Monday Review Post, 5/21/2012

So, last week there were a series of very good reasons why I couldn't go to the library on Monday. This week, there's a series of very good reasons why Tuesday makes a better library day. Next week, Monday is Memorial Day, and the libraries are closed. So what I'm thinking is, I start too many sentences with "so". And, also, that Tuesday makes a perfectly legitimate library day for the summer. Also also, if I move Review Day to Monday, I'm actually covering everything I've read for the actual week, so I'm going to try that for a change, and we'll see how that goes.

With that in mind, I give you the following reviews:

Gary Younge - Who Are We? And Should it Matter in the 21st Century?


The answer to Younge's first question is "That's complicated." and to the second is "Yes, of course, possible more so than previously."

This was a fascinating book about how human beings build their identities around issues of class, race, gender, and nationality. Younge talks about growing up Barbadian in England, about the rules for being officially Jewish in Israel, about why Barack Obama's election caused such a reaction on both the Right and the Left in the US (and elsewhere), and why young men who were Manchester United fans, who enjoy fish and chips, speak English, and have long family histories in England were willing to take explosives onto the Underground in London and blow themselves up. There's a lot more in the book, but that's a pretty good taste, I think. That's why the first question is complicated - there's a LOT there. For instance, Younge looks at the 2008 election in the US - the primary between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. There, there was a conflict between race as a primary identifier and gender as a primary identifier.  Younge looks at the difficult question for black women - should they vote with their gender, or with their race, or was the question entirely irrelevant? He traces the dilemma back to the late 1860s, when there was considerable public debate over the 15th amendment to the US Constitution, which granted the right to vote to black men (but not women of any race). Some women suffragettes contended that it was more important to give the vote to women (regardless of race - they contended that it would be better for Irish women and Black women to be able to vote than Irish men or Black men.) Some Black suffragests (which isn't, apparently, a word) contended that it was more important for all Blacks, regardless of gender, to get the vote (that the vote was as important to Black women as Black men, but because they were Black, not because they were women.) It's really really complicated - and it still plays out in politics now - so the answer to Younge's second question seems fairly obvious.

The book is a very "thinky" book which has already prompted a couple of very very interesting discussions with friends.  It's not a particularly preachy book - Younge doesn't tell his readers how they ought to think about identity - their own or others - beyond stating that they ought to think about identity. He does provide a useful tip for those wondering if a friend is gay or not - assume they are, because straight people will quickly make it clear that they are not (by talking about girl/boy friends, showing you pictures, etc). Basically, let other people define and reveal their own identity. In instances where outside forces attempt to define identity on a broad scale (as with the issue of "official" Judaism in Israel, or the nature of "French-ness"), problems arise.

As a book, the book is really well written. Younge includes enough academic rigor to satisfy the educated reader, but writes with a clear prose that the lay reader will be able to digest, with the notable exception of the introduction, which is a little dense, and filled with academic jargon. I think you can skip the intro if it seems off-putting.

Basically, this book will enliven your dinner parties, and you should really read it. And get your friends to read it too, so that you have something to talk about.

Ally Carter - I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You


(Long titles this week) I'm cheating, because I grabbed this last week, but it was SO fluffy that I had to read it right away. It's a boarding school novel, and it's a spy novel - it's James Bond meets Enid Blighton - it's delightful, very cute, and very very fluffy.

Carter does a fantastic job of marrying the very light genre of the boarding school novel (which is all about being a young woman away from home, with your friends who are also young women away from home, and falling in love with boys who don't go to your school, and giggling and pillow fights. Except there are no pillow fights. Animal House lied to us.) and the somewhat darker genre of the spy novel, which is all about identity, and hidden identity, and not being who you say you are, or think you are (see, it's all connected!), and not being sure if you can trust people that you really ought to be able to trust. On some level, the boarding school novel is about discovering who you are, and the spy novel is about hiding who you are, and the pairing really works quite well. (Kinda like boarding school novels and light horror - Hickey of the Beast?)

That being said, the book is really very fluffy - a quick afternoon's read with a little bit more thinking than perhaps you might initially expect.

