Diccon Bewes, Swiss Watching ****

During our recent trip to Switzerland, we visited the Swiss National Museum. The aspect of Swiss cultural history that intrigued me most was how their political system combines features that appear to come from opposite ends of the spectrum in American terms. They have a weak federal government and strong "states" (cantons), but also a direct democracy with citizen-generated initiatives. The Swiss people hold on tightly to traditions, but with liberal social policy. I decided I wanted to read a book that would help me understand how these apparently contradictory traits fit together.

Diccon Bewes is an Englishman now living in Switzerland, and Swiss Watching is an entertaining if somewhat anecdotal attempt to "unravel the true meaning of 'Swissness'." Its style is similar to Bill Bryson, although in the early chapters Bewes downplays the humorous travel stories in favor of more historical and cultural analysis. For me, it mostly struck the right balance between being informative and being comic. It was good to read it after spending time in Switzerland, because some of its observations corresponded to things that I had noticed. I felt like I had a better sense of the country after reading it.

Patricia Meyer Spacks, On Rereading ** 1/2

I've been doing quite a bit of rereading lately: five of the seven books I read during September and October were revivals. I revisited them not because they were fondly remembered favorites, but because I remembered enjoying them and not much else. I wanted to reconsider their place in my library -- either remember them better or move them aside.

This motivation for rereading is not among those that Meyer Spacks considers in her extended essay on the subject. While she does cover several rereading scenarios -- childhood favorites, popular novels, books she "should" like, and guilty pleasures -- she doesn't provide any insights into my personal experiences of rereading. 

Her book includes interesting analysis of the specific books she rereads, but the tone of the book was too dryly academic.

A.M. Homes, May We Be Forgiven ** 1/2

When I read The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories several years ago, I said, "A.M. Homes is the author I am most likely to check out further." It took awhile, but I have finally done it.

May We Be Forgiven starts with an apparent mental breakdown and murder, but after the smoke clears, these events cast very little shadow over the rest of the story. The rest of the book is about how our narrator ends up supporting a makeshift family.

There are a lot of excellent moments, especially what the back cover calls "unexpected intimacies," but I didn't feel like it all held together. Harold never becomes distinctive as a character, and the narrative meanders. I think there's a theme to be found in Harold's views on Richard Nixon (as the reflection of his era and the end of the American Dream), but it feels tacked on.

Judith Schalansky, Atlas of Remote Islands *** 1/2

The subtitle of this book is "Fifty Islands I Have Never Set Foot On and Never Will." It's 100 pages plus a preface, with two facing pages devoted to each remote island. One page has a nice hand-drawn map of the island (to scale); the other tells a story related to the island. The entry for Christmas Island, for example, talks about the time of year when crabs come out to spawn, only to be met by swarms of ants in a battle to the death. Many islands host utopian experiments, others are so small as to be sinking back into the sea. Lots of lonely research stations.

It's a lovely and enjoyable armchair travel book that focuses attention on the far reaches of the globe.

David Byrne, How Music Works ****

The title suggests a book about music theory, but theory is one of the few musical subjects that Byrne doesn't tackle. His main theme is how musical creativity flows from its context, not from "an upwelling of passion or feeling...that simply must find an outlet to be heard." The first chapter talks about how the buildings in which different types of music are typically played influence that music; for example, churches favor harmonically simple pieces while nightclubs like CBGB demand insistent rhythm and volume. He also has a couple of chapters about the influence of recording technologies, which I would have found fascinating if I hadn't already read Perfecting Sound Forever.

The biggest strength of the book is the specificity of Byrne's examples. He illustrates his points with events from his own life and experience, and mentions other artists by name. This approach pays off especially well in the "Business and Finances" chapter, which explains how professional musicians make money. He shows exactly how much money he made on a few of his albums, and from what sources.

The last couple of chapters are less strong because Byrne abandons the detail-oriented nature of the rest of the book. These chapters argue about the importance of making music, and there's a lot more hand waving and questionable research. However, they don't diminish how entertaining and informative the book is.

Witold Gombrowicz, Bacacay ** 1/2

I reread this collection of Gombrowicz's early stories, which I rated at three stars several years ago. His perennial theme is how we contort the world so that its facts fit our preconceived notions, and its already in place in the best of the stories. My favorite stories were "Adventures," with its account of floating glass eggs and cannibalistic lepers, and "A Premeditated Crime," about a magistrate who tortures a grieving family by insisting that their father was murdered.

As is always a danger with experimental writers, most of the stories failed to engage me, which converted their oddness into tedium. Not even Gombrowicz's great use of metaphor was able to rope me back in.

Kevin Krajick, Barren Lands ****

The main subject of Barren Lands is the discovery of diamonds in Canada's Northwest Territories. Along the way, it describes the history and geography of the far north, the history and geology of diamonds, and the dirty business of mining speculation. It also tells the story of one small-time prospector who managed to make the big strike.

I was surprised to learn how little we knew about how diamonds formed or how to find a mine. It was truly a matter of trial and error until within my lifetime! Most of the world's diamonds come from a very small number of viable mines. The De Beers consortium happens to own the most productive of them, which (combined with shady business practices) gives them the upper hand in the industry.

The author is a science journalist, so the explanations of geology and geography were very clear. I loved learning about cratons and eskers. On the other hand, I was disappointed that Krajick didn't provide the same level of insight to the diamond prospecting business. He lists all of the complicated business dealings and lawsuits that followed from discovering the mines at Lac du Gras, but missed the opportunity to provide context for it. More generally, I'd say that the writing became more superficial as the narrative picked up steam, with Part IV feeling rushed compared to the rest of the book.

