Vox Publica

"The Hamilton Case" was another book I picked up after reading the Salon review. It's about the life of a Ceylonese lawyer and it's first told as an autobiography, later as a straight omniscient-writer narrative and finally as a letter from an acquaintance. Salon sold the book as a mystery (which is why I picked it up), but the mysteries in the book were minor and relatively unimportant. Not necessarily to the narrative, but to the reader. Ultimately we don't really care who killed Hamilton.

"The Hamilton Case" was not an easy book for me to read. I'll be the first to admit that I'm a lazy reader (I'm a lazy everything), and that I don't want to concentrate in every word as a clue to the action. But if you don't in this book, you run the risk of missing important pieces of the puzzle of Sam's (the protagonist) life. That's because the author mostly hints about things, or states them so furtively that they're easy to overlook. For example, by the end of the book I'm left with the impression that Sam molested his sister, but I don't really know that. I'm also unable to judge what exactly happened with baby Leo, and what did it mean to the future relationship between Sam and his sister Claudia. So heed my advise, if you read this book, do it slowly and pay attention.

Still, there were many things I liked about the book. For one, it introduced me in an intimate, and openly biased and incompletely manner, to a culture I know almost nothing about. A trip to the UC Berkeley library is in order, not only to pick up a book about the cultural revolution in China but now one on Sri Lankan history.

The distance with which the author kept Sam bothered me somewhat, as I felt I never could get inside the man. Apparently, however, neither could he. His struggle to see himself and present himself a certain way precluded self-understanding, something that hit home. His fear of being judged had made him very judgemental (and therefore unpleasant), a trait I unfortunately share with him. Still, Sam was mostly a very lonely man. I didn't grasp enough about the myteries of his youth to understand wholy as to why. Did his mother reject him after she thought that he'd killed the baby? Or had she reject him anyway, not being much of the motherly type? Were his issues, rather, brought on by the strange nature of a boy's school, where little kids are set off to compete with one another and more sensitive kids, who can't grasp the social game or don't have the skills to play it, are forever left behind? If you judge just by the talk shows, it seems the slights of youth can be so deep as to completely define us as adults.

Most of the characters in this book were disagreeable and unpleasant, and yet when they encountered their comeuppances (mostly the loneliness of being rejected by those they had been too self-involved to reach earlier in life) I couldn't but feel sorry for them. Self-involvement is a horrible thing, but so is loneliness. And yet, how could it be any other way? The harshness of the characters obviously came from hurt and their main flaws were that they were too weak, and had been too alone, to get over them.

The end of the book brought on a different and somewhat unconnected delight, the observation that we are prone to interpret life in literary terms. Years before Hamilton, a British farmer, had been murdered and the explanations that Sam and others came up with were unconsiously straight out of the mystery novels, they themselves delighted on. Maybe it's not so much that life imitates art, as that our interpretations of life are influenced by our exposure to art.

In all, I enjoyed the book though even reading as I did it, it was work. Still, I think the images and thoughts of Sam and his family will remain with me for a long time.

The Ghost Writer was another great recommendation from Salon, many of the books I'm reading come from their recommended list and I have to say that they get it right more often than not. I thoroughly enjoyed this book for what it was and it didn't bring about any thoughts about anything in my life or the world around it, which is probably a relief to you, my reader :) Alas, this is a book that's very hard to discuss without giving out its "secret" so I'm going to do it. If you haven't read the book, don't read this "review", read Salon's and then get the book yourself.

Anyway, the Ghost Writer is about a Gerard, boy who lives with his mother in some little town in Australia. His mother loves to talk about her life growing up in a mansion in England, but she's very dodgy about the details. After he, as a young curious boy, breaks into a drawer in her room and discovers a ghost story written by her grandma and a picture of her, the mother never talks about her childhood again. About this time, he also starts a correspondence with a pen friend named Alice, a little girl who's lost her parents and the use of her legs in an accident and who writes to him from a rehabilitation home, much like the house her mother grew up in, also in England.

As he grows up, he eschews normal relationships in favor of his friendship (which has turned into a romance) with Alice, alas she refuses to let him see her until she can walk again, which happens by the end of the story. He also becomes more and more fascinated about his family secrets, all the more after his mother dies and after much searching he finds another story by his great-grandmother. Before she died, his mother had said a few words on her sleep about her great-grandmother, that she wrote ghost stories "and one of them came true".

I'm not a huge fan of ghost stories per se, I love horror movies but I have never particularly sought after ghost stories. I had to read The Turn of the Screw in college and found it painfully boring. Probably my problems with the genre go back to the fact that I'm a lazy reader, I like to read action or dialogue and grow quickly bored with descriptions which I like to skim. So much of these books is about atmosphere that skimming them pretty much ruins the effect - that this didn't happen in this book, by the end of it I was genuninely frightened, says much about the powerful writing style of Mr. Harwood.

But even though the book contains four ghost stories in it - all delicious and progressively scarier -, the book itself is not a ghost story. The reader is supposed to believe it is, mostly based on the advanced press and other reviews of the book, but also based on the admonition by the mother "one of them came true", and by the end of the story Gerard himself is almost convinced that there are ghosts (but his skepticism, rather than annoy us should guide us - why are we so ready to accept supernatural explanations for things when more parrochial explanations would do?). But there aren't (and here comes the spoiler, stop reading!), instead he's been the object of the cruelest of jokes by his previously unknown and ravingly mad aunt Anne.

After his mother dies, Gerard puts an ad in a British paper asking for information on his mother. He receives a letter from a woman who tells him that she was the best friend of his mother's sister, Anne. His mother had always claimed to be an only child, so this came to a big shock to him. The letter detailed how Anne and Phyllis (Gerard's mother) had been orphaned as children and brought up by their grandmother Viola (the writer of ghost stories) and their aunt Iris. When Anne was 21 or so she became engaged to a young man, and then suddenly broke the engagement. Her grandmother had already died and soon after her aunt did as well. Before she died, Iris had disinherited Phyllis and passed on the house to Anne. Soon after Anne made a will leaving all her property to her friend (the letter writer) and then promptly disappeared. The friend hadn't heard anything about her in over forty years. She suggested that Gerard went to London, look into the old house and try to find out what happened.

