White Oleander by Janet Fitch

I think this will be the first book I've reviewed that would get shelved in the Fiction & Literature section at Barnes&Noble. Not because I don't read plenty of these kinds of books, but becuase it's often very difficult to say anything meaningful about them (at least, in less than 500 words). White Oleander is no exception, but I'll give it a try anyway. And don't worry because I'm a man and this is an entirely female-based story, some of the same things I thought were said on other Amazon reviews by women. So there.

The story is actually very simple. Astrid's mother Ingrid kills a lover who dumped her and ends up in jail. Astrid, being a minor, has to spend years being bumped around from foster home to foster home. In the end, she grows up to find her own way. The same sub-plot is repeated several times, which is that Astrid ends up in a new place, initially thinks it could be nice, and then realizes it's a stinking hell-hole (metaphorically, that is). And that's really all there is to it, until she finally begins to live her own life at the very end. That's the kind of pattern that I typically get bored at after it repeats itself once, and this book would not be any different if not for the writing. Make no mistake, by the time she's at the fourth place, the story has gotten extremely tiresome. But the story is not the strength of this novel. The writing is the moving force here, with the story no more than a scent on the breeze. To use a comparison, if you're sitting outside suddenly you smell an odor that's pleasant but too strong, it makes all the difference in the world whether a cool breeze is blowing or not. You get tired of the smell pretty quick, but since you're enjoying the breeze you can forget about it.

I think Janet Fitch's writing, at least in this book, is definitely comparable to a cool breeze. Astrid is so emotionally unattached that the only moments of passion in the book come from other people and their (mis)perceptions of Astrid. That also is not a bad technique to use, as too often writers create characters who are the annoying "I'm the center of the world" type (albeit without realizing it). Astrid is certainly not that, and it makes her much more sympathetic than if this same story had been narrated by a whiny brat who was fixated on hating her mother. But then, there's a problem in that too. Astrid is dominated by her mother, and because of that Fitch has too many times where Ingrid gets to rant and rave about being descended of Vikings and how normal rules of behavior don't apply to them because they're beautiful and all sorts of utter nonsense. That would still be not so bad, except that these interludes go on for too long and nobody ever once challenges her.

But let me get back to the writing. Take this excerpt:

The Santa Anas blew in hot from the desert, shriveling the last of the spring grass into whiskers of pale straw. Only the oleanders thrived, their delicate poisonous blooms, their dagger green leaves. We could not sleep in the hot dry nights, my mother and I. I woke up at midnight to find her bed empty. I climbed to the roof and easily spotted her blond hair like a white flame in the light of the three-quarter moon.

"Oleander time," she said. "Lovers who kill each other now will blame it on the wind." She held up her large hand and spread the fingers, let the wind trace itself through. My mother was not herself in the time of the Santa Anas. I was twelve years old and I was afraid for her. I wished things were back the way they had been, that Barry was here, that the wind would stop blowing.

I just like that. The language flows, and makes a nice, natural, easy pace when read aloud (try it and see). The metaphorical element is substantial, but understandable and not intrusive, not something every author manages. The imagery is also subtle, but ever-present, and it makes the book much more vivid without bogging down the book (in terms of making it more difficult to read). As a contrast, if you read Eragon by Christopher Paolini, you'll see an example of the overuse of description, or perhaps just clumsier use (not that I dislike his book, I was actually quite impressed).

All in all, the book has much to recommend it, and some to recommend against it. It is too long, a price we seem to pay for most good authors (the exceptions are few, like Hemingway and Kerouac). It is also loaded with completely unnecessary material, such as any of Ingrid's inane rantings and several replications of the "Astrid goes to new home, is hopeful, is disappointed" theme. But none of that outweighs the strength of Fitch's writing, which has impressed me like few authors have done. I have to say, if you have the spare time, read it!

