Divergent (Divergent #1)

#764
Title: Divergent (Divergent #1)
Author: Veronica Roth
Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books
Year: 2011
487 pages

Spoilers--highlight to see review. A fun enough young adult novel, though with fluffier world-building than I prefer. Some reviewers have been irritated by the lack of explanation about how the factions came to be; given Tris's often-repeated realization that the imagery of the fear simulations is not actual but symbolic, I will understand this novel in the same terms. While dystopian, the novel's structural base is symbolism and analogy rather than realism. To look at it another way, its underpinning is fantasy with dystopian tattoos, an assertion that this is how things are rather than a scientific explanation of, say, why Harry Potter house elf magic is different from wizard magic.

Tris's ultimate invulnerability is also fantasy-like. Yes, there's a lot of detail about her fear and pain, but she does manage to subvert a number of people and powerful institutions. I may be willing to suspend my disbelief by assuming this has something to do with being divergent, but not if I don't experience it more forcefully in the second book.

There's some internal consistency that knocks this from a 4 to a 3 star book. For example, it's apparently very dangerous for Tris to score so well on the simulations, until it's not. Tris's brother, who's not Dauntless, seems to manage to look convincing with a gun. The Erudite are clever but perhaps not smart. (While we're on the subject, must the intellectuals be the villians? I know we're all supposed to want to be Gryffindors/Dauntless, but I imagine that many readers are Ravenclaw/Erudite.)

Most problematic is what back in my semiotics days we'd have called the suturing of the text with recuperative heterosexuality. The prodigious amount of snogging, tingling, etc. at the end of the book intends to be part of the satisfying resolution of this component of the story arc, but instead diverts the tension, and the triumph, at least for this non-adolescent reader. The message is muddled, not by Tris and Four's nascent romance, but by how it suddenly makes the climactic action slow and diverts the reader (and characters) from the story they should be living. I can't speak for others, but even a really hot divergent boy is not going to take my attention off both my parents being killed, my community being destroyed, a bullet hole in my shoulder, and a known and suspected enemy in the same train car as I'm smooching it up. Since Tris can leap buildings with a single bound (or at least leap from them), I suppose this Mary Sue conclusion is heroic, but from a feminist standpoint as well as that of plot construction, it's pretty weak.

Master and Commander (Aubrey/Maturin #1)

#763
Title: Master and Commander (Aubrey/Maturin #1)
Author: Patrick O'Brian
Publisher: William Collins Sons & Co.
Year: 1969
412 pages
Audiobook.

Well-written, engrossing, and dryly amusing. While I tired of the vast amounts of nautical nomenclature, O'Brian did a good job of filling the reader in. This was generally accomplished by having Captain Jack Aubrey and others explain what was happening to physician Stephen Maturin. Maturin is the foil with whom the reader identifies, and whose musings humanize the larger-than-life Aubrey. Maturin is a philosopher who delights in and reflects on the natural world; Aubrey is something of a lout--loud, heavy, insensitive. Their mutual love of music provides the grounds for their nacent friendship and Aubrey's impulsive invfitation that Maturin become the Sophie's surgeon. The characters complement each other and, in their musings and their interactions with James Dillon, are revealed in their strengths and failings. The narrative under the jargon is clever, skillful, and often quite funny. I'm not sure I'm ready to commit to the whole series, but I'm glad to know it's waiting for me.

Rat Island: Predators in Paradise and the World's Greatest Wildlife Rescue

#762
Title: Rat Island: Predators in Paradise and the World's Greatest Wildlife Rescue
Author: William Stolzenburg
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Year: 2011
288 pages

It's hard to characterize a book about killing some animals in order to save others "enjoyable," but insofar as that's possible, this was a very enjoyable account of rat (pig, goat, fox, cat) eradication on islands whose native birds are threatened by introduced predators. Stolzenburg raises this moral dilemma but does not explore it as deeply as I'd have liked. I'm not opposed to ecosystem restoration, but would like to see both sides explored by anyone involved. Given that brodifacoum is not a humane poison, I would have liked to learn whether effective alternatives are under development.

Snakes are not featured as introduced predator-pests in this account, so see Sacks's The Island of the Colorblind to learn about brown tree snakes' predation of avifauna on Guam. A minor nitpick: The eponymous Rat Island is in the Aleutians, not at all the biome of the palm trees depicted on the fanciful cover illustration.

