Oct 05 2010

The Facebook Effect, by David Kirkpatrick

Category: Uncategorized — podrey @ 8:11 am

Network effect: the effect that one user of a good or service has on the value of that product to other people; when network effect is present, the value of a product or service increases as more people use it.

Facebook clearly has a very strong network effect working within it – imagine Facebook if you were the only user.  But when everyone you know is on it, it becomes useful and fun and you want to be on Facebook too.

The Facebook Effect is nonfiction, and it isn’t the Ben Mezrich thriller, but it’s every bit as gripping.  I can’t put this book down.

Kirkpatrick had many meetings with the founders and employees of Facebook to get all the detailed information about how the company started and the struggles they have faced.  It takes us through the many phases of the company.  For example, when it first launched in February 2004, only Harvard graduates and alumni could sign up.  Email addresses were validated by checking that the ended in @harvard.edu.  Facebook quickly took over the campus.  The company started adding other colleges and eventually high schools in a methodical fashion, before opening it up to everyone in the fall of 2006.

There was internal personnel strife as well.  One of the co-founders drifted away that first fateful year, working on other things, while the rest of them were focusing mainly on the new company.  That led to some unfortunate events and bad feelings, and ultimately to a lawsuit.  Lance and i went to see the social network Sunday night, and i think it mostly gets the story right, though of course some things are dramatized and some are presented out of order.

I realize now how powerful this social networking tool can be.  In the prologue for this book, it was related that in early 2008, a man named Oscar Morales decided to create a Facebook group protesting FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia).  In just a few days his group had thousands of members, and one month later, Facebook had been the medium through which dozens of countries and 2 million people participated in an organized protest against FARC.  You can read a partial excerpt here.  The full story is pretty moving.

I highly recommend this book.  Our world is still figuring out how social network effects are changing the way we do things, and Facebook will have an effect on that.  I know the children of today and my future kids will be like, “how did you survive without the internet?”

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Sep 23 2010

The Secret History, by Donna Tartt

Category: Uncategorized — podrey @ 7:18 pm

All i can really say about this book is, Myeh.

This is our book club book for November/December – obviously i’m “reading ahead”.  There was talk of changing the book, but one of our members said she definitely wanted to read it, so i assume she had some good recommendations.  Then one of my bridge friends, with whom i seem to have a similar taste in books, saw me reading it and told me it was one of her favorite books this year.

So i was disappointed when i just never really got into it.  It was not as hard to read as Special Topics in Calamity Physics, but in some ways they are similar.  The first half of the book was the most interesting part.  A college student, Richard Papen, leaves his small hometown in California and transfers to small Hampden College in Vermont.  He has taken Greek, and pursues Greek at his new school, only to learn that the Greek teacher only accepts a handful of students.  Richard wins his way into this exclusive group, and it turns out the six students have nearly all of their classes together.

At the outset, we’re told that there was a murder.  Bunny Corcoran, one of the select Greek students, dies midway through the year, murdered by his classmates.  The first half of the book is kind of a reverse murder mystery, because you know the murder is going to happen, but you don’t know how or why.  The second half of the book deals with the remaining five students and how they cope with their crime, and how they dodge the authorities.

The events that lead to the murder are bizarre.  They decide they have to do it when it becomes clear that Bunny is going to rat out four of them for another murder.  It was an accident, on a night when the four students (excluding Bunny and Richard) are out in the country performing a strange Bacchanal ritual to try to experience God.  Bunny wasn’t there, but figures it out and begins blackmailing the others.  But he has attacks of conscience, and when he confides in Richard (who has already been let into the loop by the others), it becomes clear that he will probably tell others.  In order to avoid the consequences, they arrange to get rid of Bunny.

The events after the murder are less bizarre, but not particularly interesting.  There is a lot of drinking and drugs, and people being secretive.  The group is not as harmonious as it once was, and they become suspicious of and in some cases, possessive of, each other.  This builds to another climax where one person commits suicide.

