Zoë's 2014 Challenge, Part 2

I think it's time! This has been a very slow reading year for me, but I think I can finally move on to my second thread, at the end of September :/

Copying the rest from my first thread:

I have various goals for the year, including the never-ending attempt to get my TBR pile under control. I've made a list, and will attempt to read at least 4 of these categories each month, which will still leave room for a couple of new impulse picks if I remain on pace for 75. We'll see how it goes.

Asterisks indicate rereads.

Books Read

January
1. *Dealing with Dragons
2. *Searching for Dragons
3. Of Mice and Men
4. Selected Folktales/Ausgewählte Märchen
5. *Calling on Dragons
6. A History of the Hellenistic World

February
7. The Book of Negroes
8. Crazy Town: The Rob Ford Story
9. I Am Pusheen the Cat
10. The Year That Trembled

March
11. Frederica
12. Zombie Baseball Beatdown
13. What Is History?
14. Re-thinking History

April
15. Hellenism in Late Antiquity
16. 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed
17. Stronger
18. The Song of Achilles

May
19. Lullabies for Little Criminals
20. Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
21. Do Babies Matter?
22. Bridge of Birds
23. A Long Way Home
24. The Snowden Files

June
25. Fevre Dream
26. Before the Dawn

July
27. I Shall Be Near to You
28. Arabella
29. Ca' d'Zan: Ringling's Venetian Palace
30. The Power of Habit
31. Fluent in 3 Months

August
32. The Punishment of Gaza
33. The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity
34. The Great Gatsby
35. The Girl Who Was Saturday Night
36. Persepolis II: The Story of a Return

September
37. The Book of Strange New Things
38. Positive: A Memoir
39. Millennial Money
40. How We Learn
41. The Diviners

October
42. Palace of Spies
43. The Swap
44. A Path Appears
45. Being Audrey Hepburn
46. Without You, There Is No Us

November
47. The Martian
48. Losing Our Way
49. The 13th Gift
50. Of Monsters and Madness
51. Color Song

December
52. The Wonder of All Things
53. Dataclysm
54. Marry Smart
55. Dangerous Deceptions
56. *The Rosie Project
57. The Rosie Effect

Here are my goal categories:

Off the Shelf
Old ER
GeoCAT (monthly geographic theme reads in the 2014 Category Challenge)
Modern Classics (Canadian/American/Other)
Ancient Classics or Ancient History
Books I Really Should Have Read (from a list of 50 that I made for my 101 in 1001 challenge)

Bonus:
New Dewey Decimal Challenge Category
History/Science/Religion Group Reads (including past selections that I just haven't read yet)

I'm hoping that this will be enough structure to guide my reading in a productive way, combined with enough flexibility that I won't feel trapped.

I also have a list of specific books that I'd like to read for the TBR Challenge.

TBR Challenge Picks
A Little Princess
The Handmaid's Tale
Shades of Grey
The Name of the Wind
The Trial
The Gatekeepers
The Girl Who Married a Lion: and other tales from Africa
Brotherhood of Kings
The Man Who Deciphered Linear B
The Book of Negroes
To Say Nothing of the Dog
Visible Language

TBR Challenge Alternates
Anne of the Island
Babel No More
The Sisters Brothers
The Song of Achilles
Among Others
The Most Human Human
Stones into Schools
Fixing my Gaze
Pump Six and Other Stories
Voodoo Queen
I've Got a Home in Glory Land
Across the Endless River

And I should probably list my (embarrassingly large) collection of old ER books. It feels like as soon as I catch up on one overdue book, I win three more.

Old ER Books to Read
Across the Endless River
The Human Genome
The Voluntourist
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
The Ageless Generation
The Year That Trembled
What Makes Olga Run?

New ER Books to Read
A Long Way Home
The Future, Declassified
Dataclysm
Saving Normal

Acquisitions and Discards

This list is rather out-of-date at the moment....

Acquisitions

Personal Reading

January
Frederica
Cotillion (already read)
The Convenient Marriage
The Reluctant Widow
The Arabian Nights
Sindbad and Other Stories from the Arabian Nights
Before the Dawn

February
Crazy Town
The Snow Child (already read)
Jane-Emily and Witches' Children (already partially read)
You Are an Ironman (already read)
The Translator
Ca' d'Zan: Ringling's Venetian Palace
Grounds and Gardens: The John and Mable Museum of Art
A Museum Once Forgotten: Ribith of the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art

March
Marry Smart
Venetia
I Like Giving

April
Thanks for the Feedback
Stronger
Water for Elephants
The Ladies of Grace Adieu

School-Related

January
John Lydus and the Roman Past (already read)
Cicero On Divination etc. (re-buy)
The Greeks and the Irrational (re-buy)
Easy Ways to Enlarge Your German Vocabulary
Sui Segni Celesti
Cicero: A Portrait
The Matter of the Gods
Literacy & Power in the Ancient World
The Landmark Herodotus
Classical Athens and the Delphic Oracle
The Universe, the Gods and Men
Astrology in Roman Law and Politics
The Age of Justinian
Prokopios: The Secret History, with related texts

February
Berossos and Manetho, Introduced and Translated
Aetna and the Moon
Memory and the Mediterranean
Ruling the Later Roman Empire

March
Chrétiens et haruspices
What Is History?
ISAW catalogue: current
ISAW catalogue: Nubia
ISAW catalogue: Dura-Europos
ISAW catalogue: Nomads?
Rethinking History
The World of Late Antiquity
The Archaeology of Knowledge
1177 BC
In Defense of History
Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity

April
Scribes and Scholars (new edition)
Scholars of Byzantium

Discards

January
Eats, Shites and Leaves
The Vampire Diaries: The Return: Nightfall
The Dress Lodger
50 Simple Things Kids Can Do to Save the Earth
Bookstore Tourism
Generation Freedom
My Freshman Year
1000 Places to See Before You Die

May
Inkheart
Eat and Run

July
Our Kind of People
The Spindlers
The Rule of Four
The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls
Emerging Arab Voices
The Piano Shop on the Left Bank
The Virgin Suicides
American Gods (Mark owns another copy)
Interworld (Mark owns another copy)

Monthly Goals Achieved

This one is also out-of-date, but I'll work on updating it now.

