Grossman, Lev. The Magicians. New York: Viking, 2009.
The Magicians--super-smart high schoolers who get picked to go to a university of magic and have adventures of the heart and knife--are certainly not inhabiting the jolly, clean-mouthed world of Harry Potter. It's not Narnia, either, or Middle Earth, or Forks, or any other recent fantasy-magicky phenomenon, although there are plenty of allusions to that type of thing. These kids curse like regular kids, and these talking animals are often drunk.
That average Earth-ish touch makes The Magicians stand out as a fantasy, and makes it fun to read. At its heart, like the other fantasy heavyweights, is an imaginative, emotional coming-of-age story. This story just happens to take its characters through trials I haven't seen before (like fighting one evil creature after another in a nautilus-shell of a creepy barrow) and experiences their ilk don't get in other books (sex, for one).
I don't want to write too much and give away the story; it's too hard to describe, anyway. But it's sort of like Harry Potter and his friends graduating from their series and then stumbling into The Magician's Nephew. It's excellent. I worried near the end, because I was so unreasonably excited about the book at the beginning, that it hadn't lived up to my expectations and I didn't care enough about the characters. But--joy--I teared up in the last chapter or so and was happy with the ending (bittersweet at best). I conclude that I enjoyed it greatly, more than my recent three-and-a-half star books, so there you go. Read it when you get a chance (unless you're someone that might get it for Christmas from me, in which case read it in January).
Rating: ****
November 18, 2009
November 14, 2009
Deep south, deep thoughts
Stockett, Kathryn. The Help. New York: Amy Einhorn Books, 2009.
On the list of times and places I don't want to live, Mississippi in the early 1960s ranks pretty high. This book shows why. It's the story of a young woman living with her parents in Jackson after college, realizing that her friends are shallow and her world is racist, and deciding to write an anonymous book with the maids of the town about their relationships with the white families that employ them. The time is one of assassinations and lynchings, so it's a dangerous project, and one that places the maids' jobs on the line, but they do it because it's the right thing to do. Things end well (at least it seems like they will), and then we hear from the author, who was inspired by the maid who helped raise her and whom she never adequately thanked.
I went back and forth on whether I liked the book as I read it. I think I heard about it from a review online, but wasn't really aware of the subject. The blurbs on the back are glowing (even if some blurb-writers don't appear to have grasped the book). Then the first section from the maid's perspective, which is written in her vernacular, bothered me because of the mockery of "writing black" I read in Erasure. That fake book in Erasure had no real content, though, and this book surely does. I decided I didn't care, and maybe it's more authentic, although if the maid were German I doubt her whole sections would have been written with "v" replacing "w."
By the end, I was completely engrossed in the story, rooting for the characters, and even teared up a bit. The scales tipped to the positive. Now I'm just telling myself that things are different today, which is pretty easy to say from my Yankee viewpoint. I hope so.
Rating: ***1/2
On the list of times and places I don't want to live, Mississippi in the early 1960s ranks pretty high. This book shows why. It's the story of a young woman living with her parents in Jackson after college, realizing that her friends are shallow and her world is racist, and deciding to write an anonymous book with the maids of the town about their relationships with the white families that employ them. The time is one of assassinations and lynchings, so it's a dangerous project, and one that places the maids' jobs on the line, but they do it because it's the right thing to do. Things end well (at least it seems like they will), and then we hear from the author, who was inspired by the maid who helped raise her and whom she never adequately thanked.
I went back and forth on whether I liked the book as I read it. I think I heard about it from a review online, but wasn't really aware of the subject. The blurbs on the back are glowing (even if some blurb-writers don't appear to have grasped the book). Then the first section from the maid's perspective, which is written in her vernacular, bothered me because of the mockery of "writing black" I read in Erasure. That fake book in Erasure had no real content, though, and this book surely does. I decided I didn't care, and maybe it's more authentic, although if the maid were German I doubt her whole sections would have been written with "v" replacing "w."
By the end, I was completely engrossed in the story, rooting for the characters, and even teared up a bit. The scales tipped to the positive. Now I'm just telling myself that things are different today, which is pretty easy to say from my Yankee viewpoint. I hope so.
Rating: ***1/2
November 11, 2009
Yes, I agree, let's do something. Next book.
Friedman, Thomas. Hot, Flat, and Crowded. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008.
