Reader’s Diary

Rick Steber and Shell Taylor

Two young office workers, Shell Taylor and Jeff Pope, left New York City in a canoe in April, 1936. In August, 1937, they arrived in Nome, Alaska after paddling, sailing, and portaging 7865 miles. This book is a fascinating account of their trip.

Shell Taylor was an early riser, a hard charger; Jeff Pope a laid-back late sleeper. Their difference lead to tensions which once erupted in a drunken fist fight, nevertheless they stuck it out together for the duration of their incredible odyssey.

Written 50 years after the fact, the book is a bit uneven. There’s a lot of detail about the start of the trip and their wintering over in the Northwest Territories, but relatively little about their trip down the Mackenzie and Yukon rivers. Nevertheless it’s a good travel book and a great account of the North when it was still vary much a frontier.

Richard Herman

This would be Exhibit A in a coroner’s inquest into the death of the techno-thriller. A bunch of characters recycled from the author’s earlier books get in an improbable situation. Combat ensues.

The fictional Iraqi attack on Saudi Arabia is unbelievable, but a necessary diversion of US military might so that Herman can contrive to isolate an A-10 squadron in Malaysia, which is being attacked by the Chinese. There is some fighting. Nearly everybody survives. This is unfortunate because it means Herman can bring them back again in his next book.

Improbability is forgivable in escapist genre fiction, but boring the reader is not; “The Last Phoenix” is a waste of time.

Scott Lasser

This is a story of a man whose life is ruined by his desire for money. Barry Schwartz, the narrator and main character, is a ski bum with a good marriage and two kids. Frustrated by his family’s lack of money, he gets and MBA and a job on Wall Street, where he succeeds at the expense of his family, friends, and his own integrity.

It’s a promising premise marred by the fact that, rather than coming off as a nice guy seduced by greed, Barry seems like he is, was, and always will be a something of a jerk. The book is supposed to be about Barry’s corruption, but the change is barely visible and never adequately explained.

Lasser’s depiction of life at a bond trading firm saves the book. It’s a high-stress environment that provides an interesting backdrop to various subplots involving Barry’s overly-competitive, sometimes pathetic coworkers.

Harold Coyle

Coyle contrives a situation in which Idaho defies federal authority and the rebellion is put down by the army. If he had set this up in the first chapter, confined himself to telling a military story, and never mentioned politics, the book might have worked. However, as it stands, the reader is reminded on nearly every page of the sheer improbability of the situation. It’s sad to see Coyle - one of the best authors in his genre - put out such a dud.

Sam Williams

Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation, creator of the GNU General Public License, and winner of a MacArthur “genius” grant, is an odd duck. His accomplishments are real, but behind his software skills and refusal to compromise his principles lurks a sad story of a lonely boy who grew to be a lonely man.

Williams’ coverage of Stallman the hacker and free-software advocate seems to come mostly from Web sites. It’s a story that was told better by Steven Levy in his classic “Hackers”.

What redeems Williams’ book is his writing about Stallman’s childhood and personal life. It’s a sad story of somebody who doesn’t know how to relate to people and who doesn’t seem to have much fun. Stallmans seems bitter about the fact the Linus Torvalds succeeded in creating a complete free operating system, something that Stallman’s GNU project has yet to accomplish.

(This book is available online.)