Joel's Bookshelf

Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain

2011-09-12T11:42:00.000-07:00

by David Eagleman

The human brain is both an incredible piece of engineering and a very flawed interface through which to experience the world. Every year or two I find it helpful to read something that reminds me of both these ideas. Eagleman, author of the delightful Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives, does a terrific job of giving us a tour of the brain in all its biased glory - in Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain.

The subtitle refers to one of the book's main ideas: that the human mind is far from a singular entity. Just as there are thousands of processes happening at the same time, there are also multiple "voices" in every brain, each contributing to the actions and decisions that are eventually carried out. Our conscious mind, which usually seems to be a singular and consistent narrative telling us what's happening in the world and in our heads, is, in Eagleman's view, like a newspaper giving us an extremely simplified summary of current events. Even those things we think we're currently deciding are more like the slightly-delayed minutes of a corporate board meeting, all of it presented to the CEO as if he or she was the only decision maker.

Eagleman's style is fun, with lots of memorable examples. A lot of the material has been covered before, in other popular cognitive science books, and at times, I wished for a bit more depth to his explanations, but in general I found the book entertaining and thought-provoking.

My Top 14 Favorite Books Read in 2010

2011-01-08T14:14:00.000-08:00

Whenever possible I've linked them to my reviews.

Fiction

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet - David Mitchell
Room - Emma Donoghue
The Help - Kathryn Stockett
Ship Breaker - Paolo Bacigalupi
The Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Little Bee - Chris Cleave
Remarkable Creatures - Tracy Chevalier
Behemoth - Scott Westerfeld
The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate - Jacqueline Kelly

Non-Fiction

The Story of Stuff - Annie Leonard
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks - Rebecca Skloot
The Evolution of God - Robert Wright
At Home - Bill Bryson
Justice - Michael Sandel

Ship Breaker

2011-01-03T20:26:00.000-08:00

by Paolo Bacigalupi

Nailer is a Gulf Coast kid with a nasty job; he crawls through air ducts on abandoned oil tankers, scavenging copper wiring for his company. It's awful, miserable, toxic work, but it's a living, and also a coveted job among the "beach rats." What's worse, his home life is ruled by his abusive addict father. Nailer works hard to make quota every day and dreams of someday stumbling upon a really choice bit of scavenge, something that will make him rich enough to buy his way to a better life.

Then one day he hits the jackpot.

Of course, things are never as simple as they seem. I won't give away any more of the plot, but I will say that it's a thrilling, well-crafted and satisfying story. Like any other type of fiction, truly great science fiction features deep, memorable, flesh-and-blood characters. After reading Paolo Bacigalupi's short stories in "Pump 6" and his novel, "Windup Girl," I feel like his fiction has reached new heights with "Ship Breaker."

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

2010-12-28T19:07:00.000-08:00

by Rebecca Skloot

While the worlds of science, medicine, and the global economy are more closely intertwined than ever before, the role of the public is unclear. When Rebecca Skloot learned that HeLa cells, used in laboratories all over the world, originated from one woman who has been all but forgotten by medical community, she researched the history of Henrietta Lacks, her family, and the incredible legacy of her immortal cancer cells. After finding out that millions of dollars had been made from cells extracted from their mother without her permission, Lacks' family was understandably reluctant to talk to Skloot. And Skloot, who had no interest in putting herself into the book she was researching, found her interactions with the Lacks family becoming a key part of the story. It's obviously not easy to sum up, but it's a thought-provoking, multilayered book that will stay with me a long time.

Room

2010-12-01T13:15:00.000-08:00

by Emma Donoghue

Five-year-old Jack has a good life. He lives with his Ma, who loves him very much, in a room filled with everything they need. Together they play games, watch TV, eat their lunch and clean up. As he tells us about his days, though, we quickly realize that something is very strange: the two never leave the room for any reason, and haven't since Jack was born. And we realize that Ma, though she does her best, is not actually happy - she's been held prisoner here by someone Jack calls "Old Nick" for seven years.

Though the setting sounds horrific, the tale is told by Jack, who, despite his unusual circumstances is a relatively normal and sweet kid. He's never known what he's missing. Their only window is a skylight, and for all Jack knows, there's nothing outside but "Outer Space." He separates things into "real" (things inside the room) and "TV" (things he's only seen on TV). Ma whisks Jack into the wardrobe at times when Old Nick visits, so the two have never seen each other.

This is one of those stories where the voice makes the book. It's an authentic voice - a bright, charming and frustrating 5-year-old - but also one you feel comfortable with even as the suspense builds and the two find themselves confronting the Outside. A remarkable book.

The Story of Stuff

2010-11-24T09:04:00.000-08:00

by Annie Leonard

After seeing Annie Leonard's popular 20-minute web movie, The Story of Stuff, like a lot of people I wanted to know more. If each link along the chain of our economy - Extraction, Production, Distribution, Consumption and Disposal - is broken, dysfunctional, and harmful to us, what can we do to change things? Leonard, who has traveled the world tracing the path of consumer goods from their creation to their disposal in landfills, expands greatly on her video, showing us both the extent of the problems facing us, and lots of great ways to correct them.

Unlike a lot of environmental books, Leonard doesn't put a lot of emphasis on trying to change our lifestyles, buying greener products, voting with our dollar, etc. While she certainly tries to live sustainably (eating locally-grown foods and sharing a lot of material goods with her neighbors) and non-toxically (keeping PVC and other toxics out of her house) she knows that there's only so much we can do on an individual level. It's not enough for us, as citizens, to choose from a menu of unhealthy or unsustainable offerings. It's time for us to change the menu itself.

How does this happen? Corporations (such as Interface carpet tile company) sometimes voluntarily decide to invest in converting to more sustainable business models, and it's inspiring to see. More often, however, corporations only make changes when it's more immediately profitable, or when they're forced to by government regulations. Leonard points out that there are great models around the world of governments steering corporations towards sustainability in ways that benefit both the corporations and the citizens who live and work with them. In a finite world, we can no longer afford to waste so much of our resources. Leonard shows a path towards a much more realistic future.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

2010-11-12T11:49:00.000-08:00

by David Mitchell

This may end up being my favorite novel of 2010. I've been a David Mitchell fan since I read "Cloud Atlas," and always find both his ideas and his language exquisite, but I'd forgotten just how fun his novels could be. Jacob de Zoet is an early 19th-century Dutchman, a young accountant who is sent to help clean up the corruption at the Dutch trading post of Dejima, in Nagasaki Harbor, Japan. He's a good man, but obviously in over his head. The tiny, man-made island is a virtual prison for the Dutchmen, who are almost never allowed over the bridge and onto the mainland. De Zoet's cohorts cast a wary on him -- many of them were rounded up, against their will, to join the ship's crew, and are doing what they can to earn a little money on the side in Dejima.

Orito Aibagawa, a midwife, is one of the few Japanese women allowed onto Dejima, so that she may study Western medicine with the mysterious Dr. Marinus. She catches Jacob's eye, and he soon finds himself searching for ways to spend a few scraps of time with her.

The second part of the book follows Orito into a dark adventure on the mainland, and I won't say more about the plot. Fascinating setting, memorable characters and a complex, but exciting, story. Loved it.

The Help

2010-06-28T13:37:00.000-07:00

by Kathryn Stockett

Aibileen, a black maid in Jackson, Mississippi, in the early 1960s, works for an upper-middle-class white woman, Miss Elizabeth Leefolt, doing the housekeeping, cooking the meals, and raising the woman's little girl, Mae Mobley. Miss Elizabeth seems to have little interest in her daughter, and Mae Mobley can't help but notice. Meanwhile, Miss Hilly, one of the white woman's dearest friends, advises her to build an addition to her house -- a restroom just for Aibileen's use. After all, it's just not sanitary to be using the same facilities as the help, is it?

Miss Skeeter Phelan, a friend of Elizabeth's and Hilly's, decides she wants to be a writer, and believes she's come up with the perfect idea for a book -- what's it like to be a black maid? They must have some interesting experiences, right? So she asks Aibileen if she or anyone she knows might be interested in telling her their stories. Aibileen's response, of course, is less than enthusiastic. This is 1963, in the deep South, and there's no way Aibileen or any thinking person would endanger their job, their family, or their community by talking, let alone publishing. Skeeter assures Aibileen that everything would be anonymous -- she'll even change the name of their town. Soon the project is underway.

Stockett, who started writing "The Help" based on her memories of her family's black maid, Demetri, does her best to capture the voice of two maids, Aibileen and Minnie, as well as Skeeter. Whether she succeeds (or offends) is for you to decide. For me, my wife, and most readers we've talked to, the book is a heartfelt success, bringing the reader to a time and place and community that would otherwise be hard to imagine. More than most books I've read, this was hard to put down. I especially recommend the audio version, which uses three actresses for the three main characters.

Everything Matters!

2010-03-30T15:52:00.000-07:00

by Ron Currie, Jr.

Lots of books have an omniscient narrator. "Little did Bob know, he was making a terrible mistake..." Okay, that was an awful example, but you get the idea. Junior Thibodeau is actually born with that voice in his head, and it's talking to him. It doesn't talk all the time, but what it says seems to be true. The information he receives is often useful, and sometimes more than he can handle. The day he's born, he's told that in 36 years, 168 days, 14 hours, and 23 seconds, the earth will be hit by a massive meteor, wiping out all life on the planet. As you can guess from the title, this is a story about deciding what to do with one's limited time. Is it worth investing in relationships, trying to help people, getting involved in a world you know will come to an end? Junior struggles with these questions, as we all do.

This was a strange book, and pretty dark at times, but Junior is ultimately a likeable character. You hope he'll succeed, whatever that means. And I really couldn't tell where the story was going... could Junior use his "gift" to help himself? To help the world? And, as the voice in Junior's head asks him, after telling him of the world's fate, does anything he does really matter?

Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

2010-03-30T15:45:00.000-07:00

by Michael Sandel

Sandel, Harvard professor, took his popular class on the philosophy of law and condensed it into 200 thought-provoking and entertaining pages. Sandel's goal is to give a brief but thorough introduction to several different legal philosophies, including Utilitarianism, Libertarianism, the works of Aristotle, John Locke and Immanuel Kant, and modern philosophers like John Rawls. In each case, Sandel uses thought experiments as well as historic legal cases to examine these philosophies from different angles. The effort to create a just society has never been easy, and I found my eyes opening to some of the benefits and pitfalls of each approach. I felt that Sandel did "justice" to each system he talks about, while still clearly having his own point of view. Highly recommended.

Little Bee

2010-01-06T10:59:00.001-08:00

by Chris Cleave

"Little Bee" is the name a young woman from Nigeria takes after she decides it is no longer safe to keep her own. When Chris Cleave's brief but powerful novel begins, Little Bee is being released from an Immigration Detention Center in Britain, where she's been held for two years learning the Queen's English and doing her best to keep herself alive and intact. Where she goes from here is uncertain, but she has a British man's driver's license and business card in her pocket. How she acquired these, and where they take her, I will leave for you to find out.

Sarah O’Rourke, the other narrator of the book, comes from a very different world. Sarah is an upper middle-class Brit working for a stylish magazine and raising her young son. Little Bee's appearance in her life is both a blessing and a curse, bringing up a terrible choice Sarah had once had to make, one she thought was buried in her past. I would love to say more, but one of the joys of this very human story is Cleave's perfect sense of timing in revealing the past and present to the reader. It's a story of the heroism possible in all of us, and of the way we choose to live on in the face of dark situations. Cleave's writing is beautiful and gentle, with a sense of humor that helps carry us through. I'll definitely be checking out his previous novel, Incendiary, and any of his future works.

My top 10 favorite novels of the last decade

2009-12-28T11:52:00.000-08:00

Please read them and report back.

Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
I Should Be Extremely Happy In Your Company - Brian Hall
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
White Teeth - Zadie Smith
Finn - Jon Clinch
The Years of Rice and Salt - Kim Stanley Robinson
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Volume One - M. T. Anderson
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay - Michael Chabon

Art & Fear

2009-12-16T14:14:00.000-08:00

by David Bayles and Ted Orland

Books encouraging one to express oneself are often more frustrating than inspiring; afterwards, I often regret reading instead of actually creating, or I slump back into those existential creativity-killing questions such as "But what's the point?" or "Who cares?" Rather than focus on a particular craft, Art & Fear addresses creativity in general and helps deal with some of these questions head-on, freeing the reader to just get on with the creative work. From the introduction:

This is a book about making art. Ordinary art. Ordinary art means something like: all art not made by Mozart. After all, art is rarely made by Mozart-like people - essentially (statistically speaking) there aren't any people like that. But while geniuses may get made once a century or so, good art gets made all the time.

The book seems to talk in the voice of a friendly mentor. It's the kind of book you want to underline several times a page and give to all your art-making friends. Being a fairly slim volume, it won't distract you from your work for long, and you can easily carry a copy with you in your toolkit.