Andrew Lane - Rebel Fire (Sherlock Holmes: The Legend Begins)


(I'm forcing the "long title" thing here a little.) Lane has been authorized by the Doyle family to write a series of novels about the young Sherlock Holmes. I know I've mentioned this before. His theory is that Sherlock could not have had a normal childhood, because the character as described by Doyle is clearly badly damaged. As Holmes says of himself (in the modernized version, Sherlock), he's a high functioning sociopath. Lane shows us how Sherlock gets damaged.

With that in mind, this book has some fairly hefty trigger warnings. There's a gruesome death scene midway through. The villain has a thing about leaches which is really kinda creepy. There are several scenes of fairly significant peril involving large animals and drowning. And, remember, Sherlock, as described by Doyle, is a pretty dark guy, with a strong tendency towards depression and, consequently, drug use. In this novel, we see all of that (well, no drug use) - damage, depression, and darkness. Also, Sherlock learns to play the violin.

Again, this is a book about identity - about growing up and figuring how you fit into the world, and pondering if you WANT to fit into the world. What is important - friends, family, nation - humanity? Like Carter's novel, this book is surprisingly deep.

It's also delightfully cinematic. I recently heard an interview with Stephen Moffat (who is one of the writer/producers of Sherlock) in which he argued that Holmes was perfect for television - Doyle conceived of a series of episodic short stories; complete by themselves, but containing and being contained by an over arching storyline. Lane takes this a step further - the action is remarkably suited to the screen, and I can't wait - it's almost inevitable.

To that end, I have a treat (if I can figure out how to make it work) - a representative of Macmillan Press contacted me to offer me a short clip of the audio book, with permission to pass that on to you, my tens of readers. The audio clip is pretty nice too, good voice actor, nice accents, I can easily conceive of listening to the whole book read by this reader, possibly while on a road trip. It's the prologue, so it's not going to spoil anything. It does feature a leach, so if that sort of thing freaks you out, maybe don't listen to it.
This link should take you to the Audio File. Please do let me know if you can't access the file.
(I should say, incidentally, for legal reasons, that my review has not been affected by this largess in anyway.)


Jenny Lawson - Let's Pretend This Never Happened


Jenny Lawson is better known as The Bloggess - she blogs here - and this is her first book. It's part memoir, and part compilation of blog posts, and it's all amazingly hilarious. But, be warned, it's the sort of hilarious where, if you laugh at it (and you can't not laugh at it - I challenge you to try), you're going to hell. Well, probably not immediately, though.

Lawson has become internet famous by leveraging her unique style of describing her life on line. Her style is highly confessional, and displays a tendency to deliberately misinterpret what people are saying, for humorous effect. Oh, and to over react to things, and to spin things into lengthy stories.  Lawson is often the butt of her own stories, which takes the sting out of her snark a little (which it needs, because Lawson's snark is powerful strong). She bring all of that and more to her book, which is why, when the library told me this book had arrived on Saturday, I had to drop the serious academic book I was reading, and read this instead, because I knew the book was going to be AWESOME. And it is.

The book is about a whole bunch of things:

swimming squirrels
leukemia, and how Lawson may or may not be dying from it*
cats
taxidermy
growing up in rural West Texas
forks
depression
drug use
child birth and child rearing
getting married
a very happy wild boar, and
(among other things) how and how not to send pictures of your penis to your co-workers.

Mostly, though, this book is about identity. See, it's ALL connected! This is a book about growing up, figuring out who you are, deciding which bits of your seriously fucked up (Lawson swears. A lot. This is a warning) childhood you want to keep and which you don't. It's about figuring out how you fit into the world, and about how you don't fit, and about how you want to change to fit, and how you don't want to fit enough to change important parts of who you are. It's about discovering that women are not necessarily scary. And it's about cougars. The whole book is written in Lawson's delightfully scatty style, and it WILL make you laugh. Parts of it will probably also make you cry. Some parts will make you cringe in recognition, or in sympathy, or both. Parts of it may well be difficult to read - there are a plethora of potential triggers in this book, because Lawson is presenting large swathes of her life to her readers, more or less unfiltered, and some of it is pretty raw. In a lot of ways, Lawson is as damaged a person as Sherlock, and, like Sherlock, she has developed skills to work around her damage. Just like we all do, really. (Yes, I do believe I just compared Jenny Lawson to Sherlock Holmes...)

