[Book review] Boy meets depression

My first impression of this book was not favorable. This, I thought, is not a person who has mastered themself, who can look back and be objective. This person still carries the hurt of their loneliness everywhere, and their writing is imbued with it. The humor sounds snide; the stories sound whiny. The author acknowledges this early on, though, so at least there's fair warning. The first paragraph ends with, "I came into the world kicking, screaming, and crying. And maybe not much has changed since." 

My first impression was arrogant, apathetic, and wrong. This book demonstrates the real pathology of depression, and for that, it's brilliant. You hear the negative thought processes that people with a depressive disorder experience, the anhedonia, the alienation, the feeling of being lost. "All you can see is the moment you're stuck in," he says, and he's right. 

So read this. It'll help you understand, and maybe have a little empathy for the millions of people who suffer from depressive disorders. But maybe be prepared to find the author's tone a little annoying.

Blogging for Books provided me a free review copy of this book... and I still feel kinda 'meh' about it.

a book review: The Hermit, by Monica Friedman

I don't have many words for how deeply this story touched me, but I can tell you how it did so:

The characters are people first; they are individuals, not the named trait-collections one finds in some books. These characters have their own voices that are not dictated by the stereotypes attached to them. Men experience sadness; women experience anger; children can be calm; adults can be playful. There is no watering down of a smart character's vocabulary, no fluffing up of the simpler characters' vocabulary. There is never a time when the characters experience only one emotion. They're all too human for that.

It is also true that these characters are archetypes in the fairy tale Friedman weaves. It's a fairy tale about humanity, despite the greater number of animals than humans in the cast. I felt connected to the characters as people, no matter their species.

I could hear the author's voice in this story. It was strong, consistent, and clear. I could also hear the voices of the characters, for the reasons I've already mentioned. And, I could hear my own story in their voices. I cried when I saw my voice in a character's pain; when I saw, finally, how that pain came to be; when I saw how much of our pain is our own creation. I cried again when I was reminded that there's still hope - there will always be hope, and a choice.

This story is everything a fairy tale should be: it reflects us with almost obscene clarity at our best, and at our worst, and it shows us a path through the dark.

I will read this many times, whenever I need to hear it again.

[book review] Dear Mister Essay Writer Guy: Advice and Confessions on Writing, Love, and Cannibals

Dinty W. Moore's Dear Mister Essay Writer Guy: Advice and Confessions on Writing, Love, and Cannibals is not really an advice book. Nor is it really about love or cannibals, although there is advice in there to be gleaned, and he does mention both love and cannibals. He also talks a lot about Michel de Montaigne, an essayist Dinty seems to admire. It's really a string of confessions about writing and living as a writer, and it's really very funny. It's also quite short, and the high ratio of illustrations mean you're turning pages rather more rapidly than usual.

The book has an index, which I only mention because it helped me just now, when I couldn't remember how to spell Michel de Montaigne, but I'm not sure why it's there, except as a joke. Maybe it's a joke. 

More on this later. 

[book review] Viper Wine

"Venetia Stanley was the great beauty of her day, so dazzling she inspired Ben Jonson to poetry and Van Dyck to painting. But now she is married, the adoration to which she has become accustomed has curdled to scrutiny, and she fears her powers are waning. Her devoted husband, Sir Kenelm Digby—explorer, diplomat, philosopher, alchemist— refuses to prepare a beauty tonic for her, insisting on her continued perfection.

Venetia, growing desperate, secretly engages an apothecary to sell her “viper wine”—a strange potion said to bolster the blood and invigorate the skin.  The results are instant, glorious, and addictive, and soon the ladies of the court of Charles I are looking unnaturally youthful. But there is a terrible price to be paid, as science clashes with magic, puritans rebel against the decadent monarchy, and England slides into civil war.

Based on real events and written with anachronistic verve, Viper Wine is an intoxicating brew of love, longing and vanity, where the 17th and 21st centuries mix and mingle in the most enchanting and mind-bending ways."

This book has the potential to address the ways vanity and the exultation of youth corrupt the human mind and rot our social structures from inside the individuals. - 12 May 2015



Clearly, it took me a loooooong time to get through halfway through this book.
I'm still not done with it, really. I've written my review based on what I've read so far, and I feel free now to read it at a more leisurely pace.

More leisurely than taking two months to read 200 75 pages? Yes.

I haven't been able to read much this summer, and this book takes more energy than I've had anyway. It's not for the lighthearted.

You may have noticed that I haven't written much either.

I took a hiatus from my computer.