The Seashell on the Mountaintop: A Story of Science, Sainthood, and the Humble Genius Who Discovered a New History of the Earth by Alan Cutler

This was a very good book, and it's interesting in several different ways. On the one hand, it's a biography of Nicolaus Steno (which is the modern version of his scientific name, Nicolai Stenoni, which is an adaptation of his real name, Niels Steensen). It's also a history of the foundation of the science of geology, and it's a window into the early days of scientific exploration (before you object and raise the Greeks as an issue, it should be noted that despite their many studies, they never developed the scientific method, or experimental science). Many people unknowingly project our modern attitudes and opinions into the past, taking for granted the ideas of technology and knowledge. Because of that, we often forget that in the past, science and religion were not seen as diametrically opposed. Steno, who basically discovered stratigraphy and whose discoveries implied an age for the Earth older than Ussher's 6,000 years, or any other age based on a literal interpretation of the Bible, was a devout Lutheran who converted to Catholicism and spent the last few years of his life as a Catholic priest on a mission to convert protestants back to Catholicism. The main reason Steno converted was because he could not believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible, but that never altered his views about the existence of God or that God was the driving force behind the world. As a matter of fact, the men of science of Steno's time were studying science in order to find God in the world. That's why many such men were priests, and most men who weren't priests were still devoutly religious, such as Sir Isaac Newton.

Steno was born the son of a goldsmith in Copenhagen, Denmark (which was Lutheran) in 1638. He was born with copious manual dexterity and practiced it when he went to school to become an anatomist. And of course you must note that he started an anatomist, but his most famous discoveries were as a geologist and he ended life as a Catholic priest. This testifies to his many talents and mental prowess. Basically though, it all ties together. He was always a religious man, and he was exploring the beauty of God's creation when he dissected humans or animals. When a shark's head was brought to him for dissection, he noticed the similarity between the shark's teeth and "glossopetrae", or tongue stones that supposedly were natural formations that emanated from the Earth. Philosophers had tried to explain the formation of rocks in the Earth for a long time, but had never successfully explained how rocks could be formed that looked like seashells and shark teeth inside other rocks.

Basically this lead him to conclude that the only way it was possible was if the fossils had been there first and the rocks grew up around them. This led him to formulate the theory of sedimentation, which is that layers of rock are laid down on the bottom of a body of water. This property could be clearly observed even at their times on the small scales of buckets of dirty water or riverbeds. Steno understood the implications of those phenomena, and coupled that with his observations of the layers of rock evident in the mountains of Italy to come up with the new theory that the surface of the Earth was made by sedimentary layers. He also devised principles about these layers, called: the law of superposition, the principle of original horizontality, and the principle of lateral continuity. This is where you can see that by observing nature in order to find God, he found a natural process that works without any intervention from God. But even though that was just a few years after the Catholic church had punished Galileo, they didn't have a problem with Steno's work because their doctrine allowed that whatever was plainly observable must be true (something I wish biblical literalists would understand!)

In the debate over the correctness of Steno's arguments, which took place mostly after his death, the argument was never made that Steno's theory violated Christian belief in any way. Other Christian scientists either supported it or didn't, but never on the basis of conflict with written scripture.

Even if you don't read much non-fiction and aren't interested in geology, I would still say this book is interesting simply because it demonstrates some surprising things about the world and the people in it. Read it!

Counting Heads by David Marusek

This is a confused and confusing book. In terms of story, Marusek is either an experimentalist or completely inept. And story is the lesser part of this book anyway. It's more like a subset of completely different stories are told as part of an intertwining narrative, but instead of everything coming together at the end in a way you might understand, it just falls apart again after people and events swirl briefly around each other near the very end.

As far as characters, some are interesting and believable, others are just flat and boring. And half the story is spent with one character, who, in the end, ends up dead and unacknowledged. So in short, this book isn't about story or characters, it's about his fantastic vision of the future and technologies and what how humans respond to life in the face of those technologies.

