Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

I'm about halfway through reading Trevor Noah's memoir, Born A Crime. I am really enjoying it and would strongly recommend it.

I didn't know what to expect from this book, and I think I guessed it would have lots of one-liners and some satirical hot takes and exaggeration for humor's sake. I don't see much of that here. Noah relates extraordinary events from his childhood in a straightforward way. 

He's a very good prose stylist although his style is fairly plain. Not surprisingly for a stand-up comic, he's a good storyteller, but here his storytelling style is mostly not very theatrical.

As a narrator, he conveys the sense that he is very grounded. He does offer explanation and context of his past, his parents' past, and his country's past.

I guess my feeling is that Noah grew up in a world with a lot of violence: criminal, political and psychological. Some of the things that he has to say are necessarily stimulating. I find it a bit of a relief to have it related without emphasis added. But much more than this, to me, is that I think he is a very good prose stylist. I found, after reading about 100 pages, that I was composing in my head in a much simpler style. I find that to be evidence of his skill as a writer. I suspect that he really likes words and chooses them carefully and artistically.

For instance, he tells the story of how his mother came to push him out of a speeding car in a matter-of-fact way, as he also tells the story of his first Valentine when he was twelve. On the other hand, he tells the story of how, to save money on gas, his mother used to make him push the car when it was stuck in heavy traffic on the way to his school. That is dramatically told.

One of the things that I like about Born A Crime is that much of it is a portrait of his mother. His mother is a very interesting person. She was farmed out to a relative as a small child, and when that relative could no longer take care of her, she took a secretarial course. Then she worked in an office in Johannesburg, but her mother insisted that all of her salary go to supporting her entire family. So, she literally ran away to Johannesburg, sleeping in public toilets until she could find a place to live that she could afford. She enjoyed going out in Johannesburg, and met a German-speaking Swiss, Noah's father. After some time she announced to him that she wanted to have a child with him. Although initially resistant, he eventually supported her decision. Because of apartheid laws in South Africa, they could not marry or live together: their relationship was illegal. 

Another thing I like about this book is that Noah talks a lot about language and how it can be used as a barrier and a bridge. Language was actively used by the apartheid government as a way to separate people and Noah learned that speaking a variety of languages (English, Afrikaans, Xhosa and other native languages) could give him entree to a variety of people, and that interested him.

And, of course, language is his business. His career began when his friends pushed him to try standup because they thought that he was so terrifically funny. Noah talks a bit about risk-tasking here, and he says that he feels that taking risks is ultimately rewarding and what he regrets is the risks he didn't take.

This interview Trevor Noah did to help promote the book gives an overview of Born A Crime, and conveys Noah's extremely pragmatic worldview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hfMNTnBM4I&t=3893s

1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare by James Shapiro

I wondered if I would like this book so soon after reading Will in the World. Well, I loved it, and I think I might enjoy reading it again. I read it last year.

It's an account of the plays of 1599, and what Shakespeare's world was like in 1599, with a great emphasis on the political events in London that year. In fact, this book is really "about" how political events affected Shakespeare's work and I found this account both entertaining and a great improvement to my understanding of the plays. Henry the V, As You Like It, and Julius Caesar were the plays Shakespeare wrote in 1599, and I enjoyed the discussion of Julius Caesar the most.

The book opens with a wonderful adventure story: Shakespeare and his fellow Globe shareholders take apart The Theatre, their playhouse just north of London's city limits, and carry it off to re-erect it as The Globe in Southwark. They'd lost their lease to the land on which The Theatre stood. They'd built the theatre, but anticipated trouble with the landlord over removing The Theatre building, so this was a covert operation.

Sadly, the book closes on a less festive note: with Essex's rebellion and execution. The queen was increasingly unpopular, in part because she would not name a successor, leaving everyone with a sense of uncertainty. Perhaps also because the very fact that she was so old meant that it was time for something new and the younger generation was impatient for something new to begin. Finally, there were exclusive licenses being given to favorites, and this caused resentment. The impression that I carried away was that Essex was all out of chances; without a court position he was broke. He'd lost favor when he was sent to Ireland and, in the eyes of many, bungled it. Shapiro's view is that Essex had a vision of service and gallantry that was outdated.

Shapiro discusses censorship in this period, and I found myself feeling surprised that Shakespeare never ran afoul of the censors. In fact, the character of Falstaff was first named for a censor; the name had to be changed and it was changed to Falstaff. In a sense, he did not get away with that - but I think Jonson was imprisoned more than once. How did that smart mouth Mr. Shakespeare get away with that? I guess he was just that popular.

Mr. Shapiro is a Shakespeare scholar who has made quite a few public appearances and presented a television show on the historical Shakespeare. You can find these on YouTube.

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland

As the title implies, this book is, among other things, a true crime story and a wonderfully written and entertaining one. Keefe said in one of his interviews that he worked hard on the structure. It permitted him to tell a story that was suspenseful, propulsive, sometimes amazing, but full of detail.  It provides context.

It begins with the story of Jean McConville, a Protestant woman who married a Catholic, and though a recent widow with ten children, was disappeared by the IRA. The story of what happened to her, after she was dragged from her apartment in front of her children, is the frame for the book.

It mostly focuses on four people: Brendan Hughes, an IRA commander, two women, Dolours and Marian Price, and the former leader of the Sinn Fein party and the leader of the IRA in Belfast, Gerry Adams.