I'm probably back. Mostly.

~~~

My review of Viper Wine by Hermione Eyre follows:

My first thought, after reading the description of the book, was that Viper Wine had the potential to make a powerful statement about the social and psychological damage done by the beauty standard. The false value of aesthetic beauty, the judgment of worth by beauty, the patriarchal grading of women by their relative beauty, the competition that arises and demands unnatural measures to achieve "beauty" - all of these damage ourselves and our society, and this book could show us how.

 I looked at the table of contents. The chapter titles sounded like short stories ("A Discourse Between Brothers") or poems ("Moonbeams Are Cold and Moist"). The include modern pop culture references ("Fame" and "Yellow Submarine"). Together, they hinted at a poetic, ornate, satirically flowery style of writing. They were right.

 There is a prologue, and Epilogue, and 38 chapters. There are about 400 pages of text. Large pages. There is also a Bibliography (selected), and a list of illustrations. This surprised me. I mean, yeah, it says it's based on real events, but that phrase gets tossed about quite a lot with very little research to back it up. Not so in this case. Perhaps it's because this novel, this fictionalization, was written by a journalist. But frankly, calling Hermione Eyre (surely that's a pen name?) a journalist after reading any of this book at all, feels so incomplete as to be false. This woman is an Author. She has crafted what is perhaps a masterpiece.

 I took a peek at the author photo on the back flap, curious about the face that made Viper Wine. The woman in the photo challenges the viewer and does not seem above leaping out of the photo for a fist fight - if only to place bets on the winner.

 I wondered, before beginning the journey that has been Reading The Book, whether there could be a connection between the ornate writing style and the theme of social beauty concepts, especially in the damage those concepts do; is the writing style another layer of satire? Now that I'm halfway into the book, I feel it must be intentional. Whatever the case, it works.

 Seriously, don't let the ornate style turn you away before giving this book a try. It isn't over the top, and somehow it manages to not be pretentious. The story is woven by its prose. Every thread is important. Every word addresses the characters in the most human terms and stabs at the modern feminist's foes. The text describes the patriarchy without subscribing to it. If nothing else, this story is a feminist victory.

In the end, I ranked this book at four stars instead of five only because it is not broadly accessible; the average reader will have difficulty with some of the style devices - both the overall ornateness and the insertion of radio static (no really; I don't know how else to describe it), which is original and interesting, but hard to 'get' at first. 

(I ranked the back cover copy fairly low because books that only list their praise on the back annoy me. Give me a reason to open it, not sound bites.)

[book review] Rooted in Design

Rooted in Design: Sprout Home's Guide to Creative Indoor Planting
by Tara Heibel & Tassy de Give

I don't know what I expected - maybe some sort of lightweight, coffee table book, probably in paperback. This book is none of those things.
This is a textbook. It even smells like a textbook. Weighs like a textbook. But when you open it up, it's like someone hid a high-polish magazine inside a hardback shell. Minus the ads, and plus a whole lot of content, of course. I felt like I was looking at one of those fluffy filler articles you might find in magazines with words like "simple" and "rustic" and "living" printed in bold font against a backdrop that indicates "sterile decor" and "trust fund living" and "kids? What kids? I have no spawn to muss my walls."
The imagery is mostly blank white space, broken elegantly by a piece of moss here, a potted succulent there, and the occasional paragraph.
I had a hard time actually getting my eyeballs to read those paragraphs. This is a book that begs to be browsed - like a magazine you pick up in the grocery checkout with no intentions to buy. It's hard to imagine reading this book. In fact, it sat on my table for weeks before I read more than a section subtitle. The interior of the book just looked so much like a coffee table magazine, that I found myself treating it as one. (Let's face it - I treat textbooks that way, too.)
Finally, I forced my eyes to focus on the paragraphs. I started in the middle - I couldn't help myself - then flipped back to the beginning.
It turns out that this book is... well, it's hard to pin down. It reads like the nicest, most conversational, most helpful and friendly textbook ever. That is to say, there really is a ton of information in there, complete with step-by-step guides (that read something like recipes) for the more complicated design ideas given in the text. This really would be a great textbook for a class on this stuff. But never fear - the authors, who do this special sort of plant-based interior design for a living, aren't going to lose their day jobs anytime soon. While they do seem to share a wealth of trade secrets in this book, it's the rare non-interior designer who is going to absorb all that info. Or rather, who is going to want to absorb all that info. 
This would be a great book to check out from the library when you've decided to be your own interior designer for your posh loft apartment in some swanky urban dream, and you want a lot of greenery in your house. Oh, and your home is not situated in an arid desert environment like mine is. Still, I'll probably use some of these ideas (or a poor person's equivalent), and I'll definitely look to the photography for inspiration on future projects. Would I have bought this book, had it not been provided for review? Probably not. I would have happily flipped through it while waiting to pay for my actual purchases, though.

But hey, don't let me spoil your fun. You can find Rooted in Design on amazon. I got my copy from bloggingforbooks.org, where I post reviews in exchange for free books. Free books! Yeah baby!

The Room, by Jonas Karlsson [a book review]

This is the best depiction of mental illness in fiction that I have read. Ever. Yet. Et cetera.

And yet, I've had a hard time beginning this review. I read the book two weeks ago and have stared at this mostly blank post every day for at least a few minutes.

I'm just not sure how to express the emotions stirred by this book.

Tell you what, I'll just start here: the description on the Blogging for Books website says -

Bjorn is a compulsive, meticulous bureaucrat who discovers a secret room at the government office where he works--a secret room that no one else in his office will acknowledge. When Bjorn is in his room, what his co-workers see is him standing by the wall and staring off into space looking dazed, relaxed, and decidedly creepy. Bjorn's bizarre behavior eventually leads his co-workers to try and have him fired, but Bjorn will turn the tables on them with help from his secret room.
      Debut author Jonas Karlsson doesn't leave a word out of place in this brilliant, bizarre, delightful take on how far we will go--in a world ruled by conformity--to live an individual and examined life. 

I believe that's the publisher's blurb.

Over on goodreads.com, the reviews seem to divide into those who got that Bjorn was mentally ill, and those who didn't. At least one (that I read) pinpointed Bjorn's mental illnesses as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and a form of Autism. Neither of those is something I know enough about to validate - or invalidate - that diagnosis, but it seems apt from what I do know. (Feel free to enlighten me if you are better versed in these.)

Those reviewers who didn't get that Bjorn had some sort of mental illness were either entertained by the potential magic of the story (Bjorn is, without a doubt delusional), or were irritated with the inconclusiveness of his characterization - that is, they thought he was just a jerk.

Except, in his own mind, Bjorn is perfectly reasonable. Polite. Nice even, though only as kind as might be appropriate for his aims.

Okay, seriously, I'm going to stop myself right here. See, the thing is, this character just straight up fascinates me. This depiction of mental illness from the inside - this flawless depiction - fascinates me. I could talk about the content of the story for... well, pages. But this isn't a book report. It's a review. So instead of going on about the intricacies of Bjorn's character development, I'll just tell you this: if you have any interest in mental illness - if you are curious about how delusion sounds on the inside - you should read this book.

It's a quick, fast-moving, somewhat surreal, infinitely fascinating look at the inner workings of a delusional mind. Just go for it. If you don't like it - this book isn't for everyone, for sure - you won't have lost much time because it's only 125 pages, and they're not even all full.

Bonus: the book includes study questions at the end. If you're into that sort of thing.



