Shutter Island

#409
Title: Shutter IslandAuthor: Dennis Lehane
Publisher: HarperTorch
Year: 2003
369 pages

As I've said before, I'm not great at figuring out mysteries, and that's not why I read them. This means that I'm usually disappointed if I can immediately see the major plot point. I immediately saw the major plot point here. I enjoyed reading it well enough, but I thought that the story would have been stronger if it remained ambiguous. The ending could have kept the reader in a state of confusion while still showing what was about to befall the protagonist, which is distressing enough whether it's warranted or part of a conspiracy.

The City of Ember

#408
Title: The City of EmberAuthor: Jeanne DuPrau
Publisher: Yearling
Year: 2003
288 pages

It may seem like an oxymoron to call this middle reader title a sweet little dystopian novel, but that's what it is. This first in a series of four introduces Ember, an underground city developed and populated in the face of potential holocaust to safeguard a tiny fraction of the human race. In this it is reminiscent of Mordechai Roshwald's classic Level 7. Unlike Roshwald's tragic Officer X-127, DuPrau's Lina is a young adolescent with a community, a job, and relationships. Here the threat to the underground safe house is not related to the war but to the failure of the physical infrastructure. The actions of a greedy leader several generations before led to the misplacing and later mangling of the revelatory document that would have explained events and provided egress instructions to the denizens of Ember. Lina and Doon, a boy about her age, discover evidence of more greed and misuse of power, while also following clues that may save themselves and their community.

A theme that is present in at least the first three books but not elaborated upon is that small-scale individual greed, corruption, or suspicion of others may have dire consequences for large numbers of people.

Meet Vannah of the Seychelles

#407
Title: Meet Vannah of the Seychelles
Authors: Jennifer Toussaint-Cali and A. Nathalie Essomba
Publisher: Trafford
Year: 2007
Country: Seychelles
48 pages

A cute illustrated children's book about a girl's family in Seychelles. It appears that the illustrations and the text are entirely or partially biographical for a member of one of the authors' families, which increases the appeal and interest. There's more about God in it than I would wish, but I imagine it's an accurate depiction of the main character's family and culture.

The Gods Drink Whiskey: Stumbling Toward Enlightenment in the Land of the Tattered Buddha

#406
Title: The Gods Drink Whiskey: Stumbling Toward Enlightenment in the Land of the Tattered Buddha
Author: Stephen T. Asma
Publisher: Libri
Year: 2005
272 pages

I enjoyed this personal reflection/discursus on Buddhist practice versus philosophy. However, it was often a struggle to continue reading given the author's two very obnoxious habits: Insulting and disparaging any form of Buddhism or related practices with which he does not agree, and putting these and other insulting and offensive commentary on others' thoughts and practices into the mouths of his conversation partners rather than claiming them as his own. I don't disagree with many of Asma's statements when they're stripped of their gratuitous contempt and vitriol, but I hope never to express disagreement with others the way that he does. An interesting book, but almost devoid of enjoyment for this reviewer, also a Buddhist-thinking, Cambodia-going, professor.

Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All Its Moods

#405
Title: Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All Its Moods
Author: Michael Wex
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Year: 2005
319 pages

Audiobook: http://www.amazon.com/Born-Kvetch-CD-Yid

dish-Language/dp/0061131229 . Be aware that the audiobook reader sounded like a cross between Jerry Lewis and Stephen Hawking--very strange intonation.

I read this by alternating between the book and the audiobook so that In could see orthography and hear pronunciation. Ideally I'd have done these simultaneously, but in fact I alternated media.