Anyway, the book is remarkable - a deeply emotional, and deeply satisfying, book. There are probably bits that you will like a great deal, and those will almost certainly make up for the bits you don't like as much (if they exist.) In a lot of ways, this may well be the best book I read this week.

*spoiler - she isn't.

That's it for this week, but watch this space for a contest announcement, and tomorrow's library post.

Friday Review, 3/11/2011

Andrew Lane - The Death Cloud


This is the first of Lane's Young Sherlock Holmes books. The series is approved by the Doyle family, which adds a little something to the experience, perhaps. At any rate, Lane set out to piece together Holmes' adolescence from the hints that Doyle had presented. He writes about the exercise here, and concludes that, for the most part, Holmes' childhood cannot have been a pleasant or comfortable one. Given that, I had expected that this book would be rather more dreadful than it was.

Lane has set himself an interesting challenge - we know, of course, how Holmes turns out; more importantly, we know what skills he has. Doyle, of course, presents us with a preternaturally competent man with a wide array of interests and abilities. Lane has to do two things. First, he has to show us a young Holmes gaining those skills and interests, and second, he has to tell a story worth reading at the same time. I think he succeeds entirely at the first part, and does a pretty good job at the second part, although there are some places where the whole exercise goes somewhat off the rails. Mostly, Holmes inserts himself into situations that he (as an adolescent) has no place inserting himself into. This is, of course, the meat and potatoes of the adolescent detective novel; the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, the various books of Enid Blyton (The Secret Seven, The Famous Five, and the Adventure books), even Encyclopedia Brown; all hinge on children and teens inserting themselves into matters which are entirely beyond the scope of the average young person. I have no idea why it bothers me here, but it does, a little.

The story turns around the summer that young Sherlock spends with his uncle, since his father has been sent to India with his regiment. Sherlock's brother, Mycroft, newly hired by the British Government, ensures that Sherlock has a tutor for the summer. The tutor, as might be expected, is somewhat non-traditional in his approaches. Against the better judgement of the tutor, Sherlock solves a mystery involving the defense of the realm.

In the end, the whole thing was fun, but not particularly deep.

Grace Pundyk - The Honey Trail


Here's the food ethics book for the week. Pundyk, an Australian free lance writer, sets out to explore the world of honey. Starting in Yemen, she travels to Australia, New Zealand, Borneo, Russia, The United Kingdom, Italy, Turkey, the United States, and China. In each country, she seeks out honey producers and honey sellers. She reveals the twisted history of honey. Honey bees of one sort of another exist natively on every continent except North and South America (the honey produced in the Americas is made by transplanted European bees.) - despite this, Argentina is one of the world's biggest honey producers (only China produces more). Each country makes a slightly, or indeed wildly, different type of honey, depending on the flowers the bees visit, and the species of bees being kept.

The book is fascinating. Honey is deeply complicated. The plant life needed to keep bees is under pressure all over the world - bees are kept in some of the most sensitive ecosystems, from the leatherwood forests of Tasmania (under threat of logging) to the wetlands of Borneo (under threat of being converted into palm oil plantations) to the midwest of the United States (where drought and agricultural monocultures are having a significant and negative impact on bees and honey.) In Australia, Pundyk finds bee keepers who argue that the government is not doing enough to protect forests - and other bee keepers who argue that the government is doing too much. By keeping them out of national parks, the government has significantly impacted the territory of some Australian bee keepers, who must keep moving around the country in order to expose their bees to new flora on a regular basis. In Borneo, she works through a local NGO devoted to turning bee keeping into a viable business in order to keep plantations out of the sensitive land - the NGO works to teach traditional honey hunters more modern techniques, so that fewer bees are killed in the process of harvesting the honey.

