Tag: I Read Everything

Skinny Bitch by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin

This post originally appeared on I Read Everything

Book: Skinny Bitch

Authors: Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin

Type of Book: Health, diet, veganism

Why Did I Read This Book: Because someone I follow on tumblr posted excerpts and it seemed delightfully and refreshingly rude. Also, because I read some Amazon reviews wherein people were shocked, shocked I tell you, that the authors were pushing a vegan agenda in their book! As if promoting veganism is a terrible, subversive, bizarre thing to do. Needless to say, I was amused.

Availability: Easily obtained, you can get a copy here:

Comments: I am a failed vegan. I fail for a lot of reasons but mostly it is because I am lazy. I was raised with a specific palate and it’s hard to change. Also cheese is an addictive substance and I will refudiate anyone who insists otherwise. I don’t give any excuses for my failure – I fail because I fail, and that’s all there is to it. So I was very interested in this book after reading some excerpts because it seemed like the authors cut their audience very little slack. It also appeared that the shallowness of the title aside, the book was about more than achieving a scrawny body, also examining the disgrace of the American food industry and the complete failure of the FDA to ensure food safety.

My first impressions were right and wrong. The book certainly pulls no punches in its approach. Take this gem, for example:

So before you say, “I could never give up meat,” realize that nearly every single vegetarian on the planet said those same words. Then shut the fuck up, look at an inspirational picture of a skinny bitch, and clean out your freezer.

Yeah, I am just enough of a masochist that those words made me dizzy a little bit. No sarcasm here. I like tough love aggression. I mean, one of the chapters is entitled, “Don’t Be a Pussy.” Seriously. These women don’t want to hear our shitty excuses.

Their refutation of the Atkins Diet made me love them a little:

So shout it from the rooftops until every one of your dumb-ass misinformed friends hears: YOU CAN EAT BREAD AND FRUIT!

And my last crumb of adoration before I start listing my objections:

Give up the notion that you can be sedentary and still lose weight. You need to exercise, you lazy shit.

Needless to say, my elliptical machine has a not-so-fine layer of dust on it. I really need a tough love friend to yell at me the way these women do, because despite their foul mouths and name calling, they also make it clear that this is a process, making these changes, and that every step you take towards eliminating animal from your diet is a step towards saving your health and your life.

But I have some pretty profound issues with this book. First, I must acknowledge that I am a person who has a crush on Morgan Spurlock. I like nothing better than someone who is willing to look into issues and tell us the truth, even if it means being smeared on Fox News. I’ve read almost every major book that discusses the American food industry, from Eric Schlosser to Michael Pollan(whom I have grown to loathe with the fire of a thousand suns or at least the heart of a woman who finds hunting wild pigs to satisfy some primal need to be distasteful) to Frances Moore Lappe. So my first issue with this book is one that may only be specific to me and those like me, but there is little in this book that will be new to people who are interested in healthy food and concerned about the increasingly libertarian, capitalist approach to regulating the food and drug industries. I read nothing in this book I did not already know.

Second, this book puts a couple of lines in to discuss the relative expense of a vegan, organic diet.

Recognize that anything worth having is worth fighting for… Fuck excuses about not having the time or the money… Certainly your health and your body and you are more important than anything else in your life.

Okay, yeah, I sort of get it. I mean, they are right to a point, health is worth fighting for. But money is a finite resource. If you don’t have it, you can’t just say, “Fuck it, I’m gonna pay more for food anyway.” So I was uneasy, but then my uneasiness was substantiated further.

Don’t be a cheap asshole. Yeah, yeah, yeah, organic produce is usually more expensive than conventional produce. But we spend countless dollars on clothes, jewelry, manicures, magazines, rent or mortgages, car payments and other bullshit. Surely our health and our bodies (we only get one body) are more important than anything else in our lives.

The authors make the point in the same paragraph that perhaps the costs will even out because the more you prepare your own meals and snacks, the less money you spend on costly eating out or impulse food shopping.

But this passage above, more than anything else, distills why many bristle at health food vegans. Veganism as practiced in America can be one of the most elitist diets ever. If one eschews animal products and animal cruelty in all forms, everything from food to shampoo to laundry detergent becomes more expensive. The vegan refusal to admit this troubles me.

You see, like many of our peers, Mr. Everything and I are precariously middle-class. I mean, I own a home, we have two cars, one of which is very old, and we can afford for me to spend money on books. We get to run the air conditioner in the hot, Texas summers. Compared to 90% of the world, we are blessed and privileged. But I don’t spend countless dollars on manicures. I’ve never had one, in fact. I wear no jewelry. I use an old computer. My purse is ten-years-old. And I find a vegan diet prohibitively expensive during the winter when the farmers markets are no longer open out here in the ‘burbs. I find vegan, organic products as a whole to be quite a bit more expensive than their non-vegan, non-organic counterparts. So to drill this idea down to its core – I am a privileged person economically and even I find the vegan lifestyle dear economically.

Of course, on paper, many vegans also adopt a less consumer-driven lifestyle and don’t have closets filled with leather shoes, silk blouses, wool coats. But reducing consumer spending can only get you so far, meaning one has to be purchasing manicures, jewelry, and clothes to the extent that such dollars can be reallocated to purchasing organic and vegan foods. I would venture that millions of Americans don’t spend money on frivolities. They are not out buying french pedicures and the latest shoe style favored by celebutantes. They don’t have the money to redirect to healthier food options and to callously suggest that they do makes it hard to make a case for veganism as a truly sustainable way of eating for everyone, not just us reasonably comfortable white chicks who live within 25 miles of a Whole Foods and a regular farmer’s market.

Let me give this as one example:

There are a ton of awesome, soy-based fake meat products on the market, which are great for transitioning away from meat…

I’m glad they included the word “transitioning” because those soy-based fake meat products are so expensive I can’t see buying them permanently. (Also, on a strictly personal level, I have never smelled a fake meat other than bean-based veggie burgers that didn’t smell a little like what would happen if you microwaved PlayDoh but I have always had a sensitive nose.) At my local supermarket, a package of Morningstar Farms Chick’n patties costs $3.49 for 9.5 ounces of product, and Morningstar Farms is a more affordable vegetarian brand. That’s $5.92 a pound. That may not sound bad but bear in mind that this is the cost for a product that would be one element of one meal for a family of four. More exclusive brands cost far more. Fake meats cost far more than regular non-vegan equivalents. People who shop on a budget, especially for families, or those who use food stamps, flat out cannot afford food like this. People without cars who live in areas under-served by grocery chains cannot obtain fake meat from the frozen aisle. Of course, the authors don’t control the food inequity in the USA, wherein the worst calories are the most affordable, wherein some urban areas are under-served by supermarket chains. But this is not the first source I have read that glosses over the financial realities of eating well, making broad statements about how it’s affordable without really explaining the details of such statements.

