Scrinanbbles

Book review: The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker

2013-05-29T17:08:00.001-04:00

What an uncommon and intriguing idea for a novel! A golem—a person made of clay and brought to life by dark Kabbalistic magic—and a jinni—a creature of the Syrian desert made of fire—find each other in 1899 New York City. First-time novelist Helene Wecker conjures a powerful spell with this immigrant tale imbued with Jewish and Arab folklore.

Chava is the golem. Created in Poland to be a man’s wife, she finds herself masterless when the man dies at sea en route to New York. She would not have lasted long alone in the city, but she is discovered by an elderly rabbi who takes her in. He helps her learn how to deal with the incessant needs and emotions she can feel in people when she is near them, and in time, she finds work in a bakery.

Ahmad is the jinni, discovered in a copper flask by a tinsmith in the Little Syria neighborhood of the city. The jinni knows what he is and that he must have been captured by a wizard, but he has no memory of the event, nor is he aware, at first, that 1000 years have passed since he was imprisoned. Like the rabbi with the golem, the tinsmith helps the jinni adjust to life in his new situation. They tell the community that Ahmad is the tinsmith’s new apprentice.

Neither the golem nor the jinni need to sleep, so it is inevitable they should encounter each other in the dark streets of the city one night. They each recognize the other is not human. (“You are made of clay” the jinni says to the golem. “And you are made of fire,” responds the golem.)

Although their natures are opposite—the golem is circumspect, the jinni mercurial—they become friends and spend months exploring New York, both the streets and the rooftops, by foot. When the golem’s creator, a disgraced rabbit obsessed with becoming immortal, is himself drawn to New York, the golem and the jinni find their unlikely friendship, and their very existences, in peril.

In The Goleum and the Jinni, author Helene Wecker brings the disparate elements of her story together into a highly satisfying read. Her characters are thoughtful as well as otherworldly, giving Wecker plenty of opportunity to tackle topics such as free will, love, and community. This she does with a deft hand. The book is lengthy and feels a bit overlong at times, but this is not much of a drawback. Wecker weaves her tapestry of fin de siècle Manhattan and middle-eastern magic so richly, she takes the reader captive.

Book review: The Afterlife of Emerson Tang by Paula Champa

2013-05-13T07:33:00.002-04:00

Beth Corvid is an archivist who works for the wealthy art collector Emerson Tang. Beth and Emerson are both solitary, private people, and their arrangement suits them both well until Emerson discloses he has a terminal illness. Then Beth takes on a larger role in his life, coordinating his medical care as well as overseeing his collections.

Emerson is only in his early 30's. He is angry that is life is being cut short and thinks that nothing comes afterward. Beth knows better, because she had a near-death experience as a child, and ever since has felt on the outside of things. She pines for the peace she had during her experience and has no idea what purpose she returned for.

Beth and Emerson discuss what will happen to his art collections after he's gone, but he refuses to talk about the vintage car he acquired without her knowledge, a 1954 Beacon roadster. One day, artist Helene Moreau contacts Emerson. Helene is known for the futurist "Speed paintings" she created by running cars over canvases. She is interested in the Beacon and offers to buy it.

Emerson refuses to sell to Helene and furthermore becomes obsessed with the idea of uniting the body of the car with its original engine. During this quest, Beth meets Miguel Beacon, the grandson of the auto company’s founder who is trying to both revive the brand and invision more sustainable transportation. Miguel offers to help find the engine. The story follows the quest for the engine and its aftermath, each character dealing with the effects of longing, loss, and grieving.

The Afterlife of Emerson Tang is an immensely thoughtful novel. Although much of the plot revolves around a vintage car and first-time novelist Paula Champa provides some interesting ideas on the appeal of cars and speed, the novel mainly deals with death and grief. Emerson struggles against death. Beth has never embraced her own life after her narrow escape from death, and she must figure out how to live without Emerson. Helen Moreau has been stuck in grief over a lost relationship and counts on the car to reignite her creative spark. Miguel is striving to deal with the demise of his grandfather’s company by both reviving it and making something new.

Champa's gorgeous, intelligent writing provides many memorable passages. One of my favorites: "What is a vehicle but a private capsule? One in which the mundane errands and memorable adventures of a life are accomplished. By some alchemy, through this constant association, a mingling, a transmutation can occur. In memories alone, a car is capable of encapsulating and entire life. Or more than one."

I found part one of the book ("The Body") completely engrossing, and I loved all the questions it raised. Part two ("The Engine") failed to deliver on the promise of the first for me. The addition of Miguel at this point (he does not appear in part one) and his coincidental relationships was a hindrance rather than a help. I actually wish he had been left out, because all the pieces were in place without him. Beth, Emerson, and Helene’s story, with its philosophical questions about cars, life, and death, was enough for me.

Regardless, Champa’s ambitious debut provides plenty of food for thought. I may never look at cars in quite the same way again.

Book Review: The True Secret of Writing by Natalie Goldberg

2013-04-29T18:27:00.001-04:00

Natalie Goldberg is the author of one of the classic texts for writers, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within. Published in 1986, it has sold over a million copies and has been translated into fourteen languages. She’s back with another book on word craft, The True Secret of Writing: Connecting Life with Language.

Goldberg is a long-time Zen practitioner, and her unique contribution is to blend Buddhist principles and practices with the writing life. The retreats she leads combining meditation and writing form the backbone of the book.

Goldberg’s expressed reason for writing this book is to record her retreat practices so others can use them, and this she does. In Part One: Basic Essentials, she describes her methods and the philosophy behind them: writing is for everyone, writing is a practice, writing retreats can be mostly silent and succeed. In Part Two: True Secret Retreat Essentials, she describes daily schedules and more details. (Reading lists and sign-up sheets for routine jobs shared, Zen-style, by students can be found in appendices.)

Part Three: Elaborations, tells retreat stories and provides some sample writing prompts for the reader. In Part Four: Encounters and Teachers, Goldberg describes more of her personal experiences and talks about teachers, authors, students. As the text progresses, more memoir appears.

In the introduction, Goldberg explains that the title “The True Secret of Writing” stems from a joke. Sometimes if a student is late, she will say, “I just gave the true secret of writing, and you missed it.” The joke is that there is no true secret; there is only the practice. And this Goldberg is willing to share in abundance.