Henry Bromell, Little America ***

Little America has all the elements of a classic espionage story: America spies in the Middle East during the Cold War, informants with murky motives, geopolitical maneuvering, revolts, and assassinations. I especially liked how Bromell captures the Arabs' dilemma of the time:

We see ourselves from the point of view of the West and find ourselves lacking... With self-hatred comes a terrible nostalgia for the way things were, or at least the way we imagine things were... This nostalgia of defeat is dangerous and breeds tyrants. (p 282)

However, the book suffers from two fatal flaws.

First, our narrator jumps willy-nilly from the present to the past and from person to person. I'm sure Bromell would argue that it's intended to reflect the fragmentary nature of experience, but the effect didn't work for me. It just concentrated my attention on the aspects of the story that our narrator couldn't possibly have uncovered.

Second, the stakes never seemed sufficiently high to engage me with the story. We know from the beginning that the King of Kurash will be assassinated. We even have a pretty good idea of why he's killed. The only question is whether the narrator's father pulled the trigger. I didn't really care. 

Robert D. Kaplan, The Revenge of Geography ****

In his preface, Kaplan says that he intends The Revenge of Geography as a corrective to the numerous tomes about the coming triumph of globalization. Regardless of how "flat" the world is becoming, the fundamental facts of geography will continue to be a key influence on the geopolitics of the 21st century. For example, the fact that Iran is the only country with coasts on both the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf will continue to influence its policies, not to mention its relationships with neighbors China and Russia.

The book gives a great overview of the macro-geography of major world players -- Russia, China, India, the United States, and the Middle East -- and how their topography and position "explain" their history and worldview. It's full of delightful tidbits of geographical wisdom, such as the fact that human innovations tend to spread along lines of latitude where the climate is similar, or that North Africa and the northern countries of South America align with their neighbors across the Mediterranean/Caribbean rather their their continent-mates because of a major barrier to the south (the Sahara and Amazon basin respectively).

I don't think Kaplan manages to weave all of his interesting insights into a coherent geopolitical story. It's not for a lack of trying: Part 1 of the book spends far too much time describing the theories of analysts from the past -- all the way back to Herodotus! I also found his analysis of North America less convincing than his analysis of Asia.

David Masiel, 2182 Kilohertz *** 1/2

2182 Kilohertz is the story of Henry Seine, a young man working for an oil company in the Arctic while dealing with the collapse of his marriage and the death of a few colleagues. He is starting to believe that he is a Jonah who brings bad luck to those around him.

The story and the character development are rudimentary and occasionally amateurish, but the setting is unique and compelling. I always like books that portray competent people going about their jobs, and I'm also a sucker for stories set in Alaska. 

Lorraine Adams, Harbor ***

The first few chapters of Harbor are excellent. Page 1 finds Aziz Arkoun standing on the deck of a tanker, freezing, with his skin bleeding from the asbestos insulation he used as a blanket, getting ready to jump into the waters of Boston Harbor. Aziz is a refugee from Algeria, and the author conveys the disorientation of his early days in America with realistic specificity: his joy at encountering street vendors who speak Arabic; his concern about letting them know he is Algerian; the apartment where the guy from his home town lives with several sketchy characters.

In contrast to the vividness of the immigrant experience, the sections of the book that take place in Algeria are vague and unfocused (partly because Aziz is reluctant to remember what happened). In the later stages of the story, we see how the FBI almost willfully misinterprets the actions of our heroes, but this too is underdeveloped.

Sergio de la Pava, A Naked Singularity *** 1/2

A Naked Singularity is a big, ambitious first novel, the kind of book where a new writer seems to want to fit in everything he has ever wanted to say. De la Pava surrounds the main story with digressions and philosophical interludes on subjects ranging from the boxer Wilfred Benitez to The Honeymooners.

Our narrator, Casi, is a public defender in Manhattan. In Part 1, he describes in fascinating detail the legal process from the time I am arrested through my arraignment. He handles numerous colorful defendants. In Part 2, one of Casi's fellow lawyers convinces him to commit "the perfect crime," while Casi also tries to help prevent the execution of a mentally-challenged man on Death Row. Part 3 describes the fallout from the action in Part 2, with a heavy Crime and Punishment influence.

I loved Part 1. The plot was realistic, the setting was well rendered, and the philosophical asides were well integrated with the story. (The theme was how/whether we can really know other people.) These virtues were less in evidence as the book went on. The key character in Part 2, Dane, was clearly a Tyler Durden-style projection of Casi's; the heist planning was nowhere near perfect, and the digressions felt random rather than thematic. In Part 3, the tone became entirely comic, and realism flew out the window.

But I sure did like the first half...

Patrick O'Brian, The Ionian MIssion ****

Book 8 of the Aubrey/Maturin series is a bit short on sea battles -- to the point where a potential dust-up in the middle of the story goes by the board -- but it makes up for the lack by giving a strong sense of the day-to-day (and month-to-month) activities during the Napoleanic Wars. Much of the action takes place during the blockade of Toulon, with rows of ships tacking back and forth across the mouth of the port. O'Brian's descriptions of the political situation are clearer than they have been in previous books, so that the import and complications of the titular mission are palpable.

