Review: American Honor Killings: Desire and Rage Among Men

American Honor Killings: Desire and Rage Among Men by David McConnell

My rating: 3 of 5 stars







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Review: 1933: Poems

1933: Poems by Philip Levine

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



Wistful blankverse without destination or resolution from the former Detroiter. Levine takes you to the moment of heartache, death, a meeting setting the stage lets you fill in the rest.



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Review: Goodbye, Columbus

Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I remember this book very well, it was a very rewarding venture off the road of non-fiction reading I typically stick to. Each story deals with the problems and concerns of secondand third-generation assimilated American Jews as they leave the ethnic ghettos of their parents and grandparents and go on to college, the white-collar professions, and life in the suburbs where they suffer alienation and self-doubt. This is not a life experience I have had, but Roth touches universal chords and I can still relate to the wistful, sad nostalgia of "Goodbye, Columbus" coming from the record Brenda's brother listens to about his years as an athlete at Ohio State University. I don't know bout the alienation experienced by the assimilated Jew, but I can relate to the existential panic and frutstration with religious inconsistencies that causes Ozzie, without thinking, to run to the roof of the synagogue where he threatens to jump.



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Review: Eating Animals

Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Foer makes a powerful indictment against modern factory farming practices: they are cruel & inhumane, proliferate an environmentally damaging industry, and become wellsprings of human disease from obesity to contagions. Foer charts his path from investigator to vegan to vegatarian slaughterhouse maker. (The final engineering feat bring to mind the Errol Morris documentary "Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.")

For Foer, turkey, chicken and pork industries are just irredeemable with the beef industry modestly better. Heritage breeds, those not already inbred to sickly mutants, are rare and unsustainable for the globe leaving no way out but vegetarinaism for the earnest researcher and father.

Very interesting is the economic angle: food prices have remained and are expected to be flat over the years, but food producer's costs and cost of living rise with everyone else, forcing them into the arena of institutionalized animal curelty to increase margins and have a sustainable business model.



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Review: The Collected Works of Henrik Ibsen, Volume IV

The Collected Works of Henrik Ibsen, Volume IV by Henrik Ibsen

My rating: 1 of 5 stars



The Kindle edition is so ride with incorrect characters as to unreadable.

Find the original Google-scanned eBook version and you will see it is due to the volume's marking and underlines.

This applies only to the Google scan from Univ. of Michigan Libraries edition, available from Google, archive.org, and elsewhere.



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Review: An Ocean of Despair

An Ocean of Despair by Thor Harris

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This short chapbook is Harri's drawings and prose documenting a year-long battle with madness. Harris details the onset conditions, suicidal thoughts, the difficulties with prescribed SSRI medications and the eventual return to balance with a new outlook and the right meds.

I read it with the accompanying ambient collaboration with Rob Halverson, Fields of Innards, included on CD.



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Review: The Collected Works of Henrik Ibsen, Volume IV

The Collected Works of Henrik Ibsen, Volume IV by Henrik Ibsen

My rating: 1 of 5 stars



The Kindle edition is so ride with incorrect characters as to unreadable.

Find the original Google-scanned eBook version and you will see it is due to the volume's marking and underlines.



View all my reviews

Review: An Ocean of Despair

An Ocean of Despair by Thor Harris

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This short chapbook is Harri's drawings and prose documenting a year-long battle with madness. Harris details the onset conditions, suicidal thoughts, the difficulties with prescribed SSRI medications and the eventual return to balance with a new outlook and the right meds.



View all my reviews

Review: The Confessions

The Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Among the reasons I have enjoyed reading Rousseau's obsessively detailed, confessional autobiography is that I recognize in him a fellow book lover. Consider this quote from ""JJ": "I have lost or dismembered numbers of books through the habit of carrying them about with me everywhere, in the pigeon-house, in the garden, in the orchard, and in the vineyard. While occupied with something else, I put my book down at the foot of a tree or on a hedge ; I always forgot to take it up again, and, at the end of a fortnight, I frequently found it rotted away, or eaten by ants and snails. This eagerness for learning became a mania which drove me nearly stupid, so incessantly was I employed with muttering something or other to myself."

However, I cannot recongnize in myself (thankfully) thin-skinned Rousseau's small-mindedness, petulance, defeatism, and general self-defeating actions. It is somewhat amazing the the author of [b:The Social Contract|12651|The Social Contract|Jean-Jacques Rousseau|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1309284382s/12651.jpg|702720] had such a bizarrely unhealthy sex life, a streak of self-abasing confessionalism, and a Tesla-like ability to confound his own financial success and security through his intellectual property.

