Bowling Alone

Posted on January 7, 2012 by smellincoffee

Bowling Alone: the Collapse and Revival of American Community
© 2001 Robert D. Putnam
544 pages

Every so often I read a book that strikes my brain as lightening, forever altering my thinking and earning a permanent place both on my bedside bookcase and on the tip of my tongue, for I will be thinking, talking, and writing about it from that point on. Bowling Alone is such a book. In it, Robert Putnam makes the case that America has experienced over a half-century of social decline — decline that is universal, across all demographics and throughout the nation. He uses a concept called social capital, a representation of the strength of social ties between individuals and their networks; the more social capital a society has, the more cohesive it is and the better it functions as a human community in matters of health, safety, and problem solving.

He first charts a steady decline in social capital by  using falling rates in civic organizations (like the Rotary Club), locally-organized political activity, religious participation, communal leisure activities, and other markers. Putnam then attempts to ascertain the causes of this steep decline, which seems inexplicable given that the baby boomer generation has reached the age where civic participation is at its greatest. He finds a variety of society-wide forces (increasing job and security pressure; suburbanization; the rise of television), but also notes a major generational influence.  The most active civic generation in American history is dying off, but much of their strength comes (Putnam believes) from the unifying force of WWII.  That war called upon the resources of the entire nation — women in the workforce and children gathering scrap metal were just as important as the soldiers in the field. People didn’t simply work together; they believed they were working together, and for a common goal. Putnam believes that this extended period of national solidarity cast a shadow over that generation’s lives — but the baby boomers and generation-Xers have had no such struggle. No one would think of the Vietnam War as bringing people together; indeed, it must stand out as one of the most divisive wars in American history.

In making his argument, Putnam is both exhaustive and conservative — anticipating objections to his conclusions and answering  them as a matter of course. He’s also not quick to overestimate the influence of any one factor, when sometimes I thought such emphasis might be appropriate. Putnam then asks the question, “So what?” and examines the ways in which social capital is a boon to society and then the consequences of losing it. He then ends by offering several goals for American society to work forward to as a way of strengthening itself. My interest in this book stems from my interest in the ‘human habitat’ in general, and community is an essential part of that.

Bowling Alone is imminently worthy of consideration — not just for the ideas it contains, but for the thorough manner that Putnam presents them. A small caveat; the book may be marginally dated given the rise of social networking sites. While Putnam does address online communities, facebook and similar creatures are altogether different from usenet groups and static websites —  and although they’re scarcely a replacement for what we’ve lost, certainly they’re a factor that would need to be considered if this book were published today. For my own part, I am resolutely committed to doing my part to live my life in connection with other people.

Highly recommended.

Related:

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The Son of Neptune

Posted on January 6, 2012 by smellincoffee

The Heroes of Olympus, Volume II: The Son of Neptune
© 2011 Rick Riordan
521 pages

In The Lost Hero, Rick Riordan introduced another epic battle between the gods, forcing three young demigods to free Hera from imprisonment and forestall the awakening of Gaea and her Giants — but without their leader, Percy Jackson. The ‘lost hero’ returns to the story in The Son of Neptune, robbed of most of his memory and under constant attack by monsters until he finds refuge in a camp of demigods…named Camp Jupiter.

This is no small camp of half-bloods; Camp Jupiter is a bonafide city styled on Rome, where its illustrious history and mythology live on. These campers are born of the gods’ Roman personalities and they regard their rumored Greek relations with contempt. Beset on every side by monsters and without their own leader, they regard the unexpected arrival of Percy with suspicion. But Hera — Juno — has a plan, and Percy must play a part in it together with two new characters, both with mysterious pasts they would prefer to hide.  The trio are given a quest — to travel beyond the reach of the gods, to a place where no demigod has returned from alive before….Alaska. There they must free Death from the clutches of one of Gaea’s giants, because no one is staying in the Underworld like they should and it’s causing quite a bit of confusion.

I welcomed the return of Percy and couldn’t wait to read this book, eager to see how Riordan developed the Roman camp. They’re far different beyond referring to the gods by different names; the Romans are populous enough to live in a large city defended by legions of demigods and their descendants, governed by a senate. They are organized, energetic, and militant. I delighted seeing little nods to both history and mythology. For instance,  Percy is forced to join a disgraced legion which lost its eagle in the artic hinterlands years ago, under the leadership of a man named…Varus.  One of Riordan’s new heroes (Frank Zhang) gives him the opportunity to create a character with a fascinating backstory out of a possible Romano-Chinese connection in history, a ‘lost legion‘. The Son of Neptune is the “end of the beginning” for Riordan’s new series: now Juno’s plan to unite the camps is laid out in full, for only together — and with the gods — can they triumph over the ancient and wrathful earth-goddess by marching on the Doors of Death. I took for granted that the heroes would triumph in this little adventure — surely they must live on to fulfill the Prophecy of Seven introduced in the original series. It wasn’t quite as novel as The Lost Hero given that the reader has already learned most of the mystery by this point, but I still enjoyed the Roman aspects and dramatic tension which is building in the series. The next book, the Mark of Athena, will unite the seven properly, and I’m excited to see where they’re going…for the next battle will be fought not in America, but in the home of the gods….Greece.