My Top 12 Favorites from 2009

2009-12-15T20:50:00.000-08:00

...that is to say, of the books I read in 2009, these were my favorites, in no particular order. Please read them and report back.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog - Muriel Barbery
Human Smoke - Nicholson Baker
Zeitoun - Dave Eggers
Art & Fear - David Bayles and Ted Orland
Homer & Langley - E.L. Doctorow
American Wife - Curtis Sittenfeld
Feed - M.T. Anderson
City of Refuge - Tom Piazza
Leviathan - Scott Westerfeld
Predictably Irrational - Dan Arielly
The Geography of Bliss - Eric Weiner
Bright of the Sky - Kay Kenyon

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

2009-12-14T15:40:00.000-08:00

by Mark Twain

I haven't always been a big fan of audiobooks, but I'm starting to see how they can sometimes have real advantages over printed books. Take The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, for instance. With bits of dialogue like this, from Jim,

"Say, who is you? Whar is you? Dog my cats ef I didn' hear sumf'n. Well, I know what I's gwyne to do: I's gwyne to set down here and listen tell I hears it agin,"

I blanched at the thought of ever reading the entire book. Then after hearing some recommendations of the audiobook read by Tom Parker (Grover Gardner), I gave it a try. Parker's voice explored every nook and cranny of each accent, which, in an audiobook, was delightful. I have no idea what Parker's actual voice is like; his default in this case was a warm and personable Arkansas sound, reminiscent of jazz legend Bob Dorough. And, with Parker's help, I fell in love with the story.

Though the book has its flaws (I could've done without Tom Sawyer's intervention towards the end), I came to realize that Huck's voice is what makes it so special, and so much more involving the The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. While Tom is a trickster, always gleefully gaming the system, Huck doesn't wish to bother anyone; he wants nothing more than to be free. Free of the confines of polite society; free of the clutches of his drunken, abusive father; free of the settled life. It makes perfect sense that he would befriend Jim, who, of course, craves a much more fundamental kind of freedom. Huck eventually has to decide whether he can live outside of society itself, and this is what makes the story so subversive for its time, and for ours: sometimes that's the only way to do the right thing.

Zeitoun

2009-12-11T17:00:00.000-08:00

by Dave Eggers
Zeitoun is the true story of a successful man, a respected business owner with a devoted wife, three children, a dog, and rental properties all over town. Unfortunately, that town is New Orleans, he's a Syrian-American, and his life is about to change forever.

Abdulrahman Zeitoun is the kind of guy you like to have around in times of crisis. He's calm, self-assured, and resourceful. When the news comes that Katrina may be more than the standard summer storm, Zeitoun helps his wife pack the kids and dog off to Baton Rouge to stay with her sister; Zeitoun decides to stay to watch over the family home and all the tenants of their rental properties. His wife isn't happy about it, but knows that her husband is as stubborn as he is hard-working. The two are in constant contact via cell phone, as usual. As devastating as the storm is, Zeitoun sees the flood as an opportunity to make use of a secondhand canoe he'd picked up at a yard sale. He paddles around his neighborhood, helping anyone he can and checking on neighbors. With help from other residents, he rescues several elderly people from their homes. And every day he feeds the abandoned dogs in the house across the street.

As Kathy Zeitoun follows the horrific news stories, her calls to Zeitoun get increasingly insistent -- he's got to get out of there, leave town now that the storm has passed. After his cell phone runs out of power he takes his canoe over one of his properties every day at noon to call his family. And it's there, one day, as Zeitoun is about to call his wife, that several military personnel burst in the door and arrest him. He is never given a phone call; as far as his family knows, he is dead.

Dave Eggers writes the story in a subdued, just-the-facts style--no verbal fireworks are needed, of course. I was riveted. A lot of books have been written about the Bush years, and I haven't felt much need to read them; I know what I think about his administration. But, without even touching on anything political, Zeitoun says volumes about the catastrophe of Katrina, of New Orleans, and of our nation's response to a city in crisis.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog

2009-12-02T09:00:00.000-08:00

by Muriel Barbery
One of the ironies of being intelligent is the realization that intelligence is not always helpful. For Renée, a middle-aged concierge in a Parisian apartment building, intelligence is something best kept hidden away, to be occasionally enjoyed in private, maybe with a good friend. But people expect someone of her background and employment to be boring and obedient, and she does her best to meet their expectations.

Meanwhile, Paloma, a 12-year-old living whose wealthy family lives upstairs in the same building, has decided that, unbeknownst to the silly and superficial people surrounding her, life is meaningless. She has a plan to dramatically end her life on her 13th birthday.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog alternates between the diaries of these two characters, who are both in for a surprise when a mysterious stranger moves into the building. This is a slow-paced book, celebrating these two sparkling souls who hide themselves so well. It is not, however, a book in which nothing happens. Part of the fun is in seeing how these beautiful minds will react when pushed out of their comfort zones. Loved it.

Leviathan

2009-11-27T08:24:00.000-08:00

by Scott Westerfeld

Deryn and Alek, the two heroes of Scott Westerfeld's new young-adult steampunk adventure, Leviathan, try very hard to be seen as normal teenage boys. This isn't easy, because Deryn, who longs to fly for the British Army, is a young woman, and Alek is the son of the recently-assassinated Archduke Ferdinand, leader of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

I haven't read a lot of Steampunk--the basic idea is to splice technology from our present (or even future) onto the Victorian or Edwardian eras, and see what that very different culture would have done. In Leviathan's timeline, Darwin not only developed the Theory of Evolution, but also discovered DNA and learned how to manipulate it. So, while Austria's Imperial-Walker-style robots are fun, the real thrills come when you follow Deryn into the British Air Service, which uses Darwinist beasties of all shapes and sizes, whole engineered ecosystems in the sky. Westerfeld's details, both biological and mechanical, make this bizarre alternate history come alive, and Deryn and Alek are smart and lively characters. Though the ending sets you up for a sequel, it's also very satisfying on its own. Highly recommended.

Homer & Langley

2009-11-27T08:22:00.001-08:00

by E. L. Doctorow

One of the great benefits of fiction is the ability it gives the reader to slip into the skin of someone else, to temporarily inhabit another soul and body. Even more remarkably, the subject doesn't need to be someone like you, or even someone you'd ever thought you'd be able to relate to. With Homer & Langley, for instance, E.L. Doctorow brings you into the mind of an kind, well-educated man who, by the end of his life, was seen as some sort of monster or freak.

Homer Collyer tells us, in his inimitable voice, that he is one of two brothers, the blind one. We learn how he lost his sight, the world slowly growing darker and less distinct. Despite this, Homer is a vital soul and makes the most of his other senses, learning to navigate using his hearing, his sense of smell, even his sense of air pressure around him. His brother Langley, who takes care of Homer after their parents' death, is an iconoclast, railing against authority figures of all kinds. We see Homer and Langley journey through the 20th century without often leaving their 5th Avenue brownstone. Their family fortune enables them to opt out of the working world, though they remain reluctant to spend much, eventually letting their servants go. It soon becomes clear that Langley is an eccentric, so fiercely independent that he sees no reason to pay utility bills or even the mortgage. He buys newspapers from all over town and debates with Homer about the horrors of the day.

The brothers aren't unfriendly--Homer has a job playing the piano at a silent movie house, the scenes whispered into his ear by a lovely girl he develops deep feelings for; the brothers befriend a gangster charmed by Homer's abilities; they hire a Japanese couple to clean their house in the year leading up to Pearl Harbor; they're adopted by hippies who see them as longhaired counter-culture gurus.

By the end of their lives, the Collyer brothers were famous around New York, and even worldwide, as compulsive hoarders, recluses living amidst tons of their own garbage, never opening the black shutters over their windows. I'm not sure anyone but Doctorow could have made these two human lives so relatable, so tragically beautiful. As extreme as these two brothers were, they bring up basic truths of life: our struggle between independence and community, our tendency to accumulate possessions and detritus over a lifetime, and the eventual loss of everything we hold dear. Homer's story deeply touched me, and also made me want to clean my basement.

Paradise, Piece by Piece

2009-10-20T15:44:00.001-07:00

by Molly Peacock

It's easy to think of life as a series of additions: adding knowledge, skills, friendships, a spouse, a home, children. In poet Molly Peacock's memoirs, we're reminded that what's subtracted from our lives - through fate or through choice - can be just as important. Peacock seems to start her life with a frighteningly full plate and gradually learns to choose what she wants to let go of, making her way towards a life that's the right size for her. Of course, as in any life, this is not a simple, sure path.

Peacock's prose is beautiful, and her story, of a creative person finding balance, is inspiring. Though she seems to understand early in her life that she doesn't want children, she says it's a choice one is consistently remaking. Is she cutting herself off from life, or freeing herself? How can the same family be a launchpad for one child and quicksand for another? She has no simple answers, but I very much enjoyed her point(s) of view.

Infinite Jest

2009-09-29T11:07:00.001-07:00

by David Foster Wallace

Usually when I consider posting a book here, my main criterion is whether or not I'd recommend it to friends of mine, and I try to write the review as if I were trying to convince my friend(s) to read the book. In the case of Infinite Jest, I find this very difficult. To be honest, I wouldn't recommend the book to many people. The book is not only extremely long, but extremely unpleasant, full of broken, deformed, addicted, in some cases mentally ill people who do terrible things to each other while having extensive flashbacks to the unspeakable cruelties they've lived through. The plot, what there is of it, doesn't really kick in until about 500 pages in, and doesn't ever fully coalesce, though there are enough intriguing hints and clues that you feel like you WANT it to come together. What's more, the book is peppered with hundreds of endnotes, some of them several pages in length, requiring the reader to constantly flip back and forth, and necessitating a second bookmark. Not exactly a quick read.

Like many people, I had "Infinite Jest" sitting on my bookshelf for years, and kept feeling like I really should read it. Infinite Summer, an online Infinite Jest reading group, was a huge help. Here were people all over the world, many feeling the same combination of dread and anticipation, reading the book at the same time. I'm not sure I could've done it without my support group.

So. Why read it? I'm not sure you should. But if, after all my warnings, you're still intrigued, Infinite Jest certainly does have its rewards. One of Infinite Summer's guides described it as a plea for empathy and sincerity wrapped in a cynical, detached, post-modern disguise. Only by writing such a tough, nasty, over-the-top screed could David Foster Wallace bring in the audience to whom he most wanted to deliver his message of brotherly love, or so goes the theory. I think this rings true. Characters like Hal Incandenza, Don Gately, and Joelle Van Dyne won't soon leave my memory, and, like my very favorite books, they help me see the beauty at the core of the human beings around me, no matter how gnarly their lives may be. It's a brilliant and blinding work of art, and I do recommend taking up David Foster Wallace's challenge, if you feel you can.

Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives

2009-08-01T09:41:00.000-07:00

by David Eagleman

What happens after we die? It's one of the most basic questions, and every human culture has come up with answers. Science has its own answer, which, to many of us, seems unsatisfying. Rather than worry about who's right, David Eagleman suggests we explore the idea of the afterlife even further. In Sum, he offers 40 of his own visions of possible afterlives, most of them mutually exclusive. Each is imaginative and thought-provoking, and seem no more more or less plausible than some of those afterlives proposed by philosophers and theologians throughout the ages. I found it beautiful.

Drood

2009-07-16T15:59:00.000-07:00

by Dan Simmons

As we saw in the film, "Amadeus," the artistic life can be difficult enough even without having a friendship with one of the most popular creative geniuses in history. In Drood, we meet Wilkie Collins, a successful novelist and friend of Charles Dickens, writing, for us in the 21st century, a chronicle of the bizarre events of the last few years of his and Dickens's lives. Collins is an unreliable narrator if there ever was one; he's addicted to ever-higher doses of laudanum (made by combining opium with ethanol), which he tells himself helps to cure his painful gout. The result is that he's had recurring hallucinations throughout much of his life. These are unpleasant enough when they're clearly only in Collins's head, but we really start to worry when they begin affecting the real world -- does this mean they weren't actually hallucinations to begin with?

The story begins with Dickens relating to Collins a terrible railway accident he's been through: Dickens was sitting with his mistress and her mother when the viaduct the train was going over collapsed, and several rail cars fell to the bottom of the ravine below. Dickens and company were unharmed. Dickens then went to assist any still-living passengers in the wreckage, and on his way down the slope, a very unusual man introduced himself. Drood was his name, he had no nose or eyelids, hissed as he spoke, and his goal among the survivors seemed to be the exact opposite of Dickens's.

All in all, the book felt a little long, and probably could have been edited down a bit. But for those looking for a big, creepy Victorian-era novel, Drood does the trick. Dan Simmons's research is frighteningly thorough, and all the dark details make the book stick in one's mind long after reading.

