aliay's 2013 reading

Books read for teaching/school in whole or in excerpts

Consumerism and Consumer Culture
Consumer Society Reader by Douglas Holt
Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America by Jackson Lears

Psychology of Language
The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker
The Stuff of Thought by Steven Pinker
Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things by George Lakoff

Leisure books I started but didn't finish

The Story of Ain't by David Skinner
Into the Beautful North by Luis Alberto Urrea
Twentysomething: Why do Young Adults Seem Stuck? by Robin Marantz Henig
Contemporary American Judaism: Transformation and Renewal by Dana Evan Kaplan
Closing Time by Joe Queenan
Saturday Night by Susan Orlean
The Control of Nature by John McPhee
Judaism's Great Debates by Barry Schwarz
An Abundance of Katherines by John Green
Lean in by Cheryl Sandberg

Leisure Books finished

Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation by Edward Deci
When God Talks Back by T.M. Luhrmann
Choke by Sian Beilock
Libra by Don DeLillo
Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright
Land your Dream Career by Tori Randolph Terune and Betsy Hays
Book Crush by Nancy Pearl
Flagrant Conduct by Dale Carpenter
Letters to a Young Scientist by Edward O. Wilson
Why Don't Students Like School? by Daniel Willingham
The Hollywood Economist by Edward Jay Epstein
Ungifted by Scott Barry Kaufman
The Big Picture by Edward Jay Epstein
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel
Real Talk for Real Teachers by Rafe Esquith
Why Waco? by James D Tabor
Free to Learn by Peter Gray
The Book of My Lives by Aleksandar Hemon
To The End of June: The Intimate Life of American Foster Care by Cris Beam
MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

Welcome to Club Read. How is Libra going?

Libra started out with an intense bang for me (any scene that features the NYC subways from a child's POV goes straight after my heart) but I was unable to finish it- there was one scene that left me so disgusted I just had to put it down. Sad that, as I had just been introduced to a fictionalized Jack Ruby and I've been generally enjoying the sense of confusion and mayhem that lies at the heart of DeLillio's messages about identity, history, and Americana.

I hope to return to Libra at some point soon and finally finish it off.

Into The Beautiful North was a book club read- I found the first 60 pages or so howlingly funny but I lost a connection with the characters as the plot got moving, I found the concepts a little heavy-handed. I'm impressed with Urrea's writing chops and will give his nonfiction a second look.

Why We Do What We Do is a cross between a self-help book and a popular audience digestion of academic writings (a la Thinking, Fast and Slow) Only I've read Deci's academic works, and in some ways I find them more satisfying because they're more conceptually rigorous.

Deci shares some evidence that suggests that external rewards (money, praise) can limit intrinsic motivation, and that key elements to support intrinsic motivation include supporting one's autonomy (the ability to make decisions and exert control over factors in one's life) and perceived self-efficacy. It made for a fast Saturday read.

Oops, I was thinking that "Books started, not finished" meant "currently reading, not finished yet". I guess you really mean it's a book you have stopped reading. Good luck with Libra

It's been a slow month for outside reading... I'm bent on finishing Libra and snacking my way through Closing Time: A Memoir by Joe Queenan

Put down Twentysomethings by Robin Marantz Henig after a 50 page skim. Book seemed so meh- kind of at the edge of bad chick lit, bad pop psych, and bad social science. Plus I had read most of the articles (academic and non-academic) that the author cited in the first 50 pages, wasn't necessarily motivation to read more.

Contemporary American Judaism: Transformation and Renewal

I got about 50 pages in, I found the writing tedious though the topic interests me.

: ) ... I don't know how one makes that kind of book not tedious.

Finally finished Libra after putting it down for a few weeks.

In short- one man's journey to find agency and meaning in a world filled with confusion and injustice.

This man also happens to be Lee Havey Oswald, and the story is imagined from mildly historical record.

Congrats aliay! Was it worth it?

Libra is a book I buy every time I see it, to give to any unsuspecting people who may not yet have read it. Congrats for finishing it even if it didn't appeal. It is amazing how much of Delillo's background actually happened. If you should ever be tempted to follow up on this novel with another of the same ilk, there is always Norman Mailer's Oswald's Tale!

Hello Alia - Libra is on my list thanks to you and Sassy!

I love that you're putting down crummy books And listing them.

Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright

I don't know how much my LT reading list and library reflects this, but I absolutely gobble up works on religion, particularly contemporary religious movements.

To be honest, I'm still torn on what to think here-yes, this book did keep me up all night, but part of me felt that Wright was aiming for such accuracy and attempting to avoid lawsuits at all costs by providing detailed information that part of the human story and part of the Scientology liturgy got lost.

Verdict: start by reading Wright's pieces from the New Yorker on which this book grew, and if you do read it, look into a solid companion book. I'm not sure I have a good one to recommend, but both Inside Scientology and The Church of Scientology give additional insights where I felt Wright was cut off.

@SassyLassy- do you buy it in a "you won't believe this book exists!" kind of way? I could never see Libra as a casual recommendation!

Mkboylan I like reading books, I never said I was intent on finishing them! Especially with nonfiction, which as you can see I read much of, there's no rush to the end. Sometimes I stop a book if I am bored with it or if I have to return it to the library. The way I see it- this is my leisure time, not yours or anybody else's, so I have so reason to defend my tastes or lack thereof!

Closing Time: A Memoir

I left my paperback somewhere - it was a literary-feeling memoir of growing up poor in Philadelphia. Funny and bitter, in a tender sort of way. For me, this was my quintessential bus reading- enjoyable, not too hard to pick up and leave off...literally.... But not inclined to finish, unlike The Power Broker Godel, Escher, Bach Religion and Human Evolution and Nature's Economy

The Story of Ain't was like chick-lit for nerds. Funny but with an ambitious topic- language,social shifts, and dictionaries in the 1960s - that valued breadth and breeziness over depth and rigor. Would have finished but had to return it.

>16 aliay: Been thinking about this. I suspect it is partially "you won't believe this book exists!" as you suggest, but it is also that there is so much detail and so many leads, worthwhile or otherwise woven into the story, not to mention the skilful story telling, that I keep giving it away. Most of the recipients are fellow Delillo fans, none of them are fellow conspiracy buffs!

Saturday Night by Susan Orlean.

It's an ideal airport book, as a bunch of vignettes about what people across the United States are up to on a Saturday night. I found the idea of the book lighthearted and a little novel, but after zipping through the first 150 pages or so I have no motivation at all to finish the vignettes.

If you are looking for engrossing literary accounts of everyday life, I recommed:

Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing by Ted Conover
Home Town by Tracy Kidder (really, anything by Tracy Kidder, but his work in Western MA is superb.... Among Schoolchildren and House are also gems)
Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlance

The Control of Nature by John McPhee.

I'm a big fan of McPhee's writing and I like the idea of reading about civil engineering projects and the history of taxpayer funding for such ambitious (and sometimes doomed) projects, but I found his essays needed too much technical background to appreciate them. I've been reading all about levees but I have no idea what one is or what it does or what it looks like. I also don't have the patience to learn before diving back in. Sorry John, maybe another time.

Years ago I read a book on interviews of nonfiction authors, and Newjack and Random Family both became books I really wanted to read...but never got around to. Thanks for the reminder. (The book is The New New Journalism by Robert Boynton, from 2005.)

Restraining my urge to try to explain levees to you (I imagine sure Wikipedia would have enough info if you were really curious).

YES. I also read The New New Journalism when it came out! I was all into In Cold Blood and The Right Stuff and the idea of literary nonfiction excited me.

John McPhee is such an elegant writer- I'm sure I'll return to The Control of Nature at some point. Just not exactly my idea of summer reading :-)

Judaism's Great Debates

This book is presents as a series of vignettes around central debates throughout Judaism. It's a short book-- 100 pages long, a small book-- about the size of an index card, and the text is nearly double-spaced. You could finish this book standing up.

Rabbi Schwarz does a good job of presenting the "reader's digest" version of several major debates/philosophical questions throughout Judaism. I appreciate that he excerpts from dense Rabbinic texts and writes to a reader at an introductory level.

My one gripe about the book- and it's not really a gripe as much as an observation- is that this feels to me the kind of book that doesn't have a real audience. The kinds of people most likely to pick up a book like this aren't interested in the snapshot approach and may find the summaries basic.