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The Week at the Library (4 January)

Posted on January 4, 2012 by smellincoffee

Pending Review(s): Bowling Alone: the Collapse and Revival of American Community, Robert Putnam.
Currently Reading: The Son of Neptune; Rick Riordian; The Fabric of the Cosmos, Brian Greene (on hold until next week)
Potentials: How the Mind Works, Stephen Pinker

This blog started out as a weekly affair until I switched to individual book reviews, and since then I’ve been trying to work with the weekly post and make it purposeful, but not redundant.  In addition to the info above, I’ll also be including quotations I would have otherwise scribbled down in my journal or posted to my facebook wall — funny bits of diaogue, deliciously rich exposition, or thought-provoking passages.

=============T=H=E===W=E=E=K===I=N===Q=U=O=T=E=S===========

“We did it, we bashed them, wee Potter’s the one
And Voldy’s gone moldy, so now let’s have fun!”
“Really gives a feeling for the scope and tragedy of the thing, doesn’t it?”

p. 746, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Finally finished up my Harry Potter Christmastime Re-Read!

The reason there are no humanlike robots is not that the very idea of a mechanical mind is misguided. It is that the engineering problems that we humans solve as we see and walk and plan and make it through the day are far more challenging than landing on the moon or sequencing the human genome.Nature, once gain, has found ingenious solutions that human engineers cannot yet duplicate. When Hamlet says “What a piece of work is man! how noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable!” we should direct our awe not at Shakespeare or Mozart or Einstein or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar but at a four-year old carrying out a request to put a toy on a shelf.

p. 4, How the Mind Works. Stephen Pinker.

British political philosopher John Stuart Mill lauded the effects of participatory democracy on character. Without shared participation in public life, Mill wrote, a citizen “never thinks of any collective interest, of any objects to be pursued jointly with others but only in competition with them, and in some measure at their expense…A neighbor, not being an ally or an associate, since he is never engaged in any common undertaking for joint benefit, is therefore, only a rival.” The engaged citizen, by contrast, ‘is called upon…to weight interests not his own; to be guided, in case of conflicting claims, by another rule other than his own private partialities….He is made to feel himself one of the public, and whatever is for their benefit to be for his benefit.”

p. 337, Bowling Alone

TV-based politics is to political action as watching ER is to saving someone in distress. Just as one cannot restart a heart with one’s remote control, one cannot jump-start republican citizenship without direct, face-to-face participation. Citizenship is not a spectator sport.”

p. 341, Bowling Alone

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Top Ten Anticipated Reads for 2012

Posted on January 2, 2012 by smellincoffee

At the start of 2012, the Book and the Brokish are looking forward to this year’s anticipated reads!

1. The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Quest for What Makes us Human, V.S. Ramachandran

This was scheduled to be released in January of last year, and I fully expected that I would buy it at some point.  I didn’t get around to that, but it’s being re-released this month as a paperback; the decreased price  means it might make it to my bookshelf.  As it happens, this is the only book on last year’s anticipated reads list that I never got to read.

2. Death from the Skies! or Bad Astronomy, Phil Plait

Phil Plait is an astronomer, blogger, and activist within the skeptical community. He’s also my favorite geek: I always get a kick out of hearing him on the Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe or StarTalk (the latter of which is hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson, another astrophysicist), and it’s high time I try out one of his books.

3. 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, Charles C. Mann

Mann’s 1491: New Revelations about the Americas before Columbus rocked my world. It’s one of the best history books I’ve ever read, and I fully intend on getting my hands on a copy of his newest release, which (one assumes) will tackle the ecological and political changes European expansion brought to the Americas.

4. Department of Temporal Investigation: Forgotten History, Christopher L. Bennett

While I’m generally excited about many of the new Trek releases scheduled for 2012,  Bennett is one of my two favorite contemporary Trek authors (along with David Mack), and he never disappoints.

5. Battle of Shiloh, Jeff Shaara

In 2012 Jeff Shaara will be returning to the American Civil War to do a set of novels set in the western theatre, with the first book centered on the bloody battle of Shiloh. He hasn’t shared its title yet, but I’ll be waiting to see if it’s in my library. I’m curious if he’ll continue in his own developing style (which  tends to concentrate on one character and use other viewpoint personalities only as a supplement) or revert to his father’s, given that Michael Shaara’s original Civil War novel, The Killer Angels, inspired Shaara’s own career.

6. Coup D’Etat, Harry Turtledove
The fourth novel in Turtleodove’s “War that Came Early” series  should be promising, given that in The Big Switch,  his WWII began taking a drastically different shape than ours. I’m guessing from the title that the leadership position of one of the belligerant nations is going to go through a bit of turmoil.

7. The Son of Neptune, Rick Riordan
Second in the Young Olympians series, I’m going to guess this novel finds out what Percy Jackson has been up to while living among the Roman demigods. This was released in October, but I’ve been waiting for my library to acquire it.

8. A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather Than Nothing, Lawrence Krauss and Richard Dawkins

This one sounds interesting. Dawkins is a biologist and Krauss a physicist, and a book that draws on their respective fields will be quite a treat indeed. I’ll probably wait for reviews to seriously think about buying it for myself, though; I’ve never read Krauss before and cosmological physics can be a daunting subject. I’m also interested in Dawkin’s The Magic of Reality, a little book that introduces the wonder and methods of science to children. From what I’ve heard, it not only answers common questions kids have about the universe, but it explains how we know it — and how kids can find out themselves.

9. The Foregone Conclusion, John Grisham.

Again, I’m predicting that Grisham will release another thriller this autumn. He’s been fairly consistent these last few years.

10. Technological Narcissism, James Howard Kunstler

JHK hasn’t yet given his upcoming book a title, but he’s mentioned several times on his podcast that he’s in the process of writing a new book on our “technological narcissism”, which I believe he means our obsessive belief that we can always dig ourselves out of a hole using new technology when a change in our behavior is what is called for.  Given Kunstler’s interests in criticizing urban sprawl, he’s probably thinking of people who believe Americans will develop Some New Fuel that will allow us to maintain the same patterns of automobile use that we have now — when it might be a brighter idea to invest in transit, like trains, or urban planning that results in walkable neighborhoods that don’t force the majority of people to be utterly reliant on cars.

I couldn’t find any information on it, but James Kaplan is supposed to release the second half of his Sinatra biography — and I would assume that will happen this year or next.

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The Best of 2011: Annual Year in Review

Posted on January 1, 2012 by smellincoffee

Previous yearly wrap-ups:  2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010

Ever since I began blogging about books in May 2007, I’ve taken time in early January to reflect on the previous year of reading. There are always stand-out books I like to spotlight, and trends to mull over.

Using ChartGo.com, I broke my reading down into the main genres I visit, excluding miscellaneous works. Last year I commented with some wariness that for the first time ever, fiction had surpassed nonfiction reading. It accomplished the same feat this year, and by a larger margin.  I blame Bernard Cornwell. Discovering the police mysteries of Michael Connelly also helped, as I’ve read more than a few Harry Bosch mysteries this year.

Early in the year I resolved to read ten particular books, most of which had given me trouble in the past; I’m happy to say I read nine of those. I was also able to maintain my ‘bookish resolutions‘for the most part. An undeclared goal was that of finishing Isaac Asimov’s Empire series, which I did.

And now…the best reads of 2011!

In general fiction, there were some truly outstanding novels:

  • The Sea-Wolf by Jack London combines adventure at sea with an epic story-discussion about morality, the meaning of life, and the measure of a man when a literary critic is kidnapped and forced to serve on a sealing schooner dominated by a brute who fancies himself a Nietzschean superman.
  • To Kill a Mockingbird is, “classic” status aside, simply one of the best novels I’ve ever read. This coming of age story set in Depression-era Alabama features two young people who are forced to grapple with adult questions of conscience and courage during a legal battle. They are guided by their extraordinary father Atticus Finch.
  • The Big Rock Candy Mountain by Wallace Stegner is a beautiful, wild, wrenching story about a restless man who drags his family through peril and poverty looking for financial success.Though the man Bo is never a viewpoint character, he dominates the book and its central characters with his admirable energy and sometimes destructive passion. Even months after reading it, I simply can’t get over the novel.
  • The Ethical Assassin by David Liss is an altogether different experience than these prior three. It isn’t grand or profound, but quirky and provocative. At first glance it might come off as merely a whimsical novel, but the fascinating interplay between the titular assassin and the main character should stir the minds of readers. 