It's weird. I should love this book for two reasons. First, it's another from the Obama vacation reading list. Second, I agree with the basic premise: we need to tap into the innovative power of the country (with the right government support) to completely change our energy outlook, potentially arresting climate change, further integrating the planet with technology, and compensating for the growing population of the world.
But I don't. Though there were a few new insights I gained, I read the rest of the book tabbing passages that were self-contradictory or annoying and wondering how it could take 400 pages to exhort me to follow the strategy outlined above.
One example: there's a long section on how we need to get electricity (and then tons of technology) to every corner of the world so that everyone can be connected and magically start innovating to save the planet. It seems that Friedman views anyone not on the grid as underprivileged and yearning. But later in the book he talks about a guide in some lush rain-foresty area who lives out in the middle of nowhere, is totally connected to the land, and is held up as a model even without a phone and a laptop. Plus, I didn't see anything about the environmental impact of mining the coltan in cell phones, the potential hazards of materials that go into processing solar panels, or other effects of green technology compared to the admittedly dirty technologies in use today. I tabbed at least ten other sections of similar confusion, but I don't feel like discussing them.
On the interesting side was the discussion of the "cradle to cradle" concept of manufacturing and recycling, in which products are made from materials that are "either completely reusable in other products or completely biodegradable, so they can be used as fertilizer." For example, the billions of pounds of carpet thrown away each year could be reprocessed into carpet again if it were designed correctly. I like that idea.
Another ray of hope comes from the timing of the book, written during the 2008 primaries. Maybe the election of President Obama and the current efforts to increase "green jobs" with stimulus money and an energy bill will have some effect, although I haven't yet heard of anything on the scale that the book recommends. The fact that it was on the President's reading list--assuming he was able to get through it--is enough for me right now.
Rating: **1/2
It's weird. I should love this book for two reasons. First, it's another from the Obama vacation reading list. Second, I agree with the basic premise: we need to tap into the innovative power of the country (with the right government support) to completely change our energy outlook, potentially arresting climate change, further integrating the planet with technology, and compensating for the growing population of the world.
But I don't. Though there were a few new insights I gained, I read the rest of the book tabbing passages that were self-contradictory or annoying and wondering how it could take 400 pages to exhort me to follow the strategy outlined above.
One example: there's a long section on how we need to get electricity (and then tons of technology) to every corner of the world so that everyone can be connected and magically start innovating to save the planet. It seems that Friedman views anyone not on the grid as underprivileged and yearning. But later in the book he talks about a guide in some lush rain-foresty area who lives out in the middle of nowhere, is totally connected to the land, and is held up as a model even without a phone and a laptop. Plus, I didn't see anything about the environmental impact of mining the coltan in cell phones, the potential hazards of materials that go into processing solar panels, or other effects of green technology compared to the admittedly dirty technologies in use today. I tabbed at least ten other sections of similar confusion, but I don't feel like discussing them.
On the interesting side was the discussion of the "cradle to cradle" concept of manufacturing and recycling, in which products are made from materials that are "either completely reusable in other products or completely biodegradable, so they can be used as fertilizer." For example, the billions of pounds of carpet thrown away each year could be reprocessed into carpet again if it were designed correctly. I like that idea.
Another ray of hope comes from the timing of the book, written during the 2008 primaries. Maybe the election of President Obama and the current efforts to increase "green jobs" with stimulus money and an energy bill will have some effect, although I haven't yet heard of anything on the scale that the book recommends. The fact that it was on the President's reading list--assuming he was able to get through it--is enough for me right now.
Rating: **1/2
November 3, 2009
A prequel that can't match the sequel
Rhys, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea. New York: Norton, 1966.
Wide Sargasso Sea is another "slim volume" that failed to satisfy. If I had been assigned it and Jane Eyre together in school, I'm sure we would have discussed it at length and I would have gotten more out of it than the satisfaction of finishing one of my pile of library books. As it stands, it's not something I feel like thinking about in detail.
I learn from Wikipedia that the Sargasso Sea is in the North Atlantic and bounded by several currents that make up the North Atlantic Subtropical Gyre. Metaphorically (although maybe not in reality), it's somewhere you could get trapped even though it has no tangible borders. I certainly missed the metaphor while reading, but I suppose it relates to the main character's entrapment in an ill-advised marriage and detachment over time from everything that once made her happy.
