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"content": "\u003cp>I’m always happy when a new Nick Hornby book comes out. I’m not really sure why, since he’s not that great of a writer, and his books always seem to just miss the mark of what they were intending to say or do. But for some reason I enjoy his writing, and most of all I always come away with the feeling that his heart is in the right place, and he’s a right-on guy. So that’s saying a lot, cause I sure can’t say the same for Don DeLillo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>A Long Way Down\u003c/b> gathers four apparently disconnected souls on a London rooftop on New Year’s Eve, all with the intention of committing suicide. Through their individual ineptitudes and lousy communication skills, they all somehow manage to stave off the event and give themselves some time as a group to mull it all over. The book is written from four different first-person perspectives: Maureen, the fifty-something single mother of a severely disabled teenage son; Jess, the wild teenage girl with a runaway mouth; JJ, the American rock dude whose band and girl have both abandoned him; and Martin, the Regis-like talk show host who has ruined his career, his image, and his marriage by sleeping with a fifteen-year-old girl.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At first, only Martin and Maureen appear to have any real grounds for committing the deed, but as we are led through each character’s personal history and emotional landscape, we begin to feel the pain and despair that each of them carry around. Over the course of the next few months, these four ridiculously mismatched people form a sort of dysfunctional support group, where they fight more than bond, yell more than talk, and suffer more than heal. But somehow, even the sensation of being connected to another human can be enough to bring you down from the ledge, if only for the time being.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hornby writes in a light, modern tone that would almost seem trashy if it weren’t so compelling and heartfelt. The narrative structure is unique, giving each character a chance to tell a piece of the story in order to create a multi-faceted whole, rather than just a wanky post-modern exercise in confusing the reader. And he manages to tie in some current events, namely 9-11, without it seeming random or gratuitous. Most of all, he is always on the lookout for the real moment, the honest connection, and the cliché-free epiphany. In \u003cb>A Long Way Down\u003c/b>, as in real life, these qualities are what keep us all from jumping.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>A Long Way Down\u003c/b> by Nick Hornby\u003cbr>352 pages. Paperback.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cp>Hawaii is a strange place. It’s a part of the United States and yet it is very distinct from the mainland. Its population coexists uneasily with non-locals and yet it’s a tourist destination. It has a rich history and yet is the youngest land mass on the planet. It’s a place to get lost or place to be found. The islands also serve as the background to SF-based author Kaui Hart Hemmings’ debut collection of short stories: \u003cb>House of Thieves\u003c/b>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hemmings’ characters struggle amidst Hawaiian ways and notions. They surf, they swim, and they have names like Keoni and Mele. But island influences aside, the collection is essentially about relationships. In the first piece “The Minor Wars” a father navigates his daughter’s relationship with her comatose mother while in the title story “House of Thieves” a sister deals with her wayward brother. In “Secret Clutch” a sixteen-year old boy is over-attached to his nanny who feels it’s time he grew up, and a child-less real estate agent tries teaching her neighbor’s rebellious teenaged daughter a lesson in “Location Scouts”.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All the main characters seem to come from privileged, mostly white, backgrounds. I wondered why this was. Was the author, who was born and raised in Hawaii herself, simply writing about a world with which she was all too familiar? Did she come from this same background? And if not, then why was every single story about the same class? Whatever the reason, the result is that the class differences and racial tensions between the natives (i.e. those people who have mixed Polynesian and/or Asian blood) and the whites is highlighted. This is most seen in the story “Begin with an Outline” in which a college student who’s half white and half native writes about her pot-growing pidgin-speaking, neglectful dad. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While stories like the above have great dialogue, several of the pieces in the collection suffer from stilted dialogue that doesn’t seem natural. Certain lines are almost self-conscious as if the author had tried re-working them to sound real. Bits and pieces of “The Minor Wars” and chunks of my least favorite story — “Island Cowboys” are demonstrations of this awkward lining. On the other hand, much of the dialogue in stories such as “House of Thieves” and “Secret Clutch” is sharp. Hemmings has a good ear for adolescent banter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>House of Thieves\u003c/b> is a solid collection. They’re not the most moving or striking stories I’ve ever read, but they are insightful and complex. They tackle difficult issues which are hard to explain and take even more savvy to portray. I’ve read a few books based in Hawaii and this book wove the plots most seamlessly with the setting. Instead of portraying the island and its inhabitants as hokey or simply lurid, Hemmings depicts the characters and setting as straightforward and nuanced as possible. The people within the pages of \u003cb>House of Thieves\u003c/b> are characters rather than caricatures and the author is successful in revealing Hawaii’s true face. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Hawaii is a strange place. It’s a part of the United States and yet it is very distinct from the mainland. Its population coexists uneasily with non-locals and yet it’s a tourist destination. It has a rich history and yet is the youngest land mass on the planet. It’s a place to get lost or place to be found. The islands also serve as the background to SF-based author Kaui Hart Hemmings’ debut collection of short stories: \u003cb>House of Thieves\u003c/b>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hemmings’ characters struggle amidst Hawaiian ways and notions. They surf, they swim, and they have names like Keoni and Mele. But island influences aside, the collection is essentially about relationships. In the first piece “The Minor Wars” a father navigates his daughter’s relationship with her comatose mother while in the title story “House of Thieves” a sister deals with her wayward brother. In “Secret Clutch” a sixteen-year old boy is over-attached to his nanny who feels it’s time he grew up, and a child-less real estate agent tries teaching her neighbor’s rebellious teenaged daughter a lesson in “Location Scouts”.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All the main characters seem to come from privileged, mostly white, backgrounds. I wondered why this was. Was the author, who was born and raised in Hawaii herself, simply writing about a world with which she was all too familiar? Did she come from this same background? And if not, then why was every single story about the same class? Whatever the reason, the result is that the class differences and racial tensions between the natives (i.e. those people who have mixed Polynesian and/or Asian blood) and the whites is highlighted. This is most seen in the story “Begin with an Outline” in which a college student who’s half white and half native writes about her pot-growing pidgin-speaking, neglectful dad. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While stories like the above have great dialogue, several of the pieces in the collection suffer from stilted dialogue that doesn’t seem natural. Certain lines are almost self-conscious as if the author had tried re-working them to sound real. Bits and pieces of “The Minor Wars” and chunks of my least favorite story — “Island Cowboys” are demonstrations of this awkward lining. On the other hand, much of the dialogue in stories such as “House of Thieves” and “Secret Clutch” is sharp. Hemmings has a good ear for adolescent banter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>House of Thieves\u003c/b> is a solid collection. They’re not the most moving or striking stories I’ve ever read, but they are insightful and complex. They tackle difficult issues which are hard to explain and take even more savvy to portray. I’ve read a few books based in Hawaii and this book wove the plots most seamlessly with the setting. Instead of portraying the island and its inhabitants as hokey or simply lurid, Hemmings depicts the characters and setting as straightforward and nuanced as possible. The people within the pages of \u003cb>House of Thieves\u003c/b> are characters rather than caricatures and the author is successful in revealing Hawaii’s true face. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>I always kinda liked Jen Trynin’s music. She had a smoky, world-weary voice, an interesting guitar style, and cool, intelligent songs. Back in the mid-90s, when I was half-heartedly trying to sell myself as a singer-songwriter without actually selling myself, which I now know is a pretty idealistic and stupid goal, gals like Jen Trynin were being courted by the majors as the next big thing. At that time, I suppose I would have loved being courted as the next big thing. Little did I know what she went through, what she almost became, and what she did and didn’t know about the music business when she got that major label deal. But after reading \u003cb>Everything I’m Cracked Up To Be\u003c/b>, I can safely say now that I’m glad it didn’t happen to me. I’m thankful to have wallowed in the comfort and obscurity of the sub-indie universe and kept my life and my music intact. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Jen Trynin was turning 30, she made a promise to herself to finally take one last shot at “making it.” She had been playing her acoustic folk music in what she calls the “Sunday through Wednesday chick with an acoustic guitar ghetto,” and was tired of it. Tired of being thrown into that same dull groove, and tired of feeling intimidated by the real rockers in Boston, where she lived. But most of all, she was tired of never getting anywhere with her music. So she got an electric guitar, some thrift store clothes, and started her own indie label for the sole purpose of creating a buzz and getting signed. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jen tells her story with such rollicking good humor, it’s like a teen girl novel crossed with a tell-all rock n’ roll expose. She has obviously grown up enough to look back on that time with a perspective that is laughably honest and unflinching. She’s certainly not the best writer in the world, but she knows her limitations, and what she lacks in artistry she makes up for with great humor and 20/20 hindsight. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In those heady post-Nirvana days, when every major label was looking to sign the next indie crossover superstar, Jen Trynin released her CD \u003cb>Cockamamie\u003c/b> on her own little fabricated Squint Records label. Her calculated move paid off. Before she knew it, her New York shows were packed with industry heavyweights, offers were pouring in and she was looking at $300,000 publishing advances. She eventually signed with Warner Brothers, and went out on a promotional tour with her scrappy rock trio to support \u003cb>Cockamamie\u003c/b>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jen endows some of the music biz sharks with silly nicknames, some have their own names, and all are just portrayed as pathetic weasels. Her anecdotes somehow endear these otherwise shady characters to the reader, turning them into fodder for a comedy of errors with her budding career as the catalyst. And her descriptions of life on the road, with all its alienation and temptation, are truly grueling. Suffice it to say that as the tour drags on, things don’t look so rosy for Jen. Her hit song that had been climbing the alternative charts just drives everyone up the wall, and everywhere she goes she starts hearing the two words that will ultimately seal her fate — Alanis Morissette. I enjoy the fact that Alanis Morissette is a harbinger of doom in this book, because she sure seemed that way to anyone who had the misfortune of hearing her annoying voice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a story that has probably been lived more times than we could possibly know, by artists we will never hear of. But thanks to Jen for finally telling the story that any aspiring artist needs to hear, whether they like it or not. The sorry truth is: no matter how good you are, how driven you are, and how many people love your music, it’s all a matter of luck and timing. Art and commerce make strange bedfellows, because commerce keeps kicking the sheets off the bed. The lack of luck and timing didn’t keep Jen from writing a great follow-up album, \u003cb>Gun Shy Trigger Happy\u003c/b>, which I highly recommend as a fine slice of moody guitar pop that should have made it but, lucky for us, didn’t. If she had become a real rock star, she wouldn’t have written such a rockin’ book!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0151011486/KQEDORG-20\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Everything I’m Cracked Up to Be\u003c/a> by Jen Trynin\u003cbr>Hardcover. 368 pages.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a story that has probably been lived more times than we could possibly know, by artists we will never hear of. But thanks to Jen for finally telling the story that any aspiring artist needs to hear, whether they like it or not. The sorry truth is: no matter how good you are, how driven you are, and how many people love your music, it’s all a matter of luck and timing. Art and commerce make strange bedfellows, because commerce keeps kicking the sheets off the bed. The lack of luck and timing didn’t keep Jen from writing a great follow-up album, \u003cb>Gun Shy Trigger Happy\u003c/b>, which I highly recommend as a fine slice of moody guitar pop that should have made it but, lucky for us, didn’t. If she had become a real rock star, she wouldn’t have written such a rockin’ book!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0151011486/KQEDORG-20\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Everything I’m Cracked Up to Be\u003c/a> by Jen Trynin\u003cbr>Hardcover. 368 pages.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Last Monday night was one of those cold blustery nights that make you want to stay home and never leave. Instead, I walked through the streets and pondered the strange synchronicity of hearing about Slobodan Milosevic’s death over the weekend and the prospect of seeing Zlata Filipovic read from \u003cb>Zlata’s Diary: A Child’s Life in Wartime Sarajevo\u003c/b>. A diary she kept as an eleven-year old during the siege on Sarajevo. The ultra nationalist Serbian leader who drew the former Yugoslav republics into a long and bloody war, passed away over the weekend, while on trial for war crimes at The Hague. It seemed like poetic justice that the young girl had grown into a woman and that the eloquent and heartbreaking diary she kept as a child would outlive him. But not before a war destroyed her childhood, divided an entire country, and genocide, bloody massacres, and the daily grind of war killed 250,000 human beings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Zlata Filipovic (now twenty-five years old) is a poised young woman filled with compassion, determination and a hopeful out look on the world, despite her traumatic experience. During the reading at \u003cb>A Clean, Well-Lighted, Place for Books\u003c/b> she spoke with frankness about beginning the diary in earnest, and expecting to write about boys, girlfriends, music, books, and the usual subjects that preoccupy adolescent girls. The diary entry in the fall of 1991 finds Zlata watching the American Top 20 on MTV and munching on pizza. By the spring of 1992 Zlata’s comfortable existence quickly disappeared and life in Sarajevo was forever changed by the war. But what does it mean to try to live and survive in the midst of war? There is always a war raging on in some part of the world. For those who don’t experience war first hand, it is a distant idea, something that happens to other people, somewhere far away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The diary entries are a detailed chronicle of the dangers, cruelties and reality of daily life during wartime. The beginning of firing on the city, hearing guns blasting away day and night, shells falling throughout the city, shells blowing out the windows in her living room, lack of water to drink and bathe with, spending days in a cold dark cellar during heavy bombing and feeling the building shake as if it’s going to be torn apart, facing snipers on the way to get basic supplies like water and bread, having your eleven year old friend die with shrapnel lodged in her brain, cars burning in the streets, dead bodies charred in the street, and the constant sound of gunfire. This is only a small fraction of the reality of war.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She read the following passage from her diary. Boredom!!! Shooting!!! Shelling!!! People Being Killed!!! Despair Hunger!!! Misery!!! Fear!!! That’s my life! The life of an innocent eleven-year-old schoolgirl. A schoolgirl without a school, with out the fun and excitement of school. A child without games, without friends, without the sun, without birds, without nature, without chocolate or sweets, with just a little powdered milk. In short a child with out a child hood. A wartime child. I now realize I am living through a war, I am witnessing an ugly disgusting war. I and thousands of other children in this town that is being destroyed, that is crying, weeping, seeking help, but getting none. God, will this ever stop, will I ever be a schoolgirl again, will I ever enjoy my childhood again?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As she read the diary, the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq loomed like a dark shadow. I thought about the significance and timeliness of the re-release of the book. The honesty of her observations and eloquence of her insight, are a reminder that the inhuman and simplistic portrayal of the war on the news, is a big lie. Just like the reason for the invasion has consequently proven to be a lie. A lie perpetrated by people who stand to gain power and wealth at the cost of human life and utter destruction. \u003cb>Zlata’s Diary: A Child’s Life in Wartime Sarajevo\u003c/b> stresses our capacity as human beings to feel empathy. No matter how much distance and culture and language and geography and age separate human beings, we still experience the sorrow and tragedy of loss. If we allow ourselves to experience empathy and truly comprehend the impact of war, perhaps no more children’s war diaries will need to exist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0143036874/kqedorg-20\">\u003cb>Zlata’s Diary: A Child’s Life in Wartime Sarajevo\u003c/b>\u003c/a> by Zlata Filipovic\u003cbr>Paperback, 197 pages\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cp>There have been numerous and varied ruminations on the Dracula legend. There have been books (the most famous of which is written by Bram Stoker), movies, comic books, television shows, songs, and even costumes all inspired by that most famous of vampires. For over a hundred years, since Stoker popularized the Eastern European folk legend about an actual 15th century nobleman known as Vlad the Impaler whose moniker indicates his thirst for blood, we’ve been obsessed over the blood-sucking vampire. Author Elizabeth Kostova takes yet another look at the Dracula legend in her debut novel \u003ca href=\"/.amazon/0316011770\">\u003cb>The Historian\u003c/b>\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although the concept of vampires has been around for centuries, it took Stoker’s novel, \u003cb>Dracula\u003c/b>, to thrust it into popular imagination. Initially a macabre, gothic metaphor for Victorian repression (The Forbidden) regarding sexual proclivities (i.e. Dracula as a sexual predator who lured young girls into his lascivious world), the idea of Dracula and vampires has morphed from the horrid, evil and cruel into something else entirely. In Anne Rice’s \u003cb>The Vampire Chronicles\u003c/b>, vampires are beautiful, damaged, sensitive creatures, and some are even rock stars. In the cult-favorite \u003cb>Buffy the Vampire Slayer\u003c/b>, vampires are both demonic beings to be destroyed and handsome love interests.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kostova’s novel explores the history behind the legend. Her Dracula is equal parts cruel and regal. But Dracula himself is not the crux of the story; it is rather the chase to find his tomb that serves as the meat of the novel. While the novel is narrated as a flashback by a professor who relates her experiences as a young, sheltered school girl living in 70s Amsterdam who unknowingly stumbles upon a long-hidden mystery in her father’s study, the main part of the story takes place a couple decades in the past as her father reveals to her his secret through both stories, which he orates while on their travels around Europe, and letters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In this vein, the real protagonist is her father, Paul, as a young scholar and PhD candidate who goes in search of his missing professor and beloved advisor, Bartholomew Rossi, after he mysteriously disappears the night Paul recounts his discovery of a strange book in his thesis carrel. He enlists the aid of Helen, a no-nonsense Romanian-Hungarian visiting scholar who also happens to be related to Rossi. They are convinced that if they can find Dracula’s tomb, they will be able to find Rossi.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And very much like in \u003cb>The Da Vinci Code\u003c/b>, the clues to Rossi’s whereabouts are imbedded in historical artifacts and medieval lore, which the two have to traverse through Turkey, Bulgaria, and Hungary to trace. Meanwhile, Paul’s young daughter also embarks on a quest to find a missing loved one. However, unlike \u003cb>The Da Vinci Code\u003c/b>, \u003cb>The Historian\u003c/b> is not a page-turner. As its title suggests, it is as dry as the densest of academic tomes. And at 656 pages, it is just as long.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Worst of all, after trudging through nearly six hundred pages I was met with an anti-climatic ending that left me wanting. Kostova paints an alluring picture of a scholarly life in which PhDs trot around the globe like adventurers that read ancient manuscripts like maps (Indiana Jones, anyone?). It makes one want to go out and apply to grad school. But this is supposed to be a novel about Dracula, not a romanticized look at academics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the novel, various scholars hot on Dracula’s trail are warned off through various insidious means — friends, loved ones and pets are killed, lives are destroyed, threats are administered etc.; he clearly does not want to be found. As a reader, I felt the same way trying to finish the book. Every time I picked up this soporific work, I mysteriously fell asleep.