2011 Top 10: Radioactive

Eighth in a series of reviews of my 10 favorite books read in 2011, presented in alphabetical order.

Radioactive by Lauren Redniss, ©2011

In Radioactive, Lauren Redniss uses art (primarily illustrations created through a process of “cyanotype printing” that evokes negative images and glowing radiation) to present a biography of Marie Curie ... and of radiation itself, from Roentgen to Hiroshima to Spider-man.

Even the words are art, in a font (developed by the author) that looks like delicate hand printing, arranged interestingly on the pages. I enjoyed seeing the personal side of Marie Curie, loved learning that Roentgen “dubbed the invisible light an ‘X’ ray, X for unknown,” and can understand how, at the turn of the century, the piling-up of discoveries of so many invisible forces (electricity, radio, telegraph, x-ray, radioactivity) “blurred the boundary between science and magic.”

It’s a part-linear, part segue-filled slideshow. Lovely.

2011 Top 10: My Own Country

Seventh in a series of my 10 favorite books read in 2011, presented in alphabetical order.

My Own Country by Abraham Verghese, ©1994

A fascinating, moving memoir of a doctor treating (more accurately, devoting his life to) early AIDS patients in small-town Tennessee. It's a startling reminder of how much more closeted gays were in the late 1980s and how much a death sentence AIDS was then. The last hundred pages are just sad with loss, which is exactly how it was.

Jan 14 edit: Fortuitous timing -- just came upon this TED Talk by Abraham Verghese on the importance of touch; it concludes with a moment that could have been in this book.

2011 Top 10: Boys of My Youth

Sixth in a series of reviews of my 10 favorite books read in 2011, presented in alphabetical order.

The Boys of My Youth by Jo Ann Beard, ©1998

My mother is sewing a button on my father’s shirt while he’s still wearing it. “I was having this terrible feeling,” she says, “that she’d be this forty-year-old woman, going around telling people that we took her d-o-l-l away from her.” She leans down to bite off the thread. My father tests his new button and it works perfectly. “In three days she won’t remember she even knew that d-o-l-l,” he predicts.

But of course Beard remembers, and tells, in this non-linear collection of linked personal essays. They’re coming-of-age essays, where growing up is as likely to occur at thirty as at thirteen or three. Each age is rendered perfectly, as are the characters and the 1970s-80s period details of small-town Midwest.

Among the boys of Beard’s youth are Hal, that beloved d-o-l-l her mother’s oldest sister bullies her mother into throwing away; teenage boys who mostly ignore her at backwoods parties; her father who drinks and disappears for weeks at a time; Eric: boyfriend, husband, …; and a school-shooter in the University of Iowa physics department on a day Beard has gone home early to care for her aging dog. There are girls, too -- aunts and cousins; her older, nemesis sister; her mother who smokes on every page; a lifelong best friend she consults while writing these essays.

I love these people and their settings, love Beard’s writing and want more. I've also read her new novel In Zanesville, the first half of which feels exactly like these essays. I'm still scouring the Internet for anything else she's written.

2011 Top 10: Blood, Bones & Butter

Fifth in a series of reviews of my 10 favorite books read in 2011, presented in alphabetical order.

Blood Bones & Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton, ©2011

Slowly the meadow filled with people and fireflies and laughter -- just as my father had imagined -- and the lambs on their spits were hoisted off the pit onto the shoulders of men, like in a funeral procession, and set down on the makeshift plywood-on-sawhorse tables to be carved. Then the sun started to set and we lit the paper bag luminaria, which burned soft glowing amber, punctuating the meadow and the night, and the lamb was crisp-skinned and sticky from slow roasting, and the root beer was frigid and caught, like an emotion, in the back of my throat.

Gabrielle Hamilton looks back on her nine-year-old self in that passage -- over-the-moon infatuated with her older siblings, her mother’s way in the kitchen and her father’s way with setting a stage ... and unaware that divorce and neglect are just around the corner.

By 13, she’s drugging with an older crowd and lying about her age to get work in restaurant kitchens to support herself; before long she's participating in a felony-level employee theft racket. Yet she has a knack for stumbling onto cooking mentors and gradually learns enough to run the kitchen at a kids’ summer camp and freelance-cook at high-volume caterers for fancy Hamptons (NY) parties. She completes a fiction-writing MFA, but only because she simultaneously finds a wellspring of sanity and true creativity in a side cooking job that recalls the down-to-earth food and settings of her childhood. And it's with that "real food" perspective that she eventually opens a restaurant -- New York City’s acclaimed Prune.