The main character, you see, is Antoinette, who becomes nutty old arsonist Bertha in the attic in Jane Eyre. The back jacket makes it seem like she's preyed on and driven into madness. The biggest part of that is probably that she's left without assets of her own after her marriage to unknown (unnamed) Mr. Rochester, so she can't get out even when she wants to. Good thing women have more rights these days. Mr. Rochester doesn't seem particularly evil, just easily swayed by opinions and rumors.
The madness--if there even is any--is constructed in large part out of rumors about her parents and her connection to a woman with a witchy reputation. Plus, Antoinette had a crappy childhood, growing up after emancipation made things seriously tense for white landowners in the Caribbean. All that, without some good therapy, is probably enough.
Witchy woman perks up her ears when Mr. Rochester says he'd give his eyes "never to have seen this abominable place"--foreshadowing, anyone? That and the fires in this book (one in Antoinette's childhood, one that might be the Jane Eyre fire) are the only real connection to the original novel. The trouble is that I don't like the book enough either for it to stand on its own or for it to be taken as a set with the Jane Eyre I loved. I'll leave it for the English classes to analyze.
Rating: *1/2
Wide Sargasso Sea is another "slim volume" that failed to satisfy. If I had been assigned it and Jane Eyre together in school, I'm sure we would have discussed it at length and I would have gotten more out of it than the satisfaction of finishing one of my pile of library books. As it stands, it's not something I feel like thinking about in detail.
I learn from Wikipedia that the Sargasso Sea is in the North Atlantic and bounded by several currents that make up the North Atlantic Subtropical Gyre. Metaphorically (although maybe not in reality), it's somewhere you could get trapped even though it has no tangible borders. I certainly missed the metaphor while reading, but I suppose it relates to the main character's entrapment in an ill-advised marriage and detachment over time from everything that once made her happy.
The main character, you see, is Antoinette, who becomes nutty old arsonist Bertha in the attic in Jane Eyre. The back jacket makes it seem like she's preyed on and driven into madness. The biggest part of that is probably that she's left without assets of her own after her marriage to unknown (unnamed) Mr. Rochester, so she can't get out even when she wants to. Good thing women have more rights these days. Mr. Rochester doesn't seem particularly evil, just easily swayed by opinions and rumors.
The madness--if there even is any--is constructed in large part out of rumors about her parents and her connection to a woman with a witchy reputation. Plus, Antoinette had a crappy childhood, growing up after emancipation made things seriously tense for white landowners in the Caribbean. All that, without some good therapy, is probably enough.
Witchy woman perks up her ears when Mr. Rochester says he'd give his eyes "never to have seen this abominable place"--foreshadowing, anyone? That and the fires in this book (one in Antoinette's childhood, one that might be the Jane Eyre fire) are the only real connection to the original novel. The trouble is that I don't like the book enough either for it to stand on its own or for it to be taken as a set with the Jane Eyre I loved. I'll leave it for the English classes to analyze.
Rating: *1/2
November 1, 2009
Sunday fun
Jacobs, A.J. The Guinea Pig Diaries. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009.
About a month ago, I wrote about The Year of Living Biblically, which I really enjoyed because it's "both entertaining and thought-provoking" (is it weird to quote yourself?). The Guinea Pig Diaries is (are?) less of both, but still a treat to read in bed on a cloudy Sunday afternoon. It took me about three hours, and my cats hung out with me the whole time. Not bad.
In his latest work, Jacobs documents nine experiments less intense than those that appeared in Living Biblically and his earlier work, The Know-It-All. They range from learning more about George Washington and trying to live by his list of 110 rules of conduct (apparently swiped from a 16th-century Jesuit, but reprinted in an appendix to the book and still decent today--like "when a man does all he can, though it succeed not well, blame not him that did it") to doing everything his wife says for a month (hmm...).
Each chapter has at least a nugget of insight, but these experiments lean more toward stunts, like Jacobs ghostwriting for his nanny's online dating site. That's why I liked the more serious chapters best. The highlights were the one about George Washington and "The Rationality Project," in which Jacobs attempts to identify biases and think rationally. Another interesting appendix lists some of these biases, many of which I've experienced, such as the "sunk cost" one where you go to a crappy movie because you already spent the money on the ticket.
If all three of Jacobs's books were on a shelf and you could take your pick, this probably wouldn't be the one. If you happen to choose The Guinea Pig Diaries at the library or in an airport bookstore, however, you'll be likely to laugh out loud a few times (possibly startling the cats) and not to fall victim to the sunk cost bias.