For example, authors include a chapter on brands they like that offer nutrition, organic goodness and veganism, and overall, I think the list is awesome. But the Peanut Butter Puffins cereal by Barbara’s Bakery cost much more than Captain Crunch by Quaker Oats. At my local supermarket, I can’t even get the former. I have to drive into Austin proper, which requires gas, then spend about $1.50 more per box. The Barbara’s Bakery cereal is far superior, don’t get me wrong, but in order to get it, I need a car, the ability to drive 20 miles round trip, the gas for the trip and the money to pay extra for the product. I have no kids, so the box would last me a while, but the same could not be said for a family with a couple of children. This may seem like I am niggling, but this is important because at some point, we have to admit that the doctrine of veganism and organic eating in general is something only some of us can afford the way the world currently works and to insinuate that it really is just an economic choice for everyone is misguided and, frankly, elitist.

The part about spending money on rent or mortgages being “bullshit” is absolutely insane. Mortgages are not bullshit. Rent is not bullshit spending. It’s how we ensure we have a kitchen to prepare our hopefully vegan meals. I cannot imagine what sort of mindset considers paying rent to be bullshit. I just can’t. It was either horribly ill-conceived or speaks of a callousness that has left the authors so out of touch with that which really matters that they have no problem lumping in the costs of not being homeless with the same money spent on manicures.

Finally, my last quarrel with this book is that it has two versions: Skinny Bitch and Skinny Bastard . In the interests of making me happy, Mr. Everything read Skinny Bastard and we compared books. They are virtually identical, with small differences for sex-specific health concerns. It’s clear the book for women got edited a little for men. At $14 a pop for a new, small format, trade paperback with margins that permit only 20 lines per page, it was not a good investment. And like me, Mr. Everything has read a ton of books on subjects covered in this book already but unlike me, he didn’t like being called an asshole or a lazy shit.

All in all, if you are completely new to veganism, how the government is little help in determining food safety and healthy eating in general, I can see how this book would be of some help. For anyone who already follows the Post Punk Kitchen, for whom Isa Chandra Moskowitz has already revealed the awesomeness of vegan food, who has a battered copy of Diet for a Small Planet on their shelves, or those who don’t like ad hominem abuse, this book may be a miss. I’m not the sort to return a book because the content didn’t come through for me, but if I had a chance to not purchase it in the first place, I’d likely go that route even though me and my big fat ass could use some scolding.

(Also, in a shameless bit of online nepotism, if you are looking for a really good book of vegan recipes, try 500 Vegan Recipes: An Amazing Variety of Delicious Recipes, From Chilis and Casseroles to Crumbles, Crisps, and Cookies, co-written and beautifully photographed by my friend Celine Steen.)

The Lives They Left Behind by Darby Penney and Peter Stastny

This post originally appeared on I Read Everything

Book: The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic

Authors: Darby Penney and Peter Stastny

Type of Book: Non-fiction, biography, history, photography, psychiatry

Availability: Published by Bellevue Literary Press in 2008, you can get a copy here:

Comments: This book was an unexpected comfort for me. I walked an interesting road in psychiatric medicine (I can call it interesting now with some distance – at the time it was an unrelenting nightmare from which I feared I would never wake) and the stories of the patients in this book, the psychiatric fads that doomed many of them to inappropriate care, showed me that in many ways the more things change, the more they stay the same, which may sound horrible in a sense, but really it put my own experience into perspective. And despite some similarities between my own care and the care of one of the patients in the book, I feel incredibly lucky to live in the present age, current deficiencies in mental health care notwithstanding.

This book discusses the lives of 10 people whose suitcases were left behind at Willard Psychiatric Center in upstate New York. Painstakingly researched, the identities of the people whose belongings were found in the hospital attic long after their deaths are explored not only in terms of their lives in the hospital, but also in terms of who they were before they ended up at Willard. Though we in our modern ways may see old psychiatric homes as barbaric – and they were in some respects – they were society’s attempt to deal with people who may have had profound problems, most of whom had no where else to go. Many who were considered “incurably mad” found themselves in poor houses, where their behaviors made them subject to terrible abuses. In 1869, Willard took in patients who had been deemed unsuitable for poorhouses and workhouses (and a pox on every person who thinks a return to either is a good idea).

… Willard received only patients from across the state who had already exhausted the public resources of their counties. Even paupers did not want to witness people kept in tiny cells and iron locks, being fed through openings in their doors, never let out until their limbs were crippled. Women were regularly abused by all comers, and the whole business had turned into a matter of public disgrace.

But even as the mentally ill were shipped to the countryside, it bears mentioning that the hospital’s goal was to be self-sustaining, meaning that the patients were required to work in fields or in workshops in order to fund Willard. Moreover, the institution had the perspective that they needed to provide a “morally” correct place for the mentally ill, giving them certain stigma while attempting to help them. Masturbation was cause for alarm and at times confirmation that the patient was in fact quite mentally ill. A sex life was completely off limits to the mentally ill at Willard.

Because of the psychiatric fads of the time, most of the people in this book and likely many at Willard were diagnosed with schizophrenia or various forms of hallucinatory dementia when the fact is few actually had the condition. In a similar parallel to a lack of early understanding of how some psychiatric drugs affect blood sugar and cause diabetes, many patients were put on drugs that caused them permanent neurological damage. Some neuroleptic drugs caused tardive dyskinesia and some doctors did not understand the causation between the drugs they prescribed and the uncontrollable fidgeting they saw in patients.

The psychiatrists who first introduced neuroleptics noticed rather quickly that the drugs caused symptoms not unlike Parkinson’s disease, but saw this as evidence that the medication was working effectively, rather than as an indication that it caused neurological damage… Nevertheless, decades later, when the full extent of the problem had become quite obvious, psychiatrists continued to prescribe these drugs for most patients in institutions, despite their limited effectiveness and the disfiguring and disabling side effects.

If this sounds primitive, we needn’t pat ourselves on the backs too soon for our improved medications.

Second generation neuroleptics, also called “atypicals,” were considered more effective and less likely to cause side effects than the older drugs, which are significantly less expensive. The NIMH study showed that these highly praised medications were no more effective than the cheaper drugs they replaced, while causing a new slew of side effects, including diabetes and heart disease. A 2006 British study had similar results…

People who know well those who are mentally ill, especially those with bipolar disease, often remark that they just don’t understand why sufferers don’t take their medications. Well, you see, the meds often don’t work as well as one would hope, they make you gain untold amounts of weight, can give you permanent neurological problems, diabetes, as well as creating addiction to the drug that makes withdrawal a dicey prospect. The behavioral problems these drugs are supposed to address often are dwarved by the health and further mental problems they cause. Some benefit from atypical antipsychotics, to be sure, but many walk into taking such drugs without a full picture of what the drugs may do in the long run.

