tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-75700897189580113972024-03-14T01:36:37.935-04:00All The Things I've LostJust imagine if I could remember every book I've ever read.Danielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14798260312344004773noreply@blogger.comBlogger60125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570089718958011397.post-37072229793853378872010-01-26T21:59:00.005-05:002010-01-26T22:46:30.626-05:002666 en español: ¿porqué?<p><i>Academic guilty conscience.</i></p>
<p>As an undergrad, I was a comparative literature major. This is basically like being an English major plus foreign languages. I concentrated in 20th century French and Italian writers, specifically Italo Calvino and Georges Perec, and it was expected that I'd read everything in the original. Since then, reading translations when I could understand the original feels to me like a cop-out, as if I were reading the Cliff's notes.</p>
<p><i>Snob appeal.</i></p>
<p>I won't deny it. Who among us (and by <i>us</i> I mean <i>lit nerds</i>) hasn't looked up from their weighty tome, scanned the other passengers on the bus, and thought, <i>Who else would read this?</i> Reading in a foreign language, you add, <i>And who else <b>could?</b></i></p>
<p><i>D.I.Y.</i></p>
<p>Reading in a language you don't totally understand is a little bit punk rock. The experience is rough around the edges, unfinished. You're taking on a task for yourself — the work of rendering a foreign text comprehensible — that someone else could have done better, but you know that going in. It's a choice you've made, to sacrifice professional polish in exchange for a greater sense of control and full understanding. Think Ramones; think Linux.</p>
<p><i>Language learning.</i></p>
<p>This is more of a rationalization, really.</p>
<p><i>Contributing to the discussion.</i></p>
<p>In the <a href="http://www.bolanobolano.com" target="_blank">various</a> <a href="http://infinitezombies.wordpress.com" target="_blank">internet</a> <a href="http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%232666" target="_blank">forums</a> for this 2666 group read, the question often comes up: <i>What is this like in Spanish? Does what I'm noticing come from Bolaño or the translator?</i> I like to know for sure — that's my foreign languages and literatures training again — but it also gives me a different perspective that is interesting to the other readers who are participating.</p>Danielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14798260312344004773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570089718958011397.post-20328521841982924282007-08-31T11:25:00.000-04:002007-11-21T21:03:19.099-05:00Intuition<p><strong>Author:</strong> Allegra Goodman<br />
<strong>Year:</strong> 2006<br />
<strong>Genre:</strong> Literary fiction</p>
<p><span style="font-style:italic;">Intuition</span> is the story of an academic controversy in which one graduate student accuses another of falsifying results. There's a lot of talk in the book about how science is a search for "truth," while I've always understood it to be a search for "facts." In this case, truth is hard to come by: not only the scientific truth of the results of the experiment in question, but even the more mundane truth about what happened in the laboratory.</p>
<p>Goodman draws up her characters masterfully. What I liked most about it is that there are no clear good guys and bad guys. Instead, you sympathize first with one character, then with another. I really wanted to take sides one way or the other, but I couldn't do it; the characters were too complex.</p>Danielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14798260312344004773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570089718958011397.post-21624480680798184232007-08-20T10:51:00.000-04:002007-11-21T20:47:02.540-05:00DMZ Vol. 1: On the Ground<p><strong>Author:</strong> Brian Wood<br />
<strong>Year:</strong> 2006<br />
<strong>Genre:</strong> Graphic novel</p>
<p>There's a civil war going on in North America. Long Island belongs to one side, New Jersey belongs to the other, and Manhattan is the DMZ. A young reporter gets stranded there and has to find a way to survive, and hopefully send back some exclusive news.</p>
<p>The comic's first impact is a visceral reminder that war is real, and that modern war happens to everyday people in the place where they live. Amid the horrific vision of a bombed-out lower Manhattan, you're forced to remember that the realities of bombed-out Baghdad (and countless other places as well, but especially Baghdad) are just as close to home.</p>
<p>Premise aside, the book's plot and characters are interesting enough to carry you through the first few issues. Future installments will tell whether they're meant to function as your guide through the nightmare landscape of urban war, or will exist as independent entities in their own right.</p>Danielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14798260312344004773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570089718958011397.post-80284371438763033222007-08-20T10:50:00.000-04:002007-11-21T20:55:48.194-05:00Unknown Quantity<p><strong>Author:</strong> John Derbyshire<br />
<strong>Year:</strong> 2006<br />
<strong>Genre:</strong> Science history</p>
<p>I like math. I was a math minor in college, and would have double-majored if I could have taken math classes on my junior year abroad. In high school I was really good at math, but when I took honors math classes in college I was just good enough to hang on for the ride. I realized that, as much as I enjoyed learning about group theory, complex analysis, and the search for really big prime numbers, I wasn't good enough to do it professionally. Sadly, if you don't live in that world full-time, it's astonishingly difficult to keep up with it at all, and so I let my math lapse after graduation.</p>