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions

2009-07-10T11:36:00.000-07:00

by Dan Ariely
It's been pretty well established that human beings are not the calm, rational creatures we'd like to think of ourselves as. What Ariely brings to the discussion is the idea that our irrational decision-making follows predictable (and scientifically testable) patterns. Ariely, a Professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University, gives an illuminating tour of his experiments in this field. Do people who are sexually aroused make different choices than they do in a "cooler" state? Why do people cheat less when asked to sign an imaginary "honor code"? Why do people act differently when money is involved? Why does an expensive pain reliever work better than the same drug at a lower price? Just seeing how the testing was done is fascinating, and the results made me look differently at my own decision-making.

Bright of the Sky

2009-07-06T07:24:00.003-07:00

by Kay Kenyon
For those of you interested in genre, Bright of the Sky feels somewhere in-between SF and Fantasy. Titus Quinn, the main character, comes from a recognizable futuristic Earth, and there's plenty of scientific grounding for the plot. But much of the story takes place in a completely different universe, called the Entire, with its own rules and technology so far removed from ours that they seem like magic. The sentient creatures of the Entire have always been able to see our universe (which they call the Rose) and have based much of their culture upon our own.

When we first meet Titus, he is living a solitary life after losing his wife and child. The three of them somehow broke the bounds of our universe and ended up in the Entire, and Titus, who lost all memory of that time, is the only one who came back to Earth. Now a possible way to bridge the two universes has been discovered, and the Minerva corporation wants to send Titus across to pave the way. Titus, of course, is much more interested in finding his wife and daughter, if they survived, and bringing them home.

Kenyon's world-building is exquisite; her vision of the Entire is rich and multilayered. The Entire is a truly frightening and beautiful place, and Titus's journey is spellbinding. As Titus becomes, once again, familiar with the world of the Entire, his memories start to come back, and he doesn't necessarily like what he remembers about his life there. I found a lot of parallels, emotionally and narratively, with Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow, which I also highly recommend. Bright of the Sky is the first book in a series, and I'm looking forward to the next installment.

Moby-Dick

2009-07-06T07:24:00.001-07:00

by Herman Melville
Unlike a lot of high schools, mine, in 1980s central Illinois, didn't cover a lot of "classics." And in some ways, that may have been a blessing, because I have never been more resistant to reading (especially reading assigned books (shudder)) than I was in high school. So, instead of my opinion of these musty old 19th century books being formed then, I get to discover them now, at a time in my life when no longer feel required to reject them as old and boring nor to praise them just because they're part of the canon - I can just read them, as books.

Moby-Dick has a reputation, and rightly so, for being a slog, and it was only after hearing an enthusiastic recommendation from an old friend that I even considered picking it up. I was pleased to find, as Jack Murnighan pointed out in a recent NPR piece, that much of the book is actually very funny, especially the first third, and I found myself laughing out loud at times while listening to the audiobook. The narrator is a likable guy, but a bit out of his element, and his job interview on the deck of the Pequod was one of the book's highlights for me.

Of course, soon, much to the dismay of many readers, the narrator is no longer out of his element, but is instead explaining every detail of the whaling industry. At times it's as if you've stumbled into a 19th-Century Wikipedia and are helplessly clicking on every link around the topics of Whales and Whaling. While I didn't skip any pages, there are certain times I feel okay about letting a chapter or two "wash over me," and this was definitely one of those times. The audiobook was especially good during these times, because I could tune my attention in or out, depending on my interest.

Honestly, though, I didn't find the technical parts all that dull. After a while I started to think of the novel as taking place in an alternate reality, one in which humans were endangered and animals were not, where there was still the possibility that there were real monsters out there. Read this way, Moby-Dick becomes a riveting feat of world-building fantasy.

That said, it's interesting to note that our narrator struggles with the idea that whales could, like the buffalo before them, be hunted nearly to extinction. And, unlike Captain Ahab, most of the whalemen have a difficult time believing that any whale could act with malicious intent.

It should also be said that, though Moby Dick was ahead of its time in many ways, as evidenced by the capable, racially-diverse crew of the Pequod, there are nevertheless times when the prejudices of the times reassert themselves, and the reader has to grimace a bit. And there are other sections when the beautiful language of the book sometimes gets into weird areas, for instance a section in which the whalemen rhapsodize about the wonderful feeling of sperm in their hands - meaning, of course, the oil harvested from a sperm whale. Though Melville has a wonderful sense of humor, I'm not sure this bit was meant to be funny.

City of Refuge

2009-06-01T07:27:00.001-07:00

by Tom Piazza
City of Refuge is about two families living in New Orleans as Katrina approaches and then hits. But more than that, it's about the meaning of "home." How bad do things get before you give up on your home? What is home without the people who made it feel that way? What if your home doesn't feel like home to your wife? What ties you there, and what pulls you away?

Katrina is, of course, one of the most politicized disasters in recent history. Whereas other natural disasters can sometimes be thought of as a pure and simple tragedy, a terrible "act of God," there was nothing simple about Katrina and its aftermath. And even those in New Orleans when it hit were initially relieved when the storm missed the city and seemed to blow over with fairly minimal damage. Then the poorly-built levees broke, all around the city, and the waters rushed in. Around America, people saw it on the news, and almost immediately felt compelled to comment on it. "Why didn't those people get out of there?" "Why isn't the government helping them?" "Why would anyone build a house below sea level?" Tom Piazza captures the media storm as well as the experience of those whose lives were directly affected, who often had much less access to information about what was happening to their town.

I love books that put you firmly in the shoes and skins of people far away, people you never thought you'd relate to, and help you see through their eyes. Tom Piazza has written about New Orleans before, but here he expertly uses the novel form to create empathy in the reader. His characters are devastatingly real, beautifully flawed human beings who are doing what they can to live their lives, to make a home wherever they can.

The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World

2009-05-19T13:52:00.000-07:00

by Eric Weiner

According to studies by happiness researchers, the people of certain countries are, on average, much happier than those of other countries. Obviously, people living in hunger or abject poverty are likely to be unhappy, but how about those countries where people are relatively well-off? For instance, why are people in Moldova so much less happy than people in Bhutan? Why are Icelanders happier than Brits? Eric Weiner (yes, pronounced "Whiner,") a self-described neurotic and public radio commentator, travels around the world to find out.

First he stops in Amsterdam to, among other things, check in with Ruut Veenhoven, who created the World Database of Happiness. He asks how, exactly, happiness could be measured. What, exactly, is it - is it pleasure? Is it the satisfaction of doing good deeds? Is it spiritual enlightenment? And how accurate are people at knowing their own happiness levels?

Weiner brings the perfect mixture of cynicism and wonder to the task; he spends time in each country he visits, getting to know the people, the culture, the basic philosophies people live by. I found it an entertaining and thought-provoking philosophical travelogue.

The World That Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square

2009-05-02T15:48:00.000-07:00

by Ned Sublette

Near the end of his history of early New Orleans, Ned Sublette says of Katrina and those hellish months afterwards: "To lose any American city would have been unthinkable. But to lose New Orleans..." Those of us who have lived in New Orleans or visited often have an understandable affection for the place. But the rest of us may wonder: what's so special about this low-lying, poverty-stricken city at the dirty end of the Mississippi? It's one of the oldest cities in America, but its history stood very much apart from the thirteen colonies. It was always an outsider, not quite French, not quite Spanish, not quite American, but the music that originated there came to define the American sound. It was a major center for slave trading, but at the same time had more free people of color than any other town in America.

True to the title of the book, Sublette ranges far and wide, from Africa to South America, from the Caribbean to Canada, to tell the story of the deep roots of New Orleans. I learned much more about Havana and Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti) than I'd ever known. New Orleans was apparently even more heavily influenced by the Caribbean than by France or Spain. And, though the effects of the Haitian Revolution sent deep reverberations all across the early United States, I had certainly never been taught about it in school. Though at times it seems Sublette is talking about anywhere but New Orleans, he keeps beautifully connecting it all, until the reader understands what a miraculous and unlikely culture New Orleans evolved into.

Feed

2009-05-01T08:19:00.001-07:00

by M. T. Anderson

Science fiction fulfills many roles. It can be escapism, a fun ride, a prescient look at things to come. But great science fiction seems to do its best work when you're not reading it, when you've put the book down and you're walking around in your life and you get that vertiginous feeling that what you've been reading about is happening RIGHT NOW.

M. T. Anderson's Feed is one of those books, a short but potent tale of a generation who lives their entire lives connected to the Feed, the equivalent of our internet/ iPhone/instant messaging/satellite TV, so well integrated into the human body that it picks up our tiniest chemical surges and barest hints of desire. Wondering about something? You've already got the answer. Admire somebody's shirt? It's available from the following vendors at these incredible prices. It's not a new idea, but Anderson's gifts of language and characterization put you so vividly in the head of a Feed-connected teen that soon you'll be speaking the language.

Titus is visiting the moon with some of his friends, and, despite the Feed's constant hype about how awesome everything on the moon is, Titus and his friends are quickly getting bored. Then he meets Violet. She's beautiful, but she's also... different. She's connected to the Feed, of course, but talks more like someone who spends her time reading books. Together, they're caught in a terrorist attack, which shuts down their Feed connection, and technicians are called in to operate. Soon they're back up and running, but their lives may never be the same.

The audio version of Feed brings to life the barrage of advertisements, news items, and pop songs Anderson includes between chapters, giving the listener an even more vivid sense of being jacked in to the Feed. Anderson perfectly captures not only the dystopian landscape of corporately-sponsored youth culture, but also the teenage dilemma: enthusiastically accept what the world wants to sell you -- making you an "insider" -- or reject your culture and fight the system, making you an "outsider." Most of us get caught in-between.

American Wife

2009-03-18T19:25:00.001-07:00

by Curtis Sittenfeld

If you've ever thought about Laura Bush and wondered, "How did she end up with him?" Curtis Sittenfeld has wondered the same thing. There are critically-acclaimed biographies you could read, if you want to get the details, but Sittenfeld uses fiction to go deeper. It's not possible, of course, to really know what it's like to be Laura Bush; but "American Wife" allows us to know exactly what it's like to be Alice Blackwell (nee Lindgren), a woman whose life story is very closely modeled around Bush's. When I started reading, I imagined the book would really get interesting once Alice met Charlie Blackwell, but I was soon so caught up in the fascinating character of Alice that I felt in no hurry for her to grow up and get married. Sittenfeld's pacing is perfect, somewhere between a page-turner and a character-driven literary novel.

Though the parallels to Laura Bush are plentiful, the reader can also relax and enjoy the story as fiction. At its core, the story asks, What is it like to set your own life aside to follow someone you love? Is it possible to be yourself while also unintentionally becoming a public figure? Does loyalty to your husband or wife take away from your loyalty to yourself?

Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization

2009-03-18T19:24:00.002-07:00

by Nicholson Baker

I remember the first time I heard about Hitler. My father and I were hiking along a creek in Northern Illinois as he told me the basics. I was baffled by the idea that murder, that most basic of all wrongdoing, would ever be encouraged by a world leader. This shows how naive I was at the time; it wasn't long before I would learn of the myriad exceptions to "Thou Shalt Not Kill."

Later, as I continued to fill in the gaps in my knowledge about World War II, I came to accept the idea that, however I might feel about the morality of war in general, this particular war was both necessary and unavoidable. I could doubt the existence of true evil in the world, yet see it clearly in the actions of Hitler and his Nazis. If there was ever a time to step in and destroy evil to preserve goodness, this was it.

Nicholson Baker's Human Smoke asks that we look again. Baker is known for seeing the details most of us miss; this time he's turned his eye on the ephemera of the years leading up to World War II -- journals, diaries, newspaper articles, contemporary interviews, radio speeches -- and put together a chronological mosaic of people and places as they were at the time. The major players are there, as are the citizens and soldiers, but we also hear quite a bit from those who opposed the war, and those who offered alternate paths. More than anything I've read, this book took the inevitability out of the equation, left me wondering not only what would happen but what could happen. What if Roosevelt had loosened our tight quotas on Jewish immigrants, allowing thousands of refugees to escape from Europe? What if Churchill had not insisted on his blockade, which starved not only the Nazis but all those innocents we told ourselves we were saving? Why did Roosevelt find it necessary in 1934 to parade our battleships through Japanese waters? What if Hitler's ridiculous plan to send the Jews to Madagascar had succeeded, instead of his horrific "Plan B"?

By our actions, did we save as many lives as we destroyed? Is war ever truly inevitable?

Whatever conclusions you come to after reading Human Smoke, it's well worth the time. It was one of the most eye-opening and thought-provoking books I've read in a great while.

