Book Help Web

Young Adult Literature Challenge

2008-03-31T14:08:00.000-07:00

Peter Pan was an experience well worth reading. I had thought that I had read it long ago, but as my son and I listened to the book, I realized that my experience with Peter Pan was solely through the myriad ways he had seeped into our popular culture. I'm so glad that I took the time to go back and to hear Barrie's original (well, OK, one of his originals. The Peter Pan stories took many forms).

I've also written numerous reviews for the remaining books in the challenge and will be posting those at Book Help Web over the next couple weeks.

Combining categories

2008-02-28T10:45:00.000-08:00

I've finally decided what I'm going to do for the two final categories in the juvenile literature challenge (I'm still working on the graphic novel).

I'm listening to Barrie's Peter Pan on CD. So that will cover both the classic and the book on tape categories.

The third Leon Goss review is now posted.

Leon Goss III

2008-02-21T08:02:00.000-08:00

I'll get back to writing about the young adult literature challenge in my next post, but I'm going to take a slight (very slight) detour.

Toward the end of last year, I stumbled upon a new children's book author. He published four titles that came out on the first day of 2007. All of them were children's picture books with empowering themes. What I especially liked about the three titles that I read was the sense of humor. Most of them had a fairly light touch and were amusing as well as uplifting. Leon Goss III has formed what he dubs an entertainment company that includes a publishing arm.

The main page of the company's Website refers to other books that they're publishing, but the publishing pages of the Website lead to dead links.

Speaking of digressions, I absolutely cringed at the press release talking about their donation of 150 books to a congresswoman for dispersal to needy readers. In a quick read of the two paragraph release, I found eight spelling and punctuation errors as well as content challenges. It was a bit painful for a site that promotes literacy.

Book Help Web now has reviews for two of the three titles that I read and the third one, Selfus Esteemus Personalitus Low, is on the to-do list. My favorite was In Your Seat, Mr. Pete because it took such a delightful outlook on a young, creative, rambunctious boy. However, I was also tickled by both the illustrations and storyline of By the Light of the Moon.

Challenge Readings: Contemporary/Realistic fiction

2008-02-19T10:17:00.001-08:00

I read two books that fall into the contemporary/realistic fiction book for the young adult reading challenge.

Actually, I should say that I read two books that self-classify themselves as juvenile fiction. The first, The Pale Surface of Things, might more rightly be categorized as an adult fiction book that is appropriate for young people. In fact, it would make an excellent nominee for a Christopher Award.

It was an enchanting book in a setting that was, to me at least, unique. I'd never before read a book set in modern Crete. It tells the story of several people who are forced to make choices between their own self-interest and what is best for the community. It begins with a runaway groom, fleeing from a grasping, materialistic bride into a world of unexpected kindness and violence.

The author is an excellent storyteller with a great command of mood and language. My one complaint is that the book wraps up a little too neatly and has a few too many coincidences in it. However, he also created characters who really have to question what moral courage means and the situations are compelling and filled with suspense.

I'll plan to get a review posted of it before too much longer.

The second book was Emmy's Question. I approached this book with a healthy amount of skepticism. It's the sort of topic you expect to be addressed on after-school specials. When done well, it can be a memorable classic, when not done well, it can be turgid and heavy-handed. I was pleased that this book firmly fell into the first category. From the very first paragraph, I was hooked and couldn't stop reading until I'd finished the book.

Emmy is a young girl with an alcoholic mother. The entire story is told from her perspective as she struggles to understand something far beyond her experience. She takes the reader with her as she learns more about her mother's disease and how not to take responsibility for it.

Both books were highly satisfying reads.

Edward Albee quotes

2008-02-14T07:42:00.000-08:00

I was updating some profiles on Book Help Web today (adding new publication, death dates, new awards, etc.), when I came across these wonderful quotes by Edward Albee:

What could be worse than getting to the end of your life and realizing you hadn't lived it?

A usefully lived life is probably going to be, ultimately, more satisfying.

Writing should be useful. If it can't instruct people a little bit more about the responsibilities of consciousness, there's no point in doing it.

If you're willing to fail interestingly, you tend to succeed interestingly.

That's what happens in plays, yes? The shit hits the fan.

Creativity is magic. Don't examine it too closely.

Challenge List

2008-02-13T10:18:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I blogged about the Juvenile Fiction challenge. Here is the list I'm working with:

Contemporary/Realistic Fiction
Emmy's Question
The Pale Surface of Things

Poetry, Drama, or Humor (any of these will work)
The Triple Chocolate Brownie Genius

Sports, Mystery, Supernatural/Paranormal (any of these will work)
The Secret Zoo

Fantasy or Science Fiction
The King and Fire Chanter
Seeing Redd

Historical Fiction
The Red Scarf
The Pirate Hunter: Book II
Zan-Gah

Nonfiction
Voices from the Village

Classic “juvenile” fiction (first published pre-1920)
Undecided--I'm going to have to take a trip to the library before I decide on this one. I may go with "Through the Looking Glass" by Lewis Carroll. I think I've only ever read excerpts from that one.

