Book Lists and life!

Wow what a couple of weeks – my father’s death has effected me far more than I had expected. I thought that being thousands of miles away it wouldn’t effect me that much – but it has – however life carries on whether you want it to or not and I have been typing book list requests to the publishers for books to review and authors to interview.

I have sent some Qs to crime writer Peter James re his brilliant book Dead Tomorrow. I also have an  interview with Ancient Chronicles of Darkness writer Michelle Paver in 3 weeks time – I just love her books even though they have been written for children. Her last book in the series being Oath Breaker with her next one Ghost Hunter out in a couple of weeks – this will bring the series to an end and I for one will greatly miss having a new one to look forward to each year.

Well both Gareth and Ann 2 of my reviewers have been going hell for leather with lots of reviews so keep a look out for our latest ones. Ann loves Fantasy and historical but reads just about everything and Gareth is very definitely into Graphics with a side line of crime with our other reviewers filling in the gaps. Me I just love the children’s ones with a few adults thrown in for good measure!

[Via http://bfkbooks.wordpress.com]

Deeper: A Review

Title: Deeper

Author: Megan Hart

Genre: Erotica/Romance (Harlequin’s Spice line)

Rating: ★★★

Back Cover: Twenty years ago she had her whole life spread out before her. She was Bess Walsh, a fresh-scrubbed, middle-class student ready to conquer the design world. And she was taken. Absolutely and completely.

But not by Andy, her well-groomed, intellectual boyfriend who had hinted more than once about a ring. No. During that hot summer as a waitress and living on the beach, she met Nick, the moody, dark-haired, local bad boy. He was, to put it mildly, not someone she could take home to Daddy.

Instead, Nick became her dirty little secret— a fervent sexual accomplice who knew how to ignite an all-consuming obsession she had no idea she carried deep within her.

Bess had always wondered what happened to Nick after that summer, after their promise to meet again. And now, back at the beach house and taking a break from responsibility, from marriage, from life, she discovers his heartbreaking fate—and why he never came back for her. Suddenly Nick’s name is on her lips…his hands on her thighs…dark hair and eyes called back from the swirling gray of purgatory’s depths.

Dead, alive, or something in between, they can’t stop their hunger.

She wouldn’t dare.

Side note: I wonder who was writing this back cover copy. It doesn’t match some of the story. She wasn’t studying design, and she wasn’t a waitress.

REVIEW:

First, let me say that this was my maiden venture into the very popular genre of Erotic Romance, sometimes called Romantica. Typically, straight up erotica is focused on the sexual side of the story and not much else. Those kinds of books don’t hold much interest for me. My favorite part of any romantic story is the build-up and tension. If the characters just jump in bed from the get-go, I don’t really feel engaged with the story.

So, when I heard that there is a new crop of erotica that includes romantic plots, I was intrigued. (Plus, I could use it as research, since I am writing a romance. I wanted to see what delineated erotic romance from the sensual romance.)

However, after reading Deeper, I’m a little on the fence about the novel and the genre.

Things that made me happy:

–The novel alternates “Then” chapters (the story of Bess’s summer with Nick when she was 21) with “Now” chapters (the story of Nick’s supernatural return and the ensuing relationship when Beth comes back to the beach 20 years later). I enjoyed reading the two parallel narratives.

–I cared enough about the characters to feel sad at points in the book

–the relationship was monogamous

–the MC was likable and believable

–there was a little bit of happily ever after

Things I didn’t love:

–Okay, so I know it’s erotica, but sometimes the sex scenes seemed to just be there because the author was afraid too many pages had passed without any nookie. Perhaps this is a genre issue for me more than this specific book. I found myself skimming a lot of these scenes–something I never do in a regular romance. : )

–There were a lot of loose strings that never tied to anything. For instance, she goes into a new age store and buys books on spirits to try to help figure out what’s going on. But, she never reads them. As a reader, I’m making mental notes on things like–oh, that will be important later. But then they weren’t. So what was the point of mentioning them in the first place?

–The climax (ha, punny) was quick and not fully explored. I don’t want to write spoilers, but at the end I still had a number of questions unanswered.

Overall: I’m giving this three stars because I’m not giving up on the author or genre yet. The book held my interest and I think with a few tweaks, could have been great. The majority of reviewers on Amazon gave it the full five stars, so maybe I’m just picky.

Warning: This book is an 18 and over read. Also, if you are offended by frank language or fully described sex scenes, this won’t be for you.

Diana Athill’s Memoir, ‘Somewhere Towards the End’ – The Last Non-Lecture

An editor in her 90s writes about the end of her sex life and more

Somewhere Towards the End. By Diana Athill. Norton, 182 pp., $24.95.

By Janice Harayda

Diana Athill has mastered that bittersweet negotiation with old age that the poet Elizabeth Bishop called “the art of losing.” Born in 1917, Athill worked for decades at an esteemed London publishing firm, where she edited the Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul and others, and she has had a vibrant life that included an affair with the playwright Barry Reckord. In her new memoir, she writes eloquently of life after her retirement at the age of 75 – the ebbing of sexual desire, the deaths of friends, the pleasures of gardening and driving a car when the padding on the soles of her feet has grown so thin she is hard put to walk a hundred yards.

Somewhere Towards the End won a major British award for biography and reflects a keenly English sensibility rooted in the values of the world that existed before Starbucks moved into Victoria Station. Athill is by no means morbid. But neither does she lecture or assault you, as so many American authors do, with cloying euphemisms like “aging” – a word that, as Katha Pollitt has noted, applies to all of us: “A 50-year-old is aging at the same rate as a baby or a tree or a bottle of wine, exactly one second per second.”

Athill is matter-of-fact but discreet about events such as a miscarriage that nearly killed her and about the prostate troubles suffered by Reckord, with whom she lives. But her natural tact doesn’t preclude astute observations on life. In her last chapter, Athill avoids reaching for tidy lessons and observes instead that “most lives are a matter of ups and downs rather than of a conclusive plunge into an extreme, whether fortunate or unfortunate, and quite a lot of them come to rest not far from where they started, as though the starting point provided a norm, always there to be returned to.”

Best line: As a student at Oxford in the 1930s, Athill told a man named Duncan that she had fallen away from the Christianity of her youth: “ … I said that though I was unable to believe in the god I had been taught to believe in, I supposed that some kind of First Cause had to be accepted. To which Duncan replied ‘Why? Might it not be that beginnings and endings are things we think in terms of simply because our minds are too primitive to conceive of anything else?’”

Worst Line: Athill writes of a 103-year-old woman who had a “positive attitude” (and, a page later, a “positive outlook”), a rare descent into cliché.

Recommendation? Somewhere Towards the End is more cohesive than the Nora Ephron’s entertaining but disjointed  I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman, and reading groups might like to compare the two books.

Published: January 2009 (first American edition).

Furthermore: Somewhere Towards the End won the 2008 Costa Award for biography. Athill also wrote Stet: An Editor’s Life, a memoir of her years in book publishing. Other quotes from Somewhere Towards the End appeared on this site on July 17.

Janice Harayda is a novelist and former book editor of the Plain Dealer in Cleveland.

More quotes from Somewhere Towards the End will be posted later today.

© 2009 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.
www.twitter.com/janiceharayda

One-Sentence Reviews of New and Classic Novels Recently Reviewed on This Site

No time to read long book reviews? Every review on this site is condensed into a one-line summary saved in the Books in a Sentence category. Summaries of recently reviewed novels and short stories for adults appear below. You’ll find other one-line condensations, many of them shortened versions of reviews of books of nonfiction and poetry, in the Books in a Sentence category at right.

Novels
Finger Lickin’ Fifteen. By Janet Evanovich. Evanovich’s series about bounty hunter Stephanie Plum goes further south with a tasteless beheading and sophomoric jokes like, “Nobody calls me pecker head and lives.”

The 8th Confession (Women’s Murder Club Series). By James Patterson and Maxine Paetro. A glorified San Francisco police procedural set in such large type, you wonder: Was this novel written for for people who will be reading it by candlelight while eating Beanie Weenies out of a can during a power blackout?

Love in a Cold Climate. By Nancy Mitford. A beautiful English heiress flouts convention by marrying a man who had been her mother’s lover in a modern classic of comedy, inspired partly by the author’s half-batty upper-class family.

Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind. By Ann B. Ross. A rich Presbyterian widow in North Carolina learns that her dead husband has left her a startling legacy — an illegitimate 9-year-old son — in the first of ten novels that are more irreverent than those of Jan Karon’s “Mitford” series but cut from a similar bolt of pop fiction.

The Pains of April. By Frank Turner Hollon. A 86-year-old retired lawyer looks back on his life from a Gulf Coast rest home, where he has held onto more of his marbles than some residents. (Briefly mentioned.)

The Naked and the Dead. By Norman Mailer. Nowhere near as good as some of the 20th-century war novels often mentioned in the same breath, such as All Quiet on the Western Front and A Farewell to Arms. (Briefly mentioned.)

A Summons to Memphis. By Peter Taylor. One of the great American writers of the late 20th century shows how a move from Nashville to Memphis has reverberated over time — all but destroyed a family that was once a model of Southern gentility — in a novel that deservedly won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

The Ponder Heart. By Eudora Welty. A comic novella about a rich and kind-hearted uncle put on trial for a murder he didn’t commit, full of examples of Welty’s wonderful ear for the dialect of many Southern groups.

