ABR’s #CBR5 Review #23: Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup

This book doesn’t need much introduction. It is the memoir that has gained renewed attention since the release of the film by the same name. The memoir was written in the 1850s by Solomon Northup who, although he was a free man living in the North, was kidnapped and sold into slavery. He remained a slave for 12 years until he was able to convince a white abolitionist to help him contact his family and secure his freedom.

I have not seen the movie, but I would highly recommend the book. It is beautifully written, poetic in places, horrifying in others. It is much more than a historical narrative, it is the story of a loved and loving man who remains hopeful and spiritual in the harshest of situations.

As you’d expect, it is educational, but it is also inspirational. Some passages are so lyrical, they read like a psalm.

The book really deserves a more thoughtful and robust review, but no matter how elaborate the review, it would come down to the same recommendation: Just read it.

Caitlin’s #CBR5 #61: Bubble World by Carol Snow

This is an interesting book about a girl who lives on an island utopia…except it’s not what it seems. It ends up being some sort of junior matrix situation, where teenagers who have difficulty in the real world are hooked up to computers and live virtual lives. I wasn’t expecting that at all when I started the book, and it ended up being much more interesting than I thought it would be.

You can read my full review here.

Sophia’s #CBR5 Review #69: “The Artful Edit” by Susan Bell

I’ve had The Artful Edit: On the Practice of Editing Yourself (2007) by Susan Bell on my to-read list ever since I decided to try NaNoWriMo about seven months ago. I can’t remember how I originally found The Artful Edit, but I quickly decided to postpone reading it until after I had actually written something to edit. And that’s how I came to be reading it in December.

Susan Bell taught a New York’s New School graduate writing class in self-editing, and I think the idea for the book came from that class. Bell separates the book into five separate chapters: one about stepping away from your work to gain perspective; one focused on macro-editing; the next on micro-editing; a “master class” delving into editing for different artists (i.e. photography); and finally a brief history on editing and how it’s changed throughout the years. Although this book was more school learnin’ than entertainment, I found it generally interesting and helpful. The chapters end with a quick summation of the suggestions discussed in the chapter, and I think I’ll keep those for further reference. The last chapter dragged, and was more challenging to push through, although Bell still managed to relate it back to our own works.

Unlike No Plot? No Problem!, which got me started on the whole NaNoWriMo adventure, The Artful Edit is a little more intimidating. Instead of encouraging laypeople that anyone can do it, Bell dissects great literary texts and quotes and discusses countless famous authors (only some of whom I actually knew). I definitely got the sense that this book was for “real” writers. Part of me felt desperately out of my league. However, Bell also had a number of famous authors describe their own editing processes, which turned out to be quite varied. Not only was this fascinating, but it was freeing to see that what works depends on who you are and how you work.

One of the main teaching elements of The Artful Edit was the use of The Great Gatsby. Bell liberally used quotes from earlier versions with comparisons to the final draft, as well as some enlightening correspondence between Fitzgerald and his editor to illustrate various aspects of writing and editing. The examples were helpful as illustrations, but it was also fascinating to see the building of something so famous. I’m certainly not looking to write a great classic: an understandable story that I let some of my friends read would count as a major accomplishment, but it was inspiring to see how much difference editing can make in a text. I haven’t even looked at my first draft since the end of November, but reading this book has me excited to get back into it.

To see more of my reviews, visit my blog here.

reginadelmar’s #CBR5 review #52 In Defense of Food: An Eaters’ Manifesto by Michael Pollan

I am a fan of Michael Pollan, having read several of his books and heard him speak when he’s in town. I hadn’t read In Defense of Food because I heard him interviewed and attended a lecture right around the time the book was published. At the lecture he brought a shopping bag full of things he’d picked up at a grocery store: green tea infused sodas, yogurt with fiber added, and numerous other manufactured foods. His point was that in the United States we practice “nutritionalism” focusing on particular nutrients rather than whole foods, and eating manufactured foods in the process. This is the theme of the book.  Pollan goes through a history of food science, a description of what we are eating today, and his suggestions for a better way of eating.

The phenomenon of nutritionalism was named in the late 20th century, but has been in practice since the 19th century. Currently the popular “bad” nutrient is the carbohydrate. Athe end of the 20th century it was fat, in the 19th and early 20th century, John Kellogg and others extolled the harm of animal proteins. In general, our food research seeks to isolate certain nutrients and determine their harmful or beneficial effects. This isn’t all bad, science has discovered vitamins and other minerals in food and determined they were necessary. The problem is that this form of reductionism also creates over simplifications in our approach to food.

Mrs Smith Reads The Unwinding An Inner History of the New America by George Packer, #CBR5, Review 24

I finished The Unwinding too late to include it on my Best of 2013 Reads list, but if I could, I would totally move it to first place. Everyone should read this book. George Packer has put a human face on the economic collapse of the US over the last four decades, and what he describes is not pretty.

The Unwinding is not a non-fiction economic treatise on bad political and corporate malfeasance used to describe our current inequalities, instead, Packer tells stories. These stories come from North Carolina (my home state), Ohio and Florida. Packer gives us history writ small, detailing the lives of lower middle class and poor individuals struggling to be successful and make a good life for themselves and their families as corporations and our politicians make it harder and harder for anyone but the most wealthy to enjoy anything approaching success.

