The World that Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square; Ned Sublette (2008)

Reviewer: Elle Ewok
Rating: 4 Pierogies (ignoring the last two pages)

Review: I have always been rather taken by New Orleans. Its unique culture (French/American/African influences) - particularly its dark creepy undertones - appeal to my interests. That said, although I can name all sorts of unique attributes of New Orleans (jazz funerals, cemeteries, voodoo, mardi gras, creole, cajun, jazz, vampires, pirates, lasciviousness ect) I could never understood how they all fit together or why they are even attributes of New Orleans to begin with. On my most recent trip to New Orleans in February I stopped by Faulkner House books (as I always do when in NOLA) and asked for a recommendation on a general history of New Orleans. The lovely lady who works there (and I suspect is a part owner) recommended "The World that Made New Orleans" and explained that it is a comprehensive history of New Orleans told through the prism of musicality. Sounded interesting so I bought it.

"The World that Made New Orleans" is simply a very good, interesting and straight forward history book. If you are interested in history you will like this book. If not - you will be bored to tears. Proceed accordingly.

I love history and enjoyed reading this book very much. All my questions about how New Orleans' peculiar atmosphere and culture came to be were answered and I learned a great deal. This book is not simply a book about New Orleans. The history of New Orleans can only be understood by studying the context of its time and place in the world. As such "The World that Made New Orleans" is also a comprehensive history book about English, Spanish and French colonization in North America; American Revolutionary history; Caribbean colonization; the African slave trade; the American Civil War and the Haitian Revolution. Considering I have not studied any of these things since high school, it was an incredibly engaging and interesting history to read about.

Surprisingly the least successful part of the book was when it talked about music - which was supposed to be the "hook" of this book. I really appreciate what he was trying to do here, but the reality is, reading about music that you can't hear just is not that interesting. I studied music extensively for a very long time and I found it hard to follow and boring. I ended up using You Tube to hear some of the songs and styles the author was talking about and they sounded absolutely nothing like what I was expecting from what I read. This is just a mild criticism, however, and reading about the historical evolution of musical styles was interesting.

I really enjoyed this book and only have one gripe with it but it pissed me off enough to mention here. On the last two pages of the book the author, out of nowhere, states that the less-than perfect government response to Hurricane Katrina was a calculated effort on the part of the Republican Party to drive black Democratic voters out of Lousianna so that Louisianna would be an even redder state.

Um okay.

I really lost all respect for the author for saying such a ridiculous thing as a fact and it made me question the credibility of the entire book. The fact that he would make such an inflammatory accusation without feeling the need to produce any supporting proof whatsoever was offensive.  Look, I get that turning people with different political beliefs than you into evil caricatures is tempting - it is easy and allows you to feel morally superior in the process. In reality, however, most people are not hyper-partisans who are going to fall for it and you are just making yourself look like an idiot. The majority of Americans probably lean one way or the other politically, but have beliefs that cross party lines on occasion. Furthermore, most Americans have friends and family members of different policial persuasions that they love and respect and don't think of as supporters of evil. Gratuitiously accusing republicans of something so horrendous and evil may get you a high five from Kanye West and back slaps at Manhattan academia dinner parties but everyone else is going to look at you as a complete fart-sniffing a-hole (South Park reference FYI).

Let me posit an alternative theory Mr. Sublette: Perhaps the lackluster goverment response to Katrina was because the federal government (regardless of which party is in charge) was not prepared for such a crisis and is generally a big, bloated, slow, wasteful, and ineffective bureaucracy. It has never had to change or streamline its operations to become less bloated/slow because is immune from liability and can pay for its constant screw ups by taking tax money off the citizens that actually earned it. Not to mention that it hardly makes sense from a policitical perspective for Republicans to drive black democratic voters out of one red state (Louisianna) directly into another (Texas mainly). The whole thing was mean-spirited, groundless and stupid and it left a really really bad taste in my mouth.

Ignoring the last two pages, I would otherwise recommend this book to any history lover.

Rules of Civility, Amor Towles (2011)

Reviewer:  BeezusKiddo

Rating: 5 Delicious homemade pierogies

Review:  This is the book that Breakfast at Tiffany's failed to be. Katey Kontent is an intelligent, strong-minded young woman brushing elbows with New York's blue bloods, never quite fitting in herself, but taking the city by storm. I loved this book.

