A quick book review- Fool

I have been a fan of Christopher Moore for a while, his books tend to be quick, easy reads for me. But he is very hit and miss for me. I loved Coyote Blue which is the first book I read by him and Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love story was also quite enjoyable. I absolutely love Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff and his two most recent novels, You Suck: A love story (the sequel to Bloodsucking fiends) and A Dirty Job were also both really good. The rest of his novels were good in most cases, nothing really great, but light and airy and that is nice to read sometimes. So when I heard he was doing a novel based upon the Shakespearean play King Lear, I was intrigued. Well, in this novel, Fool, he did not disappoint. It is loosely based upon King Lear, but Moore acknowledges that he takes from like 12 other works of The Bard and so it does not follow King Lear directly. I also do not know King Lear very well, but I was able to recognize it somewhat and elements of other Shakespearean plays in the book, Fool. I find it at least sort of helpful to be aware of Shakespeare's work if you are going to read Fool, but I am sure that is not totally necessary. The best part, IMHO, is the bawdiness of this book. There is a warning at the beginning of the novel that it is bawdy and it does not disappoint in that area. The whole book is full of double entendres, sexual behavior and other bawdiness. It reminds me a lot of the Renaissance Faire when I used to go when I was in high school. (GG and I went to the Faire last year and it is now not as entertaining or as bawdy as I recall.) There may be times in which the humor is sophomoric and infantile, but when I am laughing within the first few pages, I know I will enjoy the book. It may not follow King Lear accurately, but it is a fun romp nonetheless.

Book Review- Train Go Sorry: Inside a Deaf World

I have not always been a fan of nonfiction books. I find them to be boring and tedious and when I read I like to lose myself in the story and fiction does that better, IMHO. But I have recently gotten on a bit of a nonfiction binge, where I will read a nonfiction book or two and then go back to fiction for a while. And since I do not always like nonfiction, I am picky about what I read, so when I see a recommendation somewhere for a nonfiction book, I tend to like having these ideas from others. (I like fiction book recommendations as well, but nonfiction is where I struggle finding books most of the time.) I saw this recommendation, on a big blog that I read, about this nonfiction book, Train Go Sorry: Inside a Deaf World and I knew I wanted to read it. First, it sounded like an interesting and easy read and two, I have an interest in deaf culture and I thought this might be a good book to read to get an insiders view of the world of people who are deaf. I was right on both accounts. This is a fascinating story of life inside the Lexington School for the Deaf. The author, Leah Hager Cohen, spent much of her life living in and around the Lexington School. Although she is hearing, Cohen's father was the principal and then the superintendent of the Lexington School which means she was around the deaf community for much of her growing up years.. She mentions at the beginning of the book that for some of her early years she lived on the grounds of the Lexington School and so was, at least marginally, involved in the deaf culture from birth. Cohen goes back to the school as an adult and acts as an observer to be able to tell the story of this school and by extension a part of the deaf community. She highlights two students, James and Sofia, who are both seniors at the Lexington School, each of whom has their own personal struggles. Sofia immigrated with her family from the former Soviet Union to the United States. She had been to a school for the deaf in Russia and so had learned Russian and a form of sign language, so when she was attending the Lexington School she had to learn English and American Sign Language (ASL). She also became interested in having a Bat Mitzvah, even though she was about 5 years older than the traditional age for this coming of age ceremony. Since she was going to have to read from the Torah, Sofia also had to learn Hebrew in addition to ASL and English.

James is a African-American male who lives in a rougher part of New York City and initially struggled with tardiness and absenteeism when he first entered the Lexington School. The Lexington School finally realizes that the best solution to this problem is to allow James to stay in the residential dorms on the school campus that are now rarely used. James' bother was in jail while the book was being written and James said that if he had not been deaf and gone to the Lexington School he also might have ended up in a gang. James struggles with trying to find his way as an individual surrounded by an urban culture that does not value school and learning and also as someone who needs to learn in order for him to be able to make it in a hearing world. Both Sofia and James are success stories in the book, each of them finds their way on to the next chapter of life with both of them going to an institution of higher learning.