Rating: ***
About a month ago, I wrote about The Year of Living Biblically, which I really enjoyed because it's "both entertaining and thought-provoking" (is it weird to quote yourself?). The Guinea Pig Diaries is (are?) less of both, but still a treat to read in bed on a cloudy Sunday afternoon. It took me about three hours, and my cats hung out with me the whole time. Not bad.
In his latest work, Jacobs documents nine experiments less intense than those that appeared in Living Biblically and his earlier work, The Know-It-All. They range from learning more about George Washington and trying to live by his list of 110 rules of conduct (apparently swiped from a 16th-century Jesuit, but reprinted in an appendix to the book and still decent today--like "when a man does all he can, though it succeed not well, blame not him that did it") to doing everything his wife says for a month (hmm...).
Each chapter has at least a nugget of insight, but these experiments lean more toward stunts, like Jacobs ghostwriting for his nanny's online dating site. That's why I liked the more serious chapters best. The highlights were the one about George Washington and "The Rationality Project," in which Jacobs attempts to identify biases and think rationally. Another interesting appendix lists some of these biases, many of which I've experienced, such as the "sunk cost" one where you go to a crappy movie because you already spent the money on the ticket.
If all three of Jacobs's books were on a shelf and you could take your pick, this probably wouldn't be the one. If you happen to choose The Guinea Pig Diaries at the library or in an airport bookstore, however, you'll be likely to laugh out loud a few times (possibly startling the cats) and not to fall victim to the sunk cost bias.
Rating: ***
Simply excellent
Haruf, Kent. Plainsong. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999.
Forget that Plainsong was on the Obama vacation reading list. That--via my mom--might be how I heard of it, but it's not how I'll remember the book. Plainsong, plainly, is wonderful, spare and touching, real and timeless.
Timeless is a particularly important adjective, I think. Other than the fact that there are cars (and were long enough ago for two older characters' parents to have died in a highway accident), the events in this book could have occurred at any time in history when there were schools and relationships and a need to connect. For that matter, the book could be set in any place, not just the Colorado town the author chose.
In calm, measured sentences, Haruf spins the story of a pregnant teenage girl and those who help her, along with a newly single-ish dad and his two young sons, as well as how those two worlds interconnect by the end. There's plenty of drama (especially when teacher dad expects work out of a jock student and finds how few people support that notion; also, when teenage father expects his formerly abandoned girlfriend to drop everything for him) but most of it is thoughtful and internalized, even if that's not always the healthiest option. Things work out if you have people to lean on. The final chapter is so quietly peaceful that it brings a slow smile.
The only thing that might have annoyed me in this book is the choice not to use quotation marks for the dialogue. I didn't have any trouble figuring out what was going on, though, so I'll let that style choice slide. Of course, it all goes back to the definition of "plainsong" at the beginning of the book: "the unisonous vocal music used in the Christian church from the earliest times; any simple and unadorned air." Simplicity doesn't make a work any less beautiful, and sometimes more.
Rating: ****
Forget that Plainsong was on the Obama vacation reading list. That--via my mom--might be how I heard of it, but it's not how I'll remember the book. Plainsong, plainly, is wonderful, spare and touching, real and timeless.
Timeless is a particularly important adjective, I think. Other than the fact that there are cars (and were long enough ago for two older characters' parents to have died in a highway accident), the events in this book could have occurred at any time in history when there were schools and relationships and a need to connect. For that matter, the book could be set in any place, not just the Colorado town the author chose.
In calm, measured sentences, Haruf spins the story of a pregnant teenage girl and those who help her, along with a newly single-ish dad and his two young sons, as well as how those two worlds interconnect by the end. There's plenty of drama (especially when teacher dad expects work out of a jock student and finds how few people support that notion; also, when teenage father expects his formerly abandoned girlfriend to drop everything for him) but most of it is thoughtful and internalized, even if that's not always the healthiest option. Things work out if you have people to lean on. The final chapter is so quietly peaceful that it brings a slow smile.
The only thing that might have annoyed me in this book is the choice not to use quotation marks for the dialogue. I didn't have any trouble figuring out what was going on, though, so I'll let that style choice slide. Of course, it all goes back to the definition of "plainsong" at the beginning of the book: "the unisonous vocal music used in the Christian church from the earliest times; any simple and unadorned air." Simplicity doesn't make a work any less beautiful, and sometimes more.
Rating: ****
October 30, 2009
The punishment is mine
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1994.
If I had been assigned Crime and Punishment in 11th grade English, back when we read Anna Karenina with relish, maybe it would have worked out. What's the problem today, when I decided I didn't want to read the last half?