Through her stories, Goldberg expresses truth as she understands it. “What is true? Maybe tomorrow I can sift down closer. What is essential? This practitioner’s life. Not to act and react, but to notice, to come close to ourselves--and others--close to all things. And also accept our mind where it is and meet it there.” (p. 160)

Goldberg sometimes comes off in her stories as the crazy Zen master. Spontaneously at a retreat she might say, let’s go walk outside in our bare feet (even in winter). Or she might jump and wave her arms while reading her favorite Zen poems. This is her training. If it’s not what you want in a writing teacher, best not attend her retreats. That doesn’t mean you won’t find her book interesting.

What Natalie Goldberg has done is present her retreat practice for anyone who wishes a sample it. I now feel like I have spent some time at a New Mexico retreat as an observer. I’m sure her methods and views are not for everyone, but I am also convinced anyone can learn something from her life’s journey and accumulated wisdom.

Book review: Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend

2013-04-22T10:09:00.001-04:00

Budo is the imaginary friend of Max Delaney, an eight-year-old boy with autism. Imaginary friends look and function as their humans create them. Since little kids are the ones thinking them up, they often are missing ears or eyebrows, for instance, and they come in all shapes and sizes. Budo is very human in appearance and is especially smart and able, because Max has such a vivid imagination.

Aside from other imaginary friends, only Max can see and hear Budo, and Budo watches out for Max, within the limits of being invisible and unable to interact with the physical world. He can’t really help much when Tommy Swindon, a fifth-grade bully, comes after Max. And Budo can’t help Max’s parents, who disagree on how much help Max needs.

Budo is tested when Max disappears from school one day. Budo knows what has happened to his friend, but he can’t communicate with Max’s teachers or parents. Budo must muster all his courage and get more help from other imaginary friends than he has ever dreamed possible in order to do what he must: be there for his creator, his best friend, Max.

Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend is a sweet, poignant, and satisfying meditation on friendship and facing fears, with healthy doses of ideas on parenting on teaching along the way. It is also one of the most original novels I have ever read. I was drawn in immediately and loved hearing about how the world of imaginary friends works. The language is childlike, but this aspect lends the book charm and warmth. Because of the uniqueness of this world, I found it hard to guess what was going to happen.

Author Matthew Dicks is an award-winning third-grade teacher with a gift for storytelling. Memoirs is his third novel. His first, Something Missing, focused on a thief who only took items that would not be missed; his second, Unexpectedly, Milo, featured a home-health aid with multiple obsessions and a crumbling marriage. I look forward to seeing what springs from his fertile imagination next.

Article first published as Book Review: Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend by Matthew Dicks on Blogcritics.

Book review: Every Contact Leaves a Trace by Elanor Dymott

2013-04-02T17:01:00.000-04:00

Alex is the grieving narrator of Elanor Dymott’s debut novel, Every Contact Leaves a Trace. He begins by saying that his wife Rachel has been murdered, and he admits he didn’t know her very well. He goes on to recount their first meeting, the meeting that lead to their marrying some ten years later, and a great deal in between.

Most of the action took place at Oxford University, where Alex and Rachel were students, Alex studying law, Rachel, literature. Alex was always smitten with Rachel, but the reverse was not true. Rachel had two close friends also studying literature, Anthony and Cissy. Their first two years at school, the three were inseparable and wild (parties at Rachel’s godmother’s house were particularly infamous).

Told as I imagine a lawyer might (author Dymott studied literature at Oxford but then became a lawyer), the story is laid out slowly and painstakingly, which great attention to detail, too much for my taste. Alex and his Oxford teacher Harry come off a bombastic, and the story moves ahead at a tortuously slow pace. The “people and circumstances are not always what they seem” theme feels beaten to smithereens. I wanted to yell, “I get it already!” I also expected more from the characters. While I applaud the philosophical stance Dymott takes—in the end, we still don’t know what really happened, nor will we ever really know—it all feels very labored.

The book received positive reviews in the UK, so my take on it might well reflect my nationality. Judge for yourself:

Review in The Independent
Review in The Guardian (part of a longer article)

Book Review: Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

2013-03-19T19:09:00.003-04:00

Kate Atkinson’s new novel Life After Life follows Usrula Todd, who is born in England during a blizzard in February 1910. She dies immediately, and is born again, same time, same place. This time she makes it to toddlerhood. Each time she is born, circumstances begin the same but small changes allow her life to continue or not, and the same is true for some of those around her. Sometimes they die, sometimes they don't.

Through the apparently inexhaustible rounds of living and dying, Ursula begins to recognize situations she’s experienced before and is able to prevent or avoid some outcomes. The biggest changes come in how she lives her young adulthood, which takes place when the Blitz is on in London.

The retelling of the same person’s life story might sound dull, but it is anything but. Atkinson is able to build up suspense in the reader each time to find out what will change this time. As The Guardian puts it, “Atkinson's knack for retelling – what to repeat, what to change, what to leave out – is satisfyingly faultless.”

The novel is also paints a touching and gently humorous portrait of family life. We spend a great deal of time with Ursula’s family of origin and get to know her parents, brothers, sister, and aunt well. With the exception of her oldest brother Maurice, whom no one in the family seems to like, each person is seen through a loving lens, particularly Ursula’s sister Pam. The bond between the sisters permeates every iteration of Ursula’s life.

There is also a philosophical element to the book. What would you do if you could relive your life until you got it right? At one point Ursula decides to make a huge change, but questions remain. Just what does change, when the world is always reset on her death? And do others in her world also experience any of the premonitions and deja vu that Ursula does?

Life After Life is engaging, beautifully written, and utterly inventive. This amazing novel is a joy to read. Fans of Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie novels will find a departure but should also enjoy the trip.

Article first published as Book Review: Life After Life by Kate Atkinson on Blogcritics.

Book review: 11/22/63 by Stephen King

2013-01-16T07:25:00.001-05:00

Stephen King’s sprawling 11/22/63 is addictive. I just wish it wasn't so long.

Jake Epping is a divorced high school English teacher from Lisbon Falls, Maine. In June 2011, his friend Al, the owner of a diner with suspiciously low prices, calls him. Al has seemingly aged over night and is clearly near death. The reason why stuns Jake: Al has spent four years in the past. A corner of his pantry is not the wall it appears; it is a portal to September 1958.

Al has been using this “rabbit hole,” as he calls it, for years. He buys meat at the local market (explaining how he can make such a cheap hamburger) but left it that for a long time. Until he heard about a woman crippled in a hunting accident in 1958. He decides to test out what would happen if he saved her.

