false 14 50 45 true 5666347 read 4 true 53339 currently-reading 1 true 53338 to-read 20 false 348355 library 4 false 55168 kitchen 4 false 53345 office 2 false 53342 bedside 2 false 75321 unpossessed 1 false 348363 borrowed http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/75699013 skye's review of Half a Life: A Novel
by V.S. Naipaul

I'd be interested to see what you think about Magic Seeds, the "sequel". I like it even better. If Half a Life contains Naipaul's sharpest satire on English manners, Magic Seeds turns around the knife around to dissect (sans anesthetic, of course) the mentality of the revolutionary. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/70971549 Pork and Sons (Hardcover) by Stephane Reynaud
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/70971333 to: Doctor Glas: A Novel (Paperback) by Hjalmar Söderberg
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/70971259 to: The Friendship: Wordsworth and Coleridge (Hardcover) by Adam Sisman
bookshelves: library
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/63181758 to: The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (Hardcover) by Alain de Botton
bookshelves: library
Botton's lyric and philosophical essays on the modern landscape of productivity is less about individual occupations than it is about the aesthetics of the factory, the office building, and the shipyard. Botton is indifferent to the specific tasks and ideas of his subjects, and instead meditates on what the spaces and organizations of our multinational economies could imply about the legacy of our civilization.

A lofty topic, no doubt, and occasionally burdened by Botton's indulgence in his own moods and discomforts, which he makes no attempt to disentangle from the themes of the book; in fact, he states at one point the most successful people may very well be those who have the most difficultly becoming comfortable. So we get endearing tales of his insomnia in suburban hotels, his innermost opinions on biscuits, and the fact the photo of third-world president reminds him of his father.

Despite the plentiful chapters dedicated to engineering topics, such as logistics, rocket science, and aeronautics, Botton evinces no interest in these fields beyond superficialities. He gleefully recites facts, figures, dates, and terminologies, without really looking at one of theses fields from within its own rules, history, and major practitioners. What we are left with is a sense of drifting, of a journalist who wanders among the feet of titans without ever looking up at them in the eyes.

The sense of alienation wells up over the course of the book, becoming palpable and sublime, particularly in his chapter on the career councilor, where Botton neatly deconstructs the tautological absurdity of "becoming who you are". And throughout, he supplements his philosophic melancholy with Romanticism, largely in the form of (slightly creepy) studies of women in the workplace who inevitably serve as symbols of unattainable sensuality and the fleeting nature of accomplishment. Yet the narrative's chronic inability to relate intimately to its subjects is neither naive and childlike, nor juvenile and subversive. It is a deliberate and effective literary strategy which constantly draws the reader's imagination inward, as if transfixing on a whirlpool. The artist-as-outsider trope is presented so seductively and so skillfully, at times the book reads like poetry. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/63178126 to: Down and Out in Paris and London (Paperback) by George Orwell
bookshelves: library
The British-Indian-born Eric Blair, writing his debut under his lifelong pseudonym George Orwell, describes a period of personal poverty that deliciously mixes autobiography with poetic license to create stylish and deeply political presentation.

While Eric Blair was firmly upper middle-class, and assembled his material much like Thoreau assembled his Walden--with the frequent assistance and cooperation friends and family--it is clear his George Orwell has lived significant amounts of it. Moreover, the narrator frames his two episodes of serious destitution as a aristocratic slide from Bohemian indifference to money into a all-out daily battle to find bread and housing, essentially conceding to the reader that elements of of the experience were voluntary, and certainly not inevitable.

Orwell's book is rightly most famous for its description of a great French hotel from the inside of its bowels, wherein the protagonist finds work as a plongeur (essentially a dishwasher) after selling most of his possessions to make rent. His portrayal of the mentality of menial labor, the rituals and ranks of service workers, and the utter chaos and filth concealed behind swinging doors brings to mind Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential, where the customer is an afterthought to the all-consuming ravenous beast that is the dinner rush.

The second half of the book describes adventures as a tramp in London and environs, particularly the boarding houses and municipal lodgings the tramp must wonder between, many being no different than concentration camps, with lockdowns, humiliating lice inspections, and bedless cells.

