Thoughts: Reading

giving up on another Allende AND the best/worst last line ever

Fri, 16 Nov 2007 14:44:52 GMT

This week I finally gave up on Isabel Allende's first foray into youth fiction, La Ciudad de las Bestias [The City of the Beasts]. I don't remember ever reading a book so full of cliches and stereotypes. And it was boring. Man! That's the second Allende book I've given up on: the other was Inés del Alma Mía, which was boring and anachronistic (rather than boring and cliched). Someday I'll read some of her "good" fiction, like La Casa de los Espíritus.

And speaking of poor prose, we can always remember the best / worst last line ever in a work of fiction. At the end of Dan Brown's absurd Angels & Demons (which I admit to having consumed in a matter of hours), Brown leaves us with: "Vittoria slipped off her robe. 'You've never been to bed with a yoga master, have you?'" Thank you, Dan. Let's hope that makes it into the screenplay.

A couple of weeks ago, I also gave up (for the millionth time) on Guns, Germs, and Steel again. I've been trying to read that book for years. I've tried the audiobook three times, I own a print copy: and I just can't do it. It's just too boring to me. So if you want to know about long-term human history, talk to someone else. Or borrow my copy of GGS; I won't be reading it.

play review: a bit of the bard

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 14:21:05 GMT

A few days ago, on a whim, I picked up from the library an audio dramatization of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. It was lots of fun. I don't listen to lots of Shakespeare, but I may mend my ways (at least with the comedies). (Right now I'm listening to essays by a surgeon; he's a good writer, but - I mean - who can compare...) Here is what I wrote for Amazon:

delightful, clear production of a witty, fun play

This fully dramatized production of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing is delightful. Shakespeare's wit comes through in full force (especially in the Beatrice-Benedick storyline): I love that the words from hundreds of years ago can evoke my laughter today. This play is immensely fun and the performance is excellent.

The enunciation of the lines is clear and the voices of the different characters are distinct, but - not being a Shakespeare expert - I found it invaluable to read over the synopsis included in the liner notes, since the audio performance does not include any stage directions or character identification (as in "Beatrice:" and "Claudio:").* With that small help, however, my enjoyment was unhampered.

I highly recommend this dramatization!

* Indulgent tangent: The occasional confusion resulting from a lack of character identification reminded me of a wonderfully clever passage in Jasper Fforde's Lost in a Good Book (the sequel to The Eyre Affair) in which a fictional character hiding out in the real world is revealed due to his inability to follow "undedicated" dialogue (i.e., dialogue without explicit attribution as to who is speaking). Fforde's books are wonderful, silly fun for the Shakespeare and other literature lover; the passage I refer to is on page 360-361 of the paperback edition.

a nice innovation in book reviews

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 14:55:43 GMT

I love books, and I love reading thoughtful book reviews as well. Thus, I was pleased to see that Amazon has made a neat innovation to the way it organizes customer reviews. If you go to a book, just below the title is shown the average rating and then an identification of how many reviews that rating is based on, e.g. "(802 customer reviews)". If you click on that number, it takes you to a page which shows you

A histogram of how many reviews have 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1 star.
An excerpt from the most helpful favorable review (4 or 5 stars)
An excerpt from the most helpful critical review (1, 2, oe 3 stars)

And then it lists the review in order of most to least helpful (you can also sort from newest). Here is the page for A Thousand Splendid Suns.

Of course, if you really enjoy well-written book reviews, check out Metacritic, which gathers the professional reviews for lots of new books.

development book review: another wildly compulsive (i.e., I couldn't put it down) tale from the author of The Kite Runner

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 01:44:51 GMT

I just read A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini, author of the wildly popular The Kite Runner from a few years back. I wrote the 802nd Amazon review of the book, so I'm clearly the pivotal opinion. Still, I keep telling myself that I write these reviews mostly to help me process them (and for you, if you read this blog). This book wasn't always easy to read, but Hosseini is all about redemption, so you can count on him for a feel-good ending (unlike Kiran Desai and her Inheritance of Loss or Rohinton Mistry and his Fine Balance: I guess people in Afghanistan have happy endings but people in India don't: if that were true, I'd expect more India-Afghanistan migration than we currently observe...).

intensely engaging story of women’s struggles in Afghanistan

This is the story of two women in Afghanistan and their intersecting lives. It seeks to capture a glimpse of what life for women was like there from the 1960s to the present. The glimpse isn’t pretty. One reviewer expressed it this way: “Hosseini's depiction of Mariam and Laila's plight would seem cartoonishly crude if it were not, by all accounts, a sadly accurate version of what many Afghan women have experienced” [1].

As in The Kite Runner, Hosseini knows how to tell a compelling story. I couldn’t put the book down and read it in about two days. I missed my subway stop on the way to work as I read, I read it while I walked down the street, it’s a true page-turner. Also like The Kite Runner (but even more obviously so here), Hosseini brings the story full circle and ties up every loose end, leaving something of a contrived feeling.

