Review of The Girl on the Train

Paula Hawkins' debut novel The Girl on the Train just reached the mark of one million copies sold.  One could say it is a runaway hit that has really picked up steam (okay, I'll stop now).

Title character Rachel takes the same commuter train every day, keeping up appearances to her roommate after she is fired from her job.  The train regularly stops in front of a house inhabited by a couple on whom Rachel fixates.  She views their life as perfect.  At the same time, she is haunted by her old life and failed marriage.  She regularly numbs her emotions with alcohol and has a hard time moving on.

One day, from the train, Rachel sees the woman she calls "Jess" (whose real name is Megan) kissing a man who is not her husband, and then the following day she goes missing.  Rachel offers what she knows to police, and gets entangled in the investigation.

The plot will keep you guessing the whole way through.  How many readers will guess what is behind Megan's disappearance?  I was certainly taken by surprise.

The characters are neither well developed nor likable.  This flaw does not matter a great deal, though, as the suspense story is the driving force of the novel.

Why is the book a giant sensation, the one that everyone wants to read?  The success of Gone Girl and the marketing of this book to its fans has something to do with it.  Luckily, The Girl on the Train is decently written and keeps you on the edge of your seat.  Though not high literature or even particularly book discussion worthy, it is entertaining.

Book to film: Silver Linings Playbook

Both the book and film versions of Silver Linings Playbook are great, but the book is better.  The voice of the male protagonist, Pat, nails a particular kind of poignant humor in the book that the movie, with Pat portrayed by Bradley Cooper, does not fully accomplish.  And to be fair, that may be because the movie is limited to two hours, and Pat cannot get as much of his voice in there as in the book.

Pat is a former high school history teacher who has just been let out of a mental institution and released to the care of his mother.  In the movie, he has been there for several months.  In the book, he believes he's only been on the inside for a few months when in fact he has been there for four years.  He plans on reconciling with his estranged wife, Nikki, and devotes his time to trying to become the man she always wanted.  Meanwhile, he's being pursued by a troubled woman named Tiffany.

The selective liberties that the script takes from the novel are basically fine.  In terms of how I saw the characters in my mind's eye, the movie came up short, but one casting choice that ended up fitting was Jennifer Lawrence.  I didn't have trouble buying her as Tiffany for one minute.  Whether you have read the book or not, you will likely agree that she steals the show.

The Silver Linings Playbook is Matthew Quick's debut novel.  His second book, The Good Luck of Right Now, is also good.  It has significant similarities to its predecessor:  a teetering-on-loserdom male protagonist/narrator who tries to make his way in life in the wake of a life-changing development; both female love interests are very emotionally damaged; and the male protagonist's voice displays the same kind of poignant humor.  Going forward, Quick would be wise to distance himself somewhat from that voice so he does not pigeonhole himself as a writer.  Yet this is my only real criticism of his books, both of which are great reads.

Review: Jim Henson: The Biography, by Brian Jay Jones

If you love the Muppets, as I do, here's a good book for you.  At about 500 pages, this is a thorough biography, but it does not drag; Jim Henson lived a full life in his 53 years.  This book is especially fun to read in tandem with Imagination Illustrated: The Jim Henson Journal.  In addition to combing through archival material, Brian Jay Jones spoke with people close to Henson both personally and professionally.

Born in 1936, Jim Henson grew up in Mississippi through his early teens, and then his family moved to Maryland. He plunged into puppetry at age 18 by answering a television station's job posting. His future collaborator, head writer Jerry Juhl, explains, "Jim wasn't a puppeteer.  He got into puppetry because it was a way of getting into television and film . . . that was really his passion" (109).  As it turned out, of course, he was talented in both the design and performance of puppets.

At the same time, he enrolled at the University of Maryland and studied design.  He met Jane Nebel in a college puppetry class, and recruited her to work with him as a puppeteer for the television station.  They would later marry and have five talented children:  Lisa, Cheryl, Brian, John, and Heather.  Jim and Jane had a hit segment with Sam and Friends, and Jim also produced television commercials. They moved to New York in early 1963, and soon settled in a house in Greenwich, CT.  Jane, though having cofounded her husband's company, did not continue performing.  Jim's recruit Frank Oz "thought he understood why Jane had gotten out of regular performing, for reasons that went beyond motherhood.  'A great puppeteer needs to be aggressive and selfish,' Oz said--qualities, he thought, the artsier Jane lacked" (115).

We learn about Henson's first characters, including which Muppets appeared early on.   Although Kermit was the first of the Muppet characters to be conceived, Rowlf first resonated with audiences as a strong character through his appearances on The Jimmy Dean Show.  Kermit started as a turquoise puppet that wasn't any particular animal.  "'We frogified him,' Jim said later, only slightly lamenting the loss of the abstraction.  'He just slowly became a frog'" (93).  Jim explained about Kermit that he "is the closest one to me.  He's the easiest to talk with.  He's the only one who can't be worked by anybody else, only by me.  See, Kermit is just a piece of cloth with a mouthpiece in it.  The character is literally my hand" (163).

