"Zombie Spaceship Wasteland," more

Healthy Life Video The Best Celebrity Diets Play Now!
Washington Post Book Reviews For You Monday February 7, 2011 NEW IN PAPERBACK The case for an unplugged life NA NA ISBN NA NA pages $NA Reviewed by Nora Krug The domestic scene that Susan Maushart describes in her memoir "The Winter of Our Disconnect" (Tarcher, $16.95) will resonate with many parents of teenagers: three children, 18, 15 and 14, locked in front of screens, "uploading photos from last night's gathering, stalking a potential boyfriend's ex-girlfriend's Facebook friends," howling at the latest YouTube gag. So ingrained were these habits that the hum of her son's PC, Maushart writes, had become "as familiar and insistent as my own pulse." Until one day Maushart, a journalist and single mother then living in Perth, Australia, decided to pull the plug: "I was worried about my kids." (Also, as someone who slept with her iPhone, Maushart was worried about herself.) Her book chronicles the six months her family spent living technology-free. (There were, however, some important caveats: Computers could be used outside the home, while cell phones were allowed if they were used only as phones. LOL.) What transpired, as one might expect, was a mix of balking and bonding. Gradually, the whining about boredom and threats to move out evolved into happy if not quite Norman Rockwell moments: kids playing musical instruments, cooking meals and playing Sudoku, gathering around the fireplace to eat and share. Sleep habits improved; rooms were cleaned; library cards were rediscovered. "I'm not saying anybody suddenly went from Hannah Montana to Homer," Maushart writes. But "I watched as my kids awoke slowly from the state of cognitus interruptus ... to become more focused, logical thinkers." Writing in a breezy, conversational style, Maushart weaves anecdotes with statistics and cultural studies. The result is a book that itself suffers from cognitus interruptus. Nonetheless, she makes an inspiring and entertaining case for the unplugged life, if not for the considered one. Parents need not get so exercised about technology, the authors of "Not Quite Adults" (Bantam, $15) argue. "The much-maligned digital age," Richard Settersten and Barbara E. Ray explain, in fact "might be a panacea" for the many young people today who lack ties to a community beyond their families. Reaching into the ether for connections is one of the many ways that members of Generation Y are redefining the act of growing up: "The path to adulthood is no longer one of independence, but interdependence," Settersten and Ray write. This also means living at home longer, delaying marriage, and job-hopping. Some have blamed kids and parents for this "failure to launch," but Settersten and Ray take a broader view, examining the economic and cultural forces that have sparked and prolonged the phenomenon -- a poor job market and the limits of a college degree among them. The book, which is based on extensive data and field research, has been criticized as an apology for lazy kids and indulgent parenting. Indeed, statements such as "tough love rarely works" won't sit well with Tiger Mother types, nor will the observation that helicopter parents "aren't so bad after all" appeal to cool free-rangers. Still, the book is a thoughtful, thorough analysis that offers constructive suggestions for parents to gently lead their 20-somethings out the door. From our previous reviews Donna Rifkind praised Julie Orringer's "The Invisible Bridge" (Vintage, $15.95), a fictional "account of the very particular way in which Hungary's Jewish population was decimated by the Holocaust," for its "brilliant use of a deliberately old-fashioned realism to define individual fates engulfed by history's deadly onrush." In "The Girl Who Fell From the Sky" (Algonquin, $13.95), a first novel by Heidi W. Durrow, a young biracial girl is forced to face harsh realities following a family tragedy. Lisa Page described the book as "a modern story about identity and survival." Physician and medical journalist Randi Hutter Epstein offers an "engrossing survey of the history of childbirth" in "Get Me Out" (Norton, $15.95), according to Stephen Lowman. "Stuff" (Mariner, $14.95), by Randy O. Frost and Gail Steketee, is a thoughtful study of hoarding in which the authors, both academics, "take the position that hoarding is an actual physical and neurological condition that may be related to OCD or autism or Asperger's syndrome," noted