If this had been done as a series of short stories where he simply demonstrated some new concept and explored the ramifications of that on human existence, this would have been a much better book. Some of the concepts he brings up are breeding whole races of clones to fill certain niches, the affect of artificial intelligences on societies, nanobot weapons, a government that becomes opaque to oversight because doing so would make it vulnerable to attack, and how people would choose to be if they were free to reshape their bodies as they wished.

Marusek does have some truely interesting ideas. He just doesn't have an interesting book. I wish it had been done better because this could have been almost as good as John C. Wright's The Golden Age trilogy. Too bad, it's just another forgetable piece of sci-fi exploration.

Me Against My Brother by Scott Peterson

Most Americans are ignorant of Africa, sometimes willfully so, and for the rest of us it can be impossibly complex to understand. I'm sure that for many people the last time they thought of Africa was when they saw Black Hawk Down. Black Hawk Down exemplifies the average American reaction to Africa: we don't even know something's happening until it's over. For example, the genocide in Rwanda wasn't reported on until the Tutsis had mounted an attack and were killing Hutus. Even when the news finally did start reporting, they muddled it and made hash of it until most Americans didn't know who was who and who'd started killing first. The same could be said of Sudan, althouth their struggle is ongoing.

In this book, Peterson examines troubled Africa through the lens of these three conflicts. Don't get me wrong, he's not one of those who still thinks of Africa as the "dark" continent, full of savagery and constantly at war. But sub-Saharan Africa has long been deeply troubled with internal conflict and riven by wars fueled by racial hatred and industrial nation's money. Some Americans are familiar with the idea that skin color doesn't mean race. An example is people who still consider themselves Irish or Italian or Polish or even Jewish. Even so, most Americans tend to look at Africa and think, "Well, they're all black." The subtext of that, of course, is that they're all the same. Such an attitude couldn't be more wrong. Hutu and Tutsi are not ethnically distinct people. These are artificial categories simly distinguishing the upper class (Tutsi) from the lower class (Hutu). The Belgians used the Tutsi to enforce their will in order to keep their own hands clean. In short, class resentment lead, through a long string of events, to the genocide in the '90s.

Peterson goes into detail on these three conflicts and succeeds in achieving his goal of humanizing the people involved in the struggles. Sometimes it's hard to read, as such brutality is unknown here in America. Here, a man might strangle some children, or a mother chop of her baby's arms. These are brutal, yes, but not on the same scale as a group of machete-weilding men grabbing children out of their mother's arms and dismembering them in front of her while she screams in horror before they turn on her and either rape her and kill her or just kill her. But these things are not unknown in Africa, nor is the sight of children carrying guns uncommon. Peterson is no armchair analyst though. He was a journalist on the ground in these countries when atrocities were happening daily. He also has another side to tell of the American intervention in Somalia, something that may undercut any notions that Americans knew what the hell they were doing. According the Peterson, the incident detailed in Black Hawk Down was not inevitable and was probably the direct result of Americans killing some of the most powerful clan leaders at a peace meeting.

As I said, Peterson uses these three nations and events to cast a light on the whole of Sub-Saharan Africa. He does a pretty good job of that, I think, and this book would serve to enlighten many an American if they would read it. He explores some more general themes along with the specific incidents, although I did feel that this book would have been better as a beginning for a series of works about modern Africa than as a stand-alone. As far as I'm aware though, he hasn't written another book. I'm sure plenty of his journalism has been published though.

I recommend this book, but I caution you, it's not always an easy read. There are color plates, but they're not the kind of pictures you see in National Geographic. Still, this is a book most Americans need to read.

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond

This is a good book, but not, in my opinion, the earth-shaking book I heard being raved about for years on end. Nor is it entirely worthy of its own National Geographic special. Still, it is an important and worthy book. The major problem with it is that it does not, in fact, directly address the issues of European dominance of the colonial era, which topic is strongly implied as the subject by the title (the supposed European triple threat) and the cover picture (which is of Pizarro capturing the Inka emperor). As says many times over, there are proximate causes (the ones directly involved in a certain event), and there are ultimate causes (the most basic reasons for an event happening). He's not as much concerned with the proximate causes for European dominance in the Americas as he is with the ultimate causes.

