Kristie Reviews: As Always, Julia

First a disclaimer: I didn't read the whole book, mostly due to the increasing size of my book pile and the tyranny of library due dates, so I'm giving myself half points for the parts I finished.

Julia Childs? Totally not vegan. But I can't help but love her. She was such a character, in real life and on TV. She cared a lot about food and friends and I can't help but admire the love and friendship she shared with her husband Paul. As Julia herself says:

"People who love to eat are always the best people."

This book is a collection of letters between Julia and Avis DeVoto, a book reviewer and editor. Their correspondence started when, in response to an article by DeVoto's husband about the deplorable state of knives available to the American Housewife™, Julia sent the DeVotos a letter and a classic French knife. Avis answered the letter, and a friendship was formed. Avis would turn out to be instrumental in getting The Art of French Cooking published and turned into the classic cookbook America knows today.

Aside from the sharing of many very non-vegan recipes, there's lots of interesting talk about quality kitchen knives, the complete unavailability of shallots in America, the publishing industry, 1950's politics (both women were dedicated Democrats and abhorred the now infamous McCarthy), and the ridiculously long list of famous people Avis and her husband hung out with at parties.

In the end, the book is just their letters back and forth, so events happen in real time--that is, slowly. So I don't feel bad putting this down without seeing an ending--it's worth the read just to hear these women's voices.

I probably wouldn't recommend this right off the bat; if you're interested in reading Julia Childs, her autobiography My Life in France is a better place to start.

Word count: 18,000 words, so 9,000 points
Kristie's total points: 483,748

Sara Reviews: Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki

This book teaches that good is bad and bad is good. How do you review a book like that?

I rate it Buddha/Flower.

Word Count: 41,000

Sara's Total Points: 200,275

Kristie Reviews: Light Boxes by Shane Jones

Do you ever start reading a book, and you want so bad for it to be really good, but just:

Kind of interesting but I don't feel like I'm reading, I feel like you're talking at me. Also this is veering hard into hipster territory.

Did this start as a list of direct influences on the book but then you tossed in Myspace to throw us off?
Because um

 Selah oh no are you on tumblr

Please stop

I mean, the story is interesting at a basic level--February declares war on a small town of balloonists by outlawing flight and making it dark and snowy months, while the town rebels in really precious and magic-realism-y ways--and there are a handful of lines that have really beautiful and interesting imagery, but as a whole it doesn't really come together. I don't give a damn about a single character and I don't even care what the ending was.

On top of all this, there is an uncomfortable level of similarity between Light Boxes and Salvador Placencia's incredibly brilliant People of Paper, of which Jones admits to being a big fan.

I want to do this book justice but it doesn't do itself justice. 3/10.

Word Count: 20,000 or so
Kristie's total points: 474,748

Kristie Reviews:Jagannath by Karin Tidbeck

Man, I'm really rolling with the short stories thing. I swear my attention span shortened by half in the last year.

I think tumblr is to blame.

BUT ANYWAY book reviews!

Jagannath is a collection of Weird Scandinavian short stories. I say "Weird" as a genre, not just as an uncreative descriptor. Capitol "W" Weird. Most of these stories go into the territory of horror without ever getting too scary, and for the most part, I really liked that--I'm attracted to many of the trappings of horror stories, but I scare pretty easily. But to be honest, some of these stories could have cranked up the creep factor just a bit more; everyone needs a good literary punch in the gut here and there.

Despite the Hindi title, most of the stories had a decidedly Scandinavian bent, what with changelings and vittra and tiny cabins hidden away in mountain forests (which I particularly enjoyed, since I've been fantasizing about leaving cities forever and living the rest of my life in a tiny cabin in the woods--the tinier and woodsier the better).

So they're a bit like darker stories Miyazaki might make for people in their mid- to late 20's. There, that's it.

Weirdest story in the book: probably the Aunts, who spend their lives eating and eating until they get so fat they split open and a tiny baby Aunt comes out and the excess from the old Aunt's body is OKAY NEVERMIND I've said too much. Go read it if you really want to know. 8.5/10.


Word Count: ~32,000
Kristie's Total Points: 454,748

Kristie Reviews: Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut

Here is what I love about Kurt Vonnegut. To quote:

Where do I get all my ideas from? You might as well have asked that of Beethoven. He was goofing around in Germany like everybody else, and all of a sudden this stuff came gushing out of him. It was music. I was goofing around like everybody else in Indiana, and all of a sudden stuff came gushing out. It was disgust with civilization.

