Trouble by Jesse Kellerman
Category: Fiction Grade: F
This was a lay down. Jesse, the son of authors Faye and Jonathan Kellerman, doesn't have any where near their talent. He relies on shock value to keep the reader interested and it doesn't work. The book tells the story of a surgical intern who, supposedly saves a woman's life from a street attack by killing her attacker. There's plenty of nauseating detail about surgical procedures. If that weren't enough, the woman he saves (sorry for the spoiler) turns out to be a masochistic psycho-chick. The descriptions of violent sex finally turned me off completely and I put the book away. Only go here if you've got a really strong stomach (and don't tell me that you decided to read the book - I don't want to know).
Friday, February 23, 2007
Palestine - Peace Not Apartheid
Palestine; Peace Not Apartheid by Jimmy Carter
Category: International Affairs Grade: B
I'm probably going to get in trouble for this review. I don't usually talk politics publicly - its really a no-win thing to do. Former President Carter has just been lambasted by the main stream press and American Jewish leaders. There's a lot wrong with this book, but the reaction reminds me a lot of the broad inter-generational attitude in the 60s summed in the bumper sticker slogan - "America - Love it or Leave it". Alan Dershowitz commented on Carter's book - "he blames everything on Israel and nothing on the Palestinians". Unfortunately, as in the 60s, there's a strong push, in the United States, to take the opposite view. The strength of the American Jewish lobby has defined the slightest anti-Israel statement as fundamentally anti-Semitic. Disagreements and discussions that are fairly common within the Israeli people - settlements or no settlements, land for peace, the wall - are condemned without discussion in the United States.
There is strong international support, reflected by repeated UN resolutions and repeated multi-party agreements, that Israel, as a country has a right to exist in peace. Carter never suggests otherwise. While his biases are clear and, as I gather from a little research, sometimes wrong, his fundamental point seems simple and, to me, pretty obvious. This area of the world will never know peace unless some just solution is found for the million plus refugees that have been created by the creation and expansion of Israel. Whether the expansion is justified, and what the Israeli borders should be doesn't change this basic fact. Maybe expelling these people from their homes and settling them in foreign countries, long term refugee camps or occupied territory is a necessary evil for the long term security of the Israeli people. It doesn't change the fact that a million rootless people are a permanent breeding ground for unrest and international terrorism. The "war on terrorism" is not a battle that can be won with missiles and tanks. Its a hearts-and-minds battle. Creating a permanent underclass in the region is not a viable solution.
One of the best things about the 60s was that it taught people that love of country did not require unconditional acceptance. Rather, the survivability of democracy requires constant skepticism about the things done in our names. The lesson for today is that, especially to an American Jew, support for Israel can not demand blind allegiance. Don't accept the branding that Carter has received. Read the book for yourself; do the research; make up your own mind. Otherwise, don't criticize.
Category: International Affairs Grade: B
I'm probably going to get in trouble for this review. I don't usually talk politics publicly - its really a no-win thing to do. Former President Carter has just been lambasted by the main stream press and American Jewish leaders. There's a lot wrong with this book, but the reaction reminds me a lot of the broad inter-generational attitude in the 60s summed in the bumper sticker slogan - "America - Love it or Leave it". Alan Dershowitz commented on Carter's book - "he blames everything on Israel and nothing on the Palestinians". Unfortunately, as in the 60s, there's a strong push, in the United States, to take the opposite view. The strength of the American Jewish lobby has defined the slightest anti-Israel statement as fundamentally anti-Semitic. Disagreements and discussions that are fairly common within the Israeli people - settlements or no settlements, land for peace, the wall - are condemned without discussion in the United States.
There is strong international support, reflected by repeated UN resolutions and repeated multi-party agreements, that Israel, as a country has a right to exist in peace. Carter never suggests otherwise. While his biases are clear and, as I gather from a little research, sometimes wrong, his fundamental point seems simple and, to me, pretty obvious. This area of the world will never know peace unless some just solution is found for the million plus refugees that have been created by the creation and expansion of Israel. Whether the expansion is justified, and what the Israeli borders should be doesn't change this basic fact. Maybe expelling these people from their homes and settling them in foreign countries, long term refugee camps or occupied territory is a necessary evil for the long term security of the Israeli people. It doesn't change the fact that a million rootless people are a permanent breeding ground for unrest and international terrorism. The "war on terrorism" is not a battle that can be won with missiles and tanks. Its a hearts-and-minds battle. Creating a permanent underclass in the region is not a viable solution.