The Genocides. By Tom Disch. Unseen aliens sow the seeds of an ecological catastrophe in a book two experts recently named one of the “100 must-read” science-fiction novels of all time. (Briefly mentioned.)

Middlemarch. By George Eliot. The first great multiplot novel in English — and maybe the greatest ever — tells the story of a young woman who longs to be useful as it reminds us that “that there is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it.”

The Host. By Stephenie Meyer. A woman wages a host-versus-graft struggle with a new soul, inserted in her body by aliens, in a creepily Freudian tale written at a fourth-grade reading level.

Bright Shiny Morning. By James Frey. A dark, postmodern novel about Los Angeles that combines stories of stereotypical characters — a Mexican-American maid, a closeted gay male superstar — and so many trivia lists, you almost expect a recipe for huevos rancheros.

Jane and Prudence. By Barbara Pym. A clergyman’s wife plays matchmaker for a female friend and fellow Oxford graduate in a quiet novel salted with wry observations on the sexes. (Briefly mentioned.)

A Gentleman’s Guide to Graceful Living. By Michael Dahlie. A witty and intelligent novel of New York manners (and a recent prize-winner) about a blueblooded father who finds comfort in the love of his adult sons after a divorce and other crises.

Short Stories
Ten Lost Tribes. By Tamar Yellin. An award-winning English writer’s superb collection of 10 linked short stories about geographically or otherwise displaced characters, inspired by accounts of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.

Olive Kitteridge. By Elizabeth Strout. An uneven collection of linked short stories (published in Seventeen, South Carolina Review,  O, the Oprah Magazine, and elsewhere)  that, alas, won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for its tales of a retired math teacher in a coastal town in Maine.

All Souls. By Christine Schutt. A skimpy Pulitzer finalist that its publisher has billed as a novel but is, in fact, a collection of linked short stories — many no more than vignettes — about how students and others react when a Manhattan prep school senior gets a rare connective-tissue cancer.

One-Minute Book Reviews has a policy that at least 50 percent of all reviews will deal with books by women. The “About This Blog” page describes other principles of the site, including that it does not accept free books  or other promotional materials from editors, publishers, authors, agents or others with ties to books that may be reviewed here. The “FAQ” page answers questions such as, “Why don’t you take free books?”

(c) 2009 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.

www.twitter.com/janiceharayda

How Professors Think

We like to think we function in a meritocracy – that the best ideas rise to the top, and that petty politics, much less racial/gender discrimination never come into play when making academic judgments.  Lamont seeks to understand how academics make judgments and she questions our supposed objectivity. Her book is no diatribe against how decisions get made, but she also is certainly not supporting the ideas that level-headed academics make judgments of a proposal or individual strictly on the merits of the idea. 

She was able to sit in on deliberations of major social science and humanities panels which make decisions about whom to award a grant or fellowship.  Some will say that her sample is biased because she did not look at ‘scientific’ groups such as the NSF or the NIH.  I can not say if it is biased, but I would certainly like to see a similar study of those in the natural sciences.  Others will criticize her method, which is qualitative.  She interviewed about 50 individuals involved in the review process.  The interviews and observations provided a great deal of data, and the presentation is excellent. 

Few will be able to criticize her scholarship.  The author is extremely well read and versed in a great deal of social science literature, particularly in her own field of sociology.  She is remarkably versatile in moving us backwards and forwards in the sociological literature to help us think through how we define objectivity and how we employ it (or do not).   

Anyone who has participated in academic committees will have to acknowledge at least a modicum of begrudging respect for what Lamont found.  There is the individual who has his or her pet project and will go to great lengths to ensure that that proposal gets accepted.  There is another person who goes berserk if a project is rejected (or accepted) and the committee goes along in order to bring calm back to the group.  There is also the disturbing quality that individuals tend to like projects that support their own views of the world, and reject projects that do not.  Many acknowledge this bias and try to fight against it, others are not aware of it.  (And then there are the economists who know their view is right, so why shouldn’t they support it and reject everything else?). 

Lamont’s book comes at the right time.  Peer review – whether it be the National Research Council’s reputational rankings, or promotion and tenure guidelines – are topics of perennial concern, but of particular importance now, as we juggle finite dollars against competing demands.  Lamont does not give us any answers about what to do, and I appreciated it.  “Scholars strive to produce research that will influence the direction of their field” she writes at the outset of the book.  Yes, we do.  Lamont writes in a quiet, conversational tone that had me thinking about how I might better reach my own academic judgments, and what I might do to improve those panels and committees on which I sit.  This is a great book that should be read by all who participate in peer review.

Bill Tierney

Serious about delusion #4

I have to keep reminding myself that Keith Ward’s book is not called Why there just might be a God.

Fourth in a series responding to Keith Ward’s Why there almost certainly is a God: Doubting Dawkins1

See also Serious about delusion #1; #2; and #3

The God Hypothesis

Keith Ward: Why there almost certainly is a God

Ward asks us to be ‘fair’ to the God Hypothesis:

[T]he reality of God is usually said to be infinitely greater than that of any human-like mind that we can imagine. God is not just a projection of a human mind onto the sky. What theistic philosophers usually say is that God is not less than a mind, with consciousness, knowledge and will. The divine reality may be infinitely greater than that, but if we are going to think of it at all, we will not be seriously misled if we think of it as a mind – recognising that we are using a model suitable for us, but one that does not literally apply to God.

At the risk of stating the obvious, this is just talking about the concept of God, not shedding light on whether or not God exists. To say ‘God is not just a projection of a human mind’ will convince no one who isn’t already convinced, because that is exactly what the concept of God appears to be to someone not already convinced. As Ward says, God

is something that has thoughts, feelings and perceptions, but no physical body or brain. Such thoughts and perceptions will be very different from human thoughts.

Why would anyone think God has thoughts, feelings and perceptions, if not because we do? This concept of God is a mixture of attributes both human (thoughts, feelings, perceptions) and non-human (has always existed and always will; no physical body or brain). It is intriguing to wonder why Ward feels qualified to say ‘if we are going to think of [the divine reality] at all, we will not be seriously misled if we think of it as a mind’. Perhaps we will be completely misled?

Ward asks:

Could there be an unembodied mind, a pure Spirit, that has knowledge and awareness? I can see no reason why not.

OK, but to repeat a truism from the previous post, the possibility that something might exist does not mean it does. He goes on:

The God Hypothesis has at least as much plausibility as the materialist hypothesis. Both are hard to imagine, but neither seems to be incoherent or self-contradictory. Either might be true.

This kind of talk baffles me. My instinct is to think: I can’t let him get away with this. But it is hard to think of a fully adequate rejoinder, without saying the same thing over and over again. I’ve tried to tackle Ward’s attacks on matter and materialism in Serious about delusion #2.

Ward asks:

What is the point of being a materialist when we are not sure exactly what matter is?

I would reply: in order to be materialists, must we know exactly what matter is? Must a theist know exactly what God is? If so, then a lot of people who think they are theists are not as theistic as they thought they were.

I feel quite happy being materialist – in the sense of thinking that, on balance,

mind is reducible to electrochemical activity in the brain, or is a surprising and unexpected product of purely material processes,

without knowing precisely – or indeed extremely imprecisely – what matter is.

Matter could be very mysterious indeed, but you can’t solve a mystery by just adding another mystery to the mix. As I tried to explain in Serious about delusion #2, if we don’t need to bring in God to explain how rainfall happens or how stomata work, then I cannot see why you need God to explain how consciousness happens.

Consciousness (17th Century)

The explanations of rainfall and stomata are fundamentally in terms of matter – which, let us agree, we cannot explain. There was a time when we had no explanation of rainfall or of stomata, and now we do – even though we do not know what matter is. So there could come a time when we will have just as adequate an explanation of consciousness, but still no better understanding of what matter is.

And even if we take the view that we may never understand how consciousness happens, this is likely to be because we are ourselves conscious, and are trying to understand consciousness using our own consciousness. This may well be impossible. But even if it is impossible, I cannot see how its impossibility moves us any closer to thinking a God must exist or that mind must be an irreducible component of reality.

Observant readers will have noticed how much I have repeated myself in the last few blogs. At the risk of flogging this poor point to death, I shall try to sketch three scenarios. They are intended to be mutually exclusive, but I am not claiming they exhaust the possibilities.

Crucially, the scenarios are about what is the case, not about what we know now; or about what do not know yet but may know in the future; or about what we may never know.

Scenario 1: Materialism

Matter (whatever it is), or something like Gribben and Davies’ ‘mysterious and unknown substratum’ (see Serious about delusion #2), gave rise to mind – both consciousness and self-consciousness. This happened by the same process of gradual, non-teleological, evolution (see Scenario 3: Teleology below) as gave rise to – for example – seed dispersal, protective mimicry, and the beaks of finches. If we are ever to understand what mind is and how it arose, the knowledge we will need is scientific knowledge: physics, chemistry, biology, neurophysiology, psychology, cybernetics, informatics and so on.

