Bonk: the Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, by Mary Roach

Published in 2008. 319 p.

Rating: 5 stars

Summary: Mary Roach, a scientific author with a sense of humor, goes globe-trotting in order to learn what science has found out about sex through its research. She focuses on arousal and orgasm in both males and females (human and not, but the not only as it pertains (or specifically doesn’t) to humans.)

Review: I’m in love. As the girl who barely passed certain science classes in high school and college, it is a miracle for me to be able to understand, nay, enjoy, a book that can be found in the science section of your local bookstore. Granted, sex is a topic that is universally interesting (okay, maybe not for the two medically asexual people in the world,) but still, despite words like vasocongestion (the swelling of bodily tissues caused by increased vascular blood flow and a localized increase in blood pressure…thank you wikipedia,) the book is understandable and thoroughly enjoyable.

As a science author, Roach does not stray away from the big words, high-tech procedures and instruments of research, and from being there in person. Roach clearly rejected her high school English teacher’s rule to never put herself in her writing: Roach appears very often throughout the course of the book. She got into all of the research rooms that she was allowed into, sometimes to the point of volunteering for various studies herself, and with her husband (Bravo, Mr. Roach.) Her point of view and funny running commentary (yes, she’s a footnote sort of girl…expect one to two on most pages) make the situations less awkward, and at the same time, hysterically funny. While watching a paralyzed girl masturbate from the other side of the double-sided (but not soundproof) glass, Roach nearly fell off of a desk, and in the process, knocked many other things off the desk, causing her doctor friend to scream. Roach blamed the skirt she was wearing, and afterwards asked the study subject (the paralyzed girl) if she had heard screaming from behind the glass, to which the girl responded in the affirmative. Roach then launched into a discussion of the findings (actual and hopeful) of the study. It is episodes like these that make Roach the perfect author for a book like this. She personalizes and humanizes the science, putting it in layman’s terms (after she’s used all the big words the scientists use) and making it accessible for the intelligent reader.

Perhaps my favorite aspect of the book is that Roach explores things that could be potentially useful for the sex-having person. For example, she tells you why pheromone perfume and cologne is a crock of shit (or urine, or sweat…ick. And ick again. And one last time…ick). She tells you why suction aids masturbation (but why doing the aforementioned act with a vacuum cleaner is not advisable.) You find out everything you need to know about your own and your partner of choice’s “bits,” and what helps stimulate men and women, and what doesn’t. The book has a ton of sex advice, but bases all of it on concrete research that she goes over with the reader. It’s a sex manual with evidence, in a way. It’s also a fantastic read (I can’t tell you how many times I missed my train stop (and almost did even more times) because I was so absorbed in the book.)

This is not a book for the unintelligent…if a reader who enjoys the topic of sex but is at the Sophie Kinsella level of reading, the reader won’t make it through this book. This book is also not for the, ahem, inexperienced. A younger person with whom I am acquainted read this book right before I did, and commented that he didn’t particularly like it, and that it was not as funny as he had expected, or as “good.” My reaction (as it generally is whenever he makes a sex-related remark): go have sex, sweetheart. Then we’ll see what you really think. All in all, though, I would recommend this book to all open-minded, intelligent individuals. Happy humping.

I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell, by Tucker Max

Published in 2006. 288 p.

Rating: 5 stars

Summary: Tucker Max: Southern ladies man and raging drunk, recounts his adventures in mostly red states. He drinks, he insults, he shags, he often vomits, he writes about it.

Review: Funniest thing I have EVER read. Ever. Ever ever. Ever. This book is so far beyond hysterical, I have actually found that it has practical applications: it can be referenced similarly to Sex and the City, but mostly with guys, because lets face it, girls aren’t exactly clamoring to read the book.

I fully believe that 90% of people have a little Tucker Max in them. Even if no one knows about it, there’s a little Tucker Max inside everyone. Socially, we learn to check the little Tucker Max voice in our heads, because our mothers taught us not to be rude. Apparently his mother wasn’t around or something, because he never learned to check the rudeness.

Tucker gets drunk, Tucker insults the ugly girls/guys, finds a (sometimes) hot (always) dumb girl to shag, usually shags her, and then some crazy shit happens, generally either directly before, during or after the shagging. Sometimes it involves the shagging, other times it involves upchuck or other bodily excrements, sometimes it involves cars, guns, punches, dead goats or whatever else.

Is Tucker a legend? Some say so. However, I must say, we’ve all had those nights, and I know plenty of people that live up to the Tucker Max standard. Hell, I’ve done that a time or two (Tucker, you remember being played by a girl or two in your day? I’m that girl, the girl who plays guys that think that they are playing her. While I’m drunk. And insulting and blueballing the guy who wants to take me home.) I think Tucker is very inventive in the crazy shit he enacts (see “Tucker goes to a Hockey Game,”) and sometimes he gets stories because he is about as dumb as the girls he shags (see “Tucker tries Buttsex; Hilarity does not Ensue.”)

Do I think everyone should read this book? Absolutely not; it would send my mother into an early grave. This is for the strong stomached, sexually and drunkenly unshockable (although you may still be shocked at times,) who like to laugh at other people. You should be intelligent if you plan to read this book, otherwise, it’s you that Tucker is making fun of. You should not be a slut, again for the reason that you are the one he is making fun of. However, if you are an intelligent non-whore that likes sex jokes and trading stories about “dude, I was sooo drunk that I…” this book is probably for you. Also check out his website (tuckermax.com), specifically for the Miss Vermont story that does not appear in the book. If you are unsure as to whether or not you will enjoy the book, read one or two of them online, and then go buy the book (yes, buy. No library on this one, you will be passing it around to all of your friends. And will still want to keep a copy of it at home for reference.)

The Stars, The Snow, The Fire, by John Haines

Originally published in 1977. 182 p.

Rating: 4.2 stars

Summary: A collection of essays about Haines time in Alaska. The essays describe the hunting/trapping lifestyle, homesteading in the wilderness, local stories (legend and factual ones), and the surrounding environment.

Review: John Haines is a pretty impressive guy. He writes award winning poetry, and yet still manages to make a living in Alaska by trapping and selling furs. And then writes a book about it.

