Imagine the Power of Habit: The science of science-y self-help

Probably the two books I was most excited about reading this summer were Charles Duhigg's The Power of Habit and Jonah Lehrer's Imagine. I borrowed the Power of Habit ebook from the library, but I had bought the Imagine ebook off the Barnes n' Noble website -- and was then quite disappointed when it turned out that Mr. Lehrer had fabricated some of the quotes in his best-selling book and subsequently resigned from his position at the New Yorker. So in the end, I didn't read Imagine (and eventually managed to get a refund).

But why were these my books of choice? I had never really thought about it, beyond the superficial -- they were bestsellers and they sounded interesting. Doesn't that seem like enough? But then I read a really interesting critique of Imagine on the New Republic website, and it flipped my whole perspective of these intellectual, science-y self-help books that have become immensely popular the last couple of years. In his review, Issac Chotiner of TNR writes, "Imagine is really a pop-science book, which these days usually means that it is an exercise in laboratory-approved self-help. Like Malcolm Gladwell and David Brooks, Lehrer writes self-help for people who would be embarrassed to be seen reading it. For this reason, their chestnuts must be roasted in 'studies' and given a scientific gloss. The surrender to brain science is particularly zeitgeisty."

I saw another article about Lehrer, post-scandal, that was discussing this same issue. Eric Garland essentially says on his blog that we, the reading public, have become enamored with these sorts of easy answers to difficult questions, which is what has funded this trend. I personally thought The Secret was a little ridiculous -- believe away your cancer! -- but when you add scientific studies and whatnot to the mix, it suddenly seems like these books will allow you to grasp creativity, success and your habits, and even better, grab hold of them. When I think about it, this too sounds a little ridiculous -- these concepts are not that simple -- but I suppose we all want some easy solution, myself included.

Interestingly, when I look back at my blog posts on both The Secret and Outliers, I noted that both books seem to ignore the hard work that has to take place in order to be successful. In discussing Outliers, I wrote, "While [Gladwell's] theory may be true, I felt that it lacked personal responsibility, that duty to get up and do your best to do your thing every single day." And about The Secret, I said, "I think my biggest issue with [it] is that it ignores the work and actions that have to take place for anything to happen, much less to achieve success. I mean, I can visualize a best-selling novel all day – I can believe it with every fiber of my being – but I can't attract those 80,000 words. Maybe I can attract an agent and a good review from Michiko Kakutani and an appearance on Oprah, but I can't attract the creation of a book – I will actually have to sit down every day and write it and there's no magical formula for that." And even The Power of Habit downplays the work changing a habit takes.

 

Hmm, so where does that leave us? Still struggling with the complexity of trying to be great, creative and successful. Alas. I suppose this is why everyone wants the magic pill.

Power of Habit: Why we do what we do (#15)

The title of the Power of Habit says it all – habits are powerful, and  author Charles Duhigg explores how habits affect individuals, companies and societies, and how they can be changed. “Most of the choices we make each day may feel like the products of well-considered decision making, but they’re not. They’re habits. And though each habit means relatively little on its own, over time, [they] have enormous impacts on our health, productivity, financial security and happiness.” (p.11) While a lot of Amazon readers found the book to be redundant and many were disappointed that it’s not actually a self-help book, I found all of the anecdotes and research about habits to be fascinating. So  fascinating, in fact, that I’ve already repeated a number of Duhigg's anecdotes to others.

In the book, a habit loop seems a pretty simple thing, composed of three things: a cue, a routine and a reward. What separates a habit (a must-do) from a routine (should-do) is a craving. The person has to want the reward badly enough so that when he/she sees the cue, he/she will act automatically in terms of the habit that’s already been created. So, for example, you may not actually want the donut in the break room, but when you see it, your mind automatically associates it with the reward (sugar high!) and the craving drives you to eat it. If you want to change this habit, you have to really look at your behavior and figure out the cue and reward. (All of this is pretty hard work, which I thought was understressed -- in the appendix, one of the researchers notes that some simple habits, like nail biting and stuttering, can be changed using this Simplified Habit Reversal, but those with more serious habits, like smoking, gambling and depression, need cognitive behavior therapy, which requires more a intensive intervention.)

The first section of the Power of Habit was the most convincing -- it was pretty easy to understand and recognize how an individual's habit loop works. I thought the book went a little off the rails in the second section -- which examined a company's habits -- and I was completely unconvinced in the third section, about social movements. I didn't buy that the things he called habits were, in fact, habits. (In regards to companies, he talked about how truces between departments allowed them to get on with work, but it seemed to be more about relationships; in terms of the civil rights movement, his examples seemed more to reflect relationships and peer pressure.)

But the book ends on an interesting note, about how the brain activity of, say, compulsive gamblers and people who suffer from sleep terrors (or those on certain medications) look the same, and yet we don’t hold them equally accountable for their actions. Is that right? On the one hand, we have this socially accepted view of the individual, who is completely responsible for his/her conscious choices – but the point of the book is that the primitive parts of the brain take over when it comes to habits. It made me think, which is all that I really ask. So, despite some flaws, I can say that I did enjoy the Power of Habit, and I would definitely recommend it.

