Books read recently by J. Zimmerman.
Inspired in part by Catarina.net's book blog.

Check our disclaimer or our links or Best books read in 2003 or our reading archive.

Reader's Bill of Rights - after Daniel Pennac in Better than Life as quoted in the November 2003 Utne Magazine - contains the rights to:

Skip pages Reread Browse

Not read Not finish Not defend your tastes

Read: anything escapism out loud anywhere

{ December 2003 }

(12.31.2003)

Helping Someone With Mental Illness by Rosalynn Carter with Susan K. Golant. Former first lady Rosalynn Carter provides a powerful tool for families, social workers, doctors, and clients. Tells many deeply moving individual stories; discusses diagnosis, treatment, scientific research, stigma, advocacy. She writes: "with proper diagnosis and treatment, the overwhelming majority of people with mental illness can now lead productive lives." Ms. Carter's sympathy in relating individual stories highlights her discussion of the diagnosis and treatment of mental illnesses, including schizophrenia, depression, bipolar illness (manic-depression), and anxiety disorders. For decades she has been a respected advocate for the mentally ill. "Reading Carter on mental illness is like reading Dr. Spock on child care." (Peggy Moorman)

(12.30.2003)

• Skimmed:
  In an Uncertain World: Tough Choices from Wall Street to Washington by Robert E. Rubin and Jacob Weisberg ( 2003). I'll return to it when I have time!
  Robert Rubin, the seventieth U.S. Secretary of the Treasury starting 1995 and currently a director of Citicorp, has (with the aid of writer Jacob Weisber) written a very educational and charming book on the U.S.A. fiscal power and policy, primarily in the 1990's.

  The book's energy is in the stories of Rubin's response as Secretary to financial crises abroad (Mexico, Asia, Russia, Brazil), to the federal government shutdown, and to the variations of the stock market.

  Rubin teaches with a light hand how specific U.S. fiscal policies toward other countries (e.g., Mexico) have measurable consequences on the U.S.A., such as increasing illegal immigration, increasing importation of illegal drugs, and reduction of U.S. exports.

  Rubin's philosophy is that nothing is provably certain. He shows how, even in the rarefied air of risk arbitrage, he uses probabilistic thinking to calculate costs and benefits and their likelihood. He enters decision-making deeply, calculating his options and being willing to make decisions despite remaining uncertainties.

  Rubin's principles were summarized as "The Rubin Doctrine of International Finance" by Tim Geithner and colleague as a going-away gift when he departed Treasury. The list of 10 rules includes:

  "1. The only certainty in life is that nothing is ever certain. 2. Markets are good, but they are not the solution to all problems. ... 5. Borrowers must bear the consequences of the debt they incur - and creditors of the lending they provide. ... 9. Never let your rhetoric commit you to something that you cannot deliver. 10. Gimmicks are no substitute for serious analysis and care in decision making."

  To these, Rubin adds an eleventh rule:

  "11. The self-interest of the United States requires us to engage and work closely with other nations on issues of the global economy. "

  For more winning points, check out Robert D. Steele's notes on this book in Amazon.
  For terminology, see our investing glossary.

• Read: 2003 Pushcart Prize XXVII Best of the Small Presses edited by Bill Henderson ( 2003).
  67 poems, fiction, and non-fiction from the smaller, less commercial presses. Some marvelous work.

• Read:
  Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood ( 2003).
  Think bio-engineering is a good and well-controlled area? Read this engrossing book and think again.

  Short-listed for the Booker Prize in 2003, this satisfyingly apocalyptic "speculative" fiction is one of Margaret Atwood's best. The protagonist's wry sense of humor, in a world where he may be the last living human, relieves the terrors of the book (including being hunted by intelligent and freaky genetically engineered predators) and make it (despite other reviewers) LESS "grim and depressing" than Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. As the protagonist (Jimmy or Snowman) scavenges the little that remains of civilization, he remembers how his biotech world was smashed by the creative and dangerous genius, Crake (named ironically for an extinct animal).

  Like others of her books (most notably "The Blind Assassin", her Booker Prize winner) this novel by Margaret Atwood works through a sequence of flashbacks. Here she uncovers the cause of the destruction as well as the origin of the genetically engineered Children of Crake. The latter look like humans, for the most part, but how much genetic engineering does it take, how much splicing of genetic features borrowed from other organisms, to make a human non-human?