On the Line

#761
Title: On the Line
Author: Eric Ripert & Christine Muhlke
Publisher: Artisan
Year: 2008
Country: Andorra
240 pages

Andorra. Though what's missing is any mention of or reference to Andorra, where Ripert spent much of his childhood until age 15. While he credits Andorra as an influence, I don't know enough about Andorran cuisine to know how this childhood exposure affected his cooking.

This book is a blend of day in the life of/everything you always wanted to know about Le Bernardin, Ripert's highly-rated restaurant. There is also a reasonable amount of food porn photos (i.e., big, glossy photos of fish and fish-turned-to-food) plus food porn recipes ("Wow! Do people actually do that? You'd need to be so... dedicated"). I'm not a big seafood aficionado, and while I enjoy sushi and sashimi, let's just say that I am the intestinal canary in the coal mine when it comes to raw fish. I would enjoy and be willing to try many of these dishes as an amuse-bouche, but not as a main dish.

Burning Lights: A Unique Double Portrait of Russia

#760
Title: Burning Lights: A Unique Double Portrait of Russia
Author: Bella Chagall
Illustrator: Marc Chagall
Publisher: Schocken
Year: 1988
Country: Belarus
272 pages

Belarus. Bella Chagall was Marc Chagall's wife. This is a volume of her little tales of Jewish home and religious life, as seen by a young girl in a prosperous family. It's sweet, sometimes ethereal and sometimes almost hallucinatory. It would be a good introduction to European Jewish life in the late 19th and early 20th century. Many line drawings by Marc.

Botswana Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs & Etiquette

#759
Title: Botswana Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs & Etiquette
Author: Michael Main
Publisher: Kuperard
Year: 2010
168 pages

This provides a basic introduction for the traveler to Botswana. At first I had high hopes, as the author writes more frankly than some in this series. However, I quickly became tired of the note of condescension toward Batswana that permeates the cultural sections.

There was too little discussion of how male and female travelers should interact with Batswana (a complaint I have about the whole Culture Smart! series), nothing about LGBTQ travelers (homosexual acts are illegal), and too little on HIV considering that Botswana has the second-highest HIV/AIDS rate in the world. A few Setswana phrases are offered, but without stress or pronunciation notes.

From a production standpoint, the photos are in too dark a register and with too little distinction between tones, and there are multiple typos.

Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History

#758
Title: Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History
Author: George Crile III
Publisher: Grove
Year: 2003
560 pages

A fascinating overview of US involvement in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, revealing a history quite different from what one was told at the time. It reinforces the impressions that


1. Governments are full of scheming narcissists and manipulable incompetents.
2. Narcissists do what they want, for their own gain and egos.
3. If you get in the way of a narcissist or its government, you will be destroyed.
4. You may be destroyed for trivial reasons.
5. The law is for hoi polloi only.
6. Governments lie and act angry and shocked when held accountable for their ilegal acts.
7. All explanations of behavior are rationalizations for aggressive primate pissing and grabbing contests.

Cf. the opening scenes of 2001: A Space Odyssey. This book will inform you, but it won't make you want to spend more time with humans.

Make Room! Make Room!

#757
Title: Make Room! Make Room!
Author: Harry Harrison
Publisher: Berkley
Year: 1978
153 pages

Well, okay enough for what it was, but A) these lunkheads don't collect rainwater during a water shortage? and B) nothing about Soylent Green being people? Really? That's all movie script addenda? Boooo. Leaving aside the movie, it's not very good as a novel (though fine as a polemic, and there's good world-building). As a plot, it's pretty basic, with no real twists (or at least, none that are really worked). The ending is pretty anticlimactic. Harrison doesn't seem to have wrested much from his story elements.

Limassol

#756
Title: Limassol
Author: Yishai Sarid
Translator: Barbara Harshaw
Publisher: Europa
Year: 2010
160 pages

I liked reading this but found much of the action implausible. For example, I don't believe at all that the protagonist would be released rather than charged and jailed after helping a mass terrorist escape. There's more, but since that's the climax, I'll stick with it as the most unlikely part.