Cohen also intercedes with chapters about her paternal grandfather and grandmother, who were both deaf. She discusses what it was like for them to have traveled from the Old Country, both of them were from the former Soviet Union, and their own struggles as individuals who are deaf. She discusses her father and how he went from living in a household parented by two deaf individuals where he learned ASL to the point at which he kind of stumbled upon the job as an administrator at the Lexington School, where his father had attended. Cohen discusses some of the current issues in the deaf community, at least they were current in 1994 when the book was published and some of them still are very much issues, such as what she refers to as mainstreaming and is now called inclusion to cochlear implants to the rise of deaf pride and how these issues affect the deaf community and deaf culture.

Cohen provides the reader an insight into deaf culture that is rarely seen, or at least I have never really seen it before. She presents the issues that currently plague the deaf culture as it struggles to define itself in a hearing world. Although, Cohen is not always unbiased in her opinions about the larger issues, she does a magnificent job presenting the individual stories with no external opinions and allows each individual to present their own thoughts, feelings and ideas for themselves.

Although I got this book from the local library (yay local libraries), this is one book that I may have to buy at some point as it seems as though it would be a valuable book to read and re-read every so often.

Book Review- In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

I just finished reading In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. I found it to be an interesting continuation of Botany of Desire and Ominove's Dilemma. The book In Defense of food, continues Pollan's views on eating more plants and looking at the ways in which the Western diet is reflected by the food we eat. This book is more of a rant and is a culmination of the other two books. Where as Omnivore's Dilemma and Botany of Desire were more books of him exploring and issue and then talking about what he had learned, Eater's Manifesto is him talking about the issues with our diet and ways to change the way we eat. He begins with a section on nutritionism which is the focus by Americans on single nutrients such as protein or vitamin b12 or fat rather than on the whole foods. He discusses that we have become so focused on what we should not eat such as fats or carbohydrates and that the "bad foods" have changed over time as science has changed. We have gone from margarine being the perfect alternative to butter to realizing that butter is much better for us than margarine because of the trans-fats in margarine. Pollan also goes into the science of nutrionism and how we are still not sure how all of the vitamins and chemicals in our food interact and how they in combination work to make us healthier. The next section is where he defines food. As he says, we should not have to define food, but unfortunately we do at this point. He is trying to define food as anything that your great grandmother would recognize as food, so things like twinkies are not food, all the chemicals we add to bread among other things then negates them as food, high fructose corn syrup which seems to be in everything these days is not food and should not be treated as such. Pollan seems to be trying to redefine food as more "natural", he wants to get away from chemical additives as being allowed to be called food. The final section is then on how to eat.

Because I agree with his views on things that we as Americans eat too much food that is processed, I really liked this book. I liked his thoughts that things like bread have been so altered now it is hard to still see them as bread. At one point he lists all of the ingredients in bread, there is a long list of them. Bread should be simply flour, yeast, and water. He also looks at the fact that we have so processed foods like flour that we now have to add nutrients back into the bread or other final product to replace what we have taken out. He is also honest that we need to change our eating habits. We need to eat less, less snacking and less on our plates when we eat our main meals. We need to eat more plants and less meat. We need to recognize that the interactions between us and our food have evolved over a long period of time and that in processing these foods we have changed these relationships.

Eater's Manifesto was an interesting book with ideas that have been proposed and discussed in many other places, but it is nice to see them put together in one book that is easily accessible to all who wish to change their eating habits and to be more aware of the issues in our current food system.

