Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life
Julia Briggs
Harcourt, Inc.
15 East 26th Street, 15th floor, New York, NY 10010
www.harcourtbooks.com
0151011435 $30.00 1-800-543-1918
Alma Halbert Bond
Reviewer
Virginia Woolf was a genius, perhaps the greatest woman writer who ever lived. Yet most of the numerous biographies written about her stress her social life and connection with the Bloomsbury set. Very few look into the factors that shaped her artistry. Julia Brigg's book can be used as a text book on the intricate development of creativity and how it functioned in the life of Virginia Woolf. Reading her diaries, letters, and original manuscripts, Briggs has created a masterly study of the writing processes of Virginia Woolf and how they influenced her finished products. Briggs superbly connects each volume with what was going on in Woolf's life and why she needed to write each particular work at the time she did. The book also demonstrates with clarity the connection between mental illness and creativity in the work of this great author. We finish reading this superb biography with the feeling that we know who Virginia Woolf was, how she worked, and that she was a woman far in advance of her time. Most of all, we come away with a great respect for an author who survived the ravages of bipolar disorder to arise like a Phoenix from the ashes of devastating mental illness.
The Voyage Out (1915)
Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life begins with a discussion of The Voyage Out, Woolf's first novel. The structure of Brigg's book follows Woolf's major works. In between, Briggs skillfully inserts comments on Virginia's personal life and the influence of people close to her on her work. Woolf published The Voyage Out in 1915 when she was 33 years old, but Briggs states that Woolf's life in fiction really began eight years before, when she first developed her conception of the novel. According to Briggs, the title of the novel says as much about Virginia's creative journey as it does about the book. Woolf herself, when commenting on George Meredith's first novel, said that a beginning writer's word vacillates from one attitude to another, and that "the whole fabric seems to rock a little insecurely," thus preparing the way for a new and original vision of the human condition" (p 28.). Surely that is what Virginia Woolf accomplished in The Voyage Out.
Night and Day (1919)
Virginia's second novel, Night and Day, often sounds like a drawing room comedy. It is a love story that ends in a marriage that parallels some of the tensions of her own.
During the first year of her marriage, Virginia endured the worst breakdown of her life. The illness lasted over two years, and nearly resulted in her death. She had just completed The Voyage Out. Woolf frequently was depressed on finishing a major novel, as if she couldn't bear to let it go. In addition, she had just gotten back the proofs for The Voyage Out, and was afraid everyone would jeer at her. Some reviewers, including the present writer, believe that resentment of her husband's tyranny (he maintained absolute control over her eating, hours of sleeping, when she could see friends, and worst of all, how much or how little she could write, under the guise of looking after her health) contributed to Virginia's psychosis, and it was only in her illness that she could face her dislike of him.. For long periods of her confinement, she refused to see him. "I do not like the Jewish voice; I do not like the Jewish laugh," she wrote in her diary around this time (p. 45). Except for a brief period in their first year of marriage, she refused to have sex with him. At times during her illness, she became violent, talked incessantly for days on end, and then fell into a coma. According to her husband, Leonard Woolf, she became either ominously silent or over-stimulated and compulsively talkative, behavior symptomatic of bipolar disease.
Night and Day served as therapy for Virginia. She wrote herself back into the secure days of her childhood, when her highly educated Victorian family was still intact and spent delightful summers at St. Ives in Cornwall. In the process of recreating the enchanting atmosphere, Virginia also discovered how claustrophobic and entrapping that world had been, and began to question established social and literary convention. Night and Day is the most conventional as well as the most neglected of her novels. Woolf herself thought the book was not her best work, but represented a necessary stage in her development as a writer, much like the courses Vanessa had taken at art school.
Jacob's Room (1922)
Jacob's Room is Virginia Woolf's protest against World War 1, and her belief that Jacob, like her deceased brother Thoby, was doomed by when and where he was born. For the first time in her novels she used a technique by which writers leave out more and more reality, trusting to the reader to fill in the gaps. Thus, although the atmosphere of WW 1 permeates the book, it is rarely mentioned as such, but only referred to peripherally. For example, pro-war processions pass beneath the windows of Whitehall, waving banners, and a similar procession holds up lines of carriages, carrying aristocrats to the opera. Thoby had always seemed mysterious and vague to Virginia, and perhaps Jacob's Room was an attempt on her part to make him come alive psychologically. If so, in that respect, although the book is beautifully written, it is not a success, for Jacob remains as unfathomable and nebulous as his predecessor.
Mrs. Dalloway (1925)
In Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf concerned herself with the relationship between the individual and the group, of solitude versus company, in a country that resumed its pre-war life as if millions of young men had not died. The heroine, Clarissa Dalloway, is cold and self-absorbed, completely wrapped up in the party she is to give that evening. In the book, Woolf caricatures the English ruling classes and they way they dress up for their various roles. She writes, "people have any number of states of consciousness. I should like to investigate the party consciousness" (p.157). In Mrs. Dalloway, she also investigates the psychotic consciousness. The previous summer, Woolf had reexperienced a two-month bout of her old illness. Recovering, she vowed that it would never happen again. Once more using a novel as therapy, she set about exorcizing her illness through the creation of Septimus, a psychotic, suicidal man in whom moments of despair alternate with moments of extreme happiness. His experiences give us the only available clue as to how Woolf felt during her illnesses. The book also deals with homosexuality: Clarissa's fascination with Sally Seton parallels Virginia's many homosexual crushes and, later, her love affair with Vita Sackville-West. "Friendships with women interest me," she says, in a bit of an understatement (p. 152).
To the Lighthouse (1927)
To the Lighthouse, the fifth of Woolf's nine novels, is generally considered her masterpiece. It is the most autobiographical of her novels, as well as serving as the most therapeutic. Virginia was obsessed by thoughts of her parents after their deaths, and felt it necessary to write about them. Ten years after the book was finished, she felt she had done for herself through writing the book "what psychoanalysts do for their patients. I expressed some very long felt and deeply felt emotion. And in expressing it, I explained it and then laid it to rest" (p. 160) . The book brings out "the sense of life in opposition to fate - i.e. waves, lighthouse (p. 169)," the sense that despite death and loss, the natural world goes on, and that what has been lost can only be restored through art.
Orlando (1928)
Virginia Woolf was in love with Vita Sackville-West and wrote her Orlando, "the most charming love letter in literature" (p. 215). Woolf intended Orlando to be a fictionalized life of Vita, including details of her life, her ancestors' lives, and Knole, her ancestral home,. But unfortunately, Vita, a confirmed "Saphist," was not satisfied with Virginia as a lover, perhaps because she was not as available as Vita would have liked. She once told Virginia that she would either have to marry her or leave her. Since the first choice was highly improbable, Vita chose the second. When she took on new lovers, Virginia wrote her that the book is "all about you and the lusts of your flesh and the lure of your mind... who go gallivanting down the lanes with Mary Campbell" (p. 192). Orlando was a work of revenge for infidelities and an attempt at disengagement. In it, Virginia could write about her sense of betrayal. She also found the book a good excuse for demanding more information and photos, in the attempt to make it look like a real biography. According to Briggs, "She had found a way of using her art not merely to exorcize past relationships, but also present ones" (p. 193).
A Room of One's Own (1929)
Brilliant as Virginia was, she was prevented from going to college like her brothers, using the libraries or chapel, walking on the grass (from which Woolf herself was actually shooed off by an Oxford Beadle) or eating in the university dining rooms. That she became as well educated as she did is a tribute to her great intelligence and desire to learn. In A Room of One's Own, Woolf uses the symbolism of doors and windows to indicate her feelings of being shut in and out, and in doing so wrote one of the founding documents of the women's movement, which became and still is the key text for many courses on women's studies. The book ends, fittingly enough, with the famous treatise on Shakespeare's sister, Judith, who could not have approached Shakespeare's genius under the deprivations faced by women, and whose second coming women must patiently await.
The Waves (1931)
Considered by some reviewers as more like a poem than a novel, surely The Waves is the most beautiful book ever written! It is the story of time passing, of the changing phases of human life, "the strange and intermittent process of growing older" (p. 256), symbolized as the rising and the setting of the sun, and reflecting the primal rhythm of the waves. As Shakespeare wrote in Sonnet 60, "Like the waves make towards the pebbled shore/So do our minutes hasten to their end." (Woolf's analogy of the passing of time with the cycles of nature is reminiscent of Shakespeare's placement of Sonnet 60 to coincide with the 60 minutes of the hour.)
The book is written in individual monologues, providing a history of the growth of consciousness from "its first bright arrows of sensation" (p.259), through the six children's growing awareness of time during their passage from the first school day to the last, the focus on the loss of youth, self-awareness- "I am not one and simple, but complex and many" (p. 259), the binding of the individuals into a group, and the revelation of art, which brings the characters (and their creator) to find their own ways of resisting time and loss. The Waves is a great work of art. More than any of her other works, it establishes Virginia Woolf as a genius of monumental achievement.
The Years (1937)
Woolf was not finished with feminism after she wrote A Room of One's Own, but steadily continued to accumulate information about it for five years. One day, while taking a bath, she conceived the idea for The Years. The first draft emphasized the continuity between A Room of One's Own and the new book, which was intended to be a novel of fact, not of vision, as The Waves had been. The Years opens with her addressing a group of young women, to whom she explained that to understand the present, they had to make sense of the past. She would help them do by telling them the story of the imaginary Pargiter family, using the family as a metaphor for society itself. Woolf wrote, "...there are to be millions of ideas...in short, a summing up of all I know, feel, laugh at, despise, like, admire hate & so on" (p. 282). Woolf said there was not a fact in the book which could not be verified, thus anticipating the carefully researched fiction of our own times. The book explored "the great feminist issues - contraception, chastity, rape, patriarchy, the future, and the nature of patriotism" (p. 285). Woolf wanted "to give a picture of society as a whole, of the way the old fabric slowly gives place to the new, of a recurrence of some pattern" (p. 302). She was very successful in achieving this goal, but The Years in no way compares with the artistry Woolf exhibited in To the Lighthouse and The Waves. She would argue her feminist case even more persuasively in Three Guineas.
Three Guineas (1938)
Despite the phenomenal success of A Room of One's Own, male chauvinism seemed as dangerous to Woolf in the 30s as it ever had been, so she decided to take her arguments a few steps further in a new book. Her efforts resulted in Three Guineas, a critique of patriarchy and its effects on life within marriage, militarism and imperialism. While it took thirty years for the world to catch up with Woolf's philosophy, Three Guineas today is considered a founding document in the history of gender studies, showing, for example, how differently men see war than women do. Woolf writes, "although we look at the same things, we see them differently" (p. 323).
Three Guineas is much harder to read than Woolf's other novels, and, at least to this reviewer, not as interesting. According to Briggs, "Three Guineas is further from fiction than most of her (Woolf's) work, yet at the same time more consciously contrived. Its strenuous prose is a strength paid for with a certain loss of lightness and spontaneity" (p. 318). Woolf considered herself an apolitical person. She wrote, "Thinking is my fighting" (p.337). Yet her book Three Guineas has changed the world's definition of what is political to include gender, along with class and race.
Between the Acts (1941)
Between the Acts was Virginia Woolf's last book. At the time she was writing it, England was at its lowest ebb. Hitler was at the height of his power and England was expecting an invasion any day. On a personal level, depleted rations left Virginia and Leonard half starved, while fuel shortages kept them continually frozen. In addition, their home in London had been bombed, and many of their friends had committed suicide. "We live without a future," she wrote, "with our noses pressed to a closed door" (p. 397). Shortly after she finished her last novel, she killed herself.
In The Years the character of Eleanor, speaking for her author, finds England, "small:...smug:...petty" (p. 372). Yet when she watched an owl flit from branch to branch in the lovely summer night, and listened to her sister-in-law's soft country accent, she thought, "This is England." According to Briggs, "Eleanor's vision of peace and continuity on the threshold of disruption would provide the seed for Woolf's final novel" (p. 372). In it, she compacts English literature and history into a social comedy that accepts and embraces the ambivalence of life. The book reflects Woolf's love for and reservations about her country, and explores her vision of creativity. It ends "in a world where nothing is concluded" (p. 392). In discussing critics attempts to view Between the Acts as a summing up of Virginia Woolf's life, Elizabeth Bowen writes that it is absolutely untrue. "Between the Acts is incapable of being completed" (p. 394), any more than the story of Virginia Woolf ended with her death.
The Summing Up
Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life is a carefully, even exhaustively researched book which is supplied with 107 pages of notes. It is perhaps the best researched biography I have ever read. Although I myself am the author of a well-received book about Woolf, Who Killed Virginia Woolf? A Psychobiography (1989) and read many biographies of Woolf and all of her published work, there is much new material about her in Brigg's book. I wish Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life had been published before I wrote Who Killed Virginia Woolf?
