Secrets of the Seven Smallest States of Europe: Andorra, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, San Marino and Vatican City

#964
Title: Secrets of the Seven Smallest States of Europe: Andorra, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, San Marino and Vatican City
Author: Thomas Eccardt
Publisher: Hippocrene Books
Year: 2004
360 pages

Eccardt gives good coverage without too much repetition to comparisons, contrasts, and descriptions of the 7 European microstates. I enjoyed reading the whole book, though others may want to use it as a reference work. Though Eccardt provides airport and road graphics, I'd have enjoyed an itinerary or two.

The chapter on language has several less-coherent passages, suggesting the utility of consultation toward a future edition. There are also pages here and there that seem under-edited by the evidence of multiple grammatical and typographical errors, as well as sudden outbreaks of repeated and unnecessary occurrences of "actually" and "of course." With Pope Benedict's abdication, the book will shortly be two popes behind, so it may be time to revise and update. A section on Esperanto, one of Eccardt's other areas, would be useful, as would information on gay rights, gun ownership, and other issues of potential interest. 

[Little Fuzzy]

#963
[Title: Little Fuzzy]
Author: H. Beam Piper
Publisher: Ace
Year: 1962/1976
174 pages

**SPOILERS**
  Re-read in order to compare with Scalzi's Fuzzy Nation. I read Little Fuzzy sometime in my adolescence, and it's funny to see my highlighted paragraphs (all of which concern language as evidence for sapience). I enjoyed re-reading it, though as an adult reader I am somewhat chilled by the happy colonialism of the ending, which is presented uncritically as a good thing and not presented ironically or as a cautionary parallel to slavery or colonial practices. Though the Fuzzies are declared to be sapient, the protagonist and others are "adopting" Fuzzies "of their own," moving them out of the forest and into their houses, and generally improving them (in the colonial sense). The Fuzzies are described as cognitively similar to a preadolescent, and as indigenous in the positive-sounding language often used in racist and colonial descriptions of primitive (sic) races (sic). And they're so happy! (Gosh, I've learned a lot from the noble savage!) For their part, the Fuzzies are glad to move into the wonderful big house and become domesticated, so that's okay, right? The flavor of the text hovers between Fuzzy-as-pet and Fuzzy-as-indigene who requires benevolent protection from the civilized overlords. Protected from what, since until the book's action they were a successful sapient, language-using, tool-creating species? Why, protected from the bad colonizers, as opposed to "Pappy Jack" and the good colonizers.

Zero and Other Fictions

#962
Title: Zero and Other Fictions
Author: Fan Huang
Translator: John Balcom
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Year: 2011
152 pages

Taiwan. The fault may be in the translation, or I may not be sufficiently immersed in Taiwanese culture from 1980 to the present, but this collection struck me as fairly forgettable, though my understanding is that many of this author's works have been significant departures from Taiwanese standards. The best story of the four was "How to Measure the Width of a Ditch," which uses memories of historical, cultural, and personal artifacts as a way to talk about the melancholic aspects of progress and aging. Would that the rest of the collection were as strong.

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity

#961
Title: Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
Author: Katherine Boo
Publisher: Random House
Year: 2012
288 pages

A useful and very depressing book for anyone involved in international aid, loans, or service. I'll consider grouping it with a book about the Grameen Bank and something about best practices in international aid for an advanced course on ethics and hope. 

Buddha

#960
Title: Buddha
Author: Karen Armstrong
Publisher: Viking
Year: 2001
240 pages

A biography of the Buddha that provides useful historical context for both his distress and his subsequent teachings. Armstrong situates the Buddha's ideas and practices in the preceding religious cultures, the shift from agricultural/pastoral society, and the Axial shift of world view occurring in some cultures of the region in that epoch. She brings alive the suffering and restlessness of the era, describing issues such as the rise of a merchant class and the changing faces of religious observance, caste boundaries, and types of poverty that are still very much evident in contemporary India elsewhere.

Armstrong does a good job of describing the differing goals of biographers of different eras and pointing out aspects of the Buddha legend that, while not true by the contemporary Western standards for biography, either were true in the world of the Buddha's biographers or were true in the sense that they reflected established tropes for narratives of this type. Armstrong's cultural, linguistic, and philosophical explanations contribute to this book's utility and the reader's enjoyment.

For context, read these in this order: The Bhagavad-Gita: Krishna's Counsel in Time of War for a taste of pre-Axial, pre-Buddhist and more role-stratified, less-individual society; Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity for contemporary problems identical to those of Buddha's time; this book (Buddha) as commentary on the previous two and an introduction to the Buddha's teachings; and the 14th Dalai Lama's How to See Yourself As You Really Are, which is an excellent and accessible introduction to the empirical practices of Buddhist philosophy. 

The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong

#959
Title: The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong
Author: Laurence J. Peter & Raymond Hull
Publisher: HarperBusiness
Year: 1969/2009
192 pages

An entertaining, though dated (sexist, racist, homophobic) business/management guide, presented as humor but in its central premise, that we are promoted to the level of our incompetence, spot on. 

Skippy Dies

#958
Title: Skippy Dies
Author: Paul Murray
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Year: 2010
661 pages

4.5, rounded up, though I'd have liked an emotionally crisper ending. In the many reviews I've read, there's not a lot of mention of the novel's structure, which is obvious at times but doesn't feel too lock-step because Murray uses humor to make parallelism entertaining rather than mechanical. The characters are believable, the emotional content becomes increasingly nuanced, and there's a great deal that's funny and dramatic without a lot of pathos. I was friends with people like many of these boys, though most of them didn't die at the time.

When I consider this novel in relation to the criticism Rowling received for sex, drugs, teen angst, obscenity, and small-sphere politics in The Casual Vacancy, I'm more convinced than ever that the criticism was about that book not being Harry Potter. Skippy Dies is like blending The Casual Vacancy with a handful of rock and roll, a copy of Hustler, and just a pinch of Lord of the Flies. Characters from this book and Rowling's would easily understand the structure and rules of each others' communities.

The audiobook was a delight, with clear reading by multiple narrators.