I don’t understand the suicide.  I didn’t really like or identify with any of the characters.  One of the themes of the book seems to be that life is never quite what you want it to be; things are not quite as beautiful as you want them to be.  I suppose for me, this book wasn’t as good as i wanted it to be.

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Sep 13 2010

The Unseen by Alexandra Sokoloff

Category: Uncategorized — podrey @ 1:03 am

The Unseen is on our book club list for October.  Since read the September book last year, i figured i would get a head start on this one.

All i really knew about the book was that was supposed to be a little bit about the paranormal.  As i got into it, it immediately became clear that the book is set nearby in Durham.  A psychology professor, Laurel MacDonald, decides to move all the way from California to start a new life after she had a dream about her world collapsing around her, and then it happens exactly as she had dreamed it.  In a brand new place, she describes North Carolina through an outsider’s eyes.  I was delighted with her descriptions of both the environment, and the people who live here (with their southern ‘charm’ in some cases).

Laurel teams up with another professor to recreate the parapsychology experiments done at Duke in the sixties to explore the possibilities of ESP.  They conduct some of the same experiments, using the student population of Duke, to find some talented individuals.  They also discover a well-buried case about a house that was haunted by a poltergeist, and set out to see if they can recreate the poltergeist effect with two students who scored well on the ESP tests.

I started reading the book when i got home on a day when Lance was out of town.  So there i was, alone in the house, and wouldn’t you know it, Laurel and her crew DO recreate the poltergeist effect.  And then i started hearing things in my own house.  It was about midnight when things started to get scary in the book, so of course i had to stay up and finish the book or else i would have never been able to sleep!

The paranormal stuff in the book was approached in a scientific way so that i could almost believe that this stuff was really possible.  The idea is this: some people have heightened abilities in the “sixth sense” area of the mind.  A poltergeist isn’t a real thing, but instead it is a physical manifestation of the anxiousness of a person or persons who have these strong mental abilities.  Especially when you get several of them together, they can create the poltergeist effect, with the sounds and weird things happening.  OK, yes, it is far-fetched but the book approaches this concept slowly and you can suspend disbelief enough to go along with it.

The book lost me at the very end though.  Suddenly, the poltergeist (which i thought was supposed to be something the students’ minds were conjuring) became a separate and malevolent spirit force that was trying to “get out” of somewhere.  And then Laurel, the professor, suddenly has strong psychic powers also, and is able to communicate on a spirit level with the young spirit-selves of the students who performed the same experiment forty years ago… It’s just too much.

I enjoyed the story and it was certainly a page-turner.  I just felt that toward the end i was no longer able to suspend my disbelief, and it left me feeling flat because of that.

There aren’t many complex themes in the book, so i’ll be interested in what we discuss at book club.  I wonder if anyone will have some ghost stories to share?

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Aug 30 2010

Special Topics in Calamity Physics, by Marisha Pessl

Category: Uncategorized — podrey @ 8:40 am

Well, it’s really too bad that no one else in my book club finished this book.  There would have been a lively discussion.

This book was first recommended to me by my almost brother-in-law Will years ago (three? four?) and was described to me as “Harry Potter for girls”.  I bought it almost immediately and tried to read it twice during the last few years, but i was unable to make it past the second chapter.

When our book club put it on the agenda, i was pleased because i knew it would motivate me to read it.  And, even better, i have been on a reading roll lately, devouring books left and right.

Despite the momentum i had going in, it was still difficult to get into Pessl’s book.  Why?  One of the things that was difficult for me was the length of all the sentences.  Every time a new thought begins, it is interrupted and annotated and parentheticals are inserted, until you forget exactly what the beginning of the sentence was.  I cannot tell you how many times i had to reread a sentence to figure out what was being said.  It was exhausting.  However, that wasn’t the biggest problem.  I could get over long sentences if there was a plot, but the plot for this book does not seem to develop itself until several chapters in.  And even then it seems weak.