On this assumption, then certainly as far as the ‘living world’ is concerned – the flora and fauna of planet Earth – there was a time when there was no mind, no self-consciousness. There was a time when there was ‘awareness’ or ‘sensitivity’, in the sense of specialised sense organs, and this was before there was full self-consciousness. Similarly there was a time before there was any awareness or sensitivity because the appropriate sense organs hadn’t yet evolved – just as there was a time before there were any living things, in the sense of self-replicating entities.

In this scenario we have reached a point where self-consciousness has evolved. But this evolved self-consciousness has a particular feature – that it can present itself to itself as an irreducible component of the reality it is conscious of, because its consciousness of that reality is inextricably bound up with its consciousness of itself. It may be a necessary feature of self-consciousness. How it was achieved we do not know – yet. We may never know.

Scenario 2: Anti-materialism

In this scenario mind (incorporating for the sake of argument both consciousness and self-consciousness) is an irreducible component of reality. Features of human neurophysiology etc which support mind may have arrived by a process of evolution, but mind itself has an irreducible aspect which cannot be explained as a product of evolution.

Because mind is an irreducible component of reality, there was never a time in the history of the universe when there was no mind.

Scenario 3: Teleology

This is a distinct scenario, although it includes features of both the other two.

As in Scenario 2: Anti-materialism above, mind is an irreducible component of reality, but mind and self-consciousness may not be quite the same thing.

Evolution is also involved but, unlike in Scenario 1: Materialism above, the evolution – and in particular the evolution of self-consciousness – has purpose behind it, and is therefore directed towards a specific goal.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

This scenario has a number of variants, associated with eg Hegel and Teilhard de Chardin. Both shared a vision that cosmic, geological, biological, technological, political and cultural history was (and is) in some way the gradual and directed realisation of mind’s (or spirit’s) purpose to become conscious of itself. If ‘mind’ is seen more as a principle of rationality the scenario has some affinity with Herbert Spencer’s universal natural law of progress (see Great god progress).

Having sketched these scenarios, my point is this. From the perspective of an individual self-consciousness (a living person) the phenomenological data available to that person give no reason for choosing between the three scenarios. Crucially, the appearance, to that person, that that person’s mind is an irreducible component of that person’s experienced reality is just as evident in Scenario 1: Materialism as in Scenario 2: Anti-materialism. Therefore it cannot be a justification for Anti-materialism over Materialism.

This does not ‘prove’ Materialism. But it is the scenario with the least unjustified assumptions. It treats mind as a phenomenon in the world, and is in line with the best available scientific knowledge. That knowledge cannot yet give a fully satisfactory account of how mind emerges from matter. But nor can Scenario 2 explain how mind is an irreducible component of reality or why it has to be. Scenario 2 includes the additional unjustified assumption that somehow mind was around at a time in the history of the universe when no living creatures had evolved to be conscious, and therefore is committed to speculating as to how this might be possible.

Similarly Scenario 3: Teleology includes an unjustified assumption that there is a purpose and a direction, and is committed to speculation as to where these may have come from, or how they are inextricably bound up in reality.

Scenario 1 admits purpose in the context of the evolved self-consciousness. Purposeful action is an undeniable feature of that evolved self-consciousness. Again Scenario 1 cannot give a fully satisfactory account yet of what purposeful action is and how it evolved. But nor can Scenario 3 explain where this purpose comes from, whose purpose it is, how it operates, and what its relationship is with the only mode of purposeful action we do have experience of, which is our own.

Bottom line: the three scenarios are all possible, and as far as I know there is no piece of currently available information which disproves any of them. If one is true, the other two are false. (Or all three are false, and the truth is something else.) But the fact that all three are possible does not make them equally sound. Scenario 2: Anti-materialism and Scenario 3: Teleology both rest on assumptions which have no independent justification. Scenario 1: Materialism does not.

The fact that we do not yet know how mind evolved does not undermine Scenario 1, any more than the fact that we do not yet know what mind was doing in the universe before conscious animals evolved undermines Scenario 2, or the fact that we do not yet know how purpose operates in the universe undermines Scenario 3. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. What undermines Scenario 2 is the unwarranted assumption of the real unique irreducibility of mind. What undermines Scenario 3 is the unwarranted assumption of real purpose in the universe outside ourselves.

References

1 Keith Ward, Why there almost certainly is a God: Doubting Dawkins, Lion Hudson, London, 2008.

© Chris Lawrence 2009.

A Pile of Guilt: Do you fret over your TBRs?

Forgive me bloggers, for I have sinned.  The cause of the recent rainy weather is my TBR pile–it’s BLOCKING the sun, preventing it from shining. 

In an act of desperation, I recently moved my TBR pile from my desk, where it was taking up prime real estate, to a dark corner of my office, out of view.  Why did I do this?  Simple.  The guilt over the leaning tower of TBRs was eating away at me, gnawing on me each time I plopped into my chair.  I tried rearranging and restacking them, to no avail.  They didn’t go away or look less daunting, so I banished them to the corner.

How did I find myself in such a conundrum?  Way back in February, at my request, a book blogging friend sent me a box of books as I prepared to launch Book, Line, and Sinker.  I wanted to have some books to review and feared I wouldn’t have enough material.  This kind blogger sent me a box of 20 books and I was overjoyed.  I pawed through the box, reading dust jackets and flipping through pages.

I picked out a book and blazed through it.  And then I started jotting down other bloggers’ suggestions for books and I even started getting review copies from some publishers and authors.  And the 19 books began to collect dust because I was reading everything else first!  Even though the blogger has told me repeatedly that it’s no big deal, I still feel terrible!  

Then, as if I didn’t have enough stuff to do, I created an insane challenge in which I thought I’d read 30 books this summer.  So far, I’ve made my way through 6 (and want to KISS the person who suggested Gargoyle–it was UNBELIEVABLE).  I’m going to keep plugging away but will be content to finish all 30 by Labor Day 2010! 

So, the 19 books are still lurking in my TBR pile only now they’ve found themselves piled below 12 others that are lined up for reviews in August and September.  Will I ever get to them all?  I have a book review each week for the next 8 weeks but should be able to squeeze in some of the 19 between now and September. 

Are you guilty over your TBRs?  How do you handle it?!  I need an intervention or at least have to say a few Hail Marys to assuage my guilt!

Eric Hodgins's Classic Comic Novel 'Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House' -- You Think Your Problems With Contractors Are Bad?

A  classic comic novel about moving from the city to the country sends up the modern lust for property

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. By Eric Hodgins. Illustrated by William Steig. Simon & Schuster, 228 pp., pp., $12, paperback.

By Janice Harayda

Reading yesterday’s bestsellers can be a little like trying on that pair of white vinyl go-go boots in the attic: You don’t know whether to laugh or cringe at our former tastes. Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House is a sparkling exception to the rule that bestsellers tend to become dated within a generation and comic novels age faster than serious ones because so much humor depends on topical references. This classic first appeared in 1946 and has never lost the droll charm that made it in an international hit.

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House satirizes the modern lust for property, and its enduring appeal lies partly in the all-too-believable naiveté of Jim Blandings, a Manhattan advertising executive, and his wife, Muriel, who decide on a whim to buy and restore a 170-year-old farmhouse in Connecticut. They fall in love with the barns, apple orchard and majestic views: “But the furnishings were in general of the era of Benjamin Harrison, with an overlay of William McKinley, and here and there a final, crowning touch of Calvin Coolidge.” And when house turns out to be too decrepit to restore, Jim and Muriel resolve to tear it down and build another on the site.

This decision sets up a superbly constructed plot in which the new house becomes the couple’s antagonist. The Blandings square off against bankers, lawyers, architects, contractors, hostile neighbors and the local historical society – in short, all the people who still bedevil home-buyers. But the house itself is their real opponent. Amid the soaring bills and construction delays, Mr. Blandings imagines how delightful it would be “to return to the city and move a final, ten blocks father north.” Will he throw in the drill bit and go back to the Upper East Die? Or sell the place and buy one against which he isn’t so overmatched?

Eric Hodgins controls the suspense deftly. And the late New Yorker cartoonist William Steig adds three dozen or so brilliant drawings, many of them a full page, that throw the comedy into higher relief and show how much we have lost now that the fully illustrated adult novel has almost disappeared. Along with Hodgins’s masterly text, Steig’s fanciful pictures remind us that if a man’s home is his castle, sometimes he’s the court jester instead of the king.

Best line: “It surged over Mr. Blandings that he very much wished he were back in the city … he wanted the noise of the city in his ears; the noise with which all city dwellers were in such perfect, unconscious harmony that the blast of a gas main down the block might strike the eardrums but penetrate not the brain.”

Worst line: A few expressions have become dated. When Mr. Blandings sees the contractors’ bills, he cries: “Jesus H. Mahogany Christ!”

Recommended if … you like comedy that stays close to life. Hodgins’s satire is much more realistic than that of the over-the-top novels of Christopher Buckley (whose Boomsday involves plan to save Social Security and other benefits by giving baby boomers a financial incentive to commit suicide, known as “Voluntary Transitioning”). Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House is also a nearly perfect book club book partly because: 1) It’s a classic that few people have read; 2) It’s relatively short and widely available in paperback and at libraries; 3) It deals with a situation almost anybody can appreciate; 4) It may show a new side of William Steig to members familiar only with his children’s books, such as Dr. De Soto and Shrek!; and 5) All those slackers who never finish the book can watch one of the movie versions.

