How the Hippies Saved Physics, by David Kaiser

Hey, look, I finally finished this book, first mentioned on the blog back at the end of July. I had to return the book pictured, but then found the audio version on OverDrive, so I couldn't help but listen, right?

Right.

Okay, so. First of all, this book is not exactly about how hippies saved physics. The title is based off of some study called How the Irish Saved Civilization, and the hyperbole is intentional, so I guess I'll let it slide. It is about hippies, and about hippies doing physics, and about hippies doing really weird things with physics, so if you're into that sort of thing you won't be disappointed.

On the actual surviving physics side of things, there's a lot of info in the book about quantum physics and how absolutely insane it is, with entangled particles and the double slit experiment and quantum encryption and of course Schrödinger's cat, which is probably still causing (and not causing) Schrödinger endless amounts of frustration.

I majored in physics, so mostly in this part I was like yeah yeah whatever none of this is really new or interesting.

BUT THEN.

Soooooo it turns out that more than one physicist in the 60s spent some time doing research into extrasensory perception, on the government's dime. And then some more on other people's dimes. And that is really the selling point of this book for me, because WHAT. Apparently there were some physics dudes and chicks totally into that Uri Gellar guy and other people who claimed to be able to see the future or see the other side of a playing card or whatever, and the U.S. government was like, well, we'd better play it safe and pour some money into this research just in case the Ruskies get there first. Fantastic! And even when said government stopped pouring money in and most people were like, eh, whatever, probably not, there were still physicists who were like, but MAYBE.

And I am a sucker for a crazy person story, so I liked this part of the book, and the part where Kaiser goes off about one of the non-government money-pouring people who totally turned out to be a murderer. WHAT.

Also, I love the guy who narrates the audiobook (he also did The Disappearing Spoon), whose delightful voice got me through all the boring parts just fine. I totally want to go find a list of his work and see if he's done any other books I'm interested in reading.

Recommendation: For those who need some crazy science-related anecdotes to throw around at parties.

Rating: 7/10

Wreck the Halls, by Jen Yates

Hee hee hee hee hee! I love Cake Wrecks, and also Cake Wrecks, and really just cake wrecks in general. I love stopping by the cakes on display at Publix and hoping one of them might be terrible enough to go on the internet, but also hoping that none of them are.

Unlike the previous general-wrecks book, this one is particularly focused on the end-of-year holidays. And Star Wars. Obviously. There are phallic poo-turkeys and a Super Bowel cake, really terrifying Santas and gingerbread men and Care Bears, and the last cake on this page that made a finals-addled husband of mine practically pee his pants laughing. It's not that funny, but law school is apparently very difficult.

There's also the patented Jen Yates patter, which here includes some re-written Christmas carols and several pun-laden paragraphs, which I would reproduce for you here except I do want to you keep reading my blog. Let's just say there's some fantastic wordplay involving bread and also poo, because this woman cannot stop talking about it.

Someday I will get that coffee table and then I will purchase this and its predecessor and any future Cake Wrecks books and scare people away from my home with them. And you should, too.

Rating: 8/10

Geek Girls Unite, by Leslie Simon

Hokay. So. I mentioned in my last post that I had picked this book up for no real reason but that it looked interesting and name-dropped some people that generally intrigue me. It is possible I did not even crack it open to look inside, just said, ooh, pretty purple cover and went for it.

Because prooooobably if I had looked inside I would not have brought this home. See, what I thought I was getting was a look at "geek girl" culture and, per the cover, how these girls are "taking over the world." Well, I did get that, I guess, but I also got a lot of stuff I was not expecting.

The book is set up so that each chapter covers a specific style of geek girl, starting with a quiz on your knowledge of the style (spoiler: all the answers are C and the A and B answers are often ridiculous), providing a stereotypical description of such a geek girl, giving a history of awesome girls who fall into the category, naming some current "geek goddesses," describing people these geek girls shouldn't be friends with and boys whom they should date, and offering up required reading/listening/clicking/watching/etc.

The parts with the historical context and the current "goddesses" are interesting, because they give me cool people and things to look into and are, like, factual and stuff. But all the other parts were either just okay or kind of lame, and I think it's at least partially because Simon and/or her publishers don't seem to know what audience this book is for.

