All Consuming : eliseb

A story about "A Short History of Nearly Everything"

nobody@allconsuming.net (eliseb) — Fri, 24 Jun 2005 05:46:57 GMT

by Bill Bryson

If only all science books were as entertaining as Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything. Bryson explains the major scientific theories known to man with masterful storytelling skills. Weaving in richly researched details on the lives and characteristics of the foremost historical scientific figures, Bryson discourses on everything from the big bang theory and quantum physics, to paleontology and plate tectonics. As he put it, the book is about ”...how we went from there being nothing at all to there being something, and then how a little of that something turned into us, and also what happened in between and since.” Not just detailing what we know, Bryson describes how we learned what we now know.

As an undergraduate Earth Sciences major 20 some odd years ago I remember one of my geology professors describing how the theory of plate tectonics had at that time recently turned the entire Geology field upside down, and how as a theory it had been utterly reviled for years, until the evidence was so overwhelming it had to be accepted and embraced. According to Bryson, this violent resistance to breakthrough ideas appears to be a pattern often repeated.

I have a few things to say about the audiobook. I listened to the abridged version from Audible.com which was narrated by Bryson himself. He has a lovely voice. So lovely and calming in fact that I nearly fell asleep several times while driving and listening to the book. The content of the book is extremely interesting, so much so that I kept on pulling my hair to feel some pain so that I could stay awake to listen to it. I’m serious. This is a great book. There must be something in his voice; I bet if it were analyzed it would be found to trigger the alpha and beta brain waves conducive to sleep. My mother was listening to it as well and I had to wake her up several times. We finally had to take breaks from listening. They cut a lot out to make the abridged version 5 hours down from I think 17? I’m planning to buy the book to see what I’ve missed.

A story about "Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything"

nobody@allconsuming.net (eliseb) — Fri, 24 Jun 2005 05:13:16 GMT

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

by Steven D. Levitt

In Freakonomics, authors Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner turn a spotlight on to some touchy areas – abortion, crack dealers, parenting, the KKK, cheating by school teachers, guns in homes. They present a view that if you remove the lens of morality and how things “should be”, many phenomena can be explained through basic economic principles. As a business professional with graduate degrees in both economics and business, I couldn’t agree more. Yet the book is in a word, lightweight. A little over 200 hundred pages and presented in large, easy-to-read print, Freakonomics can be read in a couple of hours. And if you understand anything about economics that you could pick up in a college survey class, you won’t be that surprised by their analysis. I can only think that the reason this book has been on the NYT best seller list is because most people don’t understand the basic tenets of economics.

The author’s assertion that a main contributor to the falling crime rates across the country in the mid 90s was due to unwanted babies not being born twenty years earlier will rankle many, especially conservative Catholics and right-to-lifers. This is not a new theory, nor was Levitt the first person to think of it when his paper on the subject was published in 2001. However, the popularity of Freakonomics may be was gets this theory more out into the mainstream and collective consciousness of this country. By the way, although Levitt presents his theory on crime and abortion almost as if it is “the truth”, it is not a fact, but a theory, albeit one with compelling evidence and arguments.

All in all I was amused and intrigued by much of what is presented in this book but think that it could and should have been twice as long given the cost of the book.

A story about "Skinny Dip (Hiaasen, Carl)"

nobody@allconsuming.net (eliseb) — Wed, 15 Jun 2005 15:39:16 GMT

Skinny Dip (Hiaasen, Carl)

by Carl Hiaasen

What a howler. Reminiscent of Mickey Spillane, Carl Hiassen’s Skinny Dip starts with crooked sleeze-ball Charles Perrone throwing his wife off a cruise ship miles away from the coast of Florida. Unbeknownst to Chaz, his wife Joey, was a champion swimmer and athlete in college, and turning her fall into a dive, survives the fall, swims to near exhaustion, eventually latches on to a floating bale of marijuana, and is picked up out of the ocean by a retired cop Mick Stranahan. Joey doesn’t understand why Chaz tried to kill her and spends the bulk of this hilarious story with Stranahan figuring out why and taking revenge by driving her husband crazy. The book is filled with great character sketches – Tool, a pain-killer addicted hired thug who gets reformed by the terminally ill old lady whose meds he tried to steal, Red Hammernut, the agribusiness tycoon who is paying off Chaz to falsify water quality records so he can keep his polluting enterprise up and running, and Karl Rolvaag, the homicide detective who keeps two albino pythons and when they escape is disturbed when the yappy dogs of neighbors go missing.

Joey is a force to be reckoned with, and gives new meaning to the saying, “don’t get mad, get even.” Boy does she and how.