It deals at length with all four of this figures. Hughes and the Price sisters made sacrifices as IRA soldiers that made the Good Friday Agreement a very bitter pill for them to swallow. Hughes specifically said that every death, civilian or paramilitary, was a worthless sacrifice.

Columbine by Dave Cullen

Read this book for my book group, very reluctantly. I just have never been interested in crime stories.

My book group rated it very highly: they valued the quality of the writing, the quality of the research behind it, and the wide-ranging aspects of the reporting.

I couldn't help wanting to consider the public policy implications of what Cullen had to say about the events of that day. A mental health professional and researcher Cullen spoke came to believe that both shooters, Harris and Klebold, had undiagnosed mental health illness. Harris was a narcissistic psychopath (the shooting was originally intended to be a bombing and to demonstrated his superiority) and Klebold suffered from depression and perhaps other mental health illness. I'm grossly simplifying.

The public policy implication I inferred from the reporting in this book is that school shootings are a significant public health problem deserving of public investment. Money should be spent on research and on educating the public about the kinds of signs that troubled teenagers (and others) may display before a shooting event. Further, there is a need for school shooting reporting to be less sensationalistic (to some extent, I think the frequency of school shootings might cause that already to be happening). I recall that in The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell reported a phenomenon in a South Sea island community, in which suicide had become contagious among teenagers. I think this "contagion," this impulse for teenagers to imitate each other, is very profound. We should be aware of it and act accordingly. I think that response should include not publicizing school shooters because giving school shooters notoriety is part of the problem. Although Cullen did not address this topic, I think that there is a need for a greater institutional response, including trainings, about shootings of this kind and how public administrators and front line public service providers should respond.

Outcasts United: A Refugee Team, An American Town by Warren St. John

This nonfiction book written by a reporter from the New York Times, is part sports story, part human interest story, part sociological study.

My book group read this book, and it was chosen because the author was doing some promotion locally. It's obvious to me that promotion works: I just read a sports book!

It's also a wonderful thing to visit this book, written in 2009, about immigrants working together and about what they can contribute to a community.

In this book, of course, part of what the refugees in the story are offering are their soccer skills, honed in alleys and streets and dusty fields. But something else these refugees offer to the people who are helping them and others around them is resilience, strength, gratitude, and love of family.

In Clarkston, Georgia, refugees are resettled in inexpensive apartment complexes on the edge of town. Gradually, their numbers grow and their presence begins to change the nature of the town.

Refugees have many problems. They have to work in order to support their families, but they often speak little or no English. Refugees are lent the money for the tickets to the U.S.; they receive only three months of assistance. They've often experienced terrible trauma, witnessing acts of violence and sometimes witnessing acts of violence against members of their own family.

A Jordanian immigrant, Luma Mufleh, a graduate of Smith College, moves to Georgia because the weather reminds her of her home. She is a former soccer player and a huge fan. She starts coaching soccer because she enjoys it so much and feels inspired by her own coach as a child, an American woman married to a diplomat living in Jordan.

Eventually, she stumbles upon the immigrant community in Clarkston, and decides that she would like to coach soccer there. She recognizes that poverty and trauma place special stresses on these refugee kids, and that's part of what motivates her.

This book is the story of how she succeeding in overcoming her teams' lack of experience of team discipline, their occasional need to act out, the lack of funding for equipment, and succeeded not only in helping all her soccer players to play better soccer, to have a social and comforting experience where they can make new friends, be kept busy doing something that they love and kept out of trouble, and learn to work together as a team with people from different backgrounds, and leadership skills.

I fell in love with the book around the third page. I just felt absorbed in the stories of Luma and wanted to learn more about her and the young men she was working with in her soccer program.

My book group found the writing style here somewhat plain. I too, initially saw St. John's writing style that way. However, by the fifth page, I was completely engrossed. I was just so curious about how Luma would solve the team's problems, how she'd manage her relationship with the YMCA who subsidized the program by renting a field for the team and providing a bus, and her relationship with the young soccer players in her program.

Some of the problems that Luma encountered were that the community center where the YMCA rented a field for her really didn't want the team to practice there. Eventually, the community center ended the relationship, leaving Luma's team with no place to play. No specific reason was given, I think, but the inference I drew was that the refugee children on the team were viewed as outsiders to the community.

Since the events chronicled in the book, things have changed in Clarkston. While many residents moved away, new residents who appreciated being in a diverse community moved in. A new mayor, a younger man who embraced Clarkston's diversity, was elected.

I googled Luma and found that she is attempting to raise money for a new facility to provide soccer programs for children in Clarkston. I think that that sports facility would be an asset to the community, and I cannot help being pleased that the diversity that immigration brings is now valued in Clarkston.

Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt

I have been reading Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt. I was attracted to it because I remembered reading favorable reviews of it ten years ago when it came out, because it had an attractive cover, interesting color plates, and because I read a little bit and found myself swept along by Greenblatt's lively, handsome and accessible writing. I was intrigued when Greenblatt explained that Shakespeare is one of our greatest biographical puzzles because while there is a large amount of certain kinds of documentation, such as criminal charges, lawsuits, property records, church attendance records, and wills, there are no personal letters, no diaries, and little eyewitness account.

I believe it is intended to be a biography in which the author's own creative output is used to illuminate the biography. It's intended for a general audience, rather than a scholarly one, and if you have been watching Will on TNT and want to know more about the life of William Shakespeare, this book is an excellent choice.