~~~

Bloggingforbooks.org sent me a review copy, in exchange for the review. It's a cool site if you're into getting free books and don't mind giving them a few words back in exchange. Check it out.

when the Railsplitter went foreign

I don't usually read non-fiction history books cover to cover, but when I do...

Here's the thing. I picked this book from the Blogging for Books website because, frankly, the selection at that time sucked, and this was the only one that struck me as having potential. I really wasn't in the mood for a presidential biography (I've never been in that mood; I'm not sure I'd even recognize it, if I did stumble across it). But the other options were downright dismal. So I selected this one, about Abe Lincoln.

The book is Lincoln in the World: The Making of a Statesman and the Dawn of American Power, by Kevin Peraino. And yes, I received a review copy in order to do this review.

I've had good luck with the books I've chosen from Blogging for Books. Here's to hoping that continues. Lincoln in the World certainly didn't disappoint.

Maybe I should reword that. I was expecting to struggle through a dry accounting of treaties and dignitaries lists I'd never remember quit reading after a few paragraphs. Instead, I got sucked in by Peraino's humor and insight.  Who wouldn't smile knowing that the esteemed president was completely aware of and honest about his lack of preparation for his post as our leader in foreign affairs? "I will be very apt to make blunders," he said to an unnamed foreign dignitary.

I'm totally stealing that line, by the way.

But anyway.

I grew up thinking Lincoln was something of a romanticist; perhaps that is only because our history books remember him romantically. The truth is that Lincoln was a literalist. Peraino quotes Lincoln's friend as saying that Lincoln's mind "crushed the unreal, the inexact, the hollow, and the sham,... Everything came to him in its precise shape and color."