Book Review- The Omnivore's Dilemma: A natural history of four meals

The Omnivore's Dilemma is the journey of Michael Pollan trying to find out about the food that we put on our table and its origins. He first explores the industrial chain of food, then the organic chain and finally he attempts to be a hunter/gatherer. The first conclusion that Pollan comes to is that most products that we encounter in the supermarket can trace their origins or at least the ingredients can trace back to cornfields. Not only is corn is one of the main sweeteners we use, high fructose corn syrup (try to find anything sweet that is carried in a grocery store without this ingredient is very difficult), but it is what we feed to cows, both beef cows and dairy cows, chicken, pigs and increasingly fish. Pollan points out that even when we are looking at other vegetables corn may be involved in the packaging of the vegetable. Since corn is a prevalent piece in the entire industrial food chain, Pollan travels to a corn farm in Iowa to see how the process starts and then attempts to follow the corn as far along the food chain as he can. He follows the corn on two different paths, one to the cows and one to the chemicals. He buys a beef cows and wants to follow its life and see what happens to it. Pollan is able to follow the cow to where it is housed with thousands of other cows crowded together in a large barn. He sees the cows being given constant doses of antibiotics to keep them from becoming too sickly in these close confines. The cows are also fed many other nutrients and supplements as cows are natural grass eaters, not corn eaters and yet since we have the corn and it is cheaper to produce and will produce fatter cows, they are fed corn. This is really as far as he can follow the cow, he cannot see the kill floor where the cow is slaughtered, he cannot even find out the date of when the cow he bought will be slaughtered. On the other side, he again is given limited access to see how the chemicals are pulled from corn, but he is able to see how the corn is processed in many different ways to lead to many new chemicals to be added to our food. He ends this section with a trip to McDonalds to eat an industrially produced meal.

The next journey he takes is into the world of organic farming. Pollan discovers that because the idea of organic has become so popular in our culture, the companies that are now producing organic meat and crops are not much different than their industrial counterparts. They are still employing monoculture farming to produce one or just a few crops, they still house the cows, chickens or pigs in large barns where the animals still have no freedom to move around. Those fields we see on many of our packages of organic food do not currently exist if they ever did. The free range chickens have access to a door to leave their chicken house, but that is only opened for approximately two weeks before they are slaughtered and at this point they have been in this chicken house for a few months and so why would they think of going outside when they are used to the surroundings of the chicken house. The beef cows are still packed together in large groups, but because hormones can not be used to help bolster the cows immunity, there have to be many veterinarians that roam the barn keeping an eye on the animals and doing other things to keep the cows healthy. At the end of this section Pollan cooks a meal that is entirely from Whole Foods and is certified organic.

Third, Pollan travels to a small farm in Virginia that produces all kinds of vegetables and meats without the use of antibiotics or pesticides or hormones. This farmer, Joel Salatin, has a radical idea of how to raise animals. He lets them graze outside and rotates the cows and chickens and pigs in a manner that allows the land to be replenished and the animals to work in a way that would be natural. In other words, he follows what would be the natural pattern of how these animals live. For example, the chickens go into a field after the cows as they prefer the grasses they eat to be shorter and chicken also love to eat the grubs and bugs that live in the excrement of the cows. Salatin create a farm that is self sustaining in many ways and keeps the land and the animals healthier. Pollan even helps with the slaughter of the chicken on the Salatin's farm as that is the only animals that a farmer is allowed to slaughter himself, beeves and pigs must be sent to an industrial slaughtering plant. At the end of this section, Pollan create a meal of chicken from the Salatin's farm among many other local produce and even some local VA wine.

The final section is about Pollan's hunting and gathering of food for a meal. He has to learn to hunt and shoot a gun, which he had never done before, so that he can hunt wild pigs in northern California where he lives. He also learned how to forage for mushrooms and how to find mushrooms you can eat and that wouldn't kill you. He then creates a meal from things he has found or hunted himself.