I enjoyed about the first 6 chapters, which included topics such as the titular kvetching. Though they included a heavy dose of diachronic linguistics, the balance of language, anecdote, and culture worked well. The latter half of the book took some slogging, perhaps because it became a vocabulary lesson (which, don't get me wrong, I enjoy) without sufficient leavening humor. I could appreciate the scholarship, but it was no longer very fun. Oddly, the sections on relationships and sexual terminology were relentlessly heterosexual. As a child who heard neo-Yiddish terms like faygeleh, which has a fun etymology (<vogel) and is used a lot in conversation, I wondered: How does one navigate this in conversation? By same means as for schwartze? Sadly, Wex does not illuminate this fairly ubiquitous term, or any others related to homosexuality. .וואָס אַ שאָד

Birds of Central Park

#404
Title: Birds of Central Park
Author/Photographer: Cal Vornberger
Publisher: Harry N. Abrams
Year: 2005
208 pages

An exquisite volume of photos of Central Park's birds, including many sublime, larger than life shots. It's hard to imagine the patience Vornberger must have to capture such lovely, balance images. The Blackburnian Warbler on page 58 takes my breath away.

The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N

#403
Title: The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N
Author: Leonard Q. Ross (Leo Rosten)
Publisher: Harcort, Brace, & World
Year: 1937/1965
154 pages

I can't find a photo of my edition, but the publishing information above is correct. This is a re-read for me, but since I read it somewhere between 30-37 years ago it's more nostalgic than anything else. I have had H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N on my mind for several weeks as I read books that evoke him. Hyman, an immigrant, takes beginner's night English classes and speaks like your immigrant forebearers did if they were Ashkenazi Jews in New York or New Jersey before 1950. Hyman is an earnest yet immovable object. Reading this as a child, I saw him as the bane of his teacher's existence. Reading it now, having taught or worked in educational settings for most of the intervening years, I took in that Hyman's teacher, Mr. Parkhill, understands that Hyman is both a burden and a genius. This, I think, is something that differentiates this episodic comedy from others that rely exclusively on the trope of the dumb greenhorn's hilarious mispronunciation and mangled grammar. Hyman's misunderstandings provide a fresh vision of English, revealing hitherto unseen facets of the language and forging fresh connections. For me, the shining and ineffable utterance, the pinnacle of Jewish philosophy's efflorescence, is Hyman's assertion, "Mine oncle has a gless eye." You'll have to read the story to see why this simple (and untrue) statement is such a hilarious emblem of Talmudic reasoning paired with the Jewish stubbornness necessary to survive in world that seeks to quash the Jewish spirit.

I read The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N at my grandparents' house, at about the same time as I read Roth's Portnoy's Complaint and Idries Shah's Mulla Nasrudin tales. Leaving aside an early adolescent's profound embarrassment at having her mother ask, "Have you gotten to the liver yet?", this is a useful trio, of which Ross/Rosten is the fulcrum. Hyman brings Yiddishkeit to the New World, not just through his language, but in his attitude, world view, and exuberance. His is the optimism of the Jew in the promised land. While he bears the burdens of tsars and World War I, his is not the generation of Hitler's particular horrors. Portnoy holds the angst of post-Holocaust American Jewry that must wrestle with how much to accept and how much to reject the pessimism of such active anti-Semitism. Portnoy would find Kaplan naive, but see this as contemptible, whereas the Mullah Nasrudin might find him companionable, another blessed fool whose nonsense makes reasonable sense, if one is willing to really hear it.

The Impostor's Daughter: A True Memoir

#402
Title: The Impostor's Daughter: A True Memoir
Author and Illustrator: Laurie Sandell
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Year: 2009
253 pages

Unlike some reviewers, I do know what a "graphic memoir" is, and I teach with them and have presented on doing so at a national professional conference. On Thursday I was in Portland, Oregon for a meeting and spent an hour at Powell's Books, arguably one of the world's best bookstores. I had located a copy of Laxalt's Sweet Promised Land to read as my Basque book for my Books of the World Challenge, and The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N for a nostalgia re-read as I finish up Wex's fantastic Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All of Its Moods. I was done and congratulating myself on my ability to escape Powell's at under $15. This had never happened before, and it didn't happen this time, either.

Since I figured that the martini and Thai take-out dinner I was heading to wouldn't get around to any food for several hours, I went to the Powell's cafe for a cookie. The graphic novel section is in the cafe, and as I stood in line, I saw R. Crumb's graphic--what? "Graphic novel/cartoon-style rendition," I guess, of The Book of Genesis on an end cap. Munching my flourless chocolate cookie, I went over to look at the Crumb. There's something wonderful about Genesis illustrated by the man who brought us the cartoon version of Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis (as well as the various applications of same in the rest of his early oeuvre). I was going to wait to buy the Crumb, I decided. Maybe later, used. On the next end cap was Sandell's The Impostor's Daughter: A True Memoir.