Reading group guide: This site has also posted a review of the sequel to this novel, Blandings’ Way, and a reading group guide to Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, which you can find by using the search box.

Published: 1946 (first edition), 2004 (Simon & Schuster paperback).

Furthermore: Hodgins’s novel has inspired two movies I haven’t seen – Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, with Cary Grant and Myrna Low, and The Money Pit, with Tom Hanks.

This is a repost of a review that first appeared in 2007. I am on a brief semi-vacation.

www.twitter.com/janiceharayda

Book Review: <em>A Distant Mirror</em> by Barbara Tuchman

Author:  Barbara Tuchman
Title: A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century
Publication Info: [Ashland, Or.] : Blackstone Audiobooks, 2005. (Originally published in 1978)
ISBN: 9780786152940

Other Books Read by This Author: Practicing History, The Guns of August

Summary/Review:

The same historian who wrote an entire book – The Guns of August – about just one month in the First World War and found in it a microcosm of the war in its entirety goes an entirely different route in this book, taking on an entire century of an entire continent.  Not just any century, but a pretty rotten one.  The Fourteenth Century in Europe is marred by the Hundred Years War, Papal Schism, climate change (the Little Ice Age), the last Crusades, pillaging brigands, and if that wasn’t bad enough – the deadly pestilence.

With so much ground to cover this book delightfully veers off on numerous topics, kind of a cluttered attic of medieval facts.  Yet, Tuchman still manages to draw out one clear focal narrative and that is that the calamities of the 14th century sowed the seeds of the modern world.  Corruption in the church – from the warring popes down to local parish priests known for sleeping around and gambling during mass – lead to Reformation and the eventual downfall of Christendom.  100 years of warfare lead to increasing national identity for France and England that broke down feudal loyalties.  Peasant revolts eerily foreshadow the French Revolution. Death and disease destroyed ideas of hierarchy and order, whether from God or from wealth.

Tuchman centers the narrative on the life of French nobleman Enguerrand de Coucy, a 14th century Forrest Gump who happened to be at numerous pivotal events and had his life well-documented.  Also appearing in A Distant Mirror are John Wycliffe, Catherine of Siena, Geert Groote, and Charles VI whose monarchy would be marred by bouts of madness.  Fascinating events depicted include Christian movements like the Bretheren of the Common Life and Bretheren of the Free Spirit, The War of the Eight Saints, The Bals de Ardents, and the Battle of Nicopolis.

I’ve been meaning to read this book for over 20 years but was always intimidated by its length and the scary army of skeletons on the cover.  I’m glad that I finally plugged into an audio book adaptation and listened over a period of a couple of weeks.  Tuchman as always a crisp, detailed and entertaining writer (albeit a sometimes overly opinionated one).  This one will be worth reading again one day.  I find the whole period of time fascinating.

Rating: ****

Book Review: Free Range Kids by Lenore Skenazy

Free Range Kids by Lenore Skenazy

Free Range Kids – Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry by Lenore Skenazy is a non-fiction book about parenting and allowing children to be independent. This book was a fun and entertaining read weighing in at just under 200 pages. It is slathered with humor and sarcasm just the way I like it when reading material breaking down ‘conventional wisdom (Did you know it is a derogatory term?)’. Lenore also keeps a blog http://freerangekids.wordpress.com with the latest triumphs and tragedies that confront Free Range Parents.

The TV is Lying to You
Lenore Skenazy talks about the over reporting and dramatization of abductions. If you watch (take your pick: CSI, CSI: Miami, CSI: New York, Cold Case, Criminal Minds, Bones, Law & Order, Law & Order SVU) or the news there is a 100% chase are you are going to be bombarded by psychopathic monsters (and I’m not just talking about Bill O’Reilly). There is a reason for this. Fear, like sex, sells. Don’t believe me? Can you tell me the stories of JonBenet Ramsey, O.J. Simpson, and Caylee Athony? Now, can you summarize Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, and Oliver Twist? I find, like Lenore, that people pay way too much attention to television and not enough to their actual neighborhood. It’s safe even if the TV says it is not. Crime statistics are available for your neighborhood.

Responsibility & Independence
Kids want to be independent. I don’t know how many times my preschoolers (soon to start Kindergarten!) have shouted, “NO, DAD! I CAN DO IT MYSELF!” A key notion in this book is about giving your kids responsibility and independence commensurate with their ability. You teach your child the skills they need to know then you allow them to practice what they’ve learned. For instance, my oldest daughter uses the super sharp vegetable peeler and helps peel carrots for dinner. That is because I taught her how. Supervised her a couple of times and then let her do it herself. Did you know what happened? SHE CUT HERSELF! A cheap lesson. A few tears and a band-aide later we were back peeling vegetables. But she is so happy when she gets to help make dinner. As Lenore put it she learned ’self-confidence’ not ‘parent-supplied-confidence’ (a.k.a. Here is your trophy for being second winner!) When we take walks in the evening I have my daughters take turns telling me when it is safe to cross. Teach them the skills and let them practice. It is hard to let go but they keep showing me they are smarter than I give them credit for.

Stranger Danger!
Again, on our walks we talk about strangers. Dad asks, “Is it OK to talk to strangers?” My kids say, “Yes.” Dad says, “That’s right!” Another key theme in Lenore’s book is that not every stranger is a going to snatch you away as soon as Mom & Dad aren’t looking. Some parents might be aghast, “YOU SHOULD NEVER LET YOU CHILD TALK TO STRANGERS!” Yeah, you see… that’s just dumb. Back to the principle of not assuming people are crazy child snatchers. One positive note about my kids talking to strangers is that the strangers want to talk back! I’ve met many normal (non kiddie snatchers) in my neighborhood because they are happy to talk to little girls (even if their dad is scary stranger). Again, it is important to teach your children the skills they need in case they are confronted with that creepy person. Dad asks, “Do we ever go near a strangers car?” Kids say, “No.” Dad asks, “Do we ever go anywhere with a stranger?” Kids say, “No.” Dad asks, “Would mom and dad ever send a stranger to come and get you?” Kids say, “No.” Dad says, “That’s right I would send … ” and I give them examples of the people we know that we would send to get them. What are the chances that my girls are going to need to use their skill of not going away with a stranger? About 1:1500000. They should know these things just in case. Just like using “Stop, Drop, and Roll”, “Get out of the house first if there is a fire, go to the neighbors, then dial 911″, “If you get lost just sit down and we’ll find you or ask a STRANGER for help”.

Odds of Dying

Calculating the Odds or Parenting by Evidence
I tried to find a reference and failed about how people can’t tell the difference between 1:1000 odds and 1:100000. It ‘feels’ the same to them. Maybe this is why parents don’t want to let their kids outside because they can’t tell that being abducted by a stranger (odds 1:1500000) is statistically insignificant. What parents really need to be worried about is things like obesity, getting exercise, wearing helmets and seatbelts, and sunblock. OH! What is this? Here is some evidence to back up my assertion. This is a nice little article talking the about the odds of dying. I’m laying out the odds for the top five ways you are going to die.

1. Heart Disease: 1-in-5
2. Cancer: 1-in-7
3. Stroke: 1-in-23
4. Accidental Injury: 1-in-36
5. Motor Vehicle Accident:1-in-100

I’m personally hoping for the 1:79746 Lightning Strike on my 120th birthday. So… controlling obesity, getting exercise, wearing helmets and seatbelts, and sunblock helps cut into those odds. And I even get to let my daughters out to play on the sidewalk all by themselves.

This book was a great little read and helps bring things back into perspective as a parent. There are so many experts out there trying to scare you into using the products or captivating you while TV stations try to sell you other products. So, turn off the TV, boot the kids outside, and start reading.

Emma-Jean Lazarus Fell in Love by Lauren Tarshis

Emma-Jean Lazarus approaches reality with her feet grounded firmly in rationality, logic. When the boys in her class engage in a boisterous game of table hockey involving plastic knives and a chicken nugget, Emma-Jean observes, “Adolescent males engage in conspicuous displays to attract the attention of females” (p 4).

Like its predecessor, Emma-Jean Lazarus Fell in Love is eloquent yet simple, endearing yet quirky. The characters are wholesome without being stereotypical. Even the minor adult characters have dimension when seen through Emma-Jean’s keen perspective.

It was a pleasure to see Colleen (Collcakes) mature into a more confident young woman while retaining her optimism and sweetness. Even bad boy Brandon Mahoney seems to be reforming. I had no idea Tarshis was working on a sequel so I was delighted to see this on the children’s cart … I hope she isn’t stopping at two.

Read this if you have a Kindle.

From Sam Diaz at ZDNet:

Imagine buying a DVD at Wal-Mart and then, a few days later, someone from the Hollywood studio that produced that movie breaks into your house, takes that DVD out of your collection and leaves a refund on the dresser for you – all because that studio suddenly decided that it didn’t want Wal-Mart selling its DVDs.

Sounds crazy, right? But, in theory, that’s exactly what Amazon is doing with two electronic books sold for the Kindle e-book reader.  More…

Poorly Made in China

For my novel Hong Kong On Air, I researched contract manufacturing in China; Paul Midler literally wrote the book on the subject. Asia Times just ran my review of Midler’s Poorly Made in China, a behind the scenes look at doing business with Chinese factories. It’s a rip-roaring read – my wife has no interest in the subject but couldn’t put it down – telling a fascinating, frightening story about the products we trust for our homes and families, where those products come from, and about the people standing, or more accurately, hiding behind them. Midler offers a unique perspective on the world’s most important emerging economy and its growing power and influence.

Totally globalized native New Yorker and former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen is author of Hong Kong On Air, a novel set in his adopted hometown during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, financial crisis, and cheap lingerie.

The Pearl by John Steinbeck

I taught The Pearl at summer school this year. Although I have read a couple other Steinbeck novels, I’d never read this one. It’s a great little novella to teach because of its simplicity and easily recognizable themes of greed and hope.

Kino and his wife Juana lead a simple life in La Paz, Mexico around 1900. Kino is a pearl diver, depending on the canoe passed down through the generations and his own work ethic.  He’s a man content with his lot in life because he appreciates what he has. When his infant son, Coyotito, is stung by a scorpion it sets off a chain of events that not only ruins Kino, but upsets the delicate balance of the natural world (if only metaphorically) and the community in which Kino had so happily lived.

The Pearl is an accessible novel. It gave us lots to talk about – do you need money and possessions to make you happy? Should you judge a man by the clothes he wears or his character? Is violence ever justified? Today’s teens often do think that money buys happiness and if ever there was a novel to disprove this assumption, The Pearl might well be it.

If I were just reading it for pleasure, though, I might have been disappointed. I’m not a gigantic fan of Steinbeck’s writing at the best of times (although he certainly deserves his place in that list of great American writers). The Pearl is simplistic and at times unrealistic (which likely has to do with the fact that it’s a parable which comes from the oral tradition of storytelling). As it teacher it offered me lots to work with; as a reader it was less enchanting.

Penguin Reading Guide

God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (part I: overview)

I have seen Christopher Hitchens in interviews many times. It was Hitchens that had the gumption after Jerry Falwell died, to go on air and call him what he was: a hate monger using religion as his aegis. I admired him for that but for all the times I have seen him he always came off as a pompous egomaniac. I read his book reviews in the Atlantic and thought of him as a capable writer, but still with an healthy regard for himself and his abilities.

I must admit though, that upon finishing his book he is one of those rare people whose high opinion of themselves is not vainglorious but merely honest. He is a very capable writer, making a good case for the dissolution of the world’s religions. When I first saw this book I was hesitant to pick it up. The arguments for atheism in popular literature usually run two ways. The first is to merely list a series of historical events in which religion played a major role in travesty. The crusades and the persecution of Galileo usually get top billing, showing the bloodthirstiness and intellectual suppression by religious authorities. This is the most common route and, I daresay, the most honest route.

I say honest, because these two events did happen under the auspices of religious authority. The problem with using them is that they are tired arguments resulting from a history at least 5 centuries ago. The problem with the Crusades as an example depends on the skill of the writer. The Crusades were bloody, that cannot be denied, but since the polemic is usually against Christianity it is misplaced as only the first Crusade can be considerred successful while every subsequent Crusade was a disaster.

The second method is to partake in ad hominem attacks against the faithful. This is the method most often partaken in internet forums as well as popular literature. Using tired arguments that often involve phrases like “prove it” and the ever popular “how come evil still exists in the world?” This is nice only in the respect that forces the faithful to answer the questions that often elude it, but it often degenerates into swill eventually coming to a point where a person like Richard Dawkins wants to call atheists, “brights.”

Fortunately this book did not turn out like that. What Hitchens presents us with is a long narrative on why religion in general, the very concept of it, is not only based on fabrications but also harmful to the population of the world. All the while he maintains intellectual respect for the followers of religions, refraining from calling them stupid or stomping on their specific beliefs as inane or foolish. That’s not exactly clear…he sees the followers of religion as victims, tricked by ancient charlatans into following something that cannot be verified or proven false. In this respect he retains reverance for religious ceremonies and the ideals of its followers. Instead of attacking them, he attacks the theology behind the religion, religion’s ceremonies, and their origins.

Most importantly, while he himself says that, “my particular atheism is a protestant atheism,“  he does not limit himself to attacking Christianity. Something that i have experienced too often when I was a student and professor. It seemed to me that every time I heard the word atheist it was dishonest. It wasn’t atheism the student was espousing it was “a-christianism” or merely heretical christianity. Christianity takes the brunt of most atheistic attacks on religion in this country because it is the number one religion here, and because it seems that most of the atheists that I have encountered are unwilling to attack Judaism for fear of being called antisemitic, Islam for fear of being politically incorrect, or any Eastern religion because they are intellectually unable to do so.

I was delighted to see Hitchens level his attack against all three of the western Monotheisms by attacking their history, origin, and foundation books. Moving from there he levels against Eastern religions using the same methodology. What often gets the East off the hook is that their atrocities are not well known but Hitchens does illuminate them.

Also of great interest is his anticipation of a response that seeks to mention what happens when atheists get into power. Citing the two most popular examples of Hitler and Stalin. This is soundly dealt with and the closing chapter chronicling the difference between intellectual pursuits and the dogmatic opponents that he has had to endure.

I’ll deal with some of the arguments more specifically next post, as well as some reservations I had with the book. As much as I enjoyed it there are some problems. The book does a fine job with regard to the case for atheism. However, I would have changed the title. Obviously chosen for its ability to grab the attention of the casual bookstore customer the book itself does not attack god, rather than it attacks religion. I would have kept the subtitle as the title, but I am pretty sure this was an editorial or marketing choice.

Book Review: <em>An African in Greenland</em> by Tété-Michel Kpomassie

Around The World For a Good Book selection for: Togo

Author: Tété-Michel Kpomassie
Title: An African in Greenland
Publication Info: New York : New York Review Books, [2001] (Originally published in 1981)
ISBN: 9780940322882

Summary/Review:

Kpomassie, who grew up in a traditional society in Togo, writes a charming, insightful and very human account about his year living among the traditional societies of Greenland.  The story begins when Kpomassie is a boy and is injured in a fall from a tree.   In his convalescence he comes across a book about the Eskimos and finds himself obsessed with the idea of visiting Greenland.  After 10 years working his way across Africa and Europe, earning money and travel visas, Kpomassie finally arrives by ship on the shores of Greenland.

Kpomassie seeks out the most remote and traditional Inuit villages he can reach and enjoys the hospitality of many villages, forms friendships, and by the end of the book expresses the desire to live out his days in Greenland.  There are some great scenes of hunting for seal, fishing, community gatherings, and a ride across the ice by dogsled (and the embarrassment of falling off).  There’s also a dark side to Greenland as Kpomassie observes the loss of traditional culture to Danish colonialism, widespread underemployment and the ensuing poverty and alcoholism.  The sunless winter in the most remote village Kpomassie visits is especially depressing.

I broke my rule of focusing on fiction for my Around The World For a Good Book project because I could not resist the cross-cultural premise of a man from an African traditional society visiting the traditional cultures of Greenland.  Part travelogue, part memoir, and part anthropology, this is one of my favorite books I’ve read thus far this year.

Recommended books: The Silent Traveler series by Chiang Yee shares a similar warm, humanist style of observation and interaction of people from different cultures.
Rating: ****1/2

CJ Laity Stirs More Shit, Drinks

Mmmmmm!!!!

Leading up to C.J. Laity being emphatically asked to leave a venue and the fact that people actually applauded his ouster owes much to the virulence of ill feelings that Laity himself helped to foster In the weeks leading up to his ejection, Laity seemed to go out of his way to show his disdain, not only for the host of the event, Charlie Newman but the four featured poets. His response wasn’t unexpected, given that he has – in his way a stormy history with all five parties.

The common thread that runs through all of them is that they made the blunder of disagreeing with him on some matter and/or they were viewed by Laity as competitors, somehow chipping away at his status as a scene maker. Of the four features Kurt Heintz, Kristy Bowen, Scott Dekatch and Todd, the latter seems to have earned most of Laity’s anger as the two of them briefly engaged in a back and forth email exchange rife with sarcasm and no small amount of vitriol. If the coin of the realm is meaningful and respectful dialogue, then for either Todd or Laity engaging in a bootless email war is a great example of the law of diminishing returns.

‘Oh, boo hoo, CJ doesn’t like me! Yawn. I read through your anthology. You set the bar pretty fucking low for “one of the most respected poetry institutions in America.” In my ever so humble opinion, Mr. Laity, you are a charlatan, and a hack, a no-talent hanger on. Don’t you dare darken my e-mail address with any more of your projects, much less a short note just to hurl an insult.   I bet you feel great about yourself after suckering a bunch of teenagers out of their allowance so they can appear in your pay-for-play delusion-fest.  Poetry doesn’t OWE you a living. It never has and it never will. If you need to pay your bills get a job, but don’t dare pretend at representing poetry or Chicago. You are an insult to both.’

