2007 statistics

Number of books: 125*
Number of pages: 36,821
Mean pages/book: 294.568
Number of fiction (includes children's/young adult, poetry, fictive humor): 58
Number of non-fiction: 67

Goal for 2008: 50+ books, of which at least one per month is long or complex.

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*Actually, it's 126, but I didn't count this:


Title: The Pop-Up Book of Phobias
Author/Illustrators: Gary Greenberg, Balvis Rubess, Matthew Reinhart
Publisher: HarperEntertainment
Year: 1999
Pages: 22

A very nice, large-format adult pop-up book. My favorite is the dentist who is, if memory serves, viewed from an inside-your-mouth perspective. Many common phobias are pleasingly/disturbingly represented, making this an excellent gift for your favorite therapist (though you'll have to process the meaning of the gift, so you may want to drop it off anonymously). 

(not counted) The Pop-Up Book of Phobias: Gary Greenberg, Balvis Rubess, Matthew Reinhart 125. Tank Girl [vol. 1]: Alan Martin & Jaime Hewlett
124. Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet, and Beyond: Pankaj Mishra
123. The Reality Bug (Pendragon Book 3): D. J. MacHale
122. The Italian Secretary: A Further Adventure of Sherlock Holmes: Caleb Carr
121. The Last Siege: Jonathan Stroud
120. Gun, with Occasional Music: Jonathan Lethem
119. The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible: A. J. Jacobs
118. The Rejection Collection Vol. 2: The Cream of the Crap: Editor: Matthew Diffee
117. The Never War (Pendragon Book 3): D. J. MacHale
116. Coraline: Neil Gaiman
115. Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation: Michael Zielenziger
114. Interpreter of Maladies: Jhumpa Lahiri
113. The Lost City of Faar (Pendragon Book 2): D. J. MacHale
112. The Glass Castle: Jeannette Walls
111. Gracefully Insane: Life and Death inside America's Premier Mental Hospital: Alex Beam
110. River of Time: A Memoir of Vietnam: Jon Swain
109. Pigeons: The Fascinating Saga of the World's Most Revered and Reviled Bird: Andrew D. Blechman
108. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?: Philip K. Dick
107. Another Day in the Frontal Lobe: A Brain Surgeon Exposes Life on the Inside: Katrina Firlik
106. Water for Elephants: Sara Gruen
105. Don't Try This at Home: Culinary Catastrophes from the World's Greatest Chefs: Kimberly Witherspoon & Andrew Friedman
104. The Awful End of Prince William the Silent: The First Assassination of a Head of State with a Handgun: Lisa Jardine
103. Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia: Elizabeth Gilbert
102. Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die: Chip Heath & Dan Heath
101. Cambridge Studies in Medical Anthropology 1: Social Lives of Medicines: Susan Reynolds Whyte, Sjaakvan der Geest, & Anita Hardon
100. The Yiddish Policemen's Union: Michael Chabon
99. The Leap: Jonathan Stroud
98. Not the Thing I Was: Thirteen Years at Bruno Bettelheim's Orthogenic School: Stephen Eliot
97. Survivor: Chuck Palahniuk
96. Survival of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease: Sharon Moalem and Jonathan Prince
95. The Map that Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology: Simon Winchester
94. Send in the Idiots: Stories from the Other Side of Autism: Kamran Nazeer
93. Happy Accidents: Serendipity in Modern Medical Breakthroughs: Morton Meyers
92. Rumspringa: To Be or Not to Be Amish: Tom Shachtman
91. Your Disgusting Head: The Darkest, Most Offensive and Moist Secrets of Your Ears, Mouth and Nose: Dr. and Mr. Doris Haggis-on-Whey
90. Barry Trotter and the Unauthorized Parody: Michael Gerber
89. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers: Mary Roach
88. Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid: Lemony Snicket
87. Powers (Annals of the Western Shore): Ursula K. Le Guin
86. Beyond Birdwatching: More Than There is to Know about Birding: Ben, Cathryn, & John C.Sill
85. A Field Guide to Little-Known and Seldom-Seen Birds of North America: Ben, Cathryn, & John C.Sill
84. The Lost Executioner: Nic Dunlop
83. Happy Birthday or Whatever: Track Suits, Kim Chee, and Other Family Disasters: Annie Choi
82. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier: Ishmael Beah
81. Succeed in Business: Vietnam (Culture Shock!): Kevin Chambers
80. Rough Guides: 25 Ultimate Experiences: Southeast Asia: Rough Guides
79. Rough Guides: 25 Ultimate Experiences: Ethical Travel: Rough Guides
78. My Pet Virus: The True Story of a Rebel without a Cure: Shawn Decker
77. A Cook's Tour: In Search of the Perfect Meal: Anthony Bourdain
76. Culture Smart! Vietnam: A Quick Guide to Customs and Etiquette: Geoffrey Murray
75. The Girl in the Picture: The Story of Kim Phuc, the Photograph, and the Vietnam War: Denise Chong
74. Insight Pocket Guide: Hanoi and Northern Vietnam: Samantha Coomber
73. Stay Alive, My Son: Pin Yathay with John Man
72. A Prayer for Owen Meany: John Irving
71. Haiku U: From Aristotle to Zola, 100 Great Books in 17 Syllables: David M. Bader
70. Towards Understanding: Cambodian Villages beyond War: Meas Nee & Joan Healy
69. Kafka Americana: Jonathan Lethem & Carter Scholz
68. Vietnam, Now: A Reporter Returns: David Lamb
67. Charlie Bone and the Beast (Children of the Red King 6): Jenny Nimmo
66. The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession: Mark Obmascik
65. If Harry Potter Ran General Electric: Leadership Wisdom from the World of the Wizards: Tom Morris
64. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: J. K. Rowling
63. Mugglenet.Com's What Will Happen in Harry Potter 7: Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Falls in Love and How Will the Adventure Finally End: Ben Schoen, Emerson Spartz, Andy Gordon, Gretchen Stull, & Jamie Lawrence
62. Another Field Guide to Little-Known & Seldom-Seen Birds of North America: Ben, Cathryn, & John Sill
61. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (re-read): J. K. Rowling
60. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (re-read): J. K. Rowling
59. The Unauthorized Harry Potter: Adam-Troy Castro
58. The Paradox of Choice: Why Less is More: Barry Schwartz
57. A Thousand Splendid Suns: Khaled Hosseini
56. 100 Questions and Answers about Hepatitis C: A Lahey Clinic Guide: Stephen Fabry & R. Anand Narasimhan
55. Flyte (Septimus Heap, Book 2): Angie Sage
54. The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary: Simon Winchester
53. Magyk (Septimus Heap, Book 1): Angie Sage
52. Farewell to Manzanar: A True Story of Japanese American Experience During and After the World War II Internment: Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston & James D. Houston
51. Cheating Destiny: Living with Diabetes, America's Biggest Epidemic: James S. Hirsch
50. Banvard's Folly: Tales of Thirteen People Who Didn't Change the World: Paul Collins
49. The End of Harry Potter? An Unauthorized Guide to the Mysteries That Remain: David Langford
48. A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian: Marina Lewycka
47. The Great Snape Debate: Orson Scott Card, Joyce Millman, & Amy Berner
46. World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War: Max Brooks
45. Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why: Bart D. Ehrman
44. In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World It Made: Norman Cantor
43. The Stolen Child: Keith Donohue
42. The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye: Jonathan Lethem
41. Across the Wall: A Tale of the Abhorsen and Other Stories: Garth Nix
40. You Can't Get There from Here: A Year on the Fringes of a Shrinking World: Gayle Forman
39. Knock Yourself Up: No Man? No Problem: A Tell-All Guide to Becoming a Single Mom: Louise Sloan
38. Possible Side Effects: Augusten Burroughs
37. The Psychology of Harry Potter: An Unauthorized Examination of the Boy Who Lived: Editor: Neil Mulholland
36. Pendragon: The Merchant of Death: D. J. MacHale
35. The Wisdom of Harry Potter: What Our Favorite Hero Teaches Us about Moral Choices: Edmund M. Kern
34. The Unwanted: A Memoir of Childhood: Kien Nguyen
33. The Seventh Tower: The Violet Keystone: Garth Nix
32. The Seventh Tower: Into Battle: Garth Nix
31. The Seventh Tower: Above the Veil: Garth Nix
30. My Detachment: A Memoir: Tracy Kidder
29. Hawaii's Birds (6th ed.): Hawaii Audubon Society
28. The Seventh Tower: Aenir: Garth Nix
27. Mountains beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World: Tracy Kidder
26. Charlie Bone and the Hidden King: Jenny Nimmo
25. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything: Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J.Dubner
24. Charlie Bone and the Castle of Mirrors: Jenny Nimmo
23. Not Even Wrong: A Father’s Journey into the Lost History of Autism: Paul Collins
22. Self-Made Man: One Woman’s Year Disguised as a Man: Norah Vincent
21. Charlie Bone and the Invisible Boy: Jenny Nimmo
20. The Birds of Kaua'i: Jim Denny
19. Men and Cartoons: Stories: Jonathan Lethem
18. Charlie Bone and the Time Twister: Jenny Nimmo
17. Fragrant Palm Leaves: Journals, 1962-1966: Thích Nhat Hanh
16. Midnight for Charlie Bone (The Children of the Red King, Book 1): Jenny Nimmo
15. Birding on Borrowed Time: Phoebe Snetsinger
14. The Seventh Tower: Castle: Garth Nix
13. The Seventh Tower: The Fall: Garth Nix
12. Inkspell: Cornelia Funke
11. War in the Blood: Sex, Politics and AIDS in Southeast Asia: Chris Beyrer
10. The Sociopath Next Door: Martha Stout
9. Strange Piece of Paradise: Terri Jentz
8. The Beatrice Letters (A Series of Unfortunate Events): Lemony Snicket/ Illustrator: Brett Helquist
7. The Rejection Collection: Cartoons You Never Saw, and Never Will See, in The New Yorker: Editor: Matthew Diffee
6. Candyfreak: A Journey through the Chocolate Underbelly of America: Steve Almond
5. Girl in Landscape: Jonathan Lethem
4. The Road: Cormac McCarthy
3. Abhorsen: Garth Nix
2. Lirael: Garth Nix
1. Sabriel: Garth Nix

