Category: NonFiction

Why Things Bite Back

gr4c51 Comment

Tenner, Edward. Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006.

I first became interested in Why Things Bite Back when I thought of the title in relation to health and flu vaccinations. The more aggressively we try to fight the ills of the seasonal flu the more resilient the virus gets.  Now with the vast-reaching and rapid spread of the H1N1 virus Why Things Bite Back seems even more telling.

Edward Tenner takes an in-depth look at the technology that first set out to make our lives easier, more convenient, and faster: technologies that include chemistry, invention, ingenuity and just plain luck. The advances science and medicine don’t come without fault and failure. It’s these drawbacks that Tenner describes as “revenges.” Seat belts that save adults but kill children, for example. The unexpected thrill to Tenner’s book is that it isn’t dry and didactic. There is actual humor hidden in the irony.

My favorite line (for obvious reasons), “…what are we to make of stepping from office elevators into our cars and driving to health clubs to use treadmills (a feature of nineteenth-century prisons)…” (p 10).

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Dewey Deconstructed: 300s” (p 66).

Fire Next Time

gr4c5Leave a comment

Baldwin, James. The Fire Next Time. New York: Dial Press, 1963.

The Fire Next Time is a slim yet powerful 120 pages. Baldwin does not waste a single page on empty words or phrases. Every sentence is an argument for America to beware of “the fire next time.” He implores the reader to take a page from history and not turn a blind eye to it; we must change the course of racial inequality in order to survive. Even though The Fire Next Time was published not even ten years after the integration of Little Rock’s (Arkansas) Central High Baldwin’s fiery words hold true today.

The title, The Fire Next Time, is drawn from a “recreation of the Bible in a slave song” – ‘God gave Noah the rainbow sign, no more water, the fire next time’ (p 120), yet there are several examples of such warning scattered throughout the entire book. This warning is in a couple of my favorite quotes.

“But, in the end, it is the threat of universal extinction hanging over all the world today that changes, totally and forever, the nature of reality and brings into devastating question the true meaning of man’s history” (p 71), and “Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets ans one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time” (p 105).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in two chapters: “African American Fiction: He Say (p 10), even though it isn’t fiction, and again in the chapter “Essaying Essays” (p 81).

Hole in the Universe

gr4c5Leave a comment

Cole, K.C. The Hole in the Universe: How Scientists Peered Over the Edge of Emptiness and Found Everything. New York: Harcourt Inc., 2001.

January is quickly becoming my month for nonfiction (sorry, S.!). The Hole in the Universe is what Nancy Pearl calls a book about nothing and author K.C. Cole supports that with her subtitle, “How Scientists Peered over the Edge of Emptiness and Found Everything.” Cole combines physics, science fiction, literature, mathematics, and humor to make her case. Who knew a book about nothing could be so entertaining? Cole has the ability to take scientific fact and not-so-exact speculation and make nothing about something.

Line to scratch your head over: “Potential, it turns out, is one of the most impressive properties of nothing” (p 3). From that sentence on, I knew I was in for an interesting time.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust” in the chapter called, “Zero: This Will Mean Nothing To You” (p 256).

In Search of Robinson Crusoe

gr4c5Leave a comment

Severin, Tim. In Search of Robinson Crusoe. New York: Basic Books, 2002.

I have no idea why but in the beginning of reading In Search of Robinson Crusoe I couldn’t tell if it was fact or fiction.

Reading In Search of Robinson Crusoe reminded me a great deal of the show “Myth Busters.” Everyone knows the story of (or at least heard of) Robinson Crusoe. Tim Severin sets out to explain the landscape of Daniel Defoe’s imagination, beginning with the Isla Robinson Crusoe, 400 miles off the coast of Chile. Weaving together fact, fiction, myth, mystery, history and adventure Severin is able to produce a believable retracing of one of literature’s best known castaways, Robinson Crusoe. What’s more, Severin is able to retrace the ancestry of Man Friday as well.

Oddest sentences: “The overpowering influence is the surrounding ocean. Its weather system brings over 40 inches of rain each year, and although the average temperature is a mild 15 degrees Fahrenheit, the daily conditions veer abruptly from warm sunshine to gusts of cold wind and rain showers” (p 46).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Islands, Desert and Otherwise” (p 128).

