The Dangerous Pages Review

Blue Nights By Joan Didion

2012-03-01T08:00:00.000-05:00

Alfred A Knopf, New York 2011
Memoir, Biography
Themes of: death, illness, aging, motherhood
Reminds Me Of: The Year of Magical Thinking, also by Joan Didion, White Oleander- Janet Fitch, A Wedding in December & Light on Snow by Anita Shreve

Joan Didion's husband of 40 years has died. Less than two years later, their only daughter followed. Then, Didion's own health begins to deteriorate. What's left is the opportunity to make art from her sorrow. In the face of such tragedy, even her words falls short, but they leave readers with the promise that it's possible to confront mortality with bravery, dignity and curiosity.

Didion's descriptions glitter in your mind, images of New York City in the twilight and California blossoms in the dusk. There is champagne and watercress sandwiches, jazz, movie stars and poetry. Designer names and fashionable places dot the pages like discarded jewelry. Hers seems like a luxurious, jet-setting life; between it and the horror of the events described, there is an outspoken contrast. It speaks of our carelessness towards life, which becomes more precious when we confront death.

Didion, the survivor, agonizes over what she could have done differently for her daughter. She explores the fears of motherhood and her conclusion is unique:

Yet there were always dangers to children.
Ask anyone who was a child during the supposedly idyllic decade advertised to us as the reward for World War Two. New Cars. New appliances. Women in high-heeled pumps and ruffled aprons removing cookie sheets from ovens enameled in post-war "harvest" colors: avocado, gold, mustard, brown, burnt orange. This was as safe as it got, except it wasn't: ask any child who was exposed during the postwar harvest fantasy to the photographs from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ask any child who saw the photographs from the death camps. (Didion, 98)

She goes on to talk about Suzanne Degnan, a child kidnapped and killed in 1946, a JonBenet murder in a period when such things (supposedly) never used to happen. This in lieu of the stereotypical lament about how the world has changed for the worst. Didion is too honest for such self-delusions.

She confronts her own own mortality as she battles a feeling of frailty. She gets shingles. She falls, injures herself and wakes up covered in blood, not even knowing how it happened, realizing that she is finally "old". It's as if Didion were observing her life through a window. She's there to take notes, to try to make sense of it all.

The book's title comes from twilit evenings in the city, just before night falls. L'heure bleu. The "gloaming". A long period of blue light before the day ends forever:

"This book is called Blue Nights, because at the time I began it, I found my mind turned increasingly to illness, to the end of promise, the dwindling of days, the inevitability of the fading, the dying of the brightness. Blue nights are the opposite of the dying of the brightness, but they are also its warning." (Didion, 4)

Actress Diana Lynn, a family friend of Didion's, figures prom-
inently in her memories.

"Me Talk Pretty One Day" To Be Releasd in Iran

2012-02-26T09:50:00.003-05:00

Considering the fundamentalist attitude toward homosexuality (and some of the other books that are banned in Iran) it seems unlikely that Sedaris' frank discussion of homosexuality will be a big hit. But I would love to have a copy of Me Talk Pretty One Day in Persian.

Potholer54

2012-02-21T14:00:00.002-05:00

My favorite Youtuber in all his snarky, smart-assed glory.

Candide by Voltaire

2011-11-22T23:55:00.005-05:00

By the end of February 1759, the Grand Council of Geneva and the administrators of Paris had banned Candide.^[2] Candide nevertheless succeeded in selling twenty thousand to thirty thousand copies by the end of the year in over twenty editions, making it a best seller. The Duke de La Vallière speculated near the end of January 1759 that Candide might have been the fastest-selling book ever.^[82] In 1762, Candidewas listed in theIndex Librorum Prohibitorum, the Roman Catholic Church's list of prohibited books.^[2].
--Wikipedia

Sometimes, when i read a book, I start craving another book. Case in point: Barbara Ehrenreich comes off as a curmudgeon in her most recent book Brightsided, in which she takes on the recent trend of irrational optimism as preached by megachurch leaders and self-help books like The Secret. She's not saying to be angry and disagreeable all the time (although let's face it: she comes off that way), she's just making the case for reason- something her book has in common with a classic French work by the philosophe Voltaire.

In his book, a woman gets her butt cheek cut off. Also, there are a lot of references to sex. (Pourquois pas? Voltaire was French).

Maybe it's because he had a sense of humor. Maybe it's because it is fiction. But when Voltaire decided to take on irrational optimism (represented by philosopher Gottfried Leibniz's in his day) he did it way better .

Candide is short, fast-paced. It relates one event after another and along the way, deals with the problem of evil, the church and the government, which might explain why they were so pissed off about the book.

Essentially, the protagonist goes through a series of truly awful events and at every turn, his master,Pangloss, a parody of Leibnizian philosophers, maintains that it's okay, because this is the best of all possible words. The name of this character has become synonymous with irrational optimism. Panglossianism is still with us today and after 250 years, this book is still funny, still has a sharp witty edge.

