Book 323: Amsterdam

 

“As far as the welfare of every other living form on earth was concerned, the human project was not just a failure, it was a mistake from the very beginning.”

Dates read: June 25-27, 2019

Rating: 6/10

Lists: Booker Prize, The New York Times best-seller

Few things are more satisfying than boiling hot self-righteousness. If there's a drug that gives you that feeling of someone else being not just incorrect, but morally wrong, and being about to shove it in their face that you're a better person than they are, please no one tell me. I will become an addict. Of course, we all know that it is almost inevitably followed by realizing that you are not quite in fact as heroic as you felt, nor is the other person the literal spawn of Satan. But it's a heady rush while it lasts.

Even long-standing friendships aren't immune from misunderstanding and resentments. In Ian McEwan's Amsterdam, two old friends meet at the funeral of a woman they each had loved once. But it isn't the free-spirited Molly, now gone after a brief but terrible bout of dementia, that drives apart Vernon, the editor of a struggling London newspaper, and Clive, a respected composer. They've long since come to terms with that part of their lives. Neither of them can much understand what she ever saw in another one of her former lovers, who also attends the funeral: Julian, a conservative politician whose policy stances would seem to be anathema to Molly's guiding principles of love and acceptance. Nor can they understand why she married George, who seemed bent on controlling her and molding her into conventional respectability. Like many friends, Vernon and Clive have gone through cycles of being more or less close over the years, and the funeral pushes them back into each other's orbit. Spooked by the circumstances of Molly's death, each promises that if the other were to be in a similar state of decline, they would help the end come quicker.

Not long afterwards, both men find themselves in a position to have to make a moral choice. Vernon is given photographs that Molly took of Julian during their relationship...photos that his support base would find shocking. These photos would solidify Vernon's position at the paper by boosting circulation and catapult him into the spotlight after a lifetime of toiling away in relative obscurity. Clive has received a prestigious government commission to compose a piece to celebrate the millennium, and struggles for inspiration until, when taking a hike while out of town, he sees a man attack a woman on the trail. Finding himself suddenly able to see where he wants his symphony to go, he ignores the situation and doesn't report what he saw to the police. Clive is aghast that Vernon would even consider publishing the photos of someone else's private, intimate moments. Vernon is insistent that Clive report what he saw and face responsibility for his failure to intervene on behalf of the woman and keeping what he witnessed from law enforcement. The two are bitterly estranged.

This book is so short as to practically be a novella. That doesn't limit the impact of McEwan's satire, though. If you have ever known a pompous middle-aged man, Vernon and Clive are pitch-perfect. Both ruminate on the clarity of the situation facing the other, while running themselves ragged in the mental gymnastics required to justify their own choices. Each can only see the ways in which they themselves have been good, devoted friends, while the other has taken advantage of their generosity. But that's kind of one of the issues: character. While obviously something this brief and with this perspective isn't out for a deep character study, Vernon and Clive are basically the same person. And George, who shows up to create havoc throughout, seems more like a plot device than a human. I never found anyone compelling enough to really care about how it would end up.

How it ends up is a little too tidy and convenient, for that matter. And the pacing is odd...it drags and feels bloated (despite its brevity) in places, but the conclusion feels rushed. It's not without its clever moments and witty turns of phrase, but it really feels like an excellent short story concept that got padded into a decent-but-unspectacular short novel. It's worth a try (the upside of having such a low page count is that even if it doesn't work, it shouldn't take long to finish), but there are sharper, funnier satires out there. 

One year ago, I was reading: The Eyre Affair

Two years ago, I was reading: The Year of Reading Dangerously

Three years ago, I was reading: Daisy Jones & The Six

Four years ago, I was reading: My Name is Venus Black

Five years ago, I was reading: Nefertiti

Six years ago, I was reading: The Namesake

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Book 323: Amsterdam

Book 315: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

"That’s life for you. All the happiness you gather to yourself, it will sweep away like it’s nothing. If you ask me I don’t think there are any such things as curses. I think there is only life. That’s enough." 

Dates read: May 11-15, 2019

Rating: 8/10

Lists/awards: Pulitzer Prize, The New York Times best-seller

I grew up in an entirely female household. My mother single parented my sister and I. She had serious boyfriends every now and again, but it was almost always just the three of us. Perhaps it's understandable, then, why I have always favored books by or about women. I know what a femininity crisis looks like, feels like. Men and their concerns have tended to feel slightly alien, like something to study that I'll never be able to fully comprehend.

To say that Junot Diaz's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is testosterone-heavy is an understatement. It's a profoundly masculine piece of work. The book tells the life story of Oscar (whose real surname is not "Wao", a mocking mispronunciation of "Wilde", but rather "De Leon"), who is born into a Dominican family and grows up in New Jersey with his mother Hypatia and sister Lola, and is dead by his mid-twenties. Whether that death was avoidable, or whether it's the result of a fuku, a curse, on the De Leon family, whose history is explored in-depth along with that of the Dominican Republic as a whole, is left up to the reader to decide.

Starting when he's a child, the only thing in life Oscar wants is a girlfriend. Not only does he feel pressure to live up to a machismo Dominican ideal, he's the kind of guy that thinks he's in love if a girl smiles at him on the street. Unfortunately for Oscar, he's overweight, awkward, and a big science fiction nerd. This does not render him attractive to most of the girls he knows. The situation does not improve when he goes to college, where he briefly rooms with Yunior, his sister's boyfriend and the narrator of the story. Profoundly depressed, he makes an unsuccessful suicide attempt, after which he's sent to the DR and falls in love with the girl next door, who happens to be a prostitute. She seems to return his affections, but she's already in a relationship, and thus is created a situation doomed to an unhappy ending.

First things first: Junot Diaz is a fantastic writer. The narrative voice he creates for Yunior is like nothing I've ever read before. Diaz's prose is so lively it practically bursts off the page, and is filled with joy and sadness and anger and humor. It's also full of footnotes, Spanish, and pop culture references, and though I dutifully tracked down translations and explainers I honestly think you'd be okay if you just used context clues to figure it out, because otherwise you stop reading and being able to give your full attention to the narrative is the better option. Diaz's storytelling skills, the way he balances all of the elements of the book so it never drags or stumbles and sweeps you along, are a rare thing.

The elephant in the room: Junot Diaz is definitely not a feminist. He's been accused of sexual harassment and the writing in the book would tend to confirm that he has misogynistic tendencies. Yunior is presented as sympathetic although he continually cheats on his partners (including Lola). Oscar's quest for a girlfriend treats the women he desires as objects to be wooed and possessed. A portion of the book focuses on Hypatia's backstory, but presents first and foremost sex and violence. I'm sure it's easier for Diaz to have told the story the way he told it, but with his talent I would have hoped for better. Nevertheless, this is a fantastic book, which I very much enjoyed reading and want to read again someday. Be prepared for some issues with the presentation of women, but otherwise, I would recommend reading this book. 

One year ago, I was reading: Mindhunter

Two years ago, I was reading: Without A Prayer

Three years ago, I was reading: The Prince of Tides

Four years ago, I was reading: The Power

Five years ago, I was reading: Moonlight Palace

Six years ago, I was reading: Occidental Mythology

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Book 315: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Book 306: All The President's Men

 

"The August 1 story had carried their joint byline; the day afterward, Woodward asked Sussman if Bernstein's name could appear with his on the follow-up story - though Bernstein was still in Miami and had not worked on it. From the on, any Watergate story would carry both names. Their colleagues melded the two into one and gleefully named their byline Woodstein."

Dates read: March 27- April 3, 2019

Rating: 5/10

Lists/awards: The New York Times best-seller

I'm a bad liar. Which isn't to say that I don't lie...like everyone else, I do, but I make an active effort to do so less often than I could. Not because I'm more morally righteous than anyone else, but because being bad at lying means I'm more likely to get caught. It's just mentally exhausting to keep track of who you've lied to, about what, and the stress of how to handle it if two people who each know different versions of the story start to talk to each other is too much for me to handle. I'm more likely to keep secrets than I am to lie, but even that's dicey (I'm a compulsive confessor when I've had a beer or two).