I listened to the abridged audiobook from Audible.com read by the author himself. Hiassen does a superb job narrating this story. He and the story remind me of the great old radio drama shows. It’s so entertaining, you can pick it up almost anywhere in the story and be racked with laughter. In fact, I played some for my dad while driving and he was still chuckling 20 minutes later.

A story about "The Master Butchers Singing Club: A Novel"

nobody@allconsuming.net (eliseb) — Wed, 15 Jun 2005 15:37:12 GMT

The Master Butchers Singing Club: A Novel

by Louise Erdrich

That Louise Erdrich likes to tell stories becomes obvious from the reading of her novel The Master Butchers Singing Club. She never races through a tale, but takes her time, dissecting every nuance in delicious detail. The book’s central character is Delphine, whom we meet as she is returning home to Argus, North Dakota in the early 1930s with her balancing act partner Cyprian to care for her father, the town drunk. Delphine is a survivalist – a hard working, tough love, feet-firmly-planted-on-the-ground woman. She befriends Eva, the wife of the local butcher, Fidelis Waldvogel, who had immigrated to Argus from Germany after the first world war. Fidelis starts a singing club, the members of which make up many of the contributing characters of the story.

I had expected that the book would be about Fidelis, as the title had suggested “The Master Butcher”. And it is, in that all of the stories and subplots relate to Fidelis and his family. But the novel really centers around Delphine and her struggles to survive and to help the people she loves. The novel is rich with subplots involving the various residents of Argus – Clarisse, the town mortician, Hawk, the love-struck sheriff, Step-and-a-half, the town rag collector, Tanta, Fidelis’s spiteful spinster sister, and others. At times the novel reminded me of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg Ohio, with its bizarre midwestern characters all not-so-loosely connected.

I’ve read some other reviews of The Master Butchers Singing Club that didn’t like the wandering subplots. I for one found the novel deeply satisfying. Erdrich writes simply and well. She paints vivid scenes that become etched in one’s mind. I can see Tanta in her shiny silver suit, striding forcefully through the town looking for a job. I can see Delphine’s father’s house so layered with garbage, vomit, and piss that it takes months to clean out. I see Step-and-a-half’s notions shop with the brand new sewing machine in the corner. Sometimes Erdrich lingers too long with the inner thoughts of some of the characters. My reaction when that happens is, this is a woman writing. Men don’t write this way. I don’t think my father would have the patience for this book. But my mother would love it.

In the end, The Master Butchers Singing Club is about love, loyalty, tragedy, and redemption. It is about how small actions of good will can change the course of lives. I highly recommend it. The audiobook, in particular, is well done – read by the author herself.

A story about "Dream of Scipio"

nobody@allconsuming.net (eliseb) — Wed, 15 Jun 2005 15:33:26 GMT

Dream of Scipio

by Iain Pears

Iain Pear’s The Dream of Scipio follows the lives of 3 men, all men who are deeply thoughtful and philosophical, all who must face terrible decisions which try their deepest beliefs, and all men who lived in France’s Provence in three different centuries of great upheaval. Manlius Hippomanus, a wealthy Roman aristocrat, suppresses his own Greek philosophical training to become a Bishop in the mid to late fifth century AD, the period during which the Roman empire is collapsing and Gaul is abandoned to the Visigoths. 900 years later Manlius’ writings are studied by Olivier de Noyen, a poet in the service of Cardinal Ceccani, during the brief historical period in which the pope resided in Avignon – the mid 1300s, and during which time the great plague decimated a third of Europe. 600 years later again, Julien Barveuve, a classics scholar unearths de Noyen’s writings in the Vatican. Like the men before him, Julien’s life is turned upside down as his world collapses during the Nazi invasion of France. Each man is also passionately in love with a powerful woman, and each passion leads to disastrous results.

This intricate novel is not a light summer read. It took me two thirds of the way through it to consistently keep track of who was who and which century we were in. Once the characters were finally established in my brain as to which century, which conflict, and which woman, the novel began to come together. And after finishing it, I picked it up to read it again, this time with more appreciation and less confusion. Once beyond the complexity of juggling three stories simultaneously, the novel became quite interesting, mostly because of the horrendous moral choices each character had to make. In each situation the main character performs a brutal betrayal and endures a great sacrifice to do what he thinks is right. Each has high moral ideals that are compromised by political realities. The fundamental philosophical questions that each has devoted their lives to examining are called to bear in their own lives.

