Book Reviews: Magic, Parenting, and Fake Facts

There are several reasons I have not been blogging as much lately. There are the standard ones like family, work, and the holidays, but I've also been reading a lot. I don't think there's been a point in my life since I was about 7 that I didn't have at least one book going, but lately I've had 2-3 going at a time, and I've just felt more like reading than blogging. But now I'm gonna blog a bit about what I've been reading, so there you go.

Lev Grossman's The Magicians
There is no way to describe the plot of this book without making it sound derivative of at least two famous fantasy series: Harry Potter and the Chronicles of Narnia. Quentin Coldwater, our anti-hero, is recruited into a school of magic, and eventually ends up learning that the fantasy world he's been reading about since he was a child, Fillory (which is basically Narnia), is real. That's not much of a spoiler, trust me.

The twist here is that instead of young, relatively squeaky-clean British kids visiting these magic settings, we have older, far-from-innocent American kids doing so. The novel can in some ways be read as a long thought experiment. Yes, many of us grow up reading about kids who learn to do magic or travel to magical lands, and of course we always wanted to be those kids, right? Grossman takes a step back and asks, really? Would you? If you had magic powers and could do virtually anything you wanted, wouldn't you get bored after a while? And as far as magical lands go, how much fun do you think being in constant mortal danger actually is?

I can't say any of the characters are particularly appealing--they're all pretty much jerks. But that's kind of the point. Nice people apparently don't make particularly good magicians. Characters that don't promote a lot of sympathy aside, the story moves along quickly. It takes Harry Potter 7 books to get through Hogwarts, but it takes Quintin Coldwater 2/3 of a book to get through Brakebills Academy. If anything, the last 1/3 of the novel moves a little too quickly. Grossman could have easily stretched the time in Fillory out for another 100 pages and I wouldn't have minded a bit.

All in all, a very fun book, and I would recommend it to any reader (over the age of 13 or so) who's ever read a fantasy novel and wanted oh-so-much to escape into that book. The Magicians will definitely force you to rethink that notion.

Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman's NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children
Though I have been a parent for nearly 3 years now, I've never been much for parenting books. Many of them seem to work along the lines of "Hey, this worked for me, so it will obviously work for you!", which as most sane parents know is complete shite. You might call it the Jenny McCarthy class of parenting books (speaking of which, hurray for The Lancet for finally retracting the vaccinations-lead-to-autism paper!). This book caught my eye, however, because it's based almost entirely on published literature and interviews with actual scientists. Indeed, the reference section alone accounts for about 10% of the books length. Though the authors share a few personal anecdotes to demonstrate their points, the book is by and large a summary of very real research.

Several topics are discussed: the importance of sleep for kids' development, the actual causes of aggression in young children, sibling rivalries, how to build a child's vocabulary quickly, and perhaps more importantly, how not to. Many parents have learned by now that the Baby Einstein series not only fails to help kids talked sooner, it can actually impede speech development. This book explains why. There's a chapter on lying, and why it's not necessarily a bad thing when kids do it. In perhaps one of the most eye-opening chapters for me, the authors tackle the dogma that thrusting a child into a multi-ethnic environment will help make them "color blind". And in my favorite confirms-my-suspicions chapter, the authors essentially trash the idea that kindergartens for "advanced" kids are worth a damn.

All of this is presented in easy-to-digest prose--it's a quick but informative read. NurtureShock has not become my new parenting bible, but it has changed the way I interpret the behavior of my children, in what I have to believe is a good way. I would even go so far as to recommend this book for non-parents, because chances are you will have to interact with children some day, even if they aren't necessarily your own.

John Hodgman's More Information Than You Require
I can direct you to my earlier review of Hodgman's first book, and that would pretty much cover my bases here. This book is basically a continuation of The Areas of My Expertise--the page numbers even start where the last book's left off. Only this time we have a list of mole man names instead of hobo names, and Hodgman himself was a bit more famous when he wrote this book. Is it essential reading? Absolutely not. Is it still pretty damn funny? Yes. That is all.

Halloween 2009: The Graveyard Book

Probably the best possible book to have finished reading on the night before Halloween.

I finished The Graveyard Book about 4 minutes ago, so my brain is still whirling a bit. Neil Gaiman is quite a story teller. When I initially read the synopsis of this book--something along the lines of "Nobody Owens is a boy raised in a graveyard by ghosts"--I had my doubts. I also knew it was a children's book, though I must emphasize that it's for older children. The first few pages describe a family being stabbed to death, so please don't read this to your 6-year-old.

