Books
I'm pretty far behind on posting about books, and it's almost the end of the year! (I'm also extremely behind on posting about anything OTHER than books, but we'll ignore that for the moment.)
51. The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels by Ree Drummond
The Pioneer Woman is a fun blogger, and Black Heels to Tractor Wheels was the ongoing story that she told on her blog about meeting, dating, and marrying her husband. On the blog, most (all?) posts were accompanied by a relevant recipe - her husband's favorite steak, or the comfort dish her mother always made, for example - but these were pulled out of the final story, which made her clear references to the foods themselves seem almost out of place. And, as some of my friends noted, avid readers of Drummond's blog will have read ninety percent of the content already, which is somewhat disappointing. I'd recommend this book to anyone who likes non-professional food writing who hasn't read The Pioneer Woman yet.
52. Millard Fillmore by Paul Finkelman
Biographies of Fillmore's presidential predecessors often begin with a summary of the man's flaws juxtaposed with all of the great things that the man achieved during his professional life, reminding us that no man is perfect but that some of our founding fathers did great things despite their faults. Fillmore's biography begins with the statement that Fillmore was the most handsome president of his time, which makes it appear as though Finkelman was grasping at straws to find something nice to say about poor President Fillmore. And, sure enough, Fillmore's most notable action as president appears to have been his unswerving devotion to the Fugitive Slave Act, which gutted the legal rights of African Americans. This wasn't a bad biography, but Fillmore was obviously not a terribly exciting subject.
53. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Henrietta Lacks, a poor black woman born in 1920, was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 1951. At the time, modern cancer research was just beginning to gain steam. When doctors realized that Henrietta's cancerous cells reproduced prodigiously and did not die, they begin sharing (and eventually selling) the cell line. Those cells, called HeLa cells to maintain Henrietta's privacy, are still used in biomedical research today, although Henrietta never gave her permission for the use of her cells for research or sale, and the Lacks family has never gotten a dime. This fascinating book is part medical nonfiction, part memoir - it tells the story of Henrietta, her cells, and her family - and although it meanders in places, it's probably worth it to work through the tangents.
54. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
The narrator of the book, who is never named, is a young woman employed as a "companion" to a wealthy and somewhat obnoxious American in what I assumed was the early 20th century. While in Monte Carlo, the obnoxious American is star-struck by the wealthy and attractive Maximilian de Winter, but to her chagrin, he becomes much more interested in her mousy and poor companion. But all is not well with their love story - the new Mrs. de Winter constantly feels as if she doesn't measure up to Maxim's first wife in the minds of her husband and the household staff. A gothic mystery reminiscent of Jane Eyre, Rebecca is a mystery that provides just enough hints to keep the reader interested but not so many as to be frustratingly obvious.
55. Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo
Bridge of Sighs is Richard Russo's sixth novel, but the first of his that I've read. I found a lot of similarities to Pat Conroy - the book centers around one man and his family but also includes a number of other characters, each with interesting back stories and most with good hearts, trying but often failing to live together without hurting each other. Russo's skill lies in the realism of the interactions between his characters and the occasional humor of those interactions. My only disappointment was that I felt the whole book was building up to one event, but then Russo used (what I found to be) a deus ex machina sort of writer's trick to avoid having to write the event at all. I do prefer that all the loose ends be tied up, but I don't think that should require extreme measures. Recommended for Pat Conroy fans.
56. What Got You Here Won't Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith
Goldsmith has made a career out of helping middle managers to go from good to great. To do this, he asks their peers, managers, and subordinates to provide honest feedback about the manager's faults and then works with the manager to fix those faults. It hardly sounds like that would fill a book, but it does, between descriptions of each of the major fault categories Goldsmith has identified, lessons on how to do a fault survey when a highly-paid consultant like Goldsmith isn't available to provide the data anonymously, and tips on how to ensure the problem is really fixed. I'm not a manager, but I'm sure I have at least as many faults as one, so I found this book pretty interesting if not terrifically entertaining.
