Registered: Sep 2000
Location: The Bottom of the Toyem Pole
Posts: 9453

Read in 2003:

I've been meaning to write this up for a while now, but just haven't been able to get to it until now. This is a partial list as my library is split between my apartment and my inlaws and I'm at my inlaws, but a fair amount of what I read is here. I didn't actually get to read too much this year, not counting my non-school related stuff. So much of my reading is occupied by "academic" stuff, and a fair amount of my personal reading is non-fiction, research and theory stuff that actually requires a fair amount of reader involvement. I like fun fiction like Grisham and Rowling as a nice 2-3 day distraction that I can just veg out on and devour, but that doesn't happen very often.

Here is my list, in a non-chronological order:

What to expect when you're expecting: Pregnancy guide book. A good one, and well recommended for expecting parents.

Bringing Baby Home: Guidebook for after baby comes. I didn't think this was that good, but it was a gift so what can I complain about.

A Simple Plan: The book that the movie was based on. I dropped a bunch of Japanese textbooks and study guides off at the book room of the foreign student and faculty housing building I used to live and saw this there, so I grabbed it. The movie was filmed very close to the book, but the book was grimmer. Even though I knew how the story ultimately ended up, there were enough bits not included in the film to make this enjoyable. Easy read.

2001: Had never read this. Watched the movie once, but it failed to hold my attention at the end (I may have been drinking as well). I was surprised to learn that Clarke and Kubrick were writing the film and movie collaboratively; I had always assumed the book came first. It was an interesting read, but the end wasn't so cool, if I understood it correctly.

Neuromancer, by Gibson: Fun read. Had an old copy that I found somewhere and took it with me to Hawaii. Bought some Red Hook, a pack of smokes, and Blimpie's sandwich and read it all night long. I need to re-read the ending when I'm not so tired and drunk. Great story though, for sure.

Why do people hate america?: Bought this after reading that euphorbia was reading it on Goatboy's recommendation and I wanted to see what was up with it. In the end, I missed the discussion about it, which was probably just as well as I don't have time to keep up on and contribute to discussions around here much anymore. I thought this was a decent book, especially the first half, as it did a fair job of talking about how the world percieves the U.S. (and it isn't just an image problem. Well, it IS an image problem, but it is the image the U.S. has of itself that is the problem. Anyway, we can talk about that somewhere else, I think). I wasn't sure if I bought into the extended discussion of John Wayne and the American identity based in the western frontier, but it merits intelligent discussion. The authors' post-modern theoretical attachments shone a bit brightly for my tastes and I felt that some of their deconstruction was rather meaningless, but it was a worth reading, and I recommend the first half or 2/3 to people interested in and wiling to hear from a non-US voice about what is wrong with America. It didn't come as a pure axe to grind, although that was there in parts.

Fast Food Nation: Loved it. Great work into the corporate ideological cultural space that we inhabit in the United States. It didn't turn me off of fast food, but it did get me fired up about raising people's awareness of the ways that being a fast food nation gets a tacit endorsement from our behavior, even though it includes added prices that we probably don't really like. It was just an eye-opener, and I think it should be mandatory reading for high school students in their junior year (they don't pay attention as seniors). Coercion by Doug Rushkoff should be on the docket too for high schoolers, but I read that a few years ago so it doesn't really belong here.

Globalization and its discontents: I started my globalization knowledge with Lexus and Olive Tree, which was a nice intro in a certain way. It surely helped me to understand later complailnts about globalization much better. Lexus and Olive tree was once described as a "long deep kiss with globalization" which sums it up pretty well. Stiglitz, the author of Globalization and its discontents, used to work inside the IMF/World Bank/ US Gov't system, and he does an excellent job of explaining the problems with the system as it stands. Essentially, globalization is a non-democratic, utterly non-transparent system of government that has coopted the original goals of the World Bank (make the world a better place). Everyone bitches about a New World Order or subjugation to the UN; globalization is every bit as domineering but massively more subversive and dangerous because it doesn't sell itself as government per se. Mandatory reading.

Dreaming War by Gore Vidal: First book I've read by Vidal. I wasn't impressed too much, but I did like his catch phrase about the United States of Amnesia. This book felt too much like it was a package of his words that was published because it would rake in a few bucks for him, rather than a book that he felt had to be published to make his message heard. Meh.