Graphic Novel
Still thinking; "The Sandman" isn't really young adult literature

Audiobook
Still thinking--again, it will require a trip to the library.

Juvenile fiction/Young Adult fiction

2008-02-12T10:09:00.000-08:00

I'll confess, I'm a juvenile fiction junkie. It frustrates my husband to no end as he thinks I should be reading something with more substance--or at least more adult in nature. For now, I've bought time because I tell him that I'm evaluating books for our son to read.

However, he and I both know it goes beyond that. It really is one of my favorite genres. There is a great deal of discipline involved with writing young adult fiction and it takes a very talented author to do it well. Some of the best writing takes place in so-called children's books, especially when the authors have a real respect for their audience and don't buy into the philosophy that you have to use small words when talking to children.

I've been on a juvenile fiction kick lately, reading one or two novels a night from a stack of books that were published in the past two years. I've been really impressed with what I've read, especially since some of them I was skeptical about the chosen topics and didn't have very high expectations for them. One in particular (which I'll review and blog sometime soon) absolutely blew me away.

At any rate, in my wanderings over the Web, I came across this challenge. It's a Young Adult Literature Challenge. It's a challenge that was too fun to pass up. I'll blog about it here--I need to get back in the book blogging habit anyway and share some reviews along the way.

If you find this sort of thing interesting, let me know and I'll dig up a few more. Perhaps one day we'll even have a Book Help Web challenge.

Jane May

2007-11-27T09:06:00.000-08:00

I love interviewing and talking with new authors--mostly because they're still enthusiastic about being interviewed and are willing to talk. Theirs are some of the most fascinating interviews, perhaps because they haven't answered the same questions a bazillion times already.

An example of this is the most recent Book Help Web interview with Jane May. It was really a lot of fun to do and I think it is fascinating to read. She's got a lot of interesting things to say and a wonderful sense of humor. It also helped that I truly got a kick out of her latest book, Hooked. It's a funny story that never gets preachy despite having something to say.

This was the first interview that I've done at Book Help Web using our chat room. It provided a nice opportunity for us to go back and forth on a given topic rather than being confined to a single question and answer. I look forward to doing more interviews that way.

Consulting literary horoscopes

2007-11-14T06:02:00.000-08:00

As I wandered around the Love of Reading site yesterday wondering what to blog about, I was drawn to the many wonderful books that they promote. Most of those books I probably would have known nothing about were it not for the fact that I run Book Help Web, a site that draws me far beyond my normal reading comfort zone and into the wonderful worlds beyond.

Book Help Web is a daughter site to Consumer Help Web, which is, in turn, the parent site to a collection of sites that help people make smart consumer choices about a wide variety of things whether it be media (Movie Help Web, Music Help Web, TV Help Web), hobbies (Beading Help Web, Scrapbooking Help Web, Cooking Help Web), finance and shopping (Consumer Help Web, Shopping Help Web, Financial Help Web), or travel and education (Homeschool Help Web and Travel Help Web). There’s even an MMA site (which has something to do with fighting, so I’m told).

As part of such a family, my mission at the book site is to try to cover a wide range of books and to comment where I can on what things people are reading. As the owner is constantly saying, we have to be more than a review site. We need to be a source of information. For books, that task can be pretty daunting. To avoid becoming a niche site, I've had to learn to stretch beyond what I would normally read.

The good folks at FSB Associates, the organization behind Love of Reading, have helped to do that with information about a wide variety of authors and books. It was through them that I was fascinated by the Intellectual Devotional. Thanks to them, I laughed and was warmed by Kevin Clash and his memoirs, My Life as a Furry Red Monster. They set me up with Adrienne Brodeur and her hilarious Man Camp. They left me outraged at what we're putting our teens through Alexandra Robbins' The Overachievers. It's been a good relationship that has helped pull me out of my comfort zone.

I've also taken to perusing best seller lists and ruminating over why people are reading what they're reading (or at least, buying what they're buying whether or not they're reading it). I've especially come to enjoy the Amazon top-seller list. It's one of those spyholes into the reading psyche, a hidden horoscope of American culture. It's like reading a code that tries to predict where the shifts in our cultural thinking are about to take place.

Bestselling titles reflected such things as the shift from support to opposition to the Iraqi war, the move from angry conservativeness to hesitant moderation.

Now, my study has been so loose as to almost not merit so weighty a word as "study," but as an indicator of trends, I've found the list to hold great interest. It invites all sorts of wonderful conjecture from wild to thoughtful.

