Citizen Reader

Downer Book Week: The Business of Baby

The Business of Baby: What Doctors Don't Tell You, What Corporations Try to Sell You, and How to Put Your Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Baby Before Their Bottom Line
by Jennifer Margulis

As I told my mom, the great thing about expecting very little from the American medical establishment is that you're not particularly shocked when you read books like The Business of Baby: What Doctors Don't Tell You, What Corporations Try to Sell You, and How to Put Your Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Baby Before Their Bottom Line.

So yeah: Margulis has a lot to say on a broad array of topics surrounding pregnancy, childbirth, infant care, and cultural norms in this wide-ranging investigative book. But was I particularly surprised by any of it? Not really. If you read this book, you'll find a lot of tidbits like this:

--"When I ask [Dr. Michael] Klaper why obstetricians don't emphasize the importance of nutrition during pregnancy, he chuckles. 'No one tells us it's important!' he exclaims, shaking his head. 'We go to medical school to learn how to work in the body repair shop--which is what hospitals are. If you break your body, go to the hospital. They'll fix it. But then get out of there. No one is going to mention nutrition to you before, during, or after, because no one mentions it to us.'" (p. 9.)

--"Data collected by the United Nations shows that while the vast majority of countries reduced their maternal mortality rates (for a global decreace of 34 percent), the maternal mortality rate in the U.S. doubled between 1990 and 2008, from 12 to 24 in 100,000 births." (p. 50.)

--"Another report found that women at for-profit hospitals were 17% more likely to have a Cesarean, despite having fewer risk factors, than women at nonprofit hospitals." (p. 87.)

I'll admit that the chapters on health care (and especially how the American system differs from systems in Europe) held my interest more than chapters on how the formula and diaper industries are conspiring to get mothers to buy their formula and diapers. My interest perked back up for the chapters on vaccinations and well-baby visits, though, and I read much of it with that feeling you get when you've experienced what an author is talking about:

"Every well-baby visit begins with charting a baby's height and weight against a standardized curve. But because pediatricians are usually so rushed, this quantitative evaluation is often done without taking the particular context of the baby's family into account, and without consideration to the problematic nature of the growth charts themselves." (p. 232.)

All I can say is: been there, heard that.

To say I enjoyed this book would be all wrong. But it was informative (particularly a lot of the information about vaccinations (there's a chart on p. 264 that lists how many vaccines Norwegian children get, as opposed to their American counterparts, that's pretty shocking). I did feel it was a little short on helpful future suggestions or policy ideas (although she does list resources in an appendix and inspirational stories throughout), but it was not really that kind of book. All in all, I think I still preferred Jennifer Block's book Pushed: The Painful Truth about Childbirth and Modern Maternity Care (which I read a while back) overall, but this book did provide a larger viewpoint on more issues surrounding having and raising children.

Still drawn to downer books.

Evidently I can't fight my own personality: most of the books I want to read seem to be downer books.

A case in point: I can't wait to get my hands on this one. That review is long, but should definitely give you a sense of whether or not you want to read it. Any book that makes a novel on the zombie apocalypse (World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War)* look optimistic is clearly a book for me.

*Over the weekend I saw the movie The Great Gatsby (I didn't enjoy it as much as I enjoyed Moulin Rouge, but it was still a lot of fun, and Leonardo DiCaprio? That guy's a super-talent), and there was a preview for the movie version of World War Z. My friend and I wondered, how is it possible that Brad Pitt just doesn't age? Wow, does he continue to look good.

Back in the reading saddle.

I realized the other day that I have a different book going in every room of the house (and one in my backpack), and it feels really, really...good. It feels like I am getting back to myself again, reading-wise.

So what's going on where? Details to follow, but in the bathroom I have a novel by a British author I've always enjoyed, in the bedroom is a book on how Generation Y is getting royally screwed, economically speaking (nice light bedtime reading, dontcha know), in my bag is a memoir that I'm not quite sure about but am going to stick with anyway, in the living room is a somewhat depressing book (book info toward the bottom of that post) that I've had to take a small pause from, and in the kitchen waits a book I started a few weeks back and really must get back to, because it is fascinating. Oh, and how could I forget a book about books, which, interestingly enough, has a chapter about being in the middle of too many books (and which roves around as I carry it from room to room and outside)? Add to that some books on gardening (every year in spring I read about gardening, rather than actually gardening) and some on toilet training (although, sadly, neither CRjr nor I are too interested), and you have a full reading slate.

