Corn, Dresden, and BWAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

35 (NTY) The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan 5/13

Pick:
I loaned this out to a friend, Tonya Arnold, who was both inspired and appalled by it, just like Toni was; I think both of them had to stop partway through the book and read something else, just to keep from having to give up food forever from the sheer horror and despondency. Once Tonya gave it back, it went on the short list until I got to it.

Story:
My response to this was what it usually is when I read about how the corporate-industrial complex has ruined our world: rage. This led to a really nice blog about how much I now hate corn, where most of my reviewing was already done.

Other than make me want to go through the offices of Monsanto and Archer Daniels Midland dealing out solar plexus jabs, the first part of this book made me want to be a farmer. I shrugged it off and decided to write, instead, which was the right choice -- but honestly? I may want to be a farmer someday. I loved reading about Joel Salatin's Polyface Farm in Swoope, Virginia (Which is also prominently featured in the movie "Food, Inc.," though the book, of course, gives more information.), and his system of intensive management of livestock. The problem for me would still be in the slaughtering -- and the knowledge base, I suppose, since Salatin is a third-generation farmer, and I'm third-generation bourgeois -- but I still love the idea. I love the idea of making real food, of understanding where food should come from and what it should do for you, and fighting against the ravages of the agribusiness corporations. I would love to do that, if I could. And I, unlike those organic bastards, wouldn't sell out when General Mills came knocking. As hard as Pollan worked to make that Cascadian Farms guy seem like a logical man doing the logical thing, he still strikes me as a money-grubbing sell out. Sure, go be that if you want -- but recognize that you're betraying the values you ostensibly started with.

I loved reading the final chapters in this, about hunting and gathering; I didn't know any of what Pollan said about mushrooming, and even though I'm not terribly fond of mushrooms, he made me want to go hunt for them and eat them. Sort of. I am at least fond of the idea. More interestingly, Michael Pollan is the first and only person who has ever made hunting make sense to me. That actually might be the most interesting thing I take away from this book: while I will still and always criticize sport hunting and trophy hunting, hunting for food actually seems like a reasonable thing to do, now. I get it. It just took someone who could honestly describe the entire experience better than my students can, and Pollan did that. It was interesting.

Great book. Everyone should read. Oh, and read about how much I hate corn, too.


36. (Re-read) Small Favor by Jim Butcher 5/15

Pick:
I can't go on without reading Harry Dresden! I can't! Must . . . finish . . . series!

Story:
In the two years since I last read this book, I managed to forget all but the smallest details, so this was nice -- it was an almost-fresh reading. As always, I love the Denarians; the two big showdowns in this book are incredible, especially given that Harry is genuinely outclassed in them -- and in essence, loses one of them. I like the tension between Harry and his friends, who are forced to doubt Harry at more than one point; I like the way we see Mab's manipulation working throughout, from the shadows and barely visible (and not always done in a way that makes any sense to any sane person, which I also liked), and I absolutely loved the Gruffs. Especially the last one, and the way Harry resolves it.

Great book.


37. (12) Turn Coat by Jim Butcher 5/18

Pick:
I loved reading Dresden so much, I went straight into the next one -- which was new, at least for me! Woohoo! I CAUGHT UP!

Story:
To be honest, I didn't like this one quite as much. I didn't like the premise; not because it was poorly thought out or didn't work or anything, but because it put Morgan into Harry's world. Since Jim Butcher is the kind of writer he is, he couldn't let himself write Morgan as anything other than a cantankerous, prejudiced, hard-boiled leather-assed bastard, and it was very annoying to keep reading that in the middle of my happy Harry time. I mean, when Harry goes home to his apartment, I want to read about Mister and Mouse, and get ready to laugh at Bob's cracks. Instead, every time Harry comes home I got -- Morgan. Being Morgan. Though the repeated almost-fights broken up by Mouse were pretty damn funny.

I did like the Council intrigues (I knew who the villain was! Go me!) and I absolutely loved Demonreach and how Harry deals with that. I also really liked Binder, since it gave us a good view of how much damage a minor talent could do if he was also a hard-ass mercenary. Which gave me a push toward one of my ideas for a character in the upcoming Dresden Files RPG (Which will be a librarian, with a specialty in fae lore, who has one magical trick -- I haven't decided what yet. Knowledge will be my power.). The ending of this book, though, was just sad. The good guys win, yet still everything in Harry's life pretty much goes bad. I'm hoping the next book can redeem some of this. I really hope that. I'll be reading it soon.


