Kait

I'm really conflicted about this book — it's very in-depth, well-researched and written in an engaging fashion. The author goes into exhaustive detail about the history of autism and Asperger's Syndrome ... but relegates the ostensible point of the book (neurodiversity, present and future) to what amounts to an extended epilogue. If you're looking for a comprehensive history of autism, you've found the right book. If you're looking for anything else, keep searching.

Louis Theroux makes documentaries about subjects i find fascinating, though his movies always end up making me feel a little queasy. I don't know if it's my latent journalism muscle or simply the same cringe-twinge that you might get from an average episode of The Office, but there's almost always at least one moment, after he's gone in-depth with his subjects and gotten them to expose more honesty than you'd really expect, that he says something off.

The first time I noticed this was when I watched The Most Hated Family in America, a documentary about the Westboro Baptist Church's founding family back before they were individually famous (e.g., People knew the church was full of hateful bigots, but the country wasn't really on a first-name basis with any of them). 90% of the film is intensely interesting, gripping stuff. Then he corners a couple of the younger teens to ask them if they really believed this stuff, and wouldn't they rather just be normal and have boyfriends?

To me, it felt like overstepping the bounds of journalism and into the realm of pop psychologist. Not only was it fairly mean to the kids to put them on the spot like that on camera, it to me sort of undercut the documentary up to that point. Theroux clearly had a point of view; how fair a representation was everything else he'd shown us? I found that almost all of his films have similar points of uncomfortable blurring of the lines, as if he goes around not to document stories but to insert himself in the middle of them as savior.

The Call of the Weird is his book-length re-expoloration of some of his earlier American documentary subjects, in an attempt to ... reconnect with them? His motives don't really matter, as the book is largely a recitation of his films, followed by interviewing the subjects, who have little desire to open up yet again.

Theroux makes a number of reflexively defensive points: in his foreward, he talks about how he hoped the book wouldn't be just another “Look at all the freaks in America!” roadshow, or if it was that it would the purest distillation of the form (as if this is better?). In the book proper, he seems on an eternal journey of enlightenment, realizing that the former subjects have nothing to gain by talking to him, or that it's kind of silly to expect a specific former subject who had never dropped his “persona” to suddenly open up his deepest personal feelings simply because Theroux wants him to.
All that being said, the discussions of the various subcultures are fascinating, because as I said at the top Theroux picks interesting subjects and documents them well. Additionally, the most revealing part of the book came when Theroux mentioned his surprise that the UFO people were so unwilling to look skeptically at their beliefs. He talked of his own tendency toward self-doubt and “logical-mindedness,” and his inability to understand people that wouldn't look so askance at themselves. This for me explains my reactions to his documentaries, though it more suggests that maybe it's just not the best field/format for him.

In all, the book suffers from the primary problem that Theroux's documentaries do: He mapped out an entire story in his head that didn't materialize in the same way once he took it on the road. What we're left with is his attempts to reconcile the two.

Overall, this is a well-researched book on the history of the creator of Wonder Woman, his crazy-ass family and the very deep feminist theory that undergirds most of the early comics.

The only knock on the book is that it is by no means a complete history of Wonder Woman. It might better have been titled, “The Secret History of Wonder Woman's Creation,” or, most accurately, “Wonder Woman and Feminism: The Early Years.”

You'll learn about William Marston, the inventor of an early version of the lie-detector test/failed psychologist/failed moviemaker/failed entrepreneur who used his lifelong obsession with women to craft the early tales of the Amazonian Wonder Woman. You'll learn about his wife. And his other wife. And his other other kind-of wife.

You'll be confused by what scholarship/writing should be attributed to whom between the primary threesome. You'll be bewildered by the lengths of the deception that the unofficial wife went to keep Marston's progenitorship a secret from her children. And you'll be slightly weirded out by how closely Margaret Sanger weaves in to all of it.