 Paired with:

Somebody might now want to ask me, "Can't you ever be serious?" The answer is, "No."

Armageddon in Retrospect is a collection of previously unpublished short works, most of which are fiction, most of which have to do with war and Dresden and POW's. The book doesn't list when these were originally written, though someone on the internet said it was between Vonnegut's time in WII and kicking off his career as a novelist, and that pretty much makes sense.

The first piece is not fiction, it's the letter written by Vonnegut to his dad in 1945 at the end of his part in the war. It's stark and stunning and probably made his dad laugh and cry to read it.

The piece that made me cry was Spoils, about a freed American POW who loots a farm and kills what turns out to be the beloved pet rabbit of a poor, crippled Czech farm boy. I know.

The piece I liked best was Guns Before Butter, about a group of malnourished American POW's who sit around and talk about all the amazing food they're going to eat when they get home. That's the kind of story I can really get behind.

Short stories are good for short attention spans, Sara! This one was 7/10 I'd say.

Word Count: ~52,500
Kristie's Total Points: 422,748

Man I usually don't read this much. But I'm in it to win it, thanks book club!

Sara Reviews: The Enchiridion by Epicetetus!

It seems that no matter the time period or cultural context, "self-help" genre texts tend to boil down to the same basic principle: stop dreading and desiring things you have little control over and maybe you won't be so damn miserable.

A few bits of the Enchiridion read a little like Eastern philosophy except way more centered on self (Westerners, am I right?). Some of its points could perhaps be better contextualized.

"If you kiss your child, or your wife, say that you only kiss things which are human, and thus you will not be disturbed if either of them dies."

Damn, that's cold, Epictetus. I swear like half of this thing just talks about how you should chill if your family dies.

"If a horse should be prideful and say, 'I am handsome,' it would be supportable."

"Supportable" seems like an understatement for describing a talking horse.

"You must drink no cold water, nor sometimes even wine."

This is describing what you should do if you are training to win the Olympics. Am I reading wrong or is this insinuating that wine is a more appropriate beverage for an athlete than cold water?

"Don't allow your laughter be much, nor on many occasions, nor profuse."

Straight up terrible advice.

"If anyone tells you that such a person speaks ill of you, don't make excuses about what is said of you, but answer: 'He does not know my other faults, else he would not have mentioned only these.'"

I think this is supposed to mean you should be humble, but it kind of reads as trolling idk.

"Women from fourteen years old are flattered with the title of 'mistresses' by the men. Therefore, perceiving that they are regarded only as qualified to give the men pleasure, they begin to adorn themselves, and in that to place ill their hopes. We should, therefore, fix our attention on making them sensible that they are valued for the appearance of decent, modest and discreet behavior."

wat

"It is a mark of want of genius to spend much time in things relating to the body, as to be long in our exercises, in eating and drinking, and in the discharge of other animal functions."

Is he seriously saying that only dumbasses take a long time to poop? We're done here. 1/10 stars.

Word Count: 7,392 (I feel like this blog is a testament to my short attention span.)
Sara's Total Points: 166,667

Kristie Reviews: Everything You Know About Indians is Wrong, by Paul Chaat Smith

Alternatively: Everything You Know About This Book From Reading the Title is Wrong. This is not, for example, a retelling of Native American history. The title is a jab directed not just at white people. And this is not not a book that talks a lot about Indian installation and performance artists with whom the author, director of the National Museum of the American Indian, is personally acquainted.

This is a rambling discussion of Native American culture and art, both contemporary and throughout history, spoken with both love a deeply critical eye towards most everything. This approach turns up some interesting finds, such as the fact that many famous speeches and writings attributed to Native Americans are in fact anything but--Chief Seattle's speech immortalized in the children's book Brother Eagle, Sister Sky was actually a disputed speech rewritten almost completely by a University of Texas instructor in 1970; bestselling "autobiography" The Education of Little Tree was written by a white supremacist. Moral of the story: a large part of what is considered Native American tradition and culture is made up, but that doesn't exactly make it not real.

There is much discussion, both proud and embarrassed, of the American Indian Movement (AIM) of the sixties and seventies, particularly the occupation of Alcatraz, the siege of Wounded Knee, and the raid on the BIA headquarters. All worthy of examination, especially with Smith's need to deconstruct any attempt at a single narrative of these complex events.