Briggs tells us that Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life is intended mainly for "the common reader," the name of several of Woolf's books. It is written in a style that is easy to read and maintains the reader's interest through most of the book. The times when it is boring are usually because Briggs is writing about material of Woolf's that is dry. Unfortunately, despite her genius, that occurs more often than most reviewers will admit. Briggs states that her book was inspired by Woolf's deep interest in her own processes of writing, and by her feeling that other biographies concentrated too heavily on Woolf's social life, thereby underestimating the centrality that creativity had for her. Woolf remained fascinated all her life by her own thoughts and creative processes, and recorded them faithfully in her diaries and letters.
Woolf's fiction is generally concerned with her inner life and the ways she was able to recreate that life in her work. The famous German critic, Erich Auerbach, believed that Woolf's ability to depict the private life of many types of people touched on "a common life of mankind on earth" (p. 488).
Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life is a fine biography, broader, deeper, and vastly superior to most of the biographies written about her. Briggs did what she set out to do, in that she wrote an excellent study demonstrating the centrality Woolf's creativity had for her life. It is usually interesting reading, and contains a vast reservoir of knowledge about the history of England, of World War 11, of early feminism, the treatment of women in Great Britain at that time, and literature. In addition, it is a fascinating story of the life and works of perhaps our greatest woman writer, who might well have been Shakespeare's sister Judith.
If I have any criticism about Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life, it is that I would have liked more material on the psychogenic origin of many of her books as well as her personal problems, such as formed the basis of Who Killed Virginia Woolf? A Psychobiography. I came away from reading Brigg's book with no further insight into the psychogenic origin of her creativity or her madness. In a few spots of her book, it seemed to me the author really didn't understand Virginia Woolf. But then, Julia Briggs is a researcher and a professor of English literature, not a psychologist.
Book Proposals That Sell
W. Terry Whalin
Write Now Publications
A royalty division of ACW Press
5501 N. 7th Ave. #502, Phoenix, AR 85013
1932124640 $14.00 www.writenowpublications.com
I haven't been impressed with books on book proposals in the past. They've all seemed to come with cookie-cutter ideas, simple forms, and little depth. But Book Proposals That Sell has impressed my socks off! Not only does Whalin share his expertise in the field of writing book proposals—he's written more than 60 himself—but he gives readers an insider's glance into the world of book publishing; which is quite valuable!
Knowing how to write a great book is only half the battle. If you don't impress the publishing houses with your proposal your book will sit on your computer or in your garage collecting dust. You'll never see a dime for your hard work and you'll probably give up writing altogether.
But thanks to Book Proposals That Sell you have the opportunity to not only learn how to write a great book proposal but to understand what publishers want, how they make their decisions, and what you can do to better your chances of getting a publishing contract. There's even a sample book proposal that sold for six figures! If you're serious about making a living as a book author or you simply want to be a one-time wonder, you need a copy of Book Proposals That Sell.
Blood Stripes: The Grunts' View of the War in Iraq
David J. Danelo
Stackpole Books
0811701646 $29.95
Andrew Lubin, Reviewer
www.andrewlubin.com
There are an increasing number of books coming onto the market now about the war in Iraq that have been written by various Marine or army veterans who fought there. "Blood Stripes" is one of the better efforts on the market today.
Written by David J. Danelo, a former Marine officer, and combat veteran of Iraq, "Blood Stripes" chronicles the efforts of four Marine infantry units fighting in the western desert towns in the Sunni Triangle. He follows these four squads of grunts as they leave from the United States and spend their seven month tour fighting the fedayeen. Danelo writes with the clear and concise style of the combat veteran he is, as he brings the reader to the edge of their seat with his description of these young Marines walking a daily IED patrol, or getting themselves physically and emotionally ready to clear houses in Husaybah and Haditha.
"Blood Stripes" refer to the red stripe running from the waist to the cuffs on the dress slacks of a Marine non-commissioned officer, and these are the Marine leaders who are the subject of Danelo's book. A non-commissioned officer is typically 22- 25 years old, and whose ranks are corporal and sergeant. These NCO's are the lead characters; they are the "small unit leaders" who take their Marines into battle. Danelo tells their story powerfully; with the quiet authority of a Marine officer who has ordered such NCO's into battle, and has seen the bloody consequences of these ugly street fights.
Danelo does not dwell on the rightness or wrongness of the war. Instead he introduces the reader to the individual Marines, to their families, and to how they cope – both back home in America, as well as in Fallujah, Ramadi, and the other nasty little towns where the war is being fought – with the daily stress of heat, IED patrols, and combat. As we get to know the Marines and their girl friends and wives, Danelo gives us a glimpse of what these young men experience in combat in the narrow streets and back alleys of western Iraq.
"Blood Stripes" is Danelo's first literary effort, and it is well done indeed. This is not a feel-good book; not all the Marines return alive. But for a reader who wants to know what the Marines are experiencing in Iraq every day – be sure to read this book.
The Temple at Landfall (Previous release in UK as The World Celaeno Chose.)
Jane Fletcher
Bold Strokes Books, Inc.
430 Herrington Road, Johnsonville, NY 12094
1933110279 $15.95
Cheri Rosenberg
Reviewer
Jane Fletcher is the consummate storyteller and plot wizard. Getting caught up in the action happens as if by magic and the fantasy elements are long forgotten. The world Fletcher creates, the characters she brings to life, and the rich detail described in eloquent prose, all serve to keep the reader enchanted, satisfied, yet wanting more. A 2005 Lammy finalist, The Temple at Landfall is surely a winner in this reader's book, and as an author, Jane Fletcher is the Goddess herself.
What could be more important than creating new life and reveling in the joy of having the gifts to perform such miracles? In the world of Celaeno, without men to procreate, women rely on the Imprinters for continuation of the species. Lynn, chosen by the Goddess to function as an Imprinter, also has healing talents and a heart of gold. At the tender age of twelve, the Sisters claimed her for the temple at Fairfield where she soon learned the ropes and proved to be their greatest asset. Before long, word of Lynn's gift spreads and she is whisked away to the temple at Landfall by Sister Smith—an ambitious political fool who longs to be the Chief Consultant at any cost. Only, instead of feeling privileged, Lynn feels like a slave destined for a celibate, hapless, and exhausting life under the rule and watchful eye of the Sisters who truly believe they are doing the Goddess's will. The leaders use religion to justify their less than pious actions where greed, backstabbing, political maneuverings, and ignorance prove the inner sanctum is less than holy. Lynn wonders if the Guards (the Sister's army) are there to protect her or to keep her from running away.
When Lynn meets the fearless, handsome, and brilliant heroine Lieutenant Kim Ramon of the 23rd Squadron of Rangers, the soldier is brusque surmising the Imprinter is asking silly questions. However, Lynn soon finds that she can't deny her lustful thoughts and profound attraction for the noble warrior. Kim knows all too well the prohibition of mingling with the holy ones, but Lynn is not your average Imprinter. She makes it hard for Kim to ignore the woman behind the title.
Fletcher's claim to fame is her compelling narrative, plot twists, intense action sequences, vivid scenery, and the reader's hope that against all odds the heroines will live happily ever after. The intelligence with which Fletcher writes about imprinting verses cloning, religion verses science, religious leaders verses heretics, and her attempt to show the sort of biased, unsupported dogma that religious fanatics pass off as rational unquestionable fact makes The Temple at Landfall not only entertaining but thought-provoking as well. Don't miss it. Once you visit Celaeno, you won't want to leave. The Temple at Landfall is a pleasure to read, hard to put down, and is the perfect addition to any library. I recommend everything this 2005 Golden Crown Literary Society winner, for The Walls of Westernfort, has penned.
On The Home Front: My Mother's Story of Everyday American Life from Prohibition through World War II
Mary Jo Clark
Penguin Putnam
375 Hudson St, New York, NY 10014
0452283124 $12.00
Coletta Ollerer
Reviewer
Mary Jo Clark is a lady who liked to tell stories and her son, Jack, liked to hear them. He decided to write them down and you will enjoy hearing them too. According to Jack, "The stories all have beginnings, middles and endings. Frequently, there is a punch line. Some are funny, others sad. . . . . . they are of a world that no longer exists." (pxvi) It is a world that, in a sense, is lost but it so good to go back there in reminiscence and enjoy the innocence. The small vignettes are very entertaining and Jack's decision to omit their chronological order makes them seem like ordinary conversation. That is how we talk about our lives, in small bites without any time lines. Mary Jo is so easy to like as are the people who populate her anecdotes. She had seven children and a great love for them all. She and her husband had a good marriage. She didn't tell us that, we just understood as she talked on.
In 1941 she was working at Spiegel's. About her boss at Spiegel's she says, "He (Modie Spiegel) was the president of Spiegel's, and he used to come to the cafeteria to eat his lunch with everybody else. One day he got his sleeve in the soup bucket. He laughed. Everybody thought it was so funny – the president of the company with his sleeve in the soup bucket. That would never have happened at Sears (where Mary Jo was employed earlier). They'd be in the executive dining room." (p1)
During Prohibition, her dad decided that he could make hooch in the basement. "So he went out and bought himself a still, which was a great big ceramic crock. He bought malt and hops and whatever else goes into it. And he was very happy that he had this stuff fermenting in the basement. Then one day it all blew up. The still was in pieces all over the basement." (p44)
In 1930 Mary Jo was working at Sears. One of her coworkers was married on a Saturday and when she came back to work on Monday, "They called her into the main office and told her they were sorry, but they didn't have married women at Sears, so she would have to leave." (p58) It was a different time in corporate America. Mary Jo muses, "There were about 200 people in the collection department and when I think back, I know I never heard of their husbands. A lot of them were older. They just had all that Sears stock they held on to – profit sharing." (p58) Women liked to be independent in those days, too, but only a few could manage it.
This enjoyable read rubber-banded me back to my childhood. That good-hearted attitude Mary Jo displayed was commonplace. Neighbors knew each other and people cared about those around them. I read the book in one afternoon and so enjoyed basking in the nostalgia.
Matthew B. Ridgway: Soldier, Statesman, Scholar, Citizen
George C. Mitchell
Stackpole Books
Mechanicsburg, PA
0811722945 $15.95
Dan Schneider, Reviewer
www.Cosmoetica.com
Of all the great American military leaders the last century produced, from Black Jack Pershing to the World War Two icons- Dwight D, Eisenhower, Chester Nimitz, George Patton, Omar Bradley, George Marshall, Douglas MacArthur, through Stormin' Norman Schwarzkopf, perhaps the greatest of them all, militarily speaking, was General Matthew Bunker Ridgway, the man who took over from MacArthur after Big Mac was dismissed by President Harry S. Truman during the Korean War. It was Ridgway, Commander of the U.S. Eighth Army, who rallied the UN Forces from nearly being pushed into the sea by the North Koreans, Russians, and Chinese, and forced what has been an over half century long stalemate. Because of things as this, General Marshall, in fact, called Ridgway, 'the finest soldier I have known.' General called it 'the greatest feat of personal leadership in the history of the Army.'
Yet, the book Matthew B. Ridgway: Soldier, Statesman, Scholar, Citizen, rereleased in 2002 by Stackpole Books (231 pages, $15.95), and penned by George C. Mitchell, does little to expand on the essence of the man. His personal life is a virtual cipher, which renders his son's accidental death, years before his own death, a mere fact, with n pathos nor gravitas given to it, for we hardly know the boy, nor his relationship with his father, to care that much over the loss. At best, this book is a straightforward rendering of the four aspects of the man its subtitle claims. While this makes for a good encyclopedia entry, as a book, it makes for rough reading. Especially odd is that this rather dry rendering was written by Dr. George C. Mitchell, a well known journalist, diplomat, and educator who had the advantage of knowing his subject before his death before his July 26, 1993, death at the age of 98. Yet, he never exploits this fact to his reader's benefits, with personal anecdotes nor reminiscences of the great man in his dotage. There is no play with form nor stretching of the medium. Of course, given its subject, the book could not be bad, for even an A to B to C journey through the life of such as man as Matthew B. Ridgway is informative and enlightening. Yet, the book never makes a claim for putting its subject on a par with his contemporaries, as MacArthur nor Patton.
