Book 39 - The Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell

Book 39 - The Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell

The Tipping Point is Malcolm Gladwell's Bestselling book that explores what it takes for an idea to take hold. Published in 2000, prior to the crushing success of social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, the book puts forth the argument that there is a tipping point, a point at which an idea takes off and takes on a life of its own, and that this tipping point can be influenced by the smallest things.

There's "The Law of the Few," the notion that very few influential people exert most of the influence over whether the idea takes off. These people can be broken into 3 categories: Mavens, Connectors, and Persuaders. Mavens are knowledge experts, and this expertise makes them influential. Connectors are people who bridge the gap between disparate groups of people. They know everybody, and therefore are effective at spreading a message among different groups. Persuaders, are the salesmen. These are the people who can make you feel like you really want a product or care about an idea.

The second factor Gladwell explores is "Stickiness," which is the ability for an idea to take hold and maintain that hold. A multi-million dollar ad campaign is useless if your message doesn't stick. If you can't remember the message and associate it with the product, the money is wasted. Gladwell discusses the effort that went into making the show "Sesame Street" capable of holding a preschooler's attention, and how the makers of "Blues Clues," took what was learned from "Sesame Street" and created an even "Stickier" format.

Finally there is "The Power of Context," the notion that you can tweak the way that the information is presented in small ways, with very powerful results. One way he explores this is in the turnaround in the New York City crime rate in the early nineties. During the eighties, violent crime on the subways was very bad. The problem was that the subways were dirty, graffiti covered places that looked like no one cared about them. New York launched a campaign to clean up the subways, remove the graffiti, and stop the panhandling and turnstile jumping. The effect was dramatic: Crime plummeted.

This is a well-written and thought-provoking book, but as I mentioned before, it was written prior to the social networking explosion, so it is a little dated in that respect. He hardly even mentions the internet in the book. In the edition I read, which was published two years after the first and contains a new afterward by the author, he notes this oversight and talks about email, but at that point MySpace and Facebook were still at least a year away. It's not that the advent of social networking negates anything he says, but it becomes an important medium for implementing some of the ideas he puts forth, and it would be interesting to see what Gladwell has to say about these technologies.

Book 38 - The Lost Symbol - Dan Brown

No preamble - let's go straight to the review!

Book 38 - The Lost Symbol - Dan Brown

The Lost Symbol, the latest book from Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, is a fast paced thriller that in order to be enjoyed requires from the reader a vast suspension of disbelief, because at the beginning of the book, set in Washington, D.C., most of the town is watching a Redskins NFC playoff game.

Seriously, the setting is D.C., but the belief we as readers are asked to embrace is the notion that the Masons run everything. They are in all positions of power. They protect secrets which if known could change the world as we know it. They built the Nation's Capital, and embedded their symbology throughout the city.

OK, so maybe the last part isn't such a stretch. It's been pretty well established that many of the Founding Fathers were Masons, and so it is not really much of a surprise that they would embed their imagery in the buildings of D.C., and it is this fact that allows Brown to draw the reader into his broader intrigue. He is able to point to specific buildings and point out where these symbols really exist and say, "see, I told you it was there," which gives him credibility and allows the reader to at least temporarily believe in the broader conspiracy.

The other major thing we are asked to believe in is noetic science. This the science of trying to prove some of the metaphysical questions that everybody asks. Does God hear our prayers? Do we have a soul? What happens to the soul when we die? It is the combination of ancient mysticism and science, and plays heavily into the secrets that the Masons are supposedly trying to protect.

Brown weaves a fast-paced tale of suspense, involving kidnapping, dismemberment, puzzle solving, and a lot of chasing. It feels like an episode of 24, and it should, as the entire story takes place in less than 24 hours. Robert Langdon, famed symbologist and the protagonist from Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci Code, has been asked by his friend, Peter Solomon, a high-ranking Mason, to speak at a Smithsonian event to take place at the U.S. Capitol Building. However, in reality, Solomon has been kidnapped, and it is his captor, the evil Mal'akh, who has lured Langdon to D.C.. Mal'akh wants to force Langdon to decode Masonic symbology that will lead him to the secrets of the Ancient Mysteries, which Mal'akh believes will bring him enormous power. But before Langdon can even unravel the first clue, the CIA becomes involved, as does the Architect of the Capitol, who is himself a high-ranking Mason.

