Short Review: "The Porcelain Thief"

Huan Hsu is an American of Chinese descent (an ABC - American born Chinese), so there are multiple layers of confusion when he takes a break from his career to return to China to investigate the whereabouts of a treasure his several greats grandfather Liu buried during China's upheavals in the early 20th century. Huan does not speak Chinese very well, but he does not look like a foreigner to the Chinese either, which causes problems. The grandmother he hopes will help him has her own agenda and doesn't want him raking up the past.

What struck me, however, is how very American his behavior is - brash, impatient, occasionally angry and sometimes unreasonable, but absolutely determined to figure out the mystery. In lesser hands this might have been unpleasant, but here he skillfully meshes a fascinating history of the last Chinese dynasties with his family's trials through several wars. (The porcelain is really just the McGuffin - the real story is his family's cultural history, and the tag line for the title shows this: Searching the Middle Kingdom for Buried China - literally and figuratively.) I learned quite a bit - highly recommended.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for a review. The image above links to the book's Amazon page.

Short Review: "Create, Narrate, Punctuate: How to Fashion Exquisitely Styled Sentences"

This is a non-fiction writing textbook disguised as a meditation on the use and abuse of language, and a pretty good one, too. Reminds me of Edwin Newman's "On Language," or Richard Lederer's "Less than Words can Say" but with end of chapter questions and answers. Not a dry recitation of grammar rules (although virtually all the rules are spelled out clearly), but rather an argument for good written communication, using quotes from famous writers and wry remarks on the state of English these days (poor, generally) to get his point across.

The author, Ramy Tadros, teaches at the college level (in Australia...much of the book uses British spelling) and does some editing on the side. Highly recommended.

I received a free copy of this eBook from StoryCartel in exchange for a review. The image above links to the book's Amazon page.

Full Review: "Under Magnolia: A Southern Memoir"

Frances Mayes is well-known for her many books on Tuscany, particularly "Under the Tuscan Sun," (which was eventually made into a movie.)

A lush, evocative, perceptive writer in any event, she outdoes herself with "Under Magnolia," a memoir of growing up in the deep South. Sometimes you can go home again, even though you remember every detail of the racist, dysfunctional, eccentric, but somehow still loving and supportive family that you grew up in. We learn about her parents, her grandmother, various neighbors and other relatives, but the most moving portrayal to my mind is her close relationship with their black servant, Willie Bell, who guided her through some difficult times, took care of her, and whom she eventually lost touch with, to her continuing distress.

Mayes now divides her time between Tuscany and Hillsborough, NC, and she compares the two frequently in "Under Magnolia", noting similarities and differences of thought. She also notes that the South has improved dramatically in several respects (particularly racial relations.)

Highly recommended meditation on home and what that means.

I obtained a free copy of this book in return for a review, from Blogging For Books. The image above links to the book's Amazon page.

Full Review: "John Shaw's Guide to Digital Nature Photography"

"What camera should I use?"

I was pleased to see the author's answer: "The one you have with you." Good man. I can learn something from him. He jokes that a frequent comment he hears is "'you must have a really good lens,' as if the lens went out all by itself and took pictures." There is very thorough information here on gear you might buy, of course, but most of the chapters will be helpful for getting the best results with just about any digital camera. The real practice of photography, Shaw insists - the art - is the "capture of optimal vision," by the photographer, not the equipment. He is a very good teacher of that art.

This is not a book for complete beginners (who would undoubtedly not want four whole pages devoted to focusing a lens, for example), but rather for people who have basic digital camera skills and want to raise their game. (Those four pages on lens focusing taught me more than any number of other texts.) There are chapters on gear, getting started, lenses, composition, close-ups, and the photographer at work, plus many dozen of Shaw's nature images.

He's been doing this a long time. Highly readable, in-depth, with a lot of advice that could only come from experience.

Highly recommended.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from Blogging for Books in exchange for a review. The image above links to the book's Amazon page.

Full Review: Journaling with Questions - "Q&A a Day"

Here's an interesting idea, although you're going to have to write small. The book is called "Q&A a Day" and it is put out by the Potter Style imprint of Crown Publishing Group. Every day has a question associated with it. Each page has a single date with five spaces underneath (you fill in the year), so you answer the same question on the same day for five years. When I asked to review this book, I thought I'd get some huge coffee-table size thing, but it's tiny - about 4x6x1 inches - and hardcover, with gilt-edged pages. Very classy. It would fit in a purse if you so chose.

No matter how cute the book is, though, the important thing is the quality of the questions. Here are the first five: 

• January 1: What is your mission?
• January 2: Can people change?
• January 3: What are you reading right now?
• January 4: What was the best part of today?
• January 5: What was the last restaurant you went to?