Ernie and Bert were the premier characters Henson came up with for the children's television show Sesame Street in 1969.  Says Frank Oz, who took over Bert, "The design was so simple and pure and wonderful.  You had somebody who is all vertical and somebody who is all horizontal'" (143).  Said Henson of Sesame Street, "Kids love to learn, and the learning should be exciting and fun.  That's what we're out to do" (167).

The Muppet Show, pitched to major networks in the U.S., ultimately was funded by Lew Grade, who approached Henson to produce the program for his ATV Associated Television franchise in the UK.  The show lasted for five seasons consisting of 120 episodes which were first broadcast in Britain between 1976 and 1981.  The show was recorded at ATV's Elstree Studios just north of London.  Henson split his time between the two countries, establishing the Creature Shop in London in addition to his company headquarters in New York City.  Some tension grew between the two locations' employees, who sought Henson's attention and approval.

1979's The Muppet Movie was a hit, and created the demand for future movies starring the Muppets.  Henson was more interested after the first Muppet movie in exploring other creative visions.  His movie projects The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, Jones posits, suffered from sacrificing story for visuals, which were what Henson was really interested in.  Indeed, he said, "I guess I've always been most intrigued by what can be done with the visual image.  I feel that is what is strongest about the work I do " (331-32).

Although The Dark Crystal made a good profit, for Henson "it was about vision and inspiration, and the fact that audiences didn't or couldn't appreciate it hurt him terribly" (348).  He explained that The Dark Crystal "was a huge undertaking--a vision I had, and one which ultimately has helped to carry our art form to a more sophisticated and technically advanced stage.  The most important thing, however, is to love what you're doing and to go after those visions, no matter where they lead" (351).

Labyrinth, however, only grossed $12 million on its $25 million budget.  Said Henson, "I was stunned and dazed for several months trying to figure out what went wrong--where I went wrong" (390).  "Labyrinth was 'absolutely the closest thing to him,' said Jane, the one in which he had invested most of his creative capital--and to have audiences reject it felt to Jim like they were rejecting him personally" (391).  It seems, though, that these two movies have gained greater appreciation from viewers over time.

Henson did not much separate his work life from his personal life.  He said, "I love my work and because I enjoy it, it doesn't really feel like work.  Thus I spend most of my time working" (291).  He found most of his expressiveness through his work as well:  "I live kind of within myself as a person, so my outlet has always been the Muppets; therefore, I tend to do sort of wildly extroverted characters" (163).  His marriage to Jane apparently suffered from a lack of communication on his part.  Their marriage would crumble into a separation, but despite this and the fact that Jim then dated a lot, a bond remained between them.

Sadly, John Henson, Jim's fourth child, died of a heart attack two days ago, on February 14, 2014.  He was 48 years old.  John was also a puppeteer and performed the ogre Sweetums following the death of Richard Hunt in 1991. He served as a shareholder and board member of The Jim Henson Company.  His mother, Jane Henson, died less than a year ago, in April, 2013, of cancer at age 78.

Jim Henson had an interest in spirituality and possessed faith in goodness and all things being interconnected.  He embraced optimism as a guiding principle in his life.  "Simply, Jim Henson's greatest legacy will always be Jim himself:  the way he was, and the way he encouraged and inspired others to be--the simple grace and soft-spoken dignity he brought to the world . . . as well as his faith in a greater good that he believed he and his fellow inhabitants of the globe were capable of" (487).

I like that the book's blurb about the author includes:  "His favorite Muppet is Rowlf (thanks for asking)."  Mine is Janice.  Which Muppet is your favorite?

Janice

Review: Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir, by Linda Ronstadt

Linda Ronstadt, a 2014 inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, tells the story of her life in music in Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir.  Blessed with a powerful and distinctive singing voice, she was the first woman to have four platinum albums in a row.  I remember as a child sifting through my parents' record collection and one I especially liked was Ronstadt's 1977 album Simple Dreams.

She grew up in the Arizona desert, on a ranch outside Tucson, of mixed Anglo-Mexican heritage.  She was raised alongside three siblings and her father owned a hardware store.   She remembers a home life filled with music.  At age eighteen, she moved to Los Angeles to enter its music scene.

She worked on finding the people and the songs that would propel her forward in accordance with her creative vision.  She got her start with the folk-rock band the Stone Poneys and then began a solo career.  She wanted to be a country-rock artist, and not have to choose between the two genres, despite skepticism from label heads.  Later, she went on to explore the Great American Songbook and traditional Mexican folk songs.  "The Mexican shows were my favorites of my entire career," she says.  "After the surreal experience of being caught in the body-snatching machinery of the American celebrity juggernaut, I felt I was able to reclaim an essential part of who I was:  a girl from the Sonoran Desert" (179).