Carolyn See, who called the book "utterly engrossing." In "Nothing Was the Same" (Vintage, $14.95), a memoir about her late husband, psychiatrist Kay Redfield Jamison offers "a clear-eyed view of illness and death, sanity and insanity, love and grief," Reeve Lindbergh wrote. "The Talented Miss Highsmith" (Picador, $24), Joan Schenkar's biography of Patricia Highsmith, reveals a "catalog of torments" about the celebrated thriller writer, according to Jonathan Lethem. A.N. Wilson's "Our Times" (Picador, $20), the third volume in his history of modern Britain, "is a sharp-tongued elegy to what Wilson considers a vanished country," according to Stephen Lowman. Nora Krug's paperback column appears once a month. She can be reached at krugn(at symbol)washpost.com. Copyright 2011 Washington Post Writers Group Comment on this Story | Printer Friendly | Share | Top ZOMBIE SPACESHIP WASTELAND: A Book by Patton Oswalt Patton Oswalt Scribner ISBN 978-1439149089 191 pages $24 Reviewed by Mike Sacks Patton Oswalt, a Sterling-raised comedian who toiled for years in Washington (D.C.) area comedy clubs, is one of those rare performers whose material translates to any medium without losing its sharpness -- including, for the first time, print. Part memoir, part graphic novel, part collection of humor essays, his "Zombie Spaceship Wasteland" is a little ungainly but extremely likable. The book will be valuable to anyone who wants to know how to get from here to there. Simply: how to go from being a broke, carless teenage movie usher in the Towncenter strip mall in the 1980s, just an outcast "stuck in the syrup of the suburbs" and surrounded by "paint huffers and skate rats," to becoming one of the most respected comics working. Oswalt has appeared in more than 25 movies (including playing the lead in 2009's wonderful "Big Fan"), released numerous albums and toured with a veritable who's who of today's top comedic talent, including Zach Galifianakis, David Cross and Todd Barry. So, how did he do it? It helps to start out, as Oswalt did, as a "dopey faced" kid obsessed with science fiction and post-apocalyptic fantasy board games that allow a player to create highly imaginative, personal worldviews and characters. Oswalt breaks it down into even further geeked-out minutiae. In his opinion, the average teen outcast falls into one of three highly specific categories: those who prefer zombie stories (and feel a "disgust with the slick and false"), those who enjoy spaceship stories (and are content with "their insular, slightly muted lives" because their "deflector shields (are) up"), or those who, like him, tend to gravitate to stories that take place after the apocalypse (and are "confused but fascinated" by the blandness of the world). For Oswalt, this blandness begins to evaporate with a little help from Monty Python, Richard Pryor and George Carlin -- and with the arrival of an even more exciting, possibly treacherous, obsession: "I went to a pool party -- the first one I was skinny enough to swim at without my shirt. I made out with a girl, and the curve of her hip and the soft jut of shoulder blades in a bikini forever trumped the imagined sensation of a sword pommel or spell book." While Oswalt might have written more about the skills he used to wend his way through the bleak landscape toward success, it is well worth it to join him on his odyssey. That the hero of this tale is a formerly overweight nerd who hails from suburban Virginia makes it only more gratifying -- especially for those outcasts dreaming that, one day, they too will be able to bridge the gap between here and there. Mike Sacks is on the editorial staff of Vanity Fair magazine and is the author of three books, including a forthcoming collection of humor pieces, "Your Wildest Dreams, Within Reason." Copyright 2011 Washington Post Writers Group Comment on this Story | Printer Friendly | Share | Top Recent Stories    THE METROPOLIS CASE    THE SIXTIES: Diaries, Volume Two: 1960-1969    PUNCHING OUT: One Year in a Closing Auto Plant    POSER: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses    ANDREW MARVELL: The Chameleon	Quick Clicks Free Snuggle Fabric Softener Free samples, coupons, daily newsletter with exclusives! PC SLOWDOWN? Try Error Nuker! Free... Best Registry cleaning software available. Try It FREE!
Copyright © 2009 ArcaMax Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

"The Metropolis Case," more

Wine and Dine Video Potato-Stuffed Onions Recipe Play Now!