It is similar to Gullivers Travels by Jonathan Swift in that it is satirical, was controversial and came out of the Enlightenment. So Brightsided made me crave Candide and Candide made me want to read Gulliber's Travels. This is how my binges get started...

The Interesting Internet...

2011-11-13T15:18:00.005-05:00

It turns out that, contrary to popular belief, the Internet is more than just porn and Facebook: there is some good reading out there.

Like this article on Freethought Today. It's old but I keep coming back to it. It is an excerpt from an acceptance speech by neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky, for the Emperor Has No Clothes Award. In the speech, Sapolsky makes some fascinating suggestions about the origin of religion:

To get a real insight into this, we have to come to that question, "Why is there this similarity between religious ritualism and OCD rituals?"

You could say, "It's just by chance."

Or you could say, "There's a biological convergence going on there." It's not random that we're most concerned with rituals about keeping our bodies healthy, our food clean, that sort of stuff.

But another answer in there has got to be, "People with OCD invented a lot of these religious rituals."

Let me give you one example of this.
A 16th-century Augustinian monk named Luder for some reason left a very detailed diary. This is a man who grew up with an extremely brutal father, had a very anxious relationship with him, was very psychosomatic-illness-oriented. One day he was out walking in the field. There was a thunderstorm, and he got a panic attack, and vowed, "If I'm allowed to survive this, I will become a monk and devote the rest of my life to God."
He survives, becomes a monk, and throws himself into this ritualism with a frenzy. This was an order of monks that was silent 20-some hours a day. Nonetheless, he had four hours worth of confessions to make every day: "I didn't say this prayer as devoutly as I should have. My mind wandered when I was doing this, doing that."
The first time he ran a mass, he had to do it over and over because he got the details wrong. He would drive his Father Superior crazy with his hours and hours of confession every day: "God is going to be angry at me for doing this, because I said this, and I didn't think this much, and I didn't do this the right way, and I . . ." until the Father Superior got exasperated with him and came up with a statement that is shockingly modern in its insight. He said, "The problem isn't that God is angry with you. The problem is that you're angry with God."
The most telling detail about this monk was, he washed and washed and washed. As he put it in his diary: "The more you wash, the dirtier you get." Classic OCD.

The reason why we know about this man Luder is because we know him by the Anglicized version of his name: Martin Luther. [laughter]

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

2011-11-13T10:55:00.007-05:00

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Rebecca Skloot: February 2 2010

Henrietta Lacks was diagnosed with cancer in the 1950s. She was a patient at Johns Hopkins hospital, which offered medical services to the poor. After returning to the hospital for a couple of outpatient procedures, Lacks lost her battle. She died at age 30 in 1951, leaving 5 children and a husband. She was black, uneducated and her death was slow and painful.

All of this happened at a time when researchers had been unsuccessfully trying to grow live human cells in laboratories. Because patients like Henrietta Lacks received services for free, it was understood that they would give any tissues and samples taken from their bodies to the hospital for research.

This was understood by the hospital, but not by the patients.

The doctor who examined Henrietta took a sample of her cancer cells marking the sample with the phrase "HeLa". These prolific cancer cells grew like crazy in the laboratory and before researchers could catch their breath, they had batches and batches of cells available for research. Today, you can buy HeLa cells for a few dollars. They have been used in AIDS research, cancer research, vaccination research. In short, these cells revolutionized modern medicine.

The first part of this book is delicious. It is informative and eye-opening. This is the kind of writing that can spark an obsession: the next thing I knew, I was hanging out in the Biology section at the library, grabbing books like I was picking berries. I googled until my fingers hurt.

Then came the second half. The author inserts herself into the story as she chronicles her relationship with the family of Henrietta Lacks, primarily Lacks' daughter, Deborah.

Rebecca Skloot tries to portray this family as poor, dignified black people that had been taken advantage of by indifferent (or outright malicious) doctors and scientists. This portrayal falls apart as she tells the family story. Lacks and her husband were first cousins and she got pregnant with her first child at the age of 14. Her developmentally disabled child was institutionalized before Lacks' death. After, no one visited the girl, not even her father. Her children at home were molested and physically abused, one of her sons spent his adult life in and out of jail. All of this is presented in the book as if the tragedies in this family have something to do with Johns Hopkins using the cells.

It was unintentionally funny at times, when Skloot and others tried to explain scientific concepts to Lacks' offspring and they would burst out with a bizarre (even disturbing) question that clearly showed they weren't understanding.

Comparisons to the Tuskegee Syphilis experiments are inaccurate and Henrietta Lacks, who did not choose to get a fast-growing, invasive cancer, is not another Rosa Parks just because she is black.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks raises questions about bioethics, and the future of medicine. Then it became another, somewhat bizarre story about her children whose story was definitely less remarkable. I turned the last page thinking that what came out of her death was perhaps the brightest part of her life.