January (4)
Modern Classics: Of Mice and Men
Off the Shelf: Selected Folktales/Ausgewählte Märchen
Ancient Classics/Ancient History: A History of the Hellenistic World
GeoCAT: The Book of Negroes (actually completed Feb. 2)

February (1)
Old ER: The Year That Trembled

March (0)

April (2.5)
Ancient Classics/Ancient History: Hellenism in Late Antiquity
Ancient Classics/Ancient History: 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed
Off the Shelf: The Song of Achilles

May (2)
Off the Shelf: Lullabies for Little Criminals
Off the Shelf: Do Babies Matter?
Off the Shelf: Bridge of Birds

June (1)
Off the Shelf: Fevre Dream
Bonus (History, Science and Religion): Before the Dawn

July
(check Dewey categories)

August (2)
Ancient Classics/Ancient History: The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity
Modern Classics: The Great Gatsby
(check Dewey category for The Punishment of Gaza)

September

Ambitious new thread, Zoe!

Hi there, Zoe! :)

Hi _Zoe_!

Lots of good books, including one of my favorite Georgette Heyers, Arabella.

Happy New Thread, Zoe!

Thanks for visiting, everyone!



41. The Diviners by Libba Bray.

I've had mixed experience with Libba Bray's work: I really enjoyed A Great and Terrible Beauty; I think it was the book that got me back to reading YA as an adult. But I hated the sequel, because it was based on a type of puzzle that Bray obviously didn't understand, which ended up revealing the hidden bad guy way too early in the book in a way that left zero room for doubt. I haven't even read the third book in the trilogy. But I did read Beauty Queens, which was interesting and readable but way too over-the-top for my tastes (and this despite the fact that I was amused by its basic premise of beauty queens stranded on a desert island).

So, that brings us to The Diviners. I'd heard (probably from Nora?) that Bray's writing had improved a lot, and it's true. So I picked up this book because the 1920s New York setting was appealing to me, and I wanted something relatively light. The only problem is that the protagonist started off extremely unlikeable, almost intolerable. I considered putting the book down after about 120 pages because I just didn't want to read any more about her selfish, irresponsible behaviour. But I decided that I'd invested enough time already that I should keep going a bit more, and fortunately once the plot picked up Evie was too busy trying to solve the supernatural mystery to be quite so obnoxious as before. So in the end, I actually enjoyed the book quite a bit. I'm even inclined to read the sequel, if not immediately.

In other news, I'm getting really tired of Amazon not stocking specific books. It's always been my go-to place for books and book information, but now that I keep being forced to check B&N and other sites for new, popular books like the sequel to The Diviners, I wonder whether this is going to have a long-term impact on my habits. I hope so, because I'm really not impressed with Amazon's tactics in this dispute.

>9 _Zoe_: I'm glad you liked it, in the end!

>10 norabelle414: Thank you for encouraging me to read it!

>9 _Zoe_: - When I saw *The Diviners*, I thought you had been referring to the classic Canadian novel by Margaret Lawrence. I hadn't realized there was another book with that same title

>12 jessibud2: I probably should be reading more Canadian classics! One day.

Happy new thread, Zoe! I'm having a slow reading year too so I feel your pain. Glad your latest read was moderately good. :)

Ahhh, why is there never more time in life? I spent an exhausting weekend writing a funding application while travelling to Cape Cod for my cousin's wedding, and now I just want to sleep and read fluffy novels. This means I'll get further behind on future deadlines, and the whole cycle will repeat again....

On the bright side, I can now post about two of those fluffy novels:



42. Palace of Spies by Sarah Zettel. This is a ridiculously over-the-top story of an orphan who gets caught up in intrigue at the 18th-century English court. Kicked out of her uncle's home for refusing to marry an obnoxious young man who assaulted her at a recent party, she turns to the mysterious gentleman she met at that same party, who introduces a scheme to disguise her as a recently-deceased attendant to the princess, from which position she can report on the doings at court. It's a completely implausible scenario, especially since she's interacting with people who actually knew the deceased attendant well, but it's actually a lot of fun. I'm definitely planning to read the sequel when it's released, and I may look for some of Zettel's other books too.

43. The Swap by Megan Shull. This is another one with a ridiculous premise: a middle school boy and girl somehow swap bodies and have to figure out how to live in each other's lives. Before the swap actually happened, I was unimpressed by the super-stereotypical boy and girl lives: the guys all talk in almost incomprehensible bro-speak, and Jack is a super athlete whose father pushes him really hard so that he can eventually play in the NHL, while Ellie is dealing with an incredibly obnoxious former best friend who's turned into a classic mean girl.

But once the switch actually happened and the story picked up, I actually found the book really compelling, and read it within a day. All the characters were fleshed out a bit more, and turned into real people who I could relate to and care about (with the exception of the horrible mean-girl former friend, but I was still satisfied with how things turned out with her). It's a fun premise to explore, and I think Shull does it really well. I really enjoyed spending time with these characters.

A belated review of an earlier book:



40. Millennial Money by Patrick O'Shaughnessy

If you picked up this book on the strength of the O’Shaughnessy name, you may be disappointed to realize that the author is not the founder of O’Shaughnessy Asset Management, but his millennial-aged son. However, that shouldn’t deter you from reading what turned out to be one of the most interesting investment books I’ve ever encountered, especially if you fit into the target demographic of young people with a long investment horizon ahead of you.

What makes this book so interesting is that it’s not only about specific investment advice, but about the larger issues that affect our investments. The first section addresses larger economic trends, including the inflation associated with the absence of a gold standard, to argue that young investors need to completely rethink the definition of “risk” in an investment. The risk isn’t crazy fluctuations in the short-term, but rather the loss of purchasing power due to steady inflation over the years. On a similar note, O’Shaughnessy argues that individual investors are actually better able than fund managers to achieve good returns over the long term, because we can disregard short-term fluctuations in our own portfolios, while fund managers are more concerned about keeping their jobs by avoiding any terrible but ultimately irrelevant losses in a single year or even quarter. O’Shaughnessy also says that we should take a global approach in our investing, citing the example of Japan in the 1990s to show that even the most successful-seeming industrial economy can be susceptible to devastating collapse.