Of the ten stories, several were heartbreaking. For example, the Russian emigre who escaped from a WWII internment camp with his wife to New York, where he began creating an excellent life, only for his wife to suffer and die from a catastrophic miscarriage. He broke down and became psychotic after her death, and ended up at Willard, where he spent the bulk of the rest of his life. A folk artist of no small talent, he painted scenes from his native Ukraine. In his suitcase, he kept the flowers his wife had carried during their wedding ceremony in Austria in 1945.

But the person in this book whose story most affected me was that of Margaret Dunleavy, an orphan who left Scotland and was an accomplished nurse in the United States until the intrusion and a complete lack of understanding in the medical and psychiatric world left her confined to Willard for the rest of her life. Margaret had contracted tuberculosis and worked in a tuberculosis hospital, but she suffered several setbacks in her life, setbacks that cost her the job and the lodging that came with it. She was placed at Willard for what was supposed to be a temporary stay that became permanent. She entered Willard with 18 trunks, the contents of which she was seldom allowed access to, her car was repossessed, she was seldom able to see her companion and perhaps boyfriend of many years, and all the accomplishments in her life were dragged from her as her life became that of an institutionalized patient. She described being sent to Willard as being “like a fly in a spider’s web” and she was right. She was ensnared in psychiatric faddery and a tendency by some doctors to dismiss a patient’s pain and to diminish the addictive properties of the drugs they prescribe.

Her trunks were filled with her life’s possessions – linens, carefully wrapped china, diplomas, many pictures of the road trips she took with friends. Her immigration papers, her medical certifications and letters from friends and her male friend, embroidery, patterns, and most importantly, pictures of her with her car. An independent woman, Margaret never married and rare for the time, she owned her own car, traveling on vacations with female friends, her mobility giving her freedom. And unlike many at Willard, she had friends who stuck by her until the end. The depth of her friendships, the loyal bonds that those who are extremely mentally ill enough to be institutionalized for life often have a hard time forming, should have been a clue she was not schizophrenic, but the dogma of the time said she had the disease and she was treated for it until she was a shell of a person.

Margaret, who had tuberculosis and was diagnosed with gastric problems, had a doctor she preferred, driving far out of her way to see him. She was given belladonna and codeine, both of which were addictive to some extent and made any psychological problems the chronically ill woman had even worse. Her worsening health, the worsening health of her male companion, combined with worry about her family in Scotland at the outbreak of WWII, caused her to show signs of fray. Her employers at the tuberculosis hospital intervened in a way that now seems outrageous – they terminated her care, her personal relationship with her doctor and forced her to see a more local doctor. Losing contact with her trusted physician, combined with an abrupt termination of her drug regimen, caused Margaret to break down, landing her forcibly institutionalized for life on the following, extremely insubstantial grounds:

“Annoys people. Accuses people of persecuting her and talking about her. Says switchboard operator listens in on her conversations and that people on other floors can be heard talking about her.”

Once at Willard, her physical ailments were often dismissed as hypochondria, she was diagnosed in the face of all known reason with dementia praecox (an archaic term for schizophrenia) of long-standing, and was prescribed medication that ensured her frail health degenerated more and that if she was not mentally ill before entering Willard, she was certainly mentally unwell when she died there.

Her story is so resonant with me because in the summer of 2008, my mother almost died, I lost two beloved cats within weeks of each other, and I knew I was losing my job. I was in distress, sought help, and in the face of all that I know about myself, accepted a bipolar diagnosis and began to take atypical antipsychotics. What began as an emotionally difficult time morphed into physical misery that I hope I never face again. I was placed on Geodon, within days was shaking, felt snakes under my skin, stopped eating and started hallucinating. I asked the psychiatrist for help and he prescribed me enough Xanax to ensure a terrible addiction. It all culminated in a stay at a psych ward after the voices in my head told me to kill myself. The four day stay in the locked down ward did stabilize me until the voices stopped, but I also left the place on Prozac, Wellbutrin, Xanax, Valium, Trazedone and Ambien. I developed an addiction that almost cost me my marriage because the drugs made me so crazy I wanted to leave my spouse of 15 years. I have shared my experience and while it is certainly not the norm, too many have shared similar experiences of being shoe-horned into inappropriate diagnoses (most often bipolar, the 21st century answer to schizophrenia and dementia praecox), crippling addictions, and doctors who pile medication on top of medication with seemingly callous disregard as to what such drugs may do as they fine tune their patients’ brains.

(And though it goes without saying, I must say anyway that meds help a lot of people. I would never tell anyone not to take meds if they had a realistic diagnosis, understood all the ramifications of taking psychotropics and made an informed decision. My descent into hell had none of those elements involved, and that was the problem. My experience is not a testimony against psychological pharmacology, but rather an encouragement to approach one’s mental health care with information and caution.)

In the course of reading Margaret’s chapter, I was introduced to the idea of the chaos narrative, which helped me make sense of what happened to Margaret as well as what happened to me in the bowels of the psychiatric system.

The chaos narrative is essentially an anti-narrative, because the self in the midst of chaos has no time for reflection or the ordering of narrative in a way that makes meaning. As Frank [Arthur Frank, the creator of the idea of a chaos narrative] puts it, “A person who has recently started to experience pain speaks of ‘it’ hurting ‘me’ and can dissociate from ‘it.’. The chaos narrative is lived when ‘it’ has hammered ‘me’ out of self-recognition.” Chaos stories are hard to hear, both literally, because, in their lack of sequence and causality, they may not be apparent as stories to the listener, and figuratively, because they are anxiety-producing, even threatening, to the listener, a reminder that anyone of us may find herself in this painful state.

In this age when doctors barely have time to get your basic history, it is unlikely many know a chaos narrative for what it is. They hear a rambling patient, who may be fidgeting with nervousness and tension, who cannot sleep, who is plagued by a sense of doom and may be acting out, and the narrative seems indicative of the psychiatric disorder du jour. In the midst of most of these stories, chaos narratives were at play – illnesses, life upheavals, and misfortune – and doctors did not hear the stories they were told.

Modern psychiatric life is different now, to be certain. A heavier emphasis is placed on pharmacology than long-term therapeutic care and those whose mental illness is severe will not have their possessions discovered in disused attics because many are homeless now due to the drastic termination of funding mental facilities experienced in the Reagan administration. It is hard to say which is worse – being in an institution your entire life when you don’t need such care, or being on the streets, unable to get such care if you do need it.

