So Cold the Winter in Nebraska, I mean the River

Author: Michael Kortya
Title: So Cold the River
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; 1 edition (June 9, 2010)
Format: Kindle Edition
ASIN: B0035IIBUA

A good twisty story that connects a creepy story from the past with current characters through the paranormal. You will find ESP, possession, and ghosts. The characters are vivid and I liked the main guy a lot. I thought I could tell a bit where things were going, but I liked the trip; there are great descriptions of architecture and setting. There's a nicely drawn older female character. The main guy, a failed movie maker whose marriage is on the rocks, is likeable, too. I thought this was scary enough to be unsettling but not so violent or gross as to be off-putting. A memorable read; I will track down more of this guy's books.

Lee Child, Worth Dying For

Author: Lee Child
Title: Worth Dying For
Publisher/format: Delacorte Press, cloth
ISBN: 978-0385344319

I really respect Lee Child for not churning out identical Reacher books each year. This author has taken care to develop his character in interesting ways, and he has also taken him through various psychological twists and turns. The penultimate Reacher book, 61 Hours, ended with a cliffhanger that I wasn't expecting; also, it featured a more broken, uncertain Reacher, and fabulous descriptions of a barren South Dakota winter. Child has stayed in the middle of the country for Worth Dying For: here, he places Reacher in a rural, agricultural area of Nebraska--not near the larger cities of Lincoln/Omaha but somewhere in the west (but not, I think, the Sandhills, because the main occupation of the people is farming).

Child does a great job with the NE landscape, its wideness, starkness, and flatness, and he describes a certain kind of Nebraska woman--older, strong, no-nonsense, modest, conscientious, full of integrity, reserved--perfectly. He describes many of the rest of his Nebraskans as quiet, fairly passive go-along-with-the-flow sorts. (Many Nebraskans do seem this way to others, but I believe that the truth is that once you find the part in the flow that they refuse to go along with [which does, in fact, exist, but which they will not tell you about until you accidentally stumble onto it], they will be shockingly stubborn and unmovable.) Even the Nebraskan evildoers in this book have a certain amount of integrity and civility despite their psychopathic, horrid selves. The culture of civility and refusing to make waves is important in NE, but as I hinted before, not everyone here is as passive as the folks in Reacher's town.

Also suffering from this passivity, sort of, are the ten Cornhusker (I think ten) football players Reacher beats up at one time or another in the course of the book. This is very amusing in some ways, but these could not have been Blackshirts. Note that Child is careful to call them "Cornhuskers," and that the trademarked name for the team is "Huskers." He did not want to run afoul of UNL/trademarking/etc.etc., I bet (or his publisher did not want him to).

Anyway, this book is interesting in that it's kind of humorous in an Elmore Leonard sort of a way--criminals and Reacher showing up at the same time and same place without realizing it; comic timing and quick cuts, etc.etc. The nature of the evildoers is kept uncertain until late on. It is very, very horrible what they are doing--which is pretty shocking to the reader because you've been set up, so to speak, by the Elmore Leonard-type timing/humor, and it kind of falls away very quickly into horribleness. There's something of a revenge scene at the end that shocked me a bit in that it has a civilian being Reacher-like.

Reacher is especially hard and distant and killer-like in this one--scary again, despite the fact that he begins the book injured and presumably psychologically battered. Not much is mentioned about the unresolved cliffhanger from 61 Hours; Child is in no hurry to tell us what happened, and when he does, it's almost off-handedly. This I liked.

Anyway, this was a very satisfactory installment in the Reacher series, and I liked it a lot. My big problem is this: there was no shopping expedition for Reacher. I don't care that there are no stores in the middle of the country. I really, really missed the shopping, and I hope he will get back to it. Those are absolutely my favorite parts of the books.

Detroit 187 and Homicide: Life on the Street

I was a huge fan of Homicide: Life on the Street. A few reviewers have noted that the new show Detroit 187 is very similar to H:LotS. Here are similarites/homages from the pilot alone:

1. Two guys searching for a shell casing in an alley. Joke is that they find many possibilities. This scene appears in both the first and last ep. of H:LotS.

2. Partnership with a young guy and an intense, brilliant, difficult-to-get-along-with older one who doesn't even want a partner. In H:LotS, this was Frank Pembleton (black, genius, veteran) and Tim Bayliss (white, innocent, rookie). Frank's a master interrogator in the Box (interview room). One of the hallmarks of some great H:LotS eps was seeing Frank be brillian in the box--and then later also Tim. We see the Michael Imperioli character being . . . interestign in the box in the new show. Also, the innocent newcomer in the Det. show is a black guy; the hardened genius veteran is the white guy, Michael Imperioli. Det. 187 is more about Imperioli so far, and I'm not sure the new partner will be in future eps. We'll have to see. I do know Imperioli has been given a great role and that I really loved his acting in the pilot.

3. Liutenant Gee, from H:LotS, spoke Italian, was Sicilian. In Det. 187, we have a female sergeant, perhaps also Italian? Have to see more.

4. The board where a record of cases are kept--red for open, black for solved--played a prominent role in H:Lots; camera often went to it for significant moments. In Det. 187, we have a significant board scene at the end. We'll see if they integrate it further.

Det. 187 has a long way to go, but mostly I felt very heartened watching it, and excited to think there might be another great police procedural show out there. We'll see if Det. 187 can do "service" to Detroit the way H:LotS did Baltimore; I know the latter was started by Barry Levinson (Bawlmer native) and was guided from a love of the city. We'll see if Det. has similar lineage/potential.

Fears for the Detroit show: will be too schmaltzy; will shy away from the grittiness. In this show, already, all the cops are basically good looking, probably too much so, and Det., a city in crisis, looked strangely pretty in some scenes. We'll see how it goes.