It's like the Christmas story, where people who are at the bottom of society (a "virgin" girl and her tiny baby) suddenly become the most important people in the world.This is the biography of a face in a crowd who becomes extremely important to the well-being of the human race. If this story was fiction, the plot would seem contrived: "lame" even.

But that's how truth works sometimes.

Book Review: Made in America by Bill Bryson

2011-08-10T14:05:00.000-04:00

Title: Made in America:An Informal History of the English Language in the United States
Author:Bill Bryson
Publication Year:1994
Rating: 10/10
Similar Books: A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
Purchased from Waldenbooks

Language is fascinating and the language of the Pennsylvania Dutch attests to this fact. The Pennsylvania Dutch aren't even Dutch- they're German. The name is an "accident of history". They are one of the few American ethnic groups that formed their own language.

They're also, according to author Bill Bryson, one of the many ethnic groups that have left their mark on the American way of speaking. Yes, they speak German, but their German is different from Germany's German. They have a host of strangely specific words.

For example, fedderschei is the condition of being reluctant to write letters. And aarschgnoddle are "the globules of dung found on hair in the vicinity of the anus".

Bryson doesn't know why the Pennsylvania Germans/Dutch would need such a word and neither do I--but I have found a new (very mature) name to call people when they piss me off.

Made in America is divided into topics- food, sports, politics, sex, shopping, inventions- and each chapter relates the history of key words and their attached concepts.

Bryson examines language as a living thing that changes over time, reflecting the growth of the people who use it. Many discussions about English end up lamenting the death of Shakespeare's great language, as if a) Shakespeare himself didn't make up new words, altering 'his' language forever and b) languages are supposed to remain the same.

This book left me feeling educated, as if I had just completed a course in everything there is.
I would love to see it updated to include the language of the Internet age. WTF? G2G, TTYL.

Book Paraphernalia: Liquid Bookmarks from Designbloom

2011-07-11T01:09:00.000-04:00

OMFG!!! Somebody spilled blood and ink all over my books! Murder! Bibliocide! Help!
Oh no, wait. We're cool. It's just an awesome $24 bookmark.

If I had the red one, I would use it only for my Stephen King books. That would certainly impress the kind of people who are impressed by bookmarks.
People like me.

Poems From France by William J. Smith

2011-07-06T01:00:00.001-04:00

In the scenic town square of McDonough, GA, there is a used bookstore called Bell Book and Candle. I used to visit there once a week to spend a few dollars. It was the first time in my life that I was able to actually *buy* books I wanted and I couldn't believe my luck. Tucked in the basement of an antique furniture store, they also sold incense, handmade candles and comic books. It was a pretty big store, with lots of nooks and crannies to tuck yourself into.

In one of these nooks, I found a book of classic French poems for $3. I still have it and I thought I'd blog about it for Paris in July.

The book is an old faded hardcover with a battered dust jacket. The back cover is sprinkled with fleur-de-lis and roses. It was printed in 1967 and each poem is printed twice: once in English and once in French. It begins with a medieval poet named Eustache Deschamps and ends with Jacques Prevert. Along the way, it includes Guillaume Appollinaire, Charles Baudelaire and Paul Eluard.

One of Eluard's poems became my favorite because of it's passion and repetition.

Liberté

Sur mes cahiers d'écolier
Sur mon pupitre et les arbres
Sur le sable de neige
J'écris ton nom

Sur toutes les pages lues
Sur toutes les pages blanches
Pierre sang papier ou cendre
J'écris ton nom

Sur les images dorées
Sur les armes des guerriers
Sur la couronne des rois
J'écris ton nom

Sur la jungle et le désert
Sur les nids sur les genêts
Sur l'écho de mon enfance
J'écris ton nom

Sur les merveilles des nuits
Sur le pain blanc des journées
Sur les saisons fiancées
J'écris ton nom

Sur tous mes chiffons d'azur
Sur l'étang soleil moisi
Sur le lac lune vivante
J'écris ton nom

Sur les champs sur l'horizon
Sur les ailes des oiseaux
Et sur le moulin des ombres
J'écris ton nom

Sur chaque bouffées d'aurore
Sur la mer sur les bateaux
Sur la montagne démente
J'écris ton nom

Sur la mousse des nuages
Sur les sueurs de l'orage
Sur la pluie épaisse et fade
J'écris ton nom

Sur les formes scintillantes
Sur les cloches des couleurs
Sur la vérité physique
J'écris ton nom

Sur les sentiers éveillés
Sur les routes déployées
Sur les places qui débordent
J'écris ton nom

Sur la lampe qui s'allume
Sur la lampe qui s'éteint
Sur mes raisons réunies
J'écris ton nom