One of the best things about the 60s was that it taught people that love of country did not require unconditional acceptance. Rather, the survivability of democracy requires constant skepticism about the things done in our names. The lesson for today is that, especially to an American Jew, support for Israel can not demand blind allegiance. Don't accept the branding that Carter has received. Read the book for yourself; do the research; make up your own mind. Otherwise, don't criticize.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Category: Classic Fiction Grade: A
And so we continue with the effort to try to read some of the classics that, when we had to read them as kids or college students, we hated.
Almost everybody knows the basic premise of this book -- painting ages, real person doesn't. The theme has been used repeatedly in various formats, but this is the first time (or at least the first time I remember) that I read the original. The first really surprising thing is that the book reads like it was written last year, not 115 years ago. I guess it shows that true "wit" is ageless. Wilde is an amazingly good writer. Wilde was one of the leaders in promoting a hedonistic, i.e. pleasure first, lifestyle in late 19th century England. Of course, the homosexual undertones of the book had to be masked enough that publishers would accept his book for publication. Wilde eventually ended up imprisoned because of a homosexual affair he had about five years after writing this book.
The common view of the book - an aging painting leaves the subject young and beautiful is actually only half the story. As the book develops, the painting becomes far more than a stand in for Gray's beauty. It becomes first his conscience, then a repository for all the less-than-beautiful things that make up Gray's hedonistic life. It's unusual in that, essentially, Wilde ends up condemning the life that he himself lived.
This is one of the books that will encourage you to continue finding all the classics that you really should read before you die.
Category: Classic Fiction Grade: A
And so we continue with the effort to try to read some of the classics that, when we had to read them as kids or college students, we hated.
Almost everybody knows the basic premise of this book -- painting ages, real person doesn't. The theme has been used repeatedly in various formats, but this is the first time (or at least the first time I remember) that I read the original. The first really surprising thing is that the book reads like it was written last year, not 115 years ago. I guess it shows that true "wit" is ageless. Wilde is an amazingly good writer. Wilde was one of the leaders in promoting a hedonistic, i.e. pleasure first, lifestyle in late 19th century England. Of course, the homosexual undertones of the book had to be masked enough that publishers would accept his book for publication. Wilde eventually ended up imprisoned because of a homosexual affair he had about five years after writing this book.
The common view of the book - an aging painting leaves the subject young and beautiful is actually only half the story. As the book develops, the painting becomes far more than a stand in for Gray's beauty. It becomes first his conscience, then a repository for all the less-than-beautiful things that make up Gray's hedonistic life. It's unusual in that, essentially, Wilde ends up condemning the life that he himself lived.
This is one of the books that will encourage you to continue finding all the classics that you really should read before you die.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
The Ancestor's Tale
The Ancestor's Tale by Richard Dawkins
Category: Science Grade: B+
Well, we have a first. Occasionally, Dan will recommend a book to me and I've learned over the years that he likes to read on a different intellectual plane than the rest of us. I've tried reading Salman Rushdie and Anthony Burgess and just couldn't get going. I guess they fly right over my head. But finally...
Writing a good book about science for a lay audience is really tough. Most scientists (or engineers or musicians or just about anybody), have their own jargon. Stripping out the jargon so us normal people don't get lost without stripping out the content at the same time is a task that most science writers just aren't up to. Most science books I've tried to read go to one of two extremes - they either read like children's books or they read like textbooks. Neither approach is likely to hold somebody's interest.
Dawkins has really accomplished something in this book. He's managed to explain evolution in an interesting and engaging way that keeps you reading for some 600+ pages. He's used two gimmicks to frame the science that are, in large part, responsible for keeping things approachable. First, he tells the story of evolution backwards. That is, he starts with humans and works backward through time chronicling each different group of living things from which our evolutionary path sprang. He speculates about what he calls our concestors - a creature that is, possibly, a common ancestor of us and the newly joined branch. It takes a little getting used to the fact that time is moving backwards but, given the way evolution works, each step is relatively small (in the grand scheme).
The second gimmick is to use Chaucer's Canterbury Tales as a model for his story telling. At each branch point, Dawkins picks one of the creatures from the new branch and uses that creature to give us a relevant and almost always interesting lesson.
First thing I have to say about this book -- if you can read this and come away without a firm conviction that evolution is the way things happened, you're just not paying attention. Although its called the "theory" of evolution, there's so much documented evidence, so many interesting experiments, that its just inconceivable that evolution isn't a good model of how the earth turned in to the environment that we know. With the time frames we're thinking about here - hundreds of millions of years - of course, we'll never have unchallengeable proof of the theory, but its so elegant and fits what we do know so perfectly that, while there may be more and more details that we discover with better research tools, the framework of evolution is the way things happened.
