'My Year of Meats' by Ruth L. Ozeki

My Year of Meats, Ruth L. Ozeki (3)

This book makes an interesting fictional companion piece to ‘Omnivore’s Dilemma’ and ‘Eating Animals’. The main character, Jane, is a half Japanese, half Caucasian woman who grew up in Minnesota. We meet her as she embarks on a year of producing a Japanese TV show depicting wholesome American’s cooking meat for their families. A beef company who hopes to inspire the Japanese housewives to run out and buy meat to reproduce the exciting recipes they see on the shows sponsors the show. We also follow Akiko, the unhappy wife of one of Jane’s bosses, as she attempts to appease her husband with duplicated recipes from the show. As Jane navigates her way through producing and directing what she feels would be entertaining and educational for the Japanese housewives, she often butts heads with her boss. As she gets deeper, she starts to see the dark side of meat production, which is obviously at odds with her sponsor’s views. Ms. Ozeki uses humor to highlight many of the more disturbing elements of this book to make the passages a bit more palatable (i.e. the bad guy wants to be called ‘John’ since his last name is Ueno, it is pronounced ‘John Way-no’). I liked the book – though I am not sure it would be to everyone’s taste, pun intended.

'Going Clear, Scientology, Hollywood, & the Prison of Belief' by Lawrence Wright

Going Clear, Scientology, Hollywood, & the Prison of Belief, Lawrence Wright (4)

I had originally read Mr. Wright’s New Yorker article about Paul Haggis, the long time Scientologist screenwriter who recently left the church. This book is his full study of the church – from the origins with L. Ron Hubbard to the present day issues. While he had very little support of help from current members of the organization, Mr. Wright is a Pulitzer Prize winning author with the investigative and fact-checking resources of the New Yorker and therefore this book appears to be well researched, well documented and as unemotional as possible. That being said, until the epilogue, where he compares Scientology to older religions, it was hard not to be very biased against the wackiness that is this supposed religion. Most organized religions have something, when viewed objectively that comes across as hard to believe, which is what faith is all about. It is interesting that we tend to give the older ones (where we can’t prove something is untrue?) more credence. Regardless, the claims of Hubbard and his Scientologists are relatively easy to confirm and Mr. Wright shows many key points to be false. It is clear that Scientology has helped many people with taking control of their lives regarding personal responsibility and choice. I was slightly disappointed that this wasn’t investigated more. He spends a large amount of time on the atrocious behavior of the senior members and the ‘clergy’, known as the Sea Org. I was most discouraged with the philosophy of their current leader: always go on the attack, never defend, and how this has been used over and over against anyone who questions them in any way. This is a very interesting, albeit disturbing book.

'Want Not' by Jonathan Miles

Want Not, Jonathan Miles (3.5)

Mr. Miles’ second novel follows three stories of disparate, relatively unlikely people in and around New York City. They are all related to various types of waste in our culture and somewhat converge near the very end of the book. The first follows a young ‘freegan’ couple living off the grid in NYC. The book starts with one of them bemoaning the enormous amount of edible waste from society while dumpster diving and retrieving examples. In the second, we find a sad sap of a fellow, having just hit a deer on his way home from a late night out drinking, decides to pack it into his jeep, take it home and butcher it at 2am. This comes across as a symptom of the mid-life crisis he suffers, seemingly due to his wife’s recent affair and their subsequent separation. The last begins with a mother going through the belongings of her husband, who died several years ago in the World Trade Center 9/11 attacks. The twist is that immediately after his death, she discovered that he had been having an affair, which caused her conflicting feelings of betrayal and grief. This story evolves into more about her new husband (a questionable fellow who runs a more questionable business) and her daughter from the first marriage. Overall I found this book interesting. The characters are fresh and well written and the underlying message is important. There were a couple of points with regards to the messaging for the nuclear waste site that were particularly thought provoking. Given that, I was a little disappointed in the climax. It felt rushed and a bit thin compared to the rest of the story.

'A House in the Sky' by Amanda Lindhout & Sara Corbett

A House in the Sky, Amanda Lindhout & Sara Corbett (4)

This story was painful to read, but brought up many questions as most good books should. It is the true story of Ms. Lindhout’s life. She describes her beginnings in a small, remote town north of Calgary, Canada. She dreamed of visiting the locations seen in the National Geographic magazines she used to escape from the realities in her home. When she became old enough she moved to the big city (Calgary), got a job waitressing and saved enough each summer, to travel the world each winter. She didn’t pick the obvious, glamorous locations: Paris, Rome, and Amsterdam. She picked the grittier locales from her magazines: Latin America, Laos, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. She often went alone and stayed in 1 star hotels to make her money stretch farther. Eventually she goes to Somalia with an old boyfriend and gets kidnapped for ransom. The final half of the book is the horrible retelling of that experience. Throughout this book I vacillated between two questions: what does it take in one’s upbringing and personality to have the courage to travel to these places? And how could she be so selfish to put herself is such obvious danger just to say she had been there? I realized something about myself – I am far too cautious (upbringing and personality) and good with numbers. A combination that says: if the risk is greater than 30% that something bad may happen, I will not take that risk. In addition to bringing up good questions for all of us, this book delves into the complication of being a Western woman kidnapped by young Muslim men and boys. I often thought ‘how would I have handled that?’ and was impressed by her strength, intelligence and overall ability to forgive.

'Bringing up the Bodies' by Hilary Mantel

Bringing up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel (4)

I will start by saying if you liked ‘Wolf Hall’, you will like this novel. I should also confess that I am enamored with all things Henry VIII. Compared with the present day’s mostly ineffectual monarchy, Henry VIII managed to manipulate his religion and marital status with lasting effects for the country and western world. All this from a Tudor, not even one of the strongest English royal bloodlines. Hilary Mantel has taken this well-known story (in this case, the demise of wife #2, Anne Boleyn) and tells it, once again, from Thomas Cromwell’s point of view. Cromwell is infamous in many ways, though usually as the lowborn executor of Henry’s will – which is often to alter facts to allow the King to do whatever he wants. While the writing is not easy to follow (the large cast of characters with titles differing from names and often the lack of reference to the speaker), it is better than ‘Wolf Hall’, the first in this series.  I also found it easier to read than most non-fiction books about this subject. Ms. Mantel has done an admirable job in bringing out the story while sticking to the plot and nature of the characters as agreed by many scholars. The only exception may be Thomas Cromwell himself. She has given him a humanity and lack of self-promotion that is atypical of most non-fiction accounts.

'Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea' by Gary Kinder

Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea, Gary Kinder (4)

This true story of a shipwreck, discovery and recovery is quite amazing. The first third of the book tells the harrowing story of a ship in the 1850’s struggling to carry it’s California gold rush gold back to New York City. Mr. Kinder has you holding your breath as a terrible Atlantic storm hits the ship and the passengers struggle to survive. The second third is far less hair-raising as it jumps back to modern day (the 1980’s) as a describes the person and processes used to possibly one day discover and recover the wreckage of the ship. This section lagged a bit for me. The descriptions of equipment and discoveries were interesting, but rather long-winded. The last third of the book picked up again with the rush to find and hold onto the shipwreck before someone else gets there. While the story of the discovery of one of the most famous and profitable (over 20 tons of gold!) shipwrecks was amazing, unfortunately the not yet published epilogue is disturbing. Apparently Tommy Thompson, the creative genius who came up with the inventive equipment and processes for finding the wreck is now a federal fugitive believed to have escaped with much of the gold!