  Atwood's attention to words is a delight. One sees it in her own excellent writing, and in her many puns in the names of the products and organizations (HelthWyzer, Extinctathon, MaddAddam, RejoovenEsense, BlyssPluss), and in the words (berating, bemoaning, doldrums, lovelorn, leman, forsaken, queynt) that Jimmy says to himself because he can no longer say them with people who understand them.

• Read: Another World by Pat Barker. Interesting but frustrating - a tale of sibling (mainly fraternal) loyalties and treacheries and the slow and closely observed dying of an elderly veteran. Her World War One trilogy mines, on some related material, is better.

• Read in Utne Magazine (for January 2004) a list of the top 10 censored stories of 2003. See their magazine for details of these:
  1. Bush insiders plan for a new American empire for Emperor George.
  2. Homeland securities threaten our civil liberties.
  3. U.S.A. (Bush administration) illegally removed pages about 8,000 from the 11,800-page weapons declaration submitted by Iraq to the U.N.
  4. Rumsfeld's plan to provoke terrorists.
  5. Unions under siege.
  6. FCC's hand-over to corporations of increased Internet control likely to cause reduced competition and increased consumer charges.
  7. U.S.A. (Bush administration) ignores or subverts nine previously signed multilateral treaties.
  8. Uranium weapons were used in Iraq. The used depleted uranium has only 40% less radioactivity than "pure" uranium. Up to 800 tons used since the first Gulf War.
  9. Failure of American intervention in Afghanistan to reduce poverty, sexual inequality, and civil disruption.
  10. New Partnership for Africa's Development looks like a new threat of exploitation in Africa.

• Read the modestly named: The Only Guide to a Winning Investment Strategy You'll Ever Need by the modest Larry E. Swedroe.
  
  Another proponent of long-term investment in indexes funds. Suggests how to select a "balanced passive portfolio for the long haul". The first 2 chapters report how active portfolio management eats up your savings. The next 4 chapters discuss efficient markets and modern portfolio theory. The last 5 chapters discuss how to make efficient portfolio theory work for you
  (Also see our notes).
  For terminology, see our investing glossary.

• Finished The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of The Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester (1999)
  What made this book popular is the peculiar fact that thousands upon thousands of definitions of words in the amazing OED (Oxford English Dictionary) were drafted from a cell in an English asylum for criminal lunatics by American surgeon Dr. William Chester Minor. He began in response to an appeal to readers by OED editor Professor James Murray, for help in a project (begun in 1857) that is somewhat analogous to the Open Code project on the Web. ["The compilation of the OED, begun in 1857, was one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken."] Definitions were collected and the overseeing committee, led by Professor James Murray, organized these into a volumes. The attention to detail and long hours needed (Winchester hypothesizes) had a calming effect (effectively a self-medication) on the deluded Dr. Minor.
  
  Winchester is a delightful speaker and conversationalist, but his books tend to be a bit stodgy to read. Listening to it on tape, therefore, was a good compromise.
  
  Thinks: I wonder how strenuous it would be simply to sit down and read through the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary edited by William R. Trumble, Lesley Brown, Angus Stevenson, and Judith Siefring?

• Read: The Rose by Li-Young Lee.
  Includes some marvelous poems. Also see notes on Li-Young Lee's reading and talk in San Jose, November 12 and 13, 2003.

• Skimmed: Common Sense on Mutual Funds: New Imperatives for the Intelligent Investor by John C. Bogle.
  A logical plan for the individual investor and for the fund industry. Bogle is the founder of the Vanguard Group.
  Also see our review.
  For terminology, see our investing glossary.

• U.S.A. scientists announced consensus that humans are affecting world climate. While this may not sway the beliefs of my Creationist colleagues, it vindicates my sister-in-law, who has worried about global warming for 3 decades.
  
  
• Skimmed: Population Connection's Reporter (Winter 2004).
  Remember the Ecology Footprint quiz. Check it out for your own impact on Gaia. The current average American ("Eusan") footprint is over 10 hectares (25 acres). The current worldwide average footprint is 2.4 hectares (6 acres), which exceeds the available acreage.

