detailmuse-ing in 2013

(Thread continues here.)

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Welcome! I’m not sure where I’ll go in my reading this year, but my intention along the way and in the end is “satisfaction.” That will probably mean more fiction (especially “small” and “quiet” stories), more books by my favorite writers, and definitely more poetry. My general preferences are mainstream and literary fiction, memoir and science-y nonfiction, workplace settings, and originality.

In this message, I’ll post cover images of what I’m currently reading plus maintain a list of books I’ve finished. In the next, I’ll list notable non-book reading (e.g. isolated short stories, essays, articles) and non-reading (e.g. videos).

# = read from my TBRs (acquired pre-2013; my goal this years = 40)

For more about my recent reading, see my Club Read threads for 2012, 2011, and 2010.

Fiction
27. Gone Girl# by Gillian Flynn (4)
26. The Other Typist by Suzanne Rindell (3.5) (See review)
24. Vignettes of Ystov by William Goldsmith (3) (See review)
22. Edward Adrift by Craig Lancaster (3.5) (See review)
20. Big Brother by Lionel Shriver (3.5) (See review)
13. A Wrinkle in Time# by Madeleine L’Engle (4) (See review)
10. The Fault in Our Stars# by John Green (4) (See review)
9. The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout (4) (See review)
7. Olive Kitteridge# by Elizabeth Strout (4)
2. The Sense of an Ending# by Julian Barnes (4) (See review)
1. Suddenly, A Knock on the Door# by Etgar Keret (4) (See review)

Nonfiction
29. More Scenes from the Rural Life by Verlyn Klinkenborg (3.5) (See review)
28. Pitch Black by Youme Landowne / Anthony Horton (4) (See review)
25. Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach (4)
23. Pieces of Light: How the New Science of Memory Illuminates the Stories We Tell About Our Pasts by Charles Fernyhough (3) (See review)
21. Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think by Viktor Mayer-Schonberger / Kenneth Cukier (4.5) (See review)
19. Dirt Work: An Education in the Woods by Christine Byl (2.5) (See review)
16. Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction# by Tracy Kidder/Richard Todd (4) (See review)
15. Integrative Wellness Rules: A Simple Guide to Healthy Living by Jim Nicolai (3) (See review)
14. The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum by Temple Grandin / Richard Panek (4) (See review)
12. The Universe Within: Discovering the Common History of Rocks, Planets, and People# by Neil Shubin (4.5) (See review)
11. Washington Schlepped Here# by Christopher Buckley (3)
8. Slouching Towards Bethlehem# by Joan Didion (4) (See review)
4. Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog# by Kitty Burns Florey (3.5) (See review)

Other
18. National Geographic Guide to Scenic Highways and Byways, 4th Edition (3) (See review)
17. Slamming Open the Door (poems) by Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno (4.5) (See review)
6. This Is Water by David Foster Wallace (commencement speech) (3) (See review)
5. The International Traveler's Guide to Avoiding Infections by Charles E. Davis (reference)
3. New and Selected Poems: Volume One by Mary Oliver (3.5)

2013 Non-book Reading

2013 Non-reading
Michael Apted’s long-running documentary film series, “Up” -- discovered via a segment of CBS Sunday Morning

A longlist from my TBRs … from which to pull some early-2013 reads:

Fiction
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
✔ The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
✔ Suddenly, A Knock on the Door by Etgar Keret
✔ The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
✔ Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
The Highest Tide by Jim Lynch

Nonfiction
Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life by Eva Jablonka/Marion Lamb
Power Sex Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life by Nick Lane
The Violinist's Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code by Sam Kean
✔ The Universe Within: Discovering the Common History of Rocks, Planets, and People by Neil Shubin
The Great Influenza by John Barry
Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle by Carl Jung
Appetite City: A Culinary History of New York by William Grimes
✔ Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction by Tracy Kidder/Richard Todd
What to Listen for in Music by Aaron Copland
✔ Slouching Toward Bethlehem by Joan Didion
Columbine by Dave Cullen

Fun
✘ My Ideal Bookshelf by Thessaly LaForce due at library, no renewals
Fashion: The Definitive History of Costume and Style
The Science of Good Cooking by America’s Test Kitchen
✔ Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog: The Quirky History and Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences by Kitty Burns Florey

I'll be following your reading MJ. I'm impressed you are tackling Infinite Jest! Maybe one day.... What to Listen for in Music is on my list for this year too.

Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog does sound interesting. I used to love diagramming sentences in school. Soothing. I hope you get to The Great Influenza. I read it a few years ago and was astounded at some of the things that happened in the US that I hadn't known about. When H1N1 broke out, I was eerily reminded of some things from TGI.

I loved Columbine when I read it last year. It was really well done. Though I felt it got a little too gory at the end, the journalism/research was fantastic.

Ooh, looks like some interesting reading lined up for you this year! Including a couple of volumes that are on my own TBR Pile, as well. I've only read two of them, Olive Kitteridge and Columbine, but both of those were very good.

>4 arubabookwoman:-7 Welcome everyone! I want to be reading all those books, and right now. Narrowing my TBRs to the list helped my focus, but despite having picked two short ones to begin with, my mind is still half in them all.

Beyond sadly: the news has brought Columbine to the top of my TBRs too, too often.

We have a couple of non-fiction TBRs in common: Power Sex Suicide, which I got about a year ago because I really liked Life Ascending, and Columbine, which I got mere days ago for sadly obvious reasons.

I'm halfway through What to listen for in Music, which I am enjoying.

>qebo that encourages my high hopes for Nick Lane, I'm also interested in his Oxygen.

>arubabookwoman and bas -- high hopes also for Copland. I loved the first two (music theory) chapters of another, This Is Your Brain on Music, but felt the writer didn't do as well with the neuroscience and then it devolved into memoir.

I was thrilled to take delivery of two books of poetry yesterday -- Mary Oliver’s New and Selected Poems: Volume One and Poetry Magazine’s 100th Anniversary collection, The Open Door.

I dove into Oliver, who’s extraordinarily accessible and all about nature. I snipped this from a passage about the possibility inherent in early morning (or, the new year):

The snails on the pink sleds of their bodies are moving
   among the morning glories.
The spider is asleep among the red thumbs
   of the raspberries.
What shall I do, what shall I do?

kill the snails.

What to Listen for in Music is creeping up my wishlist for a variety of reasons. Will be interested to see what you think. (You too, Barry).

If 'small, quiet' stories are something you're looking for Olive Kitteridge is highly recommended.

I thought Olive Kitteridge was quite remarkable ~ both the character and the writing.

>13 baswood: - Hmmmm....I'd go with kill the spider.

What to Listen For in Music was very helpful for me. I have This is Your Brain on Music on the pile - would still like to read it this year but sad to hear about the memoir-devolving.

bas LOL!! This will not happen in Oliver's poems, though some animals come close to killing her.

>jane, judylou, bragan -- I'm fascinated with linked short stories and the pressure is on for Olive Kitteridge, I've been saving it for years. haha Jane I thought I detected sarcasm, but I see you rated it 4 stars.

>DieF, I read This Is Your Brain on Music with iTunes nearby, listening to snippets of the songs discussed really helped.

Suddenly, A Knock on the Door by Etgar Keret, ©2010, acquired 2012

{The writer} misses the feeling of creating something out of something. That’s right -- something out of something. Because something out of nothing is when you make something up out of thin air, in which case it has no value. Anybody can do that. But something out of something means it was really there the whole time, inside you, and you discover it as part of something new, that’s never happened before.

This collection contains one short story and 34 very short stories and flash fictions translated from the Hebrew. If you’ve read Keret you know exactly what these stories are like. If you haven’t, think Kafka and characters whose denial of their circumstances takes them over the edge into “something out of something” alternate realities where they can feel again.

Very imaginative! Sometimes funny. Together, almost too sad. Still, I liked or loved at least half the stories -- my favorite here is also the first I ever read by Keret, Creative Writing -- and I’d read another of his collections ... after I buoy up a bit.

I am tempted to get hold of this is your Brain on Music I wonder if it will refer to my brain?

I enjoy short stories and your review has me putting Suddenly, A Knock on the Door on the WishList. Thanks!

I read Mary Oliver some years ago and liked her well enough, but strangely, she didn't speak to me in a way that others poets have, and I have not pursued her work since that time. It's always lovely to hear someone talk about poetry though, so thanks for sharing your time with her.

17 - Ha! No, I enjoyed a good deal. One of my projects for this year is to try to nail down exactly what it is I like about certain things - with this and several other things I think it's the looseness of the narrative.

>bas I'm curious for your comments when you finish Copland's book -- what you glean, considering your immersion/appreciation for music already.

>lisa hope you enjoy!

>21 avaland: lois too soon to tell for me. In the last couple of years I am connecting with poetry, though, in a way I never have. Like >jane, it will be interesting to figure out why.

I've had What to Listen for in Music for decades and have never read it! Guess I should!

>rebecca I was going to say it seems to be in the “Club Read canon” :) but when I looked at the Group Zeitgeist it’s not in the list of books shared. In fact, there’s not even one nonfiction work in the top 100!

Oh, interesting detailmuse; I'm a little surprised about no nonfiction works! But looking at the list now, it's a little more traditional and popular than I would have expected.

Group Zeitgeist? Gotta go check that out...

ETA: My, we are a rather pedestrian lot, aren't we?

EATA: But then again, another popular group has the 7 Harry Potter books and the Hunger Games in the top 10. (All of which I've read.)

>26 rebeccanyc:, 27 I’m not sure when Characteristic Works (“a list of commonly-held works adjusted to take account of in-group versus overall popularity”) is calculated in groups’ zeitgeists, but it makes Club Read 2012 look more as I’d expected. (Including half a dozen nonfiction.)

Well, I guess we'll have to wait until "Characteristic Works" is generated for CR2013 to get a real feel for this year's group.

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes, ©2011, acquired 2012

I certainly believe we all suffer damage, one way or another. How could we not, except in a world of perfect parents, siblings, neighbours, companions? And then there is the question, on which so much depends, of how we react to the damage: whether we admit it or repress it, and how this affects our dealings with others. Some admit the damage, and try to mitigate it; some spend their lives trying to help others who are damaged; and then there are those whose main concern is to avoid further damage to themselves, at whatever cost. And those are the ones who are ruthless, and the ones to be careful of.

When sixty-something year-old Tony Webster receives a surprising bequest, he sorts through memories of his youth -- his 1960s London school friends and first girlfriend -- to try to make sense of it.

It’s a novella-length exploration of philosophy and memory that is somehow both quiet and a page-turner … although, about three-fourths through, I felt like telling Tony to take it to a therapist and come back to the reader when he’s figured himself out. A dozen passages continue to vie for posting here, easily 1% of the book, but I’ll leave it at just a few more (some spliced because he keeps returning to topics) while I look forward to reading more by Barnes.

