Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, by Steve Krug

Published at August 22, 2008 in Science for Everyone. 0 Comments

SEL Books: TK5105.888 .K78 2000

I confess an interest in usability sparked by my previous experience as a technical writer. I developed print and online help for software, and I wanted to understand how best to organize help so that people can actually use it—can actually (gasp!) find what they need.

But, but, BUT! I want to emphasize that usability is relevant to everyone who creates anything—not just a Web page or a product, but also a sign, even an email. How are you going to ensure that people are going to see what they need to see. People skim email. How do you get them to focus on the important parts?

Usability books can help you to think about design in a different way, to flip around your viewpoint so that you think about how the user interacts with what you produce. Along with Donald Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things, I recommend Don’t Make Me Think to just about everyone, because they’re both directed toward the general public.

Krug’s book is a quick read. It is well-organized and broken up into small, easy-to-digest chunks. In other words, he applies his design ideas to his own book, thus providing not only good information but a good example to follow.

Don’t Make Me Think really does make me think, but in a good way.

The History of Love, by Nicole Krauss

Published at July 22, 2008 in Fiction. 0 Comments

Central: PS3611.R38 H57 2006

The History of Love moved me. It shoved me, knocking from my comfortable existence. It awakened me from intellectual lethargy.

One of the reasons that I love The History of Love so much is that reading is something of a central character. All of our main characters are transformed by reading. The book-within-a-book (the novel The History of Love that is published in Chile by Zvi Litvinoff) influences the lives of both Almas, Leo, Isaac, both parents of Alma Singer, Zvi himself, and his wife, Rosa. All of these people make major life choices that relate to this book. It connects them all—across time and space, across culture and geography, across war and peace, across want and plenty.

Reading is immensely important, for many reasons. I believe reading transforms the reader (and the writer, as well, but that’s another story). Reading not only transports us to places we’ve never been, it takes us to places and times we can never go—the future, or the past, or places that exist only in our imaginations. It also introduces us to people we will never meet, living in circumstances completely off our radar screen, and with points of view we may never have considered. Reading stretches us, moves us, startles us, and disturbs our comfortable views, while it also comforts us, soothes us, tickles our funny bones, and fills us with wonder.

There are other reasons that The History of Love means so much to me. It is something of a mystery, as Alma seeks her namesake and Leo seeks connection with his son. The narrative draws us in as it whirls around in time and space, sucking us into an eddy of questions and desires. And the characters drew me in. I become very fond of Leo and Alma and Bird. Indeed, when I had thirty pages left to read, I waited three days to finish, so reluctant was I to leave behind these funny, sweet, quirky, lost characters. I need not have feared. They will be with me always.

Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software, by Steven Johnson

Published at July 15, 2008 in Science for Everyone. 0 Comments

SEL Books: Q325 .J65 2001

This book has solidified some of the ideas I’ve been formulating for past dozen or so years. Immensely exciting! The focus of the book is on emergence—the ability of multiple entities to display intelligent behavior while working as a group. Related terminology includes self-organizing systems, swarm intelligence, complexity theory, and chaos theory.

I have been looking for connections for a great many years, which is why I’m fascinated by comparative anything (comparative literature, comparative religion, comparative linguistics, etc.). Give me an apple and a lugnut and I’ll find some common denominator. (Give me a little time, though.)

It amazes me that slime molds and ant colonies work as an intelligent whole, while each individual organism has the individual intelligence of, well, a slime mold.

This book does not provide any breakthroughs or new information that hasn’t been out there for years. What it does do is gather and organize the information so that we in the general public can get a sense of the mind-bending breakthroughs going on in just about every field of discipline (economics, urban planning, physics, education, management, gaming, biology, etc., etc., etc.).

The main contribution this book makes is to urge us to be asking the questions. How is intelligence formed? How do we measure it? Can we measure it? What kind of emergent systems are on the verge of intelligence? Computers? Robots? The World Wide Web?

An exciting world is emerging.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer

Published at May 13, 2008 in Fiction. 0 Comments

Central: PS3606.O38 E98 2006

Every once in a while I read a book that I wish would not end. This is one of them.

Admittedly, I found the characters difficult to connect with at the start, though they immediately intrigued me. Both of the two main characters—an 11-year-old boy and an aged old man—are out of the ordinary. The narration passes back and forth between them, their stories paralleling for most of the book and finally connecting.

I developed a deep fondness for these two characters, who seem to be polar opposites—old and young, fearless and afraid, strong and delicate, mute and verbose.

The child, Oscar, still mourns his father’s death  some two years before in the World Trade Center attacks. He finds a key, and sets out on a quest to discover what it opens. He desperately hopes to find a pattern, an intention, a meaning that will bring some kind of sense to his suffering.