If you are specifically interested in the "lost years," the seven years between Shakespeare's marriage and the first mention of him in London living as an actor and a playwright, you will be disappointed. Greenblatt mentions the usual suppositions: that he worked as a tutor for one or more wealthy Northern recusant families, that he traveled in Italy, that he worked for his father and possibly, worked for a touring acting company. I should mention that almost nothing is known about these seven years of Shakespeare's life. There are no diaries or letters to or from Shakespeare in this period, and no universally accepted records of his employment. Records that we do know about are the schoolmasters of the Stratford Grammar School that Shakespeare himself had attended for some time; Greenblatt shows that there is evidence that three schoolteachers had links to the Catholic recusant movement (Catholics who did not attend Church of England services and English and other priests, educated and ordained on the Continent), which means that he could have had the connections to work in that capacity.

If you are interested in knowing whether it's likely that Shakespare's life was touched by Catholic thought and politics, or the politics of the Tudor era, this book would be a good resource because Greenblatt explains this very well. He talks about the references to Catholicism in his plays and other aspects of Shakespeare's biography that appear in the plays: references to the processes of curing leather, for instance, something Shakespeare knew from having worked in his father's glove business.

I found that aspect alone fascinating; I took Elizabethan Era History in college and cannot recall anything about "recusants," or about how the Elizabethan police state and the continuing loyalty to the Catholic faith in rural England, especially the north, created ongiong fear and tension. (At this time, everybody was expected to go to a Church of England church.) In fact, Greenblatt argues that there are many references to Catholic ritual in the plays and Shakespeare may have viewed the theatre as a sphere in which some of the communal concerns of a population that felt the absence of a former practice and cultural dislocation might feel some acknowledgment of their feelings.

There is a great deal here about Shakespeare's life in London, and about the aspects of Shakespeare's life that influenced his playwriting. Especially, Greenblatt makes some interesting inferences about Shakespeare's life: 1) That he regretted his early marriage at 18 (he finds references to the foolishness of marrying young in his work); 2) that he detested his wife; 3) That Hamlet was not only informed by the loss of his son and the impending loss of his father but by his awareness that Protestantism's relationship to the dead was very different from that of Catholicism, and less comforting; 4) That his father's reversal of fortune made the theme of restoration a recurring one in Shakespeare's work; 5) that the late plays' recurring father-daughter relationships reflected Shakespeare's close relationship with his elder daughter, Susanna. Greenblatt also discusses the biographical aspects of the sonnets, Venus and Adonis, and The Rape of Lucrece. I have not read these poems and only a few of the sonnets, but I found this discussion very interesting.

There is much evidence of factual events Shakespeare's life but it comes almost entirely from legal documents: lawsuits, contracts, references to his father's life as a local public official and Shakespeare's own will.

For students, I think the chapter notes at the back of the book may be quite helpful in locating books that deal with certain questions in greater depth.

Hero of the Empire by Candace Millard

This is a very entertaining book, and I would certainly recommend it for any fan of Churchill or of history. Millard was recommended to me as someone who wrote history in a very accessible way, and I certainly agree. Her prose is lively, and she shapes her narrative for its maximum entertainment value. And the story of Churchill's escape from a prisoner of war camp was a ripping good yarn.

Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

I've just begun this Pulitzer Prize-wining nonfiction account of Memorial Hospital in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

It's already easy to see that the health professionals inside the hospital went from feeling confident about their ability to ride out the storm to being frightened and stressed by the heat and other factors due to the loss of electricity for several days.

It seems that there are some obvious policy recommendations.  Hospital generators need to be reliable for at least four days rather than hours.  Hospitals need to designate on-site decision makers, and need to prepare them for making major administrative decisions if they are not hospital administrators.  Perhaps hospital administrators should be required to remain on-site during hurricanes and other storms than can remove electricity, and should be required to try to get to the hospital if the electricity goes out.

The Zen of Social Media Marketing by Shama Kabani

I love this book.  It has a lot of virtues:  it offers pithy rules for social media marketing; it's brief and concise; well-written, so easy to read; and while it is aimed at beginners, I think some of its points are useful for everyone to remember.

First of all, it answers the most basic question:  why Social Media Marketing?  Because a) that is where the people are, b) trust in advertising continues to erode and c), people are already talking about you (don't you want to be part of that conversation?).

This book focuses on using blogs, Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin to market your business.  There's also a chapter on Google+, which I suspect is not on the radar of many libraries.  Part of its appeal to businesses is that your Google+ p age will appear with search results.  There are also 30 pages of case studies, mostly smaller businesses, and how they used these principles to grow their businesses.

One of the themes of the book is that, while you utilize an effective publicity strategy on social media, you need to also stick to the knitting:  make sure that your product is top-notch.  It's high quality and high value that is, in some cases, the key to success.

For instance, in Kabani's discussion of Groupon, Living Social, and other group buying sites, she points out that if you create a coupon to attract new customers, be sure to have a plan in place that includes high-quality service performance and customer service.  Encourage your coupon customers to follow up on social media with comments about your product or service.  BUT - be sure that the experience that your prospective customer has when they use a coupon is likely to merit a good review.  If you think that staff are not ready for the highest levels of scrutiny, it might be wise to review some important customer service principles.  To make the most of the opportunity afforded by the group buying coupon, a business leader must prepare to staff to cross-sell or upsell, without being too aggressive.