  "Prof. David Pimentel estimates that the Earth can support from one to two billion people with a U.S. standard of living, good health, nutrition, prosperity, personal dignity, and freedom. ... The scenarios below [which they adapted from Prof. Ross McCluney's on-line data] estimate the shifts in quality of life as world population continues to grow, if we maintain current patterns of consumption." The following adapted from Population Connection's Reporter:

  World Population	Standard of living worldwide
  2 billion	Average U.S.A. standard of living (health, nutrition, personal freedom).
  0.5 billion	Same affluence as 2 billion, but with more freedom of action.
  4 billion	Same affluence as 2 billion, but with many restrictions, requiring recycling, limits, rationing.
  6 billion	Europe and U.S.A. inhabitants live at level of 2 billion population; rest of the world lives at current prosperity level of Mexico.
  20 billion	Average standard of living at current prosperity level of Mexico..
  40 billion	Average standard of living at current "prosperity" level of Northwest Africa.

  [See also more on Ecology elsewhere.]

• Finished: Runes, A Review of Poetry: Memory edited by C.B. Follett & Susan Terris ( 2003).
  A lovely issue. Ask for it at your local independent book store (Winter Solstice 2003 issue, ISBN 0-9657015-9-X).
  This annual journal of 100 poems is professionally printed, perfect-bound, digest-sized; includes good artwork.
  This Memory issue includes poems by Kim Addonizio, Mark Chapman (winner of the 2003 Runes poetry contest judged by Li-Young Lee), Lucille Clifton, Jane Hirshfield, Robert Mezey, Marge Piercy, David St. John, Michael Waters, and Eleanor Wilner.

• Finished: The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown ( 2003).
  A totally overrated book that seems to be stuck on the Best Sellers list.

  I recommend the comments on this book by Geoffrey Pullum at his Language Log:

  "Brown's writing is not just bad; it is staggeringly, clumsily, thoughtlessly, almost ingeniously bad. In some passages scarcely a word or phrase seems to have been carefully selected or compared with alternatives. I slogged through 454 pages of this syntactic swill, and it never gets much better. ... Because it seemed to me to be such a fund of lessons in how not to write."

  See Truth and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code by Bart D. Ehrman for comments on the huge number of factual errors made by Dan Brown with regards to the history.

The Creative Habit: Learn it and Use it for Life by Twyla Tharp ( 2003). Devoured it in a single day. This is the best book I read in 2003 . It inspires the reader to move into the creative zone and do the work essential to being any kind of professional artist. Twyla Tharp (the leading and innovative choreographer) is a brilliant mentor and a no-nonsense delight. Brendan McCarthy, in her marvelous review in Ballet Magazine, writes: [Twyla Tharp] is a Puritan, has great certainties and is impatient of ambiguity ("I don't like grey. That is how I am."). ... The core of her argument is in the book's title: that creativity is less a matter of genius than of disciplined work habits. Her rituals - notably her daily two-hour gym session beginning at 5.30 a.m. - matter; not merely because they shape her day, but because they are a source of strength when creativity is barren and inspiration comes slow.

Check our review page.

Read the book. Do the exercises. Do your art. (12.1.2003)

• Finished: Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason by Helen Fielding.
  A delight - a chocolate mousse of a book.
• Finished: The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century by Paul Krugman ( September 2003).
  Well researched and well written. A selection of New York Times op-eds (written 2000-2003) by economist Paul Krugman. Reports on the executive work of George W. Bush as "bad economics wrapped in the flag" and "blatantly based on bogus arithmetic."

{ November 2003 }

(11.30.2003)

• Abandoned (see rights): Good Faith by Jane Smiley.
  Maybe it's just a bit too real and depressing: "a searing indictment of the 1980s greed culture" and "the excesses that can become powerful intoxicants to those who taste them" by people who believe "old rules are meant to be broken."
  The reality of the G.W.Bush administration makes fiction of this nature too painful to read.

• On a day of delicious Thanksgiving food, another treat was to re-read the classic:
  100 Poems from the Japanese by Kenneth Rexroth (Translator).
  These are mainly 5-line "short poems" or tanka (though Rexroth writes them as quatrains), such as:

  The mists rise over The still pools at Asuka. Memory does not Pass away so easily. [Akahito]

  with a sampling of Naga Uta ("long poems") and haiku, such as:

  The long, long river A single line On the snowy plain. [Bonchô]

  I like the idea of kasei - a deified poet. Yamabe No Akahito was one.

