A Momentary Taste of Being

In his third book length publication Jonah Lehrer takes on the world of creativity, innovation, and to some extent imagination--though that is hardly touched upon at all.  Leaving the secure ground of neuroscience (particularly in the second half og the book) Lehrer strays into the fields of social psychology and sociology with somewhat mixed results. Perhaps that is only for me.  I tend to become quite skeptical when research involves more than empirically verifiable fact and strays off into the territory of group interaction.  You can say that something worked, but it seems difficult to pinpoint why that something worked in the particular instance.  Taking the well-known example of Pixar, Lehrer  (summarizing the work of others, implies that success was largely the result of architecture forcing hallway meetings and interchange.  This, in turn, blossomed into some of the wonderful films we see from the studio.  If such chance meetings and random co...

I'm not certain that enough good can be said of Kate Grenville.  In this second book of a trilogy devoted to the early history of Australia, she gives us the story of  Daniel Rooke--fashioned loosely after the real-life character of William Dawes.  William Dawes was an early student of the Aboriginal peoples and their language as well as an astronomer and all round polymath.  He was expelled from Australia and went on to join forces with William Wilberforce and, eventually, to open a school for freed-slaves in Antigua. What Ms. Grenville gives us here is a remarkable story of first contact--of trying to forge the bonds of understanding that would bridge a vast gulf between the experiences of two different cultures.  She performs a remarkable feat in being able to show us the darkness of "civilization" as viewed by the aboriginal people.  She also speaks of the tenderness of heart and kindness that can bridge any gap.  She does all of this in language...

One Saturday I happened into the library and stumbled upon a relatively new book by Kate Grenville with the title of Sarah Thornhill. I might not have given it a second glance--but truth is, I did, and doing so discovered that it was the prize-winning third volume of a trilogy.  Never one to start at the end I went looking for the other two volumes and stumbled upon The Secret River. As is the way with a great many things from the library, it took me a while to get around to it, and then some time to get into it.  And once again, I'm very glad I did. The Secret River  tells the story of William and Sarah Thornhill from the time that William was born to an impoverished family in the London Slums through the time of his transportation to Australia and on to his eventual success there.  In the course of the story, he marries Sarah who goes with him to Australia and in the strange way that things transpired in that early colony becomes his overseer and master.  T...

It occurred to me the other day, while reading a remarkable study of the figurehead and inspiration behind our latest round of privateering, that we've really missed the mark.  It really occurred after I attempted to watch Atlas Shrugged in its most recent film incarnation, not wishing to subject myself to the turgid prose and rancid philosophizing of the one person most responsible for the progressive decline of anything good to say about the libertarian ideal.  If   The Book of Mormon could spawn a highly successful Broadway appearance, why not Atlas Shrugged: The Musical ,  or better yet, Who is John Galt?: The Musical. It could be paired with a revival of Springtime for Hitler  or Hitler on Ice: The Ice Capades Spectacular (as featured at the end of History of the World: part I). Think of the possible profits--the ability to exploit the poor and downtrodden--the possibility of proselytization. On a more serious note--a more sobering and bracing stud...

I was familiar with the name Susan Hill from that wonderful little book Howard's End Is on the Landing , a kind of compendium of personal favorites from books and literature.  I was familiar with The Woman in Black from the film, which I had wanted to see, but never really had the opportunity.  So, what a wonderful convergence when I discovered that the film I wanted to see came from a source that I knew I would enjoy reading. And, I was not wrong.  The Woman in Black has the form of a classic ghost story--it even starts on Christmas Eve as children are sharing their made-up ghost stories and the experience plunges our first person narrator into a re-experience of his own horrifying ghost story. Arthur, a  young lawyer, is sent from London to the middle of nowhere--a small town at the very edges of a great swamp/marsh where stands Eelmarsh House--the home of an eccentric old woman who has recently died.  His job is to go through the papers in the house, ext...

James Renner has produced a couple of books of nonfiction before this, his first novel.  His skill is evident and the novel--a result, at least partially of his own wide reading and his own interest in crime writing is stunning. For the first two thirds of the book we follow the story of David Neff, a writer for an indie newspaper, whose passion for the truth manifests in the investigation of a series of murders that had taken place several years previously in his native Northern Ohio.  (As a side note, it was a pleasure to read of towns and places that I know of but few have ever heard of--Ravenna, Canton, along with Akron, Kent, and Cleveland).  His researches lead directly to the trial of an additional perpetrator and may have indirectly precipitated his wife's death. With the exception of two very odd interludes that presage the third section of the novel, all of this is told in a very straightforward, if fun, time hopping sort of way, with the recounting of a...

from "The People" in China in Ten Words Yu Hua This was a key moment in my life. I had always assumed the light carried farther than human voices and voices carry farther than body heat. But that night I realized that it is not so, for when the people stand as one, their voices carry farther than light and their heat is carried farther still. That, I discovered, is what "the people" means.