<p><em>Unknown Quantity</em> is a rare exception: a book about math and math history made accessible to the interested layperson. And Derbyshire doesn't just write about math; he writes about <em>algebra,</em> possibly the most abstract and conceptually challenging branch of theoretical mathematics. By covering the history of algebra over the last 6000 years or so, the book follows how emerging awareness of numbers in ancient Babylonia led to the Greeks, the Renaissance, and the algebra that most people remember (or don't) from high school. Then, in the 17th and 18th centuries, algebra took a sharp turn to the abstract, but Derbyshire makes clear connections to show how it evolved from more representational problems. He challenged me, but he never lost me entirely.</p>Danielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14798260312344004773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570089718958011397.post-33137852389968558392007-07-31T22:18:00.000-04:002007-08-21T11:54:07.755-04:00The Two Towers<p><strong>Author:</strong> J.R.R. Tolkien<br />
<strong>Year:</strong> 1954<br />
<strong>Genre:</strong> Fantasy</p>
<p>After whiling away a summer afternoon with Peter Jackson's <em>Fellowship of the Ring</em> movie, I wanted to continue the story. So, I bought the DVD of <em>The Two Towers</em> online, and reread the book while I waited for it to arrive. Of course we watched the movie as soon as it got here, and of course my attention was drawn primarily to the differences between the book and movie versions.</p>
<p>Now, I'm not one of those die-hard LOTR fans who finds fault with any deviation from the original. On the contrary, out of the four most important variations I noticed, two of them were positive:</p>
<ul>
<li>In the book, Merry and Pippin convince the Ents to fight against Saruman. In the movie, Treebeard is reluctant to join either side in the war, and Merry has to trick him into walking near Isengard and seeing the devastation for himself. I like Merry's having to do something clever (any redeeming moments are welcome for those two troublemakers), and it's really effective on film to see the horror of deforestation from an Ent's perspective.</li>
<li>In the movie, but not in the book, the elves come to the aid of the Rohirrim at Helm's Deep. This led to some cool fight scenes and gave Viggo Mortensen the chance to speak a little more Elvish. More important, though, the alliance between elves and men is one of the recurring themes of the epic, and it's thrilling to see the Anglo-Saxon-like Rohirrim and the numinous Elves fighting together.</li>
</ul>
<p>I also noted two differences that I thought took away from the story:</p>
<ul>
<li>Tolkien's Faramir is immune to the Ring's temptation, while Jackson's Faramir actually kidnaps Frodo and tries to bring him back to Gondor. I believe that Jackson is making the point that all men are corruptible, but the point of Faramir in the story is just the opposite. He represents the noblest tendencies remaining in the fallen race of Gondor, the nobility of Númenor that persists in his line. In the movie, he wants to steal the ring, but in the book, he says to Sam, "Not if I found it on the highway would I take it."</li>
<li>On a related note, the sibling rivalry between Boromir and Faramir is played up much too strongly in the movie. Mostly, I don't like Jackson's interpretation of Denethor (who doesn't even appear in the book until <em>The Return of the King</em>). The Steward should be mad with despair, for regardless of whether Mordor or Gondor prevails in the war, the reign of the Stewards will end. He should have a sense of mortality and impending doom on a grand scale, not just for himself but for his family, as if he had failed his noble ancestors. With such a hopeless outlook, he should have no interest in playing favorites between his sons.</li>
</ul>
<p>On balance, I consider the book and the movie to be complementary ways of telling the story. Tolkien's writing is strongly visual, presenting a challenge to which Jackson's production design responds admirably (while also working wonders for the New Zealand tourist board).</p>Danielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14798260312344004773noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570089718958011397.post-61114885732776439832007-07-26T09:42:00.000-04:002007-08-21T10:48:03.221-04:00The Penelopiad<p><strong>Author:</strong> Margaret Atwood<br />
<strong>Year:</strong> 2005<br />
<strong>Genre:</strong> Literary fiction / Mythology</p>
<p>Margaret Atwood retells the story of the Odyssey from Penelope's point of view, interspersed with commentary from the twelve maids that Odysseus kills after his return to Ithaca. These days, there seems to be a trend of new fiction based on classic literature (see <em><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/1146462/">Finn</a></em> and <em><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/106961/">March</a></em>), and Penelope is an obvious character to pick up, especially for someone like Margaret Atwood.</p>
<p>The book did have its interesting parts. I liked the look at Penelope's early days as a sheltered princess in Sparta, ugly-duckling cousin to the slutty Helen. It's easy to forget that those mythological royal families had more intermarriage than the 19th century crowns of Europe, and that characters who are generally considered to symbolize different aspects of femininity are also <em>people who would have known each other</em>. In fact, I'd say in general that Atwood succeeds when she reconsiders mythological characters as people, rather than symbols.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, though, through most of the book, she uses the characters of the <em>Odyssey</em> as symbols that suit her own agenda. Her treatment of the maids is the most glaring example: in Homer's version, it's true that they are needlessly slaughtered by Odysseus and Telemachus, but there's not much more to say about them. Atwood inflates them into figures of more importance by <em>saying it over and over,</em> albeit in different literary forms: there's free-verse poetry, folk music, courtroom drama, and even a sea shanty. The introduction notes that "the maids form a chanting and singing Chorus," but this isn't the sort of chorus you'll find in Aeschylus; rather than commenting on the action of the main story, they have their own story to tell. And to repeat. In the end, I didn't feel sorry for them anymore, just guilty and defensive on behalf of men for the mistreatment of women throughout the history of the world.</p>Danielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14798260312344004773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570089718958011397.post-74325539042419874822007-07-25T15:09:00.001-04:002007-08-20T11:39:33.877-04:00Skellig<p><strong>Author:</strong> David Almond<br />