A year ago, non-fiction books dominated the list. Was it a desire to make some sort of sense out of the world around us? Even the fiction tended to be contemporary realism, with settings often placed in the hot spots of current events. One of the exceptions to that was the beautiful Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards—a book that is featured here at Love of Reading. Yet, even that book was based on a real-life event, though it was the author who infused that event with the moral and ethical questions raised in her novel.

At other times, on the top-seller list seemed to report on spiritual and ideological warfare, with theological arguments battling for attention. Even the fiction got into the game with such books as Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code breaking all sorts of records and C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia making a comeback. This year, Philip Pullman’s Golden Compass is climbing back on, throwing yet another voice into the mix.

Looking at the list today, it seems we’ve made a sharp turn into New Age spirituality, a spirituality that lets us hold onto our obsessions about our body and physical health. The top five books are all about improving one’s soul, life, health, and diet. It’s not until you get to #6 that Khaled Hosseini makes a bid for fiction’s place on the list with his A Thousand Splendid Suns. Such a bid is quickly shoved aside by Stephen Colbert, the as-yet unreleased “An Inconvenient Book”, a dog story, and numerous other self-help and guide books. Even James Patterson can only make #14 with his latest Alex Cross book.

What does all this mean? Are we looking inward more? Do we think this is a time for improvement and a new form of escapism? Are we trying to meet ourselves in the pages of other people’s books?

Who knows!

But I do know that I'll continue to read the list and wonder why we're reading what we're reading and what it means for our future. For somewhere in the pages of what we read, we discover and renew our passions. While my passions may not be the same as my neighbors, the better I can understand theirs, the more likely we are to find common ground and to connect with each other in a healthy, joyful manner.

Is it any wonder that so many of us have a Love of Reading?

The Golden Compass

2007-11-07T14:30:00.001-08:00

My e-mail box was recently the recipient of a barrage of e-mails about an upcoming children's movie that should be avoided at all costs. I glanced at the first few, not really worrying about it because I so rarely get to the movies that it was unlikely I'd have to go out of my way to avoid seeing this one.

Then I got one that went into more detail. It said that while the movie would likely be innocuous enough, it was intended to draw people into the books and the books were an atheist's attempt to kill God. The mention of the books sparked my interest. I read further and discovered they were talking about Phillip Pullman and the "His Dark Materials" trilogy.

Possessing the contrary soul that I do, I immediately went out and bought the trilogy, prepared to feel the same frustration that I did when people called for the banning of Harry Potter books. The outcry over Harry Potter I considered to be sheer idiocy and the result of intellectual laziness.

After reading The Golden Compass, the winner of a Carnegie Medal, I can at least understand where the critics are coming from. Yes, this book does point out the abuse of the church. However, I'm still not convinced that this is a bad thing nor that there is anything in this book that I would consider harmful.

This is the response that I have drafted, but not yet sent to those who forwarded me the e-mail along with (in some cases) their outraged commentary:

I would encourage everyone to read this interview:

http://www.thirdway.org.uk/past/showpage.asp?page=3949

before making a final judgment on the movie or the book. The Third Way is a Christian magazine that describes itself as a "virtual home of rigorous Christian thinking on politics, society and culture. Third Way is a magazine for people who haven't lost faith in God or lost touch with the world." It is a rather intense interview with the author that deals specifically with his viewpoint on Christianity and how that is manifested in the books.

As a result of these e-mails I did go out and buy the trilogy because I'm always wary when someone starts a campaign that preys on our fears. I've now read the first book and would certainly agree with the assessment that this is not a pro-Christian book (of course, neither are the majority of shows we watch on television). It does, though, raise interesting questions that we as Christians ought to be prepared to respond to and frankly, consider. He does address abuses of the Church throughout history, abuses that we should be aware of if we wish to prevent them from being repeated. Knowing that the Church has done evil things in the past does not mean acknowledging that the Church is an evil entity. It means acknowledging that we must understand the cultural forces that led to those acts so that we can be vigilant about not falling into the same errors. If we pretend that they did not exist, then we provide fuel to our enemies who know otherwise and will (and do) use those things against us.

These books are only dangerous to children who believe everything that they read or are told. As Christians, we raise our children to have spirits of discernment, to not believe everything that they read. We raise them to be able to listen to an idea and then compare it to God's teachings. If we don't let them read or see things as children which are contrary to Christian beliefs, then we risk them being swayed or shattered by the first eloquent argument they meet as an adult. Haven't you met the adults who left their Christian faith because they came across a single fact that seemed to contradict what they had been taught as a child? Rather than be able to meet the seeming contradiction with a spirit of inquiry, secure that God has the answers and that we can search for them, they throw everything away.

Yes, Pullman dislikes Narnia. Personally, I adore Lewis' work but I also recognize that he proposes a pretty unconventional theology (do you know that in the Narnia books he says anyone who does good does it onto God even if that person is serving another religion by a different name? That people do not need to be Christian in name in order to achieve heaven so long as while practicing the other religion they act in a way consistent with Christianity?). For that matter, fellow Christian theologian J.R.R. Tolkein didn't like the Narnia series. Pullman has some valid criticisms of the series, but while he didn't like the series, neither did he set out to write the opposite.