{It} isn’t something I actually saw, but what you end up remembering isn’t always the same as what you have witnessed. {…} this is my reading now of what happened then. Or rather, my memory now of my reading then of what was happening at the time.

…as the witnesses to your life diminish, there is less corroboration, and therefore less certainty, as to what you are or have been. Even if you have assiduously kept records -- in words, sound, pictures -- you may find that you have attended to the wrong kind of record-keeping. {…} “History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.” {…} It’s a bit like the black box aeroplanes carry to record what happens in a crash. If nothing goes wrong, the tape erases itself. So if you do crash, it’s obvious why you did; if you don’t, then the log of your journey is much less clear.

I read The sense of an Ending last year and although I enjoyed it, I did not think it was a graet book or a prize winning book.

“History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.”

Interesting quotations. I'm trying to decide if I agree with this one.

I loved The Sense of an Ending when I read it last year. That second quote about memory stuck in my mind, too.

>RG your review last year hooked me!

>bas I agree, but so many book (and film) prizes/awards confound me. I have better luck when I see them as bringing me new possibilities vs promising a phenomenal experience.

> lisa I had your exact comment about another passage and so I decided not to post it! On the one I did post, I went back to the book and it's referring to personal histories. I can agree with it: we punt on the imperfections and inadequacies and record the result as our truth/history.

Here's the passage I didn't post:

...mental states can be inferred from actions. That’s in history -- Henry VIII and all that. Whereas in the private life, I think the converse is true: that you can infer past actions from current mental states.

I'm starting to feel all tangled now, but I think both are true both ways.

Very late in getting to your thread with all this crazy posting CR. MJ, am I mistaken in sensing a change in the direction of your reading over the past year? More poetry, less non-fiction? Maybe my imagination, but I'm very curious to see where your poetry reading and other reading goes this year.

Fascinated by the Keret review, and I'm very curious about The Universe Within: Discovering the Common History of Rocks, Planets, and People by Neil Shubin. Actually, I just put in on my wishlist. I really liked Your Inner Fish

Oh, The Universe Within sounds interesting!

>dan, rebecca -- I'm enjoying The Universe Within, hoping that continues because I'm also interested in Your Inner Fish. I remember some controversy though -- against someone's theory that humans recreate all that evolution again via the stages of every developing embryo -- not sure if that was in Shubin's book or someone else's?

>dan I’m definitely seeking more fiction this year. You woke the data-geek :) and you are correct: over the past five years, my fiction has plummeted and my nonfiction has skyrocketed ... until last year, when lit journals and poetry replaced a lot of nonfiction.

2008
F 52%
NF 47%
Other incl poetry 1%

2009
F 46%
NF 53%
Other incl poetry 1%

2010
F 44%
NF 55%
Other incl poetry 1%

2011
F 36%
NF 60%
Other incl poetry 4%

2012
F 36%
NF 49%
Other incl poetry 15%

37: I enjoyed Your Inner Fish, so I'll definitely be getting to The Universe Within eventually. Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny? Ernst Haeckel. As I understand it, discredited as stated, but still organisms often retain developmental structures and vestiges of evolutionary past.

That's what I learned too, Katherine, about ontogeny and phylogeny. There's also the whole evo-devo thing, but I haven't really followed that since it developed (sorry!) since I studied biology.

Our local NPR station interviewed Neil Schubin last week and both Your Inner Fish and The Universe Within immediately jumped onto my wishlist.

>qebo exactly! (And with proper vocabulary!) It's been appropriated to other disciplines so seems like something to know more about, e.g. via Gould's Ontogeny and Phylogeny. I see you have that, have you gotten to it?

40: Evo-devo is fascinating!
42: I see you have that, have you gotten to it?
The opposite, alas. I read it so long ago that I barely remember.

It's nice to be in a group where people are reading poetry, and not just really dead poets either. I seldom read a poetry book from cover to cover, so I have been trying to note "selections from' on the my reading lists. I'll be watching :-)

>44 avaland: lois it's probably a Club Read influence up there in msg38. I joined in 2010 and things take time to percolate...

New and Selected Poems: Volume One by Mary Oliver, ©1992, acquired 2013

This omnibus of 142 poems includes new (early 1990s) poems plus selections from Oliver’s numerous published collections dating back to 1963.

Her voice over these 30 years is incredibly consistent -- curious, respectful -- but to me, a little flat in imagination and emotion. I did like how the repetition in this, snipped from another section of the same poem as >msg12 above, evokes the passing of time in a silent woods:

{…}
In the distance
the moon and the stars
give a little light.
In the distance
the owl cries out.

In the distance
the owl cries out.
The snake knows
these are the owl’s woods,
{…}

Oliver’s content is also consistent -- the peace and beauty of nature -- but here I noticed some evolution: more danger in the newest poems, and an attention toward not wasting life, not letting it slip away under-used or under-appreciated, for example this passage that I’ve seen as the epigraph in at least one book:

Tell me,
what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

If I read more by her, it will be her post-1992 works.

One of my favorites:

Alligator Poem
I knelt down
at the edge of the water,
and if the white birds standing
in the tops of the trees whistled any warning
I didn’t understand,
I drank up to the very moment it came
crashing toward me,
its tail flailing
like a bundle of swords,
slashing the grass,
and the inside of its cradle-shaped mouth
gaping,
and rimmed with teeth---
and that’s how I almost died
of foolishness
in beautiful Florida.
But I didn’t.
I leaped aside, and fell,
and it streamed past me, crushing everything in its path
as it swept down to the water
and threw itself in,
and, in the end,
this isn’t a poem about foolishness
but about how I rose from the ground
and saw the world as if for the second time,
the way it really is.
The water, that circle of shattered glass,
healed itself with a slow whisper
and lay back
with the back-lit light of polished steel,
and the birds, in the endless waterfalls of the trees,
shook open the snowy pleats of their wings, and drifted away,
while, for a keepsake, and to steady myself,
I reached out,
I picked the wild flowers from the grass around me---
blue stars
and blood-red trumpets
on long green stems---
for hours in my trembling hands they glittered
like fire.

Well I like Alligator poem too.

I loved the experience of reading The Sense of an Ending, sitting in a London cafe on a rainy and reflective Sunday afternoon in the fall. The quotes you posted took me back to the cafe and the book, so I thank you for that. I'll definitely re-read this sometime this year.

No controversy regarding Shubin's Your Inner Fish that I know of. Stephen J. Gould's books have some out-dated ideas. "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" is ancient history...I hope. Ernst Haeckel died in 1919.

Oh yes, more poetry in LT is good thing (re #38, 44, 45...and then #46). Thought-provoking alligator. I haven't yet quite found a way to grasp Mary Oliver...maybe that isn't the point, and hence my problem. I've read poems I liked, but not ones that make me want to read more. I tried a book back in 2009 (Evidence: Poems) but only made it part of the way in then returned it to the library.

>Darryl, what a perfect experience for that book! Did you sense that going in?

(>re Haeckel/Gould/etc, I'm also interested in some of the history.)

>Dan, I like Oliver's nature theme but am also not hooked. I'm interested in Philip Levine's themes in What Work Is so am going in cold (except for having enjoyed an essay by him) to that collection.

But some of the poems I read in literary journals just stop me ... I put down the book and sit, appreciating. I've kept a spreadsheet but so few of those poets have published collections yet. I do have Kate Lynn Hibbard's Sleeping Upside Down on order, and Jackie Kay's Fiere (prompted by poems on edwin's thread).

I have the same experience with lit journals. They are selective and each poem is different. Short stories too. I have had more success with the stories in journals than a short story collection by an author. Although many of those "short stories" are really just parts of novels in progress.

But, I don't have a spread sheet...what a great idea...

I've read Levine's The Simple Truth in 2009, but it went right by me. I think I would react differently now ??

MJ, if I understand your question correctly, yes, I was very aware of my surroundings when I read The Sense of an Ending. I can remember exactly what cafe I was in, the weather (moderately rainy, humid and windy) and where I was sitting in the cafe, as if I was just there this afternoon. There aren't any books I can think of offhand that I've read where the atmosphere in which I read it matched so well with the book itself.

>Darryl, the atmosphere in which I read it matched so well with the book itself
yes this is what I meant and wondered about conscious planning vs fortuity. I can imagine matching the London setting, trying to match book to mood ... but to experience it as hoped and then also to still be connecting on the overriding aspect of nostalgia, nice.

Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog by Kitty Burns Florey, ©2006, acquired 2012

A light, retro volume about the history of diagramming sentences: from its origins in the practices of “parsing” (identifying the functions of words in a sentence, e.g. article, noun, verb) and illustrating sentences via “balloons” --



-- to its replacement by “tree” diagrams.

There are dozens of examples (sentences diagrammed) that bring it all back if you once learned it, but otherwise there’s not much of a tutorial. My favorite section included little bios and diagrammed sentences from famous writers, among them Gertrude Stein; Henry James (see sample on baswood’s thread); Hemingway; Proust; Joyce Carol Oates; Jack Kerouac; Faulkner and others ... and John Updike, who makes me wonder if writers’ diagrammed sentences could serve as fingerprints:



Some (but not all) of the author’s research seems casual (she wonders and supposes), and she wanders into personal experience/opinion more than I wanted. But diagramming is terrific fun, and this book works very well overall.

I loved diagramming as a kid. My favorite part of grammar classes. Very soothing activity. I was definitely not in the majority in my opinion!

I've never seen sentence diagramming before. Believe it or not, we weren't taught grammar at school.

Nice review of Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog, MJ. I think I vaguely remember diagramming sentences in high school, but that would have been at least 35 years ago.

I already added this to my list of interesting books based on the discussion in Barry's thread, and I too found diagramming sentences fun. I think that was the extent of our grammar classes; I definitely learned much more grammar in French class than in English!

54: Oh, that looks like fun! My mother has talked nostalgically about diagramming sentences in the 1930s/40s, but it never entered my education in the 1960s70s.

When I learned diagramming it would have been the early 60s. It was probably on its way out then.

I didn't learn diagramming either (educated in the 1990s and 2000s), but I suspect I would not have enjoyed it or been overly good at it.

>56 letterpress: I'm intrigued. Was there a pedagogical reason for not teaching grammar, or did the teachers just not cover it?

I too learned much more grammar studying French than in my English classes. For instance, I don't remember parts of speech or verb tenses (other than past, present, future) being taught much in English class. I'm not sure why, other than that I went to a very rural, backward, horrible school.

Diagramming was as fun to me as puzzles. Florey writes that it still has a life in some ESL courses, private schools and homeschooling, the CIA (computer spyware for emails/chat rooms), and law (parsing contract language).

My time has been consumed by watching DVDs of Michael Apted’s long-running documentary film series, “Up” since I learned of it two weeks ago on a segment of CBS Sunday Morning. Back in 1964, a team selected 20 seven-year-olds of varied English demographics, particularly representing class status -- and particularly failing to anticipate the role of women; only four girls were included -- all with an eye toward envisioning England’s “shop steward and executive of the year 2000.” But by following 14 of those children via new documentary installments every seven years since, the project has grown much more personal.