Is it for girls who want to find their geek clique? Well, they won't be able to tell from the quizzes, since the right answer is generally very obvious even if you haven't figured out that it's always C. Is it for girls who want to read about themselves and their chosen clique? Maybe, but when I turned to what I thought would be mine, the "Literary Geek Girl," I found out through the "character sketch" that I'm going to have to become completely immune to fashion and popular music and also go back in time to undo all that Cliffs-Notes-ing I did of really terrible books, and I'm just not willing to do that. Is it actually for boys, considering the "geek love" sections seem directed at the boys (very specifically boys, too) who want to win over a geek girl's heart?

I don't know. I wish the book had been less segmented and more about the generally geeky girl, and I wish there had been more factual stuff and less Seventeen filler, but I suppose that wasn't meant to happen here. And so I am disappointed by my own high expectations. But I give Simon props for using actual geek girls as primary sources for the book and giving me scads of new books and albums and websites and movies to procure and devour, and really any book that's going to get people interested in new things is good by me.

Recommendation: For the girl who has always wanted to be a [insert geek style here] Geek Girl but never knew where to start.

Rating: 7/10

Packing for Mars, by Mary Roach

Ah, Mary Roach. It's been awhile. How you been? Oh, you've been gallivanting around the world talking to astronauts and wannabe astronauts and chimponauts and people who pretend to be astronauts for SCIENCE? Tell me more!

And she does! There is much more than I would have guessed to tell about space, that final frontier and whatnot. Some of it I had heard before, like the bit about how a certain president was not a fan of lady astronauts, and oddly some of it I heard on a podcast referencing Packing for Mars after I had started the book but before I got to the part they referenced. That was odd.

Other bits I had not heard but made sense, and were kind of intriguing, like the whole chimps in space program and how it totally ruined the start of our space race and how at one point there was a human testing a spacesuit to see if it was humane for chimps, except that the point of the chimp wearing the spacesuit was to see if it was safe for humans. Oh, science. And the part where she goes off to Japan to visit their astronaut training camp or whatever and you find out that Japanese astronaut candidates have to fold 1000 paper cranes for luck and psychological testing. On that basis alone, I am not cut out to be an astronaut.

And, of course, in true Mary Roach fashion, there were also bits about sex in space and poop in space that I didn't know I didn't need to know until I knew them. Darn her! Suffice it to say that it is difficult to do both, and so NASA at least tries to avoid them when at all possible. Also, you shouldn't talk about your poo problems on a live microphone. For your sake AND everyone else's.

I'm wondering if my lack of love for Spook is content-based or narrator-based, because the woman who narrates this one also did Bonk and I liked the latter equally as much as this current one. I think this narrator has an excellent blend of "Wow, did you know this?" and "Wow, did you need to know this?" and sometimes, "Wow, you definitely don't need to know this but it's written down so I'm gonna have to tell you anyway," like when Roach writes about her lack of knowledge about body odor in the crotchal region, not for lack of trying ew. Sorry. I heard it, so you have to, too!

I promise most of the other fun facts in this book are actually fun, and it's about space! I really don't think you can go wrong.

Recommendation: For lovers of SCIENCE and crazy people who write about science and obscure factoids disguised as science.

Rating: 8/10

(What's in a Name Challenge)

Space space wanna go to space yes please space. Space space. Go to space.
Better buy a telescope. Wanna see me. Buy a telescope. Gonna be in space.
I’m in space.

Street Gang, by Michael Davis

Street Gang is a fine example of what my friend Mary would, I think, call a worthwhile audiobook — one where ears-reading is an improvement over eyes-reading. (Examples: Bossypants, things read by Michael York.)

I tried to eyes-read this book when it first came out, but got bored real quick-like and sent it back home to the library. But then I saw it on, what else, OverDrive, and I figured I'd give it another shot. I'd never heard of the narrator, Caroll Spinney, but I quickly discovered that he just so happens to be the voice of both Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch. He sounds a little Big-Bird-y in his speaking voice, and it was this wonderful cadence that helped me get through the book. Extra bonus: after the book proper is done, there's an extra hour of interview between Davis and Spinney that is, if not exciting, very interesting to listen to.

The book proper, though... eh. It purports to be the complete history of Sesame Street, but it feels more like a hodge-podge of histories — there's quite a bit about childrens's television programs prior to Sesame Street, like Captain Kangaroo and Howdy Doody, some background on the various actors eventually cast on Sesame Street, and of course rather a lot about Jim Henson, to the point where the book starts with his funeral. And all these little vignettes are just sort of tossed around in the book, so I had a bit of trouble reorienting myself with each new chapter. And I get that that's probably the point, that this sort of mixed-up narrative is reminiscent of an episode of Sesame Street, but it was hard for me to hold on to the thread most of the time.

