jmadigan

• Rated 1 stars

“Thanks to his privileged upbringing, author Michael Gates Gill is handed a cushy job as an executive at a major advertising agency, but he has to sacrifice a lot of time with his family and opportunities for personal development to succeed. Eventually Gill is unceremoniously fired from that job for being too old and too expensive, and soon after THAT he has an affair that leaves him with a broken marriage and a new son. Gill is edging ever closer to being financially destitute when a 28-year old African American woman managing a Starbucks offers, almost accidentally, this old White man a job as a lowly Starbucks barista. And so begins How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else in which the author re-evaluates all of his assumptions about everything from what makes him happy to the ugliness of class and race inequality.

Okay, as far as memoirs go, this isn't a bad hook. It was good enough to make me read it, but the problem is that How Starbucks Saved My Life is so badly written and so badly executed on every level that it's a shoe-in for the worst book I'll read this year. The ONLY good thing about this book is that it's giving me the chance to use, without irony, the word "maudlin" to describe it.

This thing has all the art and subtlety of an After School Special for the geriatric set. Not only is the prose clumsy and boring, but I quickly got tired of Gates's patronizing amazement over everyday things that I can't believe any person of any intelligence would marvel over. A bucket full of soapy water? ASTOUNDING! People taking the subway to work? INCREDIBLE! A successful Black businesswoman? INCONCEIVABLE! Is he kidding? Does he really expect me to believe him when he claims his mind is blown by these kinds of things? (Answer: yes, he does.)
And that's not even the worst of it. In a blatant sign of an advertising man trying to turn serious author, Gill seems intent on explaining every single reaction or sentiment you're supposed to have in response to every one of his stilted expositions. After someone pays him a compliment, for example, Gill looks you in the figurative eye and tells you "This made me happy. Because blah blah blabity blah blah..." and he goes on for a whole paragraph explaining something that he thinks you're too emotionally retarded to pick up on by yourself. Generally every sentiment and insight and thought is telegraphed in this manner, with the author telling you exactly how you're supposed to feel or interpret the events of the story, the telling of which is often completely lost in this mawkish exposition.

And this isn't surprising, considering the author's background. He may be making change and scrubbing toilets now, but Gill's legacy as an advertising man is all too apparent. Worse, most of the book reads like some kind of stealth marketing for Starbucks, with everything --EVERYTHING-- about the place sold and oversold as some kind of realm of mythical happiness for hourly workers where the baristas belch sunshine and the espresso machines dispense unicorn giggles. With the single exception of one co-worker who tries to get Gill written up for mishandling his cash register, everyone he works with is an overflowing fount of happiness, good intentions, and sentimental epiphanies.

It's not that I mind some of these things or think these people can't exist, but the ENTIRE experience is unbelievably hyped and presented in such an artificially positive light that I no longer felt like I was reading an authentic memoir or even a halfway credible fiction, which is the same problem I had with A Million Little Pieces even if it skewed in a slightly different emotional direction. So it's not only poorly written, but transparently disingenuous as well. Like, I suppose, most other advertising.”

jmadigan wrote this review Friday, November 14 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

“The full title of the book here is Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, Super Heroes, and Make-Believe Violence. In it, author Gerard Jones presents a thesis that exposure to violence --especially fantasy violence-- is not unhealthy to children, but actually critical to proper emotional, social, and mental development. It's the inverse of the "violent media makes violent kids" angle that most of us are used to hearing, and it's pretty interesting and compelling in places.

Basically, Gerard's book boils down to the fact that when kids watch violent media, it helps them develop emotional coping mechanisms to work through the stressful and frightening things in their lives. When a kid picks up a coat hanger, points it at her playmates and pretends that it's a gun, she's not practicing for some future school shooting as much as coping with stressors in her life by feeling powerful and in control. The key is that the kid knows it's make believe and can tell the difference between, say, cracking someone on the head with a bat and having a mock sword fight with the empty cardboard tube. It's about facing and triumphing over their imaginary monsters. It's about the sense of power and control that this brings.