Tank Girl [vol. 1]

#125
Title: Tank Girl [vol. 1]
Author/Illustrator: Alan Martin & Jaime Hewlett
Publisher: Titan Books
Year: 2002
Genre: Cartoon (called graphic novel, but it's not)
128 pages

It's not often that a person can say they've read two books with mutant kangaroo characters in a month, but I've accomplished it with my 125th and last book of 2007. The illustrations are fun and the lettering is hard to read. The story, such as it is, is pointless and meandering, but you're not reading it for the story, are you? You're reading it to enjoy a scantily-clad, bandage-wearing, cheap-beer-swilling, anarchistic young woman who drives a supertank and has sex with a kangaroo. If you want the same vibe but without the kangaroo, try The Complete Hothead Paisan: Homocidal Lesbian Terrorist instead.

Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet, and Beyond

#124
Title: Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet, and Beyond
Author: Pankaj Mishra
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Year: 2007
Genre: political science, history
323 pages
The title appears to derive from André Malraux's 1926 The Temptation of the West, though I'm not sure why. Regardless of its provinence, the title (especially the subtitle) is inaccurate, and has confused better and more educated readers than I. It would more accurately be titled Essays on Strife in the Subcontinent. This would have the virue of accuracy, as well as alerting the reader that this is a collection of essays that are not well-integrated. The 1-page preface promises something the book doesn't deliver, and is highly inadequate as a device to unify the book. Mishra's overall project would have been much better served by a chapter-length preface that provided contexts for each piece and showed how each fit into and supported his contention. I still might have disagreed that he had demonstrated his point, but I would have had a better sense of what he thought he was demonstrating. This doesn't mean that the essays aren't sometimes interesting or useful, but that they neither fit the title nor cohere; as such, Mishra does not reach the audience he intends.

I was expecting a more socioanthropological text, but this a largely a collection of essays on politics. Mishra says these essays "seek to make the reader enter actual experience: of individuals ... and of the traveler" (i), but this goal is not realized by a number of the essays, which often offer page after grueling page of facts about Indian political history, for example, with no subheadings, no citations, no index, no individual or traveler narratives, and a certain amount of jumping around and repetition. The lack of an index is particularly annoying and makes the book useless as a reference should one want to use it for background when reading other authors of the subcontinent (Jhumpa Lahiri, for example). The lack of citations makes it impossible to evaluate Mishra's contentions or to understand where they fit in the broader discourse of Indian-Pakistani relations, for example.

I am troubled as well by the notion of "temptations of the West" as ostensibly illustrated here. Histories of other Asian countries  demonstrate considerable strife, brutality, abuse of power, corruption, and lack of respect for others' welfare emanating from and enacted by the colonial powers of the East long before Western colonization and influence. I am willing to be convinced, but Mishra does not take up the argument that this is a Western phenomenon rather than a human one. The question of how to modernize in a way that integrates two cultures rather than subsuming one is vital and fascinating. However, Mishra generally does not address it, which was my greatest disappointment in a book that I thought would have this issue as a major focus.

The only "temptation" I can spot is Mishra's often-repeated concern that colonial powers offer education but there are then no jobs for the people who have been educated. This is an important and realistic concern, but one that might have been best served by an historical comparison, if one exists, to the relationship between education and vocation under colonial China, for example. As it stands, and without context, Mishra's complaint sounds like an indictment of providing education to the prolitariat. I assume that this is not what he intends, but that is how it reads without further elaboration.

Each essay in and of itself is interesting (though some are long, dry slogs for a reader who was not expecting 10-page recitations of historical facts between encounters with "individuals" or "the traveler"), but suffers from the reader's ongoing question of what each has to do with "temptations" or "the West." I am sure that I am missing a great deal here; Mishra's writing is highly regarded and taken seriously enough that he is the focus of some bitter disputes. For a reader with no or little background, however, it is hard to see what is special or interesting about Mishra's ideas. Though I read a great deal of history, and am conversant on several broad topics in Asia's political history, I cannot help but think that had this book's marketing been more accurate, I would not have picked it up. Having picked it up and read it in its entirety, I am incredibly frustrated by Mishra's lack of an orienting frame. By all means, read this if it looks interesting to you, but read 20 pages before you buy it to be sure it's what you think it is.

Bonus review: As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl

Someone on goodreads asked me why I had rated this book so low, so I wrote an extemporaneous review. Not part of this year's reading. Enjoy!


Title: As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl
Author: John Colapinto
Publisher: HarperCollins
Year: 2000
Genre: medical, LGBTQ
279 pages  
I use this book (and the related NOVA special) to teach my students about poor methodology. It intends (among other things) to discredit John Money's work on gender. I'm no fan of Money's, but this book doesn't use the work it could have to really discredit him. (Milt Diamond's work alone would make a good start but it is not adequately described or cited in this book, which is admittedly not scientific, but an outgrowth of a Rolling Stone article).

Money's work isn't placed in historical context very well, so a lot of energy is wasted focusing on Money's misunderstandings when, in reality, Money's studies contributed (sometimes unintentionally, but importantly) to contemporary gender studies. Money's techniques absolutely should be scrutinized with a contemporary eye, but also they need to be seen within the parameters of contemporaneous social science. I'm not saying I agree with his techniques, or his write-ups, but that he was far from alone in his behavior, thinking, or practices.

In terms of this particular family, the biggest confound to either Money's ideas about gender fluidity or to the counterargument of gender essentialism is that it wasn't blind, and certainly not double-blind. It's really hard to have a blind case study, but what that means is that this issue should figure prominently in the discussion. Numerous family members and doctors knew that the subject had been born male and was reassigned as female. That's a huge methodological problem. We don't know how the family would have behaved if they'd had a girl, so we can't compare outcomes, but my impression is that they pushed "female-gender" dress, possessions, and behaviors pretty hard. This doesn't work well for many biological females, let alone a child for whom it represents a change of behaviors toward and responses to that child. That's not emotionally neutral, nor is a shift toward what appears to be more restriction neutral, especially when the child is old enough to be aware of the difference, which Bruce/Brenda was. He had a sibling he was treated like, then suddenly he wasn't. What's not bizarre about that from a child's point of view?

Nor is the child likely to be unaware of a reasonable amount of ambient tension hinging on his gendered behavior over time. I perceive this family as pretty average, not terrifically sophisticated, and highly self-effacing in relation to authorities. Perhaps a different family would have managed this situation differently. Under the circumstances, I don't think there was a lot of choice at the time.

One family's experience, however tragic it is and however much I empathize with them and am professionally embarassed by Money, is just one case. It raises questions, but it doesn't do much for either side of the argument about whether gender is innate.

I also thought the author couldn't see Bruce/David as a person and was too fascinated by the freakish aspect of the story.