I won't encourage my son to read Pullman's trilogy, but neither will I forbid it. Rather, I will be vigilant so that if he does read it, I'll ensure that we can discuss the ideas and where I think they are flawed. If he reads it, it will be an opportunity to talk to him about Christian theology and how the misreading of it can lead to the errors that were committed historically and how we can avoid it now. I will teach him also, how our God is so strong that he is not weakened by the searchings of those who have not yet found him nor by their outrage at what they see as the wrongs of those who serve Him. By teaching him that God is stronger than doubt, I hope that I will teach him that God will love him through the inevitable doubt that his faith will suffer.

Please forgive the length of this e-mail. I think literature and storytelling is important--it was Jesus' favorite way of teaching. I get nervous whenever there is a call for censorship. I would far rather we be called upon to read and engage with things that we disagree with than to call for it to be banned or ignored. Every time we have done the latter, the sales of the targeted book or movie go through the roof as its defenders rally around it. Wouldn't it be more effective to arm ourselves with God's grace and wisdom rather than with our anger and indignation? Couldn't we use this movie as an opportunity to engage people on the ideas set forth? Because we won't silence the ideas even if we refuse to participate in the debate. We serve a mighty God. Perhaps we ought to look at this movie as an opportunity to bring about greater things for Him by speaking up to dispel some of the myths or even to ask forgiveness for those things of which we are guilty. Perhaps there is a message that Christians might take from this movie and these books that can be used to strengthen our faith.

Terry Goodkind and the Sword of Truth

2007-11-02T12:21:00.000-07:00

I really have no objection to authors making money. Nor do I mind them returning to characters again and again or continually returning to a world that they've created.

What does sour me on an author is when they constantly return to a world even though they no longer have a story to tell and they're simply rehashing the same one over and over again. For some reason, fantasy authors fall prey to this more than any other genre--except perhaps romance novels.

One of the biggest offenders in my book is Terry Goodkind whose 11th book in the Sword of Truth series (Confessor) comes out next Tuesday. It claims to be the last one, but I'm afraid I won't believe that until at least five years have passed without another one coming out.

It's a series that started out wonderful. Wizard's First Rule was engaging and compelling and if there was a little too much bdsm kink in it, it was forgivable because the story was so well told. Even the next few books carried on some of the promise. However, they were saturated with the same heavy-handed themes. It got to the point where I could only envision Goodkind wearing leather and carrying a whip that he brandished over readers he expected to be ever-more submissive and willing to take whatever punishment he wanted to dish out.

I'd lost any sort of submissive tendency by the third book and while I tried to force myself to forge on eventually gave up in utter disgust. I no longer cared about Richard and Kahlan because they were no longer real to me. They constantly made the same mistakes and faced the same decisions. They learned little and grew less.

Even reading the description of what is supposed to be the final book once again brought back the anger that what started out so creatively and sparked such interest became bogged down in such muck.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

2007-11-01T10:30:00.000-07:00

While browsing the bestseller lists, I was surprised to see such names as Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Leo Tolstoy pop up. Then I remembered Oprah. I have to confess, I'm please that she's been selecting literary classics for her book clubs. I don't think she could have started with them--people wouldn't have done it. But now that she has built up the trust that she has, it's a perfect move.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera has been on my list to read since last year when I saw a Spanish-language opera based on that book performed at Michigan State University. It was a beautiful opera with a magical story. As I read more about its background and talked to the director, the phrase 'magical realism' kept coming up. In some ways it struck me as a more literary and "acceptable" term than "fantasy," but really it is just a subgenre of fantasy. (Of course, I've always believed that fantasy has the ability to be as literary as any other genre even if some of it is pretty trashy and churned out with little thought to quality.)

It was certainly those magical qualities that made the opera so appealing--that and the three love stories were endearing. I'll be looking for the book and saying yet another thank you to Oprah for making books like this so accessible and popular.

Hello again!

2007-10-30T07:24:00.001-07:00

I've returned to the world of book blogging and hope to have new entries for you at least twice a week. Yes, I'd love to actually show up here with daily blogs, but for now I'm working at being realistic.

Some things to chat about:

Have you seen the new front page interview? It's with Alan Alda. His latest book, Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself, is a most satisfying read. He takes a tone of encouragement and optimism, a voice that is sorely needed. In fact, overall, I was impressed with his good sense and his overall life philosophy. We could use more people like Alan Alda in this world--well, more people like him who have a public microphone and a voice that people will listen to.

The next interview on deck is with Jane May. She's recently published her second mainstream fiction book and it was a blast to read. I laughed through the whole novel. However, it was more than just humorous fiction. She's got a literary twist in there that is sure to delight lovers of folklore and fairy tale literature.