But that's not what we get. Rather, these events are visited in passing mention or in more brief discussion than they deserve at points throughout the book*. What the reader will discover in the pages at the back--but as they've likely realized just a few chapters in--is that this is not a cohesively written book, but instead a collection of essays and speeches first published elsewhere. Now, there's nothing wrong with a wide-spanning collection of essays that return to a common topic (for example I'm currently reading Vonnegut's Armageddon in Retrospect, and we are 3 for 3 with the firebombing of Dresden), but the reader should probably be informed as part of the Introduction, not the Afterward, lest they get fed up with being introduced to the same topic of conversation from the same starting point over and over and over.

If I were to recommend this book, I'd suggest reading most of Part I, a couple chapters of Part III, and definitely the essays "States of Amnesia" and "A Place Called Irony" (the latter of which is particularly brilliant). The rest I'd give a pass unless you're really into reading about conceptual installation and performance art and believe them to be at the forefront of contemporary cultural representation. I don't.

TL,DR: Native Americans' hypothetical facebook status would read: "In a relationship with Native American Culture: It's complicated." Also, performance art, man! Pretty great if that's what you're into.

Ultimately I'd say unless you really like reading about conceptual performance art (as I've mentioned profusely that do not), about 8 out of 19 essays are worth reading, which equates to a rating of about 4/10? I'd probably give it a lot more if I'd just skipped the boring parts.

Word Count: ~65,000
Kristie's Total Points: 370,248

*Smith apparently did write a book on this topic, called Like a Hurricane: The Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee. I haven't read it, but I'm sure it's worth checking out. If you want a somewhat more sympathetic telling by someone who was closely involved with AIM, I'd recommend Lakota Woman by Mary Crow Dog. (Actually, I'll flat out recommend it whether or not you're interested in that particular piece of history).

Sara Reviews: Around the World in 80 Days!

I honestly hated this book. A guy goes around the world in 80 days. The end. Who cares? I'm surprised this book holds its appeal to so many people today, because it just doesn't feel relevant. This story would have been interesting at the time of its writing when people hadn't really traveled and didn't have the internet and didn't know about the world, because it does a pretty good job of putting the reader in exotic places. However, reading it now, it's just like 'oh this guy goes all over the place and has lots of obstacles and then he overcomes them.' The attitude is also extremely Eurocentric, and I can hardly blame the author given the time period, but it just seems dated now. It's very 'lol foreigners, they're so uncivilized!' Aouda is described as basically white with her European education and she's super hot so it's chill to like her even though she's Indian. That all said, the characters are at least sympathetic and compelling, and even though it's a pretty straightforward story, you are somewhat caught up in whether or not the protagonists will be successful (spoiler alert: they are).

I think my resentment was partially based upon self-loathing that I almost couldn't power through a 60,000 word book. And guess how many hot air balloons there were?

ZERO. 2/10 stars.

Word count: 62,465 
Sara's total points: 159,275

Kristie Reviews: Cozy Classics' Pride and Prejudice, Moby Dick

I am such a super serious reader you guys and I want all my points!!!

I saw these at a book store, and while I did read all 12 words of each book (24 points total!!!!!), I mostly want to tell you how totally cute they are. Needle-felted illustrations coupled with text that doesn't do much to tell any kind of story, but who cares, everybody loves whales fighting boats and Regency-era social commentary (though not necessarily in the same story I guess? Have they started crossing Jane Austen over with other literary classics? I feel like this should have happened already).

They were pretty darn cute, but I found the story to be a little lacking (a collection of nouns and imperative verbs, without a single clause or even phrase to be found, does not make for a very cohesive narrative). So 8/10!!!!!!


Word count: 24!!!!!!
Kristie's total points: 305,248

Ok but actually here are all these books I'm trying to read right now... WHICH ONE WILL I FINISH FIRST / WILL I EVER FINISH ANY / ONLY TIME WILL TELL

(Just in case you didn't think I was a super serious reader)

Kristie Reviews: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

Well I wrote a whole big review of this book but Blogger decided to be a bitch and delete it. Thanks, Blogger!!!

ANYWAY. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami is about a guy whose cat runs away, and then he quits his job and does a lot of nothing, until weird shit starts happening and keeps on happening until the end. It's told with a pervasive feeling of dreaminess and dissociation, and the flow is about as dream-like as you can get without becoming incomprehensible or pretentious, unlike some books out there (yes I'm looking at you, Only Revolutions. Asshole).