Not Without My Daughter: Scary, very scary (#14)

When I was in elementary school, an unremarkable woman named Betty Mahmoody was married to a crazy person. He also happened to be Muslim, originally hailing from Iran. For reasons that aren't explained until nearly the end, this man convinces Betty that he, she and their young daughter should take a trip to Iran to see the family, and when they get there, he goes through a complete personality shift and tries to keep them there, as his chattel, forever. This is the basic premise of Not Without My Daughter, the bestseller published in 1987.

It's a pretty scary book -- and not one to read right before you get married, as I did. Betty goes on what she thinks is a two-week holiday to Tehran, only to learn once the two weeks are up that her husband plans to keep them there. Since women have absolutely no rights there, there's nothing she can do about it -- she doesn't have the right to travel without her husband, she doesn't have any rights to her daughter, and her husband has the right to do whatever he pleases with the both of them, including beating them in the street if he so chooses. As she says early on, "I tried to deal with the realization that I was married to a madman and trapped in a country where the laws decreed that he was my absolute master" (68). Betty decides that she will get herself out of Iran, somehow -- but only if she can take her daughter, too, providing the title of the book.

It was a quick, enjoyable read, though more than once I found myself looking at my fiance, thinking, Do I really know this man? Because that's the real issue in Not Without My Daughter. My impression was that Mahmoody primarily blamed Iran and Islam for what happened to her and while I understand it, given what she went through and how personal it felt, I thought this blame was a little heavy-handed in the book. Because let's face it, there are people being held against their will in America per directives from so-called religions -- just last week, there was the Vanity Fair teaser about Scientology auditioning wives for Tom Cruise and the punishment Iranian actress Nazanin Boniadi suffered when she failed to please him. Then there are the FLDS people. My point is, these things can actually happen to you in America, too; Mahmoody's problem wasn't that she was married to a Muslim, it was that she was married to a crazy person. And she knew he was crazy long before she ever agreed to go to Iran with him. It's just that the problem spiraled way out of control when she went to a country where he was legally and culturally allowed to be that crazy, and hopping a fence in the middle of the night wouldn't cut it as an escape. But I often felt that in the novel, Mahmoody wrongfully blamed the religion and the country more than she blamed the individual, her husband, who had been severely depressed and acting strange when they were living in the US.

I haven't seen the movie version of Not Without My Daughter -- released in 1991 and starring Sally Field (who, incidentally, I once saw in a drugstore in Vancouver). And I probably won't -- the trailer looks horribly dated, and according to Wikipedia, the film got mixed reviews and was criticized for its racist characterization of Iranians and their culture. There's apparently also a 2002 documentary called Without My Daughter, telling the husband's side of the story.

Sweet Confusion on the Princes' Islands: Yet another passive friggin' protagonist (#13)

When in Rome, do as the Romans do, goes the old adage -- and when in Rome, read their books. While I am still deep in the throes of Game of Thrones -- I've just started Dance with Dragons -- I've also realized that while I am spending time in Turkey, I should explore some of their literature and expand my horizons a little bit further.

And so I began with Sweet Confusion on the Princes' Islands, a novel by expatriate Lawrence Goodman that was published in Turkey, which accounts for its scarcity of Amazon.com. (Okay, so it's not exactly "Turkish" literature, but it is set in Turkey, on an island in the Sea of Marmara, just off Istanbul.) I didn't expect much from it, though I hoped it would be a sweet read in the vein of My Father's Glory & My Mother's Castle by Marcel Pagnol or Rosamunde Pilcher's Sleeping Tiger. But it wasn't to be, mostly because Sweet Confusion on the Princes' Islands features one of fiction's most passive protagonists -- something that any casual reader of this blog knows I hate. And most interestingly, for once that boring protagonist is a man!

The novel revolves around Ed Wilkie, a Californian in his early 30s who has impulsively decided to take a job teaching English at a boys' school on one of the Princes' Islands. It begins with his arrival in Istanbul -- he's a single man, accompanied only by his dog, Starleen -- and though things seem to be a bit odd, merely a sign of things to come, Ed takes it all in stride. It turns out that Ed never questions a thing -- despite all the bizarre incidents that happen over the course of Sweet Confusion, the man never shows the slightest bit of curiousity about anything. He doesn't even know the first name, nationality or specific line of business of his closest friend on the island. The book blurb calls him naive, but he struck me as sort of a dimwit.

Superficially, Sweet Confusion is a tale about the minor but zany adventures surrounding a naive young man thrust into a new world. But the adventures aren't always minor -- there is murder and drug trafficking, after all -- and they aren't particularly zany. And that's because the story is from Ed's point of view, and again, Ed never has a reaction to anything or asks any questions. As a result, nothing in the plot is well-developed; weird things happen, but it's generally without significant or emotional comment from any of the characters, making for a very flat book. Not surprisingly, the end was completely contrived and ridiculous.

