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).