The second section of the book presents the more typical discussion of a specific investing approach that the author recommends. O’Shaughnessy is not particularly in favour of index funds; while he supports the idea of applying strict rules in purchasing stocks, he doesn’t believe that purchasing more of whatever happens to be biggest is effective in the long term, since the largest companies ultimately tend to underperform. Instead, he presents a checklist of five other criteria that he uses for screening stocks: stakeholder yield greater than 5%, return on invested capital greater than 30%, operating cash flow greater than reported profits, enterprise value to free cash flow less than ten times, and six-month momentum in the top three quarters of the market.

At first, I was a bit annoyed by some parts of his list because he uses some more obscure metrics that aren’t trivial for the average investor to check on the average free stock site. It’s easy to find something like the price-to-earnings ratio, but not so much enterprise value-to-free cash flow. O’Shaughnessy recommends various websites that we can use, including some that require payment, and I was all set to reject paid tools that I figured would be priced for wealthy investment bankers. Then I realized that the one he recommended most strongly, and that can apparently duplicate his entire strategy, only costs something like $25 per year, so I really can’t complain.

There is one part of his book where I think he gives terrible advice to the average person, when he tries to reduce big-money investments to more modest amounts: he suggests taking a $10,000 yearly investment, breaking it into 2-4 chunks to invest every 3-6 months, and then buying the best 10-20 stocks (based on his screening list) in each period. Trading costs at discount brokerages have admittedly come down a lot in the past years, but buying 10-20 different stocks with a $2,500 investment is still going to eat up a significant percentage of your money just in trading fees. Even with a modest $5 trading cost, you would be losing 2-4% of your investment to trading fees. Um, no thanks. That strategy was obviously designed for people dealing with much larger sums of money, where the trading fees would actually be negligible; the average person can still follow the basic approach, but would have to make far fewer purchases each year.

Anyway, the final third of the book deals with the sort of material that I see more often in popular psychology books: descriptions of various studies that explain why people make bad decisions in the stock market. We get caught up in market excitement and fear, so that we buy and sell at exactly the wrong times. I was familiar with this basic concept, but I enjoy reading about specific evidence like a study of twins showing that certain investing biases are actually genetic. This section was interesting even beyond the investment component.

Overall, then, I’m really glad that I read this book. You should obviously do your own thinking and not just follow the author blindly, but there’s plenty to think about here. O’Shaughnessy sums up his advice in three concise sentences—go global, be different, and get out of your own way—and I was pleasantly surprised to find that the explanations of these principles actually merit a book-length treatment. Besides being a helpful investing guide, this is a really interesting book to read.

>17 _Zoe_:

Millennial Money does sound interesting, but I don't want to read it now that you've summed it up so nicely! :)

The parameters O'Shaughnessy uses for choosing stocks sound too complicated for little old me. For fun, I buy a small amount of stock about four times a year through a company which has a straight $7 per trade fee. However, I only buy interest-giving stocks so, the longer I hold each stock, the less I've lost on the trading fee. In addition, I re-invest the dividends in more stock shares at no charge. The amount of stock I do this with is really small and no more than I could afford to lose completely if the market tanked. I also know not to sell at the bottom of the market. :)

All in all, I think the stock market can be fun and a useful investment tool. People who do their own investing need to educate themselves about the market before putting money in and learn to never to put all their eggs in one basket.

>18 SqueakyChu:

- SqueakyChu!! Where have you been?? Haven't seen you in these parts for a dog's age. Everything ok??

(sorry for the hijack here, Zoe)

>18 SqueakyChu: Hehe, I'm glad my description was helpful :)

To be clear, I do think it makes sense for regular people to buy stocks (and I'm a big fan of dividends!), I just don't think it should be done as 40-80 individual transactions each year, unless you're investing so much money that hundreds of dollars in fees are insignificant. My personal approach was to start with index funds so I'd have some initial diversification, and then buy maybe two or three individual stocks in a year. So if I were inclined to follow O'Shaughnessy's approach (or any other set of criteria), I'd do it only once per year and choose just the two or three stocks that were highest-ranked at that time.

>19 jessibud2: Don't worry, you're welcome to hijack! I'm just happy to see a bit of life in this thread ;)

44. A Path Appears by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn.

I really enjoyed Kristof and WuDunn’s previous book, Half the Sky, so as soon as I saw that this new book existed I knew that I wanted to read it. I had high expectations, and they managed to meet them. The book is basically about how to make a difference in the world, both in the direct sense of addressing social issues like poverty and hunger and in the broader sense of creating opportunities and hope. Their arguments are supported by evidence, and there are plenty of interesting descriptions of scientific studies, but they also include anecdotes about individuals to maintain the human interest factor.

By the time I finished the second page, I had already been moved to tears once and had thought of a way that I personally could have an impact. The book as a whole is just so interesting and inspiring. My only complaint is that there’s such a density of information, divided into discrete sections rather than a continuous narrative, that it can almost start to blur together. It’s still an easy read, but I couldn’t recount all the details that I learned here.

The book as a whole has three parts: the first deals with the sorts of interventions that are most effective for helping individuals in different circumstances and at different times of life, the second deals with the organizational and structural issues of providing aid, and the third deals with the effects of giving on the giver rather than the recipient. All of these are fascinating, but I found the second particularly striking, partially because it was the least familiar to me. Here, Kristof and WuDunn argue that it might be beneficial for charities to be run more like effective businesses, and that for-profit enterprises also have the potential to do a lot of good. The current trend among donors is to support charities with the absolute lowest overhead costs, but Kristof and WuDunn argue that this prevents the charities from having as much impact as they could, because they skimp on things like marketing and research and are unable to grow large enough to achieve efficiencies of scale.

This is worthwhile reading for anyone interested in making a difference in the world.