Our protagonist and narrator is Blue Van Meer.  Her mother died when she was very young, and she was raised by her very brilliant father, moving 2-3 times per year as he traveled to different universities as a sort of permanent visiting professor.  Blue is recounting her senior year of high school, during which she tries to explain the sudden death of a quirky teacher at the school, Ms. Hannah Schneider.  The book tries to hook you at the beginning with this murder mystery, but it doesn’t work well.  The first 60 pages are quite tedious as we lead up to Blue’s senior year, where her father has promised they will for once stay in one place for the entire school year.

After that, the book does start to get better.  There’s fitting in with the “in” crowd in a new school, rebelling a bit against Dad, a mysterious death, an infatuation with a boy, all kinds of normal teenage stuff.  Once that started happening, i was hooked enough to know i’d make it to the end of the book this time.  However, it all still seemed quite a mishmash of events that didn’t seem important, and you wondered why on earth you were having to sit through all of this.  Can we get to the point already?

It isn’t until p. 330 (of 514) that the book suddenly, finally, becomes a page-turner.  That’s when Hannah Schneider finally dies.  You’ve known it all along, and now you become consumed with what happens next.  Her death is ruled a suicide, but Blue starts finding clues that it was more likely murder, and the clues start adding up and making sense as she begins to solve this mystery.  Many of the events that didn’t seem important in the first 330 pages now start to have a significant context, and i found myself flipping back through the book so i could find those passages and remind myself about them, and in that way perhaps i could help Blue solve the mystery.

The book ends in an open-ended fashion.  That’s what makes it such good fodder for book club discussions.  To any of by book club compatriots who have made it partway, i say, keep going!  And let me know when you’re finished.

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Aug 29 2010

The Running Man, by Stephen King

Category: Uncategorized — podrey @ 12:21 am

The Running Man was published in 1982 by Stephen King under his alias Richard Bachman.  The Bachman books are generally considered to explore the darker side of human nature.  I couldn’t quite tell the difference; my few King reads have all had some weird darkish elements in them.  But The Running Man is certainly dark.

The year is 2025 and America has “progressed” into a dystopic society where the poor are oppressed and pollution is so bad that they’ve stopped reporting the numbers.  Instead they’ve required installation of “Free-vee” units in all homes (television) and are programming America to death.  The most popular shows are reality shows of a dark nature.  Swim with Crocodiles is one; the longer you survive the more money you (or your heirs) will earn; contestants often die.  Treadmill to Bucks is another; the longer you can walk or run while correctly answering questions earns you more money; wrong answers increase the pace; contestants usually have healthy problems; most won’t die but some do.

The most gripping and most popular show is The Running Man.  One contestant is given a 12-hour lead, some cash and sent out into the world.  He can go wherever he likes.  However, citizens get rewards for reporting sightings of him.  Meanwhile, after his 12-hour lead, the hunters are sent to track him.  He sends in tapes every day so the audience can see his condition.  Every hour he lasts earns money for his family.  If he lasts 30 days, he wins the big prize of a billion dollars for his family.  No one has ever lasted more than 8 days.  Oh, and when he is caught, he is brutally murdered.  This is OK with viewers, though, because contestants are always demonized as poor specimens of the human race.

How do they get contestants when so many come to bad ends?  The oppressed poor volunteer when they get desperate, usually in order to get money to help their families.  Ben Richards is one such, with a wife and a daughter who is very sick.  They need money for a real doctor for the child.

Ben isn’t nearly as bad a guy as he is made out to be by the show.  He’s actually pretty smart and practical, and a bit of a rebel; understandable given his living conditions.  You’re definitely rooting for him all the way.   The book is a page-turner; i couldn’t put it down, trying to find out how it ended.  I won’t give it away.

I haven’t seen the movie that was based on this book, though i might order it from Netflix now to see how they adapted it.