<strong>Year:</strong> 1998<br />
<strong>Genre:</strong> Children's fantasy</p>
<p>This is a dreamy, mystical story about a young man named Michael who is trying to deal with life crises that are bigger than he is: a new home, an unwell infant sister, and his parents' being distracted by all that, leaving him to work things out for himself. Plus, there's a man with wings living in the garage, suffering from arthritis, living on aspirin, Chinese takeout, and beer, and waiting to die.</p>
<p>It's a story about balancing the spiritual and the material, two tendencies that are symbolized by our young hero's friends. With his school buddies, Coot and Leakey, he stars at soccer and clowns around. His companion in his personal struggles, however, is his next-door neighbor Mina. She does not go to school, but is receiving an education at home that involves birding, sculpture, and William Blake. Michael stays at home for some time exploring an old abandoned house with Mina and meeting the mysterious Skellig in the middle of the night, while he builds the inner resources to deal with his life's problems. There's a difficult scene, drawing on the story's symbolism as well as the trials of friendship among 12-year-olds, in which Michael's school friends come to visit him at home, and he joins in their mockery of Mina. It's clear that Michael's place is in the world, but he hasn't truly come to terms with things until he can return to school, to be friends with Leakey and Coot, <em>and also</em> with Mina.</p>
<p>Names are of great importance in this story. Both <em>Michael</em> and <em>Skellig</em> come from the island <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skellig_Islands">Skellig Michael</a>, and Michael is also the name of a winged angel. <em>Mina</em> is short for Wilhelmina, which echoes William Blake. <em>Coot</em> is simply a nutty character, while <em>Leakey,</em> a character who expresses skepticism about the evolution of human beings from the great apes, refers to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leakey">family of paleontologists</a>. Perhaps most important, the baby sister is nameless throughout most of the story, and the family's act of naming her at the book's conclusion definitively recognizes her as one of the living.</p>Danielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14798260312344004773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570089718958011397.post-15406272730970302222007-07-25T15:07:00.000-04:002007-07-31T12:38:03.423-04:00Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series<p><strong>Author:</strong> Eliot Asinof<br />
<strong>Year:</strong> 1963<br />
<strong>Genre:</strong> History</p>
<p>An interesting history of the 1919 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sox">Black Sox scandal</a> from a journalistic perspective. It's the book that <a href="http://imdb.com/title/tt0095082/">John Sayles's movie</a> was based on.</p>
<p>I picked up this book (for $1!) because of my casual interest in baseball history, but baseball isn't really the point of the story at all. Instead, it's a sad reminder of the way that power protects the powerful, whatever side of the law they might be on, while pawns and servants (innocent or not) are left to take the fall. It seems clear that all of the eight banned players were present during discussions about throwing the World Series, and that at least some of them actually cheated during the games. It's also clear, though, that the gamblers who really benefited from the fix got away clean while cheating the players out of most of their payoff. In the end, there was a sort of unspoken agreement among the more powerful gamblers, lawyers, and baseball team owners that the easiest face-saving decision would be to treat the eight suspected players as harshly as possible — and then to do nothing else. It's even more tragic because baseball is all that guys like Shoeless Joe Jackson knew how to do.</p>
<p>I wonder how much has changed since 1919. Of course, with baseball players now regularly paid in the millions, they have little reason to throw games for money. They're much more powerful than they were. I believe, though, that there still exists a sort of collusion among teams, players, and the media to perpetuate a wholesome, nostalgic view of baseball. (How often did "kids" and the "national pastime" come up in contemporary discussion of the 1919 World Series? How much are they mentioned in connection with Barry Bonds?) Talking about baseball as a cultural institution is good for business, after all, and talking about it as a business, well, isn't.</p>Danielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14798260312344004773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570089718958011397.post-81041518175822339702007-07-23T21:49:00.000-04:002007-07-30T10:34:06.426-04:00Evolution, Me & Other Freaks of Nature<p><strong>Author:</strong> Robin Brande<br />
<strong>Year:</strong> 2007<br />
<strong>Genre:</strong> YA fiction</p>
<p>Mena begins her ninth grade year in a bit of an awkward situation: she comes from an evangelical family, but all the kids from her church are ostracizing her. <em>... Freaks of Nature</em> is her diary, and as we follow the story, we learn what all the trouble is. It's the story of a girl who's learning to think for herself, and beginning to create an adult relationship with her parents.</p>