Partly it's not being required to. If I'd read it in school, we would have focused on the intellectualization of crime, starting with Raskolnikov's journal article about how extraordinary people can kind of do whatever they want and progressing through the crime and the criminal's self-punishing madness (and maybe legal punishment, but I didn't get that far). As a slightly lazy spare-time reader, however, about all the analysis I'm going to bother with is that last sentence.
Another issue is the translation. I thought this mid-90s Barnes & Noble edition might have some fresh translation designed to make it approachable for contemporary readers. Not so. When I poked through the Library of Congress catalog to find the link above, I saw that the Constance Garnett translation was printed in 1917. This edition is just a repackaging. I do not like this translation. Maybe it's faithful to the original, but it seems like Razumihin is always shouting (aren't there other verbs?) and the frequent use of ellipsis and play-like dialogues just annoyed me. I think I might actually attempt the book again if I came across a bright new translation, like when I read the Robert Fagles Odyssey in high school.
Finally, there's the story itself. It's a classic, so I'll tread lightly here and bear in mind that the translation (and my laziness) may have tainted it. I liked the feeling of nervous foreboding that Dostoevsky creates. It's not clear what's going to happen, and that's a good thing. There's a down side to that, too, because the title crime happens very early on and the rest of the 500-ish pages deal with the punishment side. It was too much for me. Unfortunately, I didn't particularly like or care about any of the characters, so there wasn't much incentive to keep reading. Razumihin seems pretty nice, but there's all the shouting. Dounia, the main character's sister, appears to be both beautiful and self-aware, but I know the book's not about her. The main character, Raskolnikov, is just the whack-job he's supposed to be, and not particularly enticing to me. Yes, that's only my impression from the first half of the book. Things might change. Too bad.
So, if someone can recommend a good translation (or maybe a movie version--let's be honest, here), I'll give it another chance. For now, though, the stack of other books I have from the library--two more today--is where I'll focus.
Rating: **
If I had been assigned Crime and Punishment in 11th grade English, back when we read Anna Karenina with relish, maybe it would have worked out. What's the problem today, when I decided I didn't want to read the last half?
Partly it's not being required to. If I'd read it in school, we would have focused on the intellectualization of crime, starting with Raskolnikov's journal article about how extraordinary people can kind of do whatever they want and progressing through the crime and the criminal's self-punishing madness (and maybe legal punishment, but I didn't get that far). As a slightly lazy spare-time reader, however, about all the analysis I'm going to bother with is that last sentence.
Another issue is the translation. I thought this mid-90s Barnes & Noble edition might have some fresh translation designed to make it approachable for contemporary readers. Not so. When I poked through the Library of Congress catalog to find the link above, I saw that the Constance Garnett translation was printed in 1917. This edition is just a repackaging. I do not like this translation. Maybe it's faithful to the original, but it seems like Razumihin is always shouting (aren't there other verbs?) and the frequent use of ellipsis and play-like dialogues just annoyed me. I think I might actually attempt the book again if I came across a bright new translation, like when I read the Robert Fagles Odyssey in high school.
Finally, there's the story itself. It's a classic, so I'll tread lightly here and bear in mind that the translation (and my laziness) may have tainted it. I liked the feeling of nervous foreboding that Dostoevsky creates. It's not clear what's going to happen, and that's a good thing. There's a down side to that, too, because the title crime happens very early on and the rest of the 500-ish pages deal with the punishment side. It was too much for me. Unfortunately, I didn't particularly like or care about any of the characters, so there wasn't much incentive to keep reading. Razumihin seems pretty nice, but there's all the shouting. Dounia, the main character's sister, appears to be both beautiful and self-aware, but I know the book's not about her. The main character, Raskolnikov, is just the whack-job he's supposed to be, and not particularly enticing to me. Yes, that's only my impression from the first half of the book. Things might change. Too bad.
So, if someone can recommend a good translation (or maybe a movie version--let's be honest, here), I'll give it another chance. For now, though, the stack of other books I have from the library--two more today--is where I'll focus.
Rating: **
October 26, 2009
Enough to make you hungry
Barbery, Muriel. Gourmet Rhapsody. New York: Europa Editions, 2009.
[Link is to Amazon.com page for the book; not an endorsement--just can't find it in the Library of Congress catalog.]
I've been waiting to write about this slim volume, mainly because I like the phrase "slim volume." There aren't too many of those published.
