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Book 27 in Cannonball Read 2

Medicine is a cultural practice. Although we like to think of science as neutral, the practice of science - especially medicine, which involves so much interaction with other people - is filtered through our culture and beliefs. Anne Fadiman’s fantastic book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down explores the clash of two different cultures within a medical establishment, combining an engaging story of a young Hmong girl with epilepsy with an instructive treatise on Hmong culture and medicine. I’ll admit that this book falls right into an area of personal interest (the intersection of culture and medicine), but it’s good enough to recommend to almost anyone.

Fadiman starts by telling the story of Lia Lee, a Hmong girl with severe epilepsy. The title of the book - the spirit catches you and you fall down - is the Hmong description of epilepsy. In Hmong culture, epilepsy is understood as both a disease, and a blessing of sorts - it is an indication that the sufferer is in touch with the spirit world, and could become a shaman. The doctors who treated Lia over the course of many years worked hard (and received no fee) to treat her, but never understood this basic fact.

The Western medical view of epilepsy versus the traditional Hmong understanding is only the tip of the iceberg. Lia was given a complicated regime of medication, but her parents could not read or tell time to know when to give her the medication, or even differentiate which one was which.  They relied on traditional healing methods to help their daughter, which led to CPS taking her away for a period of time. Her parents were heartbroken without her, and the foster mother - who had been a foster parent to dozens of children - states that Lia was the only child in her care who would have been better off with her parents.

The picture Fadiman paints is not of evil or incompetent people, but of a system trying to help a family without understanding the ways in which their culture is so fundamentally different, and interpreting their lack of understanding as belligerence and non-compliance. Fadiman  does not turn anyone into a villain, she just shows people from different backgrounds trying to do what they identify as their ‘best’. It is all the more heartbreaking to learn that so many people involved in Lia’s case were trying so hard and looking out for her.

Fadiman documents the history of Hmong immigrants in America, but she wisely saves this for the later part of the book, after the reader is hooked into Lia’s fascinating story.  The history of Hmong immigration post-Vietnam War is surprisingly unknown in America, such that many people do not even know what ‘Hmong’ means. The term refers to a group of people that have lived a nomadic lifestyle in Asia for centuries, driven out of place after place. The short version of the story of Hmong immigration to the U.S. is that they helped American forces in Vietnam, were promised refuge, driven out of Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand, so many chose to come to the U.S., where they faced rampant racism in an alien culture.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down brings this hidden part of our history to the forefront, but is first and foremost the story of Lia Lee and the people who cared for her. This story is better than most novels I have read in the past few years - more poignant, more sorrowful, but also more full of hope.

Book 26 in Cannonball Read 2

In Jeff Lindsay’s fifth Dexter book - the story of a psychopath with an urge to kill that he uses only against other serial killers - the plot mirrors some of the developments of the TV series (unintentionally or not). Dexter’s wife, Rita, has an unplanned pregnancy, and the new baby influences Dexter’s life, changing his marriage from a convenient cover for his nighttime activities to a real family. This Dexter actually feels feelings, rather than faking human emotions for the benefit of his acquaintances and coworkers.

While Dexter is swearing off his moonlighting as a serial killer, a group of vampire wannabes is murdering young girls, and possibly eating them.  Dexter is roped into helping his sister Deb investigate, and ends up playing a crucial part in solving the murders. This main storyline is suspenseful, but it lacks the punch of the TV show’s storylines dealing with a single, known nemesis who is very close to Dexter. The suspense comes from the reader having no idea who the villain is, rather than from a known villain slowly unraveling Dexter’s secret. It’s the difference between seeing only the crime scenes that Dexter is called to and building suspense from the escalation of crimes, and introducing the reader to Arthur Mitchell before Dexter even knows who he is and building suspense from the way Dexter works his way into Arthur’s life as ‘Kyle Butler’.  The former makes for an entertaining page-turner, but the latter becomes a deeply suspenseful psychological tale where the risks feel real and imminent.

This is not to say that Lindsay’s books are not worth reading, or that there aren’t some deep flaws in the TV series.  Lindsay just gets suspense from plot mechanics - often unmasking a minor character, or someone who was just introduced, as the killer.