Sur le fruit coupé en deux
Du miroir et de ma chambre
Sur mon lit coquille vide
J'écris ton nom

Sur mon chien gourmand et tendre
Sur ses oreilles dressées
Sur sa patte maladroite
J'écris ton nom

Sur le tremplin de ma porte
Sur les objets familiers
Sur le flot du feu béni
J'écris ton nom

Sur toute chair accordée
Sur le front de mes amis
Sur chaque main qui se tend
J'écris ton nom

Sur la vitre des surprises
Sur les lèvres attendries
Bien au-dessus du silence
J'écris ton nom

Sur mes refuges détruits
Sur mes phares écroulés
Sur les murs de mon ennui
J'écris ton nom

Sur l'absence sans désir
Sur la solitude nue
Sur les marches de la mort
J'écris ton nom

Sur la santé revenue
Sur le risque disparu
Sur l'espoir sans souvenir
J'écris ton nom

Et par le pouvoir d'un mot
Je recommence ma vie
Je suis né pour te connaître
Pour te nommer

Liberté

Paul Eluard
in Poésies et vérités, 1942

Liberty

On my notebooks from school

On my desk and the trees

On the sand on the snow

I write your name

On every page read

On all the white sheets

Stone blood paper or ash

I write your name

On the golden images

On the soldier’s weapons

On the crowns of kings

I write your name

On the jungle the desert

The nests and the bushes

On the echo of childhood

I write your name

On the wonder of nights

On the white bread of days

On the seasons engaged

I write your name

On all my blue rags

On the pond mildewed sun

On the lake living moon

I write your name

On the fields the horizon

The wings of the birds

On the windmill of shadows

I write your name

On the foam of the clouds

On the sweat of the storm

On dark insipid rain

I write your name

On the glittering forms

On the bells of colour

On physical truth

I write your name

On the wakened paths

On the opened ways

On the scattered places

I write your name

On the lamp that gives light

On the lamp that is drowned

On my house reunited

I write your name

On the bisected fruit

Of my mirror and room

On my bed’s empty shell

I write your name

On my dog greedy tender

On his listening ears

On his awkward paws

I write your name

On the sill of my door

On familiar things

On the fire’s sacred stream

I write your name

On all flesh that’s in tune

On the brows of my friends

On each hand that extends

I write your name

On the glass of surprises

On lips that attend

High over the silence

I write your name

On my ravaged refuges

On my fallen lighthouses

On the walls of my boredom

I write your name

On passionless absence

On naked solitude

On the marches of death

I write your name

On health that’s regained

On danger that’s past

On hope without memories

I write your name

By the power of the word

I regain my life

I was born to know you

And to name you

LIBERTY

Book Porn: March of the Penguins

2011-07-05T01:00:00.000-04:00

Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large audiences existed for serious books. Penguin also had a significant impact on public debate in Britain, through its books on politics, the arts, and science.

-Wikipedia, "Penguin Books"

Penguin books, with their distinctive design and logo are familiar to readers. I have a few of them on my shelf:

But my humble stack is nothing compared to what you are about to see. Feast your eyes, bibliopervs:
This collection belongs to blogger Karyn of A Penguin a Week. She lives in Australia, collects vintage penguins and according to her comment on this post, her husband built these shelves for them.

If you think this photo is awesome, check out her photostream on Flickr. Each of her blog posts is a review of a Penguin she has read. Many of the vintage Penguins she reviews are classic works and many are obscure books that are out of print.

Book Paraphernalia: The iPhone Bookshelf Skin

2011-07-01T13:03:00.001-04:00

Someone, somewhere is determined to replace paper books with stupid little screens full of text. This person is my sworn enemy, but I have to admit, he/she comes up with some bad@ss ideas. Like this:It's a bookshelf iPhone skin. It's one of those things you spend money on because it says something about you. This says "I can afford an iPhone and I am literate."
Haven't you always wanted to say that?

http://www.murketing.com/journal/?tag=books-the-idea

Paris in July: Mais Oui

2011-06-30T01:00:00.001-04:00

Yay!
So, having decided to revitalize my poor neglected blog, I started looking for new blogs to stick in my roll. I found BookBath and by finding BookBath, I found this challenge, hosted by Karen of Bookbath and Tamara of Thyme for Tea.

There will be no rules or targets in terms of how much you need to do or complete in order to be a part of Paris in July - just blog about anything French and you can join in. Some ideas for the month might include:

- Reading a French book - fiction or non-fiction

- Watching a French movie

- Listening to French music

- Cooking French food

- Experiencing French art, architecture or travel (lucky Tamara!)

- Or anything else French inspired you can think of...

If you are interested in being a part of this experience leave a comment on this post and we will put together a side bar showing all of the participants. There will be weekly French themed prizes during the month for which we will randomly draw the winners from all the French themed posts of that week that link back to us. We will be writing weekly wrap up posts for you to link your posts to.