A Feast for Crows: Weakest of the group, SPOILERS AHEAD (#12)

By the end of a Storm of Swords, the third book in George R.R. Martin's fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire, I felt like I'd gone through a war (and barely survived). At that point, nearly all of the main characters have died, usually in the most brutal of ways, and those that are left have escaped off into the world, their status and location generally unknown. PLEASE STOP READING NOW IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHO'S ALIVE AND WHO'S DEAD AT THE BEGINNING OF BOOK FOUR.

As I said in my last post on the series, Storm of Swords contains somewhat of an ending. There's a definite lull in the action -- the war for the throne seems to have mostly abated with the deaths of Robb Stark, Joffrey and Renly, and Stannis' choice to instead fight at the Wall, so there is somewhat of a peace in the realm. Almost everyone else of major importance to the story -- Arya, Sansa, Tyrion, Bran and Rickon -- has skipped off to locations unknown, almost all outside of the kingdom.

It's a definite and necessary lull in the action, and I expected that A Feast for Crows, book four, would pick up that thread, following the far-flung characters. They are the major characters left, after all. But that's not what happens at all, and it's very perplexing. Martin chose to dedicate the bulk of A Feast for Crows to the activities of minor characters, and the result is a pretty boring 800-page tome. Tyrion, Bran and Rickon, and Daenerys Targaryen are not in A Feast for Crows at all; Jon Snow only makes a brief appearance in Sam's narration. Instead, the book focuses heavily on Brienne of Tarth's fruitless search for the Stark sisters, family intrigue in Dorne and power struggles on the Iron Islands; the most interesting segment of the book is Cersei's, where she finally, at the end, gets what she deserves. Samwell Tarly, Arya and Sansa do make appearances, but not a lot happens with them.

Ultimately, A Feast for Crows spent too much time on the details. The book ends in a really interesting place -- it just didn't need all the minutae to get there. Apparently when George R.R. Martin was writing the book, he couldn't stop, and when he realized he had too much material, he split the story (and characters) into two books -- A Feast for Crows and book five, A Dance with Dragons. But I feel like he would have been much better served to cut the minor characters from this book (or at least limit them to a chapter), creating a tighter, more exciting read. Having said that, I know expect A Dance with Dragons to be a fireworks show...maybe it will be worth it?

Death Comes to Pemberly: So, apparently, does boredom (#11)

I don't generally read mysteries or crime novels. There's so much death, destruction and terror in the world that I generally avoid these genres in my reading choices -- and frankly, I've never really understood it as a form of entertainment. So, not surprisingly, I haven't read much by P.D. James, just one book whose name I can't remember. But I was pretty excited when I heard she'd written a mystery incorporating the characters from Pride and Prejudice -- I'm not a raving Jane Austen fan, but there's a reason that book's a classic.

Unfortunately, P.D. James' attempt to recapture the magic of Pride and Prejudice in her mystery Death Comes to Pemberly falls short. While all of the main Pride and Prejudice characters appear -- Darcy and Elizabeth, Georgiana, Wickham and Lydia, Jane and Bingley -- the relationships between them are very wooden. It appears that James was attempting to imitate Austen's style, and in that, I suppose, she succeed -- it's just that she succeeed at imitating the aloof style of Persuasion rather than the sparkling wit of Pride and Prejudice. The tone of Death Comes to Pemberly is pretty lifeless, and there's almost no development of the characters' inner lives -- Darcy and Elizabeth, for example, are happy because the text says so, not because you see any true warmth between them on the page.

Six years after the close of Pride and Prejudice, Dary and Elizabeth are living happily on their estate, Pemberly, with their two young sons. Life is apparently perfect. Elizabeth is preparing to throw a huge ball the next evening when her headstrong younger sister Lydia unexpectedly arrives, absolutely hysterical. She had been traveling with her husband, the ever-disgraced Wickham, and his friend, Captain Denny, preparing to crash the ball. But Wickham and Denny had gotten into an argument, and Denny had exited the carriage and headed into the dark woods. Wickham followed and then...gunshots. When Darcy and the members of his search party locate them, Wickham is standing over his friend's lifeless body, seemingly confessing to the murder. But, of course, it's never that simple in a mystery, and Darcy spends the rest of the novel trying to figure out who the real culprit is.

This quest involves a number of people that weren't in Pride and Prejudice, but James doesn't develop them enough for the reader to care, which makes the mystery pretty dull. We don't learn anything about Captain Denny so there's no emotional attachment to the crime; at the same time, Wickham (along with everyone else) has apparently not changed in the slightest in six years, so it's hard to care all that much about whether an unreformed scoundrel gets saved from the hangman's noose.

If you don't care about a novel's characters or plot, there's really not a lot to hang your hat on. In this case, you're probably just better off re-reading Pride and Prejudice. And then making up your own fan-fiction version about what happened after the happily-ever-after.