Held at a Distance: My Rediscovery of Ethiopia

#755
Title: Held at a Distance: My Rediscovery of Ethiopia
Author: Rebecca G. Haile
Publisher: Academy Chicago Publishers
Year: 2007
200 pages

A better book than it's getting credit for being. Part history, part family history, part travelogue, this is an elegant piece of work that speaks not only to what might cause a family to need to flee their homeland, but what it's like to come back. Haile balances the legacy of her family with the strange experience of being an expatriate tourist in her own land.

It was also fun to see Amharic words that are from the same Semitic roots as Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic.

My Life in France

#754
Title: My Life in France
Author: Julia Child & Alex Prud'Homme
Publisher: Knopf
Year: 2006
336 pages
Audiobook.

A lovely autobiography (mediated by Alex Prud'homme). The narrative is a mix of written and oral styles, with a tone distinctly Julia's that makes me miss watching Julia on PBS, a staple of my younger life. At the time, I just thought she was fascinating, funny, and frank. She wasn't afraid to say she'd made an error, which wasn't true of many authorities at that time. I had no perspective on how revolutionary Mastering the Art of French Cooking was; I just knew that the recipes made sense, even if I had no plans to prepare sweetbreads, say, or bread. Her cookbooks are still among the clearest and most explanatory I use.

The audiobook reader does a good enough job, with occasional mispronunciations, but she has a good reading voice. However, there is no PDF of the photos, so I'll still need to look at the book.

Henry's Demons: Living with Schizophrenia, a Father and Son's Story

#753
Title: Henry's Demons: Living with Schizophrenia, a Father and Son's Story
Authors: Patrick Cockburn & Henry Cockburn
Publisher: Scribner
Year: 2011
255 pages

A reasonable example of its genre, and with the added interest of Henry's and (uncredited in the authorship) his mother's writing in addition to father Patrick's. A useful addition to family memoirs about schizophrenia because of the minor but repeated emphasis on the deleterious effects of marijuana on people vulnerable to psychosis.

In its best moments, it's absorbing and sad; at worst it's sometimes confused about where to direct its anger. I certainly empathize with the author's frustration about the insecurity of secure facilities, though for one I think his vision of the security of pre-community mental health facilities is a romantic one (his son might well have spent his days tied to a bed prior to the advent of medication). Having worked on a unit where a patient kicked his way out through a barred metal door and absconded over a tall fence, I also know that someone bent on escaping will manage to do so unless their right to any freedom is abrogated. In terms of rights, it interests me that Henry seems not to have been tried on older medications (they have higher side effect profiles, but work well for some people), nor, until they began powdering his cozapine, did he appear to really have a successful trial (and given the frequency with which he smokes marijuana, I'm not convinced he's had a totally clean trial yet). I also wonder, given the sometimes manic flavor of his episodes, if he was ever tried on lithium or Depakote, but hey, I'm not a medical doctor and this is idle speculation on my part.

Read with The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey through Madness for another perspective on British mental health care, and with Hunt's Mental Hospital and Rosalynn Carter's Within Our Reach: Ending the Mental Health Crisis for an early perspective on the miracle of antipsychotic medication, and a contemporary perspective on the failure of adequate community-based mental health care. 

Eels: An Exploration, from New Zealand to the Sargasso, of the World's Most Mysterious Fish

#752
Title: Eels: An Exploration, from New Zealand to the Sargasso, of the World's Most Mysterious Fish
Author: James Prosek
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Year: 2010
303 pages

An enjoyable, easy to read book about eels. While there is enough scientific and technical information to be engaging, the heart of the story is cultural, with an emphasis on New Zealand, Pohnpei, and Japan. I would think of this genre as "personal nature writing," with Prosek as a character as well as narrator of the story, woven together by both the focus on eels and Prosek's shift of focus from the objective to the spiritual. I found it engrossing as well as sometimes gross. I admire Prosek's ability to subtlely shift between genres as he reports on his learning and experiences. I'll never eat unagi again without thinking about this book. 

Revolution in Guinea: Selected Texts

#751
Title: Revolution in Guinea: Selected Texts
Author: Amílcar Cabral
Translator/editor: Richard Handyside
Publisher: Monthly Review Press
Year: 1969
Country: Guinea-Bissau
174 pages

Guinea-Bissau. A selection of political essays and related materials by Amílcar Cabral, architect of the revolution in former Portuguese Guinea. Though dense and somewhat repetitious, it underscores Cabral's contentions about colonialism, neocolonialism, the role of the petty bourgeoisie, the role of the peasantry/working class, and the question of whether a people exists in history if they do not meet Marxist criteria. His arguments are easy to follow, he is a smooth operator, and he manages to get his digs in at Portuguese colonialism as he makes other points to the UN and Tricontinental Conference.