I notice it because the cover was bright and interesting, and because it was in the graphic novels section and the subtitle is "A True Memoir." "True" is inserted with a caret, so I knew that truth and memory would be an issue. Given the cover illustration, in which Sandell depicts herself with face obscured by a photo of her father, it seemed that identity would be a focus as well. I flipped through the book. The appealing interior illustrations are also brightly colored in the palate of the dust jacket. They were engaging and the lettering was easy to read. The flap promised a good story. I bought it. At least I left Powell's at under $40, but alas, that is no record for me. (My first visit to Powell's, during my first visit to Portland, was half an hour and $115 in 1996 dollars).

The Impostor's Daughter is about Sandell's father and his profound effects on her life. Sandell does a terrific job of representing her passionate, larger-than-life father and herself as an adoring child. Over time, odd things happen and discrepancies creep in. Just as Jeannette Walls so eloquently described the crumbling of a child's idealization of her parents in The Glass Castle, so Sandell shows the reader the erosion of her trust in her father's professed life story. As the evidence mounts that he is not what he says he is, Sandell moves from passive discovery to active uncovering, investigating the "facts" of her father's life and finding them at best grandiosely distorted; at worst, fabricated. The article she wrote about this process is available at Esquire (but read it after you read the book). This story of disillusionment co-occurs and intersects with her own adult development, where telling her father's stories stands in for telling her own stories, where her romantic relationships are ambivalent, and where she must eventually come to terms with her growing addiction to Ambien.

I'd have wished for a last panel that didn't show Sandell beginning to write the book, but this is a minor complaint. I read until the martini and Thai take-out dinner started. Toward the end, when conversation flagged, I read a little more when I thought I could get away with it. I read when I woke up not many hours later to go to my meeting. I read during breaks at the meeting. I did not read on the highway, though I thought about it. I did not read until I got back home, at which time, although I was exhausted from the martinis, the meeting, and the trip back home, I refused to do anything else until I'd finished reading.

Read The Impostor's Daughter with The Glass Castle, or with other graphic memoirs such as Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, Alison Bechdel's Fun Home, and Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers for an interesting range of graphic styles and subjects.

The Story of Little Black Mingo

#401
Title: The Story of Little Black Mingo
Author: Helen Bannerman
Publisher: Dodo Press
Year: 2006 (reprint; 1901 0r 1902 original)
48 pages

Read as a Dodo Press electronic download.

For whatever the observation is worth, Mingo, like Bannerman's more well-known Little Black Sambo, takes place in India; the "black" does not refer to Africans. Like Sambo, Mingo is a child who outsmarts an aggressive animal. In this case, it's an Indian crocodile (the Mugger, Crocodylus palustris) whose fate makes turning into butter seem benign. Illustrations by Bannerman.

The Sorceress (Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel #3)

#400
Title: The Sorceress (Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel #3)
Author: Michael Scott
Publisher: Delacorte
Year: 2009
502 pages

Lots of action in this third volume, plus some character development for Machiavelli, Dee, and Perenelle Flamel. There's also a reasonable amount of foreshadowing of what the implications of being the legendary twins may be for the twin Sophie and Josh.

More than the action, however, this installment is about maturing and questioning authority; in this case, Flamel. It is about seeing authorities/adults as human and fallible, balancing contempt for their weaknesses and faults against their good deeds and intentions. It is about balance, which parallels the books' pervasive concern about and symbolism reflecting the ideas of balance and harmony.