Lindsay does a few things that bring Dexter is Delicious a step above other thrillers.  Dexter’s narration is more than just effective - the alliteration in his descriptions of himself, using phrases such as ‘dashing dimpled Dexter’, shows Dexter’s interior wit firsthand, and if there is never a feeling of real danger, it is due to the narration’s lack of emotion even while in peril.  Lindsay’s use of the Dark Passenger - an actual presence in Dexter that leaves at one point, as opposed to the murky metaphor of the TV series - continues to develop in interesting ways, such that it is almost a separate character rather than a part of Dexter’s psyche.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the novel is the way Lindsay brings back Brian, Dexter’s serial killer brother who appeared in book one.  In the first book, Dexter found himself admiring Brian, intrigued by the crime scenes he left behind. In Dexter is Delicious, Dexter sees in Brian the aspects of himself he is trying to suppress.  Lindsay uses Brian as a red herring, then a possible menace to Dexter’s family life, and then he pops up again near the end. Brian’s involvement with the resolution of the plot is no surprise to anyone paying any attention, but Dexter misses Brian’s unsubtle hints throughout the book. This is tied to the most troubling aspect of the book: a moral, non-killer Dexter is a stupid Dexter, who finds himself in danger with no clue how to get out, relying on Deb or Brian to rescue him. Is Dexter actually unable to take care of himself without the serial killer part of his brain turned on, or is he just rationalizing his enjoyment of a gruesome hobby?  The reader is left only with Dexter’s self-serving, and possibly self-deluding, narration to puzzle out the inner workings of his psyche.

Book 25 of Cannonball Read 2

Jessica Mitford was a muck-raking journalist most famous for her book The American Way of Death, an expose of the funeral home industry and ways in which it exploits grieving families. In The American Way of Birth, she turned to the history of birthing in the United States, finding much to critique in the ways that doctors currently treat both pregnant women and non-doctor caregivers such as midwives.

Mitford begins Birth by relating her own experiences giving birth, showing through personal experience how medical standards have gradually evolved to allow the birthing woman less autonomy. She then moves on to a historical perspective, from barber surgeons of England in the 1500’s to ‘granny midwives’ in the south in the early 1900’s, on to the highly medicalized births that are common today.  The bulk of the book looks at current practices - including doctor vs. midwife care, how doctors and hospitals deal with midwives, and income & class disparities in care.

Mitford ends up on the side of the midwives, but her position is balanced and measured. She is not an advocate for at-home, natural births for everyone, but she appreciates the training and knowledge of midwives, and documents, then critiques, the ways in which midwives’ practice is restricted and  devalued, and medical interventions planned when they are unnecessary. Mitford ultimately advocates for unrestricted choice for birthing women, and finds that our current system funnels almost everyone into the same type of care - care that uses medical interventions frequently, more often than is necessary and to aid the convenience of the doctor rather than serve the health of the mother and the child.

Mitford’s writing is a joy to read. She writes in a journalistic style - mostly relaying facts in a neutral manner, but she readily admits her biases when they come up. She is alternately funny, sarcastic, and skeptical, and builds a powerful argument within an enjoyable personal style. While her ultimate thesis - that medical providers should allow the maximum freedom for pregnant women to choose their plan of care, and simply treat them as autonomous human beings - is not so radical in and of itself, it is a proposition that seems radical in the current system. Mitford’s common sense journalism is simply a rational voice against a large and dominant bureaucracy.

Book 24 in Cannonball Read 2

The Lovely Bones was quite popular when it came out, and quickly acquired a high status. When the movie version came out in late 2009, almost every review compared it unfavorably to the book. Now, when the book came out, I was in school, and not likely to read for pleasure. The reviews of the movie piqued my interest - not so much from the fact that they compared the movie to the book unfavorably (that happens all the time), but because of the way many of the reviewers spoke of the book.

The Lovely Bones opens with the murder of 14-year-old Susie Salmon, and she narrates as she looks on from the afterlife. It is as much about Susie moving on and letting go of her attachment to her life as it is about what goes on for those she has left behind.

