The Zen of Sushi

The Zen of Fish: The Story of Sushi, from Samurai to Supermarket by Trevor Corson

My rating: 1 of 5 stars
The Zen of Fish had potential and I'd probably have given it three or maybe even four stars if Trevor Corson hadn't made the terrible decision to talk to me as if I was in second grade.  Particularly in passages where he wrote about scientific processes (e.g. the amino acids that give fish their flavor and the processes that create them) he used the kind of language you'd expect from a tour guide giving a tour to class of small children.  I am sorry, but I don't think any second graders are likely to be reading this book.  Please, Mr. Corson, learn to treat your readers with some respect.  In fact, I've read the book Mr. Corson references as his primary source for the scientific information. It was pretty dry and technical in places, but definitely accessible.  It doesn't take baby-talk to make science intelligible!

Aside from his failure with the science, Mr. Corson made another mis-step.  It reads as though he developed a crush on Kate, the sushi student who is the primary focus of the story.  All of a sudden half way through the book he suddenly starts talking way too much about her lovely hair in a way that is totally irrelevant and distracting.

Too bad that a potentially fascinating topic was so abused.

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Hungry Woman in Paris

Hungry Woman in Paris by Josefina López


My rating: 1 of 5 stars
Too much sex, not enough substance.  Overall Josephina Lopez came across as a little whiny and not engaged enough in her own life to really make for interesting reading.  If I'd wanted to read mostly about sex I'd have read a romance novel and, undoubtedly, gotten better sex scenes.  Since I didn't, I'd have preferred much less sex and a lot more insight.  The central question of the book seems to be "why didn't the protagonist want to marry the apparently perfect man?"  She never answers it very satisfactorily, nor is her exploration of the question interesting enough to make the substance of the journey stand on its own even without an answer.  Don't waste your time.

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Learning to Bow

Learning to Bow: Inside the Heart of Japan by Bruce Feiler


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Learning to Bow is Bruce Feiler's entertaining account of his year teaching English in Japan.  Having just returned from a year in Asia myself, it was easy to relate to his culture shock stories.  Learning to Bow also contains very interesting discussions of the Japanese education system and the difference between it and the American one.  Clearly there are ways in which Japan could stand to learn from us.  Equally clearly, we could profitable take some lessons from Japan.

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14 Cows for America

14 Cows for America by Carmen Agra Deedy


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This exquisitely illustrated picture book is a heart-warming (the more so because it is true) tale of a young Massai man who felt driven to do something to comfort the American people in the wake of September 11.  He tells his village elders what has happened and they, too, want to help.  And that is how the people of the United States come to possess a small herd of blessed Kenyan cattle still cared for on our behalf by the same remote village of Massai.  We all should learn from the generosity of these people half a world away who offered what they could to help people they'd never met in a place they could scarcely imagine.

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Half the Sky

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas D. Kristof


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Half the Sky is simultaneously heartbreaking and inspiring.  Using the stories of remarkable women he has met around the world, Nicholas Kristof makes an impassioned plea for us to open our eyes, get engaged and take meaningful action to improve the plight of women everywhere.  The women Kristof profiles have been gang-raped, beaten, mutilated, sold into sexual slavery, often targeted by the very police, governments and other authority figures who should have been protecting them - even by other women.  But some of them have also overcome overwhelming odds to rescue themselves and to fight to help other women.  Kristof argues convincingly that "women's issues" are really people issues - that everyone benefits when women are safe, educated and productive.  He calls for us to get engaged - to step outside the safety of our homes and witness what too much of the world sees every day and to get involved.  Half the Sky should be required reading for everyone, everywhere and we should heed its call.

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What the Dog Saw

What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures by Malcolm Gladwell


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures is a wonderful collection of (author: Malcolm Gladwell]'s New Yorker columns spanning more than a decade.  Gladwell tackles an enormous range of topics, each in an engaging and thought provoking way.  It never, for example, would have occurred to me that I might be drawn in to an essay on women's hair dye.  Gladwell, however, uses the topic as a springboard to explore how women's roles in society have shifted over the past half century and the interrelationship between advertising and culture.  Fascinating!

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Weekends at Bellevue

Weekends at Bellevue by Julie Holland


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
It's not entirely clear to me why Dr. Holland chose to tell her story, or, at least, to tell it as she did.  In a recent NPR interview she sounded a great deal more sensible and grounded than she sounds in Weekends at Bellevue where she comes across as the petulant, aggressive, badly-behaved doctor we all hope never to see.  Although she tried to illustrate her evolution from an immature, whiny, insecure resident to a caring, respected healer, she apparently never entirely overcame her aggressive tendencies.  Perhaps that makes this more honest than many memoirs, but it also leaves me wondering why she thought her story was worth telling. The book might have been more balanced had it included at least a few stories about the more ordinary patients that came through her ER, rather than focusing to exclusion on the most extreme cases.  It is clear that she is far more interested in extreme pathologies than in all of the people with more mundane, but just as painful to them, problems.  Reading this would certainly dissuade me from seeking Dr. Holland out for treatment in her private practice.  

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The Last Chinese Chef

The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I wish I'd read this book before I moved to China, not after I got back! Although the story was no better than ordinary, the wealth of detail about food, what's important about it, what makes it great, how it is perceived in the culture, etc. is fantastic. I was never really able to articulate what distinguished the great food we had in China from the not-so-great. This book did it for me. Now I wish I could go back with a more mindful awareness of what to look for in a dish and eat my way around the country.

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The Glister

The Glister: A Novel by John Burnside


My rating: 2 of 5 stars
[books: The Glister] starts out as a moderately interesting portrait of a teenager growing up in a left-behind, industrial wasteland. The book grows increasingly more improbably right up through the clumsy climax at the end. It is too bad John Burnside felt a need to force a silly, not-at-all-thrilling, thriller-style mystery story into what had the potential to be an interesting exploration of what happens when the company abandons the company-town to its fate.

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The Art of War

The Art of War by Sun Tzu by Sun Tzu


My rating: 2 of 5 stars
The main text of The Art of War was somewhat interesting especially in light of its age, but I found Giles's commentary distracting and difficult to follow. I will concede that the problem might lie more in the layout of the free Kindle ebook edition than in the commentary itself. Maybe at some point I'll give it another try.

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