57. Bossypants by Tina Fey
Tina Fey is hilarious. She did improv at Second City in Chicago, she was the lead writer for Saturday Night Live, and now she's in charge at 30 Rock. If you've watched 30 Rock, that's a good indicator of the level of humor you'll find in this book - for example, this is part of the first page of the book: "If you are a woman and you bought this book for practical tips on how to make it in a male-dominated workplace, here they are. No pigtails, no tube tops. Cry sparingly. (Some people say 'Never let them see you cry.' I say, if you're so mad you could just cry, then cry. It terrifies everyone.) When choosing sexual partners, remember: Talent is not sexually transmittable. Also, don't eat diet foods in meetings."
Of course, it's great to read the funny stuff, but I actually found some of the (rare) serious things that she said to be much more interesting. My favorite part was her discussion of the Saturday Night Live skits about Sarah Palin, who is probably Fey's most popular character. She mentioned the backlash she got about playing Palin - commentators said it was "mean." This is Fey's response in the book: "There was an assumption that I was personally attacking Sarah Palin by impersonating her on TV. No one ever said it was 'mean' when Chevy Chase played Gerald Ford falling down all the time. No one ever accused Dana Carvey or Darrell Hammond or Dan Aykroyd of 'going too far' in their political impressions. You see what I'm getting at here. I am not mean and Mrs. Palin is not fragile. To imply otherwise is a disservice to us both." If you like Tina Fey, I recommend this book. And my recommendation to Ms. Fey, as difficult as it might be for her to be serious, would be to include more seriousness in the next book. Not because she isn't funny, but because she obviously has some really interesting serious things to say.
58. Spousonomics by Paul Szuchman and Jenny Anderson
If you've read both the commerical blockbuster Freakonomics as well as any one of John Gottman's books on relationships, and you can imagine squishing them into one book, then you have a good idea of what Szuchman and Anderson have written. Each of the book's ten chapters are dedicated to one economics principle, including division of labor (if one of you is significantly better at making dinner, maybe you should always make dinner and let your spouse always do the dishes) and loss aversion (humans just hate to lose, which makes us hang on to arguments more than we would if we were robots). I found the case studies in each chapter interesting and the advice generally sound, and although the relevance to economics was sometimes a stretch, this might be a relatively good relationship book for someone who really doesn't want to read a book on relationships.
59. Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
John Howard Griffin, after convincing a doctor to make his skin darker using a combination of pills and tanning beds, lived for a month in various places in the South as an African American. When this book, which is essentially his journal of that time, was published in 1959, I imagine this was groundbreaking and also extremely controversial. Griffin's simple descriptions of the way he is treated as a white man and the way he is treated as a black man speak volumes about race relations in our country. By its nature, the book/journal meanders a little, but I found Griffin's musings after the story is publicly known particularly thoughtful and incisive: "The mail poured in, hearteningly favorable and moving. Most people in other areas, including the Deep South, understood, though the situation remained uncomfortable at home. Our townspeople wanted to 'keep things peaceful' at all costs. They said I had 'stirred things up.' This is laudable and tragic. I, too, say let us be peaceful; but the only way to do this is first to assure justice. By keeping 'peaceful' in this instance, we end up consenting to the destruction of all peace - for so long as we condone injustice by a small but powerful group, we condone the destruction of all social stability, all real peace, all trust in man's good intentions toward his fellow man." Recommended for its unique and interesting perspective on the lives of Americans.
60. Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer
Joshua Foer found his reporting on a memory competition interesting, although the ability of the competitors to remember huge amounts of random data seemed almost alien - contests include memorization of lists of numbers, words, names and faces, packs of cards, and poetry. Next, Foer interviewed some memory champions, and one offered to train him, telling Foer that he could compete in the next year's memory competition if he wanted to. So he decided to try, and that made all the difference.
