Book 33 of 2011

I finished this shortly before performing my staff duty at work as the ticket seller for the play.

33) My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey by Jill Bolte Taylor
Jill Taylor is a renowned brain scientist who had a massive stroke due to a golf ball sized clot in the left hemisphere of her brain at 37 years old. It was the best thing that ever happened to her.

Taylor's story came to me through a TED talk that another teacher showed me while we both were teaching One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Much like Chief, her brother is schizophrenic, which led her to study the brain as a means to find out why his perception of the world differs from that of everyone else. Her stroke gave her the opportunity to study the effects from a unique perspective and discover that the impairment a stroke entails also allowed her the chance to reboot her personality.

Taylor provides a great deal of insight into how the brain works, something she always studied in theory but discovered in practice when the clot essentially silenced the left half of her brain. The left hemisphere is the language center of the brain, but, more importantly, it's the part of the brain that puts everything we see or experience into context. Conversely, the right hemisphere is all about experiencing the present moment, taking in the here and now in such a way that Taylor compares the time when the stroke silenced her left hemisphere to experiencing Nirvana. Since her left side could not provide the context of the past, present or future, she no longer knew where the borders of her body ended and the rest of the world began. She goes into great detail about how her life was changed by the stroke, both in taking the 8 years to fully recover and noting the ways in which she consciously made decisions to avoid the emotional baggage that hounded her pre-stroke.

While the content of the book is fascinating, the layout and structure take away from the whole. The last four to six chapters really drag as she gets into flowery descriptions about letting the right brain take over and leaving the left brain behind every once in awhile. A better editor could have spread out the experience of the stroke and subsequent recovery over the course of the book with the chapters on how best to establish a right brain connection interspersed in between as a way to bring things together in a more cohesive way. Plus, toning down or getting rid entirely of how appreciative she feels towards each of he individual cells would have increased my enjoyment and decreased my frustration at the repetitiveness of her writing.

Still, it's a fascinating story that allows someone to experience the kind of empathy needed when dealing with someone who has had a stroke, and her guide for doing so in the back of the book will be invaluable for anyone suffering through the experience.

Here's the original video, which, if you're a senior, you'll see again in the spring.

Book 32 of 2011

32) God, No!: Signs You May Already Be an Athiest and Other Magical Tales by Penn Jillette
One half of the magical duo Penn & Teller, Penn Jillette is a noted blowhard, but an entertaining one. He's cultivated this personality since his act with his partner has seen him become the talkative one of the two and they're pretty successful. The book makes the case for a secular collection of commandments to replace the Biblical version while liberally sprinkling in stories from his own experiences inside and outside of his life as an entertainer. Jillette is firm in his own beliefs and has no qualms discussing them here, as both a libertarian and an atheist.

Book 31 of 2011

31) Wounded Warriors: True Tales of Iraq, Vietnam and Those For Whom the War Never Ends by Mike Sager
Much like Chuck Klosterman's IV, this book is a collection of articles written over Mike Sager's career that, at first glance, appears to focus on veterans who have come back from battle changed. Unfortunately, the "wounded warriors" premise stretches pretty thin to include drug addicts (a warrior of addiction?), kids involved with dog fighting (warriors of poverty?) and Kobe Bryant (...I got nothing.), which ultimately takes away from what would appear to be an important work.

My favorite articles were the titular one about how Iraq war veterans deal with their injuries, be they emotional or physical and the story on the morbidly obese man who comes to terms with his obesity but still has to deal with everyone else's lack of acceptance of it. In both, the motif of the wounded warrior was clear, and he takes the subject matter seriously with a depth that isn't often found in the latter. He'll sometimes switch between his third person narrative to a first person account of the subject's experience, which most writers/reporters don't have the courage to do.

While I didn't care for a few of the stories (the Vietnam veterans sticking around Thailand felt cliche and the Marlon Brando article that ends the book was self-indulgent), I enjoyed his overall writing style and was curious how he managed to secure his access with some of his subjects. Sager gets in deep with the poor Dominican kids who engage in vicious dogfighting, and how he gained the access to a bunch of poverty stricken adolescents as a middle-aged white guy felt like a more interesting story than the one he was telling.