Al discovers he can change the past but the past is not easy to change; it resists. Still, when he returns to 2011 (only two minutes elapse in the present every time he goes into the past), he sees little difference, except that the woman was not crippled.

Al decides he can use the rabbit hole for real and lasting good if he can stop President Kennedy from being assassinated in 1963. He comes down with terminal lung cancer while in the past, and returns to the present, hoping he can convince Jake to take up the mission. TIme is of the essence, because the lease is up on the diner, and it is scheduled to be replaced by a box store, which no doubt will close the rabbit hole.

Jake first thinks Al is crazy but is convinced when he enters 1958 himself. Armed with what Al was able to prepare for him, Jake takes on the mission and takes the alias George Amberson. Since the past appears to reset with every re-entry, he must accomplish again anything he set straight the last time before heading south and eventually to the Texas 1963 rendezvous.

Jake/George is a truly decent guy who finds it in himself to both love and kill. He doesn’t appear to have any serious flaws, which makes him a little less than three-dimensional. The same can be said of the other major characters; the decent ones, anyway. King paints Lee Harvey Oswald as more complicated, with spots of decency and reasons for being the way he is, but in the end Oswald is a loser who by giving in to it, leaves his humanity behind and becomes evil.

What really drives this massive novel (842 pages) are the questions, will Jake/George succeed? What will happen if he does? In this Stephen King does a terrific job. Except for the period that Jake/George must wait between 1958 and November 1963, the book is a page-turner. Having not experienced that period of time myself, I can’t say for sure, but I think King does a great job of recreating it.

11/22/63 is a must for King fans, Kennedy buffs, and time-travel enthusiasts. Anyone else with enough time and strong-enough wrists should find it entertaining as well.

Book review: Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone

2012-12-30T08:12:00.001-05:00

Witches, vampires, religion, the supernatural—Max Gladstone's debut novel Three Parts Dead has them all.

Humans have come to dominate after the God wars of a generation ago. Kos, the God of the city Alt Coulumb, was the exception, until he, too, dies. Tara, newly graduated practitioner of Craft, is taken on by one of the large Craft firms. She and her boss have the job of resurrecting Kos before the God's creditors claim what is left of his power. Aided by Abelard, a chain-smoking priest in Kos' church, Tara discovers that Kos was murdered and must make the case in Alt Coulumb's courts, thus adding a legal thriller element.

Three Parts Dead sports a byzantine plot and writing that I found pedestrian. It took a long time for me to be interested in what was going to happen, but even after that point, I still found the story too abstruse to be accessible. First published in hardcover by Tor in October 2012, the publisher must have recognized it as having appeal among hard-core fantasy readers. For a positive review from a receptive reader, see the review at Kirkus Reviews.

Book review: Proof of Heaven by Eban Alexaner

2012-12-16T15:39:00.000-05:00

I like books about the brain, and I also like life-after-death stories, which why I couldn’t resist the allure of Proof of Heaven: a Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife.

In November 2008, Dr. Eben Alexander, a respected brain surgeon who was not particularly religious, had a near death experience (NDE). He contracted a rare and virulent form of bacterial meningitis and was in a coma for seven days.That he recovered fully is also very rare; people in his state of illness have a 90% mortality rate, and those that recover usually remain in a vegetative state. One might say the whole scenario was miraculous.

Dr. Alexander does. But his main reason for writing this book is not to share a rare medical event. He wants to tell the world that he experienced Heaven during his coma. Since in his expert opinion this experience could not have been generated by his incapacitated brain, it means there really is a soul.

He opens the book with a preface about skydiving, which he did on a regular basis as an undergrad. The writing here is wonderfully descriptive, and I thought, “This guy can write!” Unfortunately, he does not take this approach to the rest of the book. While he does provide a few vivid passages, particularly about his NDE, he glosses over much of his career and family life, rendering everyone else in his story two-dimensional.

I also don’t believe he succeeds in proving the existence of Heaven or an afterlife. In the main text, he says over and over that only the cerebral cortex of the brain could generate so vivid and coherent an experience as he had, but his cortex was not functioning at all. He does not explain why he believes his cortex was “offline” except in an appendix where he addresses the question. Here he does go into some detail that could be too specific for the layman, but he clearly states he’s dealing in theories. His cortex should have been nonfunctional based on what is known about the brain’s anatomy and physiology, but he does not have any proof.

A main point Dr. Alexander wishes to make is that science is itself a worldview that is limiting, and if we need to be open that all we still don’t know. A worthwhile point, to be sure, but I believe Dr. Alexander has taken the opposite tack with regard to his NDE. He is no longer open to what science does not know about the brain, which is a lot. There may well be a physical explanation for his experience that science cannot yet detect.

Dr. Alexander would no doubt see me as the kind of reader who seeks to invalidate his experience. That’s not the case. I do not doubt he had this experience and that it changed his life, nor do I question his statements on how unlikely it was that he would contract and then fully recover from his illness. I just don’t think he’s provided a thorough inquiry in this book to prove anything. He relies on his credentials - of a well-educated and respected neurosurgeon who did not believe in NDEs before his experience - to convince the reader.

More persuasive is the chapter on near-death experiences in The Undead by Dick Teresi. Teresi is a science writer who provides plenty of examples (in particular, the story of a patient who had all the blood drained from her brain for a radical surgical procedure) that demonstrate NDEs cannot be explained by brain function as we currently understand it. NDEs feel so much more real than dreams and are much more coherent than psychotic hallucinations, and it's hard to imagine what part of the brain might be dreaming or hallucinating in NDEs when there is no activity measurable by EEG and no blood in the brain.

Be that as it may, we still don't know, and may never know, what is going on with NDEs, and Proof of Heaven is not that helpful. For an even-handed approach to where science and spirituality intersect, I recommend journalist Barbara Bradley Haggerty’s Fingerprints of God. Like Alexander, Haggerty brings a willingness to believe in God to the table, but she goes much further to investigate whether or not all such experiences can be explained or discounted. That she ends up having her faith affirmed just goes to show that nobody yet can prove one way or the other that God and Heaven exist.

See what The New York Times had to say about the book: "Readers Join Doctor’s Journey to the Afterworld’s Gate."

Book Review: Brain on Fire by Susannah Cahalan

2012-11-29T16:34:00.002-05:00

Susannah Cahalan is the first to admit she is a lucky young woman. She chronicles why in her gripping memoir Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness.