The old man is on a quest of his own, but revealing that would reveal too much. What I will say is that the book left me with a sweet, lingering sadness and a desire to appreciate every moment.

Adam’s Curse: A Future without Men, by Bryan Sykes

Published at April 25, 2008 in Biology, Genetics and Science for Everyone. 0 Comments

SEL Books: QH600.5 .S98 2004

By turns fascinating and disturbing, Adam’s Curse explores the possible causes, ramifications, and solutions to a currently intractable problem–the human male is facing extinction.

The human male is facing two dangers–decreasing sperm count and the deteriorating Y chromosome. Dr. Sykes predicts that, if no solutions are found in the meantime, human males will disappear from the earth within the next 125,000 years (roughly 5000 generations).

This sounds like an awfully long time to come up with a solution, but when we’re talking about changes that occur slowly, planning ahead apparently can’t begin too soon.

Naked in Baghdad, by Anne Garrels

Published at March 4, 2008 in Nonfiction. 0 Comments

Central: DS79.76 .G373 2004

During the lead up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the voice of Anne Garrels became a familiar friend to me. I found myself turning up the radio, and listening more intently, when I heard her voice on NPR. During the invasion, I held my breath, and prayed for her safety.

While reading this book, I heard her voice clearly in my head. I suspect that people who already know and love her work will find this book particularly meaningful, but I don’t want to discourage anyone from reading it.

This is neither pro- nor anti-war; it is a very personal story—detailing the struggles and dangers she met with in attempting to cover the story. She was one of the few western journalists who stayed throughout the invasion, and her narrative conveys the deep sense of comeraderie that developed among this small band of holdouts.

The title refers to a tactic Garrels used to protect her precious (and contraband) broadcast equipment. Terrified that she would be relieved of this equipment, she discovered that when Iraqi police knocked on her door, she simply needed to tell them that she needed to get dressed before she could let them in. They would wait, more or less patiently, outside her door while she rushed around hiding the equipment and throwing on some clothes.

Maybe the manner of her broadcasting, in the dark and in the nude, at least partially influenced the intimate feel of her broadcasts.

Garrels has been home and back to Iraq several times since then. She’s covered Russia and several other countries. And still, her voice draws me in whenever I hear it.

Genome : The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, by Matt Ridley

Published at March 4, 2008 in Biology, Genetics and Science for Everyone. 0 Comments

SEL Books: QH431 .R475 1999

Science writer Matt Ridley hit upon a creative method for introducing lay readers to the human genome—to write its biography.

Each chapter focuses on a particular chromosome (Chromosomes 1 through 22, plus one chapter coupling X and Y together). For each chromosome, the author focusses on one or two genes, using it as a launching pad to explore a particular topic, such as fate, instinct, sex, conflict, or free will.

Of course, we learn a lot about the human genome, genetics, and evolution along the way, but it all leads to his central question: are we nothing more than the sum total of our genes? Ridley presents the Nature v. Nurture debate, and takes it further by introducing a third factor—free will.

Both “sides” of this age-old debate are on the side of determinism; our personalities are determined either by our genes or our environment. But do we have a say in this at all? Ridley presents compelling evidence that who we are is an amalgamation of all three influences, though not necessarily in equal measure.

This book was written more than eight years ago, so a greater body of knowledge on this subject has been amassed since then. The Human Genome Project completed its mapping in 2003, and scientists are using the information for a wide variety of research projects, including solving crimes, discovering relationships among all living things, mapping the evolutionary process, discovering more about our ancestors, following the movements of peoples across time and space (as in Mapping Human History, the “Pick” for September 2006), and, of course, disease treatment and prevention.

Yet, despite its age, I still recommend this book as a wonderful introduction to genetics. Its language is comprehensible and its tone inviting. This book is evidence that learning can be fun.

In the Shadow of No Towers, by Art Spiegelman

Published at February 29, 2008 in Graphic Novel/Comic. 0 Comments

Central OVERSIZE: PN6727.S6 I5 2004

As the five year anniversary of 9/11 approaches, this book seemed an appropriate read. This collection of comic strips that appeared in the wake of the attacks is not for the squeamish or easily offended. It will move you, maybe disturb you, and maybe anger you.

Spiegelman is angry. He splatters his anger and grief like paint onto the canvas. Catharsis may have eventually mitigated his passion, but we meet it here before that mitigation. We meet him in all his fury—raw and bitter and intense. Some will find it offensive, especially as it takes aim at political figures and policies.