A story about "Shah of Shahs"

nobody@allconsuming.net (eliseb) — Wed, 01 Jun 2005 21:24:43 GMT

Shah of Shahs

by Ryszard Kapuscinski

In Shah of Shahs Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski turns his focus to the former Shah of Iran, the CIA supported dictator whose oppressive regime led to the revolution that took Americans hostage in their own embassy, caused the shah’s exile, and resulted in the fundamentalist Islamic government that runs Iran today. Kapuscinski published this book in 1982, just a few years after the revolution. In his unique style Kapuscinski weaves history, stories of individuals, and his own observations and interpretations.

It seems as if in every oppressive regime, there is a police authority, a spy network that detains and tortures anyone suspected of not being loyal to the ruling regime. In Iran, that group of thugs was the Savak.

And Savak meant, above all, torture of the most horrible kind. They would kidnap a man as he walked along the street, blindfold him, and lead him straight into the torture chamber without asking a single question. There they would start in with the whole macabre routine – breaking bones, pulling out fingernails, forcing hands into hot ovens, drilling into the living skull,, and scores of other brutalities – in the end, when the victim had gone mad with pain and become a smashed, bloody mass, they would proceed to establish his identity. Name? Address? What have you been saying about the Shah? Come on, what have you been saying? And you know, he might not have said anything, ever. He might have been completely innocent. But to Savak, that was nothing, being innocent. This way everyone will be afraid, innocent and guilty alike, everyone will feel the intimidation, no one will feel safe.

In such a society, husbands and wives would go years without ever mentioning a thing about the government. You never knew what someone might say under torture, so it was safest not to ever mention anything that could be taken as dissatisfaction with the government. If a Savak agent overheard you complaining that the heat of the day was “oppressive” they would interpret that as complaining against the Shah and cart you off to jail.

The first two thirds of Shah of Shahs focuses more on the historical background leading up to the revolution. The last third concerns the revolution itself. In this section Kapuscinski offers reflections on the nature of revolutions; he has experienced first hand dozens of them around the world. One observation of note is that the people who come to power after the revolution aren’t the same people who brought the regime down. In the case of Iran, people with a democratic vision took the greatest risks, suffered the most oppression, and caused the downfall of the Shah. Iran however could not support a democracy, as the majority of the population preferred Islamic fundamentalism. So ultimately that’s what they got in the Ayatollah Khomeini.

Well written, as all Kapuscinski’s books, and essential reading for anyone truly interested in current Middle Eastern conflict.

A story about "Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History"

nobody@allconsuming.net (eliseb) — Wed, 01 Jun 2005 21:20:43 GMT

Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History

by George Crile

September 11th made it clear that thousands of Afghans that we had armed and trained had become terrorists with the US now in their sights. How did Afghanistan become a training ground for terrorists? George Crile’s Charlie Wilson’s War is the story of how one man, U.S. Congressman Charlie Wilson, Rep. Texas, almost single-handedly launched the several billion dollar CIA operation in Afghanistan to force out the occupying Soviets, without a vote in Congress, and without the clear approval of the President. What started as barely a nuisance campaign turned into the greatest covert operation in CIA history.

Charlie Wilson’s War is a highly entertaining, eye-opening, sobering book. Entertaining because of Crile’s journalistic writing and the indepth character studies of the main players: Charlie Wilson – a charismatic, boozing, womanizing, ruggedly tall and handsome, ne’er-do-well Congressman from the Texas bible belt and Gust Arvakotos – a street-fighter Greek-American CIA agent whose aggressive and “earthy” behavior clashed with the blue-blood establishment at Langley. Highlighted as well are a string of beautiful, seductive women who inspired and accompanied Charlie to the Mid East, Michael Vickers – a brilliant strategist whose approach of diverse weaponry led to the ultimate Soviet retreat, and many many others. Eye-opening because of the exposure of all the back-room politics that went into play in order for this war to get off the ground. Trading favors and buying influence is how things actually get done in Washington. If you want to be where the power is, sit on the Defense Appropriations Committee. They’re the ones who dole out the bucks – defense contracts in your state. Sobering because well, the escalation of conflict in that area caused the deaths of thousands of Russian solders and hundreds of thousands of Afghans. And, after the Soviets pulled out, in the power vacuum that was created, the Afghans turned on each other with the weapons and training we gave them.

This book is a great read. I spent three nights in a row up until 1:30 a.m. reading it, only putting it down when the words started to blur.