Gerard returns again and again to the point that kids are attracted to things that make them feel powerful in the face of what we adults may have forgotten is a very intimidating world. Whether it's Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, Pokemon, Superman, or professional wrestlers, kids dig it because humans like to feel powerful and safe. Jones even hits some impressive insights when he talks about why pop idols like Britney Spears infatuate little girls so much: Spears is, in some very important ways, just like the ass kicking Power Rangers. She moves around the stage with powerful, kinetic energy, with backup dancers and even the camera reacting extravagantly to every kick, punch, and hip thrust in her routine. Girls like that kind of power, and they like pretending to have it. It's just in a different package than ninjas, barbarians, or super heroes.

This is just one example of the kinds of things that Killing Monsters presents in ways that I wasn't used to, and I enjoyed seeing different perspectives and conclusions. Jones mixes in reports from his own workshops that he's done with children of various ages with real research done by psychologists, sociologists, and other scientists. And for someone not trained in as a scientist, Jones displays an impressive amount of acumen for understanding and critiquing research on the effects of violent media. Even though he may use different terms, I often caught Jones talking about things like the confirmatory information bias, overgeneralization, and selection bias in the research he examined. It's not just some dude with an opinion. It's some dude with an informed and thought out opinion.

So while I'm not about to sit down with my 4-year old daughter to watch the Die Hard trilogy with her, Killing Monsters has made me rethink some of my assumptions and I'm not about to freak out just because she points her fingers at me, makes "pew! pew!" sounds, and gleefully shouts "I KILLED YOU!" Instead, I'll just clutch my chest and fall down. She loves that.”

jmadigan wrote this review Friday, November 14 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

“The Diskworld books I've read so far have been lampoons of the high fantasy genre, and author Terry Pratchett keeps that up in this sixth book, Wyrd Sisters. He does, however, also head into some new territory by blending in some satire of Shakespeare in general and of Macbeth in specific. Indeed, he starts with the Macbeth references right off the bat by recreating the famous three witches scene and using it to introduce the three main characters of book: the truculent but ultimately good hearted Granny Weatherwax, the jovial and moderately ditzy Nanny Ogg, and the inexperienced and slightly naive Magrat Garlick.

Wyrd Sisters is the most tightly plotted Diskworld book I've read yet, with the three witches getting involved in shenanigans loosely based on the plots of Macbeth with a shot of Hamlet thrown in. There's the ghost of a murdered king, a lost heir, the aforementioned witches, a villainous usurper, a traveling band of thespians, and some really angry forest animals. Like the rest of Pratchett's stuff, it zips along and entertains along the way. If you don't laugh out loud, you're sure to at least smile every other page or so.

I wasn't impressed with Granny Weatherwax as a character when she debuted in Equal Rites, but here Pratchett seems to get a better feel for her and she's much more entertaining in the context of working among her peers and her hapless rivals. I liked watching the author work with the witches' idea of "headology," which roughly correlates to psychology and getting in the right state of mind to make things work. Using, by virtue of sheer stubbornness, an ordinary copper rod as a substitute for a magic sword in a demon-summoning ritual, for example, is a fun contrast to traditional witchcraft formulas, ceremonies, and occult flim-flam. Pratchett also has some fun contrasting the pastoral and humdrum kingdom of Lancre with more exciting (and, as it so happens, deadly) places like the city of Ankh-Morpork. My favorite part of the book was when the three witches attended a play for the first time in their lives and were completely flabbergasted by all the strangely dressed actors prancing around and thinking they could fool them into believing that they were kings and ghosts and such.

So it's fun stuff, different enough from previous books but familiar enough in tone and overall setting to be comfortable. I'm still a fan and I'm warming to Granny Weatherwax as a recurring character.”

jmadigan wrote this review Friday, November 14 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

“Some books work because they take you to new places you could never go on your own. This has, in my experience, included fantastical realms, outer space, periods of history long past, and Canada. Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time adds another place to that list: the mind of an autistic boy.

The story here is told in the first person by 15 year old Christopher Boon, who suffers from autism or, perhaps, the related Asperger syndrome; the novel never directly addresses the question. Christopher is a math wiz and has a phenomenal memory, but his condition leaves him with severe difficulties dealing with things like simultaneous multiple streams of information, new people, and the subtleties of everyday human communication. He also doesn't like anything yellow or brown, and he is completely incapable of getting emotional responses right or understanding (or caring about) the emotions of other people. Still, you get the sense that he's a good kid, and his dad loves him.