Paul Berliner, Thinking in Jazz **** 1/2

Honestly, Thinking in Jazz is overkill for a simple jazz fan like myself. It's a nearly 900-page work of ethnomusicology, filled with music theory and hundreds of pages of music transcriptions. The target audience is academic musicologists and aspiring jazz musicians. The subject is "the infinite art of improvisation."

However, nearly every one of the four hundred pages comprising Parts 1 and 2 ("Cultivating the Soloist's Skills" and "Collective Aspects of Improvisation") yields an insight about what jazz musicians do and how they go about doing it. Berliner provides very specific tips that paint a very vivid portrait of the music and the life of musicians. For example:

Pianists can make a subtle harmonic offering to soloists by presenting a non-chord tone or color tone in the inner voice of a passing chord. To present the same color tone in the upper voice of a sustained chord is a more pronounced offering, one that can produce dissonance if others ignore it.

Berliner explains ideas very clearly, although he does repeat himself quite a bit in standard academic style. He sets out to de-mystify the process of improvising. By identifying all of the melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, and extraneous factors that go into it, he makes improvisation less mysterious but even more miraculous.

The book deepens my appreciation of the music even as much of it went over my head. The only thing that could have made it better was a companion CD.

The Essential Schopenhauer ****

I've been a fan of Arthur Schopenhauer since I read his Essays and Aphorisms many years ago. While I think that his philosophical system is too simple to be right, I appreciate the basic idea of the will or life-force being identical to the "strange and mysterious" forces of nature and to Kant's noumena. I am also impressed by how seriously he respects and incorporates insights from Eastern and Western religious traditions.

The main attraction of Schopenhauer is his writing style. He writes directly, provides clear examples rather than abstruse terminology, and chooses excellent literary references. I frequently find him funny, even - in fact, especially - when he's expounding on the cruelty and pointlessness of life.

This collection comprises mostly selections from his major work, The World as Will and Representation. It addresses the core of his thought more directly than Essays and Aphorisms did, although I have to say that I found the essays more entertaining and wide-ranging.

The biggest drawback to this collection is a total lack of critical comment. The editor doesn't provide any information about how the selections were chosen, or when they were written, or what's missing in the ellipses that appear within the selections. It's a good thing Schopenhauer is so clear himself.

Benjamin Tammuz, Minotaur ** 1/2

Meh.

The description and review quotes for Minotaur promised an obsessive narrator and an avant-garde spy story; these are a few of my favorite things. This characterization only applies to the first 40 pages or so. After that, we get a few brief character studies that don't add up to much. When the story returns to our obsessive secret agent in the latter stages, it tries to explain how he came to be the way he is but fails to provide a convincing portrait.

Robert A. Burton, A Skeptic's Guide to the Mind *** 1/2

Burton is a neurologist who believes that other neurologists, with an assist from journalists, make unwarranted claims about the mind based on their research into the brain. In fact, it may be impossible to draw conclusions about the mind or consciousness from data about the brain. The mind is not the brain, even if you believe that the mind emerge from the brain.

Burton believes that consciousness is a set of "involuntary mental sensations," comparable to perceptual sensations but applied to mental activity. For example, understanding is the feeling you experience when your brain completes a calculation. In essence, Burton extends Hume's point about causation to the full range of rational thought: agency, intention, certainty, morality, and so on. My involuntary mental sensation is to find this idea fascinating.

The book contains many good insights, most of which I agree with. However, Burton's style is too casual and superficial. He addresses case studies only glancingly, and is surprisingly dismissive of philosophy:

After recently watching a few online introductory philosophy courses, my first reaction was that a fair number of age-old philosophical arguments seemed nonsensical.

That's quite a claim to make based on watching a few online videos! 

Christos Tsiolkas, The Slap ***

In the first chapter of The Slap, a group of family and friends is having a backyard barbecue. One of the children has a tantrum, and a man not his father slaps him. Descriptions of the book suggest that it "shows how a single action can change the way people think about how they live, what they want, and what they believe forever." But that's not really true. The slap merely serves as the pretext for examining a cross-section of Australian society. We meet a range of characters - young and old, native and immigrant, rich and poor - and learn how they react to the slap, but none of them change what they believe forever.

I understand why Tsiolkas chose to tell his story by rotating through eight narrators, but I think the book would have been better if he'd focused on the central character of Rosie, or maybe Rosie and one other character for perspective. Rosie was the richest character, and her story touched on all of the themes Tsiolkas addresses.

Tsiolkas limns the subtlety of certain emotions very well, but anger is not one of them. Whenever one of the characters gets upset, he or she becomes indistinguishable from the other characters.

David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding **** 1/2

Human blindness and weakness is the result of all philosophy, and meets us at every turn, in spite of our endeavours to elude or avoid it. .... Nature has kept us at a great distance from all her secrets, and has afforded us only the knowledge of a few superficial qualities of objects; while she conceals from us those powers and principles on which the influence of those objects entirely depends.

I came to this philosophical classic well acquainted with its main arguments and its extensive influence, but discovered the benefits of returning to original sources. On the one hand, it takes a while to get used to Hume's 18th century prose; on the other, I was surprised how often he sounds totally modern. For example, Hume's description of the chain of cause-and-effect leading from a past event to our current belief sounds almost exactly like Kripke or Putnam's account of reference, and his idea that belief is a feeling or sentiment anticipates James' pragmatism.

It was enjoyable and illuminating to read Hume's arguments in their original context and without modern commentary.