A few things made an impact on me and will stay with me from this book:

- In Rousseau's younger years, he was one of the rootless, poor vagabonds which dotted the landscape of Europe in the early 18th Century. That lifestyle, during which Rousseau typically wrecked his own chances of betterment time and time again, of cottage industries, patronage, and latent feudalism was a fascinating part of the work which I am sure is among the earliest examples of the hyper-confessional autobiography that is not uncommon today. ([a:Lance Armstrong|1544|Lance Armstrong|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1213137491p2/1544.jpg], where's yours?)

- In one bizarre episode [a:Friedrich Melchior Von Grimm|4189980|Friedrich Melchior Von Grimm|http://www.goodreads.com/assets/nophoto/nophoto-U-50x66-251a730d696018971ef4a443cdeaae05.jpg], Rousseau and another man of letters stop in to visit a simpleton tween sold off by her mother as a concubine. Grimm, apparently, claimed to have only lingered in the young girl's room to make the others wait and Rousseau typical sexual encounter was an episode of weeping self-loathing. He confesses the peccadillo in his mind to his wife (five children, all dropped off at the orphanage) who forgave him and then Grimm shows up to tell on Rousseau. So, what's Rousseau's take on this? Grimm is a jerk ... no commentary on the poor young girl, the motivations of her mother, or the general behavior of his colleagues. It was all par for the course in that day and age, apparently.

- I am amazed Rousseau gives so much of his supposed enemie's correspondence, which only supports the apparent fact that Rousseau was a self-destructive, peevish whiner.



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Review: The Primal Screamer

The Primal Screamer by Nick Blinko

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



A don't read fiction often, so I am grateful for having received this work as a gift, else I would not have sought it out and experienced it. The author presents diary like an alternative reality of the history of Rudimentary Peni, his own anarcho-punk/deathrock band along with primal scream therapy experiences. I don't know how real for Nick Blinko those treatments where, but as a fan of underground music, I did find myself going to Google often to see if I could suss out the truth of the slightly veiled scene elements. I had better luck with that than understanding why some words are apparently almost randomly set in bold type, even when it is not understandable for emphasis. The mildy Lovecraftian tale of descent in anti-social madness, which recalls to me [b:The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity|28134|The Eden Express A Memoir of Insanity|Mark Vonnegut|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320516841s/28134.jpg|28720], builds well into what appears to be a violent, otherwordly breakthrough and then ... well, I just hate a denoument that winds up in a dream...



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Review: Mathematical Thinking: How to Develop It in the Classroom

Mathematical Thinking: How to Develop It in the Classroom by Masami Isoda

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Hatsumon is a Japanese word for "posing a problem”. Teachers know that the way in which the problem is posed influences students' learning significantly. A teachers' considered hatsumon will orient a students' thinking so that the answer and learning appears to the student to be from within ̶ a discovery ̶ as compared to a more occidental approach of a step-by-step recipe intended to funnel the student toward a solution that becomes understanding after practice. The authors here offer a two-part work composed of first a largely high level view of this approach that is buttressed with a final part of low-level, detailed classroom examples.

[Look for my full review at MAA Reviews]




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Review: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



I've long been a fan of Clemens/Twain. His writing are among the earliest I ever remember reading. I was doubly keen to revisit the work as narrated by "Frodo". The American actor does a fantastic job at delivering the dialect, but I find at this stage of life that deluge of semi-literacy, n-words, ruralisms and fantasy, well, tiring. I think if I read the book now - and maybe then - I would have skipped over much of this and absorbed the story. Maybe I am much more of a fan of Sawyer than Finn, for I feel Clemens was. In the final act, when Tom Sawyer makes his appearance the story and pace really picks up as if Clemens himself is more enthused.



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Review: Gods, Graves & Scholars: The Story Of Archaeology

Gods, Graves & Scholars: The Story Of Archaeology by C.W. Ceram

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Ceram does a wonder ful job bringing to life the early adventurers (not scientists) that kicked off archaeology as a science in the Old and New Worlds, and bringing to life the ancient societies of meso-america.