C.J. responded ‘Fuck you you shit for brains fucking loser asshole! Nobody will ever give a fucking shit about Todd and you know why–read your own fucking dribble below. You are a self centered piece of crap who has never done anything for anybody. All you do is go around using people and then you stab them in the back. Who the fuck do you think YOU are? A poetry god? So you have a fucking crap ass book folded and stapled like a self publishing fucking loser yourself. FUCK YOU, you jealous prick, just because YOU can’t earn a living off of poetry stop taking it out on somebody who can. My job IS poetry, you dumb garbage mouthed sick demented lobotomy case. For you it’s just a fucking hobby, but for me it’s a life. Your time is going to come, you scum bag!
‘This is not veiled YOUR DAY IS GOING TO COME’

The last sentence, taken from another email sent to Todd by C.J. Laity is truly disturbing- disturbing enough by almost anyone’s standards to be brought to the attention of law enforcement.

Kurt Heintz, the founder of a poetry and information website called The E-Poets Network years ago found himself on the bitter end of Laity’s temper and subsequent histrionics. Laity went so far as to create a website mimicking Heintz’ not only to pull traffic but yet, again as redoubt from which to hurl rancor and spite. His attempts to sabotage Heintz’ site and readings having met with failure, Laity, even years later continues to snipe, denigrate, and generally make an unmitigated nuisance of himself.

Recently, Laity has done this to one other person, David Hargarten aka Buddha 309 who hosts a poetry reading series called Waiting For the Bus. Hargarten, a poet and musician developed a MySpace page called the Chicago Poetry Resource Center as place where poets could post information about upcoming poetry gigs. C.J. Laity took umbrage first because of the potential competition and more absurdly because of Hargarten’s use of the words Chicago Poetry. In Laity’s mock site he resorts to childish name calling and a lapses into an adolescent tirade about all the things he has allegedly done for Buddha (the backstabber) as well as what Buddha has done to him.

Kristy Bowen and Scott Dekatch simply took issue with being required to pay a sum of money in order to read their poetry at one of C.J. Laity’s readings. Dekatch’s questioning followed on the heels of Bowen’s reluctance on principle to pay a reading fee to read for free meant that they too were targets of Laity’s noxious ire.

‘Todd was taught that there is only one style of poetry that is acceptable and that style just so happens to be his own. The last time I saw that do-nothing Kurt Heintz was years ago when he bombed with a piece about being a “gay man in a burka”. Huh? Kristy Bowen recently savored her little malicious bout of CJ bashing at her blog and no doubt earned some brownie points from the hate club for doing it. And Scott DeKatch doesn’t think poets should pool their money to publish a book or to put on a fest, but he has no problem paying Kinkos to publish his own work’

‘Fri Oct 3: St. Paul’s Cultural Center, 2215 W. North Ave, Todd , Kristy Bowen, Scott DeKatch and Kurt Heintz (not a fart that stinks, scary, huh?), 8 – 9:30 PM, donations. I am definitely going to make an attempt to go and review this one.’

‘Fri Oct 3: St. Paul’s, 2215 W. North Ave, Todd, Kristy Bowen, Scott DeKatch and Kurt Heintz will fart chanel number five in what promises to be the snob fest of the year,’

Because this was sent out in mass emails as well as posted on the Chicago Poetry website, the implications of belligerence, drama and venom were crystal clear. Nor was the connotation of planned prejudice lost on anyone. Trouble was brewing for this poetry reading and neither the performers, the host nor the audience had to leave their seats- trouble came to them in the form of C.J. Laity who careened into the room like a man long used to charting ill-plotted collision courses.

The right or wrong of what happened next is certainly open to speculation. C.J. Laity was asked to leave a poetry reading because of his prejudice against the performers and fears of escalated belligerence on his part. His being asked to leave was also the last straw or the first shot across the bow- a growing intolerance for Laity’s brand of correspondence as well as his duplicitous attempts to needlessly sow dissension via character assassination has been percolating for years. Allegations of email spoofing, website mimicry, cyber-bullying, trail him like the proverbial smoke from a distant fire. Should he have been allowed to stay is too up for speculation because if even part of the goal was to perhaps avoid a negatively biased review of the performers, then it failed. His thoughts of them now underscored by his ejection have given him weeks, perhaps even years of traction- in which he, once and still considered a villain can now wear the cerements of a victim. His attempt to drape himself in the First Amendment and turn this into a violation of free speech only underscores a poor grasp of constitutional law. That people applauded is testament to at least two dynamics. One, a sigh of relief, albeit short-lived that a negative electric charge had been successfully dissipated. Two, for those who knew the back story and at the time there were about thirty members of the audience who did, it was a fine bit of theatre.

From far enough away, the whole mess reminds me of those young adult dramas on television. Indeed, the CW series, Gossip Girl’s premise is mostly based on teenagers jockeying for power. The show’s main character, Serena is a malicious gossip that discusses the goings on of her peers then posts the gossip and photos on her website. The students spend an inordinate amount of time and effort to check the site on the computers and cell phones in order to receive the latest, hottest gossip. Incidentally, Gossip Girls is based on a series of books written for teenaged girls and its target demographic is 18-34 young women. From all accounts C.J. Laity is in his early to mid 40s. To be fair many of the other individuals mentioned in this essay are also well outside this demographic.

What seems to raise everyone’s hackles is C.J. Laity’s bombastic assumptions of authority. Claiming that he represents all Chicago Poets or the Chicago Poetry Scene as it were is as ludicrous as a Republican politician claiming he or she represents the interests of all Republicans or a Black spokesperson claiming to represent the interests of all Black people. And if by some Outer Limits twist he did, what poet in their right mind would desire as their spokesperson, the servant of their interests someone who engages in years long vindictive feuds against imaginary or ill perceived foes, resorts to profanity, libel, defamation, violent threats, sabotage, cyber bullying, and generally sowing factional dissension nearly everywhere he goes? What rankles some poets is that their name, their art may in some way be attached to Laity self aggrandizing label of being the authority on all things Chicago Poetry complete with all of the bad mojo and emotional mephitis that comes with it..

Again, it comes back to what Laity’s ejection and everything that led up to it boils down to. The steady decline in civility is being marked by what takes its place; cruelty, spitefulness and selfishness. That society is made up of singularities- people of differing points of view trying to find their way is true. However, it is their recognition that we are cheek and jowl, shoulder to shoulder, verse and note symbiotically connected to one another that forms the basis for civilization.

I wrote earlier of moral language. Such language is not to be confused with politeness. Neither is it a language that requires it to be stripped of passionate conviction. Moral language stems from the same place that any methodology of conveying information does; the desire to be heard, to be understood, to have it be recognized that all of our experiences, the good as well as the bad resonate in someone else.

Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.
—Shelley, Percy Bysshe

The irony is that honesty, critical thinking as well as abstract thinking and that miraculous ability to tap the ley lines of inspiration in order to uplift the human psyche across time and space is the lifeblood of poets. Every moment they allow themselves to become immersed in pettiness, in cruelty and in acts of malevolence diminishes their reach, blunts that extraordinary ability to create. If these wielders of words cannot discover a language to communicate transparently with honesty, empathy, mercy and atonement they have a lot to learn about the true soul of poetry; to speak for time, into time.

For a good time, cum here!

Great Reads: Storyteller Series by G.R. Grove

As I think about the story I am trying to write, I like to examine the wealth of historical fiction that is already out there to enjoy, what the authors do, and what there is to learn from them (both in terms of that which I would like to emulate and that which I hope to avoid). In these examinations, I have come across some very good writing. One of the authors whose works I have especially enjoyed of late, and one whose works I think deserve some good word-of-mouth, is G.R. Grove (author’s blog). Grove’s Storyteller series is an excellent addition to the historical fiction genre. These three books, the opening trilogy of a larger story that she estimates will progress over nine works, follow the life of Gwernin Kyuarwyd as he enters into an apprenticeship and begins to learn the trade of the bard in sixth century Wales.

In the first volume in this tale, Storyteller (Amazon, LibraryThing), we meet Gwernin as he travels his summer circuit as, surprise, a teller of stories at festivals and in the homes of those he meets, trading his stock of tales for food and lodging or praise and prizes. He and his companion fall into their share of troubles, but in a lucky stroke of fate, these troubles ultimately land Gwernin in the very place he would most like to be – apprenticed to a master bard and learning this new trade. As Flight of the Hawk (Amazon, LibraryThing), the second book in this trilogy, opens, Gwernin is off on yet another summer adventure. This time, he is off on a diplomatic mission to the kingdoms of the north. We learn much of Gwernin’s character as he is tested in ways he could never have thought possible, and we see him grow, both in his bardic training and as a man. Finally, in The Ash Spear (Amazon, LibraryThing), Gwernin once again travels forth with his companions. This time their journey takes them west, at least geographically. Over the course of this novel, what starts as a grueling test for one of Gwernin’s companions, turns into the most dangerous test Gwernin will ever face.

Grove’s writing is compelling and the stories make for great reading on their own, but it is the exploration of Welsh culture in the 6th century that is the true star of these books. She does an amazing job in describing not only the natural environment and daily life of this period, but also the struggles as these people deal with the invading Saxons and the conflict between their own religion and the invading Christians.