It's hard to think of someone more closely connected in the popular imagination to secrets and lies than one Richard Milhous Nixon. On his way to virtually certain re-election, he just couldn't resist the urge to direct a break-in to the Democratic National Committee office, and the cover-up cost him not only the presidency, but his legacy forevermore. It was the reporting of Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward that really pushed the story forward, and their book All The President's Men recounts how they came to be major players in the scandal. The book is less about the underlying events than one might think, instead focusing primarily on the reporting process.

It turns out that the process of reporting a major story, involving many sources, is...kind of boring? Woodward and Bernstein try to track down sources, find them, talk to them, go back and talk to the same people again to try to get more information out of them, get referred to new sources, and then lather, rinse, repeat. The tension should build towards the next story, then the next, then the next, but it felt more like a trudge than anything else. I have to imagine that it often felt that way to report, little pieces fitting into a larger puzzle here and there, rather than a swelling towards a crescendo. But realistic or not, it doesn't make for very exciting reading. Especially when the biggest mystery of the book, the identity of Deep Throat, has been solved for those of us reading today.

I found myself wondering as I was reading if this story wouldn't have been better served by having someone else tell it. Obviously I understand why Woodward and Bernstein wanted to write the book about their own deeds, but either they're not particularly gifted at narrative-crafting or they're too far inside of it to see the forest for the trees. They recount giddily the editing that led the placement of sentences within a paragraph, making it clear that as reporters this was a fraught and tense process. But as a reader, it holds little excitement. A book that recounted their investigation and placed it in its context of what was happening at The Washington Post and in the Oval Office in a broader sense would be one I'd be very interested in reading. This one, though, left me mostly feeling like I'd really like to watch the Kirsten Dunst/Michelle Williams comedy Dick again, because if this was the real story the other one is much more entertaining. If you love newspaper/political reporting, or have a deeper interest in Watergate and the Nixon administration, this will be something you'll find it worthwhile to read. If you're looking for more dynamic nonfiction, this may be a classic but it is very skippable.

One year ago, I was reading: The White Princess

Two years ago, I was reading: The Line of Beauty

Three years ago, I was reading: Detroit

Four years ago, I was reading: Player Piano

Five years ago, I was reading: The Executioner's Song

Six years ago, I was reading: Through the Language Glass

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Book 306: All The President's Men

Book 300: If Beale Street Could Talk

 

"The world sees what it wishes to see, or, when the chips are down, what you tell it to see: it does not wish to see who, or what, or why you are."

Dates read: March 5-9, 2019

Rating: 7/10

Lists/awards: The New York Times best-seller

I thought I understood the world at 16...didn't we all? When you grow up in a small homogenous town, things seem so simple. I was so sure that affirmative action was bad, undocumented immigrants getting deported were getting what they deserved, and that everyone who was in jail belonged there. Since I held those kinds of beliefs, I've left my hometown. I've lived life, gained experiences. I am about to be 36, and the person who thought that way feels so long ago.

My AP English course was the only one that exposed me to African-American literature, and I wish that curriculum had included James Baldwin's If Beale Street Could Talk. Reading it at 33 was powerful. Reading it in high school would have been that much more so. The story it tells is simple yet indelible. Tish and Fonny are teenagers who've grown up in the same neighborhood in New York City their whole lives. They've always been friends, but as they approach adulthood they both come to realize that their bond is love. They're happy, looking forward to starting their lives together, scoping out a loft in which they can live and has space for Fonny to pursue his dreams of being a sculptor. But then there's an accusation: a woman claims that Fonny raped her, and he's jailed pending trial.

Shortly after he's sent away, Tish discovers she's pregnant. Her warm, loving family accepts the news with joy, as does Fonny's father, but his primly religious mother and sisters disapprove. The urgency of Fonny's plight escalates enormously: Tish and her unborn child need him home. Their loved ones undertake extraordinary efforts to gain his release as Tish gets closer to her due date, and she reminisces about how they found themselves in this predicament.

I tend to find, in stories about young lovers, that the lovers themselves are often the least interesting part of it, and it was true for me here as well. While Tish and Fonny's story and the forces that play upon them are powerful, neither of them is an especially vivid character. They're sweet, their love is pure, and it's easy to feel outraged about the injustices visited upon them. Thankfully, Baldwin has surrounded them with an engaging supporting cast. The way Tish's family mobilizes to secure a lawyer for Fonny, and her mother's trip to Puerto Rico to try to find the woman who accused him in particular, create intrigue and drama that keep the story moving forward.

I'll be honest, though: the plot, as thought-provoking and heartwrenching as it can be, isn't the main attraction here. It's the writing. This was my first Baldwin book, and I fell in love with his powerful, lyrical prose. It's not dense, but it is a book that encourages you to read it slowly...each word is chosen with obvious care, and the way he strings them together is masterful. The book may be relatively short, but there's a lot there. I can already tell this is one I'll return to and be able to get even more out of with subsequent readings. I would recommend this book widely, it's beautifully written with a message no less relevant today than when it was published.

One year ago, I was reading: Yakuza Moon

Two years ago, I was reading: Tower

Three years ago, I was reading: Paint It Black

Four years ago, I was reading: Boys and Girls Together

Five years ago, I was reading: Life Itself

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Book 300: If Beale Street Could Talk

Book 286: The Cuckoo's Calling

 

"Her bloodshot eyes squinted at nothing; she seemed momentarily mesmerized, lost in contemplations of sums so vast and dazzling that they were beyond her ken, like an image of infinity. Merely to speak of them was to taste the power of money, to roll dreams of wealth around in her mouth."

Dates read: January 1-6, 2019

Rating: 7/10

Lists/awards: The New York Times best-seller

I can't imagine the pressure of being the author of a wildly successful and beloved series and getting ready to write your next book. The expectations are so high. People already have a set opinion about who you are and what you do as a writer, and are extremely attached to that opinion. Writing a book that's solid but not sensational means getting pilloried, having your whole career questioned. Anything less than magic creates its own news cycle.

For what it's worth, I thought The Casual Vacancy was good. Not great, flawed, but good. But from the reaction to it on the internet, you'd have thought J.K. Rowling followed up Harry Potter with a total dud. So I understand why, when she started her next project, she opted for a pseudonym. It's under "Robert Galbraith" that she's publishing her next series, mystery novels set in England starring a private detective called Cormoran Strike. In The Cuckoo's Calling, the first entry, we meet Strike, the illegitimate son of a rock star and a groupie, and veteran whose service in Afghanistan cost him part of a leg. We also meet his brand-new temp assistant, the young, intelligent, and newly-engaged Robin Ellacot. She's only supposed to stay for a week, as Strike can't afford an assistant and she's interviewing for "real jobs", but when she proves capable as a new case is brought into the office, she winds up staying on. The new case is a doozy, too: a young supermodel called Lula Landry has fallen from her balcony to her death, ruled a suicide, but her brother wants to prove that she was murdered.

The investigation takes Strike inside the worlds of the wealthy and high fashion, neither of which he fits into with any grace. He conducts his investigation methodically and thoroughly, interviewing her neighbors, the upper-class white mother that adopted the biracial Lula, her designer and model friends, shopgirls who saw her the day she died. When one of his contacts, a poor girl from a rehab group, turns up dead, Strike knows he's on the trail of someone truly dangerous. With Robin's help, he draws a trap for his suspect...while dealing with his own personal drama, like a sister he loves but struggles to connect with and the breaking of his engagement to a beautiful, unpredictable socialite.

I don't often read mysteries...the genre just doesn't do much for me. If it's too simple, I'm bored, but if it's convoluted, I get annoyed. This mystery wasn't much of the exception I was hoping it might be. I followed the interviews one-by-one, and while I can say that I never guessed the outcome, I also didn't quite buy it. The murderer's motives never really fell into place for me. It also just feels like the first in a series. There are plenty of allusions to both Cormoran and Robin's personal lives and issues, and they're given a little bit of context, but it seems clear that they're meant to be fleshed out properly with later books.

