Old man review…

Old man review. Read at your own risk.

As you get older, the illusion is that time goes by faster. The theory, I think, is that the segment that is passing --- the hour, day, or week --- is a smaller and smaller fraction of the hours, days, etc. that you have lived. Your time is being used up and you only have a smaller fraction of what you had. At the ripe old age of sixty-five, this dynamic has certainly kicked in for me.

Time seems to be passing by way too fast; I have too little of it left to assimilate everything that I need to or want to. I am like a computer you buy, utilize, fill up, and that eventually begins to be too full, inadequate in capacity and speed, freezing up, and crashing. Furthermore, keeping up with the pace of technology seems to have a similar dynamic: I can't keep up and at times I don't want to even try keeping up. Therefore, going into reading this book, SMARTER THAN YOU THINK: HOW TECHNOLOGY IS CHANGING OUR MINDS FOR THE BETTER, I thought that technology wasn't necessarily changing my mind for the better. I didn't have adequate time and, perhaps, the ability for it to do so. For example, I haven't adopted to cell phones and such e-devices as readily or as rapidly as many of my friends, neighbors and relatives, often to my detriment, but more often to my delight and my contemporaries' chagrin.

But I think Clive Thompson makes some astute observations and plausible explanations for why he believes technology changes our minds for the better. I, of course, enjoyed reading the various histories in the evolution of innovation that he tells about and about humankind's continuing reluctances through the years and now to accept change. I also enjoyed reading about new innovations, innovators, and conceptions of human intelligence, etc. What a delight! How overwhelming! I did enjoy the read, and as I perused and contemplated what I had read I did realize that I do incorporate innovation, even in old age, into my life to make things easier. For example, I'm utilizing voice dictation software in order to write this because it has become more and more painful and irritating to type things out because of arthritis.

I am not, however, convinced that we retain our learning longer than we used to. However, learning is much more accessible in our era than ever before and that is the dynamic that has been changing and seems to be continuing to change. I like it that I can have access to information now that I could never have access to so readily in earlier periods of my lifetime.

Some change, however, is quite scary. I think of the contemporary crises involving data collection by the NSA, for example. Doesn't it have a tendency to put into jeopardy all notions of privacy that we might have? Furthermore, without a clean and clear commitment of mind to the whole enterprise of technology, it is all for naught. People become addicted to mindlessness: playing perhaps entertaining games and watching and being stimulated by videos and whatnot in an addictive manner that doesn't necessarily improve the mind or the quality of living but wastes it away. So, the caveat is always it only works to better your mind if you apply yourself in a responsible way.

a good turn of word in the lathe of literature

This is a review of TRUCK, A LOVE STORY by Michael Perry.

Don't you think the title of this book TRUCK, A LOVE STORY seems a little hokey, maybe even manipulative? It's as if its author — or more likely, the book's editor/publisher, who most often does the naming — wanted to broaden the book's market appeal. How many women would read a book titled TRUCK? How many men would read A LOVE STORY (setting aside that old romance novel by Eric Segal, which was made into a movie)? However, I guess it could be said that this particular book appeals to broader audiences than those just enamored of a particular vehicle or of touchy-feely stories of romance and love.

Well, all of that is beside the point. The book is good, worth reading whether you're a male or female or somewhere in between. Michael Perry writes well, even if it seems sometimes he has too much on his mind. I happened to read this with a book club comprised primarily of women. They generally outnumber the men in the group three or four to one. Many of the books we read could be considered more or less feminine oriented and sometimes I've even heard the women themselves utilize the term chick lit. Because they outnumber the men so far this is the dynamic we men in the group have to live with. But truthfully, we cover a broad swath of interesting fiction and nonfiction, mostly fiction, which brings me to this book.

Is TRUCK, A LOVE STORY fiction or nonfiction? It reads like a memoir, but I never did really see anywhere where it claims to be nonfiction. Perhaps, Michael Perry realizes that imaginations always figure into memories and experiences anyway. (The author after all writes, "Fortunately, the eye is an organ capable of deception. In collusion with the brain, it convinces you to ignore what you see — or don't see.) Or perhaps I just missed where it says what it is.