All that said, I'm terrifically sorry for the family's pain and very distressed that David later committed suicide.

The Reality Bug (Pendragon Book 4)

#123
Title: The Reality Bug (Pendragon Book 4)
Author: D. J. MacHale
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Year: 2003
Genre: young adult, fantasy & science fiction
375 pages

It's heartening that this series is improving over its run. This book borrows from some of the traditions of cyberpunk, though there's a countdown at the end that makes one wonder why the Veeloxians don't compute in binary. Ah, well. Maybe it's hexadecimal. Bobby steps more clearly into his role as lead traveler and Mark and Courtney play a bigger role in the narrative as we learn more about the acolytes who support the travelers.

There are still some internal consistency problems. For example, Bobby's journal is presented through a holographic technology that doesn't exist on Earth Two, which is forbidden. Mark frets about this for a few sentences, then, without resolving the problem, ignores it. There are, as always, other large continuity/consistency problems. At the end of the book, an enormous number of earlier-threatened deaths are made no mention of. Amusingly, a large portion of the book takes place in a virtual reality where internal consistency matters and is discussed by the characters.

Saint Dane suffers from complex villain syndrome; his plans to kill Bobby and destroy territories are needlessly byzantine. Near the end, we learn that there are 10 territories, making me wonder why Earth is three of them (Earths One, Two, and Three). Ten seems lonely in the vastness of time and space, but perhaps we will learn more about this seemingly low number as the series progresses.

The Italian Secretary: A Further Adventure of Sherlock Holmes

#122
Title: The Italian Secretary: A Further Adventure of Sherlock Holmes
Author: Caleb Carr
Publisher: St. Martin's
Year: 2005
Genre: mystery, Holmesiana
340 pages
If you must read every modern Holmes tale, then you'll want to read this one. As a person who enjoys both classical and comtemporary Holmes, I found it slightly below "okay." While Carr (whose work I've enjoyed) hits the tone and language right, the narrative never quite gets off the ground. It's plodding and Holmes has no sparkle. The events almost hang together, but don't quite cohere. Holmes's conclusions often aren't based on facts known to the reader, making this a passive mystery. Holmes's speculations about supernatural phenomena are no less jarring simply because the anthology for which this was originally intended had ghosts and Holmes as its premise--it's a weak idea, not well-rooted in Holmes canon. Finally, perhaps I'm dense, but  I don't know who the perhaps-Gaelic-speaking hunchback who runs off toward the end is (surely not the ghost of Rizzio; why would an Italian speak Gaelic?). Nor do I know why Watson and Holmes show so little interest in him. I had to struggle to finish this novel, which feels too long for its contents. I did enjoy the coincidence of reading two books in a row that both included discussion of the use of siege engines to fling plague-ridden bodies over the enemy's battlements, but that is not a sufficient reward for the difficulties this book presented.

The Last Siege

#121
Title: The Last Siege
Author: Jonathan Stroud
Publisher: Miramax
Year: 2003
Genre: young adult
297 pages

A delightful and well-delivered young adult novel from the author of The Bartimaeus Trilogy, The Last Siege plays with the conventions of fantasy while lightly skirting the genre. Stroud's characters are believable, which is important to the reader's experience, since they are not always credible. Indeed, a major strand of the novel involves the characters' evaluation of the others' reports about their own trustworthiness and experiences. The situation into which the teens are drawn is made plausible by Stroud's shaping of the narrative, and all three characters are largely sympathetic. Stroud may be forgiven a continuity flaw or two (early on, Emily's sled simply disappears from the tale). He picks his details well, and if you're not cold and exhausted by the end, you're not reading attentively enough.

The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible

#119
Title: The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible
Author: A. J. Jacobs
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Year: 2007
Genre: memoir, religion
389 pages
I was pleasantly surprised by Jacob's documentation of his year of biblical literalism. When I began, I had a number of concerns, based in part on his last book, The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World. The Year of Living Biblically addresses some of the concerns I had in both instances about a rather mechanistic approach to a year-long, self-imposed, all-encompassing task. I'd have liked to see a more explicit discussion of the reality that by the time the Bible was redacted, much editing had occurred and the documents already reflected past practices that even then were functionally unknowable. (Having proofread upward of 25 volumes of Jacob Neusner's Talmud and Mishnah translations and commentaries (e.g., this kind of thing), I am all too aware of the multi-page disputes that one verb could provoke even hundreds of years ago). Jacobs does say a number of times that even biblical literalism involves interpretation and picking and choosing (he gives the example of not actually plucking one's eye out if it offends one), but it might have been useful for him to discuss in more detail that there was no period in which all of the laws found in either testament were actually followed simultaneously.

I'd also have liked more reflection on the process, a quarterly summing up, for example. Since the structure is chronological rather than thematic, at its worst it reads like a diary of tasks (today I threw a stone at an adulterer--check). Generally , however, Jacobs's narrative moves along at a reasonable clip, is pretty funny (though I do wonder why my local Borders stocks it under "Humor" rather than "Religion"), informative, and good-natured. Though some of Jacobs's actions are bizarre out of context, I imagine that many readers will identify with his ongoing difficulties telling the truth, not swearing, and trying to adhere to dietary restrictions.

Jacobs's account of following Old Testament prescriptions is more successful than his New Testament months, which are less richly detailed. He does talk about his difficulty as a Jew (even an agnostic Jew) in following some of Christianity's rules. I kept wishing he'd taken a full Old Testament year, then spent another year immersed in a religious tradition entirely alien to him. (I must say apropos of this that I don't blame him for not doing so, and his wife is saint enough as things stand).

For more tales of year-long obsessive pursuits, read Jacobs's The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World, Julie Powell's Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen, and Mark Obmascik's The Big Year. Please feel free to add comment with other year-long quests to do some big task. For general obsession, it's hard to go wrong with Stefan Fatsis's Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players. If you'd like to drive a friend or relation to nervous exhaustion, give him or her all of these books at once. Enjoy!

Gun, with Occasional Music

#120
Title: Gun, with Occasional Music
Author: Jonathan Lethem
Publisher: Tor
Year: 1994
Genre: science fiction, mystery
262 pages

It has a kangaroo walking into a bar, see? What's not to like? This was Lethem's first novel and it's just as confident and sharp as the rest. A dystopian noir detective novel of the future, Gun, with Occasional Music hits its tone well and sustains it evenly throughout. Some detail (including the occasional music of the title) is not as well-developed as I'd have liked. The plot develops in the Fahrenheit 451-A Scanner Darkly range, plus the expected Chandler-Hammett twists and complications. The final conceit is a little simplistic and not nearly as effective as the narrator (and perhaps author) seem to think, but if that doesn't bother readers of McCarthy's The Road, neither should it trouble Lethem's fans. If you're planning to read both, read The Yiddish Policeman's Union before this; otherwise, Chabon will be too depressing by comparison.

The Rejection Collection Vol. 2: The Cream of the Crap

#118
Title: The Rejection Collection Vol. 2: The Cream of the Crap
Editor: Matthew Diffee
Publisher: Simon Spotlight Entertainment
Year: 2007
Genre: cartoons, humor
293 pages

A weak follow-up to the first collection. Only one or two of the cartoons included made me laugh. Scatology seemed over-represented (the subtitle "Cream of the Crap" might have been a clue). The cartoonists' self-completed bios were far more entertaining than their rejected cartoons in most cases. Diffee's explanation of the submission-to-rejection process is interesting and his appendix on reasons for rejection is more entertaining than some of the cartoons.

I may have been biased by an interview with Matthew Diffee that I heard on on National Public Radio before reading the book. Diffee explains a cartoon of his, beginning "It's Che Guevara--or however you say his name, I don't even know." "Sigmoidoscope," he says in relation to another cartoon, "I didn't know that was a real thing." In my head, I hear Hermione Granger: "What an idiot." I think less of Diffee after hearing him attempt to explain the cartoons, though his point that it's odd to narrate cartoons on the radio is well-taken. For his part, the interviewer also mangles the word "tyrannosaurus" ("tyrannus rex") and says it has "forepaws," which is rather shocking for Fresh Air. Since none of this reflects on the book per se, I have tried to put it aside.

In summary, the book was mildly entertaining, but for my money, the first collection is better.

