Paper Frigate

The Last Holiday DVD

2008-02-07T09:50:00.000-08:00

Queen Latifah, Timothy Hutton and Gerard Depardieu

The mistaken diagnosis of imminent death is a rich field for comedy writers, giving them a chance to explore the honest life values of the protagonist, without actually requiring the character to die. What will the character choose to do with the supposed remaining days of life? In Send Me No Flowers, Rock Hudson's hypochondriac George tries to set up his wife (Doris Day) with a safe mate in a future without him. George's shallow self-focus turns one-eighty with the expected onset of death.

Georgia Byrd (Queen Latifah) has the opposite of Hudson's neurosis; she is shy and self-effacing. She cooks Cordon Bleu-level meals, but only for others — she herself eats only Lean Cuisine. She sings in a choir, but has to be told by the director to sing out. "I thought I was," is her puzzled response. And her love for fellow Kragen department store employee Sean Matthews (LL Cool J) is unrequited only because she doesn't dare say anything to him.

A bump on the head changes her life. A faulty CAT scan shows blank areas in her brain that lead her doctor to give her the death sentence: she has three, perhaps four, weeks to live. Suddenly, her "Book of Possibilities", in which she has recorded all the things she wants to do someday, is a list of things she will never accomplish.

Like George, Georgia makes a one-eighty. She cashes in her savings, splurges on a first-class trip to Prague and books into the ritzy Grandhotel Pupp, in the Presidential Suite, and makes up for lost future-time by ordering seven meals at dinner.

Coincidentally staying at the resort are Matthew Kragen (Timothy Hutton), owner of the department store chain where Georgia was mis-diagnosed, and her Congressman and a Senator with whom Kragen is trying to work some kind of back-room deal. Georgia's straight talk and lust for life puts her into an unexpected competition with Kragen for the respect of these men, the star chef of the Pupp, Chef Didier (Gerard Depardieu), and even Kragen's mistress (played by Alicia Witt).

Done wrong, this story would be schmaltzy or trite. But Queen Latifah has the presence to pull off both the shy, withdrawn Georgia and her fully-blossomed Madame Byrd character. Brilliant writing (including credit for the 1950 Alec Guiness version of the film, written by JB Priestly) and a perfect casting of Hutton as the unlikeable mega-mart mogul and Depardieu as the goofy-but-wise chef let Latifah shine.

This one goes on my "watch often" shelf.
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Blaze by "Richard Bachman" (Stephen King)

2008-02-02T07:09:00.000-08:00

SIMPLE, YET POWERFUL

Before the story of Blaze begins, author Stephen King explains why a new novel under his pseudonym "Richard Bachman" is now being released: it is a trunk novel from his Bachman days, rejected by the author as "...great when I was writing it, and crap when I finished." Other Bachman novels were written before, but published after King's Carrie, which fixed the name Stephen King firmly in the horror-genre frame.

Thirty years later, King returned to the draft of Blaze to begin a re-write, ruthlessly stripping sentiment and purple prose to leave a strong noir-objective narrative, influenced strongly by the crime stories of James M. Cain, and the character-rich style of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. (More than character-development comes from the latter novel — King says the novel is "...an homage to Of Mice and Men — kinda hard to miss that."

Clayton Blaisdell, Jr., or "Blaze" as his associates call him, has always been bigger than the others around him, but he wasn't always dumber. A series of misfortunes, including a deceased mother, an abusive father who threw him downstairs repeatedly (leaving a cup-sized dent in his forehead and a larger gap in his mental faculties), a tyrannical headmaster at the orphanage, and a series of unfortumate foster-home experiences, have shaped him strangely.

Blaze has survived through having a series of partners who help him cope with life despite his feeble mind, from his buddy Johnny's signals in Arithmetic to his partner George's planning in their career as petty con artists on the streets of Boston. Now, though, George is dead. Blaze is having trouble remembering that, though — he hears George clearly, urging him to do that one last big crime they had been planning before his death.

So Blaze sets out to kidnap the six-month-old son of a wealthy family. This mentally-numb, socially-frozen giant connects with his own childhood of deprivation, the kidnap victim, and the still-functioning depths of his own mind in a story as compelling as any of King's later fiction. I was reminded of The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, calling on her inner resources to survive in the wilderness — Blaze's wilderness is in his own mind, and his rescue is also driven by what he finds within himself.
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Variable Star by Robert Heinlein and Spider Robinson

2008-02-01T10:30:00.000-08:00

Young Love vs. Old Money

Every adolescent boy in the throes of first love believes his lover implicitly. Even further, he believes in his lover. So when Joel Johnston is hesitant to propose to his sweetheart Jinny Hamilton, it is because he doesn't care for the thought of raising children on credit. Since he's a poor student-slash-musician, and she's no wealthier, he is baffled by her casual approach to their lack of money.

Soon enough, though, he finds out why she isn't bothered by the thought of debt. His poor lover Jinny is really hyper-rich Jinnia Anne Conrad, masquerading a la Haroun Al-Rashid, to find a love who isn't after her money. Unfortunately, Joel isn't interested in marrying the Conrad fortune, and by chapter 5 he's headed for the colonies.

This journey is the rest of the story, barring the twist at the end in classic Heinlein — and Robinson — fashion.

We aren't told how much of this novel began as a outline written circa 1955 by Robert A. Heinlein and discovered after his death, and how much was written by Spider Robinson. What is clear, though, is that Variable Star is a pastiche of Robinson's wit and knowledge of Heinlein's authorial voice, and RAH's grasp of the interesting story line. It may be uneven; it may ring false a time or two, but it is still a Heinlein story.

What isn't there: Spider Robinson's love of puns and his ardent counter-culture stance, Heinlein's customary view of discipline and hard work (often in the military) as a source of success in life. What is there: the capable and self-determined young hero who characterizes all Heinlein's stories, the odd-ball associates that populate Robinson's novels, and the 50's-conservative philosophy that informed most of Heinlein's tales.

The novel has been criticized as being all journey and no arrival. I don't agree. In a sense, every life is all journey, and to arrive is a conclusion we dread.

You don't have to be a Heinlein or a Robinson fan to enjoy this novel. It's a great story. (No surprise there; Heinlein was the champion of the great story.) If you read it as a posthumous RAH novel, though, you will be disappointed. As capable as his production of Heinlein voice is, Robinson is unable to recreate it entire. A little of Spider slips through — and that's fine, because the collaboration of the two, however posthumous, provides us with something quite unique.
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Building Harlequin's Moon by Larry Niven and Brenda Cooper

2008-01-31T08:10:00.000-08:00

Utopia Lost and Found

Utopia always goes wrong; the best laid plans, etc. is truth as well as a cliché. Sometimes it takes generations. In Building Harlequin's Moon, a novel by Larry Niven and Brenda Cooper, the plan to build utopia goes off the rails right away for the John Glenn, a colony ship fleeing a Solar System filled with rogue AIs. They were supposed to come out at the planet Ymir side-by-side with another colony ship, ready to deploy nanotechnology to terraform Ymir into an ideal place to build a new Earth. Instead, their engines go out of kilter, delivering them to Harlequin.

Their only option is to assemble the material from Harlequin's rings into a moon, then wake the frozen colonists and lead them through terraforming the new moon, Selene. It will take generations of effort to re-create the supplies and fuel they need to go on to Ymir — which by this time, may be already terraformed by the crew and colonists from their sister ship.

It will mean centuries, even millennia, of effort. They must take care not to let the AI tools they have grow too intelligent, lest the same thing that happened on Earth occur in the Harlequin system. And there will not be room in the rebuilt ship for all the colonists on Selene when they are done.

How they balance the needs of the ship with the needs of the colony, the growing tension between the Earth-born ruling elite from the original ship's crew (who seem to live forever due to repeated freezings) and the Children of Selene (the short-lived colonists), and the dawning realization that Ymir might not be the last best hope for the human race after all, give this novel a strength that we haven't seen since Ringworld.

I had trouble getting into the novel; there is a confusion of flash-back and dreaming in the opening chapters that takes some deciphering. Once I had these sorted out in my mind, however, the remainder of the story was very engrossing. This is mostly due to strong characters — an Earth-born woman refuses to take take further restorative Sleep, Selene's Children are growing aware of the way way they are being short-changed by the ship's crew, and Gabriel, the leader of Earth-born and teacher of Selene Children, will have to make a drastic decision about the future of Selene itself.

It is also absorbing because of Niven's strength in describing future technology and cosmic-sized engineering works. We are there for the building of a planetoid from what is essentially space-dust; we come along while the assembled moon cools and is made habitable. This story is even more enjoyable because all the engineering is the works of Man — no aliens lurk in the corners of the narrative. The closest thing to them is the deliberately-crippled AI pilot of the John Glenn, Astronaut, a character strongly reminiscent of Heinlein's Mike in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

Larry Niven has a genuine talent for finding collaborative writers, and nurturing them with his other well-known talent: creating elaborate, but believable, technological cultures. With Brenda Cooper, he has written a worthy shelf-mate to Ringworld.
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To Cork or Not to Cork by George M. Taber

2008-01-29T08:03:00.000-08:00

The conflict has already become both emotional and vicious... Some... have turned into shills for one camp or the other, often making unsubstantiated and outrageous claims about their favorite products, while self-righteously condemning someone else's...
Friendships wither away when people can no longer carry on a civilized dialogue about something that in the large scope of things is pretty inconsequential.

George M. Taber has the knack of bringing his readers into the world of wine. He follows the brilliant Judgement of Paris, in which he chronicled an industry-shaking blind taste test in France that awarded top position to a California wine, with To Cork or Not To Cork (subtitled: "Tradition, Romance, Science, and the Battle for the Wine Bottle").

Anyone who has loving laid down a wine to age, postponing its enjoyment for years to allow it to mature in the bottle, only to be met with aromas of wet cardboard and mildew upon uncorking it, knows the problem. It's called "corked", that musty, unpleasant spoilage, and it utterly ruins the wine. As long as the incidence was low, it was a known but tolerated random risk with wine; vintners routinely replaced bottles that were found to be corked, and ate the loss. It was just part of doing business in the industry.

But as Taber details in this book, during the 1970s and '80s, the incidence of corking in wines grew alarmingly, even as the chemicals that caused it were finally identified. A sensitive palate could detect as little as 3 parts per trillion of 2,4,6-trichloroanisole (TCA), but wine cork shipments to the US were sometimes measured with ten or even a hundred times that amount of TCA.

New World winemakers suspected they were being sent the rejects of European wineries, although it may have been due to the long-term effects of Spanish Civil War and World War devastation of the cork forests in Spain and Portugal more than a deliberate strategy to short-change Western vintners. When corked wines began to seriously impact their bottom lines, however, wineries began looking for alternatives to cork.

The problem with substitutes, though, as Taber reveals, was that they ran smack up against tradition and perception. The experience of pulling a wine cork was a crucial part of the romantic experience of enjoying a good wine. And the early association of alternative closures with cheap jug wines and low-quality, inexpensive product made consumers reject wines that were not stopped with cork.

Besides that, wine-making is not a science; it is an art form supported by science, experience, and guess-work. Vintners hesitated to use cork substitutes without knowledge of how the cork contributed to the production of wine. When the lead time for a wine might be ten or more years, testing alternative wine-bottle closures meant taking an immense gamble on their product. All agreed that something had to be done, but what?

With careful history interspersed with "Message in a Bottle" anecdotes, Taber tells us what they did in New Zealand and Australia, in the wine country of California and Washington, in the vineyards of France and Germany, and in the cork forests of Spain and Portugal, to battle TCA and build great wines.

I read this one with cork drawn from a Pastori 2003 port, with T-top pulled from a creamy Obsborne Coquinero Sherry, and with screw-top removed from a luscious Lawson Dry Hills Late Harvest Reisling from New Zealand. All wonderful wines — I tasted with a new appreciation of the art of making wine, in which the "inconsequential" choice of a stopper could make such a difference in the end product.
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The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan

2008-01-28T07:38:00.000-08:00

Juvenile: 5th-9th Grade
Magical Adventure Series

The second book in the innovative series Percy Jackson and the Olympians finds many of the same heroes and villains from the first book, The Lightning Thief, back in danger from the monsters that seek out the sons and daughters of the Olympian gods.

For a change, Percy Jackson has nearly made it to the end of a school year without being expelled. The problem with going to school with non-heroes is that, due a phenomenon called "the Mist", they don't see the monsters that come after Percy — they only see the results: broken chairs and windows, burned school buildings, and bruised classmates. When the Laistrygonians, giant cannibal monsters, show up at Percy's laid-back school, the PE coach just sees the big kids taking on the little kids at dodgeball. If it wasn't for Percy giant (if a bit slow) friend Tyson, he would have been killed by the flaming brass cannon-balls tossed in that game.

Annabeth also shows up just in time to slay the last of the cannibals, but she's really come to tell Percy that Camp Half-Blood, the special summer retreat for the scions of Olympus, is under attack again. This time, the magical border that protects the camp is in danger because the tree of Thalia that gives it strength has been poisoned.

Even worse, Chiron is suspected of poisoning the tree, so he has been replaced by a nasty fellow named Tantalus. When Percy realizes that his friend Grover is in trouble, and rescuing him will also allow the tree to be healed, Tantalus awards the quest to Clarisse, the daughter of Ares, who is no friend of Percy's. Annabeth, Percy, and Tyson will need to leave the camp without permission if the quest is to succeed.

Once again, Riordan has crafted a winning story, full of action and witty dialogue. Percy is a nice kid without being a wimp or a wuss, and you want Percy and his friends to succeed, and their opponents to fail. A nice twist is introduced when Luke's father Hermes helps Percy as a way to help his son, even though Luke was hardly helpful to Percy in the first book.

The third book in the trilogy, The Titan's Curse, is out in paperback in April. Definitely worth watching for!
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Princess of Wands by John Ringo

2008-01-26T09:54:00.000-08:00

Trust a woman to get the job done.

John Ringo is known for his thrilling depiction of combat and the future weapons of war, and for the creation of steely-jawed heroes and loathsomely inhuman creatures born either to battle against humans, or fight at their sides. In Princess of Wands, however, Ringo takes a sidestep into the swamps of Louisiana to present a warrior of a different kind.

Barbara Everett is a sweet lady. A devout Christian, she believes it is her duty to stay at home, keeping the house clean and her family nourished in both the physical and the spiritual sense. Her hobby, though, is martial arts, and in her modest way, Barb has become a master at "all forms and all attacks". She's a good wife and Mom, but she's at the end of her rope with managing her children (and her husband's drinking problem). She's off to Louisiana for the weekend to find peace and sample Cajun food.

Detective Sergeant Kelly Lockhart is a skinny graying fellow trying desperately to find a clue in a vicious series of rape/murder crimes that police fear may be the actions of a cult. His hunt for a person of interest takes him to Madame Charlotte, a fortune-teller who warns him to find the "sign of the princess" if he wants to survive his search in Cajun country. One look at the too-small "Aloof Elven Princess" t-shirt stretched tight across Barbara's well-endowed figure, and Kelly suspects he's found his sign. Her familiarity with firearms and other arts of self-defense merely confirms his hunch.

Almadu is a demon. His latest attempt to break through to our world is the root cause of the case police call the Bayou Ripper. He's collecting the souls of those slain by his followers; three more and he wins the toaster. And humanity — especially Christians — is his idea of toast.

The intersection of these three deep in the bayous of Louisiana is simply the beginning of a roller-coaster ride of epic proportions. Before they are done, Kelly and Barbara will need to battle Almadu's cult members in the swamps and also in the halls of a resort hotel during a sci-fantasy convention. With the help of a Wiccan and several gaming, technical and hocus-pocus-style wizards, they will fight the good fight against the evil demon. And once they're done, Barb will really have to do something about her home life...

John Ringo's heroine is a winner, so I hope we see more of Barb and her partner Kelly Lockhart. I was impressed with the way he was able to keep Barb sweet and Christian without making her mushy or preachy, and how well she and Kelly worked together without becoming sexually involved. Well-done all around, and a joy to read!
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The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

2008-01-25T10:38:00.000-08:00

Juvenile: 5th-9th Grade
Magical Adventure Series

In this innovative series Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Rick Riordan has broken free of the Harry Potter chains, and given us a fresh hero in a brave old world of magical adventure. The first book in the series, The Lightning Thief, introduces Percy Jackson, a mouthy, dyslexic kid with a little problem: he's the son of Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea, and he's not supposed to exist. He's come to the attention of the gods on Olympus, and not in a good way.

To protect him from that danger, his mother sends him to a summer camp for other children of Greek mythology. A witty re-working of summer camp frolics has Percy vieing with the other "houses" at the camp, making alliances with Athena's daughter Annabeth, a satyr named Grover, and other scions of the Olympians. Before Percy can relax into this safe haven, however, they learn that the gods are at war, Percy's father is accused of stealing Zeus's lightning, and they need to go to Hades' domain to retrieve it.

The adventure quest is a staple of this genre, and Riordan has given us a good one. The underworld is entered through a record label's offices in LA, and the summer camp is on the Atlantic coast. When they finally get there, Percy and his friends must convince Hades that neither Percy nor his father is the lightning thief. If they fail, the gods will destroy the human race.

The action is fast-paced, other characters from Greek myth who appear in the novel are lightly drawn with a fun twist, and there are plenty of plot twists to delight the reader. The vocabulary is pitched to 6th-grade level, but for reading aloud, those Greek polysyllabic names will be a challenge even to older readers — Poseidon, Procrustes, Charon and Dionysus are a mouthful for many adults!

In a welter of Harry Potter imitators, this series is a welcome relief, but it shares with Rowling's series the appeal for both boys and girls, the sense of wonder and power in a good story, and the joy of reading as a magic all its own.
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All Tomorrow's Parties by William Gibson

2008-01-24T09:56:00.000-08:00

Tickets for the End of the World Now Available

Colin Laney may be dying in a cardboard shelter in Tokyo, but he sees what's coming: the end of the world as we know it. Laney has a talent for seeing the shape of things to come by recognizing patterns in the ebb and flow of information in the Web. But as Heisenberg noted, "the observer interacts with the observed through the process of observation." Laney may be starving and sick in a cardboard shelter in Tokyo, but his detachment from life isn't helping — there is a perturbation in the shape of what he sees, and it may mean someone else is now able to observe it. And him, as well.

In All Tomorrow's Parties, Gibson has given us visionary insights into how the information age shapes us and the world we inhabit. Pattern Recognition introduced that concept in a current-time setting, while we met Laney and several other characters who appear in this near-future novel, in Idoru and Virtual Light.

These are solid characters, and we recognize them easily by their actions and choices. Laney hides, and obsesses, due to the action of the drug that initiated his skills; Rydell yearns to be a cop as he dances from one low-level job to another; Chevette the one-time bike-messenger/thief moves restlessly from one interstice to another; Rei Toei the idoru lives her virtual life and conspires to make the leap to flesh and blood.

Their lives intersect one final time on the quake-damaged Bay Bridge. Suspended between San Francisco and Oakland, they hunt through the cobbled-together dwellings and lives of the bridge people for the one thing that will trigger the end of the world. Because Laney has foreseen an event coming, and after it nothing will be the same.

Gibson's prose distills the objective style of 30s noir and gives it new vigor with a futurist edge: "Rydell knew that killing was not the explosive handshake exchange of movies, but a terrible dark marriage..."

He uses words with precision and grace, crafting phrases, sentences and paragraphs of such evocative power that they haunt you for hours. "Formal absences of precious things" describes the empty pedestals in a jewelry-store window at night; it also introduces a man whose concealed knife is "a key to a door", and he "is by trade a keeper of the door to that country", Death. Laney calls his interface with the world "Suit", because his black salaryman's costume is maintained with paint; also "the man's ankles are painted, in imitation of black socks, with something resembling asphalt."

As with the novels that preceded it, All Tomorrow's Parties is a feast of life both real and virtual, and not to be missed.
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Crunchy Cheddar Jalapeño Cheetos from Frito Lay

2008-01-23T10:31:00.000-08:00

Diet Reward: Intense Flavor and High Satisfaction

Whether you're trying to reprogram your eating habits, or actively dieting, when that need to nosh hits between meals, you can safely fill the hole with a small handful of spicy, crunchy Cheetos snacks.

Not the "Flamin' Hot" variety, which seems to be aimed at achieving a burn regardless of flavor — what I recommend as a daily reward for following a healthy diet is several yellow curls from a bag of Cheetos Crunchy Cheddar Jalapeño snacks. These are spicy, savory, cheesy, and have that satisfying Cheetos crunch, with a mouth-filling flavor that sates the snack urge quickly.

You are left with the feeling (after five to ten medium-size curls) that you have cheated the diet demon, done something slightly sinful. Yet a serving of 21 pieces is only 170 calories, and the secret is: you don't need a full serving to quiet that yen for a treat!

The corn curls are touted as having 0 grams of trans-fat, the latest nutritional jargon for "actually good for you", although the nutitional table on the pack reveals that more than half the calories are from fats, and 17% are saturated fats. To compare a perfectly satisfying handful of 10 Jalapeño Cheetos curls with another popular snack, a 3-cookie serving of Oreos® provides nearly twice the total calories and a little more than the total fat (7g for Oreos vs. 6.5g for the Cheetos). And as AskMen.com points out, can you stop at three Oreos?

That, in a nutshell, is why I reward my good eating with a break from the diet pulled straight from the Jalapeño Cheetos bag. Can't find them? Try the Frito Lay Item Locator!
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Gifts by Ursula K. Le Guin

2008-01-22T08:25:00.000-08:00

Juvenile: 7th grade up

Some gifts are blessings. Some are burdens.

The people of the Uplands, whisper the lowlanders, are barbarians and witches. Still, their peculiar gifts are the substance of legends, and Emmon comes among them as a thief, bent on taking the wealth such gifts are sure to have procured. So he is baffled when the first Uplanders he encounters are blind Orrec and the gentle woman Gry. He does not believe them when they explain.

Le Guin has a powerful voice, most compelling when she whispers. That is how she begins Gifts, first novel in a new series, with a subtle, insidious whisper of power misused. For Orrec is not blind, he simply refuses to use the gift of his family, when fully Seeing a thing can mean its undoing. His is a wild gift, perhaps powerful, but uncontrolled.

Each line, or clan, in the Uplands has its gift, some of which descend through the male line, and some through the female. There is the twisting, the power to twist the form of one's enemy. One line is reputed to have the power of blinding, making deaf or dumb, another the ability to send a spellknife into an enemy's heart. The gifts of rein and broom let their lines take control of another's will, or whisk his brain clean of thought.

Orrec's father used his line's gift, the undoing, on the woods on the far side side of the border with Drummant, a ruthless, reiving clan. The gift of the Drummant causes living things to wither and die, and with his gift, Ogge of Drum has taken command of a large portion of the Uplands. The undoing promised by the blasted black stumps along their border fence has halted their advance for a long time, but now Ogge is making demands that Orrec's father hesitates to deny. The threat of power lurking behind Orrec's blindfold is all that holds him at bay.

Gry is Orrec's friend, perhaps his sweetheart, and she has also denied the gift that came with her maternal line. Her power is to call animals to her; her mother and ancestors have used it to call beasts to the hunt, bringing them to the slaughter. Gry refuses to do this, preferring to use her gift only in training horses, and dogs. Because she will not use her gift as her parents demand, they have sent her away from the Uplands, and she lives in poverty with Orrec and his father.

Why do the Uplanders have such hideous gifts, if not to battle with each other? From his darkness, Orrec must decide how to manage his gift. In her exile from her family, Gry must decide if her choice is the right one.

Le Guin's tale builds from one choice to another as these two voluntary rejects search for their purpose in the world. As with all her stories, compelling characters rise organically from the narrative. We want Orrec and Gry to make the right choices.

The young reader is guided by the story to see that the choices they make are not only the right ones for these two young Uplanders, but a better choice for all the Gifted.
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The Earth Moved by Amy Stewart

2008-01-21T22:07:00.000-08:00

On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms

Nearly thirty years ago in Long Beach, across the street from the office building where I worked was a gooey black-caked field where once had been stored oil-field equipment, used pipes and barrels, all dripping with remnants of oil and refinery waste. One day, there was this barren plain stretching eight square blocks; the next there were mounds of soil curtained with poly sheets to prevent runoff trenching. It was part of an experiment to see how soil remidiation could be performed with one simple ingredient: earthworms.

Today, there are new offices, houses, cafes and shops on that ground. The earthworms accomplished it all. No measurable trace of toxins or hydrocarbons remains, other that what would be expected in rich soil. I thought a lot about that transformation as I read Amy Stewart's The Earth Moved, a paean to the accomplishments of the lowly earthworm.

An organic gardener, Stewart describes the worms she keeps in a composting bin beside her back door as an opener to this journey through the lives and doings of worms. She has brilliant company on the way: Charles Darwin, who spent the last years of his life studying the way worms produce compost, Thoreau and e.e. cummings and even Friedrich Nietzsche. But it is the worms who have center stage, from the giant Oregon worm (which may be extinct — we simply can't dig fast enough to find out) to the microscopic nematode.

Stewart's passion for the topic is evident as she details the ways, beneficial and not, in which earthworms affect our planet. For example, the toxic remediation I witnessed in Long Beach is one of the promising accomplishments of worms. In digesting organic matter in the soil, worms can balance methane outgassing, eliminate toxins by combining them into less-harmful substances, and erect a chemical barrier against certain kinds of garden pests. They also encourage the growth of molds and the mycelia of fungi, which help the roots of plants take up nutrients from the coil.

On the other hand, non-native worms released in some areas can do great harm: the native hardwood forests in the Northeastern US, for example, are in danger from introduced earthworms. As the worms move in from surrounding lawns and golf courses, or are introduced as discarded live bait, the ground layer or "duff" in the forest changes. Animals and plants that require the buildup of this duff layer are driven out by the action of the worms.

Stewart makes it clear that there is still much to be learned from studying this humble life form that is capable of so much. The lively prose coupled with her passion for these remarkable creatures makes this a fascinating, funny and informative treat.
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The Green Trap, by Ben Bova

2008-01-21T11:13:00.000-08:00

"These little critters take in water and carbon dioxide and give off oxygen. That's how the oxygen we breathe got into the atmosphere."
...Cochrane stared at the stromatolites, going about their business of life as they had been for almost four billion years. The only sound in the greenhouse was the gurgling of the water washing over the rounded pebbles and slightly larger rocks. It was hot inside the glass walls. Cochrane took off his jacket, pulled his tie loose.
And asked himself, Mike got himself killed over these microbes? There's got to be more to it than this.