Think about simple things - front, back, up, down, left and right. Most animals that we're familiar with have a front and a back. Since most animals move to find food, its logical that animals who had their food intake portal (call it a mouth) in the "front", would be more likely to survive to adulthood and breed. Once that happens, animals who's waste removal portal is the farthest from their mouths - i.e. where it won't contaminate their food supply - are, again, more likely to breed. Similarly, if you think about most environments, up is very different from down. Attacks from predators are more likely to come from "up" as is light. "Down" is usually somewhat more protected and somewhat darker. So, creatures with protection like a shell or spikes, on the "top" will breed. If you think about most fish, they tend to be darker on the top than the bottom. This would seem to be because, given that light comes from "up", this kind of shading provides better camouflage. It just makes sense if you've got millions of years to breed for the most effective bodies. Oh, and left and right? For almost all animals, left and right don't pose different threats or advantages so most animals are side-to-side symetrical!
This isn't an easy book to read. Even though Dawkins has definitely made it approachable, there's a lot of long, Latin names to get through and even a fair amount of math in some sections. If you like science, though, this is a terrific broad brush view of evolution with a lot of biology, biochemistry and even some physics thrown in.
One final note - if you're a creationist and are easily offended, skip this book. Dawkins is convincing enough that he'll make you feel silly and, on occasion, he does rub it in a little. But, I have to say, if you're a creationist because of a belief in a God who created all this - wouldn't you really rather believe in a God that could design an incredible system like evolution than a God that could make a platypus?
Category: Science Grade: B+
Well, we have a first. Occasionally, Dan will recommend a book to me and I've learned over the years that he likes to read on a different intellectual plane than the rest of us. I've tried reading Salman Rushdie and Anthony Burgess and just couldn't get going. I guess they fly right over my head. But finally...
Writing a good book about science for a lay audience is really tough. Most scientists (or engineers or musicians or just about anybody), have their own jargon. Stripping out the jargon so us normal people don't get lost without stripping out the content at the same time is a task that most science writers just aren't up to. Most science books I've tried to read go to one of two extremes - they either read like children's books or they read like textbooks. Neither approach is likely to hold somebody's interest.
Dawkins has really accomplished something in this book. He's managed to explain evolution in an interesting and engaging way that keeps you reading for some 600+ pages. He's used two gimmicks to frame the science that are, in large part, responsible for keeping things approachable. First, he tells the story of evolution backwards. That is, he starts with humans and works backward through time chronicling each different group of living things from which our evolutionary path sprang. He speculates about what he calls our concestors - a creature that is, possibly, a common ancestor of us and the newly joined branch. It takes a little getting used to the fact that time is moving backwards but, given the way evolution works, each step is relatively small (in the grand scheme).
The second gimmick is to use Chaucer's Canterbury Tales as a model for his story telling. At each branch point, Dawkins picks one of the creatures from the new branch and uses that creature to give us a relevant and almost always interesting lesson.
First thing I have to say about this book -- if you can read this and come away without a firm conviction that evolution is the way things happened, you're just not paying attention. Although its called the "theory" of evolution, there's so much documented evidence, so many interesting experiments, that its just inconceivable that evolution isn't a good model of how the earth turned in to the environment that we know. With the time frames we're thinking about here - hundreds of millions of years - of course, we'll never have unchallengeable proof of the theory, but its so elegant and fits what we do know so perfectly that, while there may be more and more details that we discover with better research tools, the framework of evolution is the way things happened.
Think about simple things - front, back, up, down, left and right. Most animals that we're familiar with have a front and a back. Since most animals move to find food, its logical that animals who had their food intake portal (call it a mouth) in the "front", would be more likely to survive to adulthood and breed. Once that happens, animals who's waste removal portal is the farthest from their mouths - i.e. where it won't contaminate their food supply - are, again, more likely to breed. Similarly, if you think about most environments, up is very different from down. Attacks from predators are more likely to come from "up" as is light. "Down" is usually somewhat more protected and somewhat darker. So, creatures with protection like a shell or spikes, on the "top" will breed. If you think about most fish, they tend to be darker on the top than the bottom. This would seem to be because, given that light comes from "up", this kind of shading provides better camouflage. It just makes sense if you've got millions of years to breed for the most effective bodies. Oh, and left and right? For almost all animals, left and right don't pose different threats or advantages so most animals are side-to-side symetrical!
