Reading, singing, reading

The Beatles: The Biography
by Bob Spitz

If you have any fond memories of Beatles music at all, and if you have an annoying tendency to get songs stuck in your head, don't read this book!>  Because you'll then have an irresistible urge to get the old Beatles CDs out of the box, or maybe even check them out of the library if you can't find the box, and then there you'll be. All the old songs stuck in your head for days.

Beep beep uh beep-beep, yeah!

I listened to this as an audiobook and it would have been so awesome if they'd done the mixing for me.  Maybe a few songs in between each chapter. Sigh.

While clearly engrossed in his subject matter, Mr. Spitz doesn't overlook his subjects' character flaws.  You get to meet The Beatles as people, not paragons.  Very enjoyable.

Habit-breaking!

The Power of Habit: 

Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

by Charles Duhigg

It starts off with a man with a damaged hippocamus and almost no memory at all, who could still function almost like a normal person--by habit. He could get up and cook himself breakfast and often did--several times a morning. He could do it, but couldn't remember he'd done it.  Habit?

Then the book speeds into an understanding of "the habit loop" and convinces you that habit rules your life...but maybe not your destiny.  It's all about the habit loop: cue--routine--reward. Understanding this and analyzing your own bad behaviors will allow you to improve your life, make money, delight your friends and eat more cookies!.

Just kidding. He's onto something, I'm sure, but you need to remember a couple of things:
1. Change still takes effort.
2. Sometimes you have to manufacture the "cue".
3. Some habits are hiding coping mechanisms for underlying problems.

His description of breaking his afternoon snack habit walks you through #1. #2 is described in the the amazing success story of the Pepsodent toothpaste advertising--and the long-time failure of the ads for the Febreze odor eliminator.

But #3 is one of those examples of Jesus exorcising a demon only to have seven other demons leap in. Breaking any habit that is helping us deal with problems is difficult, period. Alcoholics Anonymous has the habit solution--it teaches people to replace the comfort of hanging out with friends in the bar to talking to a sponsor or attending meetings with supportive people.
But he writes,

Alcoholics who practice the techniques of habit replacement, the data indicated, could often stay sober until there was a stressful event in their lives--at which point, a certain number started drinking again, no matter how many new routines they had embraced.
However, those alcoholics who believed ... that some higher power had entered their lives were more likely to make it through the stressful periods with their sobriety intact.

For people who can't deal with the higher power hypothesis, support groups can fill the void.

After that the book goes onto a description of corporate change; then a great chapter called The Neurology of Free Will. It describes how a sleeping person having night terrors and fighting off an imaginary enemy could be compared to a compulsive gambler.  And that raises the complex question of culpability--if a sleeping person commits assault, is he guilty of a crime? If a compulsive gambler takes a line of credit from a predatory casino, is he liable for the loss?

I almost wish the author gone on to discuss the American response to drug addicts--when is it a crime and when is it a sickness?  Which is more helpful in the end--punishment or treatment? I'd like to see what he says.

Okay but no banana

Becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder: The Woman behind the Legend

by John E. Miller

Really good...until Rose grew up. Seriously, I mean it. The author did his stuff and churned out a delightful biography, but I think he really wanted to write a literary biography. If the title tells his intent, it was to describe how an ordinary girl with no apparent writing goals ended up being the children's author of the day, maybe of all time. And he couldn't. Or didn't, anyway.

 He did well with the history of her early life but I wanted more about the places, people and times. When you can't find letters or diaries to flesh out a portrait, you have to fall back on newspapers, magazines, and other writings of the times...but I can't see he did much of that. He just relayed the history; well-written, enjoyable, but not deeply satisfying. I prefer reading the annotations in Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography.

When Laura's writing career became the focus, it was clear he wanted to dig deep and see how in the world she pulled it off. Where did she start as a diarist, and how did she progress to a master storyteller? Did her non-fiction articles get editorial help, and if so, how did that develop her writing?  Why were some characters included and others suppressed? How did three real-life girls become one Nellie Oleson? How much of the book was written by Rose?  (Almost none; it seems, but she clearly had an influence.)

He tried to answer all these questions and more, but he didn't have a lot of first-hand material about Laura Ingalls Wilder--no diaries, not many letters except travel journals. However, he had plenty of material about Rose Wilder Lane and her writing career--and that's what he included. A lot of it. Her thoughts, feelings, personal angst, and anger at her parents.

Fine. I get that. It's what made her a writer. But it's not what made Laura Ingalls Wilder a writer.

All bellyaching aside, it's a good book. I just wish it had been titled, Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder lane: The Women Behind the Legend.

Charles Dickens had good writing genes

One Pair of Feet by Monica Dickens

Maybe not as surprising as One Pair Of Hands, because I knew what to expect--but just as much fun. She brings the same energy, enthusiasm, and snarky wit to the profession of nursing that she did to cooking, and oh! the poor patients!

Maybe she's not quite as untalented as she seems to be.  She didn't kill anyone, and may have helped to save at least one paitent. In Britain in those days (1939 or so), nursing was taught by apprenticeship. They started off working on the first day, learned on the job and gradually earned more responsibility as they went along. They took classes, too, but I can't tell they learned much from it.  What is a cell? and did they ever find out?  Her first year exam questions were to describe personal hygiene and tell about the proper design and operation of sewers. She aced 'sewers'.