But! For interesting conversational tidbits about children's television? This book fits the bill quite nicely. I learned how Sesame Street got its name (basically: they couldn't come up with anything better), how much intense educational and market research went into the making of even the very first episode, and how Barney almost ruined Sesame Street, if you need another reason to dislike large purple dinosaurs. And I got to hear Caroll Spinney as Big Bird and Oscar, and doing a passable Ernie and Kermit as well! I do think my tiny cousin's impression of Ernie's laugh is much better, though. I might be biased. :)

Recommendation: Definitely worth a read or listen if you've ever spent way too much time watching PBS in the afternoons.

Rating: 7/10

The Disappearing Spoon, by Sam Kean

My favorite element is antimony, for the most arbitrary of reasons — Sb are the initials of both antimony and a nickname I had in high school. That's it. That's all I knew about antimony before reading this book. Now I know two important things about it: a) there used to be people who liked antimony more than I do, to the point where they were willing to dig it out of feces, and b) it's used to make the strongest known superacid. I hope you can figure out which of these I appreciate more.

If you have a favorite element, or if you want one, you should pick up this book, because it will tell you everything you never knew you wanted to know about the periodic table.

There are element-specific facts, like those about antimony, and scientist-specific facts, including long passages about Mendeleev, the Curies, and various other scientists I can't remember off the top of my head. There are also bits about alchemy, of course, and how aluminium (which is really annoying to hear over and over on the audiobook) became so amazingly devalued, and how Tycho Brahe may have had more than one fake nose, because you always need a good one for the fancy people.

And, I mean, that's the whole book, really, is facts, which is a fun time and leads to a lot of me going, "Oh! Did you know that Paul McCartney got a rhodium record for making all the music, because rhodium is apparently awesomer than platinum?" at dinners with people who liked me better five minutes ago. But there's nothing wrong with that!

Recommendation: It appeals to the science nerd and trivia nerd in me, so if you've got one of those, go for it!

Rating: 8/10
(A to Z Challenge)

In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote

I had meant to post this last week, but with Blogger acting up I figured I'd wait until I was sure everything was fixed. This turned out to be an excellent idea, as a) Blogger ended up eating a couple of my posts and b) by waiting, I made it to the book club meeting for which I read this book AND we watched a companion movie. So I have lots to talk about!

So, the book. I'd been meaning to read this, oh, forever, so I'm glad the book club made me do it. Before reading it, though, I just knew it was an important book that people read, and also a true crime story, another thing I've never read. The reason it's important is because it is a true crime story written as non-fiction but in the style of a novel, with people doing things and talking to each other and expositing their own story. This was apparently a very new thing, and the conceit does fall apart in places, like any time Capote includes an entire letter or confession or whatever that just goes on for pages and pages or when there are scenes where you know Capote had to be making some stuff up because he just couldn't have that information.

The story itself is about the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas, who in 1959 were murdered quite unexpectedly and brutally in their own home. Capote's novelization presents the murder and investigation in a really interesting manner, as the Clutters die fairly early on in the story and the rest of the book is spent first in figuring out the whodunnit and then in pondering about the whydunnit. The book jumps back and forth between the Kansas investigation and the murderers on the run until, of course, the two meet, and then there's a bunch about jail and the trial, which is more intriguing than I originally thought it would be.

I quite liked this book even with its problems, and so did the rest of my book club, and after we talked about it we watched Infamous, which is a recent movie about Capote and how he managed to actually write this book. I thought it was a perfect complement to the book, as it's structured similarly and touches on the unreliable narrator problems of In Cold Blood while taking its own liberties with Capote's story. Brilliant, really. And it was really the unreliable narrator parts that intrigued me most — the movie brings up the fact that Capote never took notes during interviews, preferring to write things down with 99 percent accuracy later (mmhmm), and that he reworked "quotes" until they sounded better, which did not surprise me in the least. The movie even points to one bit of In Cold Blood that is just outright fabricated! I may need to go read the book that Infamous is based on.

Recommendation: For the Criminal Minds/Law and Order/other crime procedural lover in your life.

Rating: 8/10
(A to Z Challenge What's in a Name Challenge)

The Wordy Shipmates, by Sarah Vowell

This is the last Sarah Vowell review for a while, I promise! It turns out that I can only take so much of the same kind of book. Also, I didn't like this one very much, which is disappointing because I actually own the print version, but which is less disappointing because I only paid a dollar for it.