Lately

Author: Lee Child
Narrator: Dick Hill
Title: 61 Hours

The problem with long-running series is that it's hard to keep them interesting, hard to avoid either becoming so repetitive you're putting people to sleep or so far-fetched it feels as if the characters/plots become unrecognizable. Anyway, Lee Child is a very smart guy and Jack Reacher has remained a very interesting hero, but I had started to feel some series malaise lately. In this book, Child takes Reacher in some unexpected directions psychologically. Maybe it felt too fast or neat in some senses, but I was mostly okay with it, very diverted. Reacher did not sleep with a woman in this book, which I found refreshing; however, he does still go on one of his patented shopping sprees, which I love most dearly. I pray to god in heaven he'll never stop *that.*

I listened to the audiobook for this one. Dick Hill, who I used to like, has lately become hard for me to take. I've noticed he tends to increase volume and decrease the pace of his reading to signify intensity, and to me in this book, it just felt too heavy. Maybe he's gone batty. Maybe I have. I don't know.






Author: Sarah Graves
Narrator Lindsay Ellison
Title: Trap Door (Home Repair is Homicide series)

I started reading this series around book 9, so I can't claim to have an extensive knowledge of it. I'll start with what I like most, which is the local color/detail about Maine (landscape, clothing, accents, food, etc.). I've been listening to the books and I enjoy Lindsay Ellison's Maine accent a lot. I find the heroine, Jacobia Tiptree, tiresome and not all that bright, and she's impulsive, which drives me crazy as a personality trait because it's so inimical to good home repair or good detective work. The supporting characters are more sympathetic and interesting. I do love the realistic plotline involving Jacobia's son Sam, who battles substance abuse; this is handled very well, because he doesn't *get* well at once; he has relapses, and the incredible every-day difficulty of staying clean is portrayed well. Just wished I found the heroine less annoying--more sensitive, more thoughtful--though she has her moments.

The Iliad

I had no idea:

Patroclus rising beside him stabbed his right jawbone,
ramming the spearhead square between his teeth so hard
he hooked him by that spearhead over the chariot-rail,
hoisted, dragged the Trojan out as an angler perched
on a jutting rock ledge drags some fish from the sea,
some noble catch, with line and glittering bronze hook.
So with the spear Patroclus gaffed him off his car,
his mouth gaping round the glittering point
and flipped him down facefirst,
dead as he fell, his life breath blown away.
And next he caught Erylaus closing, lunging in--
he flung a rock and it struck between his eyes
and the man's whole skull split in his heavy helmet,
down the Trojan slammed on the ground, head-down
and courage-shattering Death engulfed his corpse.

That is seriously vivid and yuck, and yet it's got beautiful images. And think--this war lasted ten years!

Do men really talk like this?

From John Sandford, Dark of the Moon:

"So here's the woman with the fourth-best ass in the state of Minnesota, right in your hometown, and not a bad set of cupcakes, either, from what I could see . . ."

True Story, by Michael Finkel

Title True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa
Author: Michael Finkel
Publisher: HarperCollins, 2005; HarperPerennial
ISBN: 0-06-058047-X (cloth copy I read, from the library); PB copy available now 978-0060580483


Michael Finkel was a writer for the New York Times magazine until he submitted a story about a main character he'd assembled from a composite of people (and did not tell the magazine that that's what he was doing). He was found out and then lost his job with the magazine.

Christian Longo was a guy with a wife and three kids; they were devout Jehovah's Witnesses. When he faced financial problems, Longo engaged in a series of crimes (check counterfeiting, theft) that made his life more and more complicated and unhappy--and he ended up murdering his wife and children. Following the murders, he went on the lam to Cancun, Mexico, where he decided to impersonate Michael Finkel. (He didn't know Finkel had lost his job; he was pretending to be a reporter/writer.) When Finkel, newly fired, found out about the story, he decided to write about it and to get to know Longo.

On some levels, True Story is about the commitment to "going straight" or "telling the truth." Finkel scrupulously establishes that he is verifying every fact he can. For his part, Longo insists (repeatedly, extravagantly, which is a sign in itself) on "absolute truth" in his interactions with Finkel. (We learn that throughout his life, Longo has had several "come clean" moments with his church and family where he promises always to tell the truth from that moment on--even though he never does.)

Of course both men still end up lying--as do we all (in varying degrees). This is because life is complex; because truth can be complex (often, contradictory emotional truths can exist, each with validity); and because the act of narrating/writing is always on some level going to be kind of a lie (when you put something into narrative, you retell it and reframe it; you exclude things that do not fit, etc.etc.; in so doing, you have altered it; narrative theory graduate school etc. blah). Another thing to consider is that human relationships might not always benefit from statements of unvarnished truth.

Anyway, the institutions Longo and Finkel are embroiled in--the profession of journalism; religion in the form of the Jehovah's Witness church; the legal system/courts--all devote themselves to establishing absolute truth for the record, whether spiritual or public (and then delivering final judgments such as guilty or innocent; headed to heaven or headed to hell). True Story reveals that these institutions (and the enterprise of storytelling/writing in toto) cannot completely or accurately comprehend the complexity of the situations that the people they are judging must face.

Longo and Finkel have already been judged in public and received a label: "disgraced" journalist; murderer. The reality of their stories as Finkel presents it in his book is more complicated, less understandable. Moreover, as the book progresses, it becomes even less reliable: throughout the narrative, Finkel obsesses about Longo's tendency to lie, and is warned by many others about being "taken in"; and Finkel himself ends up lying to Longo (though he does confess). We just don't know what the final truth is, absolutely. To make sense of the world, in all our judgements and acts of writing, we must siphon selected items from the overwhelming, unknowable field of reality. Always, something is left out. Always, something is canceled out or repudiated--even though its opposite might also hold true. Sometimes we leave things out because of self-interest or greed, but sometimes it's because of fear or genuine lack of comprehension/scope of vision. Sometime we think we're telling a better version of something even if it isn't strictly true. There's no way, ever, to tell it all.