"People ask me why my career consisted of such rampant eclecticism, and why I didn't simply stick to one type of music," she says.  "The answer is that when I admire something tremendously, it is difficult not to try to emulate it.  Some of the attempts were successful, others not.  The only rule I imposed on myself, consciously or unconsciously, was to not try singing something that I hadn't heard in the family living room before the age of ten.  If I hadn't heard it by then, I couldn't attempt it with even a shred of authenticity" (200).

One of the best things about the book is reading about all of Ronstadt's collaborations, from onetime-backing band the Eagles to Neil Young to Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris to Aaron Neville.  "There is no right way to record. It is a matter of personal style," she says.  "When I recorded on Graceland with Paul Simon in the mid-1980s, he built his records a few tracks at a time, layering sound like the seventeenth-century Dutch painter Vermeer layered paint.  Neil [Young]'s work is more like a pen and ink drawing.  They are both masters" (101).  Of Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris, she notes:  "We weren't trying to exploit the fact that we were three established names.  We wanted to do it because at our deepest level of instinct, we suspected musical kinship" (107).  She goes on to say that when she listens to her own recordings she nitpicks "because I will hear something I think I should have done better, but the sound that the three of us made together seemed altogether different from our individual sounds and could be listened to with a rare sense of objectivity" (108).

Despite being immersed in the drug-laden California music scene of the '70s, Ronstadt remained more about the music than many of her peers.  Allergic to alcohol, she did experiment with drugs, but emerged relatively unscathed.  As with the rest of her personal life, this topic is little touched on in the memoir.  She does say, though, "Cocaine sent me straight to the doctor with a bloody nose, which required cauterization.  While I was there, my doctor cheerfully explained to me that cocaine causes the cilia in the ear canal to lie down, and many never get up again.  This can cause permanent hearing loss.  As I recognized that my ears were an important item in my musical toolbox, it was the end of my interest in cocaine" (103).

She never married, and adopted two children who are now in their early 20's.  Ronstadt retired from performing in 2009.  Today, she is unable to sing due to Parkinson's disease.  In an interview with the New York Times, she says, "I have no choice.  If there was something I could work on, I'd work on it till I could get it back.  If there was a drug I could take to get it back, I would take the drug.  I'd take napalm.  But I'm never going to sing again."

Her two children "play instruments, have a lively and active interest in music, and use it to process their feelings in a private setting.  This is the fundamental value of music, and I feel sorry for a culture that depends too much on delegating its musical expression to professionals.  It is fine to have heroes, but we should do our own singing first, even if it is never heard beyond the shower curtain" (199).  In a TV snippet that I saw, she says she is a big proponent of joining a choir.  I love how she expresses the importance of embracing making music oneself and that it may seem like it's on a small scale but that it's really not.

Linda Ronstadt's book is refreshing in that it is just as it purports to be:  A Musical Memoir.  Readers who expect any dishing on her love life (such as her relationship with former CA governor Jerry Brown) will be disappointed.  As her upbringing and family informed her musical life, we do get to learn some about those aspects of her life, which helps us get to know her.  We emerge with a clearer sense of who Linda Ronstadt is:  a strong woman who just wanted to make a career out of her great love: singing.

Gabrielle Bernstein has a lot of cool things to say

Gabrielle Bernstein is an author, life coach, and motivational speaker.  Perhaps you've heard of her as she's been featured by various media outlets from Oprah to the Wall Street Journal.  Her books are:  Add More ~ing to Your Life, Spirit Junkie, and May Cause Miracles.  She is a proponent and teacher of A Course in Miracles, a self-study metaphysical guide with universal spiritual themes which is published by the Foundation for Inner Peace.

I had seen reference to her book Spirit Junkie on a website I like, Tiny Buddha, and also came across it at work at the library when I pulled it for an interlibrary loan request.  So later on, I decided to check it out myself.  I loved it; it contains so many insights.  I think it is the best of her books.  A large part of what makes the book ring true is what Bernstein shares about her own struggle and growth:  she's lived it.

When she speaks of ~ing, she means an inner guide.  "Each of us has disconnected in some way from our relationship to love within," she says.  "And each of us has the power to reignite that connection"  (May Cause Miracles).  A big proponent of prayer and meditation, she includes specific meditations in her books.

The following two points particularly resonated with me.  "My first correspondence with my ~ing unconsciously came through in my journal . . . Feel free to ask your ~ing for help through your writing.  Trust me, you're being heard." (Spirit Junkie).  And from May Cause Miracles:  "Welcome all subtle shifts."

