The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope

#971
Title: The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope
Author: William Kamkwamba & Bryan Mealer
Publisher: William Morrow
Year: 2000/2009
270 pages

An engaging hopeful memoir by a dedicated and resourceful young man who vastly improved the lives of his family and neighbors. Reading it was--a word I've never used in a review before--heartwarming.

God, No!: Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales

#970
Title: God, No!: Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales
Author: Penn Jillette
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Year: 2011
231 pages

I can't decide whether the level of obscenities adds to or detracts from this generally interesting and amusing collection of loosely associated stories and rants. An excess of swearing typically strikes me as linguistically lazy, but Jillette's frothy audio delivery is enhanced at times by the sheer level of profanity.

Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych E.R.

#969
Title: Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych E.R.
Author: Julie Holland
Publisher: Bantam
Year: 2009/2010
320 pages
A big part of the problem for this memoir (not primarily about the people who transit through Bellevue's Psych ER, but about the writer's personal development) is her use of the present tense. Consider this statement:

"I think of my job as a psychiatrist as being, in many ways, a seduction.... I use my feminine wiles to have my way with the patients..." (109).

Is it meant to be read in the moment of the narrative, first person limited, or is it a more universal, still-true, first person omniscient declaration? If the former, it's a developmental statement; if the latter, a self-statement.

Either way, I don't see much evidence of the author's movement beyond this truth, and, like much of what she reports about her approach to psychiatry, concerns me.

The Tragedy of Arthur

#968
Title: The Tragedy of Arthur
Author: Arthur Phillips
Publisher: Random House
Year: 2011
368 pages
I ought to write my review in blank verse, but I have a cold so you'll have to endure my prose. I enjoyed this faux memoir, but it wore on me after awhile. Arthur is whiny and aggrieved without much payback for the reader for having endured this. It should have been half the length. I don't at all buy the veracity of the family confrontation at the end. Highlight for spoilers: Why would his mother go along with it? Why is Arthur made solely responsible for the consequences of his sister's out-of-relationship kiss? In addition to my incredulity about the event, it also smacks, as does a lot of the family constellating, of John Irvings's The Hotel New Hampshire.

The "Shakespearean" play that forms the second half is less Arthur Rex than just whiny Arthur Redux. A notable flaw of the audio version is the omission of the footnotes to the play, where the fight between positions on the play's authenticity is continued. Leaving out these notes is like leaving out the notes from Pale Fire and suggests a profound misunderstanding of the book's structure by whoever made such a poor editorial decision.

Chicken with Plums

#967
Title: Chicken with Plums
Author: Marjane Satrapi
Publisher: Pantheon
Year: 2004/2006
84 pages

This didn't hold me the way Satrapi's other work has, but I may need to read it again. This is another Persian family narrative, but with a male protagonist and focus. It has the feel of a family story that has been burnished by association with mystical explanations.

When Quietness Came: A Neuroscientist's Personal Journey with Schizophrenia

#966
Title: When Quietness Came: A Neuroscientist's Personal Journey with Schizophrenia 
Author: Erin L. Hawkes
Publisher: Bridgeross Communications
Year: 2012
246 pages

A memoir that very nicely illustrates many features of schizophrenia. The author is intelligent and well-spoken. Her difficulties with some kinds of judgment and insight come through in the authorial voice as well as in the narrative. A good memoir for teaching, I think, and I wish her well.

The God Delusion

#965
Title: The God Delusion 
Author: Richard Dawkins
Publisher: Martiner
Year: 2006/2008
420 pages

Enjoyable and accessible, though I suspect Dawkins enjoyed his chain-yanking and inflammatory statements as much as his logic.