The book focuses heavily on the early comics (up until Marston's death), then sort of writes off the entire 50+ other years with a “the people who came directly after Marston were chauvinist pigs” which, while not inaccurate, is not exactly meeting the mantle of “history.”

That being said, this book is essential for truly understanding Wonder Woman, her origins and her standing/place in the culture at large.

I kind of can't believe how much I disliked this book.

I will admit to being a huge Firefly/Serenity fan, so perhaps my expectations were too high. But this story felt like a pastiche, with familiar names and places jumbled together. I get the impulse to want to use elements that fans are comfortable with (Badger! Persephone! The store where Kaylee's dress came from! Jayne's hat!), but this story added nothing to the universe. It felt so rehashed I legitimately think it might possible to do this story as an episode simply by cutting and pasting together clips from the existing show and movie.

The writing is stilted (“[Inara] tried to think of a word to encapsulate how she personally felt about him. She didn't know if there was one. What was going on between her and Mal was too complicated for a single descriptor. It was a tangled knot of inhibitions and unspoken emotions which they themselves might never get around to unraveling.”), and while I know a lot of the character work on the show was nonvocal, there are subtler ways to deal with such things in literature.

If you're looking for new adventures of Serenity, I highly recommend Stephen Brust's unauthorized novel, “My Own Kind of Freedom.” Though it's technically non-canon and only fan fiction, it's a much more honest telling of a story in the Firefly universe. I hope the other planned novels take their cues from it rather than this.

It's not usually a hard question: “What are you reading about?” Most books helpfully even give you clues on the back cover, with a quick summation you can offer up. “The history of the original Dream Team in 1992.” “Jonathan Franzen didn't feel like enough people were paying attention to him so he wrote the same book three times.”

When I got that this time, I hesitated. “It's about ... a small town in North Dakota, I guess?” Which is true, but it's not really about the town, it's about the people. And while that seems like the same thing, it's not. You're not reading the detailed history since its founding, you're getting a small snapshot of a few lives. The best description I could come up with was, “It's the story of a small North Dakota town in the 80s. The events that happen are fairly normal for a small town, or at least that would be, individually. Your average small town would have one or zero of these events happening. That four or five of them are happening is nonsense, but that's kind of immaterial.”

I am not a great person to be asking for book recommendations.

The author, Chuck Klosterman, like him or love him, studies people. Profiling, describing and intuiting their reasons for existing, most of his authorial life revolved around trying to explain someone (or a group of someones).

So you can understand why, when he's trying to set a scene, it's a bit like listening to a German opera — intellectually, you understand that it's probably very beautiful, but in the moment it sounds like large bears mating. And, given that the novel takes place in the middle of nowhere, North Dakota, it's not even a very interesting German opera (or ursine copulation, depending on where you were in the metaphor).

The first third of the book is dull. A slog. I tell you this so you can prepare for it — gird yourself, lay in provisions, whatever you need to do to get through it. Because it's worth it. I've seen the other side, and it is sublime.

Because Klosterman eventually gets around to what he does best — explaining people. These characters are so vivid their mood swings started affecting how I was doing in the real world. Their actions and reactions and emotions are authentic, to themselves and to human nature. Even the most unbelievable, freakish characters are eventually explained and vindicated, even if that explanation is completely batshit crazy.

Explaining any of the plot seems simultaneously like cheating you and utterly pointless — without the connecting web, plucking at any individual strand leaves you wanting for the whole. It's raw, it's gritty, it's real, and it's definitely worth a read.

It feels like a cliché to even say so (especially since it came up so often in the book itself), but I had no idea the situation was as bad as it is for women. The most insidious part is that for individual occurrences you can almost convince yourself that it's an outlier, or that it might be simple ignorance rather than malice. But the overwhelming numbers and similarities not only go toward proving that is blatant sexism, but that it's pervasive and probably affects things in non-obvious ways as well.