A story about "The Memory of Running: A Novel"

nobody@allconsuming.net (eliseb) — Wed, 01 Jun 2005 21:16:55 GMT

The Memory of Running: A Novel

by Ron McLarty

Smithy Ide is a 43 year old drunk – overweight, friendless, and when he can think, disgusted with himself. After the funeral of his parents who die in a car accident, Smithy finds an unopened letter to his parents from a mortuary in California. The letter says that the mortuary is holding the body of Smithy’s sister Bethany, an indigent whose identity they’ve been able to match with dental records. Still in a drunken fog, Smithy finds his old Raleigh bike in their garage, and sets off down the road, flat tires as all. Thus he unintentially sets off on a bike journey across the country and in the process comes to terms with his life and the loss of his beautiful sister who couldn’t escape the voices in her head.

I downloaded The Memory of Running from Audible.com based on the hundreds of positive ratings readers gave it. For the first several hours of listening, I didn’t like it at all. Here were the ramblings of a pathetic, do-nothing loser. Where was this story going? But gradually, it wore on me. As Smithy sobered up his story drew me in. Smithy had let himself go to pot, so to speak, and as his story unravels we learn that he is basically a simple, moral person. Author Ron McLarty notes in the audiobook’s afterword that Smithy’s one gift is that of the ability to listen. It’s through this gift that we meet many people on Smithson’s journey and are touched by their unique stories as well.

The Memory of Running is meant to be heard, not read. Author Ron McLarty is professional actor, playwright, and narrator and does a terrific job narrating this story. I’ve read some reviews criticizing some of the writing in the book and I think I would be more critical too, if I had read it rather than listened to it. As it is told in the first person, the book is written how Smithy thinks; sometimes he’s not all together coherent. He’s not particularly articulate. He’s a regular Joe, and critics aside, most people aren’t English majors. The book requires surrendering to the character. It requires patience to hear out the story. Fortunately McLarty is a skillful storyteller.

A story about "On the Water: Discovering America in a Row Boat"

nobody@allconsuming.net (eliseb) — Wed, 01 Jun 2005 21:09:39 GMT

On the Water: Discovering America in a Row Boat

by Nathaniel Stone

On the Water: Discovering America in a Row Boat – In the spring of 1999, Nat Stone set out in a row boat from near the Brooklyn Bridge in Manhattan to row his way around the Eastern half of the United States – up the Hudson through the Erie Canal, down the Alleggheny and then the Mississippi, around Florida, and back up to Brooklyn and up the coast of Maine. The trip was motivated by a lifelong love of the water and boats, and by the need to fulfill a dream of following the route of Howard Blackburn, a nineteenth-century Gloucester fisherman. (Blackburn had lost his fingers after the froze to his oars while he rowed for 5 days straight to come in from the sea in a storm. Blackburn subsequently taught himself how to sail and rigged a boat that took him up the Hudson, down the Mississippi, and around Florida.) Nat’s trip included one 9 mile stretch of portage, in which, hooked up to a harness, Nat pulled the boat over land. The trip was also broken up into two parts. The first part took Nat all the way down to the point that the Mississippi empties into the sea, begun in April 1999 and completed in August 1999. To complete the ocean journey Nat would need a boat that wouldn’t so easily capsize in ocean swells. He returned to the Bayou in January 2000 and picked up his journey again.

When I close my eyes at night I see the Mississippi River. No shore, no boat, no sand bars. Only water, silty brown and swirling, so close in my mind it seems I could reach into it with my hand and watch my fingers disappear into alluvial opaqueness. The river melts the land and carries it. It is a river of water and soil, Ol ‘Muddy, running southward through the continent, starting so far to the north you’d have to drive through Pennington, Minnesota, on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation, hardly seventy miles from the Canadian border, to cross the country without bridging it. Yet it is not a still frame of water I see with closed eyes, but an endless shifting of myriad sub-currents, of whirlpools the size of saucers, smoothly flowing mushroom domes of upwelling water thirty feet wide, and countless other zephyrs of liquid movement, constantly morphing and eddying, an ever-changing puzzle of water. Looking down from a bridge one sees the river as a single, steady whole. But its flow is in fact incalculably complex, and it is this motion that puts me to sleep.

The friend who gave me this book described it as “lyrical”. I think that one word says it best. Stone is clearly a gifted writer; often his prose reads almost like poetry. It is a quiet book, consisting mostly of descriptions of the interactions he has with people he meets on this journey. Reading the reviews posted at Amazon.com, someone wrote, “not a lot of action.” Yep, that’s right. Stone rowed every foot (save 9 miles – in which he pulled overland) of a 6000 mile plus route. I would imagine that time slows down and even stretches out a bit when you’re rowing around the country. We lead such hectic, noisy, multi-tasking lives, it’s hard to slow down our own senses to appreciate the pace that results from simply rowing without an hourly timetable of commitments.

Quiet and inspiring, highly recommended.