That being said, though, Rowling's writing is as good as ever. Both of the primary characters are vivid, and I enjoyed the non-romantic relationship she built between them. As to be expected, the world-building is also a high point. Rowling's London feels like neither the brightly burnished version we see on tourism ads nor Dickensian in its roughness. It feels like a modern, cosmopolitan city, with wealth and class and race divides and pockets of ease mixed alongside areas you might not want to walk alone at night. The storyline was engaging enough, for what it was, but I'm not much of an expert on what makes a good mystery. This is a promising series debut, and I'm interested to see how it develops!

One year ago, I was reading: The Space Between Us

Two years ago, I was reading: Midnight's Children

Three years ago, I was reading: The Sky Is Yours

Four years ago, I was reading: The Panopticon

Five years ago, I was reading: Shylock Is My Name

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Book 286: The Cuckoo's Calling

Book 283: The Prince of Tides

"From my father I inherited a sense of humor, a capacity for hard work, physical strength, a dangerous temper, a love of the sea, and an attraction to failure. From my mother I received far darker and more valuable gifts: a love of language, the ability to lie without remorse, a killer instinct, a passion to teach, madness, and the romance of fanaticism." 

Dates read: December 17-24, 2018

Rating: 6/10

Lists/awards: The New York Times best-seller

When you're little, your parents are like gods...they have all the power and you assume that they're "normal" because they're all you've ever known. When you get older, though, it's easy to get angry at your parents for the ways they failed you. And all parents fail their children in one way or another, no matter how hard they try. The hard part about growing up is letting go of that upset, of recognizing your parents as flawed but (usually) trying as best as they could. Which is all well and nice to say, of course, but it can be very difficult to put into practice.

And, of course, the scars for some people are deeper than those for others. The Wingos, of Pat Conroy's The Prince of Tides, had a particularly brutal childhood in coastal South Carolina. Father Henry is a talented shrimper, but throws himself into get-rich-quick schemes that inevitably fail and takes out his frustrations physically on his wife and children. Mother Lila desires nothing more than to be accepted by the upper-class women who live the life of ease she covets and refuses to acknowledge, either publicly or privately, the abuse she and the kids suffer for fear of losing face. Older brother Luke is physically tough but open-hearted and fiercely protective of his younger siblings, twins Tom and Savannah. The twins are sensitive and smart, so much so that Savannah moves to New York City when she graduates to become a writer, and has some success. But the story begins with her suicide attempt, and Tom, whose own life is falling apart, is summoned north to help her therapist, Dr. Susan Lowenstein, piece together the childhood that left her so fragile.

It's a wild and desperately sad tale, of mental illness and horrifying violence and even a tiger. But even with the sometimes-outlandish storytelling touches, most of the story is rooted in strong, real emotions: desperation, shame, greed. And Tom isn't the only one with a dysfunctional family: Lowenstein herself, lovely and intelligent as she might be, is locked into a toxic dynamic with her faithless musician husband. Her teenage son's need for an identity outside his parents' aspirations for him gives Tom a chance to regain his own footing as a football coach and the competent, capable person he'd forgotten he could be after the tragedies he endures. Eventually, Tom and Lowenstein are drawn into a bond of their own as they race through Tom's memories to help his sister.

This is the second Conroy I've read, and I'll be honest: if it had been the first, I might not have been so eager to continue reading his work. There are aspects of this that shine, but it's less compelling than The Lords of Discipline (despite being better known because of the movie adaptation). Conroy has a clear predilection for high drama, which doesn't bother me in and of itself, but some of the plot turns here verge on the ridiculous. That the Wingos acquire and manage to keep a young tiger, for instance, despite the crucial role it plays in a climactic scene, strained my investment in the story because it was so unbelievable. And I wasn't sure about how the story handled Savannah's schizophrenia, treating her struggle with a mental illness as a problem that could be solved by putting together her life story.

What saved the book from devolving into cheesiness is Conroy's commitment to emotional truth. He has a unique talent for investing the male struggle with what it means to "be a man" (particularly, a Southern man, which has its own added level of complication) with real poignancy. The relationships he portrays between Tom and his siblings are rich and deep and realistic, and despite the more melodramatic elements what really drives the action are the kind of everyday human failures that we've all watched happen in our own lives. It took me a while to get into the book, as I struggled to get invested in the self-pity of a middle-aged white dude, but once I did get into it I thought it was solid. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it (I'd point anyone to Discipline first) because it was so uneven for me, but if you like stories about families or the South or want to read the book behind the movie, it's worth reading. 

 

One year ago, I was reading: Bird Box

 

Two years ago, I was reading: First

 

Three years ago, I was reading: On Trails

 

Four years ago, I was reading: Friday Night Lights

 

Five years ago, I was reading: The Curious Case of Kiryas Joel

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Book 283: The Prince of Tides

Book 273: In Defense of Food

"What would happen if we were to start thinking about food as less of a thing and more of a relationship? In nature, that is of course precisely what eating has always been: relationships among species in systems we call food chains, or food webs, that reach all the way down to the soil. Species coevolve with other species that they eat, and very often there develops a relationship of interdependence: I'll feed you if you spread around my genes."

Dates read: November 3-7, 2018

Rating: 5/10

Lists/awards: The New York Times Bestseller

Some of the weirder things about me are my food quirks. A dedicated lifelong picky eater, I have lots of what I refer to as my "weird food things". I don't like my food to touch. I have never liked milk in my cereal. I hate condiments of all kinds. Cilantro tastes like soap to me (this one is genetic). I've been a vegetarian since I was fifteen. As much as I know they're weird, I get touchy when people question them. The choices about what food to put inside your body are some of the most personal ones of all.

But also, the choices we make about food are influenced heavily by the processed food and nutrition industries. They're the ones who advertise our foods to us, who tell us what's "good for you". But what if those people are ignorant at best, or deceitful at worst? Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food examines the powers-that-be related to eating, and proposes his alternative to listening to the many voices who'd like to get our attention about what we're putting in our mouths. He sums up his philosophy right at the beginning of the book: eat food, not too much, mostly plants. He then proceeds to explain what exactly he means by each of those three tenets.

The bulk of the book is focused on the definition of "food". Pollan asserts that it's not what we might instinctively think, which would consist of pretty much everything we eat. Instead, Pollan rails against processed food, which he considers unworthy of even bearing the label. He also describes his issues with food science, which he criticizes as overly concerned with individual nutrients, too closely tied to the business of food, and for its history of inaccuracy. The latter two parts of his philosophy (not too much, mostly plants) are much more straightforward: we eat too much, both because our bodies do not recognize what we eat as actual food, and also because our rituals around eating have drastically changed. And plants are easily identifiable as real food, and very healthy for the body.

These are not bad ideas to keep in mind when thinking about one's own diet. More foods with little or no processing, more time and energy put into meals made of these "whole" foods, more fruits and vegetables. And there's no question that American diets are, as a whole, failing to keep Americans in good health. Obesity rates continue to rise, as do rates of diabetes and cancer. Clearly, something about the way we eat isn't working, and Pollan's suggestions make a lot of instinctive sense.

But I found this a troubling book in its own way, to be completely honest. Pollan gleefully dismisses science related to food and nutrition, leaving him free to assert whatever he wants without any pressure to support his positions, because after all, food science is bunk (he does use science to support some of his positions when he can find it, which is hypocritical). As science as a whole feels increasingly under threat, this is concerning to me. Also problematic is the amount of privilege reflected in Pollan's suggestions. The ability to access a place where fresh, whole food is sold, the ability to afford that same food, the ability to find the time to make that trip and spend that money, and then turn around and prepare the food, assumes a great deal about what people's lives look like. While he might tell readers to not eat anything that our grandmothers wouldn't recognize as food, I live a life that neither of my grandmothers would recognize as at familiar. So while the book did inspire me to think more critically about my own consumption patterns, I feel very comfortable in not taking it especially seriously. There are some decent ideas here, but I can't affirmatively recommend a book so dismissive of science.

One year ago, I was reading: Brother of the More Famous Jack

Two years ago, I was reading: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Three years ago, I was reading: Henry and Cato

Four years ago, I was reading: The Bear and the Nightingale

Five years ago, I was reading: The Guest Room

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Book 273: In Defense of Food

Book 271: Bringing Down The House

 

"Contrary to what many novices believed, the goal of blackjack was not to get the best hand possible; it was to beat the dealer’s hand."