Susannah was 24 years old, living in New York City and working as a reporter at The New York Post when she thought she had bedbugs in her apartment. She then got sick with flu-like symptoms and soon developed numbness in her left hand. She also started feeling paranoid, and her moods swung wildly. Then she had a seizure.

She saw a neurologist who thought she drank too much but grudgingly referred her to NYU Lagone Medical Center, where after a month of misdiagnoses, she eventually met her savior, Dr. Souhel Najjar. Najjar had a reputation for being able to solve difficult cases (Susannah’s mother said at one point, “He’s a real life Dr. House”). He was the first to look at all the symptoms she had from the beginning of her illness and realize she was acting so strangely—Susannah had deteriorated to a catatonic state by this point—because her brain was inflamed. She had a rare form of encephalitis.

Dr. Najjar’s treatment, which included steroids and plasmapheresis, took months to run its course. Susannah recovered slowly and painfully but fully. She recalls next to nothing of the month she spent in the hospital and had to reconstruct it by reviewing medical records and interviewing people. She has a few video recordings of her stay in the hospital, which she looks at now and wonders: Who is that girl? Where is she inside me?

Cahalan’s journey is harrowing and fascinating at once, and she tells it at a page-turning pace. Even though it is clear from the outset she recovered, the book reads like a frantic medical mystery, leaving the reader needing to know what happens next. I couldn’t put it down, and I bet you won’t be able to either.

Article first published as Book Review: Brain on Fire by Susannah Cahalan on Blogcritics.

Book review: Giving Up the Ghost by Eric Nuzum

2012-10-31T14:54:00.002-04:00

Eric Nuzum really is afraid of ghosts. Or, he used to be. In his memoir Giving Up the Ghost: a Story About Friendship, 80s Rock, a Lost Scrap of Paper and What It Means to Be Haunted, Nuzum delves into his painful past, faces his fears, and comes up with a new understanding of his personal phantoms.

Growing up in Canton, Ohio, Eric Nuzum was a nonconformist punk rocker, with the clothes, piercings, and attitude to match. He had one special friend, however: Laura Patterson. A year younger and a good student, Laura would call Eric and they would “hang out,” which meant driving around or parking the car in a secluded spot. They would talk, listen to music, smoke, drink. Once in awhile Laura would let Eric give her a goodnight kiss, but mostly not. And she most emphatically never talk about herself, so Eric heard nothing about her family, other friends, school plans.

Eric confided in Laura something he could not really share with others: that his house was haunted, that he was haunted. Strange noises came from the attic of his house, and at night, he had a recurring dream, of a little girl in a blue dress, screaming at him in gibberish. Eric’s fear of her made him sleepless and anxious and led him to seek relief in drugs.

After he graduated from high school, Eric commuted to a local college but stopped attending classes, lied about his whereabouts, and contemplated suicide. He became so distraught he ended up in the psychiatric ward of a local hospital. Laura was the only friend who came to see him there, and her encouragement gave him the motivation to pull himself together. Eric was heartsick when, a few years later, Laura is struck by a car and killed.

As Nuzum tells the story of his youth, he intersperses stories from 20 years later. Renewing an old acquaintance gives Eric the impetus to face his past, the reverberations of which remained in his fear of closed doors and his refusal to listen to or watch any ghost story whatsoever. What he decides to do is go ghost hunting, to find out once and for all if ghosts are real. He visits increasingly spooky places, including the battlefields of Gettysburg and the Mansfield Reformatory, the abandoned Ohio prison where some of The Shawshank Redemption was filmed. He has experiences that folks who believe in ghosts would say prove that they exist, but Eric is clearly not convinced.

Eric Nuzum is both a brave man and a good writer, bringing both warmth and humor to his difficult story. In taking on his relationships with both Little Girl and Laura, he provides a much-needed portrait of mental illness: one of a recovery. He stood on the brink but turned back. Today he is an award-winning writer and radio producer and has a wife and son. He is also scarred by his past, something he readily admits. His quest provided no neat and clean answers, which is another useful aspect of the book: a reminder that life is not necessarily understandable, but we can come to accept it.

Article first published as Book Review: Giving Up the Ghost by Eric Nuzum on Blogcritics.

Book review: These Things Happen by Richard Kramer

2012-10-24T07:27:00.001-04:00

What’s it like to be a 15-year-old boy living in New York City and have your best friend come out as gay? In These Things Happen, award-winning television writer, director, and producer and first-time novelist Richard Kramer has provided a smart, funny, and insightful exploration.

Wesley and his oldest and closest friend Theo are growing up and attending private school in the city. Their days are filled with college coaches (you need an edge to get into Brown), soccer practice, homework, and hormones. Wesley is currently living with his father, a well-known and respected gay activist, and his father’s boyfriend George, a former theater actor and co-owner of the restaurant above which they live. (“I’m not a very queenie queen,” declares George.)

Tenth grade appears to be going swimmingly, and Theo has just won the race for class president. Theo surprises everyone, including himself, when he announces, at the end of his acceptance speech, that he is gay and sets the true motion of the novel rolling. As Wesley tries to deal with this new reality and figure out how to have a relationship with important and unavailable father, everyone else in his life has to evaluate what Theo’s revelation means. When an act of violence turns up the emotional volume, the results are often not pretty, even for these educated, well-meaning people.

Although the first pages might give the impression of a light story and a quick read, These Things Happen is neither. We experience the action from the point of view of each main character in their distinctive and often charming voices as they stumble their way through a difficult situation and find their way back towards each other. They are an introspective and verbose bunch, which sometimes hindered the story for me and made reading more difficult. The end result, however, is still a touching coming-of-age story and moving portrait of where our society is in its acceptance, and lack thereof, of homosexuality.

Article first published as Book Review: These Things Happen by Richard Kramer on Blogcritics.

Book review: Incognito by David Eagleman

2012-08-28T07:39:00.000-04:00

Remember the old adage that we use only 10% of our brains? It’s a myth; we actually are using most of our brains almost all the time. In his latest book, Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain (published in paperback in May 2012), professor of neuroscience at the Baylor College of Medicine David Eagleman explains the surprising ways the brain actually works.

An accessible and entertaining tour of modern brain science, Incognito covers artificial intelligence, brain damage, drugs, synesthesia, visual illusions, and much more. Eagleman also considers the implications of modern research on society, particularly criminal law. Along the way, he shatters the traditional view of our conscious selves being in charge of what we do.

Eagleman is a bit of a media star (he was profiled in The New Yorker and interviewed on the NPR show Fresh Air). He is also author of Sum: Forty Tales from Afterlives in which he ponders in fiction what might become of us after death.