Land Your Dream Career by Tori Randolph Terhune and Betsy Hays

I'm a sucker for job search books, particularly job search books aimed at college students and college graduates. This book's advice is written at a truly basic level (tips like go to class, make sure you're involved inside and outside of class) and I had to laugh when one of the writers mentioned that you don't need to read a newspaper to be a "news junkie."

I don't think this book adds anything new to the college/job search advice genre- if anything it's on the shallower and sloppier end. However, reading it did allow me to claim I finished a whole book in May- one of my new year's resolutions. So thanks for that.

Judaism's Great Debates sounds interesting to me. Maybe for my Dewey Challenge.

The Language Instinct

Pinker is a cognitive scientist (affiliated with MIT at the time the book was published but looks like the other folks in Cambridge stole him) who writes about how languages are constructed. It's funny, and he gives lots of concrete examples with an absolute eye and ear towards the lay audience, but most of the book fell somewhat out of the scope of what I'm interested in, and I guess I just don't find the nitty-gritty of linguistics on its own that fascinating.

Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things

Written more towards the educated layperson or the advanced undergraduate, Lakoff attempts to bring some philosophical rigor to a conversation about how humans construct mental categories. The book is a little bit tedious, as it discusses many experiments and many theories, but Lakoff does a great job tying themes together with sensible dividers within chapters and summaries and the beginning and end of each chapter.

Book Crush

I love books about books recommendations and I absolutely scribbled down a bunch of new books to read, but I found the recommendations themselves a little bit lacking.

Perhaps one of the problems is that there's no good divider between Young Adult and Adult; I felt that Pearl limited herself too much to books that tend to appear in the Young Adult section. For example, I was surprised that some books I imagine to have crossover appeal didn't make the list.

So Pearl's book is the beginning, but it is by no means the end!

Book Crush sounds very interesting!

An Abundance of Katherines by John Green

Put it down after 50 pages. John Green writes like an episode of Family Guy- a hasty plot and implausibly sketched characters assembled for the purpose of introducing nerdy punch lines. I read Looking for Alaska and came away with a similar letdown.

For somebody interested in reading "best of category" in Young Adult, John Green is certainly a good place to start, but it's not my idea of pleasurable reading.

Lean in by Sheryl Sandberg.

Yawn. A 150-page version of the 15 minute lecture I saw online. Fine message, but not worth my reading time.

About time I got back here. Enjoyed reading about your latest books. I can't decide whether Judaism's Great Debates interests me or not...maybe I should just find a copy and see.

About The New New Journalism - this little book had a major influence on my reading. I think about it all the time, even now years later. It's curious I don't read more of the books and authors mentioned. But the ideas still bounce around in my head, like the realization that all these nonfiction authors exploit and abuse their subjects. They have no choice, it's the only really effective way to reach these subjects in a meaningful way. Anyway, it's really nice to come across someone else who read it.

It's been hard to keep up logging books here, unfortunately, as I've been reading around so much lately without finishing much of anything, so let me get back to the ones I finished for fun.

Flagrant Conduct is my second favorite read of the year so far. No matter what happens this week with the Supreme Court decisions, this book does a terrific job in exploring how a series of happy accidents encouraged a landmark Supreme Court decision that legitimized gays.

Letters to a Young Scientist is a short read, and a wonderful book for any high school or college student considering scientist. Edward O. Wilson is a masterful writer, and while I admit a few of his "letters" were a bit too technical on entomology, I appreciate that a Harvard professor is taking time to encourage the public to explore science.

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

Read it for a work-related project. It's an underwhelming read for anybody with even a little bit of training in the social sciences, and his analyses of situations come off almost like just-so-stories, as if class differences, race differences, and culture differences were easy to understand and address. Nor did I feel this book adequately addressed "outliers" as a statistical inevitability, though other books cover that ground.

I did, however, appreciate his discussion of the role of "luck" and the convenience of history in contributing towards phenomenal success. Too often the conventional wisdom goes that Bill Gates didn't need Harvard, because he dropped out and did just fine. But Bill Gates was the right person in the right place at the right time, and he DID need the Lakeside School, the University of Washington, ISI, and the others who helped launch him on a path even before he arrived at Harvard.

Thinking Fast and SlowI by Daniel Kahneman

Started in 2012 on audiobook, finished in 2013 on audiobook, bought myself a paperback "for reference."