The projected future King created was interesting.  Only 40-45 years later.  We’ve still got 15 years to get to where he thinks we’re headed.  So far he sure predicted reality shows correctly, if not their nature.  His technology projections were all over the place: he got camcorders correct; he didn’t foresee cellphones as everyone was still using pay phones; he assumed hovercraft was the way cars would evolve.  I don’t think human nature has devolved quite as rapidly as he thought.  And our government hasn’t fallen to pieces yet, though some might disagree with me on that.

A fun read.

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Jul 30 2010

Little Earthquakes, by Jennifer Weiner

Category: Uncategorized — podrey @ 4:45 pm

Little Earthquakes is a story about four very different women as they journey into and through the perils of motherhood.  Becky is the character i most related to – practical, laid back yet convinced she isn’t doing it right.  Ayinde is the wife of a professional athlete who is raising her baby literally “by the book” that her mother gave her.  Kelly is something of a control freak materialist who has to learn how to cope when her husband loses his job.  And Lia shadows these women as she mourns the child that she lost suddenly.  Each of the women undergo small earthquakes in their lives that they have to navigate through.

All these women have problematic relationships with their mothers or mothers-in-law, and the author explores how women handle these relationships while also juggling husbands and jobs and their own needs.  Often, they don’t do the juggling act very well.  And that’s very honest.  I laughed out loud at several scenes in this book.  Not being a mother myself, i can only imagine, but my mom-friends assure me it is true to life.

I appreciated the stories of these women.  And i can accept it for what it is – a glance into the life of a mother.  The book tied itself up too neatly at the end, though.  Each character has multiple levels of conflict, and then suddenly at the end of the book, all levels of conflict resolve all at the same time.  It’s too convenient.  And i understand that it’s fiction and all, and i even like happy endings, but this one was just too fixed.

Overall it was a good read.  Nothing inspirational or jaw-dropping or revealing, but very enjoyable and worth the time.

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Jul 13 2010

Self-Made Man, by Norah Vincent

Category: Uncategorized — podrey @ 7:12 pm

The full title is Self-Made Man: One Woman’s Journey Into Manhood and Back Again.

This was an interesting book.  The first half of the book more so than the second.  Norah Vincent spends more than a year dressing and passing as a man.  She puts herself in various situations to see how the male experience differs from her female one.  She gets the idea after a friend convinces her to dress in drag one night and go out for a night on the town.  That one night she gets the sense that the way men interact with each other is vastly different than how men interact with her as a woman, and she decides to pursue the idea on a more full-time basis.  She enlists the help of some friends, and eventually becomes “Ned”.

Ned joins an all-male bowling league.  I was fascinated to read about the all-male dynamic here.  Men can be competitive, yes, but it’s an entirely different type of competitiveness than women have with each other.  This chapter also tried to explain that weird thing that happens where men can get in fights with each other and then be buddy-buddy afterward (though i still don’t quite understand that).

Ned goes out on dates.  Norah thought that Ned would be a shoo-in for second dates, simply because she figured Ned was a better listener and conversationalist than typical men.  Norah revealed the deception to a few of Ned’s dates, and it turned out that they agreed Ned was better in those categories.  But “what women want” is apparently more complex, because Ned didn’t have too much luck in the dating department.

Ned goes to strip clubs to try to understand the sexual side of men.  Ned gets lap dances.  Norah can’t quite connect with this male side of Ned, though.  This chapter didn’t do much for me.

Ned gets a job.  It’s a shitty door-to-door sales type job, in an almost all-male environment.  The interactions between the males are full of male bravado and belittling of women.  This chapter was all there was of the “work” portion of Ned’s life.  While these types of jobs do exist, this type of job didn’t give a real-world glimpse of how men usually function in a work environment, which Norah readily admits.  Still, it was interesting to note how people reacted to Ned, particularly in the interviews.  Ned felt that the simple act of wearing a suit commanded respect.

