The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair by Joel Dicker

When my father bragged about finishing an 800 page book in a week, I was surprised and intrigued. He doesn't read much so I had no idea what kind of book would grab his attention so completely. Typically, I'm not very good at taking other reader's recommendations and I had serious doubts about taking my father's advice. But there was something titillating about The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair that seemed to tell me that this was no ordinary "affair". I decided to give it a go. (Full disclosure, I read it in Finnish.)

Harry Quebert is a famous novelist and Marcus Goldman, his protege. When the body of a young girl, missing since the 70's, is found on Quebert's property, America is shocked to find out that Quebert's most successful work was based on his relationship with a 15-year old girl. And now the girl's body has been found rotting under the roses of Quebert's  garden. Goldman on the other hand is riding the last ripples of the success of his first novel and dealing with a crippling writers block. When he gets the news of Quebert's arrest, he drops everything and heads to Aurora, a coastal town in New Hampshire, where Quebert has been living for over thirty years.

The premise is simple enough, but the plot is dense and easily keeps the reader's interest through the whole book. The Harry Potters and Millennium sagas of this world may approach similar lengths but often involve multiple storylines that run in circles only to keep the plot going. Dicker is able to build a story that evolves naturally and (mostly) doesn't resort to cheap tricks. The novel feels well rounded and intimate despite its vast scope.

The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair is a rare work because it is both accessible and profound. On the surface it is a crime thriller, but it never really plays out that way. The story is driven equally by Goldman's personal growth and the labyrinthine social connections of small town America. It succeeds on the strength of its characters - not only Marcus and Harry but the whole ensemble - and the classic story that draws equally from Nabokov's Lolita and Twin Peaks. Unlike other popular murder mysteries of the past years - Gone Girl and Girl on the Train, for example - Harry Quebert is completely un-cynical.

Its biggest success is that it truly grabs the reader from the first pages and doesn't let go. Dicker's storytelling acumen is notable as is his ability to write with humor and wit. Without his ability to bring levity to some mundane plot twists, the novel would read more like a run-of-the-mill detective story than the character study that it aspires to be. Readers will find favorite characters in the large cast, mine was the no-nonsense cop Gahallowood, whose verbal sparring with Goldman make for a great buddy comedy in itself.

Overall, I highly recommend this one. It may or may not endure as a classic of the genre, but for anyone who wants to spend quality time with a book, there is little wrong that can be done by picking up The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair. As always, I had some minor objections, but listing them here would be a waste of everyone's time. Harry Quebert is so good that even my father read it. In a way, there is no higher praise.

Jumalainen näytelmä by Jarkko Ruutu

Here's something completely different. The autobiography of a notorious Finnish ice hockey player, who recently quit the money leagues. Jarkko Ruutu played in the NHL for the Vancouver Canucks and the Pittsburgh Penguins, among others, and had a spotty career, where he was constantly being sent down to the AHL and then being called back up to the NHL. He played a mean game and was constantly in the news for his fighting, heckling and provocations toward other players. He would do everything he could so that his team could get the other hand in a game.

What makes this book interesting is the way that it portrays a completely different kind of professional sports career. Ruutu isn't loved by everyone. Actually he was once voted the most hated player in the league. His antics put him on the front pages of newspapers, but rarely in a good light. He cherishes his profession but also cries in frustration after games because as his career doesn't always go as planned. Before each season he would make a bet with a friend on the number of penalties that he would get during the season. Ruutu always underestimated his capacity for giving in to his animal instincts. And so every year he would lose that bet. His guesses were never even close.

I was surprised by how poorly his teams were managed (if you take Ruutu's comments at face value). Managers and coaches, both in the NHL and in Finland, treat players as property or assets and give very little attention to actually leading them. The business world has already understood that treating your employees as humans greatly increases output. So why is this so difficult to believe in a sports setting? I imagine that the effect would be even bigger in professional sports, where star athletes put themselves under immense pressure to perform. A prominent Finnish coach gets an especially bad rap. I could only wonder how on earth he could be one of the top dogs with such poor personal skills. His method mostly involved insulting, yelling and playing players against each other.