That said, as the New York Times review put it, “Mr. Hosseini’s instinctive storytelling skills…[mow] down the reader’s objections through sheer momentum and will. He succeeds in making the emotional reality of Mariam and Laila’s lives tangible to us, and by conjuring their day-to-day routines, he is able to give us a sense of what daily life was like in Kabul — both before and during the harsh reign of the Taliban…. In the end it is these glimpses of daily life in Afghanistan — a country known to most Americans only through news accounts of war and terrorism — that make this novel, like ‘The Kite Runner,’ so stirring, and that distract attention from its myriad flaws” [2].

I found the story to be just as compelling as The Kite Runner but the subject matter here was of even greater interest. Hosseini successfully gives a window on a place few Americans know much about and does so in the context of a compulsively engaging tale.

(For an interesting but in no way as engaging non-fiction account of family life in Afghanistan, read The Bookseller of Kabul.)

[1] Jennifer Reese, “Book Review: A Thousand Splendid Suns,” Entertainment Weekly, 15 May 2007.

[2] Michiko Kakutani, “A Woman’s Lot in Kabul, Lower Than a House Cat’s,” New York Times, 29 May 2007.

Note on content: the book has some war and domestic violence and a couple of sexual scenes. None of these are fun, but each plays an important role in demonstrating relationships in this society. I did not find them excessive (just real).

talking about your characters after the book ends

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 15:01:12 GMT

So you may have read that JK Rowling has commented that she always thought of Dumbledore as being gay. I've been reflecting a bit on that revelation (which is different from what I imagined of Dumbledore, although I did wonder about the apparent celibacy of both him and the other Hogwarts teachers) and on some of her other revelations (e.g., about Harry et al's careers, which did coincide with what I imagined).

A writer for the Dallas Morning News makes the argument that if it's not in the books, then readers have the right to think whatever they want. In the course of it, he recalls an interesting anecdote about Douglas Adams:

Another awfully good British author, the late Douglas Adams of the successful Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy series, confronted a comparable question a few years back. One of his fans asked about the kind of computer one of his characters used. He replied, in part:

"The book is a work of fiction. It's a sequence of words arranged to unfold a story in a reader's mind. There is no such actual, real person as Arthur Dent. He has no existence outside the sequence of words designed to create an idea of this imaginary person in people's minds. There is no objective real world I am describing, or which I can enter, and pick up his computer, look at it and tell you what model it is, or turn it over and read off its serial number for you. It doesn't exist."

I'd disagree with that a bit. It does exist – in the minds of any reader who wants it to exist. And that's what you're interfering with.

I think this is an interesting general question about writers and their relationship to their characters outside of the books. Ultimately I'd argue that it's better to let readers take over once the books are ended. (Of course, Rowling may not have finished with the books, as she's talked about writing an encyclopedia-type reference with a lot of what's in her head.) Much as I wanted to know what happened to Tom Joad after the last page of The Grapes of Wrath, I'm kind of happy that Steinbeck left it alone. That said, I was unsatisfied with the ending of the final Harry Potter and the lack of information about careers, so I enjoyed hearing Rowling's thoughts. But my enjoyment of one such revelation doesn't make it good!

In this particular case, what with the multitude of media articles and blog entries (like this one), I ultimately feel like, well, who really cares? I'm a big fan, but it's just a made-up wizard. (I'm reminded of people who were deeply upset by the Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace, when it added a biological element to the force, which they had always conceived of being purely spiritual. Again, I'm a fan, but...who cares?)

UPDATE: I just saw this quote from JK Rowling in response to the negative feedback on her outing of Dumbledore: "He is my character. He is what he is and I have the right to say what I say about him." I certainly agree that she has the right to say whatever she wants, but I'm less certain that he is "her" character. I'm not sure that's how fiction works.

But I think the key, however I feel about this, is that I can't just reject authors' post-publication views when they don't conform to what I already believed about a character. (Or maybe we can. Maybe, once they're published, the characters are in the public domain and I can choose exactly what to believe about them. Consistency may not be called for here.) Sorry, I've gone on a bit long about this.

book review: The Undercover Economist, by Tim Harford (narrated by Robert Ian MacKenzie)

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 09:41:36 GMT

Every once in a while I feel like I need to read an economics book, and I couldn't resist this seductive title. Here is what I wrote for Amazon:

dry wit and real world examples make this a mostly enjoyable introductory course in economics

Harford offers us an introductory course in economics with a dry wit and lots of interesting, real-world examples. There are a few dry stretches (such as the extensive treatment of agricultural land prices), but the book is mostly engaging and some parts are very entertaining. For example, Harford's treatment of price targeting and how supermarkets and Amazon have used technology to target customers is intriguing and fun. I also found the treatment of stock valuations insightful. In explaining the reasons that poor countries stay poor, he tells quirky (albeit disheartening) tales of his time in Cameroon. It isn't quite as fun a read as Freakonomics, but it does a better job of teaching fundamental economic principles. (Freakonomics shows that economics can be interesting and can answer questions you wouldn't expect it to; The Undercover Economist shows that economics can be pretty interesting and answer fundamental questions that you would expect it to!)

Harford is refreshingly aware of the weaknesses of the free market but does a solid job of characterizing its strengths. Sometimes the analysis is simple (the history of China's recent development, for example) and may miss important points. The key to remember is that Harford is teaching basic principles with a great deal of explanatory power but not with _all_ explanatory power. Take away the principles from your reading, but don't treat the analysis of a given application as definitive.