What ensues is a hurried combination of chase and treasure hunt, as Langdon races to unlock the Masonic mysteries and free Solomon before Mal'akh kills him. It is difficult to know who to trust. The Masons are conflicted between saving their brother and keeping the secrets entrusted to them. The CIA's motive in trying to stop Mal'akh is unclear. The only person it seems Langdon can trust is Solomon's sister Katherine, a noetic scientist who has made incredible advances in a secret research lab set up by her brother. After her lab is destroyed by Mal'akh, she joins forces with Langdon to attempt to free her brother.

I loved the fact that this novel takes place in my backyard. As I was reading, I was intimately familiar with many of the streets and buildings they went to. When one of the scenes takes the action to Franklin Square, the CIA lands on top of 1301 K Street NW, where my office used to be.

Anyway, I don't want to give too much of the book away. I thought it was thrilling escapist fiction, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Give it a try!

Book 37 - My Empire of Dirt - Manny Howard

No, I haven't really slowed down, I'm just a little backed up on entries. I've got this one and another, and I'm halfway through a third book.

Book 37 - My Empire of Dirt - Manny Howard

I've always had an interest in urban farming. My ears perk up whenever I hear a story of someone who's converted an unused lot into a community farm, or someone that is growing food in or close to the city in a commercially viable and/or sustainable way. It's not that I know much about farming, it's just one of those topics that I find it interesting. So when I heard Manny Howard in an interview talking about this project, I figured I was going to have to get around to reading it sometime.

In My Empire of Dirt, Manny Howard, a magazine writer, who at one time was on the masthead of Gourmet Magazine, accepts a freelance writing assignment to turn his Brooklyn backyard into a farm, live off the food it produces for one month, and then write about the experience. Although, he makes an allowance for salt, pepper and coffee, everything else he consumes must come from the farm.

As the book's subtitle tells us, this is "A Cautionary Tale." Very little goes right for Manny, and although sometimes he is the victim of circumstance, like when a freak tornado whips through Brooklyn, he also brings misfortune upon himself. He seems to be a bit manic, and often rushes into things without thinking them through, such as buying animals without preparing enclosures for them. This mania also manifests itself in an obsession with the farm to the exclusion of everything else, including his family, which puts a heavy strain on his marriage.

But that's not even half of Manny's problems. The yard does not receive adequate sunlight, so only certain parts of it are productive. The rabbits refuse to mate, and when he finally manages to impregnate them, they eat their young. Many of the crops are destroyed by the tornado. Many don't grow well in the first place. Even the potatoes, which he thought were going to be the easiest, turn out to be a disappointment.

Still, he manages to get some food out of the farm. He manages to grow tomatoes, eggplants, and collard greens. On the animal protein side, he is fairly successful with eggs, and manages to raise some chickens to a size at which they can be eaten. He also manages to eat at least one gamy rabbit, although this is an experience I think he would prefer to forget. There is also a bad experience with a not so freshly slaughtered bird that you would think someone who wrote for a food magazine would be smart enough to avoid.

It's an entertaining book for the most part, though I could have done with less of his personal background at the beginning, and I wasn't all that interested in the history of Brooklyn as a farming community. However, his farming misadventures definitely held my interest. If you are expecting to learn something about urban farming or the locavore movement however, there is very little here for you. Howard's failures aside, there is nothing sustainable about his venture, and as the magazine editor was footing the bill, he does not explore the economics of what he spends in order to set up the farm and tend to the plants and animals.

Book 36 - Barrel Fever - David Sedaris

I couldn't resist reading another of David Sedaris' books. I went to the library and picked up Naked, which someone told me is good, but I started to think that it would be best to go to the beginning, so I went back to the library and got his first book Barrel Fever. However, I haven't abandoned the idea of reading Naked, so it may wind up being a three-peat for Sedaris...we'll see.

Book 36 - Barrel Fever - David Sedaris

This first book of David Sedaris' short stories and essays took me a little by surprise. I had thought that his work was basically autobiographical essays, and in my review of When You Are Engulfed in Flames (http://the52booksin52weekspersonalchallenge.blogspot.com/2010/10/book-26-when-you-are-engulfed-in-flames.html), I wondered how much embellishment he added to these personal stories. Of course there were times that he was obviously exaggerating for comedic effect, but other times I wasn't sure if he was making it up or if he was just a magnet for bizarre experiences. After reading Barrel Fever, I'm even less sure of the line between truth and fiction, as the first twelve pieces in this book are purely fictional, albeit told in first person.