So grab this for the entertainment value and occasional insight, but don't hesitate to skip passages or chapters entirely. Comments from Ruutu's team mates and coaches add little, and Ruutu's own diary entries mostly show the repetitive and banal side of the sport. Surprisingly, a good companion to this book is YouTube. Television cameras were present for a lot of what is described, and reading about ice hockey only takes you half the way.

How Not to Be Wrong by Jordan Ellenberg

Mathematics, at it's core, is the act of coming up with a set of rules and using those rules to make deductions that expand their reach. It can be applied to any other aspect of life because, unlike other sciences, mathematics is universal and incontrovertible. Once something has been set in stone in the mathematical world, there is little that can be done to undo it elsewhere. Conversely, a breakthrough in mathematics has often led to surprising developments elsewhere.

Jordan Ellenberg's How Not to Be Wrong is a wonderful look into how mathematics allows us to have a clear understanding of a variety of topics from genetics to lotteries to politics. Above all, it is a universal work, one that demands nothing more than a middle schooler's understanding of mathematics to feel enlightening and insightful.

Ellenberg's style is especially delightful. Experts in many fields take themselves too seriously and treat the reader like an ignorant child. Academic writing is full of obfuscation as researchers try to make their work seem more important and complicated than it really is. Ellenberg manages to reach out to all kinds of readers with prose that is succinct and clear headed. The illustrations are a highlight; one that I won't spoil for any would-be readers.

I have some background in mathematics (a Master of Science with a minor in applied math), so I wasn't really expecting How Not to Be Wrong to challenge me as much as it did. I had heard of Russell's paradox before but Ellenberg introduces the problem through its mathematical history and not as a singular event in time. As with many other science stories (Age of Wonder for one), the context of a discovery is often as important as the discovery itself.

Russell's paradox broadly states that any formal set of rules is bound to give rise to a contradiction. But the story only becomes memorable once you see it from the point of view George Cantor, a fellow mathematician, who had just finished his magnum opus on set theory, only to see his life's work wasted, as Bertrand Russell pointed out his shortcomings. The pressing of the book had to be stopped and an additional line added to it's first page that stated the inherent contradiction built into Cantor's theory. Mathematics would never be the same again.

The McKinsey Way by Ethan Rasiel

I've been having some downtime at work recently. We have a pretty decent library of business books and I decided to put it to good use. The few true business books featured on this blog have been industry hallmarks. They've been enjoyable not only because of the subject matter but also due to the high quality of writing and corporate drama. The world is full of second rate business books that exhibit neither of the above qualities and for the most part I've resolved not to review them here. A few of those have had redeeming qualities - Good Strategy, Bad Strategy comes to mind - but mostly you'll find hackneyed advice that promises way too much. Business writing is very faddish.

The McKinsey Way, in its ultimate brevity, has endured relatively well. It does read like a company brochure at times, but there is enough humor and self-deprecation to ensure the reader doesn't feel like someone is trying to sell them a management consulting project. I am not entirely sure what the ultimate goal of the author was as he no longer works for the company. Is he simply using the company's good name to advertise his own work? I've heard that something similar is wont to happen with Navy Seals, the elite commando team of the U.S. army. Ex-soldiers use the brand for their own purposes, because it always attracts attention if a Navy Seal "reveals the ultimate workout snack" or something similar.

Although The McKinsey Way promises to reveal the techniques used by McKinsey in its consulting engagements, the level of detail is not high enough to actually be useful to copycats. It works better as an introductory course to the industry, for both newcomers and potential customers. It's enjoyable enough because Rasiel has the good sense to joke and question some of the aspects of life at "The Firm". Some of my initial goodwill was undone by the entirely unnecessary chapters towards the end containing tips on "Surviving at McKinsey". In a way they reveal the true audience of this type of literature: the 25-year old Ivy league MBA who travels the country advising CEOs, who still needs to be taught to keep a toothbrush with him when sleeping away from home.