It's lovely.

A surprise favorite.

Northern Slave, Black Dakota: The Life and Times of Joseph Godfrey
by Walt Bachman

Whenever I index books, it is always a real bonus when they turn out to be readable, fascinating books (they don't always, particularly when I'm indexing literary criticism). Particularly because when I index a book I end up reading it at least twice.

One of the titles I've most enjoyed indexing was one I did last year: Northern Slave Black Dakota: The Life and Times of Joseph Godfrey, by Walt Bachman. It's a history/biography of a man named Joseph Godfrey, who was born into slavery in Minnesota in the 1830s, and his role in the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862.

Wait a second. Did you say born into slavery...in Minnesota? That's right, I did. And that's just one of the fascinating aspects of this book. Godfrey was born to a woman who was held in slavery by a U.S. Army officer in Minnesota--which, it turns out, was pretty common in the army. It was common enough, in fact, that a healthy (well, not so healthy, if you were one of the slaves) slave trade went on at all sorts of military posts in states that have traditionally been considered free territories.

But there's much more to the story. Joseph Godfrey eventually made his way into the Native American community in the area (details are a bit fuzzy on how he escaped indentured servitude, because of course there aren't many primary sources documenting his life early on) and married a Dakota woman. When a group of Dakota Indians banded together and decided to declare war on German-American Minnesota settlers in 1862 (I need to read more about the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 in general, since I'd never heard of it before), primary accounts refer to one massacre in particular: an ambush after which it was reported that "it was, as I am informed, Wabashaw's band, a negro leading them, who committed the murders." (p. xvii.) After the war, when many Dakotas and other Native Americans were taken into captivity and put on trial, it transpired that Joseph Godfrey had taken part in the massacres, but the question became: did he take part willingly, or was he forced to by his adopted community?

Add in some strangely compelling accounts of the rushed trials of the Dakotas, and a fascinating dash of information about Abraham Lincoln*, and the end result is a really, really great book. It's put out by a small independent publisher, the Pond Dakota Press (part of the Pond Dakota Heritage Society), but it should certainly be sought out and made a part of every public library collection (as well as more academic libraries, and of course, individuals looking for a good book to add to their TBR piles).**

*That guy was incredible. In the middle of everything else he had to do as president, he personally looked through trial transcripts (and assigned others to help him) to make sure the Dakota warriors sentenced to execution were not sentenced just because they happened to be in the general area.

**And of course, I can promise you that it is as extensively indexed as I could make it.

Are blogs over?

Lately I've been hearing from many people whose taste and advice I trust that blogs are somewhat "over."

My question(s) for you are: Are you still reading blogs? If blogs are over, what has taken their place on our wasting-time-on-the-Internet agenda? Shopping? Are you spending more time on Twitter or Tumblr? I only ask because, frankly, other than BBC productions I have already seen and SHOULD NOT BE WATCHING AGAIN on YouTube, I really don't find all that much I have to look at on the Internet, other than the blogs I read and love (and which you can find in my sidebar--pretty much all favorites of mine).

Except for John Green giving a commencement address. I only watched a few minutes, but gosh, John Green is cute. It was worth wasting the time. And I'm so touched he told grads not to worry about their lawns. This makes me feel better, as my front lawn is a wasteland after last year's drought and like-living-on-the-surface-of-the-sun temperatures, and I just can't get myself to worry about it.

History that left me cold.

The Year Without Summer: 1816 and the Volcano That Darkened the World and Changed History
by William K. Klingaman and Nicholas P. Klingaman

There are many shortcomings in my nonfiction reading (and in me personally, frankly!), and one of them is that I don't read enough straightforward history books. For the most part, I like to get my history more contextually--I love it when historical bits come up in investigative writing, for instance, and I really enjoy reading historical biographies. But for some reason I don't often read or love more stereotypical history books.

The latest such history to leave me cold (pun intended) was William K. Klingaman's and Nicholas P. Klingaman's The Year Without Summer: 1816 and the Volcano That Darkened the World and Changed History. I first saw it reviewed over at RickLibrarian, and thought it sounded interesting.