Addendum: I saw a review of this in the New York Times yesterday that seemed to me to miss the point a bit. It was trying to be creative and fun, or something, by joking at the beginning and end that you wouldn't want to show this book to your teenagers because they might be so inspired to make a difference that they'd give up on a profitable career. But Kristof and WuDunn are extremely pragmatic throughout, and they actually state explicitly that people who become wealthy with successful business careers can actually end up making more of a difference than people who pursue careers with non-profits, because the wealthy business people then have enormous financial resources that they can use to support worthy causes. The authors focus constantly on what really works, even if it doesn't fit the classic charity paradigm.

45. Being Audrey Hepburn by Mitchell Kriegman

I always enjoy a good Cinderella story, so I picked up this book even though I have no particular interest in fashion or Audrey Hepburn. It’s the story of a girl with a rough New Jersey upbringing who tries on Audrey’s little black dress at the Met one night, abetted by a friend who works there, and then finds herself caught up in a socialite gala taking place in the galleries. The friend from the Met is also a very talented aspiring fashion designer, who modifies some classic dresses belonging to Lisbeth’s grandmother, so that Lisbeth can continue pretending to be a wealthy socialite and mingling among high society.

This was the perfect beach read, and I tore through most of the book with great enjoyment, despite not being familiar with all the designers and movie references that appeared constantly. I couldn’t help cheering for Lisbeth, wanting this poor girl from New Jersey to succeed in life and achieve her dreams, no matter what those dreams were. It was only toward the very end that her absolute selfishness really started to bother me. I could understand that she would ignore texts and messages from her mother, an angry alcoholic who made Lisbeth’s home life pretty miserable, but there was really no excuse for treating her best friend the same way as she got caught up in the whirlwind of days in the Hamptons. I would have liked to see more focus on Jess, the best friend and designer whose amazing creations made possible everything that Lisbeth was doing; I would have liked to celebrate Jess’s triumph more fully, instead of rushing back to her fashion show almost as an afterthought and barely making it on time.

An over-the-top revelation near the end of the book added more drama and distracted a bit from Lisbeth’s other issues, but I didn’t feel like that really helped the story; I would have preferred to see various issues resolved rather than ignored. Basically, I wanted the story to be more of a celebration of talent overcoming the odds, but instead it sort of degenerated into excess drama before eventually trailing off.

That was only the end, though. For the vast majority of the story I found this a very compelling read, and it was exactly what I needed to take along on vacation. I would consider reading more books by this author in the future.

>19 jessibud2:

All is well. Tonight I was out with my husband babysitting my grandson.

I've been on the TIOLI challenges thread and on my own thread mostly. I don't have the energy to go through so many other threads any more. If you're on Facebook, you can friend me there. I'll private message you my screen name there if you want. I do spend a lot of time on the Facebook page for my Little Free Library.

>21 _Zoe_: Hmm. BB.

>23 SqueakyChu: I do spend a lot of time on the Facebook page for my Little Free Library.
Yes you do! So much that you've convinced me not to do the same. :-)

>24 qebo:

Well, the reason I'm doing that is because I want to increase the traffic to it. On Wednesday, a journalism student from U of MD is stopping by to interview me about the LFL. Ha!

Anyway, by fiddling around with the LFL Facebook page, I keep from putting too many stupid things on my own personal FB page! I try to get creative with the LFL FB page. It also keeps me busy now that I'm not working.

How are you doing with book donations? I'm overwhelmed (in a good way, though) with them. The more books I put in my LFL, the more people that want to give me books! It was the same problem I had after joining BookCrossing and then later collecting book bullets from LT.

46. Without You, There Is No Us by Suki Kim.

Suki Kim was given an extraordinary opportunity for someone with a South Korean and American upbringing: she spent four or five months teaching English at a university in North Korea, where her students were the children of the country's elite. The university was run by Christian missionaries, and was apparently permitted because it was providing English education free of charge, though the teachers were not allowed to talk about religion with the students. Kim herself was not religious at all, but basically went as an undercover journalist, secretly taking notes for use in the writing of this book.

I've read other books about North Korea, and this isn't the best one; I'd recommend Nothing to Envy or Escape from Camp 14 as a starting point instead. But Kim's book stands out in the access that she had to the country's elite youth, and in the potential impact that she could have made. Although her job was to teach English, using pre-approved textbooks and with all of her lesson plans subjected to scrutiny, she also wanted to gradually make her students aware of what they were missing in their very limited existence, cut off from all access to the outside world. She made sure that her MacBook and Kindle were frequently visible, and impressed students with her ability to find answers to questions on the internet, which they themselves were not permitted to use. She taught them to write argumentative essays, backing up their reasoning with evidence, a completely foreign concept in a world build around unthinking acceptance of official accounts. She came to love her students, and found them gradually opening up to her.

But Kim generally comes off as frustrated with her limited progress, not appreciating the time required to come to terms with a completely different worldview. When her students constantly lie to cover for each other's absences, in a world where disobedience could mean death, she wonders whether they just don't have a sense of right or wrong. When she pushes too hard in presenting new ways of thinking, leading the students to take refuge in their familiar nationalist stories about how North Korea is the best place in the world, she laments that "nothing could break through their belligerent isolation". Yet I thought that the students showed a remarkable interest in learning about the world, considering all the constraints placed on their thought and expression throughout their lives. They don't suddenly turn into Westerners, but Kim recounts plenty of telling incidents that reveal a steadily increasing awareness.

I feel like the real problem with this book is that it stopped too soon. So much time had to be spent gaining the trust and respect of the students, and gradually opening them up to the possibility of new ideas, but Kim left after less than six months to return to North America, and didn't really have time to reap the fruits of her labour. I understand that North Korea is a brutal place to live in many ways, both because of the lack of freedom and constant surveillance, and because of the lack of basic comforts like reliable electricity and heat, and Kim constantly reports that she found it depressing and difficult to tolerate. Still, I can't help feeling that in some ways this was a wasted opportunity, and I wonder how much more of a difference she could have made—not just to her students, but to the country and even the world—if she had stayed there for a whole year, steadily building on the foundation that she had laid. She says in the acknowledgements that she had to publish this book, to tell the truth about North Korea, because she cares deeply about the country and feels an obligation to improve the lives of North Koreans. But I don't really see how this book, for outsiders, will have a deep impact, certainly not compared to the impact of daily interaction with the country's future elites at a time when they are still open to new possibilities. This is still an interesting memoir, but I personally felt like it ended almost before it had begun. I would have liked to see more about what the future held for these students with their increasing awareness that life could be different.