It's not a typical pick for me-- I usually like mysteries, scary books, dark humor. Rules of Civility has none of those, and even has a touch of romance. That's usually not my style. But Katey's narrative voice hooked my right in, and I couldn't help myself. I finished this book in less than a week.

The synopsis, from Towles' website:

Set in New York City in 1938, Rules of Civility tells the story of a watershed year in the life of an uncompromising twenty-five-year-old named Katey Kontent. Armed with little more than a formidable intellect, a bracing wit, and her own brand of cool nerve, Katey embarks on a journey from a Wall Street secretarial pool through the upper echelons of New York society in search of a brighter future.

The story opens on New Year’s Eve in a Greenwich Village jazz bar, where Katey and her boardinghouse roommate Eve happen to meet Tinker Grey, a handsome banker with royal blue eyes and a ready smile. This chance encounter and its startling consequences cast Katey off her current course, but end up providing her unexpected access to the rarified offices of Conde Nast and a glittering new social circle. Befriended in turn by a shy, principled multimillionaire, an Upper East Side ne’er-do-well, and a single-minded widow who is ahead of her times, Katey has the chance to experience first hand the poise secured by wealth and station, but also the aspirations, envy, disloyalty, and desires that reside just below the surface. Even as she waits for circumstances to bring Tinker back into her orbit, she will learn how individual choices become the means by which life crystallizes loss.

Katey's voice is so authentic that I was constantly surprised that this book was written by a man. Towles' captures the intricacies of female friendships, jealousies, and rivalries but never retreats to catfighting.

There are so many quote-worthy passages in this book that it took great restraint for me to only pick one to share:

If my father had made a million dollars, he wouldn't have eaten at La Belle Epoque. To him, restaurants were the ultimate expression of ungodly waste. For of all the luxuries that your money could buy a restaurant left you the least to show for it. A fur coat could at least be worn in winter to fend off the cold, and a silver spoon could be melted down and sold to a jeweler. But a porterhouse steak? You chopped it, chewed it, swallowed it, wiped your lips and dropped your napkin on your plate. That was that. And asparagus? My father would have sooner carried a twenty-dollar bill to his grave than spent it on some glamorous weed coated in cheese.

But for me, dinner at a fine restaurant was the ultimate luxury. It was the very height of civilization. For what was civilization but the intellect's ascendancy out of the doldrums of necessity (shelter, sustenance and survival) into the ether of the finely superfluous (poetry, handbags and haute cuisine)? So removed from daily life was the whole experience that when all was rotten to the core, a fine dinner could revive the spirits. If and when I had twenty dollars left to my name, I was going to invest it right here in an elegant hour that couldn't be hocked.

Before starting this book, my interest went back and forth. The synopsis didn't particularly grip me, and I named it as a book I planned to read in 2012 only because it was getting so much noise over at the BlogHer book club. My friend Regina lent it to me, and since I had finished up my book club books for the month, I decided to pick it up. I'm so glad I did, this book is a gem.

The Scented Ape: The Biology and Culture of Human Odour, D. Michael Stoddart (1991)

Reviewer: Ignacio van Kugel

Rating:  4 musky, onion scented pierogies

Review:  “Take your stinking paws off of me you damn dirty ape!” –Astronaut Taylor.

How often do you consider your nose, the way things smell, or how smells affect you?  There can be little doubt, that of all our senses, olfactory receives the least conscious thought on any given day.  In fact, humans have a distain of their own human smell, as we all are aware of the great amount of daily effort to remove all trace of human scent.  Language reflects a human preference to sight over smell with the phrase “I see” to mean I understand, whereas, “something smells” to mean that something is wrong.  D. Michael Stoddart attempts to explore this lack of conscious thought of the nose, why humans have a complex relationship with how we feel about how things smell, and our own human scent.  Stoddart takes a multidisciplinary approach in his book in attempting to analyze the role olfactory plays in human biology, culture, psychology, and evolutionary history. 

