Bitterblue (Graceling Realm, #3)

#839
Title: Bitterblue (Graceling Realm, #3)
Author: Kristin Cashore
Publisher: Dial
Year: 2012
563 pages

A very good novel, and a wrap-up for the trilogy that should satisfy everyone (except those who can't do without everyone pairing off at the end). The reader's experience mirror's Bitterblue's in that the story is somewhat twisty, hard to concentrate on at times, and (even if you've read Graceling and Fire), hard to tease apart. Because Cashore is such a skillful writer, I took this as parallelism to Bitterblue's own befuddled efforts to understand her kingdom and grasp the import of events that appeared disconnected but felt related. [Bitterblue's immediate emotional relationship with Fire seemed to me to be the answer to the plaint that Bitterblue is not hooked up. She's far from alone, and there are many kinds of love.

Brandwashed: How Marketers and Advertisers Obscure the Truth, Manipulate Our Minds, and Persuade Us to Buy

#838
Title: Brandwashed: How Marketers and Advertisers Obscure the Truth, Manipulate Our Minds, and Persuade Us to Buy
Author: Martin Lindstrom
Publisher: Crown
Year: 2011
256 pages

I have a lot of criticisms of this, but I'll stick with my gravest. First, the way Lindstrom interprets psychological and other research doesn't always match how I'd interpret it. For example, if you were to hook me up to a plethysmograph (you can't, but that's not the point), you might find that I was physiologically aroused by a stimulus. That's a far different phenomenon than my acting on that arousal. Lindstrom consistently conflates the two. Second, his idea of consumers as essentially mindless bumpkins who are easily suckered and misled doesn't inspire my trust his motives. Third, based on this world view, Lindstrom assigns warrantless motivations to consumers. For example, he asserts that we don't choose the first item from a shelf but reach behind it for the second because we think it's cleaner. To test this hypothesis, I surveyed random family members and friends in situ at the grocery. I didn't interview those who took the first item. They are evidently outliers, even though it was true of most of them. I asked those who reached behind for the second item why they were doing so. Nobody said it was because it was cleaner. For perishables, they said it was because items with a longer time to pull date were further back. For shelved items, they said it was because the ones in the front were dented or dinged (which they were). The only person to cite cleanliness pointed out the filthy children being allowed to paw at the lower cans and boxes. I'd like a million dollars for my fab-o study, please.

There's not a lot here that's not obvious or that you didn't read in an expose 40 years ago. Producers want to sell things. Advertisers misrepresent their products. I'm as easy to influence as anybody, but my behaviors aren't those of Lindstrom's herds of moo-cow consumers who don't seem to read the labels or Consumer Reports, or consider whether products actually work.

Andean Journeys: A Bilingual Anthology of Contemporary Bolivian Poetry

#837
Title: Andean Journeys: A Bilingual Anthology of Contemporary Bolivian Poetry
Author: Ronald Haladyna (Ed.)
Publisher: Trafford
Year: 2011
Country: Bolivia
256 pages

I tended to find the poems by women more engaging. My impression was that a number of the men wanted to use shocking imagery to show their grittiness, while the women's poems seemed both less violent and less obscure.

An e-reader may not be the best technology for facing-page bilingual poetry collections. While it was interesting to jump about recursively in each poem, switching languages as I did, it made for a jumbled cognitive experience.

An African in Greenland

#836
Title: An African in Greenland
Author: Tété-Michel Kpomassie
Publisher: New York Review Books
Year: 1981/2001
Country: Togo
300 pages

Togo. There's more of Greenland than of Togo, but Kpomassie's childhood and early adolescence provide the background for this tale. It's an adventure narrative, though not an impulsive one. Rather, it's a testament to a man who had a goal and slogged his way toward it over a number of years. Read with Gretel Ehrlich's This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland for two views of sometimes-similar experiences.

Pocket Guide: Birds of Southern Africa

#835
Title: Pocket Guide: Birds of Southern Africa
Author: Ian Sinclair
Publisher: Struik Publishers
Year: 2011
144 pages

Not read straight through, but first skimmed, then relentlessly consulted to the point where everything has been read several times. Te best of the pocket birding guides (though, like Pocket Guide to Birds of Southern Africa, it lacks taxonomic names). Includes clear photos, distribution maps, descriptions, habitat, status, voice, migration, breeding, and behavior notes.

Will Grayson, Will Grayson

#834
Title: Will Grayson, Will Grayson
Author: John Green & David Levithan
Publisher: Dutton
Year: 2010
310 pages

Cute and at times moving YA fiction (not science fiction). I thought the ending wasn't quite as believable or as emotionally significant as it should have been.

Zeitoun

#833
Title: Zeitoun
Author: Dave Eggers
Publisher: McSweeney's
Year: 2009
342 pages

Another--what?--ethnographic novel? assistive memoir? by Eggers. I appreciated the journalistic neutrality, but at times felt that this distance made Kathy seem more histrionic and Zeitoun more arrogant. If I were Eggers, I'd have ended with a quote from the Qur'an, since they were interspersed.

I read a World Book Night copy that I gave to someone who hadn't read it, who then asked me to read it so we could discuss it. I then handed it to another American in Africa.