 Historical fiction proved to be a mainstay this year. Last year its success was based on two series (Horatio Hornblower and the Saxon Stories), but in 2011 Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe novels swept the field. Sharpe is a stand-out action hero, almost legendary, but so much more attracts me to the series — the way Cornwell brings the world the early  of the 19th century so utterly alive, the relationships between the characters, and oh…that wit. Almost every week I share a quotation from a Sharpe novel on my facebook wall because they’re just too good to keep to myself.

‎”What I don’t understand,” Sharpe persevered, “is why she ran away.”
“She’s probably in love,” Hogan explained airily. “Nineteen-year-old girls of respectable families are dangerously susceptible to love because of all the novels they read.”
(Sharpe’s Havoc)

It’s terribly hard to choose between the Sharpe novels, but the three most memorable —

  • Sharpe’s Prey, in which Sharpe plays the part of spy during the British siege of Copenhagen. 
  • Sharpe’s Fortress, involving an unintentionally hilarious villain and a fantastic ending.
  • Sharpe’s Fury is another “Sharpe alone behind enemy lines” story, which I seem to like best of all. 

I did read historical fiction outside of Sharpe, though:

  • The Revolutionist is down as one of my ten favorite books this year. It’s the story of Alexander Til, a Russian-American immigrant who returns to his homeland following the collapse of the tsar and the rise of the Bolsheviks. Til is a believer in the cause of the people — not the state, which gets him into trouble when the new Soviet state turns out to be just as vicious as the old empire. What follows is an intense thriller set during the opening decades of Lenin and Stalin’s reign.

Other notable works included Bernard Cornwell’s The Fort, Bernard Cornwell’s Gallows Thief, and Bernard Cornwell’s —  look, I can’t help that the man writes brilliant books. His heroes are fantastic, his villains loathsome,  his supporting characters often hilarious, and the relationships between characters done to a T.  Combine that with the plots and the man can’t be beaten.

Bernard Cornwell, Author of the Year



It just can’t be helped. Moving on —

Last year I jumped back into Star Trek literature and had intended to keep up with new releases throughout the year, but my ability to do so flagged over the summer. And yet, it’s one of the stronger categories. Good heavens. I enjoyed the Vanguard series as a whole, but the big standout is Christopher L. Bennett’s Over a Torrent Sea. 


Outside of Star Trek I read a fair bit of science fiction, mostly in finishing Asimov’s Empire series. Joe Haldeman’s The Accidental Time Machine is definitely worth mentioning, but as far as SF goes I liked The Currents of Space and The Gods Themselves the best.

History is of course my staple, and this year saw me return to Will Durant’s Story of Civilization series, along with knocking out volume one of H.G. Well’s The Outline of History. My library doesn’t have volume II, hence why I’ve never finished it. The Age of Faith stymied my progress last year, and it took me three attempts to tackle it properly, but once I did it proved to be my favorite of the series. Other fantastic books:

And though I’m hopelessly biased, I won’t go without mentioning Montevallo: Images of America, a pictorial history of my beloved university town.

The numbers lie: this was a slow year for science,  a year which I propped up  with books of essays by Asimov and a few “made simple” works. As it happens I’m in the middle of a substantial science read, but it won’t be finished until 2012, I’m afraid. Marlene Zuke’s Sex on Six Legs and the BBC’s Walking with Dinosaurs  were high notes, though. The best would be Jared Diamond’s The Third Chimpanzee, which I sort of forgot to review, because I’m a boob.

Religion-wise, I read a few books on the Catholic and Anglican churches as part of my ongoing cultural literacy goal; Why Do Catholics Do That? was a stellar introduction.  Early in the year I enjoyed Robert Wright’s The Evolution of God, a naturalistic approach to the development and growth of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Philosophy and social criticism are related subjects for me, so I shall mention them together. While the Dhammapada was enjoyable, and Michael Pollan’s food books were fairly eye-opening (even if they had to be taken with a grain of salt given his anti-scientific slant), the undisputed king this year was Michael Foley’s The Age of Absurdity: Why Modern Life Makes it Hard to Be Happy. I read it early last year but just couldn’t do it justice in a review, so I read it again in November and tried afresh.  KunstlerCast is a close second: I yelped in surprise to see it listed on Amazon and was positively delighted when I won it from LibraryThing.  I listen to the podcast every week, you see, and practically swear by Kunstler’s Geography of Nowhere, so this print version of the conversations Kunstler and his cohost have on suburban sprawl, urban planning, and the global oil economy was right up my alley.

This year marked the first time I’ve read books relating to health and/or nutrition: The Complete Guide to Walking for Health, Weight loss and Fitness and The Beginning Runner’s Handbook are both excellent.

