The Reader by Bernhard Schlink (3.5 stars)

This novel begins strongly - Schlink paints detailed pictures as they are frozen in the young Michael Berg's brain: Hannah pulling on her stocking, riding her bike. As Michael's interest in Hannah dwindles with his increasing interest in his peers, my interest also dwindled, where was this leading? Lots of spoilers ahead...

The story soon switches gears and Schlink places the contrast of Hannah's previous life as a SS guard in the concentration camps over Michael's image of her as a lover. In Michael's struggle to both understand and condemn Hannah's crime, Schlink raises the dilemma of the post-WWII German youth: wanting to point the finger in shame and anger at their parents' generation and yet understand and love them as family at the same time.

I wanted to pose myself both tasks - understanding and condemnation. But it was impossible to do both.

Michael struggles with a new picture of someone he thought he knew well. Faced with the evidence of her having Jewish children read to her before sending them to the gas chambers he questions their entire relationship - what sort of person is she?

Would she have sent me to the gas chamber if she hadn't been able to leave me, but wanted to get rid of me?

And given he had chosen her, what sort of person did that make him?

But the finger I pointed at her turned back to me. I had loved her. Not only had I loved her, I had chosen her.

I found this section of the book intriguing as it was a subject I had wondered about myself after visiting Auschwitz and then Germany. However, while it was interesting I didn't find it particularly moving.

At the end of the novel we discover that Hannah has spent much of her time in prison first learning to read and write, then learning about the Holocaust. To me this felt a little disingenuous and a ploy to try and make the reader sympathise with Hannah. I also thought her suicide before Michael had to deal with the reality of interacting with her and caring for her was a huge cop out.

Thought provoking. This is also one of the rare instances where the movie is almost as good as the book.

3.5 stars.

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (3.5 stars)

The Poisonwood Bible follows the Price family missionaries into the Belgian Congo jungle in 1959. The story is in two halves with the first being an amazing clash of cultures where neither understands the other, despite the best efforts of some of the locals to act as interpreters and cultural guides.

The Price's arrive wearing most of their clothes with boxes of Betty Crocker cake mix taped to their bodies to get around the weight restrictions on the flight. They soon find that converting the villagers to Christianity is a complex process - most of their congregation are the lower rungs of Congo society looking for an alternative god 'Tata Jesus' to try out. This half of the book was interesting, and despite the annoying malapropisms from Rachel, I enjoyed as a great 'clash of cultures' story and a transport into jungle life in the Congo.

The second half of the story after the family leaves the jungle is more problematic and less enjoyable. Leah brings what seems to be a very one-sided view of history to the struggle for independence, which made me doubt a lot of the historical accuracy of the rest of the novel. Basically her message was that the Congo was doing fine until America came and screwed it up. Real life is never that simple.

Rachel becomes an arrogant white-supremacist who doesn't leave the bar of her upscale hotel, and despite a short journey through what seemed to be a made-for-TV miracle cure, Adah barely features at all.

The picture of the Price family in the jungle will stay with me, but the rest of the book is fairly forgettable. I don't think it deserves its position on many top 100 lists.

3.5 stars.

How to feel manly in a minivan by Craig Boreth (3 stars)

As Boreth says, "could there possibly be any market more saturated than parenting books?". I don't plan to review a whole bunch here, but I thought this one was noteworthy since it was fairly entertaining.

I was happily surprised that I shared a love of Just In Time with the author - he applies it to gaining baby knowledge only when you need it, and buying baby stuff only when you need it, not ahead of time. I'd agree although there are some basics you want to have when you get back from the hospital.

The most interesting thing I took away from the book was a recipe for chocolate salty balls. The tenuous justification for including it in the book was that they could satisfy sweet and salty pregnancy cravings at the same time...

Makes 12 balls

8 oz semisweet or bittersweet chocolate
1/4 cup olive oil
3/4 cup heavy cream
Salt (flaky, preferably Maldon)

Coarsely chop the chocolate, and place in a bowl. In a saucepan or in the microwave, heat the cream just until it comes to a boil. Pour the cream over the chocolate. Gently stir the mixture until the chocolate is melted and completely combined with the cream. Put it in the fridge until firm. Scoop about a tablespoon of the chocolate and roll it into bals. Drizzle olive oil over the top and sprinkle with salt.