Dates read: October 25-28, 2018

Rating: 5/10

Lists/awards: The New York Times bestseller

Despite the fact that I've lived in Nevada since 2012, I can count on one hand the number of times I've gambled. Why? Well, I live here. I know how it works. Casinos aren't profitable because you make money. They're profitable because they make money. You may make money here or there, but on the aggregate, the house wins. That's how the system is designed to work.

But there are always people trying to find an edge, and sometimes they succeed (at least for a while). Ben Mezrich's Bringing Down the House tells the story of a group of people who did just that. Math nerds! In the 90s, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a professor developed a method for team-based blackjack play, and recruited students to take his style of card-counting to Las Vegas. Card counting technically isn't illegal, but casinos can and will boot players who engage in it from playing on their floors. So while the teams are winning big, they're ever-watchful for security and the consequences that might come.

Mezrich fictionalizes all of his characters, including the one through whom he tells the story, calling him Kevin Lewis. A senior on track to graduate with an engineering degree and a steady girlfriend, he's intrigued when two of his friends tell him about the blackjack team they're on and take him along for a weekend at the casinos with them. There's the glamour and flash, but there's also the appealing intellectual challenge of the whole thing. He gets drawn into their world, going through their recruiting process to officially join the team, becoming at first a supporting player and then a main figure on the team. He grows distant from his previous life, breaking up with his girlfriend and having less and less he can talk about with his family, just marking time back home between his trips to Las Vegas with his team.

But they've caught the eye of the powers that be, and they can feel the pressure ramping up. Asked to leave from more and more casino floors, they try disguises, have third parties like strippers cash out their chips once they've been busted and banned, and when even those measures fail, seek alternate gaming venues. Riverboats. Reservations. Even overseas, leading to an incident in which team members are roughed up by the locals. Trust fractures between the members, and eventually there's nowhere else to go.

This makes a solid airplane read (which is where I read most of it myself). Kevin is easy to like...he doesn't get in as deep as some of the other players, which makes him seem grounded and more identifiable. There's a kind of fantasy element to it, the idea that you could learn a straightforward (albeit difficult to master) skill that could make you enormous sums of money, have a regular life as a normal person but live it up in VIP style on the weekends. The tension keeps up nicely and the plot moves along quickly. The book doesn't ask you to do too much in the way of critical thinking.

And maybe it's hoping you won't, because it came out afterwards that many of the more salacious aspects of the book were completely made up. The dramatic try-out in an underground gaming parlor, the strippers cashing out chips, even the physical assault...members of the team on which the book is based have come forward to say those are all lies. Which undermines the impact of the book, and completely discredits Mezrich as an author. And on Mezrich's authoring, this book is no great shakes in terms of prose quality. Everyone besides Kevin comes across as a narrow stock character, and the whole thing is written in a "this happened, and then that happened, and then the next thing happened" way that doesn't allow the material (however exaggerated it might be) to really shine the way it could have. It's entertaining enough, if you take it with an enormous grain of salt. It's far from unmissable, though, and if you're not interested in reading the source material for the movie 21 or in stories about Las Vegas/gambling, it probably won't do much for you.

One year ago, I was reading: The Lives of Tudor Women

Two years ago, I was reading: Forest Dark

Three years ago, I was reading: Wonder Boys

Four years ago, I was reading: Zealot

Five years ago, I was reading: Ahab's Wife

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Book 271: Bringing Down The House

Book 268: Prep

"The big occurrences in life, the serious ones, have for me always been nearly impossible to recognize because they never feel big or serious. In the moment, you have to pee, your arm itches, or what people are saying strikes you as melodramatic or sentimental, and it's hard not to smirk. You have a sense of what this type of situation should be like - for one thing, all-consuming - and this isn't it. But then you look back, and it was that; it did happen."

Dates read: October 10-15, 2018

Rating: 8/10

Lists/awards: The New York Times best-seller

Every once in a while I'll be just doing something normal, sitting on the couch or researching something at work, and a memory of something embarrassing I did in high school will run across my mind. Though I graduated nearly two decades ago now, and I'm almost certainly the only person that still remembers some of these things, I'll still blush. I know adults like to tell teenagers that high school doesn't matter, but if we're honest with ourselves, I think a lot of us would admit that not all of those wounds from those four years have completely healed over.

Like many middle-class middle Americans, I've always been kind of both mystified and fascinated by the idea of prep school. What do the children of the wealthy get up to? It is exactly middle-class middle America (South Bend, specifically) that Lee Fiora of Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep hails from. She impulsively applied to the exclusive Ault School, outside of Boston, and her middle school grades earn her a scholarship. Once she gets there, though, she doesn't know quite how to proceed fitting into her new milieu. She feels awkward, uncomfortable, and very much like an outsider among her privileged classmates.

Lee does eventually make at least some friends, but continues to struggle both socially and academically as time progresses. She nurses a long-burning crush on Cross Sugarman, the most popular guy in her class. She becomes more and more estranged from her family and roots in the Midwest. She is desperately, achingly self-conscious about everything, and possesses no more ability to articulate exactly what it is she wants than to do anything as drastic as taking steps to get it. So when a national newspaper reporter is looking for interview subjects for a piece on what boarding school is really like and reaches out to Lee right before graduation, her decision to talk about her experience winds up being part of what colors the whole thing for her in retrospect.

This was often a difficult book to read. Not because it was bad (it was in fact very good), but because Sittenfeld is so good at recreating that agonizing mental experience of being an adolescent. Lee wants so much to be liked, accepted, popular, but she can't get out of her own way. She passively observes her classmates, so afraid to be thought of as annoying or stupid or dorky that she can barely interact with them even when they're receptive to her. Being trapped inside her head while reading reminded me so much of being trapped inside the darker corners of my own head during high school that I had to put the book down even when I was into it. It's brilliant in that way, and (appropriately, given Sittenfeld's own experience in prep school both as a student and as a teacher) in nailing the little nuances of the upper class. The names alone (Cross, Aspeth, Horton, Gaines) are dead-on.

While the atmosphere and writing quality are excellent, the book does have plotting and characterization issues that hold it back from being great. Sittenfeld tells Lee's story through just a brief stretch of time during each semester as she goes through school. It leaves a lot of gaps, and I found myself wondering what exactly Lee did each summer when she went home...the one time we follow her back to Indiana for a winter break we get a picture of some deep-seated conflict that I would have been interested in seeing explored more. And it leads to only getting little slices of characters that should be important, like Lee's best friend Martha. Despite the closeness Lee relates and we're clearly meant to understand, the reader gets almost no sense of who Martha is or the usual way in which they interact, getting just a handful of conversations between them. It's frustrating, and keeps the book feeling just-a-bit underbaked. It's an interesting, compelling book, and a clear indicator of significant talent in its author, but its flaws are real. I'd recommend this book, though it does have sexual content that might mean a more immature teen reader might not be ready for it.

One year ago, I was reading: Mozart in the Jungle

Two years ago, I was reading: A Tale for the Time Being

Three years ago, I was reading: An American Marriage

Four years ago, I was reading: Snow

Five years ago, I was reading: Creative Mythology

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Book 268: Prep

Book 260: Juliet, Naked

 

"Oh, it was a complicated business, loving art. It involved a lot more ill will than one might have suspected."

Dates read: September 6-10, 2018

Rating: 7/10

Lists/awards: The New York Times best-seller

The first time I heard a Ryan Adams song was my freshman year of college, when his "Wonderwall" cover was used on The O.C. I actually didn't like it, I tend to be hard to please on cover versions. But it got stuck in my head and I found myself listening to it again and again, which led me to the rest of his music, which was been a part of the soundtrack of my life for about 15 years. Ryan's music was been there for me through parties and fun and breakups and lazy days on the boat and college and law school and moves and everything else. I saw him live four times. I bought every album the day it came out. Which means that it really sucked when The New York Times reported that he'd been predatory towards women, and I decided that I didn't need his music to be a part of my world going forward (though I do still have a sentimental fondness for the songs that meant the most to me).