Nicholas Spark's latest book is out: The Choice. It's one of those books that I think will drive critics crazy while being the delight of book clubs. In order to have a meaty, in-depth discussion of the book's themes, you'd have to give away a spoiler that is part of what makes the book work so well. I still haven't figured out how I'm going to review it. However, book clubs will love it because once you've read it, there is some great, meaty stuff to delve into.

David Blixt & Master of Verona

2007-08-08T06:17:00.000-07:00

I've spent the past three weeks down in Jackson, Michigan watching the performances of the Michigan Shakespeare Festival. It's the venue that my husband has performed in for the past six out of seven summers. This year he was joined by my 9-year-old son in that Scottish play, Macbeth.

What does this have to do with books? Only that the actor playing Macbeth has recently published a historical fiction novel called The Master of Verona. On the final Sunday of the run, he met with me for a half hour before getting ready for a show and we talked about the series, the history, and what's to come in the next book. Look for that interview soon on Book Help Web.

Still no spoilers--but very satisfied

2007-07-23T11:35:00.001-07:00

After being disappointed in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, I'll admit I was a little worried about the final book. Sure, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was a solid book that I enjoyed, but there were a lot of loose ends to wrap up. Would Rowling sacrifice pace just to get in all the details that were left open?

I'm pleased to say that I was not in the least disappointed in this book. The pacing was incredible and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is easily the best book in the series. It's a fitting ending and I'll confess to being highly satisfied.

First off, the experience of reading the book was a good one--as in the others, I laughed aloud several times. However, I also cried several times throughout the book, sometimes for grief, sometimes for joy, and sometimes because the satisfaction and thrill was so great. It was, overall, a very emotional read.

It also did a wonderful job of finishing the story. It's over and I'm not left longing for more or wondering about open-ended storylines. It's done, it was wonderful, and now it is time for another story in another world.

No spoilers here

2007-07-20T07:45:00.001-07:00

I couldn't call myself a book blogger and not write about one of the biggest book events of the decade: the release of the final Harry Potter book.

I've read with ambivalence the outcry over the early review published in a New York paper. On one hand, I understand the journalistic urge. It really is a coup to be able to publish the first Harry Potter review--something that a newspaper can't do unless it gets an advance copy. For them, it's a triumph.

However, there is really no way to review this book without including spoilers. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is a book that doesn't need reviews. People already know it is coming, know its exact release time and know whether or not they want to read it.

What readers can use are critiques--but those won't be useful to readers until after they've already read the book. It is after they read that they're going to be looking to engage in discussion and they're going to want the vocabulary to have a discussion that goes beyond "I really liked it" or "I hated it."

Ultimately, that is the job of a good critic and a good artist. The artist provides the art that engages people. The critic helps people to understand why it engaged them and to help them enter into a deeper connection with the art.

So while it was a journalistic coup, I'm not sure the New York Times paper did themselves any favors by publishing an article that people are going to purposely avoid until after they've had time to read the book themselves.

In the mean time...13 more hours and 10 minutes.

J.K. Rowling Book Tour

2007-06-15T07:35:00.001-07:00

I know, Harry Potter is all over the news, but at risk of oversaturation, I have to write that I was charmed by this bit of news. J.K. Rowling is one of those authors who doesn't have to tour. Her books are going to sell without her doing any publicity whatsoever.

The fact that she is choosing to go on tour--and that she is coming to the U.S. to do so (for the first time in seven years)--really does show a love for her audience and a commitment to the children that she writes for. I also think it was brilliant of Scholastic to not sell tickets but to choose them from schools. It's a great way to go that will allow some people access who probably would not have been able to had the tickets been for sale. It almost hints of the Golden Ticket in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Stan Lee

2007-06-13T07:17:00.000-07:00

There are many who scoff at comic books as a form of literature (though you won't catch me doing it here). However, I think there are few people who wouldn't love being in Stan Lee's shoes.

Stan Lee is the man who created such superhero icons as Spider Man and the X-Men. This week he signed a multiyear deal with Disney. They'll have first refusal rights at any film, TV show, books, or video games that he makes.

It's nice to have a publisher firmly in your pocket--especially when you're 84 years old like Lee is. It frees one's time to create--something he and his POW! Entertainment company does quite well.

Harry Potter Theme Park

2007-06-01T11:54:00.000-07:00

Universal Studios is opening a theme park in 2009 based on the Harry Potter series. It will, according to the Associated Press, have a Hogwarts, a Forbidden Forest, and a Hogsmeade Village.

I want to go.

I'd like to say that I'm thrilled that there is going to be a literary theme park, however, I'm sure that if there hadn't been the movies, there wouldn't be a theme park. However, I am pleased to see that J.K. Rowling is being closely consulted so that it will reflect closely the world that she created.

