CBR 13 # 6 - Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann

 

In Oklahoma during the1920s, oil was pouring out from the ground and the Osage were being killed. Especially the wealthy ones.  The book follows events of how the Osage tribe were driven out of their homes, settled in Oklahoma, and became the richest tribe.  Then it moves on to how many of them were systematically, yes, systematically, killed for their oil wealth.  Then the ensuing investigation and how it tied to the founding of the FBI by J. Edgar Hoover.

The book primarily focuses on the cases related to Mollie Burkhart and her family, as well as Henry Roan.  But it also provides a good historical background on the Osage tribe and how they came to own so much oil rich land.  There is a lot of Western color with the oil barons, cattle rustlers, bootleggers, bank robbers and sheriffs.  It also gives an overview of how the case of the Osage killings were instrumental in the birth and success of the FBI.  On the FBI side, the main character and one of the few good white men in the book is Tom White, who was assigned to the Osage murder cases and was instrumental in bringing the perpetrators (some of them) to justice.

The book was infuriating to read and I wasn't so sure I could finish it at first.  It was hard to read how colonialism and white supremacy led to so much oppression, both through legal and illegal means.  Maybe it is my country's history of being colonized by basically everybody that leads me to empathize so much, or maybe I'm just a normal non shitty human being.  In any case, the first part of the book made my blood pressure rise.  The last part, on the other hand, when it moves to the present time and the author connects with the descendants of the victims, brought me to tears.

It is a really good book.  Necessary if you are an American.  On another note, I am excited to watch the upcoming film based on the book.

 

CBR IV # 10 - Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain

I have to admit that all I know about cooking (which is admittedly not much), I learned from Top Chef. I also have to admit that Top Chef is where I first saw Anthony Bourdain when he guest judged that one season. I got to know him a little better when I watched the Philippines edition of No Reservations, where he came to our tiny island in the middle of the archipelago and ate "THE BEST PIG EVER!" I'm not sure what my point is, but I think its that I didn't really know that much about him except for a few episodes on TV. I knew he was a chef and that's about it.

Kitchen Confidential is about Bourdain's love affair with the restaurant kitchen. Sure, its a dysfuntional, co-dependent love affair, but he loves it. He tells of how he first experienced food and how he fell into cooking. He is very open with the horrible stuff that they do at restaurants, as well as the horrible stuff that he did. His addictions and his rise and fall and rise again in the restaurant industry.

You learn a lot in the book. There are a lot of tips about eating out and cooking in and it gives you a view of how it might work at the back of the kitchen. It really grossed me out a little bit, to be honest. All that talk of sweat and drugs and skin diseases. Ugh. It presents the kitchen staff as a group of misfits and outcasts. Of course, it would be a bit of a mistake, I think to believe that all kitchens are like Bourdain's. Even he acknowledges at the end that he is presenting the kitchen as he knows it. There might be other kinds of experiences in other restaurants. But one thing is for sure. Cooking is NOT for the weak.

But aside from the actual content of the book, it was a good read. Bourdain's voice is funny and acerbic. Sarcastic and self-depreciating. He knows his good and bad sides and isn't afraid to present all of it. He is quite a personality. Now please come back to Cebu so we can eat delicious pig and drink some San Miguel Beer.

CBR IV # 6 - Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

I can't stop reading Malcolm Gladwell (I always mistakenly type Malcolm Macdowell.huh.)! But like in the past few books that I read by him, I wasn't so much interested in the big picture, or the theory he is trying to present. I can't quit reading because the anecdotes are so interesting. The experiments and all those interesting people. Its interesting. Maybe it's because of my background in psychology (well, bachelor of arts) that I find it all so interesting.

So this book is about the snap judgements and the power of thinking without thinking. Says so right there on the cover. It talks about how our initial impressions can be very helpful and how we subconsciously perceive things can result to good decisions. There is of course a downside in which we judge instantaneously based on faulty preconceptions. Therefore, we should train ourselves to be able to distinguish which impressions are useful and which are not.

I think that's what it was about. Like I said, I didn't really pay that much attention to the main thesis, just on the individual anecdotes. What struck with me though, was that to be able to get reliable first impressions, or to be able to think without thinking, you need, like all other things, to practice.

CBR IV # 5 - Fugitives and Refugees bu Chuck Palahiuk

I don't really know why I read this, being from a 3rd world country halfway across the globe, I will probable never get to see Portland, Oregon in the flesh. Then I remembered that I read all Palahniuks I can get my hands on.

