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.

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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.)

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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.

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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.


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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.)

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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.

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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...

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