Anyway, this book is Sarah Vowell doing her Sarah-Vowell-iest to describe early Puritan America, specifically the set of Puritans that came over in 1630 to form the Massachusetts Bay Colony. There's lots of stuff about religion, of course, and Indian relations, but mostly what I remember is the politics (of course) and the fine lines everyone had to walk to attempt to make this whole colony thing work.

And this is interesting, sure, but unfortunately it seems that I am less intrigued by Puritan politics in the 1630s than I am about current politics and presidential assassinations, and so I must admit that I didn't pay that much attention to this audiobook. Well, except when Vowell went on her tangents — I will forever be amused by the idea of her explaining to her small nephew why the Puritans were still killing the Indians long after the "first Thanksgiving." Poor kid; his aunt is ruining everything for him!

Also, I may try actually reading this one again in the future; I think that part of my problem here was the fact that I know so much less about this aspect of history than I do about presidents and politics, and so I kept getting all the Johns confused, among other difficulties. Maybe if I can flip back and forth to remember who everyone is, I'll have a better time of it? Eh, give me a year or so and we'll see. :)

Recommendation: For history lovers who don't mind a little whimsy in their historical narratives.

Rating: 7/10

Assassination Vacation, by Sarah Vowell

I mentioned re: The Partly Cloudy Patriot that I thought that Sarah Vowell's sarcastic nature might come across better in audio form over print form, and I think this is where I can say that that's true. I tried to read Assassination Vacation once before, a couple of years ago, and gave it up almost immediately for being odd and confusing. This time, though, I was better prepared and had Sarah Vowell reading it to me as it was meant to be read, and so it went down real smooth-like. Or whatever.

This book is similar to The Partly Cloudy Patriot in that it is a) about politics and b) liberally (ha!) sprinkled with Vowell's personal anecdotes. It is, as you might guess, about various assassinated presidents (but not JFK), but it's not so much about the assassinations themselves as about what the assassinations meant at that point in history and mean now and what happened as a result.

So, for example, Vowell talks about her favorite president, one Mr. Lincoln, and how his assassination was meticulously planned by Booth to happen on a laugh line to cover up the whole assassinating bit as much as possible. And then she talks about how Booth ran ostensibly without forethought toward a friend's place, and moves into a personal anecdote about how she and a friend tried to follow Booth's path, failing miserably even in a car with maps from MapQuest, like, come on, this was not an accidental hiding place.

In another amusing example, Vowell talks about Teddy Roosevelt succeeding the assassinated McKinley, and how he was out hiking in the Adirondacks when the whole dying thing was going on, and also how when a messenger from the White House came running up a mountain to find him and bring him back to Washington, Roosevelt was like, "Nah, I think I'll eat some dinner first." Priorities, right?

And then there was the only problem I had with this book as an audiobook... Charles Guiteau. He's the guy what shot James Garfield, whose monument in Lake View Cemetery I adore, and it turns out that he is really really annoying. Every time the voice actor playing him started talking, I found myself moving my headphones away from my ears and just waiting for the annoying to stop so I could listen to Sarah Vowell again. Part of this was the shouty quality of the actor (of Guiteau?) and part just how insane Guiteau's words were. He was a crazy person, I have found out.

But aside from Charles Guiteau, I quite liked this book. Assassinations are interesting creatures, and I liked the many and varied perspectives Vowell brought to them, from first-hand accounts of contemporaries to first-hand accounts of Vowell getting seasick on her way to the Dry Tortugas. Sometimes her tangents got a little out of hand, and sometimes she got too much into the minutiae of politics, but on the whole I think it struck a good balance.

Recommendation: For lovers of politics and murder most foul. Or just kind of foul, I guess, depending on your viewpoint.

Rating: 8/10

The Partly Cloudy Patriot, by Sarah Vowell

I said on the Twitters the other day that I don't know whether I want to marry Ms. Vowell or be her when I grow up. But after finishing up this book and starting in on her next, Assassination Vacation, I think I just want to hang out with her and go on strange adventures on an irregular basis. She's delightfully quirky, but I'm not sure I could actually be friends with her.

I picked this book up for many reasons, but the main ones are that Vowell has a new book out, I've never read one of her books, and I've heard that the new one is a little odder than her others so it made more sense to back up and wade into the pool that is Sarah Vowell. Whatever that means.

And let's be honest, I loved it. It merited the Twitter mention as well as three quotes in a row on my Tumblr... I found myself cracking up in the middle of work and hoping that no one asked what was going on, because it would be too hard to explain.

