Month: April 2018

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline – Book

 

Ready Player One horz Good e-Reader

Yes, Ready Player One by Ernest Cline is a YA novel, but why should kids have all the fun? Here we have a Steve-Jobs-type, James Donovan Halliday, and a Woz (Steve Wozniak) type, Ogden Morrow. We have an America that has disintegrated into poverty for most people. In fact the world is so gritty, gray and depressing that most people spend a good part of their days in the VR (virtual reality) world created by Halliday, a world called the OASIS.

We visit the OASIS with Parzival (the avatar of Wade Owen Watts) and we meet his best friend Aech (H). We also visit Wade in the real world where he lives in a mobile home parked by a crane in the “stacks” outside of Oklahoma City. He also has found an intact van buried in a car junkyard where he gets away from his Aunt Alice’s cranky boyfriend. He attends a VR high school in the OASIS.

Ernest Cline has enshrined in this novel the pop computer/movie culture of the 80’s. This is a nerd book, but one that can still be enjoyed by those of us who are not so nerdy. Parzival has memorized the movie War Games, for example, but I also confess to having watched the movie a few too many times.

When Halliday dies he creates a quest, that all in the OASIS can try to win, to determine who will be the heir to his billions and his creation. This quest is at the heart of this story. It involves challenges, deep knowledge of the computer games and movies of the 80’s, and takes us across much of the “landscape” of the OASIS. James Halliday was socially awkward, perhaps on the autism spectrum. His friend Og wins the woman Halliday was in love with. This drives a wedge between these two friends. There is a love interest for Parzival in the form of Art3mis and there are plenty of villains under an arch-villain Nolan Sorrento and his company the IOI.

This book can be devoured in one afternoon which is something I rarely experience these days. I found it thoroughly entertaining, full of “easter eggs” (read the book), and with a light running commentary on the ways that VR and AI (artificial intelligence) may affect the social aspects of societies if we are not careful. You can find critiques of this novel as a literary endeavor but I see no reason to be quite so adult and judgmental about it. I enjoyed the book enough to go see the movie (in RPX). The book, for me, was better than the movie.

If you want the in-depth nerd skinny you might enjoy this article:

http://readyplayerone.wikia.com/wiki/Ready_Player_One

 

How Democracies Die by Levitsky and Ziblatt – Book

How democracies die big Chicago Humanities Festival

Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt wrote How Democracies Die. They were challenged to complete this book project by their agent Jill Kneerim. They did so with help from their student research assistants who are listed in the acknowledgments. It is a book that tries to analyze how much danger we are in of losing our democracy at this current moment in time. It begins with a story about Benito Mussolini and ends with references to the goings-on in the Trump/Republican administration, the 2016 primaries, and in the campaign of 2016. In the middle the authors look at a number of “political outsiders” who “came into power from the inside via elections or alliances with powerful political figures.” They take us through the rise of Adolf Hitler, Getúlio Vargas in Brazil, Alberto Fujimori in Peru and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. They say, “in each instance, elites believed the invitation to power would containthe outsider, leading to a restoration of control by mainstream politicians. But their plans backfired. A lethal mix of ambition, fear, and miscalculation conspired to lead them to the same fateful mistake: willingly handing over the keys of power to an autocrat-in-the-making.”

Although the authors remind us that America has had no shortage of authoritarian personalities in politics we also, they explain, have had “gatekeepers”, first in the form of powerful men in smoke-filled rooms and later in the form of political parties, conventions and the electoral college which kept authoritarianism in check, possibly with the sacrifice of some of the “will of the people”. They go on to explain that the primary system opened elections up to “outsiders” who had not come up from the ranks of government. Two factors weakened the gatekeepers, one being the availability of outside money (Citizen’s United) and two being the “explosion of alternative media”. “It was like a game of Russian roulette: The chances of an extremist outsider capturing the presidential nomination were higher than ever before in history.”

There were signs as early as the primaries that Trump might represent dangers for our democratic government.