March: A grimmer vision of Little Women (#8)

When I was home in late May, I was excited to get a couple of books of out of the library that I can't get here, ending up with Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict (Laurie Viera Rigler) and Ann Patchett's Bel Canto, in addition to Geraldine Brooks' Pulitzer Prize-winning March. I'd had March on my to-read list for a couple of years, but I never got around to it. And when I was home, it was once again at the bottom of the pile; I started both of the other two, but as it turned out, I couldn't get into either -- Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict was un-fun fluff and the tone of Bel Canto, which seemed akin to reading a Woody Allen movie, put me off. So, after many years of good intentions, I finally started March.

March takes its title from the last name of the main character, the much-missed father in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, imagining what his experience was like as a chaplain during the Civil War, the cause of his absence in Alcott's book. The novel starts out after a devastating battle, and basically, because of a chance encounter with a woman named Grace, a former slave, that he had met as a young man, he starts to remember his past. The book alternates between his reawakened memories and his present circumstances in the Union army, and March struggles to stay true to his family and his own highly held values while existing/surviving in his wartime reality.

March is an incredibly well-written book but I can't say that I loved it, mostly because I didn't like Mr. March all that much. Generally the main character in a novel -- the hero, if you will -- will learn something about themselves and the world, growing and changing in the process, but I don't think he did, not really. March is incredibly selfish from the start and enjoys playing the martyr, while not seeing the hardships he puts upon others, especially his family. I think this is what bothered me most about him, and the novel in general -- in Little Women, his wife Marmee and their daughters Meg, Jo, Amy and Beth miss him so much and have to make so many sacrifices in his absence, and it turns out, in this telling, that he's a selfish bastard who didn't really deserve it. He never honors the individuality of his wife or makes an effort to truly connect to or understand her. He’s so willing to help others, but never really his family; he always sacrifices them to the bigger cause, while they sacrifice themselves for him. And this never changes.

He also doesn't get himself up from hardship. Since he feels that he's shamed himself (by not winning an unwinnable situation), he refuses to go home, saying his work is not done, that others died or were taken back as slaves because he was not "brave enough." But really, he's choosing the easier path, one where he doesn't have to tell the truth to those he loves, as well as giving into his fondness for playing the martyr. In the end, he's literally forced to go back to his family. Grace has to reject him for him to go home, and John Brooke has to physically bring him back, gripping his arm as they make their way to the house. He doesn’t choose it and he doesn’t change.

But most importantly, he never has to atone for his initial stifling and later betrayal of Marmee. This is why he doesn't want to go home -- if he stays away, he doesn't have to tell her about his entire past or reveal the untruths written in his letters. But in the end, he doesn't really have to say anything. Marmee figures it out for herself and basically just decides to understand after she realizes it’s hard to write the truth when she’s writing to the girls, and she wants to keep the family together. She learns something, but he doesn't.

I am really not sure why Geraldine Brooks chose to write Mr. March this way. He's fairly passive and ineffectual, making him a weak character as things happen to him, when he should really be the one instigating the events of the novel. My only guess is that she's trying to reflect the harsh realities of war -- he's broken by what he's seen and done, and that can't be fixed. I suppose in this novel, the main character did change, but instead of growing, he shrank, ultimately making March the protagonist, but not a hero.

A Game of Thrones is really about Turks

There was a funny story about Game of Thrones in a Turkish newspaper earlier in the month. Supposedly (and this is a very important word for stories concerning the military's bad behavior),  officers at a school in Izmir showed the series to a group of teenage boys in an English-language class at a military academy. After they'd wrapped up the lessons, 10 weeks later, someone anonymously complained about it, saying Game of Thrones "involved 'corrupted and perverted' sex scenes and depicted Turks as 'a barbarian tribe with perverted religious rituals'."

It's really unfortunate because the parts with the Turks were my favorites. I think everyone was drawn to how they -- oh, wait a minute, I must be thinking of something else BECAUSE THERE ARE NO TURKS IN GAME OF THRONES. My only guess is that someone decided the Dothraki were the Turks (of nearly 1,000 years ago) in disguise and got their panties twisted into a bunch. 

According to this story, nine officers were accused of sexual abuse and "insulting Turkishness," which is in fact against the law in Turkey. The charges were dismissed until the Minister of Defense personally overruled the charges, and supposedly this ridiculous case is in progress.

The Diary of Anne Frank: A classic and yet not literature (#7)

Sex, drugs, tulips and Rembrandt: Those are the words I had always associated with Amsterdam, and not being much into prostitution, pot or the art of the Dutch Golden Age, I had never had the urge to visit. But then I had a very straight-laced friend who went there and absolutely loved it, and I began to reassess my position. I resolved to go, one day -- but it never came near the top 5 on my travel list, so there Amsterdam stayed, as a one-day-I'll-go trip, joining locales like India and China, places I seriously intend to get to, but someday. (And cue the Black Eyed Peas...)

Fast-forward about a decade: One day, someday, arrived. This past spring, during tulip season, we took a long weekend and journeyed to Amsterdam. Our goal was to see all the major sights, which included, of course, the Anne Frank House.

Like all good American schoolchildren, I read The Diary of Anne Frank when I was a kid, though I don't remember anything specific about the experience, just a generally favorable impression. So, I decided to read the book again. Now I realize why you should read it when you're a kid, and only when you're a kid: You can appreciate her experience without question. Because as an adult and a more critical reader, the diary presents some icky issues.