White Teeth

2009-03-03T12:06:00.000-08:00

by Zadie Smith
Ever since I read my first book by Charles Dickens (actually this was embarrassingly recent) I can't help but identify certain books as "Dickensian." It's a bad habit, and I'm trying to cut down, but just once more, I have to say it: Zadie Smith's White Teeth is, let's face it, Dickensian. I mean it in the best way: the book is multilayered, with a large cast of memorable characters coming from a large variety of classes, colors, creeds, and countries, all colliding in present-day London. Smith's voice is omniscient, her tone both humorous and heartbreaking. She's one of those writers who can introduce character after character without the reader becoming fatigued.

At the core, White Teeth is a tale of two families: the Iqbals, originally from Bangladesh, and the Joneses, of London and Jamaica. The two patriarchs fought (mainly with each other) in World War II, and have been inseparable ever since. Their younger wives hold the families together, and the kids - Irie Jones and Magid and Millat Iqbal - refuse to be contained. Smith is, herself, part Jamaican and part English, and seems to perfectly capture the sense of being a new hybrid in the Old World. The dialects and wildly disparate characters moving perpendicularly to each other reminded me of "The Confederacy of Dunces" at times. Though the narrative spins off in multiple directions, it does manage to come together explosively in the end. This book made me a definite Smith fan, and I can't wait to read her other works.

Three Cups of Tea

2009-03-01T19:57:00.000-08:00

by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
During a failed attempt to climb K2, mountain bum Greg Mortenson found himself stumbling into uncharted territory, a small Pakistani village not on any map. The people there treated him with great kindness, though they were very poor even by local standards. That's when Mortenson made a promise that would change his life: he told his new friends he would build them a school for their children.

Back home in California, living out of his car while working as a temporary EMT, Mortenson started to wonder what on earth he had been thinking, making such a promise, when he himself was barely scraping by. He knew nothing about fundraising, construction, or any of the skills he would need to build a school on the other side of the world. "Three Cups of Tea" tells how he eventually fulfills his promise, and goes on to build dozens of schools, most of them for girls, where they're needed most. And, without meaning to, he helps to fight terrorism at its very source. An incredible story, all the better because it's true.

My Top 10 from 2008

2008-12-31T17:42:00.000-08:00

Of the books I read in 2008, these are my ten favorites, in no particular order. Please read them, and report back.

Woman's World - Graham Rawle
Anathem - Neal Stephenson
Our Inner Ape - Frans De Waal
Pump Six - Paolo Bacigalupi
Fall of Frost - Brian Hall
Little Brother - Cory Doctorow
People of the Book - Geraldine Brooks
The How of Happiness - Sonja Lyubomirsky
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves - M.T. Anderson
The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science - Natalie Angier

Anathem

2008-12-16T09:20:00.000-08:00

by Neal Stephenson
I've been of fan of Neal Stephenson's novels since Zodiac, his Boston Harbor eco-terrorism romp, though, like many people, I read Snow Crash first. Stephenson's books eschew the intimidating cool of some science fiction writers, and are more about adventure in the service of Big Ideas. Anathem is no different, yet his scope may be grander than usual; this time he's invented a world so that he can explore an alternate evolution of scientific thought. Unlike Snow Crash, Anathem starts not with a death-defying chase, but with a conversation in a monastery, and some have complained that the story doesn't really get rolling until about 200 pages in. I disagree. The conversations, the personalities, the contrasting of cultures is fascinating. Though the pace may seem slow at first, this is a well-built world worth learning about, one with a lot to say about our own. And our hero, Fraa Erasmas, is a thinker among thinkers. These are interesting people, who, for most of their lives, have had a lot of time on their hands. Of course, this is soon to change.

Like others of Stephenson's books, Anathem has its flaws: underdeveloped female characters and an ending that is both satisfying and frustrating. But, all in all, it was a long and glorious ride, full of fresh ideas but also in the tradition of world-building epics like Dune or Lord of the Rings.

On Chesil Beach

2008-12-15T12:11:00.000-08:00

by Ian McEwan
There are moments in one's life that seem to be the fulcrum on which everything before and after is balanced. Of course, these moments aren't often noticeable unless something went badly, something that seems, in retrospect, the beginning of the end. In On Chesil Beach, Ian McEwan has created this sort of moment for a young English couple on their wedding night, circa 1962. There is true love between them, and each is certain about the other. But they're on the brink of one of these fulcrums in their lives, and McEwan divides his time between close-ups of this very private night, and zoomed-out looks at the life stories of these two, how they came to be here, how they chose each other. And, after, McEwan follows the long-term results. It's a brief but powerful glimpse of two human lives, how they crash and reverberate backwards and forwards in time. Beautiful.

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves

2008-11-26T07:37:00.001-08:00

by M.T. Anderson
It's easy, from our vantage point, to see the American Revolution as a good thing. Even as we look cynically at the mythology of high-school history classes, it's hard to argue with the Declaration of Independence. And Anderson didn't write the two Octavian Nothing novels to convince us otherwise. But he does such a good job taking us back into that time, and in the body of a young black man, that we are forced to think again.

As we learned in the first book, Octavian is a slave raised by Boston scientists in the 1760s and 1770s. I won't go into details about the end of the first book, but the second book picks up soon after, with Octavian and Trefusis making their way back to Boston, which is now under siege by the Rebels. When Octavian hears of the Governor of Virginia offering liberty to all escaped slaves, he knows he may never see an offer like this again. Of course, the Governor is no longer held in high esteem by many Virginians, and is forced to live, with his troops (black and white) and wealthy Loyalist colonists, off the shore of Norfolk, in their flotilla of ships, gradually running short of supplies. Would Octavian have been better off fighting on the side of American Liberty? Not likely; the punishment for escaped slaves was often barbaric. Octavian runs into some friends, new and old, and everyone has a story to tell about their journey to freedom. Octavian's story gives us an angle on the Revolutionary War few of us know much about. And Octavian Nothing is a fascinating character, both of his time and alienated from it.

Goodnight Bush

2008-11-16T13:06:00.000-08:00

by Gan Golan and Erich Origen
George W. Bush has always been an easy comedy target. But Goodnight Bush takes one of the President's own favorite books and turns it into a gently horrifying commentary on his administration. In the same way "Goodnight Moon" lets surreality creep in while the room gets darker, one could argue that Americans slowly grew accustomed to the bizarre changes in their country during the reign of the sleepy prince in the White House. The artwork is perfect, down to that singular green of the walls (not very well represented in the book cover picture at right), and the text is flawless. As in the original, the details constantly change, though the overall mood is one of resignation and acceptance. By the end of the book, one has to ask, did the last eight years really happen? Or was I sleeping, curled up in a dark and ever-stranger room, as the world outside faded to black?

Free-Range Chickens

2008-11-16T08:21:00.000-08:00

by Simon Rich
Free-Range Chickens is a collection of short dialogues and lists, on subjects Simon Rich has spent too much time thinking about, such as childhood or Dracula or God. Some are mildly funny, while others caused bouts of spastic giggles around our household. Rich plays with a lot of common TV and movie tropes, injecting the awkward comedy of real life. Obviously, it's one of those books much more easily enjoyed than described.

The Wordy Shipmates

2008-11-08T09:33:00.000-08:00

by Sarah Vowell
The Wordy Shipmates is not what I was expecting; I pictured maybe a colorful trip back in time, where, through Vowell's quirky lens, we would get a close-up portrait of life on the Mayflower and among the Pilgrims of Plymouth. Vowell is more interested in the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and, more importantly, getting us into the heads of those Puritans. Why, exactly, were they Puritans? Why leave England when they did? What did the New World mean to them? And, perhaps most interestingly, how did their values evolve into the America of George W. Bush? I realized I had been expecting a movie, albeit a daring independent film, but Vowell delivered something even better: a book, with the power to not just show us history but to help us get inside the minds of people we never thought we'd relate to.

The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science

2008-10-25T17:08:00.000-07:00

by Natalie Angier
When Natalie Angier offers you a whirligig tour, that's exactly what you get. Angier's writing style is playful and sparkling, and she seems to genuinely enjoy every aspect of science. Unlike Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, Angier's book is less about the wacky geniuses throughout the history of science, and more about what we know now, or rather, what we should know. She asked leading scientists what basic scientific knowlege no one should leave home without, and then uses her whirligig wit to take you along for the ride. Admittedly, there were sections where I started to feel my attention slipping (chemistry, anyone?), but all in all, the tone is light and full of startling and memorable examples. For instance, did you know that, though the cells making up our bodies are too small to see with the naked eye, some cells are so large that you could enjoy a single one for breakfast? Over-easy?

People of the Book

2008-10-24T06:23:00.001-07:00

by Geraldine Brooks
Hanna Heath is a rare book conservator in Australia, called to Bosnia to help restore a very rare book indeed: the Sarajevo Haggadah, which had gone missing during the siege in 1992. As Hanna gets to know the book, which is one of the few illuminated manuscripts in the history of Judaism, she comes across a few clues as to its history: a botched binding, a tiny butterfly wing, a white hair, some salt crystals. We travel back in time to witness these crucial moments in the book's 500-year life, and those who lives it touched along the way, including a girl who helps to save it from the Nazis and those who possessed it in Seville, Venice, Vienna. Between each story from the past, we return to Hanna, as she falls in love with the Bosnian librarian who saved the book during its most recent sectarian conflict. It's an intricately interwoven set of stories, full of memorable characters.

How to Be Useful: A Beginner's Guide to Not Hating Work

2008-09-23T10:52:00.000-07:00

by Megan Hustad
There are plenty of books out there that encourage people to shed the corporate chains and find more creative, outside-the-box, "authentic" ways to make a living. Isn't it time you stopped compromising, and stayed true to yourself? Good advice, in an ideal world, perhaps, but a lot of us find ourselves headed in the other direction. What about those of us who have already embraced our creative sides, but now need to buckle down and work, at least for a while, in the corporate world?

Hustad admits right away that most of the "creative and sensitive" souls she knows would never deign to pick up a "success book," such as How to Win Friends and Influence People, or The 7 Habits of Successful People, except maybe in secret. But, truth be told, there are some very good nuggets of wisdom from many of these books, and Hustad worries that her artistic friends may be shunning good advice at their own peril. Hustad does the work for us, pouring over a hundred years of success literature to find the good bits, advice that works today as well as it did in 1901. Some of her findings are counterintuitive; the first section, which draws on Andrew Carnegie, claims that to "just be yourself" is not always helpful. And another chapter concerns the right way, and the wrong way, to be self-deprecating.

Hustad's blend of history and advice, both timeless and topical, is a pleasure to read, and I can already feel myself becoming more useful.

The Botany of Desire

2008-08-12T12:09:00.000-07:00

by Michael Pollan
In The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan looks at four domesticated plants: the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato, and through them examines how they co-evolved with us to meet our desires: sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control. Examples of co-evolution abound in nature; isn't it natural that our species, and our various human cultures, have co-evolved with other species? This wide-angle view allows Pollan to look deep into American (and world) history, as well as the history of science and agriculture, revealing as much about humanity as about the four plants in question. Though Pollan's writing can be a bit over-the-top at times, for the most part, The Botany of Desire is a fascinating, eye-opening journey.

March

2008-08-06T06:13:00.001-07:00

by Geraldine Brooks
Letter-writing is a lost art. Even those who write letters regularly can find it a struggle, especially when writing to someone one loves and admires, and especially when one's own circumstances are less than admirable. What is there to say when the truth seems too ugly to recount? This is a problem faced repeatedly by the idealistic Civil War chaplain, Peter March, who is obliged to regularly send charming reassurances home to his wife, Marmee, and his four "little women." March is a good man, but his lofty ideals are getting splattered with mud and blood and reality, and, after a year in the war he may not even be sure he deserves to come home.

Brooks faced quite a challenge in creating a "missing" character from a classic novel, making sure he could be as compelling as the familiar faces of "Little Women," but she's succeeded brilliantly. March, based somewhat on Louisa May Alcott's father, Bronson, is a character all his own, and he adds a lot of humanity and imperfection to Alcott's original tale. Highly recommended.

Woman's World

2008-06-29T07:16:00.000-07:00

by Graham Rawle
To create his new novel, Graham Rawle crafted it the usual way, and then spent two years combing through 1960s-era women's magazines to find bits of text - from ads or fiction or other articles - that he could use in place of his text. Then, rather than typing it all up, he clipped out all the magazine bits and meticulously arranged them on pages, occasionally enhanced by bits of magazine art or magnificent drop caps. He photographed the results, and that's what you see.

Like many, I don't always expect that a piece of art will produce a good story, or vice-versa. And I'm sure some people will be turned off by the look of Rawle's book, thinking that it would be too hard to read, even if the novel was well-written. Not at all. Woman's World is a joy to read, and the clipped-out quality is not just a novelty, but essential to the story. I can't tell you much of the plot without spoiling it, but it does become clear very quickly that the narrator is not the most reliable. Norma Fontaine's world of fashion and good housekeeping is not as simple as it seems. The dark humor and unusual narrative style of this book reminded me somewhat of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, although the stories themselves have nothing in common. Woman's World is a delight for the heart and mind as well as the eye.