Cityboy by Geraint Anderson

There was absolutely no reason to reread Cityboy. But I was a bit down on my luck after starting and failing to finish The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel. Life of Pi is one of my all time favorite books (also by Martel), and even the movie is pretty spectacular, so my expectations were way too high. I bought the book on a trip to Portugal and imagined that it would be a breeze. Yet I was wrong, I found The High Mountains of Portugal so tedious that I decided to skip it for good. After a few hundred pages of vague, uneventful landscaping and exposition, I had no will to go on reading.

What I really needed was something that I could pick up without the risk of boring myself to sleep. Cityboy is something I read when I started my studies and I figured it would be a good send off to the corporate life. It's supposed to be a fictional account of the excesses of the banking system, but the cover up is so transparent that it only takes a few tries on Google to figure out that "Scheissebank" is Commerzbank and "Banque Inutile" is Societe Generale. The fact that the main characters name is "Steve" is probably only there to deter lawsuits, such is the extent to which the storyline resembles the authors own life. For all I care, you can read it as an autobiography.

"Steve's" job is to show the reader the extent to which the banking system (as it was before 2008) is corrupt, in-bred and pointless. Bankers make millions of pounds in bonuses just to screw their clients, use drugs and engage in other immoral behaviors. Steve is a utilities-analyst tasked with producing research notes on utilities firms: water, electricity and so on. Some of the material will be genuinely interesting to outsiders, because it's mostly about things that you would never read about otherwise. The banking sector has always espoused opacity, so there are a few precious sequences showcasing the average day in a bankers life that I found enlightening. Pick it up for the fun turns of phrase and stay for the juicy gossip.

The biggest problem with Cityboy is that Anderson himself isn't very likeable, and ultimately seems shallow and moronic. He can pretend to be a left-wing hippie all he want, but actions speak louder than words. Especially at the end, when he ponders the ludicrous amounts of money that he made by hustling clients (but mostly staying on the right side of the law). He promises to give part of the proceeds to charity, but to me that sounds like bull. Talking about giving to charity isn't the same thing as actually doing it. Anderson even tries to create an antagonist in "Hugo", a stuck-up fool of a banker, who somehow manages to get the most votes in industry surveys. But you can't really have an antagonist when there is no one to root for anyway.

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

Dark Matter is something I read because I noticed a recommendation for it online. Yes, that's right, book blogs have persuasion power. The end of summer was near and I was looking for one last book to read before the end of the holidays. Dark Matter sounded like something I might enjoy. There was a promise of classic summer sci-fi action combined with some wit and some suspense. Blood Meridian had been such an exhausting experience that I was happy to indulge myself with something much more straightforward and in that category Dark Matter delivered.

A university professor is living a fairly typical Chicago life with wife and child. One night, he is kidnapped, drugged and eventually shipped off into another dimension. Yes Dark Matter is a multiverse story, but a surprisingly uncomplicated one at that. It succeeds mostly because it's uncynical in it's simplicity and genuinely tries to keep all readers engaged. For the most part, you feel drawn to the short thriller. At this point it's only a book, but I could feel the author cutting corners to make the novel ready for a film adaptation.

Readers who are more familiar with other fantasy and sci-fi works will find plenty of similarities to other fiction. For example, the ice world that the protagonists are forced into resembles something extremely similar in a recent popular video game, The Witcher 3. I absolutely loved The Witcher, so I can't really say that Dark Matter has chosen its influences poorly, but parts of the work will feel somewhat derivative to genre veterans. That being said, I went ahead and recommended Dark Matter to a few of my friends. It's fun in the way that vanilla ice cream is fun. As entertainment it's well made, predictable and above all accessible.

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

I had mixed feelings going in and coming out. Before Blood Meridian, I read The Road and No Country for Old Men, both highly acclaimed novels from Cormac McCarthy. I disliked the former and loved the latter. The Road was too bleak, too unrelatable and I had trouble finding any trace of an actual plot. No Country for Old Men was done well by its film adaptation and was also a pleasing read, closer to a beach read than an artful interpretation. Coming from those two novels, I wasn't sure what to expect from Blood Meridian.