But I should have trusted Gaiman to weave an engaging, exciting, and touching tale. Bod (as Nobody is known) and his supernatural guardians represent a fascinating cast of characters. Those first few pages are brutal, but they immediately engage the reader. And honestly, though I enjoyed the Harry Potter series as much as anyone, I think if I were to encourage young readers to read about a young person in a magical setting, I'd go to this book first. It's a bit darker, but also better written and leaves a bit more to the reader's imagination (which is a good thing).

I'm a bit too tried to blather much more, but I will say that as with Gaiman's other children's novel, Coraline, I highly reccomend this book. It's a quick but satisfying read for an adult, and it's a story I'm sure some kids will want to read over and over.

Halloween 2009: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

In an effort to get a little more content up here, I'm going to try to do a post a night this week in honor of Halloween. I'll try to write about Halloweeny things, but some will be more Halloweeny than others. This first entry is really only vaguely Halloweeny.

My brother-in-law (who's German) recommended Stieg Larrson's novel, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, ages ago. In hind sight, it was probably before it was even released in this country. It's the first in a trilogy by the late Swedish author who basically wrote the series as a pastime. The series is relatively popular here, but it's huge in Europe. Literally millions of copies have been sold--it's like Harry Potter, but instead of magic for kids, it's sex and murder for adults.

I suppose the book is what one calls a crime thriller. It's not a genre I read often, so it's tough to say. It's the thriller part that gets me. The only difference between "thriller" and "horror" in my mind is that the "horror" usually involves the supernatural in some way. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong. I guess it's the thriller part that also makes this book vaguely Halloweeny--there are some legitimately creepy parts.

But more importantly, once you get past the first 60 pages or so, the book is pretty much unputdownable. Sure, 60 pages is a lot, but it's worth getting through. Not that the beginning is a complete slog, but it's our first introduction to the main characters of not just the book, but the series. The real meat of the story comes soon after, and it's very tasty meat indeed.

Mikael Blomkvist is a financial journalist who's recent fall from grace leads him to a dubious new employer. Though he's not the most exciting character, he's thrust into the extraordinary circumstances that form the crux of the novel. Lisbeth Salander, the titular "girl", is a fascinating character and the centerpiece of the series. It takes an agonizingly long time for her to enter the central plot, but she requires a lot more development as a character.

And really, I can't say much more without spoiling it. I haven't stayed up late to read a book in ages, and my wife read it three times faster than I did. She cursed me for encouraging her to read such a riveting book that was also too scary for her.

The novel isn't great literature, and it's not without its flaws, but it was undoubtedly a fun read. If you started it right now, you'll probably have it done by Halloween. As for me, the sequel, The Girl Who Played with Fire, should be arriving on my doorstep any day now.

Book Reviews: Tesla, Monsters, and Mad Militaries

In the last few weeks I've managed to finish 3 books. I feel vaguely literate again. Here's a brief rundown...

Samantha Hunt's The Invention of Everything Else
I first heard about this book a year or so ago when I heard an interview with the author on NPR. The premise sounded interesting--a novelization of Nikola Tesla's last few weeks on earth, during which several real events in his fascinating life are recounted. Though I am by no means a Tesla expert, any scientist worth his salt should at least have some awareness of who he is. In a righteous world, anyone who uses alternating current (which would be pretty much everybody who uses electricity) would know who he is. He was and remains, arguably, one of the most under appreciated inventors and engineers of the last few centuries.

So that's why I read the book. Tesla was a interesting dude. Hunt's depiction of him as mad genius is probably not all that far off the mark. Her depiction of Thomas Edison as an business-savvy non-genius is also probably not too far off the mark. The fictional characters with which they interact, however, are a little harder to embrace. They're better than mere caricatures, but I didn't really find myself caring about them all that much.

This book tries to be a lot of things. It's a bit biography and historical fiction, some romance, and even a dash of science fiction. Some readers may find this inability to classify the book frustrating, some may find it endearing. I find myself falling more into the latter camp--the book isn't exactly literature, but it was clever and entertaining. Just as I found the descriptions of whaling the most fascinating aspect of Moby Dick, I found the descriptions of Tesla's rise and fall as one of the world's greatest inventors very gratifying. If the novel had been composed exclusively of Tesla-centric chapters, it would have received a solid A from me. As it was, I found the chapters that didn't involve Tesla reasonably well-written, but a bit distracting. I'll leave it at a B, and recommend the book to anyone who wants to learn a bit more about Tesla but is too lazy to pick up a real biography any time soon (like me!).