Book 30 of 2011

Let it be known that I originally made a goal of reading 25 books in 2011, which I soon modified to 30 and then 35 as I found myself more and more motivated to get as many books under my belt as possible. With a little under two months left in the calendar year and five books left, I'm curious to see if I can measure up, especially considering that we're entering the hardcore grading period coming up with essays from the freshpeeps and CD projects and culminating papers from the seniors. It won't be a problem, though, if all of the books are like this one because I finished it in two and a half days.

30) Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) by Mindy Kaling
It feels like I've been too effusive with my praise of the books I've been reading lately. Not everything can be four or five stars on the Goodreads scale, right? But then I remembered that I choose what I read and I'm not trying to read things that I don't like, so if I do like it, then that shouldn't come as a shock to me or anyone else. If a book sucks so much that it'll get a one or two star rating, I'll probably stop part way through or only finish it out of spite. (Spite for who doesn't really matter even though it's pretty obvious that it's for myself.) But that leads us to Mindy Kaling's book.

Best known for her role as Kelly Kapoor on NBC's The Office, Kaling's book is a great mixture of memoir and philosophical musings of a successful, early 30-something woman who makes no apologies for having a great relationship with her parents and memorizing her debit card number to make online shopping easier. And it's also hilarious. The publisher released an excerpt shortly after the release of Tina Fey's book, Bossypants, and it was clear that it was right in the same wheelhouse.

The chief complaint that I heard about Fey's book after I read and reviewed it was how impersonal it felt, and in hindsight, that's valid. Sure, she discusses her father, her husband and the anxiety of having a second kid, but Fey never goes into too much depth on any of those topics, keeping it light, breezy yet still really funny. Kaling's book, while roughly the same length, reveals more about herself, her thoughts and her background while embracing superficiality without forsaking her insightful sense of humor.

And superficiality sounds like a mean term applied here, but, trust me, it isn't meant that way. Too many famous people seem to stalk fame like a big game hunter and then eschew the notion of it once they attain it. Mindy (Can I call her Mindy? That's how personable she comes across in the book: I want to call her Min or Mindy or M-Dog) has a chapter called "The Exact Level of Fame I Want," and that honesty is as endearing as it is refreshing.

Her writing style really works well, here, too, since I finished this in pretty quick fashion because the pages feel like a breathless Kelly Kapoor monologue. She's talented in such a way that she can use the phrase "...or whatever" effectively every single time. That takes an intelligence I'm not used to reading in my everyday life considering how often I see similar phrases used in student writing.

Other things of note in her book: She loves romantic comedies but not what they've become. Her chapter on best friend rights demonstrates just how different groups of female friends are from male friends. The chapter on karaoke etiquette shows that M-Dog and I would get along famously in person. (And she would probably hate the term M-Dog, preferring DJ Mindy Min.) The entire section on romance and guys reminds me of my wife and leads me to think that the two of them would be pretty great friends, too.

Where Tina Fey's book makes the reader want to be friends with her, Mindy Kaling's book makes me think being friends with her is possible.

Book 29 of 2011

Despite planning to grade on our first furlough day of the year, the doctor diagnosed me with an ear infection, nixing my plans. Instead, I read the last 60 pages of this book. This review, however, has taken much longer to write.

29) Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human by Grant Morrison

This is something that's hard to classify. It's part memoir, part comic book literary criticism, and part philosophical dissertation on mysticism and transcendentalism. What's really important, though, is that Grant Morrison is my favorite comic book writer, and this book both explains and shows why. 

Morrison explains his humble beginnings as the son of an urban liberal middle-class divorced couple and how that shaped his worldview in unexpected ways. His forays into punk music and crossing the line from a straight-edge lifestyle into one influenced by hallucinogenics draw a picture of a person who puts every aspect of himself into his work and endeavors to stretch the boundaries of the comic book medium. The most exciting and riveting chapter in the book deals with Morrison's experience in the fifth dimension and discovery of his own super powers of perception.

