Saturday, December 19, 2015

Cluster Critiques


NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity by Steve Silberman
One of the better books about autism if you are new to the topic, or want to know much more about autism than anyone within a hundred-mile radius. 

August in Paris: And Other Travel Misadventures By Marion Winik
Former Austinite takes her surly teens and deceased husband’s despicable mother to Paris and other exotic destinations, and makes us pee our pants laughing at all the craziness that ensues, and at Winik’s no-holds-barred story telling.

Hope: Entertainer of the Century by Richard Zoglin
I’m sort of sorry I read this book because Bob Hope is such a beloved comedian. Now I know he was also a serial adulterer, rude, grumpy, a horrible skinflint and mean. Oh, and he was an incredibly savvy businessman. Well done, just icky.

Shock Value by Jason Zinoman
This is a rollicking fun and well written history of the 1970-80s horror movies period and the players and the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants trajectory that really ended up being hugely successful, changing the genre forever – exit Frankenstein, enter Freddy Kruger.

Stuff Matters by Mark Miodownik
This is a fascinating book about the science, history and physical nature of the random everyday things that litter our lives – steel, silicon chips, elastic, etc. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you not to read this unless you have an insatiable hunger for science trivia.

Wayfaring Stranger by James Lee Burke

Dear Mr. Burke:

Please do not ever try to write another romance novel.

Thank you.

SueAnn

100 Things I Want to Tell My Children and Grandchildren: #16




(Random photo - NYC, 1982, with gal-friend, Lisa)

Listen to your “gut”.

We need to respect the fact that it is possible to know without knowing why we know, and accept that - sometimes - we're better off that way. There can be as much value in the blink of an eye as in months of rational analysis.
Malcolm Gladwell
Blink:  The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

Malcolm Gladwell spends an entire book talking about it. I have spent a lifetime trying to overcome an irrational propensity to ignore it. Instinct, suspicion, premonition, gut feeling – call it what you want, but when it comes knocking, you better let it in.

Example: This morning I began making my usual Saturday morning French press coffee, and I noticed that it was very hard to push the plunger down, which sometimes happens when you use coffee ground for drip instead of French press. So I was hunkered down over the plunger using both hands, and practically my entire body, pushing, pushing, when a tiny little voice in the back of my mind said, “You know SueAnn, sometimes when you do this, the suction of the plunger against the glass releases and coffee spits out the pour hole.” So I pulled my face away from the top of the pot, and seconds later the suction released a huge squirt of very hot coffee that landed on the front of my pajama top, burning my chest pretty badly. If I hadn’t moved my head back, that lava-hot splash of coffee would have gone onto my face and possibly my eyes.

I used to never listen to that inner voice - instead rationalizing what I wanted to do. When I was younger, it was often about getting involved with guys I knew were not good for me, and getting "burned".


So when that little inner voice - the one smarter than you - taps on your shoulder and says “Be careful” or “Maybe this isn’t a good idea”, listen!

Girl Waits with Gun by Amy Stewart


I want to say this book felt like a marriage between Victorian-era sensibilities and Hercule Poirot’s muse, Miss Marple, when in fact the setting for Girl Waits with Gun is between those two periods, around 1914, in America. 

This is the story of spinster Constance Kopp, who struggles to survive on the inherited family farm with her older, stern but likably-cynical sister, and a much younger sister (not really – spoiler clue).  

When Constance and her sisters are run down in their horse-drawn buggy by a rotten industrialist’s son, and then are horribly harassed when they try to make the son take responsibility for the expenses associated with the wreck, the sisters are forced to become astute in the matters of law, criminal investigation and armed combat. Side stories include illegitimate children and the stigma and moralities that drove decisions and outcomes for those mothers and children during that era; and the unionization of workers and the stresses and crime that came out of that effort.

This is a glimpse into an era that must have looked a lot like the one in which my mother came of age, and that made it even more interesting to me. The writing is simple, but good, and the story pace keeps your attention. 

The only thing that irked me was that I thought I was reading a novelized story of the first woman deputy sheriff in America, when in fact I was reading the prequel to that story. Constance doesn’t become the first woman deputy sheriff in America until the last few pages of the book, obviously setting the stage for a sequel, and one I will read. Smart on the part of author Amy Stewart (pictured), who is destined to pen a long-running series not unlike the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series. Girl Waits with Gun is a gentler member of the crime/mystery genre, for those who wish for less profanity and gore.

My Fight / Your Fight by Ronda Rousey


Why would I want to read a book about a woman cage fighter? This was the question I asked myself as I stared disbelieving at the Best Books of 2015 list on goodreads.com. “Fake fighting,” I said to myself. But my gut (reference SueAnn’s #16) said, “Look a little deeper,” and I am glad I did.

Supposedly Ronda Rousey is the only female professional athlete in the world paid as much as her male peers. That alone was enough to get my attention. She is also an Olympic medalist in Judo who went on to become the first woman to compete in what is called the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) – the cage fighting thing I always rush by when channel surfing because I’m repulsed by people beating the hell out of each other.

