Seriously, as I cruised through the superficial, sentimental writing, populated with evil or heartwarming characters, I kept ...moreY.A. fiction.
Seriously, as I cruised through the superficial, sentimental writing, populated with evil or heartwarming characters, I kept wondering what age group this was intended for.
The story, of a Chinese boy and a Japanese girl brought together by chance and then separated first by his father's animosity to all things Japanese and then by World War II internment, has the elements of a good story and an interesting historical setting. Nevertheless, the characters are too simple and one-dimensional, and I mean all of them, to pass as adult fiction. The young lovers, Henry and Keiko (yes, Romeo and Juliet in this version of the story)and their pure love; the contrast between Henry's narrowminded father and Keiko's openhanded, welcoming one; Sheldon, an older black saxophone player who serves as Henry's protector; and Chaz, emblematic of the bullies who tormented Henry and Keiko at school: each of these characters and more embody traits or values rather than living.
It is impossible not to be touched by Henry and Keiko's love, to see that they love each other before Henry, at least, realizes it, and to feel Henry's pain at their separation. Similarly, the novel makes palpable the injustice and outrage of the internment of American citizens in concentration camps.
Everything, from the difficulties thrown in Henry's path to their resolution, is predictable. In addition, in the scenes set in the present (1985) Henry seems like an old, old man; if you do the math he is 56 but seems much older.
If you tell me this is intended for adults I'll believe you, with some reluctance. If so, however, it left this adult reader wishing for more.(less)
This is kind of a frustrating book. Tea Obreht is a gifted writer, and she really brings you along as she tells her story.
On the other han...moreThis is kind of a frustrating book. Tea Obreht is a gifted writer, and she really brings you along as she tells her story.
On the other hand, while the more mythic parts of the story, especially the stories of the tiger's wife and the deathless man, are engaging, the stories of the "real" modern characters are flat and the characters themselves are undeveloped.
I enjoyed reading about the childhood relationship of Natalia, one of the central characters, and her grandfather, a distinguished physician and professor in Yugoslavia, and there is one account described in the novel that is simply magical. Overall, though, it's hard to recommend this. (less)
Who planned and carried out the bombing of the USS Cole? How about the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks? What about numerous other attacks, eithe...moreWho planned and carried out the bombing of the USS Cole? How about the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks? What about numerous other attacks, either successful or foiled?
That we know in detail not only who did these things, how they were planned and financed, and how they were carried out is due in large part to the efforts of Ali Soufan and people working with him. You may have seen him on 60 Minutes, heard him on Morning Edition, or heard him on Terry Gross, but The Black Banners is still worth reading.
For those of us who grew up in the 1960's, and came to view the FBI as the ultimate enemy of civil liberties, this book may be surprising, because it reveals that in the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks it was Soufan and other FBI agents who opposed the Bush Administration's torture plots as both illegal and ineffective. Unfortunately, forces at the very top of the administration were determined to use torture even when it was shown not to lead to the discovery of actionable information. As a result, Soufan demonstrates that they delayed the discovery and apprehension of Osama bin Laden for many years and failed to discover and prevent at least one terrorist attack, on an oil tanker in the Arabian Sea.
Lies, coverups, internal deception, and disregard for constitutional and humane values: Soufan demonstrates how these were the hallmarks of the Bush Administration's conduct in the years following 2001. The stated justification for these practices was that they were the only effective way to obtain information we needed to defeat the terrorists, particularly in the so-called ticking time bomb scenario.
Of course, we know, both from Soufan and elsewhere, the opposite is true. For instance we are told that Khalid Sheikh Muhammad was waterboarded 183 times, whereupon he gave up vital operational information. Soufan demonstrates that this claim is false, and that waterboarding and other forms of torture have, in fact, defeated attempts to obtain actionable information, rather than the reverse.
I strongly recommend The Black Banners. There are areas where it's tough going, frequently because of the merciless onslaught of unfamiliar names, when you don't know which names are important. There is a guide to names and persons at the end, and it would have been good to know that it was there when I started reading it. Since I was reading the Kindle version I would have appreciated links in the text to the appendix.