I’ve watched the first six installments (ages 7 through 42) and been inspired and heartbroken in the various progressions from bright-eyed child to shy adolescent to stumbling young adult to persevering middle-ager. I wish it were a little more substantive, but I’ll borrow “49 Up” from the library and then probably watch “56 Up” in the art-film theater when it opens here in February.

MJ I feel that series has been part of my life. I remember seeing the second instalment in 1971 and have probably watched every 7 years since then. I think I was quite affected when I saw it in 1971 (aged 10), and it still has those hooks in me. Like you say, inspired and heartbroken by turns.

>61 casvelyn: No pedagogical reason that I'm aware of, I attended what I assume was a typical public high school during the 80s-90s and it simply wasn't a part of the English curriculum. And I dropped French as a subject (fool!) before grammar reared its head.

#64 I've seen an installment or two at some point too. I didn't realize there were so many and that they are on DVD. Interesting. I might have to see if the library has them.

I've never watched the "Up" series, but it does sound so fascinating I may have to start at the beginning, although Netlix list the combo 7 Up/14 Up as "very long wait."

>zeno I'm about of the age too, and I keep noticing how "old" they're looking! :)

>lisa, rebecca
fyi amazon offers "7 Up" from its Instant Video for 99 cents. It's by far the shortest; successive installments incorporate more and more recaps from previous installments and approach 2.5 hours. Otherwise I'm confident that libraries will have them.

I have always been confused by diagrams, I guess I don't think that way but Sister Bernadette's Barking dog looks fun, I might just be tempted to dip into that.

I also realised I did not know any grammar when I came to learn French.

I'm fascinated by these grammar diagrams - I'd never seen them until I came across them on another thread yesterday, even though we did lots of grammar (even in English) at school. I loved what we did at school so much that it turned me into a grammar geek, which has stood me in very good stead for learning other languages since.

Enjoyed reading your reviews; I'm looking forward to seeing what else you read.

>54 detailmuse: What a fascinating-sounding book. I, too, did diagramming of sentences in school in the early 60s. Like Lisa and Rebecca, I probably learned more grammer in French class though. I can't remember liking or disliking diagramming. Hmmm. It's something I haven't thought about until you brought it up.

I've participated in many internet discussions over the years on diagramming sentences (the participants were English speakers from all over the world). Most people haven't run into it in their education, and people seemed to either love it or hate it. There are internet sites that teach you how to do it if you want to give it a go . . .

>73 Nickelini: Joyce, I'm curious! Can you give any links? Otherwise I'll google it.

#74 - this would have been in the late 1990s/early 2000, so my memory is foggy. It may have been a university website--I thought it might have been Purdue's OWL lab (which is still an excellent resource), but I don't see anything there.

As for the discussion, it was a listserv for copyeditors, so I think you have to be a member to get into it.

Let me know if you find anything with Google.

>rachel et al -- while I was browsing online for a workbook etc. on diagramming, I found this interactive tutorial.

Thanks! I'll have a look when I'm not on my iPad as it needs Flash.

Two from the library:



This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life is a transcript of David Foster Wallace’s 2005 commencement address at Kenyon College.

It’s formatted one-sentence-per-page so as to stretch it into a tiny book, which had the effect on me of forcing each sentence to feel weighty and punchy, and all equally so. When I reread it archived online in essay format, I got a better feel for Wallace’s encouragement to move from self-centered to self-aware, from unconscious reactions to mindful actions. Still, compared to his other writings, this felt phoned-in.



The International Traveler's Guide to Avoiding Infections by Charles E. Davis MD

When a trip to India looked likely (it’s been postponed), I dipped into this as I prepared to visit the travel clinic for shots. Its general chapters about avoiding infectious diseases in developed and undeveloped countries are excellent. Its detailed chapters on each of dozens of bacterial, viral and parasitic infections are excellent for general clinicians and highly motivated/not-easily freaked lay travelers.

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout, ©2008, acquired 2009

A novel about big, prickly Olive Kitteridge, told via linked short stories that feature a small-town Maine setting with Olive as the main character, or more often a minor character, and occasionally a mere walk-on mentioned in a passing sentence. She’s as briny as her name in the first story, then provoked a laugh and, nearly, tears in the second and I was hooked. I read these stories over 4-5 days and they infected me -- several times since, I’ve thought something was real-life familiar only to recall it was from one of these stories.

I’ve saved this in my TBRs for years, suspecting it would be my favorite in what has become my favorite “genre” -- linked narratives. And it is high among those I’ve read -- listed here in approximate descending rating:

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
Day for Night by Frederick Reiken
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister
The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman
You Know When the Men Are Gone by Siobhan Fallon
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
Great House by Nicole Krauss
Mrs. Somebody Somebody by Tracy Winn
Gourmet Rhapsody by Muriel Barbery
Joy for Beginners by Erica Bauermeister
The Train of Small Mercies by David Rowell

Still to read, in my TBRs:
253 by Geoff Ryman
Building Stories by Chris Ware
Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned by Walter Mosley

Still to read, on my wishlist:
Dubliners by James Joyce
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Ideas of Heaven by Joan Silber
Lives of Girls and Women by Alice Munro
Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson

eta: for a touchstone

I have Olive Kitteridge on the back-burner, but if you rate it so highly, especially in relation to Let the Great World Spin (which I loved), I might have to bump it up the TBR list. Thanks!

Interesting look at the linked narrative genre. I'm not a huge fan myself, although I did like The Things They Carried and Cloud Atlas (although I guess I didn't think of that one as a linked narrative, per se). I never realized there were so many familiar-to-me authors who wrote in the style.

Like Dmsteyn I've had Olive Kitteridge for a while now, but your comments have made me want to get to it soon - thanks! And you've got me thinking about linked narrative as a genre...

Interesting list of linked narratives. I've only read The Things They Carried and Cloud Atlas and enjoyed them both. You do make Olive Kitteridge sound tempting.

I've added The International Traveler's Guide to Avoiding Infections to my wish list, mainly because I do occasionally care for kids in the hospital who acquire infectious illnesses while traveling abroad. Last week I took care of a young boy with malaria, who recently visited his parents' home village in Nigeria, and a 2nd generation Bangladeshi girl who we initially thought had contracted typhoid fever from a visit to see her relatives in that country, but had shigellosis instead. Does this book include signs and symptoms of these illnesses?

>80 dmsteyn:-83 I like linked narratives for their sideways and inadvertent glimpses of characters and setting. Olive Kitteridge perhaps did the best job of building a character arc and accumulating into a novel. That plus its lingering effects made me rate it highly. It is a bit simple though; I do like some complexity/ambiguity that makes me feel there’s more going on than I consciously realize.

>84 kidzdoc: darryl so interesting -- did the parents not think/know about precautions (since it was going “home” for them) or did the infections develop despite precautions?

I’ve returned the book to the library but recall malaria and typhoid fever for sure, and that the chapters on specific infections are thorough -- epidemiology, pathology, diagnosis/ treatment/ prevention. I read the rabies chapter because I’d forgotten (or never known) why the hydrophobia -- fascinating; freaked me out more than Stephen King’s Cujo. I’ve always felt a bit weak on infectious diseases and think I’ll acquire my own copy of this book -- interesting reading as long as I won’t be traveling soon :)

I loved Olive Kitteridge, MJ. I thought Strout created such a real world, and such compelling characters. I remember at one point Olive drove to the park, and turned left from the parking lot to walk to a bench that she had visited before, and getting hung up on that detail, because in my mind it was to the right. :-P It's a book that's really stayed with me, too.

>87 cabegley: chris I've just received Strout's new The Burgess Boys and keep reaching for it and then deciding I should take a few more days to clear my mind of Olive.

I have her Amy and Isabelle. I'm not sure why I haven't read it yet.

nice to have a favourite genre "linked narratives" especially one you have made up yourself and so can decide what goes in it.

Glad you enjoyed Olive K, I couldn't get into it when I read it. I love you list of linked narratives.

*small voice* I actively disliked Olive Kitteridge. *slinks off before I'm noticed*

>bas no credit to me, the linked stories tag took off a few years ago -- as I thought the style did, until being reminded of Dubliners and now thinking about The Canterbury Tales and The Decameron.

>dan, lisa welcome dissenters! Do you recall if it was the writing, the structure, the abrasive Olive? I actually liked her once (or twice) and otherwise found her interestingly complex.

I didn't like Olive Kitteridge either. I found Olive to be unlikeable, and I thought the other characters seemed like stereotypes and two-dimensional cardboard cutouts. I feel like I must have missed something, though. The book received great reviews and won a Pulitzer so other people must have seen something there that I missed.

Here's a link to my review, if you are interested.

Thanks for that list of linked narrative - I am a fan of the genre as well, so I am looking forward to some of those titles! Lives of Girls and Women is great - pick it up if you get the chance.

About Olive K. Not sure how reliable my memory is, but what I recall is that some characters just didn't work, and one story about a robbery just really seemed a fail. I didn't understand why it was even included in the book. But there were things I liked. And, it is very very subtle, which can be interesting if you catch it. Olive herself was a strange character to me.

>fuzzy, lisa, dan -- thanks for commenting. I'm reading Strout's follow-up now and, having read Olive Kitteridge so recently, I'm finding some themes/details familiar, almost re-used. Lisa you'll not be surprised to hear one of them is mothers, and I read somewhere (can't remember where, altho googling it points me to The Washington Post) that Strout grew up socially/culturally isolated and her mother, "with whom Strout still has 'an intense and complicated relationship' -- became her world."

>cait, you nudged Lives of Girls and Women up the wishlist, I'm eager to finally read Munro in addition to being linked stories.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion, ©1968, acquired 2011

This is my third by Didion, after both of her memoirs, The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights, made me eager to read more by her. It’s a collection of 20 turbulent essays -- mostly social commentary but some personal, and all personally felt -- published in various magazines in the mid-1960s. Much of the commentary remains relevant; even many of the details feel current -- for example, these opening lines of the long title essay, set during Haight-Ashbury’s 1967 summer of love:

The center was not holding. It was a country of bankruptcy notices and public-auction announcements and commonplace reports of casual killings and misplaced children and abandoned homes and vandals who misspelled even the four-letter words they scrawled. It was a country in which families routinely disappeared, trailing bad checks and repossession papers.

I enjoyed most of these essays, where Didion seems like a naturalist in close observation; she infuses more so than reports and eschews transitions so that I suddenly realized things that hadn’t been written. It’s been long enough since I read them to recognize a few that still pop up as especially memorable, among them the piece about Haight-Ashbury; one about infidelity and murder outside Los Angeles; another about becoming enamored of John Wayne and forever after dreaming that a man would, as Wayne did in a film, “build her a house ‘at the bend in the river where the cottonwoods grow’ ”; and one about the psychological effects of the Santa Ana and other foehn winds that compels me to read more on the phenomenon.