Although this isn't a self-help book, Foer describes the memory tricks he uses: Depending on what is being memorized, each number, card, letter, or syllable is associated with a noun or verb. Then he creates a "memory palace" using a place he knows well (his childhood home, his current home, his grandparents' house, his work) and translates anything he has to memorize into images (the more ridiculous and dirty the better, because they're more memorable) and "places" those ridiculous dirty images in a pre-defined order in the house. Then, when he is attempting to remember some arbitrarily long list of numbers or playing cards, he just walks through his memory palace in his mind, remembers the silly things he put there, and translates them back into his grocery list, arbitrary numbers, or the American Presidents. The title of the book is an example of Foer's use of famous people to memorize cards - at one point in the competition, he placed himself (four of spades) moonwalking (Michael Jackson is his king of hearts) with Einstein (three of diamonds) in his parents' basement. For me, this is perfect participatory journalism - Foer takes the reader through a history of memory studies and discusses what we know medically about memory, but it's interesting because of the stories Foer is able to provide. Recommended.
61. Skippy Dies by Paul Murray
Daniel 'Skippy' Juster is a student at Seabrook College, a Catholic prep school in Dublin, where a small number of the students are boarders and all of the students have ridiculous nicknames and are caricatures of real human beings. Skippy's roommate is Ruprecht Van Dorn, a nerdy fat kid who's only interested in donuts and his experiments related to string theory. Howard, a teacher at the school, is in the middle of a mid-life crisis but he's also an ex-student, so he qualifies for a nickname. It's not a spoiler to say that Skippy dies, since it's in the title of the book and also the first chapter; the first half of the book describes the events that led up to Skippy's unfortunate demise, and the second half of the book tells what happened afterwards. I think Murray was hoping that this novel would be a deep statement about how difficult it is to be a teenager and how, although Skippy dies, everyone around him ends up doing a little bit better afterwards. However, I think he could have done the same things with a lot less alcohol, drugs, underage sex (both vaguely consensual and clearly not consensual) and general ridiculousness, and I think I would have liked it a lot better. Not recommended.
62. The Dancing Girls of Lahore by Louise Brown
Sex trafficking is a serious issue in many areas of the world, including the Heera Mandi neighborhood of Lahore Pakistan, and it must sometimes seem as if a few small changes should be able to stop it. When Louise Brown, a researcher on sex trafficking around the world, travels to Heera Mandi, she realizes that the issue may be more complex than she had originally imagined. This is essentially a journal of her repeated visits to Pakistan over a number of years. She follows a number of characters, but the undisputed star of her study is Maha, a fading dancer in her thirties who is trying to keep her daughters from following in her footsteps. As time goes on, Brown becomes more involved in Maha's life and less of a casual observer - but she remains an excellent narrator throughout.
63. The Sweet Life in Paris by David Lebovitz
David Lebovitz cooked at Chez Panisse and wrote some great cookbooks. Then, after the death of his partner, Lebovitz moved all of his possessions to an itty-bitty apartment in Paris. This book is filled with amusing anecdotes about Parisians, their attitudes towards Americans, and the opinion of this one American about those Parisians. And there's some food in there, too, including delicious descriptions of chocolate that make me want to move to Paris myself, as well as lots of recipes.
64. Dear American Airlines by Jonathan Miles
Benjamin Ford is stuck at the O'Hare airport, and he isn't very happy about it. So he starts writing a letter to someone - anyone - at American Airlines to tell them that he hates them, that they're ruining his life, and that he wants a refund. Although the novel is occasionally funny or vaguely amusing, the protagonist just seemed a little too "human" (flawed) for me to connect with, and it seemed a little unreasonable for a man who has done all the wrong things for years to finally blame American Airlines for this one last wrong thing that they've caused him to do. I thought that Benjamin's original plan was narcissistic and awful and was just another example of his bad behavior throughout the years - so much so that I applauded American Airlines for stranding him there in the first place. Not recommended.