The book's plot starts off with Christopher trying to play detective and investigate the death (by pitchfork) of his neighbor's dog. Thus the title. That mystery quickly falls away as the main character's investigations accidentally put him on to another, bigger mystery dealing with the fate of his absent mother. Haddon cleverly constructs the book so that chapters alternately deal with Christopher's autism and his quest to solve these mysteries. One chapter, for example, will have Christopher discussing how he doesn't understand the concept of jokes or puns because he can't get his autistic head around the concept of a word meaning more than one thing at once, and then the subsequent chapter will continue on with the main plot until another interlude takes us back to the world of autism.

Both parts are engaging and what unfolds is a fascinating character study and a really enjoyable and emotionally satisfying bildungsroman about Christopher's mysteries and what their resolution means for him and his family life. I'm no expert on autism, but the novel at least feels to me to be really genuine in that area, and even if it's not it's unarguably compelling to see it all described from Christopher's point of view. I also loved how the affective punch of the story was actually heightened given its narration by someone as emotionally distant, logical, and clear-headed as an autistic boy. I felt for his family even if he was incapable of it, and that created an unusual dramatic tension. It's really well crafted and a surprisingly good debut for a new novelist. And yes, you do find out who killed the dog.”

jmadigan wrote this review Friday, November 14 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 3 stars

“Mary Roach's Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex is a book about sex. Well, sort of. It's not erotica or a how-to manual or an exploration of sexuality in our culture or an examination of sex in the media, though it does touch on some of those things a little bit. Rather, Bonk is the history of the scientific study of sex. It's also very funny.

You may be unsurprised to find out that sex as a research subject has a history of taboos and upturned noses once you stray outside of reproductive and making babies territory. Studying the practical plumbing is one thing, though Roach does point out that aspiring gynecologists used to have to learn their crafts by working on cadavers, and even when dealing with the real thing they had to work by feel without looking. But the study of sex and sexuality for their own sake got a much slower start, thanks in no part to the many weird and uncomfortable and unconventional places it goes.

And go there you shall, curious reader. Roach is fearless and unapologetic in her exploration of the field, and she shines her light right up into some pretty shocking places. This was both great and not so great for me. I found the chapters on sex machines and the people who make them weirdly fascinating, and the chapter about how the author talked her husband into traveling to Europe to take part first hand (so to speak) in a study that used ultrasound machines to get cross-sections of the coital act was hilariously awkward. She throws herself into the research in other places, such as touring a prosthetics (and I mean "prosthetics" here) factory, and getting personal with people who attend meetings of people who build homemade sex machines. But then again, there was only so much discussion I could take when it came to monkey orgasms, genital surgery, and other things I'd rather not even write about here. I'm no prude, but it didn't take long for me to get my fill of those topics, which Roach goes into with incredible detail.

The best part of the book, though, is Roach's style, because she is the most entertaining science writer I've come across this side of Bill Bryson. She is possessed of a sharp wit and great sense of humor about all this, which goes a long way towards keeping the weird and traditionally private topics approachable and easier to relate to. And it's not of the sophomoric "boobies, tee hee!" variety, either (well, sometimes, but not often). Instead, Roach makes effective use of footnotes and asides to make jokes about not only the people she's reporting on, but also to make self-deprecating quips at her own expense since she's not as far out there as the people she's researching. In short, Roach manages just the right mixture of factual science reporting and wry humor. I laughed out loud many times during this book, and that's got to count for something.”

jmadigan wrote this review Thursday, August 21 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 2 stars

“In American Nerd: The Story of My People author Benjamin Nugent starts off with a great premise. He aims to trace the origin of the nerd stereotype, see how it developed, examine how it's depicted in popular culture, and see how it's entangled with our thinking about masculinity, technology, intelligence, and outsiders. It is a great premise, one in which I no doubt have somewhat of a vested interest. But unfortunately after some early successes Nugent seems to run out of material and just starts to kind of wander. And I'll let you in on a little secret: he's not really a nerd.