Green. It can connote money, or the politics of ecology, or naïveté. Or it can mean simply the color of photosynthesis, from microscopic algae to the leaves high in the redwood.

In Ben Bova's thriller, The Green Trap, it means all four, wound together in a twisted, jinking braid that begins with the murder of a microbiological researcher named Michael Cochrane. Cochrane's brother Paul, an astrophysicist and a loner since the death of his wife several years before, is thrown without warning into a world of sexual and political intrigue.

Cochrane's initial goal is to find out who murdered his brother. But as he learns more about his brother's research into cyanobacteria, his purpose shifts gradually. Michael Cochrane's discovery could mean the end of dependence on foreign oil, the end of burning hydrocarbons for fuel — and the end of sky-high profits for Gould Energy Corporation and its competitors. Lionel Gould, the hard-driven principal of Gould Energy, is determined that he will control the new fuel source.

Gould certainly is behind the sinister Kensington, who may have murdered Paul Cochrane. There are other players: Elena Sandoval, a siren who has attached herself to Paul's search; Mitsuo Arashi, who may be competition for Sandoval; Zelinkshah Samil, a UNESCO official from Chechnya who has been pumping funds into Michael Cochrane's research. Paul Cochrane must decide who to trust as he makes his way through the maze of competing claims and offers.

Bova's novel plays heavily on green (as in political) theories of man-made global warming and drags in the old shibboleth of the cheap fuel suppressed by greedy oil barons. Even so, the story resonates; hydrocarbons are not a renewable resource, so they will run out some day, and current methods of producing a truly green fuel like hydrogen involve releasing even more carbon load into the atmosphere than direct burning of gasoline, diesel or ethanol fuels. The cyanobacteria Ben Bova posits offer a possible escape from the green trap our industrial society has walked into.

Once again, Bova has written an intriguing mix of politics, near-future science, and thrilling action. To quote Lionel Gould, "It's very good."
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Wine & War by Don & Petie Kladstrup

2008-01-20T08:46:00.000-08:00

The French, the Nazis, & the Battle for France's Greatest Treasure

The usual history of the French Resistance in World War II focuses on urban battlegrounds, with underground strategists meeting in cafes and cellars beneath Parisian landmarks. But outside the city, in Champagne, Burgundy, Vichy, Armagnac and Cognac, an equally fierce resistance was waged by the vintners of France.

In Wine & War, Don and Petie Kladstrup reveal the German plan to plunder the bottled treasure of the vineyards of France, and the determined struggle by the French in vineyard, winery, negociant and wine cellar to protect their wares. Why would they do so? The Kladstrups make it clear that to the French winemaker, their wines are more than product; they are family and regional history, cultural icons, and the heart of the French way of life.

It began with the fall of the Maginot Line on the north-eastern border of France. Wine-makers in the Champagne region relate seeing soldiers from the line fleeing through the vineyards because the roads were crowded with refugees from northern France who carried their worldly goods on their backs. As they fled, soldiers discarded their arms in among the vines — even today, rusting rifles are found when vineyards are plowed up.

When the fleeing French soldiers were followed by the German army of occupation, a two-fold battle began: protect the fine vintages of France, and sell the German the poorer qualities as rare old wines. In the Chateau Laudenne, the cellar acquired a new back wall that was carefully festooned with spiderwebs brought from all over the vineyard. Behind that wall, the Chateau's famous wines rested safe from the German troops. Meanwhile, ancient dust gathered from carpets cleaned at a certain company was bagged and distributed to restaurants. They would dredge this dust over the shoulders of a raw new bottle, then sell it to the unsuspecting Germans as aged and valuable wine.

In the Hugel vineyards in Alsace, the 1939 vintage was "disastrous." The weather that year did not cooperate, and the grapes did not develop in sugar. Wine making has such seasons, and the Hugels simply barreled the puny wine and stored it away. When their vineyards were occupied, the German army requisitioned wine by the barrel for the Russian front. "They never specified the vintage," Andre Hugel related. "So whenever we filled these requisitions, it was always the '39 we shipped."

From the weinfuhrers to the Champagne Campaign of liberation, this book is a trove of tales of how surrendered France fought the German occupiers with wit, wiles and bad wine. Lay in a good Burgundy, light a fire, and sit back to enjoy the rich adventure of Wine & War.
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Roomba: Not Your Mother's Vacuum Cleaner

2008-01-19T15:56:00.000-08:00

Robert A. Heinlein Scores Again!

In his classic time-travel novel, The Door Into Summer, Robert Heinlein's engineer protagonist Daniel Boone Davis invents a mechanical cleaning robot — not a humanoid device that dusts and pushes the vacuum cleaner, but a smaller gadget that runs around the floor looking for dirt, picking it up and returning to its charging station when it is full or it runs out of juice.

The device is promising enough that his scheming girlfriend and unscrupulous partner conspire to trick him into taking the "long sleep"; they freeze him and send him into the future. The rest is grist for a wonderful story.

But what happened to the wonderful cleaning robot? Other conceptual gimmicks (waterbeds, ATMs, manufacturing robots) from Heinlein's fiction have become reality. Where is the floor-cleaning wizardry we were promised?

iRobot has it — when I first started looking at the Roomba, and its partner mopping machine, that Scooba, I wondered if the patents had the name D.B. Davis on them. Here it was, that all-around time saver of a semi-intelligent vacuum cleaner. The Roomba Red is the basic version. At the push of a button (and a bleeping Tally Ho!), it starts out on a drunkard's walk around the room, flicking and sucking dust, pet hair, crumbs, etc. into a small cannister. A sensor looks for concentrations of dirt; when it encounters them, it switches into a spiraling pattern designed to focus on the dirty area. Another sensor backs it away from the brink of stairs.

Yep, you can turn it on and walk away. It will clean as long as its battery has power, and there is still room in the cannister for dirt. Unless it gets stuck. Or high-centered on something. Or plugged with something it can neither suck in nor disgorge. Even then, it has a plaintive little beeping song that tells you your Roomba has problems its chip can't solve.

Rather than walk away, I like to watch the little sucker work. It rolls easily up over non-fringed carpet edges, and has a back-and-turn trick to deal with the problem when a carpet edge gets sucked into the brushes. It bounces off of obstacles, then stubbornly returns just a touch to the left or right to see if it can get past. The circling movements when it runs into the out-trackings of the cat's litter box, and the sometimes-panicked, sometimes-stalking behavior of my cats, are fascinating.

When it can't complete its task because its bin is full, the Roomba halts wherever it is and plays a sad little "Oh, no!" melody. And its triumph when it returns to its charging station, finished for the day, is evident in the "Ta-dah!" it bleeps into the room.

Oh, you still have to pick up the bigger stuff before you set the Roomba loose — in my case, cat toys, books, and the occasional sock. I still have to hand-brush the fringed carpets; the Roomba just tries too hard to suck up that fringe. And although the Roomba Red has to be started manually, there are advanced versions that start on a timer, and they all run from hardwood to carpet, sweeping as they go. (For wet-washing floors, you want the mopping robot, Scooba.)

So Heinlein can put his feet up on a cloud, and chalk another one up on his predictive scoreboard. I'll just put my feet up down here, and watch my Roomba clean.
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Trouble Magnet by Alan Dean Foster

2008-01-18T10:00:00.000-08:00

Pip & Flinx Walk on the Dark Side

One of Alan Dean Foster's abiding creations is the telepathic orphan Flinx and his Alaspin mini-drag pal, Pip. In Trouble Magnet, Flinx continues the search he began in Running from the Diety, looking for a Tar-Aiym weapon powerful enough to defeat the dark forces headed for the Humanx Commonwealth from the depths of space.

Don't worry if the foregoing doesn't explain anything — it just means you haven't encountered this redoubtable pair before, but you don't need any prior knowledge to enjoy this novel. Suffice to say that Flinx has the power to read minds, and his flying pet has the power to kill those who threaten him.

Flinx is depressed, and wondering why he should sacrifice his time and efforts to save a society he can barely tolerate, when he could be sipping Margeritas beside the pool with his girl-friend, somewhat like a Marine musing why he is watching for IEDs in Baghdad instead of Wii Bowling back home in his parent's basement.

He diverts his journey to visit Las Vegas — sorry, make that the planet Visaria, another known sinkhole of depravity — to see if he can find a spark of human decency to persuade him that humanity is worth the effort. He's obviously loading the dice by choosing this particular place for his search (although Foster belabors the point again and again in case the reader missed it.) What he finds is a teenage thug named Subar engaged in a struggle with a pair of thranx, and a lively mystery. Why did the rescuing officers shoot at all of them, not waiting to discover who was assailant and who was victim?

Led to aid Subar in his escape by a hint of familiar motives and patterns of thought, Flinx sees a reflection of the young thief he was as he grew up. Will Subar provide the motivation for Flinx to continue his quest to save society? Or perhaps he is just another diversion that Flinx has seized upon, in his desire not to continue.

As Flinx is drawn deeper into the doings of Subar's gang, he learns something that further derails his determination to find the weapon that will save Humanx society: a hint of who is father is, and where to find him. Judging by the title of the next Pip & Flinx adventure, Patrimony, I guess the Commonwealth will be waiting a bit longer for the Tar-Aiym super-weapon.

As with all Foster's Pip & Flinx novels, this is a light, enjoyable read, nothing too demanding. You can even enjoy a Margerita by the pool as you read.
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1945 by Robert Conroy

2008-01-17T12:47:00.000-08:00

Alternate History:
What if Japan Hadn't Surrendered in 1945?

Generations of military theorists have argued that the US did not need to drop atomic bombs in Japan; that the home islands were already destroyed by the American firebombs, and that their government was ready to sign the Potsdam Accords and surrender before the horrific devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Few outside the halls of academe are aware that Japan trembled on the brink of rejecting the unconditional surrender. Robert Conroy brings this alternate fate to chilling reality in 1945; subtitled: "What if Japan hadn't surrendered in World War II?"

Conroy is the master of the single-player scenario, and 1945 flips the decision of Japan's Defense Minister General Korechika Anami to set the scene. Anami refused to support a military coup when Emperor Hirohito decided to accept the Potsdam Declaration and surrender. Without his support, the coup crumbled, and Japan surrendered. What if Anami had supported the coup instead? With this question, Conroy sets the story of the prosecution of Operation Downfall, the planned invasion of Japan to end World War II.

The details of battle and suicidal attacks by ill-armed and armored Japanese are obviously based on real historical action in the invasion of the Philippines. Conroy puts a paranoid General MacArthur in charge of the invasion, even as politicians back in the States plan for the eventual substitution of General Omar Bradley. Grand sweeps of men and materiel movement precede the inch-by-inch occupation of the southern island of Kyushu.

But to bring the story home, Conroy introduces individuals: Joe Nomura, the one-armed Nissei veteran of Italian combat, dropped behind the lines on Kyushu; Lt. Paul Morrell, who arrived in Europe too late to qualify to go home after VE Day, and now is headed for Japan; Dennis Chambers, an American POW in Nagasaki who got lucky and was in an underground cellar when the bomb fell, and then got lucky again and encountered a one-armed Japanese (Joe). He also uses a host of historical combatants: Anami, Hirohito, and sub commander Mochitsuro Hashimoto; MacArthur, Truman, and Bradley. The historical characters behave in ways consistent with their known philosophies and recorded deeds.

You do not have to be well-read in history to enjoy this novel, though — it is the fictional characters whose might-have-been lives are absorbing. The switches and turns of action are thrilling in the way any good combat yarn will be; you hang on the narrative to find out what happens next. Will Joe or Dennis be captured? Will Paul succeed in Japan as he did not in Europe? Will the mounting anti-war movement in America halt the advance of the front in Japan, or will the kamikazes succeed in halting it instead?

Engrossing and intellectually stimulating it certainly is. 1945 provides a marvelous view of a history that might have happened — if we hadn't all been extremely lucky.
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Dennett's Dangerous Idea: Breaking the Spell

2008-01-16T09:59:00.000-08:00

Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

Philosophers have a natural interest in the nature of how we decide what we will hold as true or real (epistemology). Yet a major group of theories, of "known things", are held to be exempt from such inquiry. These are the religious beliefs — not religions alone, but all those concepts which are protected from rational inquiry.

In Breaking the Spell, Daniel Dennett has chosen to negate the protective charm that prevents such rational investigation. With careful steps, he hopes not to destroy the belief itself, but to shed light on why we believe.

He looks at formal religions and spiritualism alike; examines hauntings and UFOs, cults and cloisters; lays bare the foundations of jihad and jingoism.

This is not dry philosophy either — Dennett's approach is enjoyable and witty, even titillating. (If there is a "belief gene", could its success be attributable to the need for the male to promote sexual arousal in the female?) His careful explanation of intentional objects, our conception of God as a causative agent, as a combination of what we have already encountered (Father/Teacher/Judge) with a partially-understood effect (good or bad fortunes, weather, etc.), is introduced gradually so that the reader can put down the treatise at any time his belief is threatened.

Along the way, if you stay the course, you are also introduced to others who have dared this inquiry, and exposed to the musings of artists and authors, politicians and playwrights, scholars and scoundrels who have challenged belief — or used it as a tool.

And if in the end, the spell is broken for your particular belief, it will not be without support from Dennett. The final chapter, Now What Do We Do?, reveals that he has turned that searchlight on his own philosophy. There should not be a belief that is exempt from rational examination. That is a spell that Dennett has broken.
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All in the Family: The House of the Scorpion

2008-01-15T04:26:00.000-08:00

High-school concepts, 8th-grade vocabulary

How does the practice of cloning impact those who practice it? In Nancy Farmer's well-written exploration, The House of the Scorpion, Matt is the clone of a rich landlord. In this society, cloning for spare parts and life extension is a common practice for those who can afford it. Most clones are effectively lobotomized in infancy, and are never aware of their fate, but El Patron Matteo Alacran, Matt's owner/father, has chosen to leave Matt's intellect intact.

So on one level, this is the story of a young man coming of age as a commodity. Matt deals with the shifts and changes in his status, never quite a sibling in the wealthy household of El Patron, but not a servant either; neither a son nor quite a slave. Matt struggles against his destiny with the aid of servants, and eventually escapes the fortress-farm where he grew up.

Does he find freedom? He finds an orphanage where, despite beatings and tyranny of a very familiar kind, he puts to use what he was taught by El Patron. And what he learns there challenges the concept of escaping one's destiny.

On another level, the story deals with the way that using humans as commodities always corrupts the user. It is not only Matt who is used by his father. El Patron deals with his serf-like farmers as if they were slaves; he has literal powers of life and death over them, his family, and Matt. The orphans are used by those who "rescued" them, and in the end, for both El Patron and his mimics at the orphanage, their corruption enables Matt's triumph.

This novel is far more powerful than Nancy Farmer's previous Newberry award-winner, The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm, yet it is equally enjoyable. Boys looking for an exciting story with plenty of thought-provoking action will not be disappointed.
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90 Seconds to Satisfaction: Hormel Compleats

2008-01-14T10:53:00.000-08:00

Hormel Conquers Lunch!

Their commercial gives the rationale: five minutes for lunch in a busy office, and pandemonium. Calmly, our heroine draws a single-serving pack from the stash in her desk, and 90 seconds later, she is eating a tasty entree, while her colleagues battle over stale peanuts from the vending machine.

Hormel Compleats are that astonishing commodity: a product that exceeds the hype of its advertising. Best, in my opinion, are the meals with mashed potatoes or dressing as the starch. The Beef Tips and Mashed Potatoes is a perfect size for a half-hour lunch, with rich gravy, tender meat, and the right amount of whipped potato to exactly match the gravy. Yum!

The Chicken Breast or Turkey with Dressing is also savory, and perfectly portioned. A crunchy vegetable addition (water chestnuts?) to the dressing gives it a wonderful texture and satisfying "tooth".

I also tried the pasta and rice products — it was tasty, but not as nice as the potato or dressing varieties. The chicken gravy in Chicken and Rice was too salty for my palate, for example, and the pasta in the Spaghetti and Meat Sauce was a bit mushy, while the sauce was closer to catsup than Bolognese.

Hormel also produces its signature Dinty Moore Beef Stew in the same 90-second pack, and it is just as tasty and satisfying as the canned version. What is next? Perhaps the iconic Spam will appear as a 90-second treat. Cue the Vikings...
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Father's Day Shopping List

2006-06-14T18:52:00.000-07:00

June 18th, 2006 — NEXT SUNDAY

What does Dad want for his day? You could always ask, but then you run the risk of the casual demurral, "I just want a nice quiet day at home with the family — you don't have to buy me anything." You know he deserves more than that, and you'd love to surprize him with the perfect gift.

So I asked some fellows who are the same general age as my own father what they would like to see inside the Father's Day gift wrap. Their answers may (or may not) surprise you.

TECH TOYS: Might Dad like an iPod? Or how about a sleek Razr cell phone, or a Blackberry?

According to my friend Ted, a retired USN commander with a collection of hi-tech gear in his own study, Dad generally doesn't want to hand anyone in the family a better way to reach out and touch him. If he leaves his current brick-sized cell phone in a drawer at home, don't assume it's because it's too heavy. He may just want the option to be "out of reach" for part of each day.

As for the iPod, guys in my Dad's generation who have a penchant for music usually still have a vinyl collection and a working stereo phonograph system, often one they built themselves when hi-fi was young and required an engineer's certificate to operate. They're not likely to switch to MP3, even if there were somewhere to download the complete collection of the greatest hits of Nelson Riddle or Johnny Puleo and His Harmonica Gang.

Buy him a car navigation system, Ted advises. There are some pretty good deals going on Garman Street Pilots. With this, Dad will never have to stop and ask directions, ever again. Not that he ever did, anyway.

FROM THE BOOKSHELF: Books are safe for a bookish parent. Chances are, you think you know your Pop's taste in reading material: World War II or Civil War history, maybe, or a coffee-table book of early-19th-century hand-tools.

"Good grief!" was the reaction of my ex-SeaBee neighbor, Colin, whose bedroom walls are lined with bookshelves. "When I open a book, I want a real story." No coffee-table stuff, Colin recommends; that's more appealing to an interior-decorator type. (Colin's wife is an interior designer.)

He recommends something moving, like James Bradley's Flags of our Fathers or Wisdom of Our Fathers by Tim Russert. These are books that celebrate the fathers in my father's generation, both war heroes and the ordinary, everyday men who fed their familes, kept the roof over their heads, and lead them to be better men and women by their sterling example.

If you need fiction to round off the bookshelf, try a classic Clancy like Patriot Games or a stirring Nevil Shute novel like Trustee from the Toolroom .

DVD DELIGHT: I called Andy, a long-time friend who lives (and still works at age 72) in Hollywood for his suggestions for Father's Day movies. Should I get Dad a circa-1950 Oscar winner? Or would something more contemporary suit better?

Andy has his own peculiar preferences in film; he has a copy of every movie that features a major character in clown-face, from Killer Klowns from Outer Space to The Family Jewels, and onward into nuttier realms. But his suggestion for your Dad's day? Icon sports movies, or something with John Wayne.

You know the ones. Field of Dreams. The Natural. Victory. And for that other icon, the Duke: The Quiet American. Hellfighters. Donovan's Reef. No musicals. No "chick flicks." Just solid stuff that Dad will want to watch.

SPORTS GEAR: Finally, I asked Greggo, an interesting grizzled fellow we fell into chat with at a local bar last Sunday, what he would like if his kids were to buy him sports gear for Father's Day. Greggo (the only name he would give us) has eight sons, all active or retired Marines. We were impressed by this feat of paternal child-rearing, and asked if he was himself a jar-head. "Nah," he told us. "I taught PE and math at a Washington State high school while they were growing up."

So, should we give Dad a golf club or a pair of skis for his Day? Greggo suggests that if your Dad is into a sport enough to appreciate the gear, he's probably already got a well-worn whatever that he loves. And if he isn't, he may see such a gift as an unsubtle hint that he needs more exercise, or better gear to compensate for poor skill.

"Give him a beer mug with a sport-related theme," he said, lifting his own stein. "Or a really nice pair of gloves." Besides, you never know when possessing a "Richmond RiverDogs Logo Mug Collectible Officially Licensed Hockey Team Gift Accessory Merchandise" (huh?) will elevate Dad into the elite of the country-club set.

Or you can fall back on the time-honored tradition: give him a tie and let him watch whatever's on TV all day without a single kid's spat, spouse's "honey-do" request, or grandchild's "why did Mommy leave me with you?" wail. And maybe that's what Dad meant by his request for a quiet day at home.

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Hit & Run June 14th: Noshing on the Legal Cowpie

2006-06-14T18:36:00.000-07:00

Pardon My French: In Montreal, take care to swear in English (or Finnish, Swahili or Urdu). It's against the law to swear in French.

Don't spit on the streets, either, which is also illegal. And if you spot a Sasquatch in British Columbia, leave the poor beast alone — Sasquatch is a protected species in B.C.

Massachusetts Freak Flags: In this state, it is against the law for men to have their hair dyed or washed in a hair salon. Students at Harvard who grow their hair long are breaking an ancient law that forbids men to have long hair on campus.

In Nebraska, on the other hand, a mother cannot legally give her daughter a home perm without a license. I wonder if she can give her Harvard-bound Cornhusker son a permanent wave?

Moot Court When a streaker dashing across the soccer pitch during a match was tackled by the home team goalie, the goalie — not the streaker, the goalie — was ejected from the game. According to one official, the goalie should not have taken the law into his own hands.

The goalie is a cop, and technically was not wholly off-duty even while playing; he argued that he had a clear duty to end the streaker's exhibition. The officials were not swayed. His expulsion was upheld, his team was then short-sided, and they lost the match.

0740738054,0836217373,0740753029

The Rest of the Story: Hoodwinked on DVD

2006-06-11T16:20:00.000-07:00

At Least TWO Sides to Every Story...

In the woods, something sinister creeps. If it isn't the wolf (and he claims it is not), who is stealing the recipes and putting all the goodie-makers out of business? The Muffin Man has closed up shop, Peter Rabbit and his family are moving on, and Red Riding Hood is worried.

This cute movie is a worthwhile take on the Red Riding Hood myth, examining the "scene of the crime" at Grandma's house with all the panoply of police, CSI and a Nick Charles-like private eye with a talent for getting to the bottom of all the alibis. First there's Red herself, the wide-eyed innocent (voiced by Anne Hathaway). Or is she innocent? In a forest terrified by the serial cereal bandit, where no one's cookies are safe, is it naivete that leads her into the woods — or cunning?

Then there's the wolf (voice of Patrick Warburton, square-jawed as The Tick and The Emperor's New Groove Kronk). Is he really slinking around the woods, slavering over Red's goodies and her Grandma's dry thighs? He makes a pretty solid case for himself as a crime reporter, suspicious of Grannie and her delivery-girl, Red, just trying to get the story. When he's accused of the crime, he is quick to demur, "Ah, the wolf did it. Talk about profiling."

In the original story, the woodsman is almost an afterthought. In this tale, he is a fully-realized suspect, arriving in shards of glass, screaming and flailing his axe just in time to rescue Red from the wolf's threat to "take out you and your Grannie too!" Jim Belushi's voice is bland, Austrian and western by turns as the hapless lederhosen-clad actor tries to find his "inner woodsman" while he practices for an audition. His skipping commercial for schnitzel-on-a-stick is worth the price of the DVD all by itself.

The final party in the lineup is Grandma herself (Glenn Close's voice). She has been acting suspiciously, hiding from Red and leaving her precious family recipe book in Red's cabin. And why does she have a tattoo on the back of her neck?

In this tale, the police are (you should pardon me) pigs, and the Chief (a bear, voice of Xhibit) has to watch them lest they gobble the evidence. A singing goat is another high point, a sort of running gag through the second half of the film. David Ogden Stiers gives voice to Nicky Flippers, the private eye, but there isn't a hint of Major Winchester or even Cogsworth about this dapper frog.

This film came out last year, but there must have been something in the Hollywood air about hyper-active squirrels and caffiene. Cory Edwards at double-speed is the voice of Twitchy, the wolf's assistant, in a turn reprised this year by Steve Carell as Hammy in Over the Hedge.

Now that this DVD is out in the grocery stores, it's available at under $10, and it's great summer fun at that price, too. Make some muffins, bake some cookies, put some schnitzel on a stick, and enjoy it together. It's delicious!

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Hit & Run June 7th: Chowing Down on the Legal Cowpie

2006-06-07T17:28:00.000-07:00

Close Your Eyes, Children!: In Jakarta, Indonesia, an anti-pornography law makes "passionate kissing" in public a crime punishable by a sentence of up to five years in jail. The law defines "kissing on the mouth" as equally reprehensible as public nudity, erotic dancing, and lingerie parties.

Those who witness such acts are also deemed guilty, and can wind up in jail for watching.

Jumbo Parking Fines: There is a traffic law in Orlando, Florida, that requires anyone who leaves an elephant at a parking meter to deposit coins. Elephants are treated "the same as cars" in that city.

Moot Court A motorcyclist was injured as he ran a roadblock during a high-speed chase. He successfully sued the city, claiming the roadblock was improperly set up. The trial jury awarded him $60,000.

The city attorney appealed the decision and won a new trial. The biker didn't get $60K at the second trial — he was awarded $1.5 million instead!
0740738054,0836217373,0740753029

Escape from the Dark: The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau

2006-06-05T20:35:00.000-07:00

4th GR: CHALLENGE — 7th GR: FUN

The City of Ember is a rule-bound place, where all the lights go out at 9 each night, everyone rises early for breakfast, and careful recycling is a way of life. Lately, though, the lights have begun flickering. Supplies are shorter each year, and some foods are no longer available.

Until their twelfth year, the children of the City of Ember go to school. But at the end of that year, they are assigned the jobs they will do for years after, perhaps to the end of their lives. Lina yearns to be a Messenger, running free in the streets, learning the secrets of the city. Doon wants desperately to be an electrician's assistant or a pipeworker, because he dreams of fixing the ancient, failing generators of the city.

When each receives the assignment the other wants, they switch jobs, and begin a conspiracy that will not end until they learn how to save the entire city. Along the way, they solve an ancient puzzle, defeat the greed and subterfuge of the Mayor and his minions, and discover a much wider world than either had ever dreamed existed.