Here's something I don't think many people understand: why do we study history? Peraino says that "in the age of Lincoln, we see shadows of our modern global arena." And that is why we study history: to recognize ourselves and discern what is real in our present. Peraino's treatment of Lincoln provides the lens for any reader to do exactly that. He makes Lincoln real, reminding us - or perhaps telling us for the first time - that Lincoln was just as human as the rest of us.

We tend to think of History as a list of dates, names, and wars, but history is nothing more, or less, than our story. It is the story of humans. Rather than listing the minutia of all Lincoln's foreign politics, Peraino examines Lincoln's character via the hard choices he navigated, thus giving a complete picture of how personality and interpersonal conflicts affected our young country's foreign involvement.

To illustrate this picture, Peraino focused on five conflicts Lincoln faced:
1. with his friend and law partner, Billy Herndon, over the Mexican War
2. with his Secretary of State over which of them would control foreign policy
3. with the British Prime Minister, over a diplomatic crisis in the midst of the American Civil War
4. with Karl Marx, in a race for public opinion
5. with the emperor of France, over their short-lived occupation of Mexico.

In the last chapter, Peraino addresses another conflict brought about by Lincoln's foreign policy: the efforts of biographer John Hays to efforts to define Lincoln's foreign policy legacy. Peraino titled this chapter "Lincoln vs. Lincoln," a nod to the conflicting presentations of Lincoln's legacy by the several biographers, all contemporaries of Lincoln, and all seeing him differently. From this, we learn why Lincoln's foreign policy has traditionally been such a minefield for historians (and for some of us, we learn that is was a minefield, and why is was, all at the same time).