As someone who experienced my own minor obsession, I know what it's like to be devoted to a musician. But not the way Duncan is with Tucker Crowe in Nick Hornby's Juliet, Naked. Tucker was a rocker whose breakup album Juliet was starting to make him famous when suddenly, and seemingly out of nowhere, he gives up his music career and vanishes. Duncan is so obsessed that he not only runs an online message board where he talks about Tucker's music with other devotees, he also drags his longtime, put-upon girlfriend Annie to America from the small seaside English town where they live to tour the sites most closely associated with Tucker's short career. And then one day, Duncan is sent the acoustic demo versions of the songs on Juliet, which the label intends to release as Juliet, Naked.

Since Duncan is the kind of boyfriend who expects his girlfriend to make sure the home runs without his input, Annie actually gets the new album first when checking the mail, and listens to it, preferring the finished versions. When Duncan puts up a glowing review on his website, she submits her own counterpoint...leading to an email from Tucker himself, the famous recluse agreeing that the original album is better. Tucker, it turns out, is not actually a recluse at all. He lives a normalish life in small-town Pennsylvania with his wife and their small son, the only one of his five children he's actually participated in raising. One thing leads to another, Duncan cheats on and is dumped by Annie, who continues her correspondence with Tucker, whose own relationship has deteriorated beyond repair, and then happens to find himself in England, and you can probably figure out where it goes from there.

I'll be honest: Nick Hornby is a comfort author for me, and I'm predisposed to enjoy his work and let him get away with things I'd be more critical of other authors for. He often uses elements in his work that can get a little same-y: obsessive people, adult man-children struggling towards emotional maturity, sometimes a heart-tugging actual child. But he has a way with characters and especially dialogue that gives his books a sparkle and charm that overpowers his tendencies to hit familiar emotional notes. It might not be clear from the way I wrote about the book, but it's Annie rather than Duncan who's really at the center of the narrative, and her voice as she examines how she got "stuck" with Duncan and how she feels about the time they spent together, is very identifiable. Who hasn't gotten out of a stagnant relationship and felt both the exhilaration of new possibilities and the fear that what you've left behind was as good as it was going to get?

Since I'm already being honest, I will say that this is one of Hornby's lesser efforts. There are a few too many plot points going on, meaning that some of them (Duncan's rebound relationship with the girl he cheated with, Annie's efforts to curate an exhibit for the small local museum, Tucker's other children) get the short shrift. And I think Hornby treats Tucker's poor efforts at fatherhood for all but his youngest child a little too flippantly. More genuine regret there might have given some nice weight to the narrative, and for a book that does deal with some heavy stuff, it could have used it. Overall, though, it's an enjoyable read...as long as you don't think about it too much as you're reading. If you're looking to try out Hornby, I'd recommend About A Boy or High Fidelity first. If you already like Hornby, it likely won't wow you but it has its charms.

One year ago, I was reading: The Talented Mr. Ripley

Two years ago, I was reading: Dark Places

Three years ago, I was reading: The House of Mirth

Four years ago, I was reading: Eleanor of Aquitaine

Five years ago, I was reading: Oriental Mythology

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Book 260: Juliet, Naked

Book 247: The Looming Tower

"On the existential plane, Bin Laden was marginalized, out of play, but inside the chrysalis of myth that he had spun about himself he was becoming a representative of all persecuted and humiliated Muslims. His life and the symbols in which he cloaked himself powerfully embodied the pervasive sense of dispossession that characterized the modern Muslim world. In his own miserable exile, he absorbed the misery of his fellow believers; his loss entitled him to speak for theirs; his vengeance would sanctify their suffering. The remedy he proposed was to declare war on the United States."

Dates read: July 5-11, 2018

Rating: 8/10

Lists/awards: Pulitzer Prize, The New York Times bestseller

I'm naturally a high-strung person. Always have been. I'm the type who gets up out of bed to double check if I can't remember locking the door. Every once in a while, I have to remind myself with statistics that what's most likely to harm me are things I do constantly: get in the car and drive, cross the street on my way in to work, exist in a world filled with carcinogens. I'm not the only one, either. I think a lot of us are more frightened by the kinds of things that make newspaper headlines than the ones that are much more likely to be lethal. It's unlikely we'll get caught in a deadly tornado or raging wildfire. It's also vanishingly unlikely we'd ever find ourselves the victim of a terror attack.

And yet, ever since September 11th, that fear has loomed large in the American cultural imagination. It happened once, and it could happen again. But how exactly did it come to happen? That is the question Lawrence Wright seeks to answer in The Looming Tower, in which he traces the development of radical Islam and the life of Osama bin Laden, through the rise of al-Queda and the intelligence community turf wars that handicapped the country's ability to understand and prepare for the threat. It's a story that begins with seeds planted by a few in Egypt that grows to expand to Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Afghanistan, and the United States. It's a story about people, about men whose understandings of the world are on a collision course. It's a story about near-misses and mistakes that ends in tragedy.

I was a little hesitant when I picked this up...I'd read Ghost Wars about six months before and was worried that this would largely be a rehash of things I'd recently read. But that concern turned out to be unfounded. While there's certainly overlap, that book was focused heavily on Afghanistan, and the CIA's involvement in that country's recent history. This book is really about al-Queda and how it's leaders, Osama bin Ladin and Ayman al-Zawahiri, came to join together and carry out attacks against the West from their position in Afghanistan. If you're interested in this general subject area and think you might want to read one of these two books, I'd suggest The Looming Tower (or at least reading it first). 

While there is no denying the incredible research and level of detail in Ghost Wars, the end result is a book that tends toward the dense. Having read it once, I'm sure it would take me at least another few passes through it to really feel like everything was sinking it. The Looming Tower doesn't bring that level of specificity, but it's not really trying to either. That's not to insinuate that it's not deeply rooted in fact and without a breadth of source material. The references section is extensive. But what The Looming Tower does well is actually stringing that all together into a cohesive narrative. Depending on the author's skill level (and, to be honest, intended audience), non-fiction can struggle with storytelling and a tendency toward dryness. But this is where Wright shines. Despite working with names, places, and concepts that are largely only vaguely familiar to a Western readership, he never lets the pace get bogged down in information dumps. Like the events it recounts, it keeps on moving forward to what we know is coming.

That's not to say it's perfect. There's an emphasis on counter-terrorism expert John O'Neill (who died helping evacuate others on 9/11), especially his personal life, that doesn't quite fit in with the overall flow of the book that I think should have gotten trimmed. And, having read Ghost Wars, I thought the situation in Afghanistan and the relationship of al-Queda and the Taliban was simplified too far. I think the book could have added about 50 pages and given everything a bit more depth and shading and been stronger for it. But for a primer on the situation in the Middle East and inside the federal bureaucracy that culminated in September 11th, written for a wide audience, I think this a very good book indeed. I highly recommend it!

One year ago, I was reading: The Forgotten Sister

Two years ago, I was reading: Life After Life

Three years ago, I was reading: Stoner

Four years ago, I was reading: Lights Out In The Reptile House

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Book 247: The Looming Tower

Book 223: Silent Spring

"To the public, the choice may easily appear to be one of stark simplicity: Shall we have birds or shall we have elms? But it is not as simple as that, and by one of the ironies that abound throughout the field of chemical control, we may very well end by having neither if we continue on our present, well-traveled road. Spraying is killing the birds but it is not saving the elms." 

Dates read: April 8-11, 2018

Rating: 7/10

Lists/awards: The New York Times best-seller

A sound that never fails to bring me straight back into my childhood is the nighttime song of spring peepers. I never thought I'd miss the high-pitched chorus emanating from the marshland behind us loud enough to be heard through even closed windows, but sometimes I long for it with an intensity that's hard to describe. They don't exist out here in the arid West, though they're widespread in the more humid regions of the country. At least, they are now. But like all wildlife, they're vulnerable to the decisions made by humans and could very well disappear one day.

The capacity for humans to not think through the ramifications of their choices on the environment and destroy it without meaning to do so inspired Rachel Carson's classic Silent Spring. In it, she traces the links between the rising use of pesticides and insecticides and the devastating consequences it has had for animal life in areas where application is wide-spread. Worse yet, it often doesn't accomplish the desired effect in the long term, which just encourages even heavier use. She doesn't flinch away from the fact that humans are animals, too, and highlights the issues that can arise for the people who live in the often-rural and therefore less-seen communities where these poisons are used most significantly. And since these people frequently eat locally-sourced meat and fish, the problem of biological magnification (animals eating food that has its own level of exposure, compounding with each step up the food chain) becomes even more pressing for them.