In the end, then, this book must of course frustrate, since what it shows us is that the truth of any story, any crime, is ultimately too complex to be sewn up neatly, even though in our courts and moral/ethical decisions we must, nonetheless, make judgments about what we can establish to be true. It's a losing battle, I guess, one that always leaves one feeling unsettled and unfinished. However, on the "upside" (that is one revolting word, no?), that lack of fulfilment is precisely what produces language, narrative, and art, so we must also be glad for it--or at least able to admit to ourselves that it exists, even if it does not bring happy or simple narrative closure.


Strengths: weirdness of the two men's relationship as it develops, the fondness that grows between them

Weaknesses: Finkel could've done more with his own crime here. He "murdered," or at least erased, a real person in his false story; wanted to hear more about his response to that. Also, he tells us that on the day he sees the pix of the Longo's dead family (in Longo's trial), that is the end of their friendship--but he continues to engage with Longo and I'd liked to have seen more reflection on this point.

Dr. Weil

Title: Healthy Aging: A Lifelong Guide to Your Physical and Spiritual Well-Being Unabridged version
Author/Narrator: Andrew Weil, M.D. Read by the author.
Publisher: Books on Tape, 2006
Format: MP3 audiobook (Also available in an abridged version, and in print)
ISBN: 0-7393-1599-4

You know you've made the big-time as a public health figure when you're known as "Dr. X" (like Dr. Spock)--no first names necessary, thank you very much; it's the inverse, doctorish version of Cher and Madonna, I guess. Because Dr. [Andrew] Weil advocates integrative or holistic health, he is perhaps not yet as widely trusted as Dr. Spock was, but I believe that if it is not yet here, that time is coming.

The integrative approach to health, as I understand it from reading Weil (and also Alice Domar's books), views health or well-being as the result of one's status in many areas: physical fitness is important, but so are sprituality, nutrition, exercise, and psychology. For Weil specifically (see link to book at end of post), the goal of being healthy/in optimum health is to gird the immune system, to make it as powerful as possible so that the body can fight disease on its own. This is the best, most effective way to heal. Modern medicine can step in when it is needed, but it's better to need it as seldom as possible.

Therefore, instead of reflexively reaching for Advil (but doing nothing else) to cure frequent headaches, the integrative approach to health would ask that you instead consider the problem in a wider context--physical, emotional, nutritional, and spiritual--to see if there are ways you can alter your practices in these areas to stave off the headaches to begin with. The goal is to strengthen the body's own defenses overall so the immune system can take care of many problems on its own. I really like the idea of acknoweldging the effects of psychology, spirituality, and interpersonal relationships on health, and it seems logical to focus on strengthening the immune system to forestall problems.


In Healthy Aging, Dr. Weil criticizes the excesses/harm caused by the recent antiaging trend (often pseudoscientific) of searching for treatments that deny, reverse, or outright halt the signs of aging; instead, he advocates an integrative approach to growing older that aims at "compressing" morbidity. This basically means living well and then dying fast: having an active old age without significant debilitation until one's last few years (months?), when the end comes. If suffering and major illness are limited for the most part to the end of the lifespan, then one can experience the positive aspects (wisdom, depth, perspective, reflectiveness, etc.) of growing older without being overwhelmed or immobilized by pain or chronic suffering.

In addition to questioning the usefulness of the desire to halt or eradicate aging entirely, Dr. Weil also discusses the positive aspects of growing older, looking at aging as an enriching, deepening process. He considers the aging of whiskey, wine, and cheese as positive examples. Rot and decay are involved in these processes, to be sure, but they can produce positive results, such as enhanced, complex flavor and depth of taste. Weil wants us to view the effects of human aging in similar fashion. Denial of aging is not useful; nor is pretending that one will not die or ignoring the process and effects of bodily decline that we all experience. To live openly and straightforwardly with the process--physically, spiritually, and emotionally--and accept both the gifts it offers and the costs it exacts is ultimately more rewarding, says Dr. Weil. I agree.

A note on the audiobook: it's read by Dr. Weil himself. When an author reads his/her own work, it's often illuminating in terms of tone, inflection, interpretation. For me, sadly, Dr. Weil was not the most effective narrator of his own book. He reads as if delivering a paper at an academic conference: rather dry, sometimes hurried, distant, and he pounces on "QUOTE" . . . "END QUOTE." At least he does not say "unquote," as some do. His voice can seem flat at times, a bit monotone, though it is possible to tell when his enthusiasm/intensity level raises. I think this text would've been better served by a professional reader, someone more skilled at using tone/modulation/expressiveness to retain reader interest. To listen to Dr. Weil read a URL aloud is a somewhat unpleasant experience. That said, however, no one's beard (see cover pix) is cuter than Dr. Weil's.

Weil explains his theory of integrative health and the act of strengthening the immune system in many books; the one I've got is:

Title: Eight Weeks to Optimum Health, New edition, expanded and updated
Author: Andrew Weil, M.D.
Publisher: Ballantine (orig. 1996; rev. ed. 2006)
Format: Trade paper
ISBN: 978-0-345-49802-1



A final note. It's expensive to be healthy. Organic foods cost more; vitamins can really add up (my own personal vitamin recommendation over at Dr. Weil's site would cost over a hundred dollars a month); and it is time consuming to prepare whole foods. Is this an approach to eating that can be adopted by busy people without much money? Will it appeal to more than the worried wealthy (or merely well-off) well? I hope so.

Cozies and Louise Penny's Three Pines series

Author: Louise Penny
Titles: Still Life (Mass-market paperback)
and
A Rule against Murder (Audiobook, read by Ralph Cosham)
ISBNs: Still Life: 9780312948559; Rule against Murder: 9781433251306
Publishers: St. Martin's (2007); Blackstone Audio (2009)

Detective: Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, at the Sûrété du Quebec
Setting: Three Pines, a fictional village in Quebec
Genre: Cozy but with psychological complexity that is rewarding. Series seems to focus on artists and the act of creation; generational miscues and attempts to communicate; group dynamics; psychological growth or entrapment

I'm confused by the "cozy" genre of mysteries. I guess they're supposed to make you feel cozy and happy . . . about murder? About not being murdered? Generally, they seem to produce "feel-good" murder stories. At their worst, they tend to kill off threats/scapegoats (not "nice" people) and preserve the strength of the community through the ultimate expulsion. On the positive side, cozies do not intend to glorify violence or crime; they show it as a tragedy and chart the subtle ways murder can affect a community and the psychological dynamics within it.