<p>I don't read a lot of this kind of book, so there's not much for me to compare it to. I do know that Brande is a bit misleading on the science. Of course, the evolution unit in Mena's biology class becomes a battleground for the fundamentalist kids, and evolution itself is treated as a metaphor for personal change. BUT! That means there's a lot of equivocation between character development and actual biological evolution, which <span style="font-variant:small-caps">does not happen</span> in one individual's lifetime! I feel like the science teacher needs to come out at one point and say "Yes, that's very good, you feel like <em>you're</em> evolving, but that's not what I mean when I talk about natural selection."</p>
<p>Meaghan and I talked a lot about who the target audience must be for a book like this. It's certainly not addressed to the hard-core fundamentalists, who would probably take exception to their being portrayed as snotty teenagers. In the end, we decided that it might be intended for kids like Mena, who come from a religious background but are starting to question. On the other hand, it might be meant for kids like her boyfriend Casey, who know that most religious belief is ridiculous, but haven't had much to do with believers before.</p>Danielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14798260312344004773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570089718958011397.post-18139180100587420182007-07-08T14:35:00.000-04:002007-07-26T12:00:30.141-04:00Girls vol. 1: Conception<b>Author:</b> Luna Brothers<br />
<b>Year:</b> 2007<br />
<b>Genre:</b> SF<p />
<p>One dark night in Pennystown (pop. 65), Ethan picks up a beautiful, naked, silent "mystery girl" on the side of the road. He takes her home, where she forces herself on him (not meeting much resistance). In the morning, she lays eggs that give birth to identical mystery girls, who then begin assaulting the women of Pennystown.</p>
<p>This first volume features the madness and uncertainty of the beginning of a monster movie. There are freak occurrences, violent deaths, interpersonal conflicts, and a wide supporting cast who may or may not turn out to be simple stereotypes. The series may go on to say something interesting about gender roles and relationships, or it may turn out to be a pulp story with sexy zombies.</p>
<p>The art is unusual, featuring digitally enhanced color separation, lighting, and depth-of-field effects. More important, the characters' visual representation supports their individual personalities, which is essential to keeping track of the dozen or so townspeople.</p>Danielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14798260312344004773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570089718958011397.post-5674846361888111102007-06-27T14:16:00.000-04:002007-07-25T15:02:31.355-04:00Town Boy<b>Author:</b> Lat<br />
<b>Year:</b> 1980<br />
<b>Genre:</b> Memoir<p />
<p>In his native Malaysia, Lat is a phenomenon. A cartoonist since age 9, he's been enormously popular for the last thirty years, and was even commissioned to draw the artwork for <a href="http://drawn.ca/2007/07/18/lat/">AirAsia jets</a>. Of course, he's practically unknown here in the United States, but First Second Press (publishers of <a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/1145147">American Born Chinese</a>) are introducing him to American audiences by publishing two autobiographical volumes, <em><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/1124690">Kampung Boy</a></em> and <em>Town Boy</em>.</p>
<p>I haven't read the first volume, but that was no handicap at all. This book starts off when Lat's family moves from a village (or <em>kampung</em>) to the town of Ipoh, and follows the exploits of Lat and his friends through their first (age 10) and last (age 17) years of school together. They discover rock 'n' roll, cheat on the cross country race, perform in the marching band, and dream about pretty girls.</p>
<p>The striking thing about this kind of story is the mix of similarities and differences from what I would find familiar. While all the subplots could (and probably would) be found in an American memoir from the same generation, the setting shows some tremendous cultural differences. Malaysia is a very diverse country, and the English edition of the book includes some aspects of Malaysian English (notably the <a href="http://allmalaysia.info/msiaknow/malaysiana/what-lah.asp">multi-purpose particle <em>lah</em></a>) as well as bits of dialogue in Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese, and what I believe is Tamil. Also, the schools are boys only, and the British-derived educational system makes some of the school scenes difficult to understand completely.</p>
<p>Despite the foreignness of the Malaysian setting, though, the overall feeling is of the warmth of friends and family. Lat has fond memories of childhood fun and mischief, an engaging storyteller's style, and a wicked caricaturist's sense of humor. I look forward to reading Volume 1.</p>Danielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14798260312344004773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570089718958011397.post-35511801924197163442007-06-26T20:11:00.000-04:002007-07-24T12:16:22.217-04:00The Road<p><b>Author:</b> Cormac McCarthy<br />
<b>Year:</b> 2006<br />
<b>Genre:</b> Novel</p>
<p>Some years following an unnamed cataclysmic event, a father and son wander through the desolate wasteland that was once America. They hide from bandits and cannibals, living on hidden caches of canned goods and other forgotten products of the earlier world. It's pretty bleak.</p>
<p>I read the story as a thought-experiment in morality. The boy and his father constantly reassure themselves that they are "good guys," still "carrying the fire." If the earth can no longer support life, though, then everyone is doomed. What does it mean to be a "good guy" in such a world? When faced with a choice between hoarding a week's worth of food, or sharing with a stranger and running out in six days, what is the right thing to do?</p>
<p>Although he's grown up almost entirely in the post-cataclysmic world, the son has somehow acquired a very highly developed moral sense. Not only are murder and robbery out of the question, but even taking advantage of a windfall — for instance, the untouched survivalist bunker that they find by chance — must be explained and rationalized, its original owners supposed to be dead or otherwise past caring.</p>