I have Edith Piaf on the radio. Amelie in my dvd player, Balzac on my nightstand and Monet on my wall. Je suis prêt.

Book Porn: A Panoramic View of Strahov Library

2011-06-29T20:44:00.004-04:00

I am grateful to live in the Internet Age. Because even if I cannot visit the Strahov library, I can still click on this link:

http://www.360cities.net/gigapixel/strahov-library.html

and have my breath taken away.

Book Paraphernalia: Hidden Doors

2011-06-27T15:00:00.000-04:00

If you actually get one of these in your house, it's probably a sign that you read too much Nancy Drew as a child. And that you have money to burn.

It's a hidden door (from reversica.com) that opens to reveal another room. The hidden door is fashioned like a bookcase, although you can also get it with a section for a tv.

You could spend hours thinking of what to put in a hidden room...people you've kidnapped, S&M equipment, a Faberge egg on a pedestal under glass.

I know what I'd put in mine...more books.

Book Review: Losing My Religion By William Lobdell

2011-06-27T14:00:00.000-04:00

Title:Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America and Found Unexpected Peace
Author: William Lobdell, newspaper reporter
Publication Year:2009
Rating:6/10
Borrowed From the Library
Similar: Letter to A Christian Nation by Sam Harris, god Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens

Losing My Religion : How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America and Found Unexpected Peace by William Lobdell is a testimony of how the author improved life through faith-- only to became disenchanted with religion.

As a born-again Christian, William Lobdell begins to pray for God to use him in his profession- journalism- to spread a more positive image of believers. His prayers are answered when he lands a chance to write a religion column.

Preferring the inspirational stories about believers overcoming obstacles and giving back, Lobdell instead found himself covering the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal. Later he engaged in a two year investigation of Trinity Broadcasting Network and faith healer Benny Hinn. He started re-thinking his faith.

Lobdell noticed that when it came to the Schwarzenegger sexual harassment accusations, newspapers printed actual quotes, cleaning them up only by substituting more 'clinical' terms for the slang words. During the Catholic Church's sex abuse scandal, the phrase 'child molestation' was used.
The Church called it 'boundary violation' and 'inappropriate conduct'.

When Lobdell found were stories of a priest inserting a religious object into a girl's vagina and a little boy hiding his bloody underwear from his mother, he shunned the "bad touching" type euphemisms for accurate terminology.

He called it what it was: rape. Sodomy. And those words were edited out of his reports.

"The media's terms 'sexual abuse' and 'molestation' were far too neutral to describe what happened to most of these people," Lobdell writes "I tried in vain to get my editors to use more accurate and graphic descriptions[...]. They were considered too graphic for a family newspaper."

These euphemisms left the image of a passing touch, easily misconstrued, a view that let many molesters off the hook in the public imagination.

I doubt this book will make people re-think their views on religion unless they are a part of the institutions that Lobdell so clearly exposes (maybe not even then).

It's almost as if William Lobdell is a non-believer by default. He eliminated these other viewpoints and what's left is a kind of optimistic deism. Which is just fine, if it suits him, but leaves me feeling that the book is not entirely convincing to a believer.

There's room left to argue that Lobdell confuses the bad behavior of humans with God himself. He might counter by asking why people should accept what they're told about God, if the people telling them are manipulative and greedy?

Losing My Religion is not the best argument for religious skepticism--but it is a story that anyone interested in religion should read.

Book Review: A Mind of It's Own by David M. Friedman

2011-06-27T11:59:00.000-04:00

Title: A Mind of It's Own: A Cultural History of the Penis
Author: David M Friedman
Publication Year:2001
Rating: 8/10
Similar Books: Bonk: The Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach

You gotta love fascinating little bits of history. Take for example this passage, which gives you privileged access to the medieval mind:

Anna Pappenheimer was one of thousands of women killed during the witch hunts that reached their grisly peak between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries . Some of those killed were accused of causing crop failures, others of performing abortions.

But there was one crime that virtually all the women confessed to after torture, beginning with the first "documented" witch to be executed in public, the Frenchwoman Angela de la Barthe, in 1275.

That crime was knowledge of the Devil's penis.

Okay, maybe not such a privilege.

A Mind of It's Own by David M. Friedman follows the penis through Western history, from carnal knowledge of the Devil to the theories of Sigmund Freud to the militant feminism of the late 20th century.

It tells us that the Ancient Greeks idealized the bodies of adolescent boys. To them, a smaller penis meant a more civilized--and therefore more beautiful--man. They engaged in pederasty while the Ancient Romans hung giant phalli wherever they could.

The Ancient Egyptians believed that life on Earth was created through a sacred act of masturbation by the god Atum.

The Sumerians recorded in their poetry the words of the god Enki, who dug the first irrigation ditches, created the Euphrates and the first human baby ---all using his 'shrinky-dink' (as Ned Flanders called it.)"Let now my penis be praised!" cries the priapic god.