As any good biography, this book tells enough about the era that non-historians will get a clear picture of the setting and cultural climate, allowing the reader to grasp Lincoln's personal development. Peraino's analysis flows smoothly in the context, and will be easy for anyone to read. So, if you have even a passing interest in American history, check this one out. It won't disappoint.

~~~

Incidentally, Lincoln was really funny, though maybe not always the way he intended. From the text:

As for French, the nineteenth-century language of diplomacy, he did not understand enough to read a menu. ("Hold on there," the Railsplitter once told a waiter in a New York French restaurant. "Beans. I know beans.")
... In the White House, Lincoln's attempts at diplomatic finesse could seem comically inept. His efforts to bow elegantly to visiting diplomats were so "prodigiously violent" that they had "almost the effect of a smack" in their "rapidity and abruptness."
... "His conversation consists of vulgar anecdotes at which he himself laughs uproariously," the Dutch minister complained. 

Confession: I pictured something akin to the Beverly Hillbillies' shenanigans when I read that. 

the Widow Basquait

I'd seen Basquiat's name in my art history books. I didn't learn how to pronounce it. His work never spoke to me, then. I was looking for something more ephemeral, something more fitting to my adolescent pretentiousness.  I forgot about him, somewhere in the next chapter.

I chose to read Widow Basquiat: A Love Story, by Jennifer Clement, because it looked more interesting than the other options.

Because of that, my perception of our world -shifted- just a little bit.

I flipped the book open when it came in the mail, and read a page. There was a big heading: LESSONS ON HOW TO BE A WOMAN. This is a two-page passage. It describes how art critic Rene Ricard hired Basquiat's long-time lover, Suzanne Mallouk, to transcribe his poetry. During the employment, Ricard gave Mallouk advice on being a more glamorous woman. It's all interesting advice that deserves its own review, but this is the key phrase: "he tells her to study the drag queens because only they know how to act like women."

I'll let you chew on that, because that isn't what this book is about.

Technically, this book is about Suzanne Mallouk, focusing on her relationship with Jean-Michel Basquiat. Literally, this book is about two people, the 1980s art scene in New York City, and addiction. It's a coming of age story for Suzanne, as much as it is a love story for them both. And even though the book is from Suzanne's perspective (more on how the author uses that, later), Jean is the one who captures the reader, much as he captured the art world in life: by burning like a firecracker and laughing at our blinded eyes.

I read another review of this book, that ends with the phrase, "Unfortunately, Clement never interprets or judges, but the book still provides insightful clues for Basquiat enthusiasts to decipher this '80s art legend." The reviewer calls Basquiat a misogynist, and I can see why, but I disagree. On the other hand, I agree that Clement doesn't interpret or judge, and disagree that this is an unfortunate thing. I always wonder, when reading biographies, what the real motives were for the subject. In Clements' work on Basquiat, he is allowed to speak for himself. Of course, that means it's the reader's responsibility to get it right.

I could have this wrong, but I don't think Basquiat was a misogynist. He seemed to treat all his lovers in about the same careless way, and they weren't all women. Jean and Suzanne treat each other badly at times, like lovers sometimes do, but I suspect that even their worst moments had more to do with all the coke they were doing than anything else.

Perhaps it's all about perspective. From a monogamist's perspective, Jean's constant infidelity might be reason enough to say he was a terrible person. For many, his nonchalance about non-familial relationships - be they sexual, romantic, or platonic - might be reason to call him insincere. I didn't see it that way. His behavior was consistently non-committal; he was free of such fetters as social norms except in the ways he mocked them. But I don't think he disliked people. I think he loved them - individually, that is, as opposed to in groups. I find him absolutely fascinating.

A note on the style of the text: it's brusque and charming, it's a tale told in snippets, and it speaks sometimes in the third person - this is Jennifer Clement, holding the spotlight to events, no photoshopping allowed - and sometimes in first person - this is Suzanne Mallouk herself, speaking from her journal. It's not nearly so jarring as it sounds, reading these two perspectives side by side. In fact, I suspect Basquiat would have enjoyed the dancing way the two narratives engage each other. The reader is never bogged down by, well, anything. Each passage - I can't call them chapters - is no more than two or three pages. Most are two or three paragraphs. Some are less. The story jumps along, just as Basquiat seemed to jump through life.

And along the way, I learned some things, about art, about love, about the wounds we think have healed, about racism, about humor, and about manliness.

I see his art with new eyes.




For perusal:

1. "The Radiant Child" - an article by Rene Ricard, the first written about Jean-Michel Basquiat. During the interview, Basquiat was high and naked. Rene complimented the beauty of Jean's penis.


2. An excerpt from Widow Basquiat, page 73; the regular font is Jennifer, the italics is Suzanne:

BLACK TAR SOAP

Jean-Michel's favorite soap is Black Tar Soap. He uses is every day. It makes a gray lather. No one else can use it. It is his joke. Jean-Michel draws it on his paintings.

Everything was symbolic to him. How he dressed, how he spoke, how he thought, who he associated with. Everything had to be prolific or why do it and his attitude was always tongue-in-cheek. Jean was always watching himself from outside of himself and laughing. 

find it

I received a free copy of this book from bloggingforbooks.org, so that I could do a review.
I'm so glad I did. 

something Harlequin this way creeps... (book review)