Knowledge is the first step toward making it better. Calling attention to it, cutting it off and speaking out when it happens is the next — a step we all need to take.

It's probably not the book's fault. I just finished up another existentially depressing treatise on modern life, so this wasn't a great chaser (not that i knew that at the time, of course).

But man, what bleakness.

Little Children is the story of how nobody is really happy or in control, and trying to change it only makes things worse. There are brief, fleeting moments of happiness that collapse into ever-lengthening echoes of despair the minute you start to time them. Also, the story of a registered sex offender (and accused-but-not-actually-convicted child murderer!) plays a big role.
So I feel somewhat justified.

I can appreciate the argument that the novel is only trying to represent “reality,” and I will concede the plotting is at least probable, if not super likely. But this is where my “two books where the predominant theme is people are terrible in a row” thing kicks in. I understand (and subscribe to!) the idea that people, in general, are kind of terrible. Individual persons, though, tend to be less so.

Every character in Little Children feels like a consolidation of the worst traits of humanity distilled into an individual, which (in my experience) is precisely opposite of how it works. People as a whole are scumbags; Your neighbor probably isn't too bad. Though we like to joke that hipsters and suburbanites are terrible people, for the most part they're just mildly annoying when they congregate and generally tolerable on their own, short of fashion sense. Perhaps there's some sort of assholic magnet that drew those people together, or maybe it was something in the water. Regardless, you don't see that kind of bitterness and poison among a group of people outside of that ABC show The Slap, which I don't think anyone is confusing for reality anytime soon.

Which is not to say this was a bad book! Merely depressing. Just make sure you're ready going into it.

Books are supposed to make you feel, right? Sometimes you're supposed to come away optimistic about the human condition, sometimes you want to curl up in the tightest ball possible, lock your bedroom door and turn the lights out. Just because the feeling you get is bad doesn't mean the book is bad, or that it's not worthwhile.

So when I say this book made me uncomfortable, I want the context to be preserved. I think it was its goal - to a point. Addition is the story of a woman who's very much in the grips of a counting compulsion - she knows the number of steps it takes to get from one part of her house to the other, then to the cafe, then once she's there she eats the cake she (always) orders in the same number of bits as there are poppyseeds on top. And that's one of the more normal bits.

I don't want to give away the plot, but suffice it to say that things change (several times) once she meets The Guy. And it becomes frustrating and infuriating ... and I think that's on purpose, too? One of the great facets of the book is that in reading how the numbers affect Grace, they really start to get under the nerves of the reader. But it's not an obvious thing. I found myself affected not by the things she was counting, but by the sheer number of numbers she was keeping track of. Having to slog through every one of those numbers is analogous, I imagine - though by no means the same thing - the she was going through. I completely understood/felt like it made sense when one activity had to get called off, simply because I was so exhausted trying to keep up with the nervous counting.

What left me short was the ending. Grace goes through a number of different phases, as we'll call them, from full-on incapacitation by counting to love-fueled powering-through to counseling to back to the way it was ... and then we get to the end. How exactly everything turns out is left up to the reader, but I found myself completely unsure if we were dealing with someone who learned to deal with their compulsion and would be moderating it, was just abandoning themselves to the compulsion devil-may-care, or what. Everything up to and including running away to London would have seemed perfectly in keeping with the character's attitudes, which made it a little frustrating. The entire piece is supposed to be a character study - why can't we learn enough about the character?

Nonetheless, it's an excellent work that will appeal to the normal and the rest of us equally.

It's pretty classic Doctorow, with pictures? I mean, if you're into gaming unionization, you'll probably get a kick out off it. Otherwise ...

A classic coming-of-age tale of aliens, boners and pizza. It's mire than slightly weird and a little bit wound too tightly around itself, but any minor flaws are more than made up for with the most entertaining sidekick this side of a Marvel comic.