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"/.amazon/0316011770\">\u003cb>The Historian\u003c/b>\u003c/a> by Elizabeth Kostova \u003cbr>Paperback, 656 pages\u003cstrong>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Worst of all, after trudging through nearly six hundred pages I was met with an anti-climatic ending that left me wanting. Kostova paints an alluring picture of a scholarly life in which PhDs trot around the globe like adventurers that read ancient manuscripts like maps (Indiana Jones, anyone?). It makes one want to go out and apply to grad school. But this is supposed to be a novel about Dracula, not a romanticized look at academics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the novel, various scholars hot on Dracula’s trail are warned off through various insidious means — friends, loved ones and pets are killed, lives are destroyed, threats are administered etc.; he clearly does not want to be found. As a reader, I felt the same way trying to finish the book. Every time I picked up this soporific work, I mysteriously fell asleep.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"/.amazon/0316011770\">\u003cb>The Historian\u003c/b>\u003c/a> by Elizabeth Kostova \u003cbr>Paperback, 656 pages\u003cstrong>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Scheeres grew up in Indiana farm country in the mid-1970’s in a misguided fundamentalist household. Upstanding citizens and leaders in their Calvinist church, Scheeres’ parents were nevertheless horribly abusive. After raising three older children, the Scheeres, led by altruistic impulses, seek to adopt a handicapped girl, in part to provide companionship for their youngest child, Julia. Instead, they inherit two less-than-welcome black boys. Innocent three-year-old Julia immediately accepts these boys as her brothers, but her rural Indiana neighbors aren’t as eager, or as colorblind. The elder of the boys, Jerome, chafes under the strictures (and racism) of his new environment. Engulfed with rage, he partakes in all kinds of criminal behaviors, tormenting Julia whenever the opportunity strikes. The youngest boy, David, is exactly Julia’s age, and fast becomes the little girl’s closest ally and best friend.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Julia and David endure the oppressive, inexplicable, warped Christian regime of their parents and face all of the gruesome trials of an outcast childhood and adolescence together, they develop a palpable, unquestioning, blood-is-thicker-than-water bond. Unfortunately, Julia’s parents treat her brothers as second-class citizens, relegating them to the basement, criticizing them constantly, and physically abusing them at every opportunity. Julia internalizes deep shame over the discrepancy in her parents’ treatment (believing she is favored because she is white), which later causes her to act out in startling ways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, the piousness and hypocrisy mounts. “Rejoice Radio” constantly blares through the house, but it is broadcast over an intercom system that Mother uses to eavesdrop on her children. Whenever Julia and David are attacked by ugly racists at school, they are told to “turn the other cheek,” yet their father breaks David’s arm with a 2 X 4 in the name of Jesus/discipline. Finally, Julia is sent off to reform school because she is caught having a loving sexual relationship with her boyfriend. This despite the fact that she has endured years of sexual abuse under her own roof.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For some trumped-up reason, David has already been dispatched to this same reform school, so we follow the siblings to an outward paradise — the Dominican Republic — which masks an even deeper, more vicious circle of Hell. ‘Escuela Caribe’ is one of those Christian boot camps that promises to “break the child’s spirit” in order to “build their character.” The chronic humiliations and daily brutality these two encounter while at “school” are enough to make you wish they were back amongst the KKK in Indiana. But all the while, their abiding faith in one another and their impenetrable love allows them to survive the insanity of their circumstances. They give up on God, their family, teachers, and pretty much people in general, but they never give up on each other. That simple truth is their redemption. The day they manage to share a stolen moment over a piña colada feels like The Resurrection Itself. I wept with utter relief and joy for them, we’d been through so much together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’ve been on a memoir tear of late; I’ve read five in a row, but this is the only one that had me staying up until 3am to finish it. What’s great about the book is not the confirmation of every evil thing you ever thought about religious zealots (though that’s certainly a sinfully delicious part of it). What’s great is that despite its inflammatory truths, Scheeres tells her story with unflinching, calm directness and no trace of self-pity whatsoever. The jacket copy says “This book will break your heart and mend it again.” It’s true, but not in the way you might expect. That Julia Scheeres survived with her spirit (and mind) intact is nothing short of a miracle. But she isn’t after uplift — in fact, her memoir is tinged with great, unreconciled sadness. The things that were done to her and her brother in the name of Jesus were despicable, and there is no making sense out of any of it. If there is any feeling of triumph at the end of this book, it comes from the author’s tender depiction of a brother who taught her the true meaning of family: unconditional love. And that’s enough to make a believer out of me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1582433380/qid=1139876191/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/104-5295580-1521534?s=books&v=glance&n=283155/\">Jesus Land\u003c/a> by Julia Scheeres\u003cbr>Hardcover. 356 pages.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Visit \u003ca href=\"http://www.juliascheeres.com/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Julia Scheeres’ website\u003c/a> (at Juliascheeres.com)\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cp>All of us have, at one time or another, pretended to be blind. We close our eyes and reach out our hands in front of us, and try to find our way through the house — touching the furniture, the walls, trying not to bump into things. This game doesn’t usually last very long, it soon becomes disorienting and frustrating. My son loves to cover his eyes with his ski hat and say “Show me where to go!” It’s natural for human beings to experiment, however innocently, with some kind of sensory deprivation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the case of Jose Saramago’s wrenching novel, \u003cb>Blindness\u003c/b>, an entire city, and soon a whole country, are plunged into a white blindness. It comes on suddenly, starting with one man driving his car, and soon the blindness, which causes people to see nothing but a milky whiteness, grabs every man woman and child and stops them in their tracks, yelling “I’m blind! I’m blind!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This book has been recommended to me many times, and it’s taken me several years to finally pull it off the shelf and give it a go. It is the single most frightening book I have ever read. I did not expect that, I don’t know what I expected, something more poetic and delicate and dreamlike from a Nobel prize-winning Portuguese author. Instead, the book reads like a cross between \u003cb>Dawn of the Dead\u003c/b> and Kafka. David Cronenberg should direct the film, if he doesn’t already own the rights.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the blindness sweeps the city, we become intimately acquainted with an ophthalmologist, his wife, and several of his patients, including the first man to go blind. It is with this small group that we enter the horrifying world of the internees — the first people to go blind who are quarantined in a mental hospital on the outskirts of town. Heavily guarded by the military, unable to leave for fear they may infect those who can still see, they are deprived of even the most basic human necessities. With no one to care for them and guide them, and without the ability to care for themselves, the internees devolve into shadows of their former selves, forced to commit and endure the most unspeakable and unsavory things in order to survive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Saramago’s prose is fluid and endless, with no paragraph breaks, no quotation marks, and no concrete frame of reference. Yet the book reads like a thriller, and is impossible to put down. It’s all just a masterful confluence of graphic scenes of misery and degradation, and soul-digging words of wisdom and insight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One character retains her sight throughout the novel, and she is our guide to all the conflicting emotions and responsibilities that come with being the strong one, the helper, the martyr. This character hides the fact that she can see in order to help those close to her, and through this she is constantly wracked with guilt that she does not help the hundreds of others. But to do so, she would be ripped apart, for one person cannot bear the burdens of all of society. In this godforsaken world of blind savages, the human will to survive is nothing heroic or graceful, it is merely selfish, intuitive and animal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The allegorical nature of \u003cb>Blindness\u003c/b> is complex, and like all great art, can be interpreted in many ways. While reading about the decrepit nature of the city and its helpless inhabitants, I could not help but think of New Orleans, a once thriving and beautiful place reduced (however temporarily) to a completely destroyed zone of putrid water, dead bodies, and lawlessness. Is this what comes of disaster on a grand scale? Can human beings come together and organize themselves in the face of an unspeakable cataclysm? Saramago asks these questions eloquently, terrifyingly, intimately. We need only wait for the arrival of the Avian Flu to find out the answers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"/.amazon/0156007754\">Blindness\u003c/a> by Jose Saramago\u003cbr>Paperback. 352 pages.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>All of us have, at one time or another, pretended to be blind. We close our eyes and reach out our hands in front of us, and try to find our way through the house — touching the furniture, the walls, trying not to bump into things. This game doesn’t usually last very long, it soon becomes disorienting and frustrating. My son loves to cover his eyes with his ski hat and say “Show me where to go!” It’s natural for human beings to experiment, however innocently, with some kind of sensory deprivation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the case of Jose Saramago’s wrenching novel, \u003cb>Blindness\u003c/b>, an entire city, and soon a whole country, are plunged into a white blindness. It comes on suddenly, starting with one man driving his car, and soon the blindness, which causes people to see nothing but a milky whiteness, grabs every man woman and child and stops them in their tracks, yelling “I’m blind! I’m blind!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This book has been recommended to me many times, and it’s taken me several years to finally pull it off the shelf and give it a go. It is the single most frightening book I have ever read. I did not expect that, I don’t know what I expected, something more poetic and delicate and dreamlike from a Nobel prize-winning Portuguese author. Instead, the book reads like a cross between \u003cb>Dawn of the Dead\u003c/b> and Kafka. David Cronenberg should direct the film, if he doesn’t already own the rights.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the blindness sweeps the city, we become intimately acquainted with an ophthalmologist, his wife, and several of his patients, including the first man to go blind. It is with this small group that we enter the horrifying world of the internees — the first people to go blind who are quarantined in a mental hospital on the outskirts of town. Heavily guarded by the military, unable to leave for fear they may infect those who can still see, they are deprived of even the most basic human necessities. With no one to care for them and guide them, and without the ability to care for themselves, the internees devolve into shadows of their former selves, forced to commit and endure the most unspeakable and unsavory things in order to survive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Saramago’s prose is fluid and endless, with no paragraph breaks, no quotation marks, and no concrete frame of reference. Yet the book reads like a thriller, and is impossible to put down. It’s all just a masterful confluence of graphic scenes of misery and degradation, and soul-digging words of wisdom and insight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One character retains her sight throughout the novel, and she is our guide to all the conflicting emotions and responsibilities that come with being the strong one, the helper, the martyr. This character hides the fact that she can see in order to help those close to her, and through this she is constantly wracked with guilt that she does not help the hundreds of others. But to do so, she would be ripped apart, for one person cannot bear the burdens of all of society. In this godforsaken world of blind savages, the human will to survive is nothing heroic or graceful, it is merely selfish, intuitive and animal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The allegorical nature of \u003cb>Blindness\u003c/b> is complex, and like all great art, can be interpreted in many ways. While reading about the decrepit nature of the city and its helpless inhabitants, I could not help but think of New Orleans, a once thriving and beautiful place reduced (however temporarily) to a completely destroyed zone of putrid water, dead bodies, and lawlessness. Is this what comes of disaster on a grand scale? Can human beings come together and organize themselves in the face of an unspeakable cataclysm? Saramago asks these questions eloquently, terrifyingly, intimately. We need only wait for the arrival of the Avian Flu to find out the answers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"/.amazon/0156007754\">Blindness\u003c/a> by Jose Saramago\u003cbr>Paperback. 352 pages.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>This past Sunday \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com\">The New York Times\u003c/a> ran a piece in the Fashion & Style section on author Jay McInerney. It was a human interest story that chronicled the writer’s personal life rather than a book review (his latest novel, \u003ca href=\"/.amazon/0375411402%20\">\u003cb>The Good Life\u003c/b>\u003c/a>, was released on January 31, 2006). One of the main focuses of the article was how McInerney’s life mirrored that of his characters, a persona first created in his first novel, the infamous \u003ca href=\"/.amazon/0394726413\">\u003cb>Bright Lights, Big City\u003c/b>\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The book reveals the exploits of a young man, an unnamed protagonist, buzzing through life on one long alcohol and cocaine fueled bender. He works as a researcher in the Department of Factual Verification at a major magazine (resembling \u003cb>The New Yorker\u003c/b>), although the term “works” should be used loosely in this context as the protagonist rarely makes it to work on time sans hangover, and attends party after party, usually accompanied by his co-conspirator Tad Allagash and sometimes with a beautiful woman on his arm, which is just fine as his model wife has mysteriously left him. He knows his life is unraveling before his very eyes — his boss has it out for him, his family is worried about his habits, his personal life is in shambles, the memory of his mother’s death still haunts him — but he just can’t seem to get it together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Bright Lights, Big City\u003c/b> encapsulates the zeitgeist of New York City in the 80s. It inhabits the world of young, beautiful and privileged urbanites. A world, like a piece of meta-fiction come to life, that the author found himself very much a part of after the novel’s publication and enormous success. It was as if McInerney wrote himself into the world he created. Or did the world just assume that it was himself he was writing about?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The author’s use of second person contributes to this sense of memoir rather than fiction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An except from the first paragraph: \u003cbr>You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say that the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy. You are at a nightclub talking to a girl with a shaved head. The club is either Heartbreak or the Lizard Lounge. All might come clear if you could just slip into the bathroom and do a little more Bolivian Marching Powder. Then again, it might not.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Is he writing about himself or a fictionalized character; the boundaries are blurry. At the time he wrote \u003cb>Bright Lights, Big City\u003c/b>, the author was a graduate student at Syracuse University but soon after, much like the unnamed protagonist, he was living it up in NYC. Life was beginning to imitate art.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>McInerney is one of a string of writers who embody the personas they create in their novels. His good friend, Bret Easton Ellis, for example is famous for chronicling the exploits of his peers. In the \u003cb>The Rules of Attraction\u003c/b> Easton was writing about students at his college while in \u003cb>Less than Zero\u003c/b> he was writing about his friends in L.A. Granted the people are probably somewhat fictionalized but the author is still much very a part of the scenario.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Look at writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway or even Hunter S. Thompson. At what point did their personal life end and the fictionalized worlds they created begin? Did they become that which they wrote about or did they write about that which they were? This question reminds me of the ridiculous yet brilliant premise created in the film \u003cb>Adaptation\u003c/b>, whose protagonist writes himself into a screenplay only to find himself a part of the world he had created.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The fictionalization of memoir has even become a selling point. Take the work of J.T. LeRoy, for example. Or, in contrast, the controversy of James Frey and his “memoir” \u003cb>A Million Little Pieces\u003c/b>. LeRoy used his/her life as a marketing tool for his/her work; pity the writer, buy his work. James Frey simply wrote about his own life and…embellished a few points to make it more exciting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What happened to creativity? What happened to imagination? What happened to actually making things up? 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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>This past Sunday \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com\">The New York Times\u003c/a> ran a piece in the Fashion & Style section on author Jay McInerney. It was a human interest story that chronicled the writer’s personal life rather than a book review (his latest novel, \u003ca href=\"/.amazon/0375411402%20\">\u003cb>The Good Life\u003c/b>\u003c/a>, was released on January 31, 2006). One of the main focuses of the article was how McInerney’s life mirrored that of his characters, a persona first created in his first novel, the infamous \u003ca href=\"/.amazon/0394726413\">\u003cb>Bright Lights, Big City\u003c/b>\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The book reveals the exploits of a young man, an unnamed protagonist, buzzing through life on one long alcohol and cocaine fueled bender. He works as a researcher in the Department of Factual Verification at a major magazine (resembling \u003cb>The New Yorker\u003c/b>), although the term “works” should be used loosely in this context as the protagonist rarely makes it to work on time sans hangover, and attends party after party, usually accompanied by his co-conspirator Tad Allagash and sometimes with a beautiful woman on his arm, which is just fine as his model wife has mysteriously left him. He knows his life is unraveling before his very eyes — his boss has it out for him, his family is worried about his habits, his personal life is in shambles, the memory of his mother’s death still haunts him — but he just can’t seem to get it together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Bright Lights, Big City\u003c/b> encapsulates the zeitgeist of New York City in the 80s. It inhabits the world of young, beautiful and privileged urbanites. A world, like a piece of meta-fiction come to life, that the author found himself very much a part of after the novel’s publication and enormous success. It was as if McInerney wrote himself into the world he created. Or did the world just assume that it was himself he was writing about?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The author’s use of second person contributes to this sense of memoir rather than fiction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An except from the first paragraph: \u003cbr>You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say that the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy. You are at a nightclub talking to a girl with a shaved head. The club is either Heartbreak or the Lizard Lounge. All might come clear if you could just slip into the bathroom and do a little more Bolivian Marching Powder. Then again, it might not.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Is he writing about himself or a fictionalized character; the boundaries are blurry. At the time he wrote \u003cb>Bright Lights, Big City\u003c/b>, the author was a graduate student at Syracuse University but soon after, much like the unnamed protagonist, he was living it up in NYC. Life was beginning to imitate art.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>McInerney is one of a string of writers who embody the personas they create in their novels. His good friend, Bret Easton Ellis, for example is famous for chronicling the exploits of his peers. In the \u003cb>The Rules of Attraction\u003c/b> Easton was writing about students at his college while in \u003cb>Less than Zero\u003c/b> he was writing about his friends in L.A. Granted the people are probably somewhat fictionalized but the author is still much very a part of the scenario.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Look at writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway or even Hunter S. Thompson. At what point did their personal life end and the fictionalized worlds they created begin? Did they become that which they wrote about or did they write about that which they were? This question reminds me of the ridiculous yet brilliant premise created in the film \u003cb>Adaptation\u003c/b>, whose protagonist writes himself into a screenplay only to find himself a part of the world he had created.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The fictionalization of memoir has even become a selling point. Take the work of J.T. LeRoy, for example. Or, in contrast, the controversy of James Frey and his “memoir” \u003cb>A Million Little Pieces\u003c/b>. LeRoy used his/her life as a marketing tool for his/her work; pity the writer, buy his work. James Frey simply wrote about his own life and…embellished a few points to make it more exciting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What happened to creativity? What happened to imagination? What happened to actually making things up? Does writing about you and your friends really measure up as “fiction” in the most literal sense? Ultimately, as a reader you have to ask yourself: does the author’s persona and personal life really matter in a work of fiction? Is that why you’re reading the book? Does his real life make the work more interesting or better crafted? Shouldn’t novels be judged on their own merit? I think so.