Part of it is the subject matter... this book is a collection of essays mostly about politics and patriotism, which haven't changed terribly much save in name in the last nine years. Vowell is a capital-D Democrat, so she spends a few essays proclaiming her love for Bill Clinton and Al Gore and her distaste for George W. Bush. But there's no proselytizing, just an acknowledgement of her politics and her involvement in the political institution. And outside of politics proper, Vowell includes some essays about the underground lunchroom in Carlsbad Caverns National Park, the current practice of declaring everyone a Rosa Parks, and playing that one basketball game in the arcade.

The other part is Sarah Vowell. I listened to the audiobook, which is primarily narrated by her, with brief cameos from others (like Stephen Colbert as Al Gore), and so each essay is imbued with Vowell's inflections and emphases. Considering her often sarcastic nature, I can imagine that these essays might come across rather differently in print, so I'm glad I went in for the audio. It's sort of like hanging out with Sarah Vowell, right?

Recommendation: Highly recommended, unless you're smitten with George W. Bush.

Rating: 9/10
(A to Z Challenge)

Salt: A World History, by Mark Kurlansky

I downloaded this from OverDrive at the same time as The Phantom of the Opera, and started it right after I was done with the novel. It is, shall we say, not the same.

I actually remember seeing this at my local Borders way back in the day when it was the place for me and my friends to hang out. So, like, eight years ago? I was amused by the cover, but was also not at all a non-fiction reader, so it stayed on the shelf. Now that I'm trying to learn more facts (and need things to listen to at work), this book seemed perfect to read!

And it's quite interesting. I... did not know that you could apply that word to salt before listening to this book. I had no idea that salt was ever considered something valuable, or that wars were fought partially on account of salt, or that the Morton salt I put on my food is, like, intensely uniform. I thought it was just salt!

I also didn't know a lot of things about salted fish, but that whole section of the book did not interest me, either, so I can't tell you much except that apparently the Vikings started their slave trade partially because they did not have salted fish to trade with people. Salted fish, humans, same difference.

SPEAKING of salted fish and humans, did you know that when they first started bringing mummies into... what was it, Britain?... the customs people or whoever taxed them as salted fish for lack of a better way to make money off imported dead people? So maybe not so different after all...

This is what I love about non-fiction books these days. Even if the subject seems completely odd or boring, in the right hands it can have me spouting off strange facts for weeks. I'm sure my husband approves.

Recommendation: For anyone who has ever eaten salt, which is, by the way, everyone.

Rating: 8/10

I Saw You..., edited by Julia Wertz

This is an odd little book. It has a long subtitle, like so: "Comics Inspired By Real-Life Missed Connections, filled with near misses, brief encounters, strange sightings, lusty longings, and a little hope for love." I'm... not really sure what to say about it.

Okay, well, so it's a series of comics, that's a good start. And they're all based on Craigslist "missed connections" ads, which can be awesome or depressing, and are therefore sometimes awesome and sometimes depressing. I'm not clear if all of these comics are actually based on specific Craigslist postings or if some are just sort of made up, but they all sound pretty plausible.

Also, each comic is done by a different artist, so there are a lot of different art styles and different takes on how to illustrate a missed connection — some are straightforward and beautifully rendered, a couple take the Craiglist ad and turn it into something super-creepy (though I suppose some of the ads are!), most are somewhere in between. All of them give you a little insight into the kind of person that might find themselves writing to a hottie they've possibly barely spoken to.

For the most part, I found the comics a bit boring and/or predictable, but a couple really stood out and made me happy in my heart, so it wasn't a total loss.

Recommendation: For people who surf the missed connections, because maybe there's something you need to know. :)

Rating: 6/10
(A to Z Challenge)

The Book of Awesome, by Neil Pasricha

So I started reading this book waaaay back in January, and then got distracted by work and audiobooks and never managed to make it back to the book until I got that irksome little notice I get so often that says, "Hey, you. Yes, you. Stop hoarding library books. No, you can't renew it. Yes, I want it back in three days. Get on that."

I couldn't rescue the other three books mentioned in the notice... sigh... but since I was quite close to finishing this I zoomed through it, sneaking the last bit during a slow time at work. Don't tell my boss. :)

So. This here book is based on the website 1000 Awesome Things, which, in looking up that link, I discover is ready to become a second book, there are so many awesome things in the world. I can get behind that.

And that's what the book is — it's basically an annotated list of things that make life awesome, from old friends like finding money in your pocket and getting a snow day to things I hadn't realized were awesome until I read them and thought, "Hey, that is awesome," like that first scoop of peanut butter in the jar and the feeling of new socks fresh out of the package. Dude, awesome.