Orwell attempts to make summary pronouncements about how to improve the lot of the poor, and states frankly and repeatedly how the circumstances make the man, and rarely the other way around. Clearly these experiences sparked in Blair the tinderwood that would power the polemic fire in his later novels. But in this early work, one finds a more delicate ear, a sympathy with his subject, and above all that sensibility of noble defiance that tempts the young and privileged to slum it. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/46954338 to: The Terror (Mass Market Paperback) by Dan Simmons
In John Carpenter's The Thing, itself a remake of the 50's B-movie classic The Thing from Outer Space, an unfathomably evil force stalks an antarctic post, literally tearing apart its prey from the inside.

Dan Simmons took a long and hard look at John Franklin's 1895 failed and tragic expedition to find the Northwest Passage amongst the Canadian arctic and decided it deserved yet another fictional treatment in addition to the litany of novels, ballads, and plays it already possesses; but this time, in addition to endless ice, spoiled rations, frostbite, the constant threat of mutiny, and poor relations with the natives, Simmons felt historic record needed some sexing up. So he unleashes a giant killer polar bear cloaked in Eskimo myth to stalk the galleys of the eponymous HMS Terror and rend sailors limb from limb in leeringly detailed prose.

Whether or not all readers immediately recall John Carpenter, Simmons fans will surely remember his earlier work--in particular his 1989 space-epic Hyperion which earned his fame as one of the best science-fiction writers in a generation. Hyperion is also dominated by a savage bete-noire which kills some characters and spares others according to unfathomable whims, though in that novel, the mystery of the beast drives the core themes of the narrative and unites a uneasy alliance of protagonists who all understand the veritable angel of death differently.

In The Terror, however, the monster for most of the ponderous novel seems to stand for nothing more than the sheer idiocy of sailing directly into mountains of ice.

The Terror is simply too long. Since we already know the fate of all parties concerned (except the beast), Simmon's assumption that we're going to--with sailor-like cheer--endure endless passages about empty bellies, scurvied teeth, and cold toes is asking too much. With a tighter focus on a smaller set of characters the novel would have been a wonderful distraction with a teaspoon of historical truth, and its absurd New Age ending would be better tolerated. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/43880586 to: The Secret Life of Lobsters: How Fishermen and Scientists Are Unraveling the Mysteries of Our Favorite Crustacean (P.S.) by Trevor Corson
bookshelves: kitchen
Despite its trivializing title undoubtedly championed by a publicist, this book delivers an enjoyable survey of the major personalities in Downeast's lobstering and marine biology communities, as well as their understanding of this unique ocean habitat and its wonderfully tasty denizen. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/41762262 to: Outliers (Hardcover) by Malcolm Gladwell
bookshelves: office
Malcolm Gladwell's third book, like its predecessors Tipping Point and Blink, deliciously serves up sociology and carefully pruned anecdote to make an argument that is more obvious than he makes it sound, less specific than science may support, but wonderfully written--and in this volume, more subversive than his typical airport/business traveler audience may be prepared for.

The arguments he makes about the recipe for success are easy to summarize. Luck matters much more than hard work, which in turn matters more than ability and less than culture. Specifically, a certain baseline ability is necessary (usually IQ), but passed a certain threshold, only hard work matters once environment is controlled for, environment including both luck and culture. (Gladwell doesn't really distinguish between these two external variables in any consistent way; he's content to merely illustrate their power).

The book dramatizes how each variable above works by walking you through biographies of famous successes and famous flops. For example, to prove how much luck matters, he looks at how great an impact month of birth has for hockey players, year of birth for a generation of Jewish lawyers, access to a remote terminal for a 13-year old Bill Gates, and gigs in Hamburg for the Beatles. He also bats around a lovable high-IQ loser, whose 195-point mental muscle Gladwell sets up for some epic underachieving.

Gladwell does not demolish hard work or ability as human virtues to be celebrated, and in the case of the former, repeatedly returns to it as a key enabling variable for every success case he studies. But luck and culture stand as titans, capable in one chapter of literally plucking 757s out of the sky and crashing them into mountainsides.

While Gladwell mumbles in his epilogue about his own unlikely family history and about how society shouldn't waste its precious resources of talented people, we know better. The purpose of society in not to choose winners, or create more success. In fact, success is defined by its scarcity and its fickleness; as any reader of tabloids will tell you. Society's goal is to minimize human suffering and let people pursue happiness. Gladwell never observes that success and happiness are poorly correlated--to borrow his turn of phrase--beyond a certain threshold. If true glory is what you seek, you'd better develop your own yardstick for it, because in his convincingly arbitrary universe, odds are you'll need to spring for plan B. ]]>