Vanessa's profile

90 ratings (3.92 avg)
20 reviews

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read ‎(90)
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fiction-american ‎(24)
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Vanessa is currently reading

	07/05 Vanessa is currently reading: A Reliable Wife (Hardcover) by Robert Goolrick bookshelves: currently-reading	my rating:
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Vanessa's recent updates (rss)

July 01

Vanessa gave

to:
White Noise (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century)
by Don DeLillo
bookshelves: fiction-american

my rating:

read in May, 2009

Vanessa said: "Oh, how I tried to like this novel. However, I can't enjoy pretentiousness thinly disguised as prose. I hated the characters and their unnatural dialogue. Very disappointed. "

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June 29

Vanessa gave

to:
Collected Stories Including the Member of the Wedding and the Ballad of the Sad Cafe (Paperback)
by Carson McCullers
bookshelves: fiction-american

my rating:

read in June, 2009

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June 18

Vanessa gave

to:
Bel Canto (Paperback)
by Ann Patchett
bookshelves: fiction-american

my rating:

read in June, 2009

3 comments

October 08, 2008

Vanessa made a comment on Vanessa's review of Memoirs of a Geisha (Vintage International)

Vanessa wrote: "Never read that one nor have I seen the movie. I'll have to now! "

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October 03, 2008

Vanessa gave

to:
Memoirs of a Geisha (Vintage International)
by Arthur Golden

my rating:

4 comments

September 21, 2008

Vanessa gave

to:
Freakonomics (Paperback)
by Steven D. Levitt
bookshelves: nonfiction

my rating:

read in January, 2006

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Vanessa gave

to:
The Assault on Reason (Hardcover)
by Al Gore
bookshelves: nonfiction

my rating:

read in January, 2007

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Vanessa read and liked Patrick's review of The Assault on Reason:

"Really, I probably would give this book a 3.75 stars, but this system only allows whole digits in its ratings.

This book is great and terrible at the same time. The start and end of this book hit it right on the mark - there is a crisis in...more Really, I probably would give this book a 3.75 stars, but this system only allows whole digits in its ratings.

This book is great and terrible at the same time. The start and end of this book hit it right on the mark - there is a crisis in how information about our Democracy is being shared. It is clearly being manipulated by corporations and government entities. I whole-heartedly give two-thirds of this book a might big thumbs up.

But there are flaws. A minor one is Gore's understanding of communications theory. He keeps repeating as fact the idea that television is a one-way communications channel. While I understand his point since, if you scream at your television, the commercial still will keep playing. The fact is it is a two -way medium. It might be the weakest of two ways, but there are ways to communicate dissatisfaction with television. You can change the channel or simply turn it off. In fact, for the past two years, that's exactly what has been happening. It's true that FOX news is the most popular news channel and that it is making us all mindless drones. Gore's book correctly points out that most news has leaned to the right on most issues, but what he fails to add are two interesting nuggets about Fox's viewer ship - while it is the highest of all the networks, its audience is much smaller than even the third-place network 10 years ago. In fact, television viewer ship is at an all time low when compared to the past 25 years. That's a clear message from the people to TV saying "We hate what you are doing." Ergo, it is a two-way communications model.

However, that's a minor complaint. My biggest complaint about this book is the middle of it. Gore repeatedly complains about the Bush administration and how it has manipulated the media. I dislike the Bush administration and do believe they are all treasonous hacks who should be imprisoned for life, but by harping on it constantly through a great portion of the book, Gore almost makes it seem like the Bush administration is solely responsible for all that is wrong with Democracy in America today. His book would have been better served if he also had used equal examples of how Democrats as well as the two houses of Congress and the Supreme Court as well as local governments have really manipulated the system or just dropped the ball. Gore does not do this. He makes it sound like Bush's cronies have warped the entire system and that before Bush's appointment by the Supreme Court in 2000, everything worked perfectly fine. Nothing could be further from the truth, in my humble opinion. The system of communications in Democracy was far out of whack before Bush even decided to run for president and I think I could argue that Bush has gotten away with a lot of crap over the years because the system was broken before he broke it even further.

While I respect Gore's opinions in this book and believe that his complaints have merit, he would have really put himself in a better light and made this a much better book if he had expressed some of that neutrality that he complains is missing from modern communications today.(less) "

2 comments

August 27, 2008

Vanessa gave

to:
Out of the Flames: The Remarkable Story of a Fearless Scholar, a Fatal Heresy, and One of the Rarest Books in the World (Paperback)
by Lawrence Goldstone
bookshelves: nonfiction

my rating:

read in September, 2008

Vanessa said: "Read this book for a graduate class and it's fascinating. The Goldstones did an incredible amount of research for this book and it's one of the best histories of the sixteenth century I've read. Not a page-turner, there are so many details on each ...more "

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