65. Packing for Mars by Mary Roach
Space travel is extremely complex, and one of the things that makes it even more complex is the fact that we keep insisting on sending living things. In this amusing book, Roach explores some of the ways that we make space travel difficult. But before you run out and buy this for your favorite astronaut-enthusiast elementary school child, let me give you some examples - Roach discusses, among other things, sex in space (specifically, the fact that we purposefully don't send mated pairs of humans), human waste, and motion sickness. It was interesting to learn about parts of the space race that don't make front page news, but they generally weren't things that you would talk about in polite company. Recommended for space enthusiasts who aren't easily offended by frank talk about the topics I discussed above.
66. Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women by Geraldine Brooks
Geraldine Brooks, who I knew previously for her novels, was also a foreign correspondant for the Wall Street Journal. When her female assistant, who previously painted her nails and talked about dates at the office, decided to don a veil for modesty, Brooks became curious about the role of women in Islam. She discusses Mohammed's experiences with and teachings on women, as well as the modern interpretations of those teachings and what that means for modern women in Islam. The only negative I can think of is that the book was obviously written before 9/11, so it's missing some important changes that have happened as a result of the attacks and would be significantly improved if it were updated, but the current text is still very worthwhile.
67. Einstein Never Used Flash Cards: How Our Children Really Learn and Why They Need to Play More and Memorize Less by Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and Diane Eyer
I'm not sure that I could guarantee that Einstein didn't use flash cards, but the point of this book is that our current emphasis on pure remote memorization, particularly letters and numbers in young children, is not the best way for children to learn. As you might guess from the title, Golinkoff, Hirsh-Pasek, and Eyer state that playing - especially playing enhanced by adults who help a child to do tasks just slightly above his or her current ability, as well as being read to by adults who interact during reading - are actually the best ways for children to learn, and they best position a child to read, understand math, and enjoy learning later in life. Also interesting for parents will be the sidebars throughout the book where the authors discuss major (but maybe not obvious) learning milestones and provide simple ways for parents to identify where their children are related to those milestones. For that reason, the book might be more interesting for parents than for those without children, but it's still valuable for information about how children learn.
68. It's Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistle-Blower by Michela Wrong
Here's a good example of a book where my early expectations probably hurt my later appreciation. I thought that this book was going to be about starving Kenyans, one of whom finally stood up to corrupt authorities, and the heart-warming story of how the corruption has ended (or, even, is beginning to end) and everyone has enough to eat. That is not this book. "It's our turn to eat" is actually a Kenyan colloquialism that refers to the fact that each political party expects the victor's spoils when they are elected to power, so no one really expects the country to keep any of its money, and this book is the story of two or three consecutive ruling parties and the way they stole money from the Kenyan people. And it's true that there is a whistle-blower, but at the end of the book, Kenya isn't much better off than it was to start with - the international community just knows about the corruption a little more. Interesting but ultimately disappointing if you're expecting a happy ending.
69. The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdos and the Search for Mathematical Truth by Paul Hoffman
Paul Erdos (pronounced air-dish) must have been an interesting character. As Hoffman describes him, he's essentially homeless - he would show up on a mathematician's doorstep with a suitcase and announce: "My brain is open." (He means open the way that a store is open - in service.) He didn't have a house of his own - he lived basically his whole life this way, although he had some mathematicians who he stayed with on a somewhat regular basis. And, although he was a mathematical genius, in some cases helping people to solve problems that hadn't been solved for decades or even centuries, he was incapable of some simple things - he expected his hosts to do his laundry, for example, and he couldn't cook anything more complex than cereal. But he's a legend in mathematics - the Erdos number is somewhat like the Bacon number, except it's the number of published papers connecting the mathematician to Erdos, rather than the number of movies connecting an actor to Kevin Bacon. Recommended - if you're into strange mathematicians.
70. James Buchanan by Jean Baker
Jean Baker's basic premise in this biography is that, despite his training and experience, James Buchanan was ill-equipped to stop the Civil War from happening and, in fact, may have contributed to it. She is mostly successful, but I was frankly tired of reading about failed presidents by this time - Buchanan is the last in a string of them - and didn't enjoy this biography much as a result.