Eagleman is an interesting guy whose work thought-provoking to read and listen to, and his book should be required reading for all brain owners.

Article first published as Book Review: Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman on Blogcritics.

Book Review: Zone One by Colson Whitehead

2012-08-23T07:02:00.000-04:00

“Mark Spitz” is a survivor. Although mediocre in all aspects of life until the plague hit, he is one of the minority who have survived the worst of the pandemic that has turned most people into zombies.

He has volunteered to be a “sweeper” in Manhattan — a member of a three-man military team that goes door-to-door looking for zombies who weren’t destroyed when the Marines secured half the island and walled off the other half. The government, what’s left of it in the U.S., has established itself upstate in Buffalo. Buffalo is supplying the bite-resistant uniforms and ammo.

“Mark Sptiz” is the ironic nickname given to the protagonist and the only name ever given for him in the novel. He earned it when he refused to jump off a bridge being overrun by mindless human flesh eaters. After annihilating them all, he was asked why he stayed instead of taking the safety route of jumping in the river like his comrades. “I can’t swim,” he replied, even though it wasn’t true.
Mark Sptiz’s ferocity on the bridge was probably the result of his PASD (post-apocalypse stress disorder). All survivors have it to some degree, because they’ve all seen and lived through horrific things. It takes different forms and is treated as nothing more than a personal tic.

Mark Sptiz volunteered to help secure Manhattan in part because he had always wanted to live there, like his rich uncle had. The city left behind after the plague is a ghost town, of course, but it retains its structure and architectural character, the empty office buildings, shops, apartments standing like statues made in tribute to life before the end.

Literary author Colson Whitehead (his latest previous novel, Sag Harbor, was published in 2009) uses this zombie apocalypse to explore Manhattan, American culture, and human nature. What are we when the social contract, with its preoccupation with the material, is broken? In a world where it’s not safe to become attached to others, lest they go out and never return, what’s left?

I found Zone One (released in paperback in July 2012) thoroughly engaging, and it has stuck with me. I became attached to Mark Spitz, but what really struck me was the vivid scenes of Manhattan: the office with zombies kicking around it, withering away for lack of food, still in their office attire; the empty residential street with the fortune-teller storefront among the brownstones.

Unlike many writers of apocalypse tales, Whitehead does not spend time on what caused the plague, no doubt because it doesn’t matter a whole lot for those left behind. They are too busy staying alive.

The post-apocalypse world is a hot topic in publishing, but Colson Whitehead’s offering is not your ordinary zombie novel. It’s a thoughtful monster story that stands out from the crowd.

Book Review: The Information: a History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick

2012-08-12T08:29:00.003-04:00

In The Information, science writer James Gleick offers an engaging and eye-opening trip through the history of human communication.

He starts with the “talking drums” of Africa and traverses the creation of writing, the ingenious inventions of the steam age, information theory’s origins and development, and ends with the current state of the internet communication glut. He includes profiles of lesser-known innovators such as Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace, who in the 1800s envisioned computers made of gears and powered by steam, and Claude Shannon, a World War II code breaker without whose work computers could not have progressed.

Gleick traces the infiltration of information theory into other fields, such as the role it plays in our understanding of DNA. While previously biology had been considered mostly a matter of chemistry, Watson and Crick realized DNA’s purpose was to convey instructions about how to construct organisms. At the time, this idea was so novel, they put the word information in quotation marks whenever they mentioned it. Today we take for granted that DNA contains the genetic code.

Gleick takes the information infiltration even farther. In his review of the book in The New York Times Geoffrey Nunberg’ says, “Information, [Gleick] argues, is more than just the contents of our overflowing libraries and Web servers. It is ‘the blood and the fuel, the vital principle’ of the world. Human consciousness, society, life on earth, the cosmos—it’s bits all the way down.”

I found The Information (released in paperback in March 2012) in turns fascinating, startling, and baffling. I loved reading about the history of communication and felt I followed it well through the mid-19th century. After that, things got complicated, with discussions of logic proofs, unsolvable mathematics proofs, and I-still-don’t-get-it-and-probably-never-will particle physics. Then, abruptly, I was back in my comfort zone, with a timely and engaging chapters on memes and Wikipedia.

As a librarian, I probably should be more distressed that Gleick finds it fit to talk about the profession in one paragraph in the whole book; to him, libraries are just one way of organizing information in a pre-digital world. Geoffrey Nunberg points out that Gleick treats information “at a remove from the larger social world, rather than as an extension of it.” Of course no view of information is complete without the context of human understanding.

Regardless of any limitations, The Information is as entertaining as it is illuminating and is a must-read for anyone interested in communication and the history of information.

Article first published as Book Review: The Information: a History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick on Blogcritics.

Review: The Prisoner of Heaven by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

2012-07-24T07:15:00.000-04:00

During Christmastime 1957 in Barcelona, Spain, bookseller Daniel Sempere is minding his father’s shop, hoping sales will improve. Otherwise, things are good. He and his wife, Bea, have a baby boy named Julián, and their close friend Fermín Romero de Torres is about to finally give up bachelorhood and marry his beloved Bernarda. But then a mysterious stranger visits the shop looking for Fermín. Already worried about his impending nuptials, Fermín is terribly shaken, and Daniel is determined to find out why.

Thus the action is set in motion in The Prisoner of Heaven, the third book in the Cemetery of Forgotten Books cycle by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. Taking place after the action of The Shadow of the Wind and incorporating The Angel’s Game, The Prisoner of Heaven evokes the same gothic atmosphere of Spain during the first half of the 20th century. And once again, Zafón’s storytelling draws the reader into this complex world and creates a plot with pain-turning drive. We find out about Fermín’s time in prison and his connection to the Semperes. David Martin, the protagonist of The Angel’s Game, plays a significant role, and Zafón connects the three books in satisfying ways while adding a new narrative thread that will undoubtedly be featured in the next book in the cycle.

While I greatly enjoyed The Prisoner of Heaven, I found myself wishing I remembered the earlier books better. I re-read the book jackets and did some Internet searching looking for plot details I sort of remembered, both of which I found frustrating. (Those Internet folks did a good job of not revealing spoilers!) I wish had the time to read all three close together; I have a feeling I would be very pleased with how they fit with each other.

But then I would be even more anxious for the story to continue. If you enjoyed Zafón’s previous books in the cycle, it’s a sure bet you’re going to enjoy this one as well.