I suspect most people will read this book and feel a kinship with one of the people described through the possessions they left in their trunks, possessions they were denied while they were at Willard because the people in this book, all quirks and bad behavior aside, are so very ordinary, very prosaic. Each trunk represents a life truly interrupted, and in their cases, generally never to be resumed again. Truly a heartbreaking work. I highly recommend it.

The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break by Steven Sherrill

This post originally appeared on I Read Everything

Book: The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break

Author: Steven Sherrill

Why Did I Read This Book: I frequently ask friends on other Internet haunts of mine to recommend books to me. This book was recommended by the resplendent Miss Erin James, with much enthusiasm on her part. Since she has good taste, I bought a copy that same day. I initially thought it would be a good book for I Read Odd Books, but it turned out not to be so odd after all, instead quirky and contemplative.

Availability: Published in 2000 by Picador, it is still in print and you can get a copy here:

Comments:This novel, despite having the decidedly unsubtle Minotaur as its main character, is a novel of subtleties. It is a novel in which not a whole lot happens until the very end, but the small sections where the Minotaur is active – helping co-workers move, repairing his car, mending his clothes, performing chores at work, rubbing lotion all over the place where his bull upper body meet his human lower body – are the meat of the book. At times it seemed too slow, but for it to have sped up would not have worked at all, for the Minotaur plods through his life, seldom in a rush. The Minotaur, knowing that he will likely be alive many more centuries, does not need to rush about. The tedium of life, the sheer crushing weight of all the time he has been alive, has not made him nihilistic, but it has enveloped him in a sort of torpor from which only the hope of love can remove him.

The Minotaur in Sherrill’s book is indeed the figure from Greek legend, the half-bull, half-man that King Minos trapped in the labyrinth, bastard, half-breed child from his wife, Pasiphaë, the result of one of those many pranks and punishments the Pantheon meted out when their wills were crossed. But in Sherrill’s book, Theseus does not kill the Minotaur and the Minotaur emerges from the maze, forced to make his way in the real world. This book places him in North Carolina, living in a trailer in a rundown trailer court, driving a Vega that he has to repair daily, and working in the kitchen in a family-style restaurant. If you read this book expecting a magically realistic tour de force, you will be disappointed. If you read this book as a borderline Southern Gothic novel of manners, wherein social roles and customs are discussed in great detail, and you like that sort of book, then this will be right up your alley. Sherrill treats with respect the extreme lower-middle class, never making a mockery out of people who in other hands would become a loathsome Larry the Cable Guy routine.

For me, this novel operates on two levels. The first is how mundane the world is, which is a complete “Duh!” statement, I am aware. But when the world is so devoid of magic and mythos that the Minotaur is driving a Vega and working as a cook, and instead of inspiring fear he creates rather a sort of almost racial discomfort in those around him, the world is not a particularly interesting place. This is not to say the book is not interesting, but rather the world the book creates, a fine distinction but one I hope holds some clarity. The other idea the book conveyed to me heavily is that the Minotaur is used as an Other Everyman. So many novels deal with the travails of normal people in this world, but seldom those among us who are genuinely different. Freaks. Genuine outsiders. The Minotaur’s presence in this book is to show that the world really will grind down the extraordinary. While the Minotaur really does experience a mild deus ex machina at the end of the book, the Minotaur is not restored to his old glory as a menace that inspires fear. Rather, the triumph he carves for himself at the end of the book is little more than the potential love of a plump, hairy woman and a chance to work a grueling job as his own boss. The Minotaur may win, but even as we sense he may have a chance at a better time of it, we never lose fact that if he becomes his own man, so to speak, he will be a prince in a kingdom of Southern Culture on the Skids. His glory days are over. This world really is the best he can hope for.

I think the most interesting part of this book for me, aside from wondering how many years Sherrill himself must have toiled in kitchens in order to write the scenes in the restaurant, is thinking about how human the Minotaur is in how he reacts yet how it is that basic understanding of human behavior eludes him. For example, in a scene in the restaurant as he is waiting for his paycheck, the Minotaur tries to enter into conversation with some trite frat-types, using sexual vulgarity as a means to become one of the boys (in so much as he can speak – the Minotaur’s speech in this book consists of grunts and murmurs). It backfires, as we all know it will. And I wonder how it is that after centuries of living among men, the Minotaur both does not understand how the world of men works and why it is he longs to be a part of it. Of course, I suspect the answer is that as half-man, half-bull, he can understand humans only so much but he never stops longing to be a part of them. The scene where he sleeps over at his bosses’ home, an aging homosexual with an allegedly lurid past and a penchant for historical reenactments, is touching. It makes you think the Minotaur can eventually get this right, that he can eventually find a place among human beings where he can feel accepted.

But then in a scene I will not go into in too much detail lest I spoil the novel, the girl the Minotaur wants goes into a seizure during lovemaking, and his reaction to the situation is utterly baffling. There is no part of the human in the Minotaur that goes into his decision, yet the bull in him clearly is not in charge, either. Perhaps this action in comparison to the Minotaur’s emotional lethargy is what makes it hard to explain. At times, I could not determine what it was that Sherrill wanted me to know about the Minotaur or the world in which he lives.

I think that is why I found most satisfying the scenes in which much detail is given to the Minotaur’s routine. How he eats onions like apples. His grooming routines, which involve coating his long horns with clear nail polish. How he tinkers with his car. How he sleeps without the A/C and listens to his neighbors and sometimes watches them, a hopeful and hopeless voyeur.

All in all, this novel occupies an uneasy place in my mind, which may have been Sherrill’s goal. He created a being whose reactions I sort of understand and sort of don’t. He set the novel in a place in this world with which I am wholly familiar, a place I both love and loathe. I think people should read this book if only to tell me what the hell they think about it. Ultimately, I don’t know. I liked and disliked the book but it resonated enough with me that I am going to put it on my shelves and come back to it one day to see what I think then. It was a finely written book whose purpose may have been wasted on me but may become clear in a second read.

Alice in Wonderland and Philosophy, edited by Richard Brian David

This post originally appeared on I Read Everything

Book: Alice in Wonderland and Philosophy

Author: edited by Richard Brian Davis

Why Did I Read This Book: I got it in January, a release clearly meant to tie in with the Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland cinema release. It seemed interesting to me, so I grabbed it. I am not a person for whom deep philosophy holds much resonance but I reckoned I could hold my own in a book from the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture collection. Turns out I was mostly correct in that respect.

Availability: You can get a copy here:

Comments: Whenever I think of Alice in Wonderland, I always think of a passage from Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman, wherein one character is going on at length about his theories and another tires of his monologue:

“The very latest approach to Alice is just to dismiss it as a rather charming children’s book.”

