Random Thoughts

Oracle of the Dead

Book: John Maddox Roberts, SPQR XII: Oracle of the Dead (2009)

This is the latest installment in Roberts' mystery series set at the end of the Roman republic. It's good and I recommend it, but people new to the series might want to start at the very beginning. It's certainly been interesting to me to see the character development, and I wonder if people new to the series might really be missing out on something if they start here.

Confucius Lives Next Door

Book: T.R. Reid, Confucius Lives Next Door: What Living in the East Teaches Us About Living in the West (1999)

What are "Asian values"? T.R. Reid and his family spent five years living in Japan for his job as head of the Washington Post's Tokyo bureau. This book is his explication of how Japan has developed as a nation built on a Confucian model and how that contrasts with Western society. Essentially, Japanese society has been set up to form its members in a Confucian milieu, and the Japanese then perpetuate that formation through their actions. Most enchanting to me was the chapter devoted to Yodobashi No. 6 Elementary School, the Japanese grade school where his two daughters studied for three years. Certainly Japanese education is not the wholly rote experience I had thought it was. I highly recommend this book for those interested in Japan and Asia, and also for those who would like to see how a successful society could be organized in many ways better than the U.S.

Script and Scribble

Book: Kitty Burns Florey, Script and Scribble: The Rise and Fall of Handwriting (2009)

This is a popular book about the rise and fall of handwriting in the U.S., wonderfully exemplified by the author's own history. Kitty Burns Florey, the author of Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog, has again mined her childhood education, this time to show the use and teaching of handwriting. The book's most illuminating chapter is "The Golden Age of Penmanship," discussing Platt Rogers Spencer's method of penmanship and its subsequent debasement. In the book's final two chapters, Florey chats about the importance of handwriting in a digital age and on how the teaching of handwriting could be improved. 

I found this book to be inspirational--I certainly want to improve my handwriting now! Not to the beautiful but excessive level of Spencerian penmanship, but at least to the italic handwriting that Florey recommends. And some of the handwriting examples provided are truly beautiful; I wish there had been more of them. The book's weakest chapter is its discussion of graphology, the "science" of handwriting analysis, which could have been dropped without real loss.

Polyglot

Book: Kató Lomb, Polyglot: How I Learn Languages (2008)

I actually finished this a while ago, but never finished my draft entry for this book. The author was a Hungarian translator who worked in 16 different languages (fluent in five, and performing written translations in another 11). Her book is an account of her personal history in learning languages and her thoughts on the language learning process. It's an interesting read, perhaps more so if you're now interested in learning languages but didn't quite do so well with that in school.

The book can be purchased through Lulu.com but is also available online as a pdf on the website of TESL-EJ, the publisher of this edition.

My Life With the Saints

Book: James Martin, S.J., My Life With the Saints (2006)

James Martin has written an entertaining and thoughtful series of reflections on the lives of saints whom he has discovered in his time as a Jesuit. They are not hagiographies in the traditional sense, a straightforward biography of the lives of saints. Rather, each chapter has a biography of the saints intertwined with stories from Fr. Martin's own life, showing how he came to know each of these saints and appreciate their examples, if not their workings, in his life.

Not all of the saints in the book are canonized saints (although I'm sure the canonization process has started for those who aren't), which I found interesting and valuable--in a way, it makes them seem less distant and more real. I also appreciated being introduced to people whom I had never before encountered in this way. Probably the one person whom I least expected to encounter in the book was Pedro Arrupe, the former Father-General of the Jesuits, and Fr. Martin's chapter does make me want to learn more.

From the book, here is a meditation popularly attributed to Pedro Arrupe:

Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, than falling in love in a quite absolute, final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you will do with your evenings, how you will spend your weekends, what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.

Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.

A talk by Fr. Martin, Laughing with the Saints, can be seen on YouTube.

The Way is Made by Walking

Book #15 of 2008: Arthur Paul Boers, The Way is Made by Walking: A Pilgrimage Along the Camino de Santiago (2007)

OK, this is really pathetic. Out of a goal of reading 50 books in 2008, I read 15 books from cover-to-cover (note that none of these books were books I had read before; I did re-read some books I had read before, but I'm not including those in this count).

This book is Arthur Paul Boers' reflection upon his walking of the Camino de Santiago (Way of Saint James), the famous pilgrimage route in Spain. Although it has some recounting of his daily travel, it is not a travelogue. Boers explores what pilgrimages are and what it means to be a pilgrim. It is an easily-read book aimed at a non-Catholic audience (Boers himself is a Mennonite pastor). The most interesting of his reflections was his reflection on how the church does not serve pilgrims. By the end of my reading, I too wanted to walk the Camino.