I’ve always been struck that Didion is about the size of a mosquito, and here I was interested to read her take on the matter:

My only advantage as a reporter is that I am so physically small, so temperamentally unobtrusive, and so neurotically inarticulate that people tend to forget that my presence runs counter to their best interests. And it always does.

Yeah, don’t let appearances fool you, Didion is brave and passionate and compelling, and it occurs to me that one of the essays, “On Self-respect,” details the stitching behind her strength of character. And she’s shockingly wise:

I remember one day {…} we both had hangovers {…} and we walked to a Spanish restaurant and drank Bloody Marys and gazpacho until we felt better. I was not then guilt-ridden about spending afternoons that way, because I still had all the afternoons in the world.

Are you kidding me? That wasn’t written by today’s septuagenarian Didion looking back; that's her at age 32. I look forward to reading more, next up probably The White Album.

Great review of Slouching Towards Bethlehem, MJ. I have that as part of her collected nonfiction, We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live, which I am anxious to dive into.

My only advantage as a reporter is that I am so physically small, so temperamentally unobtrusive, and so neurotically inarticulate that people tend to forget that my presence runs counter to their best interests. And it always does.

Love that quote from Didion in your excellent review of Slouching towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion

Great review of Slouching towards Bethlehem! I have yet to read any Didion, but I look forward to doing so.

That's it I'm reading something by Didion next. Great Review!

Great review of Slouching Toward Bethlehem, MJ!

Great review. Everyone should read everything by Didion and then reread. She never loses her perspective.

Everyone should read everything by Didion and then reread.

Well, those are some marching orders, Sassy!

Still laughing, rebecca! That was kind of bold...I must be all better!

Thanks everyone! LOL sassy/rebecca and *twilight zone music* while I was adding another by Didion to my shopping cart I decided instead to reread Slouching! There’s much atmosphere and understatement; I think it’ll hold up so well to a reread.

Probably I should start with the Didion I already own, although I read Play It As It Lays so long ago I don't remember much of it, and I don't think I'm up to reading The Year of Magical Thinking. I guess you would recommend Slouching Towards Bethlehem as a good place to start if I were to buy something new.

>rebecca yes her memoirs draw you in emotionally ... watching her try to process grief through her intellect and ending up emotionally naked.

The Didions I’ve read I've rated in a tight trio of 4 and 4.5 stars, with just a slight ranking:

Blue Nights -- my favorite; read very soon after my mother’s death and was incredibly comforting

The Year of Magical Thinking -- fascinated to watch her try to use her thinking to change reality; may have rated this slightly lower because it was a library copy and (it’s silly but) I don’t “bond” quite as well with a book I don’t own

Slouching Towards Bethlehem -- interesting, atmospheric, personally felt essays; there’s good and bad to them being ~50 years old; she’s amazingly evocative about place, mostly California but also New York City (including why she leaves it to return to CA)

eta: Sassy: would love to know your recommendations about Didion's works

Ahhh yes, another Didion discussion.

99> ...mostly social commentary but some personal, and all personally felt... -- that line's Didionesque!

I'm not old enough to remember the Sixties. Wasn't even born when the Summer of Love exploded on the Haight. But her essay takes me there so much more vividly (though she uses words so sparingly) than all the accumulated days of romanticized images I've watched of that era in documentaries over the years. What an abyss of delusion, what haunting commentary, that ending.

109> a funny review of that despondence-inducing novel, Play it as it Lays.

I was old enough to wish I was just enough older to be able to do all those 60s things! Probably am glad I didn't (mostly).

Just want to say I love this thread.

>mk thanks!

>rebecca me too, except the only thing that really attracted me is LSD and I'm just too scaredy.

>EF, Didion's social commentary reminded me more than once of David Foster Wallace. I was going to ask for recommendations for more such writers but see the LT tag is pretty robust here, and your use of it gives me plenty to peruse.

Great review of the Didion! I've been meaning to read something by her after seeing all the praise for The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights. I had a recommendation for Play it as it Lays from somewhere else, will have to consider Slouching Towards Bethlehem no as well.

Bring back the 1960's

I was too young to enjoy them then, and am probably too old to enjoy them now!

On a more serious note, one of the things I most liked about the 60s, even as a teenager, was that we believed that we could change things. Watergate, among other things, did away with that, but I see young people now having more of a belief that they can change things -- and wanting to -- than has been true for a long time. It gives me hope!

114> Glad that tag has been helpful.

fwiw, several of Didion's essays are available at The Electric Typewriter -- at least the ones w/out broken links. Twenty of DFWs are there too, assuming all the links are still good.

& Scriptor Press has a pdf of "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" available here.

>110 detailmuse: In addition to the books you mention, I would suggest After Henry, Salvador which stretch just reviewed and Miami for the full impact of her writing. The White Album shows an early Didion and is excellent, but much more rooted in time and place, so may not be one to start with.

Taking my own advice in >105 SassyLassy:, last week I ordered a copy of Salvador to reread. Unfortunately, when I was on a huge Didion kick, most of my reading was from the library and I have very few of her books in the house. That always seems to happen with books that made a big impression. One of these days I will find a good copy of Ponchaud's L'année Zéro.

Yesterday, I had everyone’s dream job: getting paid to read! Actually, it was jury-pool duty, and just $17.20 for the day, half of which went to gas. But I sat with two languishing books and made good progress. The people-watching was also excellent -- an extremely orderly group of ~750pp in the morning, lots of coughing after lunch (reflux?? food allergies??), and then a less-orderly race to get out of the parking garage at the end of the day.

>DieF (and Rebecca and Freeque) re: Play It As It Lays, now I'm growing curious about what Didion's fiction may be like. Surely atmospheric and moody.

>thanks Sassy, After Henry appeals much like The White Album (her perspectives on events familiar to me), but more contemporary; onto the wishlist.

#120 - I always find the lawyers very distracting when trying to read during jury duty.

So here is the Didion review Kevin was posting about. Good stuff, and conversation.

#111/114/118 - OK, I give. What tag?...ohhhh..."social commentary"...slow brain today.

120: I had everyone’s dream job: getting paid to read! Actually, it was jury-pool duty
When I had jury duty a couple years ago, I was surprised at how many people were _not_ reading.

I'm constantly surprised in waiting rooms of one sort or another, by the number of people content to just stare into space.

I flew home from London some months after 9/11 and was nervous about one guy in the boarding area because he was getting on an 8-hour flight with nothing to read :(

Washington Schlepped Here by Christopher Buckley, audiobook read by Grover Gardner, ©2003, acquired 2012

A guide to Washington, DC -- a mix of historical anecdotes/trivia and personal experience -- organized into walking tours around the typical buildings, museums, monuments/memorials and Arlington National Cemetery.

It’s okay. It’s not useful as an actual walking tour, and the humor is corny/snarky enough that I was sometimes unsure what was fact vs. joke. And it’s not a glimpse of life in contemporary DC -- for that, I think I’ll read Edward Jones’s collection of stories, Lost in the City.

The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout, ©2013, acquired 2013

This is the story of a teenage boy who throws a pig’s head through a window into the mosque of Somali immigrants during Ramadan prayers.

Actually, that’s the backdrop; as the title suggests, the main story is of the Burgess Boys, two middle-aged, New York City brothers -- one a bullying corporate attorney with a fine family; one a divorced, struggling legal aid attorney -- who revisit their relationship and the small-town Maine of their childhoods to support their sister and nephew as the boy’s initial local troubles escalate into a federal charge of hate crime.

The novel appears to have been inspired by an actual 2006 incident, and has some good material about the secondary wave of Somali migration from southern U.S. states to more affordable areas of lower crime like Maine. I hate authorial preaching and was pleased that Strout conveys her messages pretty well through story here, not character puppetry.

It’s interesting, very readable; I liked it and keep thinking about bits of it, but am neutral about reading more by Strout. I read it just after finally reading Olive Kitteridge and found so much familiar territory that I wager however you felt about that you’ll feel the same about this. There’s a highly unlikeable main character and some frustrating minor ones; most grow semi-sympathetic. It’s not a collection of linked stories but it’s close -- the alternating narratives of half a dozen characters. And while ex-spouses soften into friends by midlife, dead mothers remain hazily damaging.

I loved Olive Kitteridge so on your recommendation I will be on the lookout for The Burgess Boys.

Thank you,

Robert

#124 I flew home from London some months after 9/11 and was nervous about one guy in the boarding area because he was getting on an 8-hour flight with nothing to read :(

Very funny! I've taken a lot of flights lately, and I see more people reading on their e-readers or laptops than reading books. but on the NYC subway you still see a lot of people reading real books. I'm always amazed at the people waiting in line at the post office with nothing to read.

oh...I've had Edward Jones's Lost in the City for years...Why haven't I read it yet? (My edition of The Known World had one story, something about pigeons that was just wonderfully done.)

You haven't encouraged me to read The Burgess Boys... : )
(but I'm really happy to have read your review of the ARC. Has the book even been released yet?)

>The Burgess Boys publishes March 26.

>something about pigeons {...} wonderfully done
Dan, hopefully that will replace the pigeon uppermost in my mind -- from Pigeon English last year, though I still smile when I think of Darryl's bottom-line on that story's bird as "annoying and weird."

I see the book by Temple Grandin in your 'Currently Reading' list. I look forward to your review. The HBO movie starring Clare Danes as Temple Grandin was excellent.

Temple Grandin is here on the Montana State campus speaking today - brought in by the college of agriculture. I am going to miss it but would love to have seen her!

Just popping in to see what you've been reading - always good stuff.

Hi Lois and thanks! Welcome nana and louie -- I also thought the film of Grandin was excellent. I'd like to be in her audience. Her new book is about the recent science and politics of autism and (always) advocacy and support.

Louis -- I see Nelson DeMilles in your library! I've enjoyed many many of his novels.

I discovered DeMille through my mother and have enjoyed the ones I read so far. The Charm School was an interesting look at Americans in Russia during the Cold War - interesting and at times rather frightening.

The only DeMille I ever read was The Charm School and I read it many, many years ago when I read a lot more mysteries and thrillers than I do now. I seem to recall finding it un-put-downable, but a little on the manipulative side.

>louie and rebecca -- my first (and favorite) by DeMille was The General's Daughter (riveting!), then the John Corey series beginning with Plum Island. He writes very long (recently he’s gotten bloated, in my opinion) but there’s good stuff about the harsh political underbelly (cold war, mafia, terrorism). Which is definitely a contrast to his wise-ass/tender-underbelly alpha-male narrators. About the manipulation, I do think he has an agenda.

eta: last sentence

Plum Island was my first DeMille and it's been so long I"d lile to read it again sometime.