Susie’s family is (obviously) devastated by her death. Her sister Lindsay is hit hard, as everyone sees Susie when they look at her. Her father, Jack, becomes combative with the police and suspicious about Susie’s death, eventually narrowing in on their neighbor as a suspect. Her mother becomes more and more distant, as what was previously a mild dissatisfaction with her live becomes unbearable. Susie’s little brother, Buckley, is only four when she is murdered, and does not understand for some time that she will not be coming back.

Without getting into too much plot summary, I will simply say that The Lovely Bones has many things going for it. Sebold writes with great empathy for her characters, and great understanding. She also populates the book with interesting, enigmatic characters at the margins, from Ruana Singh, the mother of a boy who had a crush on Susie, to Holly, Susie’s best friend in heaven.

The Lovely Bones is ultimately an easily relatable, instantly sympathetic story of moving through grief and loss. What sets it apart is its unfailing empathy, and its focus on not only a grieving family, but a murdered girl learning to cope with her own death. Though it deals with complex people and relationships, it is simple and forthright in telling the story.

Books 20-23 in Cannonball Read 2

Jeff Lindsey’s series of books, the basis of the TV series Dexter, is a story of Dexter Morgan, a forensics analyst with the Miami PD who moonlights as a killer. Dexter’s dad, Harry, recognized Dexter’s inherent psychopathyat a young age, and trained Dexter to become a killer of bad guys - other people like Dexter, who had killed before and would kill again. Thus was born a serial killer who only killed other serial killers.

One of the most interesting aspects of Dexter the TV series is the parallels drawn between Dexter and superheroes (this parallel is dealt with explicitly in the season 2 episode ‘The Dark Defender’). After all, aren’t most superhero stories just about ineffective Dexters? They can’t finish off the kill, it’s against their code, so the villain falls off a cliff, or is felled by their own weaponry, or is killed by a subordinate - but never the hero. The hero never stains their hands like Dexter, never goes in planning on the kill that Dexter plans for, executes with surgical precision (most of the time) and loves.

This aspect of Dexter’s character may not be present in the books, but there is plenty to enjoy, and a lot of complexity for books that read as page turners. Lindsay deserves credit for writing stories that are completely urgent, crying out for a few hours to know what happens, while maintaining careful development of his main character and his inner life. The other characters, sometimes richly observed and portrayed in the series, are reduced to a few  characteristic. This is not necessarily a criticism; the books are more about putting the reader in Dexter’s mindset than the series, so people are not complicated human beings, but large, walking pieces of meat that Dexter struggles to understand but with which he can never empathize.

Two important elements throughout the books that do not find themselves onto the TV show are constant alliteration - the titles are only the beginning - and the conception of Dexter’s ‘dark passenger’ not as a metaphor for his desire to kill, but as an actual metaphysical presence that lives in him, responds to his situation, and even flees the scene when it is scared.  When Dexter looks at another psychopath - which, in the books, includes Doakes, Cody, Astor, and almost every person he kills - his dark passenger sees their dark passenger, and they square off, trying to intimidate each other and knowing that they are attached to kindred spirits.

The first of Lindsay’s series,  Darkly Dreaming Dexter, introduces Dexter and his world, and, with a few changes and many additions, formed the first season of the series. This book is solid writing, introducing Dexter, Dexter’s problems fitting into society, and the Ice Truck Killer in about 200 pages, with a great deal of suspense, but little complications.

Dearly Devoted Dexter is still a lean book, and the suspense is thick, but it complicates some existing characters, and introduces new ones. This book is also considerably more gruesome than anything in any of the rest of the books, or the TV series. The second season of the series almost entirely departs from the books, but it borrows certain small elements - an everglades cabin off the water, the lingering suspicion of Seargeant Doakes - and uses them in entirely different ways. The ending feels like a deus ex machina, but not because the ending makes no sense or comes out of nowhere; it is perfectly reasonable with the plot that has gone before, but it just feels a little too perfect for our good old Dexter.

Dexter in the Dark gets a lot more interesting in terms of plot and villain; Dexter does not know his nemesis for most of the book, and it also introduces the idea of how ‘the dark passenger’ came to be and exactly what it is. The books also get interesting in a way never introduced in the TV series, as Cody and Astor, the kids of Rita, Dexter’s girlfriend, show that they recognize a similarity in Dexter - an urge and enjoyment of causing pain - and want him to teach them. Dexter in the Dark also brings the first time that the dark passenger leaves, introducing the idea of being just a regular guy, with no dark urges.