Gerard rushes to London, figuring he can kill to birds with one stone, figured out he mystery of his family and finally meet Alice, the love of his life. In addition to looking at the house, he does a lot of research at the records office and finds out about births and deaths in his family, interesting enough there are no birth or death certificates for Alice and her parents, as well as no notices of the accident. He's suspicious, though he hangs to the possibility that they are from Scotland. There is also no death certificate for Anne, though there is a birth certificate for another Gerard, a baby born to his mother who died in infancy. He had been guided to look for it by what he is then suspecting to have been a ghost.

Most of his enquiries take place in the old, laberynthical, abandoned mansion, where after much prying - he's by now an expert in finding hidden cabinets and recesses - he finds another ghost story by Viola, some of her letters as well as some of the missing pages to another of her ghost stories and finally, Anne's diary. Through all of this, we find out that Anne has come across her grandmother's story, written (I think) before they were born (or when they were very little) and is beginning to be frightened by the parallels between the story and her own life. In the story, two orphaned sisters grow up in a large house with their aunt and uncle, and Cordelia, the older, is given a strange legacy consisting of the paintings of her grandmother's lover. A lawyer is sent to make sure they are being kept well, they fall in love but their love turns tragic when he becomes obsessed by one of the paintings and at the same time falls for her sister. Anne sees herself as Cordelia, even more so when the young man who comes to value the paintings at their home has a name starting with the same initial as Cordelia's boyfriend. She starts a relationship with him and they duely become betrohed. Then, according to her diary at least, she starts to suspect that the story's tale of betrayal is also paralleling her life, and finally finds that her sister is having an affair with her boyfriend.

Reading all of this, Gerard comes to the unpleasant conclussion that his mother killed her sister Anne, though I'm not exactly sure why he thinks so. I have to admit that by the end of the book I was so tired that I was skimming more than usual. In addition, I was rushing to get to the end, too frightened and too curious to go to sleep without a conclussion. I don't think I fell asleep until well after 1 AM. So if I get the details of the end wrong, you will have to excuse me. If you've read the book and care to comment by all means do so.

Anyway, Gerard finds himself in the house one more time, hearing voices, having faining spells and so on. Finally he ends up being locked in the basement where he reads what are claimed to be Anne's last words, written on the finale to the ghost story. Anne claims that she has been locked in the basement by her sister Phillys and left to die there. You have to wonder, then, where her corpse is.

In any case, Gerard manages to figure out a way to escape but ends up in a frightening confrontation with what appears to be a ghost. I skimmed these last pages, but basically what I think happens is that the ghost is actually Anne. For many years she has been working on her revenge against Phillys. Apparently, when Anne's suspicions of Phyllis affair with her boyfriend grew, she decided to kill her (or injure her) in the most grotesque manner. Her grandfather had obtained a contraption that worked as an early X-ray machine. Alas, it produced terrible radiation and machines of that type had been responsible for the deaths and burnings of many people by then. So Anne put the contraption in the panelling between their two rooms and connected it to Phyllis' night lamp. When Phyllis turned it on to read in bed, the contraption would turn on and she would start being exposed to the radiation. Anne's bed was on the other side of the panelling, but she knew to keep away from her bed when the light in her sister's room was on. Alas, one night the light bulb blue off but the machine stayed on. Anne went to sleep on her bed and received all the radiation, which caused her terrible problems and years of rehabilitation. Phyllis, meanwhile, wasn't in her room as she was sleeping with Anne's boyfriend.

When Anne discovered what happened she went crazy (if she wasn't already). She killed her boyfriend (thoughs he claims he fell down the stairs) and probably buried him in the basement. Phyllis, pregnant by then, didn't know anything and continued looking for him. We don't know what drove Phyllis to leave the house, or when exactly she did. She had her baby and the baby died (of neumonia, according to Anne, but who knows!). At some point Phyllis must have realized what Anne had done or that she had gone crazy and had fled to live a quiet life in Australia, where she remained always in fear that something would happened. Or maybe it wasn't Anne she feared but ghosts.

Meanwhile Anne's revenge wasn't done. By her own admission she didn't go after her sister because her fear and exile was punishment enough, instead she took it out on her nephew. Pretending to be a pen-friend, Alice, she befriended him and betwitched him for years, keeping him away from any chance of friendship and love. Then, prettending to be that friend whose personality she probably took over as soon as she left her house, she wrote to him and sent him on that chase for family secrets which would end up with her pretending to be a ghost and frightening him almost to death.

Anyway, it was great. What I don't understand is how this could be Harwood's first novel. I saw his picture on the flap, this is not a young guy. What has he been doing all these years? Did it take him forever to finish this novel or has he been wasting his talent on non-fiction and poetry all along? I can only hope he'll be quicker with his next offering.

I came across "The Sari Shop" in the "New Books" shelf at my local public library. I like reading fiction from around the world, and our library gets a fair number of books written by Indian writers for English-speaking audiences. I don't know if this is because of the demographics of San Leandro, the particular preferences of our librarians or the fact that literature - like so many technical and service jobs - has been outsourced to India. No matter, I enjoy reading these books and "The Sari Shop", a first time effort by novelist Rupa Bajwa, was no exception.

“The Sari Shop” is not as much a story as a quick glance into the lives of the fictional employees and customers of the best sari ship in Amritsar. It focuses on Ramchand, a young man who, left orphan as a child, was unable to get an education and considers himself quite lucky to have a job at a sari shop. He is painfully poor and at the start of the story he seems to be content enough with his fate, though later he gains some ambition to at least educate himself a little better. He tries hard to learn English, though ultimately this added knowledge seems useless to him. He also awakes to the plights of the people around him - only to find out there is nothing he can do to help them, cultural and class walls being too impenetrable for his simple efforts.