  1. He would not say whether he would accept the results of the election
  2. He denied the legitimacy of his opponents
  3. He show a tolerance for and encouragement of violence
  4. He exhibited a readiness to curtail civil liberties of rivals and critics

The authors tell us that “No other major presidential candidate in modern U.S. history, including Nixon, has demonstrated such a weak public commitment to constitutional rights and democratic norms.” They offer evidence for each point they make. They also say that Republicans closed ranks behind Trump and normalized the election results.

Throughout their interesting and well-researched book we are shown examples of instances when outsiders have gradually and, sometimes, almost invisibly, sometimes rather violently taken the reins of power from the “referees” such as the courts, or the congresses of government, bought off their opponents, subverted the media, and have ended up with absolute control, thus ending a democracy. We can see where the authors are headed. They want to warn us that our democracy also could die such a death, just sliding into authoritarianism one baby step at a time. Here we look at Erdogan in Turkey and the Orbán government in Hungary and many more.

“Even well-designed constitutions cannot, by themselves, guarantee democracy,” say the authors. Successful democracies rely on informal rules, they add. “Two norms stand out as fundamental to a functioning democracy: mutual toleration and institutional forbearance.” The rest of the book shows us how these two norms are no longer functioning or are being eroded. In the end they explore our possible futures under Trump, but even if he is not the one who destroys our democracy it seems as if it has never been more threatened and it is good time to have a blueprint of what cues we should look for. Knowing when to put on the brakes or when the brakes will no longer functions could be very important either in the near or the more distant future.

Although this book seems scholarly and is constructed according to academic principles it is very readable. The language is not at all obscure and the examples of other nations who have lost their democratic government to a dictatorial government are interesting with easy-to-draw parallels. How Democracies Die should, perhaps, be required reading given where we find ourselves right now in America. It is the very best kind of thriller, the real kind.

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones – Book

 

An American Marriage horz. Parnassus books big

Oprah chooses book club books that explore social and cultural issues, sometimes very graphic abuses. Her choices can be quite literary and even somewhat gritty. I have not always kept up with Oprah’s book choices because I have my own lists that I can never seem to keep up with, but I did decide to read her latest choice, An American Marriage by Tayari Jones. We meet Roy Othaniel Hamilton in the first chapter and right away his language patterns make him unique and interesting. In the next chapter we meet his wife Celestial (nicknamed Georgia). Roy comes from a country family, not farmers, but a family from a small rural town in Louisiana. Celestial grew up in Atlanta, Georgia in a more upscale family, although her parents have divorced and her father has married the woman he was having an affair with. Both Roy and Celestial have attended classic African American colleges, Morehouse and Spelman. They meet through Celestial’s friend, and neighbor since childhood, Andre.

These two are only married for moments (about one year) before something awful drives them apart, something that is terrible because it is so racist and unexpected. Although this might happen to a white couple the odds against it are astronomical. However, if even one person in a marriage is black this can and does still happen in America. Roy is accused of raping a woman at a motel where he is staying with Georgia. His wife knows he is not guilty because they were together all night but the woman is so emotional and so certain that he is the one that he is sentenced to twelve years in prison.

Celestial has a career, she has a way to survive. At first she writes Roy every day and sees him as often as possible. But life happens. She makes sure he has money in his prison account and an uncle works on Roy’s appeal. When Roy gets out of prison after only five years, Celestial has already moved on but has not told Roy because she is so conflicted about it. There are some very emotional moments when Roy is released from prison that I cannot tell you about.

Although this book speaks to the dynamic in a marriage especially when a geographical separation takes place in a marriage, it also speaks to the overwhelming imbalance between incarceration for Americans of African Descent and other Americans. It is entirely possible that this is something many marriages in the black community have to deal with. The book doesn’t make a big deal of this demographic anomaly, but if you are aware of it then it is there in the back of your mind.

An American Marriage is much more than a classic novel about a marriage. It does not push the issue of racism, but it’s in there. It doesn’t push the fear that many people of color carry with them that they could be falsely arrested or even killed just for being black, but we feel it. It doesn’t go into detail about the way law enforcers sometimes go nuts if they think a black man has committed a crime against a white woman (in fact we do not even know for sure if the woman at the motel is white) but we are witnesses to it.

