A Rope and a Prayer: A Kidnapping from Two Sides

David Rhode and Kristin Mulvihill's book, A Rope and a Prayer: A Kidnapping from Two Sides, is one of those books that sounds great on paper. It has all the intrigue of a fabulous story--a kidnapping in a faraway land, the new bride at home tossed into the confusing, mysterious world of government agents and international agendas as she tries to free her new husband from the clutches of murderous extremists and a backdrop of international terrorism and religious zealotry. Rhode and Mulvihill manage to take that set of facts and make it into a dry, boring, tedious work that will desperately make you wish you weren't the type of person who finishes books that you start regardless of their quality.

Rhode is a Pulizter-prize winning journalist and his skill in writing and narrating isn't entirely lost in this dull, occasionally self-indulgent memoir/expose/snoozefest. Mulvihill's presence in the book adds an element of vacuous tedium, the voice of a powerless woman who spends her time pining for her husband with a ticking biological clock and a career built on the vanity and materialism of other vapid, dull women. Her portions of the book made me long for the riveting plots of Sesame Street and Dora the Explorer where his sections of the book reminded me of that dull history professor with a penchant for including family stories in his lectures.

I'd place this book in a category with Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea and that's a far better read.

Mockingjay

The last of Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games trilogy, Mockingjay is the weakest of the three books. Katniss and Peeta return to the arena, slated to fight to the death against other victors yet again. This time there's a rebellion underfoot and a handful of the victors escape the arena to stoke the flames of revolution. Peeta, however, is captured by the capital and thus, we have angst as Katniss and Gale team up to rescue Peeta from the clutches of the evil capitol, as Katniss takes her role in a manicured broadcast of rebellion. It's a very odd take on revolution and propaganda and unlike the empowered girl of the first two books, Katniss comes across very much as bumbling, meandering, powerless token of forces beyond her control. Her actions in this book seem fairly useless and ultimately contrived by those around her for their own benefit. After plowing through the first two books, I found this one something of a let down. And I hated what Collins did to Peeta. Sadistic bitch.

At any rate, after you've gone through the first two books, you really have to finish the third. And if you're into melodrama, you may enjoy it.

Catching Fire

The second of Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire, picks up where The Hunger Games left off, with Katniss and Peeta as celebrated victors of the sadistic games. Katniss learns that they've inspired a rebellion among the districts against the oppressive rule of the Capital and that she has become the heroine of the rebels. She's also discovered that her best friend, Gale, has romantic feelings for her, creating an anticipated but groan-worthy love triangle for the remainder of the series.

Catching Fire manages to maintain the momentum and interest of The Hunger Games. The world that Collins has created is cruel and gory; it has all the elements to appeal to its target audience, vicious, blood-thirsty, romance-starved teenage girls and their adult counterparts. I liked it. The whole series is worth a go.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

In her first book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, writer Rebecca Skloot cleverly weaves a tale of scientific discovery with the story of a poor black woman who died of cancer in the 1950's. That woman was Henrietta Lacks, the body behind a cultured line of cells named HeLa that have done everything from traveling to outer space to playing an integral role in the development of the polio vaccine.

Skloot takes us through Lacks' childhood as a member of a poor, black sharecropping Southerner to her move to Baltimore where her husband found work in the steel factory during WWII. Her philandering husband most likely gave her the HPV that precipitated her cervical cancer, a slice of which ultimately became the first line of cells to be successfully cultured for experimentation. Her family had no idea that Lacks' cells were being used in this manner and eventually, when they did learn of it, they ultimately lacked the education to understand what a significant contribution to science the cells had made.

This is a story about science and about a poor black family, full of ignorance and tainted by poverty and illness even before birth. We may all be born equal in the eyes of the law, but Lacks' children were born touched by syphilis, with the accompanying impacts on IQ and competence. This narrative is both heartbreaking and stunningly effective in demonstrating the ethical dilemmas of research medicine, particularly when subjects are impoverished or unable to comprehend the implications of their participation. From a woman who doesn't understand the basic mechanics of cellular structure to researchers performing some of the most consequential and advanced cytological studies, Skloot manages to weave a true history of the women behind the cells, her descendants and the paradoxical centrality and irrelevance of their family to science.

Fascinating book. I highly recommend it.

The Price of Everything

Eduardo Porter's bestseller, The Price of Everything, is an economic exploration along the lines of Freakonomics, only not quite as interesting. That's not to say it's a bad book, just that if you only had time for one, I'd go with Freakonomics.