When I read children's literature, I look for more than a tale well told. Juvenile science fiction is not hard to come by, especially today in the age of Harry Potter. But fiction which lauds heroism (particularly the kind of courage which every child will have an opportunity to demonstrate), extolls the value of friendship, and shows when adult precepts and rules are worthwhile, and how to tell when they are not — that is uncommon. (Those qualities form the foundation of the Harry Potter stories, too, and explain the widespread appeal of the boy wizard and his friends.)

The City of Ember has that same appeal. Doon and Lina are courageous; they do things children would do, yet also show judgement, persistence and intelligence. These are kids who love their parents, and still see that they must take extraordinary steps outside the regimented life they have led. In the end, they do save their city, and if they do not battle great evil, they do encounter and overcome the kind of petty nastiness that is far more common in the world.

Thos book works best in tandem with its sequel, The People of Sparks. Together, they are an interesting story — even for an adult. I recommend it highly for boys and girls who want something better than comic-book heroes and video-game battles.

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The Secret Life of Dust by Hannah Holmes

2006-06-02T22:55:00.000-07:00

TERRIFYING AND INTRIGUING

Dust is all-pervasive in our lives. It permeates our atmosphere and even fills the void between stars. Hannah Holmes has breathed life into this dusty topic, in a narrative that is by turns terrifying and fascinating.

Holmes' dust is not the motes you see floating in a beam of sunlight, but invisibly tiny flecks of dead and once-living stuff. The author wraps the dusty path of everything in these well-written essays: Build stars from it. Water earth and entomb dinosaurs with it. Start and end ice ages in its flight. Share it worldwide. Kill each other and ourselves with it. Nourish tiny grazers and predators — and the Amazon Basin, and the entire world of grain eaters — on it. Smoke it, eat it, drink it, breathe it, and wear a thin sheath of it all our lives. Return to it at life's end.

It is fitting that this tale of dust begins with the birth of the universe, our sun and the Earth; and ends with death, our own transition to dust, and that of our solar system and of the universe. Holmes makes a good case for the triumph of dust.

She also accuses it of all sorts of villainy. Dust is implicated in the creation of a field of amazing dinosaur fossils in China's Gobi Desert. The Fighting Dinosaurs were buried so quickly and completely that they retain their battle-stance. Big Mama was interred as she hunkered over her nest of eggs. The best theory is that all these animals were overtaken in the midst of their everyday activities by a massive dry mud-slide as a dune of dusty loess soil suddenly collapsed over them.

Dust is the root cause of plenty of human misery, as well, from black lung and mesothelioma to asthma and heart disease. Airborne dust has been lofting off the Earth's surface long before there were animals, including humans, around to breathe it in. In fact, humans have evolved to be highly efficient at ridding our bodies of most kinds of dust particles. Eventually, however, the "mucus elevator" fails, and we drown in the dust we've inhaled.

From the personal fight against dust, to the global, Holmes points out that increased clouds of dust may have resulted from the cool air and entrapped water of the Ice Ages, and that dust may then have brought about the death of the glaciers. Iron-rich dust promotes blooms of carbon-dioxide-spewing phytoplankton (warming), and dust is required to create reflective cloud masses (cooling). She quotes Columbia University's Pierre Biscayne, who works to identify the ancient sources of dust trapped in ice cores from Greenland and Antartica. "The climate modelers know dust is important, but it's the least well-known parameter in the Earth's thermal balance. Right now, they don't even know its sign."

This is not a book for the squeamish. If you have not been able to eat sausage since the time you read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, you may now find the idea of taking deep breaths of sea or woodland air horrifying. Reading this may kindle a desire to remove the carpets, toss your candles in the trash, and convert your fireplace into a cold, clean bed for your pets. You might even hesitate before taking a book down from a dusty shelf.

I recommend reading this excellent book right away, before it gathers dust.
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Movie Review: Over the Hedge

2006-06-01T20:56:00.000-07:00

GREAT FAMILY FUN

Over the Hedge is a delightful animated film that offers nothing but pleasure to its audience. Expect no deep insights, no religious conflicts, and no intense discussion of implications to ensue from its viewing. What it does promise (and amply deliver) is the kind of movie enjoyment we always used to get from cartoons. With sly references and broad slap-stick, this script has something to offer every member of the family.

RJ (voiced by Bruce Willis) is a snack-addicted raccoon whose greed leads him to make the wrong choice as he burgles a hibernating bear (voice of Nick Nolte). He wakes the bear, then his effort to finesse his theft fails and he is given a one-week deadline: replace the stolen junk food or die.

As he shuffles through the woods, RJ stumbles across a cooperative group of foragers lead by genial turtle Verne (Garry Shandling's voice). Instantly, he hatches a plot to dupe the group into invading sububia, just over the hedge, and helping him gather the wherewithal to placate the bear. Verne is fearful and dubious of the value to his foraging family, but RJ overcomes these fears with a single blast of cheesy powder from a nacho-chips bag.

Immediately, the other animals in the group are hooked. Hammy the squirrel (perfectly voiced by Steve Carell), with wistful hope, carves a Dorito-shaped chunk of bark and dusts it with yellow pollen from a passing bee, trying to recreate that glorious cheesy rush. He also develops a serious jones for cookies, which RJ uses in his plan to replace the bear's little red wagon. Girl Scouts, wheeling their wares around the neighborhood, are panicked by the "rabid" Hammy, jaws flecked with whipped cream, threatening, "I am a crazy rabbit-squirrel! I want my cookies!"

The rest of the story is the tale of how these animals conquer suburbia, the evil HOA queen Gladys and the demented "Verminator" Dwayne (voiced by Thomas Haden Church), and the selfish plans of RJ. Oh yes, and the bear.

The central roles of RJ and Verne have been through several changes as the film moved from its comic-strip conception to the screen. Originally, Bill Murray and Harold Ramis were to voice RJ and Verne. Then Jim Carrey was slotted for the RJ role, but was replaced by Bruce Willis. The gentle good will and manic humor of the script, however, would make this movie funny even if the main voices were total unknowns. But recognizing voices is part of the fun. Around us in the theater we could hear the comments, "That's Eugene Levy!" "That's Catherine O'Hara." "That's Wanda Sykes."

And if you have an over-the-top ham-actor possum who needs to play dead in a drawn-out diversion, who could possibly be better to voice him than the original emoter, William Shatner? No simple roll over and play dead for this possum. Shatner's Ozzie keels over in a swoon that would do a Victorian damsel proud, clutching his heart, and delivering his lines with that classic Captain Kirk sputter: "Mother, is that... you? Beckoning me... into the light? Must... move... toward... the light!"

There are ample wry jokes for the adults to catch as they whiz over the heads of the youngsters, too. At one point, the love-smitten tomcat Tiger (Omid Djalili) carefully explains that truly well-bred Persians have no noses, hence no sense of smell. That's good, since Wanda Sykes' sultry skunk Stella has been painted black with charcoal and, assisted with a strategically placed cork, sent off to seduce the cat away from his cat-door. When she decamps back through the hedge, the heart-broken tom cries after her. "Stella-ah!"

No, it's not deeply philosophical. Instead, Over the Hedge is witty and wild and cheesy and sly, like the animals themselves.

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Do You Really Need that Light On?

2006-05-31T19:16:00.000-07:00

My father was an environmental visionary. (Who knew?) As evidence, I cite the numerous occasions when he railed at us to turn out the lights when we left a room, scoffed when we asked for a ride to the local swimming pool, and challenged us as we sat reading beside a sunlight window, "do you really need that light on?"

I was reminded of this voice from the past as I listened today to a friend describe the efforts she and her husband need to stay within the energy budget imposed by their generator, the sole power source for their rural retirement home. They choose this power supply as a "green" statement. In a greener-than-thou region of California, they decided not to have PG&E run power lines over hill and dale to their house.

Instead, they ruthlessly hunt and eliminate every power drain. Microwave and coffee-maker are on power-strips so they can be switched off except when in use; the clock on the front panel draws a trickle. Likewise the VCR and TV: microvolts vanish into the circuitry as these appliances retain their settings.

Clocks are wind-type, not electric. They have no air-conditioning unit; for a breeze, they open windows on either side of the house. No vacuum cleaner, either. A Huffy broom scoops dust from the floors and whisks cat hairs from the area rugs. No electric blankets for this couple! Carol drops an extra quilt on the bed if the temperature drops at night.

Still, Carol's husband follows her around the house at night, watching for potential power-drains. "Honey, do you really need that light on?"

In short, except for the high-tech restrictions, they are doing all those things my family did when we were kids because our parents wanted to keep the power bills in check, and avoid filling the car too often. But it wasn't only money-saving that motivated my Dad. We had a push-lawnmower, because there were plenty of kids available to shove it around the yard. "Builds character and muscles," my Dad said.

We were green in a lot of ways in my home. No SUVs prowled the streets then, but my large crowd of siblings jammed somehow into the family station wagon. Littles sat in bigger kids' laps as we went to church or traveled to Grandma's house. We dried clothes on that wonder of green-tech, a clothesline in the back yard.

We rode bikes to our high school, and blushingly locked them to the rack near where the "cool kids" parked their cars. "You don't need a car to go 12 blocks," my Dad was certain in his opinion. He was right. I didn't get far without a car while I was in high school.

And now, I hear that echo of Dad's foresight in the complaints of my environmentally-savvy friends. You can ride your bike to work, can't you? You don't need that SUV to drive to the gym for your workout.

And do you really need that light on?

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Hit & Run May 31st: New Nibbles from the Legal Cowpie

2006-05-31T06:23:00.000-07:00

Spanish Pleas: In Spain, where it is illegal to use a cell phone while driving, a cop stopped a motorist driving along with one hand held to his ear. Despite the driver's demonstration that he didn't have the phone in his hand, and that it hadn't been in use for the last 12 hours, the cop still wrote him a ticket. The citation was for "holding his ear with his right hand in a prominent manner."

The driver, a lawyer, appealed the ticket, arguing that Spanish law does not prohibit scratching one's ear while driving. He won the case.

Illegal Jargon: Legal documents contain their own version of the Mother Tongue, but sometimes even lawyers need help translating what their secretaries type. In one legal memo, the typist rendered "search and siezure" as surgeon seizure. In another, the word "paratrooper" became parrot trooper.

Polly want a hand grenade?

Moot Court A man in Santa Fe, NM, is suing his wife in federal court to stop smoking, after years of trying other methods to get her to kick the habit. The premise of his lawsuit? Air Pollution. He's suing her under the Federal Clean Air Act.

0740738054,0836217373,0740753029

Getting into J. Craig Venter's Genes

2006-05-28T12:03:00.000-07:00

At the Edges of Science

What could possibly be next for manic bio-radical J. Craig Venter? Venter's entire personal genome will be published as a reference databank, to be available for all researchers, later this year. Where will the maverick researcher, once introduced in New Yorker with the opening line. "J. Craig Venter is an asshole," head now?

Venter has been an object of hate and derision among fellow genome researchers, who call him arrogant and focused on the commercial aspects of his research, and claim he "bogarts" his data. He petitioned for permission to use his "shotgun" DNA-reading method, which he developed to identify fragments of working genes while employed by the National Institutes of Health, for genome-sequencing, but was turned down by the government. So he founded TIGR Institute, which became the first to sequence the entire genome of a living organism, the bacterium Haemophilus influenzae, which causes meningitis.

In the 90s, Venter and a rival research group headed by Francis Collins, both published human genomic sequences derived from an amalgam of individuals. These two teams "achieved the feat of reading three billion letters of DNA code, the entire human genetic recipe, triggering endless discussions of the extraordinary implications of having access to all the instructions required to make every protein that builds and runs a body." (Roger Highfield, Daily Telegraph Magazine, May 27, 2006)

The "successful" human genome sequencing, however, was less than helpful in interpreting the meaning of the DNA code. For one thing, the combination of five sources in the DNA that was sequenced means both teams ended up with a recipe more goulash than human. As Nobel laureate Sir John Sulston admitted, "We were just a bunch of phoneys."

Now Venter proposes to publish the entire genome of a single individual — himself — in a databank available to all DNA researchers. Knowing the sequence does not, as yet, allow reading one's DNA like a book. The six billion "letters" of Venter's sequence are not organized into words yet, let alone the sentences and paragraphs that would allow us to identify the effects of all these genes. Nevertheless, Venter has learned a few things by sequencing his own DNA; for example, he now takes drugs to forestall heart disease after finding a gene sequence associated with heart problems.

Venter sees a future in which "personal genomics" will contribute to long healthy life for the average person. To that end, he has offered a $10 million prize to the first person to develop a way to sequence a genome at a cost of $1,000 or less.

In the meantime, having succeeded in reading his own DNA, Venter has no qualms about what comes next: writing it. Venter and his team have already launched a project to create life by building a custom DNA sequence for a microbe. Challenged to answer if this isn't "playing God," Venter replies with a grin, "We aren't playing."
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Hit & Run May 23rd: Slicing the Legal Cowpie

2006-05-23T06:37:00.000-07:00

Fuzzy Logic in Kentucky: In this state, it is against the law to dye baby ducks or chickens, unless you have more than a half-dozen to sell. And if someone else's horse dies on your property in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, and the horse owner doesn't remove it within 24 hours, it is the responsibility of the property-owner to dispose of the dead animal.

An ancient law in Kentucky requires that all citizens bathe at least once a year. Lest the aroma kill any horses, or cause chicks and ducklings to turn blue, one supposes.

Moot Court: A couple in Canada sued their real-estate agent for mental anguish and financial damages after they recognized their new house in a TV show about a grisly murder. They watched, horrified, as the show dramatized the crime, in which a man killed his wife, cut her up in pieces and hid the parts around the house — their house.

They might not have had such a strong case, except that many of the pieces have never been found.

There Go the Judge! In South Africa, a judge was faced with a 22-year-old thief who stole candy to get arrested and sent to prison. His plan? To write a book about his experiences.

The judge did sentence him to jail, then had a subsequent hearing where he persuaded the young man to abandon his desire for a stint in the stir. He ended up on probation for the candy theft.

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Robson Green: From Wire in the Blood to Rocket Man

2006-05-20T16:41:00.000-07:00

In case I haven't mentioned it lately (and I know I haven't), Robson Green is the man you want when you have a subtly-damaged, slightly-weird, very intelligent role to cast on BBC TV. I'm basing this opinion on two excellent series currently airing on BBC America: Wire in the Blood and Rocket Man.

I've already sung the praises of Green in Wire in the Blood, in which he plays Dr. Tony Hill, a criminal profiler who solves mysteries and finds killers by the simple process of "noticing everything." Green's Dr. Hill is an intense, complex fellow who seems incapable of making strong emotional connections with other people. His best connections seems to be with the killers he profiles.

This is the subtle damage to Dr. Hill, an easy thing to overplay, yet Green carefully skirts the boundary between comic and tragic in his portrayal. We are not inclined to laugh at Tony Hill, even when we see him do something comedic. Robson Green shows us that the cause of Dr. Hill's bumbling lies in his very focus on something outside himself, something necessary and noble.

In Rocket Man, we see that same intensity turned in another direction. Here, Green plays George Stevenson, a nearly-illiterate, widowed engineer "made redundant" when the local factory closed. Now he and his friends are misemployed as candy packers, night watchmen and janitors. Green's solo project, to create a rocket to shoot his late wife's ashes into space, becomes a consuming team effort, first for his engineer buddies, then for their wives and the owner of the defunct factory.

In last week's episode, George berated the team for lack of focus, then made an appeal that encapsulated the theme of the series. "We were engineers in this factory, and now we're packing silly little chocolates into silly little boxes, but that's not who we are. This is who we are, this rocket."

The rocket has come to mean more to these people than a project to put Bethan Stevenson's remains into orbit. Each person on the team uses the rocket project to transcend all the major and petty troubles in their lives. In this, the series reminds me strongly of The Full Monty, another tale of a group of unemployed workers and their one-time manager who come together to reaffirm their worth as men.

Wire in the Blood aired first in the US, but Wire was preceded on BBC by Rocket Man. Because of that reversal, it seems strange to us that Green should "follow" the cooly-distant Dr. Tony Hill with such a likeable leader-type as George Stevenson. Rocket Man could rise or fall on the strength of the central character.

Fortunately, with Robson Green as George Stevenson, it seems destined for a path to match one of the team's rockets.

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Review: Dead Lines by Greg Bear

2006-05-20T10:55:00.000-07:00

SILENCE IS... SPOOKY

What if some of the things you see every day aren't really there? What if they just look normal? You seldom compare notes with anybody, do you? You don't bring along a video camera and record every minute of your daily life to see what you might have seen that wasn't there after all.
— Greg Bear, Dead Lines

For those who would dine on old, dead dreams of glory, Hollywood is always willing to set a place at the table. In his house in the Glendale Hills, Peter Russell has been dining for years on his defunct dream. A one-time creator of "nudie films" and Playboy cartoons, he planned novels, plays, short stories that somehow never were completed. Peter's creative stream was first diverted by the easy sex of his heyday, and then dammed up by the murder of one of his twin daughters.

Now he retains just enough charm to get by. He provides the likable "face" of business for a misanthropic millionaire, and charms the trophy wife of his employer, his remaining daughter, and just about every woman he meets (except his ex-wife). And even though he is not in the movie business anymore, he does still have connections.

Those connections bring him an innovative new cell phone, a hefty commission check, and an exciting chance to get back in the game by creating a complete marketing campaign for the Trans, an eerily-clear communication device that, according to the inventor, taps into a space "below our world, lower than networks used by atoms or subatomic particles, to where it is very quiet."

Even as he dreams of revived glory, the spirit of Rod Serling is waiting to detour him into nightmare. Peter's "signpost up ahead" is a phone call to let him know his best friend is dead. After that call, his life becomes more like a Twilight Zone episode with each passing day. His dead daughter, his deceased friend, and a host of other "ghosts", living and not, begin to haunt his life.

Peter's efforts to understand these things take him from one memorable extreme to another: he consults a charismatic psychic, takes a funereal road-trip to San Francisco to dump his friend's ashes in the sea, and visits a famous prison-turned-office bloc where the death chamber is now the server room for a telecommunications startup. Phone calls from Prague and an invisible chess opponent come to seem equally mundane in Peter's new world, as the tale moves in increments from creepy understanding to real horror, ending in a crashing climax of fire and discovery.

Greg Bear's Dead Lines is truly spooky, in the way ghost stories seldom are after we enter our cynical middle years. Peter, like most of Bear's readers, does not believe in psychics, ghosts or paranormal powers. He may not be happy, but at least he is content with his life and himself. The power of Bear's story is that we understand how Peter loses both that easy contentment and his disbelief. We travel with him on the downhill path into the queasy realization that Hamlet was right. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies.

And if we're lucky, none of them have our cell phone numbers.

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Farewell Tom Corbett: A Space Cadet Departs the Earth

2006-05-17T19:43:00.000-07:00

The black depths of space are no stranger to Frankie Thomas, who starred as Tom Corbett, Space Cadet from 1950 to 1955. Dead at age 85, the veteran actor departs for his own space journey: he was buried yesterday wearing his "Tom Corbett" costume.

The TV show, which aired on CBS, NBC, ABC and the Dumont network, spawned the first science-fiction product marketing campaign, and informed school-boy's conversation with catch-phrases like "Blast your jets!" and "Spaceman's luck."

For a young DrPat, the premise was absorbing. Cadet Corbett, living 400 years in the future, being trained for his job as a Solar Guard, went to school just like we did, but found adventure zapping intruders and sailing the spaceways with his plucky companions Roger and Astro. I ate Kellogs Pep from the "Solar Cereal" box adorned with Thomas' image as Corbett, and yearned for a plastic "fuser pistol" so I could ZZZT my playmates in style.

Alas, the program ran only from 1950 to 1955, and Thomas retired when the program was cancelled. The severely-dated look of the sets and props never quite rose to the camp level of Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon, and the series is remembered mostly for its hearty baritone introduction. When Jackson Beck boomed out, "Tom... Corbett! Space... Cadet!", we settled in for an enjoyable ride to the outer limits of our mid-century imagination.

Farewell, Mr. Thomas. Don't fuse your tubes!

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Frankie Thomas, dead at 85, departs for a further destination than any in his 1950s TV career.

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Hit & Run May 17th: Bites from a Legal Cowpie

2006-05-17T18:59:00.000-07:00

Ham-Handed Burglar: When a would-be bandit walked into a deli and told the owner it was a stickup, the counterman grabbed a huge hard salami and clobbered the thief with it, breaking his nose and knocking him to the floor. Streaming blood from his broken nose, he ran from the deli and tried to hide in a nearby parked car.

Bad choice -- the car belonged to undercover cops, who were happy to take the thief to get medical help. From the doctor at the local lockup.

Moot Court: A convict in a Nevada prison is suing the state, claiming that he has been subjected to cruel and unusual punishment. His tribulation? He ordered two jars of chunky peanut butter, and received one jar of chunky and one of smooth.

Horrors!

There Go the Judge! In England, a somewhat drunken couple decided to make love in the dark road beneath a burned-out streetlight. In the midst of their passion, a bus ran over them, killing them both. The police decided the bus driver was not at fault and that the illicitly intimate couple bore the entire burden of blame for their own deaths.

The judge, however, disagreed, saying the driver's skill was "below standard", and suspended the bus driver's license for six months.

0740738054,0836217373,0740753029

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Next YEAR in the Bookstore: Numbers, Napa Valley and Not Being a Victim

2005-12-29T18:10:00.000-08:00

Week of January 1. 2006

Tuesday, January 3, 2006
The Hostage by W.E.B. Griffin is the latest in Griffin's Presidential Agent series, featuring the cast from the first of the series, By Order of the President. "An army major turned special presidential agent, Charley Castillo is rich, brash, well connected, and very good at what he does. Tons of money have gone missing in a UN oil-for-food scandal, an American diplomat has been murdered in Argentina, his wife has been kidnapped, and others have been killed in the hunt for the money. It's up to Charley and his cohorts to solve the murders by finding the widow's missing brother, who is knee-deep in the scandal... Griffin just keeps on getting better with a formula that, while predictable and sometimes implausible, is exciting and great fun." —Robert Conroy, Booklist

Laura Schlessinger has a new tutorial: Bad Childhood, Good Life (subtitled "How to Blossom and Thrive in Spite of an Unhappy Childhood"). "According to controversial radio talk-show host Schlessinger, a.k.a. 'Dr. Laura,' many people find themselves stuck in the role of 'victim,' reliving dysfunctional childhoods and repeating damaging behavior. Using examples from her show's transcripts and postshow listener comments and sharing her own personal history, she offers conservative commonsense advice framed in maxims: victims should become not just survivors but conquerors; positive behavior and attitude changes should be made without expecting linear change and growth." —Lucille M. Boone, Booklist

Just Rewards is the finale of Barbara Taylor Bradford's Harte family saga. "After 25 years, passions, revenge, envy, and unbridled ambition are still taking their toll on the Harte family, this time on Emma Harte's great-grandchildren. ... It's all very Dynasty-like and very delicious. Bradford keeps the pace moving briskly as she takes the reader from one great British house to another and expertly brings the various subplots together in a surprising conclusion." —Ginger Curwen, Barnes & Noble review.

Want "A Completely Different Way to Think About the Rest of Your Life"? Pick up The Number by Lee Eisenberg. "Eisenberg's arc through life could be used to define the baby boom. In the 1970s, he coined the term power lunch; in the 1980s, he edited Esquire and invented rotisserie baseball. In the 1990s, he wrote books on finding the good life through golf and fishing, and at the end of the decade, he joined an Internet retailer. These days, he's thinking about retirement, particularly about his Number: the amount of money he'd need to have socked away in order to be confident that his postretirement life would meet his expectations... A few of Eisenberg's chapters feel scattershot, but his perceptive analyses of real and fictional people's financial hopes and strategies will inspire readers to reconsider their Numbers and their methods for investing." —Publishers Weekly

All Night Long by Jayne Ann Krentz is a fast-paced, well-plotted romantic thriller set in a tiny Napa Valley village. "A mysterious e-mail from a childhood friend, Pamela Webb, draws big-city reporter Irene Stenson home, but when Irene arrives, Pamela is dead, apparently of a drug overdose. Handsome but damaged ex-Marine Luke Danner, who owns the lodge where Irene is staying, helps her look into the case. The plot thickens when Pamela's house gets torched shortly after she dies, and soon Irene and Luke follow a trail that leads to Pamela's father, a powerful senator who may have played a role in the death of Irene's parents when she was a young girl. When Senator Webb's PR flack is found murdered after getting caught up in a blackmail scheme and Luke and Irene start their predictable but torrid romance, Krentz sets up a series of compelling confrontations. The dialogue, which dominates the book, is strong throughout; the plot is tight. ...an impressive page-turner from a master of the genre." —Publishers Weekly

Friday, January 6, 2006
Shine: A Physical, Emotional, and Spiritual Journey to Finding Love by Star Jones "began when Star took a close look at herself and her life and realized she wasn't happy with what she saw: obesity precluded her from crossing her legs, she needed an asthma inhaler, she couldn't fasten her own necklace, and, worst of all, she got too tired to shop — a disaster because Star Jones Reynolds is a seriously committed shopper. Then she realized something else: with all her extraordinary accomplishments, none of it mattered without true love. Thinking long and hard, she finally understood that she hadn't yet met the man of her dreams because she wasn't ready for him. Star decided to make it happen... Until you read this book, you won't know how she got there — and how you can echo her triumphs and shine." (Publisher's release notes)

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Blogcritics Name the Best Books of 2005

2005-12-10T00:08:00.000-08:00

The challenge to our superior cabal was to pick the single book they first encountered in 2005 that most impressed them. The eleven winners (and the BlogCritics who selected them) are listed below, in the order in which they were nominated.

Don't be shy! Make your vote count, too — write-in candidates are welcome!

1. Meryl: The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life by Steven Leveen

This is my favorite book for 2005 because it's all about books and I love books. So mix the two and I can't help but choose this one. It also motivated me to change how I keep my list of books that I've read. The book listed a few others and I've either bought them or plan to buy them.

2. Tim Gebhart: Saturday by Ian McEwan

"Quite simply, a masterpiece." The basic premise is a Saturday in the life of a London neurosurgeon that goes horribly wrong. The vulnerability we feel in post-9/11 life and the debate over the still-on-the-horizon Iraq war provide an undercurrent of tension. Yet McEwan layers a sense of elusive foreboding and unease with activities of everyday life — a squash game, a minor car accident, cooking dinner. Moreover, his insight into human emotion and the powers of music and poetry make this so much more than just a novel. It has been years since I read a book that caused me to go back and reread sentences, paragraphs and entire sections because of their simple brilliance and power.