I also learned that:

If your baby is cranky or crying, and someone tells you what you should do about it [say]:

"Don't worry, he'll be fine once he sobers up."

And if someone touches your baby without asking:

"Ooh, I hope you had pelican pox as a child. 'Cause if not, you've got it now. You should probably call your doctor immediately. Sorry."

3 stars.

The Revolution: A Manifesto by Ron Paul (4 stars)

I've been meaning to read this since the 2008 presidential race, and finally got around to it just as Ron Paul is running for the republican nomination for the 2012 election. The book, particularly at the start, is fairly ranty and there are plenty of cavalier sweeping statements that raise a big 'citation needed':

Dissenters who tell their fellow citizens what is really going on are subject to smear campaigns that, like clockwork, are aimed at the political heretic.  Truth is treason in the empire of lies.

I agree with his position of reducing military spending, and overseas military commitments, as a huge cost saving and a pissing-off-other-countries saving. I was fascinated to read an intelligent quote along these lines from, George W. Bush's campaign in 2000, a sentiment that obviously changed drastically after 9/11.

"If we're an arrogant nation, they'll resent us. Our nation stands alone right now in the world in terms of power, and that's why we've got to be humble." We should be "proud and confident [in] our values, but humble in how we treat nations that are figuring out how to chart their own course."

I've read a few books about the Iraqi war, and Paul Wolfowitz' statement that

...the ousting of Saddam would allow the United States to remove its tropps from Saudi Arabia, where their presence had long been a major al-Qaeda grievance.

was news to me.

Having said all that, some of his ideas I don't agree with, such as stopping all foreign aid (his reasoning is that it props up failed governments), and some seem downright naive, such as pledging that if he was president he would never use executive orders. Given how dysfunctional and adversarial congress is, executive orders are one of the few tools a president has to actually get things done. I also objected to his horrific example of an abortion of a 2 lb baby to promote his pro-life stance. It is completely disingenuous - no sane pro-choice supporters are in favour of late-term abortions.

Paul is completely against centralised federal government power, apart from a small number of exceptions such as the Departments of Justice and Defence. If he got his way and had most powers delegated to the states he claims that:

We wouldn't have to worry that a social policy of which we disapproved would be imposed on our neighborhood at the whim of the new president and his court appointees, or that more of our money would be stolen to fund yet another government boondoggle.

but provides no evidence as to why he thinks state government would be any more efficient, likely to make better decisions, or even overcome the obvious inefficiency of 52 times the government they have now. I do however agree that government has become bloated and inefficient, the federal budget was 40% larger in 2007 compared to 10 years ago, but I would contend that it is bloated at all levels - city, state, and federal. He proposes abolishing income tax, but provides no justification for how this would improve the economy or even offset the thousands of government job losses it would require.

He rages against the 'welfare state' and offers up the thought experiment that if there were no government (federal or state) welfare programs, people would be more likely to volunteer and make donations themselves. I contend that lots of people are selfish, and a little pro-bono work by lawyers or a few hours of volunteering by an unskilled general populace is not going to be anywhere near enough to replace the efforts of full-time trained and paid social workers.

His position on health care is similar, and interesting since he is an obstetrician, and has been around long enough to see the system break down:

As a physician I never accepted Medicare or Medicaid money from the government, and instead offered cut-rate or free services to those who could not afford care. Before those programs came into existence, every physician understood that he or she had a respobsibility toward the less fortunate, and free medical care for the poor was the norm. Hardly anyone is aware of this today, since it doesn't fit into the typical, by-the-script story of government rescuing us from a predatory private sector. Laws and regulations that inflated the cost of medical services and imposed unreasonable liability standards on medical professionals even when they were acting in a volunteer capacity later made offering free care cost prohibitive...

I can see how this would work when most patients could pay. What about poor neighbourhoods where most people can't pay? What doctor would work there for free?

Interestingly, apparently the government is to blame for the crazy coupling of employment and health insurance:

...the HMO Act of 1973 forced all but the smallest employers to offer HMOs to their employees. The combined result was the illogical coupling of employment and health insurance, which often leaves the unemployed without needed catastrophic coverage.