As for next year….I predict that historical fiction will make another strong showing, because I’m not quite done with the Sharpe series yet. I’ll be continuing in the Story of Civilization series with The Age of Louis XIV at some point. There are still a fair few Trek lit books I’m just waiting to read, but science books are going take priority when it comes to new acquisitions. I also intend on visiting the nonfiction works of Alison Weir, whose novels I’ve enjoyed so much.  If  I read Asimov’s End of Eternity, I’ll be in the awkward position of having read all of his best-known work, save perhaps the collection I, Robot. After that it’s just…short story and essay collections for the most part.



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2011 Cumulative Reading List

Posted on December 31, 2011 by smellincoffee

Earlier in the year I took advantage of blogger’s “pages” function to keep a running list of everything I’ve read, since the blog’s own index tends to become cluttered. Tomorrow the page shall be wiped clean in preparation for 2012, but here for posterity is the list, updated for the final time only moments ago. There are three books on the list still in need of reviewing, and I fully intended to accomplish that today, but it was a nice day and I spend it outside, reading and dozing in the sun.  You can’t blame me for that, can you?

I regard the bolded entries as particularly superior accomplishments. Also note, this is not my annual “year in review” post. That should come sometime this next week, though.

— January —
1. In a Sunburned Country, Bill Bryson
2. Reunion, Michael Jan Friedman (Fiction)
3. The Evolution of God, Robert Wright
4. To End All Wars, Adam Hochschild
5. Redcoat, Bernard Cornwell  (Fiction)
6. Sex on Six Legs, Marlene Zuke
7. The Black Echo, Michael Connelly (Fiction)
8. The Rise and Fall of the Bible, Timothy Beal.
9. A Far Better Rest, Susanne Alleyn (Fiction)
10. The Age of Absurdity: Why Modern Life Makes it Hard to be Happy, Michael Foley.
11. Beyond Band of Brothers: the War Memoirs of Major Dick Winters, Dick Winters
12. Electric Universe: The Shocking True Story of Electricity, David Bodanis
13. 50 Jobs in 50 States, Daniel Seddiqui

— February —
14. Star Trek Titan: Sword of Damocles, Geoffrey Thorne. (Fiction)
15. Star Trek Vanguard: Harbinger, David Mack (Fiction)
16. Agincourt, Bernard Cornwell (Fiction)
17. Star Trek Vanguard: Summon the Thunder, Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore (Fiction)
18. Overlook, Michael Connelly (Fiction)
19. The Near East, Isaac Asimov
20. Star Trek Titan: Over a Torrent Sea, Christopher L. Bennett (Fiction)
21. A History of Life on Earth, Jon Erickson
22. The Revolutionist, Robert Littell (Fiction)
23. The Outline of History, Volume I, H.G. Wells.
24. Paths of Disharmony, Dayton Ward (Fiction)
25. With Wings Like Eagles, Michael Korda


— March —
26. The History of Japan, Kenneth Scott Latourette
27. The Fort, Bernard Cornwell (Fiction)
28. Confessions, Augustine of Hippo
29. Reap the Whirlwind, David Mack (Fiction)
30. The Fall of Terok Nor, Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens (Fiction)
31. The War of the Prophets, Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens (Fiction)
32. Inferno, Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens (Fiction)
33. A Man in Full, Tom Wolfe (Fiction)
34. Then Everything Changed, Jeff Greenfield
35. The Forgotten 500,  Gregory Freeman
36. You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train, Howard Zinn
37. Bomber, Len Deighton

— April —
38. Gallows Thief, Bernard Cornwell (Fiction)
39. What Catholics Really Believe, Karl Keating
40. Echo Park, Michael Connelly (Fiction)
41. The Archer’s Tale, Bernard Cornwell  (Fiction)
42. Star Trek Vanguard: Open Secrets, Dayton Ward (Fiction)
43. The Heart and the Fist, Eric Greitens
44. Why Do Catholics Do That?, Kevin Orlin Johnson
45. The Stars, Like Dust, Isaac Asimov (Fiction)
46. The Book of Wisdom, New English Bible
47. Disaster 1906: The  San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, Edward F. Dolan Jr.
48. The Accidental Time Machine, Joe Haldeman (Fiction)
49. Ecclesiasticus, New English Bible
50. Sharpe’s Rifles, Bernard Cornwell (Fiction)