Anne Frank was German, but her family had moved to Holland when she was quite young to escape the Nazis' growing influence. Her father gifted her with the famous diary on her 13th birthday, in June 1942, shortly before the family went into hiding. She decides to call her diary Kitty -- she declares that it will be her one true friend, which she feels she doesn’t have. But for that, she seems to be a pretty carefree kid, and she doesn't hold much back in her writing. The family went into hiding in early July; they were shortly joined by another family, the van Pels (van Daan in the diary), and a dentist friend, Fritz Pfeffer (Albert Dussel). Anne spent the next two years chronicling their time in the Secret Annex. Her last diary entry comes on Aug. 1, 1944; the police came to arrest them three days later.

That description sounds very serious, and the situation  of course was very serious, but the truth is, the diary for the most part is not. In fact, as I was reading The Diary of Anne Frank, I couldn't help but think of the opening moments of the film Eat, Pray, Love. In voiceover, the character Elizabeth (Julia Roberts) says: "I have a friend, Deborah, a psychologist, who was asked by the city of Philadelphia if she could offer psychological counseling to a group of Cambodian refugees, boat people, who had recently arrived in the city. Deborah was daunted by the task. These Cambodians had suffered genocide, starvation, relatives murdered before their eyes, years in refugee camps, harrowing boat trips to the West…how could she relate to their suffering, how could she help these people? So guess what all these people wanted to talk about with my friend Deborah, the psychologist. It was all, I met this guy in the refugee camp, I thought he really loved me but when we got separated on the boat, he took up with my cousin, but now he says he really me, he keeps calling me, they’re married now – what should I do? I still love him. This is how we are."

And this is how the diary is.

As a piece of history and a record of what a certain group of people went through during World War II, Anne Frank's diary is irreplaceable. And yet, the diary is hardly at all about the war or the Secret Annex. Rather, it captures this unique moment in time of this young life. While it's well-written, as a piece of literature, it's not great -- it's childish. Which is not surprising as it's the innermost thoughts of a burgeoning teenager. In truth, Anne has a bit of an attitude, and I didn't find her to be terribly likeable. She's constantly complaining about being reprimanded, and she goes on and on about how she doesn't love her mother and how much she dislikes the van Daans and Dussel. The diary eventually shifts to her sexual awakening, which, being without any options, manifests as a growing attraction for Peter van Daan, who was a couple of years older than she was. As a teenger's diary, it's all fine, but it's hardly War and Peace.

But the thing is, Anne Frank's diary was never supposed to be literature -- and this is where it starts to get icky. Anne Frank wrote her diary for herself,  and it was obviously VERY personal; while she intended to publish something after the war, it wasn’t this. But she didn't survive the war to write the novel she intended; in the end, her father, the only survivor of the group, decided to publish her recovered diary. And it begs the question: Should we be reading it?

I don't know what the answer is.

A Song of Ice and Fire (#5, 6, 9): The stuff of obsession

There's this series of fantasy books called A Song of Ice and Fire -- have you heard of it? Hahaha, of course you have. Courtesy of the HBO adaptation Game of Thrones, I think everyone by now has heard of it, but I'm sure I'm not alone in admitting that I'd only heard of it because of the series. And as a good little read-the-book-before-you-see-the-movie type, that's just what I did -- and now I'm kind of obsessed. I've even dreamt about Joffrey, waking myself up swinging my arm around like I had a sword in it.

I've seen the series (which currently stands at five books, with another two planned) described as having three principal story lines -- the fight between various powerful families over the Iron Throne, and the attempted of exiled princess Daenerys Targaryen to regain that throne, which her father held, and the threat from the supernatural Others who live beyond the protective Wall in the North. But I think A Song of Ice and Fire is much simpler than that -- it's the epic tale of the Stark family, the principle nobles in the North, who are torn apart in books one and two and are trying to make their way back together. They're the heroes of the books, the good guys -- and even though a number of them have been murdered by the end of book three and all seems lost, they're the ones you're rooting for. Everyone else -- and there are a LOT of 'em -- is just a part of that, affecting how that (presumed) resolution and reunion happens. 

After an encounter between some men of the Night's Watch and the Others, book one, A Game of Thrones, begins at Winterfell, home to Eddard Stark, his wife Catelyn, their five children Robb, Sansa, Arya, Bran and Rickon, plus Ned's bastard son Jon Snow. During Catelyn's narration (each chapter is narrated from the point-of-view of a various character), we find out that the king's right-hand man (appropriately called the Hand) has died, and the king and his party are on their way to Winterfell, a fateful trip that will change all of their lives. Ned will be asked by King Robert, his closest friend, to be his new Hand, and come live at the palace in King's Landing, and after he discovers some royal secrets, he attracts the queen's ire, bringing the Starks in direct conflict with House Lannister, one of the realm's most powerful and ruthless families. (In fact, one of the messages in this series is that ruthlessness equals power.)