The Ig Nobel Prizes: The Annals of Improbable Research

#399
Title: The Ig Nobel Prizes: The Annals of Improbable Research
Author: Marc Abrahams
Publisher: Dutton
Year: 2003
250 pages

The Ig Nobels are awarded (with help of Nobel laureates) for silly science. I appreciate the intersection of peculiar or bizarre preoccupations and objects with research that is sometimes useful, sometimes not. The Ig Nobels cover a good range of quirky professional and avocational studies. I prefer these to the awards that, while funny, are more mean-spirited and aren't about research but about policy or writing (e.g., digs at Deepak Chopra or Dan Quayle). Some of the research studies are solid; others make you wonder whether an IRB or any form of oversight was involved. My favorite awards include "The Happiness of Clams" (outcome: They reproduce more with an SSRI) "Levitating Frogs"  (more accurately, frogs suspended by electromagnets), and "The Kitty and the Keyboard" (on the development of software that detects when a cat is walking on the computer keyboard).

Responsible Traveler’s Guide Cambodia

#398
Title: Responsible Traveler’s Guide Cambodia
Authors: Pujita Nanette Mayeda and Friendship with Cambodia
Publisher: Wild Iris Press
Year: 2010
118 pages

The heart of this guidebook is an extensive, current list of where to stay/buy/tour that is based on factors like local ownership, commitment to a living wage or health benefits, hiring trainees or graduates of non-governmental organizations' (NGO) programs for poor or disenfranchised people, anti-sex tourism policies, training and scholarship programs, fair trade, ecological practices, and similar human rights/quality of life issues. For example, Lotus Blanc restaurant is a training site for restaurant/hospitality students who as children picked trash on the garbage tip. Cambodian Women's Crisis Center trains women who experienced domestic violence or were prostituted to make crafts. Villa Siem Reap hires graduates of an NGO training program to work in the hotel and restaurant, has a no-child prostitution policy, asks guests if they'd like to contribute to the fund that supplies water filters made by Trailblazer to orphanages and other agencies with no clean water, and runs tours of social service programs and local village markets and craft sales. In addition to the listings, there are short orienting essays on why not to give money directly to begging children, how to be respectful, the history of Cambodia, and others. There are color photos throughout.

Profits from the book go to Friendship with Cambodia. You can order the book directly from them to increase their margin: http://www.friendshipwithcambodia.org/

Shadows of Your Black Memory

#397
Title: Shadows of Your Black Memory
Author: Donato Ndongo
Translator: Michael Ugarte
Publisher: Swan Isle Press
Year: 2007
Country: Equatorial Guinea
180 pages

I was quite impressed by this novel, which made me glad that I was unable to find a copy of the first of his books I searched for, History and Tragedy of Equatorial Guinea. The story is narrated as two internal monologues, one voice calling itself "I," the other referring to that voice as "you," that recount the protagonist's formative years through his relationship with his tribal culture and religion as it interweaves, but does not commingle with, Spanish culture and Catholicism. The two voices, both of which alternate between storytelling and stream of consciousness reflection, capture the rift in identity that is such a ubiquitous and potent theme in narratives of coming of age under colonialism.

Ndongo's novel is fruitfully read with Somé's memoir Of Water and the Spirit: Ritual, Magic and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman for its spiritual/alternate reality passages, Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man for its evocation of sin and the fear of damnation, and Roth's Portnoy's Complaint for a much sadder and distressing version of Portnoy's encounter with the liver.

All Cats Have Asperger Syndrome

#396
Title: All Cats Have Asperger Syndrome
Author: Kathy Hoopman
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Year: 2006
70 pages

A cute, destimatizing picture book comparing people with Asperger's Syndrome to cats. Because there are many behavioral parallels, and because kittens pull our heartstrings with neoteny, the comparison makes people with AS less frightening and more engaging. I'm not sure who the intended audience is, but I could see it being an effective book for an elementary classroom with a child with AS, or for family members or other people who don't know how to approach someone with AS.

A Chant to Soothe Wild Elephants

#395
Title: A Chant to Soothe Wild Elephants
Author: Jaed Coffin
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Year: 2008
217 pages

A sweet little memoir in which Coffin, half-Caucasian, half-Thai, spends a summer as a Buddhist monk in his mother's home village. Though his explorations of bi-cultural, bi-racial identity are not complex, they will resonate for adolescent and adult readers engaged in (or remembering) this developmental stage. Coffin's writing is descriptive and conveys mood well.