Spiegelman was there that day—he and his wife heard the first plane crash as they walked down the street, and turned to see the horror of smoke and fire pouring from the north tower. They ran, panicking, to retrieve their daughter from her school at the foot of the towers. They later outran the toxic cloud spewing from the towers as they collapsed into rubble.

This book brought home to me an idea that ought to be obvious, but hadn’t really struck me deeply; people in the vicinity of the crash (and this applies to those in D.C. and Pennsylvania, as well) were traumatized at a level beyond the understanding of those of us who watched it unfold on television. As Spiegelman points out, even uptown New Yorkers seemed to have recovered while he was still numbly attempting to piece together a semblance of normalcy.
 
This book is part of an attempt by someone intimately affected by the events to process his trauma, anger and terror. The last third or so of the book, I think, represents some of his healing. It seems, at first blush, to bear no relationship to the pages preceding it. It is a brief history of newspaper cartooning in America, followed by seven plates of original, turn-of-the-20th-Century cartoons.

I think the author explains the abrupt topic switch by using two callouts on the page titled “The Comic Supplement.”

“Right after 9/11/01, while waiting for some other terrorist shoe to drop, many found comfort in poetry. Others searched for solace in old newspaper comics.” —In the Shadow of No Towers, #10.

“The blast that disintegrated those Lower Manhattan towers also disinterred the ghosts of some Sunday supplement stars born on nearby Park Row. They came back to haunt one denizen of the neighborhood, addled by all that’s happened since.” —In the Shadow of No Towers, #8.

Spiegelman resurrects these comic “ghosts” (Katzenjammer Kids, Kinder Kids, Happy Hooligan, etc.), and they appear throughout the No Towers comic series. I believe the beauty, clarity, and intelligence of these comics comforted and soothed the author during a chaotic and fearful time.

(Originally published in Connections, September 2006)

Mapping Human History: Discovering the Past Through Our Genes, by Steve Olson

Published at February 29, 2008 in Biology, Genetics and Science for Everyone. 0 Comments

SEL Books: QH455 .O474 2002

In Mapping Human History, geneticist Steve Olson follows the migration of humans from Africa out into the Middle East, Asia, Australia, Europe, and the Americas. He does not use the traditional “bones and stones” archeological approach. He looks one place for his evidence—inside our DNA.

Along the way, Olson takes great care to discourage those who might desire to use DNA testing to justify racial distinctions between groups. The human race has interbred among groups for thousands of years, and attempting to determine genetic markers that represent distinct races is virtually impossible.  We are so inbred that it is likely that every person on earth today has DNA from Julius Caesar, Confucius, and Nefertiti.

The book is broken down into sections representing different continents, and ending with one called “The End of Race,” which looks at Hawaii as a case study. The author also looks at connections between genetic studies of human connections and the evidence found in the archeological record and with linguistic studies of human connections. Languages apparently evolve in a similar manner, though there are not exact correlations, as one can easily adopt a particular language and culture independent of one’s genetic makeup. The evidence accumulated among these various disciplines can work together to provide a clearer picture of human movements over time.

I have long been fascinated by connections among cultural groups, and this book provided exactly the kind of information I’ve been seeking.

(Originally published in Connections, September 2006)

The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini

Published at February 29, 2008 in Fiction. 0 Comments

Central Books: PS3608.O525 K58 2003

This recommendation originally appeared in the June 2005 Connections issue. I’m re-printing it to encourage library staff to participate in the UT Arlington Conversations program. It would be fantastic if all library staff (even better, all staff on campus) reads the book. Even if you never discuss it with a student, reading it could prove to be a meaningful experience. If nothing else, it may give you some insight about a culture new to you. See page 5 to read about the UT Arlington Conversations program.

The Kite Runner provides compelling and enjoyable reading. I read late into the early morning on several occasions. This book is hard to put down.

Set in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the United States, The Kite Runner tells a story of fathers and sons, friendship, betrayal, secrets, bravery and cowardice, freedom and the prison of the self, love, redemption, and kite flying. The skill of this doctor turned first-time novelist is attested to by his ability to communicate epic themes using such a microscopic story, a story full of the fragility and strength of humanity.

“There is a way to be good again.” This statement, uttered by one of the book’s wisest characters, resonates with me whenever I think of this book.

Sometimes, the most traumatic experiences that haunt our memories are not the terrible situations we have encountered, but our own actions—the ways we damage or fail our closest companions. The Kite Runner captures both the horror of these actions and the sweetness of finding ways to heal.

(Originally published in Connections, August 2006)

The Practical Archaeologist: How We Know What We Know about the Past, by Jane McIntosh

Published at February 29, 2008 in Science for Everyone. 0 Comments

Central Books: GN 31.2 .M35 1986

This book is a wonderful introduction to archeology, well illustrated and well-written. This makes it sound dry as dirt (forgive the pun), but the book is riveting.