You didn't misread that last sentence. 

It's a fascinating read that demonstrates how Morrison possesses an adept grasp of comic book characters. He gives Superman, Batman and others their proper reverence, offering a history of their meaning to society while also properly analyzing the different phases of comic books as a medium. A recommended reading list supplied at the end is both exhaustive and illuminating and worth attempting. 

Look, this is just excellent, and sometimes excellence is more difficult to write about because people find it easier to tear things down than build them up. It's sizable compared to similar books in the genre, but worth the effort for anyone who is at all looking to explore superheroes beyond what's available at the box office each summer. 

Book 28 of 2011

I finished this using the Kindle app on my laptop during my prep period.

27) Let's Get It On: The Making of MMA and It's Ultimate Referee by "Big" John McCarthy with Loretta Hunt
One of the big items on my bucket list is to serve in some capacity as either a judge or referee in MMA. It's not something that is just going to happen, I understand. And in the meantime I should probably start taking jiu-jitsu classes or something similar as a way to further my knowledge and understanding of the sport, but, similar to teaching being a way to further my passion for English, I like to think being a ref or a judge is a way for me to contribute to something about which I'm very passionate. At the moment, it's a financial and time commitment that I can't afford, but that's why it's a bucket list, right? John McCarthy is the first and most famous ref in MMA, and his book provides a ton of insight into how refs function inside and outside of the fight game.

Book 27 of 2011

While my wife watched a show about housewives, I finished this book.

27) The Score (Parker Novels) by Richard Stark

Never having been one for crime or detective novels, I saw that this one was on sale for the low, low price of absolutely nothing for the Amazon Kindle. (It still is, as of this writing, by the way.) This is about as blank a state as I've ever approached a book, which is especially notable for one that is number five in a series. My problem is that I always want to start on the first book of any series so I don't feel lost, but I took a chance here and it paid off since the lack of knowledge wasn't a hindrance. These aren't meant to be read in any specific order that I can tell, and any references to previous books didn't stand out enough that they needed an explanation. A new reader doesn't need to know anything other than Parker, the main character, is a gruff, deliberate, no-nonsense, professional criminal. The rest explains itself.

The important thing is that the book is good, even if it's a little dated now, having first been published in 1964. The plan is to rob an entire town. The story builds appropriately, involves a few colorful characters and pays off with a suitable twist that doesn't feel like a cheat. It's not high literature, but it's an enjoyable story that pays itself off and provides a character I wouldn't mind revisiting. In reading up on the Parker series, I found that the first book serves as the inspiration for the movie Payback, starring famous nutcase Mel Gibson, which I really enjoy, so...good job, this book!

My only criticism actually comes in the Kindle layout of the book. There were a few spelling/grammatical errors as well as some problems with the layout where dialogue between two characters is formatted as one paragraph more than once. Again, the book was free, so I'm not complaining so much as warning anyone hoping to read this particular version that those kind of things might make the reading experience confusing.

Book 26 of 2011

After a weekend trip away for my wife's birthday, I finished reading this the day we got home.

26) Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
There are a number of ways to describe the plot of the book, as it borrows some familiar tropes from an array of different well-known series. It's two parts X-Men with a little Harry Potter, factored in with a little Chronicles of Narnia, set around World War II, all meant to eventually lay itself out as a longer form series. Additionally, Ransom Riggs employs a cool gimmick of utilizing found photographs, some of which have been slightly altered to further the purposes of the story, but all of which are, to borrow a phrase, peculiar.

Book 25 of 2011

I finished this one at home prior to getting ready to attend a party.

25) The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Due to the whole English teacher thing, people react with astonishment when I tell them that I haven't read certain books. There's an undercurrent of malice laced in with said astonishment which I attribute to the fact that whatever book in question is near and dear to the person's heart. "You haven't read WHATEVERSOMESUCHBOOK?! And you call yourself a teacher?" Most of the time I chuckle at their indignation and respond with some cliche about nobody being perfect because I'm not. Books exist to be read, whether that's prior to a stupid conversation or not doesn't matter. The Bell Jar has always been one of those books.