That being said, the opening story "Parade," although obviously fictional, appears to be told as Sedaris himself. It is an over-the-top piece in which he inflates his celebrity status and engages in a name-dropping extravaganza in which he claims to have had homosexual affairs with Bruce Springsteen, Charlton Heston and Mike Tyson. The rest of the fiction stories have different narrators. In "My Manuscript," Chad Holt introduces us to various people in his life, and then relates the twisted fantasy he has imagined for them as characters in the manuscript he is writing. In "We Get Along," the narrator is a son coping with his mom after his father's death revealed his serial infidelity. "Jamboree" is a white-trash tale worthy of Maury Povich, told by the younger brother of a teen girl who moves out of the house and has a kid with her deadbeat boyfriend. The boy leaves home too, moves in with his sister, and winds up taking care of the baby, because both parents lose interest in the child and its welfare shortly after it is born.

I was pleasantly surprised to encounter the story "Season's Greetings to our Friends and Family!!!" I had heard this years ago on the NPR show "This American Life," but I wasn't really aware that it was David Sedaris' work, seeing as it was performed on the show by Julia Sweeney. It takes the form of a Christmas Newsletter, written by the wife of a family that has just been enlarged by the addition of an illegitimate twenty-two year old daughter, conceived when the husband was serving in Viet Nam. The wife shares all the details of their dysfunctional family life and subsequent legal problems with the folks on her Christmas card list, in one of the most sordid holiday tales ever. If you are in a holiday mood and want to check it out, here is a link to Sweeney's reading of it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iWV4YJS-XE

You'll notice I said that "Seasons Greetings" was one of the most sordid holiday tales ever written. That's because this book contains another. It is called "SantaLand Diaries," and one of Sedaris' first breaks was his reading of this on NPR's Morning Edition. It is the true account of his time working as an elf in SantaLand at Macy's in New York. NPR often trots this recording out for the holiday season, so if you are a listener you might encounter it. If you just can't wait and/or don't want to leave it to chance you can find his reading of it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=161Fyi6fid0

Trust me, this is one of the stories that greatly benefits from hearing it in Sedaris' voice.

In my opinion, this book is hilarious, but it is not for the timid or the homophobic. This book is even edgier than the other one I read, and seems bent on shocking and offending. Personally, I like my humor that way, but it's not going to be for everyone.

Book 35 - The Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut

I've shifted into high gear trying to catch up! This is my third book since Sunday, and I'm pretty sure I can finish another before the week ends on Saturday. However, there isn't much time left, and I've got a long way to go.

Book 35 - The Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut

The governments of the world have suspended all manned space flight due to the discovery of a chrono-synclastic infundibulum, a kind of time vortex that exists between Earth and Mars. This does not stop Winston Niles Rumsford, a wealthy American aristocrat, from buying his own spaceship and flying it to Mars himself, accompanied only by his mastiff, Kazak. He flies directly into the vortex, and he and the dog are scattered through not just space, but also through time. He and the dog materialize in various locations at specific intervals, one of these locations being Rumsford's estate, where he appears to his wife and their butler every fifty-nine days.

Malachi Constant is also a very wealthy man, but lacks the aristocratic background of Rumsford. The Constant family fortune was amassed by Malachi's father Noel, who devised an investment scheme so disconnected from the market as to be almost completely random, if it weren't for the religious overtone to it. He hands this system down to Malachi upon his death, who continues to be wildly successful, growing the fortune to staggering proportions.

Rumsford's wife, Beatrice, does not allow anyone on the estate grounds for the materializations, so it comes as a shock when Malachi is invited to attend. It turns out that Winston wishes to share some information about Malachi's future with him. He tells him that he will father a child with Beatrice, and that he will travel not only to Mars, but to Mercury and to Saturn's moon, Titan. Neither Beatrice nor Malachi want these events to transpire, and start to take actions that they think will keep the prophecy from coming true. In actuality, these actions drive them closer to their destiny.

Malachi and Beatrice aren't the only ones swept up in Winston's plans. They are but pieces of a vast scheme to promote world unity and the brotherhood of man by creating a common enemy for mankind to fight against, then making them feel shame afterwards, and finally by creating a new religion through which they can be redeemed. This religion, The Church of God the Utterly Indifferent, of which Malachi becomes an unwitting prophet, seems remarkably absurdist in nature, especially after just having finished Albert Camus' The Stranger (http://the52booksin52weekspersonalchallenge.blogspot.com/2010/11/it-seems-that-i-am-repeating-myself.html). God/The Universe could care less about what happens to you, and you are so insignificant that nothing you could do could please him/it either. The irony to this in Vonnegut's story is that there is a higher order of things; a grand plan so to speak. It's just not the one you think it is, and it has very little to do with your interests.