I do believe he did an excellent job in detaling the ultimate causes of European expansion and the ultimate causes of other people's subsequent extermination or subjugation. He does assume, however, that it is sufficient that Europeans had disease and technology (guns and steel both being examples of technology) to explain why they dominated Americans. I think it's fair to say that disease was much more important than technology though. Europeans would never have had a chance if they hadn't killed 95-99% of the indigenous population of the Americas, as they would have faced a continent already filled with millions of people. Diamond does argue for the importance of technology, mainly by use of the Spanish-Inka dynamic, but instead of really arguing for the importance of Spanish guns, horses, and steel, he essentially assumes that their superiority is self-explanatory. If I had not read 1491 before this, I might have also assumed that. However, as that book explained, in reality the advantages the Spanish gained by steel swords and guns were negligible, and while horses were very powerful on the field of combat, they actually hindered Pizarro's ability to move quickly because they were not well adapted to climbing steep mountainsides, where Inka highways went straight up and over instead of using switchbacks. Diamond also rather glibly dismisses the importance of the 45,000 or more native troops who sided with Pizarro in order to overthrow the Inka, much less their destructive civil war.

With all that said however, and with the caveat that human behavior cannot be predicted 100% accurately based on environmental factors, his theory that the advantages Eurasians enjoyed were because of environmental factors is a good one and he makes a strong case for it. If we examine human settlement patterns from the stone-age onward, we see that differences quickly arise where agriculture is most suitable. For example, the first civilization in the world arose in the Fertile Crescent (which is not any longer, but was then indeed a fertile land). This is also where domesticated plants and animals appeared for the first time. And to show that this relationship is not coincidental, it is demonstrated that civilization appeared earliest in other places that agriculture first developed. You have the Yellow river in China, the Indus Valley in India, the Andes of South America, and Mesoamerica. Agriculture eventually developed over most of the world, but appeared later in the Americas than Eurasia and never appeared in Australia. Thus we can see that an obvious pattern is evidenced by the fact that the first civilizations arose in areas with the strongest history of agriculture, and that these civilizations then spread forth. Thus, agriculture enabled expansion, either because farmers displaced hunter-gatherers by converting land to farm use or killed them. And of course, in interactions between two agricultural societies, the one with the larger agricultural base won.

Diamond includes some information on how epidemic diseases are derived from livestock, so that societies that domesticated animals were the ones that developed resistances to those diseases, and then decimated people who didn't have those animals with their diseases. (I put a little of that information in a post on TWM). This is not new information, but it goes hand in hand with his thesis. As far as I'm concerned though, this should have been the focus of any event where Eurasians expanded and displaced, conquered, or killed the natives. Disease is far more powerful than any army Europe or China could have mustered, and again, technology just wasn't a factor until much later in the colonial period.

Diamond also puts forth the theory that an East-West orientation rather than North-South is what enabled Europe and Asia to share so much agriculture and technology. For example, Europe got agriculture from the Middle East and gunpowder from Asia, but MesoAmerica never got the llama from South America. The spread of agriculture took much less time in Eurasia than it did in the Americas. This is because whereas a single line of latitude can have the same climate world-wide, seasons and climates change significantly over thousands of miles of longitude.

As for starting points, Diamond also discusses why some people had agriculture and domestic animals before others. In short, it was just luck. Around the world, most of the megafauna of the ice age died out (Diamond subscribes to the Overkill theory, which I think is absurd, but it works either way). Some animals were left, and of those that were, not all were suitable for domestication. Diamond gives a list of criteria for domestication, which sounds eminently plausible to me. You couldn't domesticate buffalo, but you could oxen. You could domesticate the llama, but not elephants. He also gives a list of criteria for domesticating plants, and it's not as simple as it seems. Sumeria arose first because of a very fortuitous location and placement of certain plants and animals.