Porter examines the price of everyday goods and services before taking his book on a more interesting path as he examines the price of concepts and institutions, like happiness and marriage. He employs economics to explain why polygamy fell out of favor, why religion has the potential to make rational sense and why the recording industry had to destroy Napster but may have gone about it in a stupid way.

Overall, I liked the book. If you're looking for some interesting dinner conversation, it provides some relevant, timely fodder.

The Purpose Driven Life

Rick Warren's bestseller, The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For?, found its way into my library queue after several years of procrastination. I'm not particularly religious, but I was sufficiently curious to pick the book up and see what Warren has to say.

While obviously, this book would speak far more profoundly to an active Christian than to a secular humanist, I thought it was a pretty accurate representation of what it means to be a Christian and how being a Christian can give your life purpose, meaning and dignity no matter how small your talents or capacities. If you're interested in the Christian faith or what churchy-folk believe, it's not a bad place to start, though it's not really written as a conversion text, but more as a galvanizing book for those already somewhat familiar with Christian principles.

It's not for everyone and since I don't read Christian literature all that often, I can't speak to how it compares to other Christian texts. But it's well-written and those far more spiritually wise than me seem to like it.

Half The Sky

NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, collaborated on Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, a sobering look at the appalling conditions that women endure around the world and how contributions of time and money are making substantial changes on both an individual and a societal level. This book is Kristof and WuDunn's call to arms and I think it would be incredibly challenging to read it and not be moved to participate in some way to help the women and children profiled in its pages.

In topics varying from forced prostitution to unhealed obstetrical fistulas, Kristof and WuDunn take stock of the condition of women in third-world countries and the very real challenges to helping them in any meaningful way. They highlight people like Greg Mortensen (of Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time fame) who are working in hostile or challenging environments to promote education and public health. They examine successes and failures in international aid approaches and after ripping your guts out with horrific stories of war survivors and rescued prostitutes, they let you know how you can help.

There's nothing light about this book. If Kristoff and WuDunn's intention is to stoke people into helping women, to raise consciousness to prompt action, they've succeeded brilliantly.

If I have one criticism of the book, it's that Kristoff and WuDunn are clearly liberals and at times, their policy analysis reeks of that bias. However, the focus of the book is NOT politics and it would be a mistake to ignore it on that basis.

Worth reading.

Sippy Cups Are Not For Chardonnay

Stefanie Wilder-Taylor's foray into the glutted world of motherly advice literature, Sippy Cups Are Not for Chardonnay: And Other Things I Had to Learn as a New Mom, is an amusing take on the trials and tribulations of navigating motherhood for the first time. Like Celia Rivenbark, Wilder-Taylor is an older first-time mom who seems to think that motherhood is somehow more intimidating or challenging at 35 than it is at 25. (That's bullshit, btw).

Wilder-Taylor offers up nothing new here but her humorous tone and pithy observations make the book, if nothing else (and it is nothing else), a brainless, easy read into issues that every mom can relate to--from the other moms on the playground to the breastfeeding Nazis to the sleep-training fascists. She's obviously trying to be funny and for the most part, she succeeds. I think I might recommend this book to anyone who has tried to breastfeed a baby and had little success or enjoyment from it, since Wilder-Taylor had that experience and writes about it with a decent amount of understanding and empathy.

No matter how many of these advice books you read, your kids will always find ways to surprise you and other moms will pull out meals or disciplinary tactics that you'd expect to find in the African bush or the Spanish Inquisition. Wilder-Taylor gets that.

I liked it. I'm not sure I'd run out and buy it, but if you need a snarky pick-me-up and you're hanging with the under 7 crowd, it's a good one for you.

The Hunger Games

Suzanne Collins' futuristic trilogy begins with The Hunger Games, which I grabbed from the library without knowing what I was getting myself into. I was expecting some kind of romantic crap, but what I got was an exciting tale of a gladiator-esque fight to the death blended with a Romeo and Juliet style romance. Fabulous surprise!

In a literary world glutted with horrible fantasy books, (I'm looking at you Twilight), The Hunger Games stands out as a post apocalyptic beauty. The basic premise is that North America has been split into 12 districts and each of these districts sacrifices two teens to the Hunger Games each year. At the Hunger Games, the kids fight to the death and the winner lives in eternal glory and brings a bit of wealth back to their suffering district. Of course, our protagonist, a gal named Katniss, is from a poor, disadvantaged district, but she's spunky and resourceful. She is thrown into the arena to fend for herself against 23 other competitors. Will she turn into a savage killer? Will she win the favor of the crowds watching the competition on TV? Will she survive to see her family?