As much as she is eager for a break, I think she may find it more difficult than she expects to walk away from the series. She's almost become a captive the way the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle became a captive of Sherlock Holmes.

Michael Connelly

2007-05-30T08:30:00.000-07:00

How time flies!

It seems like it was just weeks ago that I interviewed Michael Connelly for Book Help Web about Echo Park. Yet, he's already come out with another Henry Bosch book, The Overlook.

His official Web site is filled with all sorts of fun goodies for fans of the book: a trivia game, a bonus chapter, a video, and an interactive map. He's devoted a lot of creativity and ingenunity to this series and his Web site.

Master of Verona

2007-05-24T10:01:00.000-07:00

With so few minutes for reading this week, I've gotten only a few chapters into David Blixt's Master of Verona.

However, an early observation is that it is quickly apparent that Blixt is intimately familiar with medieval costumes and fabrics. Chalk it up to his being an actor and familiar with how to wear and move in the garb of the day. The result is that his descriptions are very vivid and detailed and make for interesting reading.

More from the L.A. Times

2007-05-23T07:49:00.000-07:00

As a follow-up to yesterday, here is the link to the L.A. Times writer who has such contempt for blogging. Part of what he touches upon is the difference between a critic and a reviewer--but even then he seems to dismiss out of hand all blogging as simply nattering.

But I'll let him speak for himself:

Let me put this bluntly, in language even a busy blogger can understand: Criticism — and its humble cousin, reviewing — is not a democratic activity. It is, or should be, an elite enterprise, ideally undertaken by individuals who bring something to the party beyond their hasty, instinctive opinions of a book (or any other cultural object). It is work that requires disciplined taste, historical and theoretical knowledge and a fairly deep sense of the author's (or filmmaker's or painter's) entire body of work, among other qualities.

Opinion — thumbs up, thumbs down — is the least important aspect of reviewing. Very often, in the best reviews, opinion is conveyed without a judgmental word being spoken, because the review's highest business is to initiate intelligent dialogue about the work in question, beginning a discussion that, in some cases, will persist down the years, even down the centuries.

Who has the right to review?

2007-05-22T07:37:00.000-07:00

I was reading an interesting blog called the Emerging Writers Network this morning. In it, the blogger addressed the new traffic that had been flocking to his site because of an L.A. Times writer. There was an op-ed piece in which the writer scornfully referred to the blogger as an "auto parts guy" who was slapping book reviews up on a blog. From the sounds of it, he seemed to think Web reviewers were of a lower class who didn't have the critical knowledge to truly review books.

Having attended a critics conference earlier this year, I understand on a certain level where the frustration of the professional critic is coming from. He's lashing out because his job is threatened and there is great danger that he's going to become extinct. Unfortunately, responding with arrogance is not a good answer either. That feeds into the belief that professional critics are often out of touch with their readers and with what people want.

Ultimately, there is value in both types of reviews and neither have to replace each other. There is the value in the knowledgeable professional who brings expertise to a review. This is the person who has studied the craft, who understands the breadth of work, and who immerses himself/herself in the profession. There is also value to the everyman voice who can share the initial impression experience. When the "non-expert" is erudite, he or she is able to share things that the more detatched, professional critic can not.

Another thing worthy of pointing out is that there are many outstanding reviewers out there who don't happen to work for the L.A. Times or the N.Y. Times. Nor is there any shame to having worked a blue collar job. It is a very coastal point-of-view to assume that the color of one's collar says anything at all about one's intelligence. The rest of the country knows better.

Finding time to read

2007-05-21T09:08:00.000-07:00

Reading in my life seems to come in spurts.

There are glorious months in which I read a book or two a day and then it hits a dry spell. Lately, I've been in a dry spell where I can barely read a book or two in a week. This is usually a sign that I need to slow down a little and take time for the quieter things in life.

In an effort to do that, I've recently started reading two books. One is a classic that I've never read before: the children's book Redwall.

The other is a St. Martin's book that comes out in July: The Master of Verona by David Blixt. Blixt is a Shakespearean actor who will be performing the title role in Macbeth and Pistol in Henry V in this summer's Michigan Shakespeare Festival. I'll be meeting with him in June and publishing the interview on Book Help Web. The book itself is an epic historical novel featuring Dante's son and tracing the roots of the famous conflict between the Montagues and Capulets from Romeo and Juliet.

Book Excerpt: How clean are your hands?