And having read it now, it's pretty great.

Book 24 of 2011

I finished this while on vacation in Las Vegas.

24) You Suck: A Love Story by Christopher Moore

This is a sequel to Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story, which I read a few weeks ago. There may be a few spoilers for the first book here, since a major event happens at the end of that one which heavily influences this second part.

With Jody having turned Tommy into a vampire, she creates a new set of problems for the very mismatched but sometimes adorable couple. They recruit a teenaged goth girl minion and her gay best friend, but save for a Smurf-like hooker, the rest of the characters stay the same.

The events of the story follow immediately from the first book and span the course of about three weeks compared to the three months of the predecessor. Right away, this created a disconnect because Moore wrote the first book in 1995 and this was published in 2007. Based off the references and technology used in this one, he's retroactively placed the first book in the future. While it shouldn't have, it really threw me off.

There appear to be some structural parallels between this vampires in San Francisco trilogy to the Back to the Future series. Bloodsucking Fiends was written independently of anything else with a coda that leaves the story open for a possible sequel but it largely works on its own. The same applies to the first installment of Marty McFly and Doc Brown's tale. Demand grows to the point that somebody greenlights a sequel, except the story is big enough to encompass two books in the case of Moore's characters and movies in the case of BttF. To save money and/or time, the two are made concurrently, but, as a result, the second in the series makes for a weaker story. Yes, Back to the Future II has some great moments and gave us hoverboards, but it never feels complete and tends to get sidetracked with reliving moments from the first movie. Look at it this way: I can always watch the original Back to the Future without any problem and call it a day. However, if I start watching part II, either on TV or DVD, then I better have part III on standby or else my day is going to feel unfinished and empty.

That was the problem I had with You Suck. Half of the book keeps wanting to relive and summarize the original, probably because Moore cashes in on the Twilight craze by writing a sequel to a twelve year old vampire book that few in the demographic read the first time around. Until I read Bite Me: A Love Story, I don't feel like my opinion of this particular part can feel fully formed.

Book 23 of 2011

I finished this at the gym while using the stationary bike.

22) Point Omega by Don DeLillo
Don DeLillo tells the story in his own roundabout way of an older man who helped orchestrate the Iraq war, his daughter, and the guy who wants to make a movie about him. All of this takes place in between book ended chapters where a man watches Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho slowed down to a 24 hour pace at New York's Museum of Modern Art.

Book 22 of 2011

My Sunday afternoon was lazy, allowing me to finish this through my Kindle app. The second book, A Clash of Kings, is the only one left in my Kindle archive that I have yet to finish. So that's exciting.

22) A Game of Thrones: A Song of Ice and Fire #1 by George R.R. Martin
The people in charge of marketing the Scott Pilgrim movie got it wrong because the first book in the A Song of Ice and Fire truly is an epic tale of epic epicness; this coming from a person who doesn't like using that word in such a flippant fashion. Also notable? Fantasy isn't my thing. The Lord of the Rings trilogy was a great series of films, but I've never taken the time to read the books. Sure, I own two different editions, but the scope of most fantasy worlds (and some of the stigma surrounding them) have always put me off giving the genre a shot. That changes now.

Book 21 of 2011

This is the second of three works I'm annotating in preparation for taking over the frosh honors classes for the next school year. Of the three (Animal Farm and Othello being the other two), this is one I haven't read before.

21) Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Bradbury foretells a dystopic future where books are outlawed because they make people think too much, and thinking can lead to unhappiness. As for what amounts to happiness, people are both out of control (in the case of crazy teenagers running people over for the sake of something to do) and totally in the dark (as in the case of Montag's wife, Mildred, and her clueless friends). Without the influence of literature, people have lost the ability to ask why and with that all sense of meaning in life.

The story also comes across as muddled in parts, which I'm hoping can be a topic for discussion in class. For what's been described to me as a junior high book, I was surprised at how challenging it came across in the beginning. Too much of the world feels poorly realized in Bradbury's overly flowery diction. The book is at odds with itself: it at once attempts to be very pointedly describing a world without literature and showing the consequences of that idea in practice but also tries to capture the world using the influence of the same.

