So, my boyfriend bought this book for himself, but before he could read it I picked it up one Saturday and glanced over it and before I knew it I'd spSo, my boyfriend bought this book for himself, but before he could read it I picked it up one Saturday and glanced over it and before I knew it I'd spent the whole afternoon reading the thing. And not only could I not put it down, I couldn't stop myself from reading out loud whenever I got to some mind-bogglingly weird fact, which was about every other page, so I pretty much completely ruined this book for James by bursting out every few minutes with, "Ok, so they have this one word that means 'to come in or out of my immediate experience' and they don't have history or mythology or anything because they can only talk about events that they have actually personally witnessed," or "Whoa, they don't have numbers. Like, ANY numbers. And when he tries to teach them numbers it doesn't work and they get all pissed off and give up and go back to just saying 'a bunch.'" It's also worth saying that Everett himself—a Christian missionary turned field linguist turned atheist who brought his entire family to live in the jungle for years of their lives—is just as fascinating as the Piraha people he set out to convert. ...more
Invaluable. Full of useful maps, illustrations from every edition, and ridiculously extensive notes on Twain, antebellum Missouri, the Mississippi RivInvaluable. Full of useful maps, illustrations from every edition, and ridiculously extensive notes on Twain, antebellum Missouri, the Mississippi River, past and contemporary racial controversies surrounding the novel, etc. My cooperating teacher passed her copy down to me with high ceremony. I feel like I should have knelt and stretched my hands upward to receive it. Buy it if you're teaching Huck Finn. Now. ...more
I tried to be generous and split the difference between a five-star beginning and a two-star whimper of a fifth act.
The first chapters are seriously dI tried to be generous and split the difference between a five-star beginning and a two-star whimper of a fifth act.
The first chapters are seriously dazzling, and not just because the gritty subject matter (drug den robberies, crack babies, fistfights with spouses) matches Carr's hard-boiled, super-literate-private-eye storytelling style. (Carr nonchalantly invokes Proust when trying to explain the terrible joy of his first hit of cocaine in a bar bathroom.)
There is some truly brilliant insight into memory, identity, and addiction woven into his slightly mad method, which involved interviewing everyone he could track down from his past to investigate and fact-check every last detail of his "junkie memoir." And Carr explains that he did this not only because junkies (and even ex-junkies) are unreliable narrators, but because memoir is a deeply flawed genre in need of some heavy-duty journalistic underpinning, which is not a tough sell in the age of James Frey and Herman Rosenblat.
Carr is at his best when he's talking trash about his genre: "Dead addicts don't leave behind an uplifting tract, so the narratives are generally told by people who can go on Oprah and stand like a barker in front of their abasement." He is keenly aware of the perils of his project, but he does not back down before them, choosing instead to barrel into them with candor and humor: "If I said I was a fat thug who beat up women and sold bad coke, would you like my story? What if instead I wrote I was recovered addict who obtained custody of my twin girls, got us off welfare, and raised them by myself, even though I had a little touch of cancer? Now we're talking."
Which begs the question (which Carr loses no time in asking): why write a junkie memoir at all, however gussied up in journalistic finery? Carr's embarrassment at his own narcissism is palpable, especially when doing things like taping the interview with the washed-up mother of his children, who was smoking crack when her water broke. "Even if the conception of the memoir is venal, or commercial, or flawed, there is intrinsic value in reporting," he insists, and soldiers on despite misgivings.
Maybe this was unavoidable, but the project begins to peter out, or rather sink under its own expanding sense of self-importance, as the memoir wears on. It doesn't ever get maudlin, but the ending edges toward a smarminess you'd hoped unsentimental Carr would successfully avoid.
Do not panic. Do not panic. Do not panic. OH MY GOD IT'S MID-AUGUST. Do not panic. Do not panic. Do not panic. Do not panic. Do not panic. Do not panic. OH MY GOD IT'S MID-AUGUST. Do not panic. Do not panic. Do not panic. ...more
Book number two in the tenth-grade curriculum, a course I've seriously considered titling "Teenage Wasteland." I think I'm going to teach this in tandBook number two in the tenth-grade curriculum, a course I've seriously considered titling "Teenage Wasteland." I think I'm going to teach this in tandem with a screening of the absurdly good French film La Haine. Set in the riotous housing projects outside Paris, the film centers around three teenage boys who struggle, like Piggy and Ralph, to survive in a violent, lawless realm. With the added twist, of course, that the adult authorities who intermittently abandon and brutalize the young inhabitants of the projects only exacerbate the bloodshed, and that the boys' attempts to escape from this hell are actively prevented by these authorities. (Thanks to Simon for the recommendation!)...more
The is the first book I'm teaching in tenth grade. So much fun to read again. If at least six girls don't fall ass-over-elbows in love with Holden CauThe is the first book I'm teaching in tenth grade. So much fun to read again. If at least six girls don't fall ass-over-elbows in love with Holden Caulfield, I'm not doing my job right....more
Just astonishing. Lahiri's characters will crawl up inside your head and start throwing the furniture around in there. She sweeps nonchalantly from coJust astonishing. Lahiri's characters will crawl up inside your head and start throwing the furniture around in there. She sweeps nonchalantly from continent to continent and from era to era, writing with the same rapier insight about an old Punjabi refugee in Calcutta clinging to her shattered life and a hopeless affair between a married Indian i-banker and a young white girl in Boston. These stories engulf, implicate, inveigle. This is the one book I will teach next year that I truly, truly love. ...more
So this is the last of the whole inherent-blackness-of-the-human-soul reading list I've inadvertently embarked upon lately. I don't know what I was exSo this is the last of the whole inherent-blackness-of-the-human-soul reading list I've inadvertently embarked upon lately. I don't know what I was expecting, picking up a book that takes its title from Milton's famously oxymoronic description of hellfire.
