Three Stars

Sophronia and her friends are getting ready to head back to her hometown for her brother’s engagement masquerade ball (ah, yes. the traditional engagement masquerade – the husband and I really missed out). Their good friend, who is part of a werewolf pack (although not a werewolf herself), is distraught and leaves their dirigible school when she gets bad news. From there, things get even odder.

Steampunk is a fairly new genre for me, but I get its appeal, and I enjoy these somewhat quick reads. Things can’t be solved with a quick text message or crowdsourced post on social media – people have to really work to puzzle things out. It’s refreshing. Plus, it’s fun to picture these worlds where everyone is dressed really nicely and worries about manners. I wouldn’t want to actually live in that time (apparently some members of the conservative party in Ms. Carriger’s universe are just as racist as some of the politicians in our universe), or in a world with vampires and werewolves, but it can be fun to visit.

Slight side note – can people who are creating new world consider creating ones where being gay isn’t a thing that people find ‘shocking?’ Or find to be a bad thing? There’s so much creativity in this book that it’s disappointing that sexuality – and conservative views of it – seem to have been transplanted directly from our universe to theirs.

Regardless, if you like steampunk and YA, I think you’ll probably enjoy this book.

Five Stars

I don’t think that I’ve laughed out loud at a book that wasn’t a straight up comedy memoir in a long time. Randall Munroe is the cartoonist behind xkcd. In this book, he takes on some pretty awesome questions that are utterly ridiculous (but still fun to think about) and sorts out the science. The tone kind of reminded me of my favorite fiction book this year, “The Martian.” There are a lot of calculations that I don’t fully understand, but he explains them well and with loads of humor.

Each response include some hilarious footnotes (seriously, there’s one that’s a somewhat obscure reference to the TV show Friends) and lots of his great cartoons. A sample question (and one of my favorites, because it involves maps) is ‘which US state is actually flown over the most?’ To answer this, Mr. Munroe looked at 10,000 flights and determined a state was flown over if a flight did not take off or land in the state, but crossed the state’s airspace. He also, for a little extra fun, calculated which airport is responsible for the most flights that cross that state. The answer to the question, by the way, is probably not what you’d guess it is.

The editing of this book is superb; some of the best comments appear as a surprise turn after flipping the page. And the questions are mostly really interesting; only a couple responses did I feel like skimming. Mr. Munroe also offers up examples of some of the more disturbing questions he’s received. He doesn’t answer these, but provides sometimes hilarious cartoon responses to them.

I read this book over a couple of days while travelling and think it’s mostly perfect as a travelling book. Each question only takes up three-five pages (and probably 20% of that is cartoon), so you can pick it up for ten minutes at a time. Really the only drawback for reading a physical version (as opposed to the ebook) is that it is currently in hardback and a slightly odd size – the height seems to match most hardcovers, but it is a bit wider. If you travel with a partner, I suggest bringing it as once you finish it your partner can pick it up and will likely enjoy it.

This one has been on my to-read list basically since it came out. I knew I admired her for her stance on education (and her willingness to be so vocal at such a young age), but I didn’t know much about her beyond that, or much about her home.

This is a really interesting book for someone like me, who is not familiar with Pakistan, or at least not familiar with it beyond what gets reported in the U.S. media. If you look up images of Swat (the region of Pakistan where Ms. Yousafzai and her family come from), you will see it is utterly gorgeous. The book provides some basic history of the area, giving the reader a lot of great information about the culture, about religious influences, about the military, and the politics of the region.

The book starts with a quick chapter on the assassination attempt that nearly took her life and made her even more recognizable than she was, but the vast majority of the book is about her life before the shooting. In addition to the history I mention above, she talks about her daily life, about how things changed with the Taliban, about challenges of education. Her father is a really interesting person, as is her mother; I loved reading about them as well as Ms. Yousafzai.

The book itself is told in Ms. Yousafzai’s voice, with some assistance from Ms. Lamb. I don’t know if it was written in Pashto and then translated, or written directly in English (she is fluent in those languages, as well as Urdu), but it definitely does feel like something written by a young woman. The language is at times very flowery and the sentences can seem short and simple, but they paint a very vivid picture. I can clearly pull up in my mind her home, her school and her town; she is an excellent storyteller.

You probably heard that she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year; her work is pretty amazing. If you want to learn more (but don’t plan on picking up the book just now), you can visit the Malala Fund website.

Three stars.

This is a dense book, but it’s easy to read. It’s an almost 400-page look at the four years when the Nazis occupied Paris. As someone raised in the U.S., I’ve heard jokes about how quickly the French surrendered during World War II, and how the U.S. liberated them. But that seemed a bit simplistic, so when I saw this in a book store I knew I wanted to read it.