Links:
Nat Stone’s website with photos of the journey

A story about "Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal"

nobody@allconsuming.net (eliseb) — Sat, 28 May 2005 02:17:27 GMT

Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

by Eric Schlosser

So many people had recommended Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser that I bought the audiobook on Audible.com and listened to all 9 hours. I have mixed opinions about it. On the one hand Schlosser does a wonderful job describing the history of the fast food industry with terrific case studies of McDonalds and Carl’s Jr. Visionary entrepreneurs brought America efficiently prepared meals at prices low enough to make the food affordable to all. Schlosser also expertly delves into the the structure and participants of the entire industry, from the meatpackers and potato farmers to the franchisees and corporate marketeers. The research effort that went into this book are well deserving of praise. I was especially bothered to learn about how in-bed fast-food marketers have become with our public schools, with the schools pimping junk food to students in order to raise revenue. It is shameful that we are trading off the health of our children for the tax dollars that should be going into our schools.

On the other hand, and perhaps this is a result of my listening to a narrator read the book rather than reading it myself, I found that Schlosser often sensationalized many parts of the book when the facts could well stand on their own. Schlosser comes across as partisan anti-Republican and in most cases, anti-business. He identifies a “victim” and magnifies their position, rather than give balance by providing insight into the fuller story. As a political moderate, an MBA, and a businesswoman, I was annoyed with the tired “big bad corporate American” position that Schlosser took throughout much of the book. Perhaps it was the narrator with an overly dramatic tone. Whatever it was, the book was often annoying and I could only handle listening to so much at a time. Don’t get me wrong; everyone should read this book. The facts revealed are important for all of us to know to make better public policy decisions. The message of this book is more important than its tone.

A story about "Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation"

nobody@allconsuming.net (eliseb) — Sat, 28 May 2005 02:12:20 GMT

Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation

by Lynne Truss

Lynn Truss has written a delightful best-seller on the art of using commas, apostrophes, and semi-colons in her Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. After reading this book all I can think of is that I need to use semi-colons more often. Eats, Shoots & Leaves is both a useful guide to punctuation (primarily from a British perspective) and a witty and humorous rant against the declining use of proper punctuation in our culture. Ms. Truss frequently delves into the historical roots of many of the punctuation and type formatting standards we take for granted today.

How could a book on punctuation make it to the best seller list and stay there for… how many months has it been? One reason is by being well written and entertaining. Another reason is that those of us who read books also often like to write. Since the dawn of email and the Internet we’ve been writing much more than we would ever have expected to. As such, many of us are on the one hand appalled by the lack of proper punctuation populating the emails of those born around the same time as the personal computer, and on the other hand trying to remember what exactly those rules were that we learned so long ago. Eats, Shoots & Leaves appeals to us for both reasons; Truss lambasts the awful punctuation she sees daily while gently explaining the guidelines for doing it right.

A story about "Life of Pi"

nobody@allconsuming.net (eliseb) — Sat, 28 May 2005 02:07:51 GMT

Life of Pi

by Yann Martel

Yann Martel spins a magical story with Life of Pi. In this book, he recounts the boyhood of Piscine Patel whose parents were zoo keepers in India. Pi is fascinated both with God (simultaneously practicing Islam, Christianity, and Hinduism) and zoo animals. When the ship he is taking with his family and some of the animals sinks in the Pacific, Pi finds himself castaway on a 26 ft life boat with an injured zebra, an orangutan, a hyena, and a 450 lb bengal tiger named Richard Parker. Soon only the tiger and Pi are left on the boat and Pi is left to use his wits to survive the elements and keep from being eaten by the tiger. Pi realizes that he can’t kill the tiger and must learn to become his master in order to survive the ordeal. The interactions with the animals and Pi’s journey are all metaphors for living a spiritual life. The underlying current of the book is that Pi must master his own dark-side, his fear and despair with vigilance and compassion. Much like the Buddhist saint Milarepa who finally mastered the demons who were torturing him by accepting them and befriending them, Pi masters himself and the tiger Richard Parker. There’s much more too it, but telling more would give away the story. Simply, the book left me with sense of wonder and sadness from how one man survived the tragedy of losing his family and the 7 month ordeal of being lost at sea.

A story about "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time"

nobody@allconsuming.net (eliseb) — Sat, 28 May 2005 02:04:50 GMT

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

by Mark Haddon

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is told in the first person by Christopher John Francis Boone, a 15 year old autistic boy, who sets off on a detective mission to discover who killed his neighbor’s dog. Christopher counts forward in prime numbers, can’t tolerate the colors yellow or brown, avoids strangers, is easily overwhelmed by noise or crowds, and always tells the truth.