Book review: Truth Like the Sun by Jim Lynch

2012-07-08T09:03:00.001-04:00

Elvis Presley once said, “Truth is the like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't going away.” Elvis repeats the line when he visits the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair in Jim Lynch’s third novel, Truth Like the Sun.

The story focuses on golden boy and “father of the fair” Roger Morgan and features many cameos from the real celebrities of the time. The story opens as the fair opens, with Morgan showing off the Space Needle—which in this fictional telling was his idea—and moves back and forth in time to 40 years later when Morgan, now in his 70s, has finally decided to run for mayor. He shares this part of the narrative with Helen Gulanos, a journalist and single mother new to Seattle looking to catch a big story.

Catch one she does during the run up to the election. Helen works for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (often called The P-I), one of the city’s two daily newspapers at a time when newspaper sales have dropped, adding pressure to beat rival The Seattle Times to the story. (The P-I became the online-only SeattlePI.com, with a drastically reduced staff, in 2009.) Helen happens to be on hand when Roger announces his candidacy and then races to find the truth behind his history.

Truth Like the Sun is a rich and engaging tale, with complex characters and a plot seamlessly interwoven with the history of Seattle. Lynch takes on not only the city’s boom-and-bust history but also the topics of ambition, corruption, the Cold War, and big-time newspaper journalism on the wane. The protagonists are a flawed and likeable pair that grudgingly admire each other, and the truth turns out to be elusive, often obscured by the clouds of memory and the need to sell newspapers. Anyone interested in the city of Seattle, political intrigue stories, or just plain good writing should enjoy this book.

Article first published as Book review: Truth Like the Sun by Jim Lynch on Blogcritics.

Review: What Dies in Summer by Tom Wright

2012-07-04T08:40:00.000-04:00

Jim is a teenager in Texas, living with his grandmother. One morning in February, his cousin Lee Ann, whom he calls L.A., shows up on the porch shivering and refusing to speak. She moves in with Jim and Gram and starts seeing a therapist. JIm, being fond of L.A., is fine with this. He and L.A. are friends, and he has his own peculiarities, like having a touch of the Sight.

The school year comes to an end without incident, but the same cannot be said for summer, which is marked by danger and death. Jim and L.A. find the body of a teenaged girl one day, and Jim realizes he has been seeing this girl in his dreams for days. Before long her death is linked to the murders of two other girls in the area.

All manner of characters surround Jim and L.A., including a vagrant man with a voice of gold; a homeless woman who seems to know everything about Jim without being told; Jim’s best friend Dee, who loves to paint and whose father likes to hang out with Jim rather than his own son; and Jim’s uncle Cam, L.A.’s father, a part-time musician.

Jim is keen to protect Gram and L.A. and also to explore his relationship with his girlfriend Diana, daughter of a local policeman. When Jim goes on vacation with Diana’s family, the action comes to a head with a full-head of steam and an ending I didn’t see coming.

I loved What Dies in Summer. The writing is rich and evocative, even though the time is only alluded to (early-to-mid 1970’s) and the place rarely mentioned. For the first half of the book, I typically only read one chapter at a time; they were each filling little stories within themselves. I also was often filled with foreboding that made me apprehensive about what was next.

It has plenty of sweet and tender moments as well. Jim befriends one of Gram’s friends as she dies of cancer, and his relationship with Diana is pure teenaged love from a boy’s point of view. Jim is a likable and believable narrator, and his story unfolds at first with languor and then with urgency.

What Dies in Summer is a fine Southern Gothic debut. I’m sure we’ll hear more from the author, psychologist Tom Wright. I will look forward to it.

Article first published as Book Review: What Dies in Summer by Tom Wright on Blogcritics.

Review: The Weight of Memory by Jennifer Paddock

2012-05-21T06:53:00.000-04:00

Three women in their mid-30’s who were best friends in high school have a reunion as they ride out Hurricane Katrina together on the Florida panhandle. It’s a turning point in all their lives.

Chandler, Sarah, and Leigh — whose lives author Jennifer Paddock has followed in two earlier novels A Secret Word and Point Clear — have each suffered. As the book opens, they have all married and moved away from their hometown of Fort Smith, Arkansas. Leigh is already divorced and lives in Destin, Florida, working as a waitress. Sarah is separated from her husband and has left New York City to stay for a time in her cardiac-surgeon father’s unused vacation home, also in Destin. Sarah is living in Alabama with her struggling novelist husband.

The women have not gotten together in a long time before they reunite in Destin just as Katrina hits. In high school, they had loved the same boy and were together when they saw him die in a car wreck. Each of them struggles with her memories of that event, and also those of their fathers. Chandler’s dad committed suicide; Sarah’s left her mother; and Leigh’s mother never told her who her father was.

Dealing with the burden of memory and moving on is the theme of this engaging women’s novel. One character even suffers psychogenic amnesia, a condition where he periodically forgets biographical information about himself. His condition graphically demonstrates that memory’s weight stems from autobiography, and how we write and rewrite it determines our paths and our happiness. By the end of the book, Chandler, Sarah, and Leigh each come to realize this and end in a different, better place with their pasts.

Even though it is the end of a trilogy, The Weight of Memory stands well on its own and is a satisfying read.

Article first published as Book Review: The Weight of Memory by Jennifer Paddock on Blogcritics.

Review: White Horse by Alex Adams

2012-04-21T08:15:00.000-04:00

White Horse, Alex Adams’s debut, is post-apocalyptic novel, the first of a trilogy, that may appeal to some—but I'm not one of them, I’m afraid.

Adams’ heroine Zoe is a thirty-year-old widow at loose ends. She inherited an apartment in the city and apparently has no trouble making ends even though she works as a janitor for Pope Pharmaceuticals. Zoe could be doing other things—she’s intelligent and talented—but she is content for now to have a non-demanding day job and to resist the attempts of family and friends to fix her up with a man.

One day she finds a jar has been placed inside her well-protected domicile. Someone has obviously broken in, but nothing is taken; just a jar has mysteriously arrived. Unnerved, she starts to see a therapist, claiming the jar is a dream because she’s afraid he’ll think her insane if she admits it’s real.

With the jar sitting untouched in her apartment, Zoe sees Nick, her handsome therapist with whom she is developing a greater-than-therapeutic rapport. She is occasionally required to undergo physicals at work, during which she is given a mandatory flu shot.