There are several recurring themes that occur in Vonnegut's books, the foremost of which is time travel. Winston is unstuck in time and space in a similar fashion to Billy Pilgrim from Slaughterhouse Five. The planet Tralfamador also figures heavily in both books, a planet that seems to have undue influence on the human race. The members of the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent believe that no one should have an advantage over another person, and therefore they employ physical and mental handicaps to hobble whatever superior natural abilities they might possess, something very similar to what was done in Vonnegut's famous short story "Harrison Bergeron." These repetitions of theme do not seem redundant however, possibly because they were so imaginative to begin with. Instead they seem like recurring motifs in a larger work, like musical themes and variations as a part of a larger symphonic work.

Do I recommend it? Of course! It's Kurt Vonnegut, after all! And before you say, "but I don't like science fiction," let me stop you right there and say that this is not science fiction. It is social satire that happens to take place on other planets aside from earth. Try it, you might like it!

Book 34 - The Stranger - Albert Camus

It seems that I am repeating myself. I've read two books by Steinbeck, two by Larsson, two by Hiaasen, and now this is the second book by Camus. I am also eying another Sedaris book, possibly another Faulkner, and the third of Larsson's "Dragon Tattoo" series before I'm done. The way I see it, I have eighteen more books to read in the next six weeks, so I figure if I have to read that much, it might as well be stuff I really like. In other words, it's better to "go with what you know."

Book 34 - The Stranger - Albert Camus

Meursault doesn't care. He just doesn't care. His mother dies? He doesn't care. His girlfriend wants to get married? He doesn't care. His new friend the pimp wants him to write a letter to trick the mistress that he's been beating to come back to him, so he can beat her some more? Sure, why not? He doesn't care. He has no emotional connection to anyone or anything. He has no moral compass. Meursault thinks that life is absurd, that it has no meaning, that there is nothing beyond this physical existence.

The Stranger is set in French Algiers, and opens with Meursault receiving word of his mother's death. He goes to attend the funeral, but he shows no signs of grief for his loss. If anything, he is annoyed with the people around him trying to console him for feelings he does not have. The next day he hooks up with Marie, an old coworker, and they go see a comedy and fall into the sack. Meursault then befriends a pimp named Raymond, who gets him to write the aforementioned letter, and then later invites him and Marie to spend some time at a beach house of a friend. At the beach they run into "The Arab," the brother of the girl Raymond beat up, and they get into an altercation in which Raymond is wounded with a knife. After stopping Raymond from shooting the Arab, Meursault inexplicably goes out and finds the Arab and shoots him, emptying the gun into his body even after he is lying on the ground.

Meursault is arrested and a trial ensues. The trial quickly becomes less about the actual crime and more about Meursault's emotional state, or lack thereof. People are brought to testify about his lack of appropriate grief over his mother, in order to paint him as an amoral monster, not worthy of society's pity, and deserving of society's ultimate punishment. He is found guilty and sentenced to death by beheading.

Throughout the book, Meursault's emotional detachment is contrasted with the characters around him. Salamano is an old man with a mangy dog that he beats frequently. Upon losing the dog, he grieves in a way one might have expected Meursault to grieve his mother's passing. Raymond's passion and anger, although evil in nature, is starkly different from Meursault's indifference and amoral attitude. The examining magistrate and the prison chaplain are men of faith to whom Meursault's atheism is so alien, that they desperately try to get him to find God. In the end it is this final confrontation with the chaplain that allows Meursault to finally see that it is not just he that does not care about anything, but it is the universe that cares about nothing as well. In this revelation he finds momentary happiness before his death.

I liked the book. It is deceptive, offering great philosophical depth cloaked in a simple story. Still, I think I liked The Plague better (link to my review: http://the52booksin52weekspersonalchallenge.blogspot.com/2010/07/book-19-plague-albert-camus.html. Both books do a good job of illustrating Camus philosophy of the absurd, so either would be a good place to start if you haven't read any of his work.