We don’t often get a glimpse into the minds and worlds of people so different from ourselves. Author Mark Haddon takes us on a touching journey of how this boy’s world unravels and comes together again as he bumps up against the very real human failings of those closest to him. We feel his anguish and also the comfort he finds in his world of abstract problem solving. The book has several mind-stumping math problems, that Christopher delights in solving for us. One in particular, the Monty Hall problem, was really annoying. It’s the kind of problem that makes you sit down, take out a pen and paper and try to make sense of it. But you can’t. Or most people can’t. I think that is part of the interesting charm of this book. We the readers are as closed off to the world which Christopher inhabits, as he is to our world. As smart as I was in math, these problems confused me, made my brain hurt. As brilliant as Christopher is, it takes every ounce of his mental focus to take a simple subway ride. Highly recommended.

A story about "Artemis Fowl (Artemis Fowl, Book 1)"

nobody@allconsuming.net (eliseb) — Wed, 25 May 2005 04:15:32 GMT

Artemis Fowl (Artemis Fowl, Book 1)

by Eoin Colfer

Artemis Fowl is brilliant, inventive, cunning, devious, and the mastermind of a vast criminal empire. He is only twelve years old. His father lost and presumed dead, his mother suffering from a nervous breakdown, Artemis sets out to restore his family’s fortune by trapping a fairy from the underworld of magical creatures and holding her ransom for fairy gold. Unfortunately for Artemis, he picks the wrong fairy to kidnap – Captain Holly Short of the LEPrecon (Lower Elements Police Reconnaisance) Unit. When Holly’s comrades come to rescue her, things don’t exactly meet up with Artemis’ plans, or theirs.

I had little choice. Knowing how much I love Harry Potter (having read each book at least five times) and scifi/fantasy, my friend Suzanne and her three kids handed me their copies of the Artemis Fowl series and insisted that I read them. Well, it pays to have friends who know you well. These books by author Eoin Colfer are a hoot! Colfer describes his book as “Die Hard with fairies.” Yep, that sums it up pretty well. Sort of like James Bond, Encyclopedia Brown, and Grimms all rolled up in one. Highly entertaining. Artemis Fowl is the first in an ongoing series. In Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident Artemis teams up with Holly and the LEP to save his father from the Russian “Mafiya” and fight off a goblin rebellion. In Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code Artemis gets the whole world into trouble by using secret fairy technology to try to extort money from a evil industrialist.

A story about "The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America"

nobody@allconsuming.net (eliseb) — Wed, 25 May 2005 04:08:00 GMT

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America

by Erik Larson

Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City is the true story of the building of the magnificent 1893 Columbian Exposition World’s Fair in Chicago and the sociopath murderer H.H. Holmes who preyed on young women coming to see the fair. In his telling, Larson transports us to the late 1800s from when Chicago first wins the right by Congressional vote to host the fair, beating out rival New York City, through the two years it took to build the White City, to the fair itself, which brought in an estimated 40 million visitors during the short time it was open. Daniel H. Bernham, chief architect of the fair, led the extraordinary effort to build the fair, a feat no one thought could be accomplished in the time given. The fair drew the best engineers, architects, and designers the country had and forever transformed the shoreline of Chicago. The result was such a resounding success, Bernham imprinted grandeur into the minds of visitors who came from all over the country and set the course of American neo-classical architecture for the next fifty years.

A few miles away, in the Chicago suburb Englewood, a more sinister story was unfolding. Dr. H.H. Holmes built a boarding house on a full city block, complete with torture chamber and crematorium in its basement. On the first floor of the building Holmes ran a pharmacy, complete with bogus cure-alls, a restaurant, and several seemingly respectable businesses – fronts for countless fraud schemes.A handsome, arresting, blue-eyed man, Holmes charmed several women into working for him, or renting a room while in town visiting the fair. He seduced them, mesmerized them, and killed scores of them, either by locking them in an airtight vault and gassing them with poisonous fumes, or smothering them with ether-soaked rags. With several, he dissected them, removed their skin, and sold their bodies to be made into skeletons for local medical schools. He was a predator of the worst kind, a sociopath who preyed on the vulnerable, addicted to the thrill of killing.

One wouldn’t expect that the two stories – of the Fair and of Holmes – would work so well together, intermingled in their telling. But in a way, the contrast between the two draws the picture of each even more vividly. It reminds me of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, where beneath the surface of a neatly manicured lawn in happy town USA, a severed finger rots. The story of the Fair shows the best of the men of the time – their engineering feats, their artistic ambition, their incredidbly hard work, their accomplishment when working united to a purpose; where the story of Holmes displays man at his worst. Larson does a terrific job weaving both tales together, and setting a pace that makes it hard to put the book down.