As I said, American Nerd starts off strong. Nugent traces the history of the nerd stereotype back all the way to the days of Jane Austin novels and little geeky guys who like to play with lizards. And the author even approaches some real insights when discussing the phenomenon of "Christian masculinity" that swept through America during the early part of the 20th century and provided a flipside to contrast the nascent nerdegalian. We're given examples of what kinds of people nerds were through the decades and how the distinction rose alongside the rising crest of technology and national emphasis on science and math during the early days of the Cold War. We even get into the etymology of the word "nerd" itself, seeing how it grew out of terms like "greaser" or "nurd" until it settled into the national vernacular. This is fascinating stuff!

Unfortunately, about halfway through the book, Nugent seems to just run out of things like this to talk about, and he starts ticking off chapters dedicated to traditionally nerdy topics: Dungeons & Dragons, video games, the Society for Creative Anachronisms (think people who live in a perpetual Renaissance fair), high school debate teams, science fiction conventions, computers, and the like. Some desultory attempts are made at linking these various topics by examining what they have in common and searching for a deeper understanding of their appeal to nerds, but it never really coalesces. They're sometimes interesting as little vignettes, but not much beyond that.

It's about this point that one begins to realize that Benjamin Nugent's credentials are suspect and he isn't a nerd. At best he's a former nerd, someone who played a little D&D and maybe a little Nintendo as a latch key kid, and he has a perplexing habit of conflating nerdiness with having a lousy home life as a kid. His perspective on all the aforementioned nerdy topics seems very much to be as an outside researcher looking in, having to interview people and try really hard to understand why they're so into science fiction or video games. A real nerd would, so to speak, grok such things inherantly and sharpen the narrative through his own experiences. But there's very little of that. It's more like listening to your friend try to explain the local customs of a place they passed through on vacation once rather than someone who lived there for years.

As a result of all this, the early parts of the book that rely on pure research are the best, but the later parts and the overriding intent of understanding the nerd pathos and subculture falls short by quite a ways.”

jmadigan wrote this review Tuesday, August 19 2008. ( reply | permalink )

1 of 2 members found this review helpful.

• Rated 2 stars

“Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life is Steve Martin's autobiography about how he broke into show business and stand-up comedy during the 70s. Like most biographies, it starts off discussing Martin's early family life in Southern California and how he go bitten by the entrainment bug at a young age, doing magic tricks at a Disney World magic emporium and then working his way up to amateur night at local clubs doing a curious mix of stand-up, banjo playing, magic, and fearless idiocy. From there we get to see how Martin worked really hard to develop his act and refine it until he was writing for comedy TV shows, selling out stadiums, and igniting catch phrases nation wide on Saturday Night Live.

Oddly, the book has Martin as its secondary focus and almost a supporting character to the real star of the tale: his act. Though we do get plenty of autobiographical details, the author's attention is clearly on his stand-up act and how it developed through trial, error (lots of error), experimentation, and good old fashioned play. Martin discusses his philosophical approach to comedy and how he periodically had to step back and re-examine his act to see if it still fit with the cultural zeitgeist of the times (this was the 70s, after all). We also get interesting trivia about some of his iconic props, such as the white suit that he bought simply because it would make easier to see on a large stage. And eventually Martin explains why he got fed up with his own success and why he walked away from it, never to return.

It's not a bad story, but ultimately I felt unsatisfied with it, feeling as it did like the first segment of a complete biography. I wanted to learn more about Martin's years as a movie star, a producer, a writer, and an SNL regular. I wanted to know more about his personal life in addition to his professional one. Instead Martin just cuts things off at the knees and says "Nope, this book is about my stand-up career. That's all you're getting." I also felt that Martin's attempts at sentimentality were ham fisted and somehow cliche, particularly the whole estranged daddy syndrome that he ultimately comes to terms with on his father's death bed.