Unfortunately, it was more interesting to read about than it was to read.

This is not to say it was a bad book. The authors actually do quite a good job of putting together a bunch of disparate story lines: in the aftermath of a huge volcanic explosion in Indonesia in 1815, people across the globe had to react to an almost immediate (and quite severe) change in the climate. The authors relate stories of how agriculture in particular was disrupted in Indonesia, the United States, in Switzerland, in Great Britain, and across Europe, and how those climate and agricultural changes affected and shaped culture and historical events. Of course, I found the British and Irish history most interesting--how rising food prices led to riots among workers in Great Britain, in particular--but really, the writing's solid enough.

I'd have to say I skimmed this one more than read it, and I wasn't the only one: Mr. CR reported having the same reaction. For a better review of the book from someone who gave it a closer read than I did, try this one from Maclean's.

*Rick does a much better job than me of reading and describing history books.

Genreflecting 7 is here!

It feels like it's been a long time coming, but the newest (7th) edition of Genreflecting: A Guide to Popular Reading Interests is finally here!

For those of you not familiar with Genreflecting as a reference book, it's the mother volume in the series, including information and title lists for a ton of genres: Historical Fiction, Mystery, Thrillers, Westerns, Romance, Women's Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Science Fiction, Mainstream Fiction, Christian Fiction, Urban Fiction, Graphic Novels, and...for the first time ever...TA-DA...a chapter on NONFICTION!*

You may wonder what a chapter on nonfiction is doing in a book on genre fictions, but I say, it's about time. If we truly want to consider all the genres or types of books that people read, particularly for recreation, then I think we have to consider nonfiction. I was very honored to ask to be included, and I look forward to using the other chapters to expand my own genre title and author knowledge.

Of particular note in this volume are editor Cindy Orr's** fantastic introductory chapters. She provides information on reading as a social activity, a "toolbox" for expanding your readers' advisory knowledge, solid tips for providing good RA service, and much more. In my favorite segment, she even describes "Difficult Situations, Difficult People," which includes tips on how to help patrons who don't communicate well ("the Clam"); people who are looking for books for someone else ("the Proxy"); picky readers ("the Fuss-Budget"); and my personal favorite, parents who won't let their teens talk with you alone about what they want to read ("the Double Whammy"). And of course, because she's Cindy, she describes all these situations with gentle and understanding humor, and then provides concrete and practical solutions.

It's a gorgeous volume, chock-full of chapters by library staff and experts much more knowledgeable in their genres than I am (although I gave it my best shot, as always). Do check it out.

*Written by yours truly!

**Yes, the same Cindy Orr who edits the Reader's Advisor Online blog (among many other jobs and talents). There's nothing she can't do!

Fiction Interlude: Crocodile on the Sandbank

Crocodile on the Sandbank
by Elizabeth Peters

It seemed only fitting, after posting about mystery author extraordinaire Agatha Christie, that I talk about another mystery that I just read (during my period of floundering to find good nonfiction).

If I'm going to read fiction, largely, I prefer it to be of the mainstream-y, Anne Tyler-ish variety. Not quite literary fiction, but not quite women's fiction a la Jodi Picoult, either. But every now and then I will make forays further afield, into genre, and if I do, that genre tends to be mystery. Although I do not currently work in a library, it's always in the back of my mind that I should develop better knowledge of some genres and their authors, so when I read mysteries, at least I can feel that I am somehow "keeping up with my profession." If that makes any sense.

One author I'd always wanted to try was Elizabeth Peters, best known for her Amelia Peabody mysteries. I read the first one in the series, Crocodile on the Sandbank, which was published in 1975 (while the nineteenth book in the series, Tomb of the Golden Bird, was published in 2006). One lovely thing about any kind of historical fiction is that the publication date doesn't seem to matter as much. Set in the late Victorian period, the book features the feisty heroine Amelia Peabody, who, at 32, is considered to be an old maid--but she doesn't let that stop her, once she inherits her father's fortune, from going off to see the world. She ends up in Egypt, traveling with a new friend, and embroiled in an archaeological mystery (which just happens to include a stubborn bachelor archaeologist--gee, what happens?). I suppose I could describe the plot further, but I don't think the plot is the point, really. If you like feisty heroines, and have any interest whatsoever in Egyptology, then you might enjoy this:

"I was left, then, to be the prop of my father's declining years. As I have said, the life suited me. It allowed me to develop my talents for scholarship. But let not the Gentle Reader suppose that I was ill equipped for the practical necessities of life...