51. The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels by Ree Drummond
The Pioneer Woman is a fun blogger, and Black Heels to Tractor Wheels was the ongoing story that she told on her blog about meeting, dating, and marrying her husband. On the blog, most (all?) posts were accompanied by a relevant recipe - her husband's favorite steak, or the comfort dish her mother always made, for example - but these were pulled out of the final story, which made her clear references to the foods themselves seem almost out of place. And, as some of my friends noted, avid readers of Drummond's blog will have read ninety percent of the content already, which is somewhat disappointing. I'd recommend this book to anyone who likes non-professional food writing who hasn't read The Pioneer Woman yet.
52. Millard Fillmore by Paul Finkelman
Biographies of Fillmore's presidential predecessors often begin with a summary of the man's flaws juxtaposed with all of the great things that the man achieved during his professional life, reminding us that no man is perfect but that some of our founding fathers did great things despite their faults. Fillmore's biography begins with the statement that Fillmore was the most handsome president of his time, which makes it appear as though Finkelman was grasping at straws to find something nice to say about poor President Fillmore. And, sure enough, Fillmore's most notable action as president appears to have been his unswerving devotion to the Fugitive Slave Act, which gutted the legal rights of African Americans. This wasn't a bad biography, but Fillmore was obviously not a terribly exciting subject.
53. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Henrietta Lacks, a poor black woman born in 1920, was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 1951. At the time, modern cancer research was just beginning to gain steam. When doctors realized that Henrietta's cancerous cells reproduced prodigiously and did not die, they begin sharing (and eventually selling) the cell line. Those cells, called HeLa cells to maintain Henrietta's privacy, are still used in biomedical research today, although Henrietta never gave her permission for the use of her cells for research or sale, and the Lacks family has never gotten a dime. This fascinating book is part medical nonfiction, part memoir - it tells the story of Henrietta, her cells, and her family - and although it meanders in places, it's probably worth it to work through the tangents.
54. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
The narrator of the book, who is never named, is a young woman employed as a "companion" to a wealthy and somewhat obnoxious American in what I assumed was the early 20th century. While in Monte Carlo, the obnoxious American is star-struck by the wealthy and attractive Maximilian de Winter, but to her chagrin, he becomes much more interested in her mousy and poor companion. But all is not well with their love story - the new Mrs. de Winter constantly feels as if she doesn't measure up to Maxim's first wife in the minds of her husband and the household staff. A gothic mystery reminiscent of Jane Eyre, Rebecca is a mystery that provides just enough hints to keep the reader interested but not so many as to be frustratingly obvious.
55. Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo
Bridge of Sighs is Richard Russo's sixth novel, but the first of his that I've read. I found a lot of similarities to Pat Conroy - the book centers around one man and his family but also includes a number of other characters, each with interesting back stories and most with good hearts, trying but often failing to live together without hurting each other. Russo's skill lies in the realism of the interactions between his characters and the occasional humor of those interactions. My only disappointment was that I felt the whole book was building up to one event, but then Russo used (what I found to be) a deus ex machina sort of writer's trick to avoid having to write the event at all. I do prefer that all the loose ends be tied up, but I don't think that should require extreme measures. Recommended for Pat Conroy fans.
56. What Got You Here Won't Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith
Goldsmith has made a career out of helping middle managers to go from good to great. To do this, he asks their peers, managers, and subordinates to provide honest feedback about the manager's faults and then works with the manager to fix those faults. It hardly sounds like that would fill a book, but it does, between descriptions of each of the major fault categories Goldsmith has identified, lessons on how to do a fault survey when a highly-paid consultant like Goldsmith isn't available to provide the data anonymously, and tips on how to ensure the problem is really fixed. I'm not a manager, but I'm sure I have at least as many faults as one, so I found this book pretty interesting if not terrifically entertaining.