But even though his comedy seems a little dated and tame compared to the genetically engineered super comedians that modern science produces these days, the story of Martin's stand-up career is compelling enough to carry a short book like this one, and it's worth a quick read.”

jmadigan wrote this review Tuesday, August 19 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

“Well, how to describe Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov? Those in touch with popular culture may know that this book is about a Humbert Humbert, a middle-aged man who is old world european, educated, dapper, and a pedofile obsessed with what he calls "nymphets" --girls between the ages of 9 and 14. Through a series of misadventures in 1947 he is introduced to a 12 year old girl nicknamed Lolita, who he is immediately obsessed with. From there he begins conniving ways to seduce and steal this new nymphette, but it turns out that Lolita is not quite as innocent as you might think.

Far from an endorsement of pedophilia, Lolita's Humbert (who narrates the tale from first person) is drawn in clear, bold lines as not an underdog, not an antihero, but a clear-cut villain. He is derisive of everything and everyone else around him (particularly all things Americana), he is tretcherous, he is limitless in his self-deceit (especially when it comes to the ignobility of his desires), he is cruel, and he is generally really screwed up in the head. What he does to Lolita --robbing her of her innosense and childhood, no matter how precocious and even mean spirited she is-- is really sad to see. And then of course there are his plans for drugging her into unconsciousness so he can have her way with her. That's kind of bad.

But because Nabokov's writing is so masterful and he makes Humbert so strangely charming, a lot of the appeal of the book is flowing along with this beautiful prose and being carried by it closer to Humbert's mind so that even if you don't sympathize with him (and generally only misanthropic perverts would) you do get to see the complexities of his character and his motivations. It's ugly, but at the same time it's beautifully and impressively crafted and. I really can't overstate the beautiful, flowing, and elegant quality of Nabokov's writing here, and it's all the more impressive because English isn't even his native language. Here, look at this famous passage that describes Humbert and Lolita lounging in the drawing room of Lolita's mother's bording house:

"She was musical and apple-sweet. Her legs twitched a little as they lay across my live lap; I stroked them; there she lolled on in the right-hand corner, almost asprawl, Lola, the bobby-soxer, devouring her immemorial fruit, singing through its juice, losing her slipper, rubbing the heel of her slipperless foot in its sloppy anklet, against the pile of old magazines heaped on my left on the sofa—and every movement she made, every shuffle and ripple, helped me to conceal and improve the secret system of tactile correspondence between beast and beauty—between my gagged, bursting beast and the beauty of her dimpled body in its innocent cotton frock."

It's downright weird how that can be so beautiful and so disgusting at the same time.

What also struck me about the book was how funny it was. Well, darkly funny. REALLY darkly funny. Humbert Humbert is almost farcicle in his disdain for everything around him (save Lolita), and combined with his silver tongue and sense of European dignity this leads to some reasonably amusing rants on his part as he and Lolita criss-cross the United States on a year-long road trip. Humbert is also often undone by his own manners and perverted predilections in comical ways that in another context would paint him as a classic, downtrodden sad sack. All in all, the book is a masterful mixture of comedy, tragedy, and good old fashioned "ick." And it's worth it just to marvel at the prose alone.”

jmadigan wrote this review Tuesday, August 19 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 3 stars

“The full title of this book by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams is Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, and it sets out to describe pretty much that --how the Internet and other information technology are creating new business models that capitalize on collaboration, sharing, the wisdom of crowds (so to speak) and distributed work. It's a fascinating topic that anyone who has ventured onto the Internet can see is huge, yet the authors of this particular work seem so caught up in their own breathless hyperbole and big ideas that I had to check a calendar to make sure it wasn't the year 2000 again. As critical as their wikinomics is to commerce and culture, they still manage to oversell it.

Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of interest in Wikinomics. The book is at its best when it's telling you stories about companies that exemplify the collaborative models they introduce in the book, like the Goldcorp, gold mining company that dumped the entirety of its geological database onto the Internet and said "Okay, there you go. Cash monies for whoever can tell us the best place to dig for gold." And it worked. Really worked. There were also several chapters of interest on computer culture legends like Linux and Internet staples like Wikipedia, Flickr, YouTube, Second Life, and Amazon.com. This is where the book is at its best, telling you how these endeavors came to be and they they used the wikinomics principles to succeeded where their competitors (when they had them) failed. They even throw descriptions of a few tricks of wikinomics at play in places you might not expect them, such as in more aged companies like Proctor and Gamble.