2007-05-17T08:26:00.000-07:00

Jeffrey Anderson from FSB Publishing had this book excerpt to share on an almost alarming topic:

On Washing Hands

By Atul Gawande
Author of Better

One ordinary December day, I took a tour of my hospital with Deborah Yokoe, an infectious disease specialist, and Susan Marino, a microbiologist. They work in our hospital's infection-control unit. Their full-time job, and that of three others in the unit, is to stop the spread of infection in the hospital. This is not flashy work, and they are not flashy people. Yokoe is forty-five years old, gentle voiced, and dimpled. She wears sneakers at work. Marino is in her fifties and reserved by nature. But they have coped with influenza epidemics, Legionnaires' disease, fatal bacterial meningitis, and, just a few months before, a case that, according to the patient's brain-biopsy results, might have been Creutzfeld-Jakob disease -- a nightmare, not only because it is incurable and fatal but also because the infectious agent that causes it, known as a prion, cannot be killed by usual heat-sterilization procedures. By the time the results came back, the neurosurgeon's brain-biopsy instruments might have transferred the disease to other patients, but infection-control team members tracked the instruments down in time and had them chemically sterilized. Yokoe and Marino have seen measles, the plague, and rabbit fever (which is caused by a bacterium that is extraordinarily contagious in hospital laboratories and feared as a bioterrorist weapon). They once instigated a nationwide recall of frozen strawberries, having traced a hepatitis A outbreak to a batch served at an ice cream social. Recently at large in the hospital, they told me, have been a rotavirus, a Norwalk virus, several strains of Pseudomonas bacteria, a superresistant Klebsiella, and the ubiquitous scourges of modern hospitals -- resistant Staphylococcus aureus and Enterococcus faecalis, which are a frequent cause of pneumonias, wound infections, and bloodstream infections.

Each year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, two million Americans acquire an infection while they are in the hospital. Ninety thousand die of that infection. The hardest part of the infection-control team's job, Yokoe says, is not coping with the variety of contagions they encounter or the panic that sometimes occurs among patients and staff. Instead, their greatest difficulty is getting clinicians like me to do the one thing that consistently halts the spread of infections: wash our hands.

There isn't much they haven't tried. Walking about the surgical floors where I admit my patients, Yokoe and Marino showed me the admonishing signs they have posted, the sinks they have repositioned, the new ones they have installed. They have made some sinks automated. They have bought special five-thousand-dollar "precaution carts" that store everything for washing up, gloving, and gowning in one ergonomic, portable, and aesthetically pleasing package. They have given away free movie tickets to the hospital units with the best compliance. They have issued hygiene report cards. Yet still, we have not mended our ways. Our hospital's statistics show what studies everywhere else have shown -- that we doctors and nurses wash our hands one-third to one-half as often as we are supposed to. Having shaken hands with a sniffling patient, pulled a sticky dressing off someone's wound, pressed a stethoscope against a sweating chest, most of us do little more than wipe our hands on our white coats and move on -- to see the next patient, to scribble a note in the chart, to grab some lunch.

This is, embarrassingly, nothing new: In 1847, at the age of twenty-eight, the Viennese obstetrician Ignac Semmelweis famously deduced that, by not washing their hands consistently or well enough, doctors were themselves to blame for childbed fever. Childbed fever, also known as puerperal fever, was the leading cause of maternal death in childbirth in the era before antibiotics (and before the recognition that germs are the agents of infectious disease). It is a bacterial infection -- most commonly caused by Streptococcus, the same bacteria that causes strep throat -- that ascends through the vagina to the uterus after childbirth. Out of three thousand mothers who delivered babies at the hospital where Semmelweis worked, six hundred or more died of the disease each year -- a horrifying 20 percent maternal death rate. Of mothers delivering at home, only 1 percent died. Semmelweis concluded that doctors themselves were carrying the disease between patients, and he mandated that every doctor and nurse on his ward scrub with a nail brush and chlorine between patients. The puerperal death rate immediately fell to 1 percent -- incontrovertible proof, it would seem, that he was right. Yet elsewhere, doctors' practices did not change. Some colleagues were even offended by his claims; it was impossible to them that doctors could be killing their patients. Far from being hailed, Semmelweis was ultimately dismissed from his job.

Semmelweis's story has come down to us as Exhibit A in the case for the obstinacy and blindness of physicians. But the story was more complicated. The trouble was partly that nineteenth-century physicians faced multiple, seemingly equally powerful explanations for puerperal fever. There was, for example, a strong belief that miasmas of the air in hospitals were the cause. And Semmelweis strangely refused to either publish an explanation of the logic behind his theory or prove it with a convincing experiment in animals. Instead, he took the calls for proof as a personal insult and attacked his detractors viciously.

"You, Herr Professor, have been a partner in this massacre," he wrote to one University of Vienna obstetrician who questioned his theory. To a colleague in Wurzburg he wrote, "Should you, Herr Hofrath, without having disproved my doctrine, continue to teach your pupils [against it], I declare before God and the world that you are a murderer and the 'History of Childbed Fever' would not be unjust to you if it memorialized you as a medical Nero." His own staff turned against him. In Pest, where he relocated after losing his post in Vienna, he would stand next to the sink and berate anyone who forgot to scrub his or her hands. People began to purposely evade, sometimes even sabotage, his hand-washing regimen. Semmelweis was a genius, but he was also a lunatic, and that made him a failed genius. It was another twenty years before Joseph Lister offered his clearer, more persuasive, and more respectful plea for antisepsis in surgery in the British medical journal Lancet.