January ’10 is…

gr4c5Leave a comment

January 2010 will prove to be an interesting month. Maybe not as interesting as last month, but certainly something. There is a little bit of music: Rebecca Correia at the Iron Horse (this FRIDAY night!!!). I’d like to do something musical; something out of state…And speaking of going out of state, there is a pie/bed & breakfast thing in Rockland, Maine I’d like to check out with my mom at the end of the month.

  • High Five by Janet Evanovich ~ I know I’m cheating because I already read this on New Year’s Day – in one day. It was fun!
  • Echo House by Ward Just ~ in honor of Just’s birth month and also the month a new president (of the U.S.) takes office. I am already 75 pages into this one. It’s great!
  • In Search of Robinson Crusoe by Timothy Severin ~ in honor of January the best time to visit the islands. What islands, you ask? Any islands, I say.
  • First American: Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin by H.W. Brands ~ in honor of Benjamin Franklin. No, scratch that. I have been told to start with Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography, so I will.
  • Hole in the Universe by K.C. Cole ~ I have no idea why I am reading this.

If there is time:

  • I, Robot by Isaac Asimov ~ in honor of Isaac Asimov.

For LibraryThing and the Early Review Program: Then Came the Evening by Brian Hart (already reviewed). I have word that I am to receive another book but because there are still two others out there that I haven’t received I don’t trust that I’ll get it in January. It might become a February book.

Last Best Place

gr4c5Leave a comment

Kittredge, William and Annick Smith, ed. The Last Best Place: a Montana Anthology. Helena: Montana Historical Society Press, 1988.

When this book first arrived I took one look at it and freaked out. How in the world did I manage to order a book that is not only 1161 pages long but also is not renewable? How would I ever get through 1000+ pages in two weeks? It was ridiculous. When I did the math it equalled out to approximately 90 pages a day in order to finish it on time. Ridiculous. Ridiculous because I was still struggling through the 900+ page biography on Winston Churchill. Luckily, Last Best Place was fun to read!
Starting with Native American Indian folklore and diary accounts of expeditions through the virgin geography of Montana Last Best Place opens in the early 1700’s. It ends with a section of contemporary poetry. The folklore was probably the dullest part. I firmly believe stories like these are best communicated orally because of their repetitious nature. First hand accounts of settlers seeking new land were the most interesting.This is not a book to read all at once. Its 1161 pages encourage random readings and not necessarily in chapter order.

Favorite lines: “Curiosity, a love of wild adventure, and perhaps also a hope of profit, for times are hard, and my best coat has a sort of sheepish hang-dog hesitation to encounter fashionable folk…” (p 170).
“The situation of a man gliding over a beautiful river in a boat always has something magical about it…(p 205).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Montana: In Big Sky Country” (p 156).

Last Lion

gr4c5Leave a comment

Manchester, William. Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill – Visions of Glory 1874-1932. Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1983.

The scope of daily life during Churchill’s lifetime is covered extensively in Manchester’s Preamble and Prologue to Last Lion. The changing social scene, the evolving cultures and ever-daring fashions are included; while these details are simple,  they bog down the biography making it long and tedious. The preamble and prologue to Last Lion are like an old buggy, a very slow start. As a result the first chapter doesn’t begin until page 110.

Once the reader gets to the real beginning of Manchester’s biography on Churchill the story is fascinating. Manchester does an amazing job including photographs and letters to illustrate Churchill’s fascinating life. Manchester’s style of writing flows freely. Humor gives the biography a certain sparkle.

Favorite lines, “Churchilll could be very difficult. When a plane was preparing to land and the NO SMOKING sign flashed on, he would light up a cigar. If he found himself driving in a traffic jam, he wheeled his car out on the shoulder or sidewalk and drove to the head of the line” (p 27). While those situations would annoy the crap out of me I couldn’t help but laugh at them, too.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Winston Churchill” (p 44). Go figure.