There's evidence of that MFA in this memoir -- a beautiful mix of literary and culinary creativity. I marked evocative passages throughout, and especially recall Hamilton’s homage to the simplicity and humility of 75-year-old (chef extraordinaire) Andre Soltner preparing a perfect omelet. Although she does settle into a somewhat straightforward prose to tell the bulk of her story, and I don’t think she’s quite figured out her relationships with her parents or partners, these pages are fierce and vivid. And thus I also find myself over-the-moon infatuated -- with Hamilton’s writing and with her story of reclaiming family ... or at least an adult, work-centered facsimile of it.

(Review based on an advance reading copy provided by the publisher.)

2011 Top 10: Being Wrong

Fourth in a series of reviews of my 10 favorite books read in 2011, presented in alphabetical order.

Being Wrong by Kathryn Schulz, ©2010

Being Wrong turns the camera inward to our own personal experience of error. Kathryn Schulz writes that we relish being right:

“Our steady state seems to be one of unconsciously assuming that we are very close to omniscient. […But of] all the things we are wrong about, […] error might well top the list. It is our meta-mistake: we are wrong about what it means to be wrong. […] it is ultimately wrongness, not rightness, that can teach us who we are.”

In a gentle, leisurely narrative filled with curiosity and even humor, Schulz explores philosophy, psychology, history, and the personal experiences of people being wrong (lovers, explorers, crime victims and economists, among others). Over four sections, she 1) defines error; 2) investigates how we get there (e.g. our senses, memories, beliefs, the data at hand); 3) examines our reactions to being wrong; and 4) encourages us to embrace error. Extensive endnotes and an index complete the book.

She’s adamant that error isn’t an intellectual inferiority or moral flaw but rather something beneficial, a way of learning and becoming -- where, quoting the philosopher Foucault, “The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning.” Schulz writes, “When you were a little kid, you were fabulously wrong about things all the time”; she suggests that when we seek new experiences it is a way of plunging ourselves back into the childhood experience of not-knowing, where error leads to rapid learning.

She also suggests that there is no actual state of “being” wrong -- we believe we’re right and then we discover we were wrong and we transition to a new state of being right. And it’s those “hinge moments” of awareness that provoke the revelatory shifts that change us; it’s also our reluctance to acknowledge error and complete those transitions that keeps us stuck in painful life situations.

It's an intelligent and deeply researched book, highly readable and highly recommended.

(Review based on an advance reading copy provided by the publisher.)

2011 Top 10: Alinea

Third in a series of reviews of my 10 favorite books read in 2011, presented in alphabetical order.

Alinea by Grant Achatz, ©2008

Achatz is a wunderkind-chef now in his late thirties, and Alinea presents his debut restaurant, opened in Chicago in 2005 and now regarded one of the world’s best.

Alinea seats 64 diners for its nightly tasting menu of “upward of 28 courses” -- some of which are a single bite and most of which are more likely to be plated using tweezers than tongs. It’s “molecular gastronomy,” which I’d associated with manufacturers’ artificially processed food-like substances, but which actually is just playing with the physical and chemical properties of food. Achatz focuses on a food’s flavor, then creates interest (and usually surprise) by manipulating its appearance, texture and temperature -- for example, reducing lettuces to an intensely flavored liquid that is frozen and served as a sort of sorbet and topped with a salad dressing that has been similarly transformed.

Like diners who enter his restaurant through a monochromatic hallway, so too readers open the black-and-white cover of this oversized, overweight coffee-table book and find themselves transported, Wizard-of-Oz style, into hundreds of stunning color photographs (see some in the restaurant’s gallery). The book opens with 50 pages of terrific get-acquainted essays about Achatz and Alinea, followed by 350 pages of recipes and detailed procedures for preparing the approximately 100 dishes from four seasonal tasting menus. It’s armchair reading, or kitchen-table reading -- but only to rest the book on the table, not because you’re going to prepare many (any) of the recipes. I would have liked Achatz to deconstruct a menu thematically, but perhaps theme, more than technique, is his trade secret.

I came to this book simultaneously impressed by Achatz’s originality and derisive of most culinary over-the-topness. I come away in awed respect and with a desire to find the $200+ per-person for an evening at Alinea the restaurant. Meanwhile, Alinea the book exceeds 5 stars.