However Tayari Jones’ novel also stands as a story about a man and a woman and a marriage. In this sense it can be read at more than one level. So if you tend to avoid fiction that is loosely disguised social commentary you don’t have to eliminate An American Marriage by Tayari Jones. I believe that most likely you will enjoy it as much as any other offbeat love story.

Still I don’t think Oprah chose it because it is just a uniquely American love story, or a uniquely modern love story. It should shock us all that what happened to Roy and Celestial is still a thing that could happen in America in the 21stcentury, along with other racist actions perpetrated in the name of law and order but having little to do with the subject. It will be very telling when a romance between people of color does not need to come with an undercurrent of social injustice, if that ever happens.

April 2018 Book List

book-club-recomendations

It’s spring although it won’t stop snowing, but more time to read before the garden demands attention. This book list seems a bit smaller than usual and, of course, there are titles that call out to me. Keep writing all our authors and we will keep reading. When it finally warms up take a book to the park.

Amazon

 

Literature and Fiction

The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell: A Novel by Robert Dugoni

Ecstasy: A Novel by Mary Sharratt

Lawn Boy: A Novel by Jonathan Evison

Varina: A Novel by Charles Frazier (Cold Mountain)

The Only Story: A Novel by Julian Barnes

The Female Persuasion: A Novel by Meg Wolitzer

The Overstory: A Novel by Richard Powers

Circe by Madeline Miller

Mysteries and Thrillers

Greeks Bearing Gifts (A Bernice Gunther Novel) by Philip Kerr

The Oracle Year: A Novel by Charles Soule

Macbeth by Jo Nesbo

To Die But Once: A Maisie Dobbs Novel by Jacqueline Winspear

Warning Light by David Ricciardi

The Hellfire Club by Jake Tapper

Tangerine: A Novel by Christine Mangan

After Anna by Lisa Scottoline

Shattered Mirror: An Eve Duncan Novel by Iris Johansen

The Knowledge: A Richard Jury Mystery by Martha Grimes

Science Fiction and Fantasy

One Way by S J Morden

Head On by John Scalzi

Before Mars (A Planetfall Novel) by Emma Newman

Space Opera by Catherynne M Valente

Nonfiction

Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon by Robert Kurson

The Big Ones: How Natural Disasters Have Shaped Us by Lucy Jones

Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer by Barbara Ehrenreich

Look Alive Out There: Essays by Sloane Crosley

Losing the Nobel Prize: A Story of Cosmology, Ambition, and the Perils of Science’s Highest Honor by Brian Keating

The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery by Barbara K Lipska PhD, Elaine McArdle

The Consciousness Instinct: Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain Makes The Mind by Michael S Gazzaniga

Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C Clark and the Making of a Masterpiece by Michael Benson

God Save Texas: A Journey into the Soul of the Lone Star State by Lawrence Wright

The Truth about Animals: Stoned Sloths, Lovelorn Hippos and other Tales from the Wild Side of Wildlife by Lucy Cooke

Biographies and Memoirs

The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After by Clementine Wamariya, Elizabeth Well

Creative Quest by Questlove

Tiger Woods by Jeff Benedict, Armen Keteyian

You All Grow Up and Leave Me: A Memoir of Teenage Obsession by Piper Weiss

The Best Cook in the World: Tales from My Momma’s Table by Rick Bragg

My American Dream: A Life of Love, Family, and Food by Lidia Matticchio Bastianich

The Recovering: Intoxication and its Aftermath by Leslie Jamison

The Man Who Caught the Storm: The Life of Legendary Tornado Chaser Tim Samaras by Brantley Hargrove

Maker of Patterns: An Autobiography through Letters by Freeman Dyson

Swell: A Sailing Surfer’s Voyage of Awakening by Liz Clark, Daniella Manini

 

The New York Times Book Review

 

March 11

Nonfiction

Behemoth by Joshua B Freeman

A False Report by T. Christian Miller and Ken Armstrong

Rise and Kill by Ronen Bergman

Fair Shot by Chris Hughes

We the Corporations by Adam Winkler

What Are We Doing Here? (essays) by Marilynne Robinson

Conspiracy by Ryan Holiday

Fiction

The Friend by Sigrid Nunez

Eternal Life by Dara Horn

Brass by Xhenet Aliu

YA Crossover

Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson

The Cruel Prince by Holly Black

The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang

The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert

March 18th

Can Donald Trump by Impeached?