This volume was published in 1969, before the establishment of Guinea-Bissau and four years before Cabral was assassinated. Given the year, he has much to say about colonial conflicts in Vietnam and Cuba as well.

I most appreciated Cabral's emphasis on the importance of understanding the characteristics and history of the culture seeking to liberate itself; he asserts frequently that one size of revolution will not fit all, so different strategies will be needed. Unusually for a set of political essays, there is more than one in which he describes the social and political structure of the local indigenous peoples, using these descriptions as the basis for revolutionary strategies that differ from those of straightforward Marxism.

Not an easy read, but a useful one, providing an intelligent insider perspective that also illuminates struggles in Mozambique, Cape Verde, Angola, and Vietnam. Worth the effort.

Transition: The Story of How I Became a Man

#750

Title: Transition: The Story of How I Became a Man
Authors: Chaz Bono with Billie Fitzpatrick
Publisher: Dutton
Year: 2011
255 pages

Chaz Bono reitterates his life and coming out process, here from an acknowledged transgender perspective. The writing is often repetitive, but read simply as a memoir it's a useful addition to the literature. It's also an interesting illustration of how we interpret ourselves and our stories post hoc; Bono and I share a number of characteristics and experiences, but understand them differently in relation to our identities. What matters, of course, is not that one of us must be wrong, but that we are both right about ourselves, and at peace.

Last Night I Dreamed of Peace

#749
Title: Last Night I Dreamed of Peace
Author: Dang Thuy Tram
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Year: 2007/2008
227 pages
Audiobook.

The diary of a young North Vietnamese woman, working as a doctor for the Viet Cong. By turns poignant and polemical, it manages to be more engaging than not, and to provide a different perspective than we usually get. The introduction by Frances Fitzgerald (and read by her in the audiobook) summarizes the action, as well as the path by which the book came to be published and its reception in Vietnam. The reader pronounces the tones in Vietnamese words, which is welcome.

Infidel: My Life

#748
Title: Infidel: My Life
Author: Ayaan Hirsi Ali 
Publisher: Pocket Books
Year: 2007/2008
375 pages

Audiobook + book.

A well-told, useful memoir that grounds Ali's beliefs about Islam in her history as a woman from Somalia. The introduction by Christopher Hitchens has a weird, brittle tone that's absent in Ali's writing.

Taiwan Folktales: Proverbs, Folk Sayings, and Folktales from Taiwan

#747
Title: Taiwan Folktales: Proverbs, Folk Sayings, and Folktales from Taiwan
Author: Fred Lobb
Publisher: BooksfromTaiwan.com
Year: 2011
Country: Taiwan (Republic of China, disputed)
123 pages

Ebook.

Taiwan. An enjoyable collection of Taiwanese folk tales, well-rendered and with useful explanatory notes that include origins, variants, and source materials.

The Man Who Loved Attending Funerals and Other Stories

#746
Title: The Man Who Loved Attending Funerals and Other Stories
Author: Frank Collymore
Publisher: Heinemann
Year: 1993
Country: Barbados
178 pages

Barbados. Marl-hole = clay-digging hole. Dunk = jujube. BG = British Guiana. B'adian = Barbadian. Epergne = a form of multi-branched centerpiece, but I should know that.
 
Collymore's short story style isn't to my taste. The tone of most of the stories could be characterized as "suspense lite," sometimes shading into what would be horror if it weren't predictable. The pleasure in these stories isn't in theie plots, which abound with dead spouses, murders, angst, and light supernatural touches, but in the details of class and race relations in Barbados in the mid-20th century.

The Gray Wolf Throne (Seven Kingdoms, #3)

#745
Title: The Gray Wolf Throne (Seven Kingdoms, #3)
Author: Cinda Williams Chima
Publisher: Hyperion
Year: 2011
528 pages

As some reviewers have noted, there's not a lot of action here as regards with whom Raisa will romantically partner, but the point of this penultimate volume is not to resolve that tension but to increase it. From a mechanistic plot perspective, Chima has to get Raisa from the Borderlands to Fellsmarch, move her friends and enemies into place for the finale, and provide both some resolutions and some complications to keep the reader engaged and guessing.