"The Course positions relationships as one of the most significant opportunities for us to learn and grow.  Through another person we can come to know ourselves," she says in Spirit Junkie.  Yet she cautions, "When we perceive that someone is more special than others, we're thinking with separation.  We've forgotten that we are all one, and we've hooked back into the ego's thought system of better-than and worse-than."

In Add More ~ing to Your Life, she talks about manifesting and says,  "When your desires are backed with loving intentions of the greater good, you will feel the presence of an inner knowledge that you're on the right track and everything is lined up."

I recommend Gabrielle Bernstein's books to those who are interested in spirituality or who are looking for their purpose, improvement, or fulfillment.  I look forward to more books from her in the future.

Books of 2012

Flavorwire posted  "The Books That Made the Most 'Best of 2012' Book Lists" (the lists consulted are linked at the end of the article).  Here are my favorite books published in 2012 that I've read so far.  Feel free to comment with yours.

The Middlesteins, by Jami Attenberg

Multiple generations of the Middlestein family populate Attenberg's novel. Matriarch Edie's overeating threatens her life and creates a rift between her and the rest of the family--particularly her husband of thirty years, Richard, who has given up on her and moved out. Their daughter Robin grapples with her feelings of resentment for her father and how to help save her mother from eating herself to death. Robin's laid-back brother Benny is married to high-strung, health-conscious Rachelle, who is planning their twin children's extravagant b'nai mitzvah party while also worrying about Edie.

This is a realistic portrait of a family with all its complex personalities and problems. The author saves the book from being a downer with her compassionate handling of the characters and her infusions of humor. 

The Elementals, by Francesca Lia Block

This is a new adult fiction book from a favorite author of mine who writes primarily young adult novels (I discovered her when I was a teenager).  Most of her writing can be considered magical realism.  She deftly incorporates mythological and mysterious elements into her stories.  She also excels at sensory description.

Ariel Silverman heads off to college amidst two tumultuous events:  her mother's diagnosis of breast cancer and the disappearance of her best friend, Jeni, who vanished on a school trip to Berkeley.  Ariel wants to get to the bottom of Jeni's disappearance.  In an old house in the Berkeley hills Ariel meets three mysterious and seductive strangers who envelop her in their world.  But there is a lot that she doesn't know about them.

Quiet:  The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, by Susan Cain

I've read several books on introversion, and this is the best yet, fascinating and useful.  In a society that idealizes and pushes extroversion ("the omnipresent belief that the ideal self is gregarious, alpha, and comfortable in the spotlight"), at least a third of the population are introverts.  Cain lauds their hidden strengths.  "Our reverence for alpha status blinds us to things that are good and smart and wise," she says.

Cain recounts the rise of the cultural ideal of extroversion and the emphasis of groupthink in the workplace.  She explains how "collaboration kills creativity" for introverts, who are more productive at brainstorming alone.  The leadership potential of introverts is often overlooked yet they can make effective leaders.  Cain sheds light on how introverts can understand their own contradictions, like the ability to act like extroverts in certain situations.  She also looks at how introverts and extroverts can best negotiate relationships together.  Cain includes plenty of examples from research as well as real-life stories of individuals.

Marbles:  Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, and Me:  A Graphic Memoir, by Ellen Forney

Ellen Forney is a talented graphic memoirist (graphic memoirs being an intriguing genre that I dip into occasionally).  This book is about Forney's experience with bipolar disorder.  She chronicles what it is like for her to be manic and to be depressed, her diagnosis shortly before she turned thirty, the setbacks she faces, and tinkering with different medications.

At the crux of the book is her eagerness to determine the relationship between mental illness and creativity and whether medications inhibit creativity.  "Sometimes it seems like 'pain' is too obvious a place to turn for inspiration," she muses.  "Pain isn't always deep, anyway.  Sometimes it's awful and that's it.  Or boring."  The book reads as an honest, courageous, often humorous account with bold artwork to match.

Flatscreen, by Adam Wilson

In this darkly comic debut novel that I read with the howling wind of Hurricane Sandy outside my window, Eli Schwartz is basically a deadbeat, a couple of years removed from high school, jobless, pudgy, often stoned and clad in a bathrobe.  "People told me I was funny in high school," he says.  "It was good for awhile, the attention, until I understood what it meant.  It meant I wasn't other things:  sexy, interesting, smart, ambitious.  It meant I was going to have trouble getting laid.  It might have even meant I was fat." 

He takes on a rocky friendship with a troubled, larger-than-life, wheelchair-bound former actor.  Eli also heads in the direction of having a functional romantic relationship with an odd woman who also hasn't left town after high school.  "The most unlikely soul could find a counterpart.  Who was mine?" he wonders, and says, "everyone just needs someone to make them feel like death isn't a better option."  Despite his puttering existence, Eli searches for meaning.  This novel isn't for everyone--there are drugs, sex, snark, sentence fragments, and alternative endings--but besides the fact that it's funny, it has heart.