Book 33 - Skin Tight - Carl Hiaasen

Although I've read a bunch of classic literature, I've also peppered my selections with some non-fiction and pop fiction. I've already confessed that Carl Hiaasen is one of my favorite pop writers, so it should come as no surprise that I've read yet another of his thoroughly entertaining books.

Book 33 - Skin Tight - Carl Hiaasen

As I said in my review of Nature Girl (http://the52booksin52weekspersonalchallenge.blogspot.com/2010/07/book-22-nature-girl-carl-hiaasen.html), Hiaasen's work is highly formulaic, and Skin Tight is no exception. Set in Florida, the story centers around a retired state investigator, Mike Stranahan, who now spends a quiet existence on a stilt-house on the water, fishing and boating and entertaining young coeds who he happens to find nude sunbathing on his deck. Quiet indeed, until a hit man shows up to kill him, and Stranahan is forced to defend himself by stabbing his would-be killer in the chest with the sword-like nose of a trophy marlin. The killer dies before Stranahan can get him to talk, leaving him to wonder who put the hit out on him. Sure, Stranahan has made some enemies over the years, but he's retired now, so why go after him?

Well, it turns out that Stranahan was involved in a missing persons case involving a girl who disappeared after getting a nose job. Her doctor, Rudy Graveline, a Miami plastic surgeon of undeserved renown, killed her by accident on the operating table, and is covering it up so that he can hang on to his lucrative practice, a plastic surgery mill where young talented doctors do most of the cutting and he takes all the credit. The truth is that Rudy is a hack who's fought off malpractice so many times that he is in danger of losing his license, and he is not going to let that happen. He believes that Stranahan can expose him as the girl's killer, and therefore wants him out of the way.

Meanwhile a TV investigative reporter, Reynaldo Flemm, and his producer, Christina Marks, have caught wind of the story through a disgruntled former employee of the doctor. Christina is the true talent behind the duo: she lines up interviews, writes the questions, checks the facts, etc. Reynaldo is a vain bumbler, who is more interested in gaining notoriety by getting punched on camera than he is in uncovering a real news story. Christina teams up with Stranahan in more ways than one, and finds herself dodging the bullets of Chemo, a second hit man sent by the doctor to kill Stranahan. Chemo has a horribly disfigured face, the result of an electrolysis laser accident, and is doing the hit in exchange for dermabrasion treatments.

If you have read any of Hiaasen's work, you know this is only the beginning. Corrupt zoning commissioners, blackmail, dirty killer cops, a rather unique hand prosthesis, and more botched surgery keep the action humming along nicely. Hiaasen's writing style is tight and the comedic oddness of the characters and situations keep you turning the pages to see what happens next. This is a thoroughly entertaining book, and I recommend it to anyone who likes quirky comedy/action/mystery stories.

Book 32 - An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England - Brock Clarke

Here's another selection from my public library's "Good Books You Might Have Missed" cart. This time they did a pretty good job.

Book 32 - An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England - Brock Clarke

Sam Pulsifer is a bumbler. He bumbles through life. At least that's what his inmate buddies tell him. They are bond traders, incarcerated in a minimum security prison for various SEC infractions. Sam, on the other hand, is in there for arson and manslaughter. As Sam tells it, he accidentally set fire to the historical house of Emily Dickenson, killing two people that he did not even know were there.

Convicted when he was 18, Sam serves 10 years, and upon his release tries to figure out what he is going to do with his life. He moves back in with his parents, who have had to live with the infamy that their son has brought upon their house. In order to get rid of him, they offer to send him to college, but not before his father shows him the box of letters. Dozens of letters, sent while Sam was in prison, from people who want him to burn down the houses of other New England literary figures: Mark Twain, Robert Frost, Edward Bellamy, to name but a few. The letters come from all walks of life, and each of them has their own peculiar reason for wanting the house of a particular author burned to the ground.

Sam tries his best to leave all this behind him and start a new life. After graduating college, he embarks on a somewhat successful career as a package design engineer, marries a beautiful woman, and has two wonderful children. He goes on like this for several years, never telling his new family about his past, until one day the son of the couple he killed shows up at his door. All of his lies start to unravel, and mysterious fires start to occur at the houses of literary figures, with all signs pointing to Sam as the culprit.

I'd never heard of the author before reading this book, but I found it to be very entertaining, in a darkly tragic way. The story is wonderfully absurd, and is full of interesting characters. Sam draws our pity, but not always in a good way. Sam is often the victim of circumstance. However, he refuses to take responsibility for the things he has done, and because of his fear of the truth, he becomes more and more entangled in his web of lies, which ultimately makes his situation much worse.