Consider the film version of the life of Patton, which focuses on the man, his foibles, and his military exploits in World War Two. It brilliantly evokes, through the Francis Ford Coppola screenplay, its subject by anchoring us to his subjective point of view, especially in the memorable opening scene of George C. Scott declaiming to the viewer. Or, consider the controversial technique Edmund Morris used to give insight into President Ronald Reagan, in his faux memoir Dutch, by inserting a fictive version of himself into real and made up scenes. Now, even if one abhors such men as Patton and Reagan, one cannot but admire the willingness to hagiographize in a new way that both those media did to their subjects. Instead, Mitchell gives us a rather easy vanilla portrait, much too content to let the man and his life speak for himself. Not only does this smack a bit of laziness, especially considering the paltry length of the book, and given its subject, but the writing, itself- Mitchell's and Ridgway's, is just so banal. Here is an example of what Mitchell considers Ridgway at his best, on liberty:
We should expect to pay a price, to make a sacrifice, to retain those treasures. Measured against their loss, no price would be too high to pay, no sacrifice too heavy to endure.
Not exactly Lincoln, nor even JFK, in terms of rhetoric. On the plus side, we do get a small sense of what Ridgway was- at least as a soldier, which was a patriot- in the most uncomfortable sense of the word, as well as a religious zealot, despite three marriages. His religious beliefs often led him to take on the most dangerous assignments, because he believed God would not let him be killed while carrying out his mission. He defined his ideals for leadership as the three C's: character, courage, and competence. Yet, unlike some of his more well known contemporaries, Ridgway was also more visibly human, disdaining lecturing from podia in favor of getting into the aisles to speak with soldiers at West Point. He said, 'I always disliked standing above people. I'm no better than they are- in rank, yes, in experience, yes; but not as a man.' Once, during a foggy day in Korea, the general's driver was having trouble driving, so Ridgway took over the wheel and drove his subordinate driver. One can never imagine Patton nor MacArthur doing such a thing. They would have abused the soldier as incompetent. Nor could one imagine either of them having such a total faith in subordinates, versus machinery and ordinance, and uttering such words as these, about how to achieve military victory:
There is still one absolute weapon- the employment of which dominates every consideration of National Security- the only weapon capable of operating with complete effectiveness- of dominating every inch of terrain where human beings live and fight, and of doing it under all conditions of light and darkness, heat and cold, desert and forest, mountain and plain. That weapon is man himself.
Yet, after his retirement from the military, after Korea, Ridgway spent nearly four decades speaking out on issues that concerned him- such as budget cuts he felt threatened national security, or the Vietnam War. That the book is divided into the four sections that the subtitles describe does a little to alleviate the dry recitation of facts and quotes, but not enough to recommend the book as a read, even if its subject matter is certainly worthy of the attention.
I just hope that a book like this will serve as a spur to a future military historian who feels that Matthew B. Ridgway deserves better and deeper treatment. Often it takes a third or fourth stab at a biography of a historical figure to get the true historical significance of a man. Perhaps someone like a David McCullough, if he ever decides to turn his attention to more recent times, will take a stab at Ridgway before he, too, leaves this earth. The only other book to really even deal with Ridgway in any extended manner was Clay Blair's The Forgotten War: America In Korea, 1950-1953, but that only did so in a few sections about the larger war. Ridgway, of course, won many honors, such as a Distinguished Service Cross, a Silver Star, a Distinguished Service Medal, a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart, and a Medal of Freedom, as well as a Combat Infantryman Badge- rarely given to officers, and he was also decorated by many other nations. Would that these words held the same regard for him and the time reading this book would be a good way to be entertained while learning. As it is, even a stroll through the factual online mess that is Wikipedia can satisfy the casual fact hunter as well as this book can. It will also save your fingers the burden of turning pages, although it may not ease you into sleep as well, Such tradeoffs are what military men endure in life, and what some leave after their deaths.
Natural Mandalas
Lisa Tenzin-Dolma
Duncan Baird
Distributed by Simon and Schuster (Australia) Pty Ltd
PO Box 33, PYMBLE NSW 2073
1844832295, $AU 39.95, 160 pages
Rose Glavas, Reviewer
www.astrologyrealm.com
Having reviewed 'Meditating with Mandalas' recently I assumed that 'Natural Mandalas' would follow the same format. I was correct about my assumption but was surprised to see that it was compiled by a different author! Not that this is a bad thing, because this book is another fabulous mandala book, just like the one I had reviewed earlier. Once again the illustrations and designs of the mandalas are superb. Just browsing through them is an enjoyable (and addictive!) experience. They are also designed to appeal to Westerners, whether you have experience with mandalas and/or meditation or not.
As mentioned, this title is compiled by a different author to the first in this serious on books about mandalas. Lisa Tenzin-Dolma writes full-time about various mind-body-spirit subjects such as herbalism and meditation. She lives in Bath, Somerset with some of her previous titles being 'Swimming with Dolphins (1997), and Understanding Planetary Myths (2003). The author's background in a variety of careers (singer-songwriter, nurse, aromatherapist, counsellor, clothes and jewellery designer, whole food cook, medical assistant in a haematology laboratory, and proof-reader and editor – wow!) I think has added to her understanding of people in general. Lisa also grew up in a nomadic fashion in a variety of cultures which also adds to her understanding of what makes people tick.
'Natural Mandalas' starts off with an introduction and then another mini section introducing the natural mandalas, with the actual mandalas being set out in the following subsections: The Fertile Earth; Sky, Weather and Myth; and finally, Animal Life.
The introduction covers the meaning and use of mandalas, a sample meditation on a flower, a look at stone circles and their possible meaning, sand mandalas, tree lore and a tree meditation, meditating on the elements, half-moon meditation, flower wisdom, and finally – mandala meditation step by step.
Each of the mandalas covers four pages… for example the mandala named 'Cherry Blossom' on page 62 shows the actual illustration with the facing page giving instructions and ideas for your meditation on it. There is also a saying for it, in this case, 'In the cherry blossom's shade there is no such thing as a stranger. – Kobayashi Issa (1763 – 1827)' on the facing page. On page 64 and 65 there are further ideas and thoughts about this mandala titled 'Cherry Viewing', plus a couple of other proverbs/sayings. One of them, which I particularly like is titled 'Nature's Wisdom – Study what the pine and cherry blossom can teach. Man is not the only keeper of enlightenment. Tao Te Ching (4th or 3rd century BC).'
In summary, I would highly recommend 'Natural Mandalas' as a gift for those people who have everything. This is also a great title for those with an affinity with nature, and an interest in mind-body-spirit topics.
Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity: Get Out the Shovel—Why Everything You Know Is Wrong
John Stossel
Hyperion
77 West 66th Street, New York, NY 10023-6298
1401302548 $24.95
William Harwood
Reviewer
John Stossel has been a journalist and anchor for ABC's 20/20 for twenty-five years, and has won nineteen Emmys. So the fact that, until I opened this book, I had never heard of him, says more about my viewing habits than about Stossel. It also explains why I borrowed this book from my local library, as I certainly would not have done if I had known up-front that he is a Neanderthal and (there's a difference?) a Republican.
Nonetheless, I found many of Stossel's rebuttals of my preconceptions compelling. Points on which I would not start advocating his position without first duplicating his research (as I have no intention of doing), but am no longer prepared to argue for the opposite conclusions, include the following:
DDT has harmful effects, such as causing birds to lay eggs with thinner shells, thereby endangering the species' survival; but it is less carcinogenic than coffee, and causes far less harmful effects than are now happening as a consequence of its suppression. Revived use of DDT could harm the environment if used excessively, but would simultaneously prevent more than two million malaria deaths every year.
Neo-Mormon polygyny is not intrinsically evil. Pseudo-Mormon tyrannies in which women are indeed little more than sex slaves are aberrations. Most polygynous communities are democratic, and the women have the same rights as in any mainstream Western religion.
"Road rage" is not an epidemic. What has increased since the term was invented is media coverage of incidents of violence that have not themselves increased.
When inflation is taken into consideration, gasoline prices have decreased in recent years. Gasoline costs far less per gallon or liter than ice cream or bottled water.
World oil supplies are not running out. The Alberta tar sands alone hold enough oil for at least the next century. And with oil prices at $50 a barrel, it is economically feasible to harvest it.
Stossel also presents evidence and arguments for many conclusions that I already knew to be correct, but which contradict the beliefs of a dangerous percentage of the American public who have been brainwashed by the irresponsible preaching of the criminally ignorant. These include:
The argument that astrology must have some truth, or it would not have millions of believers, is nonsense. Millions of people believe ridiculous things. (Two thirds of all adults have imaginary playmates in the sky, but that is not an issue Stossel mentions.)
Republicans say they are going to shrink government, but do not do so.
Farm subsidies do not guarantee an ample food supply. Food would be just as plentiful without subsidies.
Political leaders, rather than promoting the general welfare, are often busybodies who want to force their preferences on us.
American kids grow up stupid because (North) American schools are a breeding ground for stupidity. Teacher excellence is not rewarded. Mediocrity is rewarded.
The right way to treat a chiropractor who claims that he can cure your child's asthma, or do anything other than give relaxing back rubs, is to take your child and run.
Homeopathy is absurd.
Marrying your cousin does not produce stupid children. If that is your choice, go ahead, marry and procreate.
Talking to your kids about sex will not generate a desire to try it, since they are already thinking about it.
Just because police use psychics, that does not mean that psychics have special abilities. Police get suckered too. (Correction: some police have allowed self-styled psychics to interfere in an investigation, but that is not the same as "using" psychics. No psychic has ever provided any useful information.)
In responding to the common belief that "the media will check it out and give you objective truth," Stossel writes, "Many in the media are scientifically clueless, and will scare you to death" (p. 1). "Scientifically clueless" does not begin to describe the NBC executives who, after being shown by investigators from CSICOP that Allison DuBois was a humbug whose claims to have helped law-enforcement agencies to solve crimes were blatant lies, remained so convinced that she possessed powers that do not and cannot exist, since they would require information to travel backward in time, that they went ahead with a series that touted her as a genuine psychic. There is no such thing as a genuine psychic.
Food irradiation saves lives. By killing bacteria, it extends its shelf life and in fact makes it safer. It produces no significant adverse side effects.
Children who accuse caregivers of sexual abuse do lie, usually because they have been manipulated into doing so by self-styled therapists who should themselves be incarcerated to prevent them from victimizing the innocent with accusations of atrocities that simply never happened. As Stossel correctly concludes, "I don't blame the kids. I blame the prosecutors and the media" (p. 11).
The full moon has no effect whatsoever on human behavior. People remember unusual events that happened on a full moon, but not events that happened at a time of the month when they were not looking for them. "We remember the hits and forget the misses" (p. 24). (Stossel acknowledges Michael Shermer as the source of that reality.)
Points on which Stossel failed to convince me, but may conceivably be right, include:
While it is more commonly girls who are pressured by boys into copulating than vice versa, it is because the boys are equally pressured by their peers to prove their masculinity by seeking gratification wherever it is available, whether they feel a personal need or not.
Outsourcing does not take jobs from Americans. It creates American jobs.
Sweatshops do not exploit people. Sweatshops help people.
Since selling body parts saves lives, it is not immoral and should not be illegal.
Men are more dangerous drivers and have a higher percentage of accidents than women (fact), because they are in general more aggressive than women (unproven).
While some businesses rip off consumers, most do not. Competition protects consumers, and government regulations simply get in the way. Price controls, far from protecting consumers, create shortages and terrible hardships. (I don't buy it, but read his arguments.)
There are, however, allegations in Stossel's tome with which I totally disagree. For example:
Religious people are happier. (So are drunks. Religion has the same bliss-inducing effect as any other mind-deadening opiate.)
The President and Congress do not run America. The people run America. (Right, and the people ran Nazi Germany).
Vouchers make all schools better. (By allowing the devoutly superstitious to have their children indoctrinated in their sectarian mythology at public expense rather than taught to think? Oh come now.)
Global warming is indeed happening, but probably not as a result of human behavior. (Republican Party line. Coincidence?)
Stossel is a self-confessed conservative, whose publisher went so far as to call him "the scourge of the liberal media" (p. 281), for the good reason that he espouses many conclusions that are not merely politically incorrect but also, in my view, indefensible. While he does a good job of showing that many limitations on women's attempts to obtain equal pay can be attributed to their lack of interest in such high-commission occupations as selling automotive hardware, he goes beyond the evidence in asserting that, "It's just supply and demand. Women make less because they want different things" (p. 41).
He is just as wrong when he asserts that the world is not overpopulated, and that continuing overpopulation is not a threat to the survival of the human race. He argues that, if Earth's entire 6.5 billion population were relocated to Texas, its population density would still be less than that of New York City (p. 26). That the problem is indeed the near impossibility of getting the admittedly real food surplus to the people who need it does not diminish the reality that overpopulation is causing mass starvation deaths. If there are too many people to feed by available distribution procedures, then there are too many people. Q.E.D.