<p>The father's morality, on the other hand, has shrunk around the figure of his son, who now takes up the entire universe. What helps the son to survive is good. While the son cares about "other people" in general, the father's concern is with this one specific other person (which may be McCarthy's comment on parenthood).</p>
<p>There's an arresting passage near the end where an old man steals the father and son's few belongings. The father tracks him down and takes everything from him: not just the food and blankets that were not his to begin with, but down to the clothes on his back. The father later says of it, "At least we didn't kill him," to which the son replies, "But we did kill him." This highlights the two characters' different worldviews: the son's feeling of responsibility to all humanity, the father's protectiveness of his remaining flesh and blood.</p>
<p>I initially considered the book's extreme setting to be a place where morality must be reconsidered. The world has basically ended; what consequences can our actions have? The more I read, though, the more I found McCarthy's post-cataclysmic morality to be just as applicable to the real world. After all, nuclear winter or not, all of us are going to die one day, and our every act of selflessness is simply a postponement of someone else's inevitable end.</p>
<p>So what does McCarthy leave us with? He considers different aspects of moral obligation, and vividly describes the horrors of a world where those obligations have not been fulfilled, but provides few clear answers in the end. The book's final image, of a stream with fish swimming in it, does remind us of the fragile beauties of our world, but <em>The Road</em> is not environmentalist polemic. Rather, this image signals the end of our journey into hell; we return, like Dante, "to see the stars again," but changed by the persistent memories of what we have witnessed.</p>Danielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14798260312344004773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570089718958011397.post-78626941548856542982007-06-25T20:01:00.000-04:002007-07-17T17:56:54.629-04:00Istanbul: Memories and the City<p><b>Author:</b> Orhan Pamuk<br />
<b>Year:</b> 2004<br />
<b>Genre:</b> Memoir</p>
<p>Orhan Pamuk is a lifelong resident of Istanbul, and in this book he tells both the city's history and his own. It's a terribly difficult book for me to write about because there's a lot going on: he doesn't just write a history of Istanbul, but also a history of Istanbul writers and painters (both Turkish and Western), of himself as an <em>Istanbullu</em>, of himself as an Istanbul writer and painter, of certain buildings or classes of building or times of day that he finds evocative, of the different moods that these buildings and times of day evoke. There's a lengthy discussion of <em>hüzün,</em> which is a peculiar sort of Turkish melancholy that the residents of a city can feel collectively because of the knowledge that they have been the capital of three empires but are now marginalized and impoverished.</p>
<p>And, there are the times when Pamuk addresses himself directly to the audience and hints at his deeper purpose in telling the story. That purpose, as I understood it, is to describe the artistic lives of Orhan Pamuk and of Istanbul, but through tangential stories that show their richness as well as their deep interconnections.</p>
<p>Reading this book is like listening to the ramblings of your favorite uncle, if your favorite uncle were Turkish, and a Nobel-winning novelist.</p>Danielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14798260312344004773noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570089718958011397.post-53884419464140511052007-06-25T19:59:00.000-04:002007-07-08T19:03:43.782-04:00Better<p><b>Author:</b> Atul Gawande<br />
<b>Year:</b> 2007<br />
<b>Genre:</b> Science / Current events</p>
<p>A doctor takes a long, hard look at the modern-day practice of medicine and catalogs its weaknesses. He asks a lot of embarrassing questions like "Why don't doctors wash their hands as much as they should?" and "How much money do doctors deserve to make?" and "Is it really worth the effort to eradicate polio?" Gawande is a very readable writer and clear thinker, and following the path of his researching and soul-searching can be educational.</p>
<p>I bought this as a father's day present for my dad, who is also a member of the medical profession. He found it notable that Gawande, a surgeon, would draw attention to his own weaknesses. In particular, Gawande tells the story of a patient who developed a post-operative infection, and admits the possibility that he himself is to blame for spreading it.</p>
<p>In the end of all his investigation, Gawande makes some pretty interesting points. I don't remember all of them (and can't check now, as I've given the book away!) but here's what I remember: don't be negative; take a critical look at what you're doing, in a way that's interesting to you. He intends his advice to be for doctors and other medical professionals, but I think they're more widely applicable, and I've been trying to apply them to my own profession of teaching.</p>Danielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14798260312344004773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570089718958011397.post-37064055891078354672007-06-18T22:03:00.000-04:002007-06-27T14:34:24.959-04:00Black Hole<b>Author:</b> Charles Burns<br />
<b>Year:</b> 2005<br />
<b>Genre:</b> SF/Fantasy<p />
<p>In 1970s Seattle, a mysterious sexually transmitted plague turns teenagers into hideous monsters. Amid typical teenage dramas of love and independence, kids try to continue their normal lives despite the threat -- or fact -- of having caught "the bug."</p>
<p>This is obviously symbolic of something, but what? Does it represent the 1970s herpes outbreak and the AIDS epidemic to come? Does it mean that these former children have a hard time forming and recognizing their new adult identities? Is a loss of innocence signified by acquiring a tail or webbed fingers or a second mouth in your throat that talks when you're sleeping? Maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe it's just another impossible situation that young people can find themselves in when they've acquired access to the adult world but don't fully understand adult responsibility.</p>