The Universe Within: Discovering the Common History of Rocks, Planets, and People by Neil Shubin, ©2013, acquired arc 2012

As Shubin traced the 3.5-billion-year history of evolutionary biology in Your Inner Fish, here he traces the ~14-billion-year history of ... evolutionary cosmology? ... from the big bang and coalescence of our solar system, through the separation of Earth’s crust into continents that created the oceans which released oxygen, to the evolution of life as we know it, practically to the point in time of reading this LibraryThing screen today. It’s a science ballet whose cast includes almost every scientific specialty, plus science history and biography and personal experience. And it’s fascinating.

I remember how gobsmacked I was when I learned that the material of our bodies originated in stars, and I felt a dozen similar occasions of awe here while reading about the right-place-right-time fortuitousness of life on Earth. For example, this from the long-ago:

Since {a mammalian fetus} receives all of its oxygen from the mother, there needs to be a way that oxygen can be transferred from the mother’s blood. The transfer is facilitated by a steep gradient between the concentration of oxygen in the maternal blood and that of the fetus: under these conditions, oxygen will travel into the fetus. Importantly, the oxygen content of the mother’s blood has to be sufficiently high to enable this transfer in the first place. This constraint means that mammals with a placenta do not easily develop above fifteen thousand feet altitude. Tellingly, the oxygen {above fifteen thousand feet} is equivalent to that in the atmosphere at sea level 200 million years ago, before the Atlantic Ocean formed {and increased atmospheric oxygen, making mammalian life possible}.

and this, about evolution right now:

In the developed world {…} most evolutionary pressure is on aspects of fertility: when we have offspring and how many we have. In the developing world things are very different: passing on one’s genes is about mortality, particularly that of children. In one world, evolutionary success is derived from the age at which people have babies; in the other, such success is derived from survival itself. Socioeconomic, cultural, and technological differences mediate the ways evolution acts in human populations.

Shubin’s scope is enormous and he covers quite a bit of it in ~200 pages of simple, captivating language; my only quibble is a bit of disorganization -- maybe the result of the survey nature of the material -- that made it difficult for me to neatly file the info into memory. But he whets the appetite for more, which for me will be David Christian's Maps of Time.

Thanks for this review; it reminds me that I wanted to get this book!

I now regret almost buying this book the other day. It sounds fantastic.

Excellent review of The Universe within, Neil Shubin

I'm glad to see such a favorable review of The Universe Within, as it's currently sitting on my TBR Pile. I'm not too surprised, though, because I thought Your Inner Fish was just fantastic. I remember that I kept pausing in my reading to do stuff like staring in wonder at my own hands. :)

The Universe Within sounds fascinating. I will be looking for it.

" But he whets the appetite for more, which for me will be David Christian's Maps of Time."

Me too, but I've only read your review (and one other around CR). Great review and great quotes.

Apologies for my LT equivalent of dine-and-dash :( and glad to see the enthusiasm for Shubin’s book, where he’s quite enthusiastic, too. I vacillate between 4 and 4.5 stars, I think due to its survey nature -- or more accurately its “telescoping” nature, where he zooms in on several aspects and speeds past others. One he focused on was meteors/asteroids and the theory that an asteroid collision with earth tilted earth's axis and loosed enough debris to coalesce into our moon ... which made last month’s asteroid-watch and the surprise meteor explosion over Russia extra interesting.

Catching up, MJ, and sorry I missed some of the earlier discussions. I want to add both Joan Didion and Nelson DeMille to my list of authors to try. Two very different writers to suit different moods. Neil Shuban sounds fascinating too.

>Hi Lisa, if you get to DeMille feel free to ask for recommendations. He's written a bunch and I've liked some much more than others.

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, ©2012, acquired 2012

Author’s Note
This is not so much an author’s note as an author’s reminder of what was printed in small type a few pages ago: This book is a work of fiction. I made it up. Neither novels nor their readers benefit from attempts to divine whether any facts hide inside a story. Such efforts attack the very idea that made-up stories can matter, which is sort of the foundational assumption of our species. I appreciate your cooperation in this matter.

This is a love story involving teens who have cancer -- Hazel, whose prognosis is terminal; her friend, Isaac, whose prognosis is disability (he’s about to lose his second eye to cancer); and Isaac’s buddy, Gus, whose prognosis is good -- and the author’s note above is less a clarification that it’s a fictitious love story and more a priming for a subplot dear to many readers’ hearts: pursuing an author to find out what else happened to the characters “off the page.”

It’s a good book -- a touching story and adequately plotted, with a bit of adventure and told in a surprisingly (and perhaps unbelievably) wise teen narrative voice. It’s a very good book, even, and headed for the big screen. But for me, it’s not great -- it’s no The Book Thief, which is my 5-star YA bar to meet. It’s a little too much for young-adult readers, rather than about young adults, or for parents of teens affected by cancer. The book gets 4 stars, though my reaction is meh.

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle, ©1962, acquired 2012

I finally read this 1960s children’s classic and enjoyed it despite not liking sci-fi/fantasy and not being in its audience of child/tween readers (which makes me less forgiving of its unmotivated plot twists). I might have loved it as a kid. It’s imaginative and silly, with aspects (that mostly don’t become "Lessons") of science; a family facing difficulty; misfits and the value of odd people; a girl growing in self-confidence; a first romance; and the possibility that love can overcome both individual bad behavior and societal evil. And it has things I suspect later writers appropriated, e.g. I’d like to ask the writers of the TV show, Lost, if this is where they got the idea for their “smoke monster.”

National Geographic Guide to Scenic Highways and Byways, 4th Edition, copy;2013, acquired 2013

Roads web this country in a labyrinth of possibilities.

That sentence above -- from the book’s introduction -- how inspiring!! But from there on, the inspiration was only theoretical, and the closest I can come to figuring out why is that the material is just too dry ... there’s no awe in it.

Visually, this is a beautiful take-along guidebook (not a coffee-table book), the text of its smooth, glossy pages generously accented with full-color photos. It’s organized into ten regional sections, each section beginning with an excellent at-a-glance map where the region’s drives are drawn in, named, and accompanied by page-references to their descriptions. Those description each include a small, detailed map and driving directions plus points of interest along the way (typically historic, cultural or natural sites rather than entertainment, dining or lodging), including contact info like phone numbers and websites.

Curiously, almost every map is rotated to fit the layout of the page, rather than the layout fit to the logical orientation of the map. There’s always a compass indicator of north, but it’s still disorienting to see, for example, the east-west (horizontal) drive along the southern shores of Lakes Erie and Ontario presented as a vertical route (with an “N” compass pointing off to the left).

And contrary to the back cover’s promise of “vivid descriptions,” the text felt workmanlike. I’ve driven some of these drives and found them to be phenomenal, but this book did nothing to recall that awe. I sometimes couldn’t decipher what was the cohesive theme of a drive. In the end, I’d probably drive quite a few of them if I were in their areas, and the information here would elevate my appreciation of the routes. But this book doesn’t inspire me to seek out any of them.

Integrative Wellness Rules: A Simple Guide to Healthy Living by Jim Nicolai, ©2013, acquired 2013

In one frame of mind, I’d characterize this book as fluff -- very short passages, simply written, more reminders than new information, with enormous amounts of white space -- that banks off Dr. Andrew Weil’s reputation and promotes his line of dietary supplements and Integrative Wellness program at the Miraval Resort and Spa.

But in another frame of mind, I’d characterize it as a meditation that calms and inspires. Dr. Jim Nicolai (the medical director at Weil’s program at Miraval) includes ~50 passages about self-improvement, organized around sections on motivation, emotions and stress, spirituality, nutrition, and fitness. The content is extremely basic, the writing is simple and conversational, and there’s an earnestness that feels like Nicolai really wants to help.

Again, it’s more reminder than new material, but that reminding is probably what makes it feel meditative. And I found a few takeaways, one being for use when I’m stuck: “What’s the next right thing to do?” Another suggests amending the SMART method of goal-setting (where goals should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely) into SMART-TV, where the addition of “Transformational Vocabulary” turns the goal from obligation into excitement. Nicolai recommends doing this by appending goals with something like, “...while thoroughly enjoying the process!” That hit home because I already have my vocabulary, drawn from the TV series Mad Men, where Don Draper rallies the staff during an especially dire corporate phase by asserting that the firm will get beyond the set-back, and will succeed, and the process will be invigorating!

I’ve been swamped, involved in some local elections. Coming in the next day or two: a few books I'm more excited about!

My, you've been busy.

I loved A Wrinkle in Time when I read it as a child, and don't dare read it again in case I don't love it anymore!

"Enjoying the process" or even "invigorating" sound much more fun than the phrase used in my family, namely that something would be a "character-builder"! But there's something about all that earnestness that would probably make me tear my hair out.

>151 detailmuse: One of the best treatments of great American roads is Blue Highways by William Least Heat Moon. It's much more about the love of the drive and the people he met along the way than about the actual routes, but ever since reading it some time ago, I've been a blue highways kind of driver. It might give you some of that awe.

>155 rebeccanyc: "Builds character" or "it's good for you" had a certain warning directness that let you know what you were in for!

>152 detailmuse: Reading about SMART goals though makes me wonder if goals should either be relevant or timely as these adjectives only suit the person who is reacting to the goals you set. Many of the most ambitious goals are not "timely" at all.
"Invigorating"... if someone said this at work, I would be afraid we were going for a run or diving into cold water. Most invigorating things don't need a process. I don't think this book would be very meditative for me... I suspect my blood pressure would climb to dangerous levels :)
That said, I enjoyed your review.

haha I'm familiar with "character builder" too! But I take things so seriously and a change of vocabulary does appeal. As do some psychology/spirituality/self-help books, but I was not in the intended audience for this one.

Oh William Least Heat Moon! Thank you for mentioning Blue Highways!

eta: argh. duplicate post.

Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction by Tracy Kidder / Richard Todd, ©2013, acquired arc 2012

During the past three decades American culture has become louder, faster, more disjointed. For immediacy of effect, writers can’t compete with popular music or action movies, cable network news or the multiplying forms of instant messaging. We think that writers shouldn’t try, that there is no need to try. Writing remains the best route we know toward clarity of thought and feeling.

Amen! (However: that’s like newspaper’s argument against radio and television -- that depth beats immediacy -- and as generations are abandoning newspaper’s depth, so I fear they will abandon writing’s clarity.)

Anyway, Good Prose is a combination memoir + lessons-learned about writing and editing nonfiction (narratives, essays and memoirs), written by a writer and his long-time editor. It covers narrative elements (story, characters, point of view, setting, structure); style (from dense journalese to wandering vernacular); truth vs. fact (and fact vs. manipulation); art vs. commercial success; and re-writing/being edited. It’s like a broader, deeper version of the “A Conversation with Author X” programs held at auditoriums and book fests and is one of the better books “on writing” for readers and beginning writers. Plus, its discussions of Kidder’s (and others’) books increased my wishlist by about ten.

