Review: Rogue States: The Rule of Force in World Affairs

Rogue States: The Rule of Force in World Affairs by Noam Chomsky
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Here, Chomsky details the United States' increasingly open dismissal of the United Nations and international legal precedent in justifying its motives and actions, particularly around the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Detailed and provocative, Chomsky brings in U.S. actions in Kosovo, etc. and Indonesia's occupation of East Timor marked by violence and brutality during the tenure of Indonesian President Suharto, among other instances of the U.S., in Chomsky's view, acting as much as a rogue state itself as anything else.

Chomsky also covers here "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country", Article 13(2) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (10 December 1948) and how this figures into Palestine.

View all my reviews

Review: The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating

The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a beautiful little book chronicling a woman's admiration for a captive snail while laid up recuperating. While a profusion of chapters and parts, the little book (small pages) has plenty of whitespace and while I lingered over it over three separate days it would make a fine, lazy read in a single sitting some sunny afternoon on the porch swing of a bucolic B&B. Enraptured with the snail (Neohelix albolabris, if you must know) her study is of interest even to malacologists, such as the care of the eggs this hermaphrodite gastropod left so she could revel even in its progeny. A delightful, reflective, and educational chronicle.

(I received the book for free through Goodreads First Reads.)

View all my reviews

Review: Death at the Priory: Love, Sex, and Murder in Victorian England

Death at the Priory: Love, Sex, and Murder in Victorian England by James Ruddick
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The fatal poisoning of Charles Bravo in 1876 remains a great, unsolved mystery. Author James Ruddick did some serious legwork doing deep research on each side of the Atlantic. While his interpretation of the facts may not sway you completely to his solution, his original work uncovering a primary source relating to housekeeper Jane Cox does make this work worth reading instead of or at least in addition to any previously formulated work. Regardless of whether he is correct, or not, the elegant and engaging presentation will be entertaining for any true crime fan.

View all my reviews

Review: Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert

Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert by Terry Tempest Williams
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"Love is a powerful tool, and maybe, just maybe, before the last little town is corrupted and the last of the unroaded and undeveloped wildness is given over to dreams of profit, maybe it will be love, finally, love for the land for its own sake and for what it holds of beauty and joy and spiritual redemption that will make [wilderness] not a battlefield but a revelation."

-Environmental writer and historian T.H. Watkins

This quote reproduced in the book captures the essence of what the author is seeking to do: summon reverence and a spiritual need for the wilderness lands she seeks to have federally protected in the Four Corners area of the American West, particularly her home state of Utah. For me, she succeeds best quoting other visionary environmentalists, details the unique and fragile ecologies, and even brings in her personal history which connects to even the Romney clan part of the Mormons expelled from Mexico.

She loses me in New Age-y depictions of the starkly beautiful lands and Anasazi traces. Also, she describes in details landmarks, pieces of art, and artifacts but the book has no illustrations outside the jacket cover.


View all my reviews

Review: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe

The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Lewis wrote this book for, and dedicated it to, his goddaughter Lucy Barfield. It comes across as definite YA material aimed at a child and, for this reason, this is one book where I like the movie better, that is The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the 2005 film directed by Andrew Adamson. The book just not have the depth and literary quality for of, say, LOTR, despite Lewis being an Inkling. When I first read this book, I was a tween library assistant and read it intrigued by the Christian angle pointed out by the librarian at my grade school. I thought then and now the Aslan sacrifice and resurrection such an obvious metaphor and even a deus ex machina as to be a cheap plot device. In the movie, Lucy is about to apply her cordial and is stopped by Susan (an attempt I did not see in the book) and carrying that through I think would have been better than the who flash of "deep magic". Other differences that make me prefer the movie:

Book: The White Witch turns a group of Narnians into stone after she is told about Father Christmas by the Fox. Movie: She turns the Fox into stone after Edmund tells her about their dealings with Asian. (I prefer the whole downplaying of Father Christmas as his more prominent role in the book brings it to an Xmas fairy tale for a child.)
Book: The battle of Beruna is only joined when Susan, Lucy and Asian arrive. Movie: The full battle is seen. (Of course, with the stunning level of today's CGI, I want the big battle scenes.)
In the book they talk about the giant Mr. Rumblebuffin, and in the move they never mention him. (That's fine with me, let's have an interquel about these giants, though. The book is overly dense with a taxonmoy of fairy tale species.)

