It’s been a rather terrifyingly productive week in the realm of digesting the written word. Find below my book reviews for the past week.
How to Dunk a Doughnut: The Science of Everyday Life by Len Fisher
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Fisher’s offering is a work written by a scientist but well and accurately aimed at the non-scientist. Where many before him have failed, Fisher has succeeded in crafting a work which does well at dancing the line between too technical and downright insulting. The author very carefully defines his terms once upon first use and then rightly expects his audience to remember them. He is accessible without being annoying.
As to his content, Fisher is widely varied while staying fundamentally true to his background in physics. In his 200 pages he touches on liquid uptake of permeable foods (the eponymous dunking of the doughnut), the protein transition of cooked eggs, the physics of simple tools, math tricks to make your trip to the supermarket less costly, boomerangs, beer foam and ball games. He closes with chapters on the physics behind the sense of taste and human sexuality.
Throughout, Fisher provides not only factual content but historical anecdotes to lighten the mood a bit. Most memorably for me, he relates the brief tale of an Australian man in the 1930s who protested loudly and publicly that the use of an erect penis during intercourse was simply too forceful. He argued that a flaccid state was more respectful and appropriate and one that allowed the woman to draw the instrument of insemination into herself at a time of her own choosing. Personally I suspect this was a case of a movement founded in the fertile ground of a personal shortcoming but regardless of the cause for the statement, it does give one a proper sense for the character of the book.
The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream by Barack Obama
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I will preface this by saying that I am far from a political person. My idea of steeping myself in political doctrine is to turn on Rush Limbaugh just so I can get my blood flowing at his Audacity of Arrogance. However, I also pride myself on reading a little bit of everything so when this came up at the library book sale bag day it seemed a reasonable title to grab.
Since I’m not perennially political I can’t knowledgeably compare this to other books of the type but I will admit that after reading it I was struck by a positive image of the author. The Obama portrayed here (by Obama) seems a fair, thoughtful and knowledgeable person. His beliefs are centered around an attempt to service the broadest common good through compromise and he’s unafraid to work hard to make those a reality. He’s well-written and expressive and I can’t help but like him more after reading his book. However, I’m well aware that this is the entire purpose of such books so I do take that reaction with a sizable grain of salt.
While there is a fair amount of “the man” here, including personal anecdotes that illustrate his character, he can sometimes be excessively wearying when going off on points of policy. Perhaps this is in part because I agree with what he has to say. His lavishly drawn out arguments fall on my ears as excessive restatements of the obvious which grow tedious rather quickly. No doubt a conservative will find them as infuriating as I find Limbaugh.
Summing up briefly, the book is well-written though over long. A briefer and more forcefully stated version would have struck me as more effective. As it stands now I’m just glad to finally have the ordeal behind me. Not, I suspect, the author’s primary intent.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Certainly sufficiently gripping and short enough to make it a simple and enjoyable one-day read. It suffers a bit from the fact that the cold war is long over so at first one is struck by a bit of a sense of ennui. Eventually the narrative manages to compensate for this and arrive at a sufficnetly nerve-wracking conclusion. Not a book that will make it to my perpetual to-reread-yearly list but not a bad jaunt for a few hours.
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Seldom is a topic of such keen and personal import brought to the page with this much skill and candor. Didion lays bare her soul as she deals with the sudden death of her husband in a year that finds her experiencing all the phases of grief in textbook fashion. The Year should be required reading for anyone dealing with loss if for no other reason than to allow the reader the knowledge that grieving is a universal, expected and normal reaction to loss.
The only factor which leaves it dangling at less than a five-star rating for me is that it’s not all that personally relatable. I appreciate endlessly her skill and honesty in this work but never having had the experience she describes it fails to resonate with me. I empathize greatly and appreciate her retelling of this period in her life but there are no points at which I can pin my story to her own. As such, it is an interesting museum piece, a fragment of someone else’s life, but not something I can currently internalize.
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
A somewhat atypical example of 1950s science fiction, or perhaps I’m just too accustomed to the rather pulpy and childish short story genre. Matheson’s work is gritty, realistic, cynical and only slightly under-informed. The author paints a picture of post-apocalyptic life that is believable and makes it seem much more contemporary than it really is. The only real annoyance was the author’s insistence in using the word ‘germs’ in place of bacteria. Doubtless this is a nod to his readership of the time but it left me rather perturbed and constantly in search of a red pen.
A Night to Remember by Walter Lord
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Overall, an insightful look into one of the most momentous events in our history. It does tend to drag on a bit in points because it goes into such depth with individual stories but some of these are deliciously entertaining. Take the good with the dull and don’t feel bad if you can’t keep the dozens of names which are thrown around straight in your head.
For the second night in a row I found my dreams haunted by the job I was dismissed from a little over two weeks ago. In last night’s dream my company wasn’t just a company. It was a city populated by thousands and I found myself an exile forced to walk in the desert and look longingly on from a distance. I was cut-off and isolated not only from the company and the people I’d known there but also from the rest of mankind. The company, apparently, represented the entirety of society. This honestly isn’t a bad analogy for the way I feel at the moment and it takes a bit of probing in my psyche to determine exactly why.
Today it has been officially one week since the company for which I worked for almost nine years told me that my services would no longer be required. For the record I don’t blame them for this since I told them two months previously that I was looking for other employment. When they had a need to lay off some staff I took it with absolute understanding that they included me in that since I had said, quite specifically and quite redundantly, that I was looking for other work. I stand by my statement from a few days ago that I would much rather they disemploy me than some person who was determined to stay and relied on that job for their daily bread, as it were.