Our Inner Ape

2008-06-08T07:32:00.000-07:00

by Frans De Waal
When humans do something especially generous, kind, or empathetic, we like to describe these actions as being very "human." When we do something cruel or vicious, we often describe those actions as "animal." Frans De Waal would argue that neither of these familiar sides of humankind are unique to humanity. All apes exhibit startling levels of empathy, and not just with their own kind. At the same time, our closest cousins in the animal kingdom, chimpanzees and bonobos, can be as cruel as they are kind. De Waal divides his book into sections named Power, Sex, Violence, Kindness, and then talks about our own species as "The Bipolar Ape." Chimpanzees and bonobos have very different societies (bonobos are female dominant and generally less violent, using sex as a social, er, lubricant) but both are similar to us in many ways. Where do we fit in? Somewhere in the middle. Despite our species' unprecedented levels of complexity when it comes to communication and technology, there's very little motivating us that doesn't align perfectly with our fellow apes. But perhaps, by learning more about our place amongst our nearest animal relations, we can understand our own species better and hopefully bring out the best in ourselves.

How I Conquered Your Planet

2008-06-07T07:49:00.000-07:00

by John Swartzwelder
You won't find Swartzwelder's goofy-ass novels at your local Barnes & Nobles. They're self-published, with bland covers and big type, and they're not exactly high literature. They are, however, written by the guy who wrote more Simpsons episodes than anyone else, and his brand of so-stupid-it's-genius comedy is immediately recognizable. There are so many laugh-out-loud moments in How I Conquered Your Planet that I became the crazy guy on the bus, randomly bursting into mad giggles. Sorry, fellow bus riders.

The absurd plot involves a bus driver / private eye named Frank Burly, who is not, shall we say, all that bright. When the Martians arrive, disguised as magicians, and work their mind-control upon him, Frank is recruited, against his flimsy will, into the Martian military. Most of this seems to be an excuse for Swartzwelder to brilliantly play with time-honored cliches in several genres. Not an easy book to recommend, but if you enjoy clever, absurdist, stoopid-funny writing, definitely check this out.

X Saves the World: How Generation X Got the Shaft but Can Still Keep Everything from Sucking

2008-06-04T19:26:00.000-07:00

by Jeff Gordinier
When the media stops talking about something, does it cease to exist? How about something as big as a generation of Americans (albeit a small one)? How can we talk about members of Generation X "saving the world" when they think the whole concept is cliché and overblown? (And please don't call them "Generation X", that's so 90s.) Jeff Gordinier, after plenty of apologies about terminology and generalities, does somehow manage to show that Generation X, though permanently in the shadow of the Boomers and drowned out by the Gen Y/Millenials, is still in existence, and in fact, whether they like to talk about it or not, saving the world.

Any book this jam-packed with generalities and personal anecdotes, of course, has to be taken with a grain of salt. But a lot of the writing was really brilliant, and I found the book encouraging and inspiring. With all the 24/7 hoopla about the wonderful continuing adventures of the Boomers, it's easy to forget that those of us who are, say, 31-48, have had a distinct and valid culture that's worth talking about.

Little Brother

2008-06-04T19:23:00.000-07:00

by Cory Doctorow
Part Young Adult technothriller, part polemic and part how-to, Cory Doctorow's latest novel was one of the most gripping page-turners I've read in a while. What happens when Marcus, a kid who loves to wrap his mind around solving puzzles (like, how do I sneak out of school when there are technologies in place surveilling my every move?) finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time after a terrorist attack, and ends up being questioned by the Department of Homeland Security? "Am I under arrest?" he asks, still under the impression that he has a constitutional right to speak to a lawyer. But no, he's definitely over his head. And when he's at last returned, shaken, to the streets, one of his friends remains in custody, possibly never to be seen again. And the DHS lets Marcus know he'll be watched. Marcus makes a vow that he's going to bring his friend back.

Little Brother is one of those stories that feels just around the corner from today. We've all heard plenty of arguments about privacy vs. security, but, for many of us, it's easy to feel that, if we have nothing to hide, we're not going to spend a lot of time worrying about our freedoms being taken away. Doctorow shines a bright light into the problems with this thinking, and vividly illustrates what happens when national security stops serving us and becomes another form of terrorism. Buy it for yourself and any smart young people you know.

Pump Six

2008-05-30T16:19:00.000-07:00

by Paolo Bacigalupi
Paolo Bacigalupi (pronounced "Batchy-Galoopy") has a sick fascination with humankind's abuse of technology. Rather than blurting out, at some merry social gathering, the latest disturbing news about endocrine disruptors getting into the water supply, as I have been known to do (sorry, everyone), Bacigalupi spins it into a world, a future whose inhabitants can barely remember anything different. Dystopian visions are, of course, a staple of science fiction, but these stories feel fresh -- rather than imagining those picking up the pieces after humankind has nearly destroyed itself, Bacigalupi often asks what happens after we've "perfected" ourselves, solving food shortages, conquering aging. While advances in technology seem able to solve almost any problem (with, of course, the help of our glorious corporate overlords), we are still humans; long-term thinking has never been our forté.

Bacigalupi presents these short stories in the order in which he wrote them -- a courageous choice that allows us to see his writing evolve over time. The first couple stories, though well written, were not my favorites, and I'd encourage anyone picking up Pump Six to read on, deeper into these darker worlds.

Fall of Frost

2008-05-09T20:56:00.001-07:00

by Brian Hall
Brian Hall has once again pulled off another high-wire feat of empathy. His meticulously-researched book taking us inside the minds of the Lewis & Clark expedition, I Should Be Extremely Happy In Your Company, remains one of my very favorites, and he returns to this form with Fall of Frost. This time he's primarily inside one man's head, though that head is old and white and tends to dart back and forth in time. Though we often travel back to Frost's youth or early adulthood, it sometimes seems as if we're still with Frost in his old age, traveling through his own history, making sense of his past while occasionally reshaping it into legend as needed. After all, in his later years he's a celebrity, often interviewed about the life that brought the world such beloved poetry. Frost's public doesn't necessarily want to hear the grimy truth, and neither does Frost want to talk about it. He is both a painfully solitary man and a constant cultivator of attention. There are countless detailed biographies about Robert Frost, but Hall lets us be there, with him, as he stops by woods one snowy evening. Beautiful.

The Count of Monte Cristo

2008-02-17T10:51:00.000-08:00

by Alexandre Dumas,
translated by Robin Buss
After doing a few calculations and realizing how many years it would take me to read all the books I had on my current "to-read" list, I started to think maybe I wanted to be a little choosier about what I spend my time on; I'm not a fast reader, after all, and I had recently read some real duds. So I started paying more attention to people talking about their all-time favorite books. For my friend Andy Sherman, it was The Count of Monte Cristo. What the heck. I checked it out of the library. To my chagrin it was 1243 pages; I could read 3 or 4 books in that amount of time! I resolved to give it the 50-page test, and wasn't disappointed; it's an exciting story.

For those unfamiliar, this 1840 novel concerns a young sailor from Marseilles, Edmond Dantes, who has a beautiful fiancee, a great job, and a father who's proud of him. Unfortunately, there are those in town who are rather jealous of Dantes' good fortune, and their envy is whipped up, by the smartest of the lot, into a conspiracy. And the fragile political environment (Napoleon has been exiled, but is rumored to be planning a coup) only makes things worse. Dantes ends up, without a trial, being thrown into a dungeon to live out the rest of his days alone, with only the memory of the life he should have had. After nearly going insane, he establishes contact with another prisoner, who helps him figure out the identities of his antagonists. He vows that if he ever gets out, he will have his revenge on these men.

Dumas has a breathless, melodramatic writing style that takes a bit of getting used to, but can be very entertaining. He was paid by the line, and he made the most of this by writing a lot of dialogue, which, coincidentally, makes his writing all the more digestible to the modern reader. There are chapters, especially during the middle of the book, that I felt could have easily been trimmed from the book, but my main frustration was with character; at times the Count of Monte Cristo seems to be a god (a fact not lost on those around him) and one almost wishes he were a bit less all-powerful. His overuse of his powers do eventually seem to catch up with him, but Dumas seemed to like his character too much to give him any real regrets. Strangely, the Count reminded me of Batman, who almost seems like an evolution of the same character: the poor unfortunate who grows into a worldly manipulator, dealing out vengance to those who would abuse their power.

Robin Buss's translation was a joy to read, and taught me that a well-translated 19th century French novel could actually be more of a page-turner than an untranslated 19th century English novel. Must keep this in mind.

The How of Happiness

2008-01-29T07:39:00.000-08:00

by Sonja Lyubomirsky
I love popular science books. For instance, Daniel Gilbert's Stumbling On Happiness was a fascinating look at the reasons so many people are bad at finding happiness. But Gilbert was very clear: this was not a self-help book, and was not designed to actually help the reader find happiness. Okay... So.... And then there are hundreds of self-help books out there, full of enthusiastic advice and dozens of anecdotes to back it up: "If it worked for Suzy Peterson, it just might work for you!" Actual scientific research rarely enters the picture.

Along comes Sonja Lyubomirsky, a respected scientist who has unashamedly written a self-help book. As a research psychologist and University of California professor of psychology, she has tested thousands of people to determine how much of our happiness is within our control (as opposed to hereditary or circumstantial) and what, exactly, we can do to become happier people. Some of her book will be familiar to those who read Gilbert's book; she talks about what happiness is, and what it isn't, and why it's important. But then she goes on to present 12 "Happiness Activities" that have been rigorously tested. Most of them are nothing new: keep a gratitude journal, get regular exercise, savor life's joys, commit to your personal goals, etc. But what's new is the "How." She stresses that not every approach works for every person, and helps you to customize your happiness program to fit your personality and lifestyle. And, because she's tested all this, she can get very specific; for instance, writing in a gratitude journal once a week is much more helpful for most people than doing so once a day. Lyubomirsky seems to sincerely want to share her research findings with the general public, and with very good reason: it's important stuff. Highly recommended.

Soon I Will Be Invincible

2008-01-10T21:34:00.000-08:00

by Austin Grossman
In the evolution of the comic-book superhero/supervillain, it's become increasingly common to attempt to really get inside the heads of the characters, rather than just watching their larger-than-life exploits from a distance. What's it truly like to pull on a pair of tights in the morning and vow that today's the day your evil plan will, at last, be complete? With Soon I Will Be Invincible, Grossman dispenses with the graphics altogether and uses literary fiction to explore the lives of Dr. Impossible, a supervillain, and Fatale, a cyborg superheroine. He strikes a wonderful balance between gently spoofing the comic-book world and celebrating it. At one point, Dr. Impossible muses, "I decided it was time to stop punishing myself. And start punishing everyone else."

The Invention of Hugo Cabret

2007-12-26T20:00:00.000-08:00

by Brian Selznick
Selznick's book is like a treasure box full of early twentieth-century delights: magic lanterns and mechanical men, clockworks and secret histories. It's also somewhere between a graphic novel and young-adult literature: the two forms are beautifully integrated and both essential to the storytelling. Hugo Cabret is an orphaned boy carving out an existence in the walls of a Paris train station, continuing his dead uncle's job of setting all the clocks twice a day. If he fails to keep them running, the station master will discover that his uncle had died, and Hugo will evicted from the timekeeper's apartment. With his resources nearly exhausted, Hugo's fate becomes intertwined with those of a mysterious shopkeeper and his granddaughter. The plot is full of exciting twists and turns, some of them revealed only through the moody, atmospheric drawings. Despite its 500 pages, it's just long enough for one breathless night. In the morning, you'll think you dreamed the whole thing.

Away

2007-12-16T16:10:00.000-08:00

by Amy Bloom
Lillian Leyb has come a long way. Something nightmarish has happened to her, far away in the Russian village where she grew up, and we learn of it just that way, in her nightmares; she's reluctant to talk about it with anyone. She's got a new life now, in New York City, and things seem to be going well. With only a very bare-bones English vocabulary, she charms her way into employment, and then into a plush life as mistress to both a handsome star of Jewish theatre and his father. But when a voice from the past gives her a bit of heart-wrenching news, she knows her journey has only just begun.

But of course, Away is not the sort of book you read to find out what happens next. For the reader, as for Lillian, it's all in the journey. Bloom finds the magic and the heartbreak (and, often, the humor) in every situation, and Lillian's hope and despair bleed into us. Away feels somewhere between a novel and a sequence of linked short stories, but she uses her skills to flesh out whole lifetimes in brief, brilliant, flash-forwards. No one Lillian Leyb touches remains unaffected.