A story about "Ireland : A Novel"

nobody@allconsuming.net (eliseb) — Wed, 25 May 2005 04:03:58 GMT

Ireland : A Novel

by Frank Delaney

Ireland by Frank Delaney is the story of a young boy, Ronan O’Mara, who in 1951 at the age of 9 encounters an itinerant storyteller, who regales Ronan and others with magical tales, blending myth and fiction, of Ireland’s past. Ronan is so taken with the storyteller and his stories that he starts a quest to find him, a difficult undertaking as the storyteller has no address – the storyteller wanders the countryside, staying with people who will feed him and give shelter in exchange for telling stories. Thus starts a life long passion for Ronan – collecting the folklore of Ireland, and uncovering Ireland’s history.

The book’s plot structure of Ronan’s search for the storyteller is a convenient container for the true gems of this novel – wonderful, colorful stories covering the breadth of Irish history, from the making of the 5000 year old tomb at New Grange, the legend and fact of St. Patrick, Strongbow and the invasion of the Anglo-Normans, Daniel O’Connell and the repeal of the penal laws, to the 20th century troubles. In every breath of this novel, the Irish gift of gab is celebrated. I listened to the audiobook version of this book and I must say that this is most captivating audiobook I’ve heard to date. (Available also at Audible.com.)The author, Frank Delaney, does the narrating. With his various Irish accents he brings the stories alive in a way only possible through the spoken word.

A story about "The Trouble Begins: A Box of Unfortunate Events, Books 1-3 (The Bad Beginning; The Reptile Room; The Wide Window)"

nobody@allconsuming.net (eliseb) — Wed, 25 May 2005 04:03:58 GMT

The Trouble Begins: A Box of Unfortunate Events, Books 1-3 (The Bad Beginning; The Reptile Room; The Wide Window)

by Lemony Snicket

“It’s not Disney,” explained one child upon being asked why he liked Lemony Snickett’s dark and dismal Series of Unfortunate Events. Kids seem to love this book series about the three Baudelaire children – Violet, Klaus, and Sunny – whose parents died tragically in a fire and who spend most of their time trying to evade the evil Count Olaf, a master of disguises who plots to steal the orphan’s fortune. Violet is the oldest with a knack for inventing, Klaus the younger boy who loves to read and study, and Sunny, the baby with 4 exceptionally strong and sharp teeth. The books in the series have predictable plots. In each, Mr. Poe, the Baudelaire’s hapless executor, appoints a guardian who is often a distant relative of the children who proves to be incapable of keeping Count Olaf away. The adults in the stories are all fooled by the Count’s disguises and don’t listen to the children who are never fooled. It’s up to Violet, Klaus, and Sunny to figure out the Count’s nefarious plan before he can implement it and abscond with the children. It always takes the three kids working together to foil the Count’s plans.

The Series of Unfortunate Events is different from most other children’s books in that people die and miserable things are done to the Baudelaires and their friends. All the while the author is warning the reader that if you are looking for a happy ending, you need to go somewhere else. Many parents are understandably concerned that the series is too dark for their children, but kids I know love these books. Through ingenuity, courage, and coordinated effort, the Baudelaires always manage to escape from Count Olaf’s darkest efforts to capture or hurt them.

From the author:

Dear Reader,
I’m sorry to say that the book you are holding in your hands is extremely unpleasant. It tells an unhappy tale about three very unlucky children. Even though they are charming and clever, the Baudelaire siblings lead lives filled with misery and woe. From the very first page of this book when the children are at the beach and receive terrible news, continuing on through the entire story, disaster lurks at their heels. One might say they are magnets for misfortune.
In this short book alone, the three youngsters encounter a greedy and repulsive villain, itchy clothing, a disastrous fire, a plot to steal their fortune, and cold porridge for breakfast.
It is my sad duty to write down these unpleasant tales, but there is nothing stopping you from putting this book down at once and reading something happy, if you prefer that sort of thing.
With all due respect,

Lemony Snicket

Links:
A Series of Unfortunate Events – DVD – film starring Jim Carrey as the evil Count Olaf.