Each of these food chains are different with the industrial and the industrial organic food chains very similar in many ways. The book was really interesting and informative. It changed the way I think about food and now has me checking the labels to see how many items I buy are from corn by-products. I find Pollan's writing to be informative and interesting, but not too overbearing or preachy. He gives you the information many times trying to maintain a bit of balance between showing the negatives in the different food chains and the positives in that same food chain. But this book is obviously written by someone and for people who are interested in learning about the food and where it comes from. This book has a slant toward the more locally grown food and away from the industrial food that is more common, but I also didn't feel that the biases were too overwhelming. But I am also becoming a proponent of local food and so where I didn't have problems with the book others may see something different. I would recommend this book if you have read other books by Pollan or if you are interested in seeing the different paths that food takes to get from the "wild" to your plate.

Book Review- 1491:New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

As a history buff and as someone who finds Amerindians and their culture especially Pre-Columbian Amerindian culture really interesting, I had seen 1491 by Charles C. Mann before and knew that I wanted to read it. I have also recently read Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel and so looking at cultures prior to the invasion and colonization by Europeans was something I was reading about a lot lately. Mann starts the book with a look at Pizarro's invasion of the Inkas in South America and the interaction among the Amerindians of Massachusetts with the Pilgrims. Each of these looks at the different groups shows a different way in which the Amerindians decided to interact with the explorers and the ways in which these interactions affect the differences in the outcomes for each group. Although each of the Amerindian groups were eventually colonized and killed off, there a vast differences in how this occurred. Where the Inkas were conquered by military force, one of the tribes of Massachusetts made a strategic choice to help the Europeans with the hope that they would align with one group over another. (Unfortunately the book had to go back to the library today and I just finished last night so I no longer have the book and I cannot remember the tribe names right off the top of my head.)

The next sections of 1491 look at how the Amerindians came to America from Asia initially and where the first settled communities might have occurred. There is much controversy on how and when peoples first came to the Americas and where they first settled and Mann goes into much of this controversy, attempting to look at much of what has been written and found as the controversies have developed. This then leads into a discussion of the different groups of peoples in the separate areas of the Americas starting with the Andes, then Mesoamerica, then North America and finally Amazonia. Mann looks at each geographic area, and discusses the different people and settlements that developed there. He looks at not just the major groups that we may think of like the Inkas, the Mayas and the Aztecs, but their predecessors and also how each of these groups developed and then the aftermath of European invasion on these groups. He also discusses the groups of North America such as the Mississippian cultures that developed that I did not know that much about. This was great as I knew about the Amerindian groups of Mesoamerica and the Andes and knew the legends and stories that surrounded Squanto and the other Amerindians that the Pilgrims first encountered, but I did not ever learn about the groups of Amerindians that lived in much of what is now the US owing to the fact that many of them were so ravaged by disease, specifically smallpox, that by the time the explorers met them, they were a shell of their former glory. There are also the images we have of the Plains Indians on horse back, where in fact horses were a European import and that the Plains Indians did not hunt or use horses prior to the European invasion. I knew that horse were imported here from Europe, but I did not know how these societies developed prior to the European invasion.

Mann also looks at the naive idea that the land that was invaded by the Europeans was virgin land, that the Amerindians had no impact on the land or were innocent steward of the land. He looks at the vast changes that Amerindians had on the land from agriculture to the cultivation and breeding of maize which is not a wild species and had to be created by humans to the use of fire to alter the land so that farming and gathering of certain plants could be accomplished by the humans on the land. He also looks at the ideas that the people who were here were not as savage as the Europeans liked to think nor were they as peaceful as we now like to think, the Noble Savage. This changing of the land is also reflected in the final section of the book when he talks about the effects of the mass death of the Amerindians and how that affected the land so much. He discusses that bison may not have been as plentiful as were then seen by explorers and pioneers. That Amerindians competed with bison, mule deer and elk for food like maize, and other herbs and plants so they were pushed to where they were available a few days ride when the Amerindians wanted or needed meat, but were far enough away that they were not eating from the gardens of the humans. This is one of many changes that the geography and plant and animal life went through after the extermination of the Amerindians at the hands of the Europeans.