This isn't an easy book to read. Even though Dawkins has definitely made it approachable, there's a lot of long, Latin names to get through and even a fair amount of math in some sections. If you like science, though, this is a terrific broad brush view of evolution with a lot of biology, biochemistry and even some physics thrown in.
One final note - if you're a creationist and are easily offended, skip this book. Dawkins is convincing enough that he'll make you feel silly and, on occasion, he does rub it in a little. But, I have to say, if you're a creationist because of a belief in a God who created all this - wouldn't you really rather believe in a God that could design an incredible system like evolution than a God that could make a platypus?
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Distribution change
Folks -- I'm changing the way these reviews get delivered to your mailbox. You should see almost no difference. Sometime in the next half hour or so, you should get another post using the new method. If you don't see that post, check your "junk mail" folder to see if the email was flagged as junk and tell your spam filter that it's a legit email. If you don't see the message there either, drop me an email and I'll try to figure out what's going on.
Monday, February 05, 2007
The Hunters
The Hunters by W.E.B. Griffin
Category: Military Fiction Grade: A
This can be a really short review since, at this point, either you read Griffin or you don't. I counted up and its pretty clear that I've read more books by this guy than anybody else I read. He's written 38 books and I've read all 38 - all broken in to series of 6-10 books; all with military themes. They are uniformly well written and entertaining, whether he's talking about World War II, Korea, Viet Nam or even, in one series, stories of the Philadelphia police department.
The Hunter is the third book in the "Presidential Agent" series. It takes place now and involves a special group of agents, led by Charlie Castillo, who work directly for the President and do jobs that aren't quite within the standard operating procedure of existing intelligence organizations or, occasionally, within the law. Castillo and his crew travel all the world turning over rocks to deal with the things that crawl under them.
Griffin's books aren't "high literature", but I'll keep buying them and reading them as soon as they come out. Hopefully, he's got another 38 books in him.
Category: Military Fiction Grade: A
This can be a really short review since, at this point, either you read Griffin or you don't. I counted up and its pretty clear that I've read more books by this guy than anybody else I read. He's written 38 books and I've read all 38 - all broken in to series of 6-10 books; all with military themes. They are uniformly well written and entertaining, whether he's talking about World War II, Korea, Viet Nam or even, in one series, stories of the Philadelphia police department.
The Hunter is the third book in the "Presidential Agent" series. It takes place now and involves a special group of agents, led by Charlie Castillo, who work directly for the President and do jobs that aren't quite within the standard operating procedure of existing intelligence organizations or, occasionally, within the law. Castillo and his crew travel all the world turning over rocks to deal with the things that crawl under them.
Griffin's books aren't "high literature", but I'll keep buying them and reading them as soon as they come out. Hopefully, he's got another 38 books in him.
Sunday, February 04, 2007
Walt Disney
Walt Disney by Neal Gabler
Category: Biography Grade: A
So, in the middle of reading this book, Liz posed the question to me - "Why do read biographies?". Good question. Ultimately, a biography is no different from any other book -- it needs to be well written, tell a good story and cover a topic that's interesting. The added plus, to anybody that likes to read history, comes when the author uses the framework of a biography to make a personal story out of the times when the subject lived. Most of the time, the subject of a biography has had some kind of major impact on the world around and has, in turn, been impacted by the things that happen in the world during his or her life. If the times are interesting and the impact is large, then you've got the potential for a great book. If a talented writer gets their hands on the story, then a biography can be full of insights that you don't find in a broader history of the times.
It's hard to imagine anyone in the arts that, ultimately, had more impact on the world than Walt Disney. My generation grew up watching him on Sunday nights showing us clever animations, interesting live-action stories and, of course, Davy Crockett. Our children's generation grew thinking of Disneyland and DisneyWorld as the most sought after vacation destination. It's pretty amazing when you think of all the "firsts" that can be attributed to Disney's company and, as you learn in this book, really to Walt himself -- first personality-based animation, first feature length animation, first "theme" park and on and on. Throughout the 50s and most of the 60s, he was America's Uncle Walt.