<p>Burns's detailed, high-contrast black-and-white <a href="http://www.fantagraphics.com/artist/burns/burns.html">art</a> provides a feeling of surreality to the whole story.</p>Danielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14798260312344004773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570089718958011397.post-40301379804608302582007-06-18T21:49:00.000-04:002007-06-18T22:03:00.512-04:00Mrs. Pollifax on Safari/on the China Station<b>Author:</b> Dorothy Gilman<br />
<b>Year:</b> 1977; 1980<br />
<b>Genre:</b> Mystery<p />
OK, it was the end of the school year and I needed some brain candy ... and you don't get much better than old Mrs. P. I once knew a fifth grade teacher who used these books to teach geography, and it's not hard to see why (although a lot of the political stuff is really dated now). But of course, I read them for good old-fashioned escapism.<p />
Gilman's languages got better as the series progressed; the Chinese in <i>China Station</i> was correct as far as I could tell, and she made some attempt at reproducing African languages on <i>Safari</i> (I have no idea how faithfully). This is a long way from her Yugoslav characters calling Mrs. Pollifax <i>Amerikanski</i> in <a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/2051566"><i>The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax</i></a>. (It should be <i>Amerikanka</i>.)Danielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14798260312344004773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570089718958011397.post-78912595355881908902007-06-17T13:13:00.000-04:002007-06-18T21:46:30.992-04:00Frindle<b>Author:</b> Andrew Clements<br />
<b>Year:</b> 2004<br />
<b>Genre:</b> YA fiction<p />
This book isn't just a well-written story about a bright fifth-grader who learns to question authority. It's also a children's introduction to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prescriptive#Prescription_and_description">prescriptive and descriptive linguistics</a>. Both linguistics and irreverence are dear to my heart, so of course I love this book. In fact, on rereading (and Meaghan didn't believe me when I told her this) the scene in the end, where an adult Nick goes back to meet his fifth grade teacher, actually made me tear up.Danielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14798260312344004773noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570089718958011397.post-39361152925662174272007-06-17T12:57:00.000-04:002007-06-17T14:41:25.076-04:00Y: The Last Man Vol. 8: Kimono Dragons<b>Author:</b> Brian K. Vaughan<br />
<b>Year:</b> 2007<br />
<b>Genre:</b> Action-adventure<p />
In this installment, the party arrives in Japan and splits up, with Yorick and 355 following Ampersand's trail to a Canadian pop star, and Dr. Mann and her new girlfriend looking for Dr. Mann's mother.<p />
The writing is still really creative. One memorable bit was basically porn for girls: a handsome android who says "Tell me about your day" and "Would you like to hold me?"Danielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14798260312344004773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570089718958011397.post-65770442148079001622007-06-05T18:44:00.000-04:002007-06-17T12:55:23.483-04:00Quicksilver<b>Author:</b> Neal Stephenson<br />
<b>Year:</b> 2004<br />
<b>Genre:</b> Historical fiction<p />
Stephenson claims to be a science fiction writer, but I have to disagree. Like <a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/7479">Cryptonomicon</a>, <i>Quicksilver</i> is not science fiction so much as historical fiction about scientists. Maybe he calls it science fiction because his audience is the same; SF or no, <i>Quicksilver</i> can unquestionably be shelved under "zany fun for geeks."<p />
What a tangle of subplots: there's the Puritan in Restoration England, the early history of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Society">Royal Society</a>, 17th-century financial intrigue a la <a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/55045">A Conspiracy of Paper</a>, Louis XIV court intrigue that's not too far removed from <a href="http://imdb.com/title/tt0082517/">Mel Brooks</a>, and <i>two</i> pirate stories. Half the fun is keeping all that in your head.<p />
I'll see if I can still remember it when I get around to reading <a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/11920">Book Two</a>.Danielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14798260312344004773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570089718958011397.post-61998780212515443862007-05-28T14:48:00.000-04:002007-06-16T17:02:28.999-04:00The Feast of Love<b>Author:</b> Charles Baxter<br />
<b>Year:</b> 2000<br />
<b>Genre:</b> Literary fiction<p />
The concept of <i>The Feast of Love</i> is that a lot of different people are telling their personal love stories to the character Charlie Baxter. The stories, which intersect, deal with mostly ill-fated love for spouses, partners, children. I originally took the "author as narrator" thing to be a standard post-modern gimmick, but my fellow book club members convinced me that it does serve a purpose: it gives all the characters a reason to tell their story, leading the various narrators to be characters as well, each with their own motivation and point of view.<p />
For the most part, I thought the characters were interesting and believable; I liked some of them, and disliked the ones I was supposed to dislike. The one exception was the teenage character, whose voice I found to be exaggerated and unconvincing. I thought this was something I could talk about with some authority, being a high school teacher, but my fellow book club members disagreed.<p />
The love stories, as I said above, are ill-fated, but that's really what makes a story. Baxter deals with this fact specifically. As one character says after having found true love:<p />