P.S. What’s the most ironic disease for a chef who puts flavor first? Take a look at this New Yorker profile.

2011 Top 10: A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again

Second in a series of reviews of my 10 favorite books read in 2011, presented in alphabetical order.

A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace, ©1997

A collection of seven essays about the popular culture, written and previously published in the early-to-mid-‘90s in Harper’s, Esquire, and scholarly journals.

Some are entertainingly observational, some are densely erudite, all are brilliant. Most include DFW’s signature styles of verbosity, footnotes and textual shorthand. There’s analysis of rural life via people gathering at a state fair; of pampered life via guests on a luxury cruise ship; of athletic (and mathematical) excellence, specifically in tennis. And of film, television and literature, for example “Greatly Exaggerated,” which turned out to be literary criticism on authorial context, a topic on my to-pursue list. (I read the essay twice, at first nearly laughing at its over-the-top density and assuming it must be satire. But it’s not, and I’m drawn to explore it elsewhere to figure it out.)

The essays are about pop culture but the setting is clearly DFW’s mind. Maybe he manipulates the reader’s attention toward it, but honestly, it feels gravitational. I have everything else of his still to read, yet I despair because eventually there will be no more.

2011 Top 10: A Bittersweet Season

First in a series of reviews of my 10 favorite books read in 2011, presented in alphabetical order.

A Bittersweet Season by Jane Gross, ©2011

Excerpted [with some paraphrasing] from the book's section on a geriatrician’s presentation to healthcare policymakers:

“How many of you expect to die?”
[All members of the audience eventually raised their hands.]
“Would you prefer to be old when it happens?”
All hands flew up in unison.
Who would choose cancer as the way to go?
Just a few.
“What about chronic heart failure or emphysema?”
A few more.
“So all the rest of you are up for frailty and dementia?”

This outstanding book -- part memoir, part instruction manual, part expose on eldercare and financing -- is a sort of documentary about that third route. Cancer deaths come relatively early (age mid-60s) and with a rapid decline for 20% of Americans, and organ failures follow a decade later, via lengthier up-and-down declines, for another 25%. But it’s frailty and dementia -- “a drawn-out and humiliating series of losses for the parent and an exhausting and potentially bankrupting ordeal for the family” -- that lead to 40% of deaths.

The topic may be heavy but the treatment is extremely readable, accessible (suspenseful and fascinating, even), and packed with useful information. New York Times writer Jane Gross uses her mother’s decline as a springboard to present statistics and discuss issues, for example:
• elder housing (“assisted living is a social, rather than a medical, model of long-term care”);
• elder care (home care, nursing homes, physicians, hospitalizations);
• private savings and public financing (“assume that whatever it is you need, Medicare won’t pay for it”);
• family relationships and responsibilities
• end of life.

Gross gathers dozens of resources into a useful appendix, and the blog she launched (The New Old Age at the NYT) remains active although with new contributors. Her mother’s 2001 decline prompted this book, but Gross incorporated up-to-date research when she wrote it in 2010. It was published when my 92-year-old mother was a couple of years into her decline into frailty, and I read it in a cycle of putting it aside and then invariably being fascinated to find recognition and comfort when I picked it up again; I finished it a month before she died.

Of the many books now about caregiving and elder care, I recommend this single volume. It’s one to read for your parents’ aging and then again for your own.

(Review based on an advance reading copy provided by the publisher.)

2011 Reading Stats

Some statistics from my 2011 Reading

Total books finished: 96
Fiction: 35
Nonfiction: 58
Other (poetry, mixed): 3

Female authors: 49
Male authors: 39
Mixed: 8
Authors new-to-me: 69
Authors with more than one book in my 2011 reads:

Jo Ann Beard (2 -- moving coming-of-age material)
Carrie Fisher (2 -- ballsy yet poignant celebrity memoirs)
James Lileks (2 -- hilarious pop-culture anti-homages)
Keiji Nakazawa (3 -- horrific graphic-novel memoirs of Hiroshima)

Original publication date:
1800s: 1
1920s: 2
1930s: 1
1970s: 5
1980s: 3
1990s: 11
2000s: 25
2010s: 48

Date acquired:
1980s: 2
1990s: 3
2000s: 12
2010s: 79

Notable tags:
Audiobook: 11 (more convenient but more difficult for me than reading)
From the library: 27 (many luscious illustrated books)
History or historical fiction: 26 (a goal, see below)
Humor: 14 (yay!)
Illustrated: 33 (a pleasure)
Novella: 7 (in 2012, it’s tomes)
Translated: 10 (an unwritten goal)
Workplace: 7 (my favorite setting)

Ratings: 77% are 3- to 4-star (okay to good), which exactly describes my reading year. Next year, I want better.