So here's the weird thing about the cat. This guy's wife is intent on him finding it (with all his unemployed free time, which lets be real, chasing cats isn't such a bad way to spend your time if you don't have to work) because she insists the cat is a symbol of their marriage. But the guy nicknamed the cat Noburo Watanabe after his brother-in-law. Why would you nickname a cat you admittedly like (which may or may not be a symbol of your marriage) after your creepy, rapey brother-in-law who you deeply despise? Kind of freaky, dude.

My major complaint, though, is that the book builds up towards an interesting climax until two-thirds the way through when suddenly half the cast drops out for no reason and the book starts moving in a totally different direction. Apparently the book was originally published as three separate volumes, the third of which is an asshole who doesn't want to keep up the story his predecessors left him. Also there are chapters missing from the English translation? What the heck.

This sounds like I'm hating on the book, which isn't really fair. I really like the parts where people are hanging out at the bottom of wells. I like the wind-up bird. And I like all the parts where the guy is looking for his cat, because it seems very quiet and peaceful, and I really dig looking for cats. I like all of the old veterans, and I like Creta Kano, the 1960's-attired psychic prostitute. I really like May Kasahara, the delinquent teenager who spends her time sunbathing and keeping an eye out for the missing cat.

Overall I'd give this a 6/10. Murakami does an excellent job of creating the mood and tone of the novel, but it would have gotten a better rating if the overall story arc was more consistent, and if the author had refrained from sexualizing (overtly or covertly) every single one of the many female characters. I wouldn't really recommend; try reading the short story it's based on, The Wind-up Bird and Tuesday's Women--it quits while it's ahead.

I can't find info about the word count, but it was 607 pages long, so if it's 300 words per page (apparently average for trade paperback), that puts me around 182,000 words.

Kristie's total points: 305,224

WINNING.

Sara Reviews Audio Programming: Doug Loves Movies!

Man, I sure suck at book club. But you know what, I spend most days listening to at least some audio programming or other, and that's a lot of hours of my life (so many hours... so many wasted, wasted hours). So, screw all of you.

Doug Loves Movies was the first comedy podcast I really listened to. My exact recollection fails me now, but I'm pretty sure that I saw somebody post online a link to the episode with Adam Scott and Jon Hamm, and being me, I was like "I should probably listen to this." My first job included lots and lots of boring, boring BIM modeling of big box stores, so my brain wasn't exactly too occupied most of the time, and this show really spoke to me at that particular moment of my life. I ended up listening to all of the (free) back episodes within a relatively short amount of time, the appeal of which was, primarily, the games.

There are a lot of mediocre podcasts out there, and other than the relatively high caliber of guests, Doug Loves Movies really isn't anything extraordinarily above the rest. But the games! Oh, the games! I think they're the reason I never really tire of this show. Even though the laughs per minute are a lot lower than on superior shows like Who Charted?, I still find myself able to chug through more episodes of this than almost anything else. Generally speaking, even the duds have plenty of games. I'm even terrible at Leonard Maltin, yet I still listen with rapt attention.

I cannot remember specific episodes to recommend, but my favorite guests include: Paul F. Tompkins (the episodes where he shows up as Cake Boss, Ice-T and Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber to play the Leonard Maltin game against himself are a delight), Scott Aukerman, Adam Scott, Samm Levine (okay, this is just a list of people who get overly enthusiastic about the Leonard Maltin game), Leonard Maltin himself (who constantly apologizes for being terrible at his own game), Anna Kendrick, Garfunkel and/or Oates, T.J. Miller (especially earlier episodes before he got sort of replaced with Pete Holmes, whose popularity I do not understand). Generally speaking, I'd listen according to who you already like.

Overall, 8/10 stars!!!!!!! Honestly, on the enjoyment scale I'd put it closer to 6/10, but 10/10 for endurability (not a word, but let's make it one).

Points or whatever: NONE GAINED! Because this is not a book and if it were, it would be a really terrible book.

Kristie Reviews: Going Bovine by Libba Bray

I know, the title sounds like it's going to be a 500-page ex-vegan diatribe. My roommate gave me a look when he saw me reading it. But when I hastily explained the plot to him, he just asked me "where do you find these books?" A fair question.

If I have a favorite genre of fiction, it's whatever one includes road trips, weird shit, bizarre humor, and characters who are certifiably (if not certified) insane. I guess it's kind of a specific category?