Fugitives and Refugees is a guidebook to the weird and interesting in Portland Oregon. Not just places but people and events. I guess Palahniuk really calls Portland home and it shines through in the book. It shows how he loves his weir quirky city.

The book is not comprehensive in the sense that we get a whole picture of Portland. It is Portland as Chuck sees it. There are the descriptions of the interesting places, people and events but there are also snapshots of different times in Chuck's life. Lots of weird stuff like eating a lady's fur coat and and the Santa thingie. There are also recipes, which I totally didn't read.

It a slim book, a fast read. It wasn't mindblowing but it was ok. A photo album of a place I will probably never see.

# 51 Jubilee City by Joe Andoe

actual review date: January 5, 2011

Joe Andoe is an artist. I learned that only after reading his memoir. Joe Andoe grew up in Tulsa Oklahoma and his early years were full of sex drugs and rock and roll. I gathered from the book that this was fairly normal in their area. So yeah. In his early years, he was aimless, with nary an art book or ambition is sight. It is not until after he has worked a few manual jobs that he decided to study art in college. He moves to New York, gets married, has kids, becomes a successful artist, and divorces. All with a lot of drinking, drugs and fighting.

His life is not told in a linear manner like most memoirs but in short vignettes that gives more of a feel than actual facts. From what I read, I mostly liked him despite his recklessness and irresponsibility. He is sort of an anomaly I guess in that he is not the typical art student, artsy type. He was just a regular joe who found out that he could do good art and the he kinda liked it. Twas ok.

# 50 Cherry by Mary Karr

actual review date: January 5, 2o11

I have not read the Liar's Club, nor was I even aware that there was a prequel to this book. The said prequel, I gathered, tells the story of Karr's girlhood. In this book, the author talks about her early girlhood and teens. Her sexual blossoming and foray into drugs and aimlessness.

The first part of the story is told in standard memoir forma, in past tense and in the first person. As Karr grows older and gets more into drugs, the narrative shifts, and Karr becomes an observer of her former self. But it also gets hazier and more fragmented. I mean, that's how I felt when I was reading it, as if I was also doing the whole drugs thing.

Though her story has some tragedies and her life was a bit complicated, it wasn't really scandalous and all that. I thought it was a good portrait of a not so typical girl growing up in the 70's. The storytelling was hazy and surreal. Perhaps, because of this, I cannot really remember the details that well, but I do remember the feeling.

#41 Touching the Void by Joe Simpson

This is a short and quite straightforward recounting of a climb that very nearly turned disastrous. Well, it was actually disastrous, but the author, with a little luck and a lot of determination was able to survive. It is, essentially a survival story and a story about the triumph of the human spirit.

Joe Simpson and his friend Simon Yates made an attempt to climb a previously unclimed West face of the Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes. They were able to reach the summit and things were going relatively well until Simpson fell and broke his tibia. Yates then had to tie him to a rope and lower him down the mountain. However, Yates, unable to see far ahead, lowered Simpson into a cliff. Faced with no other choice but to cut off the rope or be carried down himself, Yates cut the rope connecting to Simpson and sent him to his presumably certain death. However, Simpson dragged and hopped his way back to their base camp, through grinding pain, fatigue, thirst and hunger. He arrived just hours before Yates, thinking that he was a goner for sure, was set to pack up their camp.

The story is fast moving, and even though you know Simpson survives (duh), very thrilling. It is excruciating to read. It feels very painful. And you are left with admiration for Simpson's will to live. And more, the experience did not stop him from climbing again.

I used to do some mountain climbing, but my country being tropical, it is all fairly chill. It is very fun and challenging and just awesome to be on top of the world. Having said that, I would never ever climb in high altitude. It just seems so dangerous and I'm not sure I've got it in me. But yeah, the book. It's good. Exciting and inspiring.

# 36 The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

The author defines the tipping point as "the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point." The book basically looks into the phenomenon of fads and how and why it happens. The author posits that a product, idea or message spread like a virus. First, a virus will go around the population all chill-like, until it reaches a critical mass, or a tipping point, and becomes a full blown epedemic.

Gladwell theorizes that there are three very important things that make a so called "social epedemic". Thing which I shall not be discussing right at this very moment because I am lazy (and really, it's in wiki).

Some of the thoughts are obvious really, common sense. We all know that it's because of some cool people wearing high waist jeans or something that makes it spread. But what I found most interesting about the book was not really his theory, which I don't think is really on point all the time, but the examples given on successful products. Its just interesting reading about how stuff became popular. So yeah, I don't think the science or the theories are really all that, but I like the way its written and there are some interesting stories. GOod was to pass a few hours.