Oh, you'll have to read it to find out. The book is geared toward teenagers and it has a pretty straightforward, accessible style. Unlike some of my previous nerd-cred books, this one is pure brain fluff, designed perfectly to add some sweetness to your zombie's diet.

Highly recommend it for a quick, easy read.

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner's bestseller, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, is one of the more entertaining and worthwhile non-fiction, non-history books that I've ever had the pleasure of reading. While I rarely gush about books, this one is a real winner--provocative, well-written, interesting and in the end, it made me smarter for having read it. Gotta keep my brain plump for the zombies, you know.

Levitt and Dubner confess early on that their book has no unifying theme, save for the promise that it will ask questions of data sets that are typically left unasked. For example, they question whether or not high stakes testing will increase incidents of teachers cheating to improve scores and how mining test score data can help detect who cheats and who doesn't. It may not sound riveting, but reading it is as good as debating a whodunnit in Law and Order. Perhaps that's the genius of this book. It takes prurient questions--how much incentive does your real estate agent have to get you the very best price on your house?--and asks hard data to reveal the answers.

This is one of the best books I've read for awhile. I highly recommend it.

Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the World

Laurence Bergreen's gorgeously researched book, Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe, is an entertaining Age of Discovery history that blends rapturous discovery, paternalistic interaction with native cultures, disease, hardship and political machinations into a dramatic tale of exploration and death. A dear friend of mine turned me on to naval history books like Nathaniel Philbrick's winner, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex and I've been hooked since.

Bergreen's book tackles how Magellan's fleet became the first to circumnavigate the world despite multiple mutinies, Spanish-Inquisition-style punishments, scurvy, storms, improper maps and hostile enemies. He uses primary sources like captain's logs to piece together what happened, including an insightful account of the God-complex that ultimately led to Magellan's death as he attempted to force Christian conversion on an unwilling native culture and ended up hacked to bits for his trouble. Bergreen explores the motivation of the sailors aboard the ship and he explains how a fleet of five ships and more than 200 men set off...and a crippled ship with a skeleton crew of 18 returned.

I loved this book both for the actual reading enjoyment and for the high brow nerd factor. Though, between the two, I might say read In the Heart of the Sea first. It's been years since I read that one and I still recall the experience of reading it fondly.

We're Just Like You Only Prettier: Confessions of a Tarnished Southern Belle

Celia Rivenbark's book, We're Just Like You, Only Prettier: Confessions of a Tarnished Southern Belle, reads a bit like a Jeff Foxworthy comedy sketch, only less funny, less polished and less endearing. Rivenbark tackles some different territory, like the insecurity mothers feel creeping around the edges when someone asks our kid what they had for breakfast and the answer is a cookie instead of steel-cut oatmeal with organic fruit.

The book's strength lies in those few, brief moments when Rivenbark manages to meld satire with a larger note that rings true for many female readers. I think this book would fall woefully flat for men or childless women. There are a few humorous observations anyone can enjoy like her reflection on the way politicians will talk about girls, booze and casual sex as an ice breaker for more substantive policy discussion as if hungover college students groggily recalling their latest hookups want to chat about school reform. But there are other moments like the agony of marathon dance recitals that may seem dull or beyond the realm of common experience for some readers.

The book loses steam about halfway through and Rivenbark's wit gives way to some tedious reading that forcibly reminded me of sitting at The Comedy Store in Los Angeles while a struggling comedian awkwardly stumbled through a poor set of jokes while the audience laughed uncomfortably, desperately waiting for the kid to take his final bow. That being said, it's an easy read with some very entertaining moments and a bit of mindless slog. If you're looking for a laugh, I'd read Sh*t My Dad Saysfirst.

The Geography of Bliss

Another $.25 rummage sale buy, Eric Weiner's The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World, tantalized me enough with the title that I decided to read it, being both a grump and an occasional misanthrope. Half travelogue, half study of happiness, I found that I didn't think the book did either particularly well.