57. Bossypants by Tina Fey
Tina Fey is hilarious. She did improv at Second City in Chicago, she was the lead writer for Saturday Night Live, and now she's in charge at 30 Rock. If you've watched 30 Rock, that's a good indicator of the level of humor you'll find in this book - for example, this is part of the first page of the book: "If you are a woman and you bought this book for practical tips on how to make it in a male-dominated workplace, here they are. No pigtails, no tube tops. Cry sparingly. (Some people say 'Never let them see you cry.' I say, if you're so mad you could just cry, then cry. It terrifies everyone.) When choosing sexual partners, remember: Talent is not sexually transmittable. Also, don't eat diet foods in meetings."
Of course, it's great to read the funny stuff, but I actually found some of the (rare) serious things that she said to be much more interesting. My favorite part was her discussion of the Saturday Night Live skits about Sarah Palin, who is probably Fey's most popular character. She mentioned the backlash she got about playing Palin - commentators said it was "mean." This is Fey's response in the book: "There was an assumption that I was personally attacking Sarah Palin by impersonating her on TV. No one ever said it was 'mean' when Chevy Chase played Gerald Ford falling down all the time. No one ever accused Dana Carvey or Darrell Hammond or Dan Aykroyd of 'going too far' in their political impressions. You see what I'm getting at here. I am not mean and Mrs. Palin is not fragile. To imply otherwise is a disservice to us both." If you like Tina Fey, I recommend this book. And my recommendation to Ms. Fey, as difficult as it might be for her to be serious, would be to include more seriousness in the next book. Not because she isn't funny, but because she obviously has some really interesting serious things to say.
58. Spousonomics by Paul Szuchman and Jenny Anderson
If you've read both the commerical blockbuster Freakonomics as well as any one of John Gottman's books on relationships, and you can imagine squishing them into one book, then you have a good idea of what Szuchman and Anderson have written. Each of the book's ten chapters are dedicated to one economics principle, including division of labor (if one of you is significantly better at making dinner, maybe you should always make dinner and let your spouse always do the dishes) and loss aversion (humans just hate to lose, which makes us hang on to arguments more than we would if we were robots). I found the case studies in each chapter interesting and the advice generally sound, and although the relevance to economics was sometimes a stretch, this might be a relatively good relationship book for someone who really doesn't want to read a book on relationships.
59. Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
John Howard Griffin, after convincing a doctor to make his skin darker using a combination of pills and tanning beds, lived for a month in various places in the South as an African American. When this book, which is essentially his journal of that time, was published in 1959, I imagine this was groundbreaking and also extremely controversial. Griffin's simple descriptions of the way he is treated as a white man and the way he is treated as a black man speak volumes about race relations in our country. By its nature, the book/journal meanders a little, but I found Griffin's musings after the story is publicly known particularly thoughtful and incisive: "The mail poured in, hearteningly favorable and moving. Most people in other areas, including the Deep South, understood, though the situation remained uncomfortable at home. Our townspeople wanted to 'keep things peaceful' at all costs. They said I had 'stirred things up.' This is laudable and tragic. I, too, say let us be peaceful; but the only way to do this is first to assure justice. By keeping 'peaceful' in this instance, we end up consenting to the destruction of all peace - for so long as we condone injustice by a small but powerful group, we condone the destruction of all social stability, all real peace, all trust in man's good intentions toward his fellow man." Recommended for its unique and interesting perspective on the lives of Americans.
60. Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer
Joshua Foer found his reporting on a memory competition interesting, although the ability of the competitors to remember huge amounts of random data seemed almost alien - contests include memorization of lists of numbers, words, names and faces, packs of cards, and poetry. Next, Foer interviewed some memory champions, and one offered to train him, telling Foer that he could compete in the next year's memory competition if he wanted to. So he decided to try, and that made all the difference.