I marked dozens of passages, here are several:

To write is to talk to strangers. You want them to trust you. You might well begin by trusting them -- by imagining for the reader an intelligence at least equal to the intelligence you imagine for yourself.

Point of view is the place from which a writer listens in and watches. {...It’s} a place to stand, but more than that, a way to think and feel. {...} Against a large background, “I” can provide human scale. {...} the smaller the canvas, the more intrusive the first person is likely to be.

Most memoirists, struggling for accuracy, would endorse this rough code of conduct: faithfulness to fact defined as faithfulness to one’s own memories. {But} like the act of remembering, the act of writing your own story inevitably distorts, if only by creating form where disorder reigns. {...} That’s one point of a story: to replace confusion with sense. The impulse of memoir is itself a fictive impulse.

With good writing the reader enjoys a doubleness of experience, succumbing to the story or the ideas while also enjoying the writer’s artfulness.

I always wince when a reviewer says, “This book needed an editor.” Often it had an editor, but the writer prevailed. Sometimes a book arrives at an editor’s desk too late for the editor to make a substantial difference.

The kind of rewriting one learns, or used to learn, in high school or in a college freshman composition class, is a chore that mainly involves tinkering -- moving sentences and paragraphs around, prettying up a phrase, crossing out words and substituting better ones. {...But there’s a} second kind, from figuring out the essential thing you’re trying to do and looking for better ways to tell your story.

Slamming Open the Door by Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno, ©2009, acquired 2013, discovered on alphaorder’s thread.

This collection of 41 poems forms a full narrative arc about Bonanno’s loss of her adult daughter to murder. It’s extraordinarily accessible (could almost be prose vignettes) and emotionally brutal (maybe too brutal for mothers in grief, but recommended for every friend/relative of one).

TEA TIME

Losing your daughter,
losing your daughter to murder,
requires adjustment.

Like, say,
you are sipping tea
and someone
reaches over and
fantastically yanks
your heart from your chest

and it drops, pumping,
onto the table
and there it is,
there is the matter,
your whole heart,
that brilliant engine,

that tuber,
vulgar, purple,
red

and you simply don’t die,
you see;
you blanch,
and your brain beats on
and then, and then,

invariably,
you reach down
to straighten a spoon.

Great reviews, and I'm tempted by the Tracy Kidder. (I am guilty of saying that a book could have used an editor!)

Yes, I'm tempted by that book too. Not that I need another book on writing. Or any book, for that matter. Never mind.

Love the quotes from Good Prose: The art of nonfiction The book almost sells itself

Thanks all -- it's a bit loose and seems nostalgic as though their careers are over; but it's a pleasant read.

The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum by Temple Grandin / Richard Panek, ©2013, review copy acquired 2013

There’s a long tradition in medicine where the diseases start out in psychiatry and eventually they move into neurology -- epilepsy, for example. And now autism is joining that tradition. At long last, autism is yielding its secrets to the scrutiny of hard science, thanks to {neuroimaging and genetics}.

Writing (with co-author Panek) as a sort of docent, Grandin leads the reader through the history -- the psychology/ sociology/ politics -- of autism, from its introduction in 1943 by physician Leo Kanner to its inclusion in 1980’s DSM-III and expansion into a spectrum by 1994’s DSM-IV. She next explores the current science, through research studies and her own experiences as a research subject. Then she revisits Thinking in Pictures and its discussion of visual thinking vs. verbal thinking, and expands that visual thinking into two distinct subtypes -- object thinkers and pattern thinkers -- and suggests jobs that fit each of the three types of thinking. Overall, there’s some interesting anatomy, brain imaging and genetics, but not a lot of science yet, and the text on all of this uses a lot of words to get to the point.

But the biggest aspect of the book is Grandin's trove of support and advocacy for autistic persons (particularly high-functioning) and parents, schools and workplaces. Her caution against inferring autistics’ internal goings-on (“the thinking self”) from external behaviors (“the acting self”) reminded me of extroverts who do the same, and make judgments, about the interior world of introverts. She urges a respect of autistic limitations but a focus on strengths; she routinely encounters kids and parents who talk only about Asperger’s, and respond with blank looks when she asks about their talents, hobbies and favorite subjects -- which might be developed into careers. (She offers online sites to develop these interests, e.g. Khan Academy, Coursera; Udacity; edX; and even Asperger-oriented employers like Aspiritech.)

Like Gladwell in Outliers (where Talent + 10,000 hours of work = Success), Grandin says Nature + Nurture = Success applies to autistic brains, too:

I took what nature gave me, and I nurtured the heck out of it.

Interesting review, and interesting author and topic.

MJ, I know we mentioned Temple Grandin back in posts around #134. I really think that she is quite inspiring. The HBO movie with Claire Danes was so well done. Your review is quite interesting. Thank you!

Colleen

>Rebecca and Colleen, I'm fascinated by the topic -- I have an autism novel (Edward Adrift) to read very soon and two Asperger's memoirs (Born on a Blue Day and Send in the Idiots) in my TBRs. And I too have a lot of respect for Grandin. (And wanted to do so much better by her in that review but it took weeks to get even those paragraphs above; April has just not been my month for reading OR writing!! /end whine)

A public declaration (to increase the odds that these will be the next five books I read or abandon):

✔ Big Brother by Lionel Shriver (I'm halfway through and it's a snore)
✔ Edward Adrift by Craig Lancaster
✔ Dirt Work: An Education in the Woods by Christine Byl
✔ Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think by Mayer-Schonberger / Cukier
✔ Pieces of Light: How the New Science of Memory Illuminates the Stories We Tell About Our Pasts by Charles Fernyhough

eta check marks; this "public declaration" worked!

oooh oooh I just got Dirt Work: An education in the woods from the library. Yahoo

Hm, I've been looking at Good Prose at work for awhile now, and your review has bumped it up a bit on my TBR pile. Sounds like an interesting work (though to be fair all of Kidder's that I've read to date is). The Autistic Brain also sounds fascinating - do you think it's an OK starting point for Temple Grandin's books, or should I start with something else?

Big Data is on my "thinking about it" mental list, so I'll be interested in what you think about it. Also will be interested in your take on Pieces of Light.

172 - thinking about it mental list? Perhaps next question should be about the names of our lists and shelves! We've been having fun with that lately!

That is a good idea for an Avid Reader question, Merrikay. I'll keep it in mind for when it's time for a more light-hearted question!

>170 mkboylan: Merrikay your enthusiasm is contagious! So I’ve read the first ~20 pages of Dirt Work and think it might be a perfect fit right now.

>171 bell7: Mary I think you must read Thinking in Pictures (or watch the excellent film, titled “Temple Grandin,” with Claire Danes) before reading The Autistic Brain -- to get a sense of autism; of Grandin (her upbringing, her work, and her incredible ability to take care of her needs); and of visual thinking (in fact, the film has the advantage of presenting a visual interpretation of that visual thinking).

And I remember you loving The Paris Review Interviews so I think you’d enjoy Kidder’s book.

>“thinking about it list” -- I guess I have that too but didn’t know it till you wrote it!
And omg the Avid Reader thread is another that I’m eager to get caught up on

Nice review of The Autistic Brain. I've only read one book by Grandin, but I really enjoyed it. I find books about autism and other developmental / psychological disabilities fascinating. We need to understand that just because we look at the world in a certain way doesn't mean that it's the only right way to look at it!

Thanks for posting Tea Time from Slamming Open the Door, MJ. Very powerful.

>176 The_Hibernator: Rachel We need to understand that just because we look at the world in a certain way doesn't mean that it's the only right way to look at it!

It's ironic because Grandin needed to understand that too! She writes that her further exploration of visual thinking was prompted by reading an early Amazon review of Thinking in Pictures that said Grandin's experience is not the only experience. She was obsessed by it and kept it in mind for years as she came across isolated bits and finally some research that supported autistics indeed do think in several different ways.

>177 Linda92007: Linda thanks; the collection is riveting.

>175 detailmuse: Thanks for the advice! I'll add the books to my list. :)
And yes, I read The Paris Review Interviews a couple of years ago and really enjoyed them, so I'm glad to know that Good Prose should be enjoyable too.

Did you ever finish Dirt Work an education in the woods? I'm about half way through and will finish, but disappointed.

>lol Merrikay just finished it now. (It's always a pleasurable little ritual to come over to LT and update the book entry!) I too was disappointed and would not have finished but I owe a review. It does not get different or better from where you are now. I'm so glad to read your comment! -- can't believe it's a starred review at Publisher's Weekly.

Oh well! It was just weird. Some good parts and then descriptions of tools! It did NOT flow well at all.

Agree :) it pretty much lay there. I did like the tool passages, though; more creative than any other aspect of the book.

Dirt Work: An Education in the Woods by Christine Byl, ©2013, arc acquired 2013

To paraphrase another beloved American nature writer, two roads diverged, and I, I left school for work in Montana and Alaska and got myself an education anyway. {…} I saw how place becomes as much a part of you as idea or experience; how inner shifts happen knee-deep in a hole. And inner shifts predict outer ones.

It’s place, not story or characters, that Byl puts at the heart of her book, which combines an homage to nature and tools with a memoir of her traildog (“a laborer who works in the woods maintaining, repairing, building, and designing trails”) years in Montana’s Glacier National Park, Alaska’s Cordova Forest Service, and Alaska’s Denali National Park. She parses her experience into six chapters, each opening with a profile of a tool -- axe; rock bar (crowbar/fulcrum); chainsaw; boat; skid steer (Bobcat earthmover); and shovel -- that features literally and thematically in the chapter. (Of course, nominative determinism would say her attraction to tools is no accident; the Americanized version of the Dutch word for “axe” is, after all, “byl.”)

I love explorations of nature and explorations of workplace and I anticipated loving this memoir. But while Byl is likeable, her experiences just aren’t new or interesting and the writing is workmanlike -- flat and unevocative. The only glimpses of insight and originality I encountered were in those riffs on tools and in Byl’s occasional tendency toward lists -- “What tourists say to a female traildog”; “What {traildogs} want to say to tourists”; what she’ll miss about working on trails -- that develop into something, often funny. I’m fresh enough from reading Tracy Kidder’s memoir, Good Prose, that a line still echoes: “With good writing the reader enjoys a doubleness of experience, succumbing to the story or the ideas while also enjoying the writer’s artfulness.” Here, I felt neither.

Big Brother by Lionel Shriver, ©2013, arc acquired 2013

Food is by nature elusive. More concept than substance, {...} food is the idea of satisfaction, far more powerful than satisfaction itself.

Forty-year-old Pandora Halfdanarson is a business entrepreneur, a wife and step-mother, middle child of ‘70s sitcom star Travis Appaloosa ... and younger sister to New York jazz pianist Edison, whose life has collapsed to rock-bottom under the ~400-pound weight of obesity. When Edison’s last friend kicks him out, Pandora welcomes him to her home in Iowa, and Shriver begins an exploration of obesity and family, particularly marriage and sibling relationships.