Dexter by Design introduces a killer that wants to frame Dexter to create a performance art piece. Although the subplots of the book (Ator & Cody’s psychopathy, Dexter’s struggle to appear normal for Rita and the police department) remain interesting, the main plot is not nearly as much of a page-turner as the previous books.

Of the four books, I would rate Darkly Dreaming Dexter slightly above Dexter in the Dark, mostly for its simplicity; then Dearly Devoted close behind, and then Dexter by Design behind with a lag. The series as a whole is worth reading, and I cannot emphasize enough the skill with which Lindsay draws the reader in and makes  you want to read more (i.e. creates a page turner). They beg, almost demand, to be read in a single evening or two, and you will not be able to get your mind off them or fail to wonder where the story is going any time you put the books aside.

Book 19 in Cannonball Read 2

Writing about books I take to heart is much harder than writing about books that I dislike. It’s a lot easier to enumerate flaws than to explain why a book touched me so much, especially when - as with The Book Thief - it seems to contain something so much more profound than the sum of its parts.

Writing about books I love is also harder because it feels that I am putting something personal out there. This is doubly the case when talking about a book - like The Book Thief - that is not only written for young adults, but it is about World War II. Now, I have Holocaust fatigue* just like a lot of other folks, but The Book Thief is the real deal.  It deals with common motifs of WWII - book burning, bomb shelters, rations, the randomness of who dies and who is saved, hiding people in your basement - and uses them to tell a coming of age story that is, at its core, about the importance of books. Not necessarily the importance of books in and of themselves, but books as stories we tell each other to connect to each other, as little tokens we give to each other to show we care, and as works of art filled with meaning, the feeling and experience of reading them slipping away from us even as we are still in the act. 

The Book Thief centers around Liesl Meminger, a young girl who is sent to live with a new family because her parents are communists. Her brother dies en route, and she arrives at the Hubermanns scared and alone. When she is unable to sleep, Hans Hubermann, her new father, teachers her to read using the first book she has stolen, a gravedigger’s handbook. Books inform Liesl’s relationship with Hans, and also with Max Vandenburg, the Jewish man who comes to hide in the Hubermann’s basement; and with Rudy Steiner, Liesl’s friend from school, who graduates with her from stealing apples to stealing books.  The other major character is Death, who narrates the proceedings, and is imbued with a personality and a point of view by Zusak. Death sees Liesl only a few times, but knows the details of her life, and is fascinated by her and her thievery. Death is also a suprisingly empathic narrator, understanding the feelings and motivations of every character, and being moved by their plight.

Although Liesl comes from tragedy, and experiences great losses, The Book Thief is ultimately about the richness of life, the overwhelming beauty and humanity found even in horrible circumstances. The Book Thief wormed its way into my heart early on; when Death tells us that Liesl did not remember when her books turned from meaning ’something’ to meaning ‘everything’, The Book Thief already felt like it, too, meant everything. No book can really change your life or encompass everything, but damn if The Book Thief doesn’t feel like it can and does.

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*Holocaust fatigue: oversaturation with artworks set before and during World War II, characterized by negative feelings towards said works of art (largely, but not solely, movies). These feelings can range from bored indifference to dismissal to outright frustration. Those suffering from Holocaust fatigue do not doubt the historical importance of World War II or the Holocaust, but are simply over exposed to mediocre works that, by being set in a certain time period, tend to be immune from critique and/or gain an unearned reputation of cultural importance and profundity.

Book 18 in Cannonball Read 2

Every time I put on a suit, I feel unnatural. I know I have to put it on to pass for that job interview, or presentation, but it feels wrong, and I think it looks completely wrong too. A friend who wears a suit to work everyday told me you get used to it, it starts to feel more natural. You go from feeling like you’re dressing up in a costume, passing as a suit-wearer, to being actually comfortable and not feeling like you’re playing a role.