November 09 was…

gr4c5Leave a comment

November was a very up and down, all over the place month. I started the month of November by worrying about breast exams and pap smears and ended it stressing about unanswered tests. I started the month worrying about Thanksgiving and ended it by wishing time with family would never end. In between I gave up my sirsy plate, rewrote an entire assessment plan, made a new friend, walked away from heartache, closed the door on an old chapter, and discovered a guilty pleasure. Speaking of guilty pleasures. For books it was:

  • Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling ~ childrens book. I read the stories about the alphabet and the first letter. Very cute.
  • Dingley Falls by Michael Malone ~ 560 pages of sexy, funny, soap-opera-like, over the top fun!
  • An Invitation to Indian Cooking by Madhur Jaffrey ~ a great reference tool for those who like Indian cuisine (yum!)
  • Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill – Visions of Glory 1874 – 1932 by William Manchester ~ 900+ page biography on part of Winston Churchill’s life.
  • The Plague by Albert Camus ~ in honor of Camus’s birth month (& a reread).
  • Last Best Place: a Montana Anthology edited by William Kittredge and Annick Smith ~ just exactly what it sounds like, an anthology about Montana.

For the fun of it I banged out Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink in one night, thanks to a Phish show. If Kipling’s book is for children I would call Brink’s book for grade schoolers…

For LibraryThing & the Early Review program I finished Ostrich Feathers by Miriam Romm. There was a lot of heart and soul poured into the writing of this book! I also read and reviewed Penelope Holt’s The Apple. While both Early Review books covered the Holocaust (one nonfiction, one fiction) their styles were incredibly different. I found The Apple to be more soul-piercing, if that makes sense.

Note: Barbara Kingsolver came out with a new book on November 3rd. It has been torture not to run out and buy a copy for myself!

The Apple

gr4c56 Comments

Holt, Penelope. The Apple. New York: York House Press, 2009.

Can I call this book righting a wrong? While it doesn’t go that far, I feel like it goes a long way to making a once-ugly story beautiful again.

The Apple is a love story based on “the Herman Rosenblat Holocaust Love Story.” If you don’t know anything about the Herman Rosenblat story The Apple is a sweet tale about how a young Jewish boy survives the Nazi concentration camps at Buchenwald. If you do know Rosenblat’s story The Apple becomes an explanation, a reasoning for the fabrication of a once-true (but not) romance during war; a story of love in hell. It give the lie a little more reason, if you will.

Rosenblat is a Holocaust survivor who claimed to have met his future wife during his imprisonment at Buchenwald. He was 15 and she was 9. He claimed she kept him alive by throwing an apple a day over the barbed wire fence, unbeknownst the to guards and other prisoners. Years later, supposedly reunited by a blind date, they fall in love and have been married ever since. Their story attracted the attention of the media and soon they were the darlings of the talk show circuit, including Oprah. Quickly, a book and movie deal were in the works. This amazing story needed to be told. Imagine everyone’s surprise when historians and holocaust survivors alike started crying foul. Details didn’t add up and soon Rosenblat was admitting he fabricated scenarios and embellished details. But, what of the wife? Surely she needed to corroborate the story in order to make it the romance of the century?

At times I found The Apple difficult to read. The subject matter is sobering, the details are intense. While it is considered a work of fiction, Hitler’s reign of terror really did happen. Concentration camps like Buchenwald and Treblinka existed as communities of torture and slavery. There is no denying the pain that Herman Rosenblat suffered and survived. Holt’s account of that time is raw and unflinching. Her writing is as strong as Rosenblat’s desire to bring a beautiful end to an otherwise painful history.

Ostrich Feathers

gr4c5Leave a comment

Romm, Miriam. Ostrich Feathers. New York: Gefen Publishing House, 2009.

I had a hard time getting into this book. Maybe it’s from all the head-in-the-sand burying I did about the subject matter in the past.