The conclusion, and indeed, the whole book is rather Chekhovian - though the writing style reminded me more of Agatha Christie - and the book did make me feel that India was primed for a communist revolution (though I imagine that it innoculated itself against that danger in past generations by having quasi-socialist governments). But mostly, I felt this was a story I’d been told before; setting it in an Indian context added color but I’m not sure anything else. And yet, I can’t help but wonder if I’m missing something. In a clearly self-referencing note, one of Bajwa’s characters, a rich, intelligent woman who is a main customer of the sari shop, writes a novel about a sari shop after meeting and being inspired by Ramchand. It’s clear that she doesn’t know him and that all that can go into her story are her distant impressions of a life she can never hope, and doesn’t seem to want, to understand. That she is using him, his life, his story is clear - that she is doing it while she and her class are living off the labor and misery of Ramchand and his class - seems like adding insult to injury. What is not clear to me is why, with her explicit understanding of the exploitative nature of writing about the poor, Bajwa would do it nonetheless. Though perhaps the whole book, the whole story, was nothing but silken wrapping for this point - it certainly reverberates with me days after - and if so my hat goes off to her.

I want to go back to Egypt. Yes, whatever the literary merit of Arthur Phillips' novel "The Egyptologist,” when push comes to shove what I'm left with is an irrepressible desire to go back to the lands of the Nile. If I could go back circa 1922, when the main events of the novel were based, so much the better. Indeed, my friend Lola and I used to have fantasies of being Porter and Moss and traveling through the sands of Egypt in a jeep cataloguing and adventuring. The promises of the Egyptian desert, which we could taste, even as undergraduates, are difficult to forget. Lola and I are making plans to spend a couple of months exploring Egypt in a few years, when her options vest and my kids are old enough that I can leave them for a while.

As a former wanna-be-Egyptologist I strongly empathized with Ralph Trilipush, the protagonist of "The Egyptologist". That Trilipush is a dilettante, whose dreams of glory far overshadow any scholastic interest, is apparent from the beginning. But this was an age when archaeology was just beginning to differentiate itself from treasure hunting and it’s hard to begrudge him his enthusiasm. His main obsession is on discovering the tomb of the apocryphal king Atum-hadu “Atum is Aroused”, the purported author of the “Admonitions”, a series of short poems which in Trilipush’s translation, at least, have a definite pornographic bent. Trilipush has staked his reputation, as it is, in the existence of the tomb and his faith on his ability to discover it, win fame and fortune and prove all his detractors wrong is indomitable and will pull him through difficulties getting financing and permits and other troubles and to the bitter end. Trilipush’s arrogance makes him a less than likable character, but I couldn’t but be touched by his enormous self-delusion and wonder how many of us operate under similar beliefs.

While Trilipush pushes forward in his quest to discovering Atum-hadu’s tomb, an Australian detective, Harold Ferrell, crosses his path while investigating the disappearance of a former-soldier and Egyptology-lover with whom Trilipush had a close friend in common. Ferrell’s suspicions about Trilipush lead him to put inset himself into his life back in Boston, and ultimately badly affect Trilipush.

Both Trilipush and Ferrell are played for laughs, Trilipush as the arrogant dilettante who takes himself too seriously and Ferrell as a greedy fellow who is not nearly as smart as he seems himself to be. But the characters are very human, and perhaps that’s what makes the book so amusing and such a pleasant read.

In all, I had to say that I enjoyed it very much and couldn’t wait to get back to it whenever I could.

I start many books that I don't finish, sometimes because I don't like the writing and sometimes, in the case of nonfiction, because I don't trust the authors. Here are some of such books:

Fiction

Mystery

Jonathan Gash - The Ten Word Game
I didn't like the writing style, too choppy for my taste.

Non-Fiction

James C. Davis - The Human Story
I've long wanted to read a "history of the world", that would give me a general idea of how we've gotten where we are and would fill up the great gaps in my historical knowledge (i.e. the history of Africa, East and Central Asia and Eastern Europe). This book wasn't it. It's written in such a simplistic style that it reminded me of a paper by a 3rd grader. The sentences are unbelievably short and the vocabulary is not beyond that of a kindergardener. That makes the book terribly tedious to read. But beyond that, the book starts with prehistory - something that I know something about - and its approach to the early history of man is also so simplistic, so full of holes and misplaced emphasis that I found it misleading. If I can’t trust Mr. Davis to tell me the history I know, I certainly can’t trust him to tell me the history I don’t know. If you read this and know of a good world history book, I’d love the recommendation.

Our baby daughter Camila has been suffering from bouts of bad gas that make her cry and shriek in pain. It's heartbreaking and frustrating to see her suffer so, so when I came across Why Is My Baby Crying? : The Parent's Survival Guide for Coping with Crying Problems and Colic by Barry Lester of the Colic Clinic, at the library, I was quick to pick it up and read it. It was a complete waste of time.

Camila, fortunately, does not seem to suffer from colic, at least under the old definition which suggested that colic was unconsolable crying that lasted for at least 3 hours a day, was happening for at least 3 days a week and had been going on for at least 3 weeks. Wisely, Dr. Lester rejects this definition which would have parents endure 27 hours of crying before they could even call it colic (though he does so because he believes so much crying is "normal", affecting about 20% of babies) and instead offers a diagnosis of crying based on its sudden onset, the quality of the cry (often a pain cry), its physical signs (pulling legs to chest, getting doubled over, holding breath, red face, etc.) and its inconsolability. More importantly, he looks at the consequences of the crying and determines its colic if it causes "clinically significant distress in the family or impairment in the infant". Under that definition, you could say that Camila has colic.

Diagnosing her is of little use, however, if there is nothing that can be done about it. Apparently there is treatment for colic, Dr. Lester writes about his success stories at the Infant Development Center in Rhode Island at length. But the book offers few hints as to what such treatment might be. In some anecdotes, children with colic were diagnosed with GER, given Zantac and had their parents hold them semi-reclined after feedings and elevate the heads of their cribs - but these seem to be a minority of children who suffer colic. Advice for other cases is scant. The one thing that does come through is that parents should not be blaming themselves, and that they should leave the baby with a babysitter at least once a week and get a breather and an opportunity to work on their relationship. That's useful advice for any new parents, but doesn't do much to help the baby.