Review of Close to Shore

I read Close to Shore:  The Terrifying Shark Attacks of 1916, by Michael Capuzzo to gear up for the twenty-fifth anniversary of Shark Week that aired on the Discovery Channel last week.  An approximately eight-foot-long juvenile Great White shark, the author says, terrorized the New Jersey and Long Island coastal areas during the summer of 1916, killing four people and wounding one.  Incredibly, it even made its way--and survived--from the ocean to a creek.  This summer of localized attacks by an apparently lone shark inspired Peter Benchley to write the book Jaws--which Stephen Spielberg then made into the summer blockbuster movie of 1975.

Before 1916, the prevailing opinion in the United States was that sharks would not attack a living person in the country's temperate waters without provocation.  After the attacks, leading authorities admitted that their perceptions about sharks had changed.

The book's strength actually lies largely in describing the historical setting and certain cultural changes that were occurring during this period.  Ocean swimming was just becoming popular and New Jersey resorts were sought-after by the leisure class.  Capuzzo also does a good job of noting some interesting facts about sharks and the history of our perception and study of these animals.  The author takes his time with all of this context before getting into the attacks.

There are a couple of loose ends the author does not tie up.  Was the shark that killed those people during the summer of 1916 ever captured?  The author leaves this question unanswered, although it seems likely that the shark was caught.

Capuzzo seems to subscribe to the theory of a rogue shark--one that strays from its usual food source and hunts humans because of illness, injury, or some other factor that makes it difficult for it to get its usual prey.  Yet at the end of the book he talks about how the theory of rogue sharks has fallen out of favor in recent years.  Throughout the book, however, he never offers as a possibility that multiple sharks could have been involved.  Why does he subscribe to the rogue shark theory in this case?  His argument would have been more convincing if he had offered definitive evidence to support his point of view.

Despite these points left up in the air, the book offers a lot to make it a good read:  a thrilling story reconstructed from true events, some colorful characters, fascinating information about sharks, and thought-provoking reflections about changes in American culture.

Review of Escape from Camp 14

Escape from Camp 14:  One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West, by Blaine Harden tells the story of Shin Dong-Hyuk's harrowing life within a North Korean prison.  He is the only person known to have been born and raised in a North Korean prison camp to have escaped.  He was born in Camp 14 in 1982 and made his way to South Korea in 2006.  He moved to the U.S. in 2009 and lives in Washington, D.C. and Seoul.  Between 150,000 and 200,000 North Koreans work as slaves in its political prison camps.

Shin grew up in a prison camp because of the crime of a relative who fled to South Korea after the Korean War.  Shin's life inside the camp included seeing his mother as a competitor for food, being groomed by guards to snitch on anyone including and especially his family, and witnessing the execution of his mother and brother.

This is not only the story of Shin's experience in and escape from Camp 14 but is also a story of aftershocks--where does a physically and emotionally scarred individual who has endured real-life dystopian horrors go from there?  He explains, "I am evolving from being an animal, but it is going very, very slowly.  Sometime I try to cry and laugh like other people, just to see if it feels like anything.  Yet tears don't come.  Laughter doesn't come."

For a glimpse into the situation in North Korea from those living it, I also recommend Nothing to Envy:  Ordinary Lives in North Korea, by Barbara Demick.  I haven't yet read but am interested in reading The Aquariums of Pyongyang:  Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag, by Kang Chol-Hwan and Pierre Riguelot.  Escape from Camp 14 offers an often hard to take but important inside view of the country's human rights catastrophe.

Review of Please Look After Mom

Please Look After Mom, by Kyung-Sook Shin (translated from the Korean by Chi-Young Kim) is an international bestseller and winner of the Man Asian Literary Prize.  It is a moving novel told from the points of view of a daughter, son, father, and mother.  The mother, sixty-nine-year-old So-Nyo, goes missing from a Seoul train station on her way to visit her children and her family launches a search to find her.  Her children reminisce about growing up poor in the countryside and wrestle with guilt for not taking better care of her, their father feels sorry for neglecting her, and secrets are revealed.

The author explains her choice to tell the story through four narrators:  "I wanted to show a 'Mom' who was a complex and profound human being.  As it was impossible to do this in a single person's voice, I needed multiple narrators.  In the novel, the voices of the daughter, son, and father are narrated in the second person, 'you' and the third person, 'her.'  It's only the mother who uses the first person.  I had in mind the fact that, when a woman becomes a mother, she no longer gets to speak or sometimes even think in terms of that 'I.'  Of the four different voices in the book, the mother's is perhaps the most vivid and powerful.  When I was writing it, it felt as though my mother's hand had held--even gripped--my authorial hand, so that she could tell her own story."  The chapter in which the reader gets to finally hear from the mother herself, written in the first person, is indeed the most affecting.