This book focuses on using blogs, Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin to market your business.  There's also a chapter on Google+, which I suspect is not on the radar of many libraries.  Part of its appeal to businesses is that your Google+ page will appear with search results.

I think that blogs, especially when they're part of your website (as she recommends), have the potential to be very useful to libraries.  That's because, as this book points out, providing information that is useful to your patrons (in the case of a library), your consumers (people who read your content on social media and hopefully, are positively influenced by it), and finally your customers (people who actually consume your products and services), is key to social media success.

One way I would love to take advantage of social media is to use it to help answer the reader's question, "What do I read next?" whether that's a question about which book is next in a series, what's hot right now, or what's a strong recommendation for a good book to read.

She recommends blogs in particular because a) they are a better forum for conveying expertise than Twitter; b) you can ask your followers to subscribe to your blog, something that you cannot do with a website.  However, you can use a blog to drive traffic to your website by inserting links to your website in your blogs (and Facebook, and Twitter, and Google+).

She is very specific about how often a blog author needs to post to create a new audience for a blog:  twice a week.  I guess "Content is king," but fresh content is even kinglier.  Establishing a relationship with a consumer of your content is easier if you communicate more frequently.

However, as a online marketing textbook I recently read asserted, the nature of Google's algorithms determining ranking are such that, ultimately, high quality content may be more important that the strategic insertion of keywords in metatags.

Another theme is the "engagement" aspect of social media marketing.  The old fashioned model for mass communication was broadcasting:  one message sent to many people.  Kabani points out that many ineffective social media marketers "abuse" social media by continuing to push out a message
that that may or may not be tailored to sub-audiences and which does not engage the visitor.  Further, she repeated points out that while you cannot talk back to a TV, you can talk back on social media and that is its great strength.  A social media marketer should be starting, and continuing, a conversation rather a one-sided communication.

In Chapter 4, she offers some "social media marketing tenets."  They are:

1.  Respect other people online.

2.  Efforts to control and manipulate will backfire.

3.  Don't chase everything new under the sun.

4.  Traffic is nice but should not be the only goal of social media marketing.

5.  It's a good idea to use your real name.

6.  You have to be proactive (reach out to others; start a conversation).

She quotes marketing expert Nancy Marmolejo's advice to social media marketers:  "to position yourself as an expert in your field .. you must market yourself as a highly visible, ideally matched source of for your audience. .. Always focus on providing valuable content, boosting your credibility, building trust, .. Value, credibility and trust.  Add those three things to a high level of visibility and you have the social media recipe for success."  (Implied in her remarks are the value of credibility, which should be part of any public relations effort.  The way to build credibility is to be open, honest, and deliver what you promise.)

Social Media Policy

There was a time when a lot of libraries were concerned with this issue.  I assume that most libraries that want to have a social media policy now have one.

Shama Kabani makes several interesting points about crafting a social media policy.  One is that one size does not fit all, and it would be ideal for a social media policy fit your organization.  Another is that it is not necessary to make social media rules punitive or draconian.  She emphasizes commen sense, and points out that at Zappos, employees are encouraged to participate in social media and are trusted to present the company in a positive light.  She points out that as of the writing of her book, Zappos has not had any problems with social media comments posted by colleagues.  This reminds me that again, having a healthy company culture can do wonders in preventing these kinds of problems.

I think something that's implied is that when and if you adopt a social media policy, you spend some time talking with staff about their role in social media.

Some More Pithy Rules

"If content is king, video is the king of the bigger country."

"Many executives between the ages of 45 and 65 are digital aliens.  They were not brought up in the digital age and feel overwhelmed and sometimes fearful of the new technologies."

"You might have heard the saying around SEO blogs and discussion boards that "Content is King," which is true.  But optimizing that content is how to ensure your site performs better than your competitors'."  (Chapter 3, "Search Engine Optimization," p. 30.)

(Her definition of social media:)  "Online platforms where people connect and communicate." (Chapter 4, p.48.)

How Paris Became Paris by Joan DeJean

I wasn't able to finish this book because I simply didn't have time; it had to go back to the library because, not surprisingly, someone else wanted to read it.

Therefore, I can only talk about the author's main contention and the first three chapters.  The book begins with a 20-page introduction in which the author explains that the Paris we know today, and the idea of Paris as the ultimate tourist destination, the city of light, the city of romance, all start with Henri IV's desire to use a building program to restore Paris after it was greatly damaged by decades of religious war in the 16th century.

I should note that when I first had a desire to read this book I assumed it was about Baron Hausmann's work in the 19th century.  In her introduction, DeJean explains that it is an erroneous view held by many that Baron Hausmann's transformed Paris from its medieval version but it is the work of the 17th century kings, financiers, and engineering boy wonders that transformed Paris and gave us the Pont Neuf, the Place des Vosges (then the Place Royale), and the Ile Saint Louis (then the Ile Notre Dame, named for its proximity to the Notre Dame on the Ile de la Cite).

Henri IV's work began with his decision, around the turn of the 17th century, to build the Pont Neuf.  He was, among other things, concerned about creating infrastructure capable of holding the weight of carriages, the coming fashion in transportation.  The new bridge was completed in 1609, and it was different from the other bridges then being used for many reasons.  It was not lined with buildings as London Bridge and many other bridges were.  Henri IV financed it not with rents from these buildings but from a tax on wine coming into the city.  This bridge had broad, raised sidewalks for pedestrians, making crossing the bridge safer for them as carriages became more popular.  The bridge was unusually wide, 75 feet, which made it possible for merchants, performers, and gossipers to congregate on the bridge which made quickly made it most important gathering place to pick up news.