It came as no surprise to anyone to discover that he [the father] had left his property to me, the aforesaid prop, and the only one of his children who had not an income of its own. My brothers accepted this tolerantly, as they had accepted my devoted service to Papa. They did not explode until they learned that the property was not a paltry sum, but a forture of half a million pounds. They had made a common mistake in assuming that an absentminded scholar is necessarily a fool..." (p. 3.)

So yeah, I liked old Amelia. And I enjoyed the book. I don't know that I need to read eighteen more of them, and I don't think she's up to the caliber of Agatha Christie, but you could do a lot worse if you're looking for a historical mystery with an exotic setting and just a dash of romance.

Who doesn't enjoy Dame Agatha Christie?

The Grand Tour: Around the World with the Queen of Mystery
by Agatha Christie

No one, that's who.

Recently I plowed through the travel diary The Grand Tour: Around the World with the Queen of Mystery, in which Christie's grandson Matthew Prichard has gathered together her travel diary entries, letters, photographs, and snippets from her autobiography in order to re-create her 1922 world tour. Then a mother of a young toddler (Rosalind, who stayed home with Christie's mother), Christie and her first husband, Archie Christie, were invited to "join a trade mission to promote the British Empire Exhibition."

Even after reading the book, I'm not really sure what the deal was with the British Empire Exhibition. Don't you just love the early twentieth century? Trade missions! Empire Exhibitions! World's Fairs! Sure they didn't yet have antibiotics, but it sure seemed like people in those times knew how to enjoy themselves.

Anyhoo, the long and short of the matter is that Agatha got to accompany her husband on an around-the-world tour to various locations in the British Empire (South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada among them, with time for a side trip vacation to Hawaii), along with various other British dignitary/bureacrat types, in order to finish planning for the British Empire Exhibition. And the lively accounts she gives of her travels, both in her letters and in her autobiography, should not disappoint fans of Christie's mysteries. In fact, particularly while in Africa, you can see how she was already honing her descriptive style of her surroundings, which is a facet of her mysteries I think I always underestimated. And the chapter on Hawaii, when she's obsessed with surfing? Awesome:

"First you have to recognize the proper wave when it comes, and secondly, even more important, you have to know the wrong wave when it comes, because if that catches you and forces you down to the bottom. Heaven help you!" (p. 266.)

Of course she goes on to describe how she once caught the wrong wave. Scrappy gal.

The pictures of Christie herself are a lot of fun, particularly in her surfing get-ups, but most of the other snapshots are of people (mostly other bureaucrats and ex-pats) she met along the way, and are not that exciting. It's a fun book, if you're looking for something a little different in the travel line. (And if you're looking for something a little different in the review line, consider RickLibrarian's.)

A quick word of thanks.

As we head into another weekend (and I'm so glad that weekend will not include a foot of snow for me, as it already has for my neighbors to the north), I thought I'd take a quick moment to say THANK YOU.

It's now been a little more than six months that I have been an Amazon associate, and a bit more than two and a half years that I have been a Powell's bookstore associate. In that time, many of you have made some of your book and other purchases through this site (my Powell's link is at right and all of the book titles here link there as well; my "Shop Amazon" link is also at the right, as the Amazon graphic which leads you right to them). When you do that, I get a small kickback from your purchases. Your generosity and willingness to stop here first while shopping has made it possible for me to continue hosting on this domain and using the TypePad service, and I really, REALLY appreciate it. Thank you, so much.

That is all. Now go enjoy your weekend, and hopefully it doesn't involve any more winter.

What my book choices say about me I don't know.

I still continue to feel as though I am not finding much reading that is setting me on fire, but as I sat down to consider the nonfiction titles I've read in the past few weeks, I'm seeing a pattern emerge.

