Best weapon award

Started Early, Took My Dog

Great and frustrating book!  There appeared--without warning--to be four separate plot lines--or was that five?  All intertwined.  The date jumped from 1975 to now, or rather, now minus six months, but at least she gave you warning about that by putting the date on top of the flashback chapters and those where it returned.  But the plot lines and all the character changes kept me confused almost to the end.

(Warning: I'm not a reader who thrives on complexity of plot.  Complexity of subject, yes, but I just can't cozy up to so many new people so suddenly.)

But I still recommend it thoroughly. Best detective mystery I've read in years.  Between the police, the ex-police, and the used-to-be-police but now private fugitive tracker, there are plenty of insider details.  Throw in a stolen dog a little girl of indeterminate origin,  and a woman who just wants to know who she is--and you have it all.

Great gazing. And poring.

Great Maps
by Jerry Brotton


There's so much learning crammed into this book, my feeble little brain couldn't take it all in.  It's an oversized picture book, each two or four-page spread showing and explaining a map that's either significant, beautiful, or puzzling.  In some cases a map is really a collection of maps, like the Vatican Gallery of Maps.  What a thing to see!

I was amused by his method of illustrating the size of the maps.  Beside each was a figure of a human or else a human hand, showing its size relative to something we're all familiar with.  A surprising number of them were much larger than a human being.

He did marvelous work of condensing big things into (relatively) small pages.   I was disappointed only by the amount of space they gave up to show pictures that came out as big blurs.  The small, blown-up pictures of areas of the maps--those were great.  But a few of the "bigger picture" items were just wasted space.

Like many books of illustration, someday this book should be remade as an online resource.  Then the viewer could expand and contract to the limits of his thumb and forefinger.

Two natives, the author and a dog named Fatback

Neither Wolf Nor Dog:
On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder

by Kent Nerburn

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I don't want to write about it.  If rancor and pain can linger in a collective soul for so long, what hope has mankind?

At the same time I'm listening to a book about World War II in Japan.  These people, indoctrinated from birth to fear and hate foreigners, told that their race was a superhuman one and all others little more than brutal savages, raised a generation of soldiers capable of killing without remorse.  Chinese, Koreans, and American prisoners were beaten, tortured or murdered.  The decent humans feared to act--sadism ruled.

But today they're our allies.  Trading partners and friends.  What happened?

I'm hoping some of the books on my reading list will enlighten.  But the point of this diatribe is, how can we ever reconcile with the hearts of our own native races?  I'm not saying the Indian elder in this book hated the white man--he chose a white man to write down his philosophy--but oh, how he loathed the acts of the conquerors.  You feel the very land weep, poisoned with the blood of her children.  You feel the great sadness of the ones left to live...if you can call it that.

Great and long. Really long.

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
by Jared Diamond

I'd almost call this mistitled--should be something like, Agriculture, Herding and Geography: The Fates of Human Societies.  Because those were the factors that made some societies successful and others extinct.  Surplus and storage gave people the time and energy to improve their methods, breeding more surplus, better methods....  Living close to herds of animals improved the odds that infectious diseases could spread--I wish he'd written more about this--and natural selection bred resistance to those diseases.  And finally, Geography--for example, having metal ore close to the surface makes all the difference. I don't think I ever knew that smelting of metal was invented independently in different parts of the world--I always pictured it as a single man's a-ha! moment.

It's totally great but I wanted more.  He didn't get into European societies very much, after pointing out that the animals and plants domesticated in the Fertile Crescent traveled West and rapidly became established there, but the lands where they originated are now overgrazed, barren, and dry.  Why?  Was it climate change or did the humans of the Fertile Crescent simply fail to learn how to keep their farmlands productive?

And what happened after Steel?  It wasn't just Guns, Germs and Steel that made some societies dominant.  He does talk a good deal about writing, but never mentions printing. (I think.)  And what of the role of religion?

Always, I want more.

Book collector or private detective?

Louisa May Alcott:
From Blood & Thunder to Hearth and Home
by Madeleine B. Stern

Collection of Madeleine Stern's essays and lots of Alcott's letters, written from 1943 to 1995.  The story of the fascinating discover of Alcott's A.M. Barnard pseudonym is here, along with a more sympathetic view of how she came to be known as "The Children's Friend" author.  The biography of Alcott that I read gave me the mistaken view that after many frustrations making a living as a serious writer, she came to write a Girls' book as an unwilling favor to a publisher.  Not true at all.

The only essay I didn't enjoy wholeheartedly was the one where she attempted to link certain episodes in Alcott's career to passages in her children's books.  Her acting episodes in the early years, yes--almost every book had an amateur play or wannabe actress.  But I don't think it's fair to imply that direct quotes from her books had a direct parallel in her own life.

One of the recipes came out good--after I fixed it

Breaking the food seduction:
The Hidden Reasons Behind Food Cravings--and 7 Steps to End them Naturally

Neal Barnard, M.D.

Frustrating book!  The first part explains the biology behind the cravings and offers some insights as to why some cravings may be beneficial to our species.  After all, if mother's milk didn't taste good to babies they'd be disinclined to put up with it, right?   It's full of fun stuff about the opiate effect of chocolate and dairy products and sugar.  He didn't include salt for some reason.

So after the fun stuff, here comes a chapter subheading: Is it Good to Break a Chocolate Habit?   The answer he proposes is overwhelmingly, YES--chocolate can trigger migraines, increase irritability, it's full of fat, etc, etc.  Definitely a habit to break.  So why, in the last part of the book, out of 21 dessert recipes,  7 recipes are for things like "ultra-fudge brownies" and "creamy fudge frosting"  using cocoa powder?  And other five use carob powder but say,  cocoa powder can be substituted?  Someone wasn't listening to himself.