The Place des Vosges began as a silk workshop.  I loved learning about this.  Henri IV inherited an economically depressed city in which aristocrats were buying Italian silk for their dress, an expensive practice which did nothing for France's economy.  He resolved to create a silk industry in France and set up a workshop, with houses for the workers, on the old site of the Palace des Tournelles (which had been pulled down by Catherine de Medici after Henri III had been fatally injured in a joust there).  He decreed that the houses should have regular fronts, and the square was originally built with housing on three sides and a silk workshop on the fourth.  After Henri IV's death, his son did not pursue the project, which ended.  The silk workshop became (I don't know if it was converted or pulled down) the fourth wall of housing facing the square.  After some decades, the tradesmen who had lived there were replaced by aristocrats.  Eventually, the Place des Vosges became the centerpiece of an affluent, desirable neighborhood called The Marais ("the marshes").  As its name suggests, much of this area, and much of the area on the right bank, was not developed at the beginning of the seventeenth century.

I can't remember why the Ile St. Louis was undertaken, but it was created from two other islands that already stood in the Seine:  the Isle de Juifs and Isle de Vaches.  Both islands were uninhabited and primarily used for grazing.  An engineer named Marie, for whom one of the adjoining bridges is named, transformed the two islands into one.  The island was buttressed with embankments.  Innovatively, the street pattern was laid out in a grid.  DeJean writes that the architecture of the houses built on the Ile Saint Louis influenced French architecture in and outside of Paris.  Two great mansions were built on one end of the island; Baron Hausmann pulled the largest, the Hotel de Bretonvilliers, down to build the Pont Sully.  There is an arch left which I think gives an indication of the beauty of the the building, which I suppose was really more like a complex.  This is the style, smooth cut stone construction, which became our very idea of what is French architecture.

Let me go back to the Pont Neuf for a moment.  The bridge was built with observation platforms; DeJean said that this was a new innovation (and it has continued since I saw a couple of observation platforms on Blackfriars Bridge the other day).  De Jean says that this was the beginning of the mystique of Paris; people enjoyed stopping to view the Seine from the unique vantage point provided by the bridge and thus began an interest in urban views.  She points out that the Pont Neuf was the first piece of urban infrastructure that was neither a palace, fortress or monument that attracted tourists.   She sees it as the beginning of modern urban design, in which infrastructure itself may become a tourist attraction.

I know that later chapters of the book deal with other 17th century residential squares, the the design of the Tuileries and the Champs d'Elysee, and the civil unrest that took place in the middle of the 17th century.

It is especially interesting to me to read a consideration of the "beginning" of the romanticization of Paris as, coincidentally, just before I started this book I learned of "Paris Syndrome" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_syndrome) which is thought to be similar to Stendhal, or Florence, Syndrome.  Fortunately, Joan deJean's elucidation of the history of Paris is not going to cause anyone to experience Paris Syndrome.

The Cooked Seed by Anchee Min

I just loved this book; I didn't really have time to read it but I made time.

I have so much to say about this book although my thoughts are disparate and disjointed.

Anchee Min owned a four-flat in Bridgeport with her husband.  Her tales of fixing up her building are really scary and inspiring.  And, yes, if you're angry at your spouse but you want to feel better about him/her by reading about someone else who's worse off, then yes, this is the book for you.  Her husband is now a faculty member at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (where they met), but she found fault with the way that he handled managing their apartment building and the way he parented their child.

(It's an interesting commentary on the immigrant experience; Anchee could not get a job because her English wasn't good enough and she had to remain a student in order to keep her visa.  This is why she and her husband wanted to own real estate; they hoped it would be a source of income.  (Their experience was that maintaining the building ate up all the rent income.)

As much as I have always wanted to read a "real estate memoir," the last few chapters of the book are the ones that I like best.

The significance of the title is that cooked seed is what her colleagues at the film company she worked for before she left China used to call her.  Her parents were teachers and victims of the Cultural Revolution; at the age of 17 she was given a job as an actor in a film company run by Madame Mao.

When Mao died and Madame Mao was denounced, Min was tainted by the association and her colleagues jeered her by calling her "cooked seed" which meant washed up, finished, "stick a fork in her, she's done".  After working very hard to keep her job for several years, she finally decided that she had to leave China.

Toward the end of the book, she gives her daughter a lecture about "gaming the system."  Of course, she herself gamed the system:  she lied about being able to speak English when she applied for her visa from the American consulate (another story that I love:  a Chinese worker there, with haughty disdain, informs her that she got lucky:  the consular official who interviewed her realized that she could not speak English but greatly admired her pluck and said "yes").  She goes on to struggle to explain the real cost of poverty, the poverty of spirit that envelops those trapped in it.

The real appeal of this memoir is Min's "grit."  I thought that she was just as determined as the heroine of "True Grit" and thought that that might make a very nice alternative title to this book.  I was so impressed by her strength. Interestingly, I don't think she saw herself as strong but as desperate.  And, she's very candid about her doubts and about how they affected her relationship with her mother.

In fact, I'm not sure I fully understand everything that she has to say about her relationship with her mother, but I felt that she felt hurt that she could not be honest about her struggles in America because it was important to her mother that she be a "success."  At the same time, I think that she judged her parents for how they struggled when she was a child and, of course, I think anyone confronting the harsh conditions of the Cultural Revolution was lucky to survive but probably wouldn't feel lucky.  And one of the delights of the book is her gift to her mother of a toilet.