Price controls on drugs, far from benefiting the poor and the sick, cruelly harm the poor and the sick. (He must be kidding.) And price gouging, far from being evil, saves lives. (Ditto.)
A higher minimum wage helps some workers, but hurts more. (Spoken like a true Republican Neanderthal.)
Medical hypnosis is not a scam. It works—if you let it. (Stossel is clearly unaware that hypnotism DOES NOT EXIST, and all positive results are placebo effects. He should read They Call It Hypnosis, by Robert Baker.)
Stossel's contention that size matters because, "Women do have nerve endings deep inside the vagina" may have been justified when the nonexistent Grafenberg Spot was the currently fashionable media fad. It has since been established that the inside of a vagina is as sensitive to stimulation as a clipped toenail. All female pleasure receptors are in the clitoris, and for clitoral stimulation size does not matter.
In writing about what he calls "cheating," which he views as including the sharing of recreation that is safe and nonconsequential, and therefore victimless, with a non-habitual partner, Stossel reports that men and women violate the exclusivity taboo in almost equal numbers. That is probably accurate. My objection is to the continued brainwashing that victimless recreation injures a person who is not even present. Adultery meant the fraudulent impregnation of another man's woman at a time when every act of sperm intromission, regardless of the elapsed time, was believed to contribute to the next pregnancy. In an age of birth control and disease control, continuing to label as "cheating," or adultery, the recreation itself is absurd.
Stossel is right more often than he is wrong, and even when he is wrong his conclusions warrant serious consideration, if for no other reason than to be able to give them an informed rebuttal rather than a predetermined rejection. But I did not need to learn that he is welcome on the Republicanazi FOX network and unwelcome on liberal programs, to conclude that he will never be one of my favorite persons. By all means read him, but do so critically.
Ideas for Children's Writers
Pamela Cleaver
3 Newtec Place, Magdalen Road, Oxford, OX4 IRE-UK
How To Books
1845280660 9.99 Brit. pounds
Irene Edwards
Reviewer
These are scary times for Children's Writers. Should they rush into print with 'must have' genres, the fantasy that made JK Rowling and Harry Potter household names, or the gritty realism of Jacqueline Wilson's Tracy Beaker? The lives these characters inhabit are as similar, and as far apart, as the reading demands of today's youngsters, the most selective of their age ever. While it is tempting to trail current fashion, these kids are already pushing tomorrow's boundaries.
In her latest book, Ideas for Children's Writers, Pamela Cleaver neatly sums this up by urging authors to lead, not follow.
The best-selling writer calls up more than thirty years of writing for children as Tutor at the London School of Journalism, and at the University of East Anglia, to reveal today's 'Hots' and 'Nots'. She warns that the clamour by Children's Writers to chase bandwagons is turning into a headache for publishers, with fantasy in particular swamping their desks. . In today's fast-moving technology, with Dr Who battling time and gruesome gorgons, youngsters are already into science, horror, and Alex Ryder, Boy Spy.
According to Pamela Cleaver these genres are still thin on publishers' lists, and could be next year's best-sellers - a good reason to follow her advice and get writing! Something else kids love is humour, and Terry Pratchett's A Hat Full of Sky has them laughing to the last page.
Another genre catching publishers' interest is crossover books, with plots for the eleven-plus age-group and adults. The storylines are darker and more complex than usual.
Pamela Cleaver's long and successful career in publishing gives her a unique platform from which to advise writers of all genres, something she does with humour and down to earth common sense, in her latest book Ideas for Children's Writers. There may be some readers, however, expecting from the title that ideas for stories will roll off the pages. They even find the book heavy going - dull in parts - with too many how to bullets, until they discover the author's steadfast, passionate purpose.
This is a source manual, a glorious compendium of lists, plots, themes and genres, so wide in its remit that authors of adult fiction could use it for reference. The two hundred plus pages cover the whole gamut of writing for children, from picture books for beginners- with ghosts and dragons - to the more sophisticated needs of seven-plus readers, with their fascination for space adventure. Here is a book that deserves to be on every writer's shelf, written by a best-selling author always generous with help and advice to her many readers over the years, and to her creative writing students of all ages, inspired by her teaching.
Found II
Davy Rothbart
Fireside
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
0743273079 $14.00
Jess D'Amico
Reviewer
"Anthony's Apologies: Don't read beginning to end. The madness will consume you." This photocopied scrawl inhabits the first page of Found II, a collection of found items sent in by readers. To the uninitiated, author Davy Rothbart started Found magazine from scraps of to-do lists, random notes and photographs he found. 2004 wrought the first Found book, and was later followed by Dirty Found. Which makes Found II actually Found III in the series.
The Found magazines and books play on a voyeur mindset of peeking at something you shouldn't. While some of the notes are lists about budgets, including $600 set aside for crack, others are more poignant, as a letter found attached to a floating balloon addressed to "Shadow, in heaven." And while most of the book's composition is random, like sifting through a thrift store, Found II includes a few small sections, such as one composed of Adam Sandler letters, and a more sobering one of suicide notes, including one that reads, "Mike, I have lost the will to write, act, compose, create. Have a nice day. –Mitch" A note, names and phone numbers are the only things altered in the original letters.
If the first Found was a collection of items, the second, Dirty Found was art house porn, then the third, Found II is like the ending to a horror movie trilogy, closer to the first plot line, with a twist. Among the finds, Rothbart takes an extra stalker step by contacting a few of the authors of the notes. In the case of a note by Justin Davission about Zippy the Pinhead to its creator Bill Griffith published in the first Found, Rothbart actually forwarded the lost note to its intended recipient, and published Griffith's response.
If Found is a voyeur experiment, then to contact the creators of the notes for lost dogs or forgotten love notes ruins it. One of the reasons Found works so well is that there is only a minimum editorial, kept to descriptions of where the item was found if necessary, so that the notes can literally speak for themselves. In all Found II is as a collection as delightful, funny, moving and poignant as its predecessors, just maybe skip over the ones that are responded to.
The Mystic Christ
Ethan Walker III
Devi Press
P.O. Box 5081, Norman, OK 73070, USA
0972931708 $14.95
Tami Brady
Reviewer
Every once in a while I get word on a book that is truly amazing. The type of work that makes you look deeper into yourself and changes your world forever. The Mystic Christ is just that. The Mystic Christ takes the reader guides through various commonly held notions about Christ, the Biblical scriptures, and Religion in general. With many of these examples, people tend to believe in very black and white ways relayed to them only through hearsay. In other words, not only have they not read the actual Biblical passages mentioned but they have no Biblical context with which to place this idea.
It is of note that the author considers all spiritual paths as equally valuable, based upon the fact that the majority of belief systems have similar moral principles while supporting a common foundation of love. Thus, the author does not in any way delimit Christianity or the Bible. He does, however, encourage the reader to really consider what he or she believes, understand where those ideals come from, and then really truly commit to adhering to his or her path of love.
Quite impressive in and of itself. However, the thing that I appreciated most about this book was the author?s ability to direct in a clear coherent (and sometimes quite entertaining) way without preaching. All of the references (from various religious dogma) were carefully selected to illustrate each particular point. The reader was then left to determine for his or herself the validity of that specific point for him or herself. This aspect starts the reader immediately questioning and really thinking about what is truly important in this existence.
Passion Marks
Lee Hayes
Strebor Books International LLC
P.O. Box 1370, Bowie, MD 20718
http://www.streborbooks.com
1593090064 $14.00
Tracy Hudson
Reviewer
When I think of Passion Marks, I think of distinguished impressions: scratches, scars, hickies, and/or sucker bites made from intense emotions between two, mainly love. Kevin Davis wore all of those marks on a regular basis but what no one knew was they weren't made from love they were made from intense rage and from frequent outbreaks of anger.
Kevin was living a secret life at home. The man he thought he loved, James Lancaster, for saving his life after his twin brother, Keevan, died, intertwined him in a web of love, verbal, physical and sexual abuse. James is a well-known rich CEO of a software firm. James supported Kevin even though he was a college-educated man too. James insisted Kevin didn't work. He provided the best of what money could buy for him, expensive cars, jewelry, tailored clothes, especially after their passionate nights of violence. The more passion Kevin endured the bigger the gift he would receive.
Kevin's life continued to be an emotional roller coaster with James. When it was good, it was oh, so good, but when it was bad it was equally intense. Kevin's close friends began to see something was going on with him and it wasn't good. Kevin finally confided in his friends about his relationship with James. After Kevin realized he didn't deserve all the misery, the lies, the feeling of unworthiness, and the guilty feeling of Keevin's death, with the help and support of his friends, he decided it was time to leave James and reclaim his life; he had allowed that relationship to take his identity away. James had other intentions, he had made a threatening promise to Kevin he would never let him leave him...and James would do ANYTHING to keep his promise.
Passion Marks is packed with messages about Domestic Violence. People stay in abusive relationships for all different reasons: Can't handle or deal with being alone, Everything is familiar with staying and accepting the abuse, Promises of change, Apologies, Finances, Children, All the I-love-you's, Wanting to be loved and the list goes on. The author sends a very important message, which is Domestic Violence transcends race, class, and even sexual orientation. I know Domestic Violence is real and prevalent on a daily basis and if you're going through it you have to reclaim your life and do whatever it takes, ask for support, you have to learn to let people be there for you...you don't have to do it all on your own.
Passion Marks is a novel that grabs your attention from the very first page and keeps it to the very last. Lee Hayes did an incredible job on his debut novel, I have recommended this novel to everyone I know. After reading the surprising and shocking ending, I have to read the sequel, A Deeper Blue: Passion Marks II, next which wasn't actually next on my reading list but it is now.
A Dark Night Hidden
Alys Clare
New English Library
Hodder and Stoughton, 338 Euston Road, London NWI 3Bh
0340793325, $11.99, 259 pages
Victoria Kennedy
Reviewer
At the beginning of the book rumors of King Richard the Lionheart's capture are spreading across England. On the way home from spending the holidays with relatives, Sir Josse d'Acquin visits his friend the Abbess Helewise of Hawkenlye Abbey. Richard's mother Queen Eleanor is a patron of the abbey and a close friend of Helewise. Sir Josse wants to find out from his friend if there is anything that can be done to rescue the king. Father Micah the new parish priest has been sent as a temporary replacement for the regular priest who was injured in a fall. The priest quickly takes it upon himself to mete out his own savage form of justice to those who sin against God and the Church.
While Sir Josse is visiting the abbey, the fanatical priest is murdered. The knight starts an investigation and finds that he can find no one who liked Father Micah and the list of possible suspects isn't short. Josse's investigation leads him into new friendships as he rides around the countryside in search of the man or men who killed the priest. A group of strangers from the lowlands is in the area and on the run from the law. Sir Josse feels the strangers are somehow tied to the priest's death. He and his new friend the Sheriff must sort it all out for Helewise can not be involved.
Mystery lovers and history buffs alike will enjoy this book for it gives us a peek into that particular time of upheaval in church and state. The book is very entertaining and enlightening as well. I chose it because I love a good mystery. The Author Alys Clare has written several mysteries in the Hawkenlye Series.
Magdalena Ball, a New Yorker transplanted to Australia, is the founder and guiding light of the Compulsive Reader, the liveliest, most attractive, and most versatile site of its kind on the web. Her works of fiction, poetry, and articles have appeared in many anthologies and journals, and her poetry and fiction have won both local and national awards. She has studied at universities in the United States, Australia, and England. Her works include a valuable guide to reviewing, The Art of Assessment, and a soon to be published novel, Sleep before Evening.
A chapbook like Quark Soup is a slender volume of poems. In this case the twenty-eight pages contain almost that many poems with each poem filling the page. The language of the poems depends heavily on the language of modern physics. At first blanch this may appear as the antithesis of poetry, but the ingenuities of the application disprove this. The birth of a child is seen in the same manner as the creation of the universe
Photons, neutrinos, electrons and quarks
brain, spinal cord, heart
each living cell in a given moment of time and space
forms part of a greater whole
visible
in the ice caves of your eyes.
In the poems about children there is a simplicity and directness of utterance, however filtered through a poetic sensibility, that sets them apart. 'Moon Fountains' is obviously a meditation at one remove from an actual event involving an unusually gifted and precocious child:
He knew
when his mother kissed
that peach-down cheek
closing the most mundane
bedtime story
that his gentle aliens
would be waiting
his future clearer
than the icy stars.
Adults present other circumstances and the poems become more ambiguous and troubled:
You pick up the paper
rustling tragic headlines against the day
sounds emerge like foghorns in your head
cynicism and mistrust
twin cyclones riding the low pressure cell
of insecurity and fear twisting you further into
the armchair of self-protection and greed
until you are paralyzed prey
for the ugly conviction
of our enemy's worst weapons.