First I read Charlie LeDuff's Detroit: An American Autopsy, which was fantastic but not exactly cheerful. Just lately I've also read books titled The Business of Baby: What Doctors Don't Tell You, What Corporations Try to Sell You, and How to Put Your Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Baby Before Their Bottom Line and Down the Up Escalator: How the 99 Percent Live in the Great Recession (reviews to come) both of which were interesting, but again, not exactly light. And then today I stopped by the library and there was only one title waiting for me, which I didn't even remember placing on hold: Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam.*

It was totally inappropriate but I actually laughed when I saw that title, particularly in light of the other downer books I've been reading. It just goes to show that I clearly must be drawn to the dark and the depressing (as I find the majority of my nonfiction, when you get right down to it, simply by trolling the "new nonfiction" lists in my library's catalog, and picking most things based on their titles).

But just now perhaps I could use something a tad less, shall we say, "depressing as hell"? Any suggestions for good, thoughtful** nonfiction that also doesn't make me want to crawl under a rock and cry? Many thanks in advance.

*It looks like a good book, actually, but so help me, I just don't know if I can handle it right now.

**Please nothing that includes the words "inspirational" or "sentimental" on the cover or in reviews. To quote the wonderful author Jim Knipfel: "when I hear the word 'spiritual,' I reach for my revolver."

A dance with Jane Austen.

It is a truth pretty much universally acknowledged that I am a sucker for all things Jane Austen.

A Dance with Jane Austen: How a Novelist and Her Characters Went to the Ball
by Susannah Fullerton

In addition to having read her books, re-watched most film adaptations of her books way more often than is good for me (damn you, YouTube, time-waster extraordinaire), and reading any modern-day adaptations of her novels that I can find, I also pick up any nonfiction titles about her that I see pop up in my local library catalog. My latest such find was Susannah Fullerton's A Dance with Jane Austen: How a Novelist and Her Characters Went to the Ball.

It literally is just that: a book about dancing in Jane Austen's day, with extensive quoting from her novels to see how Austen incorporated balls and dancing into her fiction and plotlines. There is also a ton of good basic historical information, such as which dances were popular when, how people in that era learned dancing, what kind of music was played at balls, and how many different types of balls there were (as well as many more topics). At first I couldn't really get into this book; I just read bits of it here and there, but then over the course of two nights I got really interested and read most of it straight through. I particularly enjoyed the information on how suppers were held along with balls (I never really understood that when reading the books) and the different types of balls that were held and how people got invited to them.

But my very favorite part of the book was learning about Jane Austen's own personal experiences of ball-going and dancing:

"Jane Austen enjoyed these [Assembly] balls so much that she was disappointed if she had to miss one. If she was away from home, then she placed her 'spies' so as to get all the news. Catherine Bigg could be relied on to share gossip about who had danced with whom, who had too much to drink, which lady had opened the dance, and all the other juicy titbits of news the evening could provide." (p. 52.)

I enjoyed picturing ol' Jane dancing and placing her spies. I enjoyed that a lot.

I heart George Saunders.

If you'll remember, I am a huge fan of George Saunders's essays. He's better known for his fiction, but his fiction is often satirical, and I've never really had the intelligence or patience to enjoy satire. (Unless, of course, it's Anthony Trollope.)

Anyway. Saunders was just named one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People, and he's got a new piece in the Guardian about how he's consciously had to stop blowing so much time on computers, email, and the Internet. I am aware of the irony of posting against wasting time on the Internet, on a blog, but there you have it. Enjoy!

One way out of a reading slump.

Detroit: An American Autopsy
by Charlie Leduff

As the Great Reading Slump of 2013 continues, I find the only thing that pulls me out of it, even temporarily, is to read books on subjects which are fascinating to me. And I don't mean merely "fascinating"--I find a lot of things fascinating, which is why I usually plow through a lot of nonfiction (and fiction) on a lot of different subjects. I mean fascinating in the sense that I literally cannot look away from a book's subject, much like some people cannot look away from car accidents.

This was the case with the last such really fascinating book I read, David Quammen's Spillover. Learning about viruses and pandemics and monkeys and bats was really, really fascinating. And it happened again last week when I read Charlie LeDuff's new book Detroit: An American Autopsy.

Geographically, I am not all that far from Detroit. But sociologically, I just cannot wrap my mind around Detroit. I read every book I can find on the subject, and for the most part I have found them all unputdownable. So you're telling me there's this huge American city where grass and wildlife are just taking back whole blocks? There's this huge formerly industrial powerhouse where factories have just been left to stand rot, some for fifty years or more? And 700,000 people still live in the middle of all of that? How is it possible?

