TWI Books: #32
May. 24th, 2007 12:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akujunkanBetter late than never, eh? It's hard to read when you're sick as a dog, let alone formulate coherent statements about what you have read. Thus these late takes on the five books I read last week
1) An Inconvenient Truth - Al Gore
Yes, I know that just having read this a week ago puts me well behind 90% of the U.S. population, but in my defense I have already seen the movie. And An Inconvenient Truth The Book is fundamentally the same as An Inconvenient Truth The Film. Still, I recommend both: some concepts come across better as animated slides, while many of the movie's core ideas are given much more thorough treatment in the book. As far as Gore's central argument is concerned, An Inconvenient Truth does an excellent job of both making the science of global warming accessible without unnecessarily dumbing it down, and proving that it is indeed a problem (although not a hopeless one).
2) Sit Down And Shut Up - Brad Warner
Brad Warner's first effort, Hardcore Zen easily makes my top five books on Buddhism. The guy does an excellent job of both explaining Buddhism and its relevance to everyday life, and doing it in decidedly modern (read: post-Simpsons generation) language. Another fun fact: we're from the same place in Ohio, and he was an ALT in the same bumblefuck town in Japan where I went on JET, none of which I knew until well after I'd read his first book. Anyway, Sit Down And Shut Up is another excellent volume, this time discussing Dogen's Shobogenzo. Granted, Warner's attempts at humor feel forced at times, and I believe much of the material was available in rougher form on his old blog, but these faults by no means detract from the overall worth of the book. As a final caveat, I did read it during the height of my bout of flu last week, so I'm going to have to reread it before I can give you my definitive, not-loopy-on-meds opinion, but as things stand now: read this book.
3) Journals - Kurt Cobain
I was and continue to be a huge Nirvana fan. There is just no way to over-represent what Nirvana meant to me at 12; they were the first band that made me realise that music could be more than Amy Grant and Vanilla Ice, and that it could speak specifically to my experiences. I'd resisted reading this book for a long time, both because it struck me as a cash cow and because I was sure that the journals were heavily edited and redacted. In the end I figured that those last facts would make reading them less of an exercise in voyeurism, and so here I find myself. The book is rather disjointed (as edited and redacted journals tend to be) but still offers a fascinating glimpse into several things: how Kurt Cobain's experience of social ostracism mirrored my own as a teenager; the genesis his lyrics and some of his famous letters to Rolling Stone; how desperately Cobain wanted fame until he actually had it; and how utterly, completely fucked up on drugs he was. Perhaps the best feature of the book is that it simply reproduces the journal pages without offering any sort of commentary or explanation; no one who isn't already a fan of the band will find anything of interest here, but it really is an interesting addition to the band's story from a fan's perspective.
4) The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell - John Crawford
The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell is an Iraq War memoir written by a vet who clearly wanted to update O'Brien's The Things They Carried for the current pointless conflict, but ultimately failed thanks to his lack of literary talent. The prose is both flat and purple, and rife with thoroughly cliched "descriptive" passages—Crawford has obviously read a few Clancy novels in his time. The author also errs by throwing readers directly into the action without giving any background information on either himself or the other men in his unit; without it the reader will find no reason to care for any of these people, especially when their attitudes toward the Iraqis range from frat boy obnoxious to utterly despicable. No wonder the Iraqis hate U.S. soldiers, readers are left thinking, although this is obviously not the reaction Crawford is trying to evoke. Finally, the editing is atrocious: sentences lack subject-verb agreement, words are misused, and Crawford—I am not kidding—appears to have cut and pasted the same passages into several chapters. About the only point of interest in this book is that Crawford appears to have experienced many of the same incidents and events that Paul Rieckhoff describes in his Iraq War memoir, Chasing Ghosts. Ultimately, however, if you're looking for a soldier's account of the Iraq War, forego Crawford and stick with Rieckhoff.
5) Stones In Water - Donna Jo Napoli
Napoli is famous for her novella takes on European folk tales, so this fictional account of World War II is something of an anomaly in her catalogue. It is, however, a very well written story that deals with a little-discussed aspect of the war: Italian children kidnapped and pressed into slave labour by the Nazis. Stones In Water follows the story of one boy as he's abducted from Venice and tries to save his friends and himself. It does quite well in covering a lot of ground in its very limited page space and distilling the horrors of the war into a form appropriate for its target age group. Granted, readers will be asked to suspend their disbelief at several key points in the narrative, but Napoli tells her story so well that I found myself very willing to play along. Although Stones In Water is by no means perfect, it is very well done indeed.
SBS: I believe this actually hit 100 last Sunday, but I was too ill to count properly.
That will be all.
1) An Inconvenient Truth - Al Gore
Yes, I know that just having read this a week ago puts me well behind 90% of the U.S. population, but in my defense I have already seen the movie. And An Inconvenient Truth The Book is fundamentally the same as An Inconvenient Truth The Film. Still, I recommend both: some concepts come across better as animated slides, while many of the movie's core ideas are given much more thorough treatment in the book. As far as Gore's central argument is concerned, An Inconvenient Truth does an excellent job of both making the science of global warming accessible without unnecessarily dumbing it down, and proving that it is indeed a problem (although not a hopeless one).