One other thing: if you're coming to find a debunking of the official version of the 9/11 story, look elsewhere. Fringe characters aside, the debate is over. There is no question of what happened on September 11, 2001. We know who did it, we know how they planned it, and we know it wasn't the CIA, Mossad, the Bilderberg Group, Bush, or anyone else the conspiracy nuts have claimed.
But if you're interested in reality, you should read this.(less)
I might not have read this if I hadn't gotten a tweet from Romenesko that it was being offered free on Amazon. For me, a long-time public radio listen...moreI might not have read this if I hadn't gotten a tweet from Romenesko that it was being offered free on Amazon. For me, a long-time public radio listener, it was worth it.
The book traces Bob Edwards's early life in Kentucky, his education and military background, and his radio career. Edwards follows an unusual organizational structure, sometimes chronological, sometimes thematic, but it doesn't really detract from the book.
As someone who was shocked and dismayed by his summary firing from NPR, I was glad to hear that the action was as underhanded and ill-intentioned as it seemed to all of us loyal listeners at the time. One-sided? Sure. Am I interested in hearing yet another (likely mendacious) justification from NPR? Not in the least.
Did I "like" Uncle Tom's Cabin? That's pretty much beside the point.
Uncle Tom's Cabin is a historic, important work, one which w...moreDid I "like" Uncle Tom's Cabin? That's pretty much beside the point.
Uncle Tom's Cabin is a historic, important work, one which was famously credited by Abraham Lincoln for the start of the Civil War.
There is no question that Uncle Tom's Cabin meets Stowe's goal of making the horrors of slavery vivid and concrete. She presents all the evils of slavery and the participants in the slave economy, from the beatings and other tortures visited on the slaves, to the anxiety of the slave at the prospect of a new owner, to the almost unimaginable pain of family separation; she also presents a range of owners, from the seemingly benevolent but cynical and negligent St. Clare, to the vicious Simon Legree. (Unlike Uncle Tom, Simon Legree truly earns the evil reputation popular lore has attached to the name.) She also presents the courage and dedication of Northern allies who assist escaping slaves without sparing sanctimonious and frankly racist northerners, and she presents some believable and memorable characters, sometimes even in minor roles.
The shortcomings? An overly sentimental religiosity, the frankly incredible purity and redemptive death of Little Eva, and a creaking writing style that many readers will have difficulty enduring.
If it is her best-known work, Uncle Tom's Cabin is not the only anti-slavery book by Harriet Beecher Stowe, including A Companion to Uncle Tom's Cabin, which sets forth documented cases supporting her portrayal of slavery. Probably one is enough, but as a powerful and influential element of American history, Uncle Tom's Cabin merits a read.(less)
After I finished reading The Finkler Question I felt moved to go back to Mark Twain's essay on Fenimore Cooper's literary offenses, because I am convi...moreAfter I finished reading The Finkler Question I felt moved to go back to Mark Twain's essay on Fenimore Cooper's literary offenses, because I am convinced that Jacobson is guilty of some of the same offenses. Specifically, he should have taken the time to make his main characters at least slightly believable as human beings, but that apparently would have been too much trouble.
The Finkler Question is meant to be an examination of Jewish identity, as depicted through the actions of a self-hating gentile who by means of a series of incredible events becomes convinced he is actually Jewish. Jacobson asks us to believe in a book with an utterly unbelievable main character. Julian Treslove, the protagonist, is a 49-year-old former BBC employee who makes his living masquerading as celebrities at parties. We learn that his looks are so generic that he can easily pass for Brad Pitt or Colin Firth, or be mistaken for Dustin Hoffman or Adam Sandler. You can believe me when I tell you that there is nobody who could be mistaken for all four of those men, no matter how generic his appearance.
He is also a university graduate whose two best friends are Jews, but has no idea of what goes on at a seder, or even what a seder is. And for some reason, because Finkler is the first Jew he ever met, he internally refers to Jews as “Finklers”.
He has two sons by two different women who dumped him, yet we are expected to believe that both women were moved to name their sons after characters in the operas he was listening to when he lived with them.
There are other characters who are more believable, but having to slog through the life of a character you neither believe in nor care about is a serious drawback.