The Never War (Pendragon Book 3)

#117
Title: The Never War (Pendragon Book 3)
Author: D. J. MacHale
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Year: 2003
Genre: young adult, fantasy & science fiction
336 pages

This third installment of the Bobby Pendragon series has the usual glitches--for example, as the whole second book made clear, Courtney and Mark are not the only people who know where Bobby is, since Mitchell does, too; Bobby worries briefly that Jinx might be Saint Dane but decides that "nothing about her set my radar off" (119) though his "radar" was highly inadequate in book two, etc. However, there are far fewer of these errors than in the first two books, and higher internal consistency.
In the present volume, Mark and Courtney are almost absent, relegated to just a narrative bracket around Bobby's story. Fortunately, Mark is dissatisfied, too, and at the end of the book begins to explore ways to support Bobby more directly. The conflict this time takes place on First Earth in the 1930's and involves an enjoyable alternate history of the World War II era. Star Trek fans may hearken back to the original series episode The City on the Edge of Forever at times.

Unlike the first two books, Bobby's internal emotional battles seem realistic and genuine. This inspires the reader identification and empathy that have been lacking to this point. The present volume is a bildungsroman. That couldn't be said for the previous two.This makes me cautiously optimistic about the direction of the series, and hopeful about reading further.

Coraline

#116
Title: Coraline
Author: Neil Gaiman
Publisher: HarperTrophy
Year: 2002
Genre: Children's/young adult, fantasy & science fiction
195 pages

This is a cute enough horror/fairy tale, but I'm mystified by the awards it's received. Gaiman's setting is his usual "not here but not quite anywhere else" intersticial world whose distorted and malevolent denizens wish the protagonist no good. Like all hero's journeys, Coraline's includes guides and magical appurtenances (the latter lending a somewhat deus ex machina feel to the proceedings, but hey, it's a fairy tale). The description of the evil characters as having literal button eyes was jarring and took me out of the narrative repeatedly; they belong in a different story. True to his usual concerns, Gaiman gives us an inadequate, cool mother (it's asserted that she's emotionally attractive, but she comes off much less so than the father) and a frightening alter-mother, though it is refreshing to read something from him that is not about a sympathetic male protagonist with an unpleasant, inaccessible female love interest.

Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation

#115
Title: Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation
Author: Michael Zielenziger
Publisher: Vintage
Year: 2006
Genre: psychology, anthropology
344 pages 

Fascinating and generally accessible, though not always as well integrated as it could be, this look at Japan's modernization argues that several culture-bound psychological syndromes present in Japan today are consequences of Japan's economic, political, and cultural course. This is an interesting topic and Zielenziger does a reasonable job of describing the features and treatment of hikikomori (withdrawal to one's room, often by a young male), parasaito (young adult women who live with their families and spend their money on luxuries), and to a certain extent, futoko (children and adolescents who refuse to go to school because of bullying), all of which I might characterize as disorders of quality of engagement with others. Zielenziger's more abstract historical and cultural chapters are much drier than those in which he describes people and specific situations, but he demonstrates why this more removed information is necessary for an appreciation of the context of these syndromes. One might assume from his description that everyone in Japan works in an office shuffling papers, or in technical manufacturing, but other than that the material seems relatively complete and coherent. A comparison with South Korea provides an interesting comparison and underscores the possible differences between a society's taking on outside cultural practices and acquiring the cultural beliefs that inform those practices.

As a psychologist, I'd have liked more about hikikomori, parasaito, and futoko, particularly about their historical rise, sociopsychological disorders that have diminished during the push for modernity, and empirical data (of which there is little). A Japanese pediatrician recently told me at a conference that hikikomori is considered a bio-psycho-social disorder in Japan that warrants, among other diagnoses, the label "depression" as defined in DSM, but I did not see this perspective reflected here. Read with Yukio Mishima's Confessions of a Mask for a more intimate and visceral description of school bullying and ways in which social conformity is enforced.

Zielenziger includes a glossary, good notes, and an index. I mention these only because I will bemoan their absence when I finish reading and review Pankaj Mishra's Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet, and Beyond.

Interpreter of Maladies

#114
Title: Interpreter of Maladies
Author: Jhumpa Lahiri
Publisher: Mariner Books
Year: 1999
Genre: Fiction
198 pages

The general malady relentlessly presented in this short story collection is tension in relationships--particularly marital relationships, but others as well. The more specific malady is the existential and pragmatic shock of the Emergency--the 1947 partition of Pakistan--and the later secession of Bangladesh. These sociocultural and political ruptures form the nominally-explicit back story that informs the protagonists' emotional wariness and disillusion.

The best stories are about contemporary Indian-American families, either alone or interacting with Euro-Americans or other South Asians. The less-successful stories take place away from this context and are more forced and less interesting ("A Real Durwan" is an example ). At her best, Lahiri conveys a great deal of historical information (with which most U.S. readers are unlikely to be unfamiliar) with very little exposition and in a way that is relevant to the characters' conflicts. Read the collection in order as it hangs together well as a sequence. Read with Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things for a very different tone, and with the first few chapters of Pankaj Mishra's Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet, and Beyond for tediously rendered but informative history.

The Lost City of Faar (Pendragon Book 2)

 
#113
Title: The Lost City of Faar (Pendragon Book 2)
Author: D. J. MacHale
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Year: 2003
Genre: young adult, fantasy & science fiction
384 pages

The Lost City of Faar picks up with Bobby's second adventure thwarting the evil Saint Dane, whose goal is to destroy all worlds and all times. This time he journeys to the water world Chloral, where he teams up with a local named Spader and his Uncle Press. Together, they must identify the turning point Saint Dane will attempt to exploit and counter his attempt to throw this world into chaos.

The series' basic tasks, character roles, and terrain are similar to Diane Duane's Young Wizard series. A major difference is the presence of Courtney and Mark, witnesses who are generally removed from the action and only read about it post hoc in Bobby's journal. In The Merchant of Death, they were called upon to perform some important functions for Bobby. In the present volume, they must thwart their classmate Mitchell. Their role in the story is interesting but as-yet underused. I will hope for more involvement from them in the future.

This series has enough to offer that I've decided to keep going, but I have some misgivings about doing so. My concerns are about certain kinds of poor writing, not word choice or overuse of exposition, for example, but lack of internal consistency about the rules of the universe the author has constructed. I can live with the fact that MacHale is no stylist and that the only voice truly characterized is Bobby's. I can live with the idiocy of Mark and Courtney being frightened that Mitchell will betray them to the police and that the police would actually believe him. I can even live with the ferociously clunky ending of this volume, which has its own disturbing problems related to unreliable exposition (not unreliable narration, but actually telling the reader that events happen and then undoing them in a poorly rendered reveal). Rather, I'm talking about instances where an author undoes physics, not in a way that is consistent with the world s/he has constructed, but for authorial convenience or due to oversight. The Lost City of Faar offers several choice examples of both of these inconsistencies. If you're a person who didn't care that Niven's Ringworld rotated backward in the first edition, or about the order in which the spirits of dead people erupted from Voldemort's wand, you won't see what I'm talking about as a problem. If you have to call your friends when Homer Simpson's shirt is ripped in one shot and then suddenly not ripped in the next, heed my words: In order to enjoy the Pendragon series, you must suspend your annoyance. MacHale comes dangerously close to Funke's cavalier attitude in Inkheart and Inkspell, which can be paraphrased (to avoid spoilers) as "Gee! I don't know why that happened when it's never happened like that before and that's not how it's supposed to happen in the rules of this universe, but oh, well!" Travelers can use hypnotic powers of persuasion--except when they can't. Travelers can recognize Saint Dane in disguise--except when they can't. I will spare you my diatribe about "children's literature" that seems to be based on the assumption that children are idiots and that good crafting is not just as important as it is in adult fiction. I'm sure you can imagine how it goes.

The Glass Castle

#112
Title: The Glass Castle
Author: Jeannette Walls
Publisher: Scribner
Year: 2005
Genre: memoir, psychology, sociology
290 pages

I had a lovely review that was eaten by a missed keystroke, so I'll try again.

Walls has given us an elegant memoir of growing up with difficult parents. When we first meet the family, though we as adult readers may experience some concern, Walls' child narrator sees only the adventure and excitement of her circumstances. Her father is a smart, charismatic eccentric; her mother, an artist from a privileged background who has renounced her own family's values and social class. Walls and her siblings adore and admire their parents (while already having some uneasy inklings that parents ought to protect their children more assiduously). As the narrator ages, her perspective on her parents shifts; it's also probably the case that their oddities became more pronounced. Her father's drinking and inability to manage the interpersonal aspects of a job become more prominent, while her mother withdraws farther from reality and responsibility. An especially grim section of the narrative takes place in West Virginia, where they appear to be the poorest of the poor in their community.