A story about "Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books"

nobody@allconsuming.net (eliseb) — Wed, 25 May 2005 04:03:58 GMT

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

by Azar Nafisi

In Tehran, Iran, for two years during the late 1990s, literature professor Azar Nafisi conducted a secret class in her home for 7 women students. The class was about literature and read from works of Nabokov, Henry James, Fitzgerald, Jane Austin, and others. Reading Lolita in Tehran is professor Nafisi’s memoir of those years and those that came before, as Nafisi struggled to teach literature whose very characters and stories more often than not offended the Islamic authorities. Reading Lolita alternates between being a social history of modern Iran and the challenges for women to retain their dignity in a repressive Islamic state, and an inquiry into the power of fiction to open our eyes and give our lives meaning. Nafisi follows the lives of her students – their stories, fears, struggles, and triumphs – as each comes to terms with their lives and roles in the world. Ultimately many, like Nafisi, will choose to leave Iran, rather to continue to live in a culture where so much of their lives are proscribed.

Reading Lolita in Tehran is beautifully written. Anyone who cherishes literature will not only appreciate the subject matter, but the lyrical manner in which it is written. Highly recommended.

A story about "Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake"

nobody@allconsuming.net (eliseb) — Wed, 25 May 2005 04:03:57 GMT

Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake

by Stan Redding

Catch Me If You Can by Frank Abagnale is an amazing true story of the adventures of a master con artist and check forger. Of all the books I’ve “read” from Audible.com, this is among the most enjoyable. In his late teens, Abagnale posed as a PanAm co-pilot, getting lifts on airplanes for free to take him all around the country and the world, allowing him to pass bad checks behind the guise of a respectable airline pilot. By the time he was caught, at age 21, he had managed to bilk his victims, mostly PanAm, of over 2 million dollars. At that was 2 million in the late 60s, when the story took place. Posing as Frank Williams, Robert Conrad, Frank Adams, and Robert Monjo, Abagnale also managed to teach sociology at a college in Utah with a fake diploma, pass the bar exam and work in an attorney general’s office, pose as a pediatrician and become a temporary resident supervisor at a hospital in Georgia.

In one outrageous scheme, Abagnale recruited, and then “hired” a group of young female college students from an Arizona University. He told the girls that they were to be part of a special PR project, where they would travel to different cities in Europe and, dressed as PanAm flight attendants, be photographed for PanAm publicity purposes. He took them to Europe, hired photographers in each city, and while the girls were getting photographed, he passed back checks.

Finally nabbed in Montpelier, France, Abagnale confessed and spent 6 months in the infamous Perpignan French prison, where he stayed naked, in a 5 foot by 5 foot by 5 foot cel, in complete darkness, with only a bucket, no drain, no running water. Not once did he see light or was able to stand completely straight (he’s over 6 feet tall.) Once released from Perpignan, he was transfered to Sweden where he did 6 more months in a prison that was more like a college dorm. A Swedish judge then deported him back to the US. Faced with the prospect of meeting US Federal agents once his plane was at the gate, Frank escaped from the plane by removing the toilet mechanism from the airline restroom, and left the plane through the toilet hatch.

The escapades described in this story are creative, daring, and sometimes just heart-stopping. My one complaint with the book is that it sort of leaves you hanging at the end. Frank manages to evade some FBI agents and then the book just stops. I couldn’t believe it. What happens next?! A little research online reveals that Frank is eventually caught and serves 4 years in a US prison. He is released with the agreement that he will help law enforcement agencies catch check forgers. Frank has since made a career for himself providing this kind of advice to companies (see www.abagnale.com). There is also a film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks that came out a couple of years ago which is now available on DVD.

A story about "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close"

nobody@allconsuming.net (eliseb) — Wed, 25 May 2005 04:03:57 GMT

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

by Jonathan Safran Foer

In Jonathan Safran’s Extremely Loud, Incredibly Close we are introduced to 9 year old Oskar Schell, a highly intelligent, inventive, precocious boy coming to grips with the loss of his father who died when the World Trade Center collapsed on 9-11. Oskar discovers a mysterious key in his father’s closet with the word “Black” written on the envelope that holds the key. He decides to interview every person in NYC’s five boroughs with the last name of Black, and sets off every weekend, on foot to find them. At the same time a parallel story is unfolding with Oskar’s grandparents, their diary entries and letters that help them come to terms with their own fractured lives, having lived through the bombing in Dresden.

Extremely Loud, Incredibly Close is wildly creative. It reminded me at the beginning of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. But Extremely Loud is much richer, and the characters’ lives in more need of repair. There is a parallel too, in the Twin Towers and the destruction of Dresden, two generations apart. This book is sad and wonderful, funny and despairing, and vibrantly alive. Highly recommended.

A story about "The Kite Runner"

nobody@allconsuming.net (eliseb) — Wed, 25 May 2005 04:03:57 GMT

The Kite Runner

by Khaled Hosseini

repeat