Overall, this was a very enlightening book and added much to my understanding of the Pre-Columbian Americas and the people who inhabited this land. Mann is not always an unbiased writer, at times scolding present situations where Amerindians are still treated poorly or adding other notes that are not totally unbiased, but as a very liberal individual I didn't mind these biased comments. If you want a purely unbiased commentary you may have to just overlook some of this, but I also didn't find that the commentary was overwhelming and that Mann did a very good job of trying to look at all of the issues involved and the various controversies that have erupted in anthropology surrounding Pre-Columbian America.

Book Review- Kick Me: Adventures in Adolescence

I recently heard that the creator of the show Freaks and Geeks about life in the 80s had written a book about his own life that much of the tv show was based upon, so I had to read it. Kick me by Paul Feigis that story. Feig writes about his life starting in elementary school and ending with his senior year in high school. The book is totally anecdotal and although it does follow a general chronological order, many times Feig refers to times earlier in his to show the progression of his life. The story is really funny and a quick easy read. It also helped me remember why I love Freaks and Geeks so much and then I started to watch the DVDs and so many of the situations in the show now are much funnier because I have seen them in his book as well. It was great to see where a writer and creator came up with the ideas for a show especially as the situations are so autobiographical. Feig is a great writer and so if you are looking for a quick read to remember you adolescence or to see the funny times of someone else's than pick this book up and enjoy.

Book review- Botany of Desire

Botany of Desire is about looking at the world through the view point of plants. The book highlights the interactions between plants and humans. The author Michael Pollan, who has also written The Omnivore's Dilemma, seems to set out to show how plants have adapted and evolved as a means to employ us humans as part of their spread just like they have evolved to attract bees, birds and other pollinators. The book is split into four sections, each focusing on a different plant, first are apples, second are tulips, third are marijuana and fourth are potatoes.

The section on apples focuses of the myth and the actual man of Johnny Appleseed and the growth of apples as the frontier of the US was opened up. As a history person, it was interesting to see how one man was able to create a growth of a crop that had great value and that was spread with the settlers pretty much as they pushed the boundary of the "wilderness". Now the reason they grew the apples was to make cider, mostly of the alcoholic variety and not as a fruit to be eaten, which then leads to the kinds of apples they were growing. It is also interesting for me as I love hard cider, but apples as a fruit to be eaten that are sweet are a relatively new idea dating back to only the prohibition era. So as the types and tastes of the apples that were desired changed so did the types of apples that were grown, which led to the consolidation of types of apples from many to only a few. It was interesting and sad to see the ways in which as Americans we wanted only a limited kind of apples, those that were big and sweet, we have limited the types of apples that are grown and hence have cut off some of the variation in apples.

The section on Tulips was the hardest for me to enjoy. On one hand the Dutch Tulipmania was interesting, but the depth in which he looks at the pollination of flowers was a bit much for me. I am just not as interested in plants that serve as purely measures of beauty and are more esthetic than practical, I guess.

The next section of Marijuana was again interesting to me. Although I am not really a pot smoker and have only smoked pot a handful of times, it was interesting to see how a plant that had no intrinsic purpose other than as a way to make rope has become one that is used for recreational purposes much more often. The cannabis plant starts out as mainly used for the strength of the hemp fibers to make rope in America as the type that would allow for intoxication will not grow well in our climate except in limited areas. As the types of cannabis that exist are combined we find that we can create a plant that will grow in a wider variety of climates that will also allow for the same intoxicating effects. This section also highlighted another problem with the War on Drugs, when the federal government started to really crack down on marijuana in the mid-1980s and hence marijuana growers were forced to go underground more than they were and were forced to create better and stronger plants to withstand the forced growth in basically indoor greenhouses, they created a stronger and more potent intoxicant. Hence the War on Drugs which was supposed to lessen these drugs only made them stronger as man started to learn to create stronger plants. There was also increased hybridization of the pot plants to make them more suited to growing smaller and producing more of the parts that we want to get high. This also drives up the price of pot and we create more growers not less. So maybe banning pot was not such a great idea, huh.