Haines is clearly an accomplished writer, which if you see the reviews for Into the Wild and One Man’s Wilderness (the other 2 books I read in preparation for my trip to Alaska in a week and a half,) I really care about. Haines doesn’t get the award for most interesting book (Into the Wild receives that award, thanks to Chris McCandless,) but it was the most enjoyable to read. When he waxes poetic (which he does often,) it is subdued and dreamy and is not overkill or badly done. He reflects quite often in his essays, generally for the last page or so of many of the essays, but sometimes the entire essay will be a reflection on something.

Haines is also really good at telling the local stories through the other Alaskan homesteaders that he comes across. He describes the storyteller’s personality and physicality, and the scene of a few guys telling stories over beer and ciggies at the local (read: only) roadhouse, and then moves right into the story. Some of them are creepy but very interesting, such as the “Sack of Bones” essay. That essay actually came right after the essay entitled “Lost” and follows the same theme. As you might surmise from the title, the essays are about people who got “lost” in Alaska, i.e. they died. In “Sack of Bones,” there is almost assuredly an unsolved murder. In the midst of all the snow and ice and slaughtering animals, it was a nice change of pace.

My biggest complaint about the book is the back cover. Those who wrote the pieces of text on the back mislead me into understanding what the book was going to be about. No where on the back cover does it say that this book is a collection of essays, unrelated to each other except for the Alaskan theme. Not only this, but the book was called a memoir. So, imagine my confusion when there is no linear story, just strung together thoughts. Had I known it was only supposed to be essays, I would not have looked for a specific connection between the stories, and I think I would have had an easier time of it. When I did realize that the book was unrelated essays, the reading became much nicer and easier.

Haines really does have a gift for beautiful writing. If you are at all interested in Alaskan adventures, this would be a good book to pick up. Or, if you are looking for something a bit different than the daily fare that the bookstores offer, this might be a good choice for you. I do have one disclaimer on my recommendation to read this book, though. Do not read it if you don’t have a strong stomach; he does graphically describe clubbing animals for their furs, and carving up animals for supper. Even if you do have a strong stomach, do not eat anything while reading this book. I would recommend this book to anyone who has even the slightest interest in the subject or just in good writing in general.

One Man's Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey

Originally published in 1973. 224 p.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Summary:

In 1968, Richard “Dick” Proenneke flew out to the Twin Lakes area of Alaska, 40 miles North of Port Alsworth and 170 miles North of Anchorage, and built himself a cabin. He stayed for 2 years straight before leaving the area for the outside world. Proenneke kept a meticulous account of his days in a dated journal; discussing all of the work involved in building a cabin by himself, his diet, the flora and fauna of the surrounding area, the temperature fluctuations and how that impacted the environment, his rare encounters with other people (confined mostly to the pilot who flew in supplies as needed) and various beliefs and experiences along the way. Includes two sections of photographs that Proenneke took while out there.

Review:

This is a very simple book about a man’s experience with cabin building and living in Alaska. I picked it up because I am headed out to Alaska in a few weeks, and thought that I had better read up on Alaska a bit before I go. I probably wouldn’t have picked up this book otherwise, or gotten past the description of the book on the back.

Having read the book, I am glad that I did, and it fits pretty well with my upcoming travels. It is very calm, very simple writing, just going over the basic facts of what happened during the day; what Proenneke saw and did. It is pretty amazing to me that Proenneke managed to have a journal every single day that he was building the cabin.

The reason I only gave the book 3.5 stars is because it’s not terribly interesting, even if you are interested in the subject matter. I found myself re-reading much of the book because I realized I hadn’t paid any attention to the last page and a half, and had no idea what he was talking about. Sometimes, even when I had been reading carefully, I still had no idea what he was talking about. Since Keith went through and edited Proenneke’s journal, one would think that he would explain some of the more intricate concepts of cabin building for the woodwork-challenged types like myself. Nope.

What really shines throughout the book are the descriptions of the animals and the environment out there. Proenneke is a keen observer, with lots of patience and he records it very matter of factly, without any poetic license. Proenneke is not naturally a writer, and he doesn’t try to be one. Hi journals were very clearly not intended for anyone else, so he doesn’t try to have a fancy style; it is all rather bare-bones.

I don’t know if I would say that it was good book, but it certainly wasn’t a bad book. A bit boring at times, I don’t think I would recommend it for most people. It would be a good read, however, for people going to Alaska or people who are very interested in the outdoors, Alaska, nature and wildlife, etc.

Into to Wild, by Jon Krakauer

Published in 1996. 224 p.

Rating: 4 stars

Summary: Krakauer tells the true story of Christopher McCandless, a guy just out of college that rejected the accepted world and tramped through the Western U.S. for two years, until his death in Alaska in 1992.

Review:This book has definitely increased in popularity with the Oscar-nominated film of the same name (complete with redesigned, film-based cover.) I actually saw the movie first, and was duly impressed (Emile Hirsh is awesome as McCandless, Sean Penn wrote and directed fabulously, and Eddie Vedder did the soundtrack, and by now everyone should realize that he’s pretty much as amazing as people get.) So naturally, I was excited to read this book. And then a friend broke my heart just before I began the book: “Jon Krakauer is a terrible writer,” he said to me.

When it gets right down to it, my friend was right. Krakauer knows what he’s talking about, is a hell of a mountaineer, but is not a very good writer. He’s decent to be sure, but he’s at his best when he gets very technical about the outdoorsman-ship that McCandless employed. However, when he decides to wax poetic, well he’s just not quite Whitman, and it comes across as trite and very mediocre.

The story is course the real gem here. McCandless was fascinating in his rejection of the life that his parents had planned for him from the time he was a little boy. He was an intense, inspiring individual in the short time that he did live. As sad as his death is, he probably wouldn’t have come to media attention, and his life lessons would not have been put out into the world for those who choose to learn them.

I am always fascinated by the vagabond lifestyle, and McCandless’ vagabond existence is one of the more interesting ones that I have heard about. He met and affected people along the way, but also had solitary adventures that touched him deeply he recorded in his journal. This is the best part of the story, the relationships he had with people who took a chance on an unknown kid. The friendships that were forged speak for the kind of person that McCandless was, and that is what makes the story great, and earned it 4 stars. At the end of the day, it’s a good book if you are interested in outdoor survival, outdoorsy-ness in general, Alaska, or being a vagabond (although there are better books on each of those subjects than this one). The average person should just watch the movie…you get a sense of McCandless’ values, and the relationships are explored more, and it’s written better. It packs a punch as a movie, drawing you in more so than the book, but its so worth it. And screw the academy for refusing to nominate Vedder for an Oscar for the score because the songs were too “song-based.”