Some of the entries are really short, some go on a few pages, the entry on silence is, well, blank. It's not really a sit-down-and-read-this-in-one-go book, though obviously you can, but more of a book to reach for when you need a reminder of awesomeness. And it is awesome.

Recommendation: Not for people who have a problem with the word "awesome," which makes up probably 20% of the book's words (possibly an exaggeration). Otherwise, for everyone!

Rating: 9/10
(A to Z Challenge)

Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, by Mary Roach

Hello again, Mary Roach. You are ever so delightful.

In this book, Roach does indeed tackle the afterlife, starting with a bit of religion and then really focusing on spirits and mediums (media?) for the rest of the book. It's not nearly as titillating as Bonk, but I do know a heck of a lot more about spirit phenomena than I did before!

My favorite part: in the religion section, Roach writes about reincarnation and spends some time with a reincarnation researcher in... India, I think... who finds cases where children are claiming to be remembering past lives and then going to where they live and where they think they used to live to try to fact-check the situation. I had never thought about people doing that — it makes perfect sense, but is almost too easy, yes?

Recommendation: Good for a car trip and for the spooks-enthusiast, but not the most thrilling book you'll read all year.

Rating: 7/10
(A to Z Challenge, What's in a Name Challenge)

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, by Mary Roach

My friend Pat got this book a few years ago as a sort of graduation present from our physics department faculty (I got World Without End, which I have yet to crack open), which caused a lot of snickering amongst all present, because no matter how old you are, you are twelve when it comes to sex. This is a fact.

I have no idea if he read it or how he liked it, but the fact that I remember him getting it, coupled with the existence on the internets of a general love for Mary Roach, convinced me it would be an excellent companion for my 10.5+ hour solo road trip up to Virginia this past weekend. I was absolutely not disappointed.

To start off, Roach's writing style is lovely. She knows her stuff, and often how ridiculous her stuff is, and she puts it across in a very conversational style with tangents and footnotes and pauses to think about what she's just written galore. And the narrator of this book, who I believe I've heard on another book at some point, picks up that conversational quality quite easily — oftentimes you can hear her smiling or grimacing or making that face you make when something absolutely mortifies you to even think about. I don't even know what it's called, but I heard it!

Then, of course, there's the subject matter. I have to admit that while I was listening I wasn't sure I would retain a lot of the facts, what with the driving and paying attention to the road and whatnot, but after I was done I was easily able to relay to my husband the pertinent info. Like that there are men who masturbate by putting things up their urethras (ouch?). Or that Marie Bonaparte (related to that one Bonaparte guy) had her clitoris surgically moved closer to her vagina in an attempt to make her sex better (OUCH, and also EUCCHH). Oh, and that if you get your dog neutered, you can get him prosthetic testicles to make him feel better about himself (eh?). And so much more.

What I think I loved about this book most was that unlike certain other non-fiction books I've listened to, Bonk doesn't have an agenda other than entertaining you and providing you with endless trivia to share at family gatherings. Some bits seemed to drag on a little longer than strictly necessary, but I never felt like Roach was trying to beat one concept or another into my head.

Recommendation: This is for, you know, people who are interested in sex. I would probably not give this to teenagers, lest they get ideas that they didn't already have. Like that urethra thing. :shudder:

Rating: 9/10
(A to Z Challenge)

How to Be Alone, by Jonathan Franzen

I was so sure this post was going to go up after my book club discussed it, but unfortunately our discussion has been postponed indefinitely. I say this because I found myself not particularly enjoying the essays in this book, but I am almost positive that I will like them more after I have a chance to talk about them with people who did like them.

And I think my dislike stems largely from something that Franzen mentions in his essay "Mr. Difficult," in regards to a particular woman that once wrote to him. "She began by listing thirty fancy words and phrases from my novel, words like 'diurnality' and 'antipodes,' phrases like 'electro-pointillist Santa Claus faces.' She then posed the dreadful question: 'Who is it you are writing for? It surely could not be the average person who just enjoys a good read.'"

This woman makes Franzen out to be a "pompous snob," but I wouldn't go that far. And I am certainly not afraid of big words or opposed to working through a difficult book that has an excellent payoff. I just found, as I was reading, that Franzen was writing this book for a set of people of which I am definitely not a part, though I couldn't tell you what particular set that might be. Writerly people? Big word collectors? Hipsters?

Whoever it is, it's a group that follows Franzen Logic. To me, his essays tended to ramble on, hopping from topic to topic without terribly much in the way of transition and sometimes without much in the way of sense. I often found myself thinking, "How did we get here? Didn't we start somewhere else? Whatever, I'll just keep going and hope it comes back."

