#19: Skinny Bitch, Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin

My best advice? RUN FROM THIS BOOK. My friend recommended this book to me - she said I would never look at food the same way again. And that may be true, but Skinny Bitch is, at its core, filled with untrustworthy information written by two women who are not qualified to be prescribing such advice.

At its most basic, Skinny Bitch is deceitful. This is a book promoting a vegan diet and while I have no personal problem with that, I wasn't interested in reading a manifesto on the subject. Veganism is not mentioned anywhere on the front cover or the back cover blurb. The authors (and perhaps marketing people) have done this purposely, in order to ambush the reader – thinking, and probably rightly so, that a book on veganism is not going to sell as well as one that’s billed as “a no-nonsense, tough-love guide for savvy girls who want to quit eating crap and start looking fabulous!” It’s kind of amazing then that Freedman and Barnouin manage to take everyone else – the FDA, the USDA, the dairy people, the beef people, Johnson & Johnson – to task for being sneaky in order to sell a product when it's exactly what they've done here.

Despite the fact that Skinny Bitch directly says that doctors are underqualified (p. 60), neither of these women are qualified to be dispensing what is essentially medical advice. Let me say it again: THEY ARE NOT QUALIFIED. Rory Freedman is billed as a former model's agent and a self-taught know-it-all. Kim Barnouin, a former model, holds an MS in Holistic Nutrition that she earned online from the Clayton College of Natural Health. According to the New York Times, she did most of her research online - don't worry, I will get to the problems with that.

The biggest flaw in this book is that the authors don’t acknowledge that there are different schools of thought, that people can have differing but still valid opinions, and that there are data sets to support just about everything. Everyone else, in the writers' unqualified opinion, is wrong – every other scientist, dietician, everyone. (Unless of course, they agree with them.) Their book is like listening to Sarah Palin speak – it’s just so hateful and doesn’t recognize that anyone else’s expertise/opinion can be equally valid. To Sarah Palin, you’re “un-American” if you don’t agree with her. And to these women, disagreement makes you a “fucking moron” or a “selfish whore.” I don’t even understand why these words are acceptable. It’s not tough love, it's abuse, and as the writers themselves say, “There is nothing uglier than a pretty woman who’s nasty.”

I am not a qualified medical professional, but some of Skinny Bitch's conclusions rang false to me. Since I don't want to go on here forever, I'll leave it at that. HOWEVER, I did work as a magazine fact-checker for a number of years, and I feel absolutely qualified to discuss the authenticity of one's sources. At the back of the book, Skinny Bitch lists a number of sources - some are from nutrition books, but the majority are from websites and online articles. The thing is, newspaper articles are not considered a primary sources and neither is the Internet - and that's because neither outlet is fact-checked. I am astounded that the majority of this book was written and then published based on such flimsy sources.

I took a look at 10 of the links provided (out of perhaps 30). Three of them no longer exist. One was a newspaper in India and another was what looked like a reputable newsmagazine. Truthaboutsplenda.com used research to back up its claims, but is funded by the Sugar Association, which represents the (conflicting) interests of the American sugarcane farmer. One had an advisory board with doctors, but was ultimately there to sell products; another's mission was aiding the spiritual evolution of the human race and unveiling conspiracy theories. Holisticmed.com, used multiple times, does not list an author (so you don't know who's writing this information) and says clearly on page one that the information is not intended as medical advice. And lastly, the last website had a well-known, if self-styled author, who was the center of controversy in 2002 after other vegans accused him of making false claims and distorting the (already bad) truth. They also relied quite a bit on information from PETA, which is a respectable but biased organization. In short, none of these are valid sources and would not pass muster at any major magazine. They could all be starting points, sure, but from the citations, it doesn't appear that the writers followed them up to find more concrete facts.

There's nothing wrong with veganism and I'm sure it has a good amount of science to support it. I just hope that anyone considering such a radical dietary change will find out about the pros and cons by reading a book written by legitimate experts.

#18: The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown

I'd probably have to give The Lost Symbol - the biggest book release of the year - 2.5 stars. It wasn't awful, but it's also no match for The Da Vinci Code or my personal favorite, Angels & Demons. Simply put, it just wasn't as enthralling as the other two - there was never a point where I felt absolutely compelled to keep reading.

So, The Lost Symbol is the third Robert Langdon novel, with our hero being lured to the Capitol under false pretenses. When he gets there, he finds out he's not there to give a speech; instead, greeted by his friend's severed hand, he learns that he must uncover the Mason's long-buried Lost Word to appease a lone madman. Over the course of the night, Langdon teams up with the victim's sister, Katherine, and runs all over D.C. trying to solve the mystery and avoid the CIA.

