Category: Book Review

Book Review: Rolling Nowhere

Book Review, Grad School,

Today my group in J669 gave our midterm presentation on Ted Conover’s Rolling Nowhere. The book is Conover’s first, which was published in 1984. The premise is that as a young anthropology student, Conover spent four months riding around the county in empty boxcars with the homeless. He did it as an experiment for his thesis, but after he returned from the trip and finished his degree, he decided to turn his personal narrative of the experience into a book.

rolling-nowhere_145I am pretty happy with the way our presentation went. I have an unfortunate cold, so I was a little worried I would lose my voice or have to keep blowing my nose and be obnoxious while the members of my group were presenting, but Robitussin (arguably one of the worst tasting substances known to man) kept my symptoms in check long enough to get through our 1 1/2 hour discussion.

My contribution to our analysis was to compare and contrast Conover with the other authors that we’ve read as part of our class work for J669. I also contributed a little to the questions and discussion that we had after we all presented the parts we prepared individually. We talked a lot about the ethics involved in immersion reporting, and whether or not it would even be possible to give an accurate portrayal of homeless life given that Conover was an upper middle class college kid.

Overall I think it was a success, the class definitely helped us out by participating in the discussion and bringing up issues of their own to talk about. After I asked the first question, they really ran with it (prompted by Deb) and we didn’t have to add much more to keep the class talking for another 15 minutes. Its always good when you can fill the entire time you are allotted and we did that, so I’m optimistic.  I also got another paper back in J620 today and it was another A so I’m two for two in that class, which is also good.

I’m definitely headed into the home stretch of this semester. The only assignments I have left are my finals, and one more book for J669 (Sebastian Junger’s War). It has gone incredibly fast!

Book Review: The Secret Life of Lobsters

Book Review,

Go ahead, ask me about lobster sex. I know far more about lobster love than I ever really wanted or would need to know thanks to Trevor Corson’s book The Secret Life of Lobsters. I read Corson’s book for J669 and I have to say, it was a struggle to get through even though I did find a lot of elements in the book compelling.

Corson interweaves lobster research in with the lobster fishing industry of Maine to drive the book forward. The personal stories of the lobster men and their families add a lot of interest to the book. But, toward the end I really found myself struggling to finish the last few chapters because the research was so boring.

Homarus Americanus (The species found in Maine) Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Homarus Americanus (The species found in Maine)
Source: Wikimedia Commons.

I really pushed myself to get through all of the pages of description detailing the fluctuations in the lobster population and how lobsters migrate and where lobsters live during certain parts of their life. The hardest part about those chapters was that Corson never arrived at any conclusions. The researchers he wrote about work really hard to pinpoint why the lobster population fluctuates, and after all those pages they don’t reach a conclusion. Ending with the idea that populations naturally vary was so anti-climactic. I was disappointed.The first few chapters about scientific research focus on how a lobster molts (sheds it shell so it can grow) which I found really interesting, and about how lobsters mate. Is it stereotypical that I was entertained by the chapters about lobster sex, but once the book started focusing on lobster habitat and the lobster’s life cycle I found myself hopelessly bored?

Actually, the book officially ends with a discourse on whether or not it is humane to boil lobsters live, which I find sort of perfect. But the rather piddly end to the scientific research was still a let down.

Book Review: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Book Review, Guest Lecture,

Today I met Rebecca Skloot, the author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, mentioned in my previous blog post. Skloot’s book is the UW Madison Go Big Read program’s selection for this year, so she gave a public lecture last night, and visited the journalism school this morning to take questions.

As far as author presentations go, I loved this one, because Skloot pretty much just plopped down in a chair and said what do you want to know? It was a small group (25-30 people) but the discussion kept up for over an hour just based on audience questions. My question for her was whether she was prepared for the Lacks family’s lack of science education and how she viewed her role as a journalist but also as their teacher. Her response was that the two roles were essentially one because her reporting style is based around an informal conversation, but that she wasn’t really prepared for how confused they were about what HeLa is.

20100316we-the-immortal-life-of-henrietta-lacks-by-rebecca-sklootOther questions that were asked ran the gamut from the business of publishing a book, to how Skloot handled Deborah’s death and incorporated it into the book, how she decided on the structure of the book, and how she handled (and organized) 10 years worth of notes. She was an engaging speaker, and was even willing to talk about some of the criticisms of her that have come up since the book came out.

The biggest criticism of Skloot out there is that she isn’t doing enough to help the Lacks family. But, she has set up a foundation for them — and I think its important to remember that for 10 years Skloot was accumulating debt chasing down this story, if the book hadn’t been a success she’d definitely be in the hole so I agree with her unapologetic attitude toward the money she’s made from the book’s success.

She also mentioned that she sometimes gets push back from people who don’t agree with the fact that she kept all of the interviews in their original dialect (people saying it puts down the lesser educated black people who don’t speak with proper grammar) but Skloot points out that she kept the dialect and “broken” English of European and Asian researchers as well as the Lacks family.