The Kid, by Dan Savage

Published in 2000. 256 p.

Rating: 5 stars

Summary: Dan Savage and live-in boyfriend Terry Miller decide to do what conservative America fears most: adopt a child! They get chosen by a street punk, Melissa, fairly far along in her pregnancy, and have to overcome their fear of each other (and of children) to successfully adopt her baby boy with an open adoption. Includes lots of political and historical points of reference about adoption, especially for same-sex couples.

Review: I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: I love Dan Savage. If he weren’t gay, he’d be in trouble.

This was actually the first Savage book I read, and it made me a huge fan. The book is both heartwarming and hysterical, sarcastic and adorable. It was brought to my attention in a class in college, when a classmate brought in an excerpt from the book as his or her choice for (at least mostly) unknown non-fiction writer. The excerpt was so funny, that I went out and bought the book, and read it straight away.

One of the things I love most about Savage is that he includes so much background information about everything (I know I’ve said it before, but I’m saying it again!) He writes to the person who doesn’t know what its like to be a gay male couple, to the person who has no one idea what its like the adopt a kid, or to raise one. He gives you all the information you need to understand what the heck is going on, no matter who you are, so you can have full enjoyment of the scenarios he describes.

Savage’s voice is the best part of the book. He is so sarcastic, so cynical, but really wants to cry at the really important moments. He is so human, and unabashedly so. He points out his own flaws, Terry’s flaws, Melissa’s flaws, and the flaws of everybody else around. He is what many people would think of as a “terrible person,” but he’s really just quite honest, and his honesty is so blunt that it is downright funny. It helps that the situations are fairly extreme: their surrogate Momma is a homeless “gutter punk” who drank and drugged her way through her first trimester (before she realized that she was preggers.) The family dynamic (super quiet Miller parents and his own outspoken Catholic mother) adds quite a bit of entertainment value as well.

This is not one of those esoteric books that wins awards, but it is a social commentary that is important in its own right. Savage is an example of a much hated minority that is coming out of the proverbial closet in society, and does so with grace and humor. He deals with the challenges of being a gay man in a society that does not always accept him and his choices, and his realization of and solutions to some of the hardships he will face as the head of the multi-father household that his son will grow up in is an amazing example of the resilience of a minority population in general, and same-sex couples specifically.

I would absolutely recommend this book to anyone with an open enough mind. I have already recommended it to gay couples who are/will be looking into starting families in the near future, and also to friends who are not gay or thinking about children, because the book is just that freakin’ funny. Go read. Now.

The Celestial Omnibus, by E.M. Forster

Published in 1923 (original), 2005 (this edition). 172 p.

Rating: 4.8 stars

Summary: There are six short stories, all dealing with the idea of imagination as the savior of a person’s life, or lack of imagination as the cause of literal or figurative death. All surround English characters, either at home, or abroad in Italy or Greece.

Review:

I will freely admit that the only reason I ever pick up a book of short stories is if I like the author as a novelist so much that I feel like I have to read everything they ever read (with the exception of Ethan Canin, whose story collections I picked up because of a movie based on one of his stories.) This book was no exception, with E.M. Forster being one of my favorite novelists. His history is perhaps more interesting than my review, so I’ll do a little overview to explain why I picked this book up in the first place. (As an aside, the fact that I have to explain Forster is a tragedy of the American schooling system. Everyone in England knows who he is, as they should.)

E.M. Forster belonged to the intellectual society known as the Bloomsbury Group, who lived and worked in England (London and Sussex.) Along with Forster, the group included: Virginia Woolf, Leonard Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Clive Bell, Roger Fry, John Maynard Keynes, Lytton Strachey, Duncan Grant and Desmond MacCarthy. They were an elitist group that dabbled culturally in painting, economics, aestheticism (if you’re ever feeling super-intellectual, check out Clive Bell’s essays on aestheticism,), literary and art criticism, and of course, writing. Forster wrote such novels as A Passage to India, A Room with a View, Howards End, and the posthumously published Maurice (see last post).

Now, on to the stories. I despise most current short stories. These, however, are beautifully written stories that pull you in and keep you there until you finish reading. Forster is a brilliant short story writer, not just in choice of language, but in choice of topic as well. He is writing very much from the heart, which you can tell if you know anything about Forster’s life and other works. His stories tend to take the characters far away, whether to a real place or not. In “The Celestial Omnibus,” the little boy is taken to a heavenly land where literary figures are as alive as the boy. In “The Other Side of the Hedge,” two complete fantasy lands are created, one on each side of the hedge. Another story is set in Greece, another in Italy. Forster writes about the places he loves, both the real ones and the ones inside his imagination.

What’s really beautiful about the collection is that Forster’s stories all come with a moral, and the moral of each is essentially the same: imagination, with all that it entails is the savior of the soul, if not the body. Forster brings romance, literature, travel, and other worlds to the reader to get his point across. At the same time, the stories have real characters, ones that live in the real world (with the exception of “The Other Side of the Hedge,” in which the character is in made-up world,) that deal with real problems. At the end, imagination and everything that goes along with it are the things that can make or break a person. As long as you let yourself believe, you fall into the story and see the beauty and the magic that Forster is describing.

It’s a strange experience to read something that deviates so far from realism, but makes such perfect sense. The reader has to have a vivid imagination and a healthy soul to really understand and appreciate the stories. If the reader is lacking these things, he or she may as well not touch the collection. If the reader thinks him or herself properly equipped, this might be their new favorite short story collection.

Maurice, by E.M. Forster

Published in 1971. 256 p.

Rating: 3.7 stars

Summary: It is early 1900’s England. The story revolves around Maurice Hall, to whom the reader is introduced when he is still a young boy and unaware of his looming homosexuality. He goes to Cambridge University and is presented with the opportunity of a romantic relationship with Clive Durham, Maurice’s male best friend. After first rejecting it, he begins to accept his homosexuality, and Maurice and Clive date for a while. However, Clive falls out of love and marries a woman. Maurice does not, and takes years to recover from the break up, eventually finding love with a very unexpected other character.