Stoddard begins with a fairly technical explanation of how the olfactory bulb is connected to the brain of various creatures, including humans.  It is well known that other animals use scent, and sexual attractants to aid in reproduction.  In fact, olfactory is often critical to reproduction, and in some species sexual development and maturation.  Experiments on mice that have their olfactory bulb removed results in the mice having no interest in sex, and other hormonal effects.  Whether such sexual and behavioral disruption is effected in humans is unknown (as it would unethical to remove the olfactory bulb in a person), however, it is suspected that such an effect may occur.  Indeed, the olfactory bulb, which is in the highest passage of the nose, shares a special connection with both the pituitary gland as well as deepest parts of the brain that control emotion.  It would seem the unique feelings that can arise from a scent are the result of this nose-emotional brain connection.  Our eyes and ears lack this direct connection to the emotional brain as the sensory information from the eyes and ears are filtered through the neocortex (conscious brain) before any emotion can be triggered. 

Beyond our olfactory sense being different from our eyes and ears the question is raised, for what purposes does our nose continue to play in human life?  The human body, more than any other primate, contains more scent glands, focused in greatest number in the pubic region, axillary (armpit) region, and face.  That we develop pubic and axillary hair at puberty and that hair excels at increasing the surface area for scents to be release, it would seem that “goat under the armpit” or “flower of youth” scent is directly tied, at least, to sexual maturity and notification of sexual maturity. 

So then, why do we have such disgust with our own odor, and where did the custom of scenting ourselves with perfumes come about.  One interesting aspect of human females is that ovulation is concealed and kept secret from males, whereas in other primates, it is not.  Also, humans, although subject to debate, form monogamous (or at least serial monogamous) relationships in a “gregarious” group.  One theory for this type of relationship to work in a group is that ovulation must be kept secret from males.  Thus, courting behavior will result and force the male to invest time with the female thereby increasing the likelihood that the male will stay with the female throughout the duration of the pregnancy and the resulting 10-15+ years until the offspring reaches adulthood.  One theory of the use of perfume, is that the sexual attractants of plants and animals that do mimic human body odor, was applied to scramble any fertility signals given away by human odor.  

It is clear from the book, that Stoddard is only scratching the surface of the role of scent and human odor.  Although we may think that the nose is a primitive organ and merely a vestigial sense, it is clear that the olfactory sense and our numerous scent glands endured to play a role in the behavior and development of modern humans.  Although, much of the book focuses on the likely sexual connection between humans and scent, it is interesting that the nose is also a direct gateway to emotional parts of the brain.  This likely accounts for the unique feeling that comes about when a scent triggers a memory.  

One final theory worth mentioning is that although human scent may no longer advertise sexual readiness (ovulation), human scent may rather be a way to promote pair bonding, and monogamy through strong emotional attachment.  Could this then account for the ever increasing divorce rates in the last 100 years in Western cultures, where we cleanse, deodorize, engage in depilatory activities; that our ever increasing lack of scent makes it ever easier to break the pair bond?  So ladies and gentlemen, perhaps the best way to keep your significant other is to throw out the soap, deodorant and razors.

Divergent, Veronica Roth (2011)

Reviewer: BeezusKiddo

Rating: 4.5 tasty pierogies

Review: Divergent was selected as the top book of 2011 in the Goodreads Readers Choice Poll. It's easy to see why- this book is engaging, excited, and leaves the reader eager for Roth's next book (Insurgent, expected in May 2012).

 

Roth has the unfortunate timing of her book being released in the height of Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games books. Both depict dystopian futures with strong, brave women in the lead role. Veronica Roth's book is excellent, but her writing is less mature than Collins, so the comparison weighs in favor of Collins. It's not necessarily fair to compare these books in this way, but it's unavoidable due to the timing.

The only criticisms I have about Divergent are few and petty. I wish the lead, Beatrice, didn't re-name herself "Tris," it reeks of trying to hard to fit in. (Admittedly, strong female characters named "Beatrice" or "Beatrix" mean more to me than most, my daughter's middle name is "Beatrix," and she is named after a certain brave, ruthless woman of the same name.)

The love story is predictable and kind of immature, but that's not entirely a valid criticism, because the characters are young, so an immature love story is appropriate in that context.

I liked the way Roth characterizes and develops each of the factions. I also liked the extensive initiation process for joining the factions, it was an excellent plot device for developing the faction's personality, and makes the social structure much more interesting than "ok, this is where you're going."