>26 _Zoe_: That's an excellent review, and articulates some of my frustration. In her defense, she stayed longer than she’d initially planned, and there’s no telling how long she would have had to stay to break through. And she was always wondering whether it was cruel to show them the outside world when they were trapped.

>26 _Zoe_: Great review, Zoë! I have Nothing to Envy in my TBR pile, so I'll read that before I consider reading Without You, There Is No Us.

I wonder if Kim would have run afoul of the North Korean government had she stayed there longer.

>28 kidzdoc: Well, she has surely run afoul now. She was constantly worried (e.g. she kept her notes with her on a flash drive in case her room and computer were searched), but she decided not to stay for another term because she thought she'd done what she could do and it was a highly unpleasant place to be.

>27 qebo: Yup, I know I'm being a bit unfair wishing she had done more. I think I would have been more forgiving if she had ended on a more optimistic tone, acknowledging that her students really had made a lot of progress in opening up to different worldviews and that their story really wasn't at an end, even if hers was. As it was, it just felt really incomplete to me.

I also found that she didn't seem very tolerant of different perspectives in general, especially as evidenced by her comments about Christianity—sort of snarky remarks about how God wouldn't have let Harry Potter become so popular if he were really opposed to it, etc. It seemed like she just expected everyone to think exactly like she did, regardless of upbringing, and didn't really appreciate that gradual progress was still progress.

>28 kidzdoc: Thanks for visiting, Darryl! I hope you enjoy Nothing to Envy when you get around to it.

It's true, there was always a risk that the government would decide she'd gone too far. I was actually surprised by how much the school could get away with, though. I wouldn't have expected that showing a Harry Potter movie would be allowed, and I certainly wouldn't have expected the graduate students (more advanced than the undergrads Kim was teaching) to be introduced to the internet, even with heavy restrictions. Maybe I'm just overly optimistic, but it seemed somewhat promising.

>30 _Zoe_: Sounds interesting. I admit, I know very little about N Korea (I guess, that's the way they want it). But it surprises me that she was even allowed to bring her computer and kindle into the country. Even if she spoke Korean fluently, wouldn't they have been suspicious that she was arriving from America? And if they are truly as restrictive as we are led to believe, how did she come to teach a class there, being from *the west* and not be monitored closely? There just seems to be a disconnect in this, somehow. I'd love to know those answers, though, the back story. Did she go into that at all?

>31 jessibud2: The school was monitored extremely closely, and they knew she and other teachers were from the US. Her knowledge of the backstory of the school and how the students came to be there was limited. I wanted to see more investigation after the fact, but maybe she tried and came up empty.

The part of that story that surprises me the most was that missionaries were allowed in at all, even if their stated purpose was secular.

>26 _Zoe_:

Interesting review. Having myself lived and worked in another country for a year, I also echo the feeling that six months seems too short a time period to make much difference.

>33 lorax: Yeah, I really don't understand how they got away with the whole thing. Of course, they didn't *say* that they were missionaries, just nice Christian teachers whose churches were conveniently donating lots of money to provide a free university education for North Korean students.

But the censors did get suspicious when the teachers insisted too hard on showing a Narnia movie and not anything else, so that Narnia wasn't ultimately allowed after all.

I just got back two books that I lent to someone approximately ten years ago, and it makes me happy.

Ha! That's great! Had you forgotten about them, or did you brood over them every day of your life over the past 10 years like I would have? :P

Hehe, I wouldn't say every day, but they were definitely not forgotten! They were part of a set (of Jane Austen novels) and I was worried that I wouldn't be able to find the matching edition if I had to replace them.

Not a book, but a book-related theatrical production:



I have fond memories of Matilda the book and also of the movie, so I figured I'd enjoy the musical as well. It's been very well-received, and the only criticism I'd heard was that it could sometimes be hard to make out the words in the songs (which was true, but not really a big problem).

But when I saw the show yesterday, I didn't like it nearly as much as I'd expected, due to the overwhelming theme of child abuse. I'm really confused about how this didn't bother me in the book or the movie. Do children just have a completely different perspective on these things? Or was the balance just different in the musical? It seemed like Matilda didn't develop her abilities until about 3/4 of the way through, and until that point her resistance was fairly limited. So the first part just had a lot of really unpleasant scenes of adults doing or saying horrible things to helpless children. I think the show was very well-done, visually pleasing with strong performances, but I couldn't fully enjoy it.

Has anyone else seen this, or just reread the book/re-watched the movie as an adult? What did you think? I was very surprised my how different my reaction was now compared to in the past. I think I'll have to re-read the book or at least watch the movie, but I'm sort of afraid of ruining positive memories.

I haven't read Matilda as an adult, but I've read several of Roald Dahl's other books as an adult. There is definitely a theme of abuse victims getting (sometimes vicious) revenge on their abusers.

I do think Roald Dahl is best enjoyed as a child because his books are kind of disturbing. Though my mom always seemed to enjoy reading them to me? Idk.

I have watched the movie as an adult and it was fine. I think they made everyone funny enough that it tempers the scariness.

Hi Zoe! I have very fond memories of reading Matilda and I think I may be seen a movie by it??? Now my brain is all foggy, but really anything by Roald Dahl triggers happy memories for me. Hope you are doing well!

Oops, I disappeared again. Thanks for visiting, both of you! I think I'm going to have to watch the Matilda movie again.

In other book/theatre news, I was super excited to find out (belatedly) that Fun Home is coming to Broadway next year. I wasn't a huge fan of the book, but I love the musical.

In non-book news, I was at a conference for the past five days and am now tired, but happy. Conferences would be so much easier if I were at least one of "auditory learner" or "extrovert".

I did manage to finish one book on the flight home:



48. Losing Our Way by Bob Herbert.

I started this book eagerly and tore through the first half. Herbert paints a powerful picture of various ways in which America has gotten off course, and he makes his account very readable by including the stories of individuals to support each chapter. So we don’t just hear about how infrastructure is crumbling and needs a huge injection of cash to get up to an acceptable standard, we also hear about the personal experience of a woman who survived the collapse of the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis. This makes for a very compelling narrative.