Review: The story itself is not particularly good, but the ideas presented in it were quite ahead of their time. Quite possibly the most interesting part of the book was the terminal note, which Forster wrote in 1960, when he was apparently looking into publishing it. He explains why certain plot points are the way they are, and also the public arena into which the book would have received had it been published when it was actually written.

What makes the novel interesting to read is that it is a version of events that more or less happened in Forster’s life, and describe a very unacceptable orientation: the Oscar Wilde sort, as it is called in the book. (For those who are lost, yes, Oscar Wilde was openly gay, and his “sort” would be gay men.) Forster was very bold to have written a novel like this when he did (in 1913-1914,) but also smart enough to know that if he wanted to be commercially successful as a writer, he had to hide his fairly obvious homosexuality from the media. (A random fun fact: Forster wanted to be Jane Austen, as one can see from novels like A Room with a View and Howard’s End. Now if that’s not the gayest I’ve ever heard…) The book does function as a social commentary on the times, and the non-acceptance of homosexuality. It is not, however, a very good love story.

The book itself is rather poorly written, and generally considered so. It is, in a way, Forster’s fantasy romance, and when do people’s fantasies ever make great literature? It is frou-frou romantic, the kind of stuff that chick-lit is made of. It’s chick-lit for gay men. There are not many redeeming qualities of the novel, but it is interesting enough to take a look at, and not too long to read. Forster also gets bonus points for having really short chapters.

So, I would really only recommend the book to anyone who is interested in early, possibly unconventional and/or British views on homosexuality, or anyone who is seriously into the Bloomsbury Group. However, Forster should not be discredited for this novel. Go read Howards End. It’s fab.

Jesus Land, by Julia Scheeres

Published in 2006. 384 p.

Rating: 5 stars

Summary: This is Julia Scheeres memoir about her relationship with her adopted brother, David Scheeres. Her family dynamic is: Christian zealot parents, two older biological sisters, one older biological brother, and one same-age and one older adopted brothers. Her adopted brothers are black, and radically different: one sexually abuses her, while the other is her best friend. The novel is split into two parts; the first part is about moving to a new town and going to a new high school where race becomes an issue both in school and at home, driving Julia and David apart. The second part is about being sent to a Christian reform school in the Dominican Republic, where no law exists governing child abuse.

Review:

Having been raised in a conservative, born-again Christian household, books on how religions repress some of their followers are of great interest to me. I look for similarities in the repression inferred, and how the author(s) or character(s) overcame their repression and how their religious life was affected after that. This book fit right in with my interest level, and although I in no way suffered to the extent of Scheeres (or even in similar ways), I could still identify with the pressure of being forced to be a certain religion at a time when a person should be experimenting and trying to “find themself” as it has become called, and the fear of persecution by the religious (and for all those Christians who talk about how they are persecuted by those who don’t believe what they do when other religions are tolerated: right back at you!)

This book is amazing in the terror that it instills. I read the whole book in three sittings, which is something I haven’t done in years. The second part of the book was much quicker going; it sort of sucks you in and you have to find out the whole story just to see if they make it out okay. The first half is interesting because it sets up the family dynamic and the neighborhood dynamic: David is an outsider wherever he goes, no matter how much he tries to fit in. Julia is an outsider when she aligns herself with David; when she doesn’t, she fits in perfectly well. She talks about the guilt she feels, and it is really interesting to see how she deals with race within her very small world. However, they are both outsiders within their parent’s restrictive super-Christian life. You feel Julia die a little bit inside when she realizes that her mother loves the missionaries that she supports more than she loves her own daughter. You see how Julia, at age 17, doing what normal teenagers do, managed to land herself in jail, juvi and then reform school because she honestly believes that it is better than living with her parents, which is a pretty scary idea: things are so bad at home because of the parents, the child chooses to live in hellish situations just to escape parental wrath.

The second half of the book is pretty much everyone’s worst nightmare. The camp that first Julia and then David end up at is shocking in its abuse, despite the fact that in this day and age of memoirs and Oprah’s “heartwarming” stories, abuse stories are fed to us on a weekly basis with a happy, sunshiny, all warm and fuzzy inside ending to take away the memory of the abuse. Dave Pelzer is a perfect example. While what happened to him is by no means less severe than what happened to the Scheeres, his book didn’t make me as upset as this one did. I’m guessing it is because all of the abuse was done in the name of religion. The “love of Jesus Christ” doesn’t force or endorse the mental and physical humiliation and beatings that were doled out in every second of every day. It is a very interesting study of human culture that religious sects are the ones that carry out horrors like these. Also, because the school was in the Dominican Republic, there where no laws that would’ve allowed Julia and David to leave when they were 18 and legal adults. It was around then, when I’d already been reading for about 2 or 3 hours straight, that I realized I was not setting the book aside until I’d read to the very last page. I was committed to finding out whether or not they made it out okay.

I haven’t read a book that has captivated me this much in years. This is an absolute must-read for anyone interested in the ideas of how religion can adversely affect life (or even if you think it doesn’t, this might be a good book for you to read so that you can see that it does.) The book really hit home for me, quite possibly because of recent family feuding over a certain type of organized religion and my expelling of it from my life, but I think it would have resounded anyway, because of the book’s power and the ideas contained within it are ideas that I have struggled with for over 10 years. However, a word of warning: this book is intense, and you may cry if you are the crying sort (I’m not, so I didn’t, but I could see how someone would). If you are not the crying sort, you will probably just be rather torn up and upset about it (as I was/am.) On a side note, a good film to watch somewhat in conjunction with this book is the movie Saved! It deals with similar issues on the religion front, although it presents it in a much less frightening way, and shows how to overcome religious repression. And it is really, really funny.

Quite sincerely, I say that you absolutely should read this book, no matter who you are. Just make sure you have quite a few hours to devote to it without losing too much sleep.

The Virgin Suicides, by Jeffrey Eugenides

This book appeared in my monthly column in ShortEnd Magazine, so you can read my review of it (as compared with the movie version) there.

Go to Short End Magazine.

Party Monster, by James St. James

This book appeared in my monthly column in ShortEnd Magazine, so you can read my review of it (as compared with the movie version) there.


Go to Short End Magazine.

The Commitment: love, sex, marriage, and my family, by Dan Savage

Published in 2006. 304 p.

