Love your Geek

Geek Love: A Novel
By Katherine Dunn

What do you do if you run a freak show and you start running out offreaks? Well, if you're Lil and Art, you impregnate Lil and then have her eat, drink and smoke everything pregnant ladies shouldn't get within 10 feet of. Sure, you'll end up with a few mistakes, or miscarriages as some people like to call them, but there will also be a few successes. Lil and Art get lucky a few times and have a boy with flippers where his arms and legs should be, an albino dwarf daughter with a hunchback and a pair of Siamese twins who share a pair of legs.

Sounds pleasant, no?

Yeah, Geek Love: A Novel is pretty crazy. It's not so much a horror novel but it has many of the genre's characteristics. There are malformed human sociopaths, murders, dismemberment, maggots, cults and sex. On top of this, the whole thing has that greasy feeling, like how your hair feels after you don't wash it for a few days.

The book follows the Now-and-Then story style in that it's the story of an Albino Dwarf Hunchback during two phases of her life. The first phase encompasses her youth, as her and the rest of the family freak show travel around the United States enchanting locals with their, well, freakishness. Things are great until Lil and Art have another child, a boy who seems to have no deformities but is telekinetic. While this might seem to present a whole slew of opportunities, it instead heralds massive family turmoil. Artie the flippered Aqua-Boy begins a cult, the Siamese twin sisters begin experimenting with sex and somewhere along the line a half-dead horse has its legs surgically removed but still manages to run around the circus.

Yeah, it's unpleasant stuff and can only end badly and it does.

The second phase of the story follows the Albino Dwarf Hunchback in her later years. She works in radio, secretly stalks the daughter she had with her Aqua-Boy brother and becomes friends with a woman who pays beautiful women to permanently disfigure themselves.

Again, this can't end well and it doesn't.

So many bad endings...see it's a bit like a horror novel. Anywho, Dunn's writing is strong and the characters are interesting. There are two plot lines, the first (the Then part) is a bit stronger but the second (the Now part) isn't bad but seems like it was tacked on. It could easily have been its own short story.

The problem I had with Geek Love was that I had to suspend my disbelief a bit too much for my liking. Sure I can go along with things like crazy hillbilly cannibals and heroes who forget to bring maps when they enter the Soul Sucking Forest of the Dark Lords in a horror or action novel but in a more realistic, sort of dramatic novel (that was actually a finalist for the National Book Awards) I demand a bit more. For example, who is going to join a cult where the ultimate goal of membership is to have all your limbs amputated so all that is left is a torso? It might be me, but I just don't see that many people lining up for that kind of elective surgery.

In all, Geek Love did keep me reading. I was anxious to see what crazy thing would happen next and Dunn doesn't disappoint. The crazy train just keeps chugging along!

E=mcEXCITING

E=mc2 by David Bodanis: Who would have thought that I would find a book about a scientific equation so interesting? However, I must admit that not only was it interesting but it was very exciting. Yes, a book about the world’s most famous equation is exciting!!!

Picture a small military raid, attempting to blow up a well guarded German military factory. A factory that is the only thing keeping the Germans in the race to build a nuclear bomb! Under the cover of night they ascend a cliff away from the searchlights and clip through the barbed wire fence surrounding the installation. They find and entrance and then once inside realize they are in no way carrying enough explosives to level the joint. What do they do? Do they succeed or are they tortured and killed like the group of soldiers that were sent before them? See, I told you it was exciting.

Sure, most of the book isn’t military raids. It is instead filled with interesting and enjoyable brief histories of smart people who in some way had a hand in Einstein’s equation. The stories they tell begin with the quantification of what motion is and continue on through gravity, mass, the speed of light and they finally end at the dreaded bomb.

Bodanis does a great job expelling science in language that even I can understand and he does a good job doing it. Anyone who likes science served up with a healthy dose of history and just a bit of adventure will enjoy this book.

Currently reading: Escape by Carolyn Jessop

She escaped from the FLDS where she married a 50-year-old at the age of 18 who had a couple wives and a whole bus full of kids, literally. Scary, very scary. Why would anyone in their right mind want to have more than one wife? And 34 children? Come on!

Link of the day: http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/09/top-10-amazing.html

She blinded me with science!!!