<blockquote>We do what you do in tandem when you belong together ... We fit together. (I avoid saying these things in public; people hate to hear it, as if I'd forced them to eat raw sugar.) There's nothing to talk about to strangers anymore, if you know what I mean. Everything I want to say, I want to say to her. Life has turned into what I once imagined it was supposed to be, as complacent and awful as that sounds. In fact, I don't really want to talk about this anymore. As the poet says, all happy couples are alike, it's the unhappy ones who create the stories.<p />
I'm no longer a story. Happiness has made me fade into real life.</blockquote>Danielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14798260312344004773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570089718958011397.post-85036049673891103332007-05-21T17:09:00.000-04:002007-06-05T20:40:24.118-04:00El beso de la mujer araña<b>Author:</b> Manuel Puig<br />
<b>Year:</b> 1976<br />
<b>Genre:</b> Literary fiction<p />
I read this years ago for a college seminar on voyeurism, and picked it up again, this time in the original, to practice my Spanish.<p />
Other books have led me to write about <a href="http://thingsivelost.blogspot.com/2007/04/y-last-man-vol-7-paper-dolls.html">how speech patterns and dialogue can be tools for characterization</a>, but this book is nothing but dialogue and character. It's a story of two men in a prison cell in 1970s Argentina, the young political prisoner Valentin and the old homosexual Molina, and is written primarily as a record of their conversation. Aside from the talk about their lives in Buenos Aires and their hopes for when they are released, much of the novel is taken up with Molina's retelling the plots of films to pass the time.<p />
Valentin does not talk like Molina. In fact, in developing his characters, Puig shows himself to be practically an applied sociolinguist. Their turn-taking and interrupting, politeness strategies, and discourse styles are distinct. For instance, it's my impression that Molina "talks like a woman," using more typically female conversational styles. (I wonder if <a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/1345249">Deborah Tannen</a> would agree.) Not only is each character realized and developed through dialogue, but as their relationship grows, their speech patterns mirror those changes. They move away from the self-conscious stereotypes of the revolutionary (brusque, businesslike, analytical) and old queen (emotional, hypersensitive), and become more well-rounded personalities.Danielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14798260312344004773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570089718958011397.post-15327544720081040692007-05-16T17:46:00.000-04:002007-05-27T16:42:57.938-04:00The Complete Concrete<b>Author:</b> Paul Chadwick<br />
<b>Year:</b> 1988<br />
<b>Genre:</b> Science fiction<p />
Most American comics fall into the superhero genre, and a lot of the most thoughtful ones use that genre to make an interesting statement. <i>Concrete</i> falls into that second category, along with <i><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/8127">Astro City</a>, <a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/20247">It's a Bird</a></i>, and others of my personal favorites.<p />
The concept is the normal guy who is mysteriously granted super powers, a Silver Age cliche that recalls Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk. This time, though, our hero is not a desperate teenager but a grown man, a politician's speechwriter, and recently divorced. Also, unlike his Marvel predecessors, Concrete does not live in a world of superheroes; he is the only one of his kind. This premise leads to a more realistic consideration of the superhero in society: there are government cover-ups, scientific research, celebrity appeal. Concrete becomes a licensed character, and goes on tour with a musician who resembles Prince. Wherever he goes, he is the center of attention.<p />
In the end, it's a poignant story of a man who is granted new opportunities at the same time that the possibility of simple human existence is taken from him. He can (and does) attempt to swim the Atlantic Ocean and climb Mount Everest, but work, romance, and family are no longer part of his life. Throughout all of his trials, though, Concrete remains a believably human character. This volume's cover image says it all: it's a portrait of Concrete, whose two fragile eyes peer out from behind a face of stone.Danielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14798260312344004773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570089718958011397.post-61553130943117871552007-05-09T14:20:00.000-04:002007-05-25T16:54:48.779-04:00Pragmatics and Natural Language Understanding<b>Author:</b> Georgia M. Green<br />
<b>Year:</b> 1996<br />
<b>Genre:</b> Linguistics<p />
It's pretty clear that the meaning of words is conventional. I use the word <i>computer</i> to refer to this thing that I'm typing on because when I write that word to you, you know what I mean. The first time I realized this important fact about language, it seemed like the end of the discussion because it explains so much. On the contrary, though - it's just the beginning.<p />
Pragmatics is the field of linguistic inquiry that explores how language is used to construct meaning between individuals. This can mean the flexibility in the meaning of individual words: we know what <i>computer</i> means, but when I talk about the <i>New York Times,</i> do I mean:<br />
<ul>
<li>a copy of the newspaper (I bought the <i>Times</i> today)</li>
<li>the information contained in it (I can get the <i>Times</i> online)</li>
<li>the paper's editorial board (The <i>Times</i> says the Democrats are right)</li>
<li>the business that publishes the paper (The <i>Times</i> owns the <i>Boston Globe</i>)</li>
<li>or what?</li>
</ul> <p />
Mostly, I judge from the context of the conversation and from what I know of you to determine what you're probably trying to express. This sort of conversational mind-reading guessing game is going on all the time; it's what allows us to express nonverbal ideas in a verbal medium, and to produce infinitely many thoughts with a finite number of words. <p />