That's all I'll really say about the plot, so as not to ruin it for y'alls. By the end of book one, the Stark family has taken a direct hit, and a war over the throne erupts. But, like all good heroes, the Starks will spend these books having their notions about goodness and honor tested, and they will go through horrific situations on their road to getting back to each other. Martin seems to support this interpretation; he told The Atlantic, "With the general construction of the books, in some ways I took the Lord of the Rings as my model. Tolkien begins very small, in the Shire with Bilbo's birthday party, and from there, the characters all accumulate. ... But then at a certain point, they begin to go separate ways... You get this sense of everyone being together, and then the world gets bigger and bigger. My scheme is very similar to that. We begin in Winterfell, and everyone except Daenerys is in Winterfell, even characters that don't belong there, like Tyrion. And they set off together and then they begin to split. ... It has always been my intent, as with the Lord of the Rings, that eventually it would curve around and they would start moving back together."

Overall, the series is a grim one -- Martin has absolutely no compunction about killing off main characters, and in the most horrible ways, and by the end of book three, I'd say about 70 percent of the main characters have bit it, through beheadings, poisonings, massacres, and even a crossbow in the groin. As for the main characters that have managed to survive, almost all of them are in a place unknown to the others, some presumed dead. Book three is actually an interesting place to stop for a review, because the first three books make up a good unit; at this point, the series isn't resolved (clearly) but a lot of the story lines have been "wrapped up," in the sense that the remaining characters have come through their storms and are in a safer place. There are more trials to come, judging from what's already been, but they've hit a welcome lull.

For me, it was also welcome. I read A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings (book two) one after the other, took a two-week break to read two other books, and then read A Storm of Swords (book three) while watching Games of Thrones season 2. So book three ended up being a good place to stop...at least for a little awhile.

To read or not to read: 50 Shades of Grey

I'm trying to decide whether or not to read 50 Shades of Grey, and I am genuinely conflicted. On the one hand, I think it's important to read what the masses are reading -- I think that's part of the definition of being well-read -- and with the author having earned a reported $20 million paycheck, the masses have clearly read and spoken. So with that thought in mind, I put myself down in my library's request system for 50 Shades of Grey, resolved to read it. All I'd really heard about it was that it was an erotica version of Twilight, but even more poorly written -- which is what was giving me pause, as we all know how I felt about the ending of that series, but still, I was resolved.

And then, by chance the other day, I came across a teeny excerpt (beware -- naughty words ahead): “Does this mean you’re going to make love to me tonight, Christian?” Holy shit. Did I just say that? His mouth drops open slightly, but he recovers quickly. “No, Anastasia it doesn’t. Firstly, I don’t make love. I fuck… hard. Secondly, there’s a lot more paperwork to do, and thirdly, you don’t yet know what you’re in for. You could still run for the hills. Come, I want to show you my playroom.” My mouth drops open. Fuck hard! Holy shit, that sounds so… hot. But why are we looking at a playroom? I am mystified. “You want to play on your Xbox?” I ask. He laughs, loudly. “No, Anastasia, no Xbox, no Playstation. Come."

That paragraph was just brutal. I'm just not sure I can do it, runaway bestseller or no. What I may do is write my own housewife erotica to earn my own $20 million, but I am just not sure I can stomach this one. Life is short, and I already resolved not to read any more books that I knew from the outset would likely be bad.

On the bright side, I am patron 197 out of 334 on my library's waiting list -- they only have 12 copies, so I guess I have some time to decide.

Has anyone read it? Thoughts?

Oh my, O magazine, say it ain't so!

I was flipping through the June issue of O magazine recently when I came across the most shocking error. And rest assured, it was shocking -- just you wait for it. It was in Martha Beck's monthly column, this one titled "Charting Your Course." The article is actually really interesting, which is why it's a shame that the introduction -- touching upon the journey of Odysseus -- completely blunders the tale. Oh, I told you it was shocking.

She opens the article with, "Odysseus just wanted to go to Ithaca. No, not the one in upstate New York -- the one in ancient Greece. He dreamed of it the whole seven years he spent trapped on the island of the nymph Calypso. Eventually the pitying gods ordered Calypso to free him, at which point he managed to build a boat and set out on what he hoped would be a brief and pleasant journey."

Okay, so far, so good. But then...

"Ha. At every turn, Odysseus' travels were filled with surprises. He conquered monsters at sea only to find worse ones waiting on land. He encountered seductions that sent him half mad with longing. Finally, in the land of the dead, he got clear directions from a seer who, oxymoronically enough, was blind."

But, er, umm...the thing is, when he's freed from Calypso's island, Odysseus pretty much is at the end of his journey. All the events listed in the article have already happened to him; at this point, all he's got to do is get through a little storm at sea and a mini-vacation with the Phaeacians. The reason for the mistake is obvious enough -- in terms of chapter order, Odysseus is first seen sitting on Calypso's island (in chapter 5) before running around on all his adventures (chapters 9-12), but books 5-12 don't follow chronological order. But I didn't expect to see such a mistake in a major magazine. It's nice to see the Odyssey mentioned, I suppose, but it's also kind of a :( for classic lit.