The penises of some groups, like blacks and Jews, became emblems for mainstream society's fears about those groups themselves.

Having read this book, I see that this subject could have been handled differently- it could have been preachy, it could have been silly, it could have been disturbing (but it could never have been boring, I'm sure).

Instead, Friedman is intelligent without being esoteric, funny without immaturity and (speaking as a girl) answers questions that you really can't ask a man dude out loud. At least, not if you expect a completely honest answer.

Book Review: The Faith Healers by James Randi

2011-06-27T01:58:00.000-04:00

Title: The Faith Healers
Author: James Randi
Publication Year: 1987
Rating: 7/10
Similar Books: Why People Believe Weird Things by Michael Shermer

The amazing James Randi is a former magician who has spent a good part of his life debunking psychics and faith healers. You can see in the above video that he is pretty good at it. The Faith Healers details his efforts at exposing big-name preachers of the 70s and 80s- Oral Roberts, W.V Grant and Leroy Jenkins among them.

The Faith Healers was an engaging, fascinating read, with an almost conversational tone. It met my expectations in many ways- a satisfying example of the debunking genre, a series of interesting stories with a tiny element of scandal and outrage. Despite literally being older than I am, it was still relevant, perhaps because it links faith healing to history. Besides, critical thinking is always relevant. It's always a trip for me to discover facts about nearby-history. Before I read this book, I had no idea that Pat Robertson had ever run for president (I was all: "WTF?").

Its negatives include a tendency to be anecdotal in places and- one thing I didn't expect- spending the first three chapters talking about three faith healers in general and then giving them each their own chapter, which made some parts seem redundant.

Some of the efforts discussed in the book seem a trifle ridiculous. For example, a member of Randi's debunking team attended a healing crusade dressed as a very ugly woman. Also, there was some garbage diving involved. Since all you have to do is turn on the tv and watch to see how blatantly ridiculous healing services are, the undercover business seemed unnecessary and weird: grown men playing at espionage. But I won't deny it made the book more exciting.

Book Porn: Bibliophilic Eye Candy

2011-03-14T16:21:00.008-04:00

Book porn: (n) Photographs and descriptions that exploit the nerd's natural lust for the physical beauty of reading material. Such material is deemed highly dangerous to one's sanity . People under the influence have been known to max out their library cards, spend their food money on paperbacks and exhaust their friends and loved ones with "wish lists"
If someone you love suffers from book porn addiction, understand that there is no cure. Just give them what they want.

If there is just one trait that we can point to as the cause of bibliophilia, one characteristic that turns an ordinary mortal into a Reader (or even an Avid Reader) it is curiosity.

I just want to know things. I want to know why birds eat worms, how cars run, where playing cards come from, who invented chess, how grass grows, who the Bushmen are, how to speak Arabic and even the old cliche: why the sky is blue.Curiosity drives me to both fiction and nonfiction. Nonfiction satisfies your curiosity about the real world. Whenever I come across a subject that fascinates me that I know little about, I get excited. The nerd in me is satisfied that here is something new to be obsessive about--to read about, to search the Internet for, to watch on tv, to talk about. It makes life seem so big and full. There is so much to know.

So these books by Sterling Publishing, which you can find at Barnes and Noble, stood out on the bargain bin shelf.Each one is relatively short and easy to understand. Each is a brief introduction to a topic. The ones in the above picture are mine and include Plato, Marx, Economics, Paul, Galileo, International Relations, Existentialism, Postemodernism, Mathematics, the Crusades... with new titles having been published in the beginning of this year.
Their regular price is $14.95, but I got them at Barnes and Noble for $6.98 each, except the ones that I bought online, after discovering the ones on the Internet are only $4.99. If you're a Barnes and Noble member of course, shipping is free.

Book Review: Star Island by Carl Hiaasen

2010-10-05T18:56:00.009-04:00

Title: Star Island
Author:Carl Hiaasen
Publication Year:2010
Rating:7/10

In every Carl Hiaasen novel, you need:

- a heroine. She is wise, resilient and world-weary, given to making wry (funny) statements about life and it's contents. In the beginning of the story, the heroine is always wronged in some way. But she's a got a plan to right this wrong. She is matched by

-a hero, who's in love with her, or will be before the story ends. His desire is to protect the heroine and help her on her quest. Why does this strong resilient woman need help and protection? because lurking elswhere in the story is

-a turd. A bobbing, bubbling loaf of excrescence with no soul and no apologies for lacking one. This is your villain and he is one of Hiaasen's specialties. He's always the type of person who doesn't frighten you, unless he gets power-- and he's always after power. Sometimes there's more than one turd in the story, which sweetens the deal.

-secondary characters. Like Charles Dickens, Carl Hiaasen populates his novels with people you would swear you know except that their features are so extreme. They are caricatures more than characters but they are funny as hell.