3. Bill Wallo: Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

A confident, masterful contemporary fantasy by Gaiman, whose earlier books have tantalized millions of fans with an often humorous mixture of myth, mayhem, and magic. Anansi Boys is Gaiman at his best, spinning a delicious tale of the twin sons of a man who was once a spider — and a god as well.

4. Alpha: Distant Neighbors by Alan Riding

Mexico is not America with a Spanish accent, but a sovereign nation with a very different history, culture, legal system, and set of ethics and values. Mexicans may like the Smallville TV series and the Superman movies ; but "truth, justice, and the American way" are not the Mexican way. Riding's insights are often profound, his knowledge worth the read. As Americans, even after nearly a decade here in Mexico; the reality of a culture so mired in bribes and mordida at all levels is beyond our world view. Riding makes a valiant attempt to explain the culture from history to family life to its famed corruption. His insights are often profound, his knowledge worth the read.

5. Anna Creech: The Steerswoman's Road by Rosemary Kirstein

I first heard about this book (and the rest of the series) earlier this year when some fellow science fiction fans recommended it to me. [See Blogcritics review. -DrPat] The plot intrigued me, and I was immediately entranced by the story. The main character, Rowan, seeks the origin of some unusual jewels found scattered across the known world, a quest continually blocked by wizards who do not want to share their knowledge. In the end, we discover the wizards' work is actually technology we would recognize, expanding on Arthur C. Clarke's proposal that any sufficiently-advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Kirstein created compelling characters and a plot so well-written that I could not put the book down until I was finished. I love a good mystery and good sci-fi. This book combines both very well.

Note: This book was originally published as two separate volumes, The Steerswoman and The Outskirter's Secret.

6. Gypsyman: Armies of Hanuman by Ashok K. Banker

Over the years I've discovered my criteria for what makes a good book has changed. I used to look at intellectual challenge and stimulation as a primary means of judgment. It was a few years back that I began to reappreciate the well-told story. Plot, character, and atmosphere have become more important than deconstruction and intellectual concepts. That is why I have picked Ashok Banker's fourth volume in his massive undertaking, retelling the 3000-year-old Ramayana, which traces the story of one of the great heroes of India, Prince Rama. Armies of Hanuman includes all the elements I desire in a good story: well-written characters I can empathise with; a story line that is clear but challenging to follow; introspection from characters and the reader; and finally, an old-fashioned good read.

7. Parker Owens: The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova

I originally read The Historian because I wanted to find out what it was about the book that made it earn a $2 million advance. I never in a million years thought I would actually finish this very large book (close to 700 pages). Everything in the reviews is true — it is difficult to distinguish character povs, and the book suffers from too many coincidences. Many have felt the book dragged in spots. Still, I finished the book, and enjoyed it, and it lived up to its hype. It just goes to show you that storytelling is king. If you've got a good story, it will be published even if it doesn't follow all the latest standards of modern authoring.

[No Blogcritics review — but check here for news of the award won by Kostova in October.]

8. Alisha Karabinus: The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester

The best thing I read this year was this science fiction classic by Alfred Bester. I got it as a gift last year for Christmas and after a few false starts, I put it away and didn't find it again until we moved in July. Then, when I picked it up, I tore through the book like one possessed. Gully Foyle's quest for revenge consumed me. His need was my need. We were in this together. The Stars My Destination is a moral roller coaster that spans the universe and indeed, all of infinite time and space. Characters change and grow throughout this unpredictable tale of a future in which one man is written off as nothing, forgotten by the world... until he re-emerges, hellbent on destroying those who dared ignore him. If for no other reason at all, read it for the details of the creepy corporations whose managers and officers give up name and identity. Cyberpunk was born right here, back in the 1950s.

[Again, no Blogcritics review — although there is a footnote to a review of a book described as "out-Foyling Bester."]

9. Joan Hunt: A Son Called Gabriel by Damian McNicholl

The absolutely stellar A Son Called Gabriel has been stuck in my heart and mind since I read it earlier this year. Damian McNicholl crafted one of the most honest and touching portraits of a young man coming of age during turbulent times.

10. Scott Butki: Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser

This is the best non-fiction book I have read in several years. I knew before I read it that it would change my life, particularly my eating and buying habits, and it did. What I did not realize was what an amazing piece of writing this is. A friend who teaches English has used this book as an example of persuasive writing and that totally makes sense, as this book manages not only to convince you that fast food companies do not have the interests of their employees — and sometimes their customers — in mind when making decisions, but also to explain every important issue involving fast food, without coming off as redundant or preachy. You don't feel you are being lectured so much as educated. Reading this book — along with watching Super Size Me — sparked me to boycott national fast food companies. (I also think I'm going to give up caffeine and learn to play chess next year, so maybe I'm delusional. If so, I can always blame it on the many evil deeds done by the fast food industry.)

11. DrPat: The Confusion by Neil Stephenson

In a singularly captivating series, The System of the World, the middle volume (The Confusion) still managed to be the most impressive book I read in 2005. Deliciously convoluted, it still presented its characters with clarity and its concepts within a rollicking good story. In reading this tale, I kept running across recursive references from other books (notably Stephenson's Cryptonomicon), erudite philosophical and historical allusions, and descriptions of the state of the arts and sciences of Newton's day. All this, and pirates, too!

There they are — the books chosen as the best they read in 2005 by these ten BlogCritics. Now it's your turn to cast a ballot. Remember: Vote early, and vote often!
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0679767800,1593152310

Come cast your own vote for the best book you first read in 2005 at BlogCritics.

Next Week in the Bookstore: No New Books?

2005-12-06T21:44:00.000-08:00

This is not a list of new books out next week, so much as an announcement: There are no new books next week! (Perhaps there are, but they are paperbacks, or re-releases in audiobook format, or released in a small printing.)

Instead, let's have a quick peek at what's coming for Christmas Week!

A new Resnick debuts in the bookstore on Christmas Day itself: A Gathering of Widowmakers. Count on Mike Resnick to deliver a thoughtful new tale cloned from the seed of myth and fable.

Greg Iles' Turning Angel turns up on December 27th, a new legal thriller from the pen of "the poster boy of southern gothic thrillers" (Kirkus Reviews).

Judith McKnaught returns to the lavish Chicago setting of her popular novel Paradise with Every Breath You Take — look for it December 27th.

Iris Johannson's On the Run is another departure from her best-selling Eve Duncan series, involving a pair of toughened ex-CIA agents, buried treasure, plenty of horses and thrilling action. It also comes out December 27th.

Also on December 27th, a new Anne McCaffrey/Elizabeth Scarborough collaboration in the Power Play series will appear: Changelings, starring the precocious half-selkie twins from Pataybee.

Evolve, adapt, or perish! That's the message Geoffrey A. Moore has for business in Dealing with Darwin: How Great Companies Innovate at Every Phase of Their Evolution. Look for it on December 29th.

1592220851,0743234715,0345479904,0345470028,1591841070

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Bestsellers: Paperback Broker Climbs, Teacher Man Falls

2005-12-04T23:42:00.000-08:00

Week of December 4, 2005

According to the New York Times, Mary, Mary by James Patterson is still atop the list for fiction sales this week, while President Carter's Our Endangered Values climbs to number one in non-fiction.

John Grisham's The Broker replaces Crichton at the top of the list of paperback fiction sales, and A Million Little Pieces by James Frey remains at atop of the paperback non-fiction pile (perhaps glued in place by the golden seal of Oprah's Book Club).

This Week	Last Week	Best-selling FICTION from the NYT List
1	1	Mary, Mary, by James Patterson. The F.B.I. agent Alex Cross tracks a Hollywood killer who announces the crimes via e-mail. (2nd week on list)
2	4	At First Sight, by Nicholas Sparks. The young couple from "True Believer," who are now expecting a child, receive a disturbing message. (6th week on list.)
3	3	Light from Heaven, by Jan Karon. Father Tim's bishop asks him to revive a long-closed mountain church; the final novel in the Mitford series. (3rd week on list.)
4	2	Predator, by Patricia Cornwell. On the trail of a possible serial killer, Dr. Kay Scarpetta turns to a jailed psychopath for advice. (6th week on list)
5	N	The Lighthouse, by P.D. James. Commander Adam Dalgliesh is called in to solve a murder (or two) on a remote Cornish island. (First week on list.)

This Week	Last Week	Best-selling NON-FICTION from the NYT List
1	3	Our Endangered Values, by Jimmy Carter. The former president warns against blurring politics and fundamentalist religion. (4th week on list.)
2	1	Teacher Man, by Frank McCourt. The author of Angela's Ashes remembers his years teaching high school English in New York City. (2nd week on list)
3	2	Team Of Rivals, by Doris Kearns Goodwin. The political genius of Abraham Lincoln is revealed in his relationship with his cabinet. (5th week on list)
4	5	The World is Flat, by Thomas L. Friedman. A columnist for The New York Times analyzes 21st-century economics and foreign policy and presents an overview of globalization trends. (34th week on list.)
5	4	The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion. The author attempts to come to terms with the death of her husband and the grave illness of their only daughter. (8th week on list.)

For Christmas purchases that are likely to please a reader, you can't go far wrong with a selection from the NYT lists. To check out the expanded catalog of bestsellers, you'll need to register (free) at The New York Times online.

Be sure to check out the Blogcritics feature Next Week in the Bookstore (New Books) for choices that (while not bestsellers — yet) are unlikely to already be resting on your reader's bookshelf.
031615976X,0399152830,0743243773,0670034533,
0446532428,030726291X,0446577383,0684824906,0743284577,
140004314X,0374292884,0440241588

Please join us at BlogCritics to comment on this review.

Next Week in the Bookstore: Two Phils, a Miller and a Bill

2005-11-28T21:41:00.000-08:00

It's another quiet week for publishers as the Christmas shopping season finds buyers looking for books that have been out long enough to create a buzz. Still, there are readers who've moved on from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and will be overjoyed to find a book they hadn't even dreamed of under the tree.

Tuesday, December 6
The Constant Princess by Philippa Gregory follows the transformation of the youngest daughter of Spain's King Ferdinand into Queen Katherine of England, in a suspenseful tale that "pulls the reader along" despite its foregone conclusion. "Gregory's latest (after Earthly Joys) compellingly dramatizes how Catalina uses her faith, her cunning and her utter belief in destiny to reclaim her rightful title. By alternating tight third-person narration with Catalina's unguarded thoughts and gripping dialogue, the author presents a thorough, sympathetic portrait of her heroine and her transformation into Queen Katherine." —Publishers Weekly

In Kinsey Milhone's 19th outing, S Is for Silence by Sue Grafton, finds the 30-year-old "high-fat-eating" dectective pursuing a missing mother. "Grafton's determined march through the criminal alphabet puts readers within striking distance of the end, a destination no Grafton fan wants to reach. The latest in the lexicon should really be C Is for Cold Case, since it involves a disappearance that took place nearly 35 years in the past... Grafton juxtaposes flashbacks to 1953, when the mother disappeared, with the current investigation... this novel also presents strong character portrayals, a mosaic of motives, and a stunning climax." —Connie Fletcher, Booklist

Love Smart: Find the One You Want — Fix the One You've Got by Phillip C. McGraw is the latest "Dr. Phil" romantic self-help book. "If you are sleeping single in a double bed or walking down the street thinking, How do I meet that guy?; if you're on your twentieth date and he's no more committed than when you first exchanged cell phone numbers; if everyone you know is getting married for the second time and you can't even get a first date; if you love the one you're with but the relationship needs some spark... then this book is for you." (Publisher's release notes)

Wednesday, December 7
For Dark Horse fans, Frank Miller's Sin City Library I is the first oversized archival edition of the legendary noir series from Frank Miller and Dark Horse. "The four hardcover volumes of set I are a long-awaited addition to the bookshelves of discriminating comics fans. This slipcase holds volumes one through four of Sin City, the hard-boiled stories that started it all! Never before seen at this size, the now-infamous Marv, Dwight, Gail, Miho, Hartigan, Nancy, and the Yellow Bastard will transport you to Sin City and show you the bloody lives they lead... Miller's Sin City... has been honored with Eisner awards, Harvey awards, and the prestigious National Cartoonists' Award." (Publisher's release notes)

Paperbacks This Week

Tuesday, December 6
Edited by Bill Fawcett Masters of Fantasy is fantasy for adult and young adult readers. "This volume presents new stories..., by some of the best writers in the genre. They include Mercedes Lackey ("Valdemar"), Andre Norton ("Witchworld"), Robert Asprin and Jody Lynn Nye ("Myth Adventures"), Alan Dean Foster ("Spellsinger"), Christopher Stasheff ("Warlock"), and David Drake ("Isles"). Other selections by Mickey Zucker Reichert, Margaret Weis and Don Perrin, Janny Wurts, Elizabeth Moon, Mike Resnick, and David Weber round out this impressive collection..." —Christine C. Menefee, School Library Journal
074327248X,0399152970,0743272099,1593074212,1416509275

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Madagascar Is DVDelightful

2005-11-26T13:53:00.000-08:00

WONDERFUL

Madagascar captured me with a single teaser image: the animated lion bounding up the steps from New York's subway is felled by blows from a little old lady's handbag. Bad dog! she calls him, and bad kitty! (No wonder the trailer was nominated for a Golden Trailer Award.)

But life got in the way of my seeing this movie in the theatrical release. Now that children are grown and gone, there's little to remind me of the delights of a good kid's movie. For one reason or another, I missed this movie entirely.

Then the DVD was released, and I began to see that teaser again. My spouse helped remind me of its pull, chanting Bad kitty! every time it came on the TV. So I got the DVD, and happily relaxed into the warm arms of a really delightful story.

The voice talents of Chris Rock as Marty, a zebra yearning for "the wild," and Ben Stiller as the star of the Central Park Zoo, Alex the lion (bad kitty!), with Jada Pinkett Smith as a mellow hippo named Gloria, and David Schwimmer voicing the hypochondiac giraffe, Melman, give the excellent script an extra dimension. But in the end, it's the script that shines.

Little things, like the bad kitty! line, a quick homage to Fantasia as Gloria dives into her pool at night, and the name of one of the penguins (Kowalski, as in the putative subtitle "Kowalski Gets It" for the long-running TV series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea) pile on, zipping by almost too fast to notice. Alex does Charleton Heston. Marty zones in on a park mural to the tune of "Born Free." The penguins channel Neo, ninjas, and Captain Kirk in their quest to reach Antarctica.

There is no grand theme here, no overwhelming rush of tears or sweet nostalgic awww to reward us for our time. Yet, taken as a whole, the movie is wonderful. It is the sum of these small, sweet, funny, or referential moments that accumulates into 90 minutes of joyful escape.

And seeing it on DVD has several additional benefits. First, you can pause and skip back to review that joke that flew by so fast. Yep, the old lady really did call Alex a bad dog first.

But even better, the DVD comes with a new animated short featuring the penguins back in Central Park Zoo. "The Penguins' Christmas Caper" is delightful in its own right, giving us a new look at the coordinated chaos that is wreaked by this crew of determined birds. (My laugh as they hid in a line of perambulating nuns took me to the floor!)

Give yourself a break from the cares of the world! You can tell yourself you're doing it "for the children"; I don't care. But if you missed this charming movie in the theaters, don't wait until it's chopped into pieces on commercial TV. You'll thank me later.
B00005JNX0,B0009A2FAO,B0000TPA4C,B0000844M8,B00003CX9W

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Bestsellers: James Patterson and Frank McCourt Top List

2005-11-26T11:57:00.000-08:00

Week of November 21, 2005

According to the New York Times, Mary, Mary by James Patterson tops the list for fiction sales this week, while Frank McCourt's Teacher Man takes top billing in non-fiction this week. These books are both new this week.

Michael Crichton's State of Fear tops the list of paperback fiction sales, and A Million Little Pieces by James Frey remains at the top of the paperback non-fiction pile (perhaps glued in place by the golden seal of Oprah's Book Club).

In the children's section, look for the beautifully-illustrated Winter's Tale by Robert Sabuda, and (of course) the reprise of The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg, nicely timed for the DVD release of the animated movie featuring the voice of Tom Hanks.

This Week	Last Week	Best-selling FICTION from the NYT List
1	N	Mary, Mary, by James Patterson. The F.B.I. agent Alex Cross tracks a Hollywood killer who announces the crimes via e-mail.
2	3	Predator, by Patricia Cornwell. On the trail of a possible serial killer, Dr. Kay Scarpetta turns to a jailed psychopath for advice. (4th week on list)
3	2	Light from Heaven, by Jan Karon. Father Tim's bishop asks him to revive a long-closed mountain church; the final novel in the Mitford series. (2nd week on list.)
4	4	At First Sight, by Nicholas Sparks. The young couple from "True Believer," who are now expecting a child, receive a disturbing message. (5th week on list.)
5	4	The Camel Club, by David Baldacci. (Warner, $26.95.) A group of eccentric conspiracy theorists stumbles across an actual plot reaching to the highest levels of government. (4th week on list.)

This Week	Last Week	Best-selling NON-FICTION from the NYT List
1	N	Teacher Man, by Frank McCourt. The author of Angela's Ashes remembers his years teaching high school English in New York City.
2	2	Team Of Rivals, by Doris Kearns Goodwin. The political genius of Abraham Lincoln is revealed in his relationship with his cabinet. (4th week on list)
3	1	Our Endangered Values, by Jimmy Carter. The former president warns against blurring politics and fundamentalist religion. (3rd week on list.)
4	4	The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion. The author attempts to come to terms with the death of her husband and the grave illness of their only daughter. (7th week on list.)
5	3	The World is Flat, by Thomas L. Friedman. A columnist for The New York Times analyzes 21st-century economics and foreign policy and presents an overview of globalization trends. (33rd week on list.)

This Week	Last Week	Best-selling CHILDREN'S BOOKS from the NYT List
1	2	Winter's Tale, written and illustrated by Robert Sabuda. The coldest season, as illustrated by an expert pop-up engineer. (All ages, 8th week on list.)
2	1	A Family of Poems, by Caroline Kennedy. Illustrated by Jon J. Muth. From Lewis Carroll to Langston Hughes, an anthology of children's verse. (Ages 9 to 12, 12th week on list)
3	4	Encyclopedia Prehistorica: Dinosaurs, by Robert Sabuda and Matthew Reinhart. A pop-up dinosaur compendium. (Ages 5 and up, 18th week on list.)
4	3	Fairyopolis, a Flower Fairies Journal, written and illustrated by Cicely Mary Barker. Fairies I have known; the 1923 sketchbook and diary of a supernaturalist. (Ages 8 and up, 3rd week on list.)
5	N	The Polar Express, Special Gift Edition, written and illustrated by Chris Van Allsburg. A small boy's magical train ride on Christmas Eve, book accompanied by CD read by Liam Neeson. (Ages 4 to 8, first week on list.)

For Christmas purchases that are likely to please a reader, you can't go far wrong with a selection from the NYT lists. To check out the expanded catalog of bestsellers, you'll need to register (free) at The New York Times online.

Be sure to check out the Blogcritics feature Next Week in the Bookstore (New Books) for choices that (while not bestsellers — yet) are unlikely to already be resting on your reader's bookshelf.
0743243773,031615976X,0399152830,0670034533,
0446532428,0446577383,0684824906,0743284577,
140004314X,0374292884,0689853637,0786851112,
0763622281,0723257248,0618477977

Please join us at BlogCritics to comment on this review.

Next Week in the Bookstore: Taxes, (Ono!), an Odd Koontz, and the Paperback Blitz

2005-11-25T17:34:00.000-08:00

Tuesday is the big day this week: Major hardcover releases and the bulk of the paperback versions drop on the second day of next week. There will be plenty of Christmas-gift fodder for eager shoppers who didn't spend all their money on Black Friday!

Hint for the parent, spouse or child of the fervent reader at your address: Have Amazon deliver your gift book order to an alternate address to avoid a pre-Christmas unwrapping. I've traded this favor with a neighbor down the hill for three years now, and my spouse has yet to catch on! Gosh, honey, they delivered the Ross's Amazon order here again this year!

Tuesday, November 29
Dean R. Koontz' Forever Odd leads us off next week as he brings back Odd Thomas (from his novel of the same name) for a further look at this boy who can see (but not talk with) the dead. "These days Odd is still hosting the ghost of a morose Elvis Presley, still grieving for his dead girlfriend, Stormy, and still worrying about his very fat friend P. Oswald Boone, whose cat, Terrible Chester, likes to pee on his shoes... Odd's strange gifts, coupled with his intelligence and self-effacing humor, make him one of the most quietly authoritative characters in recent popular fiction." —Publishers Weekly

Red Lily by Nora Roberts brings Robert's In the Garden trilogy to a captivating conclusion, following Blue Dahlia and Black Rose. "Three women learn that the heart of their historic home holds a mystery of years gone by. A Harper has always lived at Harper House, the centuries-old mansion just outside of Memphis. And for as long as anyone alive remembers, the ghostly Harper Bride has walked the halls, singing lullabies at night..." (Publisher's release notes)

Before blogs, there were "journals" and "letters," and Doris Lessing is a stellar light in that world. Time Bites: Views and Reviews by Doris May Lessing presents 65-odd essays, letters and reviews from the incisive pen of this "grande dame of English letters... There's a tirade against Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe (Rhodesia was Lessing's homeland) and a coruscating indictment of American complacency before 9/11. The main theme, whether addressed overtly or underlying her literary criticism, is the indispensable place of books in the life of an educated person and an enlightened culture. Hers is a clarion call." —Publishers Weekly

Black Boy: A Record of Childhood and Youth 60th Anniversary Edition by Richard Wright brings back this seminal autobiography in a new hardcover edition. "...sometimes considered a fictionalized autobiography or an autobiographical novel because of its use of novelistic techniques... [it] describes vividly Wright's often harsh, hardscrabble boyhood and youth in rural Mississippi and in Memphis, Tenn. [In 1945], many white critics viewed Black Boy primarily as an attack on racist Southern white society... the work came to be understood as the story of Wright's coming of age and development as a writer whose race, though a primary component of his life, was but one of many that formed him as an artist." —Merriam-Webster Encylopedia of Literature

Kenneth Oppel's Skybreaker is the "breathtaking sequel to the Governor General's Award-winning fantasy novel Airborn... Drawing on the myths of Icarus and Prometheus, as well as classic sea adventures like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Poseidon Adventure, Skybreaker combines an action-packed thriller with a sensitive exploration of the limits of human ambition.... With pirates, sky monsters, and disturbed spirits, not to mention enough bizarre flying machines to fill an aviation museum (even a bat-copter for Silverwing fans), Skybreaker confirms Kenneth Oppel's reputation as Canada's leading fantasy author for children and young adults." —Lisa Alward, Amazon.ca review

Every Book Its Reader: The Power of the Printed Word to Stir the World by Nicholas A. Basbanes offers a lively consideration of writings that have "made things happen" in the world. "Basbanes again proves his fascination with the minutiae of bibliophilia, relating with relish how many volumes were in various famous readers' collections, who wrote in their margins, who kept commonplace books, and other book-related ephemera before getting to the heart of this book: his discussions with well-known readers of today... the chapter on the development of religious texts is especially strong — but the book as a whole has no central argument or philosophy to make it cohere." —Publishers Weekly

Thursday, December 1
The culmination of Max A. Collins' Road series (which began with Road to Perdition), Road to Paradise finds 50-year-old Michael O'Sullivan Jr., the young boy orphaned in Road to Perdition, who has Italianized his name to Michael Satariano, boss and squeaky-clean mob frontman of the Cal-Neva Lodge and Casino at Lake Tahoe. "When Sam Giancana decides to end his exile in Mexico and reclaim his former position as Godfather, hits are ordered, mistakes are made and many people die, some of them quite close to Michael. He's now on the run, forced to relive his father's vengeance-fueled crime spree of 40 years earlier... Collins's compelling mix of history, bloodshed and retribution is as irresistible as Sam Giancana's last meal of fried sausage, spinach and ceci beans. Readers will eat it up and beg for more."

Road to Purgatory, the second book of the series, is released in paperback this week.

Don't expect Ono's own story of her life with John Lennon in Memories of John Lennon, which arrives on Thursday. Ono solicited materiel from over 70 of Lennon's friends, contemporaries, and admirers, and is marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of Lennon's death with a collection of their reminiscences. "Newcomers to the Lennon legend might find some of the reminiscences and artwork in this compendium interesting and novel, but those alive in Lennon's time will recognize many of the quotes..." —Publishers Weekly

Friday, December 2
J.K. Lasser's Your Income Tax 2006: For Preparing Your 2005 Return by J.K. Lasser (Wiley, $16.95) is the latest update of the country's bestselling tax guide. This book was originally supposed to drop on Friday, November 25th, but was delayed. Pity the event it prepares us for could not be! The new edition has usable forms online, and online guides. "For over 60 years, more than 38 million Americans have trusted J.K. Lasser to help them save money at tax time..." (Publisher's release notes)

Paperback Releases This Week

Monday, November 28
Chainfire by Terry Goodkind is Book 9 of his Sword of Truth series, but it is also the beginning of a sequence of three novels that will bring the epic story to its culmination. "After being gravely injured in battle, Richard awakes to discover Kahlan missing. To his disbelief, no one remembers the woman he is frantically trying to find. Worse, no one believes that she really exists, or that he was ever married. Alone as never before, he must find the woman he loves more than life itself... if she is even still alive. If she was ever even real." (Publisher's release notes)

Tuesday, November 29
In the 10th book of FIST, Starfist: A World of Hurt by David Sherman, "the best-selling military sf series continues with a volume less intense than Lazarus Rising, but in its own way intelligent and agreeable. The planet of Maugham's Station reports an alien life form that uses jets of acid as weapons, which is the hallmark of the deadly Skinks. The 34th FIST is sent out, with Charlie Bass still commanding a platoon, though, as a newly commissioned ensign... to learn about how to lead as an officer instead of a gunnery sergeant. Meanwhile, the navy... decides that Maugham's Station is involved in an ore piracy scheme... It turns out that Maugham's Station is a base for neither pirates nor Skinks, and Charlie Bass is likely to be as good as a junior officer as he was as a senior NCO..." —Roland Green, Booklist

Transcendent by Stephen Baxter is the final book in Baxter's Destiny's Children trilogy. "Baxter's gripping page-turners are feats of bold speculation and big ideas that, for all their time-and-space-spanning grandeur, remain firmly rooted in scientific fact and cutting-edge theory. Now Baxter is back with Transcendent, a tour de force in which parallel stories unfold–and then meet as humanity stands poised on the brink of divine providence... or extinction."