Obviously this is a very simplified view of the world, but I think as a general model it does work very well. Perhaps with a few decades of study, it will be possible to express these concepts mathematically by accounting for such factors as weight of grain in relation to labor required and those kinds of factors. Diamond says as much in the end, and this book may be significant as the first attempt at a serious scientific study of history with all that that implies.

My review may sound mixed, but I really do respect this book and recommend it. Read it!

Don't Eat This Book by Morgan Spurlock

This book is a must-read companion to Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation. Whereas that work mostly dealt with how the fast-food model of business has reshaped the American food landscape, and the tangential affects that has had on individuals, Morgan Spurlock's book is all about how fast food itself is directly affecting Americans. Fast Food Nation makes no claims about how bad for you fast food is, but Don't Eat This Book more than makes up for it. In other words, one book is about everything that goes on behind the counter and the other is about everything

This book is not a rehash of Super-Size Me. Although he does talk about that experiment, the timeline is from well before that movie to well after. He talks about what inspired the movie, which was a lawsuit brought by two obese teenage girls in New Jersey against McDonald's. The subjects range from how bad Fast Food is to you to the incestuous relationship of the food industry and the USDA. He really covers a wide range of topics, and touches on a lot of things that happen because of American's increasing obesity, like the disturbing trend of doing surgery on kids (laproscopy) in order to reduce their weight.

If you've ever wondered how bad any of that stuff is for you, well, it's bad. After listening to Spurlock talk about how many calories are in fast-food hamburgers and fries, there's no way I'm ever going back to one of those places. Hardees even introduced a burger called the Monster that has 1400 calories and 190 grams of fat! That's disgusting!

Morgan Spurlock is a pretty good writer, and if you get the cd audiobook you can hear him read it too. It's an enjoyable and enlightening read, and in case you're thinking it sounds completely depressing; don't worry, he's got plenty of positive things to say about the direction some are taking away from the fast-food lifestyle. Also, our Austin-based Whole Foods stores have grown from one store employing 19 people in 1980 to 183 stores worldwide. It's not all bad.

Read it!

Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk

Chuck Palahniuk, doing what I hate the most about his writing for a book that doesn't need to exist. As another amazon reviewer put it, what's best about his books is that he can make you see humanity in even the most grotesque characters. I agree with that. Of course that means he's using the dichotomy between their grotesqueness and their humanity to get you to empathize with them. That's good but that's not what he's doing in this book.

So seventeen (I think, I was never quite clear) writers go on a three month retreat hosted by the mysterious Mr. Whittier. They disappear out of their lives without a trace and are taken to an old abandoned theater that's completely locked off from the outside world. And then it's like an episode of the Real World except all the characters are assholes (not a single one you'd actually like) and they're all idiots, and it's too damn long. The form of the book is that there's a narrative of what's happening to the writers (or rather what they're doing to themselves and each other), then there are the poems about them (written in the story by an unknown author) and then there are the stories by the authors in the story. Neat, eh? No, I didn't think so either.

You have to understand where I'm coming from. I'm a fan of his, dammit, and I like his writing when he's good, but he disappoints me so much (much like Bret Easton Ellis). In this book, the gross stuff has no redeeming qualities. For example, the first story, Guts, is a gross-out of the highest order, and serves only to tell you why St. Gutfrey is the way he is. It does explain something of his character, but not much. Unfortunately, that's probably one of the best stories of the book, except for the last, Obsolete, which is Mr. Whittier's story.

Another thing that just really peeves me is that you get this story from a narrator who's never explained. He's always saying "We" did something, like "We took all the light bulbs out" or "We smelled something in the kitchen". And then he has no place in the narrative. No poem about him, no story by him, and no explanation of how he lived to tell the tale or why. Nobody ever reacts to him, nobody ever talks to him, he lacks any dialogue, and as far as I can tell must have been a ghost floating around watching everything.

So anyway, read the book if you're a hardcore Chuck fan, but don't bother otherwise. It's really not worth it.