It's interesting to compare this series to George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series. The struggle for the throne, the political intrigues and machinations, the wolves, the female warriors, and the land with dragons across the sea, though muted. Chima foregrounds the shifts in narrative perspective, the romantic dilemmas, the magic, and identification with characters. While some of these are staples of the genre, Martin and Chima's choices may provide examples of how those components are pitched to the particular audiences of their subgenres. 

2011 stats and list

Number of books: 174
Number of pages: 54,585
Mean pages/book: 313.71
Audiobooks: 72
Books of the World challenge: 17
(Eritrea, Swaziland, Liechtenstein, Gambia, Cameroon, Sudan, Malawi, Namibia, Guam, Cyprus, Ivory Coast, Marshall Islands, Papua New Guinea, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Lesotho, St. Croix)
Books to date (2006-2011): 804
Pages to date (2006-2011): 227,625

January (3583 pages)
1. The 14th Dalai Lama: A Manga Biography: Tetsu Saiwai (224)
2. An Abundance of Katherines: John Green (227)
3. Extreme Hotels: Birgit Krols (192)
4. Falling Off the Map: Some Lonely Places of the World: Pico Ayer (200)
5. The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment: A.J. Jacobs (256)
6. The Oracle Bones: A Journey Through Time in China: Peter Hessler (528)
7. The Fire Cat: Esther Averill (64)
8. The Mind's Eye: Oliver Sacks (288)
9. The Red Pyramid (Kane Chronicles #1): Rick Riordan (516)
10. Homer and Langley: E. L. Doctorow (224)
11. Heart of Fire: Senait Mehari [Eritrea] (268)
12. Weeding the Flowerbeds: Sarah Mkhonza [Swaziland] (180)
13. A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters: Julian Barnes (320)
14. [Suzuki Beane: Sandra Scoppettone] (96)
February (2908 pages)
15. The Story of India: Michael Wood (319)  
16. Zero History: William Gibson (404)
17. Burmese Days: George Orwell (279)
18. Leviathan: Scott Westerfeld (440)
19. The Men Who Stare at Goats: Jon Ronson (240)
20. Birds of Thailand: Roland Eve & Anne-Marie Guigue (178)
21. The State in the Third Millenium: Reigning Prince Hans-Adam [Liechtenstein] (222)
22. How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming: Mike Brown (256)
23. In Transition: Contemporary Cambodian Artists (Curator: Ly Daravuth) (79)
24. The Windup Girl: Paolo Bacigalupi (359)
25. Storytelling in Cambodia: Willa Schneberg (132)
March (3813 pages) 
26. The Name of this Book Is Secret: Pseudonymous Bosch (384)
27. Pygmy: Chuck Palahniuk (256)
28. B. R. Myers: The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters (208)
29. Kate Atkinson: Case Histories (312)
30. Phyllis Wheatley: Poems on Various Subjects: Religious and Moral [Gambia] (80)
31. Calixthe Beyala: The Sun Hath Looked Upon Me [Cameroon] (120)
32. Peter Hessler: Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory (512)
33. Junot Díaz: Drown (208)
34. [Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange] (~160)
35. Jack Weatherford: The Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued His Empire (336)
36. Peter Laufer: The Dangerous World of Butterflies: The Startling Subculture of Criminals, Collectors, and Conservationists (288)
37.  Scott Westerfeld, Keith Thompson (Illustrator): Behemoth (Leviathan #2) (489)
38. Michael Pollan: The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (460)
April (6760) 
39. Cherie Priest: Boneshaker (416)
40. Vikas Swarup: Slumdog Millionaire [Q & A] (326)
41. Jonathan Stroud: The Ring of Solomon (410)
42. Siddhartha Mukherjee: The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer (592)
43. Suzanne Collins: Gregor the Overlander (Underland Chronicles #1) (315)
44. Sarah Rose: For All the Tea in China: Espionage, Empire and the Secret Formula of the World's Favourite Drink (272)
45. Susan Beth Pfeffer: This World We Live In (252)
46. Tina Fey: Bossypants (277)
47. Nicholson Baker: The Anthologist (250)
48. Pittacus Lore [James Frey & Jobie Hughes]: I Am Number Four (440)
49. Suzanne Collins: Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane (Underland Chronicles #2) (317)
50. David Maine: The Preservationist (256)
51. Dan Koeppel: Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World (304)
52. Suzanne Collins: Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods (Underland Chronicles #3) (358)
53. Suzanne Collins: Gregor and the Marks of Secret (Underland Chronicles #4) (343)
54. Suzanne Collins: Gregor and the Code of Claw (Underland Chronicles #5) (416)