Most of the questions are pretty good, thought-provoking without being grim, light without being stupid, and it will be interesting to see how answers change through several years, although I thought "What was the last fruit you ate?" kind of silly, and there's no where near enough space for "How do you want to be remembered?"

Still, this is a project I'd like to sink my teeth into. It's March 8 today. What was the last music I listened to?

I received this book from Blogging for Books in exchange for a review. The image above links to the book's Amazon page.

Short Review: "My Life in Middlemarch"

 
Rebecca Mead's book "My Life in Middlemarch" is a longform account of how her life was informed and enriched (and in some cases aligned with) literature in general, but by George Eliot's novel "Middlemarch" in particular. Mead moves back and forth among her own life, Eliot's life, and the characters in Eliot's novel, weaving in analysis from Virginia Woolf and others. Part critique, part love letter, part history, and part philosophy, the book is particularly lucid on how young people feel as they are trying desperately to grow up, flailing and oversharing and searching wildly for meaning...noting for example that Eliot's purple teenage writing "...move[s] me because of [its] dreadfulness, not in spite of it [as for so many other analysts]."

As a lifelong frequenter of libraries, originally in buildings and now more often online, I found this book inspiring. I know what it's like to be startled into thought by printed text, to turn around and try to write something original after inspiration by a classic work, to befriend fictional characters and then change and grow because of them. Mead has done us a great service in showing how this book stimulated her through her life, in multiple contexts. I ordered Middlemarch (which I've never read before) about 20 pages in. About time.  

Highly recommended.

I received a free review copy of this book in exchange for a review. The image above links to the book's Amazon page.

Short Review: "Provence, 1970"

 
The author of Provence, 1970 (Luke Barr) is the great-nephew of MFK Fisher, a writer well known in the mid-20th century for her books on food, cooking, and their influence on culture. Fisher's first book was in published in 1937 (Serve it Forth, an unusual, sophisticated, and fearless culinary history). She had a long and distinguished career, but Barr's book focuses on just a few weeks, in France, in 1970, as Fisher participated in an incipient revolution in how Americans viewed cooking and eating. Her companions in these lively conversations were giants of the food world: James Beard, Julia Child, and others.

Working from a variety of family papers, including Fisher's diary and the original notebook she kept from the 1970 visit to Provence, Barr (who has inherited his great-aunt's gift for beautiful prose) has crafted a leisurely, intimate, fascinating book on French and American culture and the changes at work in the world of cooking at a single point in time. Don't try to read this in a hurry. Savor it.  

Highly recommended.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for a review from Blogging for Books. The image above links to the book's Amazon page.

Full Review: "The Martian"

I checked out some of the other reviews of The Martian, by Andy Weir, and they are overwhelmingly positive. A lot of that strikes me as a collective relief response.  Surprisingly for a civilization allegedly obsessed with happy endings, we've been concentrating on nihilistic shock in both book and film for a very long time now (think Mad Max, The Road, Hunger Games - a whole library of just how miserable fiction can make us.)

Weir's novel does act as a corrective to all that. It's suspenseful, although in the same way as Apollo 13 is suspenseful; we know everything will come out okay. And it is indeed fun getting there. The story is knowledgeable about science (I teach chemistry, and there's some fine instruction here) and innovation (try, fail, try again), and teamwork. I liked it.

But I also get where the few naysayers are coming from. Very little uncertainty, pedestrian sentence structure, almost textbookish narration - there's not a lot of psychological depth here. This is adventure science fiction from the early days, when we thought we could do anything we put our minds to. We need that, no question about it, and it's time we got off our self-flagellation kick, but just a little more nuance or character development or elegance next time? Please?

I received this book from the Blogging for Books program in exchange for this review. The image above links to the book's Amazon page.

Short review: "Empire of Sin"

 
You think we have a problem today with racial violence, government corruption, and embedded injustice of epic scale? Take heart. It's nothing compared to Victorian-era New Orleans. 

Gary Krist's book is a spellbinding piece of writing. Hard to believe it's non-fiction, but Krist used original news reports and other historical documents to craft this true story of mayhem. After a prologue, the book starts off with the murder of Josie Lobrano's brother, in front of her, at the hand of her paramour in their brothel, and the subsequent crooked trial in which said paramour is let off the hook. Things get worse from there, and continue to be worse for at least four decades, through several city administrations and various heroic attempts to clean up the mess. Between minute by minute descriptions of murders and lynching, we learn about the culture of New Orleans, the roots of jazz, the founding of Storyville, and much more. 

Very highly recommended.

I received this book from the Blogging for Books program in exchange for a review. The image above links to the book's Amazon page.

Introducing Brad Warner

I am a fan of Brad Warner, punk rocker and Buddhist practitioner. My favorite book of his (he has written several) is Sit Down and Shut Up. Here's his latest post at his website, HardCore Zen.

http://hardcorezen.info/staying-hungry/3019