Confession time: when I'm exhausted and can't get to sleep, I look for something light to read. I recently went through a Harlequin romance phase, about the same time my insomnia was really peaking. These books were the lightest of the light in terms of the mental exertion required to read them, they were guaranteed to have a happy ending (thus not increasing my depression and, therefore, my insomnia), and they are ridiculously cheap (even free) on Kindle. This meant I could lay in bed feeling sorry for myself while reading book after book of merry idiocy for free or nearly-free until I fell asleep. Yeah yeah, there's still really no justification for reading that crap.

It was a short-lived phase because I got annoyed. Invariably, the chick is in some version of a crappy situation and needs the superhero-esque man - who's always wealthy - to help/save her dumb ass. He's always taller than her. He's always well-dressed, and probably has a better sense of style than she does. He also has more friends, who are also wealthy. And lest we forget, he has a mysterious past with lots of bad stuff. -And those are just some plot issues. The writing itself... well. There's a reason the market is inundated with this stuff. Writing at an 8th grade level (I'm being generous here) isn't difficult, and hey, the plot's already written!

And yet... I occasionally sneak back into the bowels of amazon.com for another cheap thrill. More rarely, I actually finish the book.

Once, while despairing over impending financial issues, I even considered writing a few of these books. I can't imagine it would take long. Just follow the formula and do some 'reverse editing'. After a brief consideration, I decided I couldn't possibly bring myself to write so poorly. I'd annoy myself. Unless it were a parody... but really, who has time for that?

Fortunately for the world, somebody else has taken on the task: David Schmidt. Don't worry, I'd never heard of him before either. He emailed me about... well, a few things, but this was one of them. He has written a parody of the genre which, I think, is pretty spot-on. And by "spot-on" I mean that he's taken all the hallmarks of horrible writing tropes in the romance genre and exploded them across the pages of his book, making them that much more visible and therefore, hilarious.

At less than $4 for a paperback and less then $3 on Kindle (and with just under 50 pages of text) it's cheap enough to be worth the quick laugh it'll provide. Assuming you're into sardonic stuff. Which I am. 

Boneshaker, by Cherie Priest

Just finished reading Boneshaker by Cherie Priest. Took me a while to get into it. It's been in my stack of books next to my bed for a month or more. I was reading a few pages at a time for a couple weeks. But partway through I started having trouble putting it down, and two days later I had finished it.

I've decided - after some deliberation - that I like the softer look of the ivory pages with brown font. At first I found it charming, an instant attraction of the book. At times it was inconsequential, and at one point I thought I might dislike it, because it was harder to read in the low light of the evening than a conventional color scheme would have been. I had to stop trying to read it when I was tired. My eyes and that light font just didn't work together, then. But... I probably should have been sleeping at that point, anyway. My fault - so the color scheme got its point back.

Why the slow start for such a voracious reader as myself?
How did it finally catch my attention?

Hmm, well,... good questions. I had to go back and skim the first part again to answer them. And when I did, I found it far more engaging than I had the first time. So my answer to both is: I have no idea.

This isn't much of a book review, I'm afraid. But I'll say this: if my son weren't so afraid of zombies, this would have been a great book to read to him. (He's in third grade, reads far below a third grade level, but loves being read to, and is totally capable of understanding higher level books being read to him. I know because I ask him comprehension questions as we read, to make sure he's actually listening.) There was tons of action, which he would love, especially... after the first part - which could explain my initial difficulty.

Ok, back to answering those two questions up there, because I've just figured it out: I didn't know what to expect from this book. I'd never read a Cherie Priest book before, and the cover touted it as full of all the steampunk-action elements, and I wasn't seeing any of those at first. It seemed to be slow-paced, in contrast to a fast-paced cover. It caught my attention when the story began to catch up with the cover, which I should add, was actually pretty soon. In all honesty, my difficulty with the beginning of the book probably had more to do with the poor quality of my attention span than it did with any aspect of the book.

Anyway. It would have been a great book to read to my son because we would both have enjoyed it. Lots of intelligent action, and no unnatural romance - which I'm afraid has ruined a good many action books with its forced, anti-climatic intrusions. And, the plot itself is not formulaic; it proceeds in such a way that I'm convinced the author is pretty damn clever.

Since finishing Boneshaker, I've also read another of Cheire Priest's books, Clementine, which is set in the same world as Boneshaker; Clementine is probably considered a spin-off of Boneshaker, but I haven't verified that. Regardless, I'm glad I read Boneshaker first because the plot of Clementine would have been hollow (though workable) without that background. That said, my suggestion to the author would be to provide some sort of indication of the best order in which to read the books of the series. While they aren't (apparently) serialized, there are major plot elements which are explained in one book and expanded in another. It was a bit of luck that I read Clementine after Boneshaker; I liked Clementine better for it.

Driven to Distraction - a book review about ADD and me

I started reading this book because my little Bear has ADHD, and I'm struggling to help him.

The book is Driven to Distraction: Recognizing and Coping Attention Deficit Disorder from Childhood through Adulthood, by Edward Hallowell and John Ratey. It's mostly by Edward Hallowell, but includes the ideas of Hallowell's mentor, John Ratey. Not that it really matters. Both men are well qualified to write this book.

Anyway, I started reading it so that I could better understand my child. In the very first chapter, I realized I needed to be taking notes - this was good stuff which I knew damn well I couldn't possibly retain unless I wrote it down. Correction: I started taking notes while reading the Preface, which I almost never read in any book (yes yes, bad student, blah blah... that's not the point here, not exactly).