The simplicity of the language and the directness of perception guarantee the effective-ness of these poems. They also have, as the last quotation attests, a captivating ability to pursue and nail down an essence by the tension of carefully chosen words and sounds. When Ball has had her say there is nothing more to be said. In her closing poem 'Planet X' she interrogates the frozen planet of the title:
Would you wake from the stupor
of your underworld prison
if spring arrived
breathing hot air against
your immobile lips?
At least one great part of what makes words into a poem is the craft of using words carefully. There is that craft in abundance in Quark Soup. Craft and strong perceptions and sensitivity. It is impossible that such a small sample as this chapbook provides can satisfy, and a sequel – a book, one hopes – is definitely required.
Bethany's Bookshelf
Magic Land Of Toys
Alberto Manguel
The Vendome Press
1334 York Avenue, New York, NY 10021
Harry N. Abrams, Inc. (distributor)
115 West 18th Street, New York, NY 10011
0865651760 $65.00 1-800-759-0190 www.abramsbooks.com
Enhanced with more than 600 full color illustrations (including 86 double-page spreads), "Magic Land Of Toys" compiled and with commentary by anthologist, translator, essayist, novelist, editor and author Alberto Manguel is a 256-page coffee table masterpiece showcasing and celebrating Parisian The Musee des Arts Decoratifs fabulous collection of over twelve thousand toys, making it one of the finest in the world. "Magic Land Of Toys" offers fascinating samples of toys that have entertained children over many generations and includes dolls, trains, wooden figures, stuffed animals, trucks, cars, little dishes and utensils, and even video game consoles. This one hundred year retrospective is nostalgic, culturally inspiring, and an outstanding tribute to yesteryear childhoods. "Magic Land Of Toys" would especially make a popular and appropriate selection for a community library's Memorial Acquisition Fund.
Lowe's Creative Ideas For Home And Garden Makeovers
Sunset Books
80 Willow Road, Menlo Park, CA 94025
037600925X $19.95 www.sunset.com
Drawing from the popular Lowe magazine dedicated to do-it-yourself projects for organizing and enhancing the various rooms of a home as well as the gardening and landscaping associated with the home, "Lowe's Creative Ideas For Home And Garden Makeovers" showcases fourteen kitchen remodels with 'before and after' photograph illustrations, making over family spaces from dining areas to "just for the kids" spaces. Also featured are great do-it-yourself ideas for remaking bedrooms, bathrooms, guest rooms, kids rooms, laundry rooms, crafts and hobbies rooms, utility rooms, and even remodeling garages and basements. Profusely illustrated, "user friendly", and a wonderful browsing opportunity for ideas, "Lowe's Creative Ideas For Home And Garden Makeovers" is a welcome and highly recommended addition to any personal or community library Interior Design, Gardening, and Do-It-Yourself reference collection.
Susan Bethany
Reviewer
Betty's Bookshelf
The Snow Princess.
Ruth Sanderson.
Little, Brown, and Company
1271 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
www.twbookmark.com
0316779822 $16.99 1-800-759-0190
This fairy tale, inspired by a Russian opera, transports its readers to the icy north of Russia, where Father Frost and Mother Spring and their lovely little daughter, the Snow Princess, live. The Snow Princess, who loves her home, has the power to call up snow - from dancing flakes to terrible blizzards – and as she grows up, she learns to use her power wisely. However, when she becomes curious about the world outside, she decides to go out on her own to see it. Her parents reluctantly let her leave, but send her off with a warning ringing in her ears: "Remember this, you must never fall in love. You are safe from death so long as love for a man does not enter your heart."
Eventually, she finds herself near a village, where she becomes fascinated by a particular family (and by a young man in that family). After spending hours watching them, she accidentally meets the young man and ends up attending the Winter Festival with him. Realizing she is in danger of falling in love with him, she goes away to forget him. Loneliness and fear of death struggle within her and she finally returns to the village to see and talk to Sergei. As the days pass, she lives as a human girl named Katia and falls in love with Sergei. When her father sends a threatening dream, she must decide what to do. Then Sergei disappears in a storm, and Katia has to find him. Will she remain the Snow Princess, with a frozen heart, or will she allow her heart to thaw toward Sergei and live – and perhaps die – as Katia?
I enjoyed Sanderson's use of language in this story, but I enjoyed her wonderfully detailed illustrations even more. From the faces of the various characters to the Russian costumes to the snowy scenery, Sanderson expresses the fairy tale atmosphere of this classic Russian story with a sure touch. I especially like her use of white and various shades of blue to indicate the changing faces of snow in the story. The Snow Princess makes a lovely addition to Sanderson's other fairy tale picture books.
Reluctant Burglar
Jill Elzabeth Nelson.
Multnomah Publishers, Inc.
601 N. Larch St., Sisters, OR 97759
1590526864 $12.99
Jill Elizabeth Nelson literally dreamed the heroine of her first novel, Reluctant Burglar, and woke up with the beginning of what turned out to be an interesting art theft mystery. Art theft (a "booming criminal enterprise", according to the FBI) has tentacles in every area of the art world, and Nelson hopes that her fictional portrayal of it will make people more aware of the dangers that threaten museums, galleries, and other places that art is kept or displayed.
Reluctant Burglar opens with Desiree Jacobs (more often called Desi) stealing a painting right out from under the noses of a museum staff and then returning it to show them how much they need help from her company, HJ Securities (named after her dad, Hiram Jacobs). She can't wait to tell her dad, currently out of the country, all about her successful day. Maybe now he'll trust her to take over, so he can take it easy! Her delight is soon shattered, though, by the visit of FBI agent Tony Lucano, who tells her that her dad is dead. Stunned by the news and angered by the agent's belief that her dad was deeply involved in an art theft ring, she is determined to prove her dad's innocence.
Instead, she is dragged into her dad's secret life, which threatens not only the company's future and her dad's reputation, but also Desi's very life. Along the way, Agent Lucano, who's been sticking close to Desi to find out the truth about her dad, develops new motives for hanging around – he's falling in love with her. Now, all he needs to know is this: Is she an innocent pawn whose life is in danger, or is she a master criminal playing him for a fool?
Betty Winslow
Reviewer
Buhle's Bookshelf
Killing In The Name Of Identity
Vamik Volkan
Pitchstone Publishing
Charlottesville, Virginia 22901
0972887571 $29.95 www.pitchstonepublishing.com
Killing In The Name Of Identity: A Study Of Bloody Conflicts by Vamik Volkan (Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia) is a scholarly examination of the psychological and political answers to the question "Why do they hate us so?" What prompts mass murder on the basis of identity alone, from ethnic clensing to the Bataan Death March to the terrorist attacks of September 11? Written with compassion as well as logical analysis, Killing In The Name Of Identity probes the universal elements in humanity and society that can prompt such tragedies, and how to best prevent, defuse and combat large-group violence in co-existing societies. Highly recommended.
Lucifer's Dictionary Of The American Language
Burton H. Wolfe
Wild West Publishing House
PO Box 642836, San Francisco, CA 94164-2836
711 Eddy Street, Apartment 13E, San Francisco, CA 94109-7845 (Author)
1419619748 $15.00 415-921-5629 http://burtonh.wolfe.googlepages.com
Lucifer's Dictionary Of The American Language is not a standard reference dictionary. Rather it is a compilation of nasty insights into American society and culture, and how ordinary words have veiled "true" meanings that reflect devil-worthy selfishness. From arbitration ("a procedure enabling opponents to scream bloody murder at each other before going to trial and being inhibited by the decorum imposed in court") to yard ("A plot of dirt, grass, flowers, trees, shrubs, weeds and the like which Americans keep in front or back of their house for use as a spouse, child and dog dumping ground, and also for the convenience of the neighbors' cats"), each entry is delicious with irony, subtext, wit, and scorn for the self-absorbed. Enthusiastically recommended.
The Beast Bowl
Tom Chaikin
Intouch Books
PO Box 84025, Gaithersburg, MD 20883-4025
097774910X $19.95 www.beastbowl.com
The Beast Bowl is a fantastic novel written for all ages, but with the especial intent of reaching out to teenagers and raising their environmental awareness. The Beast Bowl is about a football game, but not just any game - a game so great and ancient its players are animals from around the world, who risk everything for a chance at the competition. A handful of black-and-white drawings illustrate this high adventure with underlying themes about the importance of cooperation and teamwork, as well as caution against environmental habitat destruction and species extinction.
Willis M. Buhle
Reviewer
Burroughs' Bookshelf
George W. Bush Robin Hood For The Rich
Gene P. Abel
AuthorHouse
1663 Liberty Drive Suite 200, Bloomington, IN 47403
1425929427 $13.99 www.authorhouse.com 1-800-839-8640
George W. Bush Robin Hood For The Rich by Gene P. Abel, Colonel, USAR Ret. (over 30 years of service as a commissioned officer, and two-time recipient of the Meritorious Service Medal) severely questions the immediate and long-term effects to America that the Bush administration is responsible for. Sharply critical, George W. Bush Robin Hood For The Rich decries the administration's narrow-minded attempts to partially privatize Social Security without providing any transition fund for the interim monies that would be lost; the administration's alienation of its foreign allies in the years after the September 11 attacks due its blind press for war in Iraq; and the administration's utter failure to balance the budget or prevent an explosion of the national deficit. At the same time, George W. Bush Robin Hood For The Rich is not universally negative; it notes the wise actions that President Bush has taken, but laments that the harmful actions may well outweigh the good in the president's legacy for the 21st century. Drawing information from more than 40 renowned sources, and including humorous blogs to convey points with a twist, George W. Bush Robin Hood For The Rich not only identifies potential current and future problems stemming from the Bush administration but also offers recommendations for alternatives to cope with their personal impact on individual lives. Highly recommended.
Email Power
Steven Griffith
Coaching Intelligence Press
PO Box 9873, Marina del Ray, CA 90259
0977011747 $24.95 www.emailpower.com
Email Power: The Ultimate Guide is a how-to book for making the most of email communication written especially for CEOs, executives, salespeople, entrepreneurs, students, and anyone else in the academic or professional world. Chapters address how to recognize the communication styles of email one sends or receives, how to tighten one's writing so that one's message is immediately accessible, how to navigate the emotional terrain of email that may contain volatile emotions or attacks ("flames"), common acronyms and emoticons in email, and much more. Enthusiastically recommended, especially in the modern era of cyber-communication.
Europe For The Senses
Vicki Landes
Booksurge
7290 B Investment Drive, Charleston, SC 29418
1419621424 $42.99 1-866-308-6235 www.booksurge.com
Europe For The Senses: A Photographic Journal by author, traveler, and photographer Vicki Landes is a breathtaking collection of full-color photographs from around Europe. Images range from wildflowers to the Leaning Tower of Pisa juxtaposed against an aerial view of flying to Pisa, to Luxembourg's American Military Cemetery, and much more. Most photographs have a brief commentary in the form of text, printed in a handwriting-style font and reminiscing fond memories as well as recounting historical facts about the images that portray classic locations. A joy to page through, and the perfect giftbook for Europhiles.
John Burroughs
Reviewer
Carson's Bookshelf
Retirement Planning For Offshore Living
Richard Burkart
Boomers World Press
3160 Lincoln Street Apt.#2, Carlsbad, CA 92008
1934024120 $29.95 www.retiringoffshore.com 1-760-434-3441
"Retirement Planning For Offshore Living" by economist, real estate development expert, and seasoned traveler Richard Burkart is a methodical, "reader friendly" compendium of practical advice for enhancing any lifestyle by residing in a low cost tropical country like Panama where retirees on a fixed income would only spend about 25% of their expected retirement budget for pleasant lodgings, a good diet of culinary interest, and interesting things to do to pass the time. Enhanced with 60 full color photographs, this 244-page 'how to' manual addresses all the pertinent issues from Offshore Retirement, to Financing Retirement, to Longevity Planning, to Residency Requirements. Of special note are the chapters dedicated to Best Places To Live and Worst Case Scenarios. If you are in the process of planning for your retirement, or helping with retirement planning issues for a loved one, then give a care reading to what Richard Burkart advises in "Retirement Planning For Offshore Living"!
40 Hour Man
Stephen Beaupre
Manx Media
5528 NE 24th Avenue, Portland, OR 97211
0976969009 $18.00 www.manxmedia.com 1-508-288-5980
40 Hour Man is an unusual style of graphic novel narrative, telling the true story of a working stiff's 30 years struggling with the minimum wage American dream, from being a mini golf lackey to going under with the Internet boom and bust and much more. Each page features a paragraph of text and a black-and-white cartoon illustration. Although there is a small amount of adult content - 40 Hour Man is definitely for mature readers only - the primary focus is on frustrations of the working world, petty co-workers, vengeful bosses, bean-counters in suits, and other employment-related hazards. There isn't an overreaching moral to the memoir, other than that happiness in the working world is fleeting and should be enjoyed while it lasts but not depended upon to stay, but the story itself is all too sympathetic and cannot be put down. Highly recommended.