Relative to a similar volume, Landsberg's Armchair Economist, this is more enjoyable: Harford relies more on real-world examples and empirical research (not entirely, but more) than does Landsberg with his hypothetical scenarios, although I also enjoyed Landsberg. (I guess this isn't surprising: would you rather shadow an Armchair Economist or an Undercover Economist? The answer is clear!) I have yet to read some of the others, such as Naked Economics (I'd rather _not_ shadow a Naked Economist, given most economists I know) or Discover Your Inner Economist.

Robert Ian MacKenzie does a good job reading the unabridged audiobook, which consists of nine compact discs.

book review: Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 13:17:06 GMT

While I was traveling to Tanzania, I read Malcolm Gladwell's second book. He's always fun and informative (even when not convincing). Here is what I wrote for Amazon. Mine is the 819th review, so I know I'm really influencing public opinion.

entertaining, educating analysis of snap judgments (but it's no The Tipping Point)

A few years ago, Malcolm Gladwell wrote a very entertaining book, The Tipping Point. He had a central thesis, and while it was plausible, I wasn't particularly convinced. BUT Gladwell is one of the best writers around at making psychology experiments and other social science studies fascinating and accessible, so the book was interesting and fun to read.

That brings us to Blink, in which Gladwell seeks to demonstrate that our split-second first impressions can be incredibly insightful but that sometimes they are not, and how we can train ourselves to move toward the insightful side. The book is not particularly convincing (even less than Tipping) on the final aspect of the thesis that we can train ourselves to do better. But along the way, he presents fascinating cases of how these snap judgments can be right on (and why they're wrong when they are). The research isn't quite as interesting as in The Tipping Point, but I was still engrossed, entertained, and instructed.

For an example of a psychology writer who also makes research fascinating and accessible (and funny) but is much more convincing on his hypothesis, read the excellent Stumbling on Happiness, by Harvard psychology professor Dan Gilbert. He also reads the audiobook himself and does a fantastic job.

Despite my critiques, this was still good enough that I'll read whatever Gladwell gives us next.

mormons in literature: The Inheritance of Loss and Special Topics in Calamity Physics

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 14:25:19 GMT

I'm always interested to encounter mentions and portrayals of my church in literature. This morning I encountered this passage, in Kiran Desai's Booker Prize-winning The Inheritance of Loss:

She walked by several churches: Jehova's Witnesses, Adventists, Latter-day Saints, Baptists, Mormons, Pentecostals. ... and if you joined in a little harmless chat of language lessons (all the better to translate the Bible, my dear...), that was it -- they were as hard to shake off as an amoeba. [p254]

Wow! She passed both a Latter-day Saint church and a Mormon church. (These are the same church.) That said, LDS missionaries in many countries do teach language lessons as a way to meet people and can be persistent. (I can't say how hard it is to shake off an amoeba since I can't see or feel amoebas.)

Recently, in Special Topics in Calamity Physics, I came across this line:

He was a minister of indeterminate denomination, a truth Headmaster Havermeyer forbade him to disclose or even indirectly allude to during his Friday morning service, in order to avoid offending the one kid whose parents were Latter-Day Saints. [p385]

I'm not sure what that means exactly, except that maybe the Mormon kid's parents would be upset at the not-religious-enough nature of the minister. Okay. I guess the author needed to pick some really religious religion.

Finally, I encountered this line a few years ago in the excellent memoir Having Faith: An Ecologist's Journey to Motherhood:

Then the anesthesiologist drops by for a visit, peddling his wares with all the soft-spoken earnestness of a Mormon missionary.

A fine compliment, even if in the context of an uncomplimentary comparison (Steingraber is not a fan of the anesthesiologist).

development book review: What Is the What, by Dave Eggers (narrated by Dion Graham)

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 12:17:31 GMT

A few weeks ago I finished this very good book, a novelized account of a Sudanese refugee who has resettled in the United States. I highly recommend it. Here is what I wrote for Amazon:

a powerful telling of one refugee's story and how it fits into a broader disaster

Over several years, a refugee (named Achak) from Sudan who has resettled in the United States (one of the "lost boys of Sudan") told his story to Dave Eggers. Eggers wrote a novel based on the story, and the result is excellent. Leaping back and forth through time, the fictional Achak tells of how he is forced from his village by the Sudanese civil war, travels hundreds (thousands?) of miles on foot from country to country and refugee camp to camp, and then how he arrives in the United States and adjust to life there.

Several times early in the reading I wondered, Why didn't Eggers just write the story of this guy's life rather than a novel "based" on it? Eventually I could see that the novel allowed Eggers to bring in characters, sub-stories, and dialogue to teach us not only Achak's story but also about the broader conflict, the other Sudanese conflict in Darfur, and the problems encountered by a broader net of re-settled refugees. Eggers seeks to (and I believe manages to) give enthrall us with Achak and convey an impressive amount of information at the same time.

I found one of his narrative devices mildly distracting: Achak narrates from the present-day, resettled in the USA, and most of flashbacks are in the form of his mentally telling people around him his story. For example, he meets someone at his work and imagines telling them about the time his buddy got eaten by a lion. But that's a quibble.