View all my reviews

Review: Papa John

Papa John by John Phillips
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a detailed, sordid, and lengthy survey of Phillips' rise with The Mamas and The Papas and descent into drug addiction. Phillips does very little to defend his actions from "fag rolling" (blackmail for queerbashing) as a juvenile to cheating on his pregnant wives including talking one into an illegal abortion where the he believed the feared molestation by the doctor occured. Of interest for music history, we hear the times and contexts for writing "Kokomo", "Go Where You Wanna Go", "California Dreamin'", "Monday, Monday", "I Saw Her Again", "Words of Love", "Twelve Thirty (Young Girls Are Coming to the Canyon)", and more. Phillips says Mama Cass died of an over-worked heart and no drugs or lunches were involved while his own drug habit quashed his food and sex appetite while developing into a trafficking operation brought down by the feds.

John's career and live seems to parallel the major arc of history there: early 60s folk revival that was progressive socially even if it didn't want to be, The Summer of Love and the Monterey Pop Festival of 1967 that Phillips was behind as a give-back event, the violent and dispiriting summer of '68 as love began to fade into the lethal '69 including the Manson murders where Phillips claims to have been invited to the Tate house that fateful night and through Cass Elliot knew of Wojtek Frykowski as one of her druggie hangers-on and drug running diplomat boyfriend (unnamed) Pic Dawson. Phillips does drop a lot of names, including doing drugs with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and others beyond the usual suspects on the rock scene. '71 brought the drug-related deaths of Jim, Jimi, and Janis and Phillips was one that continued on with the drugs and, in his words, would have been a casualty had he not been arrested.

View all my reviews

Review: The Silmarillion

The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Included in this final volume of the audiobook is the Akallabêth and relates the history of the Downfall of Númenor and its people, which takes place in the Second Age and is the rise of Sauron. The final part, Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age, is a brief account of the circumstances which led to and were presented in The Lord of the Rings and thus stitches this misty past to the LOTR saga. But, the Arkenstone is not a Silmaril? That seems a missed opportunity to weld the arc together and have a proper MacGuffin to tie it all together, like Infinity Stones in the Marvel Universe. I was thinking the Arkenstone was a Silmaril and this final part would at least hint at how it came to be in the heart of the Lonely Mountain...

View all my reviews

Review: A Sorrow in Our Heart: The Life of Tecumseh

A Sorrow in Our Heart: The Life of Tecumseh by Allan W. Eckert
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is an amazingly detailed work of scholarship tracking the life of Tecumseh from the family he was born into to the day of his death. There are extensive notes amplifying details such as why the author chose certain points of view or why he disregarded unsupported versions of events. Largely this builds on and at times corrects Allan W. Eckert's other works The Frontiersmen, Wilderness Empire, and Gateway to Empire. The focus here is on the military life of Tecumseh from successful warrior in the period of The Revolutionary War to general of a united Indian front during the War of 1812. Much credence is given to Tecumseh predicting successfully the solar eclipse of June 16, 1806, a brilliant meteor display or comet of 1811, the December 16, 1811 New Madrid earthquake, and the day of his own death. This work of scholarship is of interest beyond Tecumseh's biography to the events he partook in, especially British-American relations over his life. The author tends toward novelisation often by recreating dialog and scenes which I think would be better forgone and could have greatly shortened the telling of a life full of enough drama.

View all my reviews

Review: The Silmarillion, Volume 2

The Silmarillion, Volume 2 by J.R.R. Tolkien
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It is great to have excellent narrator Martin Shaw do the reading for me and let him worry about the pronunciations here. Subtitled, "Of Beren and Lúthien and the Ruin of Beleriand", this middle volume of this abridged audiobook there is a story in the classic mold of a knight in quest for love. Since Thingol refused to give Lúthien's hand in marriage to Beren, a mere mortal, he had to bring back a Silmaril from the Iron Crown of Morgoth in order to win her hand.

Using Lúthien's powers to place Morgoth's court into a deep sleep (kinda like the light of Eärendil for Frodo), they were able to enter Angband where Beren was able to cut a Silmaril from Morgoth's iron crown. However, as they escaped from Angband, the great wolf Carcharoth, whom Morgoth had personally bred, awoke. Beren held out the Silmaril, hoping that its radiance would avert the beast, but he was mistaken ((kinda like The Phial of Galadriel did not completely trounce Shelob for Frodo). Carcharoth bit off his hand, swallowing it along with the Silmaril, and proceeded to run rampant through Doriath. Lúthien and the unconscious Beren were rescued by the Eagles of Manwë. Beren participated in the hunting of Carcharoth, where the beast was slain and the Silmaril recovered; the quest was accomplished, but in the process Beren was mortally wounded.