Carson writes all of this in strong, clear prose that first explains the concepts she's introducing and then illustrates them with examples of the devastating effects of poisons that are marketed as safe and effective on life, from plants all the way up to people. She doesn't condescend and though her urgency is clear, it doesn't feel alarmist or like a scare tactic. Instead, she presents her case that we need to start paying attention and questioning what we're told rigorously but understandably. Science writing often veers into the esoteric, and this book should be used an exemplar for how to write for the popular market without getting bogged down in details or sidetracked into areas more consequential for the author than the reader.

This book's continuing relevance even after it led to the the ban of DDT, the chemical she primarily discusses, is a result of both Carson's skill as a writer and the impact her work managed to have on the public. Not only did it take DDT off the market, it blazed the path that eventually led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency by President Nixon. Imaging a book being so popular and espousing its cause so effectively that it led to the creation of a new federal agency in today's world seems preposterous. All of that being said, this book wasn't an unqualified success for me. After a while, her constant use of examples of a chemical being introduced and the death of wildlife that followed started to feel repetitive, blunting its impact. And I found myself a bit skeptical of the rosiness with which she portrayed the alternative option of importing predators for invasive species control...to the best of my understanding, that can have harmful side effects of its own. All in all, though, this book is readable, relevant, and worth a perusal before you go nuts with the Round-Up on the dandelions.

One year ago, I was reading: If Beale Street Could Talk

Two years ago, I was reading: Good Omens

Three years ago, I was reading: Die A Little

Four years ago, I was reading: The Good Earth

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Book 223: Silent Spring

Book 220: Freedom

"This wasn't the person he'd thought he was, or would have chosen to be if he'd been free to chose, but there was something comforting and liberating about being an actual definite someone, rather than a collection of contradictory potential someones."

Dates read: March 30- April 3, 2018

Rating: 8/10

Lists/awards: 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (2012 edition), The New York Times bestseller

Something that seems to come up fairly frequently in profiles of successful people is that they have a daily uniform. Like Steve Jobs' constant black turtleneck and jeans, many of them report that not having to think about what they're going to wear every day frees up their minds for "more important" things. It's a concept called decision fatigue...the more decisions you have to make, the worse (over time) you get at making them logically. For me, deciding what to wear is enjoyable, but I do eat almost the exact same thing every day because food isn't that interesting to me. Cutting unnecessary choices out of your life does make things a lot simpler.

Jonathan Franzen's Freedom isn't very subtle: he tells you the major theme of the book right there in the title. It's the story of a family, headed by Walter and Patty Berglund, and how it comes to be and how (of course) it begins to fray. It begins with a short, third-party history of their residence in a newly-gentrifying neighborhood in Saint Paul, which begins when they're young, energetic newlyweds, and continues through their raising of two children, Jennifer and Joey, the latter of whom causes quite a bit of grapevine drama when he takes sides against his own family in a growing border war with their neighbors. Just about as soon as the kids are out of high school and off to college, the parental Berglunds pick up and leave suddenly, and several years later in the newspaper their former neighbors read that Walter's gotten into a bit of a professional dust-up. So right from the beginning, we know that something is rotten in the state of Minnesota.

We then go back and time and get Patty's life story, in which she always feels like an outsider in her ambitious upstate New York family, culminating in her parents' refusal to do anything when she's raped by the son of a powerful neighbor. She flees on an athletic scholarship to Minnesota, where she develops a friendship with a disturbed classmate, through whom she meets musician Richard Katz and his roommate, Walter Berglund. Though Richard and Patty are interested in each other, Walter is also interested in Patty, and though he "gets" the girl, the attraction between his wife and his best friend lingers. We also move forward to Richard, Walter, and Joey's perspectives after their move out of Minnesota, and how each struggles with freedom as opposed to stablility, and the consequences of exercising choices that become available.

Jonathan Franzen as a human being is not my favorite. But as a writer, he is undeniably talented. Freedom wrestles with some weighty stuff: 9/11, environmentalism, corporate philanthropy, temptation, infidelity, the way family patterns repeat over generations, sexual assault, selling out, forgiveness. That's a lot for one book, even a long-ish one, to tackle. But for the most part, he pulls it off. Though I didn't necessarily always like the characters he created, I almost always found them compelling and interesting. Though some of the plot schemes he tangles them up veer towards the ridiculous, he mines them for emotional truth well enough that they stay on the good side of the line of believability.

There are some missteps, though. I found some of his decisions regarding Patty's trajectory baffling. Her rape doesn't seem like a character-informing experience for her, serving rather as an explanation to write her parents out of the book until there can be a rapprochement at the end to bring things full circle. And her college friend Eliza's obsession with her also seemed underbaked...it never really went anywhere besides serving as her introduction to Richard. The balance of Patty's story rounded her out, but the way he wrote Connie (Joey's childhood sweetheart) never made sense to me. She's not a person, she's a symbol, as was Lalitha, a young colleague of Walter's who becomes besotted with him. Maybe our cultural moment just has me primed to see underlying misogyny better than I used to, but I can't deny that it's here and it was part of what kept me from being fully absorbed in the novel. It's good, very good even, and I would recommend it with the caveat that if you're looking for strong female characters, you won't find them here.

One year ago, I was reading: Forest Dark

Two years ago, I was reading: Wonder Boys

Three years ago, I was reading: Zealot

Four years ago, I was reading: Ahab's Wife

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Book 220: Freedom

Book 217: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

"Black scientists and technicians, many of them women, used cells from a black woman to help save the lives of millions of Americans, most of them white. And they did so on the same campus—and at the very same time—that state officials were conducting the infamous Tuskegee syphilis studies." 

Dates read: March 17-21, 2018

Rating: 7/10

Lists/awards: The New York Times bestseller

Do you own your body? It seems like an absurd question, but it's a real one. After all, it wasn't so long ago that bodies could be bought and sold on the open market. Nowadays, for the most part, it seems like you own your body while it's a part of you, but what about when parts of it become detached? A pulled tooth, a fingernail clipping, a vial of your blood for testing. Once it's removed, who does it belong to?

In 1951, a 30 year-old black woman, a mother of five, walked into Johns Hopkins and was diagnosed with cervical cancer. She underwent treatment, but didn't survive very long. While she was being treated, a sample was taken of her cervical cells, both the cancerous and non-cancerous ones. Each was cultivated, but while the latter cells died, the former grew and wouldn't stop growing. As was the custom at the time in that lab, the cell line was named after the person it came from: the first two letters of the first name, then the first two of the last. Henrietta Lacks. HeLa. One of the most widely used cell lines in the world for decades, but the person behind it was lost and some people even thought the original donor's name was Helen Lane...until Rebecca Skloot published The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, which told the story of the woman and her descendants for the first time.

Well, "donor" might not have been the correct word to use up there, because Henrietta didn't knowingly "donate" anything. Instead, the doctors working on her took the samples without bothering to ask her permission, which was standard practice at the time. And the ethics of this sort of thing, the evolution of informed consent, is a key part of the book, which Skloot weaves around the story of the Lacks family. How fast medical science has grown, and how slow the field's understanding of or willingness to comply with what is right has been in trying to keep up with it. In a world where all you need to get a basic understanding of your genetic picture is $100, to spit in a tube, and 6-8 weeks for processing, what kind of protections should be around that data? We likely still don't know the full implications of something like that being hacked or leaked.

This book has become a science classic already, and it's easy to see why: Skloot is a talented storyteller, and for most of the book's run does an admirable job of keeping her three pieces (Henrietta herself, the HeLa cells/medical ethics, and the story of the Lacks children) in balance. She does great work in digging up what little information there is about Henrietta's short life, mostly through the connections she managed to build with the children Lacks left behind. I've got some grounding in science research from my days as a psychology student, and I know about some of the more egregious bullshit doctors used to get up to (especially with the poor and people of color), but even I was shocked at how lax regulations on human research used to be and how deeply the focus was on getting data at any costs. I was chilled by the story she recounts of a researcher, who the Lacks children believe was untruthful with them when she encountered them years before the book was written, expressing her longing to be able to get material (i.e. blood) from those same people to perform tests.