The Storyteller series is very much a character-driven story, and Grove does not disappoint in the crafting of her characters. Each person in the tales has his own strengths and weaknesses, and while this is most notable with Gwernin as the central character, each can be seen to grow and change through the interactions with one another. The actions and reactions seem, at once, to be both in period and reasonable to a modern reader, and more importantly, there are no super-heroes in these books. Characters are flawed, and their actions, no matter how well-intentioned, have consequences (even if they don’t appear until a later installment).

This exploration of people and land, coupled with the inner struggles of Gwernin to grow and learn, is the focal point of the first book, and the rich, descriptive writing and inner turmoil continues throughout the series. However, Grove seems to add complexity with each book, adding in more fighting and action sequences in the second installment and a very rich and convincing spiritual aspect to the third. These are true additions, taking nothing from the prior installments, but giving each new book a little more. Grove takes very good care to balance these aspects as they come in, and the result is that a series that starts out on a high note just continues to improve.

A Bottle in the Gaza Sea by Valerie Zenatti

After receiving the boxes containing boxes from a multicultural grant I received I sifted through the piles and this book caught my eye. Although the book is a fictional account, the story is powerful and feels real. The references to “The Diary of Anne Frank” and felt before they are noted.

Told primarily through email communication between Tal and Naïm, the story provides insight into life in Israeli and Palestine balanced with humor and romance that allows readers to connect to the characters despite cultural differences. The compelling story is a must read for both the storyline and the message it provides.

Book Review: Coventry

Author: Helen Humphreys

Published: February 2009

Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co.; 1st American Ed edition

Genre: Fiction

ISBN-10: 0393067203

ISBN-13: 978-0393067200

10/10 (Must read!)

Witnessing Germany’s November 14, 1940 attack on Coventry from her watch position at the cathedral, widow Harriet bonds with a young man during the ensuing chaos who reminds her of her late husband, while at home, the young man’s single mother waits in agony for her son’s return and remembers the circumstances that brought her to the city.

Now MY take on it:

While the characters didn’t have a lot of personality, you could tell there was some there. But you wanted to be like Harriet and Jeremy- heroes. You wanted to help anyone and everything. But what really got to me was how she painted the bombing. It was almost as if you were there yourself, ducking for cover. Its like you could hear the bombs going off, and all the crying/screaming. I have never read anything like it before and couldn’t stop reading it. I had to read it until I finished it, even if it meant staying awake until 1 AM. I didn’t want to miss a thing. I wanted to know what happened to everyone in the book, even what happened to Coventry. When you read it, you can just see the devestation as it was happening. I can’t imagine going through something like that, ever. You feel for the people that lost anything- their home, pet, or loved ones. It wasn’t terrible disturbing but it might be for some readers. While it was rather a short read (177 pages), it’s one you won’t ever forget.

Book Review: Wise and Otherwise: A salute to life by Sudha Murty

After joining the S/W industry I hardly get anytime to read books nowadays. Even though reading is my habit this is the first book that I read this year courtesy to one of my dear friends who gifted me this book last month.
The best part of this book is the few beautiful lines written on the cover and back page by my dear friend (obviously ). Generally I end up reading those lines more than the book .

I really like this book by Sudha Murty. The chapters are short yet give meaningful messages. Especially when you start the book the way she describes a good experience followed by a bad experience in next chapter keeps you interested to read more and more. It actually justifies the title “Wise and Otherwise”. The few chapters which I really like are ”Honesty comes from the heart”, “In Sahyadri Hills, A lesson in humility”, “In India the worst of both worlds”, “Idealist at Twenty , Realists at Forty” and many more. She touched upon the actual India with her traveling experiences and speaks a volume about how the upper middle class of our society is engaged in show business, too far from the reality. How the feelings are dying in our society and our insensitivity indexes are scoring high everyday. She also tells that practicing a highly principled philosophy of life doesn’t require high class schooling. She tells how we could be very happy just by admiring and accepting what life has provided us.

But this book lacks the binding power after half way; most of the chapters are very well composed and written beautifully in the beginning. After half way the interest starts lacking and chapter’s outcome becoming more predictable.

Saying this much I would suggest its worth reading. Go ahead and read it if you have not done already.

That is a good book which is opened with expectation and closed in profit. ~ Amos Bronson Alcott

Book Review: <em>All the Shah’s Men</em> by Stephen Kinzer

Author: Stephen Kinzer
Title: All the Shah’s Men
Publication Info: [San Clemente, Calif.] : Tantor Media, 2003.
ISBN: 9781400151066

Summary/Review:

A gripping history of the first covert operation by the CIA to overthrow the popularly elected government of another nation in 1953.  That nation is Iran and the deposed leader is Mohammad Mosaddeq, the Iranian prime minister who dared stand up against Western imperialism.  The fascinating thing about this book is that for much of Mosaddeq’s reign many US leaders supported Iran’s self-determination and attempts at democracy.  Iran’s squabble was with Great Britain, especially regarding the exploitative nature of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.  When Mosaddeq nationalized Iranian oil, British leaders wanted him removed, but needed US approval which was eventually gained by the specter of Communism.  A number of familiar names play a role in the plot: Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, CIA director Allan Dulles, CIA agent Kermit Roosevelt, Jr.  (grandson of Theodore), and Norman Schwarzkopf, Sr. (father of the Desert Storm commander).  Kinzer tells the story in great detail with the ultimate outcome balanced on the coming together of some very unlikely events

Kinzer concludes that the immediate result – a stable and anti-communist Iran under the Shah – was beneficial to the United States but the long-term results were disastrous.  The Shah’s tyrannical rule in Iran, and the knowledge that the US supported him, turned most Iranians virulently against the United States.  When revolutionary Iranians took hostages at the US embassy in 1979 it was because the embassy had been a base of covert activity in 1953.  Finally, it set a pattern of CIA-sponsored activities in other parts of the world that have contributed to the loss of the USA’s image as a standard-bearer of freedom.

Recommended books: The Devil We Know by Robert Baer
Rating: ***1/2

The Atonement: Sacrifice

            In the second chapter of The Atonement, Leon Morris talks about the use of the word sacrifice to describe Christ’s work on the cross.  Morris says that “sacrifice is a term we use quite often, but in a very different sense from that which the ancients gave it.  We dimly realize that once there were people who literally offered animals in sacrifice to their gods… But when we use the word it is almost always in a metaphorical sense” (p. 43).  Morris goes on to explain how we in the modern world use this term to indicate giving up something – whether it is a parent giving something up for a child or an athlete sacrificing his time to win a championship.

            Morris argues that sacrifices in the Old Testament and as understood by the New Testament audience understood “that the action was a symbolic transferal of the sins of the worshipper to the animal, so that when it died it was taking the punishment due to the worshipper for his sins” (p. 47). 

            The Israelites living under this sacrificial system did not approach God in a light, carefree manner.  “Nobody who came thoughtfully to God by the way of sacrifice could be in any doubt but that sin was a serious matter.  It could not be put aside by a light-hearted wave of the hand but required the shedding of blood” (p. 51).

            So, the New Testament audience would have understood that sacrifice was a serious matter that resulted in the death of that which was sacrificed.  They would have understood that it was the violent shedding of blood for a person’s sins.  They would have understood that the animal sacrificed was taking the punishment that they themselves deserved.  Every time they placed their hands on the head of a sacrificial animal they would have been reminded that this animal was dying in their place.

            The New Testament writers refer to Jesus’ death on the cross in terms of sacrifice (Eph. 5:2, Heb. 9:26, Rev. 1:5).  “The men of the New Testament used ‘sacrifice’ as a helpful category when they wanted to bring out something of what Christ’s death meant” (p. 44).  

            The death of Jesus, God incarnate, is significantly different from the death of mere animals.  “The death of Jesus is to be seen as a sacrifice which accomplishes in reality what the old sacrifices pointed to but could not do” (p. 63). 

            So, what does a deeper understanding of ‘sacrifice” help us to know about what Christ’s death accomplished for us?

“Sacrifice was a splendidly solemn way of dealing with sins.  It stirred the emotions and gave the worshipper something to do.  But did it really take away sins? Could any thinking person believe that the death of some poor animal, a bull perhaps, or a goat or a lamb, would put him in the right with a God who was holy and just?

But the sacrifice of Christ was a different matter. All the old and familiar imagery helped them to understand what Christ’s death was about. They could appreciate references to blood as cleansing and to death as a means of putting away sins.  And what was no more than dimly hinted at in the case of the animals they could see perfectly accomplished in Christ” (p. 66)”

Oh. My. Gods.

I picked this book up not expecting it to be anything great. In fact, I knew nothing about it other than it had some greek mythology in it. I’m all about greek mythology so I figured–what the heck?

Oh. My. Gods. is about a girl named Phoebe who is uprooted from her home and friends in Southern California and moved to Greece for her senior year of high school. She got a little more than she bargained for.

This story was a pleasant surprise. I didn’t expect much and the story was a bit predictable, but I liked Phoebe, Damian, and Griffin as characters. I did want to see more of Phoebe’s and Stella’s relationship. There could have been a lot more development on that front. It was definitely the interactions between the characters (their relationships) that kept me interested in the story. I wanted to see how the story unfolded.