Shin hopes readers take away from the book the realization of  "the plain truth that your mother was not born that way, that she too had to become a mother.  Taking the time to think about your mother might also mean taking the time to think about yourself."

The book sheds light on both bonds among family members and life in contemporary South Korea.  The shift from countryside to city life that So-Nyo's children take in relative stride is a different world to her and seems to add to the confusion she experiences as a result of her health problems.  The family members deal with her disappearance in their own ways.  Shin uncovers the complexity of individuals and of their familial relationships.

Reading as an act of "quiet revolution"

In The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time, David Ulin expands upon an essay he wrote for the Los Angeles Times in 2009. This slim volume is an ode to the practice of reading in our current age of information overload. Ulin's book combines memoir and literary criticism, a blend that works well. He frames the content with his experience rereading The Great Gatsby as his son reads it for a school assignment.

What reading gives us, Ulin says, is not only meditation apart from other people but also the connection we form with the author through his or her words. "We regain the world by withdrawing from it just a little, by stepping back from the noise, the tumult, to discover our reflections in another mind" (151). Ulin goes so far as to characterize reading in this day and age as revolutionary, "an act of resistance in a landscape of distraction, a matter of engagement in a society that seems to want nothing more than for us to disengage" (150).

The implications of this distracted state are addressed in another recent book, Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other, by Sherry Turkle, who asserts that we are becoming so "immersed in technology that we ignore what we know about life." This thought is in line with Ulin's belief that we should take a step back from the large number of distractions we face. Few of us are immune, and we all may need reminding about the value of reading.

How I Became a Famous Novelist wins Thurber Prize for Humor

One of the funniest books I've ever read, by a writer for the NBC series The Office, has just been awarded the 2010 Thurber Prize for American Humor. Great choice! I wrote a review of this book that was posted elsewhere; with the news of the award I am reposting it below:

Pete Tarslaw, the protagonist of How I Became a Famous Novelist, by Steve Hely, wants to ditch his job fabricating college entry essays for rich applicants. He also wants to upstage his ex-girlfriend at her wedding. In his endeavor to become a novelist, “my ambitions were simple: to learn the con, make money, impress women, and get out.” In writing his completely over-the-top novel, The Tornado Ashes Club, Pete splices together various elements common to literature that appeals to the masses.

The book skewers prototypes of popular authors and the formulas they follow. A fictional New York Times bestseller list is even contained in the book, which ridiculously amplifies popular taste.

How I Became a Famous Novelist is hilarious in a bitingly sarcastic way. In fact, despite quickly laughing my way through it, I sometimes required a break from the constant snarky humor (not a criticism). You need to appreciate the tone to like this book. In its last pages, the book gets earnest all of a sudden. It has, however, provided more than enough entertainment by that point to render it a worthwhile read.

And Then There Were None: four ways

A few weeks ago, I saw a theatrical production of And Then There Were None, adapted from the Agatha Christie novel of the same name (some editions were entitled Ten Little Indians). Did you know that it's the seventh bestselling book ever? And that Christie is the third bestselling author of all time, after the Bible and Shakespeare?

The story involves ten people invited to an island under different pretenses. Once there, each guest is accused by a mysterious voice on a gramophone record of committing a particular murder. Then the guests themselves begin falling prey to a murderer. After each killing, a soldier (or Indian) figurine from the dining room table is broken. In each of their rooms is hung a copy of the nursery rhyme "Ten Little Soldiers" (or "Ten Little Indians") and the murders eerily echo the verses of the rhyme. If they are alone on the island, then the murderer must be among the ten of them, but who?

Christie herself adapted the novel for the stage, changing the ending significantly (basically, injecting a form of a "happy" ending). I was interested in reading the book to compare the two, and my curiosity extended to my viewing two film versions, Rene Clair's And Then There Were None (1945) and George Pollock's Ten Little Indians (1965). In terms of the story, I thought the book was the best, followed by the 1945 film version, the 1965 version, and finally the play. The problem with the play was that it did not spell out certain things that the movie versions did fill in. Ten Little Indians is inferior to the 1945 film for several reasons: the setting is changed to an Austrian mountaintop; some of the characters, their alleged crimes, and how they are killed off are changed (and not for the better); there are too many gratuitous shots of Vera undressing; and it seems too dated to the 60s.

Overall, though, the book cannot be beat. What I most appreciate about it is the "note found in a bottle" postscript. It explains everything from the murderer's point of view. And Then There Were None is an extremely clever mystery!

Review of Let's Take the Long Way Home

Gail Caldwell, winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism for her work as book critic for the Boston Globe, documents her friendship with fellow writer Caroline Knapp (Boston Phoenix columnist and author of Drinking: a Love Story) in a beautifully written and insightful memoir. Their bond began over their love of dogs and was cemented over additional shared experiences such as the writing life, athleticism, and past struggles with alcoholism. They both lived alone in the Cambridge area. Although this memoir focuses specifically on a friendship, it also contains mini-biographies of the two women.