Paul Kearney's The Mark of Ran: Book One of the Sea Beggars is the first in a new series by the author of Hawkwood's Voyage. "Legends speak of an elder race, the Weren, whose blood lives on in the mutated Urmen... and in young Rol Cortishane, raised on stories of those ancient days by his grandfather Ardisan. When an angry mob turns on the old man, accusing him of witchcraft, Ardisan urges Rol to sail to the city of Gascar... Readers who fancy the creak of ship's timbers and the flash of live steel, the taint of dark magic and the lure of long-buried secrets, will gladly sail away with Kearney's latest novel." —Publishers Weekly

Glorious Treason by C. J. Ryan is the Philadelphia author's second novel. Once again, a brainy beauty must act to save her world. "Gloria VanDeen’s special brand of smarts, sexiness, and raw courage has won her a promotion within the Department of Extraterrestrial Affairs. For her first assignment, she’s been dispatched to the planet Sylvania on a voter registration drive... Once Gloria "democratizes" the planet, her ex-husband, the Emperor himself, plans to pillage it... With mining operations set to begin, Sylvania’s beleaguered populace are looking to Gloria to save their world..." (Publisher's release notes)

Strange Adventures of Rangergirl by Tim Pratt is the first novel from the critically-praised short-fiction author of Little Gods. "Marzipan 'Marzi' McCarty, a 20ish California art school dropout, writes quirky comics. Marzi's also the night manager–barista of Genius Loci, a Santa Cruz coffeehouse decorated by vanished muralist Garamond Ray to hold in elemental Evil. The wild adventures that Marzi concocts for her cowpunk character, Rangergirl, start coming true after her artsy friends become obsessed with freeing weird gods... Pratt's simplistic message, glimpsed sporadically behind clouds of neo-hippie jargon, self-consciously naughty language, outdoor sex and nasty violence, is pretentious and even a little naïve — that art can trap our fears and hold them at bay. Like too much marzipan, it all turns cloying mighty fast, pardners." —Publishers Weekly

Tales Before Tolkien: The Roots of Modern Fantasy, Douglas A. Anderson (Editor) "pulls together 21 short stories and one short play to explore the wide variety of influences on the writer who has long been regarded as the father of modern fantasy. Authors range from the iconic (L. Frank Baum) to the virtually unknown (Clemence Housman). Anderson includes commentary for each piece, highlighting possible connections with Tolkien's work... Particularly memorable are stories by L. Frank Baum, H. Rider Haggard, and Arthur Machen, all of which are sure to keep fans of fantasy, new and old alike, reading." —Matthew L. Moffett, School Library Journal review.

With her third medieval mystery, Dragon's Lair: A Medieval Mystery, Sharon Kay Penman has a solid anchor in this little-populated genre. "In this sequel to The Queen's Man, Dowager Queen Eleanor is desperately trying to rescue her son Richard Lionheart, imprisoned by the Holy Roman Emperor... Justin De Quincy, the illegitimate son of the Bishop of Chester, is sent to Wales by the queen to recover one of the ransom payments, which has mysteriously disappeared... De Quincy investigates the theft and delves into the labyrinthine politics of Wales. Davydd, a prince of North Wales, claims the payment was stolen and the guards slain. Using friends and contacts and his own wits, De Quincy comes close to tracking it down, and then becomes a target himself.. Students of history and those just looking for a good mystery will be equally rewarded." —Molly Connally, School Library Journal review.

Freedomland by Richard Price, the author of Clockers, returns us to the 'hoods, with a new perspective on the generational and racial tensions of Clockers. "Price's first novel since that bestseller is less a sequel than a monumental complement played in minor key, a re-visitation by an author who's older, sadder, wiser. The story flows from an event drawn from headlines: Brenda Martin, a white woman, staggers bleeding into a hospital to claim that her car has been hijacked by a black man... The jacking allegedly occurred in the park that divides the largely black city of Dempsey from the white-dominated city of Gannon. In response, Gannon cops seal off and invade D-Town, inflaming racial tensions and attracting an army of media... Price's experience as a screenwriter (The Color of Money, etc.) shows in the predictable dramatic arc of his tale, but the novel is no less powerful for its popular bent." —Publishers Weekly

Road to Purgatory by Max A. Collins is the artful sequel to Road to Perdition. "When you're dealing with the straight-text sequel to a bestselling American graphic novel.. the words take on extra significance. Luckily, Collins is, among his other talents, a dedicated word man... In 1942, Michael O'Sullivan Jr. — the wide-eyed boy who watched his father turn into an angel of vengeance — is now grown up and about to become a WWII hero in the savage battle for Bataan. Raised by Italian-American adopted parents, Michael Satariano... then returns to America to continue his father's one-man war on the Capone mob by working his way up inside it." —Publishers Weekly
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Where Did November Go?

2005-11-25T16:45:00.000-08:00

I WIN!

Turkey Day arrived this year with a welcome message: My NaNoWriMo novel had reached 68,000 words before the online validator became active.

For the last month (minus 5 days), I've been living in Indigo, a small town in flyover country, accompanying a rural sheriff named Art Whiddick as he organizes his high school reunion, solves a missing-person mystery, and uncovers dark doings in a sinister house.

That's at night, and various odd moments during the day. I've also been working a part-time contract that became a full-time one, and then (just as November dawned), began to lap over into 50- and 60-hour weeks. Even worse, my employer wouldn't let me log on to the 'Net for any reason while I was working.

I credit this policy for my over-the-top word count, actually. Since I couldn't surf, I couldn't fill idle moments with anything but writing. So reading and reviews went by the wayside. I haven't opened a cookbook in four weeks. I haven't even played Solitaire!

Instead, I wrote. As each chapter was complete, I eMailed it to myself. And by the simple expedient of unplugging the modem after each download, I made myself write at home, too.

Now, my reward: I get to come back to life, back to BlogCritics, and back to consciousness of life outside Indigo. Oh, I'll revisit that town. I'm taking the advice of Stephen King, who said in On Writing that a novel once complete should be set aside for a while. He advises that you come back and read it with fresh eyes (once you've forgotten the push and thrust of its creation); you'll spot its vacancies and absurdities much more easily then.

Art Whiddick and Indigo go into a drawer in my desk. Whether they will ever go further, only time will tell.

Meanwhile, it's good to be back.
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Next Week in the Bookstore: Pope John Paul, P.D. James and Paperback Pleasures

2005-11-15T22:09:00.000-08:00

Haunting the aisles of my local bookstore is no longer enough for me — I carefully plot strategies to acquire the latest paperback release in my favorite science fiction series, hot off the press. While I drool over the December releases, just a month away, I can relax with views of deliberately-destroyed buildings in Las Vegas, or explore the deeper meanings of Batman and the Flash, as conceived by Alex Ross.

Tuesday, November 22
The Lighthouse by P.D. James, the 13th Adam Dalgliesh mystery, borrows elements from previous plots. James "sticks closely to formula in the shape of her mystery story but injects her characters with a range of emotions and subtlety of motive that lifts the proceedings well beyond the level of a puzzle and its solution. In the past, she has often isolated her group of victims and suspects by homing in on a particular profession, but this time she uses an even more classic mystery device: an isolated location... But it's what happens between the lines that gives James' stories their punch: the tension between Miskin and the ambitious sergeant... and, of course, the personal lives of the various suspects." —Bill Ott, Booklist

Darth Vader is back, "badder than ever," as the Emperor's ruthless black-cloaked enforcer in James Luceno's Star Wars: Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader, the sequel to the novelization of Episode III. A conclusion of sorts to a literary trilogy (Luceno's Star Wars: Labyrinth of Evil and Matthew Stover's Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith) "chronicling the creation of arguably the most popular — and complex — villain in the history of genre fiction... picks up in the last hours of the Clone Wars as Vader is charged with tracking down and annihilating the last of the Jedi Order." —Barnes & Noble review

John Paul the Great: Remembering a Spiritual Father by Peggy Noonan is the speechwriter and columnist's personal tribute to the late Pope, who arrived in office in 1978 just as she returned to the church. "Noonan is better at flashing insight and anecdote than at sustained argument and narrative. Her memoir of the late pontiff is, then, scrappy, though lyrical passages about John Paul's exceptionally didactic charisma and her own growth in faith predominate... many may feel Noonan focuses too much on her own doings... Uneven though it is, this is an absorbing personal tribute to a remarkable figure." —Ray Olson, Booklist

The sequel to her 2003 debut Venetian Stories, Across the Bridge of Sighs: More Venetian Stories by Jane Turner Rylands features a similar cast of fallen aristocrats, social climbers, workaday Venetians and their respective hangers-on. "When Baroness Sofi Patristi finally divorces her serially philandering husband to marry the architect Vittorio Fallon in 'Restoration,' the refurbishments they undertake to the family's historic palazzo are interrupted by a tragedy that halts any future plans. In 'Fortune,' two exes reunite to visit their ne'er do-well-son... Whether witty or shimmeringly wistful, however, each of the tales Rylands spins prove entertaining, and the interwoven stories borrow from each other's casts with ease." —Publishers Weekly

My kind of history book is Jeff Byles' Rubble: Unearthing the History of Demolition. "The controlled reduction of buildings to rubble is 'the black art of our time,' writes Byles. In this colorful thematic history of the demolition trade (a subject he was pursuing, it should be said, before the destruction of the Twin Towers), he rightfully calls Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, 'the patron saint of creative destruction.' Only in the 1910s did the simple need to topple skyscrapers emerge as a fact of urban renewal... Today, the ostentatious annihilation of gargantuan stadia and casinos draws awestruck throngs." —Publishers Weekly

A stunning coffee-table hardcover version of the November 8th release, Mythology: The DC Comics Art of Alex Ross (Special Limited Edition), is released Tuesday. "What if Batman, Superman, the Flash, and all the rest of the DC Comics heroes really existed? They'd look just the way comics legend Alex Ross draws them in this gorgeous coffee-table art tome. The gifted Ross reimagines the cast of DC superheroes as morally complex characters deeply affected by the events of life. In addition to Ross's amazing hyper-realistic paintings, Mythology includes an original Superman and Batman story by Chip Kidd and a retelling of Robin's origin by frequent Ross collaborator Paul Dini." —Barnes & Noble review

Paperback Releases This Week

If you buy the paperback of John Grisham's Broker, don't expect the author's typical tightly-plotted legal thriller. "Readers will find an amiable travelogue to Italy and its charms in Grisham's latest. What they won't find are the suspense and inspired plotting that have made the author (The Last Juror, etc.) one of the world's bestselling writers. Yet Grisham remains a smooth storyteller, and few will fail to finish this oddball tale of what happens to ruined D.C. powerbroker Joel Blackman, 52, when he's suddenly released from federal prison after six years... little action or tension, plastic characters and plot turns that a tricycle could maneuver." —Publishers Weekly

The third in Rosalind Miles' Tristan and Isolde Novels, The Lady of the Sea finds Isolde now a queen in her own right, facing a Pictish invasion. The Pictish king is determined to take the riches of Ireland for his own people, whether by war or by marriage with Isolde. "Miles (I, Elizabeth; the Guenevere trilogy) writes flowery prose that borders on the florid ('Swollen clouds raced screaming through the air and peal after peal of thunder came rolling in from the edge of doom'), mingling Arthurian lords and ladies, red-robed papal envoys, sword-wielding madmen and crooning truth-tellers. Despite the author's occasional verbal excesses, fans of historical romance are sure to embrace this paean to the power of the female sex." —Publishers Weekly

The movie tie-in mass-market paperback of Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden is "a reminder of just how silly the exhortation 'write what you know!' can be. Clearly Golden, a 40-something American male, has never lived anything remotely similar to the experiences of a geisha coming of age in the '30s, the glory days of Kyoto's Gion pleasure district. Yet it is precisely this vanished world that he re-creates with subtlety, sensuality, and supreme authority." —Barnes & Noble review

In Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep, "A self-conscious outsider navigates the choppy waters of adolescence and a posh boarding school's social politics in Sittenfeld's A-grade coming-of-age debut. The strong narrative voice belongs to Lee Fiora, who leaves South Bend, Ind., for Boston's prestigious Ault School and finds her sense of identity supremely challenged... The book meanders on its way, light on plot but saturated with heartbreaking humor and written in clean prose. Sittenfeld, who won Seventeen's fiction contest at 16, proves herself a natural in this poignant, truthful book." —Publishers Weekly
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Next Week in the Bookstore: Questions of Love for Michael Jackson, Frank McCourt and Alex Cross

2005-11-08T05:42:00.000-08:00

COMPELLING
There may be only four new books this week, but at least one is a new Frank McCourt. With the Diane Dimond tome on the Michael Jackson Trial, and a new Alex Cross novel, there's still plenty to generate excitement. The sleeper is Po Bronson's latest effort, a far distance from The Nudist on the Late Shift. Enjoy!

Monday, November 14
Alex Cross is back! Mary, Mary by James Patterson pits the brilliant FBI forensic psychologist against a movie star-obsessed serial killer who calls herself "Mary Smith." "Cross is sucked into the case full time, jeopardizing the outcome of the custody battle he's involved in over his youngest son. As Cross studies the e-mails and patterns of the killer, he realizes he can't be certain of anything, even the gender of Mary Smith. The thrills in Patterson's latest lead to a truly unexpected, electrifying climax." —Kristine Huntley, Booklist

Tuesday, November 15
Teacher Man: A Memoir by Frank McCourt ends the trilogy that began with Angela's Ashes with a "warming and enlightening" account of his 30-year teaching career in New York City's public high schools. His "easily embraceable" tale is told with McCourt's "trademark charm, wit, and unself-conscious self-effacement... flashbacks of his dreadful days growing up in extreme deprivation in Ireland don't sink the narrative in self-pity. Remembrances of his struggling days in college in New York ('dozing years') provide informative foundation for the real point of the book: relating his development into the kind of teacher he became..." —Brad Hooper, Booklist

Po Bronson's Why Do I Love These People?, subtitled The Miraculous Journeys of Twenty-First-Century Families, takes us on an extraordinary journey, in which every step — and every family — is real. "Bronson's is an unromantic view of family life; its foundations, he believes, are not soul-mate bonding or dramatic emotional catharses, but steady habits of hard work and compromise, realistic expectations and the occasional willingness to sever a relationship that's beyond repair... usually he offers a probing, clear-eyed, hopeful narrative of familial problems that many readers will recognize." —Publishers Weekly

Be Careful Who You Love: Inside the Michael Jackson Case, by Diane Dimond, is an account of the pop-star's much-hyped court case by the reporter who first broke the story of the young boy who accused Jackson of molestation. "The ladies of Court TV strike again... Diane Dimond takes us inside the Michael Jackson trial. And who better to tell [this] story than Dimond? Having covered Jackson's movements and courtroom antics for nearly 15 years, Dimond has a wealth of knowledge second only to Jackson himself..." —Barnes & Noble review

Now in the Bookstore for Holiday Gifting:
American Presidents Eminent Lives: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Ulysses S. Grant, a Boxed Set of Presidential biographies by Christopher Hitchens and Paul Johnson. "In the brief-biography arena, essayist Hitchens' Jefferson vies with historian Joyce Appleby's Thomas Jefferson (2003) for the loyalty of the time-challenged reader." —Gilbert Taylor, Booklist "Johnson doesn't have Americans' natural inclination to deify Washington, but he does have a great deal of respect for his subject, delineating the man's merits and deficiencies." —Ted Westervelt, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes holds within its slipcase four classic Sherlockian tales (A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of Four, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Valley of Fear), plus "clear definitions of obscure terms, pithy discussions of some of the issues that have puzzled and delighted Holmes fans for generations (where exactly was Watson wounded?) and lucid essays (which legend inspired The Hound of the Baskervilles?). Klinger manages the difficult feat of appealing both to those new to the world of Sherlockian scholarship and to those who can quote the stories like gospel. Ample use of illustrations, some from the novels' original appearances, adds to the enjoyment." —Publishers Weekly

Jefferson and His Time, in a special "slipcover edition", is the complete, six-volume, illustrated Pulitzer-Prize-winning biography, available for the first time in a handsome boxed set. "Malone is the giant on whose shoulders every subsequent scholar of Jefferson stands.... [This] is simply a great read." —Joseph J. Ellis, author of American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson.

The World of Wine: The Boxed Set includes both Hugh Johnson's The Story of Wine and The World Atlas of Wine, together in a slipcover case. Sure to be a hit with the oenophile on your gift list! "This luxury box-set includes two of the world’s most successful and best-selling wine books by the two foremost wine writers on the subject." (Publisher's release notes)

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency in paperback editions: "The first five books in Alexander McCall Smith's beloved bestselling series, featuring Mma Precious Ramotswe, the traditionally built, eminently sensible, and cunning proprietor of the only ladies' detective agency in Botswana, are now available in a beautifully designed boxed set, including a special preview chapter of Blue Shoes and Happiness." —Barnes & Noble listing
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Weekly BlogScan: Flu Shots and Fears

2005-11-06T11:54:00.000-08:00

Someone I love is ailing right now. Each year, my spouse declines the opportunity to get a flu shot, because "it always gives you the flu." And since my better half is rarely ill, perhaps this is the right approach. I, on the other hand, get a flu shot every year about this time, and though I often get sick in the winter, it's not flu—can't be, you see, since I got a flu shot!

Who should get a flu shot? According to the Official Google Blog (powered by Blogger, of course!) and Google staff doctor Taraneh Ravazi, M.D., the answer is:

Generally, those wanting to reduce their chance of getting sick. It's especially recommended for... People aged 50 and older... Women who are or will be pregnant during the flu season... Adults and children 6 months and older with chronic heart, or lung conditions including asthma, metabolic diseases such as diabetes, chronic kidney disease, or weakened immune system such as with HIV or with medications, and any kind of brain or spinal cord disorders... Children 6 months to 18 years who are on long-term aspirin therapy... All children 6-23 months of age... All the contacts of people in these high-risk groups.

Anyone notice that the last category is the kitchen-sink option? The good doctor provides a Flu Clinic Locator to find where you might be able to get a shot. By the way, he offers this argument for my spouse's objection: "A flu shot, made from an inactivated vaccine... contrary to popular belief cannot give you the flu."

But is this the vaccine that will prevent illness of the avian flu (H5N1) variety? Likely not. The shot that works (to some degree) against human H5N1 infection is Tamilflu, a post-infection treatment (for flu you've already come down with). The vaccines being distributed at your local flu shot clinic are likely to be Fluzone and Fluarix instead. Luckily for humans, it's actually quite hard to catch avian flu—it hasn't quite made the jump to human-to-human transmission. Yet.

Flu infections run in cycles, according to the theory of rhythmicity of antigenic shift.

The annual flu cycle is likely due to a combination of mutation rates, incubation times (how long it takes before an infected person begins shedding the virus), and seasonal variations in climate.... The influenza virus also has a cycle that spans tens of years. This occurs when it undergoes "antigenic shift."... For instance, the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 claimed over 20 million lives worldwide. These pandemics recur about every 10 to 30 years. The longer cycle is probably due to the low probability of having two different strains transfer genetic material to create a pathogenic virus and of having this new virus jump the species barrier back into humans.

We're concerned about avian flu, not because it is now threatening us, but because it satisfies two conditions for a potential pandemic: a highly mobile vector (migratory birds), and a viral similarity to the cause of several global flu pandemics. ("Both the 1957-58 and 1968-69 pandemics were caused by viruses containing a combination of genes from a human influenza virus and an avian influenza virus. The 1918-19 pandemic virus appears to have an avian origin.")

Mariane Szeto takes a more personal look at flu vaccines in Diary of a Diabetty, pointing out that being sick can raise your blood sugars. She counsels other diabetics not to gamble with flu, but to plan strategically for the ways in which flu will impact their lives.

Make sure that you consult your doctor for a "sick day plan." This may include checking your blood sugars more frequently, checking for ketones in your urine, or weighing yourself to monitor for excessive weight loss (sometimes an indicator for high blood sugars)... Don't wait! Get your flu shot as soon as possible because being sick is just no fun.

If you're fond of the eco-thriller of the Outbreak or Hot Zone variety, I recommend the trenchant future-blog of the Avian Flu Pandemic of 2006 published on the Nature Website. "Sally O'Reilly's Blog" was actually written by Nature senior reporter Declan Butler, and it's a scary read.

2 February 2006 The virus spreads Today, I was at a press conference at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda. A guy from the CDC pointed to a giant screen, a map of the world dotted with red pixels. He said that they'd reckoned the virus might hit in two or more waves up to eight months apart, as in past epidemics. They'd hoped the first pandemic strain of H5N1 might be poorly contagious, and come back again with a vengeance after it had picked up more infectivity. By that time we might have had a vaccine. That was just a hunch, though. And it was wrong... Look at that map! With the huge increase in passengers travelling by air, it's already lodged in 38 cities around the globe. The outline of Asia is barely visible beneath the swarm of red pixels.

SCIAM Observations gives us the editors' take on articles that appear in Scientific American. In a recent post, "Don't Fear the (Bird) Reaper?," John Rennie, the magazine's editor-in-chief, takes issue with the down-play of avian flu dangers because the strain is currently only fatal to 2 to 3 percent of those infected.

we don't need H5N1 to be highly and quickly lethal. We only need it to be highly transmissible, which is advantageous in evolutionary terms. The 1918 virus, for example, had a case-fatality estimated to be "only" two or three percent, but when you have infected a significant portion of the world's population (immunologically naive to H5N1), 2% is quite a lot of dead people. Thus if there is a 40% infection rate (perhaps comparable to 1918), we would have 2.4 billion infections, very few (percentage-wise) fatal. But a 2% case-fatality rate (no one's idea of super lethality) is still 50 million deaths... In addition, influenza is infectious before symptoms (and hence incapacitation) occur, unlike SARS or Ebola. Orent likes to say that the reason wild ducks are only mildly affected is that dead ducks don't fly. But infectious people do fly—on airplanes.

Dr. Joseph Mercola, however, cries fowl on the whole idea of a Bird Flu pandemic. In "Avian Flu Epidemic Scare is a Hoax" he argues that the media and government are conspiring to "scare you into taking the flu vaccine... Dr. Henry Miller, former director of the Office of Biotechnology at the FDA, seeks to frighten the US public by telling us that the avian flu virus can jump from birds to humans and produce a fatal illness in 50% of those infected."

Dr. Mercola has his own brand of Lydia Pinkham's to peddle, though, so I'll take his advice with a grain of salt—and a flu shot.
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Next Week in the Bookstore: Crow-Feast, Utter Bloody Rudeness, and Unnecessary Men

2005-11-02T19:00:00.000-08:00

In the first full week of November, tempting new books will be rather thin on the ground. This is typically the time of year when publishers release boxed collections of older releases for holiday gifting. But Tuesday finds a new Lynne Truss book on the shelves, ready-made for those who fell in love with her Eats, Shoots and Leaves. And George R.R. Martin's next Feast will be an essential for fans of the Seven Kingdoms saga.

Monday, November 7
The Beatles: The Biography by Robert Spitz comes out Monday. "No mere rehash of Beatles mythology, music insider Bob Spitz's revisionist biography breaks fertile new ground with material culled from hundreds of interviews and years of research, restoring the Fab Four to their raw, angry rock 'n' roll roots." —Barnes & Noble review

Next, Nicole Richie's The Truth about Diamonds: A Novel tells the sensational story of Chloe Parker, a rock royalty princess and a card-carrying member of Hollywood's inner circle. "Chloe shoots to instant fame as a spokesmodel for a national ad campaign. When her long-lost birth father appears out of nowhere and her best friend betrays her, she must struggle to keep it all together—her sobriety, her friendships, and her integrity despite the betrayals of those around her. Ultimately, Chloe comes spectacularly into her own, achieving stardom in her own right and finding true love." (Publisher's release notes)

Tuesday, November 8
Jan Karon's Light from Heaven comes out en masse Tuesday. With this book, Jan Karon brings to a satisfying conclusion her beloved story series set in the small town of Mitford, North Carolina—a village abounding in mysteries and miracles and populated by a lovable band of delightful eccentrics. "Karon deftly ties up all the loose ends of Father Timothy Kavanagh's deeply affecting life. ...filled with characters old and new and with answers to all the questions that Karon fans have asked since the series began nearly a decade ago. To put it simply—it's her best." (Publisher's release notes)

Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door by Lynne Truss isn't "a book about good manners, per se. Instead, the British author of Eats, Shoots and Leaves sets out 'to mourn... the apparent collapse of civility in all areas of our dealing with strangers; then to locate a tiny flame of hope in the rubble.' It's a plea to show some consideration to others... [M]any book buyers will tuck it lovingly into the Christmas stockings of their somewhat discomfited nearest and dearest." —Publishers Weekly

CBS producer Mary Mapes lost her job over the disastrous decision to air the story of George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard duty, with what turned out to be forged evidence. Truth and Duty: The President, The Press, and the Privilege of Power is Mapes' account of the events that ended in scandal—not for the White House, but for CBS News itself. "The firestorm that followed their broadcast trashed Mapes' well-respected career, caused Rather to resign from his anchor chair a year early, and led to an unprecedented 'internal inquiry' into the story. ...always fast, sometimes furious, and often unexpectedly funny about the collapse of one of America's great institutions." (Publisher's release notes)

Are Men Necessary? by Maureen Dowd reports from the gender wars in a new collection of essays, this time focused on what happens "When Sexes Collide." "Dowd's Bushworld, collecting her amped New York Times op-eds, hit big during the 2004 presidential campaign. This follow-up is as slapdash as the earlier book was slash-and-burn. What Dowd seems really to want to do is dish up anecdotes of gender bias in the media, which she does with her usual aplomb—everything from how Elizabeth Vargas was booted out of Peter Jennings's vacant chair at ABC during his illness... to the guys who won't date Dowd because she's got more Beltway juice (and money) than they. The rest is padding... It's intermittently entertaining, but neither sharp enough nor sustained enough to work as a book." —Publishers Weekly

For fans of A Song of Fire and Ice, George R.R. Martin's epic Seven Kingdoms saga, A Feast for Crows is the long-awaited fourth installment. They may be disappointed, however. "Speculation has run rampant since the previous entry, A Storm of Swords, appeared in 2000, and Feast teases at the important questions but offers few solid answers... Martin's Web site explains that Feast and the forthcoming A Dance of Dragons were written as one book and split after they grew too big for one volume, and it shows. This is not Act I Scene 4 but Act II Scene 1..." —Publishers Weekly

The Other Side of Me by Sidney Sheldon will also find eager fans in line to buy. This, however, is not a new Sidney Sheldon novel, but a memoir of Sheldon's youth, and his Hollywood and television days, "reminiscent of his colorful novels, a rags-to-riches yarn replete with struggle, an indomitable hero and eventual glamour... While the book is long on Sheldon's Hollywood and television days, it skimps on his domestic and publishing lives. Still, that shouldn't stop Sheldon's legions of fans from lapping this up." —Publishers Weekly

No surprise, I'm sure, that my list has only the plea from Lynne Truss to halt "utter bloody rudeness." I'll wait on A Feast for Crows until the rest of the novel is released. As for Mapes' travails in the TANG tale, I'll do my reading in the bookstore, while I stand in line with my stacks of boxed sets of Elizabeth Moon and David Weber. It's never too early to get those grandchildren pointed in the right direction!
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Ten Great Halloween DVDs

2005-10-30T19:12:00.000-08:00

SANS SLASHERS

Okay, Psycho's a great Halloween flick, and so is Halloween, of course. But how about a little more cerebral fare? Here are my suggestions for some off-the-beaten-path movies for All Hallows Eve.