Washington Post Book Reviews For You Sunday February 6, 2011 THE METROPOLIS CASE Matthew Gallaway Crown ISBN 978-0307463425 372 pages $25 Reviewed by Eugenia Zukerman "Nothing meaningful is ever unveiled without great risk -- isn't that what you learned singing your opera?" A botanist named Guillaume Marchand poses this question to his son, tenor Lucien Marchand. It's 1870, in Paris. Not only has Lucien sung the lead role in Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde," but he also owns an original score. That score plays a major role in a marvelously complex story. Author Matthew Gallaway has taken a great risk with his first novel by creating an intricate, multilayered tale that slides from past to present, from Europe to New York, from opera to pop. But despite the complexity, "The Metropolis Case" engages the reader emotionally on every page. A quartet of characters is at the center of the story: Lucien, the promising and conflicted singer; Anna, an impressive soprano from Pittsburgh who gives up a thriving international opera career in the mid-1960s to teach; Maria, a prickly young soprano who studies with Anna at Juilliard in the 1980s and is more than a student to her; and Martin, a disenchanted lawyer who has weathered Sept. 11 in New York and is ready to change his life. But to describe the plot is to miss the point. Wagner's music, with its longing for love and transcendence, is what gives this story ballast and provides a guiding motive. These four people's lives begin to intersect in strange and intriguing ways. While exploring the tragedies and duplicities that have shaped them, each one is severely tested, and each will surprise the reader. This is a story of operatic proportions, filled with coincidences, but it never seems overwrought or contrived. The author's language is down-to-earth but never earthbound, and Gallaway's characters are passionate and funny. Maria, dubbed Morticia in second grade, tells a friend, "Here I am lying in bed with a shattered heart, and the truth is I'm freaking out because I haven't practiced in two days. That's not exactly normal, is it?" Martin, who gives up his law practice, proclaims, "Quitting is seriously underrated," and there's the conductor who wears "the expression of one savoring the first bite of a spectacular creme brulee." Gallaway, like some of his characters, is from Pittsburgh, studied law and, although he played in a rock band, grew to love opera. Writing this superb novel, the author must have felt like Lucien after his first performance of "Tristan in Munich" in 1865, when "for the first time he understood the consummating power of performance and how -- as with romantic love -- he had grasped this only after years of searching, of craving something he could not have described until after it was found." Eugenia Zukerman is a flutist, the author of four books, an arts administrator and the founder of ClassicalGenie.com. Copyright 2011 Washington Post Writers Group Comment on this Story | Printer Friendly | Share | Top THE SIXTIES: Diaries, Volume Two: 1960-1969 Christopher Isherwood. Edited by Katherine Bucknell Harper ISBN 978-0061180194 756 pages $39.99 Reviewed by Dennis Drabelle Not for nothing did Christopher Isherwood coin the line "I am a camera." In this, the second volume of the British expat novelist and screenwriter's dairies, he takes the reader to the funeral of movie producer David ("Gone with the Wind") Selznick, at which Katharine Hepburn read Rudyard Kipling's poem "If." As Isherwood tells it, "When she got to the last line, she turned toward the coffin and said, '... You'll be a Man, my son!' I later heard that George Cukor thought this a supreme touch of artistry. I thought it farcical." Elsewhere, Don Bachardy, Isherwood's lover, lists which of their friends he finds it "fun to be with," the first three being Truman Capote, Gore Vidal and Tony Richardson -- two writers and a film director, all of such brilliance that it makes you wonder how Bachardy and Isherwood put up with ordinary mortals. Isherwood's unflinching perceptiveness extends even to inanimate objects, as when he takes a hard look at the Watts Towers, those pieces of junk architecture that have become a Los Angeles landmark. He reminds us that the assembler, Simon Rodia, wasn't just a throwaway-item aesthete. It was fame he was after. "I had in mind to do something big," Isherwood quotes him as saying, "and I did." Dennis Drabelle can be reached at drabelled(at symbol)washpost.com. Copyright 2011 Washington Post Writers Group Comment on this Story | Printer Friendly | Share | Top Recent Stories    PUNCHING OUT: One Year in a Closing Auto Plant    POSER: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses    ANDREW MARVELL: The Chameleon    THE MEMORY PALACE    HEAT WAVE: The Life and Career of Ethel Waters	Quick Clicks Free Snuggle Fabric Softener Free samples, coupons, daily newsletter with exclusives! Discover Why the Every Other Day Diet's Weird Tips are Changing Lives!
