The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil by George Saunders

The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil was recommended by a former advisor, and since I had heard it mentioned before, I decided to pick it up. I didn’t really investigate the book much before reading it. The book jacket made a comparison to Animal Farm, so I knew that it was either a) about talking animals or b) a political satire. As disappointed as I was about the lack of farm animals, I still think this was a great book.

Though there are no animals in this book, the characters aren’t quite human either. The somewhat surreal characters are involved in a border dispute; the citizens of Inner-Horner must take turns occupying their country (large enough for only one person at a time), the citizens of Outer-Horner are constantly on alert for “invasions” of their country by the crowded Inner-Horner citizens. The border guards, rivalries, and government appointments, are all perfectly done. Saunders is hilariously funny and just a little bit tragic; this book is a fast read that promises enjoyment.

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

This book was surprising to me; I didn’t know what to expect and had heard very little about it. Apparently, I am in the minority, as it has been a selection for Oprah’s Book Club in the past and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Middlesex is the story of three generations of a Greek-American family living in Detroit as told by Calliope or Cal. Calliope, later Cal is of the youngest generation in the story, raised as a girl, but becoming masculine as an adolescent. Cal is the product of frequent genetic mutations of a close-knit Greek community that hails from a very small town. In 2010, it is no surprise to us that inbred communities tend to have abnormal genetic traits, but of course, Cal’s ancestors had no way of knowing that this would be the case.

As I read this story, I’m tormented not by how unusual and painful Calliope’s puberty is, but how normal and painful it is. How different am I really from Cal? The feeling of alienness in one’s own body, the shame of being imperfect and different from other girls- I don’t think any of this is so unique. Perhaps that is the point; interesex individuals and hermaphrodites aren’t really so different from those of us who only exhibit characteristics of one sex.

The book feels like a cross between Forrest Gump and Lolita, the single male narrator that covers several decades in history while trying to explain a sexual situation that is foreign to most. The book is a startling contrast of the tragic and the comic, and Eugenides himself points out, but that seems to be the case with most things.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

I feel like I must have been the last person to read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo; I heard good things about it from both my parents and my advisor on my Master’s thesis. So writing about it feels very unoriginal. Yet here I sit, writing about it.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a wonderful suspense story about an unlikely pair investigating an old missing person case. A middle aged journalist who was recently convicted of libel partners with an unpredictable, punk private investigator. The two are trying to find an explanation for the disappearance of a teenage girl from a seemingly isolated island in the 1960’s.

Of course, the key for any suspense writer is to arrange circumstances and characters so that the solution to the mystery isn’t obvious. Larsson has created a cast of characters diverse enough to keep us guessing without making it confusing. (Though, as this book was originally written in Swedish, there are far more surnames beginning with “Bj” than the average American is used to).

One of my favorite things about this book is the fact that although the translation is excellent, there are still occasional spots where the wording seems a bit strange. Perhaps this is because I enjoy the foreignness of it. There are points that seem like a dubbed movie - you can tell that it isn’t really what the characters are saying, but it doesn’t matter. Whether you find these slightly awkward phrases charming or not probably won’t make much difference in the end; it’s a clever book that most will enjoy.

Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond

Why have humans in different parts of the world been so consistently dominant over the people in other parts of the world? How do some societies manage to produce so many trade goods and services while others simply work to sustain themselves? These are just a few of the questions that Jared Diamond attempts to answer in Guns, Germs and Steel.

As the reader may guess, Diamond states that economically and politically dominant countries have prospered because they possess guns, germs and steel. This may be obvious, but it is not this conclusion that takes up the bulk of the book. Rather, Diamond tries to explain how European and Asian cultures have been especially prosperous without resorting to racist or ethnocentric assumptions. Some of his most interesting points are the following:

The geographic layout of Europe and Asia are more conducive to the spread of
cultures and technologies than other continents.
The fact that humans
first evolved in Africa and migrated north through Europe and Asia before reaching other continents helped to preserve more large animal species for later domestication.
These things don’t necessarily mean that Europeans and Asians are more intelligent or innovative than other societies, but that their situations have been better suited toward some types of developments.