I won't spoil the ending for you. All-in-all, it's a pretty fun read. Check it out.

Book 31 - Pudd'nhead Wilson - Mark Twain

Book 31 - Pudd'nhead Wilson - Mark Twain

Pudd'nhead Wilson is a tale of switched identities, similar to Twain's The Prince and the Pauper, except this time the switch occurs between a son of a black slave and an aristocratic southern white slave holder. The action takes place in Dawson's Landing, Missouri, and the title character is David Wilson, a young lawyer who shortly after his arrival in town makes a remark that is beyond the comprehension of the townsfolk, and therefore earns him an undeserved reputation as an idiot - a Pudd'nhead. This reputation dooms his prospects for practicing law in the town, and he is forced to occupy himself performing basic accounting for local businesses, and engaging in one of his favorite hobbies, the study of fingerprints.

Roxy, a black slave woman, who due to generations of breeding with white men is only 1/16 African, gives birth to a boy, Chambers. Chambers is the son of yet another white southern aristocrat, making him 1/32 black, but no less a slave than Roxy. In fact, he has so little African blood that he very closely resembles the master's son, Tom, who was born on the same day as Chambers.

Roxy, fearing that Chambers will be "sold down the river" into what is commonly regarded as a worse life as a slave on a large plantation, switches Chambers with Tom, and due to a fortuitous replacement of the other house slaves and the death of Tom's mother, is able to raise the two children in their alternate roles. Chambers, now known as "Tom," grows to be a spoiled brat who has little regard for people, much less slaves, and after dropping out of school, wrestles with a gambling addiction which leads him to being disinherited from the family fortune more than once. Meanwhile, the real Tom, now known as "Chambers," lives the life of a slave, and is forced not only to simply endure his Tom's sadistic personality, but being the stronger of the two boys is often called on to fight his master's battles.

Luigi and Angelo, a pair of identical twins who claim to have traveled the world performing in side-shows arrive in town. Initially they enthrall the townsfolk. However once Judge Driscoll, Tom's uncle and adoptive father, is found killed by a knife owned by the twins - with the twins standing over the body, they are accused of the murder. It is only the forensic skills of Pudd'nhead Wilson that allow not only the identity of the real killer, but also the truth about "Tom" and "Chambers" to be revealed.

This book, while set in the South 10-30 years before the Civil War, was actually written about 30 years after, during Twain's "dark period." The book has somewhat of a cynical tone. No one simply lives happily ever after. Roxy gains her freedom, and manages to work and save money, only to lose it all in a failed bank, and to be sold back into slavery by her son. She escapes, and at the end is receiving a stipend from the real Tom, but her spirit is broken, and she lives out the rest of her days in sorrow. "Tom" escapes the gallows, but perhaps meets a worse fate. "Chambers" returns to his "rightful" station, but after years of living as a slave cannot adapt.

My edition of the book also contains "Those Extraordinary Twins." Twain tells us that when he first started the story, it was a farce about a pair of conjoined twins who each had their own head, shoulders and arms, but shared the rest of their body between the two of them. Twain claims that over the course of writing the story, another story emerged, a tragedy, and he was forced to perform a "literary Caesarean operation" to extricate the farce and leave the tragedy. The excised story, "Those Extraordinary Twins," shares many of the same characters in name, but is quite a different story. The fact that the twins are conjoined rather than identical make them the center of attention, not just auxiliary characters, and many principal characters from Pudd'nhead Wilson fade into the background. Twain humorously explores the problems with two distinct personalities sharing the same body. One is religious while the other is not. One is a teetotaler, while the other freely imbibes. If one of them is convicted of a crime, is the other guilty? While this is initially entertaining, Twain explores this with the same heavy hand as he did with Tom and Huck trying to free Jim in Huckleberry Finn, making the joke a bit tired after a while. The story is short, however, and therefore still quite funny.

It is interesting to compare and contrast the two stories, as together they offer an insight into the evolutionary nature of Twain's writing process. They are both good reads, so if you choose to read Pudd'nhead Wilson, I recommend that you find a version that has both stories (mine is Penguin Classics), so that you can see the differences.

Book 30 - Lake Wobegon Days - Garrison Keillor

Today's book is another that has been sitting on my bookshelf for nearly three decades. I don't remember why I even bought it, or if I bought it at all. I wasn't even a big fan of Garrison Keillor back then, although I now listen to "A Prairie Home Companion" on a fairly regular basis. Well, whatever the reason for having the book, I finally got around to reading it.