On a small plus side, I really only felt this detachment from the writing in Franzen's more personal essays, the ones where he talks about himself and his life and his opinions a lot. Most of the essays in this book fall into that category. But he also throws in a few journalistic pieces, about things like crappy Chicago mail delivery, the history of cigarettes and cigarette companies, and a high-security prison and the town that surrounds it. And those, I thought, were incredibly well-done, possibly because they required more focus than the personal essays and definitely because I have more interest in strange facts than strange opinions.

Now I'm curious to read some of Franzen's fiction, which I hope to be more like these latter pieces. I suppose I should pick up Freedom anyway, what with all the hype about it, yes?

Recommendation: Again, I'm not really sure what sort of person would like all of Franzen's essays, but I'm pretty certain that everyone can find at least one essay in here to like.

Rating: 7/10
(Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Earth (The Book): A Visitor's Guide to the Human Race

I haven't read The Daily Show staff's other book, America (The Book), but I've heard good things about it and also Earth, so when I saw the latter in the library browse area while shelving the other day, and most importantly when it was still there when I was leaving, I felt compelled to snap it up. And, because it was a 7-day loan book, I was even more compelled to read it right away!

Of course, "right away" doesn't mean "in one sitting," and so it took me the better part of five days to get through the 240-odd pages of insanity that is Earth. The book and the planet.

Part of that I blame on the conceit of the book — it's set up as a textbook for use by aliens who come to visit us but find that we've already killed ourselves off in some fashion. It's full of pictures and captions and "educational information" and even, wonderfully and nostalgically, one of those stamps on the inside front cover that we all had to fill out every year for all of our textbooks, with our name and the condition of the book. I had completely forgotten about those. Oh, how wonderful college would have been with free books.

Anyway. The other thing that I was made to remember about my grade-school textbooks is that they can be INTENSELY boring, even if the information is good, because it's just fact after fact, and in this case joke after joke, and it gets tedious after a while. I might suggest you get this on a 14-day loan, at least. Your brain will thank you.

When taken in the proper dosage, the factoids in this book are delightful and come in several flavors:

Amusing Truths
"This is Barb. She's the best. If you need to know where anything is, just ask her. Or call or IM her, or just email or send a text. Barb's great. Oh, but don't fuck with her yogurt in the shared fridge or she will cut you."

"It was a sad but universal fact of human life that any technology — no matter how incredible — eventually came to be seen as cumbersome. For instance, the first cordless telephone inspired awe. One year later, using the very same phone could only be seen as an ironic tribute to a time when we were forced to lug around comically giant cordless phones."

Depressing Truths
"[P]igmentation was a quick and convenient way of judging a person. One of us, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., once proposed we instead judge people by the content of their character. He was shot."

"While millions of us died of starvation and thirst, millions of others were so sated they could afford to use pies — round fruit or cream-filled pastries with enough fat content to sustain a human being for several days — as comedic projectiles, and water as giant slide lubricants."

Flat-out Lies
[On Monopoly money] "While not legal tender, this $100 bill was still widely used by hats, racecars, thimbles and Scottish terriers to buy property, pay taxes and post bail from the jail in which they were sometimes arbitrarily incarcerated."

"After winning seven gold medals Geraldo Rivera went on to become one of the world's most prominent reporters."

So... basically it's pretty much like The Daily Show. In book form. And without those "special reports" I dislike so much. If you can get through the pop-culture references and the sarcasm, you might even learn something!

Recommendation: If you like The Daily Show and you like reading very short tidbits of information, this is for you. If you are even slightly ambivalent to the comedy stylings of Jon Stewart et al., you should probably skip right over this.

Rating: 7/10
(Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Word Freak, by Stefan Fatsis

I picked this book up a while back, started reading it, and then forgot about it in favor of made-up stories. Word Freak wasn't boring, exactly, but it wasn't as exciting as other books that I had piled up, and so off to the side it went. And then I discovered it was due back to the library, with no chance to renew it, and the book proved its interestingness by popping right back into my hands rather than going back to the library unread.

I picked this book up because it promised, right on the cover, to be about "Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive SCRABBLE Players," and I am nothing if not a giant nerd for all things words. I don't play Scrabble very often, but I used to play the Yahoo! Games version constantly in high school and I've always been a pretty okay player against my friends, largely because I know a lot of words.