Undeniably UFC is as much about entertainment as fighting.  However, unlike the very staged faux fighting you see in the WWC (World Wrestling Championship), in UFC fights, if you’re not highly skilled in a wide variety of legitimate fighting techniques, in ultimate physical shape, and not convinced you are invincible, you’re not there.

The story Ronda tells is about discipline, determination, and the drive to win she inherited and learned from her mother, who won a gold medal for Judo in the Olympics and expected no less from her daughter. Ronda began taking Judo lessons at a young age and continued to compete, working her way to the top. But it wasn’t the lessons that carried Ronda to the top. It was her mom, who taught her with harsh brutality, that if you’re not the best you’re nothing.  Rousey also talks a lot about her father, who she idolizes and who dies too early, and it’s a sweet story. But I don’t think Rousey is who she is because of her father.

We learn about the 24/7 workouts and pain and single-mindedness that are apparently the hallmarks of all the best athletes. We also learn that fighters walk the fine line of being as strong as possible (carrying as much muscle as possible) without going an ounce over the highest weight allowed for their weight class. They obsess over weight, to the point that they fast and run, and do without water for days prior to a weigh-in, then feast and hydrate afterwards to get their strength back and to gain more heft to aide their fight.


I went into My Fight / Your Fight with a heightened sense of curiosity and skepticism, and ended it with a tremendous amount of respect for Ronda Rousey’s discipline, an evolved appreciation for the psychological benefits of self-promotion and confidence (otherwise perceived as arrogance), and a corrected perception of what the sport of UFC is about. I probably won’t ever watch UFC fights, but I got a good story and I learned something, and that is always valuable.

Sunday, October 18, 2015

100 Things I Want to Tell My Children and Grandchildren: #15


Put important things in the right and same place every time so you won’t lose and/or damage them.

I’m not sure why it takes some of us so long to learn.  Maybe because we have to make the same mistakes over and over again before we realize we have a problem, or maybe the pain of the recurring mistake finally gets our attention. Perhaps it is because we refuse to listen to the counsel of others, thinking their advice is insulting, trivial or wrong.

Number 15 of the 100 things I want to tell my children and grandchildren seems so simple it feels a little silly including it.  But on the other hand, if you will listen and learn, it could save you money and frustration. I know, because I didn’t, and I suffered plenty of both.

Here is my most tangible example of #15, sunglasses and prescription glasses.  I wish I had a dollar for every $100 I’ve spent on sunglasses and prescription glasses because I’ve misplaced them and/or neglected to put them somewhere they wouldn’t get scratched or broken. 

Another example. Car/house keys. Before I finally learned this lesson, I lost or damaged glasses, and frequently misplaced my car keys, leading to expense and stress.

Now, no matter what, when I take my glasses off, rather than just dropping them in my purse or laying them down somewhere, I put them in a glass case in my purse, which I always place in the same chair – every time. And when I am done with my car/house keys, I always put them right back in my purse, which again, is always kept in the same place.

These simple behaviors keep me from losing my glasses or keys, and it keeps my glasses from getting scratched or broken.

I know, this sounds silly and simple, but the next time you lose your glasses, keys or billfold, or scratch your eyeglasses from carelessly laying them down unprotected, you’ll remember my #15.


Cluster Critiques


Circling the Sun: A Novel By Paula McLain
I love Paula McLain’s writing, but her female characters have no backbone when it comes to men! In her 2014 best seller, The Paris Wife, McLain writes hypnotically about the halcyon days of 1920’s Paris and endless cocktails and repartee with the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein. Then she nearly ruins it all by weaving in the nauseating and never ending infidelities of a rakish Ernest Hemingway against his wife, Hadley Richardson, a little mouse who thinks it’s all really her fault because she’s not worthy.

Now in Circling the Sun, she takes much of her story from one of the most robust and charismatic female characters of the twentieth century, Beryl Markham (pictured), and interspersed with writing so cinematic that you can smell the rain creeping across the African bush, turns Markham into a woman (Beryl Clutterbuck) whose taste in men relentlessly veers towards abuse, and the betrayal of other women.  It’s like finding a pubic hair halfway into the best lemon panna cotta you’ve ever tasted.

OK, now that I’ve got that off my chest, I recommend you read Circling the Sun because it is about a woman who (when she’s not chasing after some good-for-nothing) lives life on her own terms, as a race-horse trainer, farmer and pilot at a time when women didn’t do these things. I also recommend you read it because the setting (colonial Africa) is exotic and brilliant, and because the story is riddled with intoxicating and seductive passages like these;

Before Kenya was Kenya, when it was millions of years old and yet still somehow new, the name belonged only to our most magnificent mountain. You could see it from our farm in Njoro, in the British East African Protectorate -- hard edged at the far end of a stretching golden plain, its crown glazed with ice that never completely melted.

…the beautiful thrashing we do when we live.

Have you ever seen stars like this? You can’t have. They don’t make them like this anywhere in the world.