Impeachment: A Citizen’s Guide by Cass R. Sunstein

Can It Happen Here? Authoritarianism in America by Cass R Sunstein

Nonfiction

Secrets We Kept by Krystal Sital

Sabers and Utopia: Visions of Latin America by Marco Vargas Llosa

The Neighborhood by Marco Vargas Llosa

Built: The Hidden Stories Behind Our Structures by Roma Agrawal

It’s Even Worse Than You Think by David Cay Johnston

A Tokyo Romance (memoir) by Ian Buruma

Victorians Undone by Kathryn Hughes

The Stowaway by Laurie Gwen Shapiro

My Father’s Wake (memoir) by Keven Tooles

Language

Swearing is Good for You: The Amazing Science of Bad Language by Emma Byrne

How We Talk: The Inner Workings of Conversation by N J Enfield

How Language Began: The Story of Humanity’s Greatest Invention by Daniel I Everett

Crime Fiction

The Temptation of Forgiveness by Donna Leon

The Escape Artist by Brad Meltzer

Let Me Lie by Clare Mackintosh

The Big Get-Even by Paul Di Filippo

Fiction

Speak No Evil by Uzodinma Iweala

A Long Way From Home by Peter Carey

The Which Way Tree by Elizabeth Crook

The Driest Season by Meghan Kenny

The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah

March 25th

Fiction

Mrs. By Caitlin Macy

Nonfiction

Stealing the Show by Joy Press

A Lab of One’s Own by Patricia Fara

Broadband by Claire L Evans

Brazen by Pénélope Bagieu

Text Me When You Get Home by Joanne Lipman

Brave by Rose McGowan

Tomorrow Will Be Different by Sarah McBride

Biotopia by Emily Chang

Dear Madam President by Jennifer Palmieri

Ask Me About My Uterus by Abby Norman

April 1

Fiction

The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea

Child Sleuths and Child Victims

The Knowledge by Richard Jury

The Disappeared by C J Box

To Die But Once (Maisie Dobbs) by Jacqueline Winspear

Jack Rabbit Smile by Joe R Lansdale

The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore by Kim Fu

Call Me Zebra by Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi (Iranian)

Song of a Captive Bird by Jasmin Darznik

Nonfiction

The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist by Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington

The Return of Marco Polo’s World by Robert D. Kaplan

Victorious Century by David Cannadine

Fatal Discord by Michael Massing

Journey into Europe by Akbar Ahmed

Water

The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World by Jeff Goodell

Replenish: The Virtuous Cycle of Water and Prosperity by Sandra Postel

The Sources: How Rivers Made America and America Remade Rivers by Martin Doyle

 

Publisher’s Weekly

 

March 16th

What is Real?: The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics by Adam Becker (NF)

Death Comes in Through the Kitchen by Teresa Dovalpage (F)

The Pleasure Shock: The Rise of Deep Brain Stimulation and Its Forgotten Inventor by Lone Frank (NF)

The Punishment She Deserves: A Lynley Novel by Elizabeth George

Never Remember: Searching for Stalin’s Gulags in Putin’s Russia by Masha Gessen and Misha Friedman (NF)

Patriot Number One: American Dreams in Chinatown by Lauren Hilgers

The Gunners: A Novel by Rebecca Kauffman (F)

The Astonishing Color of After by Emily X R Pan (YA)

The Italian Teacher: A Novel by Tom Rachman (F)

Aetherial Worlds by Tatyana Tolstaya trans from the Russian by Anya Migdal (Short Stories)

American Histories by John Edgar Wideman (Short Stories)

March 23rd

The Disappeared: A Joe Pickett Novel by C J Box (F)

Emergency Contact by Mary H K Choi (YA)

I Have Lost My Way by Gayle Forman (YA)

The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row by Anthony Ray Hinton (NF)

Searching For Stars on an Island in Maine by Alan Lightman (essays)

The Solitary Twin by Harry Mathews (NF)