This is a slow reading piece, a work you want to take your time with, a book you might start reading in bed at night if you want to go to sleep. Now I don't mean by that to say that it is boring or anything derogatory. But don't compare it with today's fast-paced fare, which seems targeted at hyperactivity disordered readers. This isn't calculated to keep you on the edge of your seat, shrieking, or covering your eyes in order to cope. Instead it'll make you want to languish like you are in the Bahamas on the beach with unlimited time and plenty of food and drink by your side with the most charming companion.

Where does a truck come in to all of this? Perry is restoring an old International Harvester truck with his brother. The restoration ticks off the time in the book. Perry's attitude is communicated in this manner: "In 1951, a man bought a pickup truck because he needed to blow things up and move them. Things like bricks and bags of feed. Somewhere along the line trendsetters and marketers got involved, and now we buy pickups — big, horse-powered, overbuilt, wide-assed, comfortable pickups — so that we may stick our key in the ignition of an icon, fire up an image, and drive off in a cloud of connotations. I have no room to talk. I long to get my International running in part so I can drive down roads that no longer exist."

Who is Perry? He describes himself: "At thirty-eight, I'm still a few follicles from a Category Cue Ball." This is one of his obsessions, besides his truck. He says, "I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian sect that not only frowned on vanity but viewed long hair on a man as sinful." He also describes himself as follows: "No matter our vocation, we so often find ourselves living life as a form of triage. I need more time with the dirt, the sense of the soil with its plenty." So gardening is another of his — I don't want to say obsessions — passions.

Family is another honored subject for the author. Speaking of his grandmother, he says "this time she raised five children of her own and took in another twenty-eight foster children. She did her baking with a .22 rifle at hand and was known to step away from the stove to snipe feral cats and once an incautious woodchuck."

And what of the love story part of the title? Well, there is Anneliese. But I can't say more without spoiling it for you, so I'll shut up and just recommend that you pick up the book, especially if you appreciate a good turn of word in the lathe of literature. If you like anecdotes stacked within the framework of car restoration and raising turnips while discovering a love interest, then find a beach in the South Pacific or Caribbean and languish away with TRUCK, A LOVE STORY in hand.

REDSHIRTS: A NOVEL WITH THREE CODAS by John Scalzi

Fun, but it could've been funner; funny, but it shouldn't have been so funny.

I graduated from high school in 1966. So I was pretty young when the original Star Trek television series played out. Sometimes I feel I'm just as young and naïve now.

This science fiction novel depended upon knowledge of the series, the fact that crewmembers unimportant to the continuing television saga got killed off in dramatic ways in the Enterprise's weekly exploitations. Scalzi plays on that "flaw" and builds his story from there.

So the main dynamic is set in the future with a spaceship named Intrepid and its "secondary" characters. The main characters of the novel, those secondary characters, figure out that essentially the same dynamic is happening to them.

Satire raises its head for savvy readers. Characterization is wanting. The dialogue seemed unnecessarily strained. The narrative focuses on the underlying mechanics and physicality of the scenario. The codas that follow the basic narrative play stronger, addressing such issues as life, choice, duty.

Review Once Was Lost

All I could think about every time I considered Sara Zarr's Once Was Lost was the completion of the line with 'but now am found.' That title set up an expectation that her book never quite fulfilled but hinted at. Maybe there will be a sequel with that title. Nonetheless, the book didn't leave me at all dissatisfied for not having fulfilled the "being found" part, because the book left me with the distinct impression that Sam could find her her way, whatever it might be, wherever it might take her.

The book is about young teenage Samara Taylor --- Sam --- during a time that she justifiably felt lost. Her mother is an alcoholic who is committed to a rehab facility. Sam misses her mother. Sam's father is a pastor who in some ways acts very pastorally and in other ways seems and is just as incapacitated and irresponsible as his committed wife, maybe even more so. On top of all of that, there is a crisis of major proportions in the community --- a young teenage girl goes missing --- that impacts Sam and her father, the pastor, and everybody else. This mystery also propels the story forward.