I did learn one useful thing from the book: to distinguish between regular cries and cries of pain. The latter are "high-pitched, loud, and of sudden onset and include long periods of breath-holding " - a great description of Camila's cries when (IMHO) she has gas. But again, the book provides no hints as to how I can help Camila through the pain.

It's not surprising that the book has no information as to what causes colic, nobody seems to know, but it does make the title of the book a little deceptive. After reading it I have no more clue as to why Camila is crying than before. Indeed, the book seems to dismiss the idea that these pain cries are due to gas (though as she often passes gas immediately after shrieking, I do think they are strongly linked) but offers no other explanations.

Dr. Lester's purpose in writing the book seems to be to make parents of colicky children feel better: it's not your fault, take care of yourself and each other, and this too shall pass. Great, but what do we do in the meanwhile?

Dr. Lester is not the only expert with a take on colic. An article in the New York Times earlier this week discusses the new thinking on colic, much of it by researchers who do not come close to agreeing with each other.

r. Ronald G. Barr, a pediatrician and leading authority on colic at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, for example, argues that babies with colic are not in pain and that their cries do not sound different from other cries. Obviously, he's never heard Camila. He thinks colic is a stage of normal development that babies will outgrow. I don't disagree with that - but again, I want to know what to do to help Camila until she outgrows it.

Dr. Ian St. James-Roberts, an expert in child development at the University of London Institute of Education, also believes that colic is normal and caused by changes in the brain that occur at around 6 weeks in development. That makes sense and should explain some type of crying, but not the tensed up, red-faced, expanded stomach, clenched fist shrieking that Camila undergoes between bouts of gas passing. Dr. James-Roberts advise to parents is to try to soothe the babies but if the crying persists to walk away. That, I think, is a usually a bad idea both for parents and babies. Even if a baby continues crying, you can't discount the possibility that the baby is comforted by his parents attempts to soothe him or even by their mere prescence. Abandoning the baby to his own misery will definitely not comfort him and is likely to send the message that his parents don't care for him. At the same time, as horrible as crying is, I think parents need to learn to deal with it, accept it and accept their own limitations and not just walk away from it or from other parenting situations that they cannot fix.

Finally comes Dr. Harvey Karp with his book The Happiest Baby on the Block (which I haven't read). His approach is to see the first 3 months of a baby's life as the fourth trimester of pregnancy and try to calm babies by approximating the conditions of the womb as much as possible. He suggests that babies be first swaddled, then held in one's arms or on one's lap and rolled onto their side or stomach, then LOUDLY shushing them in their ear, then jiggling them and finally giving them a finger to suck. Apparently doing these things in order is what helps. There are no studies that confirm his method works, but his books has gotten mostly positive reviews at Amazon.

In all, the New York Times article has convinced me that babies cry for different reasons and that it doesn't help to see "colic" as one syndrome. Instead, the different types of colic should be studied and treatment options developed.

As for me, I'll continue looking for ways to make my baby's gas get better.

When I moved my old blog to a private directory and started this one from scratch, I left much of my "public" writing behind, including my reports of books I liked (and didn't like). I do love to give book recommendations, however, so I'm reposting here my "reviews" of some mystery books I enjoyed reading over the last year.

I'll Have What They're Having: Legendary Local Cuisine
NL

"The Historian" by Elizabeth Kostova
on order

"Cast of Shadows" by Kevin Guilfoile
NEW

"Misfortune" by Wesley Stace
NEW

"In the Shadow of the Law" by Kermit Roosevelt
on order

"Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro
new/rental

"Snobs" by Julian Fellowes
new

"Under the Glacier" by Halldór Laxness

Freakonomics

Losing Moses on the Freeway : The 10 Commandments in America
by Chris Hedges

Authors

John Dunne
Qiu Xiaolong (M)

I have traveled quite a bit in my not-so-short life but, beyond a quick stop in Nairobi and a week at a conference in Rwanda, I’ve never actually been to sub-Saharan Africa. That may be why I picked up a copy of Angry Wind : Through Muslim Black Africa by Truck, Bus, Boat, and Camel by Jeffrey Tayler. I’m not usually much of a reader of travel writings, but the book promised to introduce me to an area of the world that I knew little about and I’d be unlikely to visit for several years at least. After reading the book, I’m not sure I want to go there.

For this book, Tayler traveled through the Sahel, a term describing the desert region inhabited by African Muslims in what’s now Chad, Nigeria, Niger and Mali (it also includes the Sudan, but Tayler wisely decided to skip the civil war there). While these countries have a history of falling into and out of civil war, they were relatively peaceful at the time Tayler was there, which might not have made his trip any easier but certainly made it safer. He did encounter a few unnerving situations, but most of them seemed related to his reluctance to pay the so-called formalité to the military officers and government officials that got on his way. Mostly, though, Tayler seems to have spent his time in the region figuring out how to get to the next spot.
While doing this, he ends up meeting a few colorful characters whom he employs as his guides, but seldom does his experience of a country and their people seem to reach much beyond them and those they introduce him to. To be fair, in a couple of occasions he makes an effort to meet the Tuareg, but it seems more than as an object of curiosity than for any loftier purpose.

Through the book, Tayler appears more as a tourist than a traveler, and as he often describes himself to others as such, that may not really be an insult. But his superficial understanding, western perspective and inability to connect to the people around him, are maddening, if for no other reason that it constrains my own understanding of the region. But it’s perhaps because I can empathize with him, feel the despair that cultural shock produces and makes you seek refuge in the certainty of superiority of your own culture or the shallow admiration of the more “quaint” traits of the culture you are visiting, that his inability to get beyond himself bothers me so much. I expect more from someone who’s lived and traveled abroad so much.

