#57Title: A Thousand Splendid SunsAuthor: Khaled HosseiniPublisher: Riverhead
Year: 2007
Genre: Fiction, Afghanistan
384 pages
As easy to enter into and as absorbing as The Kite Runner, Hosseini's
second novel is again set in Afghanistan over a long enough period for
readers to absorb the flavor and preoccupations of several recent
governments and upheavals. Hossneini's writing is descriptive without
being over-elaborate, and his characters are psychologically coherent. I
enjoyed the converging tales of two women's lives, and I thought the
Naomi and Ruth reference worked well. A number of the locales and
experiences described in the sections taking place in the Taliban's
Kabul evoked the CNN report Beneath the Veil,
Saira Shah's 2001 undercover documentary. Perhaps because I had images
from this program in mind, these sections of the book were particularly
vivid.
The plot was sometimes predictable and contrived. I found
the last several sections rushed in a way that decreased their resonance
and interfered with my suspension of disbelief, and reader buy-in is
critical to accepting some rather increadible events. I would not
characterize the novel as uplifting, but perhaps as ultimately
emotionally triumphant.
As an aside, a mention of Laila and Mariam's "three cups of tea" made me think to move Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace... One School at a Time forward in my queue, despite its unfortunate misuse of ellipsis right out there in front of god and everybody.
#56Title: 100 Questions and Answers about Hepatitis C: A Lahey Clinic GuideAuthors: Stephen Fabry & R. Anand Narasimhan
Publisher: Jones & Bartlett Publishers
Year: 2007
Genre: Medical, disease, Hepatitis C
186 pages
The Lahey Clinic guides, all in the 100 Questions and Answers about X
format, provide overviews of gastroenterological disorders in a way
that is accessible to non-medical readers. The level of detail is good
for a non-medical reference book, and the language is sufficiently
technical to align with medical reports and resources. Terminology is
defined in sidebars. I would have liked more extensive coverage of liver
transplantation, but Lahey does have a book solely devoted to this topic. I appreciate that both of these volumes are current and cite reasonably up-to-date studies. 100 Questions and Answers about Hepatitis C is
a good starting point for people unfamiliar with the disease. Readers
may want to follow it with a more technical or more specific book,
depending upon their reasons for reading.
#55Title: Flyte (Septimus Heap, Book 2)
Author: Angie Sage
Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books
Year: 2006
Genre: Children's fantasy
532 pages
The second book in the Septimus Heap series. Flyte relies a little more on deus ex machina than did the first volume, but generally speaking is still an above-average children's fantasy. Picking up about a year after Magyk,
the plot is perhaps both a little too complex and, at times, a little
too obscure for its payoffs. As in the first book, older readers will
quickly figure out the major plot points, but if you enjoy spotting
foreshadowing you won't be troubled by this.
#54Title: The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary
Author: Simon Winchester
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2003
Genre: History, English language
260 pages
A pleasing history of the making of the Oxford English Dictionary by the author of the related The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary,
q.v. It used to be that one could get a copy of the Compact OED by
joining a book club, and used copies were easy to find as well. When I
went to college, I schlepped my Compact OED to school, home, and to
school again each year. I still enjoy reading dictionaries (whether
monolingual or translating) and thesauri about as much as I enjoy
reading books with plots or narratives, and I'm sure I would have
enjoyed the work of the Unregistered Words Committee (which,
alas, quickly found its task subsumed in the grander and more ambitious
project the OED soon became).
Winchester is a fine writer with an
enjoyably large vocabulary. This book has somewhat uneven pacing, with
some chapters lagging a bit while others move quickly. The conclusion
seemed somewhat rushed; I'd have liked more discussion of the OED's
reception when the series was finally complete. The sections on internal
disputes, lexicographic standards, and the volunteers who provided
illustrative quotations are all very pleasant reading.
A few nitpicks:
Page
8: Though borrowed through Latin, at least three on his list of
"Latin-originated words" (idol, martyr, psalm) are actually
Greek-originated words.
Page 22: "sacerdotall" is not "now mercifully gone" but alive and well and spelled sacerdotal.
Though the promotional material says that "Winchester lovingly describes the nuts-and-bolts of dictionary making — how unexpectedly tricky the dictionary entry for marzipan was," this is somewhat misleading, as Winchester disappointingly references the same datum--that marzipan was difficult--but does not tell us why.