Although this isn't a self-help book, Foer describes the memory tricks he uses: Depending on what is being memorized, each number, card, letter, or syllable is associated with a noun or verb. Then he creates a "memory palace" using a place he knows well (his childhood home, his current home, his grandparents' house, his work) and translates anything he has to memorize into images (the more ridiculous and dirty the better, because they're more memorable) and "places" those ridiculous dirty images in a pre-defined order in the house. Then, when he is attempting to remember some arbitrarily long list of numbers or playing cards, he just walks through his memory palace in his mind, remembers the silly things he put there, and translates them back into his grocery list, arbitrary numbers, or the American Presidents. The title of the book is an example of Foer's use of famous people to memorize cards - at one point in the competition, he placed himself (four of spades) moonwalking (Michael Jackson is his king of hearts) with Einstein (three of diamonds) in his parents' basement. For me, this is perfect participatory journalism - Foer takes the reader through a history of memory studies and discusses what we know medically about memory, but it's interesting because of the stories Foer is able to provide. Recommended.
61. Skippy Dies by Paul Murray
Daniel 'Skippy' Juster is a student at Seabrook College, a Catholic prep school in Dublin, where a small number of the students are boarders and all of the students have ridiculous nicknames and are caricatures of real human beings. Skippy's roommate is Ruprecht Van Dorn, a nerdy fat kid who's only interested in donuts and his experiments related to string theory. Howard, a teacher at the school, is in the middle of a mid-life crisis but he's also an ex-student, so he qualifies for a nickname. It's not a spoiler to say that Skippy dies, since it's in the title of the book and also the first chapter; the first half of the book describes the events that led up to Skippy's unfortunate demise, and the second half of the book tells what happened afterwards. I think Murray was hoping that this novel would be a deep statement about how difficult it is to be a teenager and how, although Skippy dies, everyone around him ends up doing a little bit better afterwards. However, I think he could have done the same things with a lot less alcohol, drugs, underage sex (both vaguely consensual and clearly not consensual) and general ridiculousness, and I think I would have liked it a lot better. Not recommended.
62. The Dancing Girls of Lahore by Louise Brown
Sex trafficking is a serious issue in many areas of the world, including the Heera Mandi neighborhood of Lahore Pakistan, and it must sometimes seem as if a few small changes should be able to stop it. When Louise Brown, a researcher on sex trafficking around the world, travels to Heera Mandi, she realizes that the issue may be more complex than she had originally imagined. This is essentially a journal of her repeated visits to Pakistan over a number of years. She follows a number of characters, but the undisputed star of her study is Maha, a fading dancer in her thirties who is trying to keep her daughters from following in her footsteps. As time goes on, Brown becomes more involved in Maha's life and less of a casual observer - but she remains an excellent narrator throughout.
63. The Sweet Life in Paris by David Lebovitz
David Lebovitz cooked at Chez Panisse and wrote some great cookbooks. Then, after the death of his partner, Lebovitz moved all of his possessions to an itty-bitty apartment in Paris. This book is filled with amusing anecdotes about Parisians, their attitudes towards Americans, and the opinion of this one American about those Parisians. And there's some food in there, too, including delicious descriptions of chocolate that make me want to move to Paris myself, as well as lots of recipes.
64. Dear American Airlines by Jonathan Miles
Benjamin Ford is stuck at the O'Hare airport, and he isn't very happy about it. So he starts writing a letter to someone - anyone - at American Airlines to tell them that he hates them, that they're ruining his life, and that he wants a refund. Although the novel is occasionally funny or vaguely amusing, the protagonist just seemed a little too "human" (flawed) for me to connect with, and it seemed a little unreasonable for a man who has done all the wrong things for years to finally blame American Airlines for this one last wrong thing that they've caused him to do. I thought that Benjamin's original plan was narcissistic and awful and was just another example of his bad behavior throughout the years - so much so that I applauded American Airlines for stranding him there in the first place. Not recommended.