In his descriptions of vitamins, and at various other places throughout the book, he recommends fortified breakfast cereals--Corn Flakes, Product 19, Total, Special K....  But his chapter on the glycemic index of foods and lists Cheerios at 106 and Corn Flakes at 130.  Anything over 90 is considered high glycemic index and theoretically should be avoided.  So you should get your vitamins from highly processed, pre-digested and often sugary breakfast cereals instead of from fruits, vegetables and whole grains?   And worse still, he recommends a daily multi-vitamin, because it will provide vitamin B12 and also ease your mind in case you're worried you're missing something.   I'm okay with the latter, but if you're filling your body with a cocktail of synthesized chemicals to provide only one vitamin, something's screwy.

So I have some serious issues with the details, but I can't fault the content.  And he has a delightful writing style, for example in quoting the Coca-Cola Company's "Myths and Rumors" web site about the non-addictiveness of caffeine, he says:
       Caffeine is not addictive?  This is what your mother used to call "a lie."

Lot of reading

Walt Disney:
The Triumph of the American Imagination
by Neal Gabler

Hefty biography of a complex man.  I enjoyed it to the end, but didn't come away satisfied.  I learned all about him; a little about the people who helped him; and a tidbit about his work; but the insight into how and why never showed up on the pages.  But like I said, he was a complex man.  Who ever knows why one does something?

So a wanted less detail, more substance. Hard job for a biographer, unless they resort to making things up.

Warning: makes you really want to see some of those old Mouse cartoons again. The future of reading ought to include "animated" biographies--where you can click a link and see the cartoons they're talking about. Or if it's about a political figure, you can click to view the speeches. Or any person introduced, you can an least hover over the name and see their picture.

How much loss can a human being suffer?

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
Ishmael Beah

It is amazingly impossible that a boy's memory can have so much stuff in it.  For certain periods in his life, he relates day-by-day, hour-by-hour narratives that are mind-bogglingly detailed, down to the taste and feel and smell of the scenes unfolding.  They are so real and in our faces that it seems more of a movie than words spoken in my ears.

I listened to the audiobook, read by Ishmael Beah himself; in this case, I think that was the best choice.  Since my discovery of audiobooks a few years ago, I've heard only a few that would have been better on paper.  My theory is that most books of fact and history are better read than heard. When I'm reading history, I often want to flip back a chapter or two and review something that was skimmed or failed to stick.  But memoirs and fiction, with a good reader (they call them "performers"), have an extra kick when heard rather than read.  It could be simply that it forces me to slow down and savor.

Ishmael Beah tells of a life destroyed by war that I don't even understand as war.  What is a war that means random killing of civilians, women and children, farmers, old men, babies?  What he described was more pointless than a genocide.  The only thing distinguishing a rebel from a soldier was the color of the cloth bound around his head.  Rebels and soldiers alike recruited from the captured boys and young men--it wasn't a race war, a land war, a religious war--it seemed to have been started by rebels from neighboring Liberia, attempting to obtain a base and armies to attack into Liberia.  Once started, the Sierra Leone RUF (rebels) went on to gain more and more territory, with poorly stated goals of redistribution of wealth and power to the people.  But all they seemed to do was to make the people fear and suffer and starve. 

The United Nations peacekeeping forces eventually ended the fighting.  For now.

The book's unbelievable pain is relieved by scenes of impossible kindness.  The boys look after each other, but they are helped along their many journeys by random individuals who step outside of their fear and give them food, shelter, medicine and hope.  It is the most depressing and the most uplifting book I have found in years.

I wanna be a medical examiner!

Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner
by Judy Melinek and T.J.Mitchell

Impossible to put down--heartbreakingly honest--fascinating.

Always in the forefront were the bodies and their ailments.  OD'ed bodies that the family insisted had been murder; bodies smashed by a falling crane; 9-1-1 bodies and and body parts.  She told a lot of medical and anatomical details without drowning you in ten-syllable words.  She revealed enough about her personal life as a trainee medical examiner to make herself a real person, but didn't get embarrassing.  She didn't try to hide her femininity, but didn't wallow in it, either.

On a side note--this is my blog, I can get personal if I want to--if anyone had ever presented the idea of her profession as an option to me, I might have considered it.  As a kid, I knew about doctors and nurses, and I sure didn't want to be one of them!  Responsibility for a human life?  Not taking it.  When I got older I heard about lab technicians and theirs seemed the most boring  job imaginable.  (Still does)  But poking into a nicely dead body, dealing with science rather than human hopes and fears, occasionally trucking out of the lab with a bag of evidence-gathering apparatus to view the crime scene in situ...what a job!

Odd but likeable

The Millstone
by Margaret Drabbel

Very peculiar. Quintessential ‎scholar with not-so-great social skills gets pregnant by accident and is too shy, unassertive, and possibly conflicted, to terminate it in the early stages.  Will she or won't she?  Will she get dismissed from her position?  Will she ever tell the father?  Or even her own father?

I'm not telling.  It sounds like a good little mystery but it's more--it's an introspection.  And quite a good one. In the progress of her problem, she comes out of her private little world and observes the people around her, which adds a little picture of time and place made quite interesting by her unique perspective.  The British Healthcare system seems amazing for its efficiency.  I suppose rich people have private physicians, but the rest of us just go to the clinic.  I'll admit she had a little trouble finding here to go from there, but at least she didn't have to manage ten different referrals and in-network/out-of-network claim forms.