Those two ideas seem like they would go well together but it feels jarring. Seeing more of the home life of Montag prior to his awakening by Clarisse (GET IT!?) would have helped to make the setting more established. In fact, my edition contains an essay where Bradbury describes two scenes that he included in a play adaptation that would have gone a long way towards, if not fixing my problems, at least addressing them. Reading those last few pages felt like watching a few really great deleted scenes from a movie I sort of liked. He says that he had the chance to include them in a later, revised edition but chose not to because Bradbury felt like changing the book after people have read it betrays the message of the book. I'm not sure where I stand on that idea but I think I agree with him, as art no longer belongs to the artist once other people get their hands on it since it's open to interpretation and analysis. However, it should make for some interesting discussion come class time.

Book 20 of 2011

My wife and I decided to read while listening to last.fm, which allowed me to finish this on a very peaceful Memorial Day weekend.

20) Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story by Christopher Moore
Because meetings are often boring wastes of time, I usually try to take a book with me on the off-chance I might be able to get away with surreptitiously reading a few pages here or there.  A few coworkers gave me a People's Eyebrow when they saw the title of this book, assuming I somehow got roped into the recent young adult fiction craze that Stephenie Meyer has popularized so well. I immediately felt the need to defend myself with a short, "It was published in 1995!" While I only managed to will myself through about 80 pages of the first Twilight book before throwing it against the wall, it's clear that Christopher Moore's novel about a codependent woman thrust into the throes of vampirism and the arms of a naive young writer is not the standard Edward and Bella-style romance novel aimed at teen girls.

Book 19 of 2011

After devoting a good portion to reading on Sunday, I finished this today during SSR.

19) Animal Farm by George Orwell

It's an old, allegorical story that many people know by now: animals rise up against their human oppressors with the goal of establishing equality for all except that things don't quite work out that way.

My goal in rereading this was to annotate a new copy. Ms. Windt and I will be taking over the Frosh Honors classes next year, which provided us with a great opportunity to change some of the curriculum around. Instead of having students read Lord of the Flies, we opted for Orwell's tale of revolution gone horribly wrong, which will dovetail nicely into our first semester reading of Fahrenheit 451. This is a book that I could finish in an afternoon, but I was laser focused on making sure to highlight the important lines and note the thematic elements throughout, so it took me three days instead. Also, if you're into that sort of annotating thing, this is a great edition for it. The margins are wide and the print is even spaced out well to allow for liberal handwriting and underlining.


The essay at the beginning of this edition stands out and makes some excellent points about Mollie, a character I tend to forget about when I get to the later chapters. As for the book itself, I'm torn as to how to properly discuss it here, since I plan to go over it with next year's freshman. To overly analyze it may unduly influence them into parroting my views as opposed to coming up with their own take. Also, that might just be my own arrogance coming into play. I'm torn, you see, since I've never taught an honors class before and my biggest goal is to not completely screw it all up.

I will say this, though: my biggest complaint is that the book is very on the nose. But don't we need some things to be on the nose? There's very little one can mistake about the book: the roles everyone plays are very clear and the allegory for the Russian Revolution even moreso if anyone has a bit of history under their belt. I'm looking forward to teaching this and I hope the students really take the time to give it a proper read because it's probably the easiest book they'll be assigned all year.

Book 18 of 2011

Holy crap, I finished this in two days after borrowing it from Ms. Beeley.

18) Bossypants by Tina Fey

It feels unfair to review this book, which is part memoir and part comedic essay collection, in any sort of real or logical way since I feel like I'm predisposed to loving everything Tina Fey does since I've had a crush on her (like most of young, white male America between the ages of 24 and 39 with English degrees who stay up late at home on Saturday nights and spend too much time on the Internet) since she started doing Weekend Update on SNL back when that was a thing she did because she's a brunette lady who wears glasses on television and there are so very few of those. Also, she's smart and funny. And 30 Rock is one of my favorite TV shows and Liz Lemon is my favorite female character of all time. Plus, I liked both Baby Mama and Date Night and saw them in the theater. I was not impartial going into this book is what I'm saying.