That was always my opinion, too, that it was an outlandish story told to amuse a little girl and that all the analysis many put into the book was all so much hot air. However, there was always a niggling idea that Carroll could have hidden meaning that did not register in my young mind when I read the book. I wondered how differently I might look at Alice in Wonderland if I read this book. I already had the drug culture down, thank you very much Grace Slick. So it was possible there was more to the book and varying ways of interpreting it.

Overall, this book was a disappointment to me, and that may be a user problem, I am ready to admit. I wanted this book to explain the philosophy of Alice in Wonderland. Several articles used Alice in Wonderland to explain philosophy, and if that seems like a fine distinction, it really isn’t. The former explores philosophical points in the book. The latter uses book elements to illustrate philosophical points. You can do the latter with anything. I could, if I tried long enough, find a way to illustrate any philosophical tenet using my cats, organic bathroom cleaners or the content of the junk drawer in my kitchen. You can use just about anything to prove a theory if you don’t mind stretching a metaphor until it almost breaks. That seems to happen a lot in some of these articles, and while it wasn’t what I particularly wanted, the book is titled Alice and Wonderland and Philosophy, which means that my complaint is just me… well, complaining. The book didn’t misrepresent itself. I just wanted something else.

Of the essays that discussed the philosophy in Alice in Wonderland, several were quite informative while still being entertaining to me. “Wishing it Were Some Other Time: The Temporal Passage of Alice” by Mark W. Westmoreland and “Reasoning Down the Rabbit Hole: Logical Lessons in Wonderland” by David S. Brown both satisfied my need to explore the philosophy in Alice yet were easily read and understood by a philosophical layman like me. There were several other very good essays in the book but those two stood out for me as the best.

However, despite the fact that about half of this book was quite good, two of the essays were so bad that I wondered if perhaps it was my lack of philosophical grounding that caused my reaction, but ultimately, I decided it was that the articles were, in fact, not that good.

Join me under the jump as I get my grump on.

The Woman Who Walked into Doors by Roddy Doyle

This post originally appeared on I Read Everything

Book: The Woman Who Walked into Doors

Author: Roddy Doyle

Type of book: Fiction

Why Did I Read This Book: This was a case of a title grabbing me when I was at Border’s Books and I bought it on a whim. I almost didn’t buy it because Mary Gordon had a blurb on the back and I responded very negatively to the book I read by her recently, but I’m glad I read it. Very glad.

Availability: Penguin Books is the publisher and you can get a copy here:

Comments:: I fell in love with this book. Absolutely in love. I will, bank account issues be damned, soon order all of Roddy Doyle’s work. There are moments like this in my life, when I read an author and it feels like the literary equivalent of falling into deep, romantic love, wherein you know in advance that even if the object of your affection may fail you in some regard in the future, the sum total of their wonderfulness and compatibility with you will overshadow such moments.

Paula Spencer is an alcoholic mother of four. She cleans homes and white-knuckles her way through her evenings, controlling the times in which she drinks but still drinking far too much. She is a widow, but before her worthless husband died in a robbery attempt gone bad, she threw him out of the family home, a violent catharsis that in the hands of a less honest writer would have been the prelude to saccharine moments in which Paula’s life resolves itself. Her relationship with her sisters would have improved, she would have been able to help her addict son, she would have gotten sober herself and done something more than clean houses.

But Doyle understands that life might have a moment wherein a paralyzed person is suddenly capable of action, but that a moment of clarity does not a changed life make. Doyle shows the arc of Paula’s life as she gradually loses more and more innocence, slowly becomes more and more broken. This novel, better than any novel I have read in recent memory, tells the story of how men defined the world of women, from their actions to their words, and how hard it is to overcome such intrusive beginnings.

This is a book wherein lines and sometimes entire sections resonated deeply with me. Paula’s life was one spent in a world where men acted inappropriately, where men did not protect girls and actively harmed them in some cases, where people blamed women for getting beat up, where even fathers who never physically harmed their children cannot be trusted emotionally. This book was mostly amazing because Doyle shows how a character can hold a multitude of feelings, opinions that can seem contradictory, yet ring very true nonetheless. Doyle’s ability to show the multitudes within Paula shows him as a keen observer of human nature and a fine writer, able to accurately convey complex emotions with the beauty of an accomplished story teller yet with complete honesty.

Because some of this review may contain spoilers, please look under the cut for my entire discussion.

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much by Allison Hoover Bartlett

This post originally appeared on I Read Everything

Book: The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession

Author: Allison Hoover Bartlett

Type of Book: Non-fiction, true crime, book about books

Why Did I Read This Book: I am a bibliophile who can at times see how I could easily slide into bibliomania. People who go to any length to get books – be they rare or commonplace – interest me greatly.

Availability: Published by Riverhead Books, you can get a copy here:

Comments: This book engrossed me for reasons I did not anticipate when I started reading it. The story of this particular book thief is not as interesting as some other book thieves of whom I have read. John Gilkey, who remains unrepentant concerning his thefts of rare books from dealers, may one day become a man who steals rare books from libraries, as the book indicates he may be doing right now, but his thefts were more prosaic: He stole credit card numbers during his job as a retail clerk and used the stolen numbers to purchase books. He had an element of brazenness about him as he would go into the stores after calling in an order, posing as the “friend” of the purchaser, and pick up the books, but overall, his thefts lacked the sort of derring-do of those who steal from archives and libraries. How he did what he did and how he got caught are not the most interesting parts of this book.

What is interesting, and what Bartlett shows the best, is the world of the book lover, from the rare book shops to those who become obsessed with books and obtain them at all costs. Any lover of books will salivate over Bartlett’s descriptions of what she saw at trade shows, most especially a handwritten manuscript by Proust. She describes a book with a fore-edge painting, something I had not heard of, and it sent me rushing to the Internet so I could see some examples. It’s pure magic, such a thing of beauty. I am not one for whom old or pretty books mean much aside from the content, but I now want such a book. I am not even sure if I can explain why I want it. I just do. I feel like there is nothing I would not give up to be able to afford a book like that and I can give no adequate reason other than that I… I guess I need it? It’s hard to explain how something you did not even know existed can suddenly become a minor obsession.

This book addresses beautifully one of my greatest puzzlements: Why do I love books instead of jewelry or nice cars? Why will I spend whatever I must to get a book I want to read but will never visit a spa or get a manicure. Of course it boils down to personality, but a certain element of it is that books show a lot about me. When you walk into my home, you immediately know what I am about. And that was what prodded John Gilkey into becoming a book thief. He wanted to amass a collection of books that would wow anyone who saw them. He wanted books to define who he is and what makes him special.