By chapter three, I was reading the book for myself. I'm still trying to understand my child, and the book is still immensely helpful in that endeavor, but I've become completely engrossed in it because it's about me, too. I'm learning that although I thought I had a pretty good handle on what ADD is (I'm including ADHD under the ADD umbrella), I really only had a superficial understanding. ADD is a spectrum, not a single set of narrowly-variable symptoms which are either present or not. And now, I'm sorely tempted to do that cardinal sin of psychology (and psychiatry, and medicine...), and diagnose myself. The more I learn, the more I see myself. Which would explain a lot. I mean, a LOT.

The book is filled with case studies in which I've seen myself and my little Bear, and it is giving me insight into each of us. It has gone beyond just opening my eyes, and shown me new paths to take which will help us both. It's also the first non-fiction book I've ever read that I couldn't put down. I'll probably read it a couple times. I've actually been taking notes, just because I never remember what I read unless I write it down. And this, I want to remember.

The only caveat I have is that it's dated, having been published in 1995. Some of the medications the author mentions are outdated. However, medication is only discussed specifically in three of the 300+ pages of the book. So this datum is really irrelevant, in my opinion. I scanned through those three pages and went on my merry way. Also, the contact information in the appendix is probably no longer useful, either. That's what we have google for, eh?

~

I just found a couple more recent (2005 and 2010) books on this topic, by the same author. They're goin on my amazon list... right...now. And done.

Also, apparently there's a newer, revised edition of this same book. I highly recommend it, based on this earlier edition's excellence. 

W is for Mr. Wednesday

I'm reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman. Again. I'm remembering the last time I read it, when I wasn't so much of a 'practicing' pagan, and I was too distracted by life to really pay attention to what was actually being said in any book I read. I read this book as an adventure story - which it is, at least superficially - but I missed out on the most interesting bits.

That is to say, I didn't give the nuances of the story a lot of thought.

Why, for example, is Mr. Wednesday - Odin - portrayed as he is? And... just how  is he portrayed?

Before I started re-reading this book, I read 'somewhere on the internet' - I should have marked it, but I didn't, and I can't remember where except that it was in a comment on some webpage about the book - that some person had read the book and thought Odin was portrayed very negatively, and therefor incorrectly. That sat wrong with me, though I wasn't sure why. I just hadn't been left with that feeling of negative portrayal, the first time.

Re-reading the book, this time with a greater awareness of the characters' stories (and identities), I grew to like the Mr. Wednesday who was portrayed, though I feel like Odin is somewhat less  of a con artist than he's made out to be.

I suppose if I had read the book (the first time) when I was a child - and more of an idealist - that I might have seen Mr. Wednesday as quite the villain indeed. Back then, I might have thought that anyone who even attempted a con, was a villain. But the first time I read the book was during my deployment to Iraq (with the Army). I was spending my days interviewing suspected terrorists, hoping to glean a bit of information that might save somebody's life. A little con-artistry for the sake of survival was nothing, on my scale of good-versus-evil.

Then again... my own beliefs of what deities are, in general, would negate the entire plot of the book. I believe the forces which we call gods would not cease to exist if we stop believing in them. They're still there, personalities and all (though "personalities" is a poor term for it), because they were always there. In naming them, we only recognize what is already true. At the same time, I don't think they're particularly concerned (to put it lightly) with taking human physical forms, subject to the same laws as human bodies, which was a central idea to Gaiman's plot. So, the Odin I'm getting to know would have no need of the trickery which occurs in American Gods.

But...  I have to wonder, how would  Odin act, if the situation in the book were true - if he were actually threatened with being extinguished by the disbelief of humans? And if he could actually be killed by a gunshot or starvation? I can't say I'd entirely negate the idea behind the characterization of Odin as a trickster in league with Loki. It doesn't really seem that far fetched. He is  ruthless, afterall. And if anybody could pull off the plot of the book, it's Odin and Loki.

Regardless, I'm not convinced that we should hold our differences against the author. He tells us very early on in the book that Mr. Wednesday is not exactly the Odin we know from lore:

    "Mead," said Wednesday. "Honey wine. The drink of heroes. The drink of the gods."
    Shadow took another tentative sip. Yes, he could taste the honey, he decided. That was one of the tastes. "Tastes kinda like pickle juice," he said. "Sweet pickle-juice wine."
    "Tastes like a drunken diabetic's piss," agreed Wednesday. "I hate the stuff."

This is a fictional Odin, a character based on Odin but with some artistic license applied.

We do get a glimpse of the "real" Icelandic version of Odin, the one who came before the American version in Gaiman's story. In his very brief scene, I got a sense of the Odin I'm coming to know; he was the wise god who had sacrificed himself for knowledge, an All-Father. The contrast made me realize the urgency of the American Mr. Wednesday.

The edition of American Gods  I have, has a section in the back which includes an interview with Neil Gaiman. In it, he is asked how his writing has changed since he moved to the U.S. from England (where he grew up). This statement begins his response:

"I wrote about America a lot in Sandman  [a previous publication of his, which I highly recommend], but it was a slightly delirious America - one built up from movies and TV and other books. When I came out here I found it very different from the country I'd encountered in fiction, and I wanted to write about that. American Gods  was, in many ways, my attempt to make sense of the country I was living in."