Putting aside all of those predispositions, this book is great. Fey has a distinctive voice because she's, admittedly, very one-dimensional as a performer, but this leads to a familiarity. It's very easy to hear each word in Fey's usual exasperated cadence. Much like she does on 30 Rock through Liz Lemon, Fey is unafraid of making herself look ridiculous or be brutally honest about herself because who is she trying to impress at this point? She's happily married with a daughter and another kid on the way, working at her dream job. People that find her attractive and charming do so as much because of her sense of humor and intelligence as they do because she wears dark-rimmed glasses. And if dudes stop finding her attractive because she talks about her flat feet or belly fat, then middle fingers in the air for everyone, right? Right.

The chapters alternate between short narratives about specific moments from her personal life and an overview of Fey's career, all of which are funny. The highlight is an essay on her dad that made me want to write a similar ode to my own father. The rest of her insights into her experience playing Sarah Palin and attempting to make a hit show that instead became a critical cult darling are fun to read. I'd put this slightly above Patton Oswalt's Zombie Spaceship Wasteland, and I hope that she doesn't stop writing books with just this one. Ms. Beeley's assessment put it best: "I want Tina Fey to be my best friend."

Book 17 of 2011

This is a book I borrowed from McB that I finished shortly before the school's Friday morning meeting.

17) See Me After Class: Advice for Teachers by Teachers by Roxanna Elden

Roxanna Elden has taught all over the place in all different disciplines, from elementary to college level courses. This book takes her experiences, and the experiences of many other teachers from all different experience levels, and attempts to give the real lowdown that other teacher books fail to dole out in lieu of idealized versions of what all teachers hope to be. 

Book 16 of 2011

My wife watched old episodes of Real Housewives. I finished this book.

16) The Nimrod Flipout: Stories by Etgar Keret
This is a collection of short stories, some absurd, some pointless, some funny, some dull.

It's really hard to figure out how much I did or didn't like this book. The cover alone sold me on reading the book, and there are times when it almost reaches the heights of absurdity that a picture of a short man in a bunny suit who has just shotgunned a bunch of fat birds promises. With the exception of the story about the guy whose dog wakes him up in a peculiar way and one or two others, none of the stories really stand out as especially great or memorable. It's probably time for me to pick up a regular old novel.

As is most often the case, a conversation with McB did make me ponder something while reading this. Keret's work is translated from Hebrew and what if what I love most about the book is how the translator did their job of interpreting the words as opposed to the original author's? This book isn't a good example of that idea, obviously. But what if I only like The Stranger because Stuart Gilbert did a great job of translating it into English as opposed to how Camus actually wrote it?

Book 15 of 2011

Finishing this at 12:45am when I was in that in-between time of insomnia giving in to sleep was not the best idea, but that's what happened.

15) Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America by Matt Taibbi

A contributing reporter for Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi explores the root causes of why the economy collapsed back in 2008, how it wasn't the first time that the "bubble" burst and how the origins of our delightfully corrupt government and even more corrupt banking and corporate systems became so intertwined. There are seven chapters, each one dedicated to a different factor of the depressed economy: the Tea Party's outrage, Alan Greenspan's idiocy and incompetence, the mortgage and commodities crisis, the outsourcing of our national resources, healthcare reform's terrible implementation, and how Goldman Sachs is filled with greedy jerks who don't realize that they're greedy jerks.

Book 14 of 2011

This sat on my shelf for quite awhile. I started it a few times but always got distracted by something else. This weekend, I finally took some time to not just read it but really soak in the entire story.

14) Superman: Birthright by Mark Waid and Leinil Francis Yu
Waid and Yu take on the not-so-enviable task of retelling Superman's origin for the millionth time while updating it for a modern audience. The story clicks so well because the common complaint most people make when Superman comes up is that he's not relatable, and here Waid and Yu make him so.