Of course, being a thief meant his books could never really be on display (and keeping stolen books close to him was part of his eventual undoing), but the fantasy of people walking into his home and seeing all those old, rare, beautiful books fed the idea of identity that he wanted to share about himself with others. Us book lovers like to believe that we are often above it all in terms of acquisition, because we eschew more common consumer goods in favor of books but the end result is that our loves and desires craft a tangible identity that we convey to others, which is one of the most basic elements of consumerism.

Many matchmaking and social networking sites offer a place for members to list what they’re reading just for this reason: books can reveal a lot about a person. This is particularly true of the collector, for whom the bookshelf is a reflection not just of what he has read but profoundly of what he is: “Ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects. Not that they can live in him; it is he who comes alive in them,” wrote cultural critic Walter Benjamin.

However, Gilkey, while he clearly loves books, really sees books as a means to an end and not something that satisfies a deep longing for the item in question:

…he was not dedicated to one author or one period or one subject. As soon as he’d snagged a twentieth-century American mystery, he was on to a nineteenth-century English novel. He thieved across genres the way a distracted reader might peruse shelves in a library, running his finger along the spines, stopping at whatever caught his eye, then moving on.

I’m sure you can imagine how close to home this description hit for a woman who runs a site called I Read Everything.

Gilkey, however, despite his desire to have books, is not like any collector I was aware of, honorable or not, before reading this book. He often did not know a thing about the books he stole, simply wanting to amass a collection of first edition Modern Library Top 100 Books, going after first editions from authors he had not even read. Moreover, his sense of entitlement is baffling to the average person – Gilkey (and most of us) could not afford the books he wanted, therefore dealers were to blame for having such high prices and there was no harm done if he stole from them. As anyone knows who has ever sold books, from dealers to Amazon Merchants to people who work as clerks in bookstores, the margins in book sales are slim. Razor thin. But much of what Gilkey thinks in this book is not based in reality but rather his attempts to justify his thefts. Assigning a Robin Hood morality to what he did likely helps him sleep at night, or gives him further justification.

But through his thefts, Gilkey really was redefining himself. With an impressive book collection, he could reinvent himself into a gentleman as opposed to the impecunious grifter he is:

…he kept his mind on his collection, imagining how it would elevate his position in society. Gilkey would be regarded as a man of culture and erudition, just like the woman in the wealth management advertisement I had seen who was pictured leaving a rare book shop. Everywhere he looked–movies, television, books, advertisements, clothing catalogs–were images that confirmed our culture’s reverence not for literature, per se, but for an accumulation of books as a sign that you belonged among gentility. Through his collection, Gilkey would occupy a revered place in an envied world.

I have not really ever analyzed my own love of books in terms of what this habit says about me. I have longed to own books I cannot afford, and in a sense, I am very proud of the books I do have that are “rare” or collectible. But like most book collectors and accumulators, I am broke. I am sure there are some top dogs out there whose pocketbooks allow them to own whatever they want but for the most part, every book lover I know is like me – constrained by our bank accounts, and willing to do without most cultural markers of affluence in order to have what may seem to others like a quaint gentility. In my world, books equal being broke.

I loved this book. For people looking for a gripping true crime yarn, this will not fit the bill. It is rather a look at a strange thief and the love of books. And anyone who loves books about books will find themselves making notes of other books to read on the topic – of course I already have Basbanes but Bartlett’s careful research threw a few new names my way. This book is accessible, entertaining, and raises questions in the minds of book people about why they have their particular quirk and what it says about them.

Love All the People: The Essential Bill Hicks by Bill Hicks and John Lahr

This post originally appeared on I Read Everything

Book: Love All the People: The Essential Bill Hicks

Author: Bill Hicks and John Lahr

Type of Book: Humor, social criticism, non-fiction

Why Did I Read This Book: Because I love Bill Hicks

Availability: Soft Skull Press released the trade paperback in 2008. You can get a copy here:

Comments: Phew! I adore Bill Hicks. I think he was one of the most transgressive and interesting American comics ever. As a fellow Texan, conspiracy theorist, and Southern Baptist refugee, I felt a definite kinship with him and was crushed when he died in 1994. When YouTube came along, I pored over Bill’s appearance outside the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, checking his face and body language to see if there was any sign of what was to come, the cancer that would end his life less than a year later. Aside from looking shaggy and unkempt, which is relative given that I am talking about the man who brought us Goat Boy, there is no sign that he was not wholly fine. I have a difficult time liking Dennis Leary, though I want to like him, knowing how much of Hick’s routines he “borrowed” during his ascent. Bill Hicks was smart, funny, acerbic, angry, brave and, along with Johnny Cash, is a man I really wish I had met before he died.

So it was disappointing as hell not to love this book. In fact, it was disgusting to realize that during large sections, I was bored. The problem is not Bill. The problem is the editing. The idea behind the book was to show Bill’s comedy routines as he performed them throughout his career so that the reader can see how Bill’s routines evolved over time. The problem with this approach is two-fold:

First, Bill Hicks had the same message throughout his career. Bill Hicks’ message stayed on point more or less from the beginning. Therefore it is difficult to appreciate any sense of evolution when the spirit behind the jokes is the same and when, in fact, entire chunks of his routines are vomited verbatim up to five times in one book.

Second, the repetition on paper is mindlessly boring. Boring. Bill Hicks is not boring but this book is. Say one had the chance to follow Bill when he was alive and hear all of his routines. Being there in person, night after night, hearing his delivery, seeing the expressions on his face, it is safe to say it likely would not have been as tiresome as reading the same jokes over and over. The end result is that Hicks’ fierce messages of skepticism combined with openness, cynicism and optimism, spirituality and anti-religion, togetherness and independence, and peacefulness and a call to intellectual arms get hopelessly diluted through meaningless repetition.

This book just didn’t work.

So instead of recommend this book, I instead recommend you buy one of Bill’s CDs. Instead of complain about the book further, I’ll instead quote Bill and while these quotes are indeed from the book, they will sound so much better coming from Bill himself.

Bill on drugs:

Shit man, not only do I think marijuana should be legalized… I think it should be mandatory.

If you believe drugs don’t do anything good for us, do me this favour, will you? Go home tonight, take all your albums and tapes, K? And burn ’em. Cos you know what? The musicians who made all that great music… reeeeeeal fucking high on drugs.

Shut the fuck up. Your denial is beneath you, and thanks to the use of hallucinogenic drugs… I see through you.

Well, once again, I recommend a healthy dose of ah… psilocybin mushrooms. Three weeks ago, two of my friends and I went to a ranch in Fredericksburg, Texas, and took what Terence McKenna calls a “heroic dose.” Five dried grams. Let me tell you, our third eye was squeegeed quite cleanly. And I’m glad they’re against the law. Cos you know what happened when I took them? I laid in a field of green grass for four hours, going, “My God, I love everything.”