In a word, not to keep you in suspense, charming.  A memoir cum travelogue cum cookbook, Ms. Flinn tells the story of leaving corporate America and pursuing her dream of a degree from one of the most prestigious cooking schools in the world. Ms. Flinn tells her adventures while attending all three courses at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris--basic, intermediate, and superior.  Along the way we learn about the Chefs, their moods, their modes, their recipes, their haunts.  We also learn a bit about Paris, a good deal about the school, and a great deal about Ms. Flinn, who sounds like a wonderful person--one both interesting and entertaining to be with. Living in Paris Ms. Flinn plays host to any number of visitors--from one young man who bursts into her apartment to find the bathroom and spend much of the rest of his stay with her recovering from food poisoning picked up in London, to the visitation of two extremely trying young women who allow Kathleen and her husband to ...

Hmmm , I thought to myself as I glanced at the book, A nthony Horowitz, isn't he the author of a whole bunch of YA young spy kinds of things?  And here he is continuing the Sherlock Holmes Opus? It's scary enough when great, well known writers of mystery decide to continue the opus--few of these are entirely successful--most are marginal.  And here is a person I know little--indeed next-to-nothing about presuming to tread on this sacred ground. Well, I'm here to tell you that House of Silk is among the very finest continuations of the Holmes saga.  Perhaps a bit too much Elephants Can Remember , Sleeping Murder, or Curtain --but that's rather a matter of taste.  And to my taste, this was superb.  We start with a mysterious stranger, evidently a Boston thug threatening an Englishman who had only just recently returned from America--and we move on into murder, mayhem, opium dens, and conspiracy in high places to keep entirely hidden the secrets of the ...

Adiga-- Last Man in Tower --12/16/11 ***** Bell-- The Reapers Are the Angels --2/10/11 ***** Bennett-- Pay Me in Flesh --9/12/11 *** Berry-- The Poetry of William Carlos Williams of Rutherford --7/21/11 ***** Blackthorne-- Edge --5/6/11 *** Bohjalian-- The Night Strangers --11/15/11 *** Boyle-- When the Killing's Done --4/29/11 ***1/2 Brockmeier-- The Illumination --5/22/11 **** Castro-- Z is for Zombie -- 2/4/11 *** Cline-- Ready Player One --8/21/11 ***** Connolly-- The Gates --10/27/11 ***** Dashner-- The Death Cure --12/20/11 *** Eugenides--The Marriage Plot--11/23/11 ****1/2 Fisher-- Shockaholic --12/28/11 **** Flew-- There Is a God --1/8/11 ***** Grann-- The Lost City of Z --12/07/11 ***** Hearne-- Hammered --8/15/11 **** Hearne-- Hounded --6/25/11 **** Hearne-- Hexed --7/5/11 **** Henry-- Lime Creek --11/26/11 ***1/2 Hemingway-- The Green Hills of Africa --1/18/11 --abandoned Johnson-- Train Dreams --11/27/11 ***** Kadrey-- Sandman Sli...

One of the blurbs on the back of Mr. Adiga's latest book compares him with Charles Dickens--and perhaps this comparison is more apropos than might seem at first glance.  The White Tiger , Mr. Adiga's first book, won the Man Booker Prize the year it came out. It was a savage indictment of the current regime in India with a sharp look at the cost and benefits of "outsourcing."  One might think about it as the inside story of outsourcing.  Between the Assassinations , a kind of novel in short stories, I have not read.  This third work, is larger in volume and yet somewhat smaller in scope than either of the first two. Mr. Adiga takes us into the lives of the residents of an apartment house that comes to the attention of a building constructor who wants to place on the site new luxury apartments.  The developer offers the people in towers A and B a princely sum for their houses.  Almost all of the residents want to take him up on it.  But there is ...

I have to admit that this short novel came as something of a disappointment.  Perhaps my expectations were set much too high by so many reviewers. Ms. von Le Fort tells the story of the Carmelite Martyrs of Compiegne--seventeen Carmelites who were executed just before the end of the Terror.  She tells the story from the point of view of one who, while desiring most of all martyrdom, is trapped in the martyrdom of the one who escaped. Short, easy to read, but not at all what I expected from a book so highly praised.  It suggests that I need to go back and reread. Or perhaps better, return to the short opera by Fracois Poulenc which the work inspired--"Dialogue of the Carmelites." ***

Sometimes you're browsing through the fiction in the library and for no reason at all a book falls off the shelve and into your hands.  You look into it, evaluating, wondering.  You're caught by a sentence on the first page, or perhaps your eye crosses a paragraph further on in the novel and you're caught. I have many such experiences, but, like most blind dates, they don't work out.  You take them home for a leisurely read and you wonder, "Now what exactly did I see in this book?"  I bring home piles of books every week.  In fact, I am single-handedly responsible for keeping the library funded in my county--I keep those books and other materials moving in and out at a pace defying imagination.  Bring home two bags with thirty potential candidates and wind up returning sixteen of them the next week.  The others age well on my to-be-read shelf, but eventually they too make it back to the library--mostly unread. Michael Zadoorian's book was one s...