# 20 - Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

This books brings about a lot of conflicting emotions for me. But one thing is for sure, book Alexander Supertramp is waaaay less annoying then movie Alexander. I don't know why, but I really really find Emile Hirsch super annoying. Whew. Now that I've got that out of my system, let me go ahead with my review.

Jon Krakauer, as usual, really knows how to tell a story. Mormons, Everest, idealistic kid, all become page turners. This story is about young Christopher McCandless. Smart, upper middle class family who seemed to love him, bright future. But there's something unusual about him. Finishing college was just something he did to complete his familial obligations. After college, he left home, disappeared of the face of the earth, gradually casting off all his worldly belongings to tramp all around Ameica. Hitchhiking and walking, all to meet his ultimate goal of staying in Alaska alone.

Krakauer makes a mostly positive portrayal of McCandless. The people who he meets with and has relationships along the way seem to like and admire, and even love him. He was a nice, friendly and personable boy. He has deep ideologies and philosophies about how he wanted to live a life out of the ordinary. But he was also naive, unprepared and selfish. This ultimately lead to his death by starvation in the Alaskan not so wilderness.

In that sense, that is why i feel so conflicted about him. I mean, I get it. Why he did it. I feel the urge all the time to just leave it all behind and just live how I want to. To experience life, the road and the wild. But also being a family woman, I know that I could never do what he did to my family. It really was very selfish. Not just to his family but to all the people he met along the road who came to love him. It's not just himself he's hurting but all these other people.

Whatever one's feeling of McCandless is, the book wa undoubtedly interesting and compelling and makes you think about what you want to do and to what extent you would do it.

# 14 Bonk by Mary Roach

actual review date - 12/22/11

I read this book so long ago, I must admit, the facts that I've read about here have mostly flown out of my head. I have horrible retention when it comes to non-fiction. But what does stick with me is that it was fun, funny and flippant. Mary Roach has a way of making any subject matter (whether it be the dead as in Stiff, or sex as in this case) fun to read about.

I have this friend who tells the most awesome and strange stories about her experiences. It is sometimes so absurd that you have to wonder if she is not stretching the truth a bit to make it more interesting. But no, it's just the way she l0oks at the world. She thinks everything is amusing and interesting and it translated to how she talks about her experiences. Reading this book gave me that sort of feeling. It felt like Roach delving into the world of sex research was a big adventure. I mean, sex research in itself would seem to be pretty interesting but the author makes it even more so.

Basically, though I may have forgotten most of the fact that I learned, I do vividly remember that it was a really funny and quirky book which kept me interested throughout.

# 13 - Savage Grace by Natalie Robins and Steven M. L. Aronson

Family biography, true crime, horror story. This is the story of the Baeklands, a rich and prominent American family. The elder Baekland made his fortune by inventing Bakelite, a popular plastic.

Leo Baekland was a grandson of the original Baekland. He was, like his father, a bit eccentric and got into all sorts of hobbies, instead, of just, you know, working. He got married to a beautiful "actress" Barbara Daly, and from there flows their tragic tale.

They were living the life of social butterflies, flitting around Europe, hosting parties, and hanging out with famous people. They also son, Anthony, who they took around with them in their travels.

The family relationship was tumultuous to say the least. There were loud fights, adulterous relations, and possible incest. Finally, Leo Baekland left his family for his mistress, who was supposedly Anthony's ex girlfriend. Naturally, the story ends in tragedy for all involved.

The story us told through the statements of friends and relatives of the family, and even Leo Baekland himself. While reading, I kept asking myself, wow, are they really that articulate, even poetic at times? I guess it's possible, the circle being mostly rich socialites and artists. But I didn't really find that way of telling the story successful. It was a bit repetitive with different people saying the same thing over and over again. I mean, a story that juicy (murder, incest, adultery, homosexuality, CRAY-CRAY), should be anything but boring, but it really was, in some parts.

Plus, maybe I'm dense or whatever, but I really didn't really feel that I had an understanding or insight into the psyche of the subjects. I don't know. But what I do know is that they were supremely fucked up. It was a bit scary in a way, because when one has children, as I do, we always imagine what would happen if our kids end up as fucked up as the kids in the news. It was extra scary for me because I do see a little of myself in Barbara. Not the incest, obvs, but just that I am slightly (ok more) domineering and very intense at times, and a bit cold at times. I am trying really hard not to bring that kind of stuff to my kids, but its scary, just the same.