Walls is a good writer and the effort of reading this is emorional, not literary. I hope we'll see more from her. Read with Laura Love's You Ain't Got No Easter Clothes for another narrative about growing up with an unstable mother, and Paul Theroux's Mosquito Coast for a fictional similar situation and developmental dynamic between father and child.

For some reason, narratives about families are classified under "sociology" these days. I'd put it in "psychology" myself, but suit yourself.

Gracefully Insane: Life and Death Inside America's Premier Mental Hospital

 
#111
Title: Gracefully Insane: Life and Death Inside America's Premier Mental Hospital
Author: Alex Beam
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Year: 2003
Genre: history, psychology
278 pages

This rather superficial book can't decide whether it's a history of McLean Hospital outside Boston, or celebrity dish about famous people who have been McLean patients, or a critique of psychiatry. It doesn't quite manage to be any of these, so it comes off as fairly meanspirited and catty. Adding to the problem is Beam's writing, which has an airy tone and seems to assert that author and reader are complicit and in agreement about Beam's negative views, coupled with Beam's lack of knowledge about the history and contemporary practices of psychiatry. Beam seems to relish describing treatments such as hydrotherapy and coldpacks that are not used today and would be considered bizarre in contemporary psychiatry. Because he does not place McLean's practices in the context of contemporaneous psychiatry, he implies by omission that only McLean was stupid enough to use these practices. This isn't so. Beam's knowledge of current practice also seems scant. His diagnostic impressions when he speculates are often reductive and inaccurate, and his assertions about current diagnosis and treatment are strangely incomplete.

As a person who has worked in four inpatient facilities (both public and private, both before and in the era of managed care), I find myself in vehement disagreement with statements such as "A certain cynicism attends any hospital's long-term treatment of wealthy patients who pay their bills in full and who subsidize the care of less fortunate souls" (210). I disagree not because I think that all hospitals are great, or believe wholeheartedly in their interventions, or think they don't consider their bottom line, but because this is not how hospital staff think about and talk about patients. This is Beam's cynicism, not the attitude of the majority of people working in psychiatric facilities.

For better books about psychiatric hospitals, read Winchester's The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary, Hunt's excellent Mental Hospital from 1962, or any of the many complex and insightful accounts by patients and staff alike.

River of Time: A Memoir of Vietnam

#110
Title: River of Time: A Memoir of Vietnam
Author: Jon Swain
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Year: 1995
Genre: memoir
291 pages

The subtitle appears only on the paperback edition. It's inaccurate since much of this memoir concerns Cambodia.

Swain is one of the reporters who covered the fall of Phnom Penh in the film The Killing Fields. His was the spare passport that the group unsuccessfully tried to counterfiet for Dith Pran. I've read a number of reviews that blast this account of Swain's time in Southeast Asia; most accuse him of admiring the Khmer Rouge (which is not supported by this text), of not writing a complete history (which is not the intention of this book), and/or of being a sybarite whose recollections are primarily of the opium and sex he enjoyed in the region. While it's true that he is nostalgic for his quondam pleasures, I saw very clearly that he contrasts his younger and more mature perspectives, that he counters the hedonism and cynicism of the pre-war period with the wars' horrific effects, and that what he longs for (as in so many narratives of transition) is an imagined gentleness and naivite. I'm certainly a feminist and have my own concerns about the genre of the war narrative as told by men, in which women are only gruff authorities, prostitutes, or protective mothers. However, Swain's narrative is much more complex than that, and often succeeds in showing the transformation of peoples and countries as well as of Swain himself.

Pigeons: The Fascinating Saga of the World's Most Revered and Reviled Bird

#109
Title: Pigeons: The Fascinating Saga of the World's Most Revered and Reviled Bird
Author: Andrew D. Blechman
Publisher: Grove Press
Year: 2006
Genre: Natural history
244 pages

At the close of the book, Blechman acknowledges that when he began, he was more interested in writing about people obsessed with pigeons than the pigeons themselves. This was an interesting confirmation of my impression that pigeons were a secondary focus pretending to be primary. Yes, the text itself balances the birds with the breeders and racers, but despite Blechman's ultimate advocacy for pigeons, the impression that he finds them unpleasant keeps breaking though. This happens in a variety of ways. First, Blechman is obsessed by pigeon droppings. There are few descriptions of pigeons or their habitats that do not feature a repetitive marveling at their droppings, which Blechman and others quoted persist in referring to as "crap" and "shit." Second, despite some efforts to review the history of the pigeon and provide interesting facts, Blechman's heart clearly isn't in it. He is much more interested in the seemingly all-male world of pigeon afficionados of various kinds, describing members of secretive pigeon-shooting clubs with more appaqrent affection than he has for the birds. Third, while Blechman's words decry violence against pigeons, he devotes a fair number of pages to people who shoot them, poison them, steal them, and butcher them. He does a poor job of commenting on what could have been the crux of the book--the public's ambivalence about pigeons--and instead merely seems to enact that ambivalence, despite his stated intentions. Despite containing a fair amount of information, the book winds up feeling empty; this is not helped by an empty chapter about failing to talk to Mike Tyson (who owns pigeons).

For a narrative about another urban pest, including eradication efforts but conveying deeper regard and respect, read Sullivan's Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants (which also features a cool cover of a rat, pendant, composed of a city map).

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

 
#108
Title: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Author: Philip K. Dick
Publisher: Del Rey
Year: 1968/1982
Genre: Science Fiction
220 pages

The linked cover is one from a more recent run from the same publisher. My edition, like the one pictured, is actually titled Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep), but that's a movie tie-in title, not Dick's. The novel and the film have about as little in common as Le Guin's Earthsea Trilogy and the Sci-Fi Channel's loosely based, made-for-television movie Earthsea. There are some characters and action elements in common, but very different plots and emotional foci. Like Dick's A Scanner Darkly and Valis, there is considerable confusion between characters' selves and a larger consciousness that is the manifestation of a larger than life, perhaps unnatural intelligence; blurred identities; and at least one character who may be psychotic and/or may correctly perceive artifice and deception by people and systems. Unlike Blade Runner, which is primarily an exterior, action-adventure narrative, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? devotes considerable attention to the characters' concerns about consciousness and empathy, and plays with the reader's identification with characters over time. Like much of Dick's work, it does not answer the questions it poses about artifice versus the numinous, but instead sustains the reader's identification with the characters beyond the end of the book by letting the mystery stand.

Another Day in the Frontal Lobe: A Brain Surgeon Exposes Life on the Inside

#107
Title: Another Day in the Frontal Lobe: A Brain Surgeon Exposes Life on the Inside
Author: Katrina Firlik
Publisher: Random House
Year: 2006
Genre: Medical, memoir, education
273 pages

A well-written and easy to follow account of Firlik's training as a neurosurgeon (she was the first woman admitted to her neurosurgery residency). The narrative is more of a gloss plus clinical highlights than a more in-depth account lof her training; it is not especially psychological, though she does highlight the developmental turning points associated with the residency. There is some material, but not much, about the relationships between surgeons (either specific people or categorical groups), but a reasonable amount about what working with different patients has meant to her. Firlik tells a good neurology tale, and I would have liked more of them. Read with Working in a Very Small Place: The Making of a Neurosurgeon for another neurosurgery narrative, with Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science for another general surgical training narrative, and with The Scalpel and the Silver Bear: The First Navajo Woman Surgeon Combines Western Medicine and Traditional Healing and Forged by the Knife: The Experience of Surgical Residency from the Perspective of a Woman of Color for women surgeons' accounts with the added aspect of culture and ethnicity.

Water for Elephants

#106
Title: Water for Elephants
Author: Sara Gruen
Publisher: Algonquin
Year: 2006
Genre: Fiction
350 pages

Water for Elephants was an enjoyable novel with well-written characters who inspire identification and empathy. The setting and historical circumstances seem to be reasonably well-researched, and the plot moves along nicely. I read it in one sitting, which is unusual these days. The author has said that the story references the biblical story of Jacob, but I didn't pick this up at all, and don't see it now that I've learned of her intention. If it's there, it's weak and not well-executed. Read this with Geek Love and Freaks: We Who Are Not as Others for circus saturation; read it with Ironweed for the context of the Depression's aftermath and a different peripatetic experience.