The World Without Us

2007-11-14T14:28:00.000-08:00

by Alan Weisman
Weisman has done a crafty thing here; he's written a book capable of inspiring environmental action in its readers, without invoking the usual fears about human survival and quality of life. Starting with the premise that humans have already died off, he imagines life on Earth continuing without us. This can have a strange effect on the reader. First, one is a little embarrassed at how shoddily humankind's seemingly permanent structures and systems were constructed; very little, besides plastics, nuclear waste, and a few bronze sculptures, can last through the ages without constant human maintenance. What does this say about us? It's both disconcerting and reassuring to know that, even if we succeed in making the planet uninhabitable for ourselves and hundreds of other species, we still may not be leaving much of a mark. Weisman takes the reader on a tour around those rare spots on Earth that have been abandoned, including a disputed resort town in Cyprus, the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea, and the area Chernobyl, and we marvel at the speed and strength of nature reclaiming the land. As calm and attractive as an Earth without humans seems, one is mainly left with the sense that there has to be a happy medium; if humankind could reduce its relentless consumption of our planet's resources (especially by slowing or stopping our population growth), we would very swiftly be rewarded with a resurgence of all the beauty our planet has to offer. We haven't rendered the planet terminally ill, we've only endangered ourselves. Let the healing begin.

Voice of Crow

2007-10-31T19:25:00.000-07:00

by Jeri Smith-Ready
My wife and I couldn't wait to read Voice of Crow. The book takes up where Eyes of Crow left off, evolving from a coming-of-age story into a more expansive tale that follows many characters and many twists. The fragile happy ending that Rhia, Marek and others earn in the first book comes under threat as they face inevitable internal and external conflicts following their battle with the Descendants.

Smith-Ready introduces new levels of complexities, including prisoners of war on both sides and a journey into the very heart of enemy territory. As the Asermons and Kalindons learn first-hand about the strange land to the south, there's a growing sense that the Ilion attack may have only been the beginning.

Voice of Crow introduces some wonderful new characters and relationships while continuing to follow those we grew to love in the first book. Smith-Ready does a marvelous job of keeping the characters real, while adding depth and scope to the story. Part of that depth comes from including some characters who don't fit perfectly into their given societies, and we were impressed with the book's skillful and sympathetic exploration of issues like homosexuality, disability and post-traumatic stress disorder. We can't say more, for fear of giving away surprises. Great stuff!

Thirteen

2007-10-29T09:17:00.000-07:00

by Richard K. Morgan
A few years ago, I attended a talk by Richard Wrangham about the origins of human violence. He proposed the idea that we humans had been domesticating ourselves, over tens of thousands of years, much the way a group of wolves domesticated themselves into dogs. Richard K. Morgan seems to have latched onto this idea, and it led to his latest novel, Thirteen, taking place in a world dealing with the fallout of rampant genetic modification. Turns out that mucking about with human DNA maybe wasn't such a great idea, and most of the products of those experiments have either been killed off or relegated to the margins of society. Carl Marsalis, whose genetic modifications were sponsored by the military, is a "thirteen," created to be a throwback, undoing thousands of years of human domestication. This doesn't make him an evil person, but he has no compulsion to fit into society, and no hesitation about using violence to solve problems. This doesn't endear him to many human beings, most of whom either want to see him dead or to use him for their own purposes. Towards the beginning of the book, he's sprung out of a Florida jail to help hunt down a serial killer -- another thirteen. I don't read a lot of books that are this action-packed and suspenseful. A great ride, with a thoughtful premise.

The Arrival

2007-10-12T16:29:00.000-07:00

by Shaun Tan
For many of us who grew up in the USA, it's not easy to imagine the immigrant experience. When we travel the world, we often see signs in English, posters for American movies, American restaurants or at least American foods. Shaun Tan, whose parents immigrated from Malaysia to Australia, has created a beautiful analogy in his new graphic novel, The Arrival. Using no words, but 120 pages of breathtaking pencil drawings, Tan creates a world completely foreign to the reader, and brings his hopeful immigrant into it. The writing is unfamiliar, but that's just the beginning. The city, the birds and animals, the food, the local customs, everything the immigrant encounters is strange, daunting, but also wondrous. We watch as he slowly makes his way, registering with the state, finding shelter, finding work, making friends, saving money to send home to his own family, in hopes that they will soon join him. It's an old and universal story, but Tan has brought it home beautifully.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

2007-10-05T12:49:00.001-07:00

by Junot Diaz
What first grabbed me about Diaz' novel was the voice. This is the voice of a friend of yours, telling you about a friend of his. It's immediate, slangy, spanglish, and full of sci-fi references. Besides the voice, you learn little about the narrator until later in the story; all you know is that he can spin a great story, and that he loved Oscar Wao. Oscar is a 400-pound sci-fi fan from the Dominician Republic, living in New Jersey with his mom and sister. Though Dominican men have a reputation as being especially good with "the ladies," Oscar is a hopeless case, as his friends and family often remind him, unless he changes his ways. Years go by, and he still hasn't had his first kiss. As the novel delves into the family history, you start to understand that maybe there's something more sinister at work. Could Oscar just be the latest victim of the family curse? How could Dominicans, who live on the first place Christopher Columbus set foot on in the Americas, NOT believe in curses? How could Oscar's family, who barely survived one of the bloodiest dictatorships in history, start a new life, scot-free? The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, with its mix of hipster style and melancholic magic realism, knocked me out.

An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

2007-09-22T10:27:00.000-07:00

by Brock Clarke
"I, Sam Pulsifer, am the man who accidentally burned down the Emily Dickinson House in Amherst, Massachusetts, and who in the process killed two people, for which I spent ten years in prison and, as letters from scholars of American literature tell me, for which I will continue to pay a high price long into the not-so-sweet hereafter." So begins one of the most laugh-out-loud tragedies I've read in a while.

Sam is a self-described bumbler, who would probably be a bit behind everyone else even if his adulthood hadn't been artificially delayed by his years in prison. At the age of 18, his life, and possibly his parents' lives, have been ruined by his mistake. After his prison stay, he sets out to begin a normal life, whatever that may mean. His parents seem adrift and resentful (mom's an English teacher and dad's in publishing), even as they go through the motions of being supportive parents. Dad has a cache of letters written to Sam during his prison years, many of them threatening, but, disturbingly, a few from people who'd like to see other author's homes burned down. Then the son of the couple killed in Sam's fire shows up at his door. And soon other writers homes, all of them nearby, start to go up in flames.

This was that odd combination of page-turner and literary finesse; it seemed to be about much more than Sam's story: the weight of history, the fragility of intention, and the secrets that burn us up.

Eyes of Crow

2007-09-15T10:19:00.001-07:00

by Jeri Smith-Ready
Rhia is a young woman growing up in a tribal society a thousand years after our own. In her village, everyone grows up with a strong connection to a spirit animal. Her mother is an Otter, which gives her the power to be a masterful healer. Her brothers are Wolverines, which makes them excellent fighters. Rhia, who spent most of her childhood sick and close to death, finds herself coming to grips with her own powers: she is destined to become a Crow, which means she will help people cross over to the Other Side when they die. This is, of course, a very important position to hold in her community, but also a heavy burden to carry.

Smith-Ready has created a believable world, not too far from our own, in which the magic is subtle, spiritual and natural. Her characters are rich and multilayered, completely relatable. I can't wait to read the next book in the trilogy, Voice of Crow, which comes out in October.

The Pesthouse

2007-08-31T15:28:00.001-07:00

by Jim Crace
Once while I was reading Jared Diamond's Collapse and staying in a resort hotel, my subconscious was apparently seized with the imbalance of the modern world and I had an early morning post-collapse vision; the hotel was in ruins, picked clean, abandoned and overgrown with weeds. Jim Crace's novel takes place in that world, a thousand years after life as we know it has collapsed. Franklin is a tall young man, traveling with his brother to the east, where they hope to sail across the Atlantic to a better life. Along the way, Franklin meets Margaret, who has been left to die (or to heal) after showing signs of the flux, a plague-like disease. Franklin and Margaret end up sharing their journey, through strange hamlets and the rubble of cities, meeting other travelers as well as those who profit by leading travelers astray. Unlike McCarthy's The Road, The Pesthouse is somehow hopeful, believing in the beauty of the American spirit, even after all our works have been reduced to weeds and ruin.

Un Lun Dun

2007-07-18T14:37:00.001-07:00

by China Mieville
Not being a huge fan of conventional fantasy, I was curious to hear of China Mieville's effort to turn its conventions inside out with his first young-adult novel, Un Lun Dun. His protagonist, Zanna, travels, along with her wisecracking friend, Deeba, into a strange, topsy-turvy London, where she finds out her destiny: she's the only one who can save this world. So far, nothing new. But, as so often happens in Un Lun Dun, things quickly turn upside-down and backwards and inside-out, leaving the prophecies in tatters and the Chosen One un-chosen. Can the quirky sidekick become the heroine she was never supposed to be? Mieville populates his bizarro London with dozens of bizarre personalities, some adorable, some ridiculous, some truly frightening. A fun and imaginative ride, with some very memorable moments.

The Handmaid's Tale

2007-07-06T09:48:00.001-07:00

by Margaret Atwood
Offred is a "handmaid" in a society very different from ours, but potentially only a few years away. Her only purpose in life is to bear a child for the Commander and his wife, who, like so many, can't conceive a child. Once a month, she's the center of the Ceremony, when the Commander's wife holds her and the Commander does his best to impregnate her. Offred remembers a different life, though, when she had her own name (not "of-Fred"), a loving husband and daughter, a job at the library, where she was allowed to read, to vote, to make her own decisions, travel wherever she wanted, use birth control, wear makeup, use her voice.

With The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood accomplished not only a staggering work of speculative fiction, but also a great literary thriller. It chills me to the bone, and reminds me to keep an eye on fundamentalists, no matter what their religion. Long live our hard-won bill of rights.

The Yiddish Policemens Union

2007-06-22T12:10:00.001-07:00

by Michael Chabon
In the late 1930s, FDR's Secretary of the Interior, Harold Ickes, came up with a solution for the millions of Jews leaving Europe: give them a temporary home in Alaska. No one, (save, well, the natives) was using that land, and here are all these people with no place to go. Give them 50 years up there, and when the middle east cools down, they can move to their promised land. Ickes' idea died when it got to Congress. But in Michael Chabon's latest novel, the idea became a reality, and now, in 2007, for the 3 million Jews' living in the frozen metropolis of Sitka, Alaska, time is running out. Meyer Landsman, a down-on-his-luck detective, couldn't care less; he's more interested in solving the murder of a man living downstairs from him in the same shabby apartment building. Landsman's investigations take him into every nook and cranny of this strange but familiar city, which seems the perfect noir setting. In fact, Sitka exaggerates all the noir conventions beautifully. Not only does our hero struggle with his melancholic streak, his entire culture does. Not only is he living on borrowed time, the whole city is. Evocatively written, imaginative, poignant and darkly funny.

Finn

2007-05-31T13:53:00.000-07:00

by Jon Clinch
Why take a side character from one of America's most beloved novels and spin him off into his own book? Was it really necessary? Maybe not. But Twain does seem to invite it, leaving what amounts to an unsolved mystery in the middle of "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." Huck and Jim find, floating on the river, an old house occupied by a dead man shot in the back and a host of strange objects. The walls are covered in ghastly pictures and symbols. We later realize the corpse belonged to Huck's ne'er-do-well father. Who shot him? How did the house end up in the river? What is the meaning of the collected items and the decorated walls?

Jon Clinch goes beyond the meticulous solution of this mystery to create an unforgettable character of his own. Finn is an awful man; a drunkard, racist, thief, murderer, rapist, and, arguably, a slave-owner. His life follows a logic of its own, more a matter of physics -- like the steamboat Finn witnesses one night exploding into flames -- than any real intention. Finn doesn't seem like someone you'd want to spend time with, but at the same time he's fascinating, and, sad to say, not the worst man on the river. There's a self-destruction waiting in many of us, and Finn rides it all the way to the end, even as some abused and forgotten part of his soul struggles to make things right.

Everything Bad is Good for You

2007-04-01T09:09:00.001-07:00

by Steven Johnson
In The Unfolding of Language, Guy Deutscher took a staple subject of opinion columns everywhere -- the idea that the English language (or whatever language one happens to speak) is going downhill -- and refuted it by way of a grand tour of the evolution of language. Steven Johnson does the same thing, though somewhat less grandly, with a similar idea: pop culture is in steep decline. He argues that, while there will always be plenty of dreck, the complexity of mainstream popular culture is generally increasing, and that requires more active intellectual engagement than ever before. While one could easily sit back and let Dragnet or Starsky and Hutch wash over you, one actually has to stay sharp to keep up with the multiple plotlines in Veronica Mars or 24. Video games such as The Sims require the player to juggle dozens of variables, as opposed to Pac Man's "eat or be eaten" scenario or Frogger's "be careful crossing the street."

Johnson is careful not to say that any of this new media could or should replace more traditional media; as cognitively beneficial as today's fast-paced, multi-level media may be, nothing can replace the benefits of a good book. But he does strongly feel that brains will always be attracted to challenges, not stupefaction, and our culture reflects that as strongly today as it ever has.