Zarr's writing is subtle and sensitive. I was very impressed with her ability to create believable and realistic characters that weren't extreme or caricatures.

I am a sixty-one-year-old man who doesn't typically read in this genre or books written for this audience. Yet I didn't feel lost or like an alien reading the story and learning to better understand the mindset of its young female protagonist teenager.

Great job, Sara Zarr.

Matt Kirby recommended this book. His first published book, The Clockwork Three, will be released October 1, 2010.

Making Expression Less Taxing: A Freelancer's Tax Resource

Rabbit, Run

Last night we met as a reading group to discuss John Updike's Rabbit, Run. Nobody liked the book, including me. To a person the members of the group in attendance didn't think the book had any redeeming characters except Harry Angstrom's son, Nelson. And Nelson didn't have a significant role in the novel.

I first read Rabbit, Run in my late thirties or early forties. I didn't like it then either. In fact, after that reading of it, I decided to avoid reading anything John Updike wrote. I saw Updike several times on television --- in the news or as a guest on a talk show, etc.. I didn't like him in those appearances either. It was as though we lived in two different worlds, he and I, and we had lived totally different experiences , so much so that we couldn't find any common ground.

Because my life has not been peopled by anyone that seemed as self-centered or uncaring as Harry Angstrom, it was hard to identify with the Rabbit. I found him despicable and found myself totally incapable of identifying with the place he was at. What is more curious to me are the many awards and platitudes John Updike received for his work, not just including Rabbit, Run, but for his entire body of work, and, especially, for his series four books featuring Harry Angstrom.

The blurbs on the back of the trade paperback we bought include one by the Washington Post:

Brilliant and poignant... By his compassion, clarity of insight, and crystal-bright prose, [Updike] makes Rabbit's sorrow is and our own.

Not one single reader in our group --- and it included me, my wife, Janice, Juanita, Kris, Cheri, and Sue (regulars Brian and Merrilee were absent --- Merrilee had selected this book) saw any compassion whatsoever in Harry Angstrom. Nor did we see any clarity of insight in the man. Now, it is perhaps debatable whether or not Updike's prose was crystal-bright or not. So, giving him the benefit of the doubt for that, one out of three is not too good.

One blurb I have to agree with:

Updike's punches powerful. --- Newsweek

I'd say it knocked us all out, completely out, and it surprises me Updike was able to make a living by writing, judging by this novel.

Berated by a Hummingbird

I love this time of year, especially looking out my window. The Gambel Oaks are as beautiful as they can be; their new leaves are almost perfect with that spring green, which is closer to yellow than blue on the spectrum. The sky is blue. The day is warm. Life has returned and is burgeoning. It is truly inspiring, especially for one as old and feeling as decrepit as I sometimes do.

The birds flock to the feeder and we've had the usual profusion. One day, in the kitchen looking out the window while visiting with our daughter, Amy, when the weather was still relatively cool and verging on rain, a hummingbird showed up, incredulous. It hovered there, an inch from the windowsill as if to say, "Didn't you have a hummingbird feeder here last year? Could you please find it and put some tasty nectar in it? What's wrong with you, anyway?"

Tonight is the third Monday book reading club and we meet at Barnes & Noble. The book we will be discussing tonight is Rabbit, Run by John Updike. The person who selected that book to read for this month --- she selected it probably because Updike had recently died and the death had been given quite a bit of press time in the news --- will not be there. A couple of other people have indicated they, also, won't be able to attend. I read the book probably in the eighties, but didn't like it and therefore never read anything else by John Updike, at least that I can remember that I did. His worldview, at least in the book, and mine didn't match.

It is also the final episode of 24 for this season. Shelley made double sure I had it scheduled to record. She can't miss it! Now watch, something will go wrong, and it won't record and then will we do?