The Awful End of Prince William the Silent: The First Assassination of a Head of State with a Handgun

#104
Title: The Awful End of Prince William the Silent: The First Assassination of a Head of State with a Handgun
Author: Lisa Jardine
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Year: 2005
Genre: history
176 pages

In some ways this is less about the actual assassination of William the Silent than about the context of his death, including the means (the relatively new wheel-lock pistol), the political climate, and the religious conflicts of 16th-century Europe. The assassination itself occupies a very small portion of this volume.

Those who did not take a survey course on European or British history or the Rennaisance, or those who had trouble understanding the political machinations that preceded those fictionalized in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, will find the first chapter useful; it provides a not-too-dry overview of the Protestant/Catholic conflicts, particularly in relation to the Low Countries. Chapter 2 treats the murder itself. After that, the order of the book is puzzling. It backtracks to discuss a previous attempt on William's life, then a discourse on the history and characteristics of the wheel-lock pistol, then two chapters with non-linear chronologies on Elizabeth I, followed by primary sources in the appendices (most notably, the fatwa against William issued by Phillip II).

The chapters that actually narrate daily events are more interesting than the chapters that present a broader historical portrait; the latter suffer as all surveys do from being a blur of names and policies. That the text is not chronological adds some confusion and difficulty orienting oneself. The author's comparisons of the events to contemporary political conflicts, while interesting, might better have been served up as a final chapter that emphasized both the historical import of the assassination and its contemporary relevance. Still and all, this was an enjoyable book, and I'll watch for more from Lisa Jardine in the future.

Don't Try This at Home: Culinary Catastrophes from the World's Greatest Chefs

#105
Title: Don't Try This at Home: Culinary Catastrophes from the World's Greatest Chefs
Authors: Kimberly Witherspoon & Andrew Friedman
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Year: 2005
Genre: Food, memoir
319 pages

I'll admit that though I'm a very good cook, and with my partner own somewhere in the neighborhood of 130 cookbooks, I don't own cookbooks by any of the chefs represented in this collection. I have nothing against them, but I've never heard of most of them. This means that I read the anthology without a picture of anyone (except Anthony Bourdain) or any orienting knowledge of them. Not a Julia Child, Marcella Hazan, Marian Burros, Mark Bittman, or Nigella Lawson in sight.

The 41 authors vary significantly in their capacity to tell a story and evoke either empathy or laughter. Puzzlingly, the entries are in alphabetical order by author, which means that the stories aren't grouped thematically or interwoven by theme--there is no narrative arc. The only rationale I can ascribe this to is that this way, none of the authors would feel snubbed. This seems emblamatic of something that's mostly missing from this collection, acknowledgement that the chefs themselves may cause their staff members to experience disasters. You'd hardly know from these naratives how unpleasant and self-absorbed some chefs can be.

In addition, the 'disasters' range from true disasters (a back-seat slosh that rivals some of the restaurant scenes in Fight Club for the disgust it inspires) to non-disasters (a famous person is supposed to show up for dinner, and does) to did-you-understand-the-question? stories (it's funny to pull pranks on other cooks).

The collection was interesting enough to read, but not something I'd be likely to remember in the long-term. There are better stories to be had in books by individual cooks and chefs.

Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia

 
#103
Title: Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia
Author: Elizabeth Gilbert
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 2007
Genre: memoir, travel
334 pages

I have tried hard to like this memoir/travelogue. Why are there so many books by 30-ish folks complaining about their lives, then offering wisdom that is at best simplistic and at worst immature? Perhaps, as I've mentioned already in these reviews, the problem is that I have become a curmudgeon. Whatever the reason, however, I found it hard to like Liz. She is tediously insecure and neurotic. If her self-depiction is accurate, I doubt I'd find her socially attractive. While I sympathize about her ugly and expensive divorce, and I'm happy on her behalf that she can afford to travel the world for a year in her early 30's, I am uncomfortable with some of the unspoken class subtext (which might remind one of the economic uneasiness occasioned by Under the Tuscan Sun), as well as the overall depiction of people from other countries as more romantic, exotic, wise, etc. than one's compatriots. The author might have been better served by a directive from her Guru to stay at home and pay attention rather than flee, or (since we all have the option to flee), at least not to write a book about it.

I keep trying to articulate why this book so rubs me the wrong way; the closest I can get is that the author's anxiety is wearying. Does this mean that her adventures aren't interesting, or that she doesn't have anything to say, or that I stopped reading? No, but I could never really lose myself in the story, or develop much empathy for the narrator. The author is a magazine writer, which means her prose is relatively clean, but her sentiments are cloying.

The book is, I think, intended to be inspirational. However, the tale unfolds too simplistically, yet with assertions of its own complexity and meaningfulness. I found it unfortunately superficial and reductive.

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

#102
Title: Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
Author: Chip Heath & Dan Heath
Publisher: Random House
Year: 2007
Genre: Business, education
291 pages

An easy to read and palatable example of its genre (it thinks it's social psychology, but it seems more pitched to management than anything else), Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die teaches a basic paradigm related to the "stickiness" of ideas, and how to make them stickier. The authors open with some urban legends, then analyze them to show why they stick--that is, why people remember them and find them highly salient. It goes on to situate itself in the context of Malcolm Gladwell's discussion of "The Stickiness Factor" in The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference.

The book is distinguished from many of its ilk in that it does not seem to exist for the purpose of helping the reader to deceive others (i.e., as do many texts on advertising techniques), it draws from a variety of credible empirical and theoretical sources, and it has benign applications outside the realm of economics. I can easily see ways to incorporate their basic ideas into lesson plans, especially lessons that would help my students design promotional materials, report findings, or direct clientele to the agencies at which they train. While my copy is as full of marginal notes as any non-fiction I read, more of my comments reflect my engagement with the material rather than any substantive dispute with it.

I was pleased to see references to Lakoff and Johnson's Metaphors we Live By, not because I agree with all of their contentions, but because it evokes my pleasant college experiences of ferociously discussing this then-new book with Jonathan and Frederic, now both gone.

Cambridge Studies in Medical Anthropology #1: Social Lives of Medicines

 

#101
Title: Cambridge Studies in Medical Anthropology #1: Social Lives of Medicines
Authors: Susan Reynolds Whyte, Sjaak van der Geest, & Anita Hardon
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 2003
Genre: anthropology, medicine
208 pages 

A professional/technical text in medical anthropology, but still accessible to the interested lay reader. It approaches the meaning of pharmaceuticals and medical technologies (materia medica) in different cultural contexts, including developed as well as developing countries. The authors hold the tension between patients' uncritical trust of doctors' knowledge, and doctors' (and other medical personnels') actual knowledge. My conclusion based on the book is that no one knows much of anything in actual practice, and that we are far more likely to make medical decisions based on cultural salience and analogy than on any sort of objective appraisal or pharmacokinetics and mechanisms of action. There is an excellent chapter on rural injectionists that should be required reading for people involved in HIV and hepatitis reduction. Dry, but worth it. A good companion to Craig's Familiar Medicine: Everyday Health Knowledge and Practice in Today's Vietnam, which I'll get around to finishing and review one of these days.

The Yiddish Policemen's Union

#100
Title: The Yiddish Policemen's Union
Author: Michael Chabon
Publisher: HarperCollins
Year: 2007
Genre: fiction, alternate history
414 pages  

This seemed like a good book for #100. Chabon gives us an alternate history in which the Jewish nation, more or less, has wound up in Sitka, Alaska rather than the Middle East. It starts slow, which I apparently enjoyed more than some reviewers. I found the opening psychological and developmental sections more compelling than the later, faster-paced action. Chabon manages an enjoyable and never-normalizing blend of Yiddishkeit and the noir detective novel. The end seemed deflated, with a confused climax and a concerning loss of momentum. I did not find it to be an adequate payoff for the buildup. For this reason, I'd recommend The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay instead.

The Leap

#99
Title: The Leap
Author: Jonathan Stroud
Publisher: Hyperion
Year: 2001
Genre: children's/young adult, fantasy & science fiction
233 pages
Not nearly as complex as Stroud's Bartimaeus Trilogy, this is essentially a modernized folk tale, with a fantasy base and a certain amount of young adult-level horror to spice it up. I found it effective, though the plot was predictable. However, this is an understandable aspect of folk tales (and I'm not a young adult reader). Stroud gives us a nicely obvious but unremarked-upon contrast between the protagonist's cheerless industrial town and the alluring natural (and supernatural) world to which her quest takes her.

Invite young adults to read this now, then move on to Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell and The Stolen Child when they are ready for more sophisticated versions.