But my most lasting impression of Tayler’s journey is one of boredom. At no point in the book he seems to be having fun, there is no joie de vivre here, much less joie de voyage. He makes traveling to these countries seem unbelievably boring and alienating, so much so that I hope someone who has been to the Sahel will read this “review” and will tell me that there are compelling reasons to visit this region.

All this said, Tayler is a good writer and I did enjoy the book, if nothing else it wetted my tastebuds for some more travel writing.

The Pearl Diver is the second or third Sujata Massey mystery I’ve read and I generally enjoyed it. It’s a pretty formulaic mystery: a problem falls into protagonist Rei Shimura’s lap, she tries to figure out what’s going on, in the process of which she gets into trouble and finally the solution presents itself. Amidst all that, there are lots of information about Japan (Rei is a half-Japanese japanphile), and unless Japan truly is a completely homogenous country, some of it must be inaccurate.

Massey’s mysteries are not particularly light or expertly executed but they’re enjoyable for what they are, and I’ll probably look for her others ones at the library.

I first read about The Sociopath Next Door on (where else?) a Salon article/interview with the author (I also read the letters to Salon in part criticizing the author's work). The book didn't contribute much more than the interview. The essential point is that about sociopaths are people who do not have a conscience and are unable to feel guilt or remorse about anything. They can do whatever they want without feeling bad about it. They are also unable to feel any of the higher emotions: love, empathy, happiness and instead are consumed by lower emotions such as anger and jealousy. Because they can't feel the thrill of engaging in normal human relationships, they are often left to look for stimulation in other ways. These include alcohol and drugs but also human games.

What I hadn't realized before is that sociopaths have very different motivations, some want wealth or power, while others are just motivated by playing mind games with others. What unites them is their ability to kill and hurt without any psychological repercussions. though the author only hints at it, I wouldn't be surprised if people like Rumsfeld and Cheney were classic sociopaths. Oftentimes, by the way, they are able to seem quite charming and enthrall people.

The author presents several ways of identifying a sociopath, the one that seemed most interesting is that sociopaths often play the "pity game", making others feel sorry for them and thus excuse their behavior. Yep, that might describe Bush as well.

According to the author about 4% of Americans are sociopaths (her methodology in arriving at that number is disputed by one of the Salon's correspondents) which of course prompted me to look back into my friends and acquaintances and try to identify those who seem to meet the profile. Interestingly, I could only think of one person whom the sociopath criteria may apply to. She was a very charming and intelligent woman, a social activist of sorts and someone whom I'm sure everyone saw (sees) as an idealist. And yet, when pushed came to shove I found her ethics problematic, her behavior not quite in sinc with what she portrayed herself to be. I broke my relationship with her over an ethical issue, something which I've rarely done, but looking back it was more a question of my not really trusting her. I'm not a particularly good judge of character in most instances, but perhaps my insticts with sociopaths are not bad :)

The author goes into the advantages of being a sociopath, and she does touch the issue of genetics and evolution, but she didn't do a good job linking the issues together. It's clear that sociopathy has a strong genetic component (over 50% according to some tests), and also that it has adaptive advantages. Sociopaths are risk takers par excellence, which is often associated with reproductive success - at least as long as the frequency of the extreme-risk takers is low. Indeed, it seems quite clear (though the author didn't explore this issue) that sociopathy is a frequency dependent balanced polymorphism. It would make sense that in less complex societies their ratio would be lower, as sociopaths seem to be at an advantage in large societies where reciprocal relationships are less important. The author does quote studies that show a much lower ratio of sociopath in the far east, but those figures have been questioned.

The author spends way too much time dealing with the issue of whether it's better to be a sociopath, or rather, whether a normal person would chose to not have a conscience if they could. That seems such a non-issue to anyone with a conscience - of course you wouldn't chose to not have one, your conscience is part of what makes you who you are - that it's a waste of time reading through her (poor) reasoning on the subject.

In all, I very much enjoyed the book and I'd recommend it as an interesting and fairly quick reading.

Bangkok Tatoo is the 2nd book in the Sonchai Jitpleecheep series by John Burdett.
Once again we are treated to an unspeakable crime, the details of which don't arise until the end of the book, but which resurrects the old prejudices about horrorizing Eastern cruelty. Or human cruelty, rather. Indeed, the Thailand that Burdett describes, with its corruption, its bloody rivalry between two crime-bosses for power, money and hegemony (and control of the drug trade), its culture of absolute moral relativism, its lawlessness and killings and its sole good cop (who tries to be ethical but bends himself and his morals to the reality of his circumstances) is exactly like the Old West as depicted in the HBO series Deadwood. Change the locale and the name of the protagonists, and you have the same setting and the same plot - Seth Bullock is Sonchai Jitpleecheep.

One of the pleasures of Bangkok Tattoo, like its predecesor Bangkok 8, is reading about Bhudism as explained by Detective Jitpleecheep - who constantly chastizes the Western point of view of life (which, judged by Deadwood, is not as much western as post-industrial). Jitpleecheep addresses the reader directly when talking about such matters, and while not all of the criticism is justified and some of it seems naiive, it does give you stuff to think about. Alas, with so many innocent bystanders being killed and suffering, it doesn't seem that having a Bhuddist perspective gives Thai much of an advantage over Westerners, though it may make it easier for their bosses to control them.

Still, I enjoyed this book quite a lot and look forward to the next installment (and the next season of Deadwood for that matter).

I'm not a big reader of parenting books but I saw Unconditional Parenting at the library, was intrigued by the title and impressed by its long list of references. If somebody is telling me how to raise my children, I'd like to see what they say justified by some research.

The book presents a very simple idea: parents should not just love, but approve of their children unconditionally, and should therefore not subject them to either negative or positive judgements. That means, parents shouldn't punish or criticize their children for bad behavior, but also that they shouldn't reward them or praise them for good behavior. Ultimately, parents shouldn't be trying to control their children.

