, sitting unused, unneeded by them. They have the privilege to waste. (The reader, I suppose, is supposed to laude these marks of the main character’s wealth.)

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Review – On the far side, there’s a boy by Paula Coston

This review was originally posted on Goodreads.com and reviews.wheelerc.org on June 27, 2014.

According to the book blurb, this is an “exotic fable for anyone who has ever longed to have, or adopt, a child.”

It is more accurate to understand, this is a book about a pedophile who desperately wants a Sri Lankan boy.

I have no idea if the author was entirely conscious, or conscious at all, of how strongly this theme permeates, then pulsates, through the book. I doubt she was much aware.

This pedophiliac desire of the main character/narrator is masked as the aforementioned longing to have a child of one’s own.

When one reads the text, the desire is clear. This is not the desire to have a child. This is the desire to have a child to have sexual relations with. Specifically, a boy. It’s creepy. Reverse the gender rules and one would not even hesitate to cast stones or see the pedophilia for what it is.

Make it end
The book is bad for a variety of reasons. I will admit, Paula Coston is not a terrible writer. Her prose is palatable, just, her content is not.

At 374 pages, the book goes on and on and on without any, actual, discernible point. I wish Coston’s editor, assuming she had one, would have stepped in and asked her to tighten the book up. There are so many scenes that have no discernible point. So many pointless plotlines. So much pointless writing.

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