One of the other delights of the book is her account of how she met her husband. I won't spoil it for you by telling you the story, but I found it not just affecting, but expertly told.  Min writes that she had struggled as a writer in English, not just to master the mechanics but to create prose that flowed as the best prose does.  I congratulate her; while her prose is spare it is excellent and serves her narrative well.

Min writes that her daughter prompted her to write this memoir, saying that it would inspire women in a similar situation.  She closes the book with a quotation from Jane Eyre:

In the Garden of the Beasts by Erik Larson

This is a wonderfully readable and entertaining book. A caveat: Before you start reading it, look up Goebbels and Goring in Wikipedia. Having some sense of them as individuals may make it possible for you to keep them straight while you're reading the book. I'm pretty good at keeping the cast of characters straight in almost anything I read (I didn't struggle with 100 Years of Solitude, for instance) but I was pretty confused here. It's the story of a University of Chicago history professor who became FDR's ambassador to Berlin (a job no one else wanted, it seemed) and that of his daughter, a "free spirit". A few oddities. This is the story of a father and his daughter, though their relationship is not the story told in this book. Mom and Junior don't really figure much in this history. The first year of the Dodds' residency in Berlin is recounted in great detail; the rest of their story is barely summarized. The Dodds are real American characters in both the best and worst ways, I would say. To me, I would say that his ambassadorship gave him an opportunity to do something heroic which ended his career as an ambassador but which he would never had had an opportunity to do had he stayed in Chicago. And, that are many episodes in this book that are chilling. So it's not for everyone. Also, I personally thought that the first two chapters' exposition dragged. Oddly, for all that exposition, I thought that Larson should have offered some definition of the term "Jeffersonian democrat" and considered the question of whether Dodds' work as an ambassador was affected by his self-image.

July is a tough month: The Happiness Project

I'm on July in the Happiness Project - in fact, I've just finished it. July was a hard month for Gretchen Rubin; she was in a bad mood and everyone in her family was in a bad mood. She thought consciously about the resolutions she'd set for herself to handle parenting and family conflict issues -- and the tools she'd developed for coping with these issues - and she just ignored them. That's a very familiar feeling .. she recovered. But it shows that there are difficulties, even limits, to acquiring new behavior patterns, something any dieter could tell you.

In August she decides to read catastrophe memoirs, in part because they lend a true sense of perspective to an ordinarily very fortunate life. She also talks about giving something up: as counterintuitive as that seems, giving something up seems to also foster happiness. She also suggests imitating a spiritual master. This is one of the places in the book where she reprints posts made on her blog by followers. Some of what they said about the spiritual masters who informed their thinking was surprising and fun - Viktor Frankl was an obvious choice but Dan Savage, the sex columnist, was another surprising choice.

One day her husband asks her just how many books about Therese of Lisieux she's going to read, and after counting how many she already owns (17 plus) she realizes that St. Therese, the Little Flower, is the spiritual master she has been most influenced by and in fact has greatly, if indirectly, influenced her concept for her personal happiness project: one that will take place "in situ," that is, without disrupting her work or her family life and one that will emphasize small but meaningful changes that will be almost entirely internal.

By this time, I find myself feeling a grudging respect for Gretchen Rubin. I'm not going to read St. Therese's memoir, but I do see how it's a kind of blueprint for Rubin's own Happiness Project and how it may have influenced her to want to make a happiness project.

Rubin seems to me to be clearly not the sort of person who might have written Jesus and the Weather as a young person. But her candor in assessing the strengths, success and failure of her personal happiness project is charming.

A week or two ago, I found myself thinking, Rubin reminds me of Ann Landers. That notion seems surprising, but there is a similar quality of acceptance and practicality in both authors.

For instance, Rubin doesn't try to pretend that money isn't linked to happiness. One wants to be equal to one's peers and, she writes, relative wealth is not as important as having approximately what one's peers have. Money can't buy you happiness but it can solve some problems that, by being resolved, can promote happiness. She's forthright about the fact that acquiring things can make you feel good (she says because that feeling of gaining something feels like the growth that, it turns out, is a very important component in happiness).

She emphasizes having fun several times, and talks about different ways of having fun. She points out very importantly, that different people have fun different ways and it doesn't count as fun if it's not something you enjoy - even if you think that you should.

In September, Rubin wrote a novel. I found this amazing. It required such a large commitment of time, but she did it anyway (fast, no editing). She undertook this big project in the midst of the big project of the Happiness Project in the midst of her busy life as wife, mother, blogger.

To anyone, I would recommend reading the February chapter, in which she talks the small, practical steps she takes as part of improving her relationship with her husband. Part of her project is a "Week of Extreme Nice". It doesn't sound grand, does it (but a little intriguing, no?). The point is this: it's not really complicated; anyone can do it; it works and it's a fine illustration of how you can improve the emotional tenor of your life using the kind of tools Rubin uses: make a plan and implement it. (I have to say that making plans, implementing them, and evaluating the implementation is a big part of what she does; although the very idea of doing that, the way that she does it, doesn't really appeal to me, the results do.)

She's wonderfully practical. She begins her Happiness Project, in January, by resolving to go to bed earlier, and by cleaning out closets. Many people cannot begin something new unless they've uncluttered their mind by uncluttering their closets. It's not romantic, or dramatic, but it's effective.