In all abstract reasonings there is one point of view which, if we can happily hit, we shall go farther towards illustrating the subject than by all the eloquence and copious expression in the world. This point of view we should endeavour to reach, and reserve the flowers of rhetoric for subjects which are more adapted to them.

Ken Kalfus, Equilateral ****

In the late nineteenth century, the astronomer Sanford Thayer convinces the international community to support his plan to construct a huge equilateral triangle in the Egyptian desert and light it on fire, to telegraph our presence to the canal builders on Mars. He has lofty expectations about communicating with the strange beings on Mars, but is having a hard time communicating with his Arab workers.

This relatively short novel is full of ideas about the human condition and the interplay between ideals and reality. It's also written in a lovely style, modern but with nineteenth century flourishes. 

Paul Tough, How Children Succeed *** 1/2

I learned about this book from Slate.com's list of favorite books of 2012. It makes the case that a child's success –– in school and in life –– depends more on non-cognitive traits like perseverance than on IQ or their standardized test scores. The subtitle refers to this as "the hidden power of character."

I went in expecting a discussion of educational reform, but the first chapter "How to Fail (and How Not to)" talks more about recent developments in pediatric neuroendocrinology, the second, "How to Build Character," about motivational psychology, and the third, "How to Think," about chess. These subjects make the author's argument more expansive, but also dilute its focus.

I basically agree with the author's points about the importance of character. However, his arguments made me a little nervous, especially in the early sections. He is making very traditional points about the influence of a child's relationship with his or her mother and about the value of hard work. They are not new ideas, and in fact they're the cornerstone of the conservative view that says disadvantaged people are responsible for their own predicament. The new idea is that character is malleable and teachable, that we can implement practices to improve it. I felt that the author argued more forcefully about the impact of character than about its improvability.

John Le Carré, A Perfect Spy ***

By consensus (including the author himself), A Perfect Spy is Le Carré's greatest novel. I beg to differ. I can see why people admire it, for its attention to a developing character, and I can certainly see why Le Carré is fond of it, for its autobiographical sketch of his father. However, I found Magnus Pym to be too passive a character and the double-agent espionage to be too blatant to be believable. I also found the prose of Pym's autobiographical sections to be too self-consciously literary. And too long -- I think Le Carré was working out his feelings about his father on the page. I would trade some of the details of Pym's adolescence for a deeper portrait of his wife Mary.

There's good stuff in here, to be sure, but I can't agree that this is Le Carré's best.

James Wood, How Fiction Works ****

A better title for How Fiction Works would be something like Aspects of Style. Wood talks enthusiastically about various techniques that differentiate prose stylists from workmanlike writers and modern novelists from their predecessors: the free indirect style, the telling detail, complex character motivation, and realism. He talks about narrative technique, not about plotting.

How Fiction Works mostly eschews the pretentious critical-theory-speak of most modern literary criticism, in favor of clear examples that demonstrate his points. For example, Wood explains the free indirect style by offering alternative versions of the same observation, and illustrates the development of   consciousness in literature by comparing similar characters in the Bible, Macbeth, and Crime and Punishment. He is a master at choosing apropos literary passages. His critical interpretations are always interesting: I'm not a fan of Dostoevsky, but Wood's reading of him clarifies what is good and distinctive about his books.

The book is enjoyable, illuminating, and made me want to read great literature.

Rachel Kushner, The Flamethrowers *** 1/2

I picked up The Flamethrowers after reading an article at Salon.com entitled, "Rachel Kushner's ambitious new novel scares male critics." Salon's female critic Laura Miller suggests that the book is an attempt at the Great American Novel, and that we're not used to reading anything this bold from a woman writer. James Wood also praised it, despite his being a male critic.

It is indeed an extremely well written book that tackles big themes, especially the never-ending dance between reality and art, authenticity and artifice. It includes some wonderful set pieces on the Bonneville Salt Flats and in Italy. My favorite chapter of all describes a family get-together in an Italian villa at Bellagio: the social dynamics between the characters are well rendered.

On the down side, though, I felt the story lacked any narrative drive, and few of the characters had clear motivations. I read each scene with interest, but never really wondered what was going to happen next.

My experience of reading The Flamethrowers was similar to my experience reading Roberto Bolano's books. Kushner and Bolano are clearly talented, ambitious authors; their characters are artists in international settings; and I admire their work but can't get completely engaged with it. I actually found Kushner more compelling than Bolano (maybe due to her being an American and therefore closer to me in background?).

Timothy Noah, The Great Divergence *** 1/2

I read the Hillman Prize-winning series of articles in Slate that formed the basis of this book. Each article, corresponding roughly to a chapter in the book, examined one possible explanation for the extreme growth in income inequality over the past three decades and found that none of the usual suspects could account for the phenomenon. Not only is it an compelling mystery story, but Noah's analysis delves into most of the hot-button topics of contemporary politics: immigration, globalization, racism, classism, computerization, equal opportunity, and tax policy. He has interesting data and makes insightful points in all of these areas. In the end, Noah's suggestions in the chapter on "What to Do" are mostly the traditional liberal prescriptions.

I found the book to be slightly less compelling than the original Web articles. It sacrifices focused journalistic clarity for a greater depth of data. I sometimes started drowning under the mass of statistics.