Life As We Knew It

2007-02-20T14:37:00.000-08:00

by Susan Beth Pfeffer
Miranda, a 16-year-old girl in Pennsylvania, writes in her diary about her frustrations with her mom, her fixation on a handsome Olympic figure skater, her friends at school, and the upcoming astronomical event her teachers are encouraging the kids to watch: an asteroid will hit the moon, and should be visible from Earth. Miranda and her family watch that night, with others on their street, as the moon is not only hit but pushed into a new orbit. Cheers turn to screams as the moon grows disarmingly large in the sky. Before anyone has time to think about the implications, power starts to go out. Familiar sources of information are no longer available, as the major television stations go off the air. News trickles into town that massive tsunamis have killed millions living in coastal areas around the world. And that's just the beginning. Pfeffer keeps the story focused on Miranda's world, as it grows smaller and less certain. It's a terrifying and hopeful tale, wonderfully detailed and human, one of the most riveting books I've read in a while.

Who Needs Donuts?

2007-01-31T09:15:00.000-08:00

by Mark Alan Stamaty
As a third grader who, for the first time in my life, could see all the details of the world, thanks to my brand-new eyeglasses, I became addicted to visual detail. Others seemed to take for granted all the tiny holes in the ceiling tiles, the slow swirls of wood grain in the back of a chair. I was entranced. Stamaty's 1973 children's book, Who Needs Donuts, seems to be the product of someone who not only saw the detail but celebrated it in glorious pen and ink on every inch of the page. The story is fairly simple: a boy goes on a quest for donuts, into the bustling city. This is probably the way cities bustled for me as a child: every building is covered with signs and obscure advertisements and windows full of people going about their lives. Everyone on the street seems to be on their own bizarre quest, and the streets are full of fast-moving vehicles of every shape and purpose. Stamaty hides visual and verbal puns everywhere among the busy-ness. Lots of fun.

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party

2007-01-03T13:36:00.000-08:00

by M. T. Anderson
Almost a year too late, I finally got to read the book I was hungering for after I finished David Mitchell's incredible Cloud Atlas. Octavian Nothing shares many of the same themes, and Anderson is similarly adept at creating memorable voices. Octavian is a boy growing up with his mother in pre-revolutionary Boston in a house full of scientists. Like many kids, it takes him a while to realize that his upbringing is somewhat out-of-the-ordinary. For one thing, he and his mother are the only ones in the house who have names; everyone else is numbered. Everything that goes into, or comes out of, Octavian's body is weighed and made note of. He is taught Latin and Greek and to play the violin. He knows nothing of his father, only that his mother is an African princess, and perhaps this is the reason for the special treatment. Perhaps not. The larger world slowly creeps in to Octavian's consciousness: rumors of a coming Revolution, the realities of slavery, the pending financial ruin of the scientific commune upon which Octavian and his mother depend. This is a dark novel, with the feel of a fantasy, though all of it could have happened in that place and time. Anderson has done his research, and brings to life the horrors of slavery and the precariousness of life during wartime. Octavian himself is unforgettable.

Eifelheim

2006-12-30T17:20:00.000-08:00

by Michael Flynn
While I read this book, researchers in London announced new findings about the Antikythera mechanism, a 2000-year-old Greek computer discovered in a shipwreck in 1900. This was the kind of discovery that makes one wonder what other surprises remain to be uncovered from the past, or what past discoveries have yet to be correctly interpreted. Eifelheim tells two stories: one taking place "Now," as a historian struggles to determine why one of the many Black Forest villages hit by the plague in the 14th century was never rebuilt, despite its ideal location. (His partner, a physicist, is nearing a breakthrough that could also shed light on the case.) And the other story takes place in that village, shortly before its disappearance, as mysterious insect-like hominids suddenly take up residence in the nearby woods. We follow the priest, Dietrich, who happens to be the most educated man in town, as he tries to make sense of the visitors, who could've neatly fit in with the monstrous gargoyles on his church. Science as we know it does not yet exist, and there are no words for "interplanetary travel" or "alien species." The townspeople, who have spent their lives in the land the Grimm Brothers would later immortalize, interpret them as demons or mythical beasts, but Dietrich urges a cautious welcome. If, as they seem, they are stranded travelers, struggling to repair their craft, wouldn't it be the Christian thing to offer aid? Definitely the best medieval science fiction of the year.

Mountain Man Dance Moves: The McSweeney's Book of Lists

2006-12-18T10:31:00.000-08:00

by the editors of McSweeney's
If you can proudly carry around this pink and sparkly book with a moonlit unicorn on the cover, your sense of humor is probably edgy enough that you'll enjoy the humor inside. Then again, maybe you're an eight-year-old girl. In any case, Mountain Man Dance Moves takes David Letterman's Top Ten Lists to the next evolutionary level. Each list was submitted to McSweeney's magazine by a different writer, which ensures a lot of variety, and the humor ranges from silly absurdity ("Four Ways in Which My Life Is Just Like Pac-Man's") to dry wit ("Pickup Lines: The First Drafts"). Some lists build upon themselves, like tiny short stories. There were plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, and, I'm ashamed to admit, read-out-loud moments. The perfect gift for your secretly-giggly hipster friends.

Stumbling on Happiness

2006-11-28T10:31:00.001-08:00

by Daniel Gilbert
Despite appearances, Stumbling on Happiness is not a self-help book, and won't tell you much about how to be a happier person. But it may you help you avoid some wrong turns in the pursuit of happiness. Humankind's ability to predict the future is one of our fanciest tricks; it is, arguably, what makes us human. But it's also one of our newest tricks, and, as Gilbert shows in study after study, our predictive abilities have their limitations and flaws. Your own imagination, as powerful as it is, is often completely wrong when it comes to predicting the outcomes of your decisions. Gilbert's writing style is full of humor and creative examples of each of his points, and there are plenty of "a-ha!" moments. And he does offer a simple solution, which he is pretty sure you'll refuse to follow up on, thanks to your brain's built-in biases. I'll take that as a challenge!

The Ghost Map

2006-11-02T08:22:00.000-08:00

by Steven Johnson
150 years ago, London was the largest city in the world, and in many ways very much like any modern metropolis. But the city was almost entirely lacking in infrastructure, public works. The flush toilet had recently been invented, but citywide sewers were still years off, and "night-soil men" were paid to haul off human waste when it collected too deeply in cesspools. To put it mildly, the city stank. Editorials were frequently published in the newspapers about the putrid air, and the ill-health it undoubtedly caused, especially in the poorest parts of town. Then, in late August, 1854, people start dying in Soho. It's not the first time cholera has attacked the city , but it's the deadliest. Whole families die overnight, while their neighbors are spared. Steven Johnson tells the story of the two men, a doctor and a minister, who overcome the pseudo-science of the time to find the exact cause, stop the spread of the disease, and ultimately change the way London, and cities across the world, functioned. Our 21st-century vantage point allows us to zoom in and out, from microbe to metropolis, in ways Dr. John Snow would have loved. Johnson does a wonderful job of making this scientific detective story into a page-turner.

A Spot of Bother

2006-10-28T21:31:00.000-07:00

by Mark Haddon
It's a time-honored dramatic convention: comedy ends in a wedding; tragedy ends in death. Much of the suspense in Mark Haddon's latest book comes from the uneasy sense that the story could go either way. From the start, we follow George Hall, as he and his wife prepare for their daughter's marriage to what could very well be the "wrong man." As upsetting as this is, George has problems of his own: his body, quickly followed by his mind, seems to be slowly coming unglued. He handles this as any British Gentleman would; he keeps it to himself. Of course, losing one's mind is not something one can keep a secret for long. Unlike Haddon's last book, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, his latest book gets into the heads of a wide range of characters. Some of the underlying themes, though, are similar: one's interior life may never be glimpsed, even by those one feels closest to. Everyone has their secrets, and miscommunications, and the exquisite chaos the characters spin around the Big Day is perhaps too neatly resolved. Though not as brilliant or groundbreaking as The Curious Incident, A Spot of Bother is an expertly crafted, enjoyable novel.

This is Your Brain on Music

2006-10-14T14:59:00.000-07:00

by Daniel J. Levitin
A successful record producer who became a neuroscientist, Daniel Levitin is in a unique position to write about music. Luckily, he's a skillful writer as well, explaining the jargon-filled fields of both music and neuroscience for the layman. What, exactly, is music? Why does it provoke such an emotional response? Why do we dislike some music so passionately? How can a few tiny bones in my ear possibly sound like a symphony? How can we hear a strange new version of an old song and still identify it -- something no computer can pull off? Levitin sheds light on all these questions and many more. This is one of those science books that not only gives satisfying answers but also fills the reader with wonder.

The Polysyllabic Spree

2006-10-12T11:31:00.000-07:00

by Nick Hornby

"If we played cultural Fantasy Boxing League, and made books go 15 rounds in the ring against the best that any other art form had to offer, then books would win pretty much every time. Go on, try it. The Magic Flute v. Middlemarch? Middlemarch in six. The Last Supper v. Crime and Punishment? Fyodor on points. And every now and again you'd get a shock, because that happens in sport, so Back to the Future III might land a lucky punch on Rabbit, Run; but I'm still backing literature 29 times out of 30."
- Nick Hornby

Nick Hornby writes like a good friend; he's opinionated, self-deprecating, smart and funny. The Polysyllabic Spree is a compilation of Hornby's monthly columns for Believer Magazine, in which he basically blogs about the books he bought and the books he read each month. Hornby is a strong believer that reading should be fun. This doesn't mean that books have to be trashy, just that there's no reason to slog your way through something you don't enjoy when the world is full of incredible books. His enthusiasm for books is contagious, and, whether or not you share his tastes, you may find your reading appetite re-invigorated. Fun stuff.

The March

2006-10-10T11:58:00.000-07:00

by E.L. Doctorow
In Doctorow's latest book, Sherman's March appears like a hurricane, inexorably twisting its way across the south, unimaginably vast and destructive. At the center, if not always in control, is Sherman himself, who is both weary and strangely at home. We follow several fictional characters at the edges of the storm, as well, people who are victims, opportunists, or a bit of each. Pearl is the daughter of a slave and a slaveowner. No longer a slave, she uses the march to find a new identity: could she pass for white? Could she pass for male? Is there any place for her in the new world? Arly and Will, two convicts, use the march as their escape from punishment; they quickly don whichever uniforms are most advantageous at the time and thrive on the chaos around them. Colonel Sartorius is a surgeon who dreams of an antiseptic world where he can achieve more than daily amputations. At times the great and terrible march seems like the only place to be; the world around it has fallen apart, and the world behind it is in smoking ruins.

Wake Up, Sir!

2006-10-09T21:25:00.000-07:00

by Jonathan Ames
Alan Blair is a sad alcoholic living with his aunt and uncle in New Jersey. Then again, he's a witty young man, a published novelist with an unbelievably efficient butler named Jeeves. When his aunt and uncle insist that he returns to rehab, he has a better idea: an artists' colony in Saratoga Springs, where he can get down to finally finishing his second novel. He and Jeeves hit the road, falling into various misadventures along the way. Part of what I loved about Alan was the way his education and erudition served him so poorly in his dirty, real-world settings. In this respect, the character brought to mind Ignatius Reilly of A Confederacy of Dunces. Both characters seem to live in denial of the real world, floating somewhere above it in their minds, and below it in the minds of everyone else. Jeeves is obviously too good to be true, but his unflappable exchanges with Alan made me laugh out loud. Wake Up, Sir! bounces around on the sheer joy and pain of never quite fitting in, wherever you go, leaving the world a wonderful, horrible adventure.

Collapse

2006-10-09T21:21:00.000-07:00

by Jared Diamond
In his 1998 book, Guns, Germs, and Steel, Diamond argues that the most important factor determining the rate of a society's development has always been its location. In Collapse, however, Diamond shows that location does not seal the fate of societies, which can choose to adapt to their environments or not. Using examples from Montana, Greenland, Japan, New Guinea, Rwanda, and Easter Island, he builds a strong case that societies succeed only by throwing out any behaviors incompatible with their environment. And as population increases and globalization knits the world together ever more tightly, there are fewer and fewer societies existing in isolation. If every society now desires to live like ours in the "first world," can the world sustain us? Will we adapt to our global environment, or choose our lifestyles over our survival?

Black Swan Green

2006-10-09T21:16:00.000-07:00

by David Mitchell
Mitchell, author of such headspinning novels as Cloud Atlas (see below) and Ghostwritten, has, at first glance, stepped off his runaway train to write something more traditional: a semi-autobiographical "first novel." This is a coming-of-age tale of a year in the life of one 13-year-old boy living in a suburb in northwestern England in 1982. That's right, just one boy, one voice, one village, one year. This is still David Mitchell, though, and he shows that a year with Jason Taylor can be just as wonderfully complex and multi-layered as anything else. Jason's voice is unique, something he himself learns to deal with over the course of the book. Identity is a theme familiar to Mitchell fans, as are several other themes here: self-perception, the power of the individual, the strong versus the weak, the unrelenting change inherent in being alive. Beautifully done.