With this tragedy, there are some intriguing asides about werewolves and vampires. Partly I was disappointed that Tolkien would incorporate such timeworn legends, but intrigued on what he would have done with them, had he given us more details and them a greater role.

View all my reviews

Review: Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets

Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets by Luke Dittrich
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In the style of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, this work seeks to peel away the institutionalized obscurity of the most-studied amnesiac of all time and reveal who he was, what was done to him, and who he was. Interweaved is the author confronts his own family past as his grandfather, William Beecher Scoville, was the "pyschosurgeon" that lobotomized patient H.M., real name, Henry Gustav Molaison. In Scoville's procedure-tweaking ways he went a little deeper in his tissue removal so that H.M. traded epilepsy for memory loss. H.M.'s case was widely studied from late 1957 until his death in 2008 and played a very important role in the development of theories that explain the link between brain function and memory, which feature widely in this book. The memory of that research controlled and presented without much access granted by the primary scientist investigating him, Suzanne Corkin. The author reveals that Dr. Corkin destroyed research documents and data, and failed to obtain consent from Molaison's closest living kin, using a straw man with power of attorney.

This book is enlightening about the mysteries of the brain and the popularity of lobotomy techniques into the 70s (and beyond?) and revealing about the work of Scoville research into the unfortunate Henry Molaison.

View all my reviews

Review: The Silmarillion, Volume I

The Silmarillion, Volume I by J.R.R. Tolkien
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When I first read this years ago, I was merely thirsty for more of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, etc. So, I was disappointed and even disoriented since this sweep is much more epic and grander. Now, I come to it to appreciate only Tolkien's vision and this triumph by the linguist and fantasist. It is also rather entertaining to read of Balrogs, Elrond, and Galadriel, etc. in their mythic roles during the legendary First Age.

View all my reviews

Review: The Plague

The Plague by Albert Camus
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My used copy here has an inscription stating this is a decent book by an author that has done better. Sure, I liked The Stranger better, but haven't read all Camus' works so I can't attest to this inscriber's accuracy. The Plague is considered an existentialist classic despite Camus' objection to the label. I agree with his object. this is no The Trial and rather than being stark allegory of the human condition, it is so stark to be more allegory than novel. Perhaps a morality tale of sorts? The novel has been read as a metaphorical treatment of the French resistance to Nazi occupation during World War II, and that makes sense to me.

He implies heroism is ordinary people doing extraordinary things out of simple decency and need while some turn more pragmatic seeking to escape or exploit the situation sounds like resistance movement mentality. Camus started gathering material for the novel in January 1941, when he arrived in Oran, the Algerian coastal city where the story is set. He continued working on the manuscript in Le Chambon-sur- Lignon, a mountain village in central France where he went to recuperate from one of his periodic bouts of tuberculosis in the summer of 1942. But he was soon swept into the resistance, and it was not until the liberation of France that he was able to return his attention to the book. I can see the plague here as a visitation of evil that swarmed up out of his fetid pool and returned there to haunt mankind from afar.


View all my reviews

Review: Me Talk Pretty One Day

Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It is great to hear Sedaris narrate this triumph of self-deprecating humor himself. Some of the autobiographical material, much of what covers the events leading to his move to Paris and life there, is from live reading before audiences, which is great. In my opinion, the best material is in the last third of the audiobook and is from those audience readings. The most hilarious bits come from some vignettes he reads from his diary which I am not certain would be in the printed version.

View all my reviews

Review: Problem-Solving Strategies in Mathematics: From Common Approaches to Exemplary Strategies

Problem-Solving Strategies in Mathematics: From Common Approaches to Exemplary Strategies by Alfred S. Posamentier
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is a guide and classroom resource that can also assist an independent student looking to broaden his or her problem-solving strategies. The level is appropriate for secondary education. The reader can easily be the student looking for a self-contained overview to take at any pace or the educator looking to interject fresh material into a lecture or lesson. Each of the ten strategies present contrasting solutions in a format meant to provide insight into the problem. Only elementary mathematics is used as the goal is to improve the student’s procedure, not enlarge on mathematical techniques or even increase mathematical sophistication, per se. In the suite of examples, I feel the authors missed three opportunities: helpful duplication for contrasting, editing out unnecessarily similar examples, and including analytic geometry techniques appropriate for the target audience...

[Look for my entire review up at MAA Reviews.]





View all my reviews