Mr. Rosbottom has done a ton of research and created a really interesting story. Even though there is no, say, central narrative (i.e. there is no one family we follow from start to finish, which some writers of history do, such as Erik Larson did with “In the Garden of Beasts,” which I read earlier this year), each chapter follows the previous in a logical manner, and is still filled with stories that help us understand what life was like.

He spends time talking through how very quickly the French did come to an agreement with the Nazis about how France would be governed. Ultimately this probably saved Paris from being destroyed in bombing campaigns. He follows that up with how the Nazis were greeted and interacted with Parisians during the first year, and how that slowly changed. There were eventually curfews, and rations. Jewish people (especially foreign-born Jewish people) were rounded up and send off to prisons and concentration camps.

And this is where the most interesting discussions come up. How much should the French people – not the military, but the people – have fought back? By not engaging in a resistance movement, were they essentially accepting the Nazis? Were they cowards, or were they people who recognized that they didn’t have much they could do? Should we blame those who, say, served Nazi soldiers, even though the acts of resistance some carried out resulted in many deaths of French people? Do we blame people for doing what they think they need to do to survive?

This is clearly a sore spot in French history. Immediately after the liberation, those who were considered to be ‘collaborators’ were treated horribly – and many of those were women, who were taken in the street, had their heads shaved, and paraded around for sleeping with Nazis. Some people were accused of things they didn’t do and were killed by mobs. And some, like members of the French Police, helped bring in people to be sent out of the country and ultimately killed. How much responsibility should they bear when acting under an Occupation?

These are bigger discussions than can be resolved in one book, but if Paris interests you, if World War II interests you, and if philosophical discussions interest you, I’d suggest this book.

Four Stars

I heard about the “KonMari Method” from a quick blurb in New York Magazine a few weeks back. Seeing as how I love to be tidy and clean, as well as the fact that I’m feeling a bit weighed down from all of our stuff, I ordered the book and started reading it on Sunday. I nearly finished it in one go, I enjoyed it so much.

First off, I must admit that this problem of having too much stuff is admittedly not a luxury everyone has. Duh. Just as pervious reviews of books about what to eat have been greeted with the occasional ‘nice to have that problem’ comment, I can imagine that this might cause more than a few eyes to roll. And that’s cool – you do you. But considering the fact that I, for example, love to write in my books, I often can’t go the library route, leading me to acquire and hold on to many more books than I actually really want to keep. I think most folks who have access to some disposable income can end up spending it on things they either don’t need now, or hold onto items they no longer need.

Ms. Kondo’s premise is that homes get messy because we have more items than we need, and instead of constantly buying clever containers, shelving units and even full off-site storage lockers, we need to cull what we have back to the items that bring us joy. Yeah, that’s right. Joy. Some reviewers get caught up on this – how could toilet paper, for example, bring us joy? Well, considering the despair I’ve felt over discovering I was out of toilet paper only after I’d put myself in a position to need it, I don’t actually think that’s a stretch. Same with, say, a kitchen tool. My bread knife doesn’t make my eyes sparkle, but man do I love the fact that I don’t smush delicate breads when I use it.

The KonMari method is, on the surface, simple. Touch literally every single thing that you own (in order – starting with clothes), and decide whether to keep it or discard it. Once you are sure you are going to keep the item, you find the right place for it, and that’s where it lives. You don’t go room by room as some places suggest; you do all of one type of item in one go. Anything in that category that you forgot to put in your pile for consideration gets automatically tossed.

She also asks us to be respectful of our things, to thank them for doing what they have done for us. This might be too touchy-feely for folks, but it worked for me. And it helps ease the pain of the slow realization that you aren’t ever going to read Ulysses, and that’s okay. You bought the book, and it taught you that reading Ulysses isn’t enough of a priority for it to make sense for you to hold onto the book. Thank it and discard it.

Yes, discard. That could mean donate, recycle, or even throw out. Does that seem wasteful? I think it might to some. If you bought a dress (or received it as a gift) four years ago and never wore it, her theory is it is more wasteful taking up physical space in your closet and emotional space in your mid than it is to donate it to Goodwill. And this does go for EVERYTHING – she even direct readers to take every photo out of every photo album and photo box, go through them, and only keep the ones that really speak to you. Brutal, right? But man, that sounds kind of amazing.

If anything I’m writing appeals to you, then I strongly recommend this book. I plan to tackle the clothing portion starting tomorrow night, and I can already tell that there are some items that I’m going to discard that a week ago I couldn’t have imagined. But the chance that I might need it for a Halloween costume in a decade isn’t a good enough reason to keep it around.