#53Title: Magyk (Septimus Heap, Book 1)
Author: Angie Sage
Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books
Year: 2005
Genre: Children's fantasy
576 pages
A nice start to this children's fantasy series. Magyk works intelligibly; it also is finite and not to be used frivolously (a characteristic that magic sadly lacks in the Harry Potter
books). Sage includes enough absurdities to entertain both adults and
children (a red door painted black, for example, or Marcia's
preoccupation with stylish boots) without sliding over into farce. The
language is often clever (Silas is an Ordinary Wizard, while Marcia is
an ExtraOrdinary Wizard). The action moves swiftly and progresses
logically with only a few deus ex machina moments and
incongruities (for example, on p. 386 Jenna suddenly realizes that she
has been in the tunnels before, in her dreams, but we did not know about
these dreams prior to the revelation).
While Stroud's Bartimaeus trilogy
is the best I've read recently in this genre, the Septimus Heap books
may hold that role for younger readers. Older readers will figure out
much of the plot fairly early on, but this does not detract from the
pleasure of the story. Mark Zug has provided engaging illustrations at
the head of each chapter, and the cover art is explained not too far
from the end of the book.
#52Title: Farewell to Manzanar: A True Story of Japanese American Experience During and After the World War II Internment
Author: Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston & James D. Houston
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Year: 1973/2002
Genre: Memoir/American History
177 pages
Linked
to the paperback edition. Jeanne Watatsuki Houston recalls her family's
internment in Manzanar, one of the Western camps to which Japanese
citizens and non-citizens alike were evacuated after Japan bombed Pearl
Harbor. Houston's story has a special poignancy because there were
aspects of the camp that became familiar and comfortable to her. She
describes her family's history before and after their years in the camp
as a context for the interpersonal strains during their internment. In
addition, she describes the phenomenon of not fitting in as a more
general developmental issue, one made particularly acute in her case by
the intersection of adolescence and racism.
Since the research
shows that most people who were interned in these camps did not discuss
the experience with their own children, and that those who did have only
a very brief conversation about it, Houston's account is all the more
important and moving. Read in conjunction with Kessler's Stubborn Twig: Three Generations in the Life of a Japanese American Family and Wiesel's Night for comparison and contrast.
#51Title: Cheating Destiny: Living with Diabetes, America's Biggest EpidemicAuthor: James S. Hirsch
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Year: 2006
Genre: Memoir/Medical History
307 pages
Hirsch,
who has a brother and son with Type I diabetes, as well as having it
himself, is well-situated to write this memoir/medical history of the
disorder. He moves swiftly and easily through the early history of
medical treatment for diabetes, with numerous interesting biographies
and anecdotes. These are interwoven with his contemporary experiences
and impressions related to his son's diagnosis and care as contrasted
with his own. Hirsch holds my interest until Chapter 12, then bogs down
in a fairly detailed and less-interestingly told account of Denise
Faustman's research and political travails; he hits his stride again in
Chapter 14, though he retells some pieces of his family story that he's
already told.
I enjoyed encountering William Beaumont's
observations of a young Canadian man with a shotgun wound in his gut. I
first read about this in a science book that used to belong to my mother
or aunt (it also featured a chapter on transplanting a piece of a
rhesus monkey's uterine lining to its eye and observing that it bled in
synchrony with the monkey's estrus, which was how I first learned about
menstruation, so I must have been 9 or 10).
Hirsch seems a bit
vague on the findings on Type II diabetes, particularly on the reflexive
relationship between weight and insulin resistance. His book focuses on
Type I, which is fine, but in some places contributes to the general
confusion about the similarities and differences between the two types.
Hirsch
provides a lot of useful information about the history of Blue
Cross/Blue Shield and other health delivery systems, along with an
informed analysis of ways in which diabetes management profits those
systems. I would recommend this book for people who are somewhat
familiar with Type I diabetes; I would not recommend it for a newly
diagnosed person or her family as Hirsch's ambivalence about the medical
system is less-well mediated than the rest of the book; in addition, he
seems angry on his son's behalf, but not his own, in a way that
sometimes makes his tone an odd mixture of flat and over-emphatic.