Part of the problem, I think, is that The Lost Symbol doesn't stand on its own - its format is VERY similar to The Da Vinci Code and towards the end, there's some thematic overlap with Angels & Demons. It didn't totally feel like its own book, although I think he made a smart choice in this one by not attempting to deliver the secrets of the Masons. In The Da Vinci Code, he comes up with an answer for the modern location of the Holy Grail, which requires a large suspension of disbelief; here, instead, he manages to wrap up the book without having to make something up, to the book's benefit. (It's the same sort of choice that Junot Diaz makes in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, with the Mongoose's secret message.)

I also think, perhaps, that for me, the Freemasons are just not as compelling as the history of Christianity or science versus faith at the Vatican. I don't really know anything about the Masons or the conspiracy theories surrounding them, so I didn't really have any preconceived notions to be stripped of.

In the end, I did learn something about the Masons (and feel like there are some places in D.C. that I'd like to re-see). But more than anything, I learned - or rather, remembered - that wow, it's really easy to manipulate people. Obviously this is a work of fiction but I was struck time and time again by how the villian managed to fairly believable gain entrance to places simply by acting with confidence.

People generally give Dan Brown shit, but I like him. I don't think he's setting out to write great literature - his purpose seems to be to write a good thriller. And I think he accomplishes that for the most part here. It's not The Da Vinci Code, but that's probably an unrealistic standard to hold him too. (And hey, Dan, if you're feeling somewhat down about the mushy reviews, have a listen to Elizabeth Gilbert talk about the expectations that come with blockbuster success.) So I totally have to give Dan Brown props for poking fun of himself:

On page 355, he writes, “In a flash, Langdon understood the meaning of Galloway’s last request. Tell Peter this: The Masonic Pyramid has always kept her secret…sincerely. The words had seemed strange at the time, but now Langdon understood that Dean Galloway was sending Peter a code. Ironically, this same code had been a plot twist in a mediocre thriller Langdon had read years ago.”

The name of that mediocre thriller? Digital Fortress, Dan Brown's first book.

#17: My Sister's Keeper, Jodi Picoult

Ugg, I seriously hated this book. And interestingly, the friend who gave it to me loved it. Although I have no idea why. (Spoilers ahead, by the way)

The idea is interesting: A family conceives a baby that will be, with the help of science, a perfect genetic match for their dying daughter, Kate. But as a young teenager, Anna is tired of being noticed only when her body parts are needed and decides to sue for medical emancipation. But My Sister's Keeper just didn't captivate me. The characters were pretty one-dimensional, with the rebellious son, hero father, and callous lawyer; the mother was so awful that it was hard to see her point of view. With the trial, the novel could have had a lot of tension, but it just kind of plodded along. Partially it was the language - my friend liked its reliance on dialogue, but I felt that Picoult relied too much on allusion and metaphor to make "grand" points that weren't terribly insightful. So I was already disliking the book...and then I got to the end. Oh, the end.

What I really, truly hated about this book was the enormous cop-out ending. I felt like Picoult chose this subject - genetically engineered children, medical rights - to be controversial, which of course would stir up interest in the book upon publication. But then, there's nothing to back it up - Picoult doesn't take a stand and she doesn't offer any sort of meditation on the subject.

In the Readers Club Guide at the back of the book, Picoult says of the ending, "...this isn't an easy book, and you know from the first page that there are no easy answers." But I really felt that she took the easy road. At the end, Kate is at death's door. She needs the kidney that her sister doesn't want to donate, but she probably isn't going to make it, regardless - enough so that her doctor is actually against transplant. Even though Anna wins her case and gets to make her own decisions, she will presumably still be at the mercy of her mother's wishes for her to donate. It's not that Anna's not going to do it; it's more that, at the end, she's won the right to make her own choice. And here we are, at the big question: Should Anna feel obligated to save the sister she loves, even if it may not work and be bad for her own long-term health? The real crux of My Sister's Keeper is how can you balance the equally deserving but opposing needs of two children that you desperately love.

Guess what the answer is? That's right; there is no answer. Instead, Anna is killed in a car wreck immediately following the conclusion of the trial. Her kidney is given to her sister who, miraculously, recovers from leukemia and goes on to live a healthy life. Seriously? It annoyed me that Picoult never tried to answer the hard questions - I don't think there was a perfect ending that would have satisfied all readers, but I think she should have tried for something. But it really bugged me that she purposely chose a controversial topic and never did anything with it. (And no surprise, rebellious brother gets fixed and the scummy lawyer - who ran from his high school girlfriend over a seizure disorder, again, seriously? - gets the girl back anyway.)