55. Amitav Ghosh: The Glass Palace (552)
56. Benjamin Deng, Alephonsion Deng, & Benjamin Ajak, with Judy A. Bernstein: They Poured Fire on Us from the Sky: The True Story of Three Lost Boys from Sudan [Sudan] (334)
57. Josh Kilmer-Purcell: I Am Not Myself These Days (330)
May (3764)
58. Helen Simonson: Major Pettigrew's Last Stand (364) 
59. Graham Greene: Our Man in Havana (252)
60. Larry Herzberg & Qin Herzberg: China Survival Guide: How to Avoid Travel Troubles and Mortifying Mishaps (160)
61. Tiyambe Zeleza: Smouldering Charcoal [Malawi] (191)
62. R. Douglas Fields: The Other Brain: From Dementia to Schizophrenia, How New Discoveries about the Brain Are Revolutionizing Medicine and Science (384)
63. [Elyn R. Saks: The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness] (352)
64. Diane Duane: A Wizard of Mars (Young Wizards #9) (558)
65. Haruki Murakami: Kafka on the Shore (467)
66. Rick Riordan: The Throne of Fire (Kane Chronicles #2) (460)
67. Michael Scott: The Warlock (Nicholas Flamel #5) (391)
68. Neshani Andreas: The Purple Violet of Oshaantu [Namibia] (185)
June (4541)
69.  Piers Marchant: How to Be Pope: What to Do and Where to Go Once You're in the Vatican (128)
70. Maryanne Wolf: Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain (320)
71. Paul Collier: The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It (224)
72. Connie Willis: Blackout (512)
73. Rick Riordan: The Lost Hero (The Heros of Olympus #1) (557)
74. Connie Willis: All Clear (643)
75. Peace Corps: A Life Inspired: Tales of Peace Corps Service (183)
76. [Robert A. Heinlein: Citizen of the Galaxy] (253)
77. Philip Caputo: A Rumor of War (378)
78. John Sack: Report from Practically Nowhere (248)
79.  Paolo Bacigalupi and Tobias S. Buckell: The Alchemist and the Executioness (200)
80. Patti Smith, David Greenberg, & John W. Smith: Strange Messenger: The Work of Patti Smith (79)
81. Adam Mansbach & Ricardo Cortés: Go the Fuck to Sleep (32)
82. Leila Aboulela: The Translator (208)
83. Geoffrey Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales (576)
July (4193 pages)
84. George R. R. Martin: A Game of Thrones (A Song of Fire and Ice #1) (835)
85. Barbara W. Tuchman: A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century (704)
86. James W. Gleick: The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood (527)
87. George R. R. Martin: A Clash of Kings (A Song of Fire and Ice #2) (1010)
88. Anthony Bourdain: Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook (304)
89. Oliver Sacks: Oaxaca Journal (120)
90. Guðleif Fríður Sigurjónsdóttir: Treasured and Delicious Icelandic Recipes (45)
91. Völundur Snær Völundarson: Delicious Iceland - Special Edition (Tales of Unique Northern Delicacies) (157)
92. Matt Harding: Where the Hell is Matt? The Story Behind the Internet Dancing Sensation (144)
93. Jennifer Egan: A Visit from the Goon Squad (347)
94. Donald Miller: A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life (288)
August (3272 pages) 
95. Ursula K. Le Guin: The Wild Girls (128)
96. Angela Eagan & Rebecca Weiner: Culture Shock! China: A Survival Guide to Customs and Etiquette (Culture Shock! China) (304)
97. Shaun Tan: Tales from Outer Suburbia (96)
98. Paolo Bacigalupi: Pump Six and Other Stories (239)
99. Roz Chast & David Remnick (Introduction): Theories of Everything: Selected, Collected, and Health-Inspected Cartoons, 1978-2006 (400)
100. Xu Xin: The Jews of Kaifang, China: History, Culture, and Religion (209)
101. Carl Hoffman: The Lunatic Express: Discovering the World...Via Its Most Dangerous Buses, Boats, Trains, and Planes (297)
102. Joe Jackson: The Thief at the End of the World: Rubber, Power, and the Seeds of Empire (420)
103. George R. R. Martin: A Storm of Swords (A Song of Fire and Ice #3) (1179)
September (5580 pages)
104. David Axe: War is Boring: Bored Stiff, Scared to Death in the World's Worst War Zones (128)
105. David Sedaris: Holidays on Ice (172)
106. Augusten Burroughs: You Better Not Cry: Stories (222)
107. Speak: Laurie Halse Anderson (240)
108. Douglas Edwards: I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59 (432)
109. Amos Oz: How to Cure a Fanatic (104)
110. Paula Ann Lajan Quinene: A Taste of Guam [Guam] (122)
111. George R. R. Martin: A Feast for Crows (A Song of Ice and Fire, #4) (1060)
112.George Orwell: Down and Out in Paris and London (213)
113. Per Petterson: I Curse the River of Time (233)
114. Stavros Panteli: Place of Refuge: A History of the Jews in Cyprus [Cyprus] (192)