Everything was going well until just over halfway. I really enjoyed Herbert’s first chapter on education, where he vividly describes the devastation wrought by draconian budget cuts. So it came as a surprise to me when he started the following chapter with the claim that American education is actually perfectly fine. Test results showing that American students lag behind others have nothing to do with the quality American public education, he says, but are instead just a result of the fact that America has more poor students than other countries. Poor students tend to do poorly in school too. It follows that there’s no point in trying to improve the quality of education; we have to address poverty first.

I understand why he’s saying this. He’s basically repeating the position of Diane Ravitch, an education advocate who deeply opposes the current focus on charter schools and standardized testing. I’m actually very sympathetic to this position, at least in part: I do think that excessive high-stakes testing is destructive and results in teaching to the test without actually improving learning outcomes, and I do think that charter school policies, which somehow allow charter schools to get rid of disadvantaged students so that their overall scores look higher, are extremely problematic. I believe that reducing poverty is important too. But I have no idea how this critique of certain aspects of educational reform leads to the conclusion that there’s no room for improving education at all, so we shouldn’t even try. Surely Herbert’s previous chapter, about the problems with funding cuts, implies that education would be improved by restoring funding, for one thing. This seemed to be a case where Herbert’s position was established beforehand, and he was just going to stick to it, without actually providing careful argumentation to support his case.

The situation got even worse in a later chapter, when he turned to a critique of online schooling. I’m sure most people would agree that online schooling isn’t an ideal learning environment for most children, since there’s a lot of value in face-to-face interaction, even beyond the educational. But I thought Herbert’s arguments against it were terrible: he cites test scores showing that students don’t do as well at online schools, and then mentions the defense given by an executive of one of these online schools: the students who choose online schooling are generally not the best and brightest; they tend to be lagging behind even before they start, etc. In other words, it’s an issue of adverse selection bias.

Somehow, Herbert misses the fact that this is the exact same argument that he himself gave in support of American public schools: he said that poor test results don’t reflect on the quality of teaching, but are just the result of a comparatively disadvantaged student body. When the argument supports his position (American schools are okay), then it’s valid; when the argument supports another position (online schools are okay), then it’s invalid. This is extremely shoddy reasoning. Herbert doesn’t even bother to refute the argument made by the proponent of online schools, instead trying to attack his credibility by pointing out that he earns $5 million per year as the CEO of this online schooling company. (This is another theme running through his book: successful money-makers are generally bad. Again, I agree that the distribution of wealth needs to be drastically reformed, but I don’t think highlighting the wealth of an individual serves as a refutation of that person’s ideas.)

The strange thing is that I tend to fall on the same side as Herbert on most issues. I’d like to see a more equal society, with more spending on infrastructure and less on war; I’d like to see students receiving a good public education, in an atmosphere free from antagonism and high-stakes testing, rather than studying at for-profit online schools. But I’d also like to read a book with solid argumentation, not one that relies on the assumption of a sympathetic reader.

This is a book about black and white, right and wrong. There’s no room for nuance in Herbert’s bleak portrait of America in decline. This is all well and good, up to a point. You can easily find yourself reading along in agreement, nodding at Herbert’s arguments and lamenting with him the decline of the nation. But it only takes one area of disagreement to start questioning the whole edifice. In my case, it was his blithe argument that America’s schools are just fine, and the only way to improve their results is to pull more students out of poverty.

I’m sorry, but I’ve been the smart kid in a public education system that caters to the lowest common denominator. I’ve graduated high school with an A+ average and found that I wasn’t prepared for my university math classes, where the top students had attended private schools or came from other countries. I fully believe in fighting poverty, but poverty isn’t the only problem with the American education system. Real-life issues just aren’t that simple. There isn’t one “solution” that will fix American education once and for all, and by promoting that perspective (“my way or the highway”), Herbert is just adding to the toxic atmosphere surrounding educational reform. I’d much rather see support for multiple evidence-based improvements.

After reading this book, I still believe that money should be spent on infrastructure rather than war, that cuts to education funding are bad and out-of-control corporate lobbying is worse. Basically, this book has reinforced the ideas that I had going in. It did also make me much more aware about issues involving the military, like the use of more powerful explosives that result in multiple amputations and astronomically higher costs for veteran health care. But for the most part, this isn’t a book that you read to be informed or challenged. It’s a book that you read to reaffirm your existing perspective, and it does that pretty well, up to a point.

But even if you do agree with everything that Herbert says, you may occasionally find that you need to put the book down just because it’s so bleak. I could only spend so much time reading about how horrible everything is before I needed to take a break. I was particularly struck by the contrast to Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn’s recent book A Path Appears, which I also read recently and which takes a very optimistic evidence-based approach to making a difference in the world. Herbert does end on a note that’s not quite despair, though I wouldn’t really call it optimism: he says that if citizens as a whole decide that the status quo is unacceptable, then change can eventually come about, as it did with emancipation, the suffrage movement, and civil rights. But the details of how to get there aren’t quite clear. Unlike Kristof and WuDunn’s encouraging presentation of multiple paths to a better world, Herbert’s book lives up to its title in conveying a sense of an America that’s hopelessly lost.

>42 _Zoe_: I think I'll skip this one. I'm already quite pessimistic enough.

>42 _Zoe_:. What a detailed and thoughtful review! Now I am interested in taking a look at the Kristof/WuDunn book.

>43 qebo: Hehe.

>44 ffortsa: Thanks, Judy! I'd definitely recommend A Path Appears if you're looking for something positive to read.