The reason I haven't rated this more highly, then, is that it starts to drag at the end, becoming more a story about how the story was reported, which tends to bother me unless it's in small doses. It's clearly rooted in a deep, real fondness for Deborah Lacks, one of her primary sources, and a desire to do justice to her story too...but for me, it didn't have the power of the larger narrative and didn't quite work. That being said, this is a story everyone should read and I definitely recommend it to a wide audience.

One year ago, I was reading: A Tale for the Time Being

Two years ago, I was reading: Mansfield Park

Three years ago, I was reading: Helter Skelter

Four years ago, I was reading: Creative Mythology

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Book 217: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Book 201: Ghost Wars

"The Taliban assembled their story so that Pashtuns could recognize it as a revival of old glory. The Taliban connected popular, rural Islamic values with a grassroots Durrani Pashtun tribal rising. They emerged at a moment when important wealthy Pashtun tribal leaders around Kandahar hungered for a unifying cause. The Taliban hinted that their militia would become a vehicle for the return to Afghanistan of King Zahir Shah from his exile in Rome. They preached for a reborn alliance of Islamic piety and Pashtun might."

Dates read: January 6-17, 2018

Rating: 7/10

Lists/awards: Pulitzer Prize, The New York Times best-seller

There's no denying that we live in a golden age for information. Thanks to the internet, access to pretty much anything we might want to know is literally at our fingertips! There is virtually no subject too obscure for Wikipedia, and anyone who wants to tell us what they know can start up a blog and start writing. While this phenomenon is pretty much always useful, it's also kind of exhausting. Given access to learn about pretty much anything you might want, it's a lot easier to retreat into the familiar.

Until September 11th, Afghanistan would have been a pretty obscure area in which to be a subject matter expert. Afterwards, of course, we all found out a lot about the Taliban and the Northern Alliance and the Pashtun people, but honestly it was all so much so fast that I know I (and probably lots of other people) ended up more confused than anything else. Steve Coll's Ghost Wars tells the story of American involvement in Afghanistan, beginning around the Cold War and ending on September 10th of 2001, and it tied together a lot of the dangling strings that American involvement in Afghanistan after September 11th left me with. Deeply researched and very informative, this is a thorough portrait of how we got to where we are.

Geopolitics in Central and South Asia turns out to be really complicated! The CIA's involvement began as a response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the desire to have a firewall against the spread of Communism. It continued even after their withdrawal to both prevent a re-invasion and because of the US's relationship with Pakistan, which saw Afghanistan as a firewall of its own against India. And then there's Saudi Arabia, which had its own complicated relationships with not only Afghanistan, where it exported its brand of intense Islam, but of course the United States, as well as Pakistan. It's very messy, and trying to learn about it feels like intensely watching a magician to try to discern the sleight-of-hand...you've got your eye on one part of the stage, but to really understand the whole picture, there's something going on somewhere else that's going to be important to the way it comes together. And then of course there's the relationship of the CIA to their own government and the American public, which had a very real impact on how much, and how effectively, the CIA was able to actually do.

It becomes patently obvious while reading this book that there was very likely no one single factor that would have prevented terror attacks from taking place on American soil. There were too many forces that were all coming into alignment for it to be avoided entirely. But it does raise (without proselytizing about) issues that might have kept the particular 9/11 attack from coming to fruition that are, of course, all too easy to see in hindsight: US funding for the Northern Alliance, more willingness to heed the increasingly frenzied warnings that al-Qiada was eager and capable of an attack, a more forceful relationship with Pakistan, etc after etc. Coll doesn't try to lay blame at anyone in particular's feet, but he's also not interested in massaging or obscuring information that would let anyone claim absolution, either. He's interested in presenting as full a picture as he reasonably can, and he accomplishes that.

Considering that it's nonfiction designed to reach a mass audience, it's about as comprehensive as anyone should want/expect. In fact, if I'm being honest, its biggest flaw is that there is so much information being presented that it's overly dense. It's hard, because it never came off like there were details being dumped extraneously so it's not that it just needed a more diligent editor, but the reality is that it's a fact-heavy story, with a lot of new people/situations needing to be introduced to the reader with sufficient context, so the result is a book that ends up feeling kind of like a slog even though it's interesting and relevant. And honestly, I prefer that kind of approach to one that cuts out important bits to dumb itself down for the reader. To sum up, I do recommend this book if you're interesting in learning about the history of the US in Afghanistan. It's well-written and a very good resource. But if fact-intensive non-fiction isn't your jam and this isn't a subject of particular interest to you, there's no need to torture yourself.

One year ago, I was reading: The Fly Trap

Two years ago, I was reading: The Royals

Three years ago, I was reading: Sophie's Choice

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Book 201: Ghost Wars

Book 189: A Vast Conspiracy

"Ironically, with respect to Starr, the Democrats fell into the same trap as the Republicans did throughout the Clinton years. The problem with Starr was not that he was a lawbreaker, as the questioners consistently tried to imply, but rather that he lacked judgment and reason when it came to this case. Neither Starr nor Clinton was a criminal. The errors of both Starr and his critics illustrated the perils of a world where the legal system had taken over the political system. It was never enough to prove that your adversaries were mistaken; you had to prove that they were evil as well."

Dates read: November 11-17, 2017

Rating: 7/10

Lists/awards: The New York Times bestseller

During the 2016 election, one of the most persistent themes seemed to be the constant air of scandal that floats around the Clintons, Bill and Hillary alike. Maybe that's one of the reasons she had such a hard time shaking the email stuff...there's always the assumption that they're somehow being shady, and that this little whiff of smoke MUST portend a fire somewhere. We all remember his fling with his intern, but there's also his other rumored dalliances, and then Vince Foster, and Whitewater, and it seems to go on and on. At a certain point, they're tied to so much that it feels like something surely has to be going on.

I remember the impeachment scandal, but I was like 10 or 12 at the time, so while I understood that the President had cheated on his wife and lied about it and that's why he was in trouble, I didn't really get it. After Hilary's 2016 loss, I was curious about the backstory that I "knew" but didn't actually know, so I picked up A Vast Conspiracy, Jeffrey Toobin's book on the Clintons in the 90s. It mostly focuses on the impeachment, but also spends a lot of time with Paula Jones' lawsuit and dips into the other scandals enough to give them context. After I read it, I felt much more informed...not just about the actual events of the impeachment, but about the history of the Clintons and how they've gotten to have that air of perpetual shadiness.

On one level, Toobin tells a straightforward story: a politician with a raging libido really likes getting blow jobs from women who are not his wife. When he's Governor of Arkansas, he has an encounter of some kind with a young woman named Paula, who originally seems unperturbed but eventually launches a lawsuit against him after he becomes president. While president, a young intern develops a crush and starts flirting with him and he decides to pursue her. His inability to either keep it in his pants or admit to his wife what he's been up to leads him to be untruthful when he shouldn't have been, and because of the profound dislike and determination of a special prosecutor, he comes very very close to losing his presidency. It's a compelling story, with lots of morally ambiguous parties to project either heroism or villainy onto. I understand why it transfixed the country for months when it happened.

But Toobin also ties it in to a larger story, in which the legal system has become part and parcel of the political arena. The technique was first used by liberal interests to find the victories through the judiciary that they struggled to achieve through the legislature, but as time passed, conservatives picked it up, too, and this is perfectly illustrated by the hounding of the Clintons via the courts. It's an interesting perspective, and even though I'm well-versed in both arenas I don't know that I'd made the explicit connection before. And while I ultimately think the courts do and should have a proper role in protecting and enforcing our legal rights and responsibilities, it is a double-edged sword. Judicial processes don't always lead to the results one thinks they ought to.

As always from Toobin, this is well-written and more interested with delving into the facts to take much of a side. That's not to say it's totally without a side...it does tend to favor Clinton, particularly over Starr and the scheming Joneses, but it doesn't shy away from digging into his flaws either. It seems like there's something about the Clintons that just absolutely enrages people and drives them to try to destroy them as hard as they can...which explains why there's been so much mud thrown their way, and even though relatively little of it has ever hit a mark, with that much dirt in the air everything looks dingy.