I read Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin and found it riveting. It was about outward-facing violence -- the evolution of a school shooter -- whereas here the look is inward -- the evolution of self-destructive habits. The novels feel remarkably similar in terms of characters (including angry unlikeables) and especially in style -- the ruminative narrative here could turn into the epistolary narrative of Kevin with only the addition of, “Dear...” to begin each chapter. But just as there’s more drama with extroverts than introverts, and with violence to others vs. lack of self-care, so this novel is quieter. Boring even came to mind over the first half, which is mostly set-up. Yet the pages fly ... to an ending that’s perhaps better than the whole book.

Edison{'s} my family, the sole blood relative whom I clearly and cleanly love. This one attachment distilled all the loyalty that most people dilute across a larger clan into a devotion with the intensity of tamarind.

The sibling relationship and obesity are fresh aspects in this novel, and good reasons to consider reading it.

Enticing review of Big Brother, which explores a subject that isn't really covered much in literature. I happened to read the review of this in The Economist today, and thought it sounded interesting, a thought that your review has cemented.

so this novel is quieter. I usually like quieter and your review makes this one sound very interesting How did he get away with naming his novel Big Brother, I wonder if this was a cynical attempt to boost book sales.

>dewald I would read another by Shriver, but the content would have to interest me because her books have a lot of internal monologue. Good writing I guess; I don't find it tedious.

>bas do you mean Big Brother as in government? haha first know that she gets away with a first name of Lionel. I don't recall any government, only big as in older and obese.

>186 detailmuse: Ha! My first reaction too when seeing the title was to think of 1984's Big Brother. Sounds like a very interesting book. What a fitting cover too. Your review has me interested ....

I'm going for Big Brother.

I'll be interested to read reviews if some of you get to the book. Especially your thoughts about the ending, which I'm 2/3 for and 1/3 against.

No, Big Brother is a reality TV show in England that is incredibly! successful http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Brother_(UK)

Oh of course! It's big here, too, but I haven't watched.

Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think by Viktor Mayer-Schonberger/Kenneth Cukier, ©2013, arc acquired 2013

{B}ig data is about three major shifts of mindset that are interlinked and hence reinforce one another. The first is the ability to analyze vast amounts of data about a topic rather than be forced to settle for smaller sets. The second is a willingness to embrace data’s real-world messiness rather than privilege exactitude. The third is a growing respect for correlations rather than a continuing quest for elusive causality.

That’s “big data” the concept, to which my reactions were, respectively, bogglement, disagreement, and suspicion. And then there’s Big Data the book, wherein the authors unpacked their ideas and transformed mine.

First, about the mind-numbing amount of data, gathered everywhere -- Google and Facebook and public surveillance cameras for sure, but suffice it to say that everything electronic is gathering data, and everything that connects to the Internet is uploading the data to someone. And about the format of data, which has morphed from 75% analog in 2000 to 93% digital in 2007 (estimated to be >98 detailmuse:% in 2013). Second, that the tidy, structured data of relational databases is now miniscule (estimated at 5%) compared with the as-yet untapped, error-ridden stuff of real life, like blogs and video. And third, that conceiving hypotheses, gathering perfect, representative data, and reaching causal conclusions is nowhere near as valuable or timely as finding correlations (the “what, not why”) in a gigantic mess of data. The authors characterize big data as, “the equivalent of impressionist painting, wherein each stroke is messy when examined up close, but by stepping back one can see a majestic picture.” Fascinating!

Then they address the problems of big data and, unlike most “alarmist” book I’ve read, they propose solutions. They advise that the ship has sailed on individuals being in control of their private information and online footprints (e.g. via opting out or being anonymous), especially with the secondary and tertiary (and quaternary, and...) markets that re-analyze data long after it’s been collected. So they suggest that the data users be held accountable through law/regulation similar to what’s in place for other industries that hold potential for public harm. They suggest a new professional -- a “data scientist” or “algorithmist” -- who isn’t the do-er who queries big data but rather the outside-the-lines thinker with a big-data mindset who “peers into databases to make a discovery” that creates new value. And they caution against “what’s-past-is-prologue” thinking -- where personal history and the statistics of correlation drive everything from basing your credit score upon the credit scores of your Facebook friends, to Minority Report-like “predictive policing” -- arguing instead for safeguards that recognize free will and actual behaviors.

Here is a book with the awe I’ve been seeking! I turned every page with excitement about what would be on the next page. There’s some repetition, but it’s usually with a twist that enhances internalization and recollection, and there are dozens of fascinating business examples along the way. It’s optimistic not alarmist; rather than running to find a doomsday hidey-hole, I came away transformed. It’s the best book I’ve read so far this year.

whoa that DOES sound interesting. I love data! Hard to believe it was that much of a page-turner tho. I have to check that out!

Ditto! I think that one's going on the wishlist.

It'll go on my Waiting-for-the-Paperback wishlist; "...the authors unpacked their ideas and transformed mine." The hardcover is $16.96 from BN.COM. I noticed an article on this subject in the latest Foreign Affairs on the rack the other day; I didn't pick it up because a single issue is about $15, and I wasn't convinced I'd read it. It turns out that the article is by the same people; it costs $2.95 to buy the PDF. I'll give myself until Saturday, my likeliest next day back at the store, to decide whether to buy the PDF or the periodical.

Thank you,

Robert

Sounds really interesting. I like the idea of establishing correlations rather than causality. A much more fruitful path to my mind. Causality is an unproven quantity.

I've had that book on my "considering whether to get" mental list, and your review has turned it into the "add to the to-buy list." Glad to know it was so good.

>all -- the book was such an interesting surprise! I’m a detail person who loves ideas whereas my husband is a big-picture person who works with relational databases. I’ve passed the book to him and am interested in his take.

>Robert I’ve thought many of these kinds of books were inflated article-length works, but this one explores enough examples to become a good, short book.

>zeno you may be interested -- the authors referenced this Wired magazine essay about correlation superseding causation.

Edward Adrift by Craig Lancaster, ©2013, arc acquired 2013

I am developmentally disabled. I’m not stupid.

But 42-year-old Edward Stanton is adrift. Not from his Asperger’s or OCD, but from an accumulation of events that could be in anyone’s life: the move of his best-friend neighbors to another state; the retirement of his therapist; the “involuntary separation” from his job; and now new diagnoses of diabetes and high blood pressure. So when those former neighbors ask Edward for help with their troubled-teen son, he embarks on a road trip and a quest for purpose.

It’s a very fast read in the first-person voice of Edward, which stays just inside believability and comfortably outside tedium. It’s sweet and uplifting, but never sappy or afraid to have some tension on the page, and reminds me of enjoying Steve Martin’s The Pleasure of My Company. A follow-up to 600 Hours of Edward, it’s dedicated in part, “This one’s for those who love Edward and wanted to see more of him. As it turns out, I did, too.” Huh; now, so do I.

I love The Pleasure of My Company. I'm off to see if the library has any of these Edward books. Thanks for the review!

201 thanks MJ I read that article with interest.

I foresee the day when such massive processing capacity will help us know the names of the gods.

Thanks for the review of Edward Adrift. I've added 600 Hours of Edward to my (rather informal) wish/keep-an-eye-out-for-it list.

MJ, Edward Adrift sounds like something I would really like. My wishlist keeps expanding, but that's a good thing, right?

When I first saw the title Big Data, my first thought was "don't go there". Having retired a year ago after working for 30 years at a company where company data was the business we were in, and for the last five of those years analyzing data about the customers buying business information data, I thought there was no way I would be interested in that book. Your review has changed my mind. I just might get around to it sometime in the near future. I might even miss it just a little.... just a very little.

Great enthusiastic review for Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think

>Nana, I hope it doesn’t feel like a “busman’s holiday” read! I’d love to hear your reactions.

>about Edward -- Lancaster drafted 600 Hours of Edward during 2008’s National Novel Writing Month. I only know of two other NaNoWriMo novels, Water for Elephants and The Night Circus. It’s published by an Amazon imprint so I’m surprised to have just seen it on BN.com.

Pieces of Light: How the New Science of Memory Illuminates the Stories We Tell About Our Pasts by Charles Fernyhough, ©2012, arc acquired 2013

I set out to write about some science, and I ended up by telling a lot of stories. In memory, more than in any other aspect of human experience, narrative seems to be the appropriate medium.

Narrative does seem relevant, since the new plasticity theory of memory resembles storytelling -- that memory isn't a finished "DVD" we simply re-watch, but rather is a collection of data elements that we imaginatively reconstruct, in real time, during each recollection. And Fernyhough's narrative is interesting, with the exception of too-long recaps of experiments with his own personal memories (which, with one exception, are so inward-focused and blinder-ed that I couldn’t play along with my own memories). He also profiles the experiences of a handful of people with memory disorders and analyzes characters' experiences from literature, most notably Proust’s use of a madeleine to illustrate how strongly our senses evoke memory.

But I came to this book expecting a lot more of the "science" of the subtitle. Fernyhough touches on a number of promising topics: children's first memories and adult memories of childhood; conflicting sibling memories; "flashbulb memories" (the where-were-you-when-x-happened memories of high-emotion historical events); the correlation between older age (where there are fewer new experiences/new memories) and the faster passage of time; false memory; amnesia; and dementia. But they're only touches. I encountered just one particularly new takeaway: an exploration into why memories feel *familiar* (i.e. feel like they indeed *happened* to us rather than were just witnessed by us, e.g. in a dream) … which led to a theory that deja vu may be a miscue where this familiarity is evoked during encoding the initial experience vs. later, during the remembered experience … and led to a theory that PTSD may be another miscue that makes an experience feel like it’s happening again vs. being recalled.

Fernyhough makes Kidder’s words (from >159 detailmuse: above), The impulse of memoir is itself a fictive impulse even truer; the impulse of memory is itself a fictive impulse! Overall, recommended for readers interested in a mostly psychological and personal, not biological, exploration of memory. Actually, Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending is a much more interesting narrative of memory!

Vignettes of Ystov by William Goldsmith, ©2011, acquired 2012

I discovered this book on ljbwell’s thread -- short stories, linked stories, in graphic-novel format -- how interesting!

It’s a collection of ~20 two-page vignettes that are linked through shared characters in the city of Ystov, loosely meaning “Y-town” based on its location at the fork of a river probably in Eastern Europe. The stories are interesting and imaginative; the illustrations sometimes lack clarity and are not really to my taste except in managing to feel whimsical and bleak at once. Being vignettes, it all combines into a sum that’s more than its parts and I’m still ruminating on what it all together meant.

"Whimsical and bleak at once" well said!

I had a lot of the same feelings as you about Pieces of Light, which I had had high hopes for based on hearing the author interviewed on public radio. Unfortunately, he covered most of the interesting points in that interview! The personal emphasis in the book drove me a little crazy, and made me feel Fernyhough was trying to create a book from what could have been a long article.