Do yourself the favor of staying away from My Sister's Keeper. You will thank me, really.

#16: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson

I ended up picking this book up by chance. I was traveling and had finished the two books I brought with me - The Sex Lives of Cannibals and Air Babylon - and wanted to trade them in for something else. But I just couldn't find anything decent, until I discovered The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in a spirituality focused used-book store in a small beach town. I only picked it up, actually, because a guy at Borders had just told me it was one of the best books he'd recently read. The point is, I hadn't intended to read it, but it came into my life anyway.

For the most part, I liked it, although not enough to read the next book, The Girl Who Played with Fire, in the trilogy. On the one hand, I was pretty into the book until the last 100 pages or so, and couldn't wait to dive back into it; on the other hand, I was absolutely shocked by the sexual violence in the book, which the jacket doesn't mention.

The book seems to be about disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist, who's both trying to solve the mystery of what happened to 16-year-old Harriet Vanger in 1966 and get revenge on industralist Hans-Erik Wennerstrom. But I think the book, on a deeper level, is really about violence perpetrated against women. (Each section starts with some kind of statistic, after all.) And it's fine as a topic, but I wish I'd known beforehand that that's what the book is really about, because I'm not sure I would have picked it.

But otherwise, the book is pretty well-written, although I think Larsson (in the form of Blomkvist) took a few unbelievable leaps in solving the mystery. The writing is a little stiff - though that may be about the translation - and, as a side note, has a surprising amount of techy details (like an exhausted list of Mac laptop specs) which I found amusing for some reason. I would argue that the last 100 pages - which resolve the Wennerstrom thread after the Harriet mystery has been solved - could have been eliminated, but that's personal preference.

So, all in all, I liked it but I didn't love it. :)

#15: Air Babylon, Imogen Edwards-Jones

Hmm, I'm kinda surprised at myself that I've read another one of these Babylon books. While I quite enjoyed Fashion Babylon, and learned a lot, I found Beach Babylon to be amusing but lacking plot. Sadly, Air Babylon seems to fall into the second category as well.

Having said that, I didn't expect much and the books aren't marketed as high literature. They're good for a quick, amusing read and I liked this book enough to pass it on to a friend.

My only issue, really, is with the plot...or lack of plot. Air Babylon is about a day in the life of a British airport supervisor (at Heathrow, as I recall). It's more or less supposed to be an ordinary day, except at the end of it, a couple of the employees - including the narrator - are flying to Dubai to celebrate a birthday. Also, the supervisor has a crush on one of the flight attendents who's going to be traveling with the group. That's kinda where the plot ends - the book is really constructed around the anecdotes, and everything happens to link the anecdotes together. And in order to use the most hilarious/awful/shocking stories she discovered over the course of her research, Edwards-Jones always makes the worst thing happen. It made the book feel predictable and repetitive because you knew every new scenario was going to involve a crisis and there was no surprise when it indeed arrived.

Oh, and for the first ten pages, I assumed the narrator was a woman, I think because the cover shows a flight attendant. So it was a big shock to find out it was a man, and have to rearrange all my mental images I'd come up with.

As a side note, I can't say whether or not the anecdotes are at all true. The friend that I gave the book to spent a summer working as a flight attendant, and didn't think they sounded too outrageous. So, interestingly, an Amazon reviewer feels pretty strongly that Air Babylon is insulting exaggerated. But who knows...

#14: The Sex Lives of Cannibals, J. Maarten Troost

I read this book about a month ago, mostly while stuck in an airport, and I'm a little fuzzy on the details...but I actually had the same thought the moment I finished the book. What actually happened? There's not a plot to speak of; the author moves to Tarawa, an atoll in the Republic of Kiribati, with his employed girlfriend and he mostly writes about the ridiculous culture shock he experienced. (And it is ridiculous - I was in Kiribati ten years ago, though for a far shorter period of time, and Troost is not exaggerating in the slightest.)

So yeah, I can't really tell you what happened - he swam, he fished, he made a journey by boat - but oddly enough, it's not really a criticism. I quite liked The Sex Lives of Cannibals - it was an easy read (thus, good for traveling) and totally light-hearted and amusing. So, two thumbs up. Heck, he gets a thumb just for the title.