Ned spends three weeks in a monastery, in an attempt to find a completely male environment and learn how men living solely with men will interact.  He makes a few mistakes, for example calling one older monk “cute” and learned that men just don’t call other men cute.  By some of his behaviors, the monks decide that Ned is gay, and Ned undergoes a type of hazing as the monks try to reinforce what a real man is supposed to act like.  Norah/Ned found this surprising, that the monastery wasn’t just a place to focus on God.

Ned goes to some men’s meetings for men who are trying to explore their emotional side.  This culminates in a weekend retreat in the woods where the men undergo some bizarre but harmless rituals and explore reasons for their emotional unavailability.  Here, Norah/Ned concludes that really, we as a society ask a lot of men, perhaps too much.

Finally, Ned/Norah has a breakdown.  I think it’s understandable given all the stress she put herself under.

This book challenged some of my ideas of gender and identity.  It also made me grateful that i am a woman.  There are a few times i’ve thought life would be easier as a man, but now i really don’t think so.

There is a lot of food for thought in this book and potential for good discussion.

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Jun 22 2010

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

Category: Uncategorized — podrey @ 11:57 am

I found this book after Cindy turned me on to the Wake County Library Book A Day blog (as if i don’t already have enough books to read without getting interested in a new book every day).  I was intrigued by the write-up.

First off, i’ll tell you is what a geek is.  A geek is an act at a carnival, where a man or woman chases live chickens around, and then decapitates them.  With their teeth.  They wear white to emphasize the red blood for the crowd.  There is high turnover for this job because of broken teeth.

Charming, yes?  That is the essence of this book, though.  Gruesome and twisted… yet understandable.  Understandable in the sense that you know that act will sell tickets, because it is so off the wall.  And this book is that.

Al and Lil Binewski run a traveling carnival, and when the carnival business gets rather bleak, they take matters into their own hands and create their own “freaks” by having children while experimenting with drugs.  The results are Arturo the Aqua Boy, a boy born with fins instead of arms & legs.  Elly and Iphy, Siamese twins with two torsos and heads who share one set of legs.  Olympia the hunchback dwarf albino, whose perspective the reader will share.  And finally Fortunato, a boy who looks normal but can move things with his mind.  With these freakish offspring, the carnival gains heavily in popularity over time.

There are a lot of freakish events and sideshows, but this story is ultimately about love.

It is about familial love.  The Binewskis are a tight-knit family, and their story contains a lot of sibling rivalry as well as familial bonds.  Family can be their cruelest to each other, but they’ll also make sacrifices for each other that they would never make for anyone else.

It is also about self-love.  The Binewskis celebrate their freakishness.  Deformities and differences are not things to be ashamed of; they are things you actually want and things you are proud of.  There’s a message here for anyone who feels ashamed of any part of who they are – be proud of whatever it is that makes you you.

Honestly, i didn’t particularly like any of the characters.  The book was intriguing, though, and my thoughts are continually drawn back to it.  It’s one of those books that haunts you for awhile after you’ve finished it.

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Jun 07 2010

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, by Barbara Kingsolver

Category: Uncategorized — podrey @ 9:18 pm

This book was on the reading list for our book club this month.  The book for the month actually got changed at the meeting i missed because of the bridge tournament, but i was already mid-way through it, so i plunged ahead.

The book was by no means a page-turner.  It meandered along the way the seasons do, slow and controlled.  A family of four decides to move to their farm in southern Virginia and try to live off the land.  Their goal was to eat only locally-produced food that they either grew themselves, or was grown by the farmers around them.

Despite my comments about the slower pace of the book, I did really like aspects of it.  I liked the descriptions of how they decided what they would and wouldn’t eat.  (They made exceptions for a few things, like coffee, which are not grown in Virginia but they felt they couldn’t do without.)  I liked hearing about their adventures in raising poultry.  (Particularly the turkeys.)  I liked the recipes that were given at the end of each chapter.  (The elder daughter wrote those sections, and gave a young adult’s perspective on the family’s choices.)  I liked hearing about how the only time people lock their car doors is during June when the owner of an unlocked car might find a “gift” of fresh squash thrown inside.  (Apparently squash is a bit too easy to come by in a farm community.)