From my goals last January:
“In 2011, I want to read a little more history
--success! read 26 books of history/historical fiction--
and a few more classics,
--marginal, with 4--
to pull predominately from my TBRs,
--success! read 38 of 40 I’d set as goal and decreased my TBRs from 291 to 263--
and to [get to] other (non-book) reading [e.g. backlogged stacks of New Yorkers].”
--fail, but I'm going at it again in 2012--

Beginning tomorrow: reviews (or less-formal comments) on my ten favorite reads in 2011.

2011 Reading Recap

I read some good books in 2011, a few great books, and a couple I’m now an evangelist :) for. My full list follows, sorted by fiction/nonfiction/other in reverse chronology by order read, including ratings (out of 5 stars). I tried to decrease my ballooning stacks of TBRs (to-be-reads), so books acquired pre-2011 (some acquired decades ago) are designated by “#”. Click the link to read my review; click the book’s image (most are included at the end of this post) to peruse it on Amazon.

Tomorrow, I’ll post some statistics about my reading year. Then I’ll highlight my Top 10 via individual reviews, in alphabetical order by title, over the next ten posts.

Fiction
96. The Fiction Class# by Susan Breen (2)
88. Further Interpretations of Real-life Events by Kevin Moffett (3.5) (See review)
87. Secret Letters from 0 to 10 by Susie Morgenstern (3)
86. The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick, read on audio by Yelena Shmulenson (3.5)
84. Little House on the Prairie# by Laura Ingalls Wilder (4)
83. Range of Motion by Elizabeth Berg (3.5)
80. A Farewell to Arms# by Ernest Hemingway (3)
76. One Amazing Thing# by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (3.5) (See review)
70. Speak# by Laurie Halse Anderson (3.5)
68. Number the Stars# by Lois Lowry (4)
65. Heart of Darkness and the Congo Diary# by Joseph Conrad (3.5)
64. The Train of Small Mercies by David Rowell (3) (See review)
62. The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh (4) (See review)
58. State of Wonder by Ann Patchett (4) (See review)
55. The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly, read on audio by Natalie Ross (4)
53. The Summer Book# by Tove Jansson (4) (See review)
52. American Salvage# by Bonnie Jo Campbell (3.5)
51. Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson
46. The Notebook# by Nicholas Sparks (1.5)
45. Joy for Beginners by Erica Bauermeister (3.5) (See review)
42. Go the F**k to Sleep by Adam Mansbach, read on audio by Samuel L. Jackson (4)
39. The Heart Specialist by Claire Holden Rothman (3) (See review)
37. Translation is a Love Affair by Jacques Poulin (4) (See review)
34. The Girls# by Lori Lansens (3)
32. Hope for the Flowers# by Trina Paulus (3)
31. Tooth Imprints on a Corn Dog# by Mark Leyner (3)
26. We Need to Talk About Kevin# by Lionel Shriver (5) (See review)
18. In Zanesville by Jo Ann Beard (3.5) (See review)
14. The Housekeeper and the Professor# by Yoko Ogawa (3.5)
11. Marcelo in the Real World# by Francisco X. Stork (4)
9. Room# by Emma Donoghue (4) (See review)
8. The Art of Racing in the Rain# by Garth Stein (3.5) (See review)
7. Machine# by Peter Adolphsen (3) (See review)
3. The Silent Land# by Graham Joyce (4) (See review)

