Agent to the Stars

#828
Title: Agent to the Stars
Author: John Scalzi
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Year: 2008
365 pages

Like much of Scalzi's work, this is often funny, easy to read, and enjoyable but not significant-feeling. The characters don't have terribly distinct personalities, and the cleverness of some plot elements is what carries the book.

Tinderbox: How the West Sparked the AIDS Epidemic and How the World Can Finally Overcome It

#827
Title: Tinderbox: How the West Sparked the AIDS Epidemic and How the World Can Finally Overcome It
Author: Craig Timberg & Daniel Helperin
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 2012
421 pages

I found this a useful summary of recent advances in our understanding of HIV, its origins, and its prevention. I read it after Epstein's The Invisible Cure: Africa, the West, and the Fight Against AIDS, which covers some of the same points. Together they provide a good update or review. Add Dow and Essex's Saturday Is for Funerals and you've got a pretty good seminar reading list.

I read Tinderbox because I was on my way to sub-Saharan Africa for an HIV seminar and I wanted to be sure my knowledge was up to date. Of as much interest as the book were the significant number of vituperative reviews on Amazon. I can't comment on those that accused Timberg and Halperin of writing a worse book than Pepin's The Origins of AIDS, since I haven't yet read it. A few reviewers assert that only condoms prevent AIDS. I will merely say that this simply isn't true and move on. The troubling reviews go like this: Halperin is falsely representing male circumcision as an effective HIV prevention technique because he is Jewish and has the agenda of somehow Judaizing Africa. Some of these reviews are quite anti-Semitic.

As I say, I was in sub-Saharan Africa, so I thought I'd ask. Specifically, I asked several experts, ranging from government health representatives to heads of medical centers treating HIV. Here's a typical conversation:

Me: "A new book in the US supports male circumcision, saying that it decreases HIV acquisition by the circumcised males."

Expert: "Yes, this is true. The foreskin has receptors that HIV attaches to easily, so circumcision decreases the male's likelihood of becoming HIV+."

Me: "Some people in the US believe that the results of the Orange Farm study are not statistically valid. They say that the one of the authors is promoting male circumcision for religious reasons."

Expert: [Puzzled frown.]

Me: "They say that because he is Jewish he is trying to convert Africans to Judaism."

Expert: 1) "Do they not know that Islamic men are circumcised?" or 2) "But that wouldn't make a man Jewish" or 3) "Actually, many of the groups in this region practiced adolescent circumcision prior to the introduction of Christianity" or 4) [bewildered stare].

Me: "So if I were to reply to these allegations, what would you like me to say?"

Expert: "We would like you to say that African medical professionals are satisfied with the results of the Orange Farm study."

There you go. I'm not going to post it on Amazon, but I report it here. And I'm not going to argue about it.

Insurgent (Divergent #2)

#826
Title: Insurgent (Divergent #2)
Author: Veronica Roth
Publisher: HarperCollins
Year: 2012
525 pages

While this advances the story to an interesting point, I found it hard to get through. The timing seemed off (push, push, push, then sudden sagging, listless moments of teen bickering or love) and the characters very similar to each other in tone (though the Dauntless are hotheaded, Abnegation self-sacrificing, etc.). The trickiness of the story (for example, who's a spy, who's a counter-spy, etc.) was wearing after awhile and became hard to follow. Through it all, Mary Sue Tris is heroic, self-evaluative, insightful, smart, and impossible to wound in any meaningful way.

At its best, it moves from themes of identity and group pride (in Divergent) to ability and empathy here. That's a good direction for a YA novel, especially one about factions, belonging, and complexity.

The Drowned Cities (Ship Breaker, #2)

#825
Title: The Drowned Cities (Ship Breaker, #2)
Author: Paolo Bacigalupi
Publisher: Little, Brown
Year: 2012
437 pages

Audiobook.

Good world-building, lots of action, strong female main character. There's a lot of covert commentary on civil war, child soldiers, and the difficulty of imposing peace. It certainly resonates with Vietnam and many African conflicts. The narrative is picaresque in that the plot advances because adventures happen, not because of character growth or change. As in Ship Breaker, the story ends with the hope of an escape. Less here of the caloriemen, though much more of the half-men. Tool is arguably the real protagonist.

Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America

#824
Title: Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America
Author: Robert Whitaker
Publisher: Crown
Year: 2010
416 pages

Audiobook.

Whitaker makes some good arguments that are worth considering, but confuses the picture considerably by cherry-picking the data, leaps of logic, using his case studies and comments to make unreasonably extreme arguments (the words "always," "none," and "every" are always good indicators of this), and even ending by insulting anyone who disagrees with him. It's a shame, because though many of his concerns are probably valid, he undoes his utility by presenting his case in an unreliable manner.

From Africa: New Francophone Stories

#823
Title: From Africa: New Francophone Stories
Author: Adele King
Publisher: UNP--Bison Books
Year:2004
150 pages

A collection of short stories from French-speaking Africans or ex-pat Africans in Europe. I found it interesting to read but the stories didn't grab me. The introduction was quite worthwhile, but many of the stories had more gratuitous misogyny than I'm interested in reading.

Love and Death in the Kingdom of Swaziland

#822
Title: Love and Death in the Kingdom of Swaziland
Author: Glenn Alan Cheney
Publisher: New London Librarium
Year:2012
88 pages

This report from Swaziland gives an overview of the terrible conditions in the countryside and the obstacles faced by a religious organization providing care, particularly HIV/AIDS care. I found the depiction of the Swazi off-putting and unsympathetic, which I imagine reflects the nuns' and author's frustration as they try to change traditional behaviors. I didn't get a good sense of how the author came to be in Swaziland.