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"/.amazon/0394726413\">\u003cb>Bright Lights, Big City\u003c/b>\u003c/a> by Jay McInerney \u003cbr>Paperback, 208 pages\u003cstrong>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>I must admit, right off the bat, that I read most of this book while lying on the beach or by the pool in Hawaii. Before you gag on that, let me assure you that this was between sessions of swimming with the kid, which definitely took up the bulk of our days. Those stolen moments to read were sheer bliss, and I finished \u003cb>Oh the Glory of It All\u003c/b> the night before we left, struggling to ward off the narcotic effect of one too many mai tais at dinner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sean Wilsey, for all his wealth and privilege, got a bum deal. He fell through the cracks of a nasty public divorce between his father, San Francisco businessman, playboy and social climber Al Wilsey, and his mother, the flaky, gorgeous, slightly unhinged Pat Montandon. Luckily, he emerged from this ridiculous childhood and adolescence with the presence of mind and memory to share his insane memoir with the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To write a memoir at the tender age of 35 means that some crazy shit must have gone down in a short amount of time. Wilsey’s parents’ divorce was prime fodder for the San Francisco society pages at the time, and every aspect of their split, especially the absurdly extravagant financial details, were in the papers every single day. Al Wilsey left Pat Montandon for her best friend, the sexy, conniving, gold-digging Dede Wilsey. Dede left her husband at the time, John Traina, who later went on to marry Danielle Steel. Now, in the present day, Dede Wilsey has all but been nominated for sainthood in this town for her tireless fundraising to get the new De Young museum built. But according to Sean, she was a wicked stepmother on par with any badass Disney bitch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At first, Sean was merely brushed aside by his father and his new family (Dede brought two sons to the marriage, the bright and shiny rich boys Todd and Trevor Traina), and was psychologically terrorized by his mother’s flair for drama and threatened suicides. As time went on, the sense of being shut out and inferior to his father’s new family became more and more pronounced. The heartbreaking earnestness with which he tried to be “cool” like his stepbrothers was constantly met with some kind of cutting remark from Dede, or a reproach from his distant, hypercritical dad. Meanwhile, his mother had turned her attention and affections to her new cause of promoting peace around the world through the voices of children (Children as Teachers of Peace), which meant little more than a chance for her to prance around in front of the Kremlin in a foxy fur hat and get her picture taken.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Sean reaches his adolescent years, the book takes a turn for the better, for although it’s always interesting to read about rich society people and their problems, it’s much more interesting to read about a crazy, dope-smoking punk skater boy getting into major trouble. That’s ultimately what makes this memoir completely captivating. As soon as Sean starts acting out, his dad proceeds to ship him back east to a series of boarding schools, starting with the upscale, preppy St. Mark’s. There is something in Sean that constantly seeks approval, inclusion, and the elusive “cool,” to the point of not being able to focus on anything else. In the book he blames his parents’ self-absorption and neglect, but honestly, there’s a glitch in his personality that just seems drawn to trouble and drama. He’s his mama’s boy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wilsey is able to remember and recount such detailed and embarrassing moments of his adolescence and teen years, it is truly a gift. As you can probably guess, St. Mark’s doesn’t quite work out and he’s sent to a more “alternative” boarding school called Woodhall, which is basically just a haven for a bunch of serial stoners. On Sean’s trips home, he manages to steal cars, break things, and rile up his family to the point of exasperation. He is a bad apple with a safety net, and there’s nothing more irritating or uncontrollable than a rich kid on a rampage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because my Hawaii trip was with my own dad and step mom, the whole experience of reading Wilsey’s memoir brought back some prickly memories of my own rebellious adolescence, trying to deal with my dad’s second wife, a manipulative Dede type if there ever was one. I too was a miserable punk teen with a bad attitude and a trust fund, but luckily my parents were always there for me. I am thankful that, unlike Al Wilsey, my dad wised up and married one final time to a wonderful woman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Suffice it to say that for the train wreck of a kid that is Sean Wilsey, it gets pretty damn dark before the dawn, when he is finally broken down and rebuilt at a kooky New Age reform school-slash-sanatorium in Italy. \u003cb>Oh the Glory of It All\u003c/b> is a rollicking combination of \u003cb>Catcher in the Rye\u003c/b>, \u003cb>Mommie Dearest\u003c/b> and \u003cb>The Basketball Diaries\u003c/b>. Wilsey’s prose gets a little wobbly at times, and his years of therapy have definitely simplified some pretty complex problems, but it’s truly a fun read and a must for any connoisseur of dirt-dredging gossip, SF style.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"/.amazon/1594200513\">\u003cb>Oh the Glory of It All\u003c/b>\u003c/a> by Sean Wilsey \u003cbr>Hard Cover, 496 pages\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "I must admit, right off the bat, that I read most of this book while lying on the beach or by the pool in Hawaii. Before you gag on that, let me assure you that this was between sessions of swimming with the kid, which definitely took up the bulk of our days. Those stolen moments to read were sheer bliss, and I finished \u003cb>Oh the Glory of It All\u003c/b> the night before we left, struggling to ward off the narcotic effect of one too many mai tais at dinner.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>I must admit, right off the bat, that I read most of this book while lying on the beach or by the pool in Hawaii. Before you gag on that, let me assure you that this was between sessions of swimming with the kid, which definitely took up the bulk of our days. Those stolen moments to read were sheer bliss, and I finished \u003cb>Oh the Glory of It All\u003c/b> the night before we left, struggling to ward off the narcotic effect of one too many mai tais at dinner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sean Wilsey, for all his wealth and privilege, got a bum deal. He fell through the cracks of a nasty public divorce between his father, San Francisco businessman, playboy and social climber Al Wilsey, and his mother, the flaky, gorgeous, slightly unhinged Pat Montandon. Luckily, he emerged from this ridiculous childhood and adolescence with the presence of mind and memory to share his insane memoir with the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To write a memoir at the tender age of 35 means that some crazy shit must have gone down in a short amount of time. Wilsey’s parents’ divorce was prime fodder for the San Francisco society pages at the time, and every aspect of their split, especially the absurdly extravagant financial details, were in the papers every single day. Al Wilsey left Pat Montandon for her best friend, the sexy, conniving, gold-digging Dede Wilsey. Dede left her husband at the time, John Traina, who later went on to marry Danielle Steel. Now, in the present day, Dede Wilsey has all but been nominated for sainthood in this town for her tireless fundraising to get the new De Young museum built. But according to Sean, she was a wicked stepmother on par with any badass Disney bitch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At first, Sean was merely brushed aside by his father and his new family (Dede brought two sons to the marriage, the bright and shiny rich boys Todd and Trevor Traina), and was psychologically terrorized by his mother’s flair for drama and threatened suicides. As time went on, the sense of being shut out and inferior to his father’s new family became more and more pronounced. The heartbreaking earnestness with which he tried to be “cool” like his stepbrothers was constantly met with some kind of cutting remark from Dede, or a reproach from his distant, hypercritical dad. Meanwhile, his mother had turned her attention and affections to her new cause of promoting peace around the world through the voices of children (Children as Teachers of Peace), which meant little more than a chance for her to prance around in front of the Kremlin in a foxy fur hat and get her picture taken.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Sean reaches his adolescent years, the book takes a turn for the better, for although it’s always interesting to read about rich society people and their problems, it’s much more interesting to read about a crazy, dope-smoking punk skater boy getting into major trouble. That’s ultimately what makes this memoir completely captivating. As soon as Sean starts acting out, his dad proceeds to ship him back east to a series of boarding schools, starting with the upscale, preppy St. Mark’s. There is something in Sean that constantly seeks approval, inclusion, and the elusive “cool,” to the point of not being able to focus on anything else. In the book he blames his parents’ self-absorption and neglect, but honestly, there’s a glitch in his personality that just seems drawn to trouble and drama. He’s his mama’s boy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wilsey is able to remember and recount such detailed and embarrassing moments of his adolescence and teen years, it is truly a gift. As you can probably guess, St. Mark’s doesn’t quite work out and he’s sent to a more “alternative” boarding school called Woodhall, which is basically just a haven for a bunch of serial stoners. On Sean’s trips home, he manages to steal cars, break things, and rile up his family to the point of exasperation. He is a bad apple with a safety net, and there’s nothing more irritating or uncontrollable than a rich kid on a rampage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because my Hawaii trip was with my own dad and step mom, the whole experience of reading Wilsey’s memoir brought back some prickly memories of my own rebellious adolescence, trying to deal with my dad’s second wife, a manipulative Dede type if there ever was one. I too was a miserable punk teen with a bad attitude and a trust fund, but luckily my parents were always there for me. I am thankful that, unlike Al Wilsey, my dad wised up and married one final time to a wonderful woman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Suffice it to say that for the train wreck of a kid that is Sean Wilsey, it gets pretty damn dark before the dawn, when he is finally broken down and rebuilt at a kooky New Age reform school-slash-sanatorium in Italy. \u003cb>Oh the Glory of It All\u003c/b> is a rollicking combination of \u003cb>Catcher in the Rye\u003c/b>, \u003cb>Mommie Dearest\u003c/b> and \u003cb>The Basketball Diaries\u003c/b>. Wilsey’s prose gets a little wobbly at times, and his years of therapy have definitely simplified some pretty complex problems, but it’s truly a fun read and a must for any connoisseur of dirt-dredging gossip, SF style.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"/.amazon/1594200513\">\u003cb>Oh the Glory of It All\u003c/b>\u003c/a> by Sean Wilsey \u003cbr>Hard Cover, 496 pages\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>If this book won’t turn you into a vegetarian (or at the very least make you seriously question your beef consumption) then I don’t know what will. Ruth Ozeki’s \u003ca href=\"/.amazon/0140280464\">\u003cb>My Year of Meats\u003c/b>\u003c/a> can best be described as the fictional equivalent of \u003cb>Fast Food Nation\u003c/b>; after reading it, your diet may never be the same again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I myself am a vegetarian so my beliefs were simply buttressed by the novel’s assertions regarding this country’s various meat industries. The insidious practices of which the protagonist, Jane Takagi-Little, slowly discovers. Brash, off-kilter and fiercely independent, Jane is a struggling documentary filmmaker who gets a well-oiled gig as a producer on a show for Japanese television geared towards housewives sponsored by a lobbying and promotional group for the American beef industry, referred to ominously as “Beef Ex”, in order to hype the consumption of beef and other meat products. Each episode of “My American Wife!” features a homemaker from the American heartland who shares her recipe for a, preferably beef, meat-centric dish.