Having finished the book, I have to say that it contains a lot of wisdom about how we should live now. I also have to say that it was a bit of a slog, and I consider that a problem. I wonder if finding another way to organize the experiences would have been better.

Another problem that I see is that using the diary like structure, arranged in months, was terribly clunky. It seemed to me that although Rubin experienced growth, and had tons of wisdom to share, she didn't quite succeed in making her experience into a shapely story.

And her quotations - Rubin loves quotations and she peppers her prose with them. I think it slows down the action. I also think it creates interest but it's overused. Rubin seems to me to be both a discreet and honest writer, which stands in the way of shaping an exciting narrative.

And I think it's a challenge for someone as attuned to modest virtues as Gretchen Rubin, someone who admires Dr. Johnson and Therese of Lisieux as much as she does, to write a narrative as entertaining as, say, Blood, Bones and Butter (by Gabrielle Hamilton). Rubin wouldn't make, I'd guess, the same choices as Hamilton. While both authors are good writers, the choices that Hamilton did make, good, bad, and indifferent, provide the narrative drive and spice of her account. She gets angry, and has snarky, sarcastic, critical and contemptuous thoughts, which she shares with us and we enjoy them and perhaps also enjoy some vicarious thrill. Rubin models self-control and restraint (advocating good manners, for instance, although not for their own virtue but because of how they can help us to be happier) and it's just not as interesting as Hamilton's bad girl blues.

Having said that, what Dr. Johnson, Gretchen Rubin, and people I know have in common is a sincere, unpretentious desire to know how to live, ethically, and fulfill themselves at the same time. Both Hamilton and Rubin offer answers and some of the same answers (work hard; get things done; make things; make a difference; do what needs doing) but Rubin's approach will resonate more intimately with many of those in my world. Meanwhile, I'm a little astounded by this fact: Dr. Johnson may be dull, may even be embarrassing but I see that his influence continues to pervade how we live now. (God, I should have paid more attention when we were reading Rasselas!)

Reading Now

Still working my way through the Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin.

I've been reading a little in The Great Game: The Myth and Reality of Espionage by Frederick P. Hitz, which compares the reality of espionage with how it's been depicted in fiction. He mentions a lot of books by classic authors: Kim by Rudyard Kipling, The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad, Ashenden by Somerset Maugham (which I'd never heard of), The Quiet American and especially, The Human Factor by Graham Greene. Hitz also mentioned Erskine Childers' The Riddle of the Sands and Eric Ambler's A Coffin for Demetrios. He mentions books Le Carre a lot: Russia House, The Perfect Spy, and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. A great virtue of this book is that it is only 188 pages.

It is interesting to find out more, and especially about their motivation, about the Cambridge Five. Generally, I think I'd enjoy it more if I'd read Le Carre or any of these books. I've just read Nostromo by Joseph Conrad, and that was sometime back .. I don't really remember it but I think it shaped my view.

Oh, and I've been reading a little of London Holiday by Richard Peck. It seems very dated but it was published in 1998. It has a very gossipy tone, and it looks backward at the eighties, mentioning the AIDS crisis and the Princess of Wales. It's about the proprietress of a B & B on Radnor Walk in Chelsea and the four American women who come to stay for a London holiday.

I brought home At Home by Bill Bryson and I read a few paragraphs from the chapter on the Plum Room and felt entirely satisfied that I would enjoy it. I also brought home The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan but I haven't even cracked it open yet.

Just My Type: A Book About Fonts by Andrew Garfield

This is a book about type and its modern-day equivalent, font. As the author points out, type was a big but hidden part of our lives, exclusively considered by designers, printers, and publishers. If you weren't in the "business," or some kind of business, you probably wouldn't know too much about type.

But computer fonts changed all of that, and apparently, Steve Jobs is the person who's responsible. Oh, the zeitgeist is all about font! Or, perhaps more accurately (or hopefully), it's about design.

Jobs, I understand, took a calligraphy course at Reed College, and while he didn't expect to do anything with that calligraphy knowledge, when the Apple Macintosh shipped, it had a bunch of fonts that permitted ordinary people like me to choose fonts and to consider which fonts they wanted to choose. Before that, the state of the art in the typewriter was the IBM Selectric (Garfield notes that Big Blue was the Apple of its day) and the balls could be changed. The only two type I ever saw was Courier or Prestige Elite. Well, Steve Jobs changed all that.

In Just My Type, Simon Garfield has given us a book that is part a biography of typefaces or fonts, and partly a guide.

For instance, I learned that for several years there has been a movement against Comic Sans. It's one of those fonts, along with Brush Script, Papyrus (!Ow! a former favorite!), which, when used, demonstrates the amateur status of the user.

This is a book that, instead of flouting the received wisdom, explains what the received wisdom is, for the uncool kids.

I found it surprising to learn that the same man who designed Zapfino designed Palatino (Hermann Zapf). Palatino isn't perfectly classical: if you look closely, you can see that the capital P is not closed! But it's very close to Roman lettering, and the addition of a certain expressive style gives it its charm. Whereas Zapfino is both dramatic, bold, flouncy and inconsistent - and, it's everywhere! Brush Script is a "bad" font, the choice of an immature, inexperienced designer, and makes whatever you're working on look like it was designed in the 1950's. But, why is Zapfino everywhere (in the brochure for the retirement community, on the side of the cookie box, and everywhere else) while Brush Script is bad.