49. The 13th Gift by Joanna Huist Smith. After the bleakness of Losing Our Way, I needed to read something more positive, so I picked up this Christmas story. It's a non-fiction account of how a mysterious Secret Santa, leaving gifts at the home of a family recently bereaved by the loss of a husband/father, was able to pull that family out of a pit of despair and make them appreciate the friends and family all around them. It sounds sort of sappy, but I really enjoyed it. It's just so nice to read about people doing nice things to help others. The very beginning of the book was a bit difficult to read, because the author was in such a dark place after the death of her husband, and took it out on her children by denying them any thoughts of a happy Christmas, even as her 10-year-old daughter repeatedly asked whether they could decorate the house, get a tree, and do other basic seasonal tasks. But of course, the account inevitably took a turn for the better, as the family's mysterious "true friends" left them small gifts on each of the 12 days leading up to Christmas. By the end, the recipients were trying to do their part to spread the Christmas spirit to others as well, helping out and doing good deeds whenever they saw a chance, and I particularly enjoyed seeing how the ripple effects of one act of kindness could spread out to everyone else.

The book is subtitled "a true story of a Christmas miracle", but the focus of the story is clearly on the impact that human beings can make by being kind to one another, not on any sort of miracle in the religious sense. This is a nice heartwarming story of making a difference in other people's lives, and it can be enjoyed by Christians and non-Christians alike.

50. Of Monsters and Madness by Jessica Verday.

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and by loved by me.

I've always liked Edgar Allan Poe, and found the poem Annabel Lee particularly striking, so of course I had to pick up this YA novel based on his work. The protagonist, Annabel Lee, has been living with her mother at a mission in Siam, but moves to Philadelphia to live with her father after her mother's death. She has never met her father, and soon becomes aware that he's involved in some mysterious activities. Meanwhile, there's a murderer on the loose in Philadelphia, and something strange is afoot with the two assistants of Annabel's father, the gentlemanly Allan and the unpleasant Edgar (and of course, Allan is very attractive too—this is YA, after all). Verday has been inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson as well as by Poe himself.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
Went envying her and me—
Yes!—That was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

Verday doesn't actually follow Poe's story of Annabel Lee, beyond taking Annabel's name and presumably including Siam as a "kingdom by the sea", but instead uses these various familiar pieces to create a story that's entirely new. I worried initially that I would be thinking too much about what was different, but instead I ended up really enjoying the story for what it was. I appreciated subtle little references like "A bust of Pallas Athena greets me as I step inside," while remaining caught up in Verday's new narrative.

The gory preface had also given me some cause for concern, but I was relieved to find that the story as a whole was mostly atmospheric and mysterious rather than gruesome. I'm left wanting to read more books about Poe and more nineteenth-century historical fiction, which is always a good sign.

My only real complaint is the blatant and unnecessary set-up for a sequel in the last few pages of the book. I enjoyed this story enough that I would happily have picked up a sequel without any prodding, so I would much rather have seen the book come to a reasonable conclusion on its own. I always feel like this sort of blatant set-up speaks to a lack of confidence on the part of the author, as if she doesn't trust her readers to stay with her unless she sort of tricks them into it. Still, this is a pretty minor issue, and didn't really detract from my enjoyment of the story as a whole. I'd recommend this to any Poe fans who also enjoy YA novels, and I suspect that YA readers who aren't familiar with Poe will enjoy it as well.

>50 SqueakyChu:

I so totally love the poem "Annabelle Lee". It's my very favorite poem. I love the way it sounds when I read it out loud. I can never read it silently. I'll have to give this book a chance! I grew up on Poe stories since I'm originally from Baltimore! :)

>47 _Zoe_:, >48 SqueakyChu: - Believe it or not, though I had read Poe in literature courses, my first encounter with Annabel Lee was Joan Baez's haunting rendition of it on an old album of hers. I still actually *sing* it in my head when I read it!

>49 jessibud2:

I never heard Joan Baez's version. I'll have to look for it online.

>50 SqueakyChu: I just went downstairs to look at my old LPs. It's on an album simply titled *Joan*. The cover art shows her in profile, with a bit of a red scarf showing at the neck. Annabel Lee is track 4 on side 2.

> 50

I'll have to see if my friend has that album.

ETA: Never Mind. See the next message.

>50 SqueakyChu:

Found it online:

Lyrics:
http://www.romantic-lyrics.com/pa12.shtml

Song by Joan Baez:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIGj3CZ3uPQ

>53 SqueakyChu: Yep, different cover art but that's the version I listened to ad nauseum, in my teens. I am not generally fond of high operatic-type voices but Baez can do it like no other. She has always been a favourite of mine.

What did you think of this?

>54 jessibud2:

I can't give an unbiased opinion* because hearing it with hearing aids is THE PITS!! Music sounds nothing like I remember when I had normal hearing. :(

I did used to love to listen to Joan Baez. I used to sing the song "De Colores" ad nauseum. :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48vNfKUHWRw

*I like Poe's poem being read better than being sung, though.

51. Color Song by Victoria Strauss. I really enjoyed this YA historical fiction, because it has a theme that I always like: a girl disguising herself as a boy in order to do something that girls weren't generally allowed to do, in this case to apprentice herself to a painter. Also, it's set in Venice, which I love, so that made me like it even more. And of course, beyond these basic issues of content, the actual storytelling had to live up to my expectations, which it did.

This is the second book in a series (or maybe only a duology, judging by the highly unnecessary epilogue), but I had been told in advance that it wasn't necessary to read the first one, and that turned out to be true. Beyond the first few chapters, where there were lots of references to previous events, the protagonist is setting out on a completely new adventure and we're meeting all the characters along with her.

This book also has a sort of fantasy element, in the "color song" of the title: Giulia develops the ability to hear the voices of the paint, which mostly just helps her in mixing paints more precisely. On the whole, this was actually a relatively unimportant element of the story, and it could have been left out without having much of an impact on the plot. Which is fine, because there was enough happening already. If you come to this book looking for fantasy, you may be disappointed, but it's great historical fiction.

I'm sort of surprised that this author isn't more popular—I couldn't even find the first book in my large local library system. After reading Color Song, I'm definitely planning to seek out more of her work in the future.

52. The Wonder of All Things by Jason Mott. Unfortunately I can't really say that I enjoyed this book at all. I picked it up because of the interesting premise: in the midst of disaster at a small-town fair, a thirteen-year-old girl manages to magically heal her critically-wounded best friend, and then has to come to terms with her strange ability and all the crazy media attention that it attracts. But in some ways, the book is barely about that central event at all. Ava's power is a constant presence in the story, but the actual issues being addressed here are things like coming to terms with a mother's suicide, developing a relationship with a stepmother, reuniting with a sad, alcoholic father who's been absent since his wife's tragic death (because both Ava AND her best friend have dead mothers), and dealing with a difficult pregnancy while haunted by thoughts of the previous failed pregnancy. In other words, this is a book about all sorts of mundane, depressing problems. There's cancer too.