The audiobook reading by Dion Graham (published by BBC Audiobooks America) is very well done.

Note on content: Much of this book takes place in a war zone, so we see violence and intense human suffering. And in the USA, there is a mugging that involves lots of strong language (all in the book's first 50 pages).

the truth about fruit

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 17:59:47 GMT

No fruit dies so vile and offensive a death as the banana.

from The Inheritance of Loss, by Kiran Desai

Winnie the Pooh and The Ladies' No. 1 Detective Agency

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 11:42:21 GMT

I just took a break between meetings to read this thoughtful review of The Ladies' No. 1 Detective Agency series by Richard Bartlett at the African Review of Books. Here are a couple of excerpts, but if you enjoy the series, I recommend reading the whole review.

The success McCall Smith has achieved in the No.1 Ladies Detective Agency with the character of Mma Ramotswe has been compared with other great detectives of English literature, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, the creations of Agatha Christie.

Agatha Chrisitie was not shy of having the victims in her books dying in macabre and imaginative ways whereas death seldom, if ever, sullies the pages of McCall Smith’s books: except of course for the many characters whose friends and relatives are late due to natural causes. So if the great English fictional detectives are not a suitable comparison for the traditionally built Motswana, who is?

The ideal comparison, which helps to explain Mma Ramotswe’s place at the top of the best-seller lists in the UK and USA, comes not from the world of detective fiction but from the world of children’s literature.

Like [Winnie the Pooh], Mma Ramotswe stumbles upon adventures and solves them with equal measures of luck, homely advice and help from friends. Consider Pooh setting off on an ‘expotition’ to discover the North Pole or his quest with Piglet to catch a heffalump in a big pit with a pot of honey. Pooh does not so much seek out challenges as much as stumble across them in the course of not doing anything in particular, apart from searching for honey. Similarly Mma Ramotswe’s greatest challenges in In the Company of Cheerful Ladies, as in the other books, come from co-incidences, which turn into matters of importance and must be addressed; such as the pumpkin which is anonymously placed at Mma Ramotswe’s front door, or the apprentice Charlie’s decision to give up work after finding a rich older woman to look after him. The matter of real detective work, an errant Zambian businessman, flitters around the edges of the story, much as the real world flitters around the edge of the 100 Acre Wood.

And here's the take-away:

But she teaches us about Botswana, I hear you say. Perhaps she does, but just as you wouldn’t read Winnie-the-Pooh to learn about life in rural England, so too do not read In the Company of Cheerful Ladies to learn about Botswana. Read it simply because it brings a smile to your face and warmth to the heart. Just like a certain bear.

"the great power of the artist"

Sun, 16 Sep 2007 01:32:41 GMT

I was at the National Portrait Gallery with my family this week and saw this quote by Eleanor Roosevelt posted:

That is the great power of the artist, the power to make people hear and understand, through music and literature, or to paint something which we ordinary people feel but cannot reveal.

This is a better expression of an idea that a good friend of mine expressed in a conversation we had about the value of fiction. (I mention it in this book review.) And I believe it is so true! Great literature expresses so much of what I (and I daresay "we") feel and believe, but more clearly than I could ever say them, sometimes adding to my understanding or revealing to me things I did not entirely know were part of my belief.

book review: Special Topics in Calamity Physics, by Marisha Pessl

Sun, 16 Sep 2007 00:44:49 GMT

I read and very much enjoyed this quick (though thick) read. It's a novel, despite the title. Here's what I wrote for Amazon:

wildly entertaining prose in a fun, engaging story

I loved the prose in this book! The story is a mix of bildungsroman and whodunit. At the start, Blue van Meer is a college student who sits down to write the story of her last year of high school, in which Blue grows up and someone named Hannah dies (that much is revealed in the first few pages).

The characters are fun and the story is engaging (until the end, when it's completely addictive). But, as USA Today put it, "the real star of the doorstop-weighty tome is the nimble prose. Pessl's talent for verbal acrobatics keeps the pages flipping with minimal effort." Completely true! My wife and I read the first two thirds aloud, which only heightened the pleasure of the prose. Here are a couple of passages I enjoyed:

"Unfortunately, my instinctive response to overhearing campus-wide chitchat of the aforementioned kind was not The Pacino (godfather-styled vengeance), The Pesci (urges to stick a ballpoint pen in someone's throat), The Costner (flat, frontierlike amusement), The Spacey (scathing verbal retaliation accompanied by a blank facial expression) nor The Penn (blue-collared bellows and moans)" [p. 364].

"She asked where we were from (`Ohio,' seethed Dad), what year I was (`Senior,' fumed Dad), how we liked our new house (`It's fun,' frothed Dad) and explained that she had moved here three years ago from San Francisco (`Astonishing,' fizzed Dad)" [p58].

Pessl also crams the book with quotes from and allusions to loads of films and books, fiction and non-fiction. I found this extremely entertaining (as I also find it entertaining to identify the links between my own reading and viewing and life). (I was disappointed to learn, upon looking up several of the books on the Library of Congress website, that most of them are Pessl's inventions. But the allusions are still fun.)