Maybe I need to read, you know, The Devil Wears Prada, or something. I'm giving myself the heebie jeebies over here. Or maybe I'll just re-read Jimmy Corrigan again while I listen to Xiu Xiu on repeat and induce some sort of angsty catatonia. Onward to the center of the sun!...more
Sweet toasted Jesus, this book is violent. It was recommended to me as "Lord of the Flies, but with a bunch of Victorian schoolgirls in Rangoon." AppaSweet toasted Jesus, this book is violent. It was recommended to me as "Lord of the Flies, but with a bunch of Victorian schoolgirls in Rangoon." Apparently, Wiggins read Golding's book on a plane and thought, "It would never happen that way with girls."
I think her next thought must have been, "It would be WAY worse, and with more cannibalism and torture and rape." John Dollar is probably the most macabre work of literature I've ever set my hands on. It takes Golding's basic plot and turns it inside out, then spirals off in ten different directions, all of them impossibly terrifying. Not for the faint of heart. I read it with the idea of possibly adding it to my tenth-grade curriculum, which already includes Lord of the Flies. But no. I can't teach this thing. I'm already spending enough of my own money on classroom supplies without having to buy a class set of barf bags....more
There's something a bit off about the pacing in these stories about the nightmarish experiences of African children, and I can't tell if it's purposefThere's something a bit off about the pacing in these stories about the nightmarish experiences of African children, and I can't tell if it's purposeful or not. Akpan—unlike other writers who delve into brutality and gore—either has no sense of timing or has eschewed it for effect. His chase scenes and uber-violent tableaux read at the same slow, steady trot as descriptions of a childhood friendship. The result is unnerving, and then, at least for me, annoying.
There's also something off-puttingly preachy in his tone. Which is hardly a surprise, as Akpan is a Jesuit priest, and I should probably just get over it, but I couldn't.
The book failed to make the cut for the tenth grade curriculum for both of the reasons above. Unless they choose it themselves, there's nothing most kids hate more than a book that's trying so overtly to teach them some moral lesson, and I thought they'd yawn over the plodding pace. Back to the drawing board, I guess....more
Normally, I'm not a huge fan of spare, opaque prose, or of single-author short story collections, but Danticat is such a master of this genre I was drNormally, I'm not a huge fan of spare, opaque prose, or of single-author short story collections, but Danticat is such a master of this genre I was drawn helplessly in. These stories weave together, interlocking without overlapping, and the writing is as wry and precise as it is sparse. ...more
This book is a miracle. A practical resource for teachers; a thorough, measured take on the short, fraught history of media ed; a sound theoretical baThis book is a miracle. A practical resource for teachers; a thorough, measured take on the short, fraught history of media ed; a sound theoretical backbone; ungodly careful scholarship; and hands-down the source of the smartest insights about socio-economic class and adolescents I've ever read.
Buckingham's prose is so controlled and scholarly you almost miss it when he drops a bomb. To wit: "To a much greater extent than in conventional academic subjects, teacherly attempts at imposing cultural, moral, or political authority over the media that children experience in their daily lives are very unlikely to be taken seriously. If, as in many cases, they are based on a paternalistic contempt for children's tastes and pleasures, they certainly deserve to be rejected. It is for these reasons that protectionist approaches to media education—whether cultural, moral, or political in nature—are at least redundant, if not positively counter-productive."
And this is Britain he's talking about. If Buckingham saw the protectionist, find-the-hidden-hegemony-in-everything buzzkill that constitutes nearly all media ed here in the states, I think he'd break out the exclamation points.
Kids are already critical of the media they consume, says Buckingham, citing studies of the sophisticated ways children experience media from their earliest years. Thinking you're going to blow their minds with a big shiny word like "representation" is pure condescension. Instead, Buckingham starts where all good teachers should—with respect for students' capabilities and regard for their interests. Where he goes from there is simply amazing....more
Thanks, Broadway street-book dude. Cowboys telling fart jokes and falling in love with sullen whores are EXACTLY what I want to read about right now.
WThanks, Broadway street-book dude. Cowboys telling fart jokes and falling in love with sullen whores are EXACTLY what I want to read about right now.
Warning: This book will destroy you. I have never been so completely and utterly decimated by a novel. I don't need a book club; I need a support group.
On a side note: Maybe these are fightin' words, and I only ever read Blood Meridian, but I'll take McMurtry over McCarthy any day of the week. No Faulknerian pretensions, no torture-porn, no dogged insistence upon rendering the West as a nightmare-landscape of irredeemable violence and sorrow. McMurtry paints the West in more colors than red, creating a world as tawdry, savage, absurd, and beautiful as the Texas of my own memory. ...more
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