The fourth section was on potatoes. This section, in many ways, focused on the increased involvement of corporations, specifically Monsanto, in the growing and manipulation of plants to create what we as humans want. Pollan is able to get some NewLeaf potato plants from Monsanto that are supposed to be genetically altered so that the potato bugs cannot eat them or at least they die when they try to eat the potato plant. He wants then to see if they do truly work as a natural pesticide and also to see if he can see or taste a difference in these potatoes over the other potatoes in his garden. In combination with this experiment, he meets with several farmers who grow potatoes, two of the farmers used the NewLeaf and the other one was an organic farmer. The farmers who were using the genetically altered plants were interesting, one of the farmers grew the altered plants for corporate America who wants these perfect potatoes for their french fires and other products, but never fed them to his family; his own garden is purely organic. And he says that most of the farmers he knows, do not eat their own products either. Another of the farmers, used the genetically altered products regularly and even fed them to Pollan in a potato salad. But when he was challenged about how the corporations were affecting his farm, he did say that the corporations were creating another noose around his neck even with a Monsanto representative sitting at the table with them. Of course the organic farmer was a great proponent of the organic farming and pointed out all of the positives of organic farming, As to the NewLeaf potatoes that Pollan had planted, he said that they looked fine, but by the end of the book, he couldn't eat them. He didn't feel comfortable with them as there is no way of knowing how the splicing of genetics to create a natural pesticide would affect his own self after eating them. He noted that he knew that it was very possible that he and many others had eaten the NewLeaf potatoes at a McDonalds or any other fast food restaurant even though McDonalds did end up saying they would not buy the NewLeaf potatoes after much pressure was put on them, but for a while they were using these potatoes. He even thought of taking them to a community pot luck, but then would have felt guilty if he did not tell everyone that the potatoes were genetically altered and then who would want to eat, knowingly, genetically altered food.

Overall, it is an interesting book in the view of how humans and plants interact. The reader sees how much that human desire creates an impetus for us to alter plants to fit our needs. We select plants that are the biggest, the prettiest, the sweetest, the most intoxicating and the most profitable. We alter the plants to fit what we want from them. Sure, up till the most current times we were not altering the genetics of plants, we were only utilizing the mutations that nature had created, but then we did propagate these mutations and continue to grow only the ones that we liked thus limiting the diversity in nature. But with the beginning of Gregor Mendel and his pea plants (thank you high school biology) we began to alter plant genetics, we began to play with nature and make it into what we, as humans, thought it should be. Pollan seems to argue that plants change and evolve to suit us as well as bees and birds because we are as important to their survival as any other animal. He may be somewhat true in this assertion, we do ensure that some plants live, we do ensure that some plant's genetics continue on, but the key here is SOME. Bees do not look at flowers and pick the flower that is the prettiest, they do not decide to cross the red flower with the white flower to make a pink flower, they are attracted to something different. The relationship between the bee and the plant is symbiotic. I am not as convinced that the relationship between humans and plants is nearly as equal when taken in the general. We do not advance a whole species of plants, just the ones that please us. One final point, Pollan seems to indicate that there is some order, in his opinion, to the evolution of plants to attract humans, where as I see the evolution of plants as random combinations of mutations in which some work and some don't.