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While traveling around the country doing research and meeting different families, Jane begins to learn more and more about the industry for which she is essentially working. She uncovers the wide-spread use of steroids, hormones, and chemicals in the production of meat products and their devastating affect on both producers and consumers. She comes across men who have developed breasts, little girls who have the bodies of twenty-year olds and people who are befallen with cancer. Needless to say, her outlook on the meat industry as well as the country’s carnivorous habits changes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just as the readers’ very well may. Some might think the novel is too heavy-handed and “preachy” but I would disagree. Yes, Ozeki is making some very strong points but she does so in the context of the characters. Some may just want to read a book where the characters go through the drama of life and stray far away from the traditional taboo dinner table topics of politics and religion. But I don’t mind a little politics with my fiction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Filmmakers make political movies all the time, why not novelists as well? If you can go to the theater and watch \u003cb>Syriana\u003c/b> about the oil industry or \u003cb>The Constant Gardener\u003c/b> about the pharmaceutical industry or even see biopics like \u003cb>Good Night, and Good Luck\u003c/b> about Edward R. Murrow and his struggle for freedom of speech, why is it so wrong for an author to write about the meat industry in a fictional context as well?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It should be noted that Ozeki herself comes from a background as a documentary filmmaker and it wouldn’t be a far-fetching assumption to say that she was heavily influenced by this medium. The most striking, literal example of this influence can be found at the back of the book where she supplies readers with a bibliography of all her sources. This addition is both helpful, in that you can do some independent follow-up research if so inclined, and frightening because all those facts about the additives in meat that you wished were a part of the fictional element of the novel are all true.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I realize that I may think this way this because I agree with the points that Ozeki makes, but you can’t dispute the facts that she brings up. She’s not just whining or making wild accusations. The issues she raises are valid and whether you agree with them or not they are backed-up through thorough citation in the bibliography.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All this politics doesn’t take away from the pure fictional enjoyment of \u003cb>My Year of Meats\u003c/b>; it’s an easy read rather than a dry, academic tome. It’s funny and crass and you just might learn something new. And to me, that’s a great balance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"/.amazon/0140280464\">\u003cb>My Year of Meats\u003c/b>\u003c/a> by Ruth Ozeki \u003cbr>Paperback, 400 pages\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>If this book won’t turn you into a vegetarian (or at the very least make you seriously question your beef consumption) then I don’t know what will. Ruth Ozeki’s \u003ca href=\"/.amazon/0140280464\">\u003cb>My Year of Meats\u003c/b>\u003c/a> can best be described as the fictional equivalent of \u003cb>Fast Food Nation\u003c/b>; after reading it, your diet may never be the same again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I myself am a vegetarian so my beliefs were simply buttressed by the novel’s assertions regarding this country’s various meat industries. The insidious practices of which the protagonist, Jane Takagi-Little, slowly discovers. Brash, off-kilter and fiercely independent, Jane is a struggling documentary filmmaker who gets a well-oiled gig as a producer on a show for Japanese television geared towards housewives sponsored by a lobbying and promotional group for the American beef industry, referred to ominously as “Beef Ex”, in order to hype the consumption of beef and other meat products. Each episode of “My American Wife!” features a homemaker from the American heartland who shares her recipe for a, preferably beef, meat-centric dish.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While traveling around the country doing research and meeting different families, Jane begins to learn more and more about the industry for which she is essentially working. She uncovers the wide-spread use of steroids, hormones, and chemicals in the production of meat products and their devastating affect on both producers and consumers. She comes across men who have developed breasts, little girls who have the bodies of twenty-year olds and people who are befallen with cancer. Needless to say, her outlook on the meat industry as well as the country’s carnivorous habits changes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just as the readers’ very well may. Some might think the novel is too heavy-handed and “preachy” but I would disagree. Yes, Ozeki is making some very strong points but she does so in the context of the characters. Some may just want to read a book where the characters go through the drama of life and stray far away from the traditional taboo dinner table topics of politics and religion. But I don’t mind a little politics with my fiction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Filmmakers make political movies all the time, why not novelists as well? If you can go to the theater and watch \u003cb>Syriana\u003c/b> about the oil industry or \u003cb>The Constant Gardener\u003c/b> about the pharmaceutical industry or even see biopics like \u003cb>Good Night, and Good Luck\u003c/b> about Edward R. Murrow and his struggle for freedom of speech, why is it so wrong for an author to write about the meat industry in a fictional context as well?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It should be noted that Ozeki herself comes from a background as a documentary filmmaker and it wouldn’t be a far-fetching assumption to say that she was heavily influenced by this medium. The most striking, literal example of this influence can be found at the back of the book where she supplies readers with a bibliography of all her sources. This addition is both helpful, in that you can do some independent follow-up research if so inclined, and frightening because all those facts about the additives in meat that you wished were a part of the fictional element of the novel are all true.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I realize that I may think this way this because I agree with the points that Ozeki makes, but you can’t dispute the facts that she brings up. She’s not just whining or making wild accusations. The issues she raises are valid and whether you agree with them or not they are backed-up through thorough citation in the bibliography.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All this politics doesn’t take away from the pure fictional enjoyment of \u003cb>My Year of Meats\u003c/b>; it’s an easy read rather than a dry, academic tome. It’s funny and crass and you just might learn something new. And to me, that’s a great balance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"/.amazon/0140280464\">\u003cb>My Year of Meats\u003c/b>\u003c/a> by Ruth Ozeki \u003cbr>Paperback, 400 pages\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>The first thing that caught my attention about the novel \u003ca href=\"/.amazon/1932416218\">\u003cb>The People of Paper\u003c/b>\u003c/a> was its title. I was intrigued. Who were these paper people, I asked myself, and where did they come from? Perhaps, it was a metaphor for fragility and mortality. I went to the library to get the book and find out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I quickly discovered that it was both literal and a metaphor. In the novel there is an actual woman made of paper, called Merced de Papel, and a host of characters whose emotional fragility leads them into a myriad of schemes, adventures and campaigns. Author Salvador Plascencia creates a fantastical world in which the out-of-the-ordinary is taken as common place. This includes, among other things, mechanical turtles that roam the streets, plagues of mythical proportions that ascend upon the earth and a serial bed-wetter who engages in a war against fate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The few people I had met, previous to reading \u003cb>The People of Paper\u003c/b>, who had actually read the novel had a difficult time summarizing its premise, which, I thought at the time, could be either a good sign or a very bad one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I now know where they were coming from. It \u003ci>is\u003c/i> hard to explain, in so many words, what the book is essentially about, in part because it encompasses so much. There are dozens of characters introduced (Little Merced, Margarita aka Rita Hayworth, Federico de la Fe, Froggy, Cameroon) and even more fantastical creatures (mechanical turtles, Baby Nostradamus, a seemingly mentally-retarded baby who holds the history of the universe in his eyes, Saturn, the ringed planet as a character against whom a war is raged). It’s hard to keep track of it all. But, somehow, Plascencia manages.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The novel strongly reminds me of Gabriel Garcia Marquez; it has the same poetic quality and the same taste for the absurd. It is magical. However, at times it is so over the top that the emotional core of the story is sidelined. The characters experience genuine sadness and loss, but instead of facing these matters head on Plascencia cloaks them in absurd imagery and tucks them behind preposterous tasks. I feel like he didn’t quite get at the meat of it like he could have and took the easier road by using metaphors and crazy ideas rather than actually dealing with what his characters were going through. Nonetheless, \u003cb>The People of Paper\u003c/b> is a mastery of magical realism regardless of its lack of analysis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The ingenious layout of the book itself (it’s divided into three parts and shifts point of view between characters every few paragraphs and, in some cases, a few pages) is worth the trip to the bookstore or the library if nothing for a quick appraisal of its organization and artwork. \u003cb>The People of Paper\u003c/b> is a shining example of how McSweeney’s Books takes publishing to the next level. Even a quick perusal shows the care with which the book was assembled. This novel is more detail-oriented than any I have read — it is no assembly line product.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, I wondered how much of the book was written by Plascencia and how much was guided by his publishers. Did the author think of all the quirky little inserts — the little drawings, the graphs, the weird patterns — or did his editor? Did he put them right into the manuscript while writing or were they put in afterwards?