Patrick O'Brian, The Surgeon's Mate ****

A return to fine form for Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin after the uncharacteristically weak Fortune of War. Our intrepid pair travel home from Nova Scotia, but barely have time to put their affairs in order before they're off to the Baltic for a series of adventures that nicely balance war strategy and sailing challenges. As with Desolation Island, the meaning of the title doesn't become clear until near the end of the book.

Roy Parvin, In the snow forest ****

A fortuitous selection from the used book store, judged by its cover. In the snow forest is a collection of three novellas, all of which follow their protagonists as they ponder their lives in mountainous regions of the United States (Montana, the Trinity Alps, and Wyoming respectively).

All three stories take place in October, which fits with their elegiac tone. It's cold with the threat of a hard season ahead. The hero of the first story, "Betty Hutton," is an ex-con headed west for a new start while wondering whether he has really changed. The title story concerns an injured logger who stays behind with the women when the rest of the men head out of town for work. The final story, "Menno's Granddaughter," takes a train journey to the small Wyoming town where a woman's ex-husband lived out the rest of his days.

I'm a sucker for remote Western towns and for characters struggling against regret. Parvin is able to communicate his characters' longings without making them too introspective, and there's a surprising hopefulness to the stories. 

James Kelman, Mo said she was quirky ***

A quick return to James Kelman, for his latest one this time. Like Kelman's other books, Mo said she was quirky features a Glaswegian character's stream of consciousness, but this time it's a woman and she is living in London. Helen lives with her six-year-old daughter and her Pakistani boyfriend in a tiny run-down apartment. The book takes place over a single day.

Mo said she was quirky falls short of other Kelman books in two related ways. First, it lacks the colorful Scottish dialect that makes his sentences fun to read. Secondly, Helen's observations don't have the specificity to make them really come alive. Some of the place descriptions are vivid, but Helen's thoughts tend to be rather vague.

Ned Beauman, The Teleportation Accident **

I picked up a Kindle copy of The Teleportation Accident based on a very positive review in PopMatters, a site from which I've gotten good recommendations before. ("It’s a stylish, weird, witty, innovative, head-shaking kind of book") However, this recommendation was a bust.

Beauman attempts a tone that falls somewhere between witty social farce and 1940s deadpan noir. Despite the occasional clever turn of phrase, the prose has the awkward quality that comedy has when it's not landing. The story is too zany by half and is populated by characters with silly back stories and cardboard motivations.

Very disappointing.

James Kelman, Busted Scotch ****

When Evelyn and I visited Portland a few years ago on our 25th anniversary, one of the hidden gems I found at Powell's Books was How late it was, how late, the controversial Booker Prize winner from James Kelman. I really enjoyed the narrator's working-class Glasgow voice and appreciated his resiliency in the face of his troubles. 

When we were back in Powell's earlier this year, I picked up this collection of stories from Kelman. I enjoyed them for the same reasons as How late it was, how late: wonderful language, good characters struggling with difficult circumstances, and settings not usually found in literary fiction. I especially liked the stories where skint punters set out to perambulate to a distant broo, but aye nip into the corner for a bevy and worry about their weans.

Jeff Chang, Can't Stop Won't Stop ****

Can't Stop Won't Stop is an excellent "History of the Hip-Hop Generation," even if it wasn't exactly what I was hoping for.

I knew this book by its reputation as the definitive book about the birth and global takeover of hip-hop. I knew, too, that it addresses the social and cultural context from which hip-hop sprang. What I didn't know was that it covers the sociology of hip-hop without much focus on its artistic development. Chang talks about changes in the music — such as the shift from the early focus on the DJ to the ascendance of the MC — only when the development supports his point about cultural changes.

So I learned less about the artistic evolution of hip-hop than I wanted. On the other hand, I got a very strong portrait of the social milieu of young people of color in the 1980s and 1990s. Chang is clearly not unbiased; he writes from the young people's point of view in a style that borders on self-congratulatory. For example, he describes the attitudes of young gang members about the police without exploring the other side. This approach makes the book practically a manifesto for the hip-hop generation, not just a history of it.

Kenneth J. Harvey, The Town that Forgot How to Breathe *** 1/2

This horror novel has literary pretensions, as evidenced by the blurbs from J.M. Coetzee and Joseph O'Conner instead of Stephen King and Peter Straub. Strange things are afoot in the Newfoundland fishing village of Bareneed. Residents are dying from an illness that makes them just stop breathing, and the bodies of former residents lost at sea are washing ashore. A man who has rented a house in Bareneed for the summer is inexplicably drawn to the widow across the street. People are mermaids, albino sharks, and other legendary sea creatures.

I was drawn to this book by the promise of Newfoundlander atmosphere and creeping dread. It mostly delivered on these counts, and Harvey creates intriguing metaphysics for the supernatural events. Two problems undermined the drama, though.

First, the town featured too many people with supernatural powers before the illness struck: three or four people who could see auras, two who made drawings that predicted the future, and one who communed with her dead family. The prevalence of such powers made the strange events seem like less of a break from normality, and provided overly convenient ways to figure out the mystery.

Second, the haunting of summer-visitor Joseph and his daughter was only tangentially related to the events striking the rest of the town, both in theme and mechanics. Rather than reinforcing each other, I felt like the two stories distracted from each other.

Eric Hansen, Motoring with Mohammed ***

The first few chapters of this travel book are awesome. They describe the author's unintentional visit to Yemen in 1978, as a crew member on a shipwrecked yacht. The story of the accident, their time on a desert island, and eventual rescue is told with a perfect voice, both insouciantly adventurous and funny. (Hansen's style seems somehow like the British adventurers of old, even though he is an American.)