Do I guess the book succeeds in the sense that it is a cautionary tale (not to go cavorting in Europe and living the rich life. haha), but it didn't succeed in engaging me and making me understand what's behind these mad acts.

# 3 - A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small In Mooreland, Indiana by Haven Kimmel

I passed by this book many times in the second hand bookstore that I frequent. I never picked it up because, well, the cover didn't look that interesting and summary at the back had none of the unusual and fucked up stuff that we usually look for in memoirs. One day, a random Pajiban (I don't remember who) mentioned that the book was LOL (sorry Dustin). So, taking Pajiban word as gospel, I picked the book up the next time I saw it, still at around 1$.

The book is really simple, a series of scenes from the childhood of smart and mischievous girl in small town Middle America. Indiana is middle america, right, Americans? True to what the back of the book said, there is none of the usual sad, tragic memoir stuff. It may have been poignant at times, but it was mostly a happy and energetic read. Which is not to say that her life was perfect. In fact, were Kimmel inclined to moroseness and woe-is-me-ness, she could have spun a depressed, overeducated mother, gambler father, poorness (although Americans never seem poor to us third worlders. Even Your poorest have TVs! And huge ass sofas!) and sibling sometimes-violence into an entirely different memoir. But Kimmel was such a zippy child that she seemed to take all the bad shit in a real good way. It just was, and she was still happy.

Oh Zippy was a funny, boisterous, unusual, imaginative and smart little cookie. The scrapes she got into were funny, though not, in my opinion, laugh out loud. But then again, my husband says that I'm humorless, so maybe it's just me. The characters and her family dynamics were very interesting. Her story and her family life, is, I guess, fairly typical, but also unusual in the way that everyone is unique. What makes the book work, is Kimmel's voice and her energy. Her zippyness, as it is.

*Some may have noticed that I have not posted review #2. That's because it's not done yet.

*currently reading Never Let Me Go

*I don't usually read this much non-fiction

CBR III Review #1 The Fasting Girl: A True Victorian Medical Mystery by MIchelle Stacey

I was right in the middle of reading The Corrections when the book disappeared. Went kaput amidst all the newly opened gifts and Christmas ornaments. I eventually found the said book but not before I started and finished this one that I'm writing about now, which I picked up at a local bookstore for 50 pesos (around 1$).

The Fasting Girl examines the life of the Brooklyn Enigma, Mollie Fancher, a girl who lived during the 19th century (that's the 1800's yeah? Why can't the 1800's just be the 18th century to be all uniform? I know that there's a good explanation, I just want it to be that way, ok?). She was a fairly ordinary, intelligent, upper middle class girl who, after two accidents became bedridden for the rest of her life. She developed a host of symptoms such as paralysis, seizures, blindness, trances... you name it. But she was most famous for the claim that she had not eaten anything for a period of around 14 years, as well as her claims of psychic ability. She was a sensation during her time, made a poster girl by the Spiritualist movement, criticized and branded a fraud by the most eminent physicians of the period, followed closely by the local press, and beloved by her supporters.

Extraordinary as the story is, the author uses it more as a jumping of point to discuss various Victorian era maladies and phenomena. Stacey discusses the many diseases that seem to have plagued mostly women during that period but which seem to have disappeared in the modern world. Invalidism, hysteria, dyspepsia is discussed as well as their various remedies and theories as tho their causes. She correlates these illnesses with the society and the general condition of women during that period.

In fact, not only does Stacy discuss all that, she gives a general picture of that period. From media (newspapers) in relation to their coverage of the Fancher case, Spiritualist movement, medicine, anorexia, even transportation. Basically, anything that relates even a tiny bit to the Fancher case, she discusses.

As for Mollie Fancher, Stacy opines, based on historical accounts and the opinion of modern specialists, that she may have had dissociative identity disorder, which she explains at great length.

It was an interesting and packed read with really a lot of subjects touched upon. Some topics I was more interested in that others. However, I felt that I lacked understanding on the supposed subject of the book, Molly Fancher itself. If this was a medical mystery, then the mystery is still unsolved. I guess that a more definite conclusion would have been impossible considering the lack of evidence or whatevs, but for me, it did not deliver on the "real medical mystery" part of its titles. Instead, I learned a lot of random stuff about the Victorian era, anorexia and old timey sicknesses. Which is ok too.

(Who knew? Seems like I could write a 3 paragraph review.)

-finished reading the Corrections and currently reading A Girl Named Zippy.