• Abandoned (see rights): The Practice of Qigong: Meditation and Healing by Ken Cohen.
  Trying to listen to the tapes has relieved my insomnia, though.

• Finished: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt.
  "Berendt skillfully interweaves a hugely entertaining first-person account of life in this isolated remnant of the Old South with the unpredictable twists and turns of a landmark murder case," as one reviewer has written. An unusual book of "nonfiction" set in Savannah, Georgia, and portraying socialite Jim Williams, on trial for the murder of Danny Hansford, a moody, violent hustler. Hansford was shot in Savannah's grandest mansion in the early hours of May 2, 1981. Surely (surely?) the many eccentrics around Williams and Berendt are exaggerated?

• Finished: The Energetics of Healing (1997) by Caroline Myss.

  See also her: Invisible Acts of Power and Sacred Contract.

• Finished All About Index Funds by Richard A. Ferri (2002).
  A practical and interesting review of why Index Funds outperform managed mutual funds. A similar thesis to Bernstein's The Four Pillars of Investing; Ferri has more graphs and is easier reading.
  For terminology, see our investing glossary.

• Finished A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (1987).
  A fascinating novel of social commentary and comic tragedy. It won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction. New Orleans "just getting by" class. (John Kennedy Toole committed suicide in 1969.)

• Finished listening to 6-tape set of The Salmon of Doubt by Douglas Adams.
  What a creative and innovative man. His death is a huge loss to us. Published posthumously, this book gives the first chapters of the book Adams was writing at the time of his death. Also various fascinating essays and transcripts of talks. Among the items, his favorite project was Last Chance to See.

• Finished The Spoken Word Revolution (slam, hip hop & the poetry of a new generation edited by Mark Eleveld, advised by Marc Smith ( 2003).
  The CD lets you hear styles of slam, hip hop, performance art, and other contemporary styles of poetry; my current favorite is Todd Alcott's Television. (The dreamy, sing-songy reading styles of current female readers in California seem to derive heavily from performance art.)
  Good book crammed with essays and poems by 40 poets including Laureate Billy Collins, Sherman Alexie, Patricia Smith, and many more.

• Finished Sarah Conley by Ellen Gilchrist
  Unimpressed by the self-centered Sarah.

• Finished La Composición por Antonio Skármeta.
  El libro fue finalista en el Prix Italia. Antonio Skármeta nació en Chile en 1940.

{ October 2003 }

(10.31.2003)

• Finished skimming Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English by Patricia T. O'Conner (1998).
  A funny and pleasant book on English grammar. She emphasizes punctuation, verbal usage, and word misuse.

  Confused when to use "it's" versus "its"? So are half the reader and writers on the web - see O'Conner book and sort yourselves out.

  Not sure when to use the subjunctive mode? It's used when the intention is to express:

  1. A wish. (I wish you would get off my foot.
  2. A conditional (if)statement that is not true. (I you were not standing on my foot, ...)
  3. A suggestion or demand. (I suggest that you would get off my foot.)

• Finished Moy Sand and Gravel (2003 Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry) by Paul Muldoon (2002).
  Publishers Weekly said of this book that Muldoon is "at the top of his slippery, virtuosic game." Some of the poems are brilliant in content with a clever yet unobtrusive use of form. But most seem form-driven, self conscious, and inclined to nudge this reader in the ribs.

• Finished Hunting Badger: A Jim Chee/Joe Leaphorn Mystery by Tony Hillerman (1999).
  A crime story mixed with Native American lore.

• Finished Where I Was From by Joan Didion (2002).
  A good collection of essays, packed with information about the growth of California and the arrival of Didion's ancestors (some arriving with the Donner Party) into the state. Much of the book is about the lives of Didion's ancestors, so it feels like a gift to her relatives rather than an essay collection for everyone. However much is of interest to the unrelated reader, and many immigrants to the California can learn from it. The book would benefit from an index.

• Finished Fast Food Nation: the dark side of the all-American meal by Eric Schlosser (2002).
  If the cholesterol in fast food doesn't bother you, maybe the pervasive presence of E. coli and other stomach-churning microbes will. A well researched and sobering book about the explosion of the fast food industry. A clear display of how greed (in this case, primarily in the beef business) is killing workers and consumers.