(An interesting and related book that I read much, but not all, of is by anthropologist Nancy Louise Frey, Pilgrim Stories: On and Off the Road to Santiago: Journeys Along an Ancient Way in Modern Spain (1998). Frey's much denser book is based on her interviews of pilgrims and also goes into the history of the Camino and the institutional support of the Camino.)

My Life on the Run

Book #14 of 2008: Bart Yasso, My Life on the Run: The Wit, Wisdom and Insights of a Road-Racing Icon (2008)

I picked up this book because Terri reviewed it favorably. Bart Yasso is Runner's World magazine's "running ambassador." I had heard of "Yasso 800s" as a training aid for marathon runners, but I didn't know anything about him, so I found his autobiography quite interesting. Interestingly, Yasso wasn't a runner in school but turned to running as an adult, in part to overcome his drinking and pot smoking and also to compensate for a poor relationship with his father. I recommend this book even if you're not a runner, just because it's so entertaining. Yasso's status of "running ambassador" meant that he ran in (and was volunteered for) many off-beat races (burro racing, naked racing, mountain racing), and his description of these is often hilarious.

Happy 25th Birthday Alanna!

Wow, I was looking at Tamora Pierce's blog and saw that it's now been 25 years since Alanna: The First Adventure was released. Tamora Pierce is certainly one of my favorite authors, and I've read all of her Tortall books (but not the Circle of Magic ones--I should try reading those). It's a bit mind-boggling for me to think that I've been reading her stories since 4th or 5th grade, and am very much looking forward to the spring of 2009 when Bloodhound is to be released.

Arrest-Proof Yourself

Book #13 of 2008: Dale C. Carson and Wes Dunham, Arrest-Proof Yourself: An Ex-Cop Reveals How Easy It Is for Anyone to Get Arrested, How Even a Single Arrest Could Ruin Your Life, and What to Do If the Police Get In Your Face (2007)

This is a great book. Dale Carson, a criminal-defense lawyer in Florida, has written what is in many ways an etiquette manual for police encounters and avoiding them. His book isn't focused on teaching you to "know your rights" (although there is some of that). It is focused on teaching you on how to behave so that you aren't stopped by the police and then how to behave if you are. What makes this book unique is the author's perspective. Before he became a criminal-defense lawyer, Dale Carson spent more than 20 years in law enforcement as a Miami police officer and FBI agent.

Carson's objective is to help you avoid being arrested because being arrested can effectively sentence you to what he refers to as an "electronic plantation," where your life is in many ways as restricted as if you had actually been convicted of a crime. The first way you avoid being arrested is by not getting stopped by the police. He describes actions and behaviors that are more likely than others to attract the attention of the police. He also provides a psychological portrait of police and typical clueless populations and how they interact. If you are stopped by the police, then the second way you avoid being arrested is by not acting out and by acting humble and cooperative (although cooperative does not mean letting the police do whatever they want to you). He also details ways the police may try to provoke you into acting out and how to deal with those.

This may sound simple, but Carson presents this in a manner that is engaging, informative, entertaining, unsettling, and disturbing. If you think it impossible that you could end up on the wrong side of the police, Carson wants you to think again. There is a compassion to his words that likely stems from his experience as a criminal-defense lawyer. But as I think he would acknowledge, the people most in need of his book are probably the ones least likely to read it. 

Here are two interviews with the author:

• Harper's Magazine interview with Dale C. Carson
• FHM Online interview with Dale C. Carson

Spark

Book #12 of 2008: John J. Ratey, M.D., Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain (2008)

I picked up this book after seeing it reviewed favorably on Lou Schuler's Male Pattern Fitness blog. The author, a psychiatrist, has a short message: Exercise is good for you, not just your body but also your mind. That is, exercise has a positive effect on how your brain functions. I enjoyed the book and would recommend it, but with two reservations. The first is that parts of the book may have more detail about biochemical functions of the brain than the reader may be interested in (these parts can easily be skimmed or skipped). The second is that, as the book's author notes, almost all the research described studied the effects of aerobic exercise on the brain, so there isn't much about the effect of anaerobic exercise (note that there are good practical reasons for this). So if you're looking for information about the effect of strength training on the brain, there isn't much there (but it looks potentially promising, and you should do it anyways).

One thing I found really interesting was the book's first chapter describing a new type of P.E. instruction. For people (like me) who were less than enamored with P.E. while going to school, it sounded like something I might have liked then. I certainly like the idea of it now. For more information about this new approach, go to the PE4Life website. I hope it succeeds and spreads.