Nonfiction
94. Shockaholic by Carrie Fisher, read on audio by the author (2.5)
93. The End of Overeating# by David Kessler (3) (See review)
92. Happy Accidents by Jane Lynch, read on audio by the author (3.5)
90. Blue Nights by Joan Didion (4.5)
85. The Problem of Pain# by C. S. Lewis (3)
82. Fun Home by Alison Bechdel (4)
77. My Own Country# by Abraham Verghese (4.5)
74. A Bittersweet Season by Jane Gross (5) (See review)
73. Bossypants by Tina Fey, read on audio by the author (4) (See review)
71. Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher, read on audio by the author (3)
69. The Kitchen Counter Cooking School by Kathleen Flinn (4) (See review)
67. The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You by Eli Pariser, read on audio by Kirby Heyborne (4) (See review)
66. The Toaster Project by Thomas Thwaites (3.5) (See review)
61. County: Life, Death and Politics at Chicago's Public Hospital by David Ansell (4) (See review)
60. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again# by David Foster Wallace (4) (See review)
57. The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson, read on audio by Robin Miles (4)
50. Bomboozled by Susan Roy (4) (See review)
49. Barefoot Gen: Life After the Bomb Vol 3 by Keiji Nakazawa (4.5) (See review)
48. I Shall Not Hate by Izzeldin Abuelaish (3.5) (See review)
44. A Friend for Einstein, the Smallest Stallion by Charlie Cantrell (2)
43. Radioactive by Lauren Redniss (5) (See review)
41. Barefoot Gen: The Day After Vol 2 by Keiji Nakazawa (4)
40. The Book of Awesome by Neil Pasricha (3.5) (See review)
36. Barefoot Gen Volume 1 by Keiji Nakazawa (4) (See review)
35. In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson (3) (See review)
33. Fast Food Nation# by Eric Schlosser (4.5)
30. A Room of One's Own# by Virginia Woolf (3.5)
29. The Boys of My Youth by Jo Ann Beard (4.5) (See review)
27. The Long Goodbye by Meghan O'Rourke (3) (See review)
25. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, read on audio by Cassandra Campbell (4)
24. Thinking in Pictures# by Temple Grandin (4)
23. Women Food and God# by Geneen Roth (3.5)
21. Spark: How Creativity Works by Julie Burstein (3) (See review)
20. Unbroken by Lauren Hillenbrand, read on audio by Edward Herrmann (4.5)
17. Poke the Box by Seth Godin (3.5) (See review)
16. Better Than Great: A Plenitudinous Compendium of Wallopingly Fresh Superlatives by Arthur Plotnik (3.5) (See review)
15. Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error# by Kathryn Schulz (4.5) (See review)
13. Blood, Bones, and Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton (4.5) (See review)
12. Final Jeopardy: Man vs. Machine and the Quest to Know Everything by Stephen Baker (3.5) (See review)
10. Persepolis# by Marjane Satrapi (4)
6. Flow: The Cultural Story of Menstruation# by Elissa Stein/Susan Kim (3.5) (See review)
5. Frank Lloyd Wright: American Master# by Alan Weintraub/Kathryn Smith (3) (See review)
4. Gracefully Insane# by Alex Beam (3.5) (See review)
2. Sugar Changed the World by Marc Aronson/Marina Budhos (3.5) (See review)
1. I Remember Nothing# by Nora Ephron (2.5) (See review)

Other
95. Fodor's The Complete African Safari Planner (4.5) (See review)
91. What I Hate from A to Z by Roz Chast (3) (See review)
89. Interior Desecrations: Hideous Homes from the Horrible '70s by James Lileks (4)
81. The Gallery of Regrettable Food by James Lileks (4)
79. Alinea by Grant Achatz (6!) (See review)
78. The Food52 Cookbook by Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs (4) (See review)
75. The Unofficial Guide Walt Disney World 2012 (5) (See review)
72. Ruin: Photographs of a Vanishing America by Brian Vanden Brink (3.5)
63. Paul Fusco: RFK by Paul Fusco (4) (See review)
59. Detroit Disassembled by Andrew Moore/Philip Levine (3.5) (See review)
56. Thoughts From the Seat of the Soul# by Gary Zukav (2.5)
54. Fodor's Essential India (4) (See review)
47. Mother Said by Hal Sirowitz (3.5)
38. Bellevue Literary Review Vol 10 No 2 (Fall 2010)# (4.5)
28. Insiders' Guide: Key West in Your Pocket by Nancy Toppino (4) (See review)
22. Bellevue Literary Review Vol 9 No 1 (Spring 2009)# (4)
19. Lonely Planet Discover Europe# (3) (See review)

Marketers vs Mathematicians

After a two-year hiatus while I was reading more books than magazines, I’m subscribing again to New Scientist -- a curious, playful weekly that touches on every flavor of science.

