Monday, December 8, 2014

What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell

I grabbed What the Dog Saw from my bookshelf just as I was leaving for the airport. Malcolm Gladwell's books typically make for some nice flight reading, and from what I remember from reading What the Dog Saw many years ago, I thought that it would be just as good. Even though my flight was only to Copenhagen, I managed to read this one in one weekend. Granted I did skip some of the more insufferable material, but nobody can blame you for that if its the second time you are reading a Gladwell.

What the Dog Saw is essentially a collection of essays published in The New Yorker, and it definitely reads like it. Chapters are independent pieces, so taking a few minutes to let it all sink in after each story is a good idea. You might feel that you have learned something, if you just hunker it down in a few nights, but you won't remember much afterwards.

Malcolm Gladwell always makes for satisfying reading, but it's not really clear to me how I should approach his work. For pure entertainment value, you can just hop through the books feeling somewhat superior but not really learn anything new. But if you go back and try to meticulously wade through all of the information, you'll always run into some wishful thinking on the authors part and some poorly handled source material. I am not saying that this applies to everything in here, but there is just enough of it to always come out feeling a little bit cheated.

That is not to say that people should avoid reading Gladwell. The stories in What the Dog Saw are great if you always remember that they were first published in a news paper and not in book form. This way you won't feel cheated when you read about Ketchup or Cesar Milan, subjects that should only be acceptable in magazines. I want something more from books, even if it is a paperback, popcorn novel heavy on the kitchen psychology.

Friday, December 5, 2014

Woody Guthrie: A Life by Joe Klein

It might not be easy to explain why I became so fascinated with Woody Guthrie in the first place. He might be Dylan before Bob Dylan, the original hobo musician riding empty cargo trains across the US, but it doesn't really explain why I (and apparently many other people) are drawn to his music and life. One of Guthrie's friends wonders out loud at the end of the biography why people most often ask him about Woody and not the other, even more brilliant, musicians he worked with. Its a small mystery, one that is not completely understood through this otherwise solid piece.

Most people might not have heard the name of Woody Guthrie, but most likely know him by reputation. Remember those cartoons of a ragged traveller hopping trains through rural America? A fiddle or a mandolin strapped around his back and a bag of possessions hung on a stick over his shoulder. That is essentially who Woody Guthrie was at one point in his life and somehow that character has entered the national consciousness of western countries, especially the United States.

In addition to that travelling hillbilly, Woody was many things. An avid reader of just about anything, a brilliant (but not very productive) writer of novels, a painter of storefront signs and a communist. A small man that could charm his way through any situation, but also a capricious and callous man. His family dispersed around the country in the dust bowl era, with only his first wife staying behind in Oklahoma. All of this is a wonderful story not only because Woody is such a fascinating persona, but also because his story is as much the story of the birth of modern day America.

For the most part, Klein does a decent job with the vast amount of material. Woody Guthrie: A Life is somewhere between a facts-only biography and a memoir, but it does sometimes become somewhat tedious to read. Because Klein wants to keep things historically accurate, he is unable to bring enough color to some secondary characters. This is most likely because not that much is known of the many people that entered and promptly exited Woody's life.

Woody's life is as much a history lesson of America as it is of western music. Folk music was not supposed to enter the mainstream. Most of the songs had been sung in churches in the 19th century, or even in the cotton fields of the South. The Dust Bowl and Union activities in the United States are things that I wish I knew more about after reading this account. Pick it up for the description of a legend, but stay for the making of modern society

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

The Cuckoo's Calling by J. K. Rowling

By the time I read The Cuckoo's Calling, everybody knew that there was no Robert Galbraith and that the actual author of this detective thriller was in fact J. K. Rowling. On one hand, I completely understand Rowling's decision to work under a pen name. The Harry Potter saga is the best known book series of the last 50 years. Publishing The Cuckoo's Calling under her own name would have felt almost silly. Rowling would have been left standing in her own sizable shadow.

On the other hand, The Cuckoo's Calling is so good that there should have been no need to hide her identity. The characters are well developed and the plot is exhilarating and contemporary. The prose is vivid and concise. I have no trouble recommending The Cuckoo's Calling for anyone looking for a nice detective story or just a nice description of modern day London.

Once again, I won't go into plot details, partly because I just don't remember the names of the characters anymore. A supermodel falls off the balcony of her home. A retired soldier is paid to investigate her death for signs of foul play. The elements of the story are fairly standard, but they do not really feel that way at any point of the book. Once again, I will credit Rowling's ability to conjure complex situations in few words with some of the success.

It should be mentioned, though, that The Cuckoo's Calling is not exactly high literature. It is not Great Expectations, and it might not even be Red Harvest. But in it's own category, detective fiction, Rowling does a flawless job of creating a compelling and altogether delightful read. As a bonus, if you don't enjoy the main character, just imagine that it is Harry Potter during a stifling middle age crisis.

Tuesday, December 2, 2014

The End of Absence by Michael Harris

With the current backlog of books to be reviewed, I'm having trouble remembering the exact order in which I read them. The End of Absence, a perfectly nice book, is one of those that I am unable to accurately pinpoint on my literature timeline. Did it come before or after The Cuckoo's Calling? I really don't remember. This does not mean, however, that The End of Absence is forgettable or poor. I quite enjoyed reading it, with a few minor exceptions, and felt that I genuinely learned something new.

I guess it was perfectly suiting that I decided to buy The End of Absence after reading a positive review of it in The Economist. A few years ago, I would have had to order it from another country. Now I could just download it to my Kindle with a few taps of my thumbs. The End of Absence is, in a way, the story of that change in the way we live our lives.

It is something that has affected almost everyone's life in the western world. We now have access to most of the world's knowledge everywhere we go. Smartphones help us connect with friends, family, experts and professionals at every moment. The titular End of Absence is exactly that. We are never farther than a few feet from devices that consume our attention better than anything before them.

The best thing about The End of Absence is that it is not a cautionary tale. Michael Harris does a wonderful job of not taking a stand. After all, technological progress is something that we can't stop. We can't turn the clock back to a time before Smartphones or Kindles or Facebook. Progress is a one way street.

The subtitle doesn't do the book any real justice, though. There is no "reclaiming" proposed in this book, the closest that Harris gets to suggesting countermeasures is asking the reader to pause for a moment every now and then to remember the different ways that mobile technology has impacted their life. Has it always been for the best? Are you happier than you were before?