The cozies I've read feature close-knit groups of people who happen to live in places where many murders occur. That's where the genre gets a bit dicey for me. If these are such great places, why do so many people die in them? I am reminded of the TV show Murder, She Wrote. Why weren't people shunning Jessica Fletcher or running like hell from her? Why wasn't she banished from Cabot Cove? Nothing good happened while she was around.

In more seriousness, it is a worthwhile project to think about how crime affects a community, and in this, cozies excel. Often, mystery novels forget to trace the longstanding, painful effects of violent crime: how families/friends of victims, suspects, the police, and so forth all cope with the fallout. If some of the cozies I've read tend to idealize community ties and affluence, they also provide well-drawn and interesting characters and seem more psychologically astute than the standard plot-driven whodunnit.

Louise Penny's Armand Gamache series features a great main character and an interesting community in Quebec. I have learned much about the English/Quebecois relationship in Canada from the two books I've read. Penny is a great plotter and her mysteries have interesting twists and turns. She makes you feel exasperated and fond of her characters on alternating pages, and she does not idealize them. They are flawed and yet still likable. If these books tend toward a certain worship of Gamache, I have to sympathize, because he truly is a great character. Sometimes the denizens of Three Pines are a bit too talented, too progressive, too witty, too sensitive and artistic to be believable, but at the same time, the place seems appealing as well. Gamache is an outsider in a sense to the community, which is an important, useful device because this way readers, like him, can evaluate the positive and negatives in the community. I've found the plots very interesting and engaging; Penny is a good storyteller and does a great job of creating tension. The two books in the Three Pines series I've read, the first and fourth, are very interesting, and I'm going to keep reading the series. Louise Penny is a great find for me--I love character-driven mysteries, and hers are very engaging.

Blind Descent by James Tabor

Title: Blind Descent: The Quest to Discover the Deepest Place on Earth
Author: James M. Tabor
Publisher: Random House, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6767-1 (cloth)

I am a huge fan of James M. Tabor's Forever on the Mountain, which tells of a disastrous mountaineering expedition in 1967 in which only five of twelve men survived an attempt to climb Denali (once known as Mount McKinley). That book gives a brilliant analysis of team dynamics and psychological conflict, and it provide a fascinating meditation on the nature of leadership and varying leadership styles.

In Blind Descent, Tabor moves from mountaineering to cave diving. The exploration of "super caves" is as dangerous as high-altitude mountaineering but provides unique challenges of its own. This book got me really interested in cave diving, though I know I'd never want to do it. As in his previous book, Tabor has chosen two contrasting leaders/expedition styles to follow. The American leader is Bill Stone; the Ukrainian is Alexander Klimchouk. Stone is fascinatingly flawed, alternately impressive and deeply annoying. Klimchouk comes off as more of a mystery and a private person, but an infinitely better leader, though it's more difficult for Tabor to trace the inner dynamics of K's expeditions because of the language barrier. Blind Descent provides less of a unified narrative because the quests of the two men/expeditions are not precisely parallel; their quests took place at different times, and Klimchouk was not even present physically on the final expedition of his team described in the book. Owing to this structure, the narrative has some difficulty sustaining head-to-head tension, so I do not suggest reading this book primarily to see who wins the "race." That's not its strength, and besides, as I discovered, one of the figure captions tells you anyway who won!

I felt that some of what made Forever on the Mountain so unforgettable was Tabor's analysis and comparison: in Blind Descent, I thought Tabor's interpretive voice was less present. I should say, however, that the book is extremely engaging and that I devoured it quickly. The stories are harrowing, and the near-misses and triumphs keep the reader very engaged. If it's less reflective, it's because the text is less an analysis than a primary source report. It should be noted that in Forever on the Mountain, Tabor was dealing with an expedition that took place years ago; that there were already several existing memoirs and interpretations of the event; and that all in all, the Denali expedition lent itself better to an account that focused on analysis. Blind Descent is more firmly located in the here and now, the explorers' present.

The book has some great images; unless you've got an e-reader that handles images really nicely, I'd go hard copy with this one. Watch out for the "spoiler" in the figure caption; I kid you not; it tells you right there. This is the book's way, probably, of discouraging readers from reading it primarily as a "race" book.

Two books that have been really helpful to me

Title: Home Comforts
Author: Cheryl Mendelson
Format: Paperback reprint, 2005 (I have the cloth from 2001); Ebook, BN.Com
ISBN-13: 9780743272865

This book contains some of the only descriptions/discussion of housework I've ever encountered that does not make me want to pull my hair out or feel sullen.

Seen from the outside, housework can look like a Sisyphean task that gives you no sense of reward or completion. Yet housework actually offers more opportunities for savoring achievement than almost any other work I can think of. Each of its regular routines brings satisfaction when it is completed. These routines echo the rhythm of life, and the housekeeping rhythm is the rhythm of the body. You get satisfaction not only from the sense of order, cleanliness, freshness, peace and plenty restored, but from the knowledge that you yourself and those you care about are going to enjoy these benefits (10).

Housekeeping creates cleanliness, order, regularity, beauty, the conditions for health and safety, and a good place to do and feel all the things you wish and need to do and feel in your home. . . . It is your housekeeping that makes your home alive, that turns it into a small society in its own right, a vital place with its own ways and rhythms, the place where you can be more yourself than you can anyplace else (7).

Title:Be Happy without Being Perfect: How to Break Free from the Perfection Deception
Author: Alice D. Domar
Reader: Karen White
Format: Audiobook/MP3 file
Publisher: Books on Tape, Inc., 2008
ISBN-13: 9781415945650

This book has sane, smart suggestions on letting go of perfectionism, and lots of great relaxation techniques.