This review is already gigantic, so I'll just finish by adding that his stance on legalising marijuana to relieve court and prison systems seems sensible, and backing the US dollar with gold is an interesting idea, but I need to know more about macroeconomics to decide if it is a good one.

Overall, thought provoking and interesting. It's also really short, so not a hard read.

4 stars.

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes (4 stars)

This book seems an unlikely candidate for a science fiction award, but it won both the Hugo (as a short story) and the Nebula in its longer novel form.  The story follows, in first-person perspective, the experience of a mentally retarded man whose IQ is drastically increased by an undescribed medical operation. It doesn't feel much like science fiction, as the focus is on Charlie, self-discovery, and his changing perspective and personal relationships.

I thought Keyes did an excellent job of capturing Charlie's thoughts, his realisation that his childhood 'friends' were often mocking and cruel, and his terror at losing all his knowledge as the effects of the operation begin to reverse.  Charlie finds difficulties at both ends of the IQ spectrum, when he is a genius his emotional age has not grown with his intelligence and he finds himself being arrogant and insensitive.

Keyes also explores the strain that a mentally retarded child places on the parents and siblings.  On the birth of a 'normal' daughter, Charlie's mother switches from obsessively trying to push Charlie's abilities toward normal, to being overprotective of her new daughter at the cost of any love she had for Charlie.

Some reviewers have described the novel as a tearjerker, but I found it strangely lacking in pathos.  I'm not sure why.  It was definitely sad, but not powerfully so.  The book was made into a movie in 1968, I'll check that out and update this post.

4 stars.

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (3.5 stars)

"Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!" This book is the defining work of the pirate genre, and I think of it as a the sort of novel Tom Clancy or other modern action/thriller writers would have written if they were alive in 1883. It is a rollicking, action-packed tale that is great for kids, with a young adventure-seeking boy as the narrator.

Long John Silver is a great character - totally charming, ruthless, and self-interested. The writers of Pirates of the Caribbean borrowed much of his character for Jack Sparrow.

A couple of things I thought were a little ridiculous. One was when young Hawkins decides to go on the treasure hunt. He intends to follow a map that a bunch of pirates have killed a number of people to get their hands on, including very nearly Hawkins and his mother themselves. But there was no word of protest from the mother about him going on this journey. Maybe parenting standards were lower in 1883? Or treasure hunting was a more accepted vocation? This could have been solved by a simple paragraph about Hawkins running away.

The second thing that annoyed me was that Stevenson made it completely obvious that the clueless, foppish, squire had hired a bunch of murderous pirates and their leader Long John Silver to crew the Hispaniola on its treasure hunting mission. Couldn't he have left a bit more suspense and intrigue here? It was completely obvious that all of the crew were pirates and would turn on the good guys.

I hand you a black spot, and on the reverse it says:

3.5 stars

American Gods by Neil Gaiman (3 stars)

Just kind of meh.

I have read some of the Sandman graphic novels, and Good Omens, but this is my first Gaiman-only novel and I don't really have much to say about it. I liked the premise of the old gods with dwindling followings slowly losing power to new gods of Media, Internet etc. As an aside, the image of those new gods was well chosen - a sophisticated impossibly beautiful Media woman and a fat, arrogant pimply kid as Internet. I think this quote gives you a picture of the Internet god:

Tell him that we have fucking reprogrammed reality. Tell him that language is a virus and that religion is an operating system and that prayers are just so much fucking spam. Tell him that or I'll fucking kill you

But overall, while I enjoyed reading the book I felt no sense of urgency. The climax was non-existent and I found myself working through it like the character Shadow - plodding from one strange experience to the next, never questioning, never getting particularly excited or reacting to the events around him. Could there be a less interesting, vacuous protagonist?

Given the premise, this book could have been a fascinating look into an alternative world, but it just felt lacklustre. There is some humour, I will leave you with part of a two-page rant from Sam ("you have no idea what I can believe") but nothing in the league of Good Omens.

...I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe...

3 stars.

PS. Rock City is actually a real place, and the barns advertising it from miles around do exist. I just added it to my list of things to see in the US!