The mysterious healing power is in some ways at the centre of everything, and in other ways is dealt with only superficially. Basically, Ava and her family have only two possible responses: try to ignore everything and pretend life can go on as normal, or perform publicly-broadcast acts of healing, even as this healing makes Ava herself progressively sicker. It generally causes her to fall into a coma for several days (well, except at one critical plot juncture where that wouldn't have been convenient, so she doesn't); she constantly feels cold, and loses so much weight that she has to get new clothes.

I just didn't find it remotely believably when Ava's father encouraged her to perform a public act of healing despite the fact that it was visibly killing her, as her stepmother told him repeatedly in an attempt to dissuade him. His motivation was largely monetary; the family was struggling to make ends meet and lived in a dilapidated home. Meanwhile, the town was swarming with interested visitors who would offer someone a thousand dollars to go along to a meeting with Ava, yet somehow there was absolutely zero mention of the possibility of benefitting financially without actually performing more physically-depleting healing acts.

It just seemed completely unbelievable to me that a father would actively put his daughter's life at risk for financial benefit, especially without even considering any of the other options. Giving an interview? Nope, no mention of that. Why don't you just do this thing that would put you into a multi-day coma instead, before you're remotely recovered from the last time? I can't help thinking that the author does not have children.

So, there was a main character behaving in an unbelievable way, while the central issue was painted as a black-and-white choice without exploration of its more interesting nuanced possibilities. There was a mysterious power that mostly followed certain rules, consistently sending Ava into a coma, until that one time near the end when it violated its established rules of behaviour because that would be a bit more convenient for the plot. Throughout it all, there was a host of depressing problems forming the main subject matter of the book, and it just didn't make for a pleasant read. This is one of those books that makes me rethink my willingness to read new books by new-to-me authors; it would be safer to wait until a year after publication and let reviews and ratings tell me which books are really great.

And an interesting NYT article about the repercussions of Suki Kim's Without You, There Is No Us: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/30/world/tales-told-out-of-school-in-pyongyang-ca...

>58 _Zoe_: Oh, thanks.

>59 qebo: I thought you might appreciate it :)

>57 _Zoe_: Ugh! That's one I definitely won't read. Thanks for the enlightening review!

Zoe, it's Chrismas Eve's eve, and so I am starting the rounds of wishing my 75er friends the merriest of Christmases or whatever the solstice celebration of their choice is.

Thank you, Roni! Happy holidays to you as well!

Happy Christmas, Zoe!

Happy Holidays!

Happy last day of Hanukkah, Zoe!

From our family to yours!

Merry Christmas, Zoe!

Happy Holidays to you and Mark, Zoë! I hope to see you soon.

Happy holidays, everyone!

I seem to be several reviews behind, so I'm going to post a couple out of order:



56. *The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion. This was a reread in preparation for reading the sequel, and I love it just as much the second time. It's a funny, satisfying feel-good book that's almost unputdownable. I must have written more about it in some previous thread.



57. The Rosie Effect by Graeme Simsion. And the much-anticipated sequel, which unfortunately wasn't nearly as good. The Rosie Project was a fun read, where Don's entertaining misadventures don't cause any serious problems. The tone of the sequel is somehow completely different; it's no longer fun and lighthearted, but bleak and serious. There are still some laugh-out-loud funny moments, especially towards the end, but the issues dealt with at the heart of the story are not at all humorous.

Needless to say, this review contains spoilers for The Rosie Project, and some potential spoilers for The Rosie Effect as well. In The Rosie Project, Don falls in love unexpectedly, and his relationship with Rosie is wonderful. In The Rosie Effect, their connection seems to have disappeared entirely, as a pregnant Rosie is focused entirely on the coming baby and has no patience for major aspects of Don's personality. Their interactions in this novel give no indication that they're suited for each other, and it's just not pleasant to read about a crumbling relationship. Their one-year anniversary is a typical example. Rosie asks Don to leave her in charge of everything for that day, and I expected something like their trip to New York in the previous novel, where Rosie planned surprising activities that Don ended up loving. For their wedding anniversary, she cooks one of Don's favourite meals, but it's less about making him happy than about making a point: she's perfectly capable of cooking, and she'll eat whatever she wants, recommended pregnancy nutrition be damned. Even occasions that should be happy turn out to be all about conflict, and that just wasn't what I wanted from this novel.

Meanwhile, Don is trying in his own way to learn everything about being a father, and experiences some typical misadventures. But these too seem more serious and less funny than before: while trying to understand children, for example, he goes to watch them at a playground and gets picked up by the police as a potential pedophile. His use of aikido to disengage from a police officer is not appreciated, and soon he's being threatened with arrest and deportment, forced to attend sessions with a social worker who appears to have it out for him on the basis of a previous social encounter where he tried to order environmentally-unfriendly seafood.

It's one thing to make social errors that cause quickly-resolved problems with no lingering affects, but once the authorities are involved and the process is dragging on over an extended period of time, the situation is just no longer funny to me. I almost wonder whether this is a cultural or political thing: the author is Australian, and I have no idea what's going on in Australia right now, but failures of the criminal justice system are a pretty serious topic in the US at the moment. Reading about someone threatened by an authority on the basis of a personal vendetta is just unpleasant and not entertaining.

The novel as a whole had far more unpleasant and uncomfortable moments than I would have liked, especially given the lighthearted tone of the previous one. There were still plenty of good parts, including Don's relationships with his friends, but I often found myself more inclined to put the book down than continue reading. In the end, it took me about six days to read it, compared to two for the previous one that I had reread immediately before. I knew going in that sequels tended to be worse than the original, but this wasn't so much a lesser version of the original (which I still would have enjoyed) as a turn in a completely different direction. If you want a fun feel-good read, you should probably look elsewhere.

I've finally started a new thread, even though I still have a couple of reviews to write for this one.