Eye Witness: Acts Of The Spirit
Robert James Luedke
Head Press Publishing
2201 Long Prairie Road, #107-770, Flower Mound, TX 75022
0975892428 $13.99 www.headpress.info 1-817-410-9490
After completing a consulting assignment with the Israeli Ministry of Antiquities in Jerusalem, archaeologist Terry Harper finds himself and his colleague a victim of bombing. Whether the target was the Jewish state in general, or Dr. Harper in particular, is not clear. As Dr. Harpers struggles for his very life in the intensive care unit of an Israeli hospital, he finds himself lapsing into unconsciousness and embarked upon a journey of historical discover and spiritual awakening to the birth of the Christian faith after the resurrection of Jesus. The language of the apostles, the jews and the romans in ancient Jerusalem is presented in a contemporary American vernacular. The story of the apostles (especially the conversion of Paul) is told with lively interest. The modern day plot of attempted assassination is equally interest with its twists, turns, and unexpected developments. "Eye Witness: Acts Of The Spirit" is a unique, entertaining, imaginative, and very highly recommended graphic novel for readers of all ages by Robert James Luedke with the help of colorists Carsten Bradley, Robert Luedke, and Tommy Castillo.
ALREADY ASLEEP begins with a young boy named John asleep in bed and progresses through individual family members, as well as pets, all slumbering after a day filled with play and work activities. Written in a charming style and soothing cadence, and illustrated with warm, endearing watercolors, this is the perfect bedtime story for young children.
Herr Schnoodle & Mcbee
P. K. Paranya
Five Star/Thomson Gale
1594144125 $25.95
Private Investigator Alexander McBee's heroes are TV's Magnum, Mannix and Barnaby Jones. McBee fancies himself a loner, but that comes to an end one evening when he rescues a dog from drowning. McBee takes the mutt home to clean him up and a partnership is born. Herr Schnoodle, as McBee names the dog, has a propensity to solve crimes, and within a short time, McBee's business is booming. Before he knows it, this loner is helping the down and out while trying to figure out why Apple Sally, a homeless woman suffering from amnesia, can't remember her past. But once she does, McBee's intent on saving her from the person who wants to kill her.
McBee is an engaging man who shuns germs and is afraid of commitment, and whose perception of himself changes over the course of the book. Herr Schnoodle is absolutely lovable and rounds out this cozy mystery to perfection. The partnership between the two makes this a fun read, with winning characters and a compelling storyline.
Marvin Monster's Teacher Jitters
Tabatha Jean D'Agata & Ed Newmann
Moo Press
www.KeeneBooks.com
097668053X $6.95
Marvin Monster's upset when he learns his class has a new teacher. And what's worse, rumor has it this teacher is mean, gives lots of homework, and once turned a monster kid into a human! When the new teacher, Miss Witchafred, announces their scheduled field trip will be to explore Marshville rather than visit the Haunted Hall of Fame, a disappointed Marvin decides to do his best to get her to leave. But Marvin learns a valuable lesson as he and his classmates explore exciting areas of Marshville, from the Postal Tomb, where lizards lick stamps, to the trash field, where chomping gators recycle garbage.
"Marvin Monster's Teacher Jitters" is a delightful read integrating important social issues for young readers within an exciting story. As the monsters would say, this book is "terrifically horrific," filled with endearing characters and wonderfully captivating illustrations.
Murder at Blue Falls
Maggie Bishop
High Country Publishers
1932158758 $12.00 www.highcountrypublishers.com
Jemma Chase works as a trail leader on her parents' ranch, the Blue Falls, where she is also an accomplished photographer, carpenter and fixer-upper. Jemma has returned home in an effort to find some stability in her life, but things become tumultuous when someone begins poisoning dogs in Watauga County. Jemma is called in for an interview with Detective Tucker and bristles at his subtly accusing manner. A forensics fan, Jemma sets out to try to solve the riddle herself and keep Detective Tucker at bay. But when she stumbles upon the dead body of a neighbor, Jemma finds herself involved in a much more serious investigation and at odds with Tucker once again.
An established must-read romance author, Maggie Bishop has crossed into the mystery genre with finesse. Her latest novel is packed with suspense around a tightly-woven plot which begins with the poisoning of dogs and escalates to the murder of a local man. Throughout, she deliciously teases the reader with the bristly attraction between the investigating detective and the woman who found the man's body and who just might be a suspect. Set against the beautiful backdrop of the mountains of North Carolina, with engaging characters, red herrings at every turn, and a galvanizing story line, this is a must-have, must-read. Highly recommended.
My Name Is Esther Clara
Laurel Johnson
Dandelion Books
Tempe, Arizona
189330289X $16.95 www.dandelionbooks.net
Laurel Johnson speaks for her grandmother, Esther Clara Sanow Ford, with this - what the author refers to as creative nonfiction - first-person tale of a woman's journey through life. The reader relives history through the eyes of Esther, who experienced the hardships of World Wars I and II and the Korean War, the discord of the Vietnam War, and the worst depression this country has experienced to date. Esther's life evolved from one extreme to the other, from having to cook on a wooden stove, read by kerosene lantern and use an outhouse to one with all the luxuries electricity and running water have to offer; and from riding in horse-drawn carriages to traveling by automobile. How delightful to read about her antics as a child and terribly sad to learn of the death of a beloved child during her marriage.
Esther was a forward-thinking woman who lived during an exciting, progressive time in our nation's history. Her love and devotion to her family, especially her husband Herb, was her number one priority. It is through Esther one is reminded of the basics of life: enduring hardships with bravery and positive thoughts, loving with all one's heart, showing kindness toward others, and above all, being true to one's self.
It's a rarity when a book of this quality crosses my desk. It seemed as if Esther sat across from me, talking directly to me. I didn't want to put the book down, nor did I want it to end. Although Esther may not have had a documented impact on the history of America, she certainly made an impact on this reader and, I imagine, many others.
Marley & Me
John Grogan
William Morrow
Harper Collins Publishers
www.harpercollins.com
0060817089 $21.95
The author, John Grogan, and his wife, Jenny, newly married and worried about facing the trials and tribulations of raising children, decided owning a dog would be good practice for them. With fond memories of childhood pets leading them onward, they picked Marley, a Labrador retriever, from a large litter of pups. From day one, Marley proved to be a handful. He devoured everything in sight, tore through the house, ripped through screen doors, flung spit over the walls and guests, and worst of all, went crazy during thunderstorms. He was kicked out of obedience school and never quite learned how to properly heel. He would greet guests with enthusiasm, literally running into them and putting his paws on their shoulders.
Although Grogan claims Marley to be the world's worst dog, I'm sure this is said tongue-in-cheek. Marley proved to be Grogan's mentor; teaching plenty of lessons about love, loyalty, friendship and enjoying life to its fullest. I laughed, I cried, I didn't want it to end. As a dog owner, one of which is a black Lab, I enjoyed this book very much and am thankful our Lab isn't quite so manic as Marley. I wonder, though, what happened to Lucky?
Christy Tillery French
Reviewer
Debra's Bookshelf
Killer Instinct
Joseph Finder
St. Martin's Press
www.stmartins.com
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
0312347472 $24.95 1-888-330-8477
Jason Steadman's a personable, honest guy, a one-time frat boy whose easygoing personality is his primary asset. He's a salesman with Entronics USA Visual Systems in Framingham, Massachusetts, makers of high-end plasma screens. At the book's opening Jason isn't particularly interested in advancing his career, but his wife is another story: she's from a family of fallen blue-bloods and wouldn't mind slipping back up the social ladder. Jason finds himself able to satisfy her longing for a higher salary after a fortuitous encounter with a modern-day Renaissance man, ex-Special Forces soldier turned tow truck driver Kurt Semko. Kurt turns out to be a good friend to have: he feeds Jason information that helps him in his career, and Jason in turns gets Kurt a job with Entronics. Kurt is willing to do anything to help out his new friend's career, but his loyalty, Jason soon finds, comes with a high price. And breaking off the friendship isn't an easy option: as he continually reminds Jason, Kurt isn't the kind of guy you want as your enemy.
Finder's newest thriller is a quick read, written in conversational, first-person prose. It's exciting enough to hold one's interest, but not as tightly plotted or as gripping as Finder's 2004 novel Paranoia, with which it shares some similarities: both tell the stories of relative non-achievers who manage to climb the corporate ladder unexpectedly, with outside help, who let an old friendship lie fallow in the midst of their success, and whose self confidence increases, and integrity decreases, with each advance in position. One small complaint I have is that Jason's grasp of literary/historical references seems uneven: he alludes easily to Jay Gatsby and Luther's 95 theses at different points in the story, but elsewhere doesn't seem to have heard of Lady Chatterley or Captain Queeg. A more important problem is that Finder misses the opportunity to ratchet up the tension in his book by prolonging the conflict described in chapter 50 and subsequently putting one of the characters involved in that conflict in peril. Instead the problem is easily resolved, which is a disappointment.
All that said, Killer Instinct, if not as thrilling as the two earlier novels by Finder which I've read and reviewed (Company Man, Paranoia), is still well worth the read. Pick a copy up, and get one of Finder's earlier books as well.
Another Word a Day
Anu Garg
John Wiley & Sons
111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5773
www.wiley.com
0471718459 $14.95 1-800-225-5945
Anu Garg has been sending out his A Word a Day mailings to his linguaphilic subscriber base--some half a million strong at this point--for more than a decade. Another Word a Day is the second book to spring from this enterprise. (His A Word a Day was published in 2002.) In it Garg follows the format of his subscription list. The book is divided into 52 thematic chapters: calendar-related words (bissextile), words that are apparent misspellings of other words (monestrous), words about words (hyperbole), and so on. Garg discusses five words per chapter, providing for each its pronunciation, syntax, etymology, definition, and an example, usually culled from some modern source, of the word in print. (For example, for the word cruciverbalist Garg uses a passage from Booklist discussing Parnell Hall's series of crossword mysteries.) A quote from some famous person appears at the bottom of most pages of the book--though these quotes aren't relevant to the words under discussion in the text. Each chapter also includes a number of responses from readers of Garg's mailings. These are set off in boxes, which serves to break up what would otherwise be a monotonous layout. They are also sometimes rather interesting--for example, the seventeen different explanations Garg's readers offered for the origin of the term eighty-six as a verb meaning "to throw out." And a Seattle reader draws a nice parallel between hapax legomena (words with only one recorded use) and Googlewhacking:
Hapax Legooglemenon
"A recent variant on finding singularity in a large corpus, namely the sport, pastime, and occasional obsession of Googlewhacking. You challenge the awesome indexing capabilities of Google.com to find that elusive query (two words--no quotation marks) with a single, solitary result!"
-- Mike Pope, Seattle, Washington
You'll be happy to become acquainted with some of the words and etymologies in Garg's corpus--dasypygal means "having hairy buttocks"; "helpmeet" comes from an erroneous interpretation of a Biblical passage.You'll be happy to become acquainted with some of the words and etymologies in Garg's corpus--dasypygal means "having hairy buttocks"; "helpmeet" comes from an erroneous interpretation of a Biblical passage. Some of the entries are less compelling. I most enjoyed the more conversational parts of the book, the reader responses already mentioned and the brief discussions with which Garg introduces each chapter. I would have enjoyed the book as a whole more if the entries included lengthier discussions--more on a word's history in popular culture, perhaps, memorable anecdotes attached to the words, however tangentially--but I realize that that is not the format Garg follows in his mailings.
Linguaphiles will enjoy Another Word a Day, but reading it straight through is not recommended except to the most voracious verbivore: this is more of a book you'll want to nibble on from time to time.
I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This
Bob Newhart
Hyperion
77 West 66th Street, NY, NY 10023-6298
www.hyperionbooks.com
1401302467 $23.95 1-800-759-0190
Bob Newhart's I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This (accent on the This; as Newhart explains in his introduction, the title comes from the punch line of a joke) is not, the author admits, a traditional memoir: "A memoir is a weighty tome. Former presidents and the Marquis de Sade write memoirs; Bob Newhart doesn't write a memoir."