You'll get some of the standard stuff (love, relationships, teenagers being unreasonably angry) along with a heaping helping of Weird (time measured in distance the Earth has travelled in the universe, a horse falling off a bridge, etc.). Recommended for anyone who's not offended by swearing and has a sneaking suspicion they live inside a book.

A first-class book on the flash crash of 1987, which didn't happen nor recover quite as quickly as everyone remembers. Extensively well-researched, the author takes pains to lay out the likely causes and impetuses for the big day without seeming to lay the blame unfairly on any given sector. I was pleased that she drew connections to both the modern day and more modern crashes (2008) without swamping the rest of the work. It's a little dry, sure, but given the subject matter I'd say it actually overachieves with regard to readability. An excellent retelling of this chapter of financial history.

I'll be quite honest — I didn't expect to like Eleanor and Park very much when I started it. I read it on the advice/orders of my girlfriend, and expected it to be a teen romance novel much in the same way I expected the Maze Runner trilogy to be a teenage dystopian novel — very much of its genre, tweaking only small details, with stories interchangeable to an almost shocking degree. But it surprised me. It didn't invert, contravene and confound the trappings of the teen novel the way some of my favorite genre books subvert theirs, but it really worked for me. I cared about the characters, and I cared about what happened to them.

Read the full review here.

An excellent tale of petty heroes, heroic villains and the best darn sidekick one could ask for. The titular Nimona is a shapeshifter who wants to apprentice to the town's arch villain, a Megamind-esque mix of brains and failure.

Nimona's shapeshifting and utter lack of conscience bode well for his future prospects, but he reins her in with kindness just as much as she pulls him out of futility.

It's a slightly sad book, in that we must learn (as we always do) that you can't save everyone. But we can be comforted in that the best never fail to try.

A marvelous, reality-centric look at bullying at the onset of the 21st century. I'm quick to add the time qualifier not because this book lacks anything, but because a) bullying certainly has changed with the advent of the internet and cell phones for everyone of all ages, and b) the constant change/evolutional bent of technology means that it can't possibly completely on top off everything.
But the author is on top of the several cases she portrays, including a bunch of old favorites you'll a little bit hate her for reminding you of. The Irish girl in Massachusetts who was bullied to death, and the woman who created a fake MySpace profile to “get back at” the girl next door in retaliation for what the girl did to her daughter - both are explored in depth here, and may surprise you with the details.

The author takes pains not to blame any specific person, institution or group as the cause or chief complaint. Much like with all things, there's enough blame to be spread around for everyone, and the “solutions” (such as they are) stick mainly to the lines of “everyone should be nicer and pay more attention to things.” While that sounds like brushing it aside, it's not - there is no one-shot, quick-fix program that miraculously fixes things. It is, as with all interpersonal relationships, about viewing/treating people as people, giving others some slack, and stepping in when you see someone abusing someone else.

A worthy addition to the Dresden Files, even if the ending fell flat. Other than that, a perfect graphic adaptation of the best parts of the series.

Sometimes a book just leaves you feeling. I can't say with 100 percent certainty what I expected going into this book (things I knew about it: 1] It was likely literary fiction, and 2] it had something to do with books), but I know that got much more out of it. It's a simple story, in a way, though the plot gets a little convoluted at times. But this one's not so much about the plot, it's about the people, and the way that — like books — we connect with the right ones at the right time. You'll probably get more out of it if you're a reader, but as long you're a human, it's worth a read.

I think this biography does a remarkably even-handed job of presenting the facts about Donald Trump. The difference in opinion about him largely rests on how you read into those facts. Trump is unabashedly concerned with one person: Donald Trump. This does not make him unique or scary or terrible: It simply is his primary motivation.

It seems different and strange because a) he never says so directly, choosing instead to rely on his salesman's instincts to read the mood and close the sale, and b) this hyperfocused narcissism never faded or tempered the way we expect it to once a person reaches a certain level of success. It seems especially odd to us since politicians who run for president almost by definition have the same level of self-confidence, but they've learned it's better
electorally to obfuscate any self-interest - or at the very least it gets filtered by staff and handlers.