Bill on work and corporations:

You know what I hate about working? Bosses, that’s what I fucking hate. First of all, let me tell you something quick. The very idea that anyone could be my boss, well… I think you see the conflict. Not in this lifetime, Charlie. A few more incarnations, we’ll sit down and chat. But I used to get harassed. “Hicks, how come you’re not workin’?” I’d go, “There’s nothing to do.”

“Well, you pretend like you’re workin’.”

“Well, why don’t you pretend I’m working. Yeah, you get paid more than me, you fantasize. Pretend I’m mopping. Knock yourself out.”

Everyone should wear blue jeans and three t-shirts and eat beans and rice and break every f-ing company, break ’em.

Open a McDonald’s in Moscow and everyone’s backslapping each other. It’s depressing to me. “Oh, it’ll help the economy. McDonald’s, it’ll supply forty-five new jobs there in Moscow.” Yeah, twenty dentists and twenty heart specialists. It’s shit. Don’t eat it.

Bill on kids:

(discussing banning drugs, alcohol and pornography) “But we have to protect the children, we have to protect the children.” Let me tell you something: children are smarter than any of us. You know how I know that? I don’t know one child with a full-time job and children. Yeah. They’re quick these kids, man. They’re fucking quick.

She wanted kids. I had no idea her philosophy was so flawed. She goes, “Wouldn’t it be nice to have a kid, to have this fresh, clean slate, innocent, and to fill it with good ideas.” Yeah, yeah, how about this? If you’re so fucking altruistic, why don’t you leave the little clean spirit wherever it is right now?

Bill on religion:

We are the perfect and holy children of God, and I don’t see, being the perfect and holy children of God, how any limits could possibly be put on us… not at all. That’s the point of my act. I just want to be free of the fears and anxieties of death and the superstition of religion. Being raised as a Baptist… with an avenging God, a God who created hell for his children. I’m sorry but… no. Wrong. You’re wrong. That’s an insane God and therefore not mine. Because, see, God would be very sane, don’t you get it? That’s my act. Everything branches off from that.

I was raised Southern Baptist in Texas! You don’t think I got the message? P-shaw, my Brothers and Sisters! I got the ONE TRUE message. And I know, because this is how I was raised, that even you poor, misguided Christians from other denominations are wrong. So load your guns and prepare to do Holy Battle in the name of Jesus, the lamb of peace.

This is the message of Christianity:

Eternal suffering awaits anyone who questions God’s infinite love.

Or, to paraphrase:

I will make your life a living hell if you don’t think like me.

Bill on conspiracy:

And if the ATF and the FBI had any honor, if there was any honor left or dignity on this planet, they could commit hara-kiri while first admitting what they’ve done. They’d kill themselves, cos they are liars and murderers. “Oh, we had to bust the compound down, cos we heard child molestation was going on.” Yeah, if that’s true, how come we don’t see Bradley tanks knocking down Catholic churches?

(Regarding the Texas Book Depository JFK museum in Dallas) Anyway, they have the window set up to look exactly like it did on that day. And it’s really accurate, you know, cos Oswald’s not in it.

Bill just being Bill

My dad: “Bill, do you have to say the f-word in your act, son? Bob Hope doesn’t need to say the f-word in his act.” “Yeah, well, dad, guess what. Bob Hope doesn’t play the shit-holes I play, all right? You put him in some of these joints, he’ll have Emmanuel Lewis and Phyllis Diller sixty-nining as his closer… just to get out of there alive.”

She was a southern girl, which is the same as saying she was insane. All southern women are insane. Some are cold blooded killers and some are harmless eccentrics, but the best of the breed exhibit both of these characteristics and always the one you expect the least at the time you least expect it.

The real message of Bill Hicks:

It’s only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings and money. A choice right now, between love and fear. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love, instead, see all of us as one. Here’s what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money that we spend on weapons and defense each year, and instead spend it feeding, clothing and educating the poor of the world, which is would many times over, not one human being excluded…

Voodoo Histories by David Aaronovitch

This post originally appeared on I Read Everything

Book: Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History

Author: David Aaronovitch

Type of Book: Non-fiction, sociology, history, conspiracy theory

Why Did I Read This Book: I am an avid reader of the odd, as my other book discussion site should prove, and eat conspiracy theory with a spoon. When I saw this book as I wandered through a Barnes & Noble, it was a gimme that I would buy it. That conspiracy theory might actually shape contemporary historical belief seemed too interesting to pass up.

Availability: Published by Riverhead Books in 2010, you can get a copy here:

Comments: I liked this book but not for the reasons I purchased it. As someone who has spent a lot of time wallowing in conspiracy at different times in my life, there was little new for me in this book (though this is not to say there was not some content unfamiliar to me – there was and it was fascinating). Moreover, this book is more a debunking attempt than really a look at how conspiracy theory has shaped modern history for the average person. No one can walk away from this book and feel that any of the examples of conspiracy, their formation and later belief, has affected the modern canon of history, aside from the JFK assassination. Of course people whose personal beliefs lie on the fringe of reason hold conspiracy theory close to their hearts, but I think it is overblown to seriously suggest that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the “plot” to kill Princess Diana in a random car accident with a drunk driver, or Hillary Clinton supposedly murdering Vince Foster is ever going to achieve the level of mainstream belief that will reflect these fringe beliefs as history.

Of course there are always some who believe all manner of odd things. Michael Shermer has shown us that, as well as any other number of debunkers. It often seems as if those who have fringe beliefs are greater in number than they are because the proliferation of conspiracy theory sites on the Internet make the information seem more common place and because the press loves nothing more than a crank with a misspelled sign, wearing a costume and yelling about injustice. The Tea Party (Teabaggers, as they are known to people like me) has shown this in spades in the United States. Get some loud, bombastic, angry, and, in some instances, completely insane people in one place and the press is all over it because crazy is a close second to sales behind sex. But the numbers of Teabaggers are statistically insignificant and recent polls indicate that these people who have received so much press recently as a new force in politics don’t have enough numbers even to impact the 2010 midterm elections. Fringe beliefs among the Truthers and Birthers and Teabaggers will end up as a foot note to history, not history itself.

Aaronovitch does a relatively sound job of showing how, for the fringe, certain myths will not die and will always be a part of a certain zeitgeist regardless of the proof given to debunk these myths. Like the idea that Princess Diana was assassinated or that the Kennedys had Marilyn Monroe killed by an overdose of barbiturate suppositories. There are those who will believe this no matter what, and Aaronovitch shows clearly how the seemingly unbelievable, like the President of the United States is a foreign born citizen or that 9-11 was an inside job, gains some credence. Aaronovitch discovered similar traits that enable otherwise sane people to believe weird things.