Kelly Link's Pretty Monsters
I read Kelly Link's Magic for Beginners a few years ago. Two of my favorite stories from that anthology were "The Faery Handbag" and "Magic for Beginners". I finished Pretty Monsters a week or so ago and two of my favorite stories were "The Faery Handbag" and "Magic for Beginners."

So apparently this anthology was being marketed as a book for "young adults," but I'm really not sure how different these stories were from the previous volume. I'm not complaining about the repeated stories (the only repeated stories, incidentally); it was actually a pleasure to read them again. "Magic for Beginners" is especially good--a twisty tale of metafiction that leaves the reader needing to read it again. Other stories range from fairly light fantasy to borderline horror. Link has a fantastic imagination, an aptitude for throwing curve balls in her story telling, and an excellent ear for dialogue, particularly children's dialogue. Perhaps it's this last gift that makes these stories for young adults. The protagonists (or victims...what have you) are all children or teenagers, so I guess that's why the book was siphoned into the young adult genre.

So I guess I'd recommend you'd give this book to a young adult you know, but read it yourself first. I'd also recommend Link's Magic for Beginners, which I thought I'd blogged about already, but apparently not. I'd give that one a A-, whereas Pretty Monsters is almost as good with a B+.

Jon Ronson's The Men Who Stare at Goats
Clearly, I have my finger on the pulst of America. Or at least Hollywood. Literally the day after I picked this book up, I discovered it has recently been made into a movie starring George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, and other famous actor types. Now I honestly have no idea how TMWSAG could possibly make a good movie, but it was an excellent piece of nonfiction.

The book is Ronson's account of his adventures exploring the scary side of the US military. Not scary dangerous, but scary crazy. The title refers to a secret building in Fort Bragg where men were apparently trained for years to kill (or at least "drop") a goat just by staring at it. Ronson eventually tracks down the one man who apparently did it, a civilian who now practices on hamsters. He also talks to generals who think they can walk through walls, form psychic spies, and the people ultimately behind the Barney song torture.

In THEM: Adventures with Extremists, Ronson relied on his Jewishness to maintain the tension of being an outsider (and potential victim) in the groups he was exploring. Here, though it's seldom mentioned, he uses his Britishness to gain access to people who might not be as open with an American journalist. Ronson follows every lead to discover who the key players have been in the paranormal--or at least pseudoscientific--side of the military over the past 40 years. Much stems from a military document the suggests creating a First Earth Battalion, which suggests that soldiers should essentially be "fighting" their wars with music, hugs, and cute animals. The top brass initially took these ideas to heart, and then that heart was Cheney-fied. The result led to new forms of torture and military tactics that will either make you want to laugh or cry.

That's where Ronson's writing style comes in handy. He's funny--often laugh out loud funny--which is necessary to soften the blow of what we're actually reading here. Some of the stories he describes take place decades ago, so it's easy to say, "Oh, they did some crazy shit back then!" But when he brings his story into the Gulf War and you realize that certain people in the military are as crazy as ever, it made my stomach hurt a little. So kudos to Ronson for writing a book that was entertaining, informative, and more than a little bit sickening. A-

Paternity Leave Reading

I'm currently wrapping up my paternity leave. My brand spanking new daughter is awesome, but let's face it, infants are kind of boring. She has about 20 minutes a day that she's awake and not nursing, and I enjoy those minutes. I've used some of the other time to catch up on some reading.

I recently finished Steven Millhauser's short story anthology, Dangerous Laughter. It was my first book by Millhauser, and I wasn't even halfway through the 13 stories presented here before I knew I'd be reading more of him. Millhauser's biggest claim to fame, outside literary circles, is that the relatively recent movie The Illusionist was based on one of his short stories (the story, "Eisenheim the Illusionist," is not in this anthology). It was a pretty decent movie, and Millhauser is a very clever, thought-provoking writer. Many of the stories force the reader to consider some aspect of the world that we take for granted--a Tom and Jerry cartoon, laughter, words, household objects, our sense of touch--from a completely new, slightly skewed perspective.