Entertainment Weekly's review sums up the book well: "A 514-page escapist extravaganza packed with literary and pop culture allusions, mischievous characterizations, erotic intrigue, murders, and unstoppable (occasionally unruly) narrative energy." Metacritic (a website that aggregates professional reviews) lists 10 outstanding reviews, 9 favorable, and 7 mixed.

Note on content: The book has some strong language and some macabre material (one or two characters are killed), and some sexual references.

Madeleine L'Engle, children's author, died yesterday

Fri, 07 Sep 2007 19:40:45 GMT

The New York Times has an interesting article.

A Wrinkle in Time, her best-known book, was rejected by 26 publishers! Then "editors at Farrar, Straus and Giroux loved it enough to publish it, but told her that she should not be disappointed if it failed."

[Thanks to bookslut for the tip.]

book review: The Horned Man, by David Lasdun

Fri, 07 Sep 2007 12:41:06 GMT

Last Christmas, my brother gave me this slim, dark thriller, which my wife and I each read on our trip across country. I really enjoyed it, my wife did not. Here are my thoughts:

a murky thriller: the less you know up front, the better

Lawrence Miller is an uptight British gender studies professor at an American university. Strange things start happening to him: a bookmark isn't exactly where he thought it was. A coin in his office seems to have been moved. Then much stranger things start happening.

The vision is murky throughout this slim, grabbing tome. In many thrillers, you don't know exactly who is responsible. In this one, you don't even really understand what's happening (at least a chunk of the time). Even at the end, Lasdun refuses to make the resolution completely clear (and even dips into the surreal): After finishing the book, I could see the general resolution but lay awake, tying up loose ends in my mind. [One of the quotes on the back of the book gave me an inkling as to how the book might end; I enjoyed the book a great deal, but I'd have enjoyed the book even more if I hadn't read that.]

The Financial Times called this a "terse and beautifully controlled Gothic thriller" [1]. Well put. It was also a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and an Economist Best Book of the Year for 2002.

[1] Jonathan Derbyshire, "Covert Action," Financial Times, 3 February 2006 [available free on-line as of 29 August 2007].

"development" book review: The Full Cupboard of Life, by Alexander McCall Smith

Tue, 04 Sep 2007 02:10:29 GMT

A few weeks ago I finished listening to Lisette Lecat narrate this, the fifth book in the Ladies' No. 1 Detective Agency series. At this point, we're not learning lots of new things about Botswana, but it does remind us of the feel that Smith has developed in the course of the series.

a pleasant journey with those who have now become old friends

When I read the previous book in the series (The Kalahari Typing School for Men), it was clearly the least mysterious of the books in this series to that point: it had the fewest detective cases, instead moving forward the personal lives of the major characters (especially Mma Kutsi). With this, the fifth installment, Smith lowers the mystery quotient even further. The book contains only one detective case (albeit a fun one: find out which of a rich woman's suitors will make the best husband!) and spends relatively little time even on it.

This time, the focus returns to Mma Ramotswe's and Mr JLB Matekoni's personal lives. Despite the lack of mystery, the book is a pleasant escape into one of Africa's best-governed and wealthiest countries, with characters you can enjoy and respect. And the book has a fine ending!

I made the mistake of reading this installment just a couple of months after the last one: it's better to leave a more time between books in this series, else Mma Ramotswe's musing on the marvels of Botswana (especially the OLD Botswana) can start to feel tired. But given a little rest, this is a relaxing ride back to Jaborone. I'll read the next book, just not right away.

If you're new to the series, don't start here: go back to The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. This isn't Agatha Christie: the detective's history actually matters here. And I always listen to the audiobook version (published by Recorded Books), narrated by Lisette Lecat. She is a pleasure to listen to.

best line I read yesterday: The Pacino, The Pesci, The Costner, etc.

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 00:14:06 GMT

My wife and I are reading aloud Marisha Pessl's Special Topics in Calamity Physics (very clever prose), and at one point, the protagonist is being gossipped about extensively at her high school:

Unfortunately, my instinctive response to overhearing campus-wide chitchat of the aforementioned kind was not The Pacino (godfather-styled vengeance), The Pesci (urges to stick a ballpoint pen in someone's throat), The Costner (flat, frontierlike amusement), The Spacey (scathing verbal retaliation accompanied by a blank facial expression) nor The Penn (blue-collared bellows and moans). [p. 364]

I smiled and chuckled again just re-typing it. Great fun.

the shape of women

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 06:31:35 GMT

It was a terrible thing that the outside world had done to Africa, bringing in the idea that slender ladies, some as thin as a sebokoldi, a millipede, should be considered desirable. That was not what men really wanted. Men wanted women whose shape reminded them of good things on the table.