Not the Thing I Was: Thirteen Years at Bruno Bettelheim's Orthogenic School

#98
Title: Not the Thing I Was: Thirteen Years at Bruno Bettelheim's Orthogenic School
Author: Stephen Eliot
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Year: 2002
Genre: memoir, psychology, education
309 pages A memoir by a very long-term resident and student of Bruno Bettelheim's Orthogenic School at University of Chicago. Eliot reports that he was diagnosed with schizophrenia; it's always hard to form an impression from edited discourse, but my understanding of his description of himself is more in accord with a classic Kernbergian borderline diagnosis (for Kernberg, this meant "borderline psychotic," not today's "borderline personality disorder"), moving, as Kohlberg suggested, into a better-compensated narcissism.

Eliot does not tell his story coherently, and the jumps in time frame do not appear to be intentional or to contribute to the narrative as a deliberate structural feature. One can understand this storytelling failure as indicative of the author's ongoing difficulties with empathy and preoccupation with his internal state, but that is supposition on my part. Eliot's tale reflects, and states, his profoundly ambivalent relationship with and evaluation of Bettleheim, but, like much of the book, the reader is left with an experience of having been told something rather than having been shown it. It's hard to enter Eliot's world. That may be a lot of the problem.

For a more accessible story about schools that are also treatment settings for kids with profound needs, read Nazeer's Send in the Idiots: Stories from the Other Side of Autism. Pair Eliot with One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (the book with the Chief as narrator, not the film) and the excellent documentary on Bettelheim and the practice of blaming mothers for their children's autism, Refrigerator Mothers.

Survivor

#97
Title: Survivor
Author: Chuck Palahniuk
Publisher: Anchor
Year: 1999
Genre: fiction
289 pages

I've now read everything of Palahniuk's other than Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey. I read Survivor out of sequence because I never saw a copy for sale until recently. I was pleased to read it, because it was significantly better than Haunted, but also saddened because it seemed to confirm my suspicion that Palahniuk's earlier work much fresher and better written.

Told more-or-less forward but counting back down to the opening moment (including reverse page numbering), Survivor is relatively complex and very engaging. Palahniuk engages in some low-key yet profound worldbuilding that is more characteristic of Jonathan Lethem than of Palahniuk's usual style. Palahniuk sometimes has trouble with the balance between depicting his protagonist's brutal (and brutalizing) inner narration and evoking empathy for the protagonist and his or her plight. Not so here--the protagonist is both troubling and attractive. Palahniuk might do well to aim for this blend and not, as his more recent books would lead one to believe, for the most outrageous and disgusting extremes of human behavior and experience.

Survival of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Diseas

#96
Title: Survival of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease
Authors: Sharon Moalem and Jonathan Prince
Publisher: William Morrow & Company
Year: 2007
Genre: Science, Medicine
288 pages

Ignore the title and the hype about "a medical maverick." In fact, just take the dust jacket off. It was clearly constructed to be provocative, but it's not accurate.

Moalem marshals evidence for the positive or effective aspects of diseases that we might other characterize as harmful. He is able to do so (and stick to this theme) fairly consistently throughout the book. Afficionados of popular medical non-fiction will recognize some of the diseases and their associated anecdotes (there's some overlap with Meyers's Happy Accidents: Serendipity in Modern Medical Breakthroughs, for example). In some cases this association may not be evident until later in the chapter--"Of Microbes and Men," for example, treats evolutionary considerations for microbes and parasites that parallel those for humans.

I did find myself frustrated at times by what seemed like unreasonable dumbing down, leading to misinformation. On page 199, for example, Moalem discusses "the cold virus." The point would be stronger if he described the cold viruses, since there are a multitude of causal agents for "the cold." Some of his arguments are reductive and eliminate important considerations that are not well-expressed in an either/or paradigm (essence vs. environment makes multiple appearances inn this way, when the explanation is probably much more complex than the binary choice suuggests).

Still and all, this book was enjoyable and does a good job of eleborating on what is, for many people, a paradigm shift in thinking about the role of disease.

The Map that Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology

#95
Title: The Map that Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology
Author: Simon Winchester
Publisher: Perennial
Year: 2001
Genre: History, Science, Biography
329 pages

While I liked The Map that Changed the World well enough, it was a slow read (about 25 pages a night). I preferred Winchester's OED-related books, perhaps because I'm actually interested in the picky details of dictionary development, and because with a focus on words his Byzantine sentences don't seem out of line. Winchester is somewhat repetitive, which helped to relate events to each other but also diminished any dramatic tension to be found in the story.

I didn't mind the intrusion of the author's story at mid-book; I understood it as an outcropping from a different era than the surrounding narrative, if I may use a geological metaphor. Perhaps the problem was that I gained little sense of William Smith's psychology, which made this more a book about the history of an idea and less about the progenitor of the idea. That's fine, but a less-rich narrative.

Winchester's richness seems typically to reside in his descriptions of the historical context in which the events of his books occurred. At this he is quite masterful. I enjoy Winchester's compulsive need to share amusing tangential or coincidental information in footnotes. He also turns one particularly fine phrase , which may help explain why there is so little of Smith's emotional stratum in this book. Regarding Smith: "He was no great diarist; but once in a while his entries make one wish he had been a better one" (p. 56).

One may read excerpts here.

Send in the Idiots: Stories from the Other Side of Autism

#94
Title: Send in the Idiots: Stories from the Other Side of Autism
Author: Kamran Nazeer
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Year: 2006
Genre: autism, memoir
230 pages

An interesting and enjoyable memoir from an author with high functioning autism (he does not call it Asperger's, and since he had language delays Kanner's autism seems more accurate). Nazeer interviewed two of his former classmates from a school for autistic children, the parents of another, and two of their teachers. In addition to the poignancy of the narrative, Nazeer's speculative digressions are an interesting demonstration of the organization of autistic thought.

Happy Accidents: Serendipity in Modern Medical Breakthroughs

#93
Title: Happy Accidents: Serendipity in Modern Medical Breakthroughs
Author: Morton Meyers
Publisher: Arcade Publishing
Year: 2007
Genre: Medical, science, history
390 pages

Meyers's contention is that scientific discoveries of the paradigm-shifting sort are not generally made by rote testing of compounds (for example), but by serendipitous accidents that are recognized as significant. His examples generally, though not always, support this position. It's clear from the degree to which he becomes exercised that cancer research was the impetous for this book.

Rumspringa: To Be or Not to Be Amish

#92
Title: Rumspringa: To Be or Not to Be AmishAuthor: Tom Shachtman
Publisher: North Point Press
Year: 2006
Genre: Anthropology, Religion
286 pages

The Amish are an Anabaptist sect, so members must make a decision to join rather than be baptized at birth. "Rumspringa" refers to a period in Amish adolescence when the teen must decide whether to join the church. This decision may include exploration of the "English" comunity (i.e., everyone else), including driving, substances, and sex. Contrary to the book's assertion that this is a coming of age rite, it seems more accurate to understand it as a developmental period--it is protracted, it is not engaged in by all Amish teens (and perhaps not even by most), and many families seem to protest it.

The book is oddly U.S. majority culture-centric. The author tries to bring developmental theory into the mix, but uses theories that for the most part are out of date, not empirically validated, or see adherence to U. S. majority values as the only successful outcome. He implies that Amish youth are psychologically underdeveloped, ignoring the reality that most of the world's youth live in collectively-oriented cultures and have even less than the Amish youths' 8th grade education. The book is best when it sticks to anthropology; when it tends toward pop psychological interpretation, it is less compelling.

I kept wondering what it's like to be a gay Amish youth who holds traditional Amish values. That's a book I'd read.

Your Disgusting Head: The Darkest, Most Offensive and Moist Secrets of Your Ears, Mouth and Nose

 #91
Title: Your Disgusting Head: The Darkest, Most Offensive and Moist Secrets of Your Ears, Mouth and Nose
Author: Dr. and Mr. Doris Haggis-on-Whey
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Year: 2004
Genre: Humorous, medical
63 pages

The Haggis-on-Wheys, modern colossi of intellect and talent, in this slender yet richly illustrated tome fail to shy from the realities of mucus, shark's teeth, the sub-maxillary ganglion, and the near-sighted river otter. So ought you.