1. The Wicker Man 1973

This tops the list, with its pagan rituals done in full light of day, before the eyes of aghast Christian bigot Sergeant Howie (Played by Edward Woodward). Britt Ecklund and dozens of other lush young ladies dance nude, a cheeky Jennifer Martin talks back to the sergeant, and it all ends with the virgin Sergeant sacrificed to the goddess of the fields. Creepy, spooky and tantalizing all at the same time. Wonderful!

2. American Psycho 2000

The biggest question we're left with at the end of this film is, did anyone get murdered? Was it all in Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale)'s twisted mind? There's gore aplenty here, but it's never quite clear how much was spilled, and how much was fantasy. We do get plenty of clues about Bateman's existence as an empty mask, a hollow imitation of others. The horrifying thing about this story is not the murders, but the fact that dreaming about them is the only release available to Bateman.

3. Dracula 1979

This is the version with Frank Langella in the title role. What Langella captured was the "fatal attraction" of the blood-drinker for the women he encountered. The heavy sexuality and blatant come-hither the Count received from naughty Mina (and even from the engaged Lucy Seward, played by Kate Nelligan) played well off the languid good looks of Langella, then at the height of his beauty. In previous films, Dracula was a beast, a boorish dirty old man with special powers. Langella made him rapturously, dangerously delectable.

4. Hocus Pocus 1993

Campy, goofy, and thrilling, this movie is a Disney-fied version of a scary tale. Three witches who feed on the life-force of young children (played to the hilt by Bette Midler, Kathy Najimy and Sex in the City's Sarah Jessica Parker) are brought back to life on Halloween when a virgin (boy) lights "the black-flame candle." Among the delightful touches in this silly romp: a witch, unable to find a broom, takes off on the museum's vacuum cleaner. Careful, though—this flick is scary to young kids where American Psycho would just put them to sleep.

5. The Exorcist 1973

The original, still the best. Forget the jokes and lampoons—just give yourself over to the story, and let it surprise you again. The scariest part of the film, to me anyway, is in the middle, as the young girl begins to change in appearance and demeanor. Horrifying and startling, creepy and shocking, this is a movie that still packs a punch. Not for the youngsters, even now.

6. Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires 1974

This is classic kung-fu fare, with Dracula thrown in. Peter Cushing makes a bland Van Helsing against a totally forgettable Dracula (I've forgotten the actor's name already!), and the real thrills come from the Chinese brothers who join the Count. My all-time favorite "death of vampires" scene is in this movie, as the seven masked and robed vampires collapse in the light of day. As their empty robes flatten, little puffs of ash come out of the masks' eyeholes... Terrific effect!

7. The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T 1953

Horror! Frights! Endless piano lessons! Amazingly surreal (especially for its day), thanks to author Theodor S. Geisel (Dr. Suess), this is the story of a young boy whose mother has been hypnotised by the sinister Dr. Terwhiliker (Hans Conreid) into assisting him with his army of mind-numbed young pianists. Only the true love of "independent contractor" August Zabladowski can rescue her, and save young Bartholomew Collins from a fate worse than death—piano practice! (No, really, this is a creepy movie, I promise!)

8. Blade 1998

The best thing about this movie (another meld of vampires and kung-fu) is the music, and the horrid way the vampires move. Modern techniques let the sped-up images of the vampires mix with the regular-speed "citizens" and Blade (Wesley Snipes). The result is an almost subliminal sense that something is wrong. This moves the creep-factor way up, even before the opening credits have finished—and it doesn't slow down once until the finale. I sometimes put this DVD in just for the opening scene in the club, and the throbbing beat that climaxes with the shower of blood. Tasty.

9. The Witches of Eastwick 1987

This is a great movie about the seductive power of evil. The Devil (Jack Nicholsen) tempts three women, Cher, Susan Sarandon, and Michelle Pfeiffer—and they take the bait. Once he has them hooked, though, the Devil (how like a man!) stops wooing them, and begins using them. Some of the best scenes involve a witch of a different sort, a local biddy who pokes her nose into the witches' affairs, and winds up spewing cherry pits in church. Fun, powerful and sexy, all at the same time, this is a winner.

10. Cat People 1982

I prefer the version with Nastassja Kinski, although the 1942 version is also powerful. The brooding sexuality of Kinski suits the role well, and the haunting music by Giorgio Moroder was a mainstay on my tape player for years afterward. Malcolm McDowell makes a very scary brother to cat-woman Kinski, and lets you see the predator lurking beneath his surface. It is the female cat, however, that terrifies and tempts us with her beauty. Don't worry about subtexts; this movie works quite well as a surface tale of horror and shape-shifting.

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Next Week in the Bookstore: Rice's Christ, Piazza's Elvis, and a Holiday Princess

2005-10-26T05:49:00.000-07:00

COMPELLING

Anne Rice's genre-breaking tale of the early years in the life of Jesus Christ tops the list this week, along with a new Scott Turow, biographical works from Billy Crystal and David Halberstam, and a commentary on political virtues from President Jimmy Carter. Four for the younger crowd include a new Princess Diaries novel and three Narnia offerings.

Monday, October 31
With 700 Sundays to play with, comedian Billy Crystal re-creates the magic of his successful one-man Broadway show in this heartwarming memoir that brings to life his lovable, eccentric family and his happy childhood on Long Island's South Shore. "Once Crystal is finished with shtick and on to the story of his marvelous Long Island family, readers will be glad they can savor it at their own pace. There's the story of Crystal's uncle Milt Gabler, who started the Commodore music label and recorded Billie Holiday singing "Strange Fruit" when no one else would... There's even Louis Armstrong at the Crystal family seder, with Crystal's grandma telling the gravelly-voiced singer, 'Louis, have you tried just coughing it up?'" —Publishers Weekly

Tuesday, November 1
In Ordinary Heroes by Scott Turow, a man discovers the startling truth about his deceased father's wartime activities when he stumbles across a secret stash of letters. Bestselling novelist Scott Turow departs from his courtroom thrillers for a spellbinding story of WWII intrigue. "Inspired by the experiences of his own enigmatic father, who served as commanding officer in a World War II medical unit, Turow weaves together numerous narrative threads, the most compelling of which is Dubin's uneasy tenure as commander of a beleaguered rifle company. While Turow's fans might prefer the lively verbal skirmishes that suffuse his legal fare, the author's action sequences (like that white-knuckle free fall onto the battlefront) do plenty to quicken the pulse." —Allison Block, Booklist

Vampire novelist Anne Rice departs her usual genre with Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt. Rice brings her formidable storytelling talents to bear on a bold new literary endeavor ten years in the making—a fictionalized narrative account of the early life of Jesus, told in the words of the Gospels. "A triumph of tone... As he ponders his staggering responsibility, the boy is fully believable—and yet there's something in his supernatural empathy and blazing intelligence that conveys the wondrousness of a boy like no other.... With this novel, she has indeed found a convincing version of him; this is fiction that transcends story and instead qualifies as an act of faith..." —Kirkus Reviews

In Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis, President Jimmy Carter turns his attention to the political arena. "[Carter's] assertion that Christian fundamentalists are uniformly rigid, domineering, and exclusivist paints with a broad brush. His concern over the doctrine of "pre-emptive" war is well argued, but his consistent criticism of Bush foreign policy drips with the partisanship he claims to decry. Carter may be a kind, decent, even admirable man, but this book preaches to the choir and will not change many minds..." —Jay Freeman, Booklist

For "All Things Elvis" you want The King by Jim Piazza. This is the ultimate tribute book, a gorgeously designed rhinestone-studded keepsake filled with little-known biographical and anecdotal information and crammed with hundreds of photos and illustrations, including movie stills and posters. "Romps through the decades, highlighting Elvis events with a chronological time line floating at the top of each page, while amusing anecdotes punctuate a striking selection of magazine covers, paintings, photos, posters and other entertaining ephemera, from cinema curiosities to Elvis imitators. Paging through, readers encounter an explosion of sidebars with revelations such as that a suicide note ('I walk the lonely street') inspired 'Heartbreak Hotel.'" —Publishers Weekly

Warm up the oven! Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook arrives next Tuesday. Domestic doyenne Martha Stewart has returned from Camp Cupcake armed with dozens of tempting new recipes for scrumptious breads, delectable cookies, and other "good things." "Here, you will find the recipes and how-tos for the popovers you dream about, the simple crumb cake that you always want to whip up on Sunday morning, the double-chocolate brownie cookies that will make you a bigger hero with the after-school crowd, and the citrus bars that you could only find in that little bakery that's no longer under the same management.... Baking offers comfort and joy and something tangible to taste and savor. We all hope that these recipes provide you with years of pleasure." —Martha Stewart (Publisher's release notes)

Bill Bryson's whirlwind tour of scientific imponderables, gets a first-class upgrade in Short History of Nearly Everything: Special Illustrated Edition, in this special collector's edition teeming with illustrations that provide the perfect complement to the author's witty, engaging prose. "Bill Bryson's words are supplemented by full-color artwork that explains in visual terms the concepts and wonder of science, at the same time giving face to the major players in the world of scientific study. Eloquently and entertainingly described, as well as richly illustrated, science has never been more involving or entertaining." (Publisher's release notes)

The Education of a Coach by Pulitzer-winning journalist and author David Halberstam focuses on Bill Belichick, one of the NFL's most successful coaches, and the game of football as a team sport with rich detail, exacting research and colorful anecdotes. "As he's done in the past, Halberstam takes the classic sports-bio formula--one stellar performer's rise to the pinnacle of American sport--and transforms it into a nuance-rich story of individual triumph and social history." —Wes Lukowsky, Booklist

Holiday Princess: A Princess Diaries Book by Meg Cabot, with illustrations by Chesley McLaren, takes us to Genovia with Princess Mia for the holidays. "A princess always knows how to celebrate the holidays. There's Christmas, Hanukkah, Yule, Chinese New Year, Saturnalia... to name just a few. Then there's gift giving, the royal Genovian Fabergé advent calendar, hot chocolate with marshmallows—oh, and all those fabulous holiday movies. How will YOU celebrate this holiday season? Mia and her subjects have a few ideas." (Publisher's release notes)

Step into Narnia by E.J. Kirk is a guidebook to the places and characters of Narnia. "Just in time for the live-action movie The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in fall 2005, this companion book is perfect for children too young to read the original. It's packed with fun facts about characters, places, and magic, and has interactive sections such as a bravery test and mix and match columns."

Note: Although Amazon says Step into Narnia can be shipped today, it is actually not released until November 1st.

Also timed for release with the film, The Chronicles of Narnia Full-Color Gift Edition Box Set by C.S. Lewis, "contains paper-over-board gift editions of The Lion, the Witch and The Wardrobe and The Magician's Nephew in a box set with full-color classic Pauline Baynes art."

Note: Although Amazon says The Chronicles of Narnia Full-Color Gift Edition Box Set can be shipped today, it is actually not released until November 1st.

And finishing the trio of Narnia offerings, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Read-Aloud Edition is C.S. Lewis' beloved classic, in a large-sized, illustrated read-aloud edition. "Pauline Baynes' illustrations for The Chronicles of Narnia span a remarkable career, beginning with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in 1949, and continuing with the hand-coloring of all seven books forty years later."

Note: Although Amazon says The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Read-Aloud Edition can be shipped today, it is actually not released until November 1st.

I've waited as long as I can for Rice's Christ, so that's definitely on my list. The Martha Stewart cookbook is there too—she had me at "double-chocolate brownie cookies." Ummmm, chocolate!
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Week 3: Ballroom Bootcamp on TLC

2005-10-23T18:14:00.000-07:00

AN OBVIOUS WINNER

In a departure from last week, Ballroom Bootcamp focused on guys this week—the Artist, the Old Dog and the Football Player—trying to kick up a jive to competitive level. Once again, these first-time dancers were paired with dance experts Gocha Chertkoev, Christian Perry, and Susannah Cuesta, as they learned how brutal it can be to match speeds in a hot jive triple-step.

Fans of last season's Dancing With the Stars will recall the way boxer Evander Holyfield came to life in the Jive. The dance uses "fast twitch" muscle fibers and demands a high level of aerobic fitness, as competitors bounce, spring, twist and hop vigorously. Knowing that, you may understand why this is the first week of Ballroom Bootcamp in which I pre-picked the winner, and felt the judges were totally justified in their choice.

The "artist" of the title is John, a slightly clownish fellow who doesn't take the contest seriously at first. He and his coach, Gocha Chertkoev, almost came to blows over John's lack of focus and unwillingness to treat his coach or the dance with respect. This week was the first in which they showed even a small part of the partnering process after the initial coaching sessions—and I felt that John only got as far as he did due to the efforts of his girlfriend and the coaching of Gocha's wife (who was John's professional partner.)

Hank was the bearded "old dog," staying solo in a residence hotel as he learned to jive. In addition to lessons in Jive, Christian Perry took him come out for a round of golf, jive-style—carrying both bags, and practicing the triple-step at each of 18 holes, to build up his wind and increase his fitness. This old dog quickly learned his new tricks, but never quite got fast enough to perform an enjoyable jive.

Interestingly, both John and Hank went through a makeover as part of getting ready for competition. John's eyebrows were trimmed back, while Hank lost all but a small patch of his weedy white beard.

All three men looked very "dancer-ly" in their costumes from Randall Designs. John got the best deal here, with a shoulder-broadening swash of glitter, while Hank looked svelte and elegant in his '50s-era suit.

It was Erdolo, however, who was the obvious front-runner in this week's contest. This athletic young man had immigrated to the US from Africa with his family, and brought a real joy to his performance of jive from the first lessons. Susannah Questa had to break him of a bit of shyness first—the scene where he runs screaming when she shows up at a basketball pick-up game, and jumps a high fence to escape her, is a hoot—but once he is comfortable with dancing in front of others, he's a winner.

Thanks, TLC, for the replays! A cable outage Friday night cut me off from watching this show in its first outing, but fortunately, I had my connection back by the time the final replay was on today. Check the broadcast schedule on TLC to make sure you don't miss any of these sometimes frustrating, sometimes delightful—but always, fascinating bootcamps!
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Weekly BlogScan: Lost in Translation

2005-10-21T18:54:00.000-07:00

I began my BlogScans nearly a year ago, with the chance discovery that many blog-posts centered on a "wandering" theme. I feel as if I've come full circle to discover that many more contain a complaint that someone or some idea is "lost in translation."

This was triggered, perhaps, by a reasonably clever Blogcritics post examining how The Simpsons might survive translation to suit the Arab world. (They don't.) And Homer's translation to a sober, wise patriach in a series bereft of beer, bacon, Bart's backtalk, and Lisa's self-conscious feminism is a paradigm for other such losses in international and trans-Web communication.

For a 180-degree twist on this concept, I read John "Vampire Slayer" Blyler's complaint on JB's Circuit that his studies of vampire bloggers and dead kittens had been taken out of context. I never knew that dead kittens were a trick to trace vampire bloggers (parasitic denizens of the cyberworld that suck original ideas out of the blogs of others). But The Bay Area Is Talking had the rest of the story. Just Google the phrase "Bloggers kill kittens" and you'll find ample evidence of the propagation of an absurd idea through the Web.

But that isn't so much lost in translation as stolen. For a look at an absurd idea both lost in translation and propagated freely, check out respectful of otters, where they repair a fractured news item purported to be from ZDF News (a highly-respected Dutch news program). Did President Bush visit a specially-built food-supply depot in New Orleans after Katrina, only to have it torn down after he left? No, the bloggers conclude; the initial translator missed a segue from the story about the Presidential visit to one city with news about different day's visit to a completely different state.

Saddam called Yehzidi faith Satanism

According to Michael Yon: Online Magazine, the Yehzidi, a little-known, reclusive Kurdish tribe, had their religious beliefs mistranslated as devil worship by Saddam Hussein.

Some believe Yezidism is over 5,000 years old... Some tenets of Yezidism are readily understandable to westerners: Yezidis worship one God... They recognize and respect both Jesus and Mohammed, but as men of faith, not prophets. Where the doctrine starts to become hazy is when the angels appear... [W]hen this seventh Angel, most beloved of God, fell from grace, he was the most powerful angel in Heaven and on Earth. He rose as the Archangel Malak Ta'us... [T]he name, Malak Ta'us, literally means, "King of Peacocks."

Saddam Hussein's hatred for Yezidis and Kurds was matched only by his desire to eradicate every last one of them from Iraq. Even though most Kurds are actually Sunni Muslims, as is the now imprisoned dictator, his hatred for them remained unabated, and was relentless. Hussein knew that a collision of religious beliefs carved fault lines between the Yezidis and the Kurds who surround them. He used his common point of reference with the Kurds to sharpen their divide from the Yezidis, by calling them "Devil Worshippers." But just because the Yezidis don't have a Satan figure in their holy book, doesn't mean they can't spot a devil when they see one. Together with the Kurds, they resisted Hussein's will. Today, while the real peacock sits in jail, the unvanquished Yezidis are rebuilding their homeland.

On Always On, Bernard Moon writes about a blogosphere lost in translation. Is the Web's lightning-fast transmission of ideas actually barred by lousy translation software? His thoughts range from French outrage over Google making libraries available online, to the real need to communicate with people who speak from another cultural and linguistic stance.

That, in turn, led me to think about other topics and issues from around the globe that people not only want but need to read about from the perspectives of the people who are on the ground experiencing them. What are Iraqis saying about the situation in their country? What would the people of Rwanda have written to make us understand the horrors that took place there? ... Other than what people like Mohammed and Omar from the Iraq the Model blog—who are writing in English—have to say, we're missing out on these voices because we don't understand their language.

Sometimes, losing something in translation is worthwhile, says Hack A Day [beta]. He recommends using the lossy translator of Babelfish, for example, to make it easier to create texts for steganography. The quote is as it appears on the blog.

There are a couple disadvantages to this method of steg: the low bitrate and the fact that you have to transmit the source and the translated text. There are also some attacks to expose this method. If the same sentence appears twice in a text and is translated two different ways it would set off a red flag. Also if the machine mistakes are inconsistent: using the word "foots" in one place and "feets" in the other. If someone developed a large statistical model of all MT systems it would be easy to see that the steg doesn’t fit the mold, but the steg could also use this model to make sure it fits (an arms race).

The blogger at DealLawyers.com is another who wants to work the system to bring sense back out of what has been lost in translation in trans-cultural business deals. "A good agreement cannot fix a bad relationship, but a good relationship can fix a bad agreement... So relax and do what Asian and European dealmakers have been doing for centuries: wine, dine, and (then) sign... then wine and dine some more."

Riding Sun points out that dead-tree media also seem willing to use translation losses to provide deniability while making a point. He cites a Japanese headline on a Newsweek cover in February that proclaims "America Is Dead." Neither this article, nor its cover illustration, an American flag tossed into a garbage can, made it into the issue published in the US. That featured Hilary Swank, Jamie Foxx and Leonardo DiCaprio instead, under the title, "Oscar Confidential."

It's one thing for Newsweek to actively promote the notion that America is a "dead", "rotting" country overseas. But it's quite another thing indeed to hide those efforts from its American readers. If Newsweek really thinks America is dead, and our flag belongs in the trash, why won't it tell us? ... If I were to offer Newsweek a suggestion, it would be this: Any story or cover you're ashamed to run in America probably shouldn't be used in other countries, either.

Finally, lost in translation celebrates the sheer joy of losing it. Check out the Babelizer, which guarantees jabberwocky for your efforts. I plugged in "And did those feet in ancient time walk upon England's mountains green?" with "Include Chinese, Japanese, and Korean" turned on—and out came:

And you have gone old hour these feet more retimber the English
mountain?

Extreme calm of it! (Babelized version of "That's so cool!")
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Next Week in the Bookstore: Gabriel Garcia Marquez and a Lost Capote Novel

2005-10-19T06:04:00.000-07:00

COMPELLING
There's excitement on several levels next week, as new Danielle Steel, David Baldacci, and Patricia Cornwell novels vie with a new book by Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and a resurrected novel from the vaults of Truman Capote.

Monday, October 24
Driven From Within by Michael Jordan with Tinker Hatfield pays tribute to the teachers, mentors, and friends who have guided him in the development of his athletic skill, his ethics and his determination to be the best.

Tuesday, October 25
Dr. Kay Scarpetta is back. Predator by Patricia Cornwell follows her on a freelance assignment with the National Forensic Academy in Florida. "The teasing psychological clues lead Scarpetta and her team-Pete Marino, Benton Wesley, and Lucy Farinelli-to suspect that they are hunting someone with a cunning and malevolent mind whose secrets have kept them in the shadows, until now." (Publisher's release notes)

Toxic Bachelors by Danielle Steel relates the intertwined tales of three men, 40-something best friends who face their worst fears. "One by one, they find themselves falling deeply in love with (surprise!) women they wouldn't even have considered dating casually. A breezy read, this contains some of the usual Steel plot mechanisms (Will the handsome, wealthy bachelor successfully woo the beautiful but no-frills social worker?) and happy endings that will keep her fans reading and waiting for more. Librarians may need duplicate copies." —Kathleen Hughes, Booklist

Middle-aged men also feature in The Camel Club by David Baldacci, in a far different scenario: four men investigate the death of Secret Service man. "The Camel Club is conducting their own investigation, and before long they realize they've got a massive conspiracy on their hands, one that could affect the global political arena. Baldacci is a master at building suspense, and the conclusion of his latest novel will leave readers breathless." —Kristine Huntley, Booklist 0446577383

The Truth (with jokes) by Al Franken skewers the Bush Administration and the rest of the Right with satirical barbs. "Because after Lies comes The Truth..." (Publisher's release notes)

It's not too early for Christmas inspiration, apparently. The Christmas Hope by Donna Van Liere is the story of a girl who needs a home, a couple who take her in, and a doctor who fulfills a last Christmas wish. "Emily is a beautiful five-year-old without a place to live (her mother died in a car accident; her foster parents had to leave town suddenly) and, against the rules, Patti brings her home rather than take her to the local orphanage. Emily—who believes in angels and is possibly the gentlest, sweetest child to ever cavort across a novel's pages since Little Nell—quickly insinuates herself into the Addison hearts... Van Liere serves up another heart-tugging holiday tale." —Publishers Weekly

The centerpiece of the Spiderwick Chronicles has finally arrived! Arthur Spiderwick's Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi is a "gorgeous, must-see guide to the creatures found in their bestselling series—plus 15 more! It comes with lavish, full-color illustrations, deluxe gatefolds, and snippets from Arthur Spiderwick's personal journal—and that's just for starters. Recommended for ages 9-12." (Publisher's release notes)

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin focuses on the "mastery of men" that allowed Lincoln to bring his gifted rivals into his cabinet and conduct a presidency of enduring signficance. "Do we need another Lincoln biography? In Team of Rivals, esteemed historian Doris Kearns Goodwin proves that we do. Though she can't help but cover some familiar territory, her perspective is focused enough to offer fresh insights into Lincoln's leadership style and his deep understanding of human behavior and motivation... Lincoln may have been "the indispensable ingredient of the Civil War," but these three men were invaluable to Lincoln and they played key roles in keeping the nation intact." —Shawn Carkonen, Amazon.com review

More spellbinding historical investigation than a bio of the artist, The Lost Painting: The Search for a Caravaggio Masterpiece by Jonathan Harr is the story of the quest to recover a priceless artwork. The author of A Civil Action uncovers the mysterious, colorful life and staggering genius of Italian Baroque painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. "The narrative unfolds at a brisk pace, skipping quickly from the perspective of 91-year-old Caravaggio scholar Sir Denis Mahon to that of young, enterprising Francesca Cappelletti, a graduate student at the University of Rome researching the disappearance of The Taking of Christ... But while adept at coordinating dates and analyzing hairline fractures in aged paint, Harr often seems overly concerned with the step-by-step process of tracking down The Taking of the Christ, as if the specific artist who created it were irrelevant..." —Publishers Weekly

Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Nobel laureate's first work of fiction in 10 years, chronicles a 90-year old man's pursuit of a 14-year old virgin, and the revelations that ensue. "'The year I turned ninety, I wanted to give myself the gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin,' he boldly—and, perhaps, in a delusion of potency—declares. It is soon revealed... that his sexual gratification has always been bought and paid for. What his brazen plan to celebrate this milestone birthday comes to entail is a confrontation with a heretofore unrealized aspect of his 'inner self'—namely, that sex without love is an empty house in which to dwell." —Brad Hooper, Booklist

In the 60 Minutes newsman's second memoir, Between You and Me, Mike Wallace mixes interviews with commentary about former presidents and celebrities, and includes a 90-minute DVD of clips from his long career. "In this tepid memoir, the 60 Minutes grand inquisitor appears rather manipulative, turning on a dime from unctuous insinuation to prosecutorial grilling, always searching for the point of emotional revelation when his subject weeps, rants or flounders in self-incriminating panic... Wallace does offer intriguing, if defensive, accounts of journalistic crises like CBS's censoring of a 60 Minutes interview with tobacco whistle-blower Jeffrey Wigand. Otherwise, the book is a dull and not illuminating read." —Publishers Weekly

Summer Crossing by Truman Capote is the lost novel that the author set aside to write Other Voices, Other Rooms, and worked on for at least another decade before abandoning it. "Thought to be lost for over 50 years, here is the first novel by one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century... Set in New York during the summer of 1945, this is the story of a young carefree socialite, Grady, who must make serious decisions about the romance she is dangerously pursuing and the effect it will have on everyone involved." (Publisher's release notes)

The title says it all: Rachael Ray 365: No Repeats by charming, down-to-earth celebrity chef Rachael Ray presents a full year of menus for finicky cooks and their families, providing 365 delightfully different recipes for meals that are quick, easy, and simply delicious. "The organization takes some getting used to. Helpful but occasionally jarring "tidbits" pop up everywhere, and many "recipes" make more than one dish, so cooking just one requires a fair amount of reading... Still, the recipes are great. They vary in technique and ethnicity, and many give instructions on expanding the dish (after making Spicy Shrimp and Penne with Puttanesca Sauce, for example, 'now try' omitting the olives and capers, swapping linguine for the penne, reducing the number of shrimp, and adding lump crab meat and mussels to make Frutti di Mare and Linguine). As Ray would say, 'Yummo.'" —Publishers Weekly

I'm mildly intrigued by the Lincoln book, and the search for The Taking of the Christ—but I know it's a dry week when the most interesting descriptions are for a novel from Danielle Steel and an add-on to the Spiderwick Chronicles!
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Sin and Redemption in The Natural

2005-10-18T12:20:00.000-07:00

SUBTLE LESSONS

The iconic baseball movie The Natural can be viewed as a piece of schmaltzy fluff, feel-good nostalgia. Critics of the movie point to its almost-cartoonishly simple villains and heroes as evidence of this.