Published in English after The Elegance of the Hedgehog, this work actually came first in the French edition. That doesn't really matter, because I don't particularly remember these people from Hedgehog, and the characters matter even less in Gourmet Rhapsody. In this book, as might be ascertained from the title, food is the star.
I looked up "rhapsody" just for fun and found it defined as "[e]xalted or excessively enthusiastic expression of feeling in speech or writing." Yup, that's about right. Gourmet Rhapsody is the tale of a dying food critic's search for that one flavor that he needs to taste before he goes. In the meantime, he discourses effusively about a variety of other foods and experiences he's had throughout his wonderful life. Inserted between his remembrances are brief thoughts by his relatives, acquaintances, and even pets, most of whom wish he'd just die already. That's why I say the characters don't really matter; they're too busy hating each other to be very interesting.
The food descriptions are appropriately lush for a rhapsody, and I enjoyed reading them. It's no surprise they're "told" by a renowned food critic. Alas, I'd rather eat the food than hear about it.
Rating: **
[Link is to Amazon.com page for the book; not an endorsement--just can't find it in the Library of Congress catalog.]
I've been waiting to write about this slim volume, mainly because I like the phrase "slim volume." There aren't too many of those published.
Published in English after The Elegance of the Hedgehog, this work actually came first in the French edition. That doesn't really matter, because I don't particularly remember these people from Hedgehog, and the characters matter even less in Gourmet Rhapsody. In this book, as might be ascertained from the title, food is the star.
I looked up "rhapsody" just for fun and found it defined as "[e]xalted or excessively enthusiastic expression of feeling in speech or writing." Yup, that's about right. Gourmet Rhapsody is the tale of a dying food critic's search for that one flavor that he needs to taste before he goes. In the meantime, he discourses effusively about a variety of other foods and experiences he's had throughout his wonderful life. Inserted between his remembrances are brief thoughts by his relatives, acquaintances, and even pets, most of whom wish he'd just die already. That's why I say the characters don't really matter; they're too busy hating each other to be very interesting.
The food descriptions are appropriately lush for a rhapsody, and I enjoyed reading them. It's no surprise they're "told" by a renowned food critic. Alas, I'd rather eat the food than hear about it.
Rating: **
October 20, 2009
The right place, time, and mindset
Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers: The Story of Success. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2008.
Malcolm Gladwell, the author of The Tipping Point and Blink, is an expert at squeezing interesting facts and surprising conclusions out of daily life. His latest effort, Outliers, is engaging and informative, packed with facts and ideas that could help the reader get promoted or raise smart kids or at least pass a happy lunch hour.
Gladwell wants to explore success. Specifically, he's interested in the types of success stories we often hear--rags-to-riches fairy tales--and what's really driving the achievement. The bottom line (although reading the details and examples in the book is well worth it) is that chance, opportunity, and cultural effects play a much bigger role than might be expected.
At the beginning of the book, there are a series of examples of how an arbitrary cutoff date for kids' activities (hockey, soccer, even school) can have lasting effects. Children born right after the cutoff are bigger and more mature than the younger ones. Their reading skills are likely to be better, and they're probably bigger and faster on the rink or field. They get picked for "all-star" activities of various sorts, get more practice time as a result, and are set up for better results whether or not they're innately stars. If it's not this effect, something else (like sheer enthusiasm) may drive people to really apply themselves to a subject. There's a sort of magical threshold around ten thousand hours at some task, and people from violin prodigies to Bill Gates get this level of practice before making it. Practice may not make perfect, but it certainly makes a whole lot better.
Another interesting thread relates to confidence and hierarchy. Parents who encourage their children to question authority are teaching the sort of assertiveness that will help them seize opportunities later in life. I was struck by the story of a boy going to the doctor who "is used to being treated with respect" and behaves "much as he does with his parents--he reasons, negotiates, and jokes with equal ease." This ability to deal well with adults and not be cowed by higher-ups is one that's served me well in the past. (Of course, the end of this road is arrogance, and things start backfiring if you go too far.) Gladwell's later discussion of cultural senses of authority and their relationship to airline crashes goes along the same lines.
I hope to apply another of the author's observations in the future. Some data, when tabulated one way, purports to show the "achievement gap" between the lower and upper classes. However, when it's rearranged to show the difference in test scores on either side of a student's summer break, we see that the poorer kids learn about as much (sometimes more) than the rich kids during the school year, but get basically nothing skill-wise out of their summer vacations while the better-off students pile on the score points via summer break enrichment. Even if they aren't off at fancy camps, there are probably books and talkative adults around the house. Children are quite prepared to be sponges, so it's their caretakers' responsibility to give them the academic water they need at all times.