— May —
51. The Tragedy of the Moon, Isaac Asimov
52. The Coming, Joe Haldeman (Fiction)
53. The Book of Tobit, New English Bible
54. The Undiscovered Country, J.M.Dillard (Fiction)
55. City of Bones, Michael Connelly (Fiction)
56. Guns, Ed McBain (Fiction)
57. The Sea-Wolf, Jack London (Fiction)
58. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee (Fiction)
59. Earth Science Made Simple, Edward Albins
60. Cave Paintings to Picasso, Henry Sayre
61. Sharpe’s Tiger, Bernard Cornwell (Fiction)
62. The Ethical Assassin, David Liss (Fiction)
63. Angels and Demons, Dan Brown (Horrible, Horrible Fiction)

–June–
64. Star Trek Vanguard: Precipice, David Mack (Fiction)
65. Montevallo: Images of America, Clark Hultquist and Carey Heatherly
66. All I Really Need to Know I  Learned in Kindergarten, Robert Fulghum
67. The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan
68. Sharpe’s Triumph, Bernard Cornwell (Fiction)
69. Biology Made Simple, Rita Mary King
70. The Currents of Space, Isaac Asimov (Fiction)
71. Cop Hater, Ed McBain (fiction)
72. Sharpe’s Fortress, Bernard Cornwell (fiction)
73. God is not One, Stephen Prothero
74. The Final Storm, Jeff Shaara (fiction)

–July–
75. Sharpe’s Trafalgar, Bernard Cornwell (fiction)
76. Sharpe’s Prey, Bernard Cornwell (fiction)
77. Robots and Empire, Isaac Asimov (fiction)
78. An Altar in the World, Barbara Brown Taylor
79. Diary of a Wimpy Kid #2: Rodrick Rules,  Jeff Kinney
80. Why Choose the Episcopal Church,  John M. Krumm (fiction)
81. Judge and Jury, James Patterson (fiction)
82. Honeymoon, James Patterson (fiction)
83. The Big Switch, Harry Turtledove (fiction)
84. The Third Chimpanzee, Jared Diamond
85. Diary of a Wimpy Kid #1, Jeff Kinney

–August–
86. Star Trek Titan: Synthesis, James Swallow (fiction)
87. Seven Ages of Paris, Alistair Horne
88. Covert, Bob Delaney
89. Gospel Medicine, Barbara Brown Taylor
90. Isaac Asimov’s Caliban, Roger MacBride Allen (fiction)
91. The Age of Faith, Will Durant
92. The Gods Themselves, Isaac Asimov (fiction)
93. The Big Rock Candy Mountain, Wallace Stegner (fiction)

–September–

94. Astronomy Made Simple, Kevin B. Marvel
95. The Feather Merchants, Max Shulman (fiction)
96. The Illiad, translated by Barbara Leonie Picard
97. Your Faith, Your Life: An Invitation to the Episcopal Church, Jennifer Gamber and Bill Lewellison
98. The Renaissance, Will Durant
99. Sharpe’s Gold, Bernard Cornwell (fiction)
100. Marcus Aurelius: A Life, Frank McLynn
101. Discourses, Epictetus
102. The Tales of Beedle the Bard, J.K. Rowling (fiction)
103. Dhammapada, trans. Max Mueller, annotated by Jack MacGuire
104. The Red Pyramid, Rick Riordian (fiction)
105. Sharpe’s Escape, Bernard Cornwell (fiction)
106. Walking with Dinosaurs, Tim Haines

–October–

107. The Reformation, Will Durant
108. The Union Club Mysteries, Isaac Asimov (Fiction)
109. The Good German, Joseph Kanon (Fiction)
110. The Lost Hero, Rick Riordan  (Fiction)
111. Pathways, Jeri Taylor (Fiction)
112. The Complete Guide to Walking for Health, Weight Loss, and Fitness; Mark Fenton
113. Sharpe’s Fury,  Bernard Cornwell (Fiction)
114. Active Living Every Day; Steven Blair, Andrew Dunn, Bess Marcus, Ruth Ann Carpenter, and Peter Jaret.

115. The Planet that Wasn’t, Isaac Asimov
116. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (fiction)
117. At Home in Mitford, Jan Karon (fiction)
118. The Beginning Runner’s Handbook, Ian MacNeill and Doug Clement.
119. The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation, Barbara Rossing
120. Clash of Wings: World War II in the Sky, Walter J. Boyne
121. Sharpe’s Company, Bernard Cornwell (Fiction)
122. The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (fiction)

— November —
123. The Astral, Kate Christensen (fiction)
124. Sharpe’s Sword, Bernard Cornwell (fiction)
125. KunstlerCast: Conversations with James Howard Kunstler….the tragic comedy of surburban sprawl; Duncan Crary
126. The Greater Journey, David McCullough
127. Plain and Simple: A Woman’s Journey to the Amish,  Sue Bender
128. God Has a Dream, Desmond Tutu
129. The Crisis of Islam, Bernard Lewis
130. In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan
131. A Light in the Window, Jan Karon (fiction)
132. Timequake, Kurt Vonnegut (fiction)