And all this stuff makes sense. I've seen first-hand what can come of providing your fans with the ability to create content, collaborate, and share specialized knowledge. When I worked at GameSpy, a startup company at least partially dedicated to videogame fandom, the company built itself on the backs of people running fan sites and organizing online (and real life) communities around their favorite videogames. And the book makes good cases for how even companies whose products are NOT 1s and 0s can benefit from these principles, like outsourcing difficult research problems, using and developing open source software, or drawing on Creative Commons licenses.

The problem, however, is that the authors of Wikinomics are too busy chugging their own Kool-Aid to take a step back and get some perspective. They literally say things like how these principles --not the Internet or the computer, but just these principles of collaboration through them-- is as big a deal as the printing press or the Enlightenment-with-a-capital-E. No, really, I'm not putting words in their mouths, they really say this. Throughout all the discussions, the implication and sometimes even the flatly stated proclamation is that companies who aren't doing these things are going to die --quickly and spectacularly. Keep in mind that we're not talking about whether companies use e-mail or have a web site. The authors are saying that there is no business that won't rely on these specific collaborative techniques to prosper. Tell me if that doesn't seem like a bit of an overstatement.

Relatedly, it kind of irked me that the authors gave so little --some, but ultimately little-- consideration to the dark side of all this. They seemed to underplay the effect of everything from annoying trolls to saboteurs to corporate espionage, all of which are made possible or exacerbated by the kinds of business practices they discuss. This isn't a huge point, but it's something that I don't feel like they honestly or completely addressed.

Still, Wikinomics is worth a read for the parts that give examples and mini-bios on many of the Internet companies that you probably not only have heard of, but use. You'll just need a pinch or two of salt for the rest.”

jmadigan wrote this review Friday, August 8 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

“Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants is one of those books I'm kind of split on. Set in America during the Great Depression, the book tells the story of Jacob Jankowski, a young man who drops out of veterinary school just shy of graduation in the face of personal tragedy. Adrift and dazed, he joins a second-rate circus, almost by accident. After slumming around with the "working men," Jankowski is hired on as the show's vet when his training comes to light. From this new position he quickly falls into a love triangle between one of the show's performers and her alternately charming and vicious husband.

The bulk of the novel deals with this romance and the tension that arises as Jankowski both falls in love with the performer and befriends her husband. What I really enjoyed wasn't necessarily this story, though. Gruen seems to have done a lot of homework about traveling circuses during the Depression-with-a-capital-D, and what I liked most was this look at how things probably really were. Jankowski's is not a romanticized tale of running off to join the circus; it's a dirty, crass, slovenly, desperate, cruel, gritty, and sometimes dangerous world that Gruen does a pretty good job of pulling us into with her own blend of storytelling, narration, and explanation of certain ugly customs and harsh business practices. It's a whole new world of its own, and it was fun to get drawn into it.

It also helps that Jankowski and, to a lesser degree, his romantic rival are are interesting and strong enough characters to hold your attention. The former obviously has a stubborn streak as wide as an elephant, yet he also has noble intentions and is genuinely tortured by his infatuation with a married woman. He's flawed but noble, plus he has an elephant.

That all being said, there was one aspect of the book that really didn't work for me. Gruen punctuates the above tale of Jankowski's circus adventure with scenes of him in the present day at age 90 or so. Jankowski is locked up in a nursing home where he has to endure things like surly nurses, young (as in 85 or so) upstarts, and his general lack of freedom. Basically, it's every bad cliche you can think of about nursing homes and the elderly, and it's almost embarrassingly trite. Gruen surrounds the book's real and vastly more enjoyable story in this nursing home tale like an ugly wrapper, and I got to the point where I groaned every time such an interlude intruded upon my entertainment. After the first few, I just started skimming the bits with the elderly Jankowski to get back to the good parts. I get what Gruen was trying to do here, but her execution seemed so trite and so cliched that I think the book would have been better without the nursing home chapters at all, else she should have reduced them to abbreviated bookends for the central tale.

Still, it's good enough if you can just ignore what doesn't work and focus on what does.”

jmadigan wrote this review Monday, August 4 2008. ( reply | permalink )