Caldwell writes: "That our life stories had wound their way toward each other on corresponding paths was part of the early connection. Finding Caroline was like placing a personal ad for an imaginary friend, then having her show up at your door funnier and better than you had conceived. Apart, we had each been frightened drunks and aspiring writers and dog lovers; together, we became a small corporation."

Knapp died in 2002 at 42 of lung cancer, less than two months after her diagnosis. Most of the book is dedicated to their friendship before she fell ill. But inevitably, Caldwell must deal with the end of her friend's life. Caldwell has insightful things to say about grief, such as, "Maybe this is the point: to embrace the core sadness of life without toppling headlong into it, or assuming it will define your days. The real trick is to let life, with all its ordinary missteps and regrets, be consistently more mysterious and alluring than its end." The book contains excellent writing about the strong bond between individuals as well as reflections on life and loss.

Review of Imperfect Birds

Anne Lamott is a talented writer of fiction and nonfiction. I had not read a book by her in awhile, so I was looking forward to her newly published novel, Imperfect Birds. She explained the title in an interview in the May/June issue of Writer's Digest: "It's a line from a poem by Rumi. The line is, 'Each must enter the nest made by the other imperfect birds,' and it's really about how these kind of scraggly, raggedy nests that are our lives are the sanctuary for other people to step into . . ."

She returns to characters from her previous books Rosie and Crooked Little Heart. Seventeen-year-old Rosie has lost control. Defiant of her mother Elizabeth and stepfather James, she takes a variety of drugs and gets caught up with a guy who encourages the drug use. Elizabeth is reluctant to alienate her daughter through disciplinary actions and thereby her relationship with James suffers as she keeps secrets from him. James is the only character I consistently cared about in this book, despite him not having center stage like Rosie and Elizabeth.

One thing that bothered me about Elizabeth: why doesn't she have a job? Because she is depressed and is a recovering alcoholic? The author's point of view about this issue is unclear. Since Elizabeth and James do not have enough money at hand to send Rosie to rehab, they have to dip into money from her college fund. At one point, Rosie thinks how annoying it is that all her mother does is lounge around the house and putter in the garden when everyone else has to work.

Lamott's sensual descriptions (particularly of food) in the book remind me of one of my favorite authors, Francesca Lia Block, who does that well and also sets her novels in California. There were quite a few lines and passages that were so insightful or well-written that I wrote them down in my journal. This is an uneven novel with some beautiful writing.

The Female & Male Brains

I recently came across this quote from actress Kim Cattrall: "I'm dating again, but I know nothing about men. They remain a mystery to me, other than that they are predictable."

The differences between the female and male brains make for fascinating stuff. Louann Brizendine, M.D. wrote books on each one. She notes: "Much of the conflict that exists between men and women is fueled by unrealistic expectations that stem from failing to grasp each other's innate differences."

We know the stereotypes: women are emotional and men are not; women are more empathetic; men always have sex on the brain; women can't read maps; women are more verbal and men are more visual. But what kind of biological basis is there for these widespread perceptions?

The books follow an identical format, first laying out the parts of the brain that are different between women and men and then the hormones that affect each. Taking readers through the successive stages of life, the books also include chapters on emotions, sex, and love.

Here are just a few juicy bits of information from the books:

• "Sexual thoughts float through a man's brain every 52 seconds on average, and through a woman's only once a day." It's even worse than we thought!
• "Men use about 7,000 words per day. Women use about 20,000." More verbal indeed.
• "An innate skill in observation . . . comes with a brain that is more mature at birth than a boy's brain and develops faster, by 1-2 years."
• Men often do not register that a woman is upset until she bursts into tears: ". . . tears nearly always come as a complete surprise--and extreme discomfort--to a man . . . Tears in a woman may evoke brain pain in men. The male brain registers helplessness in the face of pain, and such a moment can be extremely difficult for them to tolerate."
• "Men are used to avoiding contact with others when they themselves are going through an emotionally rough time. They process their troubles alone and think women would want to do the same."

I thought I would learn more from The Male Brain, but I learned a lot from The Female Brain. The books have extensive notes and references, yet are fully accessible to the average person. Some of the author's cited research findings in The Female Brain have come under fire, but not being in that field, I couldn't say. I recently read a review of an upcoming book, the author of which is critical of Brizendine's findings on the female brain. That could lead to an interesting ongoing dialogue.