My first issue back was as clever as ever, including this letter to the editor from Tom Heydeman in Reading, Berkshire, UK:

I was impressed to see on the back cover advertisement (28May) that Mercedes-Benz is celebrating “125! years of innovation.” Factorial 125, the number of years claimed, is more than 10²⁰⁰, so the company started to innovate unimaginable aeons before the big bang.

fyi 125! campaign site here

Resolve: Less Languishing

While migrating recently to a new PC, I organized my writing files and was heartened to rediscover a number of works-in-progress and completed pieces … and disheartened to see them languishing. I moved the drafted stories and essays to a “To Finish” folder, and the finished pieces to “To Query.” Some might fit traditional print magazines, but I decided to explore the breadth of online opportunities, too.

And into this mobilization came another option -- from a writer-friend who emailed that he’d just self-published a short story on Smashwords*, which describes itself:

Smashwords publishes and distributes ebooks [and shorter length pieces]. Authors and publishers retain full control over how their works are published, sampled, priced and sold. … [Readers get] multi-format, DRM-free ebooks, ready for immediate sampling and purchase, and readable on any e-reading device.

For writers, self-publishing involves some heavy lifting in terms of text formatting and product marketing. But for readers, it’s still all about the story -- for example, how my friend K. G. Deloas accomplishes the twists and reveals that pull together the threads of his supernatural short story, It’s Happened Countless Times Before.


*or see others, e.g. Scribd and Amazon’s Kindle Singles

A.I. on Jeopardy!

If you enjoyed IBM’s “Deep Blue” chess challenge against Garry Kasparov back in 1997, you may be interested in watching its “Watson” challenge on Jeopardy! this week, Monday through Wednesday.

It’s part of IBM’s overall “Deep QA” artificial intelligence (AI) project, where the goal is to develop machines that can work with language to supplement the repertoire of human services in its global consulting practice. Such computers must be able to “understand” the questions humans ask; to mine data sources that are increasingly words-based (e.g. e-mail, digitized books, the Internet); and to narrow possibilities and arrive at helpful answers.

To that end, a computer named “Watson” (actually a stack of hundreds of computers with thousands of processors) will play the Q&A game Jeopardy against the show’s all-time top two champions -- highest money-winner Ken Jennings and undefeated Brad Rutter. Jeopardy hopes the com-pu-tition (ouch, their word) will be smart and entertaining to viewers; IBM hopes it will be smart and impressive to businesses.

Tune in to Jeopardy this week -- and learn more about the challenge on a PBS Nova program. I've been following the project a bit and, if anything, it has me ever more gobsmacked about the human brain.

2010 Top 10: You Know When the Men Are Gone

Final in the series of reviews of my 10 favorite books read in 2010, presented in alphabetical order.

You Know When the Men Are Gone
by Siobhan Fallon

In Fort Hood housing, like all army housing, you get used to hearing through the walls. You learn your neighbors’ routines: when and if they gargle and brush their teeth; how often they go to the bathroom or shower; whether they snore or cry themselves to sleep. You learn too much. And you learn to move quietly through your own small domain.

You also know when the men are gone.

Those opening lines hooked me into this terrific collection of short stories that are linked through a shared setting of Fort Hood, Texas, its soldiers who are deployed to Iraq, and their spouses and families who stay behind. The first story sets up military domestic life and that too-closeness to neighbors and authority. The next follows a soldier serving outside Baghdad -- an investment banker who enlisted after 9/11. Others explore suspicions of adultery; wounded soldiers returning early; the difficulty of re-acclimating to home; the public honor and private grief of widowhood.

They’re personal stories, not political, and they're gentle and straightforward, to be re-read more for comfort than for a layered understanding. But they’re some of the most engaging reading I’ve encountered ... in fact their readability reminds me of Kathryn Stockett’s The Help, the first book published by Penguin’s Amy Einhorn imprint which is now publishing this book.

Review based on an advance reading copy provided by the publisher

2010 Top 10: The Visual Display of Quantitative Information

Ninth in a series of reviews of my 10 favorite books read in 2010, presented in alphabetical order.

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward R. Tufte

According to Edward Tufte, the purpose of graphics is, “Not the complication of the simple; rather [...] the revelation of the complex.” And his Visual Display of Quantitative Information, first self-published nearly 30 years ago, is now a bible -- a sort of The Elements of Style applied to information graphics.

Tufte reviews how information can be presented (e.g. a minimal amount via a sentence; a moderate amount via a table; a huge amount via a graphic) and then turns his attention to those graphics -- from their beginnings in cartography (no one who reads the book will forget Charles Minard’s graph of Napoleon’s march across Russia) to how to achieve graphic excellence today.