Rating: 5 stars

Summary: Dan Savage has a boyfriend of 10 years, a six year old adopted son, and a Catholic mother. So naturally, the conversation turns to marriage. Savage embarks on a cross-country trip to the Midwest for a gay family camp extravaganza in which he has invited all of the members of his immediate family and their spouses/boyfriends/girlfriends/ and children. The end result: his mother convinces him to at least have a tenth anniversary party that could constitute a wedding reception, if there were to be a wedding. But will there be a wedding? Savage looks at the political arena surrounding gay marriage, but also the personal arena for marriage in general, same sex or otherwise.

Review: I love Dan Savage. I really do.

This is yet another of Savage’s hysterically funny, oh so wonderful masterpieces. It is also one of the few memoirs out there that I can actually stand, and just think, I actually enjoyed…loved…it. No Year of Magical Thinking here, this is actually a memoir that can affect those who are not in the same shoes, who might not care until they read Savage’s story.

Savage of course brings in his humor that he has become known for, starting the book with another road trip anecdote, and then moving on to the subject of how it came to be that he has a blind, deaf, one-eyed brown poodle (oh no, I’m not giving it away…you have to read it to find out.)

Family scenes

One of the best things about any Savage novel is the family dynamic that he shows. His family is nuts! I say that coming from a re-diculously weird family. His mother is darling, and the fact that although he has almost entirely shed her Catholic beliefs from his life yet keeps her penchant for expecting disaster is wonderfully refreshing and different. Rather than harp on the minor bad things in life, Savage (and his mother) instead dwell on the really insanely super bad things that could potentially happen, because God will clearly strike down everything good in a persons life (think Biblical Job, here) if that person for one second is happy about things, takes them just a teensy bit for granted, or presumes that things might stay the way they are rather than falling spectacularly apart. Paranoia, anyone?

Seriously though, the idea that God will take away everything good in Savage’s life if he presumes too much about his happy state is a recurrent theme in the book. It is one of the top reasons that he doesn’t want to get married. He is afraid that if he presumes too much about the happy state of his then-current union with Terry, God will kill off one of them (or both of them), or somehow end their relationship, and their marriage will have been for naught. He uses the examples of many celebrities and their short-lived marriages (and takes a great shot at J.Lo,) and tells about one lezzie couple that had been together for ten years, but split up after five days of marriage, but couldn’t get divorced because although laws were made in Canada allowing same-sex marriage, there were no laws for divorce (oops! At least Canada got the sentiment right by allowing the marriages in the first place.)

Terry, on the other hand, isn’t paranoid about God smiting them for getting married. He just doesn’t want to act like straight people. Instead, he wants to get “property of (insert each other’s name here).” WTF? Like that’s not totally jinxed as well (as one of Savage’s brothers, who had his 16 year old girlfriend’s name tatted on his arm at the tender age of 18, pointed out.)

An amusing aside: their 6 year old son, DJ, is against gay marriage. Go figure.

Research into the historical facts surrounding marriage/gay marriage

One of the things I love best about Savage’s novels (besides the humor, and pretty much everything else about the book) is how he incorporates his research into the narrative. Although the book is a memoir, it also has tons of information on the history of marriage, and the political history of gay marriage in the U.S., Canada, and elsewhere. Savage does his homework and gives an (albeit very biased) overview of the political arena surrounding gay marriage. He is very well-informed, and passes on a good amount of information to the reader so that the reader can follow Savage’s reasoning about his views on same-sex marriage.

The ending...it’s a surprise ending, that you don’t realize is a surprise ending until you get to the very end of the surprise ending. Confused? It’ll all make sense, when you read the surprise ending. It also happens to be a very well done surprise ending. Bravo, Monsieur Savage. Overall, an awesome book that everyone with a sense of humor should read. Even conservative republicans (because they might learn something.)

Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich

Published in 2002. 240 p.

Rating: 4.5 stars

Summary: Freelance writer and author Barbara Ehrenreich conducts a social experiment in which she leaves her comfortable middle-class existence behind to work as a low-wage worker in various fields in different parts of the country to see if minimum wage will keep a roof over her head and food on her table…or somewhere, because she doesn’t always have a table. She works as a server (waitress) in Florida, a cleaning lady in Maine and a Wal-Mart employee in Minnesota. She shares her experiences with trying to make do, and covertly interviewing her coworkers about how they make a go at it (since they don’t have a middle-class existence to go home to at the end of a month or two.)

Review: This is a timely novel for the world we currently live in. Ehrenreich tackles a tough subject and an even tougher lifestyle by adopting the lifestyle of the working poor. Major kudos to her for going undercover for the book, rather than just interviewing people as a journalist. She was able to really integrate herself with the working poor and get information that is not usually made available to a person of her socioeconomic rank. What’s really cool about the book is that I can show it to my mother as an example of how I didn’t fritter all of my wages away when I supported myself during my final two years of college, and that sometimes, yeah, you just need more money than your job provides.

Another great aspect of the book is how Ehrenreich pulls the working poor, the ones who serve the middle class and up, into view for the first time. Ehrenreich admits to never having noticed any of the workers at the places she shopped, dined, etc. She marvels at how no one of her normal socioeconomic status notices that she exists, despite the fact that she, during her three stints as an “unskilled” worker, helped to provide and keep up the lifestyle that the middle and upper classes have become used to. Diana Henriques of the New York Times writes that everyone who reads the book should pass it on to their relatives and friends…and she’s right. Everyone should read the book, and realize that there are these people out there, slaving away to make your life better. And you don’t thank…because you don’t even know that they are there. And if by some chance you do notice them, it’s almost always in a negative way. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been yelled at or ignored by someone who feels that because I’m working in retail and they have a 9 to 5 job that they are better than me. As Ehrenreich proved, half of them probably couldn’t do what the working poor, what the “unskilled” laborer, does.