Despite, or perhaps because I am a pretty controlling and judgemental person, I completely agree with this philosophy. I find many problems with the concept of controling a child. First, I think that it destroys trust. Ultimately, I want my child to do what I say because she trusts that I do know best in that specific instance and that I have her best interest at heart, not just because I say so. I want my child to question authority - be it the government's, her teacher's or mine - and I want to learn to trust my child, so that I can help her build trust on herself. Controlling her goes against that core idea.

For the first 2 1/2 years of Mika's life, I never really had to face the issue of discipline. My expectations of Mika are fairly low (or, as I would say, realistic given her age) and she never really did anything "bad". But we started having some behavior issues after the baby was born - her disobeying me, throwing things to the floor, deliberately peeing and pooping in the floor of her room, crying all the way home. I must confess that at first I didn't react well to this behavior. The baby (the probably cause of the behavior in the first place) was consuming much of my time and I was too tired and sleepy to engage Mika. So instead I "punished" her. By this I mean I showed her I was angry at her, I yelled at her and even sent her to her room in several occasions. Yes, they were terrible things for me to do and I'm quite sorry and ashamed of it. And of course the behavior didn't improve. Finally (after getting some advise from others) I decided to deal with the cause of the behavior rather than punish her for it, so I started being more sympathetic towards her, responding to her aggression in a more loving way, accepting her issues, and generally engaging her more throughout the day. The "bad" behavior stopped.

Indeed, "working with the child" is what Mr. Kohn recommends. That requires trust both on the child and yourself as a parent, and having the energy and the time to put into it, but I do believe that it pays off in the not-so-long run.

I was also glad to read Mr. Kohn's views against using "rewards" to control a child's behavior. I've always been uncomfortable with the idea of rewards, which seem to be little more than bribes to me. Now, I have used bribes in the past and I'm sure I'll continue using them (in a more limited basis, I hope) in the future, but I hate the idea of having to pay my child to comply with my requests. Plus it creates a bad precedent and they seem to go against self motivation.

But I am more uncomfortable with Mr. Kohn's position that "praise" is no different from material rewards, and should not be given to modify a child's behavior. I understand his point. On the one hand, we should not be judgemental of our children. We should approve of them unconditionally and not reward them with our praise (approval) just when they do something we like. Moreover, children should develop their own internal motivators and praise, as an external motivator, may impede these from arising. On the other hand, I am not sure whether I actually use praise to encourage specific behavior as much as to show my overall approval of her. I mean, I praise her whenever she does anything she choses to do, not just things I want her to do. I praise all her accomplishments because everything she does is impressive to me (Hmm, does this show her I have low expectations of her?). Kohn says that instead of praising, I should engage her, commenting or questioning about what she does. And that makes sense, though of course praise is more expeditious.

Anyway, I have been trying to not praise her so much, but it is really hard.

A possible criticism of the book is that it doesn't really provide specific alternatives to the reward-punishment system. What Kohn says is that you should work with your child and while that's fine and dandy, and I think it's likely to work in our specific case, I'm really not sure it will work with all children. There are kids who are just naturally "wilder" than others, less empathic, less adept at copying behavior - more prone to runing down the street or hitting their siblings. I think parents need a bit more guidance of what to do, if not reward or punish, in those cases.

Still, by the end of the book I was pretty satisfied with my own parenting methods. What I'm left wanting, though, is a book that will tell me how to control my impatience and my anger when I find DD difficult so that I can work with her productively.

Salon is one of my favorite sources for information and I particularly like them for their seasonal book recommendations. They've guided me to some very unusual and interesting books such as The Hamilton Case and The Ghost Writer. But they failed me completely in recommending Cast of Shadows. Its author, Kevin Guilfoile, is a Salon contributor so I am somewhat suspicious that the good review is due to editorial bias. Still, the book has gotten good reviews at Amazon and apparently (at least according to its website) has been well received by book critics. Let me then be the lone voice of decent who calls it like it is: "Cast of Shadows" is a lousy techno-thriller and Guilfoile a wannabe poor man's Michael Crichton.

The novel concerns a doctor who specializes in cloning human beings. After his daughter is killed by an unknown assailant, he decides to clone the DNA left on the scene so that, one day, he'll be able to know what his daughter's killer looks like. The premise isn't bad, but the plot - including its few twists and turns - is whole predictable. There are absolutely no surprises, everything is telegraphed chapters ahead so that there is no "thrill" left in accopanying the characters through their journey. Moreover, the characters themselves are shallowly drawned, they are basically stock characters with no inner lives or complexities, adding that to the fact that we know what will happen to them makes it very hard to care for their fates.

The language in the book doesn't flow well and reading it sometimes becomes cumbersome. The dialogue seemed forced and it was often tedious to read. This is Mr. Guilfoile's first novel, so I wonder if the techniques of non-fiction writing just don't translate well into the fictional realm.

Worst of all, the book missed a great opportunity to at least present the issues on the human cloning debate. It showed religious fanatics opposing it and killing doctors who cloned people (a la abortion providers), and a scientific community that universaly approved of it, but it didn't make a case (much less a good case) for either side. Most importantly, it never even asked, much less answered the question of why cloning was a better alternative than artificial insemination.

In all, I found this book boring and formulaic and I cannot recommend it.

My blog has become mostly a series of book reviews. Alas, I'm not doing much lately beyond going out with my girls or reading. And my memory has become so flitting, that if I don't write about the books I read I'm afraid I'll forget about them soon. Not that I'd mind forgetting about Out, a novel by Japanese writer Natsuo Kirino. With paper thin characters and an absolute lack of suspense, it was one of the most boring crime novels I've ever read.

The novel concerns four Japanese women who work at the night shift at the factory, and deal (or avoid dealing) with their own issues of loneliness and alienation from their families and society at large. When the husband of one of them turns abusive after gambling all the family savings away, the wife kills him in a fit of anger. For different reasons (including monetary) the other three women help the killer by dismembering the body.