–December–
133.Physics of the Future, Michio Kaku
134.Redwall, Brian Jacques (fiction)
135. Santa and Pete, Christopher Moore (fiction)
136. Bicycle Diaries, David Byrne
137. The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition, James Howard Kunstler
138. Incognito: the Secret Lives of the Brain, David Eagleman
139. Open Your Heart with Bicycling: Mastering Life through the Love of the Road, Shawn B. Rohrbach
140. 11/22/63, Stephen King (fiction)
141. The Litigators, John Grisham (fiction)
142. Sharpe’s Enemy, Bernard Cornwell (fiction)
143. Social Graces: Words of Wisdom on Civility in a Changing Society, ed. Jim Brosseau

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Sharpe’s Enemy

Posted on December 30, 2011 by smellincoffee

Sharpe’s Enemy: Richard Sharpe and the Defense of Portugal, Christmas 1812
© 1984 Bernard Cornwell
351 pages

It’s Christmastime, but winter quarters don’t exist for Richard Sharpe,  our tall, scar-faced soldier-turned-officer with flint in his eyes. Deserters from the Spanish, Portuguese, British, and French armies have banded together and are terrorizing the countryside, causing considerable friction between the British army and the Spanish themselves. To make matters worse, the renegades have taken a number of royal ladies prisoner and are holding them hostage…and among the leaders of the renegades is Obadiah Hakeswill, a truly despicable creature whose main activities are rape, theft, and escape. Sharpe sets forth with his Rifles to rescue the hostages with a bit of derring-do, but bumps into the French army along the way — and while they also intend to rescue their own hostages from Hakeswille, the Imperial troops also have other things in mind this Christmas season…

Sharpe’s Enemy has all the elements that make for an excellent Sharpe novel —  the action is small in scale, but intense, with Sharpe and his rifles engaged in action first against a castle of blackguards and then an entire French army.  The enemy is an old, familiar, and thoroughly hatable one. The only fictional character whose grisly death I’ve longed to read more than Hakeswill would be Dolores Umbridge from the Harry Potter novels. The stakes are high — the lives of innocents and the potential progress of the allied army in 1813 —  and Sharpe has to contend with idiot aristocrats to boot. It is indeed a rollicking good read…but the ending spoiled things for me. What should have been a gloriously satisfying moment for Sharpe is ruined by late-game action, and that same action threw me off, as well. On the bright side, Cornwell introduced a French intelligence officer with a lot of potential — and he’s supposed to make an appearance in my next Sharpe read, Sharpe’s Honour.

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The Litigators

Posted on December 29, 2011 by smellincoffee

The Litigators
© 2011 John Grisham
385 pages

The Litigators may be unique among John Grisham’s work in that from the start, it’s written as a comedy. The lead character (David Zinc) intoduces himself to the story by having a nervous breakdown on his way to work and taking refuge in a local bar, where he happily drinks the day away before stumbling into a seedy two-man firm of ambulance chasers and declaring that he’d like to be their new associate.  His two new employers, Figg and Finley, border on the pathetic themselves: one is an on-again off-again drunk who can’t stay out of rehab, and the other is on his fourth marriage and a fan of get-rich-quick schemes that always result in catastrophe.  While they’re not keen on taking on a new hire, one is about to engage the firm in a mass tort action. It seems there’s a bad drug on the market, and every lawyer with an eye for the future is trying to get a piece of the pie by piling on. They could use a hand in getting their ’boutique firm’ involved, and so Zinc becomes the third man in their unintentional comedy troupe.

Think of The Litigators as The King of Torts meets The Street Lawyer, delivered as a comedy of errors and peopled by two of the Three Stooges. Everything that can go wrong does: by mid-novel they’re facing a perfect storm that promises disaster.The lead character is so fundamentally decent, though, that the reader is left wincing at the fact that the poor guy is facing a fate that is the legal equivalent of falling into a woodchipper. But the Litigators isn’t simply the story of a horrifically-executed trial:   Zinc finds perverse value in his new life, enjoying the fact that instead of slaving away in a corporate tower working in international finance, he’s actually helping people…and so bizaarely, in a novel where the usual fate of Grisham’s trials and heroes are reversed,  the ending is unambiguous and (for me) satisfying.  Look for it if you’re in a mood for a quick and comedic read with some mild legal-thriller action thrown in.

