Popular Reading

I have officially made it 50% of the way through my grandmother's novel! (Which I thought was 1000 pages, but which is actually 1500 pages.) I think that means that I have earned the right to review the other books I've read in Uruguay. I thought maybe I'd want to stop somewhere in the middle of this behemoth reading project and read something else, but I really don't. It's such a good book. Just very long.  It's too bad that the books I'm about to review seems to have been read by nearly everyone, since I can't review anything else for a while.

To Kill a Mockingbird
By Harper Lee

Confession: this was assigned in high school (of course, obviously) and I have no idea if I read it or not. YES, I SWEAR I AM AN AMERICAN. I had one of those English teachers (God bless him) who assigned both the book and the movie of everything. I remembered that it had a rabid dog, and a guy named Boo Radley, and that Atticus Finch was a sexy lawyer (that can't be right), and something happened that had to do with African Americans. Which is not really good enough.

So I read it again. Or maybe for the first time. I don't know. But here's what I do know: it's a goddamn good book. Why do we waste these books on prepubescent people? Most teenagers don't give a dog fart about books like To Kill a Mockingbird and Lord of the Flies, which I pretty much want to read every year of my life. Instead of making them read these books when they'd rather be reading Twilight (and let's face it, at least they're reading something) we should put the best books on the highest shelves and say, "Nuh uh. No way. Those are a secret." Build up a little mystery and intrigue so that someday they'll be in a bookstore, see a copy, and just DIE to start reading it, instead of thinking, "oh, that's that book my stupid teacher made me read."


This is obviously not really a review because everyone already mostly knows about To Kill a Mockingbird. But if you "read" it in high school and don't really remember reading it, it actually is as good as everyone says it is and you wouldn't be wasting your time to read it again. Particularly because, reading as an adult, Scout is charming in ways I wouldn't have appreciated as a teenager.

I would recommend this book to: Anyone who hasn't read it, obvi, and anyone who pretends like they've read it, but can't legitimately remember the plot. You might be on Jeopardy someday.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
By Rebecca Skloot

Between this, The Help, and To Kill a Mockingbird, I've had just about as many books as I can handle about the awful treatment of black people in this country. At least for a couple of months. The book tells the story of what happened when a doctor took a cell culture from a woman without her knowledge and it became one of the most, if not the most, important cell culture in medical history. It also tells the story of her family, who had no idea that an entire industry had arisen from their mother's cells.

The story has thousands of facets that make it intriguing: the historical implications of the mistreatment of black bodies, the story of the family itself living in poverty in rural Virginia, the science-fiction-like quality of the cells and their infinite replication, the (moral and religious?) questions about who owns our bodies and what responsibility do we have to science? This all probably sound very heavy and a little daunting, but Skloot is a talented story-telling and manages to take a story that has information coming from all angles and weave it into a coherent narrative. More than that, she really makes you care about the characters.

You know this is not your standard science book because, well, there's a good chance it will make you cry. I did. Hard.

I would recommend this book to: Jessica D. and people who like non-fiction books that have a plot.

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother
By Amy Chua
(Audio Book)

This book could not be further from my scope of interest. It's a memoir by a woman who raised her two daughters, in America, according to strict "Chinese Mother" principles, and all of the resulting successes and failures both hilarious and terrifying. In strictly embracing Chinese parenting, she inherently critiques "Western Parents" who are both hovering and laissez-faire.

When the book was published a storm of controversy stirred around Chua because, in the book, her behavior seems, admittedly, a little crazy. She doesn't allow her daughters to have playdates or sleep-overs with friends, she makes them practice long hours, every day on their musical instruments, and in one in much-discussed incident in the book, she hotly rejects a birthday card from her daughter for not being good enough.

I wouldn't have wanted to live with her growing up. But here's what's interesting, unlike some crazy, nightmarish, overbearing parents, Chua is completely self-aware. I read an interview in TIME magazine (please do not quote me on this) where Chua stated that she intended the book to be funny and self-deprecating, and was shocked by the scandal it caused. Perhaps being armed with this foreknowledge changed my attitude toward the book.

Also, I "read" the audio edition, something I normally can't stand but was convinced to do by Vanity Fair's "Writers Reading" podcast, which featured a sample of Chua reading a sample of the work.  In her own voice, it's easy to tell that Chua may be driven, but she's not a tyrant, and that she is interested, above all, in the well-being of her children, even when it means recognizing the faults in her strategy--which is something few people are willing to do.

Perhaps it's a bad sign for the quality of the writing that hearing the author's voice made her intentions so much clearer. Or maybe since I don't have children, I'm less invested in her craziness and more open to whatever she's got to say. One way or another, the book was intriguing and HIGHLY entertaining. Even if her method had some faults, Chua poses many valid  and necessary arguments about the way we in the "West" relate to our children--even if you don't have one, you were one at some point.

I would recommend this book to: Any of my friends with children (Trina in particular), people who enjoy "crazy" behavior, and anyone who plays an instrument but is having a hard time getting motivated to practice. You will feel AWFUL for not practicing after reading this book.