We know who the women are, and soon we find out enough about them to make us feel we know them, so there is no "whodunit" aspect to the novel. The women are presented as shallow characters, burdened by difficult lives and perhaps depression, but without enough depth to make their involvement in the murder a psychological thriller. The same thing can be said about the couple of men, both former gangsters, who fortuitously get involved in the situation. They seem more like stock characters (alas, with a Japanese flair) than actual people. But what makes the novel really maddening is how every character seems to have an uncanny ability to figure out what everybody else has done and how they function psychologically. This takes away even the pleasure of seeing a character follow clues and slowly (or even through a moment of insight) figure out what�s going on. Everyone knows everything, everyone�s motives are shallow and base, and there is no payoff at the end.

Still, Kirino is a famous writer in Japan and this book was even nominated for an Edgar when published in English, so there may be something good about it. Perhaps you need to have a deeper understanding of Japanese culture to "get it", whatever "it" be. Or perhaps you just need to look at the book from another angle than that of a mystery or thriller. In any case, it didn�t work for me.

The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs can be simply yet accurately described as an amusing book. It follows the misadventures of German Philology professor Dr. Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, author of Portuguese Irregular Verbs, a self-involved yet affable character who is too much the stereotypical academic to be identifiable but enough to be somewhat believable. I particularly appreciate that while Igelfeld is shown as arrogant and bumbling, he's also shown to be an actually respected scholar. His one and only book may be tedious and ultimately insignifcant, but it is well regarded by those few who've read it. The point being that Igelfeld is amusing without being a buffoon.

The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs is the 2nd book in the Igelfeld trilogy, the first one is called Portuguese Irregular Verbs and tomorrow I'll rush to get it out of the library. I have a feeling that its pure silliness is exactly what I need to pick me up when I'm feeling a bit down.

Finally, for some reason the humor of this book reminded me of Dom Camillo by Giovanni Guareshi, the humorous stories of a parish Priest in Italy and his arch-enemy the communist mayor. I hadn't thought of that book in years, even though I named my last baby Camila, but now I'm set to read those ttories all over again.

Spam Kings is yet another book I wasn't able to finish. It's somewhat well written in that the writer is able to create suspense and keep you turning pages - but eventually you realize that it's all for naught. The stories themselves are pedestrian an uninteresting, more suited for an article than a whole book. The spammers and anti-spammers are boring people with petty personal problems that seem completely besides the point. And nothing really much happens in the book. After reading half of it I was just too bored and I'm returning it to the library.

I've decided to be nice to the FBI. I'm going to save them the trouble to bother my local librarian to find out what I intend to check out from the library and write my list here instead. OK, it's a tiny bit selfish as I've discovered that I often forget my list when I get to the library - and if I have it available on the web all I have to do is print it out. This is a list in progress, mind you. I would ask my San Leandro readership to not be mean and check these books out before I get to them.

Currently available at the library.

Non-Fiction

The Nasty Bits
by Anthony Bourdain
641.5 BOURDAIN
in New Books (ckout)

American theocracy : the peril and politics of radical religion, oil, and borrowed money in the 21st century
by Phillips, Kevin P.
973.928 PHILLIPS
in New Books (ckout)

Cobra II : the inside story of the invasion and occupation of Iraq
by Gordon, Michael R.
956.704 GORDON
in New Books

Casting with a fragile thread : a story of sisters and Africa
by Kann, Wendy
968.91 KANN
in new Books

Scribbling the cat : travels with an African soldier /
by Fuller, Alexandra
968.94 FULLER
in new Books

Losing Moses on the Freeway: America's broken covenant with the 10 commandments
by Hedges, Chris
241.5 HEDGES

An African in Greenland /
by Kpomassie, Tete-Michel
919.82 KPO

The assassins' gate : America in Iraq
by Packer, George
956.7 PACKER

The sacred willow : four generations in the life of a Vietnamese family /
by Elliott, Duong Van Mai
959.704 ELLIOTT

Pornified : how the culture of pornography is transforming our lives, our relationships, and our families /
by Paul, Pamela.
306.77 PAUL

Santeria : la religion /
by Gonzalez-Wippler, Migene
299.6 GONZALEZ-WIPPLER
SPA
missing

Don't let's go to the dogs tonight : an African childhood /
by Fuller, Alexandra
FULLER FUL
BIOG

Fiction

THE RUINS : a novel /
by Smith, Scott
CATALOGUING

The pale blue eye : a novel /
by Bayard, Louis
mystery - new

End of story : a novel of suspense /
by Abrahams, Peter
ABRAHAMS
new

Snakeskin shamisen
by Naomi Hirahara
in library catalogue but no item info
mystery

The second coming of Mavala Shikongo: a novel /
by Orner, Peter
ORNER

The people's act of love
by Meek, James
MEEK (new books)

The historian : a novel
by Kostova, Elizabeth.
KOSTOVA

The good terrorist /
by Lessing, Doris
LESSING
look at other books by her

Snobs: a novel
by Fellowes, Julian
FELLOWES

Under the glacier
by Laxness, Halldor
HALLDOR

Paradise of the blind /
by Duong, Thu Huong
DUONG

Field of Blood: A Novel.
by Mina, Denise
mystery

Deception: a novel /
by Mina, Denise
MINA

Oblivion
by Abrahams, Peter
ABRAHAMS

Classics

Bleak House /
by Dickens, Charles
DICKENS

The call of the wild
by London, Jack

The sound and the fury
by Faulkner

Sons and lovers /
by Lawrence, D. H.

The grapes of wrath /
by Steinbeck, John
classic

Not availabe at the library

The Warwolf
by Hermann Löns
fiction

I'll Have What They're Having: Legendary Local Cuisine
by Linda Stradley

Waiting for the Vote of the Wild Animals
by Ahmadou Kourouma
fiction

Understanding Vietnam
by Neil L. Jamieson

The Voice of the Turtle
by G. Cabrera Infante
fiction

Darkness at Noon
by Arthur Koestler

Mystery Authors

future reference
John Burdett
Laura Levine

I haven't written a book report in quite a while, in part because I have less free time since Camila was born and in part because I haven't been reading as much. When she was very little I could read while I nursed her, later she started grabbing for the book making that activity impossible. Now she's been weaned, so I can once again read while I lie next to her, but that usually happens only at night - as she either takes her naps at daycare or in the stroller in the way home. None of this, of course, has anything to do with "The Attack."