Regardless, that's kind of what Going Bovine by Libba Bray falls into. The story basically revolves around a kid who's a bit of a loser and an asshole, in that loveable YA fiction way, who gets Mad Cow Disease and then starts to wildly hallucinate that he's on a mission to save the world from fire giants and find the dimension-jumping doctor/scientist who can give him the cure. There's legendary NOLA jazz trumpeters, old ladies in seaside cottages, some pseudoscience, and a Daytona Beach spring break party house. There's a "punk angel" who's frankly a lot more pop than punk. There are Norse god-gnomes. There are hypochondriac teenage dwarfs, but not the LOTR kind, the regular kind. Oh, and a lot of Disney World.

I like the bit about the tree in Hope, Georgia that grants wishes. Loveable-Asshole-Boy didn't. Tant pis.

The satire is far less than subtle and at points way overdone, but I appreciated the jabs at standardized testing (which surprisingly is not something I've seen as often as you'd think in YA fiction). The writing isn't inspired, but it feels natural to the narrator. Also don't read this if you have a strong fear of getting It's a Small World After All stuck in your head. You've been warned.

I guess if The Fault in Our Stars is the big, tragic, romantic, inspiring dying children YA book of the day, Going Bovine is the "what the hell was that actually, maybe someone dies I guess, oh and I laughed" sort of novel.

I enjoyed it. 7/10. If it sounds like your kind of thing, consider yourself recommended.

Word count: 123,224
Kristie's total points: 123,224

Sara Reviews: Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka!

Mitch really is not embracing this book club I mean I invited him to post and it's been like 12 hours, no response, what is this? In what will most assuredly be a failed attempt to annoy him into participating, I am reviewing Metamorphosis because I know that it was the first thing he read for "book club."

I most related to this part:

"If they were startled, then Gregor had no more responsibility and could be calm. But if they accepted everything quietly, then he would have no reason to get excited and, if he got a move on, could really be at the station around eight o’clock."

Let's be honest, if I woke up as a bug, I'd probably be like 'oh maybe I won't have to go to work since I'm a bug!' Dick move on the part of the family though to not accept Gregor's new identity of a bug. Oh god, do you think "otherkins" use this book as like evidence that it's important to accept non-human identities? I'm not sure I like this book anymore.

Overall, it was short, so... 7/10 stars!!!!!!!!!

Word count: 21,810 (or something around there, I'm not sure for this particular translation)
Sara's total points: 96,810

Sara (Prematurely) Reviews: On the Map: A Mind-Expanding Exploration of the Way the World Looks by Simon Garfield!

I just bought this book and I'm already put off by the foreword author, who on the first page tells us, "Even at odd moments, say while clearing spam from the junk folders of my email accounts, it occurs to me that 'spam' is 'maps' backward, and how maps, the true opposite of spam, do not arrive unbidden, but only beckon." Wow, you're like the Zooey Deschanel of map-likers. I don't know what I expected from a popular book about maps that calls itself a "A Mind-Expanding Exploration," written by an author celebrated for his previous work on fonts.

But I do love maps, so. Okay.

Sara Reviews: Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell!

You know when a dude on the bus or maybe a weird uncle starts talking to you and he's going on and on with very specific anecdotal stories and drawing tenuous conclusions from them and you're just like "calm down"? This book is kinda like that. It's called "Outliers," which implies that the author has some sort of grasp of statistics, but he then oxymoronically proceeds to generalize, oversimplify and draw sweeping conclusions from his hand-picked group of "outliers." There's no reason for the reader to believe that it's anything more than a collection of anecdotes. It's interesting, sure, but what's the point?

The first part of the book posits the wild idea that success is a a product of hard work, circumstance and being in the right place at the right time. You know, I had been wondering why my grandmother wasn't the creator of Microsoft, but this book really spells out why Bill Gates was in a slightly more advantageous position to found a pioneering, multi-billion dollar software corporation. I guess I should cut grandma some slack.

The rest of the book kind of devolves from there, with some interesting stories that lack the full picture to really convince you of the author's conclusions aside from the most generic and obvious ones. Cultural differences can affect communication styles? Really. I'm already bored of reviewing this.

I did learn a few things I guess so 3/10 stars!!!!!!!!!

Word count: ~75,000 was the closest I could find on the internet. Sounds about right.
Sara's point total: 75,000