There is the perfect balance of action and description in this book for it to be transformed to a thrilling movie that is completely true to the book. (Although I love the Hunger Games, it's so heavy on description that I think the movie won't be able to everything.)

Roth keeps a blog about her writing experiences, and it's interesting to get such an intimate view into the writing and editing process. I particularly liked her entry about the differences between the early drafts and the final story of Divergent. She seems down-to-earth, intelligent, and friendly. Also, she's only 23! What an amazing accomplishment for someone so young.

Happy Friday Gift: Best Short Story Evah!

Well, it's Friday - finally. This has been one of the more stressful weeks of my life professionally so I need to decompress something fierce.

To celebrate our collective impending weekend freedom here is a link to what may very possibly be the best short story ever written: Symbols and Signs by Vladimir Nabokov.

SYMBOLS & SIGNS

I'm pretty certain at this point that Nabokov is the best writer ever although there are a few more of his works I need to read before I can say this definitively. No one can do what he can do with the written word. I love this phrase from Symbols and Signs so much, "...of neglected children humming to themselves in unswept corners." He writes phrases like that - which stick in my mind for days.

I began writing short stories when I was eight years old. I love writing but everytime I read Symbols & Signs I want to punch myself in the face and burn everything I have ever written.

Enjoy! Love, Elle

Mildred Pierce, James M. Cain (1941)

Reviewer: BeezusKiddo

Rating: 4 Pierogies

Review: When my book club picked Mildred Pierce for our February book, the only thing I knew about it was that the HBO miniseries got plenty of buzz at the 2011 Emmy's. I figured that if the miniseries was good, the book must be too. Luckily, I was right.

This book is not "good" in the traditional sense, with the traditional battles of good/evil, love/hate etc. This book is driven purely by the reader's schadenfreude--you turn pages quickly because you so desperately want to see the bad people suffer. There is not a single likeable main character. Some are bad, some are mean, some are pathetic. None of them are admirable.

 I found the plot gripping and wanted to keep reading and reading and reading, if only to see the dislikeable characters get their comeuppance, and the rare good displayed be rewarded.

THIS PART IS A SPOILER:

 IT DOESN'T HAPPEN. EVER. Good things happen to bad people. I want Bad people to suffer consequences, terrible terrible consequences. I want Good people to be rewarded. That never, ever happens here. The Bad people revel in their badness and reap reward after reward, and the Good people suffer.

 I didn't end this book disappointed because the writing was so engaging and because there is a certain level of resolution at the very end. Also, I really do like books that are filled with baddies. The Believers and Notes on a Scandal (both by Zoe Heller) are some favorites that come to mind.

Mildred Pierce was adapted to an Oscar winning film starring Joan Crawford in 1945, and the Emmy-winning miniseries starring Kate Winslet just came out on HBO last year. I can't wait to see them both!

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson (2005)

 

Reviewer:  BeezusKiddo

Rating: 4 Pierogies

Review: My mom left her copy of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo at my house well over a year ago. It has been sitting on my dining room table the entire time.

My book club picked it as the next selection, and I finally shook off the dust and took a look. Now I ask myself what took me so darn long? All the hype around the book made me less interested in it, but there was hype for good reason.

Larsson is an excellent storyteller, who has created intriguing characters, and can weave a quick and intelligent plot. Even though this book is 300+ pages, I got through it in less than a week.

A number of friends have told me that they struggled through the first 150 pages. That first section wasn't boring or difficult for me, but I didn't find it particularly gripping either. After the first 150 pages, things pick up and the plot really takes off.

I suppose the mark of a good translation is that the book doesn't feel translated. Still I find that most translated works are a little choppy. This book had no such problem. The language was very smooth.

This is not a book for the faint-hearted. It's full of violence and dark themes. According to the all-knowing Wikipedia, Larsson's writing was heavily influenced by a violent assault on a woman that he witnessed, and he never forgave himself for intervening. This comes through clearly in the book.

What most impressed me was that all 3 books in the Millenium Trilogy were only discovered and published after Larsson had died. I'm sure some editing was done, but I can't imagine any major editorial overhaul was undertaken without the author being available. For an unpublished author to just leave a work like this behind was amazing to me.