Weiner, an NPR foreign correspondent, divides the book into ten countries that each illuminate some aspect of the eternal quest for happiness, be it the entrenched misery of Moldova or the promoted happiness of Bhutan. He asks provocative questions, like how do we quantify happiness or does the simple act of defining happiness make us less happy? Can a culture breed unhappiness? Can it create happiness? Does social and financial inequality create unhappiness? Does equality create happiness? If you've ever wanted to think about happiness on a policy scale, here's the book for you.

I guess I'd say the book is worth reading, but if you could only read one novel the entire year, this one would stay dusty on the shelf a little while longer.

The Other Boleyn Girl

Yet another rummage sale purchase that found its way onto my bookshelf, Philippa Gregory's The Other Boleyn Girl is a long, but entertaining foray into historical fiction and the twisted relationship of two sisters caught between the sheets of a cold-blooded, impulsive king. If that description doesn't make you want to pick up this scintillating tale, there's also a film version starring Natalie Portman awaiting you.

Gregory allows the youngest of the Boleyn trio, Mary, to narrate the tale as the most sympathetic of the siblings brought to court by an ambitious uncle to improve the family fortune. Ushered to the King's bed at 14, Mary soon loses his favor to her more avaricious sister, Anne, who plots a clumsy Machiavellian scheme to unseat the King's current wife and usher in her own reign as Queen of England. As we all know, the scheme falls flat when Anne fails to birth a son and is eventually beheaded along with anyone else the King didn't particularly like.

Gregory executes the plot brilliantly and the arc of this story is artful, intelligent and provocative. I had trouble putting it down. Another recommendation to keep your brain plump and wrinkly for the zombies.

Sh*t My Dad Says

Justin Halpern's book, Sh*t My Dad Says, is a compilation of hilarious quotes from his foul-mouthed father first made famous by Halpern's popular twitter account. Interspersed with bawdy quotes are somewhat touching and heartfelt narratives about Halpern's childhood and his father's caustic advice as he stumbles through the adult minefields of romance and the working world. This short book is ideal for bathroom reading and so long as you're not the prudish, easily-offended-by-profanity type, it's entertaining, as far as mindless fluff goes.

Me Talk Pretty One Day

David Sedaris' most popular book, Me Talk Pretty One Day, is well worth picking up for a gander. Split into halves, the first collection of essays deals with Sedaris' childhood and 20-something stumblings and the second half explores his move to France with his partner, Hugh. Both sections examine Sedaris' literal and figurative struggle to find a voice, as a lisping homosexual in the South and as a bumbling American transplant with mediocre French in Normandy.

As always, Sedaris' charm lays in his ability to take everyday experiences, like the misery of childhood speech pathology classes or the awkward enthusiasm of a parent for music lessons, and mold it into an amusing anecdote with the capacity to draw laughter from his text. I find Sedaris' dry humor incredibly entertaining and engaging though some criticize him for being negative. He can occasionally be a bit high-brow and I think that upper-middle class readers may enjoy his work more than the less epicurian reader.

At any rate, I highly recommend reading at least one of Sedaris' books. He's one of the best American humorists of our time and he manages it without resorting to a crassness that makes you feel tarnished when you're done.

When You Are Engulfed in Flame

So I recently had the pleasure of discovering David Sedaris when I picked up When You Are Engulfed in Flames at a rummage sale for $.25. Sedaris, an American humorist whose books have sold more than 7 million copies worldwide, makes his living by observing every day phenomena with a dry wit and sardonic humor that enliven common experiences like air travel.

In his seventh published work, Sedaris takes on the stunning horrors of middle age and the realization of his own impending mortality. He tackles everything from quitting smoking, to the mundane but comforting rhythms of long-term relationships, to the indignities of ass boils. The fact that Sedaris has sold so many books should tell you that he does all of this in a snarky, funny way that makes him a worthy cultural observer. His position as a tongue-in-cheek chronicler of our time is made all the more unique as he's an unabashedly gay man and naturally, writes from his perspective as such.

I enjoyed Sedaris' work primarily for his voice, though if you only have a chance to read one of his books, I would recommend Me Talk Pretty One Day, which I review here.

The Help

Kathryn Stockett's The Help is well worth reading though I hesitate to worship it like some reviewers have. The tale is thought-provoking, entertaining and it encourages deeper contemplation of the complex racial relationships of Southern women that form a painful and very real chapter of our history. And really, what more do you want from a book than to be entertained and provoked?