This book is unlikely to clear up any mysteries for you in terms of who you want to be president! You will likely find the right information to push you one way or the other in whatever direction you were already leaning. Nonetheless, it's worth the read if you're interested in the “why” of why Donald Trump does/did anything. I'll even give you a clue as his motivation: Because Donald Trump thought that doing that thing was the best for Donald Trump.

Easily among the top 3 epistolary novels addressed to Richard Gere I've ever read - no qualification.

The thing I like about Matthew Quick (having read this and The Silver Linings Playbook) is the realism he brings to characters and situations. I don't think a single one of the people who populate his works could be classified easily via archetype or caricature. Each of them is a living, breathing (FLAWED) human.

It's the kind of writing that can be difficult to read, if only because it seems awkward to be intruding on someone else's life in so personal a way. But it's definitely worth making your way through.

An excellent retelling of The Tempest, Atwood's update of a fairly dry 500-year-old piece of canon belongs in the same echelon as Ten Things I Hate About You in terms of remaining true to the essence of the story while making it comprehensible without a lot of work. It's lively, modern without being too insistent about it and maybe tends a little bit toward Hamiltonian rap-musical excess but ultimately brings it around.

This is a fairly thrilling account of the founding and actions of Britain's special forces during World War II. It is, by the very nature of its source material, gripping and exciting stuff. Macintyre is thorough (perhaps a bit too much), but the book seems determined to make sure that all who fought and died are remembered as much as possible; so while the account might drag on a bit at times, it certainly feels complete and, to an extent, definitive. I wouldn't be able to give you an accurate accounting of everything that happened (because of the wide range of activities described over a good third of the earth's surface), but I bet I could keep you enthralled a while.

A good illustrated version of Feynman's other stories, but it misses a lot of the important bits. I'd say this is best after you've already read at least one of his other books of stories.

Sandra Beasley is an allergy sufferer, and she has plenty of funny/terrifying anecdotes to share. She's also well-researched on the topic, and provides lots of useful scientific information about how allergies actually work.

I was once a food allergy skeptic. Not that I totally disbelieved in their existence, of course: I was fully aware there people out there who could have up to and including fatal reactions to eating certain foodstuffs. I more fell in along the lines of accepting the need for a peanut-free table in the lunchroom, but thinking that most people were probably overdoing it a little. My skepticism relaxed significantly when I found a best friend (whom I later began dating) with a host of food allergies that could be set off by the slightest fragment of the food in question - soy, pineapple, etc. She takes care to point out when she can't eat something (every time we go out for hibachi, it's a hard-and-fast rule that there are to be no sesame seeds involved for anyone at the table).

After reading this book, though, I'm starting to think that we need to take it a step further. Like, legislating that people are only allowed to drink water in a public place, lest they inadvertently explode someone else standing nearby when they take a bite of Snickers.

Most allergy sufferers would take offense at that joke (and, I assure you, it is a joke), but not for the reason you'd expect. It's not that they're insensitive to jokes about their condition, it's that most only ask others to modify their lifestyles when it's absolutely necessary. The peanut-free table is a good example: It's not calling for a blanket ban on peanuts in schools. It's saying that, because severe reactions are possible even through airborne exposure, kids can't just bring a PB&J over and sit next to the kid with peanut butter allergies. (Some people do call for a blanket peanut-ban in schools, but this seems an unsustainable course as the kid grows up. Best to just invest in a bubble suit now and save everyone the trouble.)