I have always said reading translations were difficult for me. I cannot help but question situations and details and wonder if they haven’t been distorted by the translation. Miriam Romm’s slightly autobiographical story of the search for her biological father takes her back to Poland where she befriends an elderly man she secretly hopes is her real father. Their conversations and efforts to uncover the truth of the past are mechanical and false sounding. I blame this on the translation.  When Miriam laments that she is an orphan despite having a biological mother and sister I blame the translation for a loose interpretation of the word ‘orphan’. When Miriam contradicts herself about sources or when ages don’t add up I again, blame the translation. Chronological order is confusing as well.
But, probably the biggest obstacle I had to reading Ostrich Feathers was the lack of evidence her biological father even survived the Holocaust. It isn’t clear what detail led her to believe he hadn’t been murdered by the Nazis. What evidence did she have that would make her, an otherwise smart woman, cling to the improbability that this stranger was her father? It bothered me at the end when she suggests she used the old man to fuel a fantasy.
While Ostrich Feathers was written with obvious passion and intensity probably the best and most fascinating part of the story is Romm’s research abilities. The fact she was able to recover so much lost information and family history is really remarkable.

Confession: I was surprised “Carl” wasn’t included in the list of acknowledgements. Was he even a real person? Was his character created as a literary vehicle for telling the story?

Invitation to Indian Cooking

gr4c52 Comments

Jaffrey, Madhur. An Invitation to Indian Cooking. New Jersey: Ecco Press, 1999.

I have to start off by saying I love Madhur Jaffrey’s cookbooks. I own several and all of them are well-organized and beautifully illustrated (or have gorgeous photographs).

An Invitation to Indian Cooking might have been a more accurate title had it included the subtitle Getting to Know Indian Cuisines and Ingredients because Jaffrey not only invites you into the world of Indian cuisine she also includes history lessons and ingredient explanations in addition to recipes. While her tone is conversational I found it to be a little didactic at times. Her claims that Americans, on the whole, don’t know what well-prepared rice tastes like is one such example. Another drawback to An Invitation to Indian Cooking is its out-of-date information. Basmati rice, Jaffrey recommends, is readily available at specialty stores. That may have been true in 1973 when her first cookbook was published, but I expected the reprint to have some updated information. I also find it hard to believe that out of 50 states only 12 have stores that carry authentic Indian ingredients.
But, having said all that, I love the recipes Jaffrey includes in her first cookbook. I like her attention to detail and her comparisons between American and Indian products. For example, Jaffrey points out that American chicken is more tender than chicken purchased in India, therefore traditional Indian cooking techniques would not work well on an American-raised bird.

“The chicken available in American markets is so tender that it begins to fall apart well before it can go through the several stages required in most Indian recipes” (p 86).

If you are ambitious enough to make several Indian recipes at the same time Jaffrey includes a series of different menus to try.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust  in the chapter called, “India: a Reader’s Itinerary” (p 125).

November 09 is…

gr4c5Leave a comment

November is a bundle of nerves dressed as confidence. I am trying to be brave in the face of unknown in Indecision City. Thanksgiving looms large.

For books the list is short. Two of the chosen titles are monsters (each over 500 pages long):

  • Dingley Falls by Michael Malone (in honor of Malone’s birth month)
  • Empire Express by David Haward Bain ~ in honor of National Travel Month
  • Invitation to Indian Cooking by Madhur Jaffrey ~ in honor of November being the best time to visit India
  • Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling ~ in honor of November being National Writing Month
  • Last Lion: Visions by William Manchester ~ in honor of Winston Spencer Churchill

I will be lucky if I get to Last Lion since Empire Express is over 900 pages long. The other book I’m hoping to get to if there is time is Last Best Place by various authors because the best time to visit Montana is November and I’ve always wanted to go.

For LibraryThing and the Early Review Program I am reading Ostrich Feathers by Miriam Romm. I was notified in early October I would be getting it but since the book actually didn’t arrive until October 24th I have decided to call it a November book.  I also got word I will be receiving a November book. I guess I will be very busy!

ps~ I just received word my all-time favorite author, Barbara Kingsolver, is coming out with a new novel. Holy freak me out! I simply cannot wait! YAY!