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But these additions and the organization begin to feel like a shtick. A hundred pages into the book and it became too much. Instead of following the characters or getting caught up in the plot, I caught myself puzzling over things like the strange hand gestures that don the beginning of each of the book’s parts. At times, \u003cb>The People of Paper\u003c/b> is so “out there” that it distracts from the story, and that is not a good thing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"/.amazon/1932416218\">\u003cb>The People of Paper\u003c/b>\u003c/a> by Salvador Plascencia\u003cbr>Hardback, 200 pages\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The first thing that caught my attention about the novel \u003ca href=\"/.amazon/1932416218\">\u003cb>The People of Paper\u003c/b>\u003c/a> was its title. I was intrigued. Who were these paper people, I asked myself, and where did they come from? Perhaps, it was a metaphor for fragility and mortality. I went to the library to get the book and find out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I quickly discovered that it was both literal and a metaphor. In the novel there is an actual woman made of paper, called Merced de Papel, and a host of characters whose emotional fragility leads them into a myriad of schemes, adventures and campaigns. Author Salvador Plascencia creates a fantastical world in which the out-of-the-ordinary is taken as common place. This includes, among other things, mechanical turtles that roam the streets, plagues of mythical proportions that ascend upon the earth and a serial bed-wetter who engages in a war against fate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The few people I had met, previous to reading \u003cb>The People of Paper\u003c/b>, who had actually read the novel had a difficult time summarizing its premise, which, I thought at the time, could be either a good sign or a very bad one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I now know where they were coming from. It \u003ci>is\u003c/i> hard to explain, in so many words, what the book is essentially about, in part because it encompasses so much. There are dozens of characters introduced (Little Merced, Margarita aka Rita Hayworth, Federico de la Fe, Froggy, Cameroon) and even more fantastical creatures (mechanical turtles, Baby Nostradamus, a seemingly mentally-retarded baby who holds the history of the universe in his eyes, Saturn, the ringed planet as a character against whom a war is raged). It’s hard to keep track of it all. But, somehow, Plascencia manages.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The novel strongly reminds me of Gabriel Garcia Marquez; it has the same poetic quality and the same taste for the absurd. It is magical. However, at times it is so over the top that the emotional core of the story is sidelined. The characters experience genuine sadness and loss, but instead of facing these matters head on Plascencia cloaks them in absurd imagery and tucks them behind preposterous tasks. I feel like he didn’t quite get at the meat of it like he could have and took the easier road by using metaphors and crazy ideas rather than actually dealing with what his characters were going through. Nonetheless, \u003cb>The People of Paper\u003c/b> is a mastery of magical realism regardless of its lack of analysis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The ingenious layout of the book itself (it’s divided into three parts and shifts point of view between characters every few paragraphs and, in some cases, a few pages) is worth the trip to the bookstore or the library if nothing for a quick appraisal of its organization and artwork. \u003cb>The People of Paper\u003c/b> is a shining example of how McSweeney’s Books takes publishing to the next level. Even a quick perusal shows the care with which the book was assembled. This novel is more detail-oriented than any I have read — it is no assembly line product.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, I wondered how much of the book was written by Plascencia and how much was guided by his publishers. Did the author think of all the quirky little inserts — the little drawings, the graphs, the weird patterns — or did his editor? Did he put them right into the manuscript while writing or were they put in afterwards?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But these additions and the organization begin to feel like a shtick. A hundred pages into the book and it became too much. Instead of following the characters or getting caught up in the plot, I caught myself puzzling over things like the strange hand gestures that don the beginning of each of the book’s parts. At times, \u003cb>The People of Paper\u003c/b> is so “out there” that it distracts from the story, and that is not a good thing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"/.amazon/1932416218\">\u003cb>The People of Paper\u003c/b>\u003c/a> by Salvador Plascencia\u003cbr>Hardback, 200 pages\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Last week the documentary \u003ca href=\"http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/middlesexes/index.html\">\u003cb>Middle Sexes: Redefining He and She\u003c/b>\u003c/a> premiered on HBO. I didn’t see it, but it reminded me of a recent novel I had read, \u003ca href=\"/.amazon/0312422156\">\u003cb>Middlesex\u003c/b>\u003c/a> by Jeffrey Eugenides (who also wrote \u003ca href=\"/.amazon/0446670251\">\u003cb>The Virgin Suicides\u003c/b>\u003c/a>) whose main character is a hermaphrodite.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Middlesex\u003c/b> follows the trials and tribulations of the Stephanides family as narrated by Cal, an adult male formerly known as Callie back when he was a girl. And, no, Cal is no transsexual; he is a hermaphrodite. I had no idea what the book was about when I first picked it up. I thought it was some period piece set in England (yawn), imagine my surprise when I read the first line, “I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan in August of 1974.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I was titillated and intrigued. Something, no doubt, the author had intended or, at least, had hoped for. Present day Cal is fairly well adjusted for a person living something of a dual existence. But he’s got issues. Serious issues. He starts from the very beginning and tells us his family’s tale in an effort to make sense of it himself and learn more about the origins of his “condition”.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The epic tale begins in Ottoman-controlled Greece. You are first introduced to Desdemona and Lefty, a brother and sister living in a village on a hillside during a time of political upheaval. Lefty is a passionate and restless young man and Desdemona is ever the responsible, practical older sister trying to keep it together as their parents are now dead. As is her duty, she is trying to marry Lefty off. But he has other ideas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ideas that include making the moves on his sister. I know — totally gross. But Eugenides spins the love story in such a way that you actually sympathize with the siblings. You know it’s wrong and yet you still find yourself secretly rooting for Lefty as he declares his feelings and pleading with Desdemona to give in to her urges. It’s twisted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Years of such inbreeding are the cause for Cal’s physical state. Desdemona and Lefty escape Turkey and head for the United States where they start a new life as husband and wife rather than brother and sister. They head to Detroit where their cousin lives and begin their pursuit of the American Dream. Lefty goes to work for Ford, learns English, gets involved in bootlegging, starts a speakeasy in the basement, and eventually opens up a diner. Meanwhile, Desdemona bears and raises two children, keeps the house running through the Depression and goes to work for the black Muslims (think Louis Farrakhan).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The story then follows the lives of their children where more inbreeding ensues. Desdemona and Lefty’s son, Milton, marries his cousin Tessie. Good times. Milton and Tessie, (at this point) Callie’s parents, move out to the suburbs with their two young children in tow and thrive in an upper middle class existence. Callie is a beautiful young girl who blossoms into a hunkering, awkward adolescent and her brother is a geek who turns into a hippy in college much to his parents’ dismay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is during this “ugly stage” in Callie’s life (she’s tall, her voice is changing and she doesn’t have any of the womanly attributes girls her age have already been developing) that she “discovers” that she in fact also has a penis, which she naively and euphemistically refers to as a “crocus”. It is also during this time that others discover her extra package. A discovery that eventually leads her/him on a cross-country road trip culminating in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unfortunately, so much of the novel focuses on Cal’s grandparents that you are left wanting for more of his/her own story. There are references made earlier on in the novel that are never followed through with and you are still curious about Cal. \u003cbr>What was college \u003ci>really\u003c/i> like for him? What was the rest of high school like? Callie had attended an all-girls school. Where did Cal have to go?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cal refers to his first relationship but never delves into it. I realize maybe Eugenides wanted to stray away from sexual accounts that came off as sensationalist, and didn’t want to turn Cal from a regular ol’ character into “the other”. But not dealing with these issues at all was not the way to go.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It made my imagination wander. I started doing research on hermaphrodites. I wanted to know how it all worked. How it must have been for Cal. I needed to fill in the blank spaces. Did you know that some hermaphrodites can get pregnant? That’s amazing. Technically, it’s like a man being able to have a baby. But different.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Cal can’t get pregnant. I least I don’t think so. Anyways, \u003cb>Middlesex\u003c/b> has too many gaps to be a great book. I wasn’t quite satisfied when I finished reading the last page. The novel ended up being more about Cal’s family than about him/her but, then again, that may have been the point. And while the Stephanides are engaging and amazing, I wanted more about Cal. After all, the book is called “Middlesex” rather than “My Big Fat Incestuous Greek Family”.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"/.amazon/0312422156\">\u003cb>Middlesex\u003c/b>\u003c/a> by Jeffrey Eugenides \u003cbr>Paperback, 544 pages\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Last week the documentary \u003ca href=\"http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/middlesexes/index.html\">\u003cb>Middle Sexes: Redefining He and She\u003c/b>\u003c/a> premiered on HBO. I didn’t see it, but it reminded me of a recent novel I had read, \u003ca href=\"/.amazon/0312422156\">\u003cb>Middlesex\u003c/b>\u003c/a> by Jeffrey Eugenides (who also wrote \u003ca href=\"/.amazon/0446670251\">\u003cb>The Virgin Suicides\u003c/b>\u003c/a>) whose main character is a hermaphrodite.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Middlesex\u003c/b> follows the trials and tribulations of the Stephanides family as narrated by Cal, an adult male formerly known as Callie back when he was a girl. And, no, Cal is no transsexual; he is a hermaphrodite. I had no idea what the book was about when I first picked it up. I thought it was some period piece set in England (yawn), imagine my surprise when I read the first line, “I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan in August of 1974.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I was titillated and intrigued. Something, no doubt, the author had intended or, at least, had hoped for. Present day Cal is fairly well adjusted for a person living something of a dual existence. But he’s got issues. Serious issues. He starts from the very beginning and tells us his family’s tale in an effort to make sense of it himself and learn more about the origins of his “condition”.