Archives - September 2009

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Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: Gladwell proposes here that ideas, information, and behaviors act like an epidemic, starting small and spreading until they reach a certain threshold, the "tipping point". Although I enjoy Gladwell's clear, conversational writing and thought he had some interesting ideas, I was less taken with this than I was with Blink. Much of what he talks about in this book has to do with marketing and advertising, and I just don't find those compelling topics, as opposed to, say, his discussion in Blink of unconscious racism and ideas for how to combat that. It was an entertaining read generally, but it's not a book I'm going to be thinking about a lot after finishing it.
Hank Aaron with Lonnie Wheeler, I Had a Hammer: The Hank Aaron Story: Hank Aaron was until a couple of years ago the holder of major league baseball's career home run record, and he is by all accounts one of baseball's all-time greatest players. Aaron started his career in baseball soon after Jackie Robinson broke the racial barrier, while black players still faced virulent racism on many fronts. Aaron faced more than most when he challenged Babe Ruth's home run record; he received thousands of hate-filled letters, many threatening his life, which are simply horrifying to read (the book quotes several). He faced these challenges with courage and dignity, he broke the record, and he became known for speaking out on racial issues.

In this autobiography, Aaron relates the story of his life, from his poverty-stricken beginnings in Alabama to his elevation to the ranks of baseball's greatest. Each chapter is introduced with a third-person section which gives a historical picture of the world Aaron lived in, before Aaron's first-person narrative takes over; I thought this was an excellent structure, setting each part of Aaron's life and career in the context of his times while allowing for his own thoughts and opinions to be set down. This is one of the best baseball autobiographies I've read, and along with Jackie Robinson's I Never Had It Made, it's essential reading for any baseball fan who wishes to understand the history of the game. More than that, though, it provides a thought-provoking look at American social history and civil rights through the lens of the sport often considered America's favorite.
Lisa See, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan: In their remote villages in 19th-century China, women are treated like servants, not equal to the men who head their families nor to the husbands to whom they will be given in arranged marriages. When Lily is only seven, she is paired with Snow Flower, her laotong or "old same", in an lifelong bond as important as marriage and much more sustaining emotionally. Lily and Snow Flower communicate via the women's language known as nu shu, passing messages back and forth by writing on a silk fan; they share their pains and joys and heartaches both face to face and via nu shu. Eventually, though, their friendship is threatened by acts of betrayal which may sever their bond forever.

See's writing is lucid, restrained yet emotional, beautifully mirroring the elegant writings Lily and Snow Flower exchange. She's clearly done her research, and the historical details are deftly combined with her narrative, explaining but never overwhelming the story. I liked this a lot and will be reading more of See's work.
Suzanne Collins, Catching Fire: This is the second book in the trilogy that began with The Hunger Games, and this review contains unavoidable spoilers for that book, so be warned.

After their historic joint win in the annual Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark have returned to District 12, bringing the fruits of their victory with them. When sinister President Snow comes to visit Katniss, though, she realizes that the consequences of her defiance of the government in the Games may be larger than she thought. And Katniss has personal problems as well; the fictional love affair with Peeta which led directly to their victory is causing her difficulty with Gale, her childhood friend and now romantic interest, but the president insists that she continue to carry out the charade with Peeta. On their Victory Tour, Peeta and Katniss encounter unrest in the Districts, where they are seen as heroes...and inspirations for rebellion.

I still love brave, impulsive, tough Katniss and was pleased to see her relationships with both Gale and Peeta developing. As far as the plot goes, on the one hand, I thought the way in which Collins used the Hunger Games again was pretty clever, without doing a straight repeat of the first book's games. On the other, though, I would have liked to see more of what's behind the Games, of the actual political scene. I think I will have to withhold judgment on this until the third book of the trilogy is out, to see whether Collins can transcend the setting of the first two books and make the world she's created more complex. The revelations at the end of Catching Fire certainly make me hopeful that she's about to do this. And I should say: it ends on quite a cliffhanger, making me especially eager for the last book.
Paul Strathern, The Artist, the Philosopher, and the Warrior: The Intersecting Lives of da Vinci, Machiavelli, and Borgia and the World They Shaped: In different ways, Cesare Borgia, Leonardo da Vinci, and Niccolo Machiavelli are all men who shaped what we know as the Italian Renaissance. Here, Strathern discusses their achievements and examines the ways in which these intersected. The ties between Machiavelli and Borgia are well-documented (after all, the ideal ruler of Machiavelli's most famous work is modelled after Borgia), as are those between Borgia and Leonardo, who worked at Florence's request as Borgia's military engineer for a time.

Where Strathern stretches too much, I think, is in the ties between Machiavelli and Leonardo. Clearly they had some level of interaction and were linked in several different Florentine projects; Leonardo's biographer Charles Nicholl thinks it likely that they had a "cordial relationship". Strathern simply takes this too far, in my estimation, making all sorts of unsupported speculations about how Leonardo could have taken care of Machiavelli during an illness at Imola, or how Leonardo might have visited "his old friend Machiavelli" on his way to France to the court of Francis I.

In the end, Strathern produces a reasonably interesting work of popular history, which I might recommend to someone who didn't know much about the period. From a historical viewpoint, though, he simply stretches his thesis too far, on too little documentary evidence, to be completely convincing.
A.S. Byatt, The Children's Book: I adore Possession, but since I have never found another Byatt I've loved nearly so much, I was a little anxious upon beginning The Children's Book. Happily, I was enthralled right from the start.

The Children's Book is a sprawling, absorbing family epic, stretching from the late Victorian era through the Edwardian and ending just after World War I. Olive Wellwood is a children's book author who lives with her husband Augustus and their seven children at their beautiful country home, the center of an enchanted circle of friends and family, artists and craftsmen, writers and actors. Yet as the years go by, the enchanted circle begins to break up under the stress of secrets and betrayals, until the final devastations of World War I.

Olive writes fantastic tales not only for publication, but also individual stories for each child. As with Possession, Byatt weaves pieces of these and of Olive's other writings into the narrative, along with bits of letters and other documents which enhance the story and add layers to the plot and especially to the characterization. Byatt also focuses intensely on the Arts and Crafts movement and the details of the crafts -- largely pottery and puppetry -- which I found fascinating. I can see how it might be simply too much detail for some, but I generally love that sort of thing and was never bored by it.

I'm hardly an expert on this period, but the historical background seemed very well done to me, especially the slow change from the late Victorian era through the Edwardian and into World War I. I did feel that the World War I section got rather short shrift compared to the rest of the book, although thinking about it, this seems rather fitting; perhaps Byatt is mimicking the way in which the war brought a sudden end to the glories of the Victorian and Edwardian eras.

It's a long, rich book, and I'm rather looking forward to rereading it, as I'm sure I'll pick up much more a second time through.


Last updated 29 December 2009. All text and photographs © George Mitchell and Margaret Johnston, unless otherwise noted Comments, questions, suggestions to margaret@lonelymountain.net.