This book is the epitome of Malcolm Gladwell-esque readability done right- but a Noble Prize winner. It's 500 pages but it reads like butter, and the citations to the academic papers are endless, unlike Gladwell. Nothing I can say in this writeup hasn't been said before, so let me just join the choruses of praise.

Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel

I picked up Fun Home the week it was published, as I read a favorable writeup in the New York Times Book review and it was about things I like (memoir, gay women, and graphic novels.) At the time Fun Home was housed in my bookstore's "gay and lesbian" section, right next to erotica titles.

It's been wonderful to see Alison Bechdel rise in recognition, as her writing is so wide-sweeping that it doesn't appeal just to a gay/lesbian market or just to a graphic novel/fanzine market, or just to a memoir market. Are You My Mother? swings hard at questions of identity, self, and perception.

I must confess that I gobbled this up so quickly that I didn't really have time on a first pass to pay attention to the way Bechdel merges the graphic novel narrative form with her content, or how she aligns the narrative- including dream sequences- to tell a story, a meta-story, and a meta-meta-story. This is absolutely a piece I'll have to come back to, but the joy of reading it was enough for now.

Hmm... i hadn't put together that Thinking Fast and Slow and Outliers are from the same author. I've heard about Outliers from people I know in RL, but based on your comments, it seems that thinking fast and slow is a better book.

Oh, sorry, they are not from the same author. But if you are going to go for a work of readable "how do humans behave?" work then Thinking Fast and Slow is the gold standard par none and all other books are okay.

...hmmm....sorry, weird mistake. I saw Gladwell's name in the review for Thinking Fast and Slow and somehow took him as the author. Maybe I was thinking too fast (or not thinking enough...)

Why Waco?

Interesting for Branch Davidian history and theology, but I felt the book needed some better editing, particularly in the later chapters.

Free to Learn

Professor Peter Gray is on a mission to free students from "coercive" schooling by arguing for the educational and social value of a child-centered education (that is, an environment in which students learn entirely without school.)

I'm kind of sympathetic to the point of view, but I get frustrated with books that call for a radical overhaul of public education instead of books that remind parents of the importance of free time and unstructured learning. In a sense, I feel this book throws out the baby with the bathwater.

FINALLY Split Level Dykes to Watch Out For is waiting for me at my library. Have to read everything Bechdel writes!

She's great. I bequeathed my copy of The Essential Dykes to Watch out for to a friend. Sometimes I miss the copy- it's a time zone away from me- but I can always go visit her- and it!

The Book of My Lives by Alekksandar Hemon

Picked this up because I read about it on NPR. It's a collection of essays about Bosnia and Chicago, and it's darkly funny.

An entertaining read, but not my favorite- I know Hemon is first and foremost a writer of fiction, I found his memoirist self to be overly self-involved and uninterested in providing context to wartime Bosnia. (Perhaps the latter is my fault, I am relatively uninformed about Eastern European history over the past few decades.) However, Hemon's also capable of packing a punch within a few enchanting sentences or delicious paragraphs- makes me think I should have started with his fiction first.

Returning more unread books to the library today. Sorry guys- I don't have time for you! They are:

Akira by Kashuhiro Otomo- was digging the idea of reading another graphic novel, and this one got a strong endorsement from a friend.

Naked Statistics by Charles Wheelan- I enjoyed reading Naked Economics once upon a time.

The Chosen by Jerome Karabel- it's perhaps my third attempt at this book, I want to read it for many reasons, but I still can't make my way through it. I highly recommend it for those of you who like history, sociology, and American higher education and college admissions.

The Shape of the River bookends nicely with The Chosen to give another account of college admissions and the public benefits therein. Interesting for anybody who wants to read a quantitative analysis of Affirmative Action and similar race-sensitive policies, I've read it before so I got it from the library as a refresher.

Seeing What Others Don't by Gary Klein. I'm kind of taken by pop psychology, this one I can pass on, I think.

To The End of June: The Intimate Life of American Foster Care by Cris Beam

Emotional and intimately portrayed, but I didn't feel a connection to the characters of the foster teenagers being chronicled- perhaps this lack of connection I felt was due in part to these teens' inability to find long-lasting connections in their lives.

MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood

What's not to like about a dystopian scifi action-adventure romance? It's less poetic than either of its predecessors- Oryx and Crake or The Year of the Flood but it does a good job in uniting the stories that the earlier books in the MaddAddam universe began.