Her point is also that once you clean up the clutter from your house, you will have more clarity in other parts of your life. Am I expecting that once we reduce our stuff I’ll suddenly find my dream job? No. But I can see that there may be more subtle benefits. On the second-to-last page of the book, Ms. Kondo writes “The moment you picked up this book with the intention of tidying, you took the first step. If you have read this far, you know what you need to do next.” It might seem cheesy, but I do.

Three Stars

This is a book I’ve seen in a few different higher-end design stores. It seems like the kind of thing that Anthropologie would stock (shoot, maybe they do); I happened to get it at one of those houseware shops that stocks things according to color. We are lucky enough to be heading to Paris at the end of the month, so I felt justified in buying this book.

Written by a journalist and photographer, this book feels more coffee table book than guide book. The photographs are just gorgeous; honestly, I think it’d be worth buying if you just want something gorgeous to set on your coffee table to pick up now and then. The colors are so vibrant. The accompanying text is fine, but it’s not necessarily exactly what I am looking for in what essentially is a very pretty guidebook.

Ms. McCulloch spends half of the book providing overviews and ‘a walk through’ most of the arrondissements. Each overview is about two pages, followed by two pages highlighting shops, cafes, museums and streets the author thinks the reader should explore. All of the places are then listed in the second half of the book, with addresses and fuller descriptions of them. Which leads me to treat this as a reference book. However, it’s so large that there’s just no way I want to bring it with me on our trip. I could go through and write down each place to visit, but it seems to defeat the purpose, as the shops will be lacking in the context the author worked so hard to provide.

Four Stars

I love the movies Pure Luck and Innerspace. They are ridiculous, and probably do not hold up, but I love them. I also hold a special place in my heart for The Three Amigos. The one thing they have in common? Martin Short.

This is a very sweet book, which makes sense, because Mr. Short is, by all reports, a very sweet guy. He seems kind, generous, and funny in a dorky way that works for some people but not everyone. And if written by anyone else, I think this book would rub me the wrong way. It’s basically a few chapters about his early life, followed by a whole lot of name dropping. But the thing is, he’s not actually dropping names. These are just his friends, and they of course feature prominently in his memoir.

Mr. Short faced some rough stuff in his life. He lost his older brother when he was in his early teens; by the time he was 20 he was an orphan. His wife died in 2010, after 30 years of marriage. He’s experienced a lot of loss, but he’s also experienced a lot of joy. He’s had an extraordinarily successful career without necessarily being everywhere all the time. I don’t know if most people think of him as a big name of comedy, but I think comedians think of him as a big name in comedy, and they would know. I also have some issues with some of his choices – especially using a fat suit as Jiminy Glick – but I do genuinely believe it does not ever come from a place of hate.

One thing I really took away from this book is the Nine Categories. It sounds like a cult, but it’s kind of amazing, and I think I’m actually going to try it. Basically, as he faced some challenging times in his career, he wanted to keep things in perspective, and make sure he was devoting time to the things in his life that matter. So, to quote him:

“I decided to systematically compare my performance in that one specific category of my life – work – with my performance in the other important life categories, and to give them all equal importance.” (emphasis mine).

Man, that is a refreshing outlook. It doesn’t put work at the center of everything. In case you’re interested, the categories are:
– Self
– Immediate Family
– Original Family
– Friends
– Money
– Career
– Creativity
– Discipline
– Lifestyle (this is meant to include both having fun and making a difference in the world)

I love it.

I read the book, but I believe he read the audio version, and I’m betting that would be fantastic.

“In 1996, the church sent CDs to members to help them build their own websites, which would then link them to the Scientology site; included in the software was a filter that would block any sites containing material that vilified the church or revealed esoteric doctrines.”

This book is 450 pages long, and filled with horrifying – and fascinating – things. But it wasn’t until page 386 that I actually stopped in my tracks and dog-eared the page with the above sentence. It is just so deeply fucked up to use what should be a nice, innocent gesture (‘here, let us help you build a website’) to do something so underhanded.

I love this book. It is dense but extremely easy to read. It is laid out logically, it is exquisitely researched (his fact-checkers on the New Yorker article that preceded this book had over 900 items they verified), and it is fascinating. I took so much more away from this than just “man, that is a screwed up religion.” Because honestly, I think if we had access to any religion’s leadership within the first few years of its existence, with the investigative resources we have now, someone could write a book like this. I am pretty sure that the leadership of many (most?) organized religions have done some seriously screwed up things (e.g. covering up pedophilia, **cough** Catholicism **cough**), but I don’t think that means that the practitioners are evil, or stupid, or mentally deficient.