October (2009) was…

gr4c5Leave a comment

October has always been my “hang on”” month. It’s the month I hold my breath for while waiting for September to release me. This October was no different. It started with a trip to Maine to see West Coast family (and a great foggy run), a trip homehome andandand Kisa got to go (yay), Hilltop got a much needed haircut, there were a ton of new Natalie sightings, and, dare I say, the promise of a Hilltop Thanksgiving? The end of the month was a little stressful – a lump in the breast and a missing ovary. No wonder I read so many books and here they are:

  • Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis ~ sci-fi story about a man who is kidnapped and taken to Mars.
  • The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis ~ coming of age story about a young girl who is a chess playing phenom.
  • A Fine and Private Place by Peter S. Beagle ~ a ghost story about a man who lives in a graveyard for twenty years.
  • Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters ~ a mystery about two unmarried women traveling through Egypt and being pursued by a mummy.
  • The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan ~ nonfiction about the role of women through the ages (up to the 1960s when the book was written). Oh, how far we’ve come!
  • House on the Strand by Daphne du Maurier ~ a spooky tale about time travel.
  • When Found, Make a Verse of by Helen Smith Bevington ~ a commonplace book full of poetry, proverbs and excerpts.
  • Empire Falls by Richard Russo ~ a novel about small town life (read because October is the best time to visit New England).
  • The Natural by Barnard Malamud ~ a novel about a baseball player (read because October is World Series month).
  • In a Glass Darkly by Sheridan Le Fanu ~ a compilation of short stories all on the dark side (read in time for Halloween – you know…horror, fantasy, mystery, etc).
  • The Life You Save May Be Your Own: an American Pilgrimage by Paul Elie ~ biographies of Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Flannery O’Connor and Walker Percy in one book (read for Group Reading Month).

For fun, I am rereading Mary Barney’s Ring That Bell (2003) because I want to challenge my cooking and make every recipe in the book. So far I’ve cooked/baked my way through nine recipes.

For the Early Review program from LibraryThing I was supposed to read Ostrich Feathers by Miriam Romm. It hasn’t arrived as of yet, so it may very well turn into a November book.

The Life You Save

gr4c51 Comment

Elie, Paul. The Life You Save May Be Your Own: an American Pilgrimage. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003.

What do Flannery O’Connor, Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day and Walker Percy have in common? For starters, they are all authors who struggled not only with identity, but religious faith as well. It’s this search for religious truth through writing that binds them together. They conducted their searches and tested boundaries of Catholicism through the art of writing.  Mary Flannery O’Connor began her writing career in Georgia at a very young age and was considered a prodigy by many: Thomas Merton, just a couple of states north in Kentucky began his writing as a Trappist monk who wrote letters about his faith: Dorothy Day, while older than all the others, founded the Catholic Worker newspaper in New York: Walker Percy started out as a doctor in the furthest south of them all, in New Orleans, but quit medicine to become novelist. In time the group became known as the School of the Holy Ghost because of their pursuit of the answers to religion’s biggest questions. Paul Elie brings that School of the Holy Ghost back together again in a 2003 book called The Life You Save May Be Your Own containing biographies and literary criticisms of all four writers. Elie does a great job detailing all four lives and the times they lived in, but is more thorough with the women than the men. Flannery O’Connor gets the most attention while Thomas Merton gets the least.

I didn’t find any quotes that really spoke up or out, but my favorite part was Elie’s breakdown of Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer. I am almost tempted to read it again now that I have a better understanding of Percy and what he was trying to say.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Group Portraits” (p 109).

When Found Make a Verse Of

gr4c5Leave a comment

Bevington, Helen Smith. When Found, Make a Verse of. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1961.

This book has a fascinating concept. Using a phrase from Dickens’ Dombey and Son (“when found, make a note of”), Bevington changes it to “when found, make a verse of.” Throughout literature Bevington’s reaction to it is to write a poem. When Found Make a Verse Of is her way of responding to what she has read. A conversation between writer and page. Oddly enough, the poetry was my least favorite part of When Found, Make a Verse Of. I enjoyed the pieces of literature from Yeats, Cummings, Frost, Russell (to name a few) and found them just as fascinating as Bevington did. I was more thankful for the compilation of  great authors in one place than the poetry that accompanied it.

Favorite lines: In reaction to John Ruskin’s attempt to separate intellect and feeling in his diary, “Poor young man, his head was never to know what happened in the heart” (p 23).
“I am, then, a fraud as teacher, a mere slave of time in this world of morality, circling to decay? I am” (p 45). 

BookLust Twist: In More Book Lust in the chapter “Commonplace Books” (p 52).