Seems I have that experience a lot rebecca - finding the best point have already been covered in an author's interview.

Nice review of Pieces of Light, MJ; the topic is an interesting one, but this book seems too superficial for my interest.

>210 detailmuse:: Just catching up and came across this. It's great to see other impressions of the same book! Thinking back (I usually do my comments on a book I've finished right after, so they a. are fresh in my mind but b. maybe aren't as fully fleshed out), I probably would have added that the drawings are a rougher style. While I appreciated the idea of the cast of characters at the start, I then found they didn't make those characters more identifiable throughout the book, which was frustrating. I don't know if that was similar for you. But I liked the tone and feel. It made me want to know more about the characters and their stories, too.

215 and good point about ideas and responses fleshing out. For me this Vignettes has definitely been one of those books where that is very strong.

>Merrikay and ljbwell -- agree, lots realized in this book even though the vignettes were so short; I’d read more about several of those characters. It felt each time like the author tapped me on the shoulder to get my attention and then ran away! For anyone else now curious about the art, here are some examples from a Google image search of “Ystov.”

>thanks Darryl, and Rebecca good luck to any writer hereafter who tries to describe streets to me … after Fernyhough dragged me up and down memory lane in Cambridge and Sidney and the other city I can’t remember the name of!

Trying to catch up after too long away - you've been reading some great stuff. And that poem in post 160...I don't read much (any) poetry, but I read a poem like that and I wonder why not. Wow.

218 - oh Lord I don't know how I possibly missed that poem but now I don't think I will be able to get up out of my chair the rest of the day.

>rachbxl, Merrikay -- I'm a poetry beginner, so accessibility is key and these are probably the most accessible I've encountered. They're almost prose vignettes, which (considering Ystov) I suspect you'd love Merrikay ... except for the brutal topic.

Well I'm definitely putting it on my list 220. Don't think I can take the topic right now, but eventually I'm going to check it out.

Catching up from way back, covering nine reviews and a powerful little poem. I'm so glad you posted that poem. Your review of Good Prose is the second excellent review I've read here on the book and both reviews left thinking and thinking. I need to follow up that on that one. Big Data was very interesting and I really enjoyed your review on Peices of Light, even if I don't plan to read the book. Wish I had time to comment on all nine reviews....

>Dan omg after that poem I’ve now just read about Bough Down, David Foster Wallace’s widow’s poetry/artwork memoir of her grief. It sounds wonderful and powerful and I’m not sure I’m up to it.

On the Wishlist... !

Thanks for letting me know.

The Other Typist by Suzanne Rindell, ©2013, arc acquired 2013

Like the typewriter itself, I am simply there to report with accuracy. I am there to make the official and unbiased record that will eventually be used in court. I am there to transcribe what will eventually come to be known as the truth.

Plain and prudish Rose Baker is one of three typists in a 1920s police precinct on Manhattan’s lower east side, taking steno during criminal interrogations and then typing it into the official reports. It’s the era of prohibition, and when Rose’s precinct is chosen as a demonstration unit to tighten enforcement of the Volstead Act, the increased workload brings on a new typist -- the bewitching, rules-flaunting Odalie Lazare.

It’s a story of suspense and psychology so I don’t want to say anything further about the content. As for the style -- where, in suspense, the narrative pull comes from atmosphere and curiosity -- I was a little disappointed. At first, the author lets small hints of mystery accumulate to tantalize and draw the reader in deeper. But quite soon she seems to lose confidence in the reader and starts to spoon-feed the narrative (which turned me from participant to spectator) and tease/withhold information (which incited as much frustration in me as suspense).

Still, the novel reads very fast, evokes the era fairly well, and has an interesting ending -- somewhat ambiguous even, which makes for good discussion.

MJ, The Other Typist sounds like it should go on my check this out list.

Last summer, I grew frustrated by the withholding narrative style of Gone Girl and put it aside. Now after The Other Typist, I figured I'd go back to it and either get interested or cut it loose ... and I'm loving it! Right book right time, I guess.

I enjoyed Gone Girl. I read it while on vacation, and I think it was a great book for that. I am still scratching my head that it made it to the long list for the Orange (no longer orange) prize.

>226 NanaCC: Colleen it's a light read and I think you'll like it the same or more than I did (I felt a chip of impatience on my shoulder).

eta in the cross-posting

>228 NanaCC: Colleen I concur about prize-worthiness. But maybe we discount it because it's such an easy, fun read?

The Other Typist sounds like fun. I confess I have avoided jumping on the Gone Girl bandwagon because of my aversion to hype.

Looking forward to your review of More Scenes from the Rural Life by Verlyn Klinkenborg. I have never heard of that author, but it seems he has written a number of books that would interest me.

>Rebecca I'm 3/4 through Gone Girl and suspect I'll be joining the hype...

>Edwin it may be a little while yet; More Scenes from the Rural Life is one to dip in and out of. There are gems on every page, for example:

A couple of months ago, I began getting up at four in the morning. I’d been reading a lot of William Cobbett, who believed that an hour in the morning was worth two in the afternoon. {…} The dogs are thrilled to get up at four, because it means they can run around outside for a few minutes, have their breakfast, and be back in bed by four fifteen.

I go outside at night now just to admire how steep the temperature gradient has become, how the mercury seems to roll off the table once dark comes. Fall is here.

When I walk across the pasture {…} I can feel the history of this winter underfoot. Sometimes the snow crust from the Christmas storm bears me up so that I’m walking only calf-deep through the January snow, and sometimes I break all the way through to November.

That is a beautiful passage. 233

>Merrikay it's full of familiar things communicated beautifully.

P.S. Pitch Black just arrived via inter-library loan, I'm excited.

I'm looking forward to your comments about Pitch Black - it looks gritty, dark, and moving (and sadly tough to get where I am, I suspect!)

I have to say that because Verlyn Klinkenborg has been a long-time contributor to the New York Times, I have developed quite an aversion to him. Not necessarily to his writing, but to the persona of his op-ed pieces. I would like to cure myself of this, but I've had this problem for at least 10 years!

lol Rebecca, between Klinkenborg and bestseller hype, here's to some aversion busting! Now I'm curious about him, but I want to finish his book before I discover some unlikeable politics or personality...

Well, one thing these aversions do for me is they somewhat reduce my book-buying and thus marginally reduce the size of my TBR!

More Scenes from the Rural Life by Verlyn Klinkenborg, ©2013, review copy acquired 2013

This is a pleasant collection -- 173 vignette-ish essays, most of them previously published in Klinkenborg’s column in the New York Times. They’re gentle observations on nature, animals, farming and living the rural life, grouped into 11 years (chapters), within which they’re organized by month. In the middle of the book, a harsher “Interlude” section cleanses the readerly palate with op-ed about modern agri-business. At the end, a “Coda” section muses on the cosmos (the ultimate rural life?) and the evolution of scientific knowledge. A delicate, perfect, pen-and-ink drawing (black and white) by Nigel Peake opens each chapter.

I wished for a bit more of a gathering narrative to the collection, but in the end simply enjoyed it as a book to dip in and out of, e.g. by reading a year’s (a chapter’s) entries each day. I posted some favorite passages in >msg233 above; here are a few more:

For the past few weeks, I’ve been wondering, just how sharp can an icicle get? In early afternoons the icicles outside my office window lengthen themselves drip by drip, and I conclude that an icicle can only be as sharp as a drop of water. But in the morning, when the rising sun turns that curtain of ice lavender, the icicles look as sharp as needles.

The fresh snow is like a photographic plate recording a sudden exposure. We tend to think of the tracks in the snow as narratives -- after all, they’re the imprints of creatures who are going somewhere with some reason.

My wife and I recently drove from the farm to California. The trip had a narrative. It was called Middlemarch, by George Eliot. We slipped the first cassette into the car stereo somewhere near Albany {…and we finished the last one…} somewhere between Bakersfield and Fresno. {…} It so happens that America is as wide as Middlemarch is long…

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Rural Free: A Farmwife’s Almanac of Country Living by Rachel Peden

Last year, I read but never reviewed this 1961 collection of observations/vignettes (initially newspaper columns; here collected and organized by month) about Midwest country life and farm life. It’s very old fashioned, very calming ... and startling in its passing references to cold-war fears and space-travel hopes.

Klinkenborg writes much better, but I think Peden evokes time and place much better.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, ©2012, acquired 2012

This thrill-ride exploration of a marriage opens when a woman disappears on her fifth wedding anniversary. I think it's the first book I've read where the middle is better than the begining or end. I want to get right back in line for another ride in another book that’s as much fun.

Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach, ©2013, acquired 2013

This is signature Mary Roach, here shining the bright light on the quirkiest aspects of the digestive track, and layering her findings with hilarious on- and off-topic footnotes. She gets juvenile but not overly so, considering the topic. And she focuses mostly on the very beginning- and very end-points of digestion; I was disappointed that so much in the middle was unaddressed. If you’ve read and enjoyed Roach, definitely read this. If you haven’t, start with Stiff or this.

Here’s one passage, from a discussion on the colon’s drying (constipating) effect:

“Follow each call to the stool.” Or, in the words of a British physician quoted in Inner Hygiene, James Whorton’s excellent and scholarly* history of constipation, “Allow nothing short of fire or endangered life to induce you to resist...nature’s alvine call.”

*Seriously, published by Oxford University Press. But highly readable. So much so that the person who took Inner Hygiene out of the UC Berkeley library before me had read it on New Year’s Eve. I know this because she’d left behind her bookmark -- a receipt from a Pinole, California, In-N-Out Burger dated December 30, 2010 -- and because every so often as I read, I’d come upon bits of glitter. Had she brought the book along to a party, ducking into a side room to read about rectal dilators and slanted toilets as the party swirled around her? Or had she brought it to bed with her at 2 a.m., glitter falling from her hair as she read? If you know this girl, tell her I like her style.

Pitch Black by Youme Landowne / Anthony Horton, ©2008, acquired 2013, discovered on mkboylan’s thread

I spent a fair amount of time wondering if the first author’s name is a pseudonym -- “you” and “me” and “land-own”-ing in a book about friendship and homelessness. It’s a short graphic-format memoir of the authors/illustrators’ friendship and Horton’s discovery of a place to live deep below the New York City subway, and I rated it an “okay” book … until I read the New York Times article that Merrikay had linked. And then I realized that the book had infiltrated me, had developed such a rich characterization of Horton that I teared at how true this passage felt: “When he saw a friend, he would deliver a bear hug that pulsed with warmth.”

MJ, I'm glad you liked Gone Girl. I also thought it was a fun ride.

Glad to hear Mary Roach is still pulling it off!

I had a similar experience with Pitch Black. If I hadn't read about it first, I don't think it would have done much for me. Makes me think about seeking out more criticism of my reading choices.

Thread continues here.