The Help follows a wealthy Southern white woman, Skeeter, as she pursues her unusual dream of becoming a journalist. She decides to catch the attention of NYC publishers by writing about the help, the black women who spend their lives attending to the needs of white women. Stockett does an excellent job of portraying both the intense racism of the era and the genuine bonds between white women and their black help. Without being overly preachy, she manages to capture the affection black help had for the kids they nannied and occasionally, for the women they worked for.

The story follows Skeeter as she strives to give black women a voice through her writing (a facet of the story that bothers me a bit, as if black women need a white helper to have a meaningful voice). Skeeter struggles to find women to speak until the Civil Rights Movement heats up and suddenly, black woman want to be heard. And the stories they tell are honest, horrifying, funny and sad. It's incredibly difficult to write a book like this without being callous to one side or the other but Stockett manages to humanize everyone without softening the ugliness, pain or degradation of oppression. It's excellent.

It's also an easy read, great for a lazy rainy afternoon or a few days at the beach.

The Postmistress

I had high hopes for The Postmistress by Sarah Blake and they were utterly destroyed by actually reading the book. There's nothing worse than picking up a hyped piece of literature only to discover that it more closely resembles the giant dump you left in the porcelain pot this morning.

I think the reason I truly detest The Postmistress is that it had so much potential to be great and instead, it fell flat. The story traces the lives of three women--a journalist named Frankie, a doctor's wife named Emma and a postmistress named Iris--in a small town just before the US becomes active in WWII. The plot is clumsily contrived to bring the three women together. Emma arrives in Franklin on the same bus as Iris and starts a great life with her doctor husband. Soon after conceiving her first child, her husband loses a woman in childbirth, is traumatized and decides to go off to London to help victims of the German bombings. He's unaware that Emma is pregnant. While he's there, he meets up with Frankie who witnesses his tragic, meaningless death. Frankie becomes the keeper of a letter for Emma and she eventually decides to got to Franklin to deliver it. In the meantime, the doctor had left Iris with a letter for Emma in case he was killed in London. Iris intercepts a letter for Emma that suggests her husband was killed. But both Iris and Frankie tiptoe around the issue of the doctor's death until a telegram comes officially bearing the bad news. The end.

As I said, it's a plot tortured from the surroundings, entirely artificial and fairly tedious to get through. After finishing the book, I felt cheated out of a good story. The backdrop of WWII is so inherently dramatic that intrigue, suspense and emotion should ooze out of a story like this. Instead, Blake takes a fascinating backdrop and clogs it with the tale of a housewife sitting at home, twiddling her thumbs, waiting for news. If I wanted to read about bored, pregnant ladies irrationally bitter that their husbands are at work, I'd write an autobiography.

The story awkwardly jumps from wartime Europe to an America gearing up for war and the rest of the plot isn't strong enough to prevent the whiplash from that transition. The characters aren't particularly compelling or well developed. Blake has potential to be a great writer. This attempt fell far short of great and it's doomed to be forgotten within a year or two.

Cutting For Stone

Abraham Verghese's Cutting for Stone is a physician's wet dream of an epic, a tale of twin brothers raised by doctors in a missionary hospital in Ethiopia. Don't let the dramatic setting dissuade you from picking up this book. It's really a story about passion, shame, ambition and sex and the consequences of actions driven by such intense emotions.

Cutting For Stone opens with a nun and a surgeon who share their denial of a love affair that evolves in the operating theater and is consummated in a fiery lust that produces twin boys, conjoined at the head. The nun dies in childbirth and the father flees to America, unable to come to terms with his inability to save his lover, with the gruesome reality that he was willing and able to kill his children in a desperate bid to save her.

But he doesn't kill the boys. They survive and are adopted by another doctor couple whose love blooms under the stress and strain of parenting twin boys. The story follows the tale of one brother, Marion, as he matures in the politically unstable Ethiopian environment, as he falls in love and his brother crassly fucks the girl of his dreams. That betrayal eventually prompts Marion to leave Ethiopia for the US so he can pursue his dream of becoming a doctor. And while he's in the states, his lover reappears, fucks him and gives him an STD that nearly kills him.

There's an excellent twist in the tale that I won't reveal here that makes the last 150 pages fly by. It's a fabulous read, made more excellent by the time and care Verghese takes in developing his characters and allowing significant moments of their lives to unfold in a patient and deliberate way. The arch of the story is beautifully constructed and expertly executed to maximize reading pleasure. This is one of the best books I've read in a very long time.

I highly recommend it.