"The Attack," is the title of a much-reviewed book by Yasmina Khadra, the nome de plume of Mohammed Moulessehoul, a former Algerian army officer and writer. Khadra's former profession makes me suspicious of him - (clearly I'm not the only one). He is a man who has killed and committed god knows what other attrocities (he was in the Algerian army, he couldn't have done otherwise) and who denies the commission of massacres of civilians by the Algerian army (these have been well documented by Amnesty International and other human rights organizations), so I think I'm well justified in my suspicions. But I think the book stands up well on its own, and that whatever small insights into the mind of suicide bombers Khadra offers are at least honest.

The book chronicles the quest of Dr. Amin Jaafari, an Arab-Israeli surgeon of Bedouin origin - to understand why his beautiful, happy wife one day tied a bomb to her body, went to a restaurant near the hospital where he worked, and blew herself up, taking with her several children and adults. His desire to understand is to understand is very personal, he feels betrayed by his wife (and rightly so) who gave him no hints he could discern (at least until later) of her purported unhappiness and political leanings. He is shocked and he is angry and he wants answers. He seeks them from the people whom she might have worked with, who gave her the bomb, who sent her on her way of destruction. But all the answers he can get are the obvious ones - "look around us, look at the dispossesion, the missery and humilliation of occupation, look at our lack of weapons and resources, how else can we fight this war than with our own deaths?". An honest, a compelling answer but not one that can really explain why this particular woman chose that path. She had been walking in Israeli society for years, her best friends were Israelis, why not use her status to give voice to the Palestinians instead? Of course, perhaps I'm speaking out of my own prejudice.

As Dr. Jaafari explores the Occupied Territories looking for answers, for the first time (or so it seems) he becomes aware of the plight of his people, he remembers where he comes from and what he is. Alas, at the end I'm not sure this means anything.

And indeed, that was ultimately the problem with the novel for me. It was a quick and easy read, a compelling theme, but not one that was satisfactionally developed. We could empathize with the doctor's emotions, but then what? We could be curious as to the motives of his wife, but as I said we never get much of an answer for what they were. At the end, I don't think I learned anything, saw anything new about human nature, but at least I was entertained.

The PMS Murders are part of the Jane Austen series, another formulaic not-real-mystery, this time starting a struggling freelance writer. These books are not really mysteries in the sense of giving you a limited number of suspects and enough evidence that you could figure out who did it. Rather, they follow the "detective" through her progress of finding out what happened. Pretty much all "newer" mysteries are of this sort, lighthearted and quick reads and completely forgetable. Junk reading at its best.

What somewhat differentiates the Jane Austen mysteries are their humor. They are written by Laura Levine, whom according to the book's jacket is a comedy writer with a lot of TV credits from the 1970's, and they are hillarious. I particularly enjoy the e-mail correspondence between Jaine and her wacky parents in Florida. So much so that I was afraid I'd wake up Camila as I couldn't contain my laughter.

This is the third Jaine Austen mystery I've read (I think), and I'll look for others at the library.

For some reason, I love reading about expeditions to Everest. I loved "Into Thin Air" by Jon Krakauer (an awesome writer) and enjoyed "The Other Side of Everest: Climbing the North Face Through the Killer Storm" by Matt Dickinson and "Doctor on Everest: Emergency Medicine at the Top of the World - A Personal Account of the 1996 Disaster" by Kenneth Kamler. "Climbing High : A Woman's Account of Surviving the Everest Tragedy" by Lene Gammelgaard wasn't as good, but I didn't have any major complaints about it. "High Crimes: The Fate of Everest in an Age of Greed' by Michael Kodas just plain sucked.

It was an interesting subject: how Everest has become so busy and commercialized that it has attracted all sorts of crime and unethical behavior. Injured, overtired or confused climbers are often left for dead by others trying to make it to the summit of the mountain and back. Under-equipped climbers steal provisions, equipment and in particularly oxygen bottles from others, severely risking the lives of the victims. Sherpas (who really come up horrible in this book) demand more money to continue mid-way through the climbs and to rescue injured climbers, attack them, leave them for dead (while still alive) and also steal equipment. Guides abandon their clients and participate in side-business of dubious morality of not legality. One particularly dangerous one is the refilling of oxygen bottles, often without informing the buyers of the fact - refilled bottles have a high failure rate, and at 8,000 meters a failing oxygen bottle may very well kill you. And then there is prostitution, gambling, overdrinking, drug and steroid use and other vices of civilization.

It was very interesting to find out all of this, and if I ever had dreamt of climbing Everest (which I haven't, because I do have some grip on reality), this book definitely would have made think twice about it.

The problem with the book, however, is that it was very badly written and organized even worse. There are two major story lines in the book - an account of the author's own 2004 Connecticut Expedition and the account of an elderly Bolivian climber who died on Everest and the alleged responsibility of his guide. These are told more or less in chronological order and, while ultimately boring, they are easy enough to follow. Other stories, however, appear disjointedly throughout the book. In some of them, the author expresses what seems to be sincere admiration for specific individuals, in others, those same individuals are torn apart. People do have good and bad sides, but there is too little character development to understand what these people are really like.

The story of the disintegration of the Connecticut team is also not very understandable. The author suggests that members of the team turned against other members suddenly, but there is little explanation about how that came about. He seems more interested in vilifying his perceived enemies than in finding an objective place from which to look at the expedition. Jon Krakauer he is not.

He also can't write like Krakauer, it's suprising to me that he is a professional writer (a journalist), and while he uses the tools of storytelling, he doesn't do it successfully.

In sum, as far as Everest books go, this is way down the pile.