Mrs Smith Reads The Unwinding by George Packer

llp’s #CBR5 Review 24: Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me, by Mindy Kaling

It was a good book – warm, funny, and something I could identify with.

reginadelmar’s #CBR5 review #40 Lawrence in Arabia by Scott Anderson

This may have been my favorite book of 2013.  Prior to reading this book, everything I knew about  T.E. Lawrence came from David Lean’s film, Lawrence of Arabia which I like a lot. The real story is even better and more interesting than the film.

From the outset Anderson admits that Lawrence is a difficult character to know, there is so much mythology about him, both negative and positive. Lawrence himself contributed to the confusion through his own writings that are inconsistent and contradict other eyewitness accounts.  Anderson has worked through a lot of source material, often providing the reader with differing accounts of the same event, sharing his conclusions, but allowing the reader to draw her own.

The book begins prior to WWI introducing Lawrence at a young age.  His family was reclusive due to his parents’ scandalous romance.  As the book moves into the Middle East, it follows three other men who were contemporaries of Lawrence who were operating in the Middle East.  Curt Prüfer was a German national and spy who was trying to incite jihad against the British.  Aaron Aaronsohn was a Jewish agronomist and Zionist, a spy and a critical figure in the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. Anderson also tells the story of an American, William Yale, who worked for Standard Oil.  His story is much smaller than the others, but also reflects the outsider role the United States played through much of World War I.

Mrs Smith Reads The Reason I Jump by Naoki Higashida, #CBR5 Review #21

The Reason I Jump is a short but informative book written by Naoki Higashida when he was just thirteen years old. Higashida is severely Autistic and generously shares his very insightful answers to some common questions non-Autistics often have as they struggle to understand this unusual neurodevelopmental disorder.

Mrs Smith Reads The Reason I Jump by Naoki Higashida

Ashlie’s #CBR5 Review #32: Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) By Mindy Kaling

“Mindy Kaling is my spirit animal.” This was my thought as the audiobook drew to a close. (More on that in a minute.)

I had been on the fence about this book for a while. I heard good things, enjoyed her on “The Office” and sporadically see “New Girl” but I wasn’t convinced. As I was packing for a long solo road trip, I found this in my library’s digital collection and figured it would pass the time.

I am SO glad I picked it out! I’m not sure if I would have enjoyed reading it as much as i did listening to it. It was basically like having a funny, interesting, authentic friend in the car for six and a half hours. Highly enjoyable, and a few laugh out loud moments.

Back to the spirit animal observation. I have some great girl friends, but I don’t always fit well in an all female dynamic, so I was surprised at how well I identified with this book, and with Mindy. As a single woman in the south, it’s easy to let that define you (since other people do) but her attitude reminds me to be the sassy, hopeful, independent woman I am.

Lollygagger’s #CBR5 Review #50: Blackwater by Jeremy Scahill

Just to make sure we’re all on the same page: Blackwater is a horrible, horrible, horrible company, right? Like, everyone with a conscience is aware of that fact? Everyone who works there is not a horrible person (many are just trying to survive), but we all know that the organization is bloody awful, yes?

Okay, so starting from that premise, why read a book that tells you in detail about how horrible it is? Because it’s good. Really good. It is very well researched, with a level of detail in the writing that brings home the realities of just how atrocious an organization this is.

Scahill provides a history of the company, from its roots in the southern U.S., through the Iraq war and into present day, where Blackwater (now ACADEMI) has truly terrifying plans. He discusses the problems of a mercenary army – recruitment, payment, accountability (well, lack thereof), lawlessness. He uses the murder of four Blackwater contractors in Fallujah as backdrop against which the book is set, returning to what happened, how it happened, and the impact on the families. That running story points out how expendable these contractors are to the company. Their lives may be on the line, and they may be getting great compensation (unless they are from South American or Africa, which Scahill addresses in the book), but in the end, the company doesn’t care about them. Their deaths are a PR issue, but that’s about it.

The biggest problem with contractors like Blackwater from the perspective of the county and the world is that they are essentially mercenaries. They are paid to protect the elite, to do things that our military might or might not be able to do, and they aren’t accountable to anyone. They may technically be subcontractors, but they aren’t covered by the same laws as private citizens, and they pretend to be military even though they don’t have the same oversight. They can do whatever they want with minimal consequences; claiming immunity as a quasi-military organization. It’s despicable.

From the perspective of the families of the contractors who are killed due to the careless policies of Blackwater (and, by extension, the U.S. government for contracting with them), these contractors don’t get the same respect and care as the military. Some of them may be doing work that troops would have done in the past, but because they aren’t military, they don’t get the same benefits, or support. Is that wrong? I don’t know. You can argue they know what they signed up for, but Blackwater is so shady that who knows what they were really told, and how much time they all had to really review what they signed.

Beyond the tasks Blackwater performed in Iraq and Afghanistan, they also ingratiated themselves in the Katrina response, taking part in disaster profiteering. They lied about saving lives, and tried to not pay the contractors the prevailing ways.

This company isn’t just bad for the reasons stated above; they are bad because of what they represent: a shift from governmental accountability to private (stockholder / owner) accountability. One thing about war is that the country is supposed to feel the consequences of it. It should keep us from just going to war with anyone we dislike, without cause. But as more of the actions are shifted to mercenary companies like Blackwater, who’s to speak up and say it’s not okay?

If you have any interest in this, and want to have some details to back up your understanding that Blackwater is just appalling, check out the book.