But dudes. I would have no chance against any of the players in this book, even the author. I sort of knew that there was a competitive Scrabble community, but I did not realize the extent of the memorizing and calculating and sheer mental strength having that members of said community possess. Playing upwards of 10 games in a tournament on a fairly regular basis? I would be bored after, like, three. All of which I would have lost due to not knowing really really really obscure words and anagrams and how to manage a rack or the board or my brain.

Fatsis plopped himself into this world ten-ish years ago, first to write this book and then because he was obsessed. So about half the book is Fatsis talking about other players and their strange, Scrabble-obsessed lives and the other half is him talking about omg why is his rating so baaaaaad? Which it's not, of course, but people who are really good at things are also really good at thinking they're bad at things.

I think the best parts of this book were the games themselves; I enjoyed seeing strange words score lots of points and especially to see an interesting board layout. But I also thought it was interesting to see what sorts of people are the high-rated experts in competitive Scrabble... Fatsis focuses on some of the craziest people, though he insists that there are sane people who are good at Scrabble. These crazy people tend to have no jobs or lives outside of the game, and yet somehow their weird quirks and whatnot start to seem normal as the book goes on.

And now I'm itching to break out my Travel Scrabble set, except that those tiles are so hard to pop into the little holders! I should really get a real board.

Recommendation: Read this if you like to read interesting stories about oddly interesting people, or if you think you're good at Scrabble, because you're probably not.

Rating: 7/10
(Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Biting the Wax Tadpole: Confessions of a Language Fanatic, by Elizabeth Little

Things I love: words. Words and I are very good friends, if you know what I mean, which is that I really like learning about them. Where they came from, what they do, how funny they can be. See: my love of a children's book called Word Snoop. And this book is better, because it is for adults and therefore includes swear words. I am a big fan of a well-placed swear word, and Little clearly has practice in this.

I thought this book was going to be about something like the vagaries of translation, because of the title, which references a terrible transliteration of the words "Coca-Cola" into Mandarin. But actually, that's just a bit that's in the conclusion, and the rest of the book is EVEN BETTER, because it talks about verbs and modifiers and nouns and how nouns are pretty set in their ways in English, but how you have to go and decline them in other languages, and how some languages have a really fun time pluralizing nouns, and how the Bantu language family isn't content with just two or three noun classes (aka genders), no, no, how about 16? Or 22? I kind of want to die just thinking about it.

And Little feels that pain, and loves it! About noun class, she writes, "Grammatical gender often appears to be based on just the right combination of reason and utterly arbitrary dart-throwing monkey logic to ensure maximum confusion," which is SO TRUE, at least with what I remember of my French.

Little also throws in all these little sidebars of awesomeness, which highlight things that are really neat about various languages. So in a sidebar about noun tense, for instance, Little talks about how the Guaraní language adds endings to verbs to signify tense. There's a past-tense marker and a future-tense marker, which is cool, but EVEN COOLER is that you can combine them. Little's example uses presidents, so with this combination of endings you can get a word for Al Gore: mburuvicharangue, or "what we thought was going to be a future president but then turned out not to be." How cool is that?

I will grant that this might not be that cool to you — my husband certainly gave me funny looks about that last example and others that I shared with him. But if you've ever suffered through a conjugation in your life, you will probably find something to like in here.

Recommendation: An absolute must for lovers of words or languages or humorous anecdotes.

Rating: 10/10
(Countdown Challenge: 2007, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
books i done read

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

The Invisible Gorilla, by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons

A few months ago, I listened to a pretty interesting book on CD called How We Decide. I liked it, it was an interesting topic, but by the end of the CD I was all, "I am going to pistol-whip the next guy that says 'pre-frontal cortex.'"

Basically, you could go to that review, swap out the titles, and replace "pre-frontal cortex" with "illusion" and you've got my review of this book.

Don't get me wrong, it was good for the first five or six hours (out of nine-ish?) that Scott and I listened to it on our drive from Cleveland to Jacksonville. The title story is really the best, and there are a lot of other good examples of people overestimating themselves or being overestimated by people — the book is basically about how we think we're awesome at remembering things or at talking on cell phones while driving, but we are so not.

But then it starts getting old, and THEN the authors go into a diatribe about how you should totally get your kids vaccinated, which I agree with but man, I was starting to think about not vaccinating my hypothetical children out of spite. It was seriously annoying.

Once we weren't stuck in the car anymore, it was hard to get up the will to finish this book, but we did, and it does end on a good note. But like How We Decide, I would highly recommend getting it in book form so that you can skim the super annoying and super boring parts.

Rating: 7/10
(Countdown Challenge: 2010, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.