Undocumented: Immigration and Militarization of the United States-Mexico Border by John Moore (NF)

Murder on Shades Mountain: The Legal Lynching of Willie Peterson and the Struggle for Justice in Jim Crow Birmingham by Melanie S Morrison (NF)

The Master Key by Masako Togowa trans, from the Japanese by Simon Grove (F) (1st published in 1984)

My Dead Parents by Anya Yurchyshyn (Memoir)

March 30th

What is Real: The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics by Adam Becker (NF)

Because We Are Bad: OCD and Girl Lost in Thought by Lily Bailey (memoir)

Paris By the Book by Liam Callanan (F)

The Wolf: Under the Northern Sky: Book 1 by Leo Carew (Fantasy)

America is Not the Heart by Elaine Castillo (F)

Look Alive Out There by Sloane Crosley (essays)

The Consciousness Instinct: Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain Made the Mind by Michael S Gazzaniga (NF)

The Recovering: Instruction and Its Aftermath by Leslie Jamison (NF)

Denmark Vesey’s Garden by Ethan and Blain Roberts (NF)

Animals Eat Each Other by Elle Nash (F)

Resurrection Bay by Emma Viskic (F)

Killing King: Racial Terrorists, James Earl Ray, and the Plot to Assassinate Martin Luther King Jr. by Stuart Wexler, Larry Hancock (NF)

The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer

 

Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Isaacson – Book

Leonardo horiz big the Malta Independent

If your eyes and heart were opened to a whole new world filled with oil paints, and tempura, gouache, symbolism, and the subject matter of artists you were probably in your first art history class. It was a revelation that you could watch slides and listen to a professor speak about them and come away with a head full of images that lit up your mind, slapped a smile on your face and made you long for the great museums of NYC and Paris.

This is the place that Walter Isaacson takes you to in his book Leonardo Da Vinci. He puts us back in that art history class as he walks us through the details of Da Vinci’s paintings. There are color plates (even on a Kindle).

However, Leonardo was not first and foremost a painter, although that is certainly one way we remember him. After all, he did paint the Last Supper and the Mona Lisa. Leonardo, it seems, was not in love with painting and left many works unfinished. His mind saw all the components of the physical world that needed to be comprehended at great depth in order to make someone a great artist. He spent years dissecting cadavers and made exquisitely detailed anatomy drawings. He wanted to see inside eyes, brains, hearts and he drew very sophisticated conclusions about how bodies work. He studied rocks, birds (to learn about flight) and, in excruciating detail, the movements of water. He studied optics and perspective.

Yes, all of these things relate to art, but they relate even more to physics and engineering. I will leave it to Isaacson to tell you some of the other unique things Da Vinci wanted to know. Leonardo also loved theatrics and building machines for special dramatic effects. In this way he entertained kings and rulers and participated socially in the entertainments of the times, while always searching for a patron to help support his activities, his household, and the students who came to work in his workshop. He was not wealthy, being the illegitimate son of a notary.

Sadly for us, Leonardo was so often enticed by ever newer areas of exploration that he never published his enormous treasure trove of notebooks and he left it to others to receive credit for his discoveries. Perhaps it was because he was left handed and all his notations were made in mirror writing (he wrote from right to left). The idea of ancient aliens who came to earth when men were still quite primitive is now the subject of the Ancient Aliens television series, but I remember running across it years ago. Several times as I read about Da Vinci I thought he might be a distant offspring of such a technologically advanced alien visitor. Walter Isaacson is a true academic though and he said no such thing. He does not deal in conjecture and gives attributions for almost every point he makes in a fairly extensive set of footnotes at the end to the text. There is also a useful index to take you back to sections you want to review.

Isaacson is both a biographer and an art critic, as well as a fan of Leonardo and his book is not at all difficult to read. He doesn’t get bogged down in academia and he clearly wants us to share his admiration for Leonardo Da Vinci. It is a book to read in quiet moments with a nice cup of something warm or on a park bench with your bottled water while taking a break in your daily walk. A chance to dawdle in the 14th and 15th century as Leonardo pursues his life and his art, while wandering Italian towns in his rose colored robes, is the gift that Walter Isaacson gives us.