It's an anti-western epic, that follows "the kid" through the Wild West. Indians are scalped for payment, travellers are robbed, women are raped (mostly off-scene) and men murdered. There is a story, but there is also unimaginable violence and it seems that Blood Meridian is more about violence itself than any singular storyline. I can only imagine what it must have felt like to read this in 1985, when it came out. The bloodshed must have been even more distressing then.

Cormac McCarthy's prose is pure treasure. It is as if someone had handed the words down from another realm. Having read Blood Meridian, everything else sounded stale or silly. There is a weight to his words that is rare, even when compared to the very best. Descriptions of the surrounding wilds are what drives the sense of location throughout. Nature is beautiful, but it is also neutral to travellers needs. Watering holes are few and far between, the weather changes unexpectedly. Then again, there are only so many times that you can read about lighting storms and dying of thirst before it becomes a bit predictable and repetitive.

I didn't particularly enjoy the ending and completely failed to understand the epilogue. I was angry at the novel, not for having a somewhat inscrutable outcome, but for not really living up to anything. Some will say that the ending is artful and intriguing but, personally I found it to be an annoyance. You can read into it if you want, it's the stuff of college essays, but it didn't really compliment the rest of the novel and had a somewhat different tone that to me felt like it came from an altogether different novel.

A Death in the Family by Karl Ove Knausgaard

A Death in the Family is so easy to describe that it is actually very hard to describe. It's the first part of a series of autobiographical novels by Karl Ove Knausgaard (the title of the series is My Struggle, but I'm not thrilled by that additional name, so I decided to leave it out). There are six entries in the series, with each novel focusing on a specific aspect or event in Knausgaards life. A Death in the Family describes parts of his youth, his relationship with his father and the aftermath of said father's death.

On the surface, there is little else. Viewed separately from the other entries in the autobiography (which I've yet to read), the plots are only somewhat related, jump backwards and forwards in time and focus on events that seems inconclusive or unimportant. A large part of the beginning of the book is dedicated to describing a teenage escapade involving hidden beer and classmate girls that fizzles out rather than surprises.

Yet there is something in the way that Knausgaard describes the world we actually live in and not an idealized or fictionalized one that makes A Death in the Family a joy to read. It gets under your skin exactly because it is both too close for comfort and mundane. The story is familiar to everyone, but not in an overt way. Knausgaard describes emotions and thoughts that are seldom discussed amongst friends and family. As the protagonist, his main feelings seem to be shame, sadness (but not despair) and determination. The description of the relationship with his father is so powerful because Knausgaard doesn't need to describe the relationship itself but can rely on his own reactions to the death of someone he loved.

Novelists often build their work around exceptional events, vying to create a surprising tale that is complex and unpredictable. Character traits are enhanced to make characters memorable. Events are described with elan and vigour to pull in unsuspecting readers searching for spectacle. Sometimes these attempts succeed in satisfactory ways. Other times, the reader feels bored and alienated because a story that is unbelievable is also often unrelatable.

Knausgaard succeeds because his autobiographical voice is also the voice inside the (male) head. The voice that carries primitive emotions, the voice that loves father but also dispises him, the voice that yearns for a freedom that would immediately prove self-destructive. Knausgaard has evidently found a niche that has yet to be properly serviced; the description of everyday life in a manner that is truthful to the point of awkwardness. Even in translation his prose carries itself with a grace that made me look for an actual copy of the second book (instead of reading it on my Kindle). I'm looking forward to Book 2.

The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes

While I did genuinely enjoy The Age of Wonder, I struggled with it on a number of occasions, and, occasionally, even considered putting it down for a few months. It's a wonderful look at 18th and 19th century scientists who - in spite of their idiosyncrasies and vanities - managed to profoundly change the way we look at our world. The stories are insightful, intertwined and witty, the prose is excellent and the format is, for the most part, unique. On the other hand, The Age of Wonder is even too detailed for my taste; it could do without a few chapters entirely and over-emphasizes some of its source material.