Copyright © 2009 ArcaMax Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Visit the Past with New Children's Books

Wine and Dine Video Potato-Stuffed Onions Recipe Play Now!
BookDaily.com Featured Books Romance - Redeeming Love, Francine Rivers - Darkfever (Fever Series, Book 1), Karen Marie Moning Mystery - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson - World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, Max Brooks Sci Fi - World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, Max Brooks - Slaughterhouse-Five: A Novel, Kurt Vonnegut Health - Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell - Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, David Allen Teens - The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky - The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective Teens, Sean Covey Literature - Howl and Other Poems (City Lights Pocket Poets Series), Allen Ginsberg - The Iliad (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition), Homer Religion - Jesus Calling: Enjoying Peace in His Presence, Sarah Young - The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, Eckhart Tolle Business - The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen R. Covey - Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell Spirituality - The Shack, William P. Young - Redeeming Love, Francine Rivers Charles Dickens (Feb. 7, 1812 - June 9, 1870) Charles John Huffman Dickens was a great supporter of the lower classes, and wrote about them both in his novels and his nonfiction works such as "A Coalminer's Evidence." Coming from a lower-class background himself, Dickens' financial situation improved when he became a journalist under the pseudonym "Boz." In his later years, he toured various theatres, giving readings of his more famous novels. He died of a stroke, leaving his work-in-progress "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" unfinished. Featured Book and Quizzes Featured book by Charles Dickens: A Tale of Two Cities This week's quizzes: Hans Christian Andersen Arthurian Legends Sci-Fi First Lines This Week's Birthdays Jules Verne -- February 8, 1828 Former operetta writer now known for his futuristic Victorian novels. Read more aout Jules Verne. Sample books by Jules Verne at BookDaily. Sinclair Lewis -- February 7, 1885 American novelist and Nobel Prize winner known for his satirical works. Read Babbit by Sinclair Lewis at BookDaily. Bertolt Brecht -- February 10, 1898 German playwright and poet whose "epic theatre" encouraged thinking in his audience. Read Stories of Mr. Keuner by Bertolt Brecht at BookDaily. Kids' Home Library Visit the Past With New Children's Books Lee Littlewood Young history buffs have plenty to learn in these in-depth, fascinating books. "The Buck Stops Here" by Alice Provensen; Viking Children's Books; 56 pages; $18.99. Subtitled "The Presidents of the United States," this pristine informational book, set ... Continue reading...	Quick Clicks Free Snuggle Fabric Softener Free samples, coupons, daily newsletter with exclusives! Discover Why the Every Other Day Diet's Weird Tips are Changing Lives!
Copyright © 2009 ArcaMax Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

"Punching Out" and "Poser"

Healthy Life Video Learn About Bronchialitis Play Now!
Washington Post Book Reviews For You Saturday February 5, 2011 PUNCHING OUT: One Year in a Closing Auto Plant Paul Clemens Doubleday ISBN 978-0385521154 271 pages $25.95 Reviewed by Peter Whoriskey How do you tell the story of what is no longer there? For many Americans, the decimation of the nation's manufacturing work force over the last three decades is sensed only through statistics -- millions of jobs lost, factories closed and a vague unease that some working families are being rolled over. But in Detroit, the economic destruction is palpable in the ruins of the old plants that have been emptied and left to rot, serving as giant roadside tombstones for a more prosperous era. In "Punching Out," Paul Clemens, a native of Detroit, has set for himself the task of describing in depth the shuttering of one behemoth, as a kind of farewell. The idea that a major American city could be in the process of turning into a ruin is both horrifying and alluring, becoming along the way the subject of numerous trendy photography exhibits. But Clemens wants to do more than muse about another empty factory. "The arty delectation of Detroit's destruction -- 'ruin porn,' as it's called -- it sometimes seems to take up half the Internet," he writes. "I understand the fascination completely, and I don't get it at all." His case study is the Budd Automotive plant in Detroit, which in its heyday constituted a small city in itself, encompassing about 2 million square feet and employing 10,000 workers. Among other things, it stamped out the pieces of Ford Explorers. Beginning