Hansen returns to Yemen over a decade later on a quixotic quest to retrieve the travel journals that he buried in the island sand before his rescue. These chapters are more typical of the travel genre. Like the author himself, I found my attention adrift during the middle section of the book as he wanders the capital of San'a. The final few chapters show some of the strength of the first few as he visits the mountains of the north and resumes his attempts to retrieve the journals.

So: By all means, read and enjoy the first four chapters. The rest is optional.

Etgar Keret, The Nimrod Flipout ***

According to Gary Shteyngart, The Nimrod Flipout is "the best work of literature to come out of Israel in the last five thousand years -- better than Leviticus and nearly as funny."

Keret reminds me of an Israeli George Saunders. He writes stories that are short, satirical, and off-kilter, with a funny narrative voice. They have a casual, tossed-off quality that works against them when they don't land. I thought that about half of the 30 stories worked. Many of the others seemed like preparatory sketches, especially when similar themes and characters recurred in adjacent stories.

Robert M. Martin, There are two errors in the the title of this book ***

The subtitle correctly characterizes this book as "A Sourcebook of Philosophical Puzzles, Problems, and Paradoxes." It includes a wide range of stories that illustrate philosophical issues, such as the Liar's Paradox, the Monty Hall problem, and runaway trollies. It would be a great resource in discussion forums, but alas was less interesting to read cover to cover. Frankly, I just didn't stop long enough between stories to really think about the issues. 

Herman Koch, The Dinner ****

The narrator of The Dinner starts out as a pleasantly cranky complainer with little patience for social conventions and jealousy of his politician brother. There's something going on with his 15-year-old son, that's clear from the beginning, but Paul is more concerned about making it through dinner without snapping at his brother's annoying habits.

As the story progresses, we learn more about the son's issue and about Paul's unusual personality. We're treated to interesting discussions about racism in film and the number of assholes killed during the Second World War. In other words, things escalate in a deliciously misanthropic fashion. I would have handled things a bit differently in the closing pages (I disagree with Paul's assessment at the end of Chapter 43), but the overall effect is solid.

The recommendation on the back cover from Gillian Flynn is fitting, because like Gone Girl, The Dinner surprises the reader with the full extent of the narrator's nastiness.

Simon Garfield, On the Map ***

The description on the inside flap of this Mind-Expanding Exploration of the Way the World Looks promises "a stimulating journey grounded in the idea that maps hold the key to what makes us human." However, it's really more of a miscellany on the theme of maps: the chapters are largely independent of each other, and are written in a human interest style that shies away from technical detail.

The book looks and feels great. A hardcover in trade paperback size, with a nicely designed cover and plenty of illustrations. It tells entertaining stories about treasure maps, illusory islands and mountain ranges, forgery, board games, and our developing sense of the globe. I just didn't find it all that informative. The clearest example is the chapter "What's the Good of Mercator?"It describes who Mercator was and mentions the existence of other projections, but doesn't really explain their relative merits.

Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go *** 1/2

Never Let Me Go is a perfectly constructed novel. Its plot and narrative voice exactly suit its themes. It tackles nothing less than the meaning of life. Objectively it deserves a better rating than I've given it, but Ishiguro's reserved tone held me at arm's length even as I recognized its appropriateness. I admire the book more than I enjoyed it.

The story puts a science-fiction gloss on a British coming of age story. It's about the things we "know and don't know" about our lives and how this uncertain state influences what we do. This theme is even reflected in that way our narrator Kathy tells her tale: Every chapter has at least one instance where Kathy refers to an event as if we readers knew the reference ("that evening we were sitting out in the ruined bus shelter"), then goes back in time to provide the context, then implies that the incident will have further repercussions later. We know and don't know what the event represents.

Full disclosure: I saw the film version of Never Let Me Go before reading the book -- or half-saw it, since it was on a seat-back screen halfway through a trans-Atlantic flight. So I knew more about where the story was going than a fresh reader would have.

Philip Conners, Fire Season ***

Fire Season is a short memoir of a summer Conners spent as a fire lookout in southern New Mexico. As usual with such books, it combines lyrical paeans to nature with scientific descriptions of fire behavior and historical interludes about government wilderness policy. Conners is especially interested in the issue of prescribed burns versus total suppression.

I appreciated the straightforwardness of Conner's prose -- not too many flights of fancy, even when describing sunset over the mountains. My favorite parts were the day-to-day details about the job:

We measure humidity with a nifty tool called a sling psychrometer. It holds two thermometers, side by side, in a metal casing on the end of a chain. One of the thermometers has a small sleeve over the bulb, which is dipped in water. Spun by the chain in the shade of a tree, the thermometers offer two different air temperatures, one wet, one dry.

He is less skilled at navigational descriptions. Despite many passages describing the orientation of his lookout tower, I never got a good sense of the layout of the wilderness area.

 

The Paris Review, Object Lessons ** 1/2

This collection of stories from The Paris Review "is intended for readers who are not (or are no longer) in the habit of reading short stories. We hope these object lessons will remind them how varied the form can be." Although it is surprising for a book with authors as diverse as Lydia Davis and Evan S. Connell, the stories all share a certain je ne sais quoi of literariness that makes them seem not varied at all. Is it because of the editorial standards of The Paris Review? Or because the stories were chosen by writers? For whatever reason, most of the selections favor style and character sketches over narrative resolution. 