A fun read, all in all.

Discovery

I thought it would be fun to review a book on my blog, so here it is.

Discovery is a memoir by Vernon Smith, an American economist who taught at Purdue and Arizona State who won the Nobel Prize in 2002. You can preview a pretty good chunk of it here.

Dr. Smith does not spare any detail in discussing his family’s origins on a quiet Kansas farm, where engineering marvels of that time rapidly changed the landscape. This can make it a little bit of a drag, but some of the stories are engaging and worth reading. Here are a few examples:

Dr. Smith goes into great detail on making the perfect hamburger (never use ketchup) that is inherently economic: “[The] effect of minimum wage on hamburger mass production. By reducing min. wage labor costs, the substitution of machinery for labor causes unemployment.”

He also talks about dodging the draft, “To test your hearing for 4F classification, someone across the room would whisper, ‘Did you ever shit in your grandmother’s hat?’ and look for a smile.”

Distinctions between the brain and the mind: ““What exist are infinite variations on the mental theme of being human… its called individuality, the most important feature of humanity.”

He mentions his mother’s suicide, where she hanged herself in the garage: “Mother had systematically turned over, face down, every photograph in which her own image appeared.”

I was most interested in his chapters on college and economics in general.

“If goods don’t cross borders, soldiers will.” -Bastiat

“Public schools are not set up to produce achievement in their student’s lifetime performance; they are set up to yield achievement by students who do not drop out and produce good scores.”

“What is utility theory good for? It’s good for teaching.”

“Graduate school is an endurance test coupled with the belief that it is worth enduring, but it was not that demanding for me after surviving Caltech’s undergraduate meat grinder.”

Here are a list of the economic related books he plugs:

Economic Philosophy:
A.N. Whitehead, “Process and Reality”
Bertrand Russell, “History of Western Philosophy” & “Human Knowledge”
Sir Arthur Eddington, “The Nature of the Physical World”
Sir James Jeans “Physics and Philosophy”
Dick Howey

Economics
Samuelson, “Foundations of Economic Analysis”
Von Mises, “Human Action”
Lord Beveridge, Full Employment in a Free Society
JMK, The Theory of Employment, Interest and Money
Girard Debreu, Theory of Value

Mathematical Economics
R.G.D Allen, Jacob Marschak, J.R. Hicks
Imperfect Competition: Joan Robinson, Edward Chamberlin

F.A. Hayek, David Hume, Sidney Sigel, Amos Tversky, Martin Shubik, Charles Plot, Alvin Hansen, Keynes, Foster and Catchings, Hayek, Hicks, Samuelson, Metzler, Friedman, Leontief, Daniel Kahneman.

Bottom Line: Worth reading if you’re interested in economics.

The Lost World of Genesis One

John H. Walton’s new book The Lost World of Genesis One looks very interesting. I placed my order last week and shall review it soon.

Publisher’s Description:

In this astute mix of cultural critique and biblical studies, John H. Walton presents and defends twenty propositions supporting a literary and theological understanding of Genesis 1 within the context of the ancient Near Eastern world and unpacks its implications for our modern scientific understanding of origins.

Ideal for students, professors, pastors and lay readers with an interest in the intelligent design controversy and creation-evolution debates, Walton’s thoughtful analysis unpacks seldom appreciated aspects of the biblical text and sets Bible-believing scientists free to investigate the question of origins.

Here are some Sample Pages.

G. Campbell Morgan, "Discipleship" (originally published by F.H. Revell, 1897).

Fresh off his duty as director of D. L. Moody’s Northfield Bible Conferences, the Rev. G. Campbell Morgan (1863-1945) penned a series of devotional essays on the subject of discipleship.  Morgan, who was converted under Moody’s preaching in his native England, returned to London to pastor Westminster Chapel and later mentored its next pastor, the influential evangelical leader Martyn Lloyd-Jones.

Summary

In the first chapter of his book, Morgan sets forth what he understands to be the Biblical definition of discipleship:

“Disciples” is the term consistently used in the four Gospels to mark the relationship  existing between Christ and His followers.  Discipleship means a return to divine ideals through the teaching and power of Jesus . . .¹

Discipleship in this sense refers to the way in which a Christian goes about following Jesus Christ.  Jesus is understood as Lord of Lords and the greatest of teachers.  In chapter 2, Morgan tells readers that Christians must look specifically to the Sermon on the Mount (SotM) for Jesus’ own teaching on how disciples should pattern their discipleship.

Once Christians understand how to follow Jesus and His SotM, Morgan charges them to move to the next phase of the development process, a systematic application of the SotM theology  into every aspect of their daily lives.  Morgan recommends 9 areas in which application should take place and each area makes up a subsequent chapter in the book (The Disciple at Home, at Business, at Play, as a Friend, in Christian Service, in Sorrow, in Joy, in Death, and in Eternity).

While each chapter area offers a helpful devotional insight, a few stand out as being particularly helpful.  In chapter 5, for example, Morgan reminds readers that work is not the curse from the Fall.  Work is good but becomes laborious as a result of the Fall. Disciples, therefore, are reminded to find joy in work dedicated unto the Lord.

Morgan pairs work with the value of play in the life of a disciple:

The power to laugh, to cease work, and frolic in forgetfulness of all the conflict, to make merry, is a divine bestowment upon man, and its absence in any case is as sure a mark of the blighting effects of sin . . .²

Given that he was writing this chapter at a time when Britain was a major player in an emerging global economy, it is shocking that he would pen these words to his readers and charge them to slow down.

Pros and Cons

Discipleship is a great read both as a devotional book and as an introduction to discipleship theology.  Morgan makes complex subjects like the Kingdom of God easily accessible to most readers and each chapter is relatively brief and easy to read in one sitting.  I also found Morgan’s overall structure beneficial for helping integrate a theology of discipleship into everyday life.

The one glaring weakness that I find with Morgan’s work is in the thin description of discipleship.  The author reduces discipleship to an individual way of life or philosophy of spirituality. While I agree that the disciples were those who followed Jesus in the Bible, the disciples were also the recipients of the Great Commission in which Jesus told them to “make disciples.”  The command implies that discipleship is more than just an individual way of life and that discipleship requires a program of some sorts in which the church body strategically makes non-followers into followers of Jesus.

All in all, I recommend this book as a valuable resource in helping leaders think correctly about discipleship.  I could not agree more with Morgan’s definition and application of discipleship theology.  However, this book needs to be read in conjunction with a practical program book, like Bill Hull’s The Disciple Making Church, so as to communicate a more robust approach to discipleship.

_____________________

1. G. Campbell Morgan, Discipleship (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1973 reprinted edition),
pp. 11, 51.  You may find a copy of this book at Amazon.com here.

2. p. 59.

Book Review: Lush Life by Richard Price (2008)

If you’re a fan of Richard Price’s writing from the TV show The Wire, Lush Life will satisfy the void left by the series’ end.  In his eighth novel Price trails a murder in New York, using Wire-esque narrative arcs to unravel the layers of life on the street.  The characters are multi-dimensional and the dialogue carries the novel.  Price’s ear is true as is his empathy for desperate people.

The novel centers on the murder of a young man who stood up to some muggers and how two detectives work the case.  Price then spirals outward to include the back stories of the victim, his friends and family, the shooters, the cops, and others affected by the late-night slaying.

Though primarily a plot-driven novel, the heart of this story is really the setting and the world of the lower East side of New York that Price takes into.  In The New York Review of Books, Michael Chabon said,

The classic Price dyad of chief characters is represented in Lush Life by the Lower East Side itself, its authentically grungy streetscape of immigrants and poor people (Asian, Latino, and black) alternating like a point of view, block by block rather than chapter by chapter, with the new overlay of high-rise “add on” condos, fashionable shops and nightspots, and realer-than-real themed restaurants like Café Berkmann, all distressed finish and spotless tile, where Eric works as a manager.

Walter Kirn also tries to capture the essence of Price in the NYT:

Price is a builder, a drafter of vast blueprints, and though the Masonic keystone of his novel is a box-shaped N.Y.P.D. office, he stacks whole slabs of city on top of it and excavates colossal spaces beneath it. He doesn’t just present a slice of life, he piles life high and deep. Time too. The past is rendered mostly as an absence, though, as a set of caverns, a hive of catacombs. Some of his characters’ ancestors are down there, but the main way we know this is through the hollowness of the new neighborhood built over their crypts.

As an exploration of place and time the novel soars.  As an exploration of urban life that turns stereotypes and cliches inside-out  the novel excels.  It also hammers home the vibrant multi-cultural world and its tensions.  Price doesn’t really reach beyond this in terms of theme, but the novel isn’t any less for it.  He doesn’t over-weight dialogue or use it falsely; he lets the characters respond and react honestly.

The only quibble I have is with the way we follow the murderers.  It robs some of the tension in scenes since we know more than the characters do, but at times it’s worth it as the shooter once bumps into the victim’s sister.  Price creates so many worlds and as they intersect the book really takes off.

• For a good analysis of Price’s writing style and some examples of the excellent dialogue, read The Mookse and the Gripes review here.
• Price discusses Lush Life on Charlie Rose here.