after production has ceased at the plant, Clemens' story centers on the grim work of wreckers and movers of equipment, of the security guards warding off vandals and of corporate scavengers from plants in Mexico and elsewhere who buy the Budd plant's equipment for use in countries where labor is much cheaper. The tale unfolds in a series of vignettes that Clemens captured while hanging out during the months-long dismantling of the plant. The woes of Detroit provoke both desperation and philosophizing. Standing around 50-gallon oil drums with fires inside to keep warm, workers reflect somberly, sometimes colorfully, about the exodus of manufacturing and about their homesickness. A scrap thief, caught by the security guards, is forced to kneel with his hands behind his head, but then asks for a job. A trucker named Rafael shows off his tattoos of an American eagle and a phoenix and then complains about Detroit, "It's cold, it's miserable. I want to go home and ride my motorcycle and my old lady." And the author of an industry newsletter known as Plant Closing News, a kind of almanac of economic destruction, sees in the exodus a reflection of moral decline, comparing the upheaval first to the fall of Rome and then to the wayward people of the Bible, with scriptural citations to Chronicles. "You know what? It's that desperate. We've lost our horizon. We don't know whether we're flying right side up or upside down," he says. The equipment being salvaged from the Budd plant will end up in India, Brazil and Mexico, sometimes to make parts for the same auto companies, but with much lower labor costs. At the Mexican plant, the only other one that Clemens visits in the book, he notes that workers make about $3,500 a year, only a small fraction of what the unionized workers at the U.S. plant once made. Remember, Clemens instructs, that "this city once was a Cadillac, before becoming a Buick, then an Oldsmobile and a Pontiac (both defunct), and finally, a Chevy, a high mileage hauler that has done honest work but can sometimes seem closer and closer to coming to a halt." Clemens displays a fascination with equipment, although often its use and significance will be a mystery to readers. But the ultimate absence, at least for this reader, is what the Budd plant was like in its heyday and what has happened to those who once populated the vast complex. At one point, Clemens is left to imagine, as if in a movie, the manager looking out over the factory floor from his office as he realizes that they are heading for trouble. It is just the kind of scene that, if documented, might best describe the loss implicit in all those vacant factories. Peter Whoriskey covers the auto industry and manufacturing for The Washington Post. He can be reached at whoriskeyp(at symbol)washpost.com. Copyright 2011 Washington Post Writers Group Comment on this Story | Printer Friendly | Share | Top POSER: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses Claire Dederer Farrar Straus Giroux ISBN 978-0374236441 332 pages $26 Reviewed by Justin Moyer The yoga studio in your neighborhood makes money repackaging a 2,000-year-old Eastern discipline. Is that OK? Claire Dederer, freelance journalist and author of "Poser," isn't sure, but that didn't stop yoga from changing her life. "I had started going to yoga because I wanted other people to admire my goodness," she writes. "And yet what yoga seemed to be teaching me was this: Who cares? Who cares about goodness? ... There's only this: a woman in a heap on the floor." Of course, Dederer's existential nonchalance is a pose, too. Raising two children in North Seattle, she pokes fun at her clique of "hollow-eyed" mothers who breast-feed their toddlers and shop exclusively at Whole Foods -- all while grinding steamed organic carrots into baby food herself. But it's her wry ambivalence about motherhood that smuggles her book out of the New Age ghetto. "My body had become pure receptacle, not just for the growing baby but for the opinions, analysis, and rules of everyone around me," she writes. "I found that I did not like this one bit." By the end of this pilgrim's progress, with her body less a receptacle than a symbol of liberated womanhood, Dederer is happier, though no Buddha. In fact, she's about as judgmental as ever. What a relief. Justin Moyer can be reached at moyerj(at symbol)washpost.com. Copyright 2011 Washington Post Writers Group Comment on this Story | Printer Friendly | Share | Top Recent Stories    ANDREW MARVELL: The Chameleon    THE MEMORY PALACE    HEAT WAVE: The Life and Career of Ethel Waters    PICTURES OF YOU    DJIBOUTI	Quick Clicks Free samples, coupons, daily newsletter with exclusives! Free Paula Deen 12-Piece Cookware Set Eliminate Windows PC Errors Improve PC's System Speed by Up to 70%
Copyright © 2009 ArcaMax Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.