F.S. Michaels, Monoculture **

Monoculture: How One Story is Changing Everything apparently won a few awards, but to me it seemed like a mediocre sophomore college paper. I had two basic problems with it:

• It argues that we live in a monoculture that views all of life through the lens of the "economic story," reducing all of life to markets and rational self-interested actors. While I agree that economic thinking has increased in the past couple of decades, I don't believe that it is the only "story" we use to understand our lives. For example, the "scientific story" remains strong, as does  the "spiritual story" for many people. So: no monoculture.
• The author's presentation of the "economic story" is jargon-y and not particularly insightful. Even if we were living in a monoculture, this book doesn't make a compelling case for how it shapes our world view.

Erskine Childers, The Riddle of the Sands ****

The Riddle of the Sands is advertised as an "early example of the espionage novel," which is it, but it's also a sailing story, especially in its early chapters. Fans of action will find the story too slow moving. The characters spend weeks navigating the shallow waterways of the Frisian Islands trying to solve a mystery, but I was more intrigued by the navigational techniques than the mystery... until the last few chapters. The plot kept me guessing until the end. 

I enjoyed The Riddle of the Sands much more than other early spy novels that I've read, namely Conrad's Secret Agent and Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday. 

Gordon Stainforth, Fiva: An Adventure That Went Wrong **** 1/2

Fiva is the name of a route up Store Trolltind, a mountain in Norway. In 1969, nineteen-year-old Gordon Stainforth and his twin brother John, in a burst of exuberance and misplaced confidence, set out to climb it. The subtitle reveals how it went.

Most mountaineering literature is written by established mountaineers whose well-planned expeditions fall victim to circumstance. The great thing about Fiva is how Stainforth tells the story (in the first person present) from the point of view of an under-prepared teenager. I was able to identify completely with his growing feeling that they were in over their heads, and the frustration at not being able to find the proper route. The adventure itself is less dramatic than other climbs, but that just makes it easier to relate to their predicament.

A true epic, exceedingly well told.

George Saunders, Tenth of December *** 1/2

I'm a big fan of George Saunders and his distinctively humorous writing style. The stories in Tenth of December continue his evolution from a writer of absurdist stories to a writer of more traditional stories with absurdist edges. The book includes stories like "My Chivalric Fiasco" that wouldn't be out of place in earlier collections, but also stories like "Tenth of December" that are more heartfelt than hilarious. The latter category are the strongest stories in the book.

Saunder's greatest strength is in his surprising choice of details:

Years ago at The Illuminated Body he and Molly had seen this brain slice. Marring the brain slice had been a nickel-sized brown spot. The brown spot was all it had taken to kill the guy. Guy must have had his hopes and dreams, closet full of pants, and so on...  Looking down at the brain slice Eber had felt a sense of superiority. Poor guy. It was pretty unlucky, what had happened to him.  He and Molly had fled to the atrium, had hot scones, watched a squirrel mess with a plastic cup. ("Tenth of December")

I love the "closet full of pants" representing the dead guy's promise, and the squirrel representing Eber's joie de vivre. I also loved the exchange about the Flemings and their Russian babies with harelips in chapter 3 of "Home."

Like all Saunders' collections, Tenth of December is too short!

Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve ** 1/2

In The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, Stephen Greenblatt tries to make the case that Lucretius' poem De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things) is (a) a supremely beautiful work of art and (b) a key influence in the development of Renaissance thought. In my opinion, he failed to show either of these things.

With respect to the aesthetic qualities of De rerum natura, Greenblatt asserts them repeatedly but never even attempts to give us a sense of the poem. The only chapter that deals with the poem directly gives a bullet-pointed summary of its arguments. Maybe it's only beautiful in Latin? At no time did I find myself itching to pick up a copy.

Most of the book is about the discovery of the poem in a monastic library in 1417 by Poggio Bracciolini, and about the late Medieval world of the time. These are the best parts too, where Greenblatt's conversational writing style sounds like the narration to accompany a PBS miniseries. Once Bracciolini distributes copies of the poem to a few of his humanist friends, Greenblatt really has to strain to claim wide influence for Lucretius. The main "dangerous" ideas from De rerum natura were already in circulation — as Greenblatt acknowledges in his preface — and there's little evidence that the poem itself had much influence over the development of modern thought.

Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending ****

This short Booker Prize winner is a subtle examination of how we construct the story of our lives from our memories, and how the story invariably fails to capture the full reality. The subtlety is both the greatest strength of the book and its biggest weakness: strength because the narrator's thoughts are precisely the kinds of ruminations that occur to us all, and weakness because very little actually happens beyond the mundane. (The exception is the twist at the end.)

Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon, Writing Movies for Profit ****

Based on the authors (who are comedians), the title (which is actually Writing Movies for Fun and Profit) and the cover (which shows stereotypes of excess wealth), I expected a pleasantly humorous satire of Hollywood. The general tone is pleasantly humorous, but in fact this book really provides a valuable guide to writing and selling screenplays. If I'm ever inclined to start writing for studios, this is the first place I'll look for advice.

Underneath the sarcastic veneer, Garant and Lennon paint a realistic picture of the life of a screenwriter, with  very specific recommendations ranging from the correct length of a script (100 to 110 pages for a comedy) to evaluating how much the studio likes your script based on the parking pass you receive. I loved the level of detail, down to the fonts and margins that each studio requires and the page on which the "inciting incident" should occur. The number of juicy tidbits is awesome!

Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl **** 1/2

Gone Girl is a page-turner murder mystery, with all of the hallmarks of the genre: disreputable narrators, cliff-hanger chapter endings, ominous characters, and exciting plot twists that strain the edge of believability. It transcends its genre, however, by taking the time to create full-blooded main characters (Anne and Nick Dunne) and a realistic marriage. The first section of the book is as concerned about the nature of Anne and Nick's relationship as is it with the mystery of Anne's disappearance on their fifth wedding anniversary.

Flynn's writing has a literary flair that contrasts with the straightforward sardonic tone of most murder mysteries. She mostly avoids the embarrassing dialogue that plagues the genre — the only exception is the chapter in which Nick prepares for a TV interview; the lawyer and his wife engage in "adorable" banter that feels out of place.

I didn't just follow the twists and turns of the thriller, I gained insights about the nature of marriage!

Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall, The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst *** 1/2

The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst relates the true story of an Englishman who, in 1969, faked a solo circumnavigation and disappeared as he approached the finish line. He left without sufficient preparation but felt compelled by circumstances to continue. He stayed in the Atlantic while reporting (vague) positions in the Southern Ocean, then started reporting his true position after other competitors had passed him. The sailors in front of him started having problems, leaving him as the apparent victor. The stress of his deception drove him mad.

It's a fascinating story, well told. The book was written just a few years after the events, so the authors expect readers to be familiar with the outlines of the story. As someone who didn't know the final outcome, I would have preferred for the story to build to its climax instead of revealing the ending in the prologue. I also think the authors overplay Crowhurst's ineptness in light of future events; a couple of short appendices reveal him to be a more capable sailor and designer than the authors give him credit for.

Kij Johnson, At the Mouth of the River of Bees ****

The stories in this collection were originally published in Asimov's Magazine and Realms of Fantasy and so on, but it's hard to classify them as science fiction or fantasy even if they do feature magical foxes, world-destroying microbots, and yes, a river of bees. The author is far more interested in feelings than in science, even when her characters are technocrats like "The Man Who Bridged the Mist."

As with any collection of stories, I enjoyed some more than others. My favorites were "26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss" (happily the first story in the book), "Fox Magic," "The Cat Who Walked a Thousand Miles," and the title story. They all used fantastic elements to explore the same themes as realistic stories do: dealing with death, the nature of community, and what we do for love. They also have lovely, unforgettable images in them.

My least favorite stories were the most experimental ones, "Spar," "Ponies," and "Names for Water." Conveniently, these were also the shortest stories.

Peter Zuckerman and Amanda Padoan, Buried in the Sky ***

Buried in the Sky tells the true story of the disastrous day in 2008 when eleven climbers died on K2. It differs from Into Thin Air and other similar books in that it focuses largely on the support climbers, the Nepalese and Pakastani climbers.

The climbing descriptions are actually fairly lackluster, at least for frequent readers of mountaineering literature. Viewing the story through the local climbers provides a distinctive perspective though. I learned about the cultural backgrounds of the various ethnicities that work as "sherpas," and how Western climbers tend to ignore the differences at their peril. One contributing factor in the tragedy occurred when the team of support climbers setting fixed lines through The Bottleneck was left without a common language.

Ben Marcus, The Age of Wire and String ** 1/2

Ben Marcus is the author of Notable American Women and The Flame Alphabet. His prose is exceedingly experimental, but as I say in my reviews, Marcus has a tenderness that shines through the avant-garde style. The Age of Wire and String lacks that human touch, and therefore feels merely intellectual and clever.

My feelings about The Age of Wire and String are remarkably similar to my feelings about Whites, which I read right before it. Despite the vast differences between them, both are first books by authors whose subsequent books I enjoyed, and in both cases the primary enjoyment I derived from them was the ways in which they anticipated the later novels. Much of the imagery in The Age of Wire and String anticipates Notable American Women, which is the better book.

Norman Rush, Whites ***

This short collection of stories is like the extra features on the DVD for Mating or Mortals: deleted scenes or early shorts. The flavor is similar, and you can see the seeds of ideas that recur in the novels. The first story even shares a narrator with Mating, although her voice is very different. Rush's style is not fully formed yet, except for his descriptive powers. 

The book was enjoyable as a supplement to the novels rather than as a standalone collection. 

Sharon Bertsch McGrayne, The Theory that Would Not Die ** 1/2

A disappointing history of Bayes' Rule, the insight at the heart of much modern statistical analysis and extremely relevant to Google. In her quest to appeal to general readers, McGrayne doesn't do a good job of explaining the rule or how it is applied. I got only a very vague idea of how Bayesians differ from frequentists.

The main message that I took from the book is that Bayesian inference has many practical applications but is (or was) anathema to statisticians who demand mathematical rigor. The secondary message is that Bayesian reasoning requires computer power, which is one of the reasons it took so long for it to gain acceptance.

The book is more interesting as an example of how personalities and academic in-fighting influence the course of scientific progress. The development of statistics as a discipline flows from a few strong individuals, and if they didn't like Bayes' Rule then it wasn't a proper object of study. The stories of non-statisticians using Bayesian reasoning -- to break the Enigma code in World War II, to set reasonable insurance rates, to locate objects lost at sea -- were entertaining in their own right, but didn't illuminate the central topic.

The long list of interesting applications in the final chapter just made me more frustrated that I didn't understand the theory!