2) Sit Down And Shut Up - Brad Warner
Brad Warner's first effort, Hardcore Zen easily makes my top five books on Buddhism. The guy does an excellent job of both explaining Buddhism and its relevance to everyday life, and doing it in decidedly modern (read: post-Simpsons generation) language. Another fun fact: we're from the same place in Ohio, and he was an ALT in the same bumblefuck town in Japan where I went on JET, none of which I knew until well after I'd read his first book. Anyway, Sit Down And Shut Up is another excellent volume, this time discussing Dogen's Shobogenzo. Granted, Warner's attempts at humor feel forced at times, and I believe much of the material was available in rougher form on his old blog, but these faults by no means detract from the overall worth of the book. As a final caveat, I did read it during the height of my bout of flu last week, so I'm going to have to reread it before I can give you my definitive, not-loopy-on-meds opinion, but as things stand now: read this book.
3) Journals - Kurt Cobain
I was and continue to be a huge Nirvana fan. There is just no way to over-represent what Nirvana meant to me at 12; they were the first band that made me realise that music could be more than Amy Grant and Vanilla Ice, and that it could speak specifically to my experiences. I'd resisted reading this book for a long time, both because it struck me as a cash cow and because I was sure that the journals were heavily edited and redacted. In the end I figured that those last facts would make reading them less of an exercise in voyeurism, and so here I find myself. The book is rather disjointed (as edited and redacted journals tend to be) but still offers a fascinating glimpse into several things: how Kurt Cobain's experience of social ostracism mirrored my own as a teenager; the genesis his lyrics and some of his famous letters to Rolling Stone; how desperately Cobain wanted fame until he actually had it; and how utterly, completely fucked up on drugs he was. Perhaps the best feature of the book is that it simply reproduces the journal pages without offering any sort of commentary or explanation; no one who isn't already a fan of the band will find anything of interest here, but it really is an interesting addition to the band's story from a fan's perspective.
4) The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell - John Crawford
The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell is an Iraq War memoir written by a vet who clearly wanted to update O'Brien's The Things They Carried for the current pointless conflict, but ultimately failed thanks to his lack of literary talent. The prose is both flat and purple, and rife with thoroughly cliched "descriptive" passages—Crawford has obviously read a few Clancy novels in his time. The author also errs by throwing readers directly into the action without giving any background information on either himself or the other men in his unit; without it the reader will find no reason to care for any of these people, especially when their attitudes toward the Iraqis range from frat boy obnoxious to utterly despicable. No wonder the Iraqis hate U.S. soldiers, readers are left thinking, although this is obviously not the reaction Crawford is trying to evoke. Finally, the editing is atrocious: sentences lack subject-verb agreement, words are misused, and Crawford—I am not kidding—appears to have cut and pasted the same passages into several chapters. About the only point of interest in this book is that Crawford appears to have experienced many of the same incidents and events that Paul Rieckhoff describes in his Iraq War memoir, Chasing Ghosts. Ultimately, however, if you're looking for a soldier's account of the Iraq War, forego Crawford and stick with Rieckhoff.
5) Stones In Water - Donna Jo Napoli
Napoli is famous for her novella takes on European folk tales, so this fictional account of World War II is something of an anomaly in her catalogue. It is, however, a very well written story that deals with a little-discussed aspect of the war: Italian children kidnapped and pressed into slave labour by the Nazis. Stones In Water follows the story of one boy as he's abducted from Venice and tries to save his friends and himself. It does quite well in covering a lot of ground in its very limited page space and distilling the horrors of the war into a form appropriate for its target age group. Granted, readers will be asked to suspend their disbelief at several key points in the narrative, but Napoli tells her story so well that I found myself very willing to play along. Although Stones In Water is by no means perfect, it is very well done indeed.
SBS: I believe this actually hit 100 last Sunday, but I was too ill to count properly.
That will be all.
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no subject
on 2007-06-01 07:30 am (UTC)Are you still ill? I'm becoming rather worried as I haven't seen you online for quite a while, nor have you made a post about your latest TWIB or the two big fandom issues that caused a meltdown.
Get better soon. :::HUGSS::
no subject
on 2007-06-05 02:46 am (UTC)no subject
on 2007-06-05 05:28 am (UTC)Like nearly everyone else, I've got myself accounts with journalfen, greatest journal and Insane journal. Sadly, none of them can hold a candle to LJ for what I want, so I won't be migrating without a really good reason.
no subject
on 2007-06-08 04:41 pm (UTC)i couldn't help but sigh in relief when i read that, and easily puts this book to one of those on top of my To Read list :D we're in a tropical country so i've been experiencing the torture of that heat x__x;; but not as much as those living in the packed urban poor areas, where even children are already suffering from skin cancer... i hope this book opens the eyes of people and spark motivation to acutally do something about global warming.
no subject
on 2007-06-13 02:09 pm (UTC)Surprisingly, we're at the other end of the stick here. The Great Lakes don't freeze anymore because of the hotter summer temperatures, which means that the cold air pouring in from the Arctic doesn't meet cold enough air before it hits us. This leads to *more* snow and ironically, *more* uninformed idiots who don't understand meteorology and think that global warming can't be occurring because they didn't have five feet of snow during winters in the 1980s.