It gives an interesting list of the components of a healthy relationship, which I'll paraphrase:

--involves give and take
--partners compromise and take turns
--partners care about each other
--communication is open
--partners offer reciprocal gestures of caring
--partners benefit equally from [Ed. looks like I wrote "hord" here, but that makes no sense. Oh.] bond.

Also really good is Domar's Self Nurture.

The only way to heal old wounds that cause us to grasp for love or possessions is to recognize them, grieve for our losses, and nourish ourselves with compassion" (15).

More effing reduxes

This essay has been sent around, linked to a lot by those in publishing, and I'm sorry for the repeat; I believe even Jana has linked to it! However, it explains the economics of pricing e-books and why Amazon would make the moves it does wrt cloth copies and pricing. Here. It explains the debate on pricing from the publishers' POV.

E-books, pricing, availability, frustration redux redux

To combat (I imagine?) the newer publisher strategy of making some e-books available only in Barnes and Noble e-reader format (and not Kindle at all), I believe Amazon is selling cloth or paper versions of the books at Kindle prices.




Thus, the latest book in Ariana Franklin's Mistress of the Art of Death series is priced as follows:

Barnes and Noble
E-book: $12.99
Cloth: $18.68

Amazon
E-book: None available
Cloth:$9.99. Yes, that's NINE NINETY NINE.

Another example: Nora Roberts, Bed of Roses, paperback. Both sellers have the book in paper and e-versions, but Amazon's prices are still less expensive, and the paper version and e-version cost the same.:



Barnes and Noble
E-book version: $12.99.
Paperback: $9.36
ISBN-13: 9780425230077
Publisher: Penguin Group
Pub date: October 2009

Amazon
Kindle version: $7.35
"Deckle edge" paperback version: $7.35
ISBN-13: 978-0425230077
Publisher: Berkeley Trade [owned by Penguin Group] (October 2009; original edition)

I don't know what to say about this other than
1. E-book buyers could benefit from searching both Amazon and B and N, because there is a price war.
2. I've got the insanely cheap cloth version of the Franklin book at home now.

Finally, an article
"In some circles, the iPad was known as 'the Jesus tablet.'"
--Ken Auletta, Publish or Perish: Can the iPad topple the Kindle, and save the book business? from The New Yorker, April 26, 2010

Book review: Stuff

Title: Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things
Authors: Randy Frost and Gail Steketee
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 978-0151014231
ASIN (for Kindle version): B003JAO0QI

Stuff treats compulsive hoarding and hoarders with integrity, giving them earnest, honest intellectual attention in an effort to understand how they see the world and feel about themselves. The authors spend time listening to hoarders, investigating their problems, seeing how they interpret the world, following their case studies--and, finally, treating them. The authors want to help people stop compulsive hoarding because it makes them (and those around them) miserable--but through it all, they continue to approach their patients with respect and compassion, not scorn. They even at some times propose that hoarders have a special and almost artistic vision of the world, that hoarders relate to color, for example, or combinations/arrangements of things in a different (and perhaps more artistic) way than the rest of us.

Clearly, hoarding is a topic of fascination for the authors, but this is a sustained intellectual fascination with the goal of helping the hoarders to be happier. The hoarders are offered the tools to free themselves of the clutter that may be harming their lives--if they want it. It's pointed out several time that forced cleanups and treatment tend not to work with hoarders. Anyway, I loved the approach and tone of this book's authors.

Stuff is a good antidote to our culture's (and my own) obsession with reality TV about hoarding and messiness. Like I said, it treats hoarders as individuals who matter in themselves. It is geared toward increasing their happiness and ability to function in the world. In reading this book, I got to think a lot about my own relationship to things and objects, and it has been very illuminating. Most of all, I think I realized that if one makes hoarders (or other reality show TV subjects) into objects, whether of scorn, fascination, or humor, instead of trying to see the complexity of their lives, then we are denying them the full range of respect we owe them as humans. Which, perhaps, they have already given up by choosing to be on reality tv. Who knows. It is still sometimes very hard not to get sucked in.

From the amazon page on Frost's book--links to photos that demonstrate levels of hoarding (from Amazon.com). What kills me about these is the language used for level of severity. We have small, mild, serious, severe, severe with impairment (really, very severe!!), and extreme (superhorribly awful severe!). For most people, once a certain level of severe is reached, they all look the same, more or less, but I get why the authors and researchers have wanted to classify/quantify this stuff. However, I hope extreme hoarding will never qualify as a sport in a future X Games.

Only a small amount of clutter
A mild hoarding problem
A very serious hoarding problem
A severe hoarding problem with substantial impairment
A very severe hoarding problem with substantial impairment
Extreme hoarding

The Three Weissmanns of Westport

Title: The Three Weissmanns of Westport
Author: Cathleen Schine
Audiobook reader: Hillary Huber
Audio publisher: Blackstone Audio, 2010
Audio ISBN: 978-1441725189
Print publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010
Print ISBN: 9780374299040


This was a true pleasure, a smart, sad, funny audiobook with a great reader. The Three Weissmanns of Westport is a retelling of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility. In nearly all ways, I found the updating to be true to the spirit and tone of the original book. This sort of thing is very, very often botched in current Austen retellings; here is one that gets it right. The alterations to the story have been done thoughtfully and for good reason, and they fit perfectly into the story. In other words, this is a retelling in the best of senses: the original story has been both honored and transformed.


Austen's original story is about youngish people who are about to embark on the first significant relationships of their lives. Schine's Weissmanns are in their late forties and fifties (the daughters), and their mother is in her sixties. These characters have already had had their first loves (and divorces), made their careers, and had children. To me, this is a significant, wonderful shift: I love how Schine shows us that women continue developing even after the "firsts" have been settled.

All too often in popular culture, stories end after "first love" is declared, and female protagonists often consider themselves old if they are in their thirties. In such settings, women who are over forty are either rendered invisible or consigned to set, stereotyped roles (admirable or soulless career woman; loving or cruel mother/grandmother; predatory cougar or sexually repressed nonentity). Okay, I just made a bunch of generalizations and I know that there are romances and stories for older women--but I do think there are not as many, yet, as I'd like to see. Anyway, I am so happy to have found a book that focuses on the stories, thoughts, relationships, feelings, and sexuality of women over forty. These women are not used as afterthoughts or background or sources of advice/wisdom; they are the main story.