115. Anne Carson: Nox (192)
116. Alexandra Fuller: Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood (315)
117. Kouassi Pascal Soman: Abongui My People Cote D'Ivoire My Country America My Home: The Ethno-history of a Small African Kingdom [Ivory Coast] (218)
118. Mark Salzman: Iron and Silk (224)
119. Irene J. Taafaki, Maria Kabua Fowler, Randolph R. Thaman: Traditional Medicine of the Marshall Islands: The Women, the Plants, the Treatments [Marshall Islands] (300)
120. Ian Fleming: Quantum of Solace: The Complete James Bond Short Stories (304)
121. Oliver Sacks: Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain (381)
122. Jeffrey Steingarten: The Man Who Ate Everything (528)
October (4885 pages)
123. Christina Dodwell: In Papua New Guinea [Papua New Guinea] (256)
124. Maria Balinska: The Bagel: A Cultural History (288)
125. Kristin Hersh: Rat Girl: A Memoir (336)
126. Samuel Johnson & James Boswell: Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (~160)
127. Rick Riordan: The Son of Neptune (Heroes of Olympus #2) (513)
128. Kay Ryan: The Best of It: New and Selected Poems (288)
129. Lev Grossman: The Magician King (The Magicians #2) (400)
130. Michael Levy: Kosher Chinese: Living, Teaching, and Eating with China's Other Billion (256)
131. Jillian Lauren: Some Girls: My Life in a Harem (352)
132. Trevor Corson: The Story of Sushi: An Unlikely Saga of Raw Fish and Rice (256)
133. Michael Ondaatje: The English Patient (302)
134. John Bunyan: The Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which is to Come, Delivered under the Similitude of a Dream (385)
135. Carlos Ruiz Zafón: The Shadow of the Wind (500)
136. Ann Patchett: State of Wonder (353)
137. Robert C. O'Brien: Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (240)
November (5075 pages)
138. Octavio Latorre: The Curse of the Giant Tortoise: Tragedies, Crimes, and Mysteries in the Galapagos Islands (6th Ed.) [Ecuador] (243)
139. Barbara Ehrenreich: Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America (256)
140. Paolo Bacigalupi: Ship Breaker (336)
141. John Milton: Paradise Lost (276)
142. Mary Roach: Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex (319)
143. Nick Bakalar: The Medicine Cabinet of Curiosities: An Unconventional Compendium of Health Facts and Oddities, from Asthmatic Mice to Plants that Can Kill (240)
144. Joan Didion: Blue Nights (188)
145. Angie Sage: Darke (Septimus Heap, #6) (641)
146. Peter Godwin: When a Crocodile Eats the Sun (416)
147. Neal Shusterman: Unwind (Unwind, #1) (335)
148. Roz Chast: What I Hate (64)
149. Jon Krakaur: Three Cups of Deceit: How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way (96)
150. Ann Patchett: The Magician's Assistant (368)
151. Stephen Batchelor: Confession of a Buddhist Atheist (302)
152. Scott Westerfeld: Goliath (Leviathan, #3) (543)
153. Ernesto Che Guevara: The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey (175)
154. Alan Dean Foster: Star Trek [2009 Movie Tie-in] (274)
December (6211 pages)
155. Arika Okrent: In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and The Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build A Perfect Language (342)
156. Dave Eggers: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (530)
157. Cinda Williams Chima: The Demon King (Seven Realms, #1) (528)
158. Julian Barnes: The Sense of an Ending (144)
159. Eli Pariser: The Filter Bubble (304)
160. Sarah Macdonald: Holy Cow! An Indian Adventure (298)
161. Bruce C. Morris: Open Road's Best of Panama: Your Passport to the Perfect Trip! (248)
162. Richard Garrigues & Robert Green: The Birds of Costa Rica: A Field Guide [Costa Rica] (408)
163. Jonathan Swift: Gulliver's Travels (~318)
164. Dava Sobel: The Planets (270)
165. Jon Ronson: The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry (288)
166. Azar Nafisi: Reading Lolita in Tehran (356)
167. Ninni Holmqvist: The Unit (272)
168.  Mpho M'Atsepo Nthunya & K. Limakatso Kendal: Singing Away the Hunger: The Autobiography of an African Woman [Lesotho] (186)
169. Mohammed Hanif: A Case of Exploding Mangoes (320)
170. Steve Martin: Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life (207)
171. Cindy Williams Chima: The Exiled Queen (Seven Realms, #2) (586)
172. Oliver Sacks: Seeing Voices: A Journey into the World of the Deaf (208)
173. Jon-Jon Goulian: The Man in the Gray Flannel Skirt (326)
174. Florence Lewisohn: Divers Information on the Romantic History of St. Croix [St. Croix, USVI] (72)