Farm Sanctuary

Animal rights is an important cause to me. I went vegetarian over a decade ago and never looked back. Ideally, I would be vegan and we'll see if I take the plunge in the future. In Farm Sanctuary, animal rights lobbyist and cofounder and president of Farm Sanctuary Gene Baur covers the significant legal victories he has achieved, stories of animal rescues, and the ugly truths of factory farming in the U.S. Even if you think you know all of the cruel practices involved in factory farming, Baur brings more of them to light. Each chapter ends with a profile of a rescued animal and that animal's unique story.

Baur is doing great work, and has achieved so much, yet laments repeatedly in the book that he can only save a small percentage of the nation's farm animals, which are adopted out or housed at one of the organization's two farms in Watkins Glen, New York and Orland, California. Obviously not being able to save more animals both dismays him and fuels his motivation to continue his advocacy. The rescues, combined with what he has done in changing hearts and minds about animals and food (as the subtitle says) make for an impressive list of accomplishments.

The Unit vs. Never Let Me Go

I recently read The Unit, by Ninni Holmqvist (translated from the Swedish by Marlaine Delargy) and Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro. The dystopian genre to which these books belong has fascinated me since I was introduced to 1984 back when I was a high school sophomore.

I recommend both these titles to book groups. Although there are similarities between them, my favorite is definitely Holmqvist's debut novel, The Unit. A lot more seems to happen in that book than in Never Let Me Go, which is a quieter read and zeroes in more closely on a tight-knit trio of friends.

Both stories are set in societies (in Sweden in the near future and Great Britain in the late-1990s, respectively) where certain members are considered dispensable and are sacrificed for the good of others. Dorrit, the protagonist of The Unit, is wiser to what is going on than the friends of Never Let Me Go, who try to figure out the full scope of their situation for the entirety of the book.

Both Dorrit and Kathy, who narrates Never Let Me Go, become involved in bittersweet love affairs that greatly complicate matters. How does one reconcile love while on a fast track to the end of life? Does society trump the individual?

Thoughts on This Book is Overdue!

I hope people besides librarians are interested in reading Marilyn Johnson's This Book is Overdue! because she says how librarians are adapting to a changing world and why their services are still valuable. Libraries need this kind of support! I read her book not because I wanted to congratulate myself on my chosen career but rather to see how she might influence public views of the profession. I was aware of many of the specific library trends and librarians that Johnson discusses (the Connecticut Four--love the title of that chapter: "Big Brother and the Holdout Company;" librarian bloggers; the strong librarian presence on Second Life; among others) but the public at large likely is not.

This is a fun book on librarianship, for the most part, with anecdotes about a colorful array of librarians. Johnson got the idea for the book when she was researching obituaries for her first book, The Dead Beat, and found that--according to her--librarians were some of the most interesting people out there.

A whole book praising librarians may be a bit much, as Johnson does not tie the book together as well as she could have. I remain a mix of worried and hopeful about whether American culture is going to embrace librarians well into the future. We certainly have a significant advocate and ally in Marilyn Johnson.

Philosophy Lite

Marietta McCarty's How Philosophy Can Save Your Life: 10 Ideas that Matter Most is all right, but not what I was hoping to read. I only took one philosophy class in college and have done a little reading on my own, so I wanted to read something not overly scholarly but not too poppy and self-helpy, either. Turns out I wanted something more scholarly than this book.

Her ten ideas that matter most are broad: simplicity, communication, perspective, flexibility, empathy, individuality, belonging, serenity, possibility, and joy. She attaches two philosophers to each idea and briefly explains their views relating to it.

Both Library Journal and Publishers Weekly gave the book decent reviews. It is structured best for a "philosophy club," at the author's suggestion, and LJ notes: "Her concept of philosophy clubs is particularly appealing and practical for public libraries and neighborhood groups." But I didn't find it to be enough for the individual who doesn't need a bunch of discussion questions and suggested music and literature to accompany the ideas. I wanted the ideas to be more fleshed out in place of that supplementary material. McCarty merely skims the surface.

Comic sacrilege?

Being the big fan of Pride and Prejudice that I am, I couldn't pass up the Marvel Comics version, adapted by Nancy Butler and illustrated by Hugo Petrus. The five-part comic is collected in one volume. Nancy Butler's introduction explains her interest in making comic books that appeal specifically to girls. In tackling Jane Austen's beloved novel, she ultimately decided to use much of the language from the book, rather than adapting it. Once that was settled, I imagine her biggest task was to decide how to trim the story to fit this project. I think she succeeded in abridging it.

The cover is charming in its artwork and how it is made to look like a women's magazine with its catchy tag lines. The cover art is not done by the same person as the comic inside. I prefer the cover art to the rest of the artwork, but that is not much of a complaint.

Comic sacrilege? No, this is comfortingly faithful to the original overall. I was pleased to find that Butler included the best lines that I remember from Austen's text. Fans of the original will probably like this adaptation, and more importantly it should attract younger readers of graphic novels to Austen's book.