The Wright Brothers by David McCullough

David McCullough (pictured) does history better than anyone I know. It’s as if he has a portal into the past like no one else, and a unique and enviable capacity to meld bits and pieces of history together in compelling humanistic stories, bringing it all to life as few can. Some of my favorites include The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge, The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914, and the topic of this review, The Wright Brothers.

Who knew that a 26 second flight that basically consisted of a very large kite, could start something that would change the world forever. But Orville and Wilbur Wright never thought for a minute they were just flying a kite. They knew they would eventually get on that kite and ride it like a glider, and later, add the power of a motor.

There are three things about this book I will never forget. First, neither brother had a college degree. They were not engineers or aviation experts; they were not even scientists in the strict sense. They built and sold bicycles. But what set them apart and made them famous was a seemingly crazy dream, implacable curiosity, and their willingness to research and learn and to try and fail as many times as it took to succeed. I cannot help but draw a parallel between the Wrights and Elon Musk, one of the most tenacious inventors of my generation, who too refuses to listen to naysayers.

The second thing that stuck with me was the story of competition between France, England and the United States for the rights to reproduce the Wright brother’s “flying machines” for military purposes in World War I. Although the Wright brothers patriotically wanted their airplane to benefit the American military, the American military, unlike the French and British, was not that interested. In fact they came very close to selling their patent to the French government.

And finally, on a sad note, instead of living their later lives in wealth and comfort as a result of their fabulously valuable invention, the Wright brothers went to their graves fighting a continuous legal battle over various patent and claim disputes.

In between these three outstanding moments in the Wright brother’s history is a very detailed view into the lives they lived, the arduous experimentations they pursued in their belief in the reality of manned flight, and a satisfying story about two brothers who worked shoulder to shoulder to achieve a world-changing dream.

Broken Monsters By Lauren Beukes
Broken Monsters starts off at a good pace and a titillating storyline. The bodies of a young boy and a deer are discovered in a tunnel in the growing degradation of Detroit.  What makes this scenario super creepy is the boy and the deer are stitched together – the front half a boy, the back half a deer – code named “Bambi”. Detroit police, who thought they’d seen it all, are shaken, not stirred. But Detective Gabriella Versado charges head first into the case, determined to find out what is going on before the situation escalates into a full-on community panic. Meanwhile, her teen daughter and her best friend are recklessly baiting then exposing pedophiles online.

As if the story needed any further “saucing” there’s a sort of morality play on the 21st century dismantling of Detroit, to the point that it’s becomes a disaster tourism magnet, attracting documentarians, including one particularly annoying reporter who’s a little to enthusiastic for his own good.  Add to that a Detroit underground art scene just weird enough to hint at the psychosis behind the killings and you’ve got a pretty unconventional “who dun it” going on.

Unfortunately, some authors can’t seem to see the line in the sand between psychological thriller and sci-fi, or can’t figure out how to write a plausible ending to a good psychological thriller, so they just default into a whacked out creature solution that may appease some, but not this gal. Sure enough, much to my disappointment, author Beukes (pictured) does exactly that, undoubtedly thrilling lovers of illogical, amorphous, gooey villains born out of someone’s vivid imagination. If you can groove on that tripe, I mean theme, you’ll love this book. Otherwise, just don’t read past page 400.

I Am Pilgrim: A Thriller By Terry Hayes
Years ago, tiring of the formulaic sequels of le Carré, Ludlum and Clancy, I sort of stopped reading spy thrillers. So when I saw the I Am Pilgrim recommendation, I was more than a little skeptical. But I wasn’t 20 pages into this book before I stopped and said out loud to no one, “Who is this guy”?” Meaning, I was already so impressed with the book that I had to stop reading and go research the author, Terry Hayes (pictured). Originally a journalist, then a screenwriter, Hayes has an abundance of screenwriting credits under his belt for the Mad Max series, Dead Calm, Vertical Limit, and several dozen other movies and TV mini-series’. It was the fact that this was Hayes first novel that persuaded me to take as chance, and I’m sure glad I did. 

I Am Pilgrim begins when the protagonist of the story, a retired yet youngish CIA operative, is called to a low-rent hotel room in Manhattan, one day after 9/11, because the macabre murder scene looks suspiciously like a scenario of “how to get away with it” described in a book the operative penned under a pseudonym. The murder scene involves lesbian sex, drugs, a dead woman whose face and fingerprints are burned off in a bathtub full of acid, and the number to a phone booth in Turkey written down on a piece of paper salvaged from the drainpipes. And then it gets complicated.

The case leads to an unlikely jihadist with a resolve that is both appalling and engrossing, and a race against a ticking clock to save America from an annihilation that would make 9/11 look like child’s play.

I Am Pilgrim moves at an amazing pace, hopping all over the world, chasing deceptively unrelated clues, and a plot placing the protagonist and antagonist worlds apart, but methodically moving towards each other as each exciting piece of the mystery unfolds. I can pretty much guarantee you’ll enjoy I Am Pilgrim.