- Florida. Hiaasen sets all of his novels in his home state of Florida, where (if his depiction is accurate) the natural beauty is great, the politicians are crookedly slick and the people are interesting.

If you liked all of these features in Hiaasen's other novels, you will love his most recent novel, Star Island. The story revolves around a disaster diva named Cherry Pye, an amalgam of all the pop star train wrecks you've seen in the news recently. Whenever Pye is too stoned to make a good public appearance, her scheming stage mother and twin publicists bring in an actress named Ann DeLucia to 'play' her at parties and red-carpet events. The trick is to keep the world--and Cherry Pye herself from finding out.

The turd in this story is a papparazzo named Bang Abbott, a hygienically challenged photographer who decides to make it his life's work to get a picture of Cherry Pye on her deathbed--or close to it. He becomes obsessed with the wayward lip-syncher and tries to kidnap her. Like everyone else, he's fooled and kidnaps Ann instead.

The hero--and this, to me, is the best part- is one of Hiaasen's best characters from a previous novel called Sick Puppy: Clinton Tyree, AKA 'Skink', the former governor of Florida. (I love Skink!)

Among the secondary characters is Cherry Pye's bodyguard, who has a weed whacker for an arm and is almost as funny as Skink (but nobody's funnier than Skink. Seriously).

Again, like all of his novels, this one is also satirical. This time, instead of crooked politicians or litterbugs, Hiaasen takes on our celebrity obsessed culture. His criticism is sharp and part of what makes you laugh is recognizing what he's talking about.

The sad part is, since it's loaded with celebrity references (some of which I, being less than pop culture savvy, didn't recognize) it's going to seem really dated in just a few years.

It's Monday!

2010-05-10T01:00:00.002-04:00

Currently Reading:

The Closing of the American Mind by Alan Bloom

In Pursuit of the Gene by James Schwartz

The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy

Economics: A Very Short Introduction by Partha Dasgupta

After Dark by Haruki Murakami

Finished:
I haven't finished any books this past week. I'm not sick---I'm just working two jobs. (Yay, money!)

Book Paraphernalia: Cigarette Books

2010-05-08T01:00:00.000-04:00

Finally, I have found a way to smuggle reading material into dangerous places (bars, school playgrounds, church).Books disguised as cigarettes!It's genius!
And yes. They do have The Metamorphosis.

Book Review: Voodoo Histories by David Aaronovitch

2010-05-06T01:00:00.001-04:00

Title: Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History
Author: David Aaronovitch, journalist
Rating: 8/10
Publication Year:2010
Borrowed from the Library
Similar books: Why People Believe Weird Things by Michael Shermer

It all began with Kevin. Kevin was a cameraman with a conspiracy theory, the theory that the NASA lunar landing was a hoax- a motion picture masterpiece filmed by the government. A conversation with Kevin inspired British journalist David Aaronovitch to write a book.

“It wasn’t that I was forearmed with arguments to disprove his theory,” Aaronovitch writes “it was just that it offended my sense of plausibility . A hoax on such a grand scale would necessarily involve hundreds if not thousands of participants.”

Drawing from this experience, Aaronovitch set out to provide a resource for those who also find themselves on the wrong end of a conspiracy conversation. The result is Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History, an intelligent promotion of logic, clear-thinking and research over insinuation and 'woo'.

From tracing the origins of the 'holy bloodline' of Jesus myth (the basis for The Da Vinci Code) to re-hashing the details of Princess Diana's death, Aaronovitch points out flaws in the counter-arguments of conspiracy buffs and considers their role in popular culture.

More than just a good beach-read for Skeptical Inquirer subscribers, Voodoo Histories examines the story behind each theory-- it isn't just a matter of whether Oswald shot Kennedy but also when people begin to doubt that he did.

After reading Voodoo Histories, do I consider myself "forearmed"?

Yes...to an extent. Aaronovitch doesn't even address the lunar landing 'hoax', which was the inspiration for the book. It wouldn't be hard to do- Wikipedia has an excellent page on the subject and if Wikipedia can do it...

It should be a rule in the skepticism/debunking genre: never leave something unaddressed.

A book that tried to deal with all conspiracy theories would be huge- like the Encyclopedia Britannica. But if the idea was to examine their role in modern history, there were more important theories the author could have examined-- the idea that HIV does not cause AIDS (& those perpetuating the belief that it does are part of a grand "hoax") has caused thousands of deaths but it doesn't merit a mention.

Still, Voodoo Histories was a nice book to curl up with. It's informative, strengthens your powers of inquiry and debate and arms you with answers to the minor details that only obsessive conspiracy theorists usually have. It's a great addition to an anemic genre- if there were as many debunkers as there are peddlers of nonsense, the world would be a better place.