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Review: Gods, Graves & Scholars: The Story Of Archaeology

Gods, Graves & Scholars: The Story Of Archaeology by C.W. Ceram

My rating: 3 of 5 stars







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Review: EMILY DICKINSON: PROFILE OF THE POET AS COOK

EMILY DICKINSON: PROFILE OF THE POET AS COOK by Emily Dickinson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This slim chapbook lauds the baking prowess of the poetess. Apparenlty, her breadmaking made her more famous locally in the 1860s than her writing. There is some context and lette from Emily as well as photos from the Dickinson estate. Some recipes are family or period ones, but some are Emily's own, such as for gingerbread or a Christmas "black cake"



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Review: A Light That Never Goes Out: The Enduring Saga of the Smiths

A Light That Never Goes Out: The Enduring Saga of the Smiths by Tony Fletcher

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



A penetrating and detailed look at the quick rise and suddent disintegration of the Smiths over 633 pages. The book reveals Moz to be a petulant, self-centered, and insecure deal-breaker that while outspoken in criticism could brook no dissent or conflicting opinion. The focus is on the close and special Morrissey-Marr relationship, both artistic and business. The context tells much of the story of British post-punk pop, as well. Details on the albums, their recording and individual songs and sessions will be of interest to Smiths fans while the greater work has much to offer any music enthisiast.

Hear my interview with author Tony Fletcher on Outsight Radio Hours episode 695.



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Review: Eating Animals

Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Foer makes a powerful indictment against modern factory farming practices: they are cruel & inhumane, proliferate an environmentally damaging industry, and become wellsprings of human disease from obesity to contagions. Foer charts his path from investigator to vegan to vegatarian slaughterhouse maker. (The final engineering feat bring to mind the Errol Morris documentary "Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.")

For Foer, turkey, chicken and pork industries are just irredeemable with the beef industry modestly better. Heritage breeds, those not already inbred to sickly mutants, are rare and unsustainable for the globe leaving no way out but vegetarinaism for the earnest researcher and father.



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Review: Ashes: Poems new & old

Ashes: Poems new & old by Philip Levine

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



A thin volume of world-weary, nostalgic, wistful free verse from an ex-Detroit that rivers back that city.



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Review: Blind But Now I See: The Biography of Music Legend Doc Watson

Blind But Now I See: The Biography of Music Legend Doc Watson by Kent Gustavson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



An amazing, persona, and insightful journey into the life of master musician Doc Watson. From growing up blind in rural Appalachia to being swept into the folk revival, Gustavson ably invites us to see what life was like in becoming the remarkable Doc Watson. Watson's professional career with his son Merle and after Merle's death is the high part of an arc that descends into reclusion as an elder statesman of flatpicking with annual appearances at MerleFest and, almost mercifully, this work ends just prior to Watson's May, 2012 death.

Hear my conversation with the author:
Sunday, February 17, 2013.
http://www.facebook.com/OutsightOnRGW/events#!/events/475034612554661/



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Review: War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism

War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism by Douglas J. Feith

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



Feith as a high-placed aide in Rumsfeld's Dept. of Defense had an insider's view on the birth and execution of the War on Terror. Overtly, he claims a balanced view: Bush and company made mistakes, even enormous once yet the approach was basically sound. I get it; a woodchuck destroys my garden, I wage war on all woodchucks that could possibly wreak such havoc, I don't go on a personal vendetta against a single, criminal chucker. However, Feith fails to convince that the war on Saddam was a natural step in the War on Terror following laid out foreign policy (why not the rest of the Axis of Evil, or other nation-states?) and not Bush's misguided vendetta at a time when the resources and focus should have been on Al Qaeda and The Taliban in Afghanistan.



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Review: The Civil War: A Narrative

The Civil War: A Narrative by Shelby Foote

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



An excellent overview of the early years of the American Civil War: Sumter to Perryville. When Foote says a sound was "dismal in the frosty night" you know he is channeling the drama of this bloody crisis, but will go no further into treating the subject like a novel. I hope to get to the later volumes sometime soon.

A note about this specific audio version. At times, background voices can be discerned, as if the narrator was in a room adjacent to other narrators. This for me barely rose to the level of a distraction.



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Review: A Light That Never Goes Out: The Enduring Saga of the Smiths

A Light That Never Goes Out: The Enduring Saga of the Smiths by Tony Fletcher

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



A penetrating and detailed look at the quick rise and suddent disintegration of the Smiths over 633 pages. The book reveals Moz to be a petulant, self-centered, and insecure deal-breaker that while outspoken in criticism could brook no dissent or conflicting opinion. The focus is on the close and special Morrissey-Marr relationship, both artistic and business. The context tells much of the story of British post-punk pop, as well. Details on the albums, their recording and individual songs and sessions will be of interest to Smiths fans while the greater work has much to offer any music enthisiast.

Hear my interview with author Tony Fletcher on Outsight Radio Hours Sunday, February 10, 2013 at 3:00pm Eastern: http://www.facebook.com/#!/events/356796061093925/





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