DON'T GET TOO COMFORTABLE by David Rakoff

"It is not the fault of South Beach that I am a joy-obliterating erotophobe. That it comprises some of my deepest aversions (heat, direct sunlight, and a pervasive sense of fun) while lacking many of my most cherished requirements in a destination (occasional rain, the generally suppressive influence of the superego, and a melancholic populace prone to making monochrome woodcuts of hollow-eyed women sitting disconsolate in shabby rooms with their meager suppers on tin plates before them) is nobody's problem but my own. And it's a problem that I will have to keep to myself this weekend as I work the pool at one of Miami's hiply refurbished art deco hotels—the Hiawatha, let's call it."

I'm gonna sleep with this under my pillow

Lookee! I had a conversation (well, a Twitter conversation) with Mary Roach! I don't have anything else to say about it. Just wanted to make sure that I kept some proof that it happened.

This is how far behind I am

Sadly, I think I'm even missing some.


Books That Need to be Reviewed

Title (series, if applicable) Author

• It Sucked and then I Cried by Heather B. Armstrong
• The Postmistress by Sarah Blake
• The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag (Flavia de Luce, #2) by Alan Bradley
• Homicide in Hardcover (Bibliophile series #1) by Kate Carlisle Update: reviewed here
• If Books Could Kill (Bibliophile series #2) by Kate Carlisle Update: reviewed here
• The Angel of Darkness by Caleb Carr
• Heat Wave (Nikki Heat, #1) by Richard Castle
• Sizzling Sixteen by Janet Evanovich
• Faithful Place by Tana French
• The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession by David Grann
• Strange Piece of Paradise by Terri Jentz
• Lit: A Memoir by Mary Karr
• My Fair Laz: One Reality Television Addict's Attempt to Discover If Not Being a Dumb Ass Is the New Black, or A Culture-up Manifesto by Jen Lancaster
• The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson
• Killing the Shadows by Val McDermid
• Still Midnight by Denise Mina
• Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
• Spooky Little Girl by Laurie Notaro
• Hardball (V.I. Warshawski #13) by Sara Paretsky
• Body Work (V.I. Warshawski #14) by Sara Paretsky
• Sea Change (Jesse Stone #5) by Robert B. Parker
• High Profile (Jesse Stone #6) by Robert B. Parker
• Stranger in Paradise (Jesse Stone #7) by Robert B. Parker
• Night and Day (Jesse Stone #8) by Robert B. Parker
• Split Image (Jesse Stone #9) by Robert B. Parker
• The Professional (Spenser #37) by Robert B. Parker
• Blue Screen (Sunny Randall #5) by Robert B. Parker
• Spare Change (Sunny Randall #6) by Robert B. Parker
• 206 Bones (Temperance Brennan #12) by Kathy Reichs
• Spider Bones (Temperance Brennan #13) by Kathy Reichs
• Going in Circles by Pamela Ribon
• Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach
• Fly Away Home by Jennifer Weiner

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.

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).

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

Upcoming Book Signing for Captive Arizona, 1851-1900 on 4/28 #LNK

UNL Professor Victoria Smith to read and sign copies of her newest book Captive Arizona, 1851-1900 at the University Bookstore on April 28th, 2010. Smith’s presentation on Captive Arizona, 1851-1900 will begin at 7:00pm Wednesday April 28th with a book signing to follow.

Captivity was endemic in Arizona from the end of the Mexican-American War through its statehood in 1912. The practice crossed cultures: Native Americans, Mexican Americans, Mexicans, and whites kidnapped and held one another captive. Victoria Smith's narrative history of the practice of taking captives in early Arizona shows how this phenomenon held Arizonans of all races in uneasy bondage that chafed social relations during the era. It also maps the social complex that accompanied captivity, a complex that included orphans, childlessness, acculturation, racial constructions, redemption, reintegration, intermarriage, and issues of heredity and environment.

This in-depth work offers an absorbing account of decades of seizure and kidnapping and of the different “captivity systems” operating within Arizona. By focusing on the stories of those taken captive—young women, children, the elderly, and the disabled, all of whom are often missing from southwestern history—Captive Arizona, 1851–1900 complicates and enriches the early social history of Arizona and of the American West.