Divers Information on the Romantic History of St. Croix: From the Time of Columbus until Today

#744
Title: Divers Information on the Romantic History of St. Croix: From the Time of Columbus until Today
Author: Florence Lewisohn
Publisher: St. Croix Landmarks Society

Year: 1964
Country: St. Croix (USVI)
72 pages

St. Croix (USVI). This 1964 book provides a little history (with timeline) and short essays, with visual ephemera, on plantations, sugar mills, rum production, and other historical aspects of colonial and post-colonial life on the island. I mention the publication date because, though the author does a better job of describing slavery in relation to the islands than some in 1964, there are other aspects of her description that are not, shall we say, consonant with a 21st century perspective. 

The Man in the Gray Flannel Skirt

#743
Title: The Man in the Gray Flannel Skirt
Author: Jon-Jon Goulian
Publisher: Random Hous

Year: 2011
336 pages


I've shelved this under lgbtq, because Goulian isn't entirely straight, though he's not gay. He's genderqueer for sure.

Goulian is a good enough storyteller, but I found myself reading less from a literary than clinical perspective. Goulian's not-unreasonable family keeps asking him "why?" and Goulian isn't able to answer. In his last chapter, he tries to answer, giving, as most of us do, a psychodynamic explanation for his self-presentation and actions. However, I don't think it's a sufficient answer, not because I doubt Goulian's intentions and effort, but because I don't think the issue is psychodynamic or even, at its core, psychological. Goulian strikes me throughout (and I emphasize that I'm not diagnosing, but articulating an impression) as somebody with a psychiatric (physiologically-based) problem. I'm not referring to the content that may grab attention, such as his non-gender-conforming clothes, obsession with his body, and sexual experiences. Rather, what I notice is his intense rumination, difficulty making decisions, emotional paralysis, and fear. I notice that he has a hard time understanding or even rationalizing his own behavior over time. I notice his own sense of oddness, his understanding that social interaction is much more difficult for him than for other people. His sense that there is a meaning but that he can't grasp it. I notice the timing, that his life became puzzling to him in early adolescence (a time that's not only socially, but also biochemically significant). Thus, though I do think he has some obsessions and anxieties, I find myself wondering if he's ever had a good evaluation. I wonder if Paxil (which decreases social anxiety as well as depression) would make a positive difference for him. I wonder if the underlying problem is in the schizoid range. Even so, wonder if he's had a good (and smart) therapist, and if an existentially-based men's support group would help even if there's an underlying biochemical problem. I find myself glad for him that he's able to spend his time gardening and writing, and wonder what he might turn to after telling his own story and thereby, perhaps, giving a good-enough answer to the question, "What happened?"