I've always loved good science non-fiction. Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything is on the list of books that I remind myself to read every decade at least once. The Age of Wonder might not end up on that list, but it does provide the same kind of satisfaction as Bryson. Both authors understand that, while science itself is mostly straightforward and logical, the people behind it are not. To look at only the discoveries that have been made in a chronological order denies us a true understanding of how they came to be in the first place. Textbook science often ignores this part (except for the inaccurate and slightly silly image of Newton sitting under an apple tree) and is worse off for it. Richard Holmes shows us how daily science is both tedious and awe-inspiring, aspirational and conservative.

My favorite parts of The Age of Wonder were by far the introduction - the story of Joseph Banks journey to Tahiti - and the history of hot air balloons. It is possible that Joseph Banks is more famous in the UK than in Finland, but I had never heard of him before and yet he is such a central figure in the scientific community that you would think to find him on the front page of every methodology of science -course. Other wonderful passages described William Herschel being sidelined in astronomy circles because he claimed to have seen forests and lakes on the moon through his homemade, but surprisingly sophisticated telescope. Later he would be the first human to set eyes on a new planet: Uranus.

Holmes's descriptions are vivid and detailed, sometimes to the point of exhaustion. I mentioned science text books earlier because at times The Age of Wonder feels like one. It is not entirely a grabbed-it-at-the-airport read, nor is it only about science. It doesn't deliver as strongly on the poetry front as it wants to. (It is of course possible that I'm just not the right audience for that part.) But I can't really fault a book for being too well researched. The structure is there to support the long forays into characters' personal lives, so while they may feel long, you are never completely lost, even if you haven't picked it up for a few weeks. And in a way, that is exactly what I liked about The Age of Wonder: it's the work of passion, much like the science that inspired it.

Post Office by Charles Bukowski

People know that I'm into reading, so I tend to receive a lot of books as gifts. The problem is that gifting a book can be surprisingly difficult. Do I go with a new bestseller and risk giving something bland and mundane? Do I buy a classic that the recipient has most likely already read? Most people seem to opt for the former; one Christmas I received two copies of The Da Vinci Code. For my graduation party (a few weeks ago), people had put in their A-game and brought lots of really interesting books, including Post Office by Charles Bukowski. It might have helped that the party was at a book shop.

Apparently, Post Office is something of a classic, but I had never heard of it before and had stumbled upon Bukowski only in passing. Immediately I was reminded of the song "Bukowski" by Modest Mouse, which has the memorable refrain "Who would want to be such an asshole?". Other than that I had very little idea of who Charles Bukowski might be.

Post Office is one of those books that is probably best read without any preconceived ideas of what it is like. I greatly enjoyed it because it seemed short and non-threatening, a run-of-the-mill post-modern novel with aggressive punctuation and capitalization, an unlikeable main character and an existential crisis. But Bukowski turned out to be the real thing. Post Office is both heartbraking and hilarious, uncomplicated and intricate and it comes at you from many different angles in its relatively short 150 pages.

Initially, I was hoping to write a more in-depth analysis of everything that's going on in Post Office, but once again I'm lacking free time. I had a hard time deciphering whether the tone of the novel reveals the writers true thoughts or if even that is just another piece of his tongue-in-cheek humor. What am I to think of the main character: an uncomely drunk who gets lucky with the ladies and wins bets at horse races, but never manages to find decent work or a place in life. Is Henry Chinaski miserable because Bukowski himself was miserable?

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carre

I'm a big fan of the relatively new film version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. It's a great spy movie and for a while I've been looking for an excuse to read the book. The movie is, in its way, chaotic and difficult to pin down in one go. For example, it jumps back and forward in time, mostly without warning, and relies on the wit of the viewer to put together the pieces. A friend of mine said that the best way to know what is going on is to pay attention to the main character's glasses. Apparently they're different in flashbacks. The movie is as much a post-modern study of film-making as it is a spy thriller.

I did not expect the novel to be so similar. John le Carre's style is very much understated and there are passages that remind me more of Charles Dickens than Ian Flemming. If you've just read a Dan Brown, you'll likely find it frustratingly slow and uneventful. That doesn't mean that Tinker Tailor compares unfavorably to today's fiction, quite the contrary. It doesn't try to wrap everything up in a sentimental finale, where the heroes prevail and love triumphs. Those tricks are reserved for Ken Follett and the likes.