We all ‘pass’ at one thing or another. In some cases, the stakes are higher: if you’re transgender and don’t pass, you could get murdered, instead of just looking awkward in a suit.  Nobody Passes is a series of essays that explores the process of fitting in and passing for something else, from the high stakes cases we all know about - like transgender folks, or immigrants having to pass as citizens to stay in the country, to more thought-provoking categories of passing, like the woman who has to hide her interest in BDSM from her partners, the woman who has to pass as mentally ill to get public assistance, or the one who has to pass as middle-class, but then can use her poor Okie roots to get out of a tight spot with some cops who also turn out to be Okies.

Taking into account these varied life experience, Nobody Passes becomes ultimately about more than just ‘passing’ or ‘not passing’, but about our own constructions of our identities, how the way we tell the stories of our lives become part of those stories. One of my favorite essays, ‘Origins’ by Kirk Read, comes towards the end, and deals explicitly with how we construct our identites; in Read’s case, how he has constructed his identity as a sex-worker around his first client.

Some of the essays were challenging; I found myself resisting the idea that some of the writers were actually relating experiences of oppression - usually these were the essays that tackled issues I don’t know as much about, or have to work on, like class issues, or gender identities among lesbians. These negative reactions are the ones I learned the most from, about my own biases and negative perceptions.

The most salient point in Nobody Passes is the damage done by the mere idea and practice of passing. ‘Passing’ denotes an in-group and an out-group, something about your identity that is so fundamentally bad, it must be hidden to make others comfortable. It stops us from acceptance of others with complex identities, and mandates conformity to already privileged identities. Nobody Passes is not a basic analysis of identity politics, it requires previous knowledge or a very open mind, but it’s worth taking the time.

Book 17 in Cannonball Read 2

American Gods is a decent entry in the Gaiman canon, though I can’t help feeling a little worn out by the repetitive nature of some of the familiar themes and motifs Gaiman uses and reuses. Perhaps this is why most people don’t read all seven novels by an author in one year.

American Gods is about the various folk and myth gods who have followed immigrants to America -  Anansi the spider, Kali the Hindu goddess, the Egyptian Anubis, and the Slavic dark god Czernobog - and their struggle with the modern American gods of the internet, tv, and telephone. The entry point to this story is Shadow, the main character, who has just been released from prison the find his wife Laura dead and his world turned upside down. He is roped into a looming war between the old and new gods by Wednesday, a strange man who appears to have orchestrated the death of Laura to get Shadow involved.

All of the trademark things I love about Gaiman are here, most notably the overwhelming compassiona and sympathy he has for his characters. I don’t think there’s a single (human) character in any of his novels who is portrayed without some underlying understanding - maybe Graham Coates from Anansi Boys, but other than that, even the Antichrist in Good Omens is given a heart and a conscience. But American Gods, which I’ve often heard described as Gaiman’s best work, felt too meandering, with Shadow stuck too long in a small town in Wisconsin with nothing to do but get to know the locals and go on occassional errands for Wednesday.  It’s laying the groundwork for some later developments, but is not very interesting on its own. Laura rising from the dead and acting as Shadow’s deus ex machina a few times is pretty interesting though, as is his relationship to a dead, but still mobile, wife, that he can’t seem to let go off.

Then there’s the end to American Gods, which was a bit too similar to Good Omens for my taste. (SPOILERS, clearly). in both books, two sides of a centuries long struggle are gearing up far an all-out war, only to be stopped at the last minute by a speech about how we should all just get along. Yes, that’s a glib description, but it felt like an ending tacked on so Gaiman could have it both ways and portray the run-up to the war while avoiding any actual destruction.

I still enjoy Gaiman’s writing style very much, and my feeling is that I am a bit oversaturated with Gaiman-ness, just as I was with Wodehouse - and both are actually fantastic writers, so my lukewarm feelings probably reflect more on my own over-zealousness to consume an entire library, combined with my reverse confirmation bias (things I expect to be good are often disappointing because of my expectations, things I expect to be bad often impress me with basic competence).

