A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

#664
Title: A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life
Author: Donald Miller
Publisher: Thomas Nelson Publishers
Year: 2009
288 pages
Audiobook

Read by the author. I liked this less over time. It grew increasingly repetitive, the message increasingly religious, and the story seemed to discard its initial assertion that Miller was re-telling/re-making his life as he edited the movie of his previous autobiography. One of these problems wouldn't have bothered me, but 3 was too many. It may be that I'm trained as a narrative therapist, so I found Miller not only repetitive but reductive in his use of these techniques. Rather than opening up the story of his life, as seemed to be the premise and promise, he seems to substitute an authoritarian and limiting schema for previous aimlessness. Though taking on some of the responsibility for his experience, he moves quickly to attributions about an outside reality--god and evil forces--that wind up getting the glory (deity) or the blame (evil entity). This just seemed like externalizing, and externalizing to a well-worn, albeit heartfelt, cultural narrative. If this is what is meaningful for Miller, fine, but it's not what he said the book would be about.

A Visit from the Goon Squad

#663
Title: A Visit from the Goon Squad
Author: Jennifer Egan
Publisher: Anchor Books
Year: 2010/2011
347 pages

Unlike some readers, I quite enjoyed the shifts in time and perspective, especially those that articulated characters' future outcomes as asides. Much of the novel might be characterized thematically as "rust never sleeps," though the other pole of that theme emerges as well: Some people move on, whatever form that may take and whatever pleasures or regrets this inspires. American rock is the symbolic ground, but it could as easily be sports, or beauty pageants, or politics. Are you stuck in your childhood/teen years/early adulthood, do you change, are you happy about the changes? These are the novel's big, underlying questions.

There is much reviewer discussion of  the chapter written in PowerPoint. I understood it as a use of that medium to show how cultures shift and change with the generations. What are the great pauses or breaks in each person's life? What makes it good? The questions are still the same.

Where the Hell is Matt? The Story Behind the Internet Dancing Sensation

#662
Title: Where the Hell is Matt? The Story Behind the Internet Dancing Sensation
Author: Matt Harding
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Year: 2009
144 pages

Read as a download from Amazon. 

A fun introduction to the idea of travel that moves from personal project to a more engaged or altruistic activity. As a travelogue it's snapshot-style; like Matt's dances, it gives a moment of person with backdrop or other people, then moves on. It could be useful for discussing how a fantasy, not fully thought out, about "going abroad" or "studying overseas" might evolve from self- to other-focused.

Delicious Iceland - Special Edition (Tales of Unique Northern Delicacies)

#661
Title: Delicious Iceland - Special Edition (Tales of Unique Northern Delicacies)
Author: Völundur Snær Völundarson
Illustrator: Hreinn Hreinsson
Editor: Haukur Ágústsson
Publisher: Salka
Year: 2007
157 pages


 I am delighted by Delicious Iceland, and relieved to know that my aspic of ram testicles, potatoes, and turnips is indeed authentic. I do prefer to cook with objects of the same general shape and size. (For discussion of related matters, see my comments on the Doctrine of Signatures at my review of Jacobs's The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment). I don't anticipate preparing rot-cured shark any time soon, but a person never knows when the urge will strike. Ale and smoked eel sounds like a reasonable compromise between Völundarson's gustatory proclivities and my gourmandish propensities. The illustrating photos are beautiful, many of the dishes seem edible, and the interspersed stories are fun. I confess myself surprised by the lack of cardamom, but perhaps it is a Swedish abomination.

Treasured and Delicious Icelandic Recipes

#660
Title: Treasured and Delicious Icelandic Recipes
Editor: Guðleif Fríður Sigurjónsdóttir
Publisher: Harpa/bokagerdin
Year: 2009
45 pages

Yes, I get a cheap thrill from adding books to Goodreads's database.

So my friend says she's excited because she's going to Iceland. And by the way, what do I want for my birthday. It should be obvious that the answer is "an Icelandic cookbook." Fascinating not only for its old photos, but also for its dearth of vegetables and fruits, Treasured and Delicious Icelandic Recipes inspires me to learn more about Icelandic vitamin deficiencies. My friend Mrs. Medscape helpfully instructs, "The term scurvy is derived from the Nordic word skyrbjugr, meaning swelling or edema. It has also been suggested that the term is derived from the Old Icelandic words skyrbugr, scarby, or skurvic." My other friend Mrs. Google shows me that "Olde World® Icelandic Cod Liver Oil" is available in "Lemon Mint Flavor," though judging by the recipes in this slim yet suicide-inducing cookbook, there is no such thing as lemon or mint, and you'll damn well take your cod liver oil unadorned, with a fish and a pancake, and you'll be glad for it. But enough about me. I could see making some of these recipes, though I might have to be quite hungry to appreciate them. On to Delicious Iceland - Special Edition. That's right, she sent me two cookbooks. My friend loves me more than your friend loves you. Onward to the singed sheep head.

Oaxaca Journal

#659
Title: Oaxaca Journal
Author: Oliver Sacks
Publisher: National Geographic
Year: 1999/2005
160 pages
Audiobook


I  know this wouldn't be to everyone's taste, but it's absolutely to mine, because

1. I have great affection for shy, awkward men who are brimming with ideas and have few social skills.
2. I admire the scientific storytelling tradition that includes data, natural history, contextualizing narrative, and self-reflective commentary.
3. I have an amateur's fondness for taxonomy and categorization, and though ultimately I don't care what's being ordered or arranged, I have a preference for plants and animals.
4. I admire Sacks's associational tangle, and his ability to articulate it.

This small book exemplifies the style of not quite x, but not anything else, either that I so enjoy; in this way, it is genre-bending. No thought stands on its own; images, ideas, smells, aches, words, cultural referents, are all madeleines. This is true not just for Sacks, but for me as well. More than anything I've read recently, this journal of a fern-hunting trip to Oaxaca makes me wish I were engaged in conceptual mapping. One way to do this would be to have a copy of this text and be able to add hyperlinks to other texts, then display the links as a rotating, color-coded, 3-dimensional image. If this notion appeals to you, you may well like this molcajete--a little autobiography, a little pre-Columbian history, a little zocalo-watching, a little neurology, and a good handful of ferns and worts, though not as many as one would find in a book solely dedicated to the ferniness of the ferning. If you ever feel the almost painful sweetness of momentarily connecting with the hidden world of nerds who, though not quite the same as you, still understand you, pick up a copy of this charming account. 

Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook

#658
Title: Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook
Author: Anthony Bourdain
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Year: 2010
304 pages
Audiobook

It's hard to know how much Bourdain used to be a schmuck, is still a schmuck, or likes presenting himself as a schmuck. He seems to have been a genuine schmuck at times, as compared to, say, the schmuck-like stylings of James Frey. There's a lot I like about Bourdain, though, including how he discusses his previous drug use in this volume, and the abiding and deep relationship he has to food, ideas about food and gastronomy, culinary and restaurant practices, and foods of many cultures. This is a collection of essays, not a sustained narrative. Get past the introductory chapter, which seems to be intended for shock value, then enjoy the rest. There are some homages, some screeds, some memoirs, and some travelogues. Think of it as a selection of amuse-bouche, some of which will disgust rather than delight.