There must also be something about having Detroit as a hometown that really affects you, because LeDuff is a Detroit native who, after a very successful stint working for the New York Times, returned to the city with his wife and daughter to work for the failing Detroit News. This book, in addition to being a somewhat personal investigation of the city (where much of his family still lives), is primarily a collection of stories that he first told as newspaper articles--the dead man frozen in several feet of ice in the bottom of an elevator shaft in an abandoned building; numerous run-ins with the city's corrupt politicians, including mayor Kwame Kilpatrick; city police detectives and firefighters who keep going to work in hopeless situations; and relentless crime and poverty of all types. It's a lot to take in...and yet, once you start reading, you can't stop. Mr. CR blew through it in a couple of nights, and I did the same over the following week.

LeDuff is not a particularly subtle author, but there is something forthright about him and his writing that I enjoy. I also really enjoyed his personal take on the subject, as in an early chapter when he talks about his generation's parents working in factories, and how his generation thought they could make a quicker buck somewhere else (while still thinking, in the backs of their minds, the factories would always be there for them): 

"Still, we had all gotten a taste of it, summer jobs sweeping the floor or working the press. It was horrible. The yellow lights, the stink of grease and oil and acid. The unblinking time clock. You walked in the door and the first thing you're trying to figure out is how to get out. If you don't know that about factory work, you don't know anything.

What our generation failed to learn was the nobility of work. An honest day's labor...Instead of working, we figured we could be hustlers and salesmen and gamblers and partiers. Work was for suckers. If anybody had told us such a thing existed, we probably would have tried to become New York bankers and stockbrokers. And I have no doubt we would have been good at it too." (p. 33.)

And what I love about this book is that you can see the honesty of what he's saying, particularly because he himself does seem like a hustler. At several points in the book he references particular news stories he was tracking as ones that would be good to move copies of the sluggishly selling newspaper for which he worked (which strikes me as a bit of a hustling viewpoint). He seems to move through the city like that, hustling a bit here for access and interviews, getting hustled a little bit there by his interview subjects. It's genius. You'll just have to read it to see what I mean.

I thought it was a great book. I was excited earlier this spring when I saw it was coming out, and, rarity of rarities, I was not disappointed. I'd particularly love to see people use it for reading and book groups--there wasn't a single chapter that Mr. CR and I didn't bring up when we discussed it: "Could you believe that part? What about this part?" I love it when a book does that to you.

To be continued...

I know, I just can't seem to get back on a regular blogging schedule. I feel like I owe you a book review, and I even just read a fantastic book that I want to tell you about, but for the love of all that's holy, I just can't get myself to do it tonight. Soon, I promise.

In the meantime, please do check out a new travel nonfiction blog that is being written by my friend and colleague, Robert Burgin. The blog is called Travel with a Book, and it's a great source for travel book suggestions. Burgin is also the former editor of the Real Stories series (for which I've written a couple of volumes) and also just wrote a travel literature guide himself (titled Going Places). I will make sure to get a link to that blog in my sidebar.

In other news, the American Library Association has announced the shortlist for their Andrew Carnegie Medal awards, and I've got very decided opinions on what should win. Not to be too melodramatic, but if the Quammen book* doesn't win I'm giving up on the ALA forever. So there!

*I'm also pulling for Richard Ford's Canada.

I still enjoy a good down-to-earth memoir.

Midwife's Here!: The Enchanting True Story of Britain's Longest Serving Midwife
by Linda Fairley

A while back I noted that I might finally be going off memoirs. But every now and then, if I find the right one on the right subject, and it's not too long, I still enjoy munching through them the way you might enjoy crunching through a bowl of popcorn (or, if you have a sweet tooth like me, Easter candy) while relaxing.

I found this was the case with Linda Fairley's jauntily titled The Midwife's Here!: The Enchanting True Story of Britain's Longest Serving Midwife, which is billed on its cover as "the enchanting true story of one of Britain's longest-serving midwives." Now, normally I run away from the word "enchanting" the way other people might run away from the words "dark" or "bitter," but I've always had a little soft spot for midwife stories (and health narratives in general).