So is trying to slog through a book that is supposed to be riotously funny and not finding the jokes. Or, to be more accurate, recognizing what are supposed to be jokes but for the glaring problem that they aren't funny.
So the plot, character, and humor in the novel are utterly lacking, what about the politics? If Jacobson is seeking to present a novel of ideas he falls short, because he takes pains to make sure that one of the sides of the debate has nothing going for it. The political debate is about Israel and the Palestinians, naturally, but Jacobson has his thumb on the scale. The supporters of the Palestinians are buffoons, from Finkler’s ASHamed Jews group (Why capitalize the ASH? No explanation is offered) to the frankly anti-Semitic, whereas the pro-Israel side is represented by the family of a young Jewish man who is stabbed and blinded by a Palestinian terrorist. Yeah, real subtle.
Ultimately all the major plot lines get resolved, and some of them are even believable, although I wouldn’t go so far as to say satisfying. Overall, though, this is another one of those Booker Prize winning books that leaves you wondering, “Really? For this?”
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This is not an easy book to read. The style is somewhat opaque, the author has chosen not to use quotation marks or attribution, and it's told primari...moreThis is not an easy book to read. The style is somewhat opaque, the author has chosen not to use quotation marks or attribution, and it's told primarily by an unnamed narrator.
Nevertheless, The Land of Green Plums is an effective demonstration of the lives of a group of ethnic Germans under the oppressive Ceausescu regime in Rumania. The novel traces the narrator and three of her fellow students through their university years and into young adulthood. The students are not only ethnic Germans, they appear to be political dissidents, although the content of any dissident ideas doesn't appear here and their dissident conduct seems to be limited to their communications with each other. Nevertheless, their conduct results in surveillance, imprisonment, interrogation, and worse by the security forces, forcing the young college graduates into an increasingly marginalized existence.
Although not perfect, The Land of Green Plums can stand with the stylistically very different Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa as a document of life under a corrupt totalitarian government.(less)
Well, this was my first exposure to chick lit, at least if you don't count the time they tried to make me read Wuthering Heights in high school.
...moreWell, this was my first exposure to chick lit, at least if you don't count the time they tried to make me read Wuthering Heights in high school.
I don't think I'll be heading back to the genre any time soon.
What a waste of time. This was a book about a nice young girl who is sent on a trip to Europe by her eccentric aunt. On the way,, she has experiences like wondering if she'll wind up with the cute boy, wondering whether the cute boy likes her, wondering if she's acting too weird around the cute boy, and generally getting her eyes opened to the possibilities the world offers her.
The author doesn't even get some of the basics right, like twice using the word "contingency" instead of "contingent" when referring to a group of people.
I've written before about the subprime mortgage crash and how it happened. We learned shortly after it happened that a major element was the Republica...moreI've written before about the subprime mortgage crash and how it happened. We learned shortly after it happened that a major element was the Republicans' insistence on the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which they snuck into the budget at the end of 2000. This act prohibits the federal and state governments from any regulation of derivatives, and this led to the creation of the credit default swaps that were the direct cause of the collapse of AIG and the other mortgage-backed bond funds. (An interesting sidelight is that the provision was inserted at the insistence of Texas senator Phil Gramm, whose wife Wendy directly benefits from this kind of trading.)
The Big Short looks at this from a different perspective. Author Michael Lewis, whose first book, Liar's Poker, was a view of Salomon Brothers from the inside, set out to find out if any of the people who were claiming, after the crash, that they had seen it coming really had.
What he found was that there were a very few, literally a handful, of investment analysts and investors who had seen the crash coming, and had made major investments that took advantage of the vulnerabilities they were able to find in the mortgage bond sector. What he also found was that these mortgage bonds, which were supposedly Triple A, virtually risk-free investments, were in fact based mainly on what we now know were mortgages that were guaranteed, and even designed, to fail. And finally, all the information needed to find these vulnerabilities was in the public domain, and it was only by a combination of corruption and gross incompetence that the market swallowed up these worthless bond instruments.
This is a fascinating account of how people who supposedly know what they're doing, and supposedly know way more about investments than you or me, conspired to cause the collapse of the American economy and throw millions of people out of their houses. As such, it is required reading for anyone who wants to understand how we got into our current economic situation.(less)
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