One year ago, I was reading: My Own Words

Two years ago, I was reading: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

Three years ago, I was reading: Under The Tuscan Sun

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Book 189: A Vast Conspiracy

Book 188: The Underground Railroad

"She thought of the picking, how it raced down the furrows at harvest, the African bodies working as one, as fast as their strength permitted. The vast fields burst with hundreds of thousands of white bolls, strung like stars in the sky on the clearest of clear nights. When the slaves finished, they had stripped the fields of their color. It was a magnificent operation, from seed to bale, but not one of them could be prideful of their labor. It had been stolen from them. Bled from them."

Dates read: November 6-11, 2017

Rating: 7/10

Lists/awards: National Book Award, Pulitzer Prize, The New York Times bestseller

Does anyone in popular American culture have a more valuable public endorsement than Oprah? She spent decades as the most trusted voice of American housewives through the power of The Oprah Winfrey Show, and when she's given a person or product her imprimatur, it's often a game changer. She's the reason Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz have the careers they do (whether or not that's a good thing, I'll leave up to you). When it turned out A Million Little Pieces was made up of a million little lies, half of the outrage felt like it was because someone had had the gall to lie to Oprah. And lately, I'm sure I can't even imagine how many more women joined Weight Watchers at her urging.

Among the biggest beneficiaries of her blessings have been the authors who wrote books which she included in her book club. Her power is such than in 2016, her selection of The Underground Railroad for that book club drove Colson Whitehead and his publisher to release it two months ahead of schedule. From there, it won a National Book Award, a Pulitzer Prize, and ended up on the longlist for the Man Booker Prize. Obviously that kind of attention had nothing to do with Our Lady Winfrey, but it probably helped the book become a #1 best-seller. Which means that a lot of people who might not have otherwise picked it up did, which is a good thing because this book bends time and history to lay out a damning case on the way America has done wrong by Black people.

Set in the antebellum South, The Underground Railroad focuses on the journey of one slave woman, Cora, towards freedom. The granddaughter of a woman who survived the Middle Passage and was enslaved in Georgia, and the daughter of a slave who ran away when she was just a child, Cora has spent much of her life as an outcast even among her own community. So she's surprised when another slave, Caesar, approaches her to run away with him to find the Underground Railroad. In Whitehead's alternative history, the railroad is literal...there are stations built into the earth that spirit slaves away to the north.

Run away they do, and Cora finds herself first in South Carolina, which in this world has outlawed slavery but holds ownership of Black people itself, and then distributes them as it sees fit in service work. But they're also secretly infecting men with syphilis to study it, and sterilizing women...and then Cora finds out she's being chased by a man called Ridgeway, a slave catcher. So the next stop is North Carolina, which has abolished slavery too...out of a fear that the Black majority population of the state will rebel against their masters. It's replaced their labor with white indentured servants, and escaped slaves are publicly executed. Cora hides there for a while, but before she can devise an escape, she's caught by Ridgeway. That doesn't mean she stops fighting for her freedom, but freedom isn't an easy thing for a slave to find.

I wanted to love this. I wanted to find it a revelation. And it's good, very good actually. Whitehead's prose is both lovely and powerful. And I understand why he can't "go easy" on Cora...it reads sometimes like she's a punching bag for the universe and she barely gets room to breathe before she's knocked down again, but that's probably what it feels like to be African-American, obviously back then and to a lesser but still very real degree even now. And the characters are interesting, with Whitehead even writing one-off chapters from perspectives other than Cora's, to give us context for the people who have an impact on Cora's life and where they're coming from when they interact with her.

But I just never connected with and got emotionally invested in the novel the way I do for the books that distinguish themselves for me as "great". I cared only in a kind of distant way about Cora, and for all that the side characters were developed they mostly just faded away...when Caesar and Cora are separated relatively early in the proceedings, for instance, I never found myself missing him on the page. And while I cared about Cora and what was going to become of her, it was never in the way where I wanted to skip ahead to see how she might make it around each obstacle thrown in her path. I'm not quite sure why that was, honestly...like I said, Whitehead's writing is incredible so it's not for any lack of ability to make her more compelling on his part. It just didn't quite get there for me. Nevertheless, it's a very good and powerful book, and one that I'd recommend to just about everyone.

One year ago, I was reading: Disgrace

Two years ago, I was reading: Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud

Three years ago, I was reading: The Six Wives of Henry VIII

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Book 188: The Underground Railroad

Book 179: The Bonfire of the Vanities

"Sherman lifted his Yale chin, squared his shoulders, straightened his back, raised himself to his full height, and assumed the Presence, the presence of an older, finer New York, the New York of his father, the Lion of Dunning Sponget." 

Dates read: September 22- October 2, 2017

Rating: 2/10

Lists/awards: The New York Times bestseller

I try to pretend I'm kind and thoughtful, but I'll confess: when something bad happens to someone awful, even if they didn't deserve it, I don't usually feel sorry for them. I tend to figure that even if THIS bad thing isn't fair, per se, bad things that aren't fair happen to everyone, so at least when they happen to bad people we can smirk about it. What is life without those kind of tiny, petty joys?

Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities, his first novel, is filled with horrible people in 1980s New York City. Our main character is Sherman McCoy, a high-flying bond trader whose ridiculous salary somehow still isn't enough to fill his endless wants. One of those wants is a hot side piece, so he cheats on his interior designer wife with Maria Ruskin, herself the young trophy wife of a much-older rich businessman. The event that propels the entire narrative happens when he comes to pick her up from the airport one evening. On their way back to Manhattan, Sherman misses his exit and ends up in the Bronx. Now this is pre-Guiliani New York City, so crime rates are still quite high, and the Bronx in particular contributes significantly to this crime rate. Sherman is desperate to get out of the bad side of town in his fancy car, and so drives up a ramp back onto the highway only to find it blocked. When he gets out of his car to clear the debris, he's approached by two young black men, and he panics. He's aggressive with one of them, and when Maria gets behind the wheel and gets him into the car, they take off. He thinks he sees and feels one of the two guys get clipped by the car as it fishtails on their way out of there.

Sherman's inclined to report what happened to the police, but Maria dissuades him. But the guilt and worry begin to consume him, especially as the incident starts to pick up attention. Forces start to converge (a shady African-American preacher/activist type, an alcoholic English reporter desperate to prove his increasingly questionable worth to his employer, a Jewish DA trying to show the overwhelming minority community he serves action on their behalf in an election year), and Sherman is charged and sent to trial, where his prosecutor, Larry Kramer, is a man who seethes at the way his life has turned out, with a modest income that keeps him from being able to conduct the affair he wants to have with a former juror.

As you can probably tell from that rating up there, I hated this book. Basically everyone in it is The Worst, and no one's having any fun. I don't mind reading about morally questionable characters as long as they're compelling, but Sherman and everyone around him is miserable. Even before the accident, Sherman is living far beyond his considerable means and he's constantly worried about how to make sure he can stay afloat. Larry, who's the second lead in the book, is a covetous self-important blowhard obsessed with his own appearance and desirability to women. I hated both of them immediately and struggled so hard to make myself read this. It got better, plot-wise, as it went...when the pieces started coming together, I could appreciate the way Wolfe showed how the dysfunction of every participant in the process created the perfect storm in which Sherman was embroiled. But that doesn't mean I liked it.

I think part of it was the overwhelming male-ness of the narrative: all the major figures, save Maria, are dudes, and even Maria never gets the story told from her point of view the way the men do. I have no particular interest in masculinity crises, and there's a lot of that here. I think I'm also going to give up on Tom Wolfe from here on out...I read his The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test a couple years ago, and I hated it just as much as I hated this. His tics as a writer, particularly his fondness of repetitious phrases, do not jibe with me as a reader. I recognize that as a satire of a particular time and place, it has merit, but I did not like it at all. I cannot in good conscience recommend it to anyone.

Tell me, blog friends...are there any writers that you just can't read because you don't like the way they write?

One year ago, I was reading: Game of Crowns

Two years ago, I was reading: The Highest Tide

Three years ago, I was reading: Enchanted Islands

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Book 179: The Bonfire of the Vanities