Scientist in the Crib: Infant cognitive development book. Informative and fun to read, but not as relevant to me as a parent and person with a personal interest in human cognition and development. Am currently reading "Baby Steps" and "What's going on in there," two books I'd recommend before Scientist in the Crib for those that want more detail. But Scientist in the Crib is a good read, easier than the other two due to its generalist nature. For those *really* interested in cognitive development, check out Tomasello's Cultural Origins of Cognition. That's some seriously cool shit.

Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy, and religion in the Matrix: I'd read the essays on the Matrix website over the last year and wanted to read some other stuff that people were saying about the movie before Reloaded and Revolutions came out. I'm not big on allegory and deconstructing symbolism in movies and literature, partly because I'm not very good at it, but mostly because I think it usually is more of the case of the analyst imposing their interpretation on something rather than discovering something inside. Kind of like those black line drawings that look like an old woman or an eskimo at first but then if you let your brain relax the image shifts into a young woman or an Indian chief's face. The author's words and images are the black lines and what you get out of it is just a shift in perspective that results in new understandings, but the always stem from inside the viewer rather than come from the object under view. Anyway. But it is fun to see what other people come up with, so I read this. It was okay. Some of it was stupid, some of it was pretty damn good.

Kiln People, by David Brin: Sci-fi detective story. Great! Basis of the story is that technology has developed a way to make brain scans which can be imprinted into clay golems which run around and do your chores for you, only to return at night and upload their memories. It might sound hokey the way I describe it, but its a cool concept and environment (has some nice elements of surveillance society in it too), as well as a good detective plot. Recommended highly.

A Painted House by Grisham: Technically I read this over Christmas 2002, but its close enough to get included here. Man, this was a lame book. I kept waiting for it to take off, for something to happen, but nothing did. Not bad, but not Grisham. Not recommended unless you are bunkum. It seems like the kind of thing she might like.

Soldiers of God, by Kaplan: Great book about his time reporting on the Afghanistan War during the soviet conflict. He spent time with Pashtun and Uzbek fighters and really writes an incredible story about their war and their lives.


War on Iraq by Scott Ritter: Ex Marine and US front man in Iraq tells his experiences dealing with the US and their ineptitude in Iraq.

9/11 & Power and Terror: Talks by Chomsky: These were the first writings/ talks by Chomsky I've read, actually. Fairly repetitive, but good stuff here. I still can't figure out why people ignore Chomsky so much. I guess they just don't like being held to a single standard.

The Best Democracy Money Can Buy by Palast: Not completely finished yet. A decent read, I guess. I don't know what this guys credibility is (his press history is mostly with UK papers, which I'm not familiar with. Observer and Guardian, mostly.)

Silencing Political Dissent by Chang: Haven't read the whole thing, but she dives into the PATRIOT fallout of 9/11 and talks about what that legislation and the actions of the government could mean for the U.S. Lefty crap that true patriots™ needn't bother with, since it is fairly critical of the government (a no-no for TruePatriots) and traditionalist about what the U.S. stands for (America the free and all that).

I think that is about it. I've got a few pans in the fire still (the afforementioned infant psychology books, plus a bunch more lefty stuff by Chomsky, Said, Blum, and whatnot. I picked up Stephenson's Cryptonomicon but haven't dived in yet, and I've been flirting with King's sequel to The Talisman, The Dark House. The narrative style of the first pages is annoying as hell though. I'm also reading Jihad vs McWorld and a couple Robert Kaplan books (warrior politics and Ends of the Earth).

But right now, I have to get back to the 28 papers written by my non-native English speaking Japanese students on the theme of "living in a post-9/11 world."

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Registered: Sep 2000
Location: The Bottom of the Toyem Pole
Posts: 9453

I remembered two more:

Blowback by Chalmers Johnson Nice look at how Empire can bite your ass. Recommended

'Tis The sequel to Angela's Ashes. AA was a better story, but 'Tis is good, and a necessary read if you've read Angela's Ashes. It's a positive counterweight to the utter dreadful experiences in the first volume of his memoir.

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