Instead Newhart offers a collection of stories from his personal and professional lives, arranged thematically across 14 chapters. Newhart tells the story of his life in more-or-less chronological order: his childhood in Chicago (the setting, later, of his eponymous sitcom), his pre-comedy careers (including accounting and military service), the radio skits that culminated in his bestselling Button-Down Mind albums, movies and television. Along the way he also writes about other comedians, about golf and hecklers, family and famous friends. Some of these stories translate well to the page. I can picture very well, for example, this small scene at Don Rickles's house:
"If Don can avoid doing something, he will. We were sitting around his den one day when he turned to a comedian named Bobby Ramson. 'Bobby,' Don said, 'You're good at that. Would you open the window?'"
And this line from Tony Randall is perfect, the scene likewise perfectly easy to imagine, the necessary background being that Newhart's new father-in-law was actor Bill Quinn:
"On January 12, 1963, we made it to the altar. As we took our places, before the procession began, Tony Randall took one look at Ginnie's Dad and quipped, 'Look who they got to play the father.'"
Newhart writes a lot about his early routines--"The Driving Instructor" and "Abe Lincoln vs. Madison Avenue," for example. He explains where the ideas for the routines came from, and he transcribes a number of them in the book. One can read the routines with Newhart's stammering delivery in mind, but I found myself wishing that the book came with a CD, that I could hear the humor rather than try to imagine it. I'm not an aficionado of audio books, as I prefer reading to listening, but in this case, because delivery is such an important part of Newhart's storytelling, you might want to spring for the unabridged CD, read by the author.
Newhart suggests in his introduction, perhaps in jest, that writing I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This was not a cathartic experience for him. This isn't surprising. The book is not a soul-searching reflection on his life, just a collection of anecdotes, some funny, some not as much, delivered conversationally. A quick read. You'll come away from the book thinking that Bob Newhart's a nice guy (but you thought that anyway, right?), with a nostalgic longing for his classic TV show and some curiosity about his early comedy albums. Which is another reason you might want to spring for the CD.
The Interpretation of Murder
Jed Rubenfeld
Henry Holt
175 - 5th Avenue, Suite 400, New York, NY 10010-7725
www.henryholt.com
0805080988 $26.00 1-888-330-8477
Jed Rubenfeld's smart thriller The Interpretation of Murder is inspired by a historical mystery. Sigmund Freud visited the United States only once, in August and September of 1909. He received an honorary doctorate at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he also delivered a well-received series of lectures. It was an ostensibly successful visit, yet after returning to Europe Freud referred to Americans as "savages" and acted generally as if something terrible had happened on the trip. But what? Rubenfeld has written a fictional account of Freud's visit, taking the real-life riddle of Freud's animosity to the U.S. as his starting point.
Rubenfeld weaves two fictional mysteries around Freud's visit. The more engaging of the two concerns the torture and murder of a young woman found in a high-class hotel, a crime whose sadistic details are soon repeated in the bedroom of a second victim. Because of the sexual aspects of these crimes, Freud and his entourage become involved indirectly in their solution, but Freud's contribution to the story is minimal. Instead, Rubenfeld's protagonist is a wholly fictional character, Dr. Stratham Younger, an American psychoanalyst who takes on the role of amateur sleuth. Rubenfeld alternates in the telling between first-person accounts told from Younger's perspective and third-person narrative.
The second, and secondary mystery in Rubenfeld's book involves Freud more directly, as it concerns an attempt by mysterious parties to sabotage Freud's reception in the U.S. But in this story too Freud himself takes a back seat. The Interpretation of Murder, that is, does not fall into the category of mysteries with crime-solving historical protagonists, such as Stephanie Barron's series of Jane Austen mysteries.
Rubenfeld's book is clearly well-researched. I was intrigued to learn that certain particulars involving one of the victims in the story come from Freud's case files. The story is also intricately plotted, and the solution of the mystery, when it finally comes, is both unexpected and complex--rather confusingly so, in fact. With one exception Rubenfeld's characters are not emotionally compelling: Detective Jimmy Littlemore, the young policeman attempting to solve the crimes despite bureaucratic opposition, was the only truly sympathetic character. This isn't a book that will grab you by the throat, but one you'll come to appreciate instead intellectually.
I might actually have preferred it if the secondary mystery, that surrounding Freud's reception in the U.S., were removed. The story would be tighter without it, and in fact Rubenfeld's account of sadistic society murders could easily stand alone without the Freudian subplots. Freud himself is largely unnecessary to the story, though I realize that his appearance in the book may be its main selling point. As it stands The Interpretation of Murder is not perfect, but it is a smart and engaging story, and worth the read.
Course of the Waterman
Nancy Taylor Robson
River City Publishing
1719 Mulberry Street, Montgomery, AL 36106
www.rivercitypublishing.com
1579660525 $23.95 1-334-265-6753
Lest you lose interest in this review before I get to the point, I'll make it now: get a copy of this book and read it. It won't take you long. You can finish the book in one evening and then, I'll bet you anything, it will stand out in your memory as one of the most impressive reading experiences you've ever had, sticking with you as only the rarest of good books or stories can do.
With that out of the way, on to the book itself. The Course of the Waterman, Nancy Taylor Robson's debut novel, tells the story of seventeen-year-old Bailey Kraft, whose family has been fishing the Elizabeth River on Maryland's Eastern Shore for generations. Like the Kraft men before him, Bailey has river water in his veins, and a peculiar talent for finding fish: the Krafts are river royalty. But every year the haul is less impressive, and supporting a family by fishing is becoming increasingly difficult. Early in the book Bailey's father Orrin announces that he wants his son to go to college, to have options that he didn't have. This change in plan is wholly unwelcome: Bailey had expected to fish full-time after finishing high school; he would have quit school to do so had he been allowed. But responding to his father's bombshell is only the first of a great many challenges Bailey must meet in the course of the story--hard work in difficult, sometimes life threatening circumstances not least among them.
Bailey is surrounded by a handful of characters who are as vividly imagined as he is: his parents and younger sister and the Warrens, Tud and his son Booty, the latter more brother to Bailey than friend. Robson, indeed, has fleshed out her characters and explored their interlocking relationships--all of which are changed during the course of this story--more fully than most authors can in twice as many pages. Robson's book explores the obligations of friendship and the bonds, stronger than rivalries and animosities, that hold together a community of people who need one another to survive--"the pull and haul of relationship, gift, and obligation."
Like her characters, Robson grew up on the Chesapeake, and she worked for years as a deckhand on a coastal tug. (She tells her story in Woman in the Wheelhouse.) She couldn't have written this book the way she did without that experience. Readers like myself who aren't familiar with the life she describes--most of us, surely--will encounter some unfamiliar vocabulary here, but context is sufficient to get the meaning across. The first paragraph immerses the reader at once in the life of a Chesapeake waterman:
"The trotline groaned over the roller as it came up out of the blue-black Elizabeth River on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Braced against the boat's wooden coaming, seventeen-year-old Bailey Kraft was poised, dip net ready, scanning for the bait twisted every eight feet or so into the mile-long line. That was where the crab would be--if there were a crab. As he watched, a shadow rose from the dark water and came into focus, sharpening into olive shell and blue-green claws that clung to a frayed gray eel chunk tied to the line. When the crab broke the surface, Bailey leaned out, scooped it up, and dumped it into the bushel basket at his feet."
I can pick nits--precisely two. Robson tells her story in the third-person, primarily from the perspective of Bailey himself. On a few occasions the perspective changes to that of another character, and when it does, because it is so infrequent, I found it jarring. Second, the issue of race relations is introduced very briefly at the very end of the book. I found this jarring as well simply because, while it fits the storyline at the end, it has no bearing at all on what comes before and thus seems out of place.
These are minor complaints. The Course of the Waterman is a must read, for adults and young adults alike. It succeeds in being both a thoughtful, moving character study and a gripping adventure story.
The Love Season
Elin Hilderbrand
St. Martin's Press
www.stmartins.com
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
0312322305 $24.95 294 pages 1-888-330-8477
The principal action of Elin Hildebrand's The Love Season takes place over the course of a single day (August 19, 2006): 63-year-old Marguerite Beale prepares an elaborate dinner for her goddaughter, Renata Knox, whom Marguerite has not seen since Renata's mother Candace was hit and killed by a car 14 years earlier. Marguerite is a professional chef, and is renowned in Nantucket circles for the quirkiness and culinary excellence of her one-time restaurant, Les Parapluies, but Renata's visit marks the first time she has cooked for anyone--indeed, that she has received anyone into her home--since Candace's death. The mystery of that event, how it came to have such an effect on Marguerite, is slowly revealed to the reader as Marguerite, emerging from her self-imposed exile in order to gather ingredients for dinner, allows herself to remember.
Hilderbrand tells her story primarily from the points of view of Marguerite and Renata. Through Marguerite's eyes we see her part-time, years-long affair with Porter, her friendship with Porter's sister Candace, and the uncomfortable threesome that formed when, inevitably, Candace allowed one of her many would-be suitors to win her. The pattern that emerges--an intense friendship between women intruded upon by a male--is to a degree repeated in the second generation: Renata sometimes feels torn between her best friend, Action, and her boyfriend Cade, recently turned her fiancé, the very proper son of Nantucket aristocracy. Renata is in Nantucket officially to meet her future in-laws, but her real purpose is to meet the mysterious godmother who's sent her cards and checks over the years, but whom she's never been allowed to meet. Interestingly, toward the end of the book Hilderbrand begins to tell her story also from the perspectives of other characters, as if the reader is granted a wider view of the events described even as Marguerite and Renata emerge from their respective, self-imposed prisons.
On the whole Hilderbrand has done a wonderful job of fleshing out her characters and their histories, even the minor ones. Only Candace fails to come to life (no pun intended) on the page: we are told that she was charming and vital, more like Grace Kelly than Grace Kelly herself, the sort of woman who attracts people to her without trying. But Candace's actions in the book don't bear this out: she comes off as a little silly, in fact, and one wonders what all the fuss was about. But as I say, the rest of Hilderbrand's characters shine. This is a very sensual book, the particular sense appealed to being taste: Hilderbrand lingers lovingly over descriptions of food--what Marguerite is preparing in the present, entrees from Les Parapluies, corn and squash and asparagus and red peppers lying crisp and fresh in out-of-the-way farmer's markets. Food is undoubtedly important to The Love Season, but for me the thick details sometimes slowed the story too much. Still, one keeps turning the pages: the mystery of Candace's death and the secrets her characters have tried to hide from themselves are compelling. This is a very good read. You're likely to live with these characters in your head for some time.
Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife
Sam Savage
Coffee House Press
27 North Fourth Street, Suite 400, Minneapolis, MN 55401
1566891817 $14.95
Firmin, the unusually literate rat who gives Sam Savage's little gem of a book its title, was born during the Kennedy administration in the cellar of a bookstore. Pembroke Books, the beloved charge of its Friar Tuckish owner Norman, sat near an x-rated theater in the squalor of Boston's blighted Scollay Square. The circumstances of Firmin's birth, both geographic and familial, largely defined his life.
Born the 13th of 13 children to a 12-teated, alcoholic mother, Firmin was frequently compelled by virtue of his relatively diminutive size and strength to assuage his hunger by gnawing on books--a pathetic situation which, however, resulted in the singular fact and blessing of his life, his "lexical hypertrophy," heightened mental acuity coupled with an uncanny ability to read at super-human, let alone super-rodent speeds.
"I am convinced that these masticated pages furnished the nutritional foundation for--and perhaps even directly caused--what I with modesty shall call my unusual mental development."
At the same time, Firmin's early introduction to the "velvet-skinned beings" who featured in the local theater's midnight showings confused his sexuality and cemented his perverse identification with the humans whose literature he was devouring in both senses. Firmin being an anthropomorphized rat, you'll be tempted to think that Savage's novel is just another cute contribution to "rat literature"--a genre, by the way, which Firmin himself despises: "I piss down the throats of Mickey Mouse and Stuart Little. Affable, shuffling, cute, they stick in my craw like fish bones."
Don't be fooled. Firmin is caustic and cynical, his story imbued with a sense of tragedy. Early on, for example, we learn that Norman--the first human whom Firmin ever loved--has somehow failed him. In the last quarter of the book the mood grows even more somber. Savage exhibits an uncanny ability to channel the inner life of our tragic narrator: Firmin is a very believable character, a creature of elevated sensibilities mired in the ugly realities of a rat's world. Savage's writing is exquisite, particularly in the book's first half. Here, for example, he describes Firmin's first sighting of Norman's desk:
"I still did not know Norman--for some time yet he was to sit in my mind simply as the Owner of the Desk--but the clutter on the desk, the upright steel spike stacked to its tip with a ragged foliage of impaled receipts, the shiny arms of the chair, and of course the red cushion itself with its buttocks-shaped depression in the center, possessed an aura of seriousness and dignity that, considering my background, I found perfectly irresistible."