  Example on p.195: "Roughly 200,000 people are sickened by a food-borne disease, 900 are hospitalized, and 14 die. ... more than a quarter of the American population suffer food poisoning each year."
  "... a simple explanation for why eating hamburgers can now make you seriously ill: there is shit in the meat."
  The resulting E. coli 0157:H7 can release "verotoxin" which attacks the lining of the intestine. This, according to Schlosser, is the "leading cause of kidney failure among children in the U.S."

• Finished listening to Sacred Contracts: Awakening Your Divine Potential (5 audio CDs) (2001) by Caroline Myss.
  A fascinating approach to discovering the spirit and the self. See details for Caroline Myss.

  See also her: Invisible Acts of Power and The Energetics of Healing.

• Finished Poetry Speaks A book with 3 audio CDs, edited by Elise Paschen and Rebekah Presson Mosby; CD advisory editors Robert Pinsky, Rita Dove, and Dana Gioia (2001).
  Best collection of poetry read this year. What a pleasure to listen to the voices of the poets themselves. The short essays written by today's admired living poets illuminate the work of the 42 historic poets whose voices we hear.

• Finished Haiku Journal Members' Anthology 1990-1991 with an introduction by Jane Reichhold, who took over that year (from Jerry Ball) as the new editor of Geppo, in the 14th year of its publication.

  A treat to read over a hundred of the best haiku published in Geppo during the previous 12 months, and to study the work of Lee Gurga, Christopher Herold, Jerry Ball, and others who today are heard more as editors, commentators, and teachers.

• Finished Gone for Soldiers: A Novel of the Mexican War by Jeff M. Shaara (2000).
  While not a fan of war, I found this book helpful in describing two-year Mexican-American War, which began in 1847. That War, driven by the Monroe Doctrine and its imperial claim of "Manifest Destiny", gained for the USA its present Southwest. Under the leadership of General Winfield Scott, the young Robert E. Lee is crucial in the invasion of Mexico and the entry into Mexico City. Lee is responsible for much of the campaign's success, due to his clever and careful scouting.

  Many of the men that learned about fighting in the Mexican-American War reappeared a decade later in the USA Civil War, though no longer on the same side. As well as Robert E. Lee, the book shows the Mexican-American War teaching Ulysses S. Grant, George Pickett, Sam Grant, and James Longstreet.

  By a 1-in-365 coincidence, today is the anniversary of the death of General Robert E. Lee, on Oct. 12, 1870, in Lexington, Va., at age 63.

• Finished Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri (1999).
  This collection of 9 stories won Jhumper Lahiri a well-deserved Pulitzer Prize. The prose is strong and delicate, like a sword with filigree on its handle. Many of the endings are sad or poignant, and yet just and "true" in the way Hemingway meant that word when he said, "Write something true."

  These stories are set among families crossing over from India to Europe or North America. The humanity of her characters, and their struggles, have a background of customs of food, dress, and veneration of families in or from India. Our empathy with the characters lets that background become more familiar. In addition, her emphasis on the life of immigrants abroad and outcasts at home reminds us of our own possibility to be either an immigrant or an outcast.

• Finished Affection for the Unknowable by Len Anderson ( 2003).
  An entrancing poetry collection.
  See our review of Affection for the Unknowable.

• Finished listening to O is for Outlaw by Sue Grafton (1999).
  As a fan of Grafton's heroine, Kinsey Millhone, I am delighted that this book tells about Kinsey's first husband and their marriage. Again, Kinsey shows her bravery, loyalty, and compassion, as well as her tiny tendency to break the law when necessary to collect the facts she needs.

  It begins when Kinsey buys a box of old papers and other personal possessions that her ex-husband and former cop, Mickey Magruder, put in a storage locker - and then let his payments lapse.

  Other books reviewed in Sue Grafton's series include:
  B is for Burglar
  I is for Innocent
  R is for Ricochet

• Skimmed Sin and Syntax: How to Create Wickedly Effective Prose by Constance Hale (1999).
  Suitably lively and informative, written by an author that loves language like a chocoholic loves a truffle. 3 main sections (Words, Sentences, Music) and practical appendices. Fuller notes on Ariadne's poetry web.

Related pages: Poetry - Learn How to Write Your Own. Books on Learning Spanish. Forests of California and Trees of the World.

Check our disclaimer. Copyright © 2002-2016 by J. Zimmerman.