2017 #4: While I Was Gone (Miller)

While I Was Gone by Sue Miller
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It took me a bit to decide that I liked this book. I almost never read the "Q & A with the author" at the back of the book, but in this case, I'm glad I did. I was happy to read that Miller had trouble warming up to her own protagonist, and it never occurred to me that it is actually an essential part of the book. It is also a frustration--not with the narrative, but because I think most of us can recognize the places in ourselves that we don't love. In some ways it is a tough book to read, but the slow "wisdom" that "creeps up" on the characters (as one reviewer put it), is perhaps more real than your typical fictional arc.

2017 #3: What's Your Literacy IQ?

What's Your Literacy Iq?: Test Yourself On Your Literacy And General Knowledge:  1,200 Questions On Subjects From Abacus To Zygotes by Norma Gleason
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It is important to remember that the author does say that the main purpose of the book is to "divert you, entertain you, and challenge you." In those aims, it succeeded. That said, I think if the book claims to "test" literacy IQ, far more effort should have been made to ensure accuracy. The music questions, in particular, are questionable. Haydn is spelled wrong. Handel's famous oratorio is misnamed. These errors are pedestrian, yes, but really could have been avoided by having an authoritative proofreader.

All that said, I did have fun with it.

2017 #2: Engaging Ideas (John C. Bean)

Engaging Ideas: The Professor's Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom by John C. Bean
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is an essential read for anyone teaching in higher ed in any discipline that can involve writing. It will serve as a primer for some, a review for others, and a reference for all. With wide margins for annotation (for a meta experience see Chapter 8 "Marginal notes approach), this book will encourage and invigorate you to incorporate writing and and critical thinking in meaningful ways. John C. Bean offers different approaches, and while not all are created equal, he manages to strike a balance between "my way or the highway" and just a survey of methods. He offers different types of marking rubrics and plentiful examples. Both idealistic and pragmatic, Bean has managed a guide that balances pedagogical theory/philosophy (Piaget, Rogers, Elbow, Perry) with good old-fashioned "how to". The book diagnoses problems with writing (such as the "data dump" or the "and then" paper) and looks at the teacher's role in creating "cognitive dissonance" to present knowledge as dialogical, not informational. I have only one question that went unanswered. Bean is a big fan of "rewrites". One aspect he doesn't address is those students who may decide to do less than is required the first time around because they know they'll have the chance to rewrite. For me, that is different than "revision." But I value the fact that Bean's book raised this question for me. This is an indispensable book that I will return to time and time again.

2017 #1: To Say Nothing of the Dog (Connie Willis)

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If the genres of mystery, sci-fi, and historical fiction were able to conceive a love child, this book is it. Connie Willis deftly joins together humorous characters, intriguing timelines, and literary allusion in one easy-to-read volume. From the mysterious-yet-archetypal "Lady Shrapnel" to Cyril the dog, Willis' characters are a pleasure to meet, but are never overwritten (with the possible exception of Tossie). There are only two points that made it less than 5 stars for me. The solution to one of the micro-mysteries becomes glaringly obvious rather early in the narrative, and the "sleuths" (Verity and Ned) are far too slow to get it so that one reads the last 30% of the book with some annoyance. I think the author is making a larger point about assumptions, but for the non-Victorian Era reader, it is a bit unnecessary. There are other times where it feels like Willis is worried about her sci-fi cred, and we get lengthy explanations of timeline and time travel logistics that disrupt the flow of the story. That said, this was an incredibly enjoyable read, and fans of mysteries, literature, and history will find it especially pleasing.

2016 #5 Myth and Meaning: Cracking the Code of Culture (Lévi-Strauss)

This is not actually number five--I read this last semester while prepping my Orpheus and Music seminar. But I temporarily mislaid the book, so I wasn't able to write the review until now. :-)

 Myth and Meaning: Cracking the Code of Culture by Claude Lévi-Strauss
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"In order for a culture to be really itself and to produce something, the culture and its members must be convinced of their originality and even, to some extent, of their superiority over the others; it is only under conditions of under-communciation that it can produce anything. We are now threatened with the prospect of our being only consumers, able to consume anything from any point in the world and from every culture, but of losing all originality." (20)

Observations like this abound in Myth and Meaning: Cracking the Code of Culture. Lévi-Strauss, whose blending of anthropology and philosophy made him one of the most interesting scholars of myth, here offers a set of expanded lectures originally broadcast in 1977 on a CBC radio program called Ideas. In the second essay, "'Primitive' Thinking and the 'Civilized' Mind", Lévi-Strauss reveals the "totalitarian ambition of the savage mind" as distinctive from scientific thought, and how the former results in only the illusion of understanding. He also notes, however, that primitive people had the capacity for "civilizing" the mind, but simply had no need of it, calling upon instead a "fantastically precise knowledge of their environment and all its resources" (19)--something we have (regrettably) lost in our "civilized" state. This supports his concept of myth as a conceptual framework for binaries. It is these binaries that move us toward more qualitative scientific thinking, helping us to "understand a great many things present in mythological thinking which we were in the past prone to dismiss as meaningless and absurd." (24)

This collection of five essays would be a great introductory primer for the reader not yet ready to dig into The Raw and the Cooked or The Savage Mind. The most sage advice comes from Wendy Doniger in her most excellent foreword: "The trick is to jettison Lévi-Strauss right before the moment when he finally deconstructs himself." Indeed, those words apply to the works of many of our great contemporary thinkers.

Shroud for the Archbishop (Tremayne) - Sister Fidelma #2

 No review (before reviewing), but 3 stars. 

2016 #4: The Poe Shadow (Matthew Pearl)

The Poe Shadow by Matthew Pearl
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Pearl's The Dante Club is a favorite, so I had looked forward to reading this. I found the historical note at the end to be the most interesting part of the book. The narrative is uneven--it floats in and out of a nineteenth-century literary style, and I found both the narrator and Duponte to be tiresome and self-involved characters. "Bonjour" is definitely the best female character, but she fizzles out by the end. Perhaps there are too many "unknowns" in the actual historical accounts of Poe's death to make the book convincing. I felt that Pearl was trying not to take the same sorts of liberties he did in The Dante Club--fair enough. The entire book read like a struggle, however, between character development and interpolation of history. The plot twists seem to come out of nowhere (which, while that can be a boon, gets tiresome when it happens consistently) and characters are introduced but hardly developed so that one has a hard time keeping track of who has done what. Still, the book reflects a lot of Pearl's gifts as a writer--he does manage to combine wit with drama in a way few modern authors can. Having had such vastly different reactions to The Dante Club and The Poe Shadow, I am now eager to read The Last Dickens, because I do enjoy Pearl's writing on the whole. While the book was not a favorite, I'm glad I read it.