That’s quite a theory. I wonder which shapes the speaker means. A bowl of buttery mashed potatoes? A scoop of ice cream? “My dear, you are shapely like an ice cream sundae!” I’ll see how that one works at home.

from Alexander McCall Smith’s The Full Cupboard of Life, p. 23-24.

what happens to the cast of harry potter after the last book? [SPOILER ALERT]

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 23:10:18 GMT

It turns out that in a few interviews and on-line chats, JK Rowling has chosen to reveal a fair amount that is not included in the book about the careers and lives of Harry and his friends. Wikipedia offers a nice summary and has links to the original interviews and chats.

book review: Bridge to Terabithia (narrated by Tom Stechschulte)

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 05:55:33 GMT

I know, I know, enough book reviews already. Even I'm getting bored on my blog. So it goes: I've been busy. I recently listened to and enjoyed Bridge to Terabithia. Here is what I wrote for Amazon:

an emotionally moving exploration of friendship, grief, and imagination

I read Bridge to Terabithia as a youth and still remember tearing up at the climactic scene. With the release of the recent film, I decided to revisit this children's classic. I unfortunately read it immediately after seeing the film, which stole a bit of the magic since the film was a generally faithful adaptation, leaving the book with few surprises.

Let me highlight a few of the book-movie distinctions. The mother in the movie is much more sympathetic than she is in the book. (The moviemakers probably realized that one gruff parent was enough.) And yet, towards the end of the book, we finally begin to understand why the mother is how she is, and we feel sympathy and perhaps even some empathy. The father also ultimately opens up emotionally more in the movie than in the book. And Leslie, the main female protagonist, is much prettier in the movie than she is characterized in the book. (Filmmakers did the same in Hoot: Let's sell a few more adolescent boy tickets!) Both media explore the magic of imagination, but the film does a particularly good job of visualizing that. Between the book and the movie, I was reminded of the power of make-believe and have - in the past few weeks - built much more make-believe into my play with my two-year-old son (to wonderfully fun effect).

I listened to the unabridged audiobook narrated by Tom Stechschulte (published by Recorded Books). This took some getting used to, as I recently listened to Stechschulte narrate Cormac McCarthy's excellent but deeply dark The Road. Bridge to Terabithia has some tragedy, but thankfully no apocalypse. The narration was very expressive and overall well done.

book review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows [NO SPOILERS]

Fri, 27 Jul 2007 00:02:30 GMT

Our copy of Harry Potter arrived from Amazon on Saturday afternoon. I finished it about 1 o'clock Tuesday morning. I really enjoyed it. It wasn't flawless, but I won't discuss my issues so soon after the release. Overall, though, I had a great time. I think that's what I've enjoyed so much about the Harry Potter series. I just have a really good time reading them. It's not the best prose, the plotting is occasionally plodding, and sometimes the characters are really annoying (withholding key bits of info from each other until opportune times). And yet, it's still so much fun.

Enough. Here's what I wrote for Amazon. There were already 773 reviews when I posted this, so I don't expect to have a major impact, which confirms to me that I write these for myself, as a way of digesting what I read a bit better.

Note: if you haven't read the book but plan to, DON'T read the Amazon reviews. Lots of spoilers. None here, though.

rowling captivates as always and mostly satisfies (not without bumps)

PROS: I really enjoyed this conclusion to the Harry Potter series. It was lots of fun. I read it in about 48 hours. The climactic scene was great! Rowling brings everyone back into action: it’s like seeing a host of old friends. Molly Weasley has a GREAT moment.

I don’t always love Rowling’s prose (take a look at how many adverbs she uses when her characters talk: Harry said testily, Hermione said prissily, Ron said lazily), but she has created a wonderfully detailed, colorful, exciting world and has developed characters that I care about (even when I don’t always like them). I couldn’t put the book down.

CONS: I got a wee bit bored during a certain section, but frankly, the characters themselves were bored during that section, so I suppose it’s fitting. At one point near the end, I couldn’t figure out how a certain character had gotten a certain item, but upon rereading, it made sense.
Some of my minor gripes are captured in Lev Grossman’s TIME blog entitled “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: The Spoiler Post. This Post Contains Major Major Major Harry Potter Spoilers. Minor Ones Too” (July 23, 2007).

canadians

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 15:14:55 GMT

The zombies were like Canadians, in that they looked enough like real people at first, to fool you.

What could I possibly add to that?

[from Kelly Link's Magic for Beginners, p. 38]

best first line of a novel ever

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 15:05:11 GMT

We were performing a play about this maggot on our kitchen floor who grew until he was squishing out the windows, suffocating us and all those who came into the Ranch House.

As I was growing up, no creatures grossed me out more than maggots. The image of one growing until it bursts the windows of my kitchen is overwhelming...and awesome.

[from Trinie Dalton’s Wide Eyed, by way of the brilliant The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2006 (p31)]

chuck norris fact of the day

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 05:37:09 GMT

Chuck Norris created the hole in the ozone layer “to get a better look at the sun.”

from Chuck Norris Facts (www.chucknorrisfacts.com), by way of the brilliant The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2006 (p41-42)

book review: The Sandman (Volume 1), Preludes & Nocturnes, by Neil Gaiman et al.

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 05:30:38 GMT

My younger brother recommended The Sandman series to me, so I read book one the other day. It was good. Very dark, though. Maybe dark enough for me to pass on continuing the series. Still, I couldn't put the book down.

Dark. Creative. Absorbing.

I had no previous exposure to Sandman and little to graphic novels when I picked this up on my brother's recommendation and didn't put it down again until I turned the last page. The story, in brief, is that an old magician seeks to trap the personification of death and accidentally captures another eternal being instead: Dream. Dream eventually escapes and seeks to regain the tools of his trade, taken from him in captivity. In the process, he must challenge a number of unsavory characters.