In Jane Austen's novels, the most vividly described female-female relationships tend to be those between sisters or rivals; mothers in Austen's novels are, for the most part, either dead, distant, or used for comic relief. Motherhood is central to Schine's book, and she is particularly brilliant in her portrayal of Betty Weissmann, my favorite character. In Sense and Sensibility, Mrs. Dashwood is loving, funny, and flighty but not wise. Mrs. Weissmann is all of those things, plus, she gets the very best lines in the novel. One I've seen quoted often is her reaction to her husband when he (at the beginning of the book) asks her for a divorce because they have irreconcilable differences; she basically tells him: Well of course there are irreconcilable differences! What does that have to do with divorce? In Sense and Sensibility, little time is spent on Mrs. Dashwood's inner life; I really enjoyed that Schine took the time to develop Betty's so thoroughly.

This is one of those books that shocks you because it's so very, very smart, funny, and sad at the same time. The intelligence and insightfulness of the author seemed so vivid to me. It was great to read about characters who've already found--and sometimes lost, or rejected, or left--"the one" and are dealing with what comes next, looking at identity, career, and relationships from a more experienced perspective.

Anyway, a million thumbs up for this audiobook; the novel is also out in a print version (cover below) and an electronic version.

What's it to you, punk?

Title: Honor Your Anger: How Transforming Your Anger Style Can Change Your Life
Author: Beverly Engel
Publisher: Wiley, 2003
Format: Kindle
ASIN: B000VA30HO

I've been reading books on expressing and dealing with anger, and this is one of the best ones I've found so far. This book asks a lot of readers. You must be prepared to take many quizzes, do exercises, and think. If you are up to that (or even only part of it, as I was), the book provides a great analysis/discussion of various styles people use in expressing anger. You learn whether you tend to internalize ("anger-in") or externalize ("anger-out") your anger, and then you determine which anger style you tend to use and evaluate how it's working for you. There are primary and secondary anger styles, and all are connected as well to one's communication style. It is acknowledged that you may have more than one style depending on context or situation.

Anger styles that work: the assertive anger style (calmly state your problem, use I-based statements, etc.) or the reflective style (think about it all before moving to assertion). Anger styles that do not work include: aggressive, passive or avoidant, passive-aggressive, and projective-aggressive. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE, people--or, if you do not, this book can help you figure it out. I found it illuminating to see the many drawbacks that come of not acknowledging anger. This does not make you un-angry; you just channel the anger into probably not so awesome behaviors and patterns.

The author starts the book with a revealing discussion of her own problems with anger, and I liked her much better for this honesty. It also showed that she was perfectly suited in some ways to write this book.

About all those exercises: she asks you to do lots of reflecting on how anger got/gets expressed in your family of origin, and then how you use it as an adult. Readers are invited to write an anger autobiography; analyze the way anger was handled in one's family and by one's parents; and so forth. The exercises also include the writing of "anger letters" to those who have made you angry. Note: you do not necc. send these. You just try to collect your thoughts in them. Also, the author asks readers to consider forgiveness and apology or "letting it go." She manages to make that sound not stupid or annoying, and I found truth in what she said.

Anger can, Engel points out, motivate us, make us goal-oriented, give us energy and inspiration--or it can make us depressed, resentful, trapped, and immobilized. I found lots of insightful things in this book, though I must confess I was not up to doing the extensive amount of work suggested in the exercises. Perhaps I will go back to it later.

Me = anger-in; tending to the passive aggressive or avoidant; but other times also aggressive, if I know you well enough. Am free, however, to go into rage over smaller things: I might become enraged if the "l" key on my keyboard were not working properly.

Loot, by Sharon Waxman

Title: Loot: The Battle over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World
Author: Sharon Waxman
Publisher: Henry Holt, 2009
Format: Paperback
ISBN-13: 9780805090888

Fascinating book about the ethical dilemmas posed by the fact that many of the world's ancient treasures/archaeological finds have been "looted" by other nations, usually Western ones such as the United States, United Kingdom, or France. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, treasures in Greece, Egypt, Italy, and Turkey were taken by either private individuals or museum buyers. France basically ran the department of antiquities in Egypt for years, overseeing the removal of artifacts from Egypt to other countries, and Egypt was not an equal partner in these decisions. Lord Elgin in the United Kingdom simply took the frieze at the top of the Parthenon in Greece. He believed he was saving it. Gilded Age capitalists/philanthropists in the United States used their wealth and power to obtain antiquities overseas to stock the museums they were building back at home.

The countries where these artifacts were originally found (which is not always the same thing as the culture or civilizations that created them) have always had much to say about these practices, but only lately have they been able to make the raiding countries actually respond to them. As a result, the notion of repatriation--the process of returning artifacts to their regions of origin--has been hotly debated for much of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

In Loot, Waxman considers the issue from the perspective of the various groups who believe it is their mission to maintain and preserve ancient artifacts and cultural heritages: the tourism industry; museums (the Getty, the Met, the Louvre, the British Museum); people in government antiquities departments (such as those of Egypt and Greece); museum curators and directors; and antiquities dealers. Needless to say, these groups cannot agree entirely on anything; their beliefs about the core concepts at stake (history, antiquity, museums, and preservation) are too often in conflict.

Some of the main questions the book addresses are:

1. If the country of origin of an artifact is in disarray and cannot "properly" care for (security wise; preservationwise) its own artifacts/history, does it cede the right to gain (or reclaim) its artifacts?
2. If a museum has artifacts that were obtained using questionable methods, but a hundred years ago or so, to what extent should the museum be public about it? To what extent should the country where the artifact is stored (or the museum) be expected to return the artifact?
3. Who owns objects of art? The region where they were made? The museum where they have been for years? The "human community"? Who should be stewards of them?
4. What should the role of museums be in preserving culture, history, and artwork?