"History of a Disturbance" made me incredibly self-conscious about the words that came out of my mouth for days. Even as I think of the story now, weeks after I initially read it, it makes my mind feel kind of itchy. In the story "The Other Town", which isn't so much a story as it is a narrative description, we are introduced to a town that has created an exact doppelganger of itself; a copy that is kept updated minute by minute whenever a fork is shifted in a drawer or a leaf falls from a tree. How the town maintains this replica is vaguely interesting; why the town puts forth such an effort is much more intriguing.

Some of the stories feel like sci-fi or fantasy, but none fall easily into either genre. Some are character driven, some don't even have characters. Nearly all the stories were entertaining, and all of them made me think. Dangerous Laughter was easily the best anthology I've read in ages and I would highly recommend it.

On a much, much lighter note, I also finished John Hodgman's The Areas of My Expertise (or if you prefer the complete title, An Almanac of Complete World Knowledge Compiled with Instructive Annotation and Arranged in Useful Order By Me, John Hodgman, A Professional Writer, In The Areas of My Expertise). Most of the world knows Hodgman as the PC guy in the Mac vs. PC ads. He's also a frequent contributor to This American Life, for you NPR fans out there. I remember hearing an interview with Hodgman a few years ago when this book came out and thinking it sounded cool. I promptly forgot about it, then found the book relatively recently and decided to check it out. I'm glad I did.

A book consisting of entirely made-up facts probably won't appeal to everyone, but I found it highly amusing. Consider one of Hodgman's favorite topics, hoboes. He devotes several pages to a list of 700 Hobo names. And in one of the more amusing passages, he describes part of Hobo history:

At his inauguration in 1933, a new crippled president named Roosevelt addressed the nervous crowd: "The people of the United States have not failed. In their need, they have registered a mandate that they want direct, vigorous action. An so I will kill all the hoboes, and together we will gnaw on their bones." It was time for a comprehensive Hobo Eradicaiton Plan called "The New Deal."

And so on. He also expounds upon facial hair, how to win a fight, failed palindromes (e.g. Slow speed: deep owls), and eels, among several other things. It's all very absurd, but you have to actually be somewhat well-read and reasonably intelligent to understand just how absurd some of this stuff is. In other words, you might appreciate the book more if listen to NPR (or its Canadian equivalent). It's not something I would recommend reading in one sitting--or even 10 sittings--but it's a fun book to pick up once in a while for a good chuckle.

Book Review: Chuck Palahniuk's Rant

I would not call myself a Chuck Palahniuk fan per se, but I do like the books of his that I've read. The guy's got some clever ideas. He can be, but is not always, a good writer. He can also write the occasional scene that makes me want to vomit. I could never whole heartily recommend his books to everyone, but I certainly know a few people who would and do enjoy his novels. Mostly dudes.

I just finished Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey on my train ride home today, and I think it's become my new favorite Palahniuk book. Just as the subtitle explains, it's written as an oral biography, feature fragments of interviews from dozens of people who knew or interacted with the title character, Buster "Rant" Casey. It's a clever framing device, one that the author uses to his full advantage.

And that, my friends, is about as much as I can really tell you about this book without potentially ruining it. I was constantly surprised as I read this novel. About 90 pages in, it became something completely different than what I expected. About 60 pages from the end, it did another 180 on me. These massive changes in the direction of the narrative were, surprisingly, pretty organic. I didn't feel like I was being cheated by some ridiculous deus ex machina, but it was almost a pleasant jarring sense. Kind of appropriate, considering many of the main characters in this book take pleasure in purposely crashing their cars. This is some of the best metafiction I've read, and I'm sure it'll be knocking around my head for days. It's a must-read for Palahniuk fans, and a maybe-try for newcomers to his work. Though it has some disturbing sequences, it's not as bad as some of the stuff he's written, and I haven't even read some of his more grotesque works (Haunted is supposedly pretty stomach-churning).

The only other thing I'll say is that I hope nobody ever tries to make this book into a movie. I never read Fight Club, but I enjoyed the movie--I sort of have a policy not read a book after seeing the movie. Choke was a pretty decent book, but the movie was pretty not-so-good. I cannot imagine anyone, even David Fincher, doing filmic justice this novel.

I Can Read!

So I actually did some reading while I was on vacation. I finished two books, one of which I'd been reading for an embarrassingly long time. Here's the rundown...

Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
So this was the book that took me way too long to read, but in my defense, I was reading other things on the side. Like, umm, comic books, which is kind of ironic since this book tells the story of two cousins who write and draw comics together. Chabon is a member of the McSweeney's group of writers, headed up by David Eggers, who are essentially writing modern classics. At least, they're the ones winning the awards (TAAoK&C won a Pulitzer) and garnering critical praise. This was my first Chabon novel, and though I obviously didn't find it a real page-turner, I did enjoy it for the most part. Set immediately before, during, and after WWII, the prose is rich and meaty and the characters are fleshed out well without spoon feeding too much to the reader about their thoughts and motivation. Ultimately, much as I enjoyed Moby Dick for its description of the whaling industry, I enjoyed this book for its description of the Golden Age of comics. Many of the events and characters Chabon describes in relation to the comics industry were real, and it was pretty cool to compare that time period with today's comics comeback. Though I found the characters and their various story arcs interesting, I didn't find that I had to know what was going to happen to them next, especially as the book progressed and nothing good happened to anyone anymore. I'm glad I read it, but I longed for a book that could be thought provoking and a fun read. Which is why the next book I read was...
Christopher Moore's Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal
I firmly believe that everyone should read at least one of Moore's novels in their life, and of the four I've read so far, Lamb is my favorite. The premise is simple: the angel Raziel is sent down to resurrect Levi (known as Biff), Christ's best friend during those 30 years of Jesus's life that the Bible conveniently skips, and force him to right a new gospel. Biff is kind of a jerk, but he's loyal to his best friend and they go on some amazing adventures, during which JC learns to become the Messiah. Moore concedes in his afterword that based on his research of the time period (and it's obvious he did do some research), Jesus's early life was probably not nearly as fun as this depiction. It's an interesting balancing act, making the life of Christ funny, but not sacreligous. I think Moore pulls it off--he definitely pulls of the funny part anyway. I'm probably not the best judge of what might be considered sacreligous, but I'd like to think my Christian friends could read this and not be offended. Nor is the book particularly preachy, so my atheist friends should get a kick out of it, too.
Moore is no Vonnegut, who could be funny and thought provoking, but knew that brevity is the sould of wit. Sometimes the book drags on in parts that could have been more succinct--descriptions of the Jewish hierarchy 2000 years ago might prove that Moore did some research, but they do little to move the story along. The final section of the book also drops the funny altogether, but then, I have to imagine that it's really, really hard to make crucifixion funny. Monty Python pulled it off at the end of The Life of Brian, but really, I think they're the exception that proves the rule. And though the end of Biff's gospel takes a decidedly dark turn, it stays true to the character as we've come to know him.
All of Moore's books are pretty amusing, and they're certainly quick reads. The humor is often sophomoric, but I'm always up for a good fart joke. If it happens to be Jesus farting, all the better.

Your Next Favorite Fantasy Series

This is the blurb in the Onion A.V. Club that initially got me interested in Patrick Rothfuss's debut novel, The Name of the Wind:

1. Patrick Rothfuss, The Name Of The Wind (Daw)

When fantasy series have become as ubiquitous as Harlequin romances (and twice as predictable), a debut novel like The Name Of The Wind is more than a breath of fresh air. It's a reason to live a few more years, until Patrick Rothfuss gets the rest of the story of Kvothe, apprentice mage turned legendary outlaw, into print. Combining the academic setting of Harry Potter, the tortured heroism of Frodo, and the bittersweet apocalyptica of A Song Of Ice And Fire, Rothfuss' first novel in the Kingkiller Chronicles weaves a rich, fluid, irresistible world. The Name Of The Wind is the perfect midwinter escape—although the 2009 publication date for the next installment should serve as a warning: Read slowly.

High praise indeed. And the full review of the book on the same site is even more glowing, but I'm not linking to that here because it's a)pretty long and b)a bit spoilery. The back of the book itself is also loaded with high praise from the likes of Terry Brooks, Anne McCaffrey, and Orson Scott Card.

But what did I think of it? Let's just say that I'm generally a slow reader. It's not just that I don't have a lot of time to read, but when I do read it tends to be pretty slowly. When I left to visit Evelyn Is Not Real and Clyde Squid this past weekend, I had tons of music and podcasts to listen to during the trip, several magazines to catch up on, and this book. The only thing I ended up doing is reading this book. I read this book for about 8 consecutive hours until I finished it when I was stuck in the airport the other day. I didn't want it to end.