Having worked retail at only $7 an hour (I later learned that I was the lowest paid employee in the company, but I had come from out of state and didn’t know what a living wage was in Boston and didn’t request a high enough starting wage, or a raise even after I realized it), I empathize with Ehrenreich throughout all of her jobs. I felt for her when she talks about how she had to put away cart after cart of discarded clothing at Wal-Mart. Any person who has ever worked retail understands the frustration of people picking up things that they later decide they don’t want, and leaving them somewhere, whether its at a dressing room, or placed randomly in the store (insert rant: if you don’t want it, give it to a salesperson, or put it back in the correct spot. When you put it in a random spot, we, the retail workers, want to bar you from ever re-entering our store.) I also empathized with Ehrenreich over the back-breaking labor that she endured during her stint as a maid. Thankfully, I’ve never been a maid, but I’ve worked at higher levels of retail long enough to know that things like heavy lifting and being on your feet for 8 hours a day, especially both in the same 8 hour period, absolutely sucks. Ehrenreich definitely gets that point across.

That’s really what Ehrenreich was getting across about the working poor: it sucks to be a member. You can scrape by, by the quality of life is so unbelievably low, that no sane person would want to do it for any length of time, and yet, people do. I worked with a girl who had two jobs: a full-time job with kids during the week, and a part-time job in retail on the weekends. She had no days off. Ever. I couldn’t imagine a life like that until I worked full-time while going to school. I had no days off. Ever. And it sucked, big-time.

My big big big complaint with this experiment is that Ehrenreich went into each of these situations with a larger sum of money than any of her coworkers would have had when setting up (over a thousand dollars), a car (in which insurance was already paid on it, she only had to account for gas), and an unwillingness to do sometimes whatever it takes to get by (such as live with roommates.) Although I fully understand that these jobs and these few months of living poor were unpleasant for Ehrenreich, I think there is a whole other side to poverty that she will never grasp without fully immersing herself in the lifestyle, not to mention, whenever she needed to, she could pull the plug and leave. A safety net is great if you have one, but how many of the type of people she was reporting on would actually have such a safety net? I think Ehrenreich made a good head start here, but may have done better had she written another section where she was not “on location,” but interviewing someone who had no safety net, no car, roommates galore, and really lived the type of life that the impoverished live. Hell Ehrenreich, interview me. I’ll tell you what it means to hear your roommates’ every drunken move at 3 am when you have to be to work at 9, what its like to not have a safety net (my mother had temporarily withdrawn it,) what its like to walk to work every day, and make a measly $7 and hour when living in Boston (one of the most expensive cities in the U.S.), and the fight for time and a half (by law, holidays and Sundays in Massachusetts are paid time and a half, and as such, a day that you “reward” the best workers with.)

Overall, I think the book is an absolutely amazing start, and I give Ehrenreich mondo kudos for having the balls to get out there and get dirty and live the life for a while. And since not everyone has the balls to go do that for a while, anyone who doesn’t live it should read the book so they have a clue about how the other half (not the rich half) lives. And anyone who is a member of the working poor should read it just so that they know that there are people out there trying to make their lives better, and best of all, people who have noticed that they exist.

Step on a Crack, by James Patterson with Michael Ledwidge

Rating: 2 stars

Summary: The First Lady mysteriously dies during a Christmas-week dinner with the President. Her state funeral at a church in New York City is hijacked, with the hostages being among the richest and the most famous people in the United States. In comes Detective Michael Bennett, a man with ten adopted children and a wife dying of cancer in the hospital. It’s up to Bennett to negotiate with the hijackers to get as many of the hostages out alive, meanwhile trying to bring Christmas cheer to his numerous little ones at home. The hijackers are well-prepared against Bennett, escaping almost unscathed from their dangerous game, and completely unknown to the NYPD. Bennett makes it his personal mission to find these unfindable criminals and bring them to justice, before they take him out, too.

Review: Where’s Alex Cross when you need him? This book received two stars on the basis that I admire Patterson’s use of real military language, and for the grand scale of the novel. However, mixing a romance novel with a thriller is not my cup of tea. Hijackers beating up bimbo popstars…awesome. A grown man tearing up at his wife’s bedside ever other freaking minute…not awesome. You loved her, Bennett, we get it. Now be a man and stop crying. You have children and a hijacking to attend to.

Had the book been strictly a thriller, it probably would have garnered 3.5 stars (I can’t help it, a “fluff” book, as my mother and I terms books with no intrinsic value, will never garner more than 3.5 stars, unless it is absolutely marvelous). The basic scheme is pretty cool…hijack a state funeral and keep very rich, very important people until you get their money and make a brilliant escape. The tactics used, both by the hijackers and the law enforcers, were pretty cool. Everyone seemed to know what they were doing. The vignettes of Eugena Humphrey and Conlan and Rooney brought a surprising empathy to the novel. I also liked the switchover in point of view from Bennett to the Neat Man. The somewhat surprising ending was good too.

What held the book back was the god-awful family scenes. Okay, the kids were sometimes cute, you can’t go wrong with a character named Mary Catherine (you just can’t), but the oh so strong wife wasting away to 80 pounds who is so thin and fragile when she used to be the big-hearted glue that held our family together, I don’t know how she did it…vomit. If that was Patterson’s attempt to get more female readers, he has failed miserably. No one reads a thriller for the wife with cancer bits. They like the crimes, the solving of the crimes, the escapades surrounding the crimes, all the mystery and intrigue and adrenaline. For the love of god, Patterson, don’t alienate your reader!

And who is this Michael Ledwidge that wrote the book with Patterson? Is it just me, or did they hide that fact? Granted I was reading a strip (a book with no front cover…its bookstore lingo), but it says nowhere on the rest of the cover that there was a second author involved. In fact, I didn’t know there was a second author until I got to the “About the Author” the section and “Author” was pluralized, and there were two names and descriptions below it. (Okay, I’ve just looked at a picture of the cover, and Ledwidge is listed, but I’ve walked by the book a thousand times and not noticed it.)

Many years ago, I read Cat and Mouse. I think I may have even seen the movie Along Came a Spider. What I deduce is this: Alex Cross is badass. Michael Bennett is a pansy in comparison. Which means, Patterson, that you need to write about Alex Cross, not Michael Bennett.

Skipping Towards Gomorrah, by Dan Savage

Published in 2003. 320 p.

Rating: 4.2 stars

Summary: Nationally syndicated gay sex-columnist Dan Savage takes on a political agenda to commit all seven of Catholicism’s Deadly Sins, explaining the importance of all of them in the political and social arenas. He gambles and meets swingers in Vegas, stays in for smoking pot, goes to a fat-acceptance convention in San Francisco, goes weight-loss hiking in Malibu with the rich, goes to pride in L.A. and learns how to shoot a gun in Texas, and then goes on an all-out sinning binge in New York.