A Giant Catch-Up: Robert B. Parker and the Night Circus (#2-4)

Well, I suppose this is what always happens...I neglect my blog for a period of time and then realize that I need to come up with something insightful to see about books I read months ago. Why do I continually do this to myself?

All the way back in January, I read Robert B. Parker's first novel, The Godwulf Manuscript. I came across it when I was reading the Amazon reviews for Painted Ladies last year; a couple of reviewers had praised it, but to be honest, I didn't think it was all that great. The Godwulf Manuscript and Painted Ladies tread the same basic ground -- a priceless work of art is stolen, college students are involved, Spenser continues with his search even after he's removed from the case -- and neither of them held all that many surprises. There's not a plot twist in either -- the person who seems guilty is, in fact, guilty.

I'm not going to mention the third book I read this year -- it was a biography that I read in the course of research for a project, and it wasn't terribly well-done. And besides, it's not relevant to these here discussions.

In February, despite my crazy job, I managed to read Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus, which I  enjoyed and also sports a kickass cover. Morgenstern's debut novel is about two "magicians," Celia and Marco, who are pitted against each other in a contest by their teachers but don't initially know it -- the venue is the Cirque des Reves, a magical circus that moves from place to place unexpectedly, enchanting its patrons. There's a subplot about an ordinary boy named Bailey, who ends up befriending two twins who live in the circus, that really reminded me of Neil Gaiman's Stardust, I think because Bailey and Stardust's main character, Tristran, have the same sort of innocent hope.

I found the world of The Night Circus entrancing -- Morgenstern's descriptions are quite vivid, and her imaginings of the different kinds of magical exhibits Celia, especially, comes up with were incredibly creative. The plot was a little weaker, though. With this kind of a set-up, I expected a much more epic story, with greater stakes -- a life-or-death situation for the two contestants -- but it was never really like that, and nothing was ever terribly urgent. As Laura Miller wrote in Salon, "Plot is this novel’s flimsiest aspect, however, serving mostly as a pretext for presenting readers with a groaning board of imaginative treats," which I think sums up the novel well. But despite this, overall, I still enjoyed the time I spent inside the world of The Night Circus.

Larson's In the Garden of Beasts: a real-life Hunger Games (#1)

It took me a good three weeks to read this book -- and I was forced to hurry things up because the library automatically grabs e-books back -- but that was mostly about work. I quite enjoyed Erik Larson's In the Garden of Beasts, so much so that I put his other book Devil in the White City on my 2012 reading list.

While I don't read many World World II-era boooks, I feel like most of the general interest tomes (along with movies about the time) tend to concentrate on the actual war (Pearl Harbor, Atonement, Inglorious Basterds, Slaughterhouse-Five, The English Patient, Band of Brothers). But In the Garden of Beasts takes a different tack: Larson concentrates on an overlooked period of time, that of 1933-1934, the lead-up to the war. The book is a biography of William Dodd, a professor and historian from Chicago, who unexpectedly ends up as the ambassador to Germany, even though he's not really qualified for diplomatic service, especially to a nation undergoing such significant changes. Although his wife and son accompany him, the book is really about Dodd and his 20-something daughter Martha and their experiences in Berlin their first year out of four. As Larson writes in the first page of prologue, "That first year formed a kind of prologue in which all the themes of the greater epic of war and murder soon to come were laid down.” The story of the Dodds is really the common story of innocents entering the lion's den and having to figure out how to survive -- in that respect, In the Garden of Beasts ain't all that far off from Harry Potter or The Hunger Games...except that they were real people facing actual evil.

But, as Larson points out, there are very few heroes in non-fiction, and neither Martha nor Dodd get anywhere near that label. When they get there in 1933, Hitler has just been appointed Chancellor because President Hindenberg and his political allies think they'll be able to keep him under control. As we all know, that was a really poor calculation, because in the end, it turned out he was the one in control -- because he was the one willing to go to extraordinary and brutal lengths to maintain power. Hitler and his party spend those early years getting the German people in line, condensing their own power and bit by bit dismantling the rights of Germany's Jews. While other countries express "concern," especially when their own nationals are assaulted in Germany by fanatical youth, no one really appreciates the true nature of what is happening -- except for Dodd. But because he's a poor man in a rich boys' State Department and no one wants to take on Germany's "national" problems at this point, Dodd basically gets pushed aside. That actually makes for In the Garden of Beasts' biggest flaws -- in some respects, I felt like the novel never moved past an introduction, or to use film parlance, into the second act. He spends a lot of time observing but never really does much.

Martha, on the other hand, is a doer, but she's not the most likeable of girls. She is self-absorbed and naïve (but felt herself to be worldly); she seems to be someone who cannot be content with what she has, and she likes trouble and being the center of attention, which is why she flits from lover to lover, including Gestapo head Rudolf Diels and a KGB agent named Boris. Apparently she liked being with the married Diels because she enjoyed being known as the woman who slept with the devil -- I think that says it all.