Here Fairley relates the story of her three years' of nursing training, followed by her midwife training, all of which took place in the late 1960s and early 1970s. She drops in enough period details to make it fun--miniskirts, fashions by Mary Quant, and go-go boots all make an appearance--but overall she was a serious student and was energized when she discovered her true vocation in life was to be a midwife. Her revelations regarding birthing and parenting trends of that time were fascinating--nobody made you feel bad for not breastfeeding in the sixties, that's for sure--and she tells a brisk little narrative full up with enough real characters to really keep you reading. One of my favorite anecdotes was about her and her mentor, midwife May Tattersall, attending a birth in a more rural area near Manchester, England, and how Mrs. Tattersall had to yell at the husband to get the chickens out of the room where his wife was giving birth (although she let the two dogs stay):

"'Well,' she said in a voice laden with prudence, 'it's like this. When you're a community midwife, you have to fit in with the community...If she wants her dogs there, then it's best to try to accommodate her, as far as possible.'

'But...not hens?'

'Not hens, no, never hens,' Mrs. Tattersall said firmly.

I expected some pearls of wisdom about the dangers of toxoplasmosis or even salmonella poisoning, but Mrs. Tattersall simply said with a rasp, 'I flamin' well hate birds!'" (p. 219.)

Ha! I enjoyed that. I enjoyed the whole book. Ms. Fairley is clearly the optimistic, can-do, no-nonsense sort who might frighten me in real life, but she's written a book that's, well, okay, I guess I can go along with the publisher: enchanting.*

*Be warned: there are some sad stories too. Not all childbirth experiences end enchantingly, after all.

The Great Gatsby: Not suitable for high school?

I am really, really hoping to get the chance to see Baz Luhrmann's new movie adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, when it comes out in May:

I am a sucker for all things Baz Luhrmann. I loved Strictly Ballroom, I saw Romeo + Juliet about seven times in the theater (ah, college, when you still have time and think someday you'll make enough money to make up for such frivolous spending), and Moulin Rouge is the only movie I ever went to by myself because I loved it and frankly, I just wanted to adore Ewan McGregor in solitude. But while casting about for something to read the other night, I saw the novel on Mr. CR's bookshelf and thought, "hey, I haven't read this book since high school. It was okay--maybe I should read it again before I see the movie."

I did, over the course of two nights, and adored it, although perhaps "adored" is the wrong word for a novel that I found just overwhelmingly sad this time around. I can summarize the story pretty briefly: Boy loves girl; girl is married to someone else; boy thinks love can conquer all; love turns out to be more complex than boy realizes. Add the backdrop of 1920s New York and a dollop of class warfare, and there you go (for more detail: Wikipedia --in case you haven't read it, spoilers abound there).

I was thoroughly engaged by this book this time around, in a way that I know I wasn't in high school. In fact, upon finishing it, I said to Mr. CR, "Why are they giving this book to high schoolers?" I know it's a classic. It's beautifully written. But it is also deceptively simple, I think. I know the money/class aspect alone would just have been way beyond me in high school, and I already knew then what a joke it was to try and keep up with the popular crowd by buying the right clothes and owning the right things (there was no way, at least not for me, to keep up, was the joke). But in high school and even college, youth is a great equalizer. You're all young and gutsy and beautiful, even when you don't think you are. To me it only seems like after school that you start to realize, insidiously, that getting ahead (or even just staying afloat, lately) seems to largely be about knowing the right people and simply being in the right place while knowing those people. Only after school, I feel, do you start to realize the genius of the heartbreak when Gatsby starts to realize Daisy is slipping away from him...

"'Her voice is full of money,' he said suddenly.

That was it. I'd never understood before. It was full of money--that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the cymbals' song of it...High in a white palace the king's daughter, the golden girl..." (p. 127).

Or this, from the narrator, later still:

"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy--they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together..." (p. 188).

I just don't think you can appreciate the bleakness, and the truth, of that, in high school. Do you?

Looking for a few good business book reviewers.

I still periodically review books for Library Journal, and in with my last book they included this message:

"I need more reviewers with a strong grounding in business, able to take on a variety of books covering topics across the range of economics, whether it's exploring American capitalism, or the domestic and global impacts/causes of the Great Recession, investigating small business profiles and leadership models, or considering a biography of Warren Buffett!

If you have colleagues who may be interested in becoming a reviewer in such subject areas, please ask them to email me: Annalisa Pesek, at apesek@mediasourceinc.com."