Why is Comic Sans so despised? The short answer is that it's overused. (Why is it overused? I imagine because it reminds people of comics, and that there's something warm about it - it reminds me of Charles Schulz lettering for Peanuts.)

And how can Helvetica be so wonderful and so ubiquitous on the one hand, and be regarded as overused by some designers on the other hand? I guess there is such a thing as too much of a good thing.

As Garfield points out, type, or font, is everywhere around us. This book will lead you to see it with new eyes and soon you'll be saying under your breath, "That's Zapfino. That's Albertus, I think!"

And, when you have used Calibri for a sign because it just seems to fade into the background and doesn't draw attention to itself, you may, like me, be stunned to read that Calibri, "is a rounded, pliable sans serif with great visual impact."

By the end of this book, you'll agree that fonts are expressive and have personality. I wonder, though, if you might feel, like me, that not everyone agrees on what that personality is.

Yes, and if you loved the documentary "Helvetica," you'll love this, too. Here's something fun: a video promoting Just My Type (this is just the sort of thing I like)(photographed in London and Manchester): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhI2LYDkkZk

And you might enjoy this, too: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/im-comic-sans-asshole

Superfreakonomics

I listened to this book on audiobook over the summer. In many ways, it was very entertaining. It was very well narrated.

I had seen Steven Leavitt speak after the publication of Freakonomics and he talked about the importance of incentives in influencing human behavior. It was a great talk. Leavitt began by talking about his experiment in speeding up potty training by using M & Ms as an incentive. His wife predicted it wouldn't work. His wife was right.

But I have a couple of problems with this book. I have to offer my thoughts with a grain of salt: because I listened to the book on audio, I may well have lost the thread several times.

My first big problem with the book is that the last chapter, on global warming, was completely opaque to me. I really didn't understand the points Leavitt and Dubner were trying to make, and it sounded as if they were saying, "Everything you know about global warming is wrong," which might actually be happy news, but they seemed to then go on to espouse a ridiculous, Rube Goldberg solution for addressing global warming. Who knew? I guess I feel that they didn't make their case, and what's worse is that my confusion prevented me from enjoying the chapter merely as a really good story. I don't like it when someone messes with my story!

It also happens that through sheer luck, I found myself driving at high speeds when I finished the CD with the story of the high end call girl who offered her story to the authors. I was forced to listen to it a second and then, a third time. This gave me an opportunity to observe how cliched the story was and to wonder what the real point was. I suppose that it's another example of how people's economic behavior can be influenced by incentives but even that story doesn't show that everyone can be incentivized to follow a particular behavior.

But I loved learning that drunk walking is even more dangerous than drunk driving -- isn't that fact really counterintuitive? In general, I continued to find that learning about the "hidden side of everything" was entertaining if not entirely persuasive.

Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood

I listened to this book as an audiobook, and I found its many stories about the production of the 5 Oscar nominees for 1967 delightful, surprising and hugely entertaining. They were Dr. Doolittle, In The Heat of the Night, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and The Graduate.

There are many stories here, both central and tangential. The two most interesting characters, and a real focus of the book, are Warren Beatty and Sidney Poitier. I've taken Beatty for granted, but now I understand how daring it was of him to assume the role of producer; how surprising to me that the director he regularly sparred with on the set of Mickey One became his choice to direct Bonnie and Clyde. Poitier was an actor in the sometimes unenviable role of national civil rights symbol. Harris' recounting of his frustrations as an actor and civil rights activist were entirely new to me but fascinating.

Bonnie and Clyde's costume designer had never before worked on a film and at one point, Beatty, who'd hired her, snapped at her, "You don't know what you're doing, do you?" But her designs changed fashion that year and for years to come. Beatty is rumored to have gotten down on his knees to ask Jack Warner for the money; Beatty says that's not true but Harris asserts that while he met with Beatty, Warner insisted on pointing out the "Warner Bros." water tower with the "WB" on it; Beatty replied that those were his initials.

Bonnie and Clyde was intended to reflect the spirit and aesthetic of the French New Wave (which was in turn inspired by Hollywood movies) and Robert Benton and his co-writer originally hoped to have Francois Truffaut direct and even offered the film to Jean-Luc Godard.

The Graduate reveals that Dustin Hoffman was all wrong for the role and that well into the making of the film, Mike Nichols, its director, realized that he'd insisted on hiring Hoffman because Nichols identified with him. Meanwhile, Hoffman was catapulted from obscuring to stardom by a role in which he which he sometimes felt bewildered.

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? introduces Stanley Kramer, once very well-known as an "issues" director, and the complicated relationship of Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy to each other and their co-star, Sidney Poitier. When I learned how Tracy spoke to Hepburn in private, I was amazed.

I learned that In the Heat of the Night was actually filmed in Sparta, Illinois because it was thought that the film's subject matter was too incendiary to safely film any farther south.

Dr. Doolittle was an attempt by producer Arthur P. Jacobs to create a prestige children's picture like Disney's Mary Poppins. It was a flop, and aspects of the production were not only hellish (elements of the original were so fantastic that they were hard to film in the pre-CGI era) but parts of the finished film seemed laughable. Why was it nominated? Jacobs invested in a significant and successful lobbying campaign. He went on to produce the very profitable The Planet of the Apes series.

This book also conveys an industry in the midst of a huge, dislocating transition, much like the period we're living through now. If you're interested in film history or the history of the sixties, I'd strongly recommend this title.