Barry Trotter and the Unauthorized Parody

#90
Title: Barry Trotter and the Unauthorized ParodyAuthor: Michael Gerber
Publisher: Fireside/Simon & Schuster
Year: 2001
Genre: Humorous, Harry Potter
176 pagesYou don't really need to read this unless you're compelled to read everything related to Harry Potter. Mad Magazine's parodies of the films are funnier, albeit in a different genre. This parody certainly has its amusing points, and benefits from Gerber's affection for Harry Potter, but it's a mild parody of the content and the commercial exploitation of the books. There is no attempt to poke fun at Rowling's writing style (for example, there is not capitalized ADOLESCENT ANGST!), unlike the otherwise-weak Doon or the robust and still-entertaining Bored of the Rings. Still, Gerber's book manages to be something of its own as well as a parody, and is

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

 #89
Title: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
Author: Mary Roach
Publisher: Norton
Year: 2003
Genre: Medicine, natural history
304 pages

Roach's enjoyable inquiry into the history and uses (and misuses) of human cadavers, while not exhaustive, explores emblematic activities (cremation, research, etc.). Roach is a genial guide, willing to endure a great variety of smells, body parts, and activities most of us prefer not to watch in order to pursue her narrative. She tells the tales entertainingly yet respectfully, and with obvious affection for both the living and the dead.

Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid

#88
Title: Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't AvoidAuthor: Lemony Snicket
Publisher: HarperCollins
Year: 2007
Genre: Humourous, Young Adult
168 pages
A little book of aphorisms, which I presume is intended either to be sincere but wry, or a parody of the little-book-of-pensees genre. Since the volume is attributed to Snicket, whose ouvre is extensive and whose voice is distinctive, it is regretable that the majority of these large-type entries are neither funny nor apt. Some simply read like bland, generic self-help aphorisms. I expect more from the man who introduced the word "cakesniffer" to my vocabulary.

Powers (Annals of the Western Shore)

#87
Title: Powers (Annals of the Western Shore)Author: Ursula K. Le Guin
Publisher: Harcourt
Year: 2007
Genre: Fantasy & Science Fiction, Young Adult
502 pages
The third in the Annals of the Western Shore series following Gifts and Voices. These are ostensibly young adult novels, though Le Guin's work seems to get this label whenever the protagonist is a child or adolescent, regardless of the themes or sophistication of the narrative.

I recently had the opportunity to hear Le Guin read from Powers at Powell's Books at Cedar Hills Crossing. Before reading the first seven pages, she compared the book to "a jointless chicken" or "baby back ribs" because it lacks structural points that make it easy to start and stop an excerpt. This jointlessness is characteristic of Le Guin's more recent work, which has a deceptive simplicity and clarity of language and story. (She also remarked that she has stories but is not sure that she has plots.) Le Guin's writing often embodies or evokes the Tao (the link is to her translation and commentary). It is subtly complex yet straightforward.

Like the protagonists of the previous books in the series, Gavir has a secret gift--in his case, he remembers events that have not yet happened. The action is somewhat picaresque, through also psychologically developmental. I was reminded through most of it of Heinlein's Citizen of the Galaxy, which it reflects/distorts/revises nicely. I strongly suggest that you read the Heinlein, then the Le Guin, in the same way that you'd pair Heinlein's Starship Troopers (the book, please, not the film) with Haldeman's The Forever War.

Beyond Birdwatching: More Than There is to Know about Birding

#86
Title: Beyond Birdwatching: More Than There is to Know about BirdingAuthor: Ben, Cathryn, & John C. Sill
Publisher: Peachtree
Year: 1993
Genre: Birding, humorous
80 pages
The third parody of birding and birders from these authors, the current volume is in the form of a birding magazine. It includes not only notes on seldom-seen birds, but also articles, ads, and editorials. Not a sleek as the previous two, but it's still pretty funny.

A Field Guide to Little-Known and Seldom-Seen Birds of North America

#85
Title: A Field Guide to Little-Known and Seldom-Seen Birds of North AmericaAuthor: Ben, Cathryn, & John C. Sill
Publisher: Peachtree
Year: 1988
Genre: Birding, humorous
92 pages
The precursor to this book. Their styles are similar, with similarly beautiful and funny illustrations and the same affectionate fun poked at birding manuals.

The Lost Executioner

 #84
Title: The Lost ExecutionerAuthor: Nic Dunlop
Publisher: Walker & Co.
Year: 2005
Genre: Asia, Cambodia
343 pages

Dunlop's biography humanizes Comrade Duch without diminishing the horrifying impact of his actions. He illuminates some of the internal politics that make the Khmer Rouge's contradictory policies so confusing.

Though the account is engrossing, some of the writing is uneven and awkward. Some sentences don't seem to relate to their contexts. He repeats himself. He assumes that the reader knows the basic history of Cambodia, so there are gaps that detract from the reader's ability to follow the narrative easily.

Dunlap is ambivalent about photography, finding it distancing and aesthiticizing of suffering, yet it was a photograph that moved and motivated him to conduct this investigation. Similarly, he wants people to visit the Toul Sleng prison museum, but also denounces it as a "commercial enterprise" (p. 226). His ambivalence doesn't trouble me, but he frequently gives strong, contradictory opinions without developing the relationship between these points of view.

Dunlap's resources are good, but he does not seem to be aware of Vann Nath's A Cambodian Prison Portrait: One Year in the Khmer Rouge’s S-21 Prison.

Happy Birthday or Whatever: Track Suits, Kim Chee, and Other Family Disasters

#83
Title: Happy Birthday or Whatever: Track Suits, Kim Chee, and Other Family DisastersAuthor: Annie Choi
Publisher: Harper
Year: 2007
Genre: Autobiography, humor
242 pages

There's nothing wrong with this book, which is a collection of aurobiographical stories about growing up as a first-generation Korean in the U.S. There also isn't much to make the book exceptional. With the emphasis on the family's purportedly hilarious yet incessant sniping and bickering, it is somewhat monotonous. Where Choi manages to bring some emotional complexity to the work, in recounting some of the events related to her mother's health, she is a pale imitation of Amy Tan, who told very much the same story but in a much more compelling manner in 1989's The Joy Luck Club. Choi is not a bad writer, but despite a certain gloss, she comes off as a young writer. Since she is young, perhaps her style will mature. She has the misfortune to have come of age in an era in which prematurely world-weary authors posture about what their 26 years on the planet have taught them. It is ultimately tiresome.

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

#82
Title: A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy SoldierAuthor: Ishmael Beah
Publisher: Farrar Straus and Giroux
Year: 2007
Genre: Memoir, war, Africa
229 pages

A searing memoir by a Sierra Leonean boy soldier. He writes clearly and directly about his horrific experiences, often in simple yet beautiful passages. I've read a reasonable number of memoirs by child war victims, but few by young people who, like Beah, actively participated as combatants. I highly recommend this memoir; I will teach with it as soon as I have a chance.

Succeed in Business: Vietnam (Culture Shock!)

#81
Title: Succeed in Business: Vietnam (Culture Shock!)Author: Kevin Chambers
Publisher: Graphic Arts Center Publishing Company
Year: 1997
Genre: Business
240 pages

I'm not a business person, so it's always fascinating to read a text that thinks unbridled development and commerce is good for a country. Yes, Vietnam certainly has cumbersome, Byzantine, and corrupt business and governmental practices. However, Chambers seems to be of the opinion that any regulation is a problem. Indeed, Chambers seems to have a low opinion of Vietnam in general (at least from a business standpoint), so those intending to do business in Vietnam probably should consult other sources for a less negative cultural perspective.

As Chambers notes, government offices, policies, and laws change frequently in Vietnam. Thus, with a 1997 publication date on the newest edition, much of this book is superseded. The reader's difficulty in mapping the contents onto contemporary Vietnam will be magnified by both the passage of time and Chambers' disorganized presentation (for example, basic information such as the currency is presented on page 822, though it's been referred to several times before that). The map on page 12, featuring the "Gulf of Tongking" (sic) does not inspire confidence, nor the reference to "Toule Sap" (sic) elsewhere.

The vest features of the book are the cultural observations, especially as they affect business transactions. Thus, while it's helpful to know that food taken from a communal bowl should be placed on one's own plate before being eaten, this information is available elsewhere. In contrast, Chambers' observation that "there is also the common view among Vietnamese that the terms of a contract lose validity when the original signers and deal-makers change" (p. 96) is both informative and unavailable elsewhere.

So much has changed in Vietnam in the last decade--politically, economically, and structurally--that any information in the book should be fact-checked before being acted on. As a few examples: There was no restriction on my taking a cellphone to Vietnam; there were coins; the airport tax was included in my ticket. Much (though not all) of the cultural information was still accurate. I recommend that the reader concentrate on these sections and use those likely to have changed as the basis for formulating questions about commerce and government that can be answered with more up-to-date data.