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!

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!

I think I need this book

Itty Bitty Kitchen Handbook
(Reviewed by Unclutterer)

Sock Innovation by Cookie A; Country Weekend Knits by Madeline Weston

Cookie A is a great sock designer. She brought us one of the most popular and fun sock patterns of all time--Monkey--and now she has an entire book of creative designs, Sock Innovation. She is known, I think, for doing very interesting, cool things with cables; she also has a real talent for writing patterns very clearly, which I love. Sock Innovation has socks for a range of skill levels; the hardest ones are way beyond anything I'd dare attempt at this point, but there are several I feel willing to try. In fact, I have tried one pattern, "kai-mei," and I thought it produced some very pretty socks.

At the beginning of the book, Cookie A includes design information--you can learn how to design your own socks or how to alter the sizes/patterns for the one's she's provided here. Each pattern in the book is named after someone she knows, which gives the socks personality, and which I really like. All in all, a great sock book; I highly recommend it. The irony: hardcore knitters, all of them, probably already own the book!

Madeline Weston's Country Weekend Knits is exactly the kind of knitting book I love: it presents classic styles (in this case, from the British Isles, including Aran, Gansey, Fair Isle, and Shetland lace) and a brief history of each type of knitting. The sweaters are just gorgeous, and I am longing to knit a gansey soon. Have not yet tried any patterns, but they seem very easy to follow. The photography in the book is as beautiful as the sweaters.

Columbine, by Dave Cullen

I just finished listening to the audio version of Columbine, by Dave Cullen, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Previously, people had believed certain myths about the tragedy, primarily, that Harris and Klebold were outsiders who attacked because they had been bullied and persecuted. In this work, Cullen debunks that myth and others, in part because he has had access to the crucial primary sources: the boys' diaries; the "basement tapes" in which they videotaped themselves in the weeks leading to the shootings; interviews with their friends and other students, and several survivors. The book thus presents an excellent, sad portrait of Eric's and Dylan's mental states as they worked themselves up to the act of committing mass murder. The boys, it seemed, were driven primarily by Eric, whom Cullen diagnoses (following the lead of FBI profilers and analysts) as a budding psychopath; Dylan was more prone, it seems, to suicide than mass murder, but he got swept along with Eric. The thing that was most powerful to me was how impossible it is to know anyone--even one's own children. Klebold's parents in particular (who have talked more to sources) appear as very kind, good people who were totally shocked and overwhelmed by their son's actions, and in the Harris family, Cullen traces a long series of diary entries from Eric's father that indicate the various disciplinary strategies and ideas they were implementing with him. Furthermore, the boys had had contact with various mental health and legal professionals. They should have been caught and stopped beforehand--this book definitely shows that--but I just don't think anyone (and Cullen shows this) was actually able to believe that these kids would really do what they did.

The book also traces the stories of several survivors and their parents; these tales are poignant as well because they demonstrate the complex relationship between grieving and anger, and also describe very convincingly just how hard it is to recover from trauma.

The reader of the audiobook, Don Leslie, has a commanding bass voice and he does a good job of rendering teen anger and angst and speech patterns. As always seems to happen with male readers, his voices for women sometimes climb into the falsetto and thus become grating, but Leslie is definitely a talented reader, and he made the audiobook quite compelling.

In conclusion, I'd just like to say, FIFTEEN GRAND SLAMS LOOKS GOOD ON YOU, ROGER:

Review: I Like You: Hospitality under the Inflence, by Amy Sedaris

"For most people the word 'party' conjures up an image that is so intimidating, so terrifying that they just want to skip the whole thing—it's just too much pressure. A party doesn't necessarily have to be a big extravagant to-do. A party can be as simple as a few poeple getting together for conversation and snacks. As my guests leave even my most simplest parties, I consistently hear the same thing: 'That was the best time I ever had,' and it's always me saying it" (17).