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11/22/63

Posted on December 29, 2011 by smellincoffee

11/22/63
© 2011 Stephen King
849 pages

What would you do if you could walk through a door and into another world — the land of ago, where it’s always September 1958, where gas is cheap, root beer is creamy, and cars sport tailfins? Such was the opportunity English teacher Jake Epping accepted when his friend Al invited him into the pantry of his diner. For years, Al has known that there exists a curious fissure in spacetime there, one which allows people to pass from the present to 1958 as easily as descending a few steps. He’s never revealed it before now, but he has something he wants to accomplish in the past — something he can’t do himself.

The mission, of course, is saving President Kennedy’s life on 11/22/63 — five years from the date that the fissure opens into. If Epping takes on the mission — and he will, for personal reasons as well as to help his friend Al — he will have to live at least five years of his life in the past, in a time without modern medicine and conveniences. But the past has its attractions, as well.

11/22/63 is a multistage novel; at first, Epping is drawn in by the extraordinary premise and the novelty of exploring the past. Before setting forth on his mission proper, he takes several jaunts into the past to explore how he might survival in this familiar-yet-alien world, and realizes that simple changes can have broad effects — and the greater the effect of a potential change, the harder it will be to accomplish. The past is not a static canvas giving Epping free room to move: it is obdurate. It resists change, and the whole of the novel is haunted by the past’s resiliency. Even when things seem to be going well, there’s still anticipation that something is bound to go horrifically wrong.  As Jake’s mission begins in earnest, the novel becomes more a story about a man finding his place in a community. I haven’t read much of King (The Stand, Christine, and Firestarter), but I wouldn’t expect such emotional meat from an author who is known for horror and fantasy. King’s characters seem real, to the point that I started googling at various intervals to see if they were historic personalities. As the fifties give way to the sixties, Jake’s mission takes priority — leading to the action which we’ve been building up to for hundreds of pages. I had no idea what to expect from the ending, but King delivers a stellar conclusion.

11/22/63 has, I think, displaced The Stand as my favorite King novel. It’s as compelling a character drama as I’ve ever read, filled with little historical details that delighted a person fascinated with the period like myself — and of course,  driven by the tantalizing lure of being able to change the past.  Definite recommendation. Had I participated in the Broke and the Bookish’s most recent list (top ten books read in 2011), this would have have been on there.

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The City in Mind

Posted on December 29, 2011 by smellincoffee

The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition
© 2001 James Howard Kunstler
272 pages

The study of civilization is nothing less than the study of the culture of cities. Humanity has survived on the Earth for hundreds of thousands of years, but not until we began to aggregate in cities did we truly come into our own. Cities have been the cultural centers of our race and the driving force of our history which unlocked our potential in the last ten thousand years or so, and in The City in Mind, James Howard Kunstler reflects on their role in our history and their contribution to the quality of our everyday lives, focusing on a panel of select cities that may allow us to see what makes a city work and what drives it towards failure.

In The Geography of Nowhere,  Kunstler railed against the disintegration of the American city and the rise of what he sees as an imminently inferior form of urban living — suburban sprawl. Although a couple of chapters here reflect that theme,  the book is not as intensely focused. It reads something like a collection of essays, each giving the history of a given city’s development and emphasizing one particular period or element. The opening chapter on Paris is devoted to Napoleon III and Hausmann’s thoughtful redesign of Paris in the 19th century, for instance, and how it led to a fairly ugly medieval city’s transformation into a jewel of urban design.  Kunstler visits the classic spirit with Rome, and with Boston shows the reader how a city can recover from decades of thoughtless planning and sprawl.  I bought this book in part because I delight in reading Kunstler when he’s on a  critical rampage, destroying atrocious buildings and miles of commercial strips and box stories with biting with — and two chapters on Las Vegas and Atlanta give him just the excuse. Atlanta is used as a case-study for the failure of edge cities, while Vegas — which Kunstler surely deems the worst city in America — showcases a wide variety of failures, from the practical to the spiritual.  Kunstler is not a religious man, but he sees proper urban design as something which enhances the value of life; when done properly, it honors us and creates a place worth living in.

The chapters mentioned are the book’s strong points. There were other sections, like that on Mexico City, that I didn’t quite understand the point of. Kunstler is informative there — I’d known nothing about the history of the modern city following the Spanish conquest — but to what urban design-related end. I had the same reaction to another chapter, possibly because I expected more sections along the lines of Paris and Las Vegas, chapters which clearly point out good and dismal approach at design, whereas Kunstler had a more general focus in mind. Some sections are available on Kunstler’s website for your reading pleasure.

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