Review: First off, I just need to say that I fucking love Dan Savage. Go read everything he has ever written. Seriously.

So, the basic point of the book is for Savage to commit all seven of the deadly sins of his childhood Catholicism in order to prove to the “virtuecrats” that America is not the Gomorrah of the modern world, but a pretty damn cool place to live.

Greed: Savage learns to gamble. He opens the chapter by hating on Vegas, but through the course of his experiences, learns to love it and the gambling involved. The best part, though, is when Savage returns to the scene of various crimes (literally, he was charged with both a felony and a misdemeanor due to actions surrounding his experiences during the Iowa caucus,) to gamble in Dubuque, Iowa on a riverboat. Here in Dubuque, Savage meets some old gamblers that teach him how to gamble and win at Blackjack (seriously, check it out if you want to win some money gambling…good strategies are taught), but warn him properly. As Savage gets greedy at the end of his stay, he breaks the rules, loses all the money and is just another broke, greedy gambler. One word: awesome.

Lust: Swingers!! Another awesome chapter in which Savage discusses infidelity, both accepted and not. He is at his most political in this chapter…not exactly ironic, if you ask me (hello, Ms. Lewinsky). He makes a solid argument for accepted infidelities within relationships, and while I don’t know if I’ll be able to jump on board the good ship infidelity, it gives you reason to at least re-think your sexual boundaries within a relationship.

Sloth: Americans are potheads, and Savage tells us why: Americans FUCKING WORK MORE HOURS THAN ANYONE ELSE!!!! I fully support Savage in his argument for the legalization of marijuana. Medical marijuana is a start, but really, people, let’s get the ball rolling.

Gluttony: Oh. My. God. There is an organization for the acceptance of fat people…where they have their one lingo and they tell each other that fat is sexy and healthy. I shudder at the thought, as does Savage, but he braves the pounds of human flesh awaiting him and goes to a conference. Thankfully, he highlights the issues of people at the conference in which some realize that being so fat that you can’t move is not healthy, and that gastric bypass is not the anti-Christ. He doesn’t really get down to the nitty-gritty sinning part until he goes into his eating habits (concerning their inner fat-kids) with one of his friends in particular, and dissects American eating habits (why super-sized portions and meals are more popular than the Red Sox in Boston.) This is where Savage shines the most…or maybe it’s just because my mouth was watering at the thought of a gi-normous piece of cake being set in front of me.

Envy: This was probably my least favorite of all the chapters. To learn about envy, Savage goes to an expensive weight-loss ashram to lose weight with the rich and famous. He doesn’t end up envying them and their ability to pay large amounts of money to act poor for a weekend; he simply ends up a bloody mess on a trail outside Malibu.

Pride: This chapter was interestingly controversial. Savage may be the most openly gay man on the planet, and yet he doesn’t believe in the importance of Pride for the gay community. His beef is in the idea that Pride exists for the gay youth to come out and be loud and proud; he believes that is just a rainbow-filled excuse to get wasted and dance all day and night, and that it would be fine if the gay community would just come out and say that. (To throw my own two cents in, I believe that it is important for the newly out to see how big and diverse the gay population in their area is, and that it does help build pride in themselves as a part of the gay community that Pride celebrates. Booyah, Savage.) His argument lacks some basis and is not entirely well-thought out. But he parties hard and reports it accurately, so rock on.

Anger: This chapter holds my favorite line of the book: after being told that he is a natural at shooting a gun in Plano, Texas “Natural isn’t something I get called a lot in Texas.” This chapter is enjoyable to read, but I don’t really see how learning how to shoot a gun at a gun range is a sin. Forgive me Savage, but wouldn’t watching an Edward Norton-style fight club have done the trick? In the end, it comes off as a piece in which Savage boasts his gun shooting ability.

New York City: This chapter is full-on brilliant. Savage goes to the real Sin City (Vegas, you got nothing on New York), and is in involved in the committing of all seven sins in only a few short days. Here we meet Emily, a high-class escort, and Brad, another high class escort, who happens to be her boyfriend. Savage hires each of them for a night without telling either of them that he met the other half of their high-class prostituting couple. Savage gets a lot closer to his agenda with these two than in any of the previous chapters, and as a result, it is the most fun chapter in the book. Rock on, high class prostitution.

My biggest complaint about this book is that the end does not hold up to the beginning. The book takes a turn for the worse around the middle and never fully recovers, although it makes a valiant effort with the New York City chapter. Overall, I would recommend reading it, however, you start with one of Savage’s other books and become a fan before picking this one up, because this one won’t garner Savage any fans that he doesn’t already have.

Haroun and the Sea of Stories, by Salman Rushdie

Published in 1990. 224 p.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Summary: Haroun Khalifa’s father, Rashid, is a much-loved storyteller. Haroun’s mother has just run off with a neighbor, wreaking havoc on the Khalifas left behind. Haroun, in a moment of anger, belittles his father’s profession, asking the point of stories that aren’t even true, and this causes Rashid to lose his gift for storytelling. However, his reputation has already garnered him a job telling stories for a political candidate who could become dangerous towards the Khalifas if Rashid cannot tell stories. It is up to Haroun to save them by going to Gup City to get Rashid’s powers of storytelling back, but he finds an even graver situation when he gets there…the stream of stories are being polluted, one by one.

Review: In 1988, after a fatwa was issued for Salman Rushdie’s head for his novel The Satanic Verses, Rushdie was forced into hiding and separated from his son. In the first couple years of his exile, Rushdie wrote this book, a children’s book of sorts, for his son. However, most readers have agreed that this is not a children’s book for children, but a children’s book for adults.

The book’s greatest selling point is the numerous literary and cultural allusions scattered throughout the book. The one on the grandest scale is the allusion to the Wizard of Oz, to which Rushdie has always had a great love for (he wrote a published essay on the Wizard of Oz.) Things are bad at home, so the main character must go off to a magical land to fix things, so everything at home will be well again. In the magical land, the main character must see the head honcho, but is given a mission to carry out which will save the magical land before any wishes are granted. Wait, which was I describing again? Oh, both.