How can you not like someone capable of writing that? Amy Sedaris's I Like You: Hospitality under the Influence is in part a serious cookbook and in part a send-up of the notion of the etiquette book or cookbook. It's also got some awesomely weird photo essays. The photographs of Sedaris are hysterical, especially, to my mind, the ones in which she is putting on pantyhose, and it's hard to explain exactly why other than that they immediately invoke such pain and understanding in me. Anyway, she poses as a debauched, glamorous lady of the 1970s; a lush; a freshly scrubbed clueless Southern mother; and a pantyhose aficionado or fetishist—I can't figure it out. There's more, too, but I'm not sure I can make it cohere, because, in part, it just doesn't. Anyway, for the most part, the Sedaris photos, some of them taken, I see, by Todd Oldham, are just funny in and of themselves. Weirdly, the food photographs are not as effective for me; they fail often to make the food look as good as I know it is, because I've made a few of the recipes from this book, and they're all really good (about which more later).

The other focus of the book is to talk about hospitality and having parties. These pieces are often sharp and funny, though sometimes vulgar (on purpose, and in that tough "you-can-take-it way" that I always fail at), but they are usually always interesting and amusing. The book opens with a hysterical multipart letter about hospitality (juxtaposed with photos of Amy Sedaris looking suave and then passing out), then moves along to discussing various theme parties or dinners one might have, complete with meal plans and recipes. Some of this—the gypsy stuff, for example—I found not funny at all; the old people dinner made me laugh, however.

The best part of the book, in my opinion, is the recipes themselves. I love Southern food and I love Greek food and I don't know how to cook either style that well—this book focuses on these two things. Thanks to this book, I've finally made Pastitsio, and I plan to take on Spanakopita soon. Also, there's a heavenly killer chocolate cake with whipped-cream frosting recipe in there, which I also tried and made with no problem at all (there's not a temperature for the chocolate cake recipe, but you can figure it out by looking at a recipe for another cake, and it's always going to be somewhere around 375 anyway, right?). So anyway: the recipes are easy to follow, and there are many of them. You will get a good introduction to some classic Southern cooking dishes and some Greek dishes, and probably laugh, too, while reading the book. There's no bad there.

Stiff by Mary Roach

My pal Amy tried to give me a copy of this book for Christmas. I say "tried" because of course I have it (and have read it). Her first clue should have been the subtitle: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. If that doesn't say "Jana" then I don't know what does.

Anyway, I love this book so much. I just about swoon whenever it's mentioned and have to take a deep breath before I can speak. It's incredibly graphic, gross, and hilarious. Mary Roach asks every oddball question that pops into her head, even if it makes her look like a creep. I heart her.

I told Amy to keep her copy and I would re-read mine along with her. And I almost never re-read books. I can't think of the last time I did that—maybe Do the Windows Open?

Perhaps surprisingly, I haven't ready Roach's other books: Spook and Bonk (And I don't own them. Hint-hint, Amy).

From Publishers Weekly via Amazon:

"Uproariously funny" doesn't seem a likely description for a book on cadavers. However, Roach, a Salon and Reader's Digest columnist, has done the nearly impossible and written a book as informative and respectful as it is irreverent and witty. From her opening lines ("The way I see it, being dead is not terribly far off from being on a cruise ship. Most of your time is spent lying on your back"), it is clear that she's taking a unique approach to issues surrounding death. Roach delves into the many productive uses to which cadavers have been put, from medical experimentation to applications in transportation safety research (in a chapter archly called "Dead Man Driving") to work by forensic scientists quantifying rates of decay under a wide array of bizarre circumstances. There are also chapters on cannibalism, including an aside on dumplings allegedly filled with human remains from a Chinese crematorium, methods of disposal (burial, cremation, composting) and "beating-heart" cadavers used in organ transplants. Roach has a fabulous eye and a wonderful voice as she describes such macabre situations as a plastic surgery seminar with doctors practicing face-lifts on decapitated human heads and her trip to China in search of the cannibalistic dumpling makers. Even Roach's digressions and footnotes are captivating, helping to make the book impossible to put down.