Fortunately, Gabler is a great writer. He's clearly done his homewhere, producing 600+ pages of detail. However, he's good enough at what he does to know that, for all the "firsts", this had to be a personal story of one man. Gabler spends a lot of time looking for the motivation behind Disney's ambition. Disney turns out to be, according to Gabler, somewhat insecure and working hard to correct for a childhood during which, he felt, he had little or no control over his own life. For him, the animations became a process where Walt was building worlds to his own specs over which he had complete control. For the early works, especially Snow White, the first feature length animated feature, Walt had his fingers on every part of the project. He could be viscious when he had to be to protect his vision of where the project was going. He pretty much never worried about money -- that was his brother Roy's problem. In fact, he worried so little about money, that company was almost always on the brink of failure until the parks started to open. The parks were Walt's ultimate effort to create a complete physical world where he could be God. He actually had an apartment above a store front on Main Street at Disneyland where he frequently stayed so he could observe.
Surprisingly, you don't learn a lot of negative stuff about Disney although you do suspect that Gabler may be playing down parts of that. Walt was definitely a tyrant on any project that he thought was worthy of his personal attention. As I've said, he had no real concept of money. In the mode of many artists, he wanted perfection and didn't really care, at least for the first couple of decades, whether Roy could manage to turn a profit as long as there was funding for his projects. He became very conservative and a staunch anti-Communist in his later days -- driven primarily by the animators strike at the studio. Walt needed the "communist conspiracy" to deflect what he ultimately felt was a betrayal by his friend's and co-workers.
This book and learning about Disney's life is probably not going to appeal to anybody much younger than 50. While the story is good and his impact was huge, the "I lived through it" is part of the appeal to a reader.
Oh - and the one downside of reading biographies? You know how they end. If you manage to push through a long detailed biography, its primarily because you formed an attachment of sorts to the subject. When the subject eventually dies, you actually feel it personally.
Category: Biography Grade: A
So, in the middle of reading this book, Liz posed the question to me - "Why do read biographies?". Good question. Ultimately, a biography is no different from any other book -- it needs to be well written, tell a good story and cover a topic that's interesting. The added plus, to anybody that likes to read history, comes when the author uses the framework of a biography to make a personal story out of the times when the subject lived. Most of the time, the subject of a biography has had some kind of major impact on the world around and has, in turn, been impacted by the things that happen in the world during his or her life. If the times are interesting and the impact is large, then you've got the potential for a great book. If a talented writer gets their hands on the story, then a biography can be full of insights that you don't find in a broader history of the times.
It's hard to imagine anyone in the arts that, ultimately, had more impact on the world than Walt Disney. My generation grew up watching him on Sunday nights showing us clever animations, interesting live-action stories and, of course, Davy Crockett. Our children's generation grew thinking of Disneyland and DisneyWorld as the most sought after vacation destination. It's pretty amazing when you think of all the "firsts" that can be attributed to Disney's company and, as you learn in this book, really to Walt himself -- first personality-based animation, first feature length animation, first "theme" park and on and on. Throughout the 50s and most of the 60s, he was America's Uncle Walt.
Fortunately, Gabler is a great writer. He's clearly done his homewhere, producing 600+ pages of detail. However, he's good enough at what he does to know that, for all the "firsts", this had to be a personal story of one man. Gabler spends a lot of time looking for the motivation behind Disney's ambition. Disney turns out to be, according to Gabler, somewhat insecure and working hard to correct for a childhood during which, he felt, he had little or no control over his own life. For him, the animations became a process where Walt was building worlds to his own specs over which he had complete control. For the early works, especially Snow White, the first feature length animated feature, Walt had his fingers on every part of the project. He could be viscious when he had to be to protect his vision of where the project was going. He pretty much never worried about money -- that was his brother Roy's problem. In fact, he worried so little about money, that company was almost always on the brink of failure until the parks started to open. The parks were Walt's ultimate effort to create a complete physical world where he could be God. He actually had an apartment above a store front on Main Street at Disneyland where he frequently stayed so he could observe.
Surprisingly, you don't learn a lot of negative stuff about Disney although you do suspect that Gabler may be playing down parts of that. Walt was definitely a tyrant on any project that he thought was worthy of his personal attention. As I've said, he had no real concept of money. In the mode of many artists, he wanted perfection and didn't really care, at least for the first couple of decades, whether Roy could manage to turn a profit as long as there was funding for his projects. He became very conservative and a staunch anti-Communist in his later days -- driven primarily by the animators strike at the studio. Walt needed the "communist conspiracy" to deflect what he ultimately felt was a betrayal by his friend's and co-workers.
This book and learning about Disney's life is probably not going to appeal to anybody much younger than 50. While the story is good and his impact was huge, the "I lived through it" is part of the appeal to a reader.
Oh - and the one downside of reading biographies? You know how they end. If you manage to push through a long detailed biography, its primarily because you formed an attachment of sorts to the subject. When the subject eventually dies, you actually feel it personally.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)