Book Review- Ten Little Indians

After having watched and really like the movie, Smoke Signals, which I talked about here, I found out that the movie was based upon a book of short stories by Alexie called The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. I read this book and really liked it, I thought I had reviewed it, but I can't find it on this site so I guess not. Anyway, so I then got another of his short stories, Ten Little Indians. Whereas Loner Ranger... takes place pretty much totally on a Spokane Indian reservation outside of Seattle, Ten Little Indians takes place totally off a reservation, but still contains stories about Spokane Indians. Many of the stories take place in and around Seattle. Each story discusses life for Indians especially Spokane Indians in the modern world. The struggles of being an Indian, where you are viewed as basically having to be a representative of all Indians. And all Indians are supposed to have this mystical, pantheistic connection to the world. They are not supposed to have needs and wants, they are all supposed to be a shaman of some sort. These stories are about the reality of living up to being in a minority in your world. There are funny stories, sad stories, and angry stories. The characters are everything from a lawyer to a young woman who is in college and is trying to find her identity to a homeless man. Alexie amazed me as each time I read a story, it was vastly different from the story prior or even any other story in the book. I have found that many authors that I have read who have done short stories, tend to have a similar vantage point, they are male or female in all of the stories, but Alexie has stories from the perspective of both genders, although there may be more stories from a male perspective, but as a male this is probably a more comfortable writing style for him. But all of the stories are in a first person narrative, you never seem to know more than the characters themselves and so you are taking the journey along with the characters. Each story is heartfelt and interesting. I do not rad enough short stories and so this book was a great way for me to really get hooked into that genre. If you are looking for a book that will allow you to see life from another perspective, that of a Spokane Indian and want to laugh, cry and become angry at times as you read, than get this book and enjoy.

Book Review- The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon chronicles the lives of two men who start out in the comic book business in the years leading up to World War II. Joseph Kavalier is a Czech Jew who is smuggled out of Prague prior to World War II. We see his life growing up where he is trained as a magician specifically an escape artist. He ends up in Brooklyn living with his cousin Sam Clay and Sam's mother. Both Sam and Joe are artists and Sam is working at what is an early comic book company. The two of them create a new superhero, The Escapist, among a cast of other characters to populate their new comic book universe. Joe also falls in love with and has a long relationship with Rosa Saks, who becomes another of their comic book heroes, Luna Moth. The book follows Joe and Sam as they work in the early comic book business prior to World War II. It then progresses through WWII and then a bit after to finish up the story of these two and the comic book business of that era.

This is an interesting story which chronicles the Golden Age of Comics of the mid to late 1930 through the 1940s. Since I am not a huge comic book collector, it was interesting to see the way in which many of the comics began and the rise in popularity of comic books. This book also looks at the ways in which the comic book artists and writers did not benefit from the rise in the comic sales to th same extent as those who were in the management offices of the companies. Also the way in which the nation was reacting to the rise of fascism through the superheroes fighting the Nazis even prior to the eventual entering of the United States into WWII.

It took me a while to really get into this book as I just couldn't seem to find the time to sit down and really read it, but once I did, I really liked it and had no problems reading forty to fifty pages at a sitting. This was generally a light book that kept moving well with some slow parts toward the middle where the story deviates away from the comic book business and Joe Kavalier has to deal with some of his own personal demons. Overall, it was a good book that was fun to read.

Book Review- Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

Freakonomics is the story of everything and how one economist, Steven Levitt, looks at the numbers behind a variety of different things from what a Sumo wrestler and a teacher have in common to why crack dealers live with their mothers. This is an interesting book with a different take on many different issues. Levitt basically uses data to extrapolate a different spin on things that we may think about all of the time or that we rarely think about, but surround us at all times. It is a quick read and I thought an easy read. I wanted to keep reading it and had a hard time putting it down. Also, as someone who is not very math oriented and likes economics even less, or at least the economics that I had to take in college, I didn't mind the numbers and thought that they did a good job of supporting Levitt's conclusions. But because he was using data that at times was not designed to be used in the way that he did use it, I did at times, wonder if he was manipulating the data to fit his own conclusions. But overall I agreed with much of what he thought and saw the logical steps he took to go from point A to point B.