#50Title: Banvard's Folly: Tales of Thirteen People Who Didn't Change the WorldAuthor: Paul Collins
Publisher: Picador
Year: 2002
Genre: Biography
320 pages
An
anthology of once-famous, once-infamous, or never famous men (with one
exception) who were hot stuff at the time but now are obscure or
entirely forgotten. Collins (the author of Not Even Wrong: A Father’s Journey into the Lost History of Autism which I reviewed here)
has chosen an interesting assortment of scientists, scammers, and
artists to profile. He has an engaging narrative voice and generally is
successful in evoking each person and engaging the reader's empathy. I'd
have wished for a few more women, but women's historical footprints are
often fainter.
I enjoy a variant on word golf that I call "book
golf," in which I notice similarities and coincidences across unrelated
books that I read randomly in close temporal relation to each other. I
also enjoy encountering references to less-known books that I've read.
One such in Collins is an offhand reference to Wood's How to Tell the Birds from the Flowers,
a whimsical out-of-print book that I own in its 1959 paperback
incarnation. Originally published in 1917, it uses woodcuts and poems to
show the differences between two things that sound (and are drawn)
similar, such as "the Antelope" and "the Cantelope." It's slightly
crazy-seeming and was terribly absorbing when I was a child.
Collins
makes errors here and there, nothing major but still obvious. For
example, in discussing viticulture, he points out that for consistency,
grapes must be propagated from clones since the genetic material varies
from seed to seed (p. 115). However, on page 121, his big point is that
"Grapes have seeds"; he tells us this to show how Ephraim
Bull's competitors were able to steal his new Concord grape. However,
the seeds should make no difference; it's the cuttings that would. Since
Collins then immediately goes on to say this, it's not clear why he
even makes his erroneous comment about seeds.
This would be a
good companion piece to a book on mediums or eccentric inventors. To
play book golf, read it with a book on Formosa, Mark Twain, or coalt
blue glass. You'll know why.
Edited to add: A shorter version of this review was chosen for Powell's Books' Daily Dose feature for 6/24/07. See it here.
#49Title: The End of Harry Potter? An Unauthorized Guide to the Mysteries That RemainAuthor: David Langford
Publisher: Tor
Year: 2007 (paperback revision)
Genre: Literary Criticism
197 pages
Though
the title is a bit misleading (much of the book is not about "the
mysteries that remain"), this is a nicely-written and often humerous
exegesis on Harry Potter. As was the case for Orson Scott Card's section
of The Great Snape Debate
(reviewed earlier this month), this book was written by a science
fiction writer who is very familiar with the conventions of the young
adult fantasy/sf genre and can give meaningful examples for comparison
and contrast. Langford often directs the reader's attention to Rowling's
methods, suggesting ways to read clues and plot points in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows when it is published this summer.
Langford
is enjoyably literate and his jokes often are both complex and elegant.
His tone is jocular, not hip or snide. He over-relies on ellipsis at
the end of his thoughts, but, well....
Langford and I have
reached similar conclusions about a number of pending resolutions, so of
course I admire him for that (we are in agreement that Harry is a
horcrux for Lily, not for Voldemort; we agree that Snape did not
actually kill Dumbledore with Avada Kedavra but rather that he and
Dumbledore have conducted an elaborate ruse). Though I appreciate the
conclusions about the possibility of Harry's death that he draws from
other children's literature, I do think it's possible that Harry will
die (though I am leaning more toward Snape dying at the moment). I've
recently read a young adult fantasy series where the protagonist
sacrificed himself; in addition, Harry-as-interrex may need to die or at
least lose his magic. We will know soon enough.
Of the "What
Will Book 7 Bring?"-style books I've read thus far, this is the best. It
may inspire me to read more of Langford's own science fiction.
#48Title: A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
Author: Marina Lewycka
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 2006
Genre: Fiction
294 pages
Ultimately,
a rather disturbing and tragic novel that is superficially about elder
abuse, and more abstractly about the legacy of culture-wide trauma.
Themes include reconciliation/redemption (of the kind that makes it a
contender for Oprah's Book Club), connection and disconnection,
stinginess and generosity, optimism and fear, and innocence and
cynicism. It nicely illustrates how position in a family influences
one's perspective on the family, as well as the oblique ways that family
history is conveyed.
At times the narration is too self-conscious and at those points the book reads too much like a horrible Borat/Everything is Illuminated
pastiche of goofy fractured English utterances from those wacky
foreigners. It's certainly a fine first novel, however, and many
sections are very enjoyable to read. The ending is particularly moving.
If I were in high school, I'd go on and on about who or what the tractor of the title represents. Lucky for you, I'm not.