This book delves into so much that I could write pages and pages about it. It talks about what makes something a religion – is it spirituality, is it a belief structure, is it a group of practitioners who do similar things – as opposed to a cult. It discusses the dangers of government choosing what is and is not a religion (in the U.S., it’s basically all up to the IRS, which is just weird). It looks at whether this tax exemption designation is really fair, given the fact that it can cover up all manner of hideous human rights abuses (such as those suffered by the Sea Org members of Scientology).

Mr. Wright also looks at the responsibility those who make themselves the face of religious movements have to those who are treated horribly by the church leadership. When I mention Scientology, you all probably picture Tom Cruise first, then John Travolta. If you think on it a bit, you might picture Jenna Elfman, or Kirstie Alley. Given what Mr. Wright so carefully and deliberately lays out as the horrible actions taken by church leadership, and the mountains of evidence available about the violent nature of its current leader, should we hold these people responsible for their willful ignorance?

If that weren’t enough, the book also got me thinking about the nature of belief, and what people are willing to do when they think their life and salvation are on the line. If you are a deep believer yourself, but of a more established religion, some of the things church members go through might not seem so unbelievable if you replace Scientology with a fundamental version of any belief system. If you truly believe that L. Ron Hubbard had some deep connection to the realities of the universe, and the meaning of life, and that the systems he has provided are the best way to make you the best person you can be, then it makes sense that you would stay even when you are scrubbing a dumpster with a toothbrush.

But that gets to the huckster piece of things. Was L. Ron Hubbard mentally ill? Evil? A con man? Much of the first half of the book really focuses on him, and I get the sense that he was a bit of a con man but that he was mostly a deeply troubled person who probably could have seriously benefited from the psychiatry that he built his church to fight against. It’s possible his writing has helped a lot of people. But the Church – that is, the leadership, and those who don’t speak out against and fight back – have done so much harm. And it isn’t so easy to just say ‘why don’t you leave’ – the book outlines so many horrifying ways that the church leadership manipulates people into staying. It’s complicated and an almost textbook example of how to control people with fear.

So what I’m saying, 750 words later, is: read the book. It’s fascinating.

Three Stars

This is another book where I should have read the description more closely. I thought this would be a book about the ills of sugar, and in a way, it was. But what it more specifically was about was one man’s experience with type-two diabetes (including learning from his father, who lost most of his leg and his life to the effects of the disease). It was a compelling story, but the mixture of arrogance and naïveté that the author manages to put forth left me feeling like I could have better spent my time learning about this subject.

Mr. O’Connell is a writer, so that helps. Books by doctors can be a challenge if they don’t also have the skill of being able to explain very scientific terms in ways that those of us not in the medical field can understand. He has written for Men’s Health magazine, and Muscle and Fitness which, for me, left me a bit skeptical. I enjoy magazines like that on occasion (I used to subscribe to Fitness and Self, both of which are aimed at women), but I also am fairly distrustful of some of the articles, especially ones that suggest that something that medical professionals have discussed for years are have ‘obvious’ answers. And Mr. O’Connell, unfortunately, falls into making those claims often. It’s possible he’s correct, but that’s where the arrogance gets to me.

The naiveté, however, comes in when the author talks about how he was able to take control of his type-two diabetes. He had access to many different tests that I don’t think most insurance covers (which could be a problem in itself, although he doesn’t discuss that), and has a job with the flexibility that allows him to do things like eat every two hours. I could do the same, but I’m fairly certain that most non-office jobs don’t allow for that – in factories pregnant women have been fired for needing to just leave to go to the bathroom more than once a shift. And the type of food he says we need to eat is what we usually hear these days, but the cooking time and the cost can be prohibitive, especially to those who might most benefit from it. Plus, he includes loads of (mostly unsubstantiated) supplements to the point that I was reminded of those magazine articles I used to skim skeptically. Even if they work, if anyone has walked into a vitamin or supplement store lately, you know how expensive that all is. And he doesn’t really touch this at all.

I think the information he shares is, for the most part, helpful, and some of it does seem very scientifically sound. He makes strong cases for errors that the entities we most trust on these issues – such as medical associations, including the American Diabetes Association – are getting a lot of the issues around type-two diabetes wrong, but at the same time he spends three chapters arguing that something that only one doctor (his) thinks is a huge issue, but other medical professionals definitely do not. Is his doctor the lone correct voice? Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaybe. But I don’t think this author is in a position to determine that, and he speaks as though he is.