But I have to say that I still enjoyed the film more. Not because the novel is inferior, but because the actors are wonderful and the script is just the right combination of not saying enough and implying too much. In a way, it is almost a breakout feature for many of the cast involved. Benedict Cumberbatch was on the up and up but not yet successful, Tom Hardy was perfectly cast as Ricki Tarr. Even the eponymous Tinkers and Tailors were cast so well that even though they remain background characters, you can feel the back story there. A big thank you to le Carre for writing it and Tomas Alfredson for directing it.

The Martian by Andy Weir

I have to admit that my every instinct told me that I would to enjoy The Martian. The recent movie adaptation convinced me to pick up this novel. I haven't seen it yet, mind you, but I saw a trailer and from what I can tell, Matt Damon is involved and there are a lot of nice computer generated mars-scapes. So it must be great. And I heard through the grapevine that the book is neat, especially if you enjoy science, Robinson Crusoe and nit picky details. Turns out that even though I thoroughly enjoy the first two, the unashamed focus on the nuts and bolts of space missions turned me off a little.

If I didn't imply it clearly enough yet, The Martian is quite simply Robinson Crusoe in space. Sometime in the near future, manned space missions to Mars are possible (but not very frequent) and Mark Watney is a member of the latest expedition. Things go south and Mark is left for dead on the red planet. He has to "science the shit out of everything", as he memorably puts it, in both the book and the previously mentioned movie trailer. He grows potatoes on Mars, improvises a communication system to recontact Earth and comes up with all kinds of little details that make life on Mars just that much more difficult.

There is nothing much wrong with The Martian. It's funny, inventive and sincere in the same way that the movie Cast Away is; humans go on living because survival is second nature to us. The format of the novel, however, was a little rough around the edges. The material started out as a blog and was later put into print and this transition is sometimes visible. Problems arise and are solved so often that at the end I didn't feel that Mark's mission was dangerous. It felt like fiction and therefore some of the unforeseen consequences he encounters toward the end of the book seem tacked on.

The Sellout by Paul Beatty

In a way, 2015 was the year that I discovered "black" culture. (Sorry for the quotation marks; as a Finn, I'm not entirely sure what the correct euphemism is here.) Some of the most enlightening things I read or listened to were not from London or Paris, but from Compton or the Bronx. Obviously, Kendrick Lamar's music was enormous last year and it somehow resonated with me more than any other hip hop album ever. D'Angelo's Black Messiah was another big revelation, an album that is, at times, difficult to describe, almost ephemeral and hard to listen to. Then, on other days, I find it straightforward, groovy and accessible. It's a musical paradox, really.

The Sellout by Paul Beatty is another brilliant work from last year. And in a way, I felt that it was a continuation on the cultural timeline of K-Dot and D'Angelo. It's a wickedly funny piece of satire, a novel about race, mostly, and America, intermittently. The setting is a fictional city of Dickens, California; a Los Angeles suburb in the tradition of the aforementioned Compton and South-Central LA. In Dickens, race is more of a non-issue than an actual issue as everyone is either black or Hispanic. The tensions seem to run more in the heads and personal struggles of the characters than in direct confrontations with white America.

Because The Sellout is decidedly satiric, there's no real reason to revisit the plot. It's the way that everything is delivered, drawn up and torn apart that makes all the difference. Beatty makes for wonderful and surprising turns of phrase and his prose is the beating heart of the novel. His inner comedian shines bright in passages about twin cities and clinical psychology. The satire is sometimes painful, it hits its mark a little too close for comfort sometimes. Americans themselves find it a little blasphemous, but I guess it's only because they realize its honesty.

The Sellout has an earnest tone that is so different from my personal cultural experiences that it made for fantastic reading. There is some of the ominous vibe of Lead Belly's Where Did You Sleep Last Night, some of the sincere jam of Motown mixed up with Chapelle's Show's warmth. What The Sellout shares with Kendrick Lamar is the love for a shared culture that both perhaps fear losing.