It is true; many of the figures who inhabit this film are starkly good or evil. No question that The Judge is a black-hat, for example; he shuns the light of day. A "spider at the center of his web," he is the embodiment of the cardinal sin (or "deadly passion") of Avarice.

No debate either that Glenn Close plays a good girl, despite her unwed-motherhood. If there were any doubt, it is erased by the way the film garbs her in white and light. Not only is she Roy Hobb's redemption, she is also Madonna, the mother of his child.

Far more interesting are the ambiguous players, like Max Mercy, The Whammer, and Harriet Bird (the lady in black), and the redeemable characters of Bump Bailey, Memo Paris and Hobbs himself. It is in the development of these smaller sinners and weaker saints that The Natural transcends the cartoon.

Max Mercy (played by Robert Duvall) is a cynic, the embodiment of Doubt. Max is convinced that he is irredeemable—and therefore, so is everyone else. Doubt is a minor, venial sin, but it is just a breath away from the deadly sin of Despair. That Max has nearly reached Despair is evident in his counsel to Hobbs, and also from his before-the-event cartoons. He has no doubt that Hobbs will take the easy downward path, because Max himself would.

The Whammer (Joe Don Baker in a cameo), like Max (in whose company Hobbs meets the famed hitter), is a venial sinner. His hedonism is just this side of the deadly sin of Gluttony—not the relatively innocent lust for good food and wine, sex, and other such bodily pleasures, but the far more grave equation of pleasure with Good. In fact, The Whammer is rescued from stepping over the brink from venial to mortal sin by a small wound to his pride: the loss to young Hobbs in a casual three-pitch contest.

The sins of Harriet Bird (Barbara Hershey) seem obvious. The lady in black murdered several other athletes, and attempted to shoot Roy Hobbs. But beyond the murders, Harriet commits the cardinal sin of Envy. She wishes to possess the fame of the athlete by removing him from life. Only Harriet will know that Roy Hobbs might have been "the best that ever was." Her desire is obviously twisted and sick—but all Envy is sick and twisted. Harriet Bird slips that knowledge in under our guard.

Bump Bailey, who has accepted the bribes that Roy turns down, is a classic picture of little-g greed on its way to all-consuming Avarice. Bailey wants it all: fame, fortune, a lovely woman, the semblance of virtue with the pleasures of vice. Bailey chases his final ball so fervently, he collides with an unyielding wall and dies. How explicit can a parable be?

Memo Paris (Kim Basinger) and Iris Gaines (Glenn Close) are presented as opposites. Memo dresses mostly in black. She is openly manipulative of the baseball players, though she seems to be directed by Gus—Darrin McGavin—in all she does. Her sins of lust are no greater in commission, really, than Iris's, though perhaps less innocent in motivation. Yet her major sin is Sloth. Memo does nothing productive; in fact, she sucks power and purpose away from the players with whom she becomes involved. Pop Fisher (Wilford Brimley) knows Memo is the problem, even if he cannot be specific. "Some people are just bad luck," he warns Hobbs.

That leaves Roy Hobbs. Robert Redford plays the central figure of this morality play perfectly. Hobbs is the symbol of the redeemability of man—although in the past, in his glory as a young pitcher, he was guilty of sins in their venial measure, and in the present, he begins to make the same mistakes, in the end (with Iris' help), he is able to atone for past errors and regain glory.

The classic Western virtues are also displayed in the latter half of the film. Hobbs serves justice in delivering Pop Fisher from the false partnership with The Judge; he displays fortitude and courage to return as a middle-aged rookie to the game in which he might have been "the best there ever was." And although his temperence is tested by the lure of Memo Paris and the fast pace of the city, in the end, he chooses the simpler life, the ranch and fatherhood.

These lessons are not preached; they are not even made particularly explicit. Yet audiences have responded—we know good when we see it. Like Roy Hobbs, we do not always choose the good we see, but we recognize our choices.

The message of The Natural is that, even years later, we can change; we can make the better choice. Man is redeemable.
B000056WQX,0195119452,0757302211

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Week 2: Ballroom Bootcamp on TLC

2005-10-15T15:03:00.000-07:00

STILL STRONG

This week saw three new women—the Free Spirit, the Shy Girl and the Hippie Mom—taking on the Ballroom Bootcamp challenge, to learn ballroom-style Tango at a competitive level. As with last week's premiere, the best part of the contest comes as the participants approach the dance for the first time. Once again, these dancer-wannabes are paired with dance experts Gocha Chertkoev, Christian Perry, and Susannah Cuesta.

So we see mom Michelle, who wants to learn to dance, coming to her first lessons with confidence, then losing it as she compares herself to Susannah Cuesta. We watch free spirit Melody brangle with her instructor, Gocha Chertkoev, and finally dissolve into tears at her inability to come up to his standards. And back-up singer Cherish finds the steps easy to learn, but the attitude of tango eludes this shy girl.

1914 Tango instruction

Instructor Christian Perry is certainly a believer in the value of cross-training—last week he sent his student Krystel to belly-dancing class. This week, he sends Cherish to take Aikido lessons. Her martial arts coach coaxes some "ki-ahs" out of her, first tentative, and then snappingly definite. The lesson doesn't transfer to the dance floor immediately, however.

Cuesta also resorts to outside instruction, sending a life coach to counsel her student Michelle on the value of letting go and living in the moment. "Behave as if learning to dance is the most fun you know of," he tells her. "Skip into the dance studio." She does, too—and it helps her to relax into the lead of her partner.

All three women are again costumed from Davis Designs, the same atelier that produced the stunning dresses for Krystel and Monique last week. It would be easy for a single design shop to produce cookie-cutter outfits for the contestants each week, but so far, all five dresses have been distinctive and beautifully suited to the individual dancers. (Jeff, the Tour Guide from the first week, did not have such luck—perhaps because men's costumes are less exciting than women's, by their nature.)

Once again, the actual competition was disappointing, compared to the lead-up. The learning curve for Tango is steep, even for trained dancers, so one of the best things about this series is the way it shows a little of the hard work and effort that goes into dancing well. When so much credit is given for "the look" and so little, comparatively, to footwork and frame, you have a disputable result.

That was the case with the winner selected for this contest. (No spoilers, in case you haven't seen it yet!) I will be watching it again (it is rebroadcast on TLC this evening and again on Sunday), to see if I can spot why the judges made their choice as they did—because last night, I didn't see it at all!
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21 Things to Love or Despise

2005-10-15T12:52:00.000-07:00

COMPELLING

This was a challenge I couldn't resist: list 21 favorite and 21 anti-favorite (hated) things. The challenge was to do it without repeating, otherwise my favorites list might have been 20 book titles and a menu.

So here, in no particular order, are my favorite things. If you notice a theme, you may understand why I am not a slender person.

A well-executed gancho in Argentine Tango
Free books in the mail
Discovering that a new Honor Harrington (Neal Stephenson, Connie Wilson, Sherri Tepper, etc....) novel is out in paperback
Kissing in the rain
A fire, a glass of Pastori port, and a new book to read on a cold day (or evening)
Fresh-baked chocolate-chip cookies... Brandied pears with dark chocolate sauce... Chocolate-chip croissants from the City Bakery in San Francisco
A purring cat in my lap
Payday!
Finishing a project, and planning a new one
Vals cruzada
Wine-tasting tours
Falling back in the Fall
Bean soup
Twitty's Barbeque in Oklahoma City, Basil's in downtown Minneapolis, Margherita's in Elk Grove, IL, Mumtaz in Amsterdam, Seasons Grill (now called Roxii) in El Segundo, CA, My Brother's Bar and Pagliacci's in Denver, Papagallo and Browns of Rivonia in Johannesburg, East West in Sebastopol, and C.J. Borg's at SeaTac.
New shoes that don't squeak
Venison stew
An expert foot massage
A weekend visit to Wilbur Hot Springs
Saving the day at my job
Viewing Fourth-of-July fireworks from a kayak in Richardson's Bay
New York Times Sunday crossword puzzles

On the other side, there are surely at least 21 things I despise. Here, again, the effort goes into finding classes of things to avoid repetition.

Spam eMail and all its relatives: mortgage-lenders who call at 6 pm, junk mail, trash comments on my Blogcritics posts, eBay and payPal spoofers, worm and virus creators
Burnt popcorn
Cat vomit (and hairballs and other effluvia of kitty...)
Getting caught out when I'm BSing
Climbing out of a warm bed on a cold winter morning
Name-calling substituted for political or philosophical discourse
Office politics
Springing forward in the Spring
Airport security checks
Deer dead in the road (wasted food)
French onion soup... boiled cabbage... overcooked liver... undercooked bacon... watery pasta
Being asked to explain a joke
Tripping, stumbling, or otherwise looking like a goof on the dance floor
Bad breath
Wardrobe malfunctions on guys (especially me!)
Rose-scented perfumes
People who drive (or walk) "unconscious"
Getting sick
Pay cuts... getting "laid off"... unemployment
Falling asleep on the sofa in the middle of a party
Flat tires

Looking back, I can't believe I left off the biggest favorite of all: Sex. Hot monkey love. Doing the dirty boogie, the horizontal mambo, tangoing between the sheets.... But that's a different list of 21.
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Weekly BlogScan: Karl Rove

2005-10-15T12:08:00.000-07:00

Depending on your point of view, Karl Rove is either a sinister kingmaker-puppeteer behind every policy move President Bush makes, or he is simply a brilliant consultant, one of many in George W. Bush's coterie of advisors. Both views concede that this man is a power in the White House.

Either way, I think you would be hard-pressed to find another modern "consultant" to a President with the quite the amount of press coverage Rove has garnered. Who filled Rove's position in the Clinton White House? Who was LBJ's advisor? Nixon's? Kennedy's? Even in the administration of George W. Bush's father, there is no figure with a comparable prominence in the public eye.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain....

Avowed Republicans are not immune to accusations of being swayed by the ophidian eye of Rove. RadioBlogger captured this Beltway Boys discussion of Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, in which Hugh Hewitt announced:

Yesterday, Karl Rove made the argument to me that she has sat for three years in the judicial selection committee, vetting judges with [President Bush], with the vice president, with the then-White House Counsel, Alberto Gonzales, with John Ashcroft, making comments, making arguments, helping select, or you know, thumbs-up or thumbs-down. And it is impossible not to know someone's judicial philosophy after three years of such a process. I find that very persuasive.

(Following this, on his own blog Hugh Hewitt noted that "an anonymous tipster to Ed Whelan asserts that I have been misled by Karl Rove" on the issue of Harriet Miers.)

And The Rude Pundit, "proudly lowering the level of political discourse," states that Rove's persuasive powers were also enlisted to quiet James Dobson's opposition to Miers.

...it's quite something else to assure people that a nominee's Jesus-lovin' will absolutely have an impact on his or her decision-making. But that's exactly what Karl Rove did for James "Behold My Stereotypically Creepily Effeminate Voice" Dobson, head of Focus on the Family and, apparently, someone who has so much access to the White House that he must be hand-jobbed into complacency by a much-distracted Rove.

Karl Rove, high-profile consultant. [Wikipedia]

At fishbowlDC, meanwhile, they're keeping a light shining on the supposed involvement of Rove in the Plame outing. Floating in the bowl is this reference to Karl Rove Neocondoms: "If you passed by DC Superior Court yesterday and thought you saw three seven-foot-tall condoms, you didn't imagine it." The costumed condoms were there to confront Karl Rove, returning to testify before Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s Grand Jury inquiry into the Plame affair. Unfortunately, the blogger notes, "Rove entered the courthouse through a side entrance" and never saw the demonstrators.

Not to be outdone, No More Mister Nice Guy links the Miers nomination with the Plame grand jury, asserting that Miers was only named because Rove is on the outs with his boss.

I just talked to a source who told me that Karl Rove has been missing from a number of recent White House presidential events—events that he has ALWAYS attended in the past. For example, Rove was absent from [the] presidential press conference to promote Harriet Miers.... My source tells me that the scuttlebutt around town is that the White House knows something bad is coming, in terms of Karl getting indicted, and they're already trying to distance him from the president.

At his eponymous blog, David Corn turned the Plame/Miers speculation around, wondering if Miers' insider information about Rove and Plame might be a factor in her confirmation.

I did think that it would be interesting to see Miers questioned at her confirmation hearings by senators regarding the leak case. Was she a party to any discussions in the White House about the leak, about the White House's reaction to the leak (in which it issued false denials that Rove was not involved in it), about what legal strategy the White House, Bush, Rove and/or others should adopt?

And according to Keith Olbermann, MSNBC's Bloggermann, Rove's troubles with the Plame investigation are also the cause of bomb threats in New York City.

I referred to the latest terror threat—the reported bomb plot against the New York City subway system—in terms of its timing. President Bush’s speech about the war on terror had come earlier the same day, as had the breaking news of the possible indictment of Karl Rove in the CIA leak investigation. I suggested that in the last three years there had been about 13 similar coincidences—a political downturn for the administration, followed by a "terror event"—a change in alert status, an arrest, a warning.

These are recent events—but Rove has been a lightning-rod for commenters from the left and right much longer than that. On LibertyPost.org last February, it was noted that Dan Rather's embarrassment at reporting forged Texas Air National Guard documents damaging to the President had been blamed on Rove.

Spokespersons for CBS News, which aired a report based on the phony documents, and the White House could not be reached for comment on [Democrat Congressman Maurice] Hinchey's theory, which he gave during a forum on Social Security in Ithaca... Hinchey blamed Karl Rove, President Bush's top political adviser, for concocting the plan to release phony documents to the media... "They've had a very, very direct, aggressive attack on the, on the media and the way it's handled. Probably the most flagrant example of that is the way they set up Dan Rather... They set up those false papers," Hinchey said.

Oh, sure, responds Right Wing News, it's all Rove.

It was all part of Karl Rove's eeeevvviiillll plan! ... Did you know that Rove sabotaged the engines of Paul Wellstone's plane, founded the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, and got Jayson Blair hired at the New York Times? It was all Rove! When it rains on the day of a peace march? It's Rove using his secret CIA weather machine! When a Democrat misplaces his car keys? That's because Rove's magical leprechauns move them around! Ever lost a sock in the dryer? Somehow, someway, it's Rove's fault, Rove, Rove, ROVE!!!

Even further back, Thomas M. Spencer predicted on History News Network (HNN) in November 2003 that "If White House political guru Karl Rove gets his way, ...the 2004 election will turn not on Iraq or the dubious glories of the Bush economy but on liberal judges, partial-birth abortion, and gay marriage."

IMAO ("Unfair Unbalanced Unmedicated") addresses the accusation that "Republican Talking Points" come by FAX from Karl Rove. (Apparently, because he "likes to personally sign the main copies as a sort of verification." The sample memo is signed "Satan.") In this revealing post, blogger Frank J. tells us he will:

receive a fax at 6AM every day (including weekends) of the Republican Talking Points. I don’t share it with the other IMAO bloggers, and instead just browbeat them into saying what I want... I get ones specifically tailored for bloggers. I assume politicians, pundits, radio talk show hosts, and FOX News get different talking points... You'll notice how IMAudiO [podcast] has less political content than the blog due to the lack of talking points. I am hopeful there will be talking points for podcasts soon...

So there we have it. Karl Rove may be the anti-Christ (he was born on Christmas Day in 1950), or simply the strongest cog in the engine of the Bush White House. Either way, he's a power to reckon with—as P.J. Comix puts it in the DUmmie FUnnies, he's a Perfect Rovian Storm.
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Next Week in the Bookstore: Mao, Armstrong, Shakespeare, and Lemony Snicket

2005-10-12T06:04:00.000-07:00

Sure to generate excitement this week is Volume 12 from Lemony Snicket (with "cover art "too awful to show"), plus a number of intriguing biographies: a tyrant, a tech-hero, and a totemic writer. Not to mention a new version of the classic style guide from William Strunk.

Monday, October 17
John Feinstein's Next Man Up: A Year Behind the Lines in Today's NFL chronicles the 2004 Baltimore Ravens' season. "According to the punchy start of this sprawling, in-depth account of the 2004 Baltimore Ravens' season, you can forget about all the other pretenders to the throne: pro football is (at least in and around cities that have a franchise) America's sport... The runup to the first game of the young franchise's ninth season is so assiduously documented, the season itself is almost an afterthought... Feinstein wisely avoids the grandiloquent hyperbole often found in sportswriting; there are no references to deities or Greek heroes here." —Publishers Weekly

Resonant Leadership: Renewing Yourself and Connecting with Others through Mindfulness, Hope, and Compassion by Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee, reunites the coauthors of Primal Leadership. "Resonant Leadership moves from this initial exposition of problems—management ineffectiveness, and/or burnout—to solutions... three core qualities which they believe resonant leaders must continually cultivate: mindfulness, hope, and compassion... Readers of Boyatzis and McKee's latest—whether already-strong leaders looking to maintain their effectiveness, or burned-out ones aiming to get back in the proverbial saddle—will find this is a thought-provoking read." —Peter Han, Amazon.com review

Note: Although Amazon says Resonant Leadership can be shipped today, it is actually not released until October 17th.

Tuesday, October 18
Saving Fish From Drowning by Amy Tan follows 11 friends from San Francisco on the vacation of a lifetime on the Burma Road, in a story narrated by their murdered friend, who organized the trip. "[T]he travelers turn into ugly Americans in their pursuit of comfort and amusement until a renegade tribal group kidnaps them... Tan, marvelously liberated, attains new heights with her piquant humor and ship-of-fools cast of charmingly cranky characters. Writing with stinging irony about oppression, genocide, culture clashes, religion, media spin, and corruption, she slyly considers the unintended consequences of everything from a thwarted seduction to a war based on lies." —Donna Seaman, Booklist

Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events: Book the Twelfth (Vol. 12) comes out Tuesday. Fans need wait no longer for the 12th dreadful installment of his Series of Unfortunate Events—although they will need to wait until publication day to learn the book's mysterious title! The image supplied to Amazon simply reads "Art Too Awful to Show." This will be "the last book before the last book" in the series, according to the publisher. Recommended for ages 9-12.

First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong by James R. Hansen, a professor at Auburn Univ. and a former NASA historian, is the first authorized biography of the astronaut. "For the first time, the cool, precise, and celebrity-averse Neil Armstrong has authorized a biography. Its readers cannot expect any more access to his emotional interior than the first man to walk on the moon has ever allowed, but they will learn about everything he achieved in aerospace engineering... Quelling apocrypha circulated at the time of Apollo 11 about the all-American boy who dreamed of going to the moon, Hansen follows the empirical arc of Armstrong's interest in aviation... After the Korean War, Armstrong resumed his engineering career, wrote technical papers, flew hotshot planes like the X-15, and stepped irrevocably into history with Apollo 11." —Gilbert Taylor, Booklist

Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang, author of Wild Swans and her historian husband, Jon Halliday, rips the reformer's mask from Mao Tse-tung, exposing him for the bloody tyrant he truly was—a megalomaniacal murderer in the vein of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. "It takes time to get through and more time to digest, but there is no time when its value is not apparent... The first sentence of their startling book underscores the point of view to follow: 'Mao Tse-tung, who for decades held absolute power over the lives of one quarter of the world's population, was responsible for well over 70 million deaths in peacetime, more than any other twentieth-century leader.'" —Brad Hooper, Booklist

Sara Moulton serves up 200 recipes for the time-starved in Sara's Secrets for Weeknight Meals, from the Food Network host and Gourmet Executive. "Besides chapters on soup, pasta, meat and so on, there are several revolving around time-saving tips: "Shop and Serve" has recipes like the fast but tasty Tortellini Pepperoni Spinach Soup, and dishes in "Just Open the Pantry" use items from a kitchen stocked with Moulton's long list of recommended staples. "Cooking Ahead," meanwhile, unleashes the gourmet chef in Moulton with lengthier recipes that can be made on the weekend and reheated. ...cooks willing to put in some time in the kitchen each night will appreciate this book's excellent international range as well as its helpful shortcuts. Color photos." —Publishers Weekly

The Color of Law by Mark Gimenez is a legal thriller with a fresh twist on To Kill a Mockingbird, in which a ruthless lawyer finds his heart when he's forced to defend a prostitute charged with the murder of a senator's son. "Gimenez, former partner at a major Dallas law firm and current lone-wolf attorney in a single practice, not only boasts all the right credentials but also delivers an authentically creepy debut novel. A big part of this thriller's appeal is its moral backbone. The hero, former college-football legend and current corporate lawyer Scott Fenney, has struck a Faustian bargain—his whole life for billable hours—the cost of which is encapsulated when he signs an agreement to terminate the tenure of a friend in the firm who has lost his worth by losing a big client... This is a well-calibrated contemporary morality play, set in get-rich-quick Dallas, with tours of country clubs and gated communities, and knowledgeable forays into Darwinian legal tactics... Fast-paced and thought-provoking fare." —Connie Fletcher, Booklist

Nicholas Sparks offers another glimpse into the lives of True Believer sweethearts Jeremy Marsh and Lexie Darnell, with At First Sight, a romantic confection liberally laced with suspense. "Sparks pulls out all the smalltown stops—psychic grandmother, meddling mayor, sullen townie ex, jealous best friends—and offers Mars/Venus commentary on what makes his characters tick. Jeremy's writer's block, instead of heightening the will-they-or-won't-they tension, is as enervating for readers as it is for him. More compelling are the mysterious e-mails Jeremy receives that suggest Lexie may not be telling the truth (about who the father is, for one thing), and the character of Lexie's psychic grandmother, Doris, who has correctly predicted the sex of every child born in the town... Have plenty of tissues on hand." —Publishers Weekly

A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare by James Shapiro, a popular lecturer at Columbia University, portrays the Bard's artistic evolution in 1599 along with the year's significant political upheavals. "Like other Shakespeare biographers, Columbia professor Shapiro notes the importance of mundane events in Shakespeare's art, starting here with the construction of the Globe Theatre and the departure of Will Kemp, the company's popular comic actor. Having a stable venue and repertory gave Shakespeare the space to write and experiment during the turmoil created by Essex's unsuccessful military ventures in Ireland, a threatened invasion by a second Spanish Armada and, finally, Essex's disastrous return to court. Shapiro is in a minority in arguing for Shakespeare initially composing Hamlet at the same time Essex was plotting a coup..." —Publishers Weekly

A Day in the Life of the American Woman; How We See Ourselves by Sharon Wohlmuth is a new entry in the Day in the Life series. from the winning team behind the photographic trilogy Mothers and Daughters, Sisters, and Best Friends. It chronicles the everyday rhythms of women's lives in contemporary America. "On April 8, 2005, 50 of the world's most talented female photographers spent 24 hours capturing a "day in the life" of American women. The result is a rich tapestry reflecting the full spectrum of women's lives: their daily challenges, their joys and accomplishments, and their changing roles in the family, the workplace, and the community... From the well-known to the unknown, the women portrayed embody the many incarnations of the American woman. Their stories, conveyed in the intimate, resonant style of Wohlmuth and Saline's Sisters, speak to women of all backgrounds." (Publisher's release notes)

Note: Although Amazon says A Day in the Life of the American Woman can be shipped today, it is actually not released until October 20th.

Thursday, October 20
William Strunk's preeminent guide to English composition (Strunk & White), gets a very contemporary 21st-century facelift in The Elements of Style Illustrated, with the fanciful addition of illustrations by renowned artist and designer Maira Kalman. "Considering that millions of copies have been sold to millions of devotees, you might not think to ask what could enhance this (almost) perfect classic. In fact, the addition of illustrations allows readers to experience the book's contents in a completely new way, making the whole learning experience more colorful and clear, as well as adding a whimsical element that compliments the subtly humorous tone of the prose... While giving the classic work a jolt of new energy to appeal to contemporary readers, Kalman's illustrations are hemselves timeless, designed to sit alongside the ever-enduring manual for another fifty years and more." (Publisher's release notes)

Margaret Cho's I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight mixes rants against war, racism, misogyny, homophobia and various prominent Republicans with confessional ponderings of the comedian's identity as a Korean-American. "The cover photo—comedian Cho posing Patty Hearst–style before a Symbionese Liberation Army emblem—aptly conveys this messy personal manifesto's collision of in-your-face militance and little-girl-lost victimology. The political and the personal are inseparable from the celebrity preening: "I wasn't sure... which I hated more," Cho muses, "my skin color or my talent." When she manages to break from her rage, tears and ego... Cho writes with perception and humor. More often, though, she wallows in screeds against the white male power structure, sprinkled with gangsta-rap posturing..." —Publishers Weekly

Jesus Did It Anyway: The Paradoxical Commandments for Christians, by Keith M. Kent, is the third book by the former Harvard student whose writings on doing good despite people and circumstances, Anyway: The Paradoxical Commandments, took on a life of its own more than 30 years ago. "Keith writes his third book on the Paradoxical Commandments, this time relating them to Christian faith and the Bible... Each chapter lists the commandment, then draws on a teaching of Jesus or other figures in the Christian Bible to help explain it... Keith's presentation is simple and straightforward, his links between each commandment and the Bible easy to understand, if a bit obvious. This is a pleasing introduction to the Paradoxical Commandments, as well as an easy-to-swallow introduction to the Christian Scriptures. Study guides for each chapter move into deeper discussion and reflection." —Publishers Weekly

Friday, October 21
The Biggest Loser: The Weight Loss Program to Transform Your Body, Health and Life by The Biggest Loser Experts and Cast with Maggie Greenwood-Robinson, PhD, presents the diet and exercise plan tested by the hit reality show's contestants. "The Biggest Loser was NBC’s surprise hit of the Fall 2004 television season, drawing a passionate audience... With this book, people looking for change can accomplish the same type of radical makeover of their bodies, their health, and their lives that they saw on The Biggest Loser. The book features the food and fitness plans from Bob and Jillian, health advice from the show’s medical experts, and motivational tips from the contestants themselves." (Publisher's release notes)

Note: Although Amazon says The Biggest Loser can be shipped today, it is actually not released until October 21st.