Book Review: It's Not News, It's Fark by Drew Curtis

2010-05-04T01:00:00.003-04:00

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Indecision 2009 - Reindecision 2008 and Beyond

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor

Tea Party

Title: It's Not News, It's Fark
Author: Drew Curtis, Founder of Fark. Com
Rating: 5/10
Publication Year:2007
Borrowed from the Library
Similar Books: I Am America and So Can You by Stephen Colbert, America: The Book by Jon Stewart, Bias: A CBS INsider Exposes How the Media Distort the News by Bernie Goldberg

The above video is The Daily Show's spoof of CNN's best political news team. The sensationalist nature of the news and their hilarious overuse of graphics is always a target for television's number one fake news show (okay, number two. I love The Colbert Report!).

More criticism of the mainstream news comes from It's Not News, It's Fark: How Mass Media Tries To Pass Off Crap As News by Fark.com founder, Drew Curtis. If you like The Daily Show, you will probably enjoy this book.

Fark.com began as a site where people shared absurd or unusual news stories. It eventually grew to play a role in the mainstream media itself- stories submitted to Fark.com get a lot of hits, and radio and tv stations often refer to the site when looking for interesting news to share.

In the book, Curtis uncovers the not-so-subtle ways the 24 hour news networks search out meaningless stories. He criticizes them for fear-mongering, advertising and contradicting themselves when they should be reporting the news. Fark is divided into 8 sections where actual stories are given as examples, followed by comments from the site (so funny).

My favorite chapter is "Headline Contradicted By Actual Article"

Actual Headline: DNA Hints At Jill the Ripper
Actual Article: The results are inconclusive, and furthermore this article should have been about the testing procedure and not a different overhyped conclusion.

Apparently, the body of the article let it slip that the DNA sample was "so old, very small and poorly preserved" that they really couldn't come to a conclusion. It's speculation--but the headline doesn't say that. It doesn't take a careful reader to find something like that and it makes you wonder about the modern attention span.

I also like the "Media Fearmongering" chapter and "Equal Time for Nutjobs"- the last is a pet peeve of mine.

This book was published in 2007, the media still does the same crap, but it felt dated because of several pop culture references.

In the epilogue, Curtis points out that the media does what it does because people demand it.
We read this stuff, watch it, lend credence to things that, on second thought, are totally stupid and while you can say that a select group or organization like a news station needs reform, what can you do when an entire culture begs for it?

I liked this book,the way I like some of those extra-long, witty comments that intelligent trolls post on Youtube videos and online articles- it's funny and I agree with it but I won't re-read it.

It's Monday!

2010-05-03T01:00:00.003-04:00

Finished:

A Mind of It's Own: A Cultural History of the Penis by David M. Friedman
I may be enjoying this book too much. Just a little.

Fruits Basket (v.3) by Natsuki Takaya
This is my first foray into manga comics since i was small and I didn't read very many then. I can definitely see the appeal this would have for a small girl-like Twilight, it's a pre-teen girl's fantasy in disguise. I would recommend this for young girls, but I hope they'd feel a little scornful of the main character. She is so "nice" and self-sacrificing it borders on suicidal. Kindness is not equal to spineless in my book.
The boys are hot, though.

The Faith Healers by James Randi

Currently Reading:

The Forsyte Saga by John Gasworthy

In Pursuit of the Gene by James Schwartz

Books Recieved in the Mail:

1. The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene (Betterworld Books)
Finally, finally, finally! I have this book. It sits on my shelf, it's cover glistening, I keep shooting it these little happy, sideways glances. Sigh. I read a little of it this Sunday, just before Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking came on.

Books Bought At the Library:

1. Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera
2. The Discoverers by Daniel J Boorstin
3. The Clouds by Aristophanes
4. Representative Spanish Authors by Pattinson and Bleznick
5. Anthropology: Culture, Society and Evolution by John J. Collins

The Dangerous Pages Review

Blue Nights By Joan Didion

"Me Talk Pretty One Day" To Be Releasd in Iran

Potholer54

Candide by Voltaire

The Interesting Internet...

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Book Review: Made in America by Bill Bryson

Book Paraphernalia: Liquid Bookmarks from Designbloom

Poems From France by William J. Smith

Liberty

On my notebooks from school

Book Porn: March of the Penguins

Book Paraphernalia: The iPhone Bookshelf Skin

Paris in July: Mais Oui

Book Porn: A Panoramic View of Strahov Library

Book Paraphernalia: Hidden Doors

Book Review: Losing My Religion By William Lobdell

Book Review: A Mind of It's Own by David M. Friedman

Book Review: The Faith Healers by James Randi

Book Porn: Bibliophilic Eye Candy

Book Review: Star Island by Carl Hiaasen

It's Monday!

Book Paraphernalia: Cigarette Books

Book Review: Voodoo Histories by David Aaronovitch

Top Ten Things To Eat While Reading

Book Review: It's Not News, It's Fark by Drew Curtis

It's Monday!