I've read the previous memoir, Wishful Drinking and. . . well. . . I suppose enjoyed is not quite the right word for my experience with it--although my recollection of it was enough to make me pick this up when in the library. This continues the story begun in Wishful Drinking and the title refers directly to Carrie Fisher's treatment for near suicidal depression and related psychiatric problems.  While the book does talk about and illuminate this aspect of her life, it doesn't stop there and dwell on things.  Indeed, the most substantial part of this book is a loving and in many ways compassionate memoir of her later life with her famous father Eddie Fisher. I don't follow celebrity news or entanglements, so it came as something of a revelation to me (not of the fireworks and sudden dawn variety) that Elizabeth Taylor was, for some small part of Ms. Taylor's life, the step-mother of Carrie Fisher.  And you all say, "Well, duh!"  Told you I wasn'...

Mr. Dashner rounds out the trilogy begun in The Maze Runners and continued in The Scorch Trials .  These are of the YA genre that seems to have escalated in popularity in recent days--bad adults put young people in serious danger for some perceived good or order in society.  It is understandable why they appeal to young people, because we all remember the times when the adult world was out to subvert us and to harm us "for our own good."  But it does become a trifle tiresome after a while, and this third book of the series bears this out. While the series ends, it doesn't seem finished.  This last book seemed somewhat overlong and rambling without really getting to a critical point.  Mr. Dashner seemed not to know where he wanted to be with the book--Teen Angst or ZA (Zombie Apocalypse--for those not up on the terminology).  As a result, the book seemed a bit of a muddle to me. However, if you've read this far, you'll want to finish out the series, so ...

I should preface the bulk of my comments by saying that I finished this book on the way home from a trip to Austin.  When I completed it my initial impulse was to hurl it across the room.  My secondary impulse was to want to shred--eviscerating it, destroying it page by painful page--to inflict upon it some of the relentless damage it inflicted upon my psyche in the reading of it.  All of which is to say I had a very personal and substantial reaction to it.  If one follows Harold Bloom's notion that great literature "reads the reader" then I am left with the interesting quandary of wondering whether I want to know what it found out in the reading. Crossing to Safety is the chronicle of two couples.  They meet in depression era America in a university setting and the story follows them as one couple, affluent and gracious, welcomes the other couple into their family circle. We see the couples in good times and in bad for each of them--through loss of job and su...

I had read about this book last year when there was a huge amount of hype.  I'm highly allergic to hype--I break-out in all sort of unpleasant spots and rashes.  I stayed far, far away for fear of the hype-allergens. Strolling through the Library looking for books to support my son in his study of the civilizations of Peru, I saw this.  The hype had died down, everything was safe for approach, so I grabbed it off the shelf opened it up and fell in. Fell in completely--so much so that midway through reading I went out and purchased the book.  For those of you who as children read the "lost worlds" novels of Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and most prominently H. Rider Haggard, this is a treat beyond imagining.  It tells the true story of a Amazon explorer who was dedicated to the task of finding the legendary lost city of Z.  Sometimes called El Dorado, sometimes thought to be completely impossible, the Lost city of Z became the personal o...

In Rashi , Elie Weisel gives us a very brief overview of the life, times and works of one of his spiritual guides and mentors and one of the great Jewish thinkers of all time.  It really is nothing more than a tantalizing glimpse, enough to whet one's appetite for more.  Or, if you're of a mind to become acquainted with a great thinker and scholar, perhaps enough.  Myself, I'd like to read and understand more about this thinker's influence on Judaism and ultimately the world at large, because much of his work was translated into Latin and influenced Medieval thought about the Old Testament. Recommended--****  minus one star for extreme brevity.

In Train Dreams Denis Johnson takes us through the life of a man from near its beginnings until its end--all in less that about 100 pages. The novel is told in a series on non-chronological vignettes and includes things like seeing Elvis Presley's train stopped in its tracks--build the (at the time) largest railroad bridge in the world, having everything one possesses destroyed in a wildfire, and being cursed by a Chinese man who was on his way to a lynching. The novel bears repeated reading to get a sense of the time and the person.  But narrated as it is, it is very much dreamlike in quality--floating, anchored only here and there by incident and event.  The lack of chronological narration is an interesting and effective device for this story.  The language is beautifully wrought and brings the reader very much into the mind of the main character and into the spirit of the time. Highly Recommended *****

In a series of connect short stories and vignettes, Joe Henry invites us into the lives and times of a family living in Montana (I think--throughout most of the collection it sounded as though they were perched out on the vestibule to the 9th circle of Hell). There is some gorgeous langauge--some interesting juxtapositions, and a really deft handling of all of the novelistic elements.  However, I found that at times I just didn't get it.  In a couple of cases it was all about horses and the man-horse link which I lack entirely.  In another case it was some confusion over a high-school football game. So while there is much to savor here and those closer to nature will probably get more out of it, I have to admit that at times I was stymied by the subject matter. Nevertheless, highly recommended for those who want to read something that is at times exquisitely beautiful. ***1/2