Reading this book probably won't make me more of a success. I'm already keenly aware that I need to seize opportunities when they arise and be my own advocate. That's something I want to pass on to my children. On the other hand, I'm never going to have the chance to go back to childhood to spend ten thousand hours becoming a pianist or computer programmer. Maybe my kids will. Really, the only thing I've spent that much time on is reading--and I'm a darn good reader! There might be something to all this.
Rating: ***1/2
Malcolm Gladwell, the author of The Tipping Point and Blink, is an expert at squeezing interesting facts and surprising conclusions out of daily life. His latest effort, Outliers, is engaging and informative, packed with facts and ideas that could help the reader get promoted or raise smart kids or at least pass a happy lunch hour.
Gladwell wants to explore success. Specifically, he's interested in the types of success stories we often hear--rags-to-riches fairy tales--and what's really driving the achievement. The bottom line (although reading the details and examples in the book is well worth it) is that chance, opportunity, and cultural effects play a much bigger role than might be expected.
At the beginning of the book, there are a series of examples of how an arbitrary cutoff date for kids' activities (hockey, soccer, even school) can have lasting effects. Children born right after the cutoff are bigger and more mature than the younger ones. Their reading skills are likely to be better, and they're probably bigger and faster on the rink or field. They get picked for "all-star" activities of various sorts, get more practice time as a result, and are set up for better results whether or not they're innately stars. If it's not this effect, something else (like sheer enthusiasm) may drive people to really apply themselves to a subject. There's a sort of magical threshold around ten thousand hours at some task, and people from violin prodigies to Bill Gates get this level of practice before making it. Practice may not make perfect, but it certainly makes a whole lot better.
Another interesting thread relates to confidence and hierarchy. Parents who encourage their children to question authority are teaching the sort of assertiveness that will help them seize opportunities later in life. I was struck by the story of a boy going to the doctor who "is used to being treated with respect" and behaves "much as he does with his parents--he reasons, negotiates, and jokes with equal ease." This ability to deal well with adults and not be cowed by higher-ups is one that's served me well in the past. (Of course, the end of this road is arrogance, and things start backfiring if you go too far.) Gladwell's later discussion of cultural senses of authority and their relationship to airline crashes goes along the same lines.
I hope to apply another of the author's observations in the future. Some data, when tabulated one way, purports to show the "achievement gap" between the lower and upper classes. However, when it's rearranged to show the difference in test scores on either side of a student's summer break, we see that the poorer kids learn about as much (sometimes more) than the rich kids during the school year, but get basically nothing skill-wise out of their summer vacations while the better-off students pile on the score points via summer break enrichment. Even if they aren't off at fancy camps, there are probably books and talkative adults around the house. Children are quite prepared to be sponges, so it's their caretakers' responsibility to give them the academic water they need at all times.
Reading this book probably won't make me more of a success. I'm already keenly aware that I need to seize opportunities when they arise and be my own advocate. That's something I want to pass on to my children. On the other hand, I'm never going to have the chance to go back to childhood to spend ten thousand hours becoming a pianist or computer programmer. Maybe my kids will. Really, the only thing I've spent that much time on is reading--and I'm a darn good reader! There might be something to all this.
Rating: ***1/2
October 19, 2009
A new face, and a good one
Lee, Jen Sookfong. The End of East. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2008.
The book jacket informs me that this novel comes from Knopf Canada's New Face of Fiction program, "launching grounds for Yann Martel's Life of Pi." I remember liking Life of Pi, so that was enough for me to pick up The End of East from the library. I just looked up the program, and it's a decade-old effort to bring "spectacular first-time Canadian writers to readers." The complete list of books is probably something worth attacking eventually. For now, I'll focus on this one.
In her debut, Lee manages to write a delicate, yet sometimes brutal, cross-generational story of Chinese-Canadians. It's certainly not a culture with which I'm familiar, but family struggles are pretty universal (despite unhappy families being unhappy in their own ways). There are a handful of "main" characters, each of whom gets to tell his or her side of the seventy-year story. This is a wonderful gift Lee gives to the characters, who all feel basically isolated. None casts his family in a very good light, but we can understand the motives behind the actions when each character has his turn. The youngest person in the family, Sammy, is the only one allowed to speak in first person, so I suppose she is the main character--and probably shares a few characteristics and experiences with the author.
