Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life

#740
Title: Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
Author: Steve Martin
Publisher: Scribner
Year: 2007
240 pages
Audiobook.

Enjoyable enough and a quick read, Steve Martin's memoir of his life to date in comedy includes events and examples that some of us remember, but touches only lightly on his romantic relationships. More than you'd expect about his relationship with his parents, however. 

A Case of Exploding Mangoes

#739
Title: A Case of Exploding Mangoes
Author: Mohammed Hanif
Publisher: Knopf
Year:2008
320 pages
Audiobook.

I thought this might give me a kick back toward Charlie Wilson's War. Hanif uses a fictional first-person narrator to explore the presumed conspiracy that took down Pakistan's General Zia-ul-Haq. Hanif's answer: Pretty much everyone wanted him dead, including an ill-fated crow. I listened to the book, so I may have missed it, but was the case of mangoes indeed implicated as well? The novel generally retains a slightly distanced, slightly humorous tone, and sustained my engagement with the characters throughout.

Singing Away the Hunger: The Autobiography of an African Woman

#738
Title: Singing Away the Hunger: The Autobiography of an African Woman
Authors: Mpho M'Atsepo Nthunya & K. Limakatso Kendal
Publisher:  Indiana University Press
Year: 1996/1997
Country: Lesotho
187 pages


A volume of short autobiographical stories by a Basotho woman, aided by a US woman (who explains her involvement and her concerns about colonial/exploitative practices). These stories, loosely but not entirely chronologically presented, detail a complex, difficult life in a country changing over to self-rule. If I were training medical volunteers for Lesotho, I'd have them read this as a way to understand how people might be making health care, education, and economic decisions on the basis of beliefs and practical realities very different from those of the professionals.

The Unit

#737
Title: The Unit
Author: Ninni Holmqvist
Publisher: Other Press
Year: 2006/2009
272 pages
Ebook.


Aspects of the general conceit match Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, with an occasional dash of Schusterman's Unwind or Logan's Run thrown in. An important difference, however, is the protagonist's matter-of-fact acceptance of her fate, which inclines the tone more toward Ishiguro. The story around the edges was the more interesting piece for me--the staff of the Unit who clearly are troubled by their ethical scruples and lean toward disobedience. More exploration of their dilemmas (especially when the residents are so compliant) might have made this a 5-star novel.

As a woman of somewhere around 50, I found the notion that my utility to society might be complete laughable; on the other hand, as a person in a partnership not legally acknowledged by my nation, the idea that some kinds of relationships count while others don't cuts close to home. I agree with some other reviewers that [highlight for spoiler] it makes no sense that you'd waste organs by conducting medical experiments on the residents.

Reading Lolita in Tehran

#736
Title: Reading Lolita in Tehran
Author: Azar Nafisi
Publisher: Random House
Year: 2003
 356 pages


"It is only now, when I try to gather up the morsels of those days, that I discover how little, if ever, we talked about our personal lives--about love and marriage and how it felt to have children, or not to. It seemed as if, apart from literature, the political had devoured us, eliminating the personal or private." (p. 237) When I reached this statement about 2/3 in, I thought, yes, and that's why I just can't get into this memoir, despite repeated efforts over the last year.

I empathize with Nafisi (as a secular subject high school teacher in a religious school, I once had to buy or hand-expurgate 11 copies of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich to keep my job) and, while I don't find her comments on literature very interesting, I'm at least in agreement with the idea that novels are a refuge in difficult times, or that they may illuminate sociopolitical contexts other than those in which they were written.

I think my inability to engage deeply with Nafisi is due in part to the lack of emotional detail; there's a reasonable amount of telling of emotion, but not much showing of it. Nafisi as narrator seems distant, somewhat authoritarian, and sometimes reactive in ways that seem guaranteed to get her sacked, beaten, or executed. These outbursts don't always make sense to me, though I can add my own speculation that she is keeping a tight lid on her feelings, or erupts when she can't stand it anymore, or is culturally less disclosive than an American would be. However, that's just my exegesis, and Nafisi comes off as more histrionic than repressed (that is, as if her emotions are shallow rather than that she's forcing them down). Again, that's not what she says, but it is what I take from what I actually experience as a reader. Despite being much more cued by words than images, I found Persepolis more immediate and moving.

I could now get into a long discussion of fiction vs. memoir and the intentionalist fallacy, but instead I'm just going to reitterate that for whatever reason, I never got to a point where this felt like a pleasure. That's an observation, not an indictment. I'm glad to have read it, but it was a long, hard road.

The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry

#735
Title: The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry
Author: Jon Ronson
Publisher: Riverhead
Year: 2011
288 pages
Audiobook.

At a certain point I stopped taking notes on problems and inaccurate statements. Instead of a formal critique, I'll just say that this has the depth of a magazine article, with all the problems of superficiality and inxorrect information inherent in that genre. If you're not familiar with psychiatric diagnosis, how US psychiatric/psychological treatment works, or the criteria for civil commitment now vs. during Rosenhan's era almost 40 years ago, check Ronson's assertions before believing they're factual. As a narrative, it doesn't hang together very well and its conclusion appears to be "don't think you can diagnose people without adequate training," which I or any therapist could have told you when Ronson tries to diagnose himself with the DSM, if not before.

The Planets

#734
Title: The Planets
Author: Dava Sobel
Publisher: Viking
Year: 2005
270 pages
Audiobook.

A lot of people love her prose style, but I didn't enjoy it. Some authors can blend personal reflections with non-fiction; I didn't think Sobel pulled it off. This would be a good introduction to the solar system for someone who isn't very familiar with it. In the absence of enjoyable writing, there wasn't a lot to it for me. For a more informative look at a planet (more or less) and recent astronomical history close to home, try Brown's How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming.