Usually my mother and I don't share the same taste in books, and she didn't like this one at all. She said, and I quote, "I don't understand how someone could be so obsessed." And while I disagree with that point, I thought Emily Giffin's 4th novel just lacked the character development that could make you believe someone could be so obsessed. I really liked her first two books, I thought Baby Proof was good but not great, and this one falls into the average Chick Lit category. I'm not sure now I will be so enthused to pick up her next book.
I almost always fold down pages that have some thought - a new vocabulary word, an idea - that I want to go back to and remember. Not this book, though. I only folded down pages that contained examples of things I wanted to point out here. This book just lacked substance; the characters were so cookie-cutter and one-dimensional.
Here's the basic set-up (with the spoiler, sorry): Our heroine Ellen dates Leo, a committment-phobic man, in NYC. She's devastated when he dumps her, and basically can't forget about him - even though she ends up marrying the rich, handsome, but boring brother of her best friend. She pretends like she's happy, and she is, at least passably. Until she runs into Leo on the street. He wants to revive their friendship, she starts fantasizing, she sees him in secret, and this time around, he treats her like a princess, telling her everything she ever wanted to hear. It eventually comes to a head: She has to choose between her husband and Leo. What does she do? She's about to do the dirty deed when her sister calls and tells her it's the wrong decision. So she leaves. And then spends the remaining 5 pages justifying why, in fact, she had never settled in the first place, despite the previous 200-odd pages to the contrary. So predictable, so boring!
Ugg. Seriously.
Sunday, June 08, 2008
#11: Babylon's Ark, Lawrence Anthony
I don't have too much specifically to say about this book, except that I really enjoyed it. Subtitled "The Incredible Wartime Rescue of the Baghdad Zoo," it's basically about this guy - author Lawrence Anthony - who decides that you can't just leave captive animals to die in a war zone. And he's absolutely right. As he writes (with his cowriter, I should add, just because) toward the end of the book, "Our inability to think beyond ourselves or to be able to cohabit with other life-forms in what is patently a massive collaborative quest for survival is surely a malady that pervades the human soul." At times the chronology was confusing, but overall, Babylon's Ark is just a fascinating account of one man's quest to put things to right. I totally want to go visit his game reserve, Thula Thula, in Africa now.
The only thing I have to point out, though, is the factual error about halfway through about Patton's rescue during WW2 of Austria's famed Lipizzanner horses. The book says that the horses rescued from Hostau, Czechoslovakia were shipped to the United States, but that's not true - and the only reason I know this is that I just wrote a story on a herd in Illinois. The horses were actually returned to the Austrians (hence the continuation of the Spanish Riding School in Vienna today).
Anyway, overall, two thumbs up...
The only thing I have to point out, though, is the factual error about halfway through about Patton's rescue during WW2 of Austria's famed Lipizzanner horses. The book says that the horses rescued from Hostau, Czechoslovakia were shipped to the United States, but that's not true - and the only reason I know this is that I just wrote a story on a herd in Illinois. The horses were actually returned to the Austrians (hence the continuation of the Spanish Riding School in Vienna today).
Anyway, overall, two thumbs up...
#10: A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah
Subtitled "Memoirs of a Boy Soldier," this book was an interesting and autobiographical look at Sierra Leone's Civil War. Overall, I thought it was well-written, but I'm not sure if I totally agree that the chosen format was the best way to go. The author decided to tell the story the way that he experienced it, and since he was 12 years old when his village was engulfed in the fighting, he really only understood the war as it personally affected him. He didn't know anything about the politics, and as a result, you the reader never really understand why they were fighting in the first place. (I suppose you could say that about all wars over ideology and selfishly wanting to hog resources, but that's a different story.) I ended up Googling the subject about halfway through the book, and it helped, but I think the book suffered a little bit from the lack of contextual info. On the other hand, Beah would have lost that aimless, innocent quality that leads him through the book. So I don't know - maybe an introduction would have helped? (After all, you can't just rely on what you learned from Blood Diamond, right? One of my most favorite movies by the way, and an inspiration toward that rough but mighty path that is journalism.)
I was also struck by how ridiculous all these wars in Africa have been - Darfur, Rwanda, and Uganda come to mind. It really makes you wonder what people are thinking. I don't think that there are any fundamental differences between Africans and Americans (and you can hardly lump one continent all together as sharing the same motivation), so what is it that possesses people to turn into total barbarians? What is it that possesses adults to drug young children and use them as weapons? Especially in these third-world communities that were formerly so family-oriented. I definitely don't think that we're inherently more civilized (hello, Hiroshima; hello, Guantanemo Bay), but there's something about the structure that we have built that keeps the general population from such base actions. It makes my head hurt trying to think what exactly the difference is.
I guess, too, that I always sort of saw these situations in terms of the good guys and the bad guys, and this book pretty much flips that naive idea on its head. In Sudan, Al-Bashir and his government are evil and the Darfurians are helpless victims just trying to fight back; in Uganda, Joseph Kony is enlisting child soldiers and the government is just trying to keep the madman at bay. Likely not true, I realize. In Sierra Leone, they're all just warped. Beah ends up on the government's side simply because he and his friends wander into their camp first; they easily could have been picked up by the other side. It was total chance, but regardless, the children on both sides end up drugged out of their minds, indoctrinated by Rambo, and spilling blood for reasons they couldn't tell you. They can't see that they're doing what people did to them - stealing their innocence, destroying lives and villages. And of course they can't - they're children. The whole thing just makes me so angry.
There's an interesting fable at the end of the book. One of the village elders would tell it to the children: "There was a hunter who went into the bush to kill a monkey. He had looked for only a few minutes when he saw the monkey sitting comfortably in the branch of a low tree...Just when he was about to pull the trigger, the monkey spoke: 'If you shoot me, your mother will die, and if you don't, your father will die.'" And then the children would have to figure out what they would do. Beah says that when he was a child, before the war, no one would ever answer, as all the children were sitting in the presence of their parents. But now, at the end of the book, he presents the answer that he silently came up with at age 7: "I concluded to myself that if I were the hunter, I would shoot the monkey so that it would no longer have the chance to put other hunters in the same predicament."
Huh. It's the same sort of question that you've heard was often presented to Jews during the Holocaust. But I'm a little troubled by Beah's answer...I think he's saying that you take the aggressor out so that the situation can never be replicated. But who's the aggressor here? It seems like you'd have to have taken out an awful lot of people in Sierra Leone to stop the madness...but isn't that what caused the madness. It's a troubling ending, but I guess it's easy to judge from my shiny happy American bedroom.
So what's the right answer? I always thought in this game of logic that the hunter was supposed to choose himself. But I guess that's not how it works out in real life.
I was also struck by how ridiculous all these wars in Africa have been - Darfur, Rwanda, and Uganda come to mind. It really makes you wonder what people are thinking. I don't think that there are any fundamental differences between Africans and Americans (and you can hardly lump one continent all together as sharing the same motivation), so what is it that possesses people to turn into total barbarians? What is it that possesses adults to drug young children and use them as weapons? Especially in these third-world communities that were formerly so family-oriented. I definitely don't think that we're inherently more civilized (hello, Hiroshima; hello, Guantanemo Bay), but there's something about the structure that we have built that keeps the general population from such base actions. It makes my head hurt trying to think what exactly the difference is.
I guess, too, that I always sort of saw these situations in terms of the good guys and the bad guys, and this book pretty much flips that naive idea on its head. In Sudan, Al-Bashir and his government are evil and the Darfurians are helpless victims just trying to fight back; in Uganda, Joseph Kony is enlisting child soldiers and the government is just trying to keep the madman at bay. Likely not true, I realize. In Sierra Leone, they're all just warped. Beah ends up on the government's side simply because he and his friends wander into their camp first; they easily could have been picked up by the other side. It was total chance, but regardless, the children on both sides end up drugged out of their minds, indoctrinated by Rambo, and spilling blood for reasons they couldn't tell you. They can't see that they're doing what people did to them - stealing their innocence, destroying lives and villages. And of course they can't - they're children. The whole thing just makes me so angry.