65. Packing for Mars by Mary Roach
Space travel is extremely complex, and one of the things that makes it even more complex is the fact that we keep insisting on sending living things. In this amusing book, Roach explores some of the ways that we make space travel difficult. But before you run out and buy this for your favorite astronaut-enthusiast elementary school child, let me give you some examples - Roach discusses, among other things, sex in space (specifically, the fact that we purposefully don't send mated pairs of humans), human waste, and motion sickness. It was interesting to learn about parts of the space race that don't make front page news, but they generally weren't things that you would talk about in polite company. Recommended for space enthusiasts who aren't easily offended by frank talk about the topics I discussed above.
66. Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women by Geraldine Brooks
Geraldine Brooks, who I knew previously for her novels, was also a foreign correspondant for the Wall Street Journal. When her female assistant, who previously painted her nails and talked about dates at the office, decided to don a veil for modesty, Brooks became curious about the role of women in Islam. She discusses Mohammed's experiences with and teachings on women, as well as the modern interpretations of those teachings and what that means for modern women in Islam. The only negative I can think of is that the book was obviously written before 9/11, so it's missing some important changes that have happened as a result of the attacks and would be significantly improved if it were updated, but the current text is still very worthwhile.
67. Einstein Never Used Flash Cards: How Our Children Really Learn and Why They Need to Play More and Memorize Less by Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and Diane Eyer
I'm not sure that I could guarantee that Einstein didn't use flash cards, but the point of this book is that our current emphasis on pure remote memorization, particularly letters and numbers in young children, is not the best way for children to learn. As you might guess from the title, Golinkoff, Hirsh-Pasek, and Eyer state that playing - especially playing enhanced by adults who help a child to do tasks just slightly above his or her current ability, as well as being read to by adults who interact during reading - are actually the best ways for children to learn, and they best position a child to read, understand math, and enjoy learning later in life. Also interesting for parents will be the sidebars throughout the book where the authors discuss major (but maybe not obvious) learning milestones and provide simple ways for parents to identify where their children are related to those milestones. For that reason, the book might be more interesting for parents than for those without children, but it's still valuable for information about how children learn.
68. It's Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistle-Blower by Michela Wrong
Here's a good example of a book where my early expectations probably hurt my later appreciation. I thought that this book was going to be about starving Kenyans, one of whom finally stood up to corrupt authorities, and the heart-warming story of how the corruption has ended (or, even, is beginning to end) and everyone has enough to eat. That is not this book. "It's our turn to eat" is actually a Kenyan colloquialism that refers to the fact that each political party expects the victor's spoils when they are elected to power, so no one really expects the country to keep any of its money, and this book is the story of two or three consecutive ruling parties and the way they stole money from the Kenyan people. And it's true that there is a whistle-blower, but at the end of the book, Kenya isn't much better off than it was to start with - the international community just knows about the corruption a little more. Interesting but ultimately disappointing if you're expecting a happy ending.
69. The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdos and the Search for Mathematical Truth by Paul Hoffman
Paul Erdos (pronounced air-dish) must have been an interesting character. As Hoffman describes him, he's essentially homeless - he would show up on a mathematician's doorstep with a suitcase and announce: "My brain is open." (He means open the way that a store is open - in service.) He didn't have a house of his own - he lived basically his whole life this way, although he had some mathematicians who he stayed with on a somewhat regular basis. And, although he was a mathematical genius, in some cases helping people to solve problems that hadn't been solved for decades or even centuries, he was incapable of some simple things - he expected his hosts to do his laundry, for example, and he couldn't cook anything more complex than cereal. But he's a legend in mathematics - the Erdos number is somewhat like the Bacon number, except it's the number of published papers connecting the mathematician to Erdos, rather than the number of movies connecting an actor to Kevin Bacon. Recommended - if you're into strange mathematicians.
70. James Buchanan by Jean Baker
Jean Baker's basic premise in this biography is that, despite his training and experience, James Buchanan was ill-equipped to stop the Civil War from happening and, in fact, may have contributed to it. She is mostly successful, but I was frankly tired of reading about failed presidents by this time - Buchanan is the last in a string of them - and didn't enjoy this biography much as a result.