The art is good, and the dialogue is easier to follow than some graphic novels because Dream's dialogue bubbles are in a different color from everyone else's. Gaiman introduces all sorts of clever ideas: we meet Cain and Abel, werewolf-like brothers who live in a house where Cain occasionally kills Abel, who always manages to crawl back; Martian Manhunter, a superhero member of the Justice League; and Lucifer, who no longer rules Hell on his own but in committee with two partners.

Dream's quest for his tools and his position provide a canvas on which Gaiman paints depravity, mercy, disillusionment, and a host of other virtues, vices, and experiences. Every page intrigues.

[Cautionary note: This graphic novel has brief nudity, some violence, and several gross-looking characters.]

book review: Ultimate Spider-Man Vol. 1: Power & Responsibility, by Brian Michael Bendis

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 04:27:56 GMT

I've been doing a lot of heavy reading, so I took a break and read this re-telling of the Spider-man origin story. Here's what I wrote about it on Amazon:

fun, diverting update of the story: nothing revolutionary

This isn't exactly your parents' Spider-man: no radioactive spider, yes internet, Uncle Ben has a ponytail. But in general, it's the basic Spider-man origin story: bitten by Mr. Osborne's experimental spider, Peter Parker develops the skills. Mr. Osborne injects himself with something and turns into a Goblin. Fight.

Even though this isn't going to turn your ideas of Spider-man upside down (like Batman: The Dark Knight Returns did), the art is good and the story is engaging. I totally look forward to reading Volume 2.

book review: The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger (narrated by William Hope & Laura Lefkow)

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 05:31:42 GMT

On my trip to Nigeria and after, I listened to the audiobook of The Time Traveler's Wife. It was a great audiobook for traveling: engaging, thoughtful, but not too heavy. (But it was a long audiobook: 16 CDs!) Here is what I wrote for Amazon:

an engaging and epic love story in the past, present, and future

Henry has a genetic aberration that causes him to travel through time involuntarily; he appears in some other time and place, completely naked, and must survive for an unknown period of time until he returns to his present again. He doesn't know exactly what causes it, but flashing lights and surprises seem to make it more likely.

He marries Clare when he is 31 and she is 23. When he 36, he goes back in time and meets her for _her_ first time when she is 6. When he is 28 and she is 20, she walks into the library where he works and meets him for _his_ first time. Dizzying.

The love story is engaging and sweet and difficult. Clare and Henry see each other through each other's dark years, they watch each other grow and help each other learn: they are really, truly, deeply in love, from her age 6 until...well, you'll see. These characters are flawed (as people tend to be), and their actions aren't always pretty, but they could well be real.

The time travel is handled creatively and consistently: Henry and the other characters don't understand it completely themselves (as might realistically be the case with a new genetic disease), but the rules are consistent. Henry can't change anything that hasn't already happened. Occasionally he does use knowledge of the future to help himself in the past, but the key is that he can only do it when, well, when that's the way it happened. (Okay, that doesn't sound perfectly consistent, but at some point you have to follow the time-travel advice of Austin Powers's boss and "just sit back and enjoy yourself.") The time travel can be seen as a metaphor for a real, uncontrollable disease, or it can represent "arbitrariness, transience, or plain bad luck."

I'm not sure that much from this book is going to stay with me, but I thoroughly enjoyed the ride. (A friend of mine read it in just 24 hours, she was so hooked.) I listened to the unabridged audiobook read by William Hope and Laura Lefkow. They did a great job.

In case you care about this sort of thing, the book has several hundred f-words and many sex scenes: not gratuitous or particularly explicit, just the development of this couple's relationship. [The quote is from Judith Maas, "An uneven chronicle of a couple over time," Boston Globe, 12/8/2003.]

quote of the day: how to make bribery work for you

Thu, 05 Jul 2007 06:07:01 GMT

Aziz, an Indian in India during British occupation, points out the following:

When we poor blacks take bribes, we perform what we are bribed to perform, and the law discovers us in consequence. The English take and do nothing. I admire them.

from E.M. Forster's A Passage to India.

book review: The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan (narrated by Scott Brick)

Mon, 02 Jul 2007 13:37:10 GMT

On my China trip 6 weeks ago, I listened to a fascinating (long) book called The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. Maybe if I read enough of these books, I'll actually have enough intellectual and emotional ammo to convince myself to stop eating junk.

one part science, three parts philosophy, all parts compelling

Pollan takes us on a fascinating journey. He explores the origins of four meals: an industrial meal (McDonald's), an industrial-organic meal (many of the foods labeled organic in the grocery store but using industrial, mass-production techniques), a "true" organic meal, and a meal that he personally hunted and gathered.