There are no easy answers to these problems, but all parties concerned feel very passionately about the issues. As a result, this book contains lively profiles and memorable stories, and it is very fun to read. (It made me either want to become an art historian or travel.) I had not thought much about the politics surrounding antiquities, or museums, and I liked the way Waxman showed how complicated many of these problems are.


One of the most compelling stories she tells is of the "Lydian Hoard," a group of objects that were obtained under cagey circumstances by the Met. Ultimately, after much agitation from Turkish newspaper writers/activists, the museum agreed to return them to Turkey in the 1980s:

For two years the treasures of the Lydian Hoard were displayed in the Anatolian Civilizations Museum in Ankara, before being transferred in 1995 to Usak, to an aging one-room museum in the town, whose population had grown to one hundred thousand. Not only was the return of the Lydian Hoard a source of undeniable pride in Usak, but it also made restitution a popular cause . . .

But that consciousness didn't translate into broad viewership of the hoard. In 2006 the top culture official in Usak reported that in the previous five years, only 769 people had visited the museum . . .

That was bad enough, but the news soon turned dire. In April 2006 the newspaper Milliyet published another scoop on its front page: the masterpiece of the Lydian Hoard, the golden hippocampus, the artifact that now stood as the symbol of Usak . . . was a fake. The real hippocampus had been stolen from the Usak museum and replaced with a counterfeit.

I can't get this story out of my head. Returned at last, only to be stolen!

New York Times on e-books, iPads

Today's New York Times contains David Pogue's funny review of iPad: The Apple iPad is basically a gigantic iPod Touch. The review is in two sections: one for tech-heads, one for "regular people." The upshot seems to be that while regular people will probably love the iPad, tecchies are less enthusiastic. (Perhaps this is true of all things in life.) Some quotes from the review follow.

On the iPad book reading app, from the tech part:

There’s an e-book reader app, but it’s not going to rescue the newspaper and book industries (sorry, media pundits). The selection is puny (60,000 titles for now). You can’t read well in direct sunlight. At 1.5 pounds, the iPad gets heavy in your hand after awhile (the Kindle is 10 ounces). And you can’t read books from the Apple bookstore on any other machine — not even a Mac or iPhone.

The book reading app, from the regular person part:

The new iBooks e-reader app is filled with endearing grace notes. For example, when you turn a page, the animated page edge actually follows your finger’s position and speed as it curls, just like a paper page. Font, size and brightness controls appear when you tap. Tap a word to get a dictionary definition, bookmark your spot or look it up on Google or Wikipedia. There’s even a rotation-lock switch on the edge of the iPad so you can read in bed on your side without fear that the image will rotate.

I want to fast-forward three to five years ahead, when the little bugs are fixed and the price is low and I can just go get one of these. Or, you know, an iPhone. It's hard waiting for technology to smooth out!

Another NYT article, this one on how since e-books have no discernable covers when you are reading them (all an onlooker can see is the device you're using to read), the e-book thus takes away a certain instant visual marketing/advertising component from publishers. It's here.

I can say that I've had several conversations with people who have Kindles, mostly on planes. Usually, we are discussing how much we enjoy the device, or how much we like the other person's carrying case or whatever. What we're reading at the time tends not to get mentioned.

I have to say, I love trying to see the covers of other people's books. Perhaps e-book readers need a back window, one that shows the cover or title of the book you're reading. Or not. As much as I love seeing what other people are reading, I love even more the fact that e-book readers enable me to "anonymously" read or buy any old trashy thing I feel like. In general, I probably shouldn't worry about that kind of thing, but that's another topic for another day.

The Politician

Title: The Politician: An Insider's Account of John Edwards's Pursuit of the Presidency and the Scandal That Brought Him Down
Author: Andrew Young
Reader: Kevin Foley
Publisher: Tantor Media
Format; Unabridged,MP3 - Unabridged CD edition (February 22, 2010)
ISBN-10: 1400166500
ISBN-13: 978-1400166503

Andrew Young was an aide to John Edwards during his senate run and then through his presidential campaigns. I do not know the standard rules for being someone's political aide, but I can tell you that as Young and the Edwards family worked it, the important boundaries between employer and employee were completely breached. Granted, the relationship between an employer and an assistant, or a celebrity and a handler, or a politician and an aide is not standard or easily defined. Fame complicates things, making both parties likely to idolize the famous person and give him or her much latitude in conduct. Strange ego and personality issues dominated the Young/Edwards relationship. Young ended up buying furniture and taking care of house decorating and maintenance tasks for Edwards and his wife--he then ended up being the go-between between John Edwards and his mistress Rielle Hunter. In the end Young went so far as to actually claim that Hunter (now pregnant with Edwards's child) was HIS mistress and went into seclusion with her--and his family. Clearly, this is insane. Why did Young fall so far? How did he lose sight so completely of himself and his own set of ethics? (I won't even attempt to answer these questions for Edwards. I cannot understand anything he did.)

Young's book suggests the following reasons for his insane devotion to Edwards:

--Successful politicians are consummate people persons who are manipulative and able to "work" people, whether or not they intend to. They may be so charismatic that they simply do not realize their effect on others. Since Young was not a seasoned campaign worker or political person, he was startstruck by the Edwardses to begin with. He also came to love Edwards the man, and Elizabeth Edwards, and considered them close friends. The Edwardses returned that affection, often referring to Young as "family." All lines between friendship/admiration/hero worship/the workplace were blurred.

--Politics attracts the idealistic. Young states repeatedly that he loved Edwards's political messages and thought he should be president despite his personal failings. The bottom line for Young was that it was worth it to support Edwards because in the end, he'd do the right thing for the country. (Greater good for the greatest no. of people.)

--The desire to be near power or associated with power and fame makes people lose sight of themselves.

--Young's sense of his own identity as an adult was fuzzy and incomplete.