I really enjoyed this book; I am not an anthropologist or archeologist, but I found the topic very entertaining. Diamond writes in a way to explain these complex evolutionary topics to people who are not well acquainted with the field (though I think a little bit of knowledge of human evolution is helpful). Diamond's writing and conclusion were enjoyable; I felt that I took away a good deal from reading this book. And the topic was an admirable one, reminding us that people of different cultures aren’t as dissimilar as we sometimes seem.

Create Great Puzzles

For the past few months, I’ve been including word search puzzles in the student newspaper, The Southwestern Eagle. Just one of the many reasons that I have for doing this is the fact that they are so easy to make! The site www.puzzle-maker.com/ makes it easy for me to supply a list of words and generate a puzzle that includes them all.

Now, as far as using word search puzzles for actual school assignments, I don’t really see the point. But the site also creates crossword puzzles that could be lots of fun. For example, instructors may want to compile lists of review questions (which most probably do already) then have this program make a crossword puzzle. Each clue could be a review question and the answers would be the puzzle solutions. This is just one idea that I happened to think of, I'm sure there are many other ways that teachers could very easily incorporate this into their curriculum.

This may not do anything to actually improve the work, but it may help make it more fun!

Heat, by Bill Buford

Heat (Franklin, TK23.2 .T86 B83 2006), Bill Buford’s second wonderful book of insider reportage, describes Buford’s mid-life decision to start taking food very seriously. He begins as a “kitchen slave” at Babbo, a three-star Italian restaurant in New York, and works his way up. Generously, he passes along insider information designed to make me feel knowledgeable: the process of dishing out food, for example, is known as “plating.” Later he becomes apprentice to a butcher in Italy. Buford’s mentors are demanding and eccentric: every kitchen has a “screamer.” The English restaurateur Harvey White, for example, orders customers who request well-done meat to leave his restaurant. When one of his chefs breaks a leg, White is furious, saying: “How dare you?” If you were a … horse, I’d shoot you!”

Bill Buford doesn’t get mad, though, because he has so much respect for the obsessive pride and care everyone takes with their work. He’s desolate after criticism and ecstatic when praised. My reaction is to wonder that anyone ever agrees to work in the uncomfortable conditions necessary for even the least well paid employee of a high-end restaurant—let alone, do it for free, as Buford did. I’m particularly astounded that Buford, previously fiction editor for The New Yorker and founder of Granta magazine, would make such a leap outside his personal box. As a reader, however, I’m very glad that he has.

Heat has a happy ending: Babbo gets to keep its three stars--the reviewer hints that he might even have bestowed a fourth star had the restaurant’s music been better--and Buford becomes such a good cook that Babbo’s owners suggest he might want to open his own restaurant. Buford realizes, though, that he still has much to learn and makes plans to study cookery in France.

Buford’s first book was the wonderful Among the Thugs, published in 1991. The thugs in that book are English soccer hooligans, with whom Buford becomes fascinated after accidentally watching a mob of them destroy a train. His first two books were published fifteen years apart, which means we can expect a third in 2021. His Wikipedia entry suggests he’s now writing about French food, but we may just have to wait to know for sure.

Review: Stiff by Mary Roach

In Stiff, author/journalist Mary Roach investigates and observes some of the many scientific and not-so-scientific ways that donated corpses are put to use. These observations include everything from medical school autopsies and crash impact studies to crucifixion experiments and studies of medicinal cannibalism. One section of the book discusses the relatively new practice of “green” burial that some folks are now pursuing; having your body turned into compost and buried under a sapling.

This book is not an in depth description of how autopsy and other cadaver testing is actually performed. Rather, it is the description of these tests by a person who does not have a medical background. Some of Roach’s other books focus on such topics as sexual science, the evidence for an afterlife and sciences search for extraterrestrial life in space. Clearly, she is fascinated by the mechanics of things that most people would rather not know much about.

Though this book is somewhat a general overview of what it means to have your body donated to science, it is also the author’s personal exploration of possible things to do with her own corpse when the time comes. I enjoy her final thoughts on this subject.