In the Garden of Beasts essentially ends with the Night of the Long Knives, a deadly purge in 1934 that really consolidates Hitler's power. Although Dodd and his family stay in Berlin for a total of 4.5 years, the book basically jumps from this point to 1937, when Dodd leaves his position and without having accomplished much. In that respect, it's sort of a sad ending -- Dodd wanted to be an ambassador, hoping he'd have a lot of free time in which to finish his masterpiece, the Old South, but he doesn't get that in Germany and he doesn't live long enough to really even see the war. 

Despite my feeling that In the Garden of Beasts never really started, I quite liked the in-depth look into 1933-1934 Germany. Those years laid the foundation for what would happen later, and besides being an in-depth snapshot of a certain place at a certain time, it's important look at the poor decisions and apathy that would lead to the deaths of millions of people across Europe, Asia and the Americas.

2012 Book Picks

My reading philosophy for 2012? Too many books, not enough time. I made a list in December, but it was WAY over 30, so I "delisted" about 20 books, putting them on my someday-in-the-future reading list. For the most part, they consisted of classics (The Golden Notebook, The Bell Jar) and books I'd like to read again (Diary of Anne Frank, House of the Spirits), though there were a couple of recent books published in the last couple of years that just didn't capture my attention enough (Unbroken, 1Q84, Cutting for Stone, Nothing Daunted) for the ultimate 2012 list but that I still hope I'll get to.

So I had my list down to 30, but already in the first 41 days of the year, I've added more and my 2012 list has burgeoned to 58. Seriously, 58? Who am I kidding? But I'll do what I can. I'm currently reading The Night Circus, as my e-book request was suddenly fulfilled at my library back home, but as soon as that's done, I plan to dive into the Game of Throne series. This year, I'm also hoping to finish the Phillip Pullman Golden Compass series (I still have to read The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass); be impressed by the travels of a number of ladies, including Julia Child, Vita Sackville-West and Freya Stark; tackle a couple of classics including Things Fall Apart, One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Iliad and The Aeneid (though let's be honest, the last two could potentially take six months combined); read some recent/current favorites such as Bossypants, The Submission, A Discovery of Witches, and No One is Here Except All of Us; and finally, finally get to The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

My job is keeping me pretty busy so unless something changes (please God, send me change in the form of a new job), my guess at the moment is that I'll probably read about 24 books this year. It's not great - certainly not the 30 books I aim for - but I suppose it could be worse.

What's on your reading list for this year?

Wrapping Up 2011: A Look Back

Happy New Year, everyone!

I am pleased to report that after the miserable reading years of 2009 and 2010, when I read only 23 and 24 books respectively, I came back strong to finish with 36 books for 2011. Hooray, go me. But really, it's mostly about life (which I suppose you can say for most things) - I moved to an non-English speaking country in the middle of this year and as a result, I read an awful lot of books as I was getting settled. I find this is always the case when I am far from home; in fact, I started this list the year that I was studying abroad in South America.

Looking back, the best books I read in 2011 were probably Daphne Kalotay's Russian Winter; Michelle Moran's Madame Tussaud, Ann Brashares' Sisterhood Everlasting; and Ann Patchett's State of Wonder. Interestingly, all books by women, all books featuring women, and three out of four set in a distinctly different time or place. And, perhaps most importantly, all four of these books have stayed with me in some way; while there were a number of other books this year that I quite enjoyed, I can't say I've ever really thought of them again.

As for the books I most disliked? Aside from the obvious - Francine Pascal's horrendous Sweet Valley Confidential - I'd have to go with Veronica Roth's Divergent; Paula McLain's The Paris Wife; Vendela Vida's The Lovers; Rhoda Janzen's Mennonite in a Little Black Dress; and Caitlin Kelly's Malled. While I also read a number of blah books this year (and admittedly, I am picky as hell - the longer I work as an editor, the worse it gets), these ones took the cake because, aside from Divergent,  they all had pretensions of being some kind of great work, which I didn't think they lived up to. These were all books that I actively disliked and seriously considered stopping reading in the middle.

But I hate stopping in the middle. It's a little silly since life is short and you can only read so many books, and admittedly, it's partially about the list. (I mean, if I only read half of a bunch of books, I'll never make it to 30). That said, there are a few books that I quit in the middle this year. And funny enough, I didn't hate any of them - in the case of Tea Obreht's The Tiger's Wife (which I know was nominated everywhere for best book of the year), Michelle Moran's Cleopatra's Daughter, and Stacy Schiff's Cleopatra, they just failed to fully grab my attention. With David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, I meant to go back and check it out from the library again, but it just never happened. It was good but wasn't good enough. And then, at the end of the year, I started War and Peace, which I quite liked though for no discernable reason, but found I didn't have the time to read it right now.

The reason I quit War and Peace is actually because I just started a new, time-consuming job. I could have kept going but it probably would have taken me six months to read it at the pace I was going. So it's put-off for another time. Same thing happened some years ago with The Brothers Karamazov, alas.

Anyway, next post...looking ahead to 2012!