Why did Young not walk away early on? He says he ended up feeling trapped in a situation that kept worsening. Edwards kept raising his salary, and he wanted Edwards in office, and he kind of ended up having to hang around until that happened, I guess. I'm not sure. At the end, Young hints about his complex relationship with his own father, who had also committed adultery, and points out how people who are flawed and fail can recover if they are honest.

Young did a lot of awful things. He helped Edwards conceal his affair from his wife, who was suffering from cancer. This is almost too horrible to be believable. Edwards claims Elizabeth was "in remission" at the time his affair with Hunter began. Whatever.

Young also claims that Elizabeth Edwards was difficult, obstructive, unpleasant, and close to crazy by the end. He suggests but does not say outright that she pretended her cancer was worse than it was to gain media attention and support.

Obviously, Young is resentful of the Edwardses, who cut him off after he was used horribly. He does attempt to take responsibility for his own culpability. I am amazed his wife, Cheri, put up with his behavior, because in effect, Young ignored his own family to serve the Edwardses for years on end. He even ended up helping the Edwardses decorate for Christmas and purchase presents--instead of helping his own family. At one point, his mother in law simply turns her back on Young in fury and disgust. This was definitely the kind of thing he deserved!

This book provides an interesting look at Edwards, although since it is clearly tinged with resentment and hurt feelings, it must be taken with a grain of salt. I would like to hear Elizabeth Edwards's take on some of these things; I did find it a bit hard to believe she was as crazy and shrewlike as Young potrays her.

I was disgusted thoroughly with Edwards before I read this book, and after reading it, I still am, though I feel some small sympathy for him. However, I'm mostly really glad he did not make it to a serious position of power. Young, I hope, will not become anyone else's personal assistant or aide. He is not the type of personality to function well in such a role, the book shows. I found Young's refusal to see the truth of his situation very frustrating--but who of us has not had huge blindspots in life, or times of denial. I can only hope my own never lead me to enable (or engage in) behavior like Edwards's.

The audiobook is read by Kevin Foley, who has a nice, booming voice that is pleasant to the ear. I am not fond of the southern accent he adopted for Edwards, and I haven't heard Edwards speak enough to know if it was accurate. In places, Foley gets the emphasis of sentences wrong/misreads a bit--but all in all, the book is good to listen to.

Judith Warner, We've Got Issues

Author: Judith Warner
Title: We've Got Issues: Children and Parents in the Age of Medication
Publisher: Riverhead
Format: Kindle book
ASIN: B0030CVQLW


I first became aware of Judith Warner through reading her posts at the New York Times's online Opinionator blog. I am sad to see she has stopped contributing to the blog. Warner wrote on politics and society and gender and class, but her focus was often on parenting and motherhood. I am not a mother, so I did not read her posts regularly, but when I come upon them, I usually found them witty and pithy, well worth reading. In general, I like the way she thinks. She is not afraid to go out on a limb, or to be wrong, and sometimes, she changes her position on issues as years go by. I really appreciate that kind of intellectual flexibility and courage.

Warner's recent book, We've Got Issues, demonstrates perfectly her ability to revisit past positions. (Part of this tendency may be because a lot of the brainstorming/initial writing for the book was online, for the NYT blog; as a result, Warner received lots of feedback/comments and was far less isolated from the effects her arguments had on readers.)

In chapter 1, she tells us that the book she initially intended to write was conceived of as "UNTITLED on Affluent Parents and Neurotic Kids."

It was supposed to explore "fashionable children's diagnoses"--like Asperger's disorder, dyslexia, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, anxiety disorders, and bipolar disorder. . . . Its central argument was going to be that children were, by and large, being overdiagnosed and overmedicated.

What Warner found as she researched and read further was that in general, parents of children with mental disorders would vastly prefer not to medicate their children, or to have them diagnosed. In the end, they have done so only because they have had to; because their children were suffering (and the whole family was suffering) and the parents were at wit's end. In these cases, medical/psychiatric intervention turned out to be the only thing that would work. Ultimately, these were last-resort measures, for the most part, not frivolous or lazy decisions.

Therefore, instead of being critical of parents (and I have to admit, it is very, very easy to be disgusted with some of the more popular excesses that get bandied about) and claiming that the sickness of our culture creates mentally ill people (instead of these things being something we do not control), Warner ultimately comes from the issue with a sense of compassion for the struggles of the parents and children who suffer mental disorders. She notes how our society tends to ignore or stigmatize mental illness as a whole, and in children in particular, and how these parents and kids often get overlooked because of this stigma or indifference.

The idea of showing concern instead of scorn for these kids/parents strikes me as exactly the right direction to take. If we blame the kids who suffer these disorders, we only hurt them further; if we blame their parents, call them "bad parents" instead of "people whose kids need help," then we paralyze them with shame and make it that much harder for them to get help for their familites.

Warner points out repeatedly that while our society talks incessantly about how many children are overmedicated and overdiagnosed, when she spoke with the actual doctors, parents, and teachers who worked with these kids, she rarely found anyone who felt the medications/therapy were being dispensed frivolously. Whether or not one agrees with this, I definitely support Warner's belief that kids with mental disorders (and their parents) deserve compassion, attention, and care, not scorn.

The book feels less tightly organized than I'd like; I feel that the chapters wander a bit and they kind of melded together in terms of purpose and topic. However, I like Warner's narrative persona and I appreciate very much the amount of research she did for the book.

The problem with many of these issues is that we simply do not yet have longterm information on the effects of psychotropic drugs, or enough information on what causes mental disorders. Warner points out that the field of child psychiatry is very small--it is extremely difficult even to find doctors who want to study it. Given these difficulties, it's hard to find the right path to take in regard to these issues, but again, I absolutely support Warner in her sense that it is good to feel compassion for these children/families.

Finally, as per usual with Kindle books, the formatting is a nightmare. The design is ruined; the spacing is not attended to; there are typos introduced into the text. This was a more expensive e-book--one of the ones at $14.00, and I have to say it burns a bit to purchase an e-book so ridden with formatting errors. It cannot be that hard to write macros to clean files before they are put into e-book format, can it? Someone in publishing must be able to do it!