Perhaps the most obvious allusion was to the Beatles. When Haroun gets to Gup City, he meets the Eggheads, who tell him that to have his wish granted, he needs an interview with the Walrus. Eggheads…Walrus…Beatles. Yes, Rushdie is a Beatles fan as well. It seems his references are also his preferences. When the shadow warrior stutters, he stutters the names of great writers: “‘Gogogol,’ he gurgled. ‘Kafkafka,’ he coughed.” Also, when some of the characters get deep in the dark side, they realize they are in the “heart of darkness”. And of course, there are Plentimaw fishes in the sea. (Say that one out loud if you are having trouble getting it.) Oh, thinly disguised, Rushdie, thinly disguised.

Rushdie also uses Hindustani words (and variations on them) throughout the book, mostly as names of characters. He provides a handy reference guide at the end of the book as to what those words/names mean. It was a neat touch, but I wish it had been at the beginning of the book, so I would have known to look for it.

A point of irony I must bring up. Rushdie, after having a fatwa issued on his head by an Ayatollah (Khomeini) of Iran, is safely housed by Britain. And yet, Rushdie takes a shot at the Royal Family…Iff the water genie tells Haroun “it’s not as if we really let our crowned heads do anything very important around here.” Ouch.

So, all in all, is it a good story? Well, it’s decent. If you are a die-hard Rushdie fan, check it out. If you are an occasional reader, don’t bother. Grab one of his other books (The Satanic Verses, Midnight’s Children.) Having read The Satanic verses, I know the importance and the beauty that Rushdie is capable of, and this book simply did not match up. While I enjoyed the literary allusions throughout, the book seemed rather stale, and I can’t imagine a child enjoying it. I do, however, think that it would make a really cool movie along the lines of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, or some other technicolor glory. So if you are a Hollywood movie producer…hire a screenwriter to adapt it, it’ll be a hit movie.

One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Originally published in1967, published in English in 1970 (trans. Gregory Rabassa). 432 p.

Rating: 5 stars

Summary: Marquez describes the fictional village of Macondo, from is founding through it’s rise and fall, as seen through the eyes of six generations of the Buendia family. The novel encompasses the wars, revolutions, governments, families, marriages, loves, births, deaths, and religions that complicate and/or enrich life along the way.

Review: This is the book that made Marquez famous, and undoubtedly a large part of the reason that he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982. The book is beautifully written, as always, by Marquez.

A high school English teacher of mine once told our class that there are really only two great themes in literature: those of sex and death. Thankfully, Marquez deals with both and more in this novel (and all of his other ones that I have read so far.)

I absolutely loved the reading of this book. It was never boring, never tedious, and the chapters always ended right when they needed to. In the same breath, I feel as if I have just read the entire history of a civilization. Oh wait, I have.

The Buendias are richly described characters, with personalities so specific that one could easily follow Ursula’s train of thought as she mused on how a younger Aureliano has the pensiveness of Colonel Aureliano Buendia, or how a younger Jose Arcadio has the size and strength and brashness of the original Jose Arcadio Buendia, or how there is yet another heartbreaking beauty that wants nothing to do with love or marriage or carnal pleasures.

The supporting cast-members, especially the female characters, are every bit as important as the blood Buendias. Pilar Ternera, Petra Cotes, Santa Sofia de la Piedad, and Fernanda del Carpio are the most important, being the lovers/the wives/the mothers of various Buendias. The role of women in the book is very interesting because Marquez really shows how much each of the women affect the family for better or worse, and how they affect the non-Buendia characters they come across. The women are stereotyped as Madonnas or whores (quite literally, some of the women die of old age yet are still virgins, while others of the women have roles as whores, and even though they bear and help raise children, are never considered equals in the family.)

One thing that I love about Spanish-language authors, and about Marquez in particular, is their use of magical realism. Although this novel doesn’t make as much use of it as some of Marquez’ other works, it makes its appearance in a heavenly disappearance, the presence of ghosts, and in the matriarch’s incredibly long lives. The two main matriarchs of the Buendia family, Ursula and Pilar Ternera, live well over 100 years, taking care of their family. Those are some strong women indeed. The magical realism elements are stylistic, but are appreciated as long as they are taken as something that although magical, had the possibility of actually happening.

The only part of the novel that I found regrettable is one that I also found charming: the character’s names. I was forever turning back to the family to figure out which “Aureliano” or which “Jose Arcadio” Marquez was talking about, and who their parents and grandparents were so that I could place them within the context of the other characters. All I can think is if there were multiples of most of the names, couldn’t more of them have had nicknames?

One interesting quirk about the novel: there is a character who is thought to be named Gabriel Marquez; we are told that his name is Gabriel (he is a friend of the second the last Aureliano) and that he bonds with Aureliano because of the friendship between their great-great grandfathers, Colonel Aureliano Buendia and Gerinaldo Marquez. A character named after himself…interesting.

In 1967, The New York Times’ William Kennedy hailed One Hundred Years of Solitude as "the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race." Although I’m not sure it should be required reading, it was damn good.

Statement of Intent

As an introduction to this blog, I would like to start with a statement of intent. As seen on the top of this page, Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, “...would that some charitable soul, after losing a great deal of time among the false books and alighting upon a few true ones, which made him happy and wise, would name those which have been bridges or ships to carry him safely over dark morasses and barren oceans, into the heart of sacred cities, into palaces and temples.”

In honor of Emerson, I plan to review all of the books that I read in the hopes that whomever finds themselves on this page will read my reviews and it will help them choose a worthy book to spend their time energy on.

The idea for this page was a combination of two things:

1. The idea of cataloguing all of the many books that I have read with my reaction to them, which I initially thought foolish due to the large volume of books that I do read, in addition to my OCD-behavior which would force me to re-examine every book that I had ever read in order to have a complete listing. (I am forcing myself to not review any books previously read)

2. First sighting of the book 1001 Books you Must Read Before You Die, edited by Peter Boxall. I immediately pounced on the book with Emerson’s quote (a quote which I live my life by) in the back of my head, with the idea that I would save myself time and trouble and bad reads. At the time this blog is being written, I have read in entirety 64 of the books on the list, and read excerpts from and seen film adaptations of many, many more of the books.
   

If any of you out there wonder about my qualifications, I have a B.A. in Writing, Literature, and Publishing from Emerson College (yes, the title and colors are a tribute to my alma mater,) and a bright future in publishing I’m sure.