Book 30 - Lake Wobegon Days - Garrison Keillor

As I mentioned above, I am a fan of Keillor's radio program, but that hasn't always been the case. Keillor's humor moseys along at it's own pace, not really being concerned with getting anywhere quickly, and I think that it is a style that doesn't really start appealing to you until you get a little older. At least that's how it works for me. Now I love listening to his skits about Guy Noir, or the cowboys, and even his news from Lake Wobegon, which is a regular feature of the program. Lake Wobegon is supposedly a small town in Minnesota which does not appear on a map due to surveying errors. In reality it exists only in the mind of Keillor, although it bears a strong resemblance to any number of small farm towns of the region. It's fictional existence does not prevent Keillor from bringing the town to life, and in Lake Wobegon Days, he paints an elaborate picture of the town and it's people.

Keillor starts off with a fairly extensive history lesson on the founding of the town, once known as New Albion, and on its early settlers. He then talks about the role Protestantism played, gently lampooning the worship practices of the various splinter sects, before launching a Walden-esque journey through the four seasons, with a brief intermission between winter and spring to discuss the reporting of news in the town, and wraps up with a chapter that focuses on the power of preaching, among other things.

There is no overarching plot to the book. Instead it ambles along, presenting vignettes that describe the people of the town, and their way of life. It frequently time shifts from Keillor's boyhood to the present, and is rife with asides that are often presented in the form of footnotes, a technique which I found a bit distracting. One such footnote, an extensive manifesto written by a former town resident criticizing his upbringing, occupies the bottom half of 20 pages. In it's defense however, I found this manifesto to be one of the best parts of the book.

While the book paints a vivid picture of small-town life in Minnesota, I was disappointed with the lack of a cohesiveness, which made it hard for me to finish. If you are a fan of the radio show, especially "The News from Lake Wobegon" segment, you might enjoy learning some of the history of this imaginary town, and you might like hearing some of the early stories of the families that inhabit the place, but for me it just wasn't that compelling. Still, it was a popular book when it came out, so feel free to not accept my judgement of the book and to read it yourself.

Book 29 - Still Life with Woodpecker - Tom Robbins

I'm a world-class procrastinator, as is evidenced by the fact that I am woefully behind in this challenge. Another indicator is the fact that this book has been on my shelf for close to thirty years, waiting to be read.

Still Life with Woodpecker - Tom Robbins

As the subtitle on the book says, Still Life with Woodpecker is sort of a love story, in a redhead-stoner-philosopher-environmentalist-anarchist kind-of way. It tells the story of Princess Leigh-Cheri, the daughter of a deposed monarch of a small but apparently strategically significant country. King Max, his wife Tilli, and the Princess live in exile in the United States, on the shore of the Puget Sound, with their faithful servant Gulietta, in a house given to them by the CIA.

The princess, seeking purpose to her life, decides to get involved in saving the planet. After much begging, her parents allow her to travel to an environmental conference in Hawaii, with Gulietta serving as her chaperone. Here she meets Bernard Mickey Wrangle, an anarchist bomber known as "The Woodpecker," who it turns out has plans to blow up the conference. After despising him briefly, she falls in love with him, and has to wrestle with the conflict of her feelings for him vs. the moral obligation to turn him in.

Eventually Wrangle is apprehended, and has to spend time in prison. The Princess cloisters herself in her attic, attempting to duplicate the conditions her imprisoned lover is experiencing. In her solitary state, with nothing more to read than a pack of camels, she develops a world view centered around the imagery on the cigarette pack involving pyramids, redheads (both she and Wrangle have fiery red hair), and alien races. Unfortunately, the press catches wind of her self-confinement, and when word gets back to Wrangle about what she has done, he gets the wrong idea about her motives and dumps her.

Don't worry, I haven't divulged the entire story. Besides, with Robbins' writing, getting there is half the fun. The story is full of humor, psychedelic imagery, odd-ball philosophy and solopsistic interludes where he discusses his love/hate relationship with his new Remington SL3 electric typewriter, which he is using to compose the story. It also discusses the purpose of the moon, and explores how to make love stay.

All-in-all, I thought it was a fun read, albeit a little dated (it was published in 1980). Maybe if I'd read it when I bought it, I wouldn't have had to make that complaint.