Lots of laughs, giggles, and smirks; a few groans; and one hearty cheer! at the end. Loved it.

  

Another Japanese know-it-all but I love her

Japanese Women Don't Get Old or Fat: Secrets of My Mother's Tokyo Kitchen

by Naomi Moriyama, William Doyle

A celebration of her mother--with recipes!  The best kind of memoir + how-to + recipe book. Lots to read and lots to learn. Of course it's preachy and authoritative--that goes with the game. But it's all told from personal experience. You can argue--oh, but a diet of fish, soy, rice, vegetables and fresh fruit may be fine for her, but that doesn't mean it's for everybody. And you may be right. So what?  There's a lot more to the book than just lifestyle advice.

And, even though the first part is awfully preachy, it's gentle. She writes about first coming to study in America at a college near Chicago. The portion sizes of American foods shocked her--
    Nobody ate like this in Japan, and I assumed I never would either. Little did I know this was the beginning of my journey through the American way of serving and eating, or more precisely, the beginning of My Fat Years.
 ...
Within a few months of arriving in America, I had gained 25 pounds.

When she went back to Tokyo again, she moved in with her family and resumed eating home cooking, and--

Between the walking-intensive Tokyo lifestyle and my mother's home cooking, the extra 25 pounds began to miraculously melt away. I didn't do anything conscious to lose the weight; I simply went back to my mother's Tokyo kitchen and the Japanese urban way of life.
And suddenly one day I found I could easily fit into all my old clothes.

And the rest of the book is a delightful, chatty, celebration of her mother's cooking.  With recipes, techniques, ingredients and all kinds of helpful notes. It's all about the food--fresh food, lightly touched, beautifully arranged, gratefully consumed.

For most of my life, my knowledge of Japanese cooking consisted of two words--sushi and tempura. Raw fish and batter fried vegetables.  That's as silly as thinking that all of American cooking consists of steak and potato salad.  This is real home cooking--Japanese style.

Winter cheer

Definitely a hermit thrush hanging out in my yard!  I wish it would sing for me. Most beautiful bird song in the world IMHO.

History lesson alive

Maya Lord

by John Coe Robbins

I assumed this was a novel with made-up characters in real historical times, keeping to fact on the big names, places and events, but totally fabricating the characters. But the cover implies that all the people were real, and so does an internet search. So I was wrong, but I don't think that would have changed my opinion. He seems to have done a great job. The details of daily life are so very, very detailed  that it reads like a volume of history. And that, I fear, is my problem.

Historians love history, and of course they want to cram in all the facts they can uncover. Here's a couple of fact-filled examples:

They walked among palaces of magnificent stone and cedar with great rooms and courts covered by awnings of woven cloth. The buildings were shining with lime and decorated with different kinds of stonework and paintings. Countless multitudes of men, women and children stood in the streets and on the rooftops or sat in canoes on the canals to see them.

And,

He walked through gardens with a myriad of red, white and yellow flowers, blooming trees, and ponds of fresh water with an array of colorful fish. There was an aviary with every from of bird he had ever seen in this land and more. Everything was built of stone and plastered, including baths, walkways and the large open rooms where Montezuma's entertainers danced and sang.

I liked reading this, and I'm not saying the book is overloaded with detail--for example, he didn't list every color and type of fish. I was just about the right balance of description, dialog, action, and reflection for my tastes, but I expect some people will say it should have had more detail.

But my issue is...he writes like a historian. Historians cultivate a certain degree of emotional reserve between themselves and their subjects. It's necessary, I guess, to keep things accurate--but it left me cold. I liked the people, I understood their struggles, but I didn't feel their struggles.

So maybe not a great story, but definitely a great history.

Intensely supurb mystery

When you listen to an audiobook, you can't speed up when the action gets intense and you can't skim forward when you realize you're reading the exact same soul-searching angst you read in the previous chapter.  At least I can't--I'm usually driving while I'm listening and can't fiddle around with the controls.  I can, however, with a tap of the thumb, redo the really good parts.  This book has a lot of those.

It's marvelous, intensely psychological and vaguely spooky. I can describe it better by saying what it isn't--it's not action-packed, except in the minds of the characters and the dialogue between them. It's not shocking tales of serial killers who eat the victims. And it's not in the least predictable: you never know what anyone's going to do, least of all the detective.

That's not a bad thing, either. She doesn't know what she's going to do, either. And I don't mean that she's not a great detective. She can search a house, act a role, and manipulate a suspect with the best of them. She's awesome, basically.

Early on she does one thing that seems out of character--I yelled at her, out loud--but as I learned more about her, I began to realize why .  Not only was it an excellent plot enhancer, it also made a bit of sense.

The only--and I mean, only--thing I had to complain about was the length and repetitiveness of the detective's soul-searching in the beginning, when she is trying to decide whether or not to volunteer for the job. (She needed to volunteer for this particular job for reasons I will not reveal)  But it was obvious that she was going to do it, so why drag it out?

That's a pretty small gripe for a pretty great mystery. Many stars!