Good Omens

2006-10-09T21:04:00.000-07:00

by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
Good Omens has been described with phrases like "If Douglas Adams had written the Omen" and "Monty Python does Armageddon." I don't quite see it as living up to Adams or Python, but it does hold its own as an entertaining end-times fantasy. The story revolves around a demon, Crowley (formerly employed in the garden of Eden) and an angel, Aziraphale, who are called on by their respective teams to kick the end of the world into gear. The Antichrist is switched at birth, and hijinks ensue. Crowley and Aziraphale, immortals who have spent thousands of years living on Earth, have actually grown to like humans (and each other), and are a bit ambivalent about carrying out their final mission. Meanwhile, a strange young woman named Anathema Device lives her life according to a big book of prophecies written by her distant ancestor. Is there any escape from the divine plan?

The Omnivore's Dilemma

2006-10-09T20:59:00.000-07:00

by Michael Pollan
Pollan, whose last book was the superb The Botany of Desire, writes this time about the origin of food. That's not to say the historical origins, although he does occasionally visit that topic. I'm talking about the origin of that thing you just ate. Where did it come from? What was it made of, and why? (And why, so often, CORN?) How much better is "organic" food? How did we become people who know so little about the food we eat? Our ignorance about food is something most of us have become very comfortable with. But this yawning gap in our everyday lives is something Pollan says we should pay attention to. To blindly put our trust in the various industries assembling our grocery items, or to blindly follow whatever diet trends are on the bestseller lists can have disasterous results, not just for our bodies but for our society at large. Pollan's prose is engaging, eye-opening, and warm, despite the sometimes unsettling subject matter.

The Island at the Center of the World

2006-10-09T20:47:00.000-07:00

by Russell Shorto
Somewhere in the New York State Library, a man painstakingly translates a sheaf of 450-year-old documents, piecing together, for the first time, a detailed picture of the Dutch settlement that would gradually evolve into New York City. From this trove of information, Russell Shorto has crafted a warm, vivid, and very human story that feels more immediate than many current-day accounts of New York life. Shorto helps us interpret what exactly happened during the infamous sale of Manhattan Island; sheds light on peg-legged Peter Stuyvesant; and introduces us to Adrien van der Donck, lawyer and dreamer, who emerges as one of the most influential (and underappreciated) founders of New Amsterdam. Van Der Donck, according to Shorto, envisioned a Manhattan that was much more than just a corporate outpost managed by military men. Van Der Donck fought passionately for his vision of religious tolerance and individual rights. This is one of those books that makes you wonder how your high school history teacher could possibly have made history seem so dull.

The Unfolding of Language

2006-10-09T20:19:00.000-07:00

by Guy Deutscher
You hear it several times a year: the English language is going to hell in a handbasket. People are losing their ability to put together a sentence. No one has any respect for grammar or punctuation these days! Like many linguists, Guy Deutscher finds this standard rant both amusing and ignorant. Turns out that it's not just English, it's every other language as well. And it's not just "nowadays," either. People have been complaining about the younger generations' mangling of their language since the ancient Egyptians, and probably long before that. The fact is, languages are constantly falling apart, and, nostalgia aside, there has never been a Golden Age when the rules of your favorite language were perfectly upheld. So how, in the face of this constant, global linguistic decay, do languages survive and even thrive? Deutscher explains the way language evolves over time, and even speculates about how the first languages might have come into existence. The book is a bit thick at times, but illuminating, thought-provoking, and funny as well.

A Girl Named Zippy and She Got Up Off The Couch

2006-10-09T20:10:00.000-07:00

by Haven Kimmel
I'm not usually a big memoir reader, but I loved these two. Kimmel writes about childhood truthfully, without a trace of cutesyness or melodrama. She captures the voice of her younger self perfectly, while letting us read between the lines, seeing things that Zippy's little girl and Couch's adolescent weren't yet ready to see. Like all families, Kimmel's is strange, and Zippy, of course, has no idea. As she grows, she starts to wonder some things, like why her mother never leaves the couch, what, exactly, her dad does for a living, and why her friends' parents often offer her a bath. The second book, She Got Up Off the Couch, moves into deeper, darker territory (as adolescence often does), while still often being laugh-out-loud funny. What happens when Zippy's couch-bound mother decides it's time to get up and go to college? Will the family survive?

Lincoln's Melancholy

2006-10-09T19:50:00.000-07:00

by Joshua Wolf Shenk

"I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth. Whether I shall ever be better I can not tell; I awfully forebode I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible; I must die or be better, it appears to me."
- Abraham Lincoln, in an 1841 letter to a friend.

Through most of his life, Lincoln's friends and associates commented on his depressive nature. One of his law partners, William Herndon, wrote about Lincoln that "his melancholy dripped from him as he walked." Friends in New Salem, where Lincoln lived as a young man, put him on suicide watch during one of his darkest periods. Joshua Wolf Shenk's book asserts that Lincoln was a nearly perfect textbook example of a person suffering from depression. Yet, as many of us think of him, he seems to have had one of the healthiest minds in history. Shenk builds a sympathetic and very personal portrait of Lincoln as an extremely high-functioning depressive, a man whose darkness may have played a large part in his greatness. At the same time, he sheds light on the differences between Lincoln's time, when "Melancholics" were seen to have advantages along with their obvious disadvantages, and our own time, when Depression is seen as a disease to be cured.

Forty Signs of Rain and Fifty Degrees Below

2006-10-09T19:20:00.000-07:00

by Kim Stanley Robinson
Nothing so far has spurred our current government to do much about impending global climate change. Meanwhile, heatwaves and hurricanes have shown us that our country is not actually immune to those changes. So what, exactly, would have to happen that would be severe enough to get our government into gear? That seems to be the question on Kim Stanley Robinson's mind with Forty Signs of Rain. How about serious flooding at our nation's capitol, nearly returning DC to the fetid swamp it once was? How about, later that same year, record low temperatures that grind the eastern seaboard to a halt? Robinson puts his characters at the center of the storm, politically as well as meterologically. Anna Quibler and Frank Vanderwal work with the National Science Foundation. Anna's husband, Charlie, is a stay-at-home dad and environmental advisor to a liberal senator (and possible presidential candidate). In Fifty Degrees Below, the driving question becomes: If the USA put our best minds and billions of dollars to work on the problem, is there really anything we could do at this point? I prefered the second book, which mainly follows the eccentric Frank. Forty felt too much like an introduction, while Fifty throws you right into the maelstrom.

The Tree of Life

2006-10-09T19:17:00.000-07:00

by Peter Sis
Peter Sis brings a warm, watercolored texture to the story of Charles Darwin's life. Each page is like something discovered in an attic, or folded into an old atlas on a library shelf. At the same time, Sis makes Darwin seem more human than ever. We learn of his childhood, his excitement at travelling around the world (on one spread, Sis seems to have reproduced, in miniature, every single page of Darwin's seagoing journals), his joys and sadnesses as a father, his secret scientific writing, and how close he came to fading into obscurity.

No Plot? No Problem!

2006-10-09T19:09:00.001-07:00

by Chris Baty
Many of us have talked about writing a novel "someday." Chris Baty believes that the reason most wannabe novelists never write their novels is that they lack a deadline, without which it's too easy to put novel-writing off indefinitely. So in 1999 Baty and friends created their own deadline, which they called National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo). If you sign up, you're agreeing to write 50,000 words during the month of November. That's the size of a short novel, like The Great Gatsby or Brave New World. At the end of the month, if you've made it to 50K, you're a winner - no judges read your manuscript to decide its literary merits. The point is quantity, not quality. At the end of the month, you'll have a first draft to either shred, delete, or edit to polished perfection. No Plot? No Problem! is Baty's companion book, and it's definitely got me fired up about actually sitting down and writing the novel I've been chewing on for so long.

The History of Love

2006-10-09T18:59:00.000-07:00

by Nicole Krauss
I loved what Ken Kalfus said about this book, that it "will break your heart and at once mend it." The History of Love haunted me even as I read it. It's primarily the story of an old man, a young girl, and a book, and the possibilities of connections between the three. Krauss feels a lot of affection for these characters, and lets us take our time to get to know them, while gradually putting together the pieces of the grand story beneath the story. Beautiful, funny and sad.

The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists

2006-10-09T18:51:00.000-07:00

by Gideon Defoe
After reading a particularly toothsome book (see directly below), I was having trouble finding anything suitable to follow it up. The Pirates! was perfect: short, silly, and infinitely charming. The story concerns a Pirate Captain (called only, "the Pirate Captain") and his merry crew, who are misled into attacking the H.M.S. Beagle. Somehow the pirates go on to befriend Darwin, who tells him his Important Theory (ahem) and asks for their help in rescuing his brother, Erasmus, from the dastardly Bishop of Oxford. This is Pythonesque humor: the author has absolutely no interest in confining himself to historical accuracy or even the rules of "good writing." Cliches are abused, to comic effect; chapter titles are completely irrelevant; and most of the pirate characters are called things like "The pirate with a scarf" or "the pirate who played the accordian." Defoe's goal was apparently to make the reader laugh out loud, and he does that with aplomb. I felt compelled to read sections aloud to some friends and family, who, luckily, thought it as funny as I did.

Cloud Atlas

2006-10-09T18:38:00.000-07:00

by David Mitchell
Meet seafaring notary Adam Ewing, musical wunderkind Robert Frobischer, investigative reporter Luisa Rey, aging vanity press editor Timothy Cavendish, dinery clone Sonmi-451, and post-apocolyptic goatherd Zachry. Each of their stories begins in a time and place far removed from the previous story, and each story (save the last) is interrupted halfway through. One might expect a structure like this to collapse under its own weight, killing whatever interest one might have in the characters. Quite the opposite. Mitchell keeps us interested in all the characters, each story is returned to and concluded, and there are enough connections between stories that a larger story starts to take shape. (I must heartily recommend the audio version: the language can be quite baroque, and the six different narrators of the audiobook do an incredible job of keeping the story flowing smoothly.)

Assassination Vacation

2006-10-09T18:10:00.000-07:00

by Sarah Vowell
NPR regular Sarah Vowell, with her little-girl voice and quirky essays, may seem like an odd person from whom to get a history lesson. But Assassination Vacation is a truly engaging cross-section of American history, using the assassinations of Lincoln, McKinley, and Garfield as a starting point. Vowell travels across the country, often with friends or family in tow, to visit historical sites and flesh them out with surprising detail. I can't say I ever knew anything about McKinley or Garfield, and I doubt I would normally pick up a book about either President, but after a few dozen pages I was willing to let Vowell take me wherever she went. She's like your favorite aunt-you might not start out sharing her passions, but you know it'll never be boring. (NOTE: My wife and I listened to the audio version, which I highly recommend. Not only do you get Vowell's unique voice, but an odd assortment of celebrities join in, such as Stephen King, Jon Stewart, and Conan O'Brien.)

Saturday

2006-10-09T16:01:00.000-07:00

by Ian McEwan
It's easy to forget all the things that happen to us in a day. Pick a random date, say, two weeks ago, and it's tempting to say that "nothing much" happened then. But even on a slow day, a million tiny dramas and epiphanies can play themselves out. Some may lead nowhere, while others may be the start of life-changing developments. Henry Perowne, the hero of Saturday, is a comfortable guy, with a rewarding job, a loving wife, and two children he's proud of, and we follow him through what starts as a fairly unremarkable "day off." Terror, both remote (a possible terrorist attack on the news) and immediate (his mother's dementia, street thugs) hangs over the story, but Perowne is a capable and optimistic man. He's neither a hero or a villian, but an ordinary upper-middle-class guy who we're glad to get to know, especially his ordinary day gradually becomes extraordinary.

Mediated

2006-10-09T15:57:00.000-07:00

by Thomas DeZengotita
Mediated is a hard book to describe, which is a shame, because I find myself recommending it to almost everyone I know. Imagine that you are the sun, and every flower on Earth points toward you, every leaf on every tree angles toward you. This is somewhat similar to the situation we, as 21st-century Americans, face every day. Each of us is at the center of our own solar system, surrounded every day by hundreds of flattering appeals for our attention, be it television, radio, books, magazines, billboards, etc. What effect does this have? How do we, who are practically the stars of our own reality shows, compare to our grandparents, whose media intake was but a trickle? How do kids growing up today find their way through the constant barrage of information, advertising, and entertainment? Is there anything left in the world that's still real, or is "real" the best we can hope for? DeZengotita neither celebrates nor condemns our situation, but he does a great job of describing it, and opening the reader's eyes.