1) Historical precedent: If you can show that other conspiracies happened in the past, it is easier to believe they happened now.
2) Elite them against us: All conspiracy theory at its heart shows actions of an elite few – rogue CIA agents killing JFK (which is not that unbelievable for some of us), Jews plotting a world takeover – against the mass of people. Those who do not believe are seen as sheep, people who are so mass deluded they cannot believe.
3) “Just Asking Questions”: Many purveyors of conspiracy theory assume the role of an innocent questioner instead of a provocateur.
4) A circle jerk of “experts” who all quote each other in order to give the theory legitimacy.
5) A veneer of academic credibility, much of which gets echoed by established media but when examined up close, credentials are always suspect.
6) Errors in the theory are explained as disinformation from the forces that the theory hopes to out.
7) Assumption of the role of an endangered victim – those who discuss the theory claim to be under constant surveillance. This assumption of persecution makes outsiders wonder what the subjects of the conspiracy have to hide.

But at it’s heart, this book never convinced me that aside from contemporary news media dropping the ball occasionally that conspiracy theory really is shaping how we perceive history. There may be a sizable minority who have bought into the propaganda of 9-11 conspiracy but where most of the sources are concerned, like the movie Loose Change, I have never heard a single sane person speak of it favorably, and the only places where it is discussed favorably is on sites where conspiracy is the sole topic. Most people (unlike me, for the record), do not think there was a CIA conspiracy to kill JFK, though the evidence in that case has been so muddied and mishandled that differing theories as to what happened were inevitable. Most people, despite the media attention Birthers get, do not think Barack Obama is a Muslim foreigner sent to destroy the United States. While the Kennedy assassination is a different kettle of fish in some respects and has, in fact, affected history, it is hard to see the connection between the actual history of this nation and fringe belief. I cannot say the same about the UK, where a couple of the theories in the book are germane, like the idea that Princess Diana was assassinated, an anti-nuke protester murdered in a conspiracy, or the details surrounding the likely suicide of a Parliament crank. I cannot make that leap mainly because my experience with conspiracy theory exists in an American realm.

But if you get past the notion that history has been deeply affected by conspiracy theory, let alone shaped by it, this book is an incredibly informative, fascinating read. I think anyone interested in conspiracy theory will find much to like in this book. Like many, I knew that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion was fake, a scurrilous attempt to pass off fiction as a historical document exposing a Jewish plot to take over the world. Aaronovitch takes this one step further and shows that not only was it a fake, but it was a bad forgery as well, showing the original sources from which the PotEZ was taken, showing side by side analysis. Moreover, I did not know that the men at the heart of publicizing all the supposed crimes committed by President Bill Clinton are the same men behind the attempts to prove that Barack Obama is a Muslim, non-American, socialist/communist/fascist. Joseph Farah and Christopher Ruddy evidently got an 8-year break when George W. Bush took office after Clinton, but got back up to speed in a heartbeat when Democrats took the office back. There were also two British conspiracies that I was not as well-versed in. All in all, this book was worth it for the information I did not know, the connections that show how these conspiracies were created and managed for the new information age.

However, I think reason is not in as short supply as the evening news wants us to believe. Nor is it in as short supply as this book would lead one to think. People believe outrageous things, that cannot be denied. Conspiracy theory is, indeed, a cultural force. I just don’t think it is a force that shapes history and that in a large part comes from my personal experiences with conspiracy immersion, but if it were, the official line would be that Marilyn was murdered, Princess Diana was assassinated by the British royal family, Jews are out to get us and Obama is a Muslim foreign agent. If the fringe had anything more than Internet innuendo, Loose Change would not be derided in every sane circle for all the factual errors it makes. Affecting how elements of history may be perceived to certain individuals is not the same as shaping history as a whole. There is no denying that the fringe affects people who believe it and the history they subscribe to, but fringe belief has not shaped history, modern or otherwise, and in trying to prove it, this book fails.

But it succeeds in telling about some extraordinary delusions of the crowd and how they shaped perception for certain groups (and my local conspiracy expert Alex Jones gets a couple of shout outs). That it does not meet its thesis goal matters less to me than it should because it was simply so damned entertaining – Aaronovitch has an engaging writing style and an amusing, at times caustic wit, and the book is just fun to read. All in all, for a book that missed it’s mark, I can’t believe I am telling you to read it, but I am.

Amazon reviews are hinky? The hell you say!

This post originally appeared on I Read Everything

I never look at reviews on Amazon, though the site is the place where I purchase the bulk of my books. Though the story of Orlando Figes’ wife’s antics on Amazon UK is a fun read, it encapsulates all the reasons why I never review books on Amazon and why I give them little weight when I do read them.

A is for Alien by Caitlín R. Kiernan

This post originally appeared on I Read Everything

Book: A is for Alien

Author: Caitlín R. Kiernan

Type of Book: Science fiction, short story collection, erotica

Why Did I Read This Book: Because CRK is one of my favorite writers of all time, full stop.

Availability: Published by Subterranean Press in 2009, you can get a copy here:

Comments: Caitlín R. Kiernan is a writer whom I have a hard time assigning to any specific genre, though she is a writer whose work generally has some form of slipstream in it, slipstream as defined by Bruce Sterling when he said, “…this is a kind of writing which simply makes you feel very strange; the way that living in the twentieth century makes you feel, if you are a person of a certain sensibility.” Kiernan’s prose always makes me feel strange and everything I have read from her is undeniably dark even when good prevails because there is still so much more bad out there waiting.

This collection is mostly science fiction and I am notably not a fan of the sci-fi genre, but I read this anyway because Kiernan wrote it. I’m glad I read it because only two of the stories were not to my tastes. Much “hard” science fiction eludes me for the same reason I never found A Clockwork Orange to my liking – I get too distracted by the verbiage, which is often beyond my ken, and the story gets away from me. So I am at a loss to determine if any work of hard science fiction is good or not, though I am not someone who condemns a genre just because I do not like it. Two of the stories in this collection said little to me, so I was tempted to skip reviewing it, but the point of this review site is for me to review literally everything I read that does not end up on I Read Odd Books. So no chickening out.

This collection contains eight stories, some hard science fiction, some science fiction combined with erotica, some transhumanist analyses, and plenty of dystopia to last even the most jaded of readers for a long time. I admit that I prefer CRK when she is writing works that tilt more in the vein of horror – Alabaster and Daughter of Hounds are both in my list of Top 25 Books of All Time. But her essential themes remain even when her genre differs, and that is what matters I think.

My impressions of all eight stories under the jump and beware – there may be spoilers.