The comparisons in the mini-review are quite apt. If you're tired of waiting for the next A Song of Ice and Fire book, look no further. The Name of the Wind is considerably more focused considering it's about one character, and there's a reasonable chance the author will finish the series within the next couple years or so without dying, since he's a relatively young dude and this was, amazingly, his first novel. This isn't to say the book is without flaws--there are a couple lines that address the reader directly that I found somewhat annoying, though they were perfectly acceptable within the narrative structure of the book. It also takes a while to really ramp up, but if you can get past the first 100 pages or so (which aren't bad, but are still mostly prelude), you're good to go. Those quibbles aside, it was one of the most entertaining reads I've had for a while. It can be exciting, amusing, heartbreaking--everything a good adventure tale should be. Highly recommended as a fun summer read.

Things you can find in a diaper

Eric is the proud father of a happy, healthy baby, so he is probably very well acquainted with diapers. And because he is a molecular biologist, he has long been familiar with their contents. After all, Theodor Escherich isolated the bacterium that bears his name from the diapers of happy, healthy, German babies all the way back in 1885. He noted that it grew very well on all kinds of food—a convenient property for a laboratory bug. And the rest, as they say, is history... a history very engagingly presented in Carl Zimmer's new book Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life, (Amazon) which I highly recommend.

Zimmer's book has something for everyone who is interested in or acquainted with this famous bacterium. Those who, like myself, primarily know E. coli as a tool will recognize several names along the way and learn a great deal about how it came to be such a powerful resource for us. Many will be surprised to learn how controversial some activities we take for granted (transfection of exogenous genetic material into bacteria, for example) were 20-30 years ago. Readers who have very little biology background need not fret, of course. Carl Zimmer is an excellent writer (check out his blog, The Loom) who introduces all the material carefully. Only some very basic knowledge about DNA, proteins, and bacteria is necessary. Zimmer will carry you the rest of the way, from bacteriophages and flagella all the way to synthetic biology, GM crops, and gene circuits.

Whether you work with E. Coli every day or just cringe when you hear those words on the evening news, Microcosm will be an engaging, rewarding, and informative read. And it just might reassure Eric that something good and useful can be found in those smelly diapers.

THEM

No, this post isn't about the 1954 giant ant movie, it's about Jon Ronson's book THEM: Adventures with Extremists. I'd been thinking about checking out Ronson's book for a while. He's a frequent contributor on NPR's This American Life, and his dry sense of humor appealed to me.

The cover of the book gives a perfectly adequate summary of what this book is about:

"Is there really, as the extremists claim, a secret room from which a tiny elite secretly rule the world? And if so, can it be found? This book is a journey into the heart of darkness, involving PR-savvy Ku Klux Klansmen, the story of Ruby Ridge, a harem of kidnapped sex slaves, and Nicolae Ceausescu's shoes. While Jon Ronson attempts to locate the secret room he is chases by men in dark glasses, unmasked as a Jew in the middle of a Jihad training camp, and witnesses CEOs and leading politicians--like Dick Cheney--undertake a bizarre owl ritual in the forests of northern California."

If that doesn't grab your attention, what will? There are several remarkable aspects of this book. One, Ronson meets with these extremists who are almost universally loathed, and he manages to tell their story without judging them. This is journalism that's just hard to find these days. Ronson gains access, he observes, and he reports. And he finds humor in each of these situations, albeit dark humor for the most part. At times, Ronson may seem almost too sympathetic with some of his subjects, particularly with the Klansman he follows for weeks, but in the end, the people he follows tend to sink themselves.

It should be noted that this book would not have succeeded as well as it has if Ronson himself was not Jewish. Most of the people with whom he interacts believe not only that the world is run by a small, secret group of individuals, but that those individuals are Jewish. The tension this situation creates, especially in the Jihad camp and when Ronson visits Aryan Nations, is palpable. Some of the visits Ronson pays may come off as stunts, but they still make for good stories. I found the interviews with the survivors of Ruby Ridge particularly enlightening.

The major weakness of the book probably lies in the chapter referring to Ceausescu's shoes. It's an interesting anecdote, but it has nothing to do (as far as I could tell) with the rest of the books themes. And does Ronson actually ever find the secret rulers of the world? Well...sort of. The answer is somewhat anticlimactic, but I still found it satisfying.

So I'm sorry if this review is a bit jarbled. I'm a bit sick at the moment, and I read so little non-fiction that I'm barely sure how to even approach it. It should suffice to say that this was an excellent read (and it would be a quick one, for people without one-year-olds). I highly recommend it.