Savage's Firmin is a connoisseur of literature, having ingested more of it than you or I ever will. Firmin found books as a whole to be quite tasty: "My friend," he once told a man in a bar, "given the chasm that separates all your experiences from all of mine, I can bring you no closer to that singular savor than by saying that books, in an average sort of way, taste the way coffee smells." But it turns out, as Firmin discovered, that how good a book tastes is directly related to its literary quality: Jane Eyre is better than Emily Post is better than Stuart Little. That being so, you might want to give your copy of Firmin a nibble: it's a very tasty read.
The Berlin Conspiracy
Tom Gabbay
William Morrow
c/o HarperCollins Publishers
10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022-5299
www.harpercollins.com
0060787856 $24.95 1-800-242-7737
Jack Teller is a retired spook, having severed his relationship with the CIA soon after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. But two years later Jack is pulled back into service by his old handler: a Colonel in the East German Stasi is willing to hand over important information, but he insists on meeting only with Teller. Jack soon finds himself in a divided Berlin, where in a matter of days President Kennedy is due to deliver his Ich bin ein Berliner speech. In the meantime Jack has to unravel a complex plot--in which the deceptions are thick and it's nearly impossible to tell the good guys from the bad--with nothing less than the fate of the world hanging in the balance.
Tom Gabbay's debut novel is a decent read. The plot is complex, though not edge-of-your-seat gripping. It's a quick read, the chapters divided into easily digested chunks, the writing an unexceptional, straightforward prose that's suited to the genre. The story is narrated by Jack Teller some number of years after the events described. Jack was 49 in 1963, so he'd be in his early 90's if we assume that his present is 2006. But whatever the specifics, Jack describes himself as "old" at the time of narration, and his age is problematic: the narrator's voice does not belong to an old man. Teller comes across instead as someone who is in the prime of life at the time he's telling the story. My other problem with the book also involves Teller: he is not a particularly sympathetic character. Certainly Jack acts heroically in the course of the story, yet Gabbay does not manage to make him emotionally engaging, so the perils Jack faces don't affect the reader viscerally. The book starts, too, with Jack doing something reprehensible, a dramatic decision on the author's part which I think may have been a mistake: it prejudices the reader against Gabbay's protagonist from the get-go, making it even harder to care too deeply about him. The author has a winner, though, in the character of Horst Schneider, the charming young German whom Jack befriends over a night of drinking, and who, happily, pops up repeatedly in the story to spice up the dialogue.
Not a bad book, then. Good for a light, quick read. I can imagine it being turned into a decent action movie--and given the author's professional history, a move to the screen is perhaps not unlikely: Gabbay was director of comedy programming for NBC in the eighties and nineties, and he has written a number of screenplays for television and film.
The Chess Artist
J.C. Hallman
St. Martin's Press
www.stmartins.com
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
0312272936 $25.95 1-888-330-8477
J.C. Hallman's The Chess Artist is structured around a trip that the author took with his friend Glenn, the chess player of the book's title, to Kalmykia, a crumbling Russian Republic on the northwest shore of the Caspian Sea. Hallman was interested in interviewing Kalmykia's despotic president, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, a former chess prodigy and the president of the World Chess Federation (FIDE), who was using chess "as a tool to unify and mollify his people." (He had made chess instruction compulsory in schools, for example.) Woven around the story of their journey are chapters on chess history--its development and geographical migration across a thousand years, the history of its individual pieces--and Hallman's further adventures with Glenn: marathon chess sessions over the internet, formal chess competitions, blindfolded chess and speed chess, chess played in prison and in Princeton, and the various characters they ran across on their adventures--child prodigies and the denizens of Dickensian chess shops and the down-and-out chess hustlers of New York's Washington Square Park.
Part travelogue, then, and part history, Hallman's book is also an exploration of both the international subculture of competitive chess and of his traveling companion. For most of the period covered by the book, Glenn was ranked as a chess master--exceptionally good but well below the grandmasters who form the true elite of the chess world. Glenn is an enigmatic character. A germophobic 39-year-old with a genius for the game and poor grammar, he is apparently incapable of consistently making smart decisions in the real world. Divorced and perpetually broke, almost childish at times, his friendship seems to be to a great extent a burden.
"So far Glenn had managed not to drink any Russian water and had eaten little Russian food, but the effects of malnourishment and dehydration in him were still indistinguishable from laziness. I was glad to be free of him for a time."
Hallman has a tendency, actually, to write about Glenn as if he were a sort of lab animal, whose mannerisms and mode of play are alike under scrutiny.
"He shrugged and performed a gesture that was new to me, opening his palms suddenly and at the same time contorting his face to an expression of exaggerated surprise."
Annoying and strange, given to marking promising relationships with ceremonial whistling, Glenn is also a sad figure, a broken man "spiraling toward nothingness, a waste of twenty years of effort and energy." One wonders what Glenn thought of his presentation in the book. The Chess Artist is very well researched and thick with information. And it is punctuated by some truly wonderful, sometimes poetic writing:
"The train was all lullaby, the gyroscopic jostle of the tracks, the steady click of the wheels like the eighth notes of some slower melody, the stars stationary out the small window, all of it a lull of travel nostalgia, a cradle or warm womb, Glenn and I like twins incubating in that cramped space."
In Kalmykia Hallman is served "a genocide of crayfish"; in a prison cafeteria the fare is instead "hockey pucks of meat like the leftover scrapings of a botched autopsy." The high-stress atmosphere of a chess competition approaches the cannibalistic:
"A sense of anxiety was building as well, in the way of people trapped together and beginning to starve. There was a natural tendency to look about and speculate on who was expendable and of possible nutritious value." One player has the "eyebrows of a demon," while another is "a nondescript man who fit the profile of a serial killer--short, well-groomed, quiet, and very dangerous."
Hallman's writing is riddled with such evocative descriptions. This is both wonderful and, surprisingly perhaps, problematic: the problem is that Hallman tends to lavish his well-written descriptions on nearly every minor character who crosses his path, so that the reader is met with too much information:
"As would happen in each round, I found three or four boards that were interesting either for the player match-up or for what I could discern of the position. I amassed a cast of characters to follow: Anna Khan, a young, sexy, sleepy-eyed Latvian as well-known in the chess world for her play as her presence; Julen Arizmendi, a handsome young international master who somehow seemed to have acquired chess talent without the usual sacrifice of health and hygiene; GM Igor Khenkin, a man who looked to be teetering on the edge of an exhaustion-inspired insanity; Immanuel Guthi, a tall, bearded, and smelly Israeli whom Glenn and I knew from our casino--he was a regular--where he was known simply as 'Moses' for the likeness; GM Alexander Ivanov, who, like Epishin, went for little walks between his moves, holding his hands in a lotus-style pinch and closing his eyes as though to recall a fragrance; GM Alexander Galkin, a friendly-looking Russian who could have passed for a young literature professor in tweed and jeans; and Timoleon Polit, a thin, nervous, little old 1390 guy who would be on the lowest board all week, and who looked like the kind of man Jack Lemmon would play, the washed-up business stooge attempting to use chess to fulfill a criteria for having led an eventful life."
Hallman's flair is obvious. But we can be forgiven for not being able to keep any of these characters straight. After a time, the personalities in the book tend to blend together. It is tempting to say that Hallman does for chess what Stefan Fatsis does for Scrabble in his book Word Freak, exposing the weird underbelly of an intellectual pastime, the obsessives who sacrifice sleep and hygiene over their chosen game. Hallman's book, though, is a more serious and more difficult read. Presumably, the more familiar a reader is with chess, the more he will get out of the book. I myself do not play, but I was able to understand and appreciate, at least on some level, most of what the author had to say. Non-chess players should not be afraid of diving in.
Letter to a Christian Nation
Sam Harris
Knopf
c/o Random House
1745 Broadway, 17th floor, New York, NY 10019
www.randomhouse.com
0307265773 $16.95 1-800-726-0600
In writing his thoughtful little book Letter to a Christian Nation Sam Harris's principal purpose was "to arm secularists in our society, who believe that religion should be kept out of public policy, against their opponents on the Christian Right." The book is in fact an indictment of all religion, but it is addressed in particular to Christians who believe "at a minimum, that the Bible is the inspired word of God and that only those who accept the divinity of Jesus Christ will experience salvation after death." Harris's argument, in short, is that resources are misallocated and immoral decisions are made because people are deluded by Christian dogma ("immoral" in that the decisions result in prolonged human suffering, not because they are not in accord with Christian teaching).
There are no chapters per se in the book, but Harris divides his argument into ten titled sections in which, despite the book's brevity, he addresses a great many topics. Harris argues, for example, that the Bible cannot be considered a moral guide (it can as easily be used to justify the Inquisition as it can the non-violence of Martin Luther King, Jr.); that Christian morality is often divorced from the "reality of human and animal suffering" (which "explains why you [Christians] can preach against condom use in sub-Saharan Africa while millions die from AIDS there each year"); that atheism is demonstrably "compatible with the basic aspirations of a civil society" and further "that widespread belief in God does not ensure a society's health." Harris discusses the debate between science and religion, creationism and intelligent design vs. evolution, the singular position that religious faith is accorded in society:
"While believing strongly, without evidence, is considered a mark of madness or stupidity in any other area of our lives, faith in God still holds immense prestige in our society. Religion is the one area of our discourse where it is considered noble to pretend to be certain about things no human being could possibly be certain about. It is telling that this aura of nobility extends only to those faiths that still have many subscribers. Anyone caught worshipping Poseidon, even at sea, will be thought insane."
Harris effectively invokes the Olympian gods also in making a common sense argument about religion and the misallocation of resources:
"Can you prove that Zeus does not exist? Of course not. And yet, just imagine if we lived in a society where people spent tens of billions of dollars of their personal income each year propitiating the gods of Mount Olympus, where the government spent billions more in tax dollars to support institutions devoted to these gods, where untold billions more in tax subsidies were given to pagan temples, where elected officials did their best to impede medical research out of deference to The Iliad and The Odyssey, and where every debate about public policy was subverted to the whims of ancient authors who wrote well, but who didn't know enough about the nature of reality to keep their excrement out of their food. This would be a horrific misappropriation of our material, moral, and intellectual resources. And yet that is exactly the society we are living in."
And Harris touches on the timely issue of religious violence and Muslim extremism:
"It is now a truism in foreign policy circles that real reform in the Muslim world cannot be imposed from the outside. But it is important to recognize why this is so--it is so because most Muslims are utterly deranged by their religious faith."
The rational nonbelievers among Harris's readers will frequently find themselves nodding vigorously in agreement with him. For myself, if I had highlighted the passages I most appreciated in the book my copy would be awash in vibrant yellow. He makes so many good points that I can't possibly even summarize them all here. The book is cogently argued and thoroughly convincing, timely and important. But then, Harris is preaching here to the converted. How will the book be received by its intended audience? My worry is that the hard-core Christians to whom it is addressed won't be picking a copy up, and that even if they do they will be unconvinced, religious faith being impervious to, or in a different sphere than, reason. The already converted, though, will want to read Harris' book, and buy copies for their friends, so as to become angrier about the misery that religious fanaticism--assuredly not Christian only--continues to cause in this world.
Harris hopes that one day all religious belief will be eradicated. Impossible, surely! But he likens this idea to the eradication of slavery, another long-practiced human activity whose abolishment must have seemed equally impossible just a few hundred years ago, but which is now viewed in retrospect as being patently immoral. Harris imagines a future world whose inhabitants may similarly look back with "horror and amazement" at our society's religious faith. Impossible, maybe. But one can hope.
Who Are You People?
Shari Caudron
Barricade Books
185 Bridge Plaza North, Suite 308-A, Fort Lee, NJ 07024
1569803048 $14.95
Having dabbled in innumerable activities over the years--photography, Buddhism, belly dancing, golf and gardening--never settling on any one thing for very long, author Shari Caudron began to wonder, she tells us, what so many other people had that she didn't: why is it that some people are so passionate in their hobbies, sacrificing time and money and occasionally marriages in their fanaticism? Caudron logged more than 25,000 miles over three years trying to answer that question, exploring the various worlds of obsessive hobbyists, from a convention of Barbie doll collectors in Denver to pigeon racers in Brooklyn to storm chasers speeding across the Midwest in a mad hunt for tornadoes. She attended the World Boardgaming Championship in Baltimore, the Mayberry Days Festival in North Carolina, a Josh Groban concert in San Antonio. Who are You People? is the very readable, entertaining fruit of Caudron's travels.
Caudron entered into her project a cynic, and readers too are likely to shake their heads in wonderment at some of the people the author found in her travels. How can