Soon Zoe notices people in her building becoming ill. First they appear to have the flu, then they seem to recover only to drop dead. It’s not just in her building, however, it’s everywhere. Adding to world misery, a war is raging over the technology to control the weather. The Chinese knock out the Internet, and the U.S. in plunged back into the era of broadcast television.

All this happened “before.” “Now” Zoe is traveling through war- and sickness-ravaged Europe, doing what it takes to stay alive. The illness, which an Evangelical preacher named “White Horse” after one of the four horses of the Apocalypse, has decimated 80% of the world’s population. Of those who survive, many have genetic mutations. (Some turn into man-eating animals; others grow grotesque extra appendages.)

There is so much about this book that doesn’t work for me. The narrative has momentum but is marred by clumsy metaphors and its disjointed structure. The story jumps back and forth between “now” and “then,” starting with “now,” until the two timelines meet. This construction is absolutely unnecessary for Zoe’s story to be suspenseful; in fact, suspense would have been heightened in a linear telling starting from the beginning instead of with the horrible outcome of the White Horse plague.

Another pet peeve: Alex Adams appears to know very little about psychotherapy, because Zoe’s therapist is exceedingly unprofessional. He is altogether too familiar with Zoe and continues to treat her even after making a pass at her.

Another quandary: Why two apocalyptic elements, White Horse and an unrelated world war? Either one is suitable for Adams’ purposes. Having both is not necessarily a bad thing, but the way the war over the weather is treated is so cursory, it seems to have been added to the plot just to knock out the Internet.

Believe it or not, I can’t say I didn’t enjoy the novel at all. End-of-the-world stories have a narrative drive that makes you turn pages, and White Horse shares that attribute. I think this book could have worked well with a strong editorial hand to guide it. As it is, I’d have to say unless the plot elements intrigue you, I wouldn’t recommend it.

Review: All for Now by Joseph Di Prisco

2012-04-05T07:12:00.004-04:00

At first glance, All for Now sounds like it could be a tough read because it deals with clergy sexual abuse and death. Nothing could be further from the truth, however. Deploying intelligence and humor, author Joseph Di Prisco examines his subject in an engaging and entertaining way, and the end result is anything but morbid.

The novel recounts the immediate afterlife of Brother Stephen, a member of a Catholic teaching brotherhood who dies as his order is facing multiple lawsuits over sexual abuse. Stephen became a Brother right after graduating from the very high school he would teach in. After 20 years, he became an administrator, just about the time abuse allegations against priests were becoming rampant. The Brothers were no exception, and Stephen oversaw the fiscal aspects of the ensuing settlements.

On the day he died, his order was discussing the case of Shannon Reed, who said she had been molested by Brother Joel, now deceased, and had had her charges summarily dismissed by Brother Charlie, an octogenarian who was the principal at the time.

The case was particularly painful to Stephen. Shannon had been a very close friend of his in high school, and Charlie had been his teacher and mentor in the Brotherhood. Facing this difficult situation, Brother Stephen keels over in the middle of a meeting.

Stephen was a keen observer in life, and he is of the afterlife as well, which features a white Prius he drives around the California coast. He meets some of the people he had known in life, but his most dogged companion is Brother Charlie, whom Stephen discovers in the trunk of the car.

Brother Stephen is a sympathetic character with a wry sense of humor, which ironically infuses the story of his death with liveliness. As he careens through his afterlife, which most closely resembles a dream with its fanciful aspects, he hears himself interviewed on NPR, and visits jumbled scenes from his life, most prominently high school. Puzzled, Stephen tries to figure out what is going on. What’s going on is that he must finally face the truth of his life.

Brother Stephen tackles his death experience with an aplomb he apparently never managed in life, and we root for him the whole way through his afterlife adventures. Each chapter begins with a quote from the Baltimore Catechism (which, according to Wikipedia, was the “de facto standard Catholic school text in the United States from 1885 to the late 1960s”). No doubt this construction will speak most to those who were raised Catholic.

Catholic or not, religious or not, All for Now is accessible to everyone because mistakes and forgiveness are universal. A novel about a serious topic that is no downer, both All for Now and its protagonist come to a satisfying end.

Article first published as Book Review: All for Now by Joseph Di Prisco on Blogcritics.

Review: Heft by Liz Moore

2012-03-13T14:59:00.001-04:00

Arthur Opp was once merely a big man, but he has become morbidly obese and has not left his house in Brooklyn in a decade. He doesn’t need to go out; his family provides him with support, and he can get everything he needs online. His greatest joy since he stopped teaching literature at a university extension school in Manhattan is his correspondence with Charlene Turner.

Charlene had taken his class. She was very young at the time, very much of Yonkers, and not at all a good student. Arthur saw a kindred soul in her discomfiture, and they struck up a friendship at the end of the semester. Although they soon stopped doing things together, Charlene continued to write to Arthur over the years.

Arthur’s measured existence is again interrupted by Charlene nearly 20 years later when she calls him, asking if he’ll tutor her son, Kel Keller. Kel is a senior in high school and wants to play professional baseball (he’s good enough) rather than go to college, which pains Charlene very much. Arthur says of course he will help, and then panic sets in. He’s been lying to Charlene in his letters, never letting on that he is homebound. Then again, Charlene had not mentioned Kel in her letters, either.

Thus begins the action of this affecting novel, in which two fatherless boys find each other through the same woman. Arthur and Kel are genuine and believable characters. Arthur is quirky, intelligent, and both honest with himself and funny about his situation; Kel is more thoughtful and sensitive than those around him take him to be. As they chart their parallel paths, Charlene draws them in each other’s direction.

Charlene is the driving force of the narrative even though she is not given her own voice. We see her only through the prism of the two men to whom she is the most important person in the world. As the story moves on, the prism shifts, and Charlene changes. It’s an effective lesson about how well we know other people.

My one complaint about the novel is one of style. In Arthur’s chapters, the ampersand is used instead of the word “and,” which I found to be an unnecessary distraction. Aside from that quibble, however, Heft is a lovely read, replete with very human characters, a compelling plot, and a generous dose of optimism.

Article first published as Book Review: Heft by Liz Moore on Blogcritics.

Book Review: The Rules of Inheritance by Claire Bidwell Smith

2012-02-01T21:35:00.000-05:00

The Rules of Inheritance is a memoir of grief.

Claire Bidwell Smith found herself without family early in adult life. An only child of older parents, her mother died of colon cancer at 58 when Smith was 18, and her father followed seven years later, suffering from prostate cancer, when Smith was 25.