Ah, and there we see why Mr. Wednesday - Odin - is portrayed as he is.

If we were to take the gods of the old countries, and put them in situations where they could truly die of disbelief or any human ailment, and then set them in modern America, changing their natures to fit an American morality... what would  they do? Honestly, I think Gaiman may have it right.

Archer's book review: Fifty Shades of Grey

As much as I adore Archer, we don't always agree on things (gasp! I know, right?!).

When I read the Fifty Shades trilogy, I came away with a slightly different opinion of it than he did - though that difference was mostly in the nuances and degrees.

As a work of fiction, I found it intrinsically without value. However, it has extrinsic value as a statement on our (American) popular culture. I don't believe that's a particularly kind statement, by the way. I can't speak for the trilogy's reception in other countries.

That said, I actually enjoyed the read. It's superficial, but enjoyable until you look at it in an analytic light - even if some of that enjoyment comes at the author's expense, or is rooted in a sardonic view of the culture which produced and consumes this drivel.

My primary concern by which I evaluate a work of fiction is in the character development. In these books, I found the characters to be charicaturized versions of the popular views of stereotypical women - and men - which too many suburban wives (to make use of another stereotype) idealize but can't possibly attain - they're just too human, and that gets in the way (thank goodness!). I do see the value in utilizing those popularized versions of people, though, especially in the romance genre. After all, the point of romance novels is not to imitate reality. I think the author actually knew her target audience quite well, and developed her characters in the best possible way for them to be palatable for that audience. So, while I personally didn't find the characters particularly well-developed in their own right, they were perfectly developed for the author's purpose, which was to sell books.

... This post started off as a short little introduction to Archer's review of the "Fifty Shades" trilogy, so I guess I better get back to that.

After reading the trilogy, I begged asked Archer to read the books too, so that we could discuss my ideas about them and the social commentary which inevitably followed their popularity.

The following was his response. I laughed out loud, literally.

~

Fifty Tons of Utter Shit

I slog through this abomination of words, the fifty shades trilogy, and despair. Never have I met so doltish and annoying a protagonist as she.  She trivializes all womanhood with every syllable of her non-existence.  

Her boyfriend is elevated to genius by her moronic perception of his logical deductions as "magical".  At one point Anastasia interprets Grey's moody, multi-tasking, and generally active intellect as possibly afflicted with "multiple personality disorder," and this in a vastly successful businessman.  MPD is a devastating mental condition, crippling in fact, insupportable in any life requiring high function, memory, control, and structured task mastery.  She is supposed to be an "educated" girl.  This little idiot wanders around as a modern day Tartuffe, looking at all in the world as though for the very first time.  The naïveté, portrayed to the point of ridiculousness.  This Grey fellow, far from mysterious, merely appears to be a passably intelligent dude, horny, melodramatic, and somewhat kinky, in a pretty vanilla kind of way as millionaires go.  

The sex scenes in this book are banal to the point of anti-tumescence, the plot is utterly predictable, the premise is profoundly unimportant, the attempted moral rationalization of its hero (all this charity bullshit throughout his busy plutocrats life) is entirely corrupt at its base.  This is a book about banal decadence, about a stupid girl who gets a rich boyfriend, who wraps her arms around opulence, grousing and bitching the whole way, so no one will think her a whore for hitting the jackpot by yanking on the one armed bandit with her uninteresting little cunt.

These "works" are the opposite of literature; they do not ennoble, they debase us.  They make all who read them more stupid by allowing such trashy sentences into their brains.  They are an insult to womankind; they turn sex into a car commercial; they contort love into a horrible game of self-deluding sexist hypocrisy where women crave domination physically, all the while conspiring to crack the masterful spirit of their chosen man, to the point where the mystery and power that initially drew them is revealed, neutered and suborned by the mystical influence of their nasty little holes.

While this little trio of dime novels is quite a dollop of shit to be sure, the inevitable series of movies will drive all art to a new nadir.   While love and sex have been well fucked into whoredom for centuries by commerce and the churches, we will now toss kink, and the works of poor Thomas Hardy into the chemical stink of pop culture.

I predict that those movies will be the rottenest things in human culture.

I predict that their rottenness will drive, by comparison, the Twilight series, up into realms of near-tolerability, feat once thought impossible by all scientists and film critics.

The only benefits of this plague will be the sharp screams and luridly publicized emergency room visits of kink inept suburbanites maiming themselves in hilarious attempts to slavishly ape this latest trend in "sexy". That, laid at the feet of its author, once society turns its fickle, hypocritical back on this dirty little fad, will be her god damned comeuppance.  She will shrink, Shatner-like into a minor self parody, an impossibly wealthy pariah, devoid of talent, to be shoveled onto the reality show dung heap of ex-celebrity. 

-Archer

~

A bit later in the conversation, with more information gathered, Archer had this to add:

Not surprisingly, the Grey trio began its odious life as a fan-fiction afterbirth from the actual Twilight series itself. Ana and Chris actually began their papier-mâché lives as amateur copies of the ridiculous Twilight couple.  Leonard cannot even be credited with originating this monstrosity, she just copied stupid and penned idiocy in the process. Trash begat garbage.

~

Did I mention that Archer can be quite scathing when provoked?