Honey is also big business. Pundyk talks a little about the fact that honey has been shipped all over the world since the very earliest of civilizations - there are reports, for instance, of Chinese traders acquiring honey from Borneo, and there are temple paintings of honey trading in Egypt. Honey is, in addition to being a relatively easy to acquire sweetener, highly valued as a medicine. Different honeys are often attributed with different medicinal qualities, and so trade across national borders makes sense.

In modern times, honey remains an important commodity.  Pundyk discusses the struggle that smaller producers have in maintaining their local product.  For instance, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, and the United States have all raised significant tariff walls against Chinese honey, both because it is much cheaper than locally produced honey, and because there have been some serious problems with chloramphenicol - an antibiotic. Australia and New Zealand both have very stringent import laws - Pundyk is concerned that her honey will be confiscated as she enters these countries (although, actually, it is only as she arrives in Sweden, en route to the UK, that her honey is confiscated. Not, as she feared, because of import laws, but rather as a part of the prohibition against liquids on planes.) Despite this, Australian honey has been found with high levels of nitrofurans - a different antibiotic, used in Argentina, but not in Australia - keeping honey "pure" is harder than it looks. The ban on Chinese honey resulted in the near collapse of one of the major honey producers in the UK - the honey they had been selling was largely Chinese. Other honey companies capitalized.

Argentina ships a vast amount of honey to the US - most of the honey sold in the US is a blend of honey from the US, Canada, and Argentina - but how much of each sort of honey is in the blend is hard to tell. Bee keepers in the US chapter complain about the competition from Argentina - and yet, Pundyk has a surprisingly hard time finding honey, either domestic or imported, in the stores she visits in the US. This leads to a short discussion of food deserts - as she drives across the American South, she is amazed that she sees so little fresh produce on grocery shelves.

In addition to writing about bees, Pundyk writes about herself, about travelling, about finding a home, about falling in love, and blues music, among a great deal else. The books rambles all over the map, just as Pundyk does. At times, this is a little distracting; at other times, it is endearing. In the end, the book is a fascinating meander through a vastly interesting topic, and a nice way to end the Honey Month.

Terry Pratchett - I Shall Wear Midnight


This is the fourth of Pratchett's Tiffany Aching novels.  This series is a young adult series, and serves, perhaps, as an independent introduction to Pratchett's Discworld. Tiffany, a young witch, wanders through environments which will be familiar with existing fans of the Discworld novels, but which are presented in a new and fresh way in these books. The books are delightful, regardless of whether you've read any of the rest of Pratchett's work or not - but, there are some grace notes which will enhance the books if you are already a fan. This novel features a cameo appearance by a very old character - Eskarina Smith, the central character of Pratchett's much earlier novel, Equal Rites. If you haven't read the earlier novel, it doesn't matter, but if you have, there's a strong Aha! moment when you recognize Miss Smith, which is nice.

Pratchett plays with metaphors in all of his writing.  Here, Pratchett is writing about inclusiveness and interpersonal relations. He is also writing about witch hunts, both literal and figurative - it wouldn't be hard to see this as a novel about the way in which, people of, say, Middle Eastern extraction are treated in Western society. Despite that, the novel is not at all preachy. Instead, it is a romp; entirely delightful. If you are already a fan, this is a must read. If not, I'd say start with The Wee Free Men. My wife contends that the Tiffany Aching books are not necessarily a good place to enter into the Discworld, because Pratchett writes them much differently. Notably, the Tiffany Aching books have chapters, and a relatively small cast of highly developed characters, while the rest of the novels have no chapters, and have vast hordes of characters with somewhat differing levels of development. Pratchett novels are a cumulative thing - the character of, for instance, the witches, evolves quite a lot between Equal Rites (the first appearance of Granny Weatherwax) and Carpe Jugulum (which I reviewed earlier, as part of the vampire thing). The same is true of the members of Ankh Morpork's Night Watch. I think Tiffany Aching is as good a place to start any any other, probably - if you like these, you'll probably find a great deal that you like in the rest of the books.