A Feast for Crows (A Song of Ice and Fire #4)

#681

Title: A Feast for Crows (A Song of Ice and Fire #4)
Author: George R. R. Martin
Publisher: Bantam
Year: 2005/2011
1060 pages

Mistaken identities, misperceptions, and incorrect assumptions drawn from partial facts form the thematic core of this volume. There is some action, and some characters arrive at something like a destination. There is a sense of Martin shuffling his pieces into place. Violence, sex, and violent sex seem more frequent and offer less insight into characters. There is much here to invoke the classic exchange from Monty Python and the Holy Grail:

Large Man with Dead Body: Who's that then?
The Dead Collector: I dunno, must be a king.
Large Man with Dead Body: Why?
The Dead Collector: He hasn't got shit all over him.

A Taste of Guam

#680

Title: A Taste of Guam
Author: Paula A. Lujan Quinene
Publisher: Infinity Publishing.com
Year: 2006
122 pages

Guam.

A cookbook of Chamorro and other Guamanian recipes, plus a handful of the author's favorites. Some look distinctly appealing, some include too many canned items for me to be very enthusiastic, and some are inexplicable because one or more ingredients are not adequately identified. The volume would benefit from photos or even line drawings of some cooking techniques that are more local than universal.

As with many self-published books, I wish the author had had this proofread better.

For an interesting look at the cultural context, see Oliver Sacks's The Island of the Colorblind. 


The author's blog, with helpful photos, is here: http://www.paulaq.com/atasteofguam.html

How to Cure a Fanatic

#679
Title: How to Cure a Fanatic
Author: Amos Oz
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Year: 2002/2010
104 pages

Two essays on fanaticism, defined more or less as holding a rigid point of view. Though I don't agree with all of Oz's points, his perspective is interesting and his position at times refreshingly moderate.

I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59

#678
Title: I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59
Author: Douglas Edwards
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Year: 2011
432 pages
Audiobook

Fine so far as it goes. Edwards chronicles (often thematically rather than chronologically) his adventures as an early employee in Google's start-up phase. I found it interesting to read about Google, and interesting for a while to read about Edwards's interactions with company personnel and culture. However, the latter topic can be summed up more often than not as, "I suggested something, it was/wasn't adopted, I turned out to be wrong." The moral of the story might be "Grit your teeth, don't see your family for years, go on mandated recreational trips with bosses who act like adolescents, and hang on until the IPO, when you can cash out."

Speak (10th Anniversary Edition)

#677
Title: Speak (10th Anniversary Edition)
Author: Laurie Halse Anderson
Publisher: Speak (Penguin)
Year: 1999/2009
240 pages

This was okay for its genre, and certainly better than some of its ilk. The initiating event, and thus the outcome, was obvious early on, so my reading interest was less a matter of what would happen and more one of how Hulse would get there. I suppose I would have liked the protagonist to have more insight about how she also engages in stereotyping and writing people off; while she resolved the plot by addressing the problem, but this could have been an opportunity for more maturational self-reflection as well.

I was entertained by the protagonist's railing against symbolism, and the author's comments in this edition about not liking what she had to read in English class, when the symbolism here is troweled on like goth makeup. Perhaps this is one of the insights I'd have liked Melinda to experience. Ah, well. At least the attractive boy is a nerd, and at least there are no teen vampires. 

You Better Not Cry: Stories

#676
Title: You Better Not Cry: Stories
Author: Augusten Burroughs
Publisher: Picador
Year: 2009
222 pages

Interesting to read as a companion to David Sedaris's Holidays on Ice. Where Sedaris's Christmas tales are absurd but restrained, Burroughs provides the more warped and damaged end of the spectrum (in the last piece, the warpage is literal). Some reviewers don't like Burroughs's sudden transition from weird child to problematic drunk, but I though it captured perfectly the nature of blackouts and traumatic memory suppression. Read Sedaris first, and imagine Amy Sedaris as Jerri Blank creeping around the edges of both. 

Holidays on Ice

#675
Title: Holidays on Ice
Author: David Sedaris
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Year: 1997/2008
172 pages

Not his most even collection, but generally entertaining. Sedaris does best with absurd autobiography that focuses on interpersonal dynamics; the fictional pieces don't hit quite as hard.