As the story opens, Sammy's mother, Siu Sang, is tossing out all of the musty possessions left behind by her recently deceased father-in-law, Seid Quan. The house has to get clean for Sammy's sister's wedding. Early in the book, we get Seid Quan's tale, in which he comes to Canada from China and works like crazy to pay back his village, meanwhile crossing the ocean a few times to marry and conceive his three children. It's not a great life, and by the time his wife (Shew Lin) and son (Pon Man) join him in Canada, they're essentially strangers. Pon Man later marries a girl brought over from Hong Kong--Siu Sang--and has five daughters and no sons, to the distress of his mother. Siu Sang is distressed in general, probably because of some sort of post-partum depression combined with the hassle of living with a disapproving mother-in-law.
Surprisingly, I wasn't confused a bit by the narrative jumping back and forth among viewpoints. Each added story explained a little bit about the family. The challenge of three generations living together, each with unspoken hopes and disappointments, couldn't be clearer. I also found it interesting that both of the older generations were immigrants who came to Canada near or during adulthood, but from different places and experiences that kept them from being completely bound together. It's almost like there had to be five daughters so there'd be enough native English speakers to go around. The only pair that was able to spend their whole lives together and really know each other was mother and son, Shew Lin and Pon Man. It's no wonder that Shew Lin saw her daughter-in-law as a threat and that Siu Sang reacted poorly.
Lee's characters are burdened with sadness as gray as the Vancouver skies, although they all get to have a glimmer of hope at least once in the book. Would the story have been different if Lee's hometown were Los Angeles? Different, maybe, but probably not better. The End of East is already quite good.
Rating: ***1/2
The book jacket informs me that this novel comes from Knopf Canada's New Face of Fiction program, "launching grounds for Yann Martel's Life of Pi." I remember liking Life of Pi, so that was enough for me to pick up The End of East from the library. I just looked up the program, and it's a decade-old effort to bring "spectacular first-time Canadian writers to readers." The complete list of books is probably something worth attacking eventually. For now, I'll focus on this one.
In her debut, Lee manages to write a delicate, yet sometimes brutal, cross-generational story of Chinese-Canadians. It's certainly not a culture with which I'm familiar, but family struggles are pretty universal (despite unhappy families being unhappy in their own ways). There are a handful of "main" characters, each of whom gets to tell his or her side of the seventy-year story. This is a wonderful gift Lee gives to the characters, who all feel basically isolated. None casts his family in a very good light, but we can understand the motives behind the actions when each character has his turn. The youngest person in the family, Sammy, is the only one allowed to speak in first person, so I suppose she is the main character--and probably shares a few characteristics and experiences with the author.
As the story opens, Sammy's mother, Siu Sang, is tossing out all of the musty possessions left behind by her recently deceased father-in-law, Seid Quan. The house has to get clean for Sammy's sister's wedding. Early in the book, we get Seid Quan's tale, in which he comes to Canada from China and works like crazy to pay back his village, meanwhile crossing the ocean a few times to marry and conceive his three children. It's not a great life, and by the time his wife (Shew Lin) and son (Pon Man) join him in Canada, they're essentially strangers. Pon Man later marries a girl brought over from Hong Kong--Siu Sang--and has five daughters and no sons, to the distress of his mother. Siu Sang is distressed in general, probably because of some sort of post-partum depression combined with the hassle of living with a disapproving mother-in-law.
Surprisingly, I wasn't confused a bit by the narrative jumping back and forth among viewpoints. Each added story explained a little bit about the family. The challenge of three generations living together, each with unspoken hopes and disappointments, couldn't be clearer. I also found it interesting that both of the older generations were immigrants who came to Canada near or during adulthood, but from different places and experiences that kept them from being completely bound together. It's almost like there had to be five daughters so there'd be enough native English speakers to go around. The only pair that was able to spend their whole lives together and really know each other was mother and son, Shew Lin and Pon Man. It's no wonder that Shew Lin saw her daughter-in-law as a threat and that Siu Sang reacted poorly.
Lee's characters are burdened with sadness as gray as the Vancouver skies, although they all get to have a glimmer of hope at least once in the book. Would the story have been different if Lee's hometown were Los Angeles? Different, maybe, but probably not better. The End of East is already quite good.
Rating: ***1/2
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