There's an interesting fable at the end of the book. One of the village elders would tell it to the children: "There was a hunter who went into the bush to kill a monkey. He had looked for only a few minutes when he saw the monkey sitting comfortably in the branch of a low tree...Just when he was about to pull the trigger, the monkey spoke: 'If you shoot me, your mother will die, and if you don't, your father will die.'" And then the children would have to figure out what they would do. Beah says that when he was a child, before the war, no one would ever answer, as all the children were sitting in the presence of their parents. But now, at the end of the book, he presents the answer that he silently came up with at age 7: "I concluded to myself that if I were the hunter, I would shoot the monkey so that it would no longer have the chance to put other hunters in the same predicament."
Huh. It's the same sort of question that you've heard was often presented to Jews during the Holocaust. But I'm a little troubled by Beah's answer...I think he's saying that you take the aggressor out so that the situation can never be replicated. But who's the aggressor here? It seems like you'd have to have taken out an awful lot of people in Sierra Leone to stop the madness...but isn't that what caused the madness. It's a troubling ending, but I guess it's easy to judge from my shiny happy American bedroom.
So what's the right answer? I always thought in this game of logic that the hunter was supposed to choose himself. But I guess that's not how it works out in real life.
#9: The Sanctuary, Raymond Khoury
Supposedly Khoury's first novel, The Last Templar, was quite good, following a well-marked path to success laid out by The Da Vinci Code. But The Sanctuary? Not so much. This isn't a genre I particularly enjoy reading, but I feel like if I've taken the time to read a thriller, then the author ought to take the time to thrill me. Is it just me?
I'd say the main flaw is that the story is totally predictable. While I didn't have every detail exactly right, I had the main arc figured out from about page 20. It also lacked the strong historical story, which is what separated The Da Vinci Code from your run-of-the-mill paperback. There was a little something about alchemy, and how the quest to turn base metals into gold eventually led alchemists to try their hand at eternal life, but that's hardly got the heft of Jesus makin' whoopie with Mary Magdalene in a 2,000-year old conspiracy.
Ah, conspiracy. I thought I had learned something here about how the government can use our cell phones to spy on us by remotely turning on the microphone. Page 224 instructs us, "Most cell-phone users didn't realize that their phones weren't necessarily fully powered down, even if they were switched off. You just needed to set the alarm on your phone for a time when it's switched off and watch it light up to see that." I can't tell you how excited I was to learn that tidbit - I even told my brother. But guess what? I've just tried it, and it doesn't work. My phone didn't do anything. I'm both disappointed and relieved, but thank you Verizon Wireless for protecting my American right to privacy.
On one last, bitchy note that added some humor: The book jacket says that author Raymond Khoury is, "an acclaimed screenwriter and producer for both television and film." I know Dutton's got to sell the book, but that's not exactly true. According to IMDB, he's only worked on 3 shows, none of which I've heard of and none of which lasted terribly long. Sure, he's the screenwriter of the mini-series version of The Last Templar, but that's sort of a given, no?
I'd say the main flaw is that the story is totally predictable. While I didn't have every detail exactly right, I had the main arc figured out from about page 20. It also lacked the strong historical story, which is what separated The Da Vinci Code from your run-of-the-mill paperback. There was a little something about alchemy, and how the quest to turn base metals into gold eventually led alchemists to try their hand at eternal life, but that's hardly got the heft of Jesus makin' whoopie with Mary Magdalene in a 2,000-year old conspiracy.
Ah, conspiracy. I thought I had learned something here about how the government can use our cell phones to spy on us by remotely turning on the microphone. Page 224 instructs us, "Most cell-phone users didn't realize that their phones weren't necessarily fully powered down, even if they were switched off. You just needed to set the alarm on your phone for a time when it's switched off and watch it light up to see that." I can't tell you how excited I was to learn that tidbit - I even told my brother. But guess what? I've just tried it, and it doesn't work. My phone didn't do anything. I'm both disappointed and relieved, but thank you Verizon Wireless for protecting my American right to privacy.
On one last, bitchy note that added some humor: The book jacket says that author Raymond Khoury is, "an acclaimed screenwriter and producer for both television and film." I know Dutton's got to sell the book, but that's not exactly true. According to IMDB, he's only worked on 3 shows, none of which I've heard of and none of which lasted terribly long. Sure, he's the screenwriter of the mini-series version of The Last Templar, but that's sort of a given, no?
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