In the first section, I learned a lot about the industrial food industry, in particular (a) exactly how much of our food is based in corn one way or another (a staggering amount), and (b) how much petroleum producing our food takes (a similarly staggering amount). [This is the part where we learn most about the science.] In part two, Pollan opened my eyes to much of what is labeled "organic" at grocery stores: it's not what most of us (perhaps naively) think of as organic at all, very insightful. Part three, the "true" organic section, focuses on one farm that he feels really captures the concept of sustainability. Whether that model is replicable on a large scale is unclear, but the farm owner's philosophy is interesting, and living with Pollan on such a farm for a while is wildly refreshing. The last section, in which Pollan hunts a boar, gathers mushrooms, etc., speaks less to how we can transform our food industry and more to how engaging with our food deeply can affect us. The reflections are worthwhile. This book, like a tasty mix of Fast Food Nation and something by Wendell Berry, helped me to think carefully about what I consume (at least until I was able to suppress those thoughts and get back to my hot dogs).

I listened to the unabridged audiobook narrated by Scott Brick. His reading, especially in the first part describing the composition of industrial food, came across too preachy, like a mediocre, annoying, but enthusiastic preacher. He was better with the personal experiences emphasized later.

"development" book review: The Kalahari Typing School for Men, by Alexander McCall Smith (narrated by Lisette Lecat)

Thu, 28 Jun 2007 18:42:13 GMT

I recently read the fourth installment in the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series. It was pleasant, peaceful, and did the same job of reminding me of the calm that I sometimes feel in rural Africa. Here is what I wrote for Amazon:

the least mysterious so far

At this point, entering the fourth book in the series, we are all accustomed to Mma Ramotswe and her alternative brand of mystery. One or two mysteries carry through the book, with a couple more short ones in the midst, balanced with a healthy serving of Mma Ramotswe's wisdom and her reflections on the greatness of Botswana. Always relaxing and mildly suspenseful.

This one has a subtle difference: there are no actual mysteries. The agency takes on two cases: one involves tracking down some old acquaintances, and the solution to the other is apparent to the reader within a few lines of the client walking through the door.

What does that leave us with? Mma Ramotswe has competition in the form of a rude man who sets up a rival detective agency (Trust your problems to a _man_!, says the ad). The foster children experience growing pains. Mma Makutsi seeks a way to earn some extra cash. Mma Ramotse dispenses wisdom and reflects on Botswana.

This is still a very pleasant read, Mma Ramotswe has some good insights to share, and the developments in the characters' personal lives are interesting. If you are lucky enough to have access to the audiobook, Lisette Lecat's narration is excellent and soothing as always. I'm glad I read it, but don't come looking for mystery.

the world's best untranslated novels

Sat, 16 Jun 2007 04:37:15 GMT

New York Magazine recently asked about the very best novels that have not been translated into English. Here's the whole article. Here are the ones that I could conceivably read (i.e., in Spanish*) or that my wife could read (i.e., in French or Korean):

FRANCE
The book: Stéphane Fière’s La Promesse de Shanghai.
Why we should be able to read it: “Written from the point of view of a migrant worker, it points out the reality behind the Chinese boom.” —Raphaëlle Rérolle, Le Monde

MEXICO
The book: Daniel Sada’s Porque Parece Mentira la Verdad Nunca Se Sabe (Because You Never Know What’s True, Everything Seems Like a Lie).
Why we should be able to read it: “He was the contemporary Mexican novelist Roberto Bolaño most admired. A great political novel without a political agenda.” —Francisco Goldman, novelist

EGYPT
The book: Albert Cossery’s Les Couleurs de l’Infamie (The Colors of Infamy), which I’m translating.
Why we should be able to read it: “He writes in a French that belongs entirely to him about a Cairo that exists in his memory and imagination— he left Egypt decades ago. Personally, I don’t believe in national literatures.” —Alyson Waters, professor of French studies, Yale

ARGENTINA
The book: Marcelo Cohen’s El Fin de lo Mismo (The End of the Same).
Why we should be able to read it: “Cohen’s arguably Argentina’s most established novelist at the moment. His books read like Kafka on the brink of turning into science fiction.” —Martin Gambarrota, Buenos Aires Herald

CUBA
The book: Ena Lucía Portela’s Cien Botellas en una Pared (A Hundred Bottles on the Wall).
Why we should be able to read it: “It’s a brilliant, scathing Havana fever dream about a lost, overweight girl in love with an abusive, bearded older man—so brilliant that the allegorical aspect of the book doesn’t strike you until after you’ve closed it.” —Esther Allen, executive director of the Center for Literary Translation, Columbia

SOUTH KOREA
The book: Jo Kyung Ran’s “Looking for the Elephant” (part of a short-story collection).
Why we should be able to read it: “I was reminded of Haruki Murakami’s best work by the way she examines painful situations profoundly with a refreshing absence of bathos.” —Samantha Schnee, editor, Words Without Borders

* Of course, I won't be reading anything in Spanish for a while because I'm puzzling through Carlos Fuentes's clever Cristobal Nonato (Christopher Unborn), which will take me a million years. But I can't resist a book with a place called Kafkapulco. I haven't even read any Kafka, but I still can't resist.

best line I've read (listened to) this morning

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 16:51:11 GMT

Sins, thought Mma Ramotswe, are darker and more powerful when contemplated within confining walls. Out in the open, under a sky such as this, misdeeds were reduced to their natural proportions -- small, mean things that could be faced quite openly, sorted, and folded away.

from The Kalahari Typing School for Men, the fourth book in The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith, about a detective in Botswana), p. 64.

Maybe that's why I place so much value on walking beside the ocean: heaps of perspective!