According to Skloot the biggest problem she’s encountered so far has been from the white members of the Lacks family. In the whole two pages that the white Lackses are discussed, they definitely appear as racists. But, it is Skloot’s word against the word of the children of her sources (her sources are now dead) who have argued that Skloot couldn’t possibly have done the interviews because their parents wouldn’t have said the things Skloot says they did.

Considering how utterly unimportant the white Lacks family is to the story, it’s sort of absurd to think that Skloot didn’t really do the reporting. It would be such a dumb part of the story to make up, so I’m inclined to believe that the interviews are true.

This book is undoubtedly going to be Skloot’s literary legacy, so overall it was fun to get another first hand perspective on what it takes to research, write, and market a successful science book.

Book Review: Zeitoun

Book Review, Grad School,

This past weekend I spent all day Saturday reading Zeitoun, by Dave Eggers. I thought it was a great example of literary journalism, and also personally thought provoking. The book tells the story of one family in the days before, during, and after hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005. In addition to your typical survival story, it is also about being a Muslim in a post-September 11th America.

eggers, dave - zeitounMy only first hand contact with Hurricane Katrina was through the students from Tulane who were displaced and so spent the Fall 2005 semester at Lehigh. College all over the country took in the Tulane students until the campus could reopen. Other than that, I don’t know anyone who lives in that part of the country. Of course I followed the media coverage, but there is nothing like hearing someone tell their own story of what they went through. Eggers’ reporting of the Zeitoun family’s story was like hearing them tell it to me themselves. I felt like I was right there with them and it was more moving than a lot of the reporting that I was exposed to in the days after the hurricane struck.

As a Muslim family they had to also deal with the fear or being attacked for their faith, and ultimately Abdul (the father/husband) was suspected of terrorism in a lawless New Orleans, when there was no real evidence against him and arrested by the makeshift police forces in place. As someone deeply and permanently affected by September 11th, it was hard at first after that attack to distinguish between subsets of faith, to try to figure out who had struck out against my family. But ultimately by educating myself I’ve come to the conclusion that Islam is a peaceful religion, which believe me has been a hard sell to some of my friends and family.

I feel conflicted sometimes because I don’t believe people should be persecuted for their religion, the United States is grounded in religious freedom, but at the same time we need a way to protect ourselves from people who believe their religion entitles them to hurt anyone who isn’t of their faith. I’m not sure what the answer is, but arresting Muslims based on no evidence certainly isn’t it. The Zeitoun’s story made me angry because with all the resources this country has it its disposal, lawlessness should never be a concern, even in a decimated city. How does a country like the United States lose total control like that?

I don’t particularly have any answers to the issue of how to maintain religious freedom in the face of Terrorism, I am after all a mere journalism grad student, but you should read Zeitoun because it is important to at least think about these issues. You need to be exposed to other people and their stories and perspectives to understand the implications of public policy.

Book Review: Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung

Book Review, Grad School,

For the last week I have been trying to read Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung by Lester Bangs. It is a collection of articles about music that originally ran in the 1970’s. It is one of the worst things I have ever read, and I choose to read scientific reports for a living. As I was working my way through it I kept asking myself, am I just not getting it? What am I missing? Is this like when I read Tess of the D’urbervilles and hated it because I didn’t realize that the main character had gotten raped (which is the basis for the entire story) and then got completely owned in class the day we discussed it??

239404I’m still not sure if the articles are actually as awful as I perceive them to be, or if I’m completely missing the point, but I guess I’ll find out in class this week. For short pieces I found them incredibly hard to follow, and as music reviews I would say that most of the time I couldn’t even tell whether or not he liked the album or artist he was talking about. It reads like a ridiculous stream of conscious, that goes off on completely unrelated tangents that in my opinion add very little to the writing. He also uses the longest sentences. A single sentence should not take up a whole paragraph, thats just bad technique. Actually, its the absence of technique, which is really all that Bangs style of writing is.

I wish someone would pay me to say whatever I damn well please, but until this blog gets bought and turned into a TV show (which is obviously my life’s back up plan, lol) I’ll have to settle for writing for my audience and employers. If only Bangs had such constraints. His pieces read like sprawling blog posts with no point, but lots of stories and personal opinion. He literally just says whatever he wants.

The only piece in the whole collection that I liked at all was his article on The Clash. I may be jaded because personally I love The Clash, but this article actually made sense. There was a point, which Bangs proved by painting the scene in a literary way. He describes his personal interactions with the band to prove how they are different from all of their peers in the way that they care about their fans. It is an argument that he is able to prove, and he does. It is the only piece in the whole collection with that quality.

In other news, I hate press releases that are misleading and confuse me because I read them when I am half asleep so that I leave messages for potential sources early in the morning that have nothing to do with what I want to write about and don’t realize it until I get ahold of the PI hours later. So tomorrow I get to clean up my mess of messages, so that I can track down sources for an article due next week. Fun times. But there is always Rock the Casbah, and for today I guess that is enough.