Yes, I'll be buying the new Strunk—but for the articles, not the pictures! I already have my order in for the look at Shakespeare's and Armstrong's lives, and I may even give The Color of Law a spin—I always did like To Kill a Mockingbird.
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Weekly BlogScan: Avian Flu Fears

2005-10-08T16:06:00.000-07:00

Avian flu, bird flu, H5N1 flu virus: these are all hot-words creeping up in the public attention right now. This is not unusual for the fall months, the time of year when we prepare to combat the latest variant of influenza virus to come down the pike (or to jump the Pacific from Asia).

It is unusual this year, with so much else going on to claim our attention.

Recently, these background fears were brought to the forefront with the announcement by Gina Kolata in a New York Times Health article that research had revealed the source of the 1918 flu pandemic (in which 50 million people died): an avian infection that had jumped to directly to humans. RatcliffeBlog cites a Wall Street Journal article about this revelation, published in Nature:

The findings by Dr. Taubenberger and his team of researchers... follow a nine-year effort to decode the 1918 strain by sequencing its eight genes. The research concluded that the pandemic flu outbreak was most likely caused by an avian virus. The scientists also discovered 10 mutations that distinguish the 1918 virus from avian bugs, suggesting changes that the virus made to adapt to a human host, they said. They also noted that some of those mutations are also present in the currently circulating H5N1 virus, suggesting it could make the jump to humans in a similarly rapid and alarming way.

Web-journalism guru Crawford Killian also writes H5N1, a blog devoted to news about this flu variant and its dangers. He says, "I suspect we're not very far from the 1918 faith in holy medals as ways to stave off disease." In a meta-commentary on his Writing for the Web blog, Killian notes,

ABC News ran a segment on Primetime about avian flu. I'd even found an item on the Web about it, and posted the news. But I had no idea that the program would trigger a remarkable spike in my traffic. From routine traffic of 550 hits per 24 hours, H5N1 was suddenly logging four or five times that. Eventually I realized what was happening, and saw traffic peak, a day or so later, at a little over 6000 hits/24 hours... This was clearly due to viewers of one program, who promptly booted their computers, Googled "h5n1," and found my site as #2 out of close to two million pages.

At Effect Measure, the Editors sign themselves "Revere." (Paul Revere was a member of the first local Board of Health in the United States, in Boston, 1799.) They note that attention to bird flu has ratcheted up in the media.

Without Hurricane Katrina we'd probably be in the Persistent Vegetative State that characterized the previous five years of the Bush Administration regarding any threats not part of the Global War on Terrorism message. But despite the new attention, it is doubtful whether either the Administration or Congress will make much difference. The Senate has appropriated almost $4 billion in new bird flu funds... Most of it, however, is for a big Tamiflu buy, not the wisest use, especially when the US is so far down the client list it won't get the new supply for some time.

Spence at Future Health Solutions reports that thousands of turkeys in NW Turkey have been destroyed due to suspicions of their harboring the H5N1 flu variant. Bulgaria will watch migratory bird flocks to detect possible transmission of flu to domestic birds. And Romania has

...identified three cases of birds killed by the Asia-originated deadly flu strain. London has confirmed the probes Romania urgently sent for research. The first cases were discovered in the Danube delta a crossroad of the migratory routes of wild birds coming from Russia, Scandinavia, Poland and Germany.

H5N1 virus causes avian flu in humans

According to the Sri Lanka Sunday Observer, though, India sees no cause for alarm over an avian flu epidemic. "So far there has been no human-to-human transmission of the virus."

At Bayosphere, blogger Dan Gilmore isn't so sanguine. He blames the Bush administration for failing to get in line for supplies of flu vaccine sooner, and says,

Here's what a more competent and less ideological administration would do. It would say there's an emergency, and launch an emergency effort to get American pharmaceutical companies will make this drug, paying a royalty to Roche. And if Roche balked, we'd do what developing nations are doing in the case of hyper-expensive AIDS drugs: Make them anyway. Meanwhile, we'd be embarking on a crash vaccine program, one designed so we were not dependent on the same drug industry that left the US without nearly enough flu shots last year...

The Freedom Rider seems more worried about a military response to a flu epidemic in the US than he is about the disease itself. "In case of a bird flu outbreak, President Bush says that he would have to call in the troops, here on US soil, to keep us all safe. Somehow the thought doesn't make me feel any safer."

Don't worry, chandrasutra tells us—according to experts, "information is key to fighting flu pandemics." The post cites a number of excellent resources in the battle, including the WHO Avian flu site, and a BBC Avian Flu Q&A.

And at Junkyard Blog, B. Preston notes that the Democrats' plan to create the "next great genocidal smear campaign... will shamelessly use the coming bird flu threat to orchestrate it." Preston points out that the Bush Administration has spent a year building a plan to deal with a pandemic, and notes

Bush literally can't win with them--especially when the failures in New Orleans had "Democrat" written all over them. The closer to failure the Democrats actually are, the more they blame Bush for it. [Avian] flu has been nagging at the edges since 1997. Last time I checked, that means the Clintonistas had a few years to start working on the problem. Did they? Did they?

The threat may be real, or it may be an inflated concern like the 1976 Swine Flu fiasco, when more people died from the vaccine for the flu than from the disease itself. H5N1 could be the next "Great Pandemic." Or it could be only another political football to justify spending our money and curtailing our freedoms.
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Review: TLC's Ballroom Bootcamp

2005-10-08T09:28:00.000-07:00

STRANGELY DISAPPOINTING

The long-delayed debut of a new dance-reality series, Ballroom Bootcamp, premiered last night on TLC. The premise will remind you of Dancing with the Stars (DWTS): non-dancers (in this case, also non-celebrities) are paired with professional dance instructors, and given a limited time to reach competition level in their performamce.

That's as far as the similarity goes. The non-dancers in the opening episode are "a tomboy, a tour-guide, and a tired mom": a blonde whose name I have forgotten, Jeff, and Maisha. Jeff is afraid of commitment, and hopes to learn how to stick with a project. Maisha works 12 hours a day, but wants to lose weight. And the blonde is an athletic tomboy who becomes energized by the competition.

They are paired with dancers Gocha Chertkoev, Christian Perry, and Susannah Cuesta. Chertkoev visits his student Maisha at home and cleans "unhealthy food" out of her fridge—holding a pan of tuna-noodle casserole out at her, he intones, "I call this a recipe for a fat ass!" He shows up at a staff meeting and has Maisha do ab-crunches on the floor. Perry has his already-fit, but terminally reserved blonde student take belly-dancing lessons to "free her hips" and release her sensuality for the cha-cha. He is encouraged when the tomboy shows up for her next cha-cha lesson with a bare midriff. And Cuesta makes it plain that Jeff has a larger task than either of the two women. He must lead the dance, as well as performing the steps.

The goal for all three students is to learn the dance well enough to compete in a "special category" of The Yankee Classic in Boston, MA. They will have a new partner to compete with—a professional who will be their dance partner (so this is a pro-am competition just as DWTS was). And they will have professionally-fitted costumes worth thousands of dollars to enhance their performance.

I was thrilled by the transformation of Maisha, who lost 15 pounds (much like John O'Hurley in DWTS), and performed beautifully in her sequined, leopard-print adorned costume. Jeff's mobile hips (harder for a man to achieve) and sense of play, and his confidence on the floor, also impressed me. But in the end, it was the tomboy blonde whose flirty skirt-flips and dramatic Latin motion impressed the judges enough to win the competition.

It is unclear if future competitions will involve any of the three students from this week, but we can expect to see Chertkoev, Perry, and Cuesta paired with a non-dancer for new attempts with other dances in the weeks to come. Still to come, according to a PR release for the series: competitors whose real-life jobs include Crime Lab Investigator for the L.A. Sheriff's Department, a nurse technician, a stay-at-home mom with two children under three, and a former college football player.

Future competitions will be at Florida State DanceSport Championships in Sarasota, FL, and the Embassy Ball in Irvine, CA. Winners each week will qualify for a grand ball to be held at season's end.
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Next Week in the Bookstore: Grateful Dead, Juveniles from Celebs, and Wheel of Time #11

2005-10-05T06:17:00.000-07:00

Topping the list this week is the breathlessly-awaited Robert Jordan Wheel of Time volume, number 11 in the series. Readers waited nearly two years for Knife of Dreams, but will still have to wait until next Tuesday.

Monday, October 10
A Wedding in December by Anita Shreve chronicles a reunion of seven prep-school classmates who regard each other's lives with a mixture of envy and anxiety. "Uncertainties bred in the wake of 9/11 also play a role here, although they are summoned indirectly through a story that Agnes is writing about a ship collision in Halifax Harbor in 1917... The skillful, prolific Shreve, who seems to turn out one best-seller per year, seamlessly moves her story between the horrific events of Halifax Harbor and the nearly as horrific reunion, underscoring the fleeting nature of happiness and the painful trade-offs it often requires." —Joanne Wilkinson, Booklist

A juvenile by Paul McCartney, High in the Clouds is a lavishly-illustrated book designed for children of all ages. "Forced to leave his woodland home, destroyed by the expansion plans of the evil Gretsch, Wirral the squirrel vows to find the fabled land of Animalia, where all the animals are said to live in freedom and without fear. Aided and abetted by Froggo the hot-air-ballooning frog, Wilhamina the plucky red squirrel, and Ratsy the streetwise rodent, Wirral's personal quest turns into a full-blown plan to save enslaved animals Everywhere—a plan that is fraught with danger." (Publisher's release notes)

Wizardology : The Book of the Secrets of Merlin was supposedly written by Merlin himself and originally discovered in 1588. This instructional guide features a map of the world's wizards, samples of a "fairy flag," a 48-page mini-book on divination, and hidden symbols throughout the book that reveal a secret code. Recommended for ages 9-12. "For any apprentice determined to learn the arcane arts of wizardry, could there be a better teacher than... Merlin himself? Originally discovered in 1588, this remarkable text by history's most respected wizard is revealed to the world for the very first time. Lavishly illustrated by four delicate artists, its intricate design even conceals a series of hidden symbols that spell out a secret message when their code is deciphered—if the reader is clever enough to find them." (Publisher's release notes)

Gloria Estefan penned The Magically Mysterious Adventures of Noelle the Bulldog, and Michael Garland illustrated it. "For a young bulldog named Noelle, the joy of being adopted by her very own little girl is overshadowed by the worry that she won't fit in to her wonderful new home. What can an odd-looking brown pup possibly have to offer ina world where shimmering fish, glittering fireflies, and beautiful Dalmatians play games that Noelle's short legs can barely keep up with? ...it captures all the worry of an outsider trying to fit in—and all the joy of discovering that everyone has a talent that matters, and that true beauty comes from inside." (Publisher's release notes)

Tuesday, October 11
Knife of Dreams by Robert Jordan is the long-awaited 11th and penultimate installment of Jordan’s epic fantasy Wheel of Time series. The previous book in the series, Crossroads of Twilight, came out in 2003, but "...don't let that fool you; the 11th tome in this epic fantasy is the one Jordan fans have been eagerly waiting for... the latest explodes with motion, as multiple plot lines either conclude or advance, and the march to Tarmon Gai'don—the climactic last battle between the Dragon Reborn and the Dark One—begins in earnest. Faile's captivity with the Shaido, Mat's pursuit of Tuon and Elayne's war for Caemlyn come to a close, while Egwene's capture brings the Aes Sedai war to the heart of the Tower. Jordan has said that readers will be sweating by the end of the book, and he's probably right. Sweating or not, they'll also be dreading the long year or two before the 12th installment." —Publishers Weekly

The audio CD was on sale this week, but readers have to wait until next Tuesday for the hardcover A New Earth: The Opportunity of Our Time by Eckhart Tolle. This is the first full-length book in nearly eight years by the bestselling author of The Power of Now, revealing how to move from egoism to higher consciousness. " Building on the astonishing success of The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle presents readers with an honest look at the current state of humanity: He implores us to see and accept that this state, which is based on an erroneous identification with the egoic mind, is one of dangerous insanity... Tolle describes in detail how our current ego-based state of consciousness operates. Then gently, and in very practical terms, he leads us into this new consciousness. We will come to experience who we truly are—which is something infinitely greater than anything we currently think we are—and learn to live and breathe freely." (Publisher's release notes)

Martha's back! The Martha Rules: 10 Essentials for Achieving Success as You Start, Grow, or Manage a Business by publishing mogul, TV star and budding satellite radio host Martha Stewart is the her handbook for success in business. "Tapping into her years of experience in building a thriving business, Martha will help readers identify their own entrepreneurial voice and channel their skills and passions into a successful business venture. Her advice and insight is applicable to anyone who is about to start or expand a venture of any size, whether it is a business or philanthropic endeavor, but also to individuals who want to apply the entrepreneurial spirit to a job or corporation to increase innovation and maintain a competitive edge." (Publisher's release notes)

Consent to Kill by Vince Flynn, the 7th to feature Mitch Rapp, follows the CIA-oprative's battles with a Saudi billionaire, an ex-Stasti spy, and a craven national director of intelligence. "To kill a man is a relatively easy thing--especially the average unsuspecting man. To kill a man like Mitch Rapp, however, was an entirely different matter. It would take a great deal of planning and a very talented assassin, or more likely assassins who were either brave enough or crazy enough to accept the job. The latter was more than likely the type who would take on the challenge, for any sane man by definition would have the sense to walk away... Even with the element of surprise on their side, though, they would need to catch Rapp with his guard down so they could get in close enough to finish him off once and for all. The preliminary report on his vigilance did not look good." —excerpt from Consent to Kill

Paula Deen's Kitchen Classics by Paula H. Deen is a double-header, with recipes from The Lady & Sons Savannah Country Cookbook and The Lady & Sons, Too! This book presents recipes from Deen's famous eatery The Lady and Sons Restaurant, with a new foreword with material from Paula's 2004 wedding. "A great many recipes unabashedly list prepared foods among the ingredients. As an appetizer, Garlic Cheese Spread includes an eight-ounce package of cream cheese and an eight-ounce jar of Cheez-Whiz. Shrimp or Lobster Bisque contains, in addition to seafood, a can each of condensed tomato soup and condensed mushroom soup. The restaurant's most popular dessert is Gooey Butter Cakes, which starts with a box of Duncan Hines yellow cake mix. Still, some of the recipes attain a high level of regional authenticity... Readers concerned about high fat content should skip this book. But those looking for some distinctively American comfort food—and in a mood for some decidedly anti-nouvelle regression—might want to take a peek." —Publishers Weekly

The Planets by Dava Sobel, a collection of essays on the planets as she sees them, is more personal than her previous bestsellers. "Intentionally evoking wonder over data, she tries out varying compositional forms for each orb, so that this work forms a set of essays, a literary counterpart to Gustav Holst's 1916 symphonic suite The Planets. The comparison waxes explicit when Sobel ruminates upon Saturn, the incomparable ringed beauty of the solar system and also Holst's favorite. Allusive of age and serenity, Saturn has inspired connotations in mythology and astrology, and these are turned over elegantly in Sobel's emotive prose, which recalls the awe it and its wandering companions inspired in ancient times but which city lights and, perhaps, space-age knowledge have washed out. Yet with subtle balance, Sobel adds background about the planets' discoveries without tipping her essays in the encyclopedic direction as she discusses Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter." —Gilbert Taylor, Booklist

My FBI: Bringing Down the Mafia, Investigating Bill Clinton, and Waging War on Terror by Louis J. Freeh, rebuts the claims of Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies with the story of the former FBI director's struggle to strengthen and reform the Bureau from 1993-2001. This is Freeh’s entire story, from his Catholic upbringing in New Jersey to law school, the FBI training academy, his career as a US District attorney and as a federal judge, and finally his eight years as the nation’s top cop. "Bill Clinton called Freeh a 'law enforcement legend' when he nominated him as FBI Director. The good feelings would not last. Going toe-to-toe with his boss during the scandal-plagued '90s, Freeh fought hard to defend his agency from political interference and to protect America from the growing threat of international terrorism. When Clinton later called that appointment the worst one he had made as president, Freeh considered it 'a badge of honor.'" (Publisher's release notes)

From Mark Bittman, the New York Times food writer known as "The Minimalist," The Best Recipes In The World: More Than 1,000 International Dishes To Cook At Home delivers exotic recipes for the home cook, and "brings together in a single volume recipes from astoundingly different traditions, wildly varying cultures, and totally separate inspirations. Nevertheless, the book coheres and avoids becoming a jumble by being focused through a unique intelligence... On facing pages one finds Korean braised short ribs with ginger, garlic, rice wine, and chiles fronting Spanish oxtails with white wine, bacon, carrots, celery, and thyme. Both recipes contain beef, both follow a basic braising technique, yet one can hardly mistake their very opposite effects at the table... Useful for all library cookbook collections." —Mark Knoblauch, Booklist

For your gift list or music library shelf, The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics comes with commentary by compiler David Dodd. "Like many fans before him, Dodd spent hours passionately trying to find the deeper meanings in the Dead's songs. In 1994 the Internet may have been in its infancy, but Dodd knew the Web was the perfect to tool to help him annotate the entire Dead catalog. So began the building of his incredibly popular Web site. The fruits of his labors lie within the pages of this encyclopedic book... It is worth mentioning, this book should not be viewed as a cheat sheet, but a tool giving lots of background and cross-references. The interpretations are still up to you. Be forewarned, this book can be extremely habit forming." —Rob Bracco, Amazon.com review

Note: Although Amazon says The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics can be shipped today, it is actually not released until October 11th.

I've never caught the Jordan fever, so my list is fairly short this week. I'll take the Freeh, and choose one of the two cookbooks (probably the Southern Cooking double-bill). My one must-have, though, is the Sobel Planets.0312873077,
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0670034460,0312321899,0767906721,0743277473

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Sell Your Shirt Without Losing It: The eBay Survival Guide

2005-10-02T11:52:00.000-07:00

FRIENDLY GUIDE

I'm eBay-deficient, I admit it freely. I have never bought, or sold, anything on eBay, never even shopped there. But I was aware of the online auction-house, in a vague sort of way.

That changed when my spouse decided to sell some original artwork online, meaning I would be setting it up for sale. I got an eBay ID, but hadn't gone a step further, because I was intimidated by the welter of dos and don'ts and options. I had heard of people being cheated, and worried about whether I needed to set up a PayPal account.

A month passed. Two months. Then I happened on Michael Bank's book, The eBay Survival Guide. There it was, the missing "step of confidence." Banks provides all the information you need to buy and sell successfully on eBay, without getting burned by the experience.

My eBay: Even though my main interest is in selling, I carefully read Part II about buying from eBay, especially Bank's warnings to eBay bidders about recognizing red flags from sellers—okay, now I know it's pointless, even counter-productive to warn scam-artist bidders about trying to cheat me.

For my purposes, the winning chapter was 10: "How to Create Listings that Sell." Banks offers common-sense tips like "avoid cliches and overused descriptors like rare, unique, awesome, vintage, and cool"—instead, identify what is unique (awesome, cool, etc.) about your item. Use really unusual words to garner attention—Banks recommends odd, strange, eerie, and noteworthy, and suggests using a thesaurus to find an appropriate eye-catcher.

My eBay: I have this covered already—my spouse has a distinctive style, a type of art that we've named "Math Moire."

For the description, Banks provides a template for writing informative, inviting sales copy, and walks through an example for selling a wristwatch. Key to this, he says, is spell-checking and grammar. (And you thought you were done with that when you left high-school!) He cautions the seller to avoid misleading bidders with subjective reactions (don't say it's beautiful, post a picture and let the bidder decide), or omitting critical negative information (instead, put a positive spin on it—it's not "broken," it's "unrestored.")

My eBay: I checked over the copy I had already written, and added the size of the piece. This was the one item of information I had noticed was left out of almost all the Artwork entries. I don't know about others, but when I buy art, I'd like to know if it's 8 feet wide or 8 inches!

Someone wants it, but maybe not at the price!

And here it is, my own eBay page, built in ten minutes by following the advice of The eBay Survival Guide. Am I done now? Nope. Based on what happens in the next few days, I will need to decide about when—and whether—to relist.

Relisting an item gives you an opportunity to fine-tune the title, ad-copy and offering price. Banks gives some solid advice on making these choices to increase excitement, attention and the likelihood of a sale. Furthermore, he informs us, you can revise your listing in mid-auction if you're not getting much response. So that's my next step.

Even when you have an item that won't sell, Banks has a great suggestion: use it to sweeten the pot for another sale. Just because it hasn't sold, doesn't mean it is unwanted. That broken pocket watch might not be worth $9 on its own, but offered as a BONUS item with a $400 antique pocket-watch stand, it might tip the balance to buy for some bidder.

Meanwhile, if you have a yen for some tchotchke or objet d'art, or you have a gewgaw or gimcrack to sell, there's a road-map to success on eBay waiting for you in The eBay Survival Guide.

1593270631,0596006446,0596005644

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Just in Time for the 2005 Awards: Ig Nobel Prizes 2

2005-10-01T18:30:00.000-07:00

AIR ABOVE THE GROUND

On Thursday, October 6th, scientists and lab-rats will be called on the red carpet at Harvard University to receive Ig Nobel Awards "for scientific achievements which cannot or should not be reproduced."

The honors this year come just in time for my review of a second hilarious compilation from Marc Abrahams' journal, the Annals of Improbable Research (AIR), published as Ig Nobel Prizes 2. The prizes are the smallest part of the zany antics detailed in the book, which also describes the award ceremony (2004) and the efforts made by scientists to be included (and sometimes, to avoid being included) on the rolls of the Ig Nobel Award Committee.

Thanks to these courageous researchers, we now know that chickens prefer beautiful people (PDF). We can celebrate the opportunity represented by Liechtenstein, an entire country available for rent "for corporate conventions, weddings, bar mitzvahs, and other gatherings."

Or we can follow the valiant efforts of Lal Bihari, of Uttar Pradesh, India, who manages to lead an active life even though he has been declared legally dead. Pradesh won an Ig Nobel award in 2003 for his creation of the Association of Dead People, and even received a passport from the Indian government so that he could come to Harvard for the award ceremony. However, the US government refused to allow the "dead" man into the country.

Another morbid topic was "The Effect of Country Music on Suicide," in which researchers Steven Stack and James Gundlach assessed the link between country music and metropolitan suicide rates.

Country music is hypothesized to nurture a suicidal mood through its concerns with problems common in the suicidal population, such as marital discord, alcohol abuse, and alienation from work. The results of a multiple regression analysis of 49 metropolitan areas show that the greater the airtime devoted to country music, the greater the white suicide rate. The effect is independent of divorce, southernness, poverty, and gun availability... Our model explains 51% of the variance in urban white suicide rates.

Sometimes, accepting an award becomes a moment for self-promotion, as when Alan Kligerman, the inventor of Beano, took the opportunity to plug CurTail, "Beano for dogs." The opportunity is a brief one, however—honorees have a strict 30-second limit on acceptance speeches, enforced by "referees with baseball bats."

My favorite, though, has to be the study of "Scrotal Asymmetry in Man and Ancient Scupture (PDF)," confirming for all time that, yes, Michelangelo's David is lopsided. Thank heavens for the rich resource provided by the 2004 Literature laureate, the American Nudist Research Library, "preserving nudist history so that everyone can see it."

Ig Nobel Prizes 2 is on my shelf now, right next to the compilations from the Wormrunners Digest.
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Smoking Actors, Smoking Movies

2005-10-01T10:26:00.000-07:00

ART REFLECTS LIFE?

Time was, an elegant woman or dashing man was portrayed on-screen with a lit cigarette in hand. Wealth could be indicated by a long cigar, poverty or desperation by a short stub clenched in the teeth. Anxiety was telegraphed by a nervous flick of ashes from a tightly-clutched cigarette.

Everyone smoked.

This reflected a society in which many people smoked. I recall watching movies from a balcony seat, since my parents smoked, and that was where smokers were seated in the theater. In one of the first smoking restrictions, smoking was prohibited in movies theaters after that—but on-screen, cigarettes were still a frequent accessory to glamor and the good life.

As societal norms have changed, though, have the movies kept pace? That was the question addressed by a study by Dr. Karan Omidvari and others at St. Michael's Medical Center in Newark, NJ. They recorded smoking habits of five main characters in each of 447 movies made during the 1990s, including hits like Independence Day (with its celebratory cigars), and There's Something About Mary.

Ernie Kovacs rarely appeared without a cigar.

The researchers excluded animated features and science fiction with settings other than Earth, because they aren't typically intended to represent reality. They also didn't count as a smoker any character whose smoking was only depicted in a flashback or another scene that didn't occur "in the present, in the sense of the film."

What they found about smoking in movies from that decade may surprise you. Only 21 percent of "good-guy" characters smoked, while 36 percent of their adversaries did. Omidvari reflected that it is good news that Hollywood tends to depict smokers as unsympathetic characters.

Overall, 48 percent of the movie smokers were portrayed as from a lower socioeconomic class, while 23 percent appeared middle-class. Only 11 percent of smokers could be identified as upper-class. (The remaining characters could not be assigned to any particular class.)

The study revealed that smokers in US movies are more likely to be villainous and poor than heroic or wealthy. Omidvari did note that in R-rated and independent films, main characters were more likely to smoke than they were in studio releases. In fact, in these films, smoking was more prevalant than it is in the US population as a whole.

I wonder how they counted Jim Carrey's manic character in The Mask? To quote Stanley Ipkiss, "SMO-kin'!"
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