Just thought I'd pass that along. You don't get paid for your reviews, but the business books aren't all that demanding, and it can be a nice credit for your skills list if you're looking for that sort of thing. Plus, sometimes you get real stinker books, but a lot of the business books I've read for LJ have been quite interesting.

Back to the Library: April 2013

Well, here's two more books I had to take back to the library yesterday, unread:

Louder Than Words: The New Science of How the Mind Makes Meaning, by Benjamin Bergen

Here's a bit from its PR blurb: "In Louder than Words, cognitive scientist Benjamin Bergen draws together a decade’s worth of research in psychology, linguistics, and neuroscience to offer a new theory of how our minds make meaning...Meaning is more than just knowing definitions of words, as others have previously argued. In understanding language, our brains engage in a creative process of constructing rich mental worlds in which we see, hear, feel, and act."*

And here's a review: Kirkus Reviews

and

Future Perfect: The Case for Progress in a Networked Age, by Steven Johnson

Johnson is the author of several of those types of nonfiction books I call "Making Sense" or "Big Think" books--like The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. I don't know why I keep checking Johnson's books out; he completely annoys me in that "the future is gonna be GREAT!" way that all Wired magazine authors do. (I mean, I hope the future will be great too, but I don't know that it's going to be great, and let's face it, "great" means different things to different people. Walking around attached to a smartphone at all moments of your life, for instance, doesn't really sound "great" to me. But that's just me.)

But, here's a bit from its promotional copy: "At a time when the conventional wisdom holds that the political system is hopelessly gridlocked with old ideas, Future Perfect makes the timely and inspiring case that progress is still possible, and that innovative strategies are on the rise. This is a hopeful, affirmative outlook for the future, from one of the most brilliant and inspiring visionaries of contemporary culture."

And here's a review: Wall Street Journal**

Now, on to other stuff I can maybe actually get read before it comes due at the library.

*It was way optimistic of me to think I was going to make it through a denser book like this just now. I just don't have the concentration, sadly.

**Frankly? I read the first ten pages of the Johnson and was bored to tears. Even when the book was the only thing in my bathroom I still didn't feel like reading it. And the same thing happened to me reading this review, which probably means I should find a different review to post. But linking to a review I couldn't finish of a book I couldn't finish seemed too right not to do.

Now reading everything I can get my hands on EXCEPT nonfiction.

You'll forgive me, won't you, as I continue to struggle with my nonfiction slump?

Matilda
by Ronald Dahl

Lately, I got the idea that it might be good to read a few kids' classics that I never read as a child. This is a long list--my parents were great but didn't have a lot of extra time to read to me, and until I got to school, I didn't really have access to a library.* And my school librarian in my later grades, third and up, was better than anyone I knew before then at suggesting books to read, so that's really when I started my reading life (as far as I can remember, anyway). As a consequence, I missed a whole lot of children's "classics."

This is all a long-winded way of saying that last week I read Roald Dahl's book Matilda. And, as you'd expect from the author of James and the Giant Peach, it was fantastic.

If you've not read it, oh, please DO. It's about a little girl named Matilda, who's very, very smart, and who has not very nice parents. There are two fantastic people in her life--her local librarian, and her first teacher in school, the not-so-subtly named Miss Honey. And what happens when her school's very unpleasant headmistress Miss Trunchbull does something not so nice to Matilda's beloved Miss Honey? Well, you'll just have to read it and find out. I absolutely LOVE Roald Dahl. His books deal in what I would call "nasty but satisfying justice," if you can picture such a thing. I can see why kids, lovely literal kids, have loved so many of his books for so long.

So what say you: any other kids' classics I should read?**

*Although there were many books in the house--I do remember perusing our encyclopedias a lot, and picture books of saint stories (many of which were quite gruesome, magical, and AWESOME), and I definitely remember reading Jeremiah Denton's When Hell Was In Session, about his experiences in a POW camp in North Vietnam, when I was too young for it. I sure did learn a lot of words from it, though. A case in point: I had to look up "defecate" when I read the sentence "the guard jumped on Knight's stomach so violently he defecated." That's the sort of sentence that stays with a pre-teen reader, as you can tell.

**I have a practical reason for doing this now too. Soon I hope to be reading these types of books to CRjr, and I'd kind of like to know what the stories are before I read them aloud.