One hundred and forty years of doctors' plagues later, however, you have to wonder whether what's needed to stop them is precisely a lunatic. Consider what Yokoe and Marino are up against. No part of human skin is spared from bacteria. Bacterial counts on the hands range from five thousand to five million colony-forming units per square centimeter. The hair, underarms, and groin harbor greater concentrations. On the hands, deep skin crevices trap 10 to 20 percent of the flora, making removal difficult, even with scrubbing, and sterilization impossible. The worst place is under the fingernails. Hence the recent CDC guidelines requiring hospital personnel to keep their nails trimmed to less than a quarter of an inch and to remove artificial nails.

Plain soaps do, at best, a middling job of disinfecting. Their detergents remove loose dirt and grime, but fifteen seconds of washing reduces bacterial counts by only about an order of magnitude. Semmelweis recognized that ordinary soap was not enough and used a chlorine solution to achieve disinfection. Today's antibacterial soaps contain chemicals such as chlorhexidine to disrupt microbial membranes and proteins. Even with the right soap, however, proper hand washing requires a strict procedure. First, you must remove your watch, rings, and other jewelry (which are notorious for trapping bacteria). Next, you wet your hands in warm tap water. Dispense the soap and lather all surfaces, including the lower one-third of the arms, for the full duration recommended by the manufacturer (usually fifteen to thirty seconds). Rinse off for thirty full seconds. Dry completely with a clean, disposable towel. Then use the towel to turn the tap of. Repeat after any new contact with a patient.

Almost no one adheres to this procedure. It seems impossible. On morning rounds, our residents check in on twenty patients in an hour. The nurses in our intensive care units typically have a similar number of contacts with patients requiring hand washing in between. Even if you get the whole cleansing process down to a minute per patient, that's still a third of staff time spent just washing hands. Such frequent hand washing can also irritate the skin, which can produce a dermatitis, which itself increases bacterial counts.

Less irritating than soap, alcohol rinses and gels have been in use in Europe for almost two decades but for some reason only recently caught on in the United States. They take far less time to use -- only about fifteen seconds or so to rub a gel over the hands and fingers and let it air-dry. Dispensers can be put at the bedside more easily than a sink. And at alcohol concentrations of 50 to 95 percent, they are more effective at killing organisms, too. (Interestingly, pure alcohol is not as effective -- at least some water is required to denature microbial proteins.)

Still, it took Yokoe over a year to get our staff to accept the 60 percent alcohol gel we have recently adopted. Its introduction was first blocked because of the staff's fears that it would produce noxious building air. (It didn't.) Next came worries that, despite evidence to the contrary, it would be more irritating to the skin. So a product with aloe was brought in. People complained about the smell. So the aloe was taken out. Then some of the nursing staff refused to use the gel after rumors spread that it would reduce fertility. The rumors died only after the infection-control unit circulated evidence that the alcohol is not systemically absorbed and a hospital fertility specialist endorsed the use of the gel.

With the gel finally in wide use, the compliance rates for proper hand hygiene improved substantially: from around 40 percent to 70 percent. But -- and this is the troubling finding -- hospital infection rates did not drop one iota. Our 70 percent compliance just wasn't good enough. If 30 percent of the time people didn't wash their hands, that still left plenty of opportunity to keep transmitting infections. Indeed, the rates of resistant Staphylococcus and Enterococcus infections continued to rise. Yokoe receives the daily tabulations. I checked with her one day not long ago, and sixty-three of our seven hundred hospital patients were colonized or infected with MRSA (the shorthand for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) and another twenty-two had acquired VRE (vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus) -- unfortunately, typical rates of infection for American hospitals.

Rising infection rates from superresistant bacteria have become the norm around the world. The first outbreak of VRE did not occur until 1988, when a renal dialysis unit in England became infested. By 1990, the bacteria had been carried abroad, and four in one thousand American ICU patients had become infected. By 1997, a stunning 23 percent of ICU patients were infected. When the virus for SARS -- severe acute respiratory syndrome -- appeared in China in 2003 and spread within weeks to almost ten thousand people in two dozen countries across the world (10 percent of whom were killed), the primary vector for transmission was the hands of health care workers. What will happen if (or rather, when) an even more dangerous organism appears -- avian flu, say, or a new, more virulent bacteria? "It will be a disaster," Yokoe says.

Atul Gawande, a 2006 MacArthur Fellow, is a general surgeon at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, a staff writer for The New Yorker, and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health. His first book, Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science, was a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the 2002 National Book Award. Gawande lives with his wife and three children in Newton, Massachusetts. Visit www.gawande.com for information.