Yes, it was all very pleasant, and in some ways it made me want to try my own hand at it.  Audrey Podrey, farmer extraordinaire.

One thing i had to remind myself, though, is that this was no ordinary family.  This family already had a lot of experience growing vegetables in a garden next to their former home.  This family already spent many weekends in the fall pickling and canning vegetables.  This family already made their own cheese!  (Surprisingly, it’s not that hard to do.)  So this was not a “typical” family that just decided to try to live off the land.  In other words, i would have a lot to learn to even get started.

There were a lot of facts in the book that reminded me of other things i have learned from movies such as Food, Inc., King Corn and No-Impact Man.  The difference for me is that when reading, i can stop and mull over something i’ve just read, or exclaim to Lance and discuss something.  In a movie, it just keeps going, and there is less time to really absorb things.  So i would say i absorbed a lot more of the information this time around.

And i’m a convert now.  Or maybe a wannabe convert.  Even if i’m not planning to become Farmer Audrey, i still have a lot to learn.  I’ll be looking for more locally grown items, i’ll be reading more labels, and i’ll be visiting the farmer’s market more.

This was a pleasant, informative book.

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Nov 04 2009

Irresistible Revolution, by Shane Claiborne

Category: Uncategorized — podrey @ 8:01 pm

My brother Nathan and i are engaged in an email discussion about religion and spirituality.  We have pages and pages of conversation, and i’m sure there’s a blog post or few in there somewhere.  Eventually.  But one of the things he suggested i do is read this book, Irresistible Revolution.  He promised it wasn’t an evangelical book, but was a cool example of someone doing Christianity in a different way.

It may not have been evangelical, but it was a bit preachy at times.  The author’s intended audience is people who are already Christians and are searching for more meaning in their Christianity.  If this describes you, it was a very inspiring book.  It is even inspired me, a nonbeliever, that i should be doing more for my community.

Basically, this kid grew up in what has become a traditional, white, suburban, protestant church.  He finds this kind of Christianity getting stale and wants to go out and actually help the poor himself.  And he does.  He goes to the downtown parks at night and meets the homeless folks and befriends them.  He goes to Calcutta and works alongside Mother Theresa.  He founds The Simple Way, a community-sharing organization in Philadelphia.

The way he describes his journey is very moving.  He touches on some themes i have seen explored elsewhere, about how typical Christians today are often aloof when it comes to the true challenges and suffering of the very needy.  No doubt about it, the world would be a better place if people embodied more of the principles of how Jesus lived.

It’s been awhile since i read the book, and i’m just now getting around to writing about it, but i have two criticisms that i can recall:

  • Jesus is my president.  During the last presidential election, Shane wrote-in a candidate – Jesus.  He has buttons that say “Jesus is My President”.  I don’t understand this.  You may want to live more like Jesus, but we still live in a human world, a world where some form of government exists in all cultures.  Even in a tribal culture, they have clan chiefs and ways of disciplining each other and making rules for the society.  Jesus can’t be your president, and i daresay he wouldn’t want the job.
  • Let’s just end the war and show everyone God’s love.  I hate the war, and i don’t know why we’re in Iraq.  I can concede, though, that it is a delicate situation.  Consider that Iran is trying to get nuclear weapons.  What happens if they get them?  Iran is an Islamic state.  There is reason to be scared that they would lob a nuclear weapon at the US.  Why might they do that?  Because we are infidels.  Anyway, we have a vested interest in preventing them from obtaining nuclear weaponry.  What scares me is that if we “just end the war and show everyone God’s love,” then NYC will be obliterated.  What scares me more is that there will be Christians who are happy about it, because it would mean the end of the world and Jesus’ return is imminent.

Those are two things that stuck with me after i finished Irresistible Revolution.  The good stories stuck with me, too, and i will be making an effort to do more in my community.  I can do (and secular organizations are already doing) a lot of good things in the world without a religious motivation.

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