Pragmatics also deals with the ways people use language to achieve social goals, from a simple request to an attempt to persuade or change someone's mind. The assumptions we make about other people's prior knowledge are pragmatic, as are the form and function of politeness.<p />
Georgia Green's book explores all this and more. It's a rewarding read for anyone who is interested in the hidden details of language and the assumptions behind its use, as long as they're not put off by a modicum of technical language or too cool to read textbooks for fun. (I'm clearly not.)Danielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14798260312344004773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570089718958011397.post-65684911712493038682007-05-02T14:01:00.000-04:002007-11-21T20:47:58.868-05:00Slaughterhouse-five<b>Author:</b> Kurt Vonnegut<br />
<b>Year:</b> 1966<br />
<b>Genre:</b> Literary fiction<p />
So much has been said about this book that I'm not going to attempt a comprehensive review. Since this is a reread, I'll focus on what I noticed in particular this time:<p />
Imagine that Billy Pilgrim's daughter Barbara is right, and that Billy's time travel and Tralfamadorean dreams are, in fact, hallucinations. He's experiencing an extended episode of post-traumatic stress disorder initially brought on by his presence during the bombing of Dresden. He can't look at his wartime memories, but neither can he look away, so he feels that he has come "unstuck in time." Everyday events remind him unpredictably of the horrors he witnessed (typical of PTSD sufferers, I believe), leading him to see them so vividly that he believes he is literally reliving them.<p />
The constant bouncing between 1945 Dresden and 1960s <a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/43166">Babbittry</a>, together with the all-too-human wishful belief that <i>someone out there</i> knows all the answers, starts to take its toll on Billy's sanity. Becoming the sole survivor of a plane crash pushes him off the deep end, and he invents himself some <i>someone</i>s in fantastic Kilgore Trout style. The result is the Tralfamadoreans, whose four-dimensional sight tells Billy just what he has always wanted to hear: that one cannot totally escape from horror, but one can ignore it. 130,000 people burned to death? So it goes.<p />
My father also reread <i>Slaughterhouse-five</i> recently, and found it to be a shallow book with little to offer beyond "People die; war is bad; so it goes." I think he might be right about his conclusion, but I don't agree that it comes from shallowness. Rather, I would argue that Vonnegut is expressing humility before the awesome and unspeakable events of war. <i>So it goes</i>, I believe, falls somewhere between a Zen koan and <a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/31221">Wittgenstein's</a> "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."Danielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14798260312344004773noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7570089718958011397.post-32219425566817541282007-04-29T12:05:00.000-04:002007-05-02T18:37:52.472-04:00Blankets<b>Author:</b> Craig Thompson<br />
<b>Year:</b> 2004<br />
<b>Genre:</b> Autobiographical<p />
Everything seems bigger and more important to a teenager. A bad grade feels like a personal insult, and one bad day can make them think their life is over. As for the things that by any measure carry serious weight - consider romance, or family, or religious faith - adolescents often experience them with an intensity that makes adult life seem a pale imitation. In <i>Blankets,</i> Craig Thompson's art and storytelling somehow transport you back to that phase of life. He reminds us of the 17-year-old's persistent emotional rawness caused by the mere fact of living, the immediacy of the world seen through adolescent eyes.<p />
The story focuses primarily on young Craig's first serious romance, during his senior year of high school. His relationship with Raina begins as a bible-camp flirtation, but when he stays for two weeks at her house, the time they spend together develops an almost religious importance. They offer each other an escape from the constant frustrations of teenage life: school responsibilities, lack of privacy, his family's rigid fundamentalism, her parents' impending divorce. The two are the "blankets" of the title (represented by a quilt that Raina makes for Craig, as well as the constant snowfall of the Midwestern winter); they shelter each other from the harshness of life that teenagers are often so ill-equipped to face alone.<p />
During their two-week idyll, Raina leans on Craig and Craig literally idolizes Raina, as his love for her forces him to question his Christian faith. At first, he worries over literal-minded questions of lust and temptation, but eventually he finds a more profound spirituality, recognizing immanence in her earthly beauty. This brush with the divine is symbolized in the artwork, where a motif of radiance takes on the forms of a snowflake, a pattern in the quilt's fabric, and a halo for the deified Raina.<p />
Their love is a small and fragile thing. After Craig returns home, their connection is quickly broken by long distance and everyday responsibilities. The next ten years of his life are told in a space of some five pages, showing that he has gotten over Raina without allowing the reader to move on as well. On the contrary, we look back with a deep nostalgia for his adolescent romance, and forward to her influence on the adult he will become: an artist, a thinking Christian with more questions than fundamentalism, a man who forms a fully adult relationship with his younger brother.<p />
Perhaps comics, as a combination of images and words, is uniquely able to convey the unmediated emotion of adolescence, the sense of unbearable significance. Thompson makes a strong case: the experience of reading <i>Blankets</i> is like being surrounded by ghosts of your own teenage years. I certainly wouldn't want to return there, but I feel I have a different appreciation of it now.Danielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14798260312344004773noreply@blogger.com0