Just 14 when both her parents received their diagnoses in the span of a few months, Smith’s adult identity was formed amidst illness and death. So it is understandable that she became entangled in grief.

Smith’s grief drove her to drop out of college for a time and into a long-term relationship with an unstable boyfriend. She also drank heavily for many years, until a friend suggested she try AA. Although she did not join, she absorbed enough of the message to try quitting drinking for a while, and in that time, faced her pain. Now a married mother in her early 30s, Smith has found her calling as a hospice grief counselor.

Smith tells her story with unusual style. She uses no quotation marks around dialog, giving the book a free-flowing feel appropriate to memory. The structure is perhaps unique: instead of being a linear retelling, the narrative jumps around in time, always using the present tense, and is organized instead around Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.

Using this technique, Smith does not state explicitly but instead demonstrates the circular nature of grief. The stages don’t occur in order, and she revisits them until she finds a way to sit with her pain and then move on.

At times the skewing-nature of grief on Smith’s thought processes wears a little thin. The overall effect, however, is both absorbing and affecting. Now, after finishing, I still recall the plaintive sentences made completely of Smith’s longing for her mother: “Mom mom mom mom.”

I was puzzled by the title, because she does not dwell upon inheritance, either in the Mendelian or legal sense, at all. But then it struck me: what Smith inherited was grief. The rules of dealing with such a bequest are passing through the stages of grief and facing the pain or remaining stuck in its orbit.

Although Claire Bidwell Smith is still young, her memoir packs a lot of hurting and living and holds out the hope of healing. I am glad I had the chance to read it, and I’m confident Smith with achieve the goal she states for the book in her blog: that The Rules of Inheritance might help others dealing with grief feel a little less alone.

Article first published as Book Review: The Rules of Inheritance by Claire Bidwell Smith on Blogcritics.

Review: The Lola Quartet

2012-01-20T06:36:00.004-05:00

The Lola Quartet by Emily St. John Mandel, slated for publication May 15, 2012, is one of the most anticipated books of the year. (Shelf Awareness, The Millions, National Post.) Is it worth the advance praise? It depends on what you’re looking for in a novel.

Gavin Sasaki is a young newspaperman doing fairly well for himself working at the second-largest paper in New York City. When a story takes him to his hometown in Florida, however, he finds out something that unhinges him: there is a ten-year-old girl who looks just like his sister at that age. He becomes obsessed with the idea that his high-school girlfriend had been pregnant, as rumoured, when she disappeared 10 years ago.

Thus begins the story of a strange amalgam. The Lola Quartet of the title was a jazz group that Gavin played at his performing-arts high school. His girlfriend was the younger sister of one of the members. As Gavin tries to discover what happened all those years ago—if he hadn’t become a journalist, he would have become a private detective—he looks up each of the other members of the quartet, who have all trod their own bumpy paths in life.

Gavin’s dogged pursuit of the truth drives the mystery and the narrative of The Lola Quartet, which I found almost unremittingly depressing. Gavin is a truly interesting character, but we rarely see his strengths, and he rarely spends any time feeling good about anything. The same is true for all the other characters. The initial event all those years ago, a pregnancy that causes Gavin’s girlfriend to run away, went from bad to worse when a drug dealer entered the scene.

St. John Mandel is an excellent writer, tautly painting scenes with her words, but the scenes have barely a breath of air in them. The only time the story got humming was when Gavin really started thinking like a detective. But soon enough he became befuddled again and things went awry once more.

If you don’t require optimism in your reading or like your noir plenty black, then you will enjoy The Lola Quartet. Mystery fans who like loose ends tied up in a way that produces satisfaction should look elsewhere.

Book review: One Click: Jeff Bezos and the Rise of Amazon.com

2011-11-29T07:16:00.001-05:00

For anyone born after 1990, Amazon.com is one of the givens of life. But when the company was started in 1994 there was no Internet commerce yet, and there was no guarantee CEO Jeff Beezos’ vision for an Internet bookstore would succeed. One Click: Jeff Bezos and the Rise of Amazon.com seeks to answer the question of how Bezos not only succeeded but has come to dominate — and fundamentally change — the book business and shopping itself.

Author Richard L. Brandt begins by discussing the "1-Click" ordering method available on Amazon, which illustrates both Bezos’ genius and his competitive drive. The idea that the customer experience on Amazon should be as seamless as possible is Bezos’ brilliant motivating idea. The easiest way to buy would be to do so with one click of the mouse. Hence, 1-Click.

Bezos patented 1-Click, even though to many of his competitors it seemed obvious, and patents are not supposed to be granted for obvious processes. They tried to get the patent reversed, but Bezos won and used it to sue others, Barnes & Noble among them, to keep any other online retailer from allowing buying with just one click.

One Click visits Bezos’ childhood to find some answers about how he came by his success. Although he learned self-reliance on his grandfather’s ranch in Texas, Bezos was a nonetheless a geek. He took computer science early on and honed his skills at Princeton. His first jobs were in computerizing Wall Street processes in the late 1980s, where he succeeded fantastically, more due to his intellect rather than his people skills. Bezos always knew he wanted to be an entrepreneur, however; he was just gaining experience and waiting for the right opportunity.

The opportunity arrived with the Internet. What follows in One Click is a fascinating look at how Amazon got started and grew making use of the money available during the Internet bubble, pursuing Bezos’ early watchwords: “get big fast.” In doing so, he correctly predicted that Amazon would be too far ahead for competitors to catch up.

Bezos and Amazon are still doing their thing, now trying to dominate the market for e-books and e-readers. Naturally, One Click is out of date on this and other aspects of the story that have changed recently (think Borders going out of business). Given the topic, there’s no way the book could have kept up.

The book is a slight 191 pages and short in stature, making it a quick read. While footnoted and indexed, it may not cover much new ground to those who have followed Amazon from the start. Brandt, who comes off as a Bezos admirer if not a fan, gives little attention to what it can be like to work for the guy (he drives his employees and isn’t always nice). Brandt allows that Amazon’s phenomenal success may be based in part on timing, but he clearly thinks luck played a small part.

As someone who didn’t follow Amazon except as a customer, I found the book both entertaining and interesting. I enjoyed learning about Bezos’ personal history, and the book serves as a fine introduction to the era of the dot.com boom.

Article first published as Book Review: One Click: Jeff Bezos and the Rise of Amazon.com by Richard L. Brandt on Blogcritics.