To answer one of the questions above and also as a mini rant against No Child Left Behind, Levitt showed that teachers were actually cheating in order to help their students do better on the standardized tests that they had to administer. He talked about the obvious, that teachers were teaching to the test, that they were gearing all of their teaching to the types of questions that would be on the test and ignoring other subjects or topics that may be important to a child's overall education and development. But he also pointed out that it seems as though teachers were doing more than just teaching to a test, they were actually changing the answers on students' tests to the right answers. These teachers would take advantage of the fact that there was some gap time in between when the test was given and when the test had to be handed in to the administrators. They were not changing a lot of answers, but enough to help the students get a higher score. Now why would these teachers do this? It is simple, the stress and pressure of the testing on the schools and the teachers. They needed the students to do well enough so that the school would be able to continue to not be state run when does happen when a school's scores are not high enough. Teachers can also be fired if a school's scores are not high enough and if they are higher, than teachers get bonuses which can be much needed income for many teachers, as we are not paid that much. So what NCLB has created is no more than a culture where teachers have to cheat just to keep their jobs, their schools and at times to earn more money. Sumo wrestlers are also shown by Levitt to have a tendency toward cheating, but for vastly different reasons. Their reasons tend to relate to the culture of Sumo and the rankings systems where if you win over 50% of your matches in a contest than your ranking will rise, but if you lose over 50% of your matches than your ranking sinks. This was a very interesting point and as I tried to explain it here, I have found that I can't really explain it. But basically, the similarity between teachers and Sumo wrestlers relates to cheating.

Overall, Freakonomics is a really interesting read and I would recommend it to anyone. I did read the original version and there is now a revised and expanded version. I am not sure if there are vast differences in the two books, so if anyone knows if the differences are that major let me know so that I can try and get my hands on the revised edition if it is needed.

Book Review- Eats, Shoots & Leaves

This is the first in my New Year's Resolution to read more and hence post at least one book review a month on this site.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation is written by Lynne Truss and is just that a book about punctuation. I strongly dislike punctuation and grammar and have since I was in elementary school, but as I have gotten older and have written more for undergrad and grad work and now this blog I realize the importance of the written word and making sure that you are able to read it properly. So I wanted to read this book as I thought it might help me to understand the rules and usage of written grammar much better. I have issues with that damn comma and this book seemed like the way to help learn the rules for the use of the comma. It also sounded like it would be interesting and a fun read. Well, it was all of these things; it is interesting, funny and informative. Truss combines the history of written grammar and where these silly marks like the comma, semicolon and hyphen come from in the publishing world. She also discusses the literary aspects of many of these punctuation marks and writers and their varied usage of many of these marks especially ones like the hyphen or the comma which different writers tend to like or dislike to different degrees. Truss shows us common examples of punctuation mistakes in our everyday life such as at the grocery store or in the mass media. Many of these examples are humorous and show us really how the written word and punctuation has declined recently. She even ends with some discussion on the prevalence of emails as a means of communication. Truss views email as a positive thing for written communication as this means that we are continuing to write and use punctuation, albeit wrongly, but it continues the need to learn punctuation. She discusses the fact that it wasn't so long ago that the prevailing thought was that the television was making reading and writing obsolete, and that punctuation was not getting the needed attention. She acknowledges that our writing especially in emails is not usually correct, in regards to punctuation, but that since we have to continue to write, we can continue to learn the correct punctuation and then starting to write correctly again.

I really enjoyed this book. I think that it should be a book that is required reading for all high school English teachers and their students. And if it is not read in high schools should be adopted into Freshman college English classes, but we need to teach this stuff. I know it is taught, but I had it out of stuffy grammar books that made it boring. Truss makes punctuation interesting and fun. If you haven't read this book yet and need a refresher on punctuation pick it up and enjoy. I would even go so far as saying to buy it as I really think that I will use it as a reference at times so it is a book that can be read and used over and over again.