Book 16 in Cannonball Read 2

Buyology is a difficult book for me to review, not because I don’t have anything to say about it, but because I don’t want to write a review of a different book than the one I actually read. It’s pretty frustrating to look up reviews and find some idiot prattling on about what the author should have written about, instead of critiquing what was actually written. It’s the literary equivalent of complaining to your waitress that your pancakes don’t taste like a hamburger: what’s the point? Deal with what is actually there, and if you’re going to criticize, criticize it for not doing what it sets out to do.

But, I can’t separate how disappointing I found Buyology from my expectations going in. Buyology is based on a research project meant to analyze how advertising actually works on our brain, i.e. what parts of the brain are activated when you see different types of advertising. The information presented is fairly interesting - for example, anti-smoking ads light up the ‘craving’ center of the brain in smokers more than cigarette ads do - but presented in a way I found pretty appalling.

Lindstrom is completely enamored of advertisers, and lovingly describes their (creepy) methods. He describes the way companies pay bars to design their interiors to evoke certain products and logos - coca cola, a cigarette brand - without ever having the logo or brand name visible. To Lindstrom, this is clever, and he talks of it admiringly. To me, this is incredibly creepy and kind of fucked up. Finding new places to put ads, and new ways to advertise, shouldn’t be lauded as being oh-so-clever, but derided as encroaching upon our lives in an annoying and sometimes dangerous fashion.

Lindstrom is also surprisingly glib. He designed and carried out studies that he repeatedly states are the first of their kind, have never been carried out before, etc. But when it gets to describing the result, usually all the reader gets is a one sentence ‘anti-smoking ads lit up the craving center of smoker’s brains’ or ‘when presented with ads with sexual content, participants could not remember the product being advertised.’ I would actually be interested in reading about the research results in more detail, and it’s not like adding two or three pages to each chapter explaining the findings would make readers balk at the overall length (under 200 pages).

In the end, Buyology explores an interesting area of knowledge with New Studies! that are the First of Their Kind! and falls flat. The analysis is shallow, the groundbreaking studies are not explained in detail, and the perspective is perplexing.  There, I tried to review what is actually there.

Book 15 in Cannonball Read 2

Read for the Pajiba Book Club, but not finished in time.

Nabokov’s Lolita is one of the most famous novels in Western literature - so famous that the conversation surrounding the work can obscure the actual book. The term ‘Lolita’ is broadly used in society to denote some sort of under 18 vixen, a sexually aware seductress who looks like a younger version of a grown woman. Lolita the character is quite different - pre-pubescent, unaware, sexually curious but not sexually precocious. The fact that a 12-year-old character that hasn’t entered puberty is routinely cast in movies as a honry 17-year-old is more problematic than anything Nabokov writes.

Some background: Lolita is the story of Humbert Humbert, a Frenchman living on the East coast of the U.S. Humbert narrates, and it is clear that he has a sexual obsession with young girls; specifically, girls who have not yet hit puberty. He is repulsed by grown women, and the only adults he finds attractive are those who remind him of the ‘nymphets’ he loves. Humbert is taken on as a lodger by a widowed woman with a 12-year-old daughter.

Lolita is not a love story. It’s a story of obsession and self-deception. Humbert is an unreliable narrator, but also painfully honest. He makes it clear that his attraction to Lo is, first of all, part of a pattern of pedophilic attraction to pre-teen girls, and also, that it will not last once she develops an adult body. I don’t know that many people could read Lolita and walk away thinking that the book either condones his behavior, or does not consider much of what is done to Lolita to be coercive and damaging. However, Nabokov does not provide easy answers, and almost traps the reader into sympathizing with Humbert.

The famous Vanity Fair review stating that Lolita is “the only convincing love story of our century” seems like a complete misread of the book, and a misunderstanding of the very concept of love as something shared, something that both parties can learn from and work towards. The divide between a loving relationship and the relationship Nabokov details is the whole point of the book. In the end, Lolita doesn’t tell us much of anything about the character of Lolita; she’s a cipher. It doesn’t matter to Humbert what goes on in her head, and it doesn’t matter much to Nabokov, either; he’s exploring Humbert’s obsession and jealousy, not an equal relationship.

Reading Lolita  with an open mind is a fascinating experience, not just because of the book itself, but because of the cultural significance it has taken on, sometimes in opposition to what is actually contained in its pages.