38. (Got it from school. Seriously.) Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell 5/21

Pick:
Well, I've been reading so many good books, that I felt it was time for a bad one. Actually, one of my Honors students did his book presentation project on this thing last semester, and hearing about the climactic fight made me burst out laughing; it was one of the nicest moments of hilarity I've had at school all year. After he finished his presentation, he sat down and then held the book up and said, "Does anybody want this? Seriously. I'm done with it." So I took it, and told him I'd read it. It has sat on my shelf at school for the last five months; finally that same kid asked me if I'd read it yet, and I had to say no. But when he asked, I was almost finished with Dresden . . .

Story:
Somebody's been reading Bukowski.

To be honest, I haven't read very much of that master barfly's work, but I think I've read enough to describe his hero: a physically imposing, yet almost completely aloof, giant who makes a hobby of being surly. He comes, of course, from a thoroughly soul-destroying background, yet he has known enough kindness, enough love, to retain some small inner core of real compassion. While he is a dispassionately violent brute, who is constantly and intensely intoxicated, he is also a genius; this serves to add contempt for his fellow men to his already anti-social personality. He is profane and visceral, and he is surrounded by scum and filth: everybody he knows is a liar and a fool, and they are all out to manipulate and use and hurt others, including our hero -- who is generally too cynical and intelligent and savage to let them, but that inner core of goodness gives him a vulnerable spot which gets struck again and again.

If this doesn't sound familiar, you haven't read Bukowski (And I would recommend doing what I did: read one of his novels. He was a brilliant writer. But follow it up with the happiest book you can find, because good grief, is that world ever depressing.). Nor, apparently, have you read Josh Bazell's Beat the Reaper, because Pietro Brnwa is exactly what I described. Down to being Polish, just like Henry Chinaski, the main character in Charles Bukowski's books. Except Josh Bazell isn't anywhere near the writer that Bukowski was. This means that Pietro's savagery, while it makes sense, isn't sympathetic like Chinaski's; his profanity and obscenity are just off-putting, and the world of lowlifes that surround him doesn't seem realistic and therefore both eye-opening and depressing -- it just seems ridiculous.

Beat the Reaper is about an orphan who is taken in by a mafia family, and he becomes a hired gun for his surrogate father. Until, as they say, the poop hits the propellor and he leaves the mafia behind, entering the witness protection program (I'm really not spoiling much -- this is all revealed within the first few chapters; then the entire story is told in a series of flashbacks.) and becoming -- wait for it -- a doctor. That's right, a brutal and heartless killer, who manages to slaughter four gun-toting gangsters while he is tied to a chair, becomes the only doctor who isn't entirely corrupt, incompetent and self-involved in the New York hospital where he does his residency. Until someone shows up who remembers him (Maybe he shouldn't have stayed in New York after entering witness protection?), and then he has to make a decision: run or fight?

It's a silly premise, made worse by a thoroughly ridiculous character, and almost entirely killed by the fact that the inevitable betrayal -- because in Bukowski's/Bazell's world, trust always leads to betrayal -- is absurd. It makes no sense. The proposed explanation doesn't work, and isn't really given the weight to make it acceptable with some suspension of disbelief. It's just silly.

However: I did read the entire book. I did this partly because I had been told about the last fight scene (Based on what is, without a doubt, the most ridiculous idea I've ever heard of -- and I read Chuck Norris jokes) and I wanted to read it for myself, but also because Bazell, who is actually a doctor, has a ton of interesting tidbits to say about hospitals and doctors and medicine. He puts them into footnotes throughout the book, which is annoying (Because Bazell also isn't David Foster Wallace), and I refuse to believe some of them (though maybe I'm naive), but they did help enormously in making the book readable. The medical trivia, and the absurdity, were the best parts of this.

My best advice to the curious is this: read the book's first line. If you are interested in a book that starts with that, go for it; if you roll your eyes, put this down and go get Ham on Rye.