He urges a multi-disciplinary approach, cautioning that, “Allowing artist-illustrators to control the design and content of statistical graphics is almost like allowing typographers to control the content, style, and editing of prose.” He touches on psychology and cognition. He rails against using graphic design to deceive, and enlightens readers by pulling numerous examples of misrepresentation from prominent media. He devotes a large part of the book to improving the effectiveness of graphs by urging the elimination of “chart junk” (e.g. moiré-effect cross-hatching) and numerous other sources of “non-data ink.” In fact, a chapter wherein he strips away seemingly necessary text, frames, hatch marks, etc. (leaving little more than an ether vapor but in the process simplifying and clarifying the meaning) is revelatory.

So many books I've read recently have referenced Tufte, and I'm thrilled to have finally read him directly.

2010 Top 10: The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey

Eighth in a series of reviews of my 10 favorite books read in 2010, presented in alphabetical order.

The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey
by Walter Mosley

He only had one chair, and that had a book, a glass of water, and three stones he’d found that day at the park on it. They were blond stones, a color he’d never seen in rock and so he picked them up and brought them home, to be with them for a while.

That’s exactly why I read Walter Mosley -- to “be awhile” with his characters, whose situations and moral complexities I always think I haven’t seen, and whose unfamiliarity always softens into a fond recognition.

Here it’s 2006 and 91-year-old Ptolemy Grey lives alone in squalor in south-central LA. He has a small pension, he has a radio and a TV tuned 24/7 to a dueling background of classical music and cable news, and he has sporadic contact with extended family two and three generations down the line. But his home and mind have declined since his wife died decades ago, and now dementia keeps him obsessed about the ages-ago deaths of a childhood friend in a house fire and the lynching of a beloved mentor. So when another loved one dies in street violence, and a new young friend awakens Ptolemy's spirit, he embarks on a mission to protect his loved ones before his own time comes.

Mosley narrates almost completely in scenes here -- from Ptolemy’s perspective, a mix of confusion and distraction co-mingled with vestiges of philosopher and keen observer. A key plot point about experimental drugs approaches magical realism and requires a suspension of disbelief ... or maybe it just required me to fully enter a world where the rules don’t resemble the ones I know, and to appreciate the point of this book: being awhile with this man in that world. I loved every page of it.

Review based on an advance reading copy provided by the publisher

2010 Top 10: The Imperfectionists

Seventh in a series of reviews of my 10 favorite books read in 2010, presented in alphabetical order.

The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman

Rachman's debut novel is the story of an international English-language newspaper in Rome, told through alternating threads: a series of biographical vignettes tracking the newspaper from its founding in 1953 to the economy of today’s print media; and a series of linked short stories involving the newspaper’s employees (and one reader).

The stories are terrific! Set within the workplace and outside in personal life, they involve lots of characters yet each is effectively unpacked -- background characters just enough to make them memorable, main characters enough to make the reader care; many are developed further as they appear again in later stories. They’re fast stories, with lots of dialogue and strong forward momentum. And Rachman isn’t afraid of tension -- in one, I was so engaged in the hilarious interaction between a high-energy correspondent and a passive, fledgling wannabe that I thought I was going to have a stroke!

These stories are among the most enjoyable fiction I read last year, and it’s a mere quibble that I felt Rachman prepared me for a finish slightly more “Wow!” than I got. I recommend it highly and am beyond eager to read more by him.

Review based on an advance reading copy provided by the publisher

2010 Top 10: The Geometry of Pasta

Sixth in a series of reviews of my 10 favorite books read in 2010, presented in alphabetical order.

The Geometry of Pasta by Caz Hildebrand and Jacob Kenedy

As the full title states, "The Perfect Shape + The Perfect Sauce = The Geometry of Pasta," so the talents of book designer Caz Hildebrand + London chef Jacob Kenedy = this terrific book.

Part history-of-pasta and part cookbook, it begins with an overview of pastas (southern Italian peasants’ plain semolina to wealthy northerners’ incorporation of eggs and different starches) and tomato sauces (also varying from light to rich), and the concept of matching the delicacy/sturdiness of a pasta to that of a sauce. And then comes that geometry -- the actual pairings of those shapes and sauces via a 270-page alphabetic encyclopedia of dozens and dozens of pasta shapes, including:

• A short history of each pasta (referencing climate, culture and politics/economics), for example the intricate shapes that were made “when housewives had to fill long winter evenings,” and the delicate and haughty pastas of the Renaissance, which “specialist nuns would make in their convents”;
• An arresting b/w graphic of its shape;
• In some cases, recipes for making that pasta at home;
• In all cases, recipes for sauces/fillings suited to that shape;
• Suggestions for other sauces (an Index makes it easy to locate sauce recipes).