"You may have left me before / but you can't leave me behind..."

Hello everyone! I'm cross-posting here from my own blog. I'm not exactly sure how I'll do this in the future; if posting twice becomes too much hassle for me I might switch to posting culture stuff here and just linking to it from Discount Thoughts via ticker.

Anyway, Eric's post yesterday about Blankets reminded me of one of my favorite graphic novels, and so even though it was a little early for me to hit it on the decadal rotation I went home last night and re-read Stuck Rubber Baby by Howard Cruse. Although it's a work of fiction, Cruse admits that it is heavily influenced by his time in Birmingham in the sixties, and this shows through in much of the plot and also in some of the characters. The inspiration for Sutton Chopper, for instance, will be immediately obvious to anyone who remembers any part of their Black History Month lessons. But Stuck Rubber Baby is not about the Civil Rights Movement, except to the degree that the characters' reactions to it help define their relationships with each other. This story is about a young man coming to terms with his homosexuality in an extraordinary and difficult time, and the mistakes he and others make in the course of that effort.

This isn't a subject that everyone wants to read about, and I'll forgive you if it turns you off, while warning you that you are missing out on a wonderful story. On the other hand, both civil rights and gay coming-of-age are hardly topics lightly served by literature; it's tempting to dismiss this book (if you haven't read it) as a retread of overdone themes. Yet Cruse manages to avoid the all-too-easy trap of populating this kind of story with saints and sinners. Despite the enormous cast, almost every character who appears on more than one page comes across as realistically mixed. You will find something to criticize in every protagonist (especially the main character), and also something to like, or at least a basis for forgiveness, in the villains. The saintly black preacher unleashes a sarcastic, acid tongue, and the obese bigot who commits one of the book's worst acts comes across as genuinely remorseful and ashamed at the end.

The black-and-white art reflects this sensibility. The characters are highly detailed, and the lines used to draw them are very curvy. This style allows Cruse to create very expressive faces, and yet at the same time it seems to highlight physical imperfections. These characters are not supermen, nor are they ostentatiously ugly. They simply seem real—not in the trivial way one associates with photorealistic artwork, but rather the deeper reality of memory and emotion. Even the sexual content works, a rare example of art avoiding pitfalls I have mentioned before.

Who knows how much of this tale is drawn from Cruse's experience and how much is entirely made up? The strength of Stuck Rubber Baby is that you simply can't tell. This story, though it is fiction, feels real, almost frighteningly so. It has no perfect heroes, no perfect villains, and the last page holds no happy ending... only the impression that someone else's memories, with all their joy and sorrow, have been made your own.

What I'm Reading Now

The Portable Atheist is a must read, and I'm only through the first 50 pages. And I bought it today.

Religion invents a problem where none exists by describing the wicked as also made in the image of god and the sexually nonconformist as existing in a state of incurable mortal sin that can incidentally cause floods and earthquakes.

Read through the history of nonbelief with relish. Note the surprise appearance of H.P. Lovecraft...

An Unexpected Find

I'm with my I'd Offer You Some, But They Mine friends this weekend, and we went to their local strange tanning booth/used book store right down the road today. I regularly look for an entertaining/ridiculous Christian-based eschatology or creationism book (I got this one last time). But while looking through a stack of books about Jesus and infinity, I found a precious jewel.

Have you ever read Cordwainer Smith? If not, I recommend getting his complete short story collection immediately and reading it beginning to end: it is some of the strangest, compelling, and--best of all--cohesive short story science fiction ever written. No one figured out that his little-read, seemingly unrelated short stories and his one sci-fi novel were actually all parts of one huge story until long after he died.

So here's another cool thing about Cordwainer Smith: he wrote one of the first--and still one of the definitive--books on psychological warfare during WW2. It's called, oddly enough, Psychological Warfare; and he used his real name for it...Dr. Linebarger. Guess what I found in the stacks of this backwater used book store for $4? The second edition of this book (revised shortly after Korea). It's been out of print for years; when I found it I let out a gay geek gasp.

Smith/Linebarger led a life less ordinary; you will die a lesser person if you do not explore his works. I was lucky to find one of his nonfictions ones.

Impossible

George R. R. Martin still isn't done with the next book in The Song of Fire and Ice. It'll probably be next year before it's out. But a TV series? Even for HBO, it's impossible.

May the Crow's Eye make me a liar.

And if you haven't read these books, you suck.