Archive for November, 2009

book review: Thank You For Smoking, by Christopher Buckley

November 24, 2009 at 13:43 · Filed under Funny, Reading

a rollicking ride through Washington lobbying, spin-meisters, kidnapping, corporate intrigue, despite a little floundering towards the end

I read this in about 24 hours (which is fast for me). Nick Naylor is the chief spokesman for the tobacco lobby. His boss wants him out, but after an impressive showing on Oprah, he becomes the darling of the lobby’s chairman of the board. He gets kidnapped and tortured by antismoking advocates. Corporate intrigue takes place.

This was a very fun, witty ride. Naylor is sympathetic, and he has a genuine friendship with her fellow Merchants of Death, the chief spokesman for firearms and the spokeswoman for alcohol. The satire of Hollywood, of the lobbying industry, of Washington spin, is all fun. A man next to me at baggage claim said, as I laughed out loud, That must be a great book! You haven’t put it down! He was right.

In the last quarter of the book, it starts to get even a little crazy for my generous suspension of disbelief, but I still couldn’t stop reading, and the ending is satisfying (even with a several-years-later epilogue;* it’s like watching 9-to-5 with Lily Tomlin all over again).

Note on content: Some language, some sexual content, some violence. Less language or violence (and a little more sex) than Gun, with Occasional Music (but not as good as that one either). Less of everything than the White Tiger.

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fictional crime worse than real crime?

November 21, 2009 at 13:43 · Filed under Reading, portuguese ·Tagged ,

The crime of fiction is worse than the crime of the flesh. After all, the crime of the flesh can be accidental, the fruit of a momentary passion, whereas no one has ever heard of an unpremeditated crime of fiction.

[from Luis Fernando Veríssimo, O Clube dos Anjos (The Club of Angels), p14; my own bad translation]

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the book-lover’s book that describes itself

November 18, 2009 at 19:45 · Filed under Reading ·Tagged ,

I hadn’t necessarily expected to read every word of the Lowell biography, but … it’s one of those books you thrust on your partner with an incredulous cry of “This is me!” [Nick Hornby, The Polysyllabic Spree, p16-17]

That is exactly how I feel about many passages in this journal of Hornby’s own reading, and I’ve only read the first ten pages!  (I’ve read several Hornby books and haven’t been disappointed: About a Boy, How to Be Good, A Long Way Down. Good was the least good, but even that had value.)

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a postmodern detective nods to a most decidedly non postmodern detective

November 16, 2009 at 19:41 · Filed under Mystery, Reading ·Tagged , ,

On my last trip to Rio I started E. L. Doctorow’s City of God. After all, that’s the name of one of the most well known slums in Rio (and a book and movie that take place therein). Doctorow is talking about a different city though: New York. After reading ten of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot novels over the last year, this narrative struck me:

While I was at it, I bought half a dozen used paperback detective novels. To learn the trade … I just read the…things when I’m dpressed. The paperback detective he speaks to me. His rod and his gaff they comfort me. [p8]

Those last two sentence are classic Hercule Poirot sentence construction.  (Kind of like Yoda’s but also … different.)

 

On my last trip to Rio I started E. L. Doctorow’s City of God. After all, that’s the name of one of the most well known slums in Rio. (Doctorow is talking about a different city though.) After reading ten of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot novels over the last year, this narrative struck me:

While I was at it, I bought half a dozen used paperback detective novels. To learn the trade … I just read the…things when I’m dpressed. The paperback detective he speaks to me. His rod and his gaff they comfort me. [p8]

Those last two sentence are classic Hercule Poirot sentence construction. (Kind of like Yoda’s but also … different.)

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dr laura’s animosity is another man’s praise

November 14, 2009 at 19:20 · Filed under Eating, Reading ·Tagged , , ,

This is almost enough – in and of itself – to make me want to read this book:

The studies in this book … [have] been featured multiple times on 20/20, the BBC, and other network TV shows, and they’ve been bantered about by Rush Limbaugh and berated by Dr. Laura.

[from Brian Wansink's Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think]

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my and the pros’ reviews of Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell (read by the author)

November 12, 2009 at 16:34 · Filed under Reading ·Tagged , ,

My thoughts:  some very interesting tidbits, but the least compelling of Gladwell’s oeuvre

I thoroughly enjoyed Gladwell’s previous two books (The Tipping Point and Blink), and I found neither convincing in its central thesis. Gladwell has a flare for making psychology and social psychology research easily digestible and interweaving it with case studies to provide a satisfying mix that is inherently interesting, high entertainment value, and insightful into how we behave. That said, in neither of the previous books did I find that this tapestry of experiments and case studies really convinced me of the central thesis.

The thesis of this newer book is that people who are exceptionally successful – outliers – are a product of their environments much more than they are individually exceptional. First, Gladwell keeps knocking down a straw man that no one really believes anyway. I think we all know that environment matters a lot, and Gladwell never really accounts for the individual elements. Yes, the Beattles got 10,000 hours to practice in Hamburg, but were there other bands that played in Hamburg every year but didn’t go big? Yes, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were born at a special time and had a special set of privileges, but what about Bill Gates’s friends in his same high school computer club? What computer empire did they create? In other words, the individual element which Gladwell seems so excited to downplay still has to play a major role; or at least, Gladwell hasn’t convinced me that it doesn’t.

The most interesting part of the book deals with air plane crashes because it goes back to Gladwell’s successful formula: a mix of social science research (in this case, on cross-cultural hierarchy something something) and case studies – of major plane crashes.

Gladwell still tells a good story, but this one is much less convincing than his previous work.  I listened to the unabridged audiobook, and Gladwell narrates well.  At the end of the audiobook, there is an interview with Gladwell which really belongs at the beginning; it gives an intro to the book that is totally superfluous after having read it.

Note on content: There might be a swear word or two in here; and in the epilogue there is one description of slave treatment which is not pretty (but is historical), but otherwise this is innocuous sailing.

The pros’ clips are below the fold…

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Borges and the Eternal Orangutans: not to be missed!

November 12, 2009 at 16:22 · Filed under Mystery, Reading

A couple of months ago I posted a review of this fabulous Brazilian novel, Borges and the Eternal Orangutans.   I hadn’t read it in English and so couldn’t vouch for the translation, but today I stumbled on a collection of reviews of the English translation and they are glowing!

I’ll pass on two quotes:

“Luis Fernando Verissimo’s Borges and the Eternal Orangutans is a perfect novel. I’ll say it again: This book is a perfect novel. (…) The reader will mourn because the novel is so short, and it’s only the second by Verissimo to be translated into English” – Thomas McGonigle, The Los Angeles Times

“In the end, Verissimo’s pleasure in his own absurd intertextual universe is infectious: the two-way-mirror trickery of his conclusion is as satisfying as it is utterly predictable. As Borges wrote of Poe: “we might think that his plots are so weak that they are almost transparent”. Luis Fernando Verissimo’s is decidedly threadbare; but he knows, with his heroes, that a predictable detective story is not necessarily an imperfect one.” – Brian Dillon, Times Literary Supplement

More at The Complete Review

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