I'd expected this book to be glossy and slightly oversized, so was surprised to find it the size and construction of a hardcover novel. While that doesn't sound like a book to be taken into the kitchen and later wiped down, you'll want to do so -- it's filled with easy-to-follow recipes for every level of cook, from quick sauces with a few common ingredients, to sauces involving a dozen ingredients and progressive steps that are mini-tutorials in cooking technique. They include olive oil and/or butter and a wide range of fish, fowl and meat. Most serve 2-4 people as a main course; some serve 6-8 and a few feed a crowd. But even if you're an armchair foodie with little intention of preparing the recipes, this book's design and interesting (even amusing) discussion make it a delightful read.

2010 Top 10: The Elements

Fifth in a series of reviews of my 10 favorite books read in 2010, presented in alphabetical order.

The Elements
by Theodore Gray

I started collecting elements in 2002 […and] by 2009, I had assembled nearly 2,300 objects representing every element, the possession of which is not forbidden by the laws of physics or the laws of man. […] Some elements can be experienced in large quantities, like the 135-pound iron ball I keep in my office for people to trip over. Others are best enjoyed in responsible moderation -- keep too much uranium in the office, and people start asking questions (keep over 15 pounds, and the Feds start asking questions).

The Elements is a lush and visually stunning coffee-table book that showcases those samples and provides a terrific individual "biography" of each element.

Gray opens with an overview of the Periodic Table and its organization of elements into groups according to their similar characteristics. But then he explores them, element by element, in order of their atomic number rather than by group -- an effective method because the repeated returns to the various groups reinforce the group characteristics while familiarizing readers (YA and adult) with the individual elements.

Each biography is a two-page spread -- the left a full-page photo of one of those samples from Gray’s collection, and the right an array of text and images that detail the element’s history, uses, and technical specs (atomic weight; density; crystal structure; orbital electron arrangement; melting and boiling points; emission spectrum). Though it's a reference work, I read this book straight through -- often thinking, “okay, just one more” but then unable to resist that each element’s text ends with a teaser for the next one, and that Gray is liberal with trivia, personal experience, and wit. He dubs Tellurium the most melodic name and discusses the politics involved in naming new elements, finishing: “And so it is that we come to the end of our journey through the periodic table not with a bang, but with a committee.”

He’s the Bill Bryson of the Periodic Table!


P.S. The book’s enhanced e-version seems reason enough to buy an iPad :) Take a look at the book and the app with author Theodore Gray here.

2010 Top 10: The Disappearing Spoon

Fourth in a series of reviews of my 10 favorite books read in 2010, presented in alphabetical order.

The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean

I ended up with an honors degree in physics, but [...] my real education was in my professors’ stories. [...] I realized that there’s a funny, or odd, or chilling tale attached to every element on the periodic table.

Kean came to those professors already primed for their stories -- by having been fascinated to find mercury not only in the Periodic Table of science class but also in his childhood thermometers ... in literature’s mad hatter ... and in the mercury-laxative leftovers discovered in Lewis & Clark’s trail of latrines.

Though I didn’t keep strict track, I think Kean includes a tale for every single element in this terrific book. And while he did so, he opened my eyes to things I’d forgotten (or not ever known!!), for example:

• Chemistry is based on atoms’ electrons and physics on their nuclei;
• "Alchemy" is true: every element traces back to the fusion of solar hydrogen atoms into helium;
• The familiar Periodic Table is just one of many potential configurations of the elements, some of which are 3D;
• There are more than three states of matter;
• Our bodies don’t monitor whether we’re inhaling enough oxygen, only that we’re exhaling enough carbon dioxide;
• Midas was real as well as fictional;
• Why sci-fi life forms are based on silicon;
• Why Americans call it “aluminum” but it’s “aluminium” to everybody else.

There’s chemistry here, and physics and biology. But there’s also astronomy, geology, history, politics, warfare, economics, gender studies, human ambition and inter-personal conflict. And there’s a whole lotta humor. There are also dozens of entertaining and informative endnotes, suggestions for further reading, and an index. The only way to make it even better is to pair it with Theodore Gray’s The Elements.

Get started by taking a look at the disappearing spoon of the title.

Review based on an advance reading copy provided by the publisher