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The epic tale begins in Ottoman-controlled Greece. You are first introduced to Desdemona and Lefty, a brother and sister living in a village on a hillside during a time of political upheaval. Lefty is a passionate and restless young man and Desdemona is ever the responsible, practical older sister trying to keep it together as their parents are now dead. As is her duty, she is trying to marry Lefty off. But he has other ideas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ideas that include making the moves on his sister. I know — totally gross. But Eugenides spins the love story in such a way that you actually sympathize with the siblings. You know it’s wrong and yet you still find yourself secretly rooting for Lefty as he declares his feelings and pleading with Desdemona to give in to her urges. It’s twisted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Years of such inbreeding are the cause for Cal’s physical state. Desdemona and Lefty escape Turkey and head for the United States where they start a new life as husband and wife rather than brother and sister. They head to Detroit where their cousin lives and begin their pursuit of the American Dream. Lefty goes to work for Ford, learns English, gets involved in bootlegging, starts a speakeasy in the basement, and eventually opens up a diner. Meanwhile, Desdemona bears and raises two children, keeps the house running through the Depression and goes to work for the black Muslims (think Louis Farrakhan).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The story then follows the lives of their children where more inbreeding ensues. Desdemona and Lefty’s son, Milton, marries his cousin Tessie. Good times. Milton and Tessie, (at this point) Callie’s parents, move out to the suburbs with their two young children in tow and thrive in an upper middle class existence. Callie is a beautiful young girl who blossoms into a hunkering, awkward adolescent and her brother is a geek who turns into a hippy in college much to his parents’ dismay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is during this “ugly stage” in Callie’s life (she’s tall, her voice is changing and she doesn’t have any of the womanly attributes girls her age have already been developing) that she “discovers” that she in fact also has a penis, which she naively and euphemistically refers to as a “crocus”. It is also during this time that others discover her extra package. A discovery that eventually leads her/him on a cross-country road trip culminating in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unfortunately, so much of the novel focuses on Cal’s grandparents that you are left wanting for more of his/her own story. There are references made earlier on in the novel that are never followed through with and you are still curious about Cal. \u003cbr>What was college \u003ci>really\u003c/i> like for him? What was the rest of high school like? Callie had attended an all-girls school. Where did Cal have to go?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cal refers to his first relationship but never delves into it. I realize maybe Eugenides wanted to stray away from sexual accounts that came off as sensationalist, and didn’t want to turn Cal from a regular ol’ character into “the other”. But not dealing with these issues at all was not the way to go.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It made my imagination wander. I started doing research on hermaphrodites. I wanted to know how it all worked. How it must have been for Cal. I needed to fill in the blank spaces. Did you know that some hermaphrodites can get pregnant? That’s amazing. Technically, it’s like a man being able to have a baby. But different.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Cal can’t get pregnant. I least I don’t think so. Anyways, \u003cb>Middlesex\u003c/b> has too many gaps to be a great book. I wasn’t quite satisfied when I finished reading the last page. The novel ended up being more about Cal’s family than about him/her but, then again, that may have been the point. And while the Stephanides are engaging and amazing, I wanted more about Cal. After all, the book is called “Middlesex” rather than “My Big Fat Incestuous Greek Family”.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"/.amazon/0312422156\">\u003cb>Middlesex\u003c/b>\u003c/a> by Jeffrey Eugenides \u003cbr>Paperback, 544 pages\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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}
},
"city-arts": {
"id": "city-arts",
"title": "City Arts & Lectures",
"info": "A one-hour radio program to hear celebrated writers, artists and thinkers address contemporary ideas and values, often discussing the creative process. Please note: tapes or transcripts are not available",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/05/cityartsandlecture-300x300.jpg",
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"airtime": "SUN 1pm-2pm, TUE 10pm, WED 1am",
"meta": {
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"source": "City Arts & Lectures"
},
"link": "https://www.cityarts.net",
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"rss": "https://www.cityarts.net/feed/"
}
},
"closealltabs": {
"id": "closealltabs",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/closealltabs",
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"order": 1
},
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"id": "code-switch-life-kit",
"title": "Code Switch / Life Kit",
"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
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"meta": {
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
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"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Commonwealth-Club-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"meta": {
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"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
"link": "/radio/program/commonwealth-club",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jb21tb253ZWFsdGhjbHViLm9yZy9hdWRpby9wb2RjYXN0L3dlZWtseS54bWw",
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"id": "forum",
"title": "Forum",
"tagline": "The conversation starts here",
"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9am-11am, 10pm-11pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Forum with Mina Kim and Alexis Madrigal",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 9
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM5NTU3MzgxNjMz",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "http://freakonomics.com/",
"airtime": "SUN 1am-2am, SAT 3pm-4pm",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WNYC"
},
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"subscribe": {
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/WNYC-Podcasts/Freakonomics-Radio-p272293/",
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},
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"id": "fresh-air",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=214089682&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"info": "A live production of NPR and WBUR Boston, in collaboration with stations across the country, Here & Now reflects the fluid world of news as it's happening in the middle of the day, with timely, in-depth news, interviews and conversation. Hosted by Robin Young, Jeremy Hobson and Tonya Mosley.",
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},
"hidden-brain": {
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"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "NPR"
},
"link": "/radio/program/hidden-brain",
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},
"how-i-built-this": {
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"title": "How I Built This with Guy Raz",
"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/how-i-built-this",
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"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/3zxy",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-built-this-with-guy-raz/id1150510297?mt=2",
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"hyphenacion": {
"id": "hyphenacion",
"title": "Hyphenación",
"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Hyphenacion_FinalAssets_PodcastTile.png",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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"order": 15
},
"link": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/2p3Fifq96nw9BPcmFdIq0o?si=39209f7b25774f38",
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},
"jerrybrown": {
"id": "jerrybrown",
"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
"meta": {
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"order": 18
},
"link": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
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}
},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
"meta": {
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},
"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
}
},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
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"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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},
"masters-of-scale": {
"id": "masters-of-scale",
"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
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"source": "WaitWhat"
},
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"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
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}
},
"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
"title": "Morning Edition",
"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3am-9am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Morning-Edition-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/",
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"link": "/radio/program/morning-edition"
},
"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/On-Our-Watch-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "On Our Watch from NPR and KQED",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 11
},
"link": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1567098962",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5ucHIub3JnLzUxMDM2MC9wb2RjYXN0LnhtbD9zYz1nb29nbGVwb2RjYXN0cw",
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}
},
"on-the-media": {
"id": "on-the-media",
"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm-3pm, MON 12am-1am",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/onTheMedia.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.wnycstudios.org/shows/otm",
"meta": {
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"source": "wnyc"
},
"link": "/radio/program/on-the-media",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/on-the-media/id73330715?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/On-the-Media-p69/",
"rss": "http://feeds.wnyc.org/onthemedia"
}
},
"pbs-newshour": {
"id": "pbs-newshour",
"title": "PBS NewsHour",
"info": "Analysis, background reports and updates from the PBS NewsHour putting today's news in context.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3pm-4pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/PBS-News-Hour-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.pbs.org/newshour/",
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"source": "pbs"
},
"link": "/radio/program/pbs-newshour",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/pbs-newshour-full-show/id394432287?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/PBS-NewsHour---Full-Show-p425698/",
"rss": "https://www.pbs.org/newshour/feeds/rss/podcasts/show"
}
},
"perspectives": {
"id": "perspectives",
"title": "Perspectives",
"tagline": "KQED's series of daily listener commentaries since 1991",
"info": "KQED's series of daily listener commentaries since 1991.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Perspectives_Tile_Final.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Perspectives",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/perspectives/",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 14
},
"link": "/perspectives",
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