All of this is by way of saying that we as a society can definitely do some (relatively easy) things to make sure allergy sufferers have a little bit easier time. (And no, I'm not just saying this because I want my girlfriend to live. Though that's definitely a factor.) We see a societal good in having AEDs on hand because for a relatively low cost, we can save some lives. Similarly, clearly (and accurately) labeling possible allergens in food is not harmful to the manufacturers. Indeed, they're not losing any more money than they already would have (because the peanut allergy guy probably figured it out on his own after the first purchase). You don't have to ban peanuts from the ballpark, but you don't have to go throwing them in lightly-packaged bags in front of other peoples' faces, you know?

For me, the best mark of a fantasy book is whether I'd want to live in the world.

It began with Narnia, as it almost always does. Who wouldn't want to adventure in a world where nothing ever seems to go super wrong, and even if you're responsible for the death of the creator of the world you still win the consolation prize of being the freaking King.

It's a bit easy, though, isn't it? That's why with books that were clear descendants of Narnia but had more bits of realism stuck in the way (to a point), like The Phantom Tollbooth or, more recently, The Magicians. Obviously Tollbooth isn't quite realism, but the consequences seemed much more logical and directly resulting from the character's actions more than the “Well, you tried your best” aesthetic employed by Aslan.

This is all by way of explaining my ambivalence toward The Other Normals. It's a nice idea but I feel like it's been much better and to better effect elsewhere. It's a pretty standard postmodern fantasy draw-in: Boy obsessed with a particular media series (in this case, a D&D stand-in) gets magically whisked away to the world that media was based on, goes on quests, etc. Only this one involves a lot more “intentional indecent exposure at a high school dance” than the Pevensies ever dealt with.

I had troubles with the narrator. On the one hand you can say he was more realistic because of his many flaws, but his actions seemed more random and spastic than indications of character facets to be overcome. The mystical connection between the worlds, which serves to alter events and realities, only seemed to work when absolutely necessary and seemed woefully inadequate to explain what actually happened.

I don't want to seem too negative — it's a nice introduction to fantasy, particularly the kind of fantasy that seems more real because kids like you can get drawn into it, and probably would serve as a good bridge for the tween/teen who's familiar with Narnia but not really ready for Lev Grossman's The Magicians Trilogy. For the rest of us, though, there are better places to get the same fix.

There comes a clichèd point in most stories that deal with insanity where the nutjob asks the sane one who determines what sanity is, and maybe we've got the whole thing inside-out. I can say without hesitation that The Hike is batshit insane, but there's nonetheless a steadfast internal logic and heart that undergirds the craziness and connects all of the terrifying parts into a cohesive (if hallucinatory) whole.

It's rare to find a “grounded” fantasy that doesn't traffic overtly in “magic” with laws and rules (think Harrys Potter and Dresden), especially when combined with a rollicking adventure plot. Think of The Hike as a modern-day Odysseus, only with lot more LSD involved (in execution if not authorship). Eminently relatable main character, highly entertaining and endearing sidekicks, thoroughly enjoyable to read (unlike trying to slash your way through the thickets of this review), this is a fun book.

Jobs are about money, right? You're exhorted to “follow your dreams” or “do what you love,” but ultimately rent has to be paid and pizza eaten (and delivery persons paid), so ... I do a thing for you, you give me money. It's communication and interaction at its most base level, a pure financial transaction. Obviously, if you can find a way to tie meaningful employment with your inner peace and contentment, so much the better. And sure, once the cashflow establishes a certain level of stasis [eating Ramen because you want to, not because you have to], you can start to consider a lateral move for more fulfilling work, but there'a almost always a financial floor below which you dare not go.

So it's as difficult as ever to read about Ivy League graduates griping about the torturous hours they endure in the introduction to their [self-selected] professions as bankers, money-changers and Masters of the Universe. We learn all about how they have to work a lot — on the weekends, late nights, early mornings, pretty much any time electricity is available on the island of Manhattan. They don't like it! [ Duh. ] But they (for the most part) continue to do it! [ Also duh. ] That's the incentive provided by a minimum $60K salary + $20K bonus if they're thought to be bad at their job.

For the full review, please click here.