It is a very well organized work. The colorfully illustrated chapters are small (one or two pages each), which divides a large topic into digestible chunks.

McIntosh approaches the topic from many different perspectives. First she defines the discipline of archeology, covers its history as a profession, describes how it has changed over the years, and explores current movements and debates.

Then she gets into the nitty gritty (again, please forgive the pun) of the “bones and stones” portion of archeology. She explains how sites are located, details the thorough and painstaking process of excavation in various environments (such as under water, in bogs, and in deserts), and then describes how the found items are processed.

Throughout these sections, we discover how sites and items are dated, including details about various dating techniques. Each little “article” focuses on a particular site to illustrate its points.

Finally, she closes with a section called “Understanding the Past,” which describes the process of evaluating and analyzing the results of a dig. This section provides a glimpse of current scholarly views and techniques for evaluating data, as well as the processes archeologists use to make sense of sometimes exhaustive amounts of data.

This book is a very good introduction to a fascinating topic.

(Originally published in Connections, August 2006)

Beloved, by Toni Morrison

Published at February 29, 2008 in Fiction. 0 Comments

Central: MultiCultural Collection: PS 3563 .O8749 B4 1987

Last month, the New York Times Book Review asked 124 writers, critics, and editors to select the best American work of fiction published in the last twenty-five years. Beloved was selected.

The narrative haunts the reader, evoking scenes of horror, terror, trauma and eventually freedom, strength, and endurance.

The fact that escaped slave Sethe and her loved ones still live in my memory after a decade is testament to the enduring nature of this story, of these characters. Sethe’s mother, Baby Suggs, provides comfort and healing through a new kind of spirituality that transcends the slavers’ imprisoning religion. Denver, her daughter, is haunted by memories of a long-dead sister. They find it impossible to move on as long as their past lingers.

Paul D provides Sethe a momentary safe harbor, but in the end he represents a return to the past, which Sethe must surpass. And there is Beloved; who is she? The answer to that question is one of the central mysteries of the narrative. Whoever she is, in the end she proves to be a catalyst, someone who resurrects the past so that Sethe can choose to embrace or transcend it.

Beloved is not a light, fun read. It will challenge you—emotionally and intellectually. It will challenge cherished notions and fundamental beliefs. It forces readers to face historical grievances that we may want to bury, but that will continue to rise from the grave and haunt us until we face them.

Reading this book could change your life.

(Originally published in Connections, July 2006)

Global Warming: The Complete Briefing, by John Theodore Houghton

Published at February 29, 2008 in Science for Everyone. 0 Comments

SEL Books: QC981.8 .G56 H68 2004

Given the buzz about Al Gore’s new movie, An Inconvenient Truth, this book seems to be a timely recommendation. I can’t comment on the film, as I haven’t seen it, but this book is a wonderful report on current scientific thought among climatologists from all over the world (as of 2004).

The author is a climate scientist who has been studying greenhouse gases since the early 1970’s, most recently as part of The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is a joint venture of the United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

Houghton’s prose is clear and accessible, transforming a complex issue into understandable language. According to his preface, his goal was to avoid jargon and complex mathematics, though the book contains a lot of data, presented comprehensibly in the form of graphs and tables.

If reading the entire book seems to be a daunting task, I recommend that everyone read the chapter called “Why should we be concerned?” In this chapter, Houghton takes a step back from his scientist role and addresses the issue from ethical, moral and religious perspectives.

It is an unusual approach for a scientific text, but I think (and according to the author, his scientific colleagues agree) that it is a justified approach. Discussions on global warming can generate strong emotions precisely because it affects all aspects of society. In what may be considered by some to be an unusual perspective, it is the author’s Christianity that persuades him that we must all consider ourselves stewards of the earth.

I highly recommend that everyone who is concerned about the future of our children and grandchildren read this book. Whatever your beliefs about this controversial issue, gathering as many facts as possible will aid in making decisions that may have repercussions far into the future.

(Originally published in Connections, July 2006)

Old School, by Tobias Wolff

Published at February 27, 2008 in Fiction. 0 Comments

Central Books: PS3573.O558 O43 2003

The title of this book did not interest me; I certainly wouldn’t have picked it up at the book store. Haven’t we read enough about mid-century New England boy’s prep schools? But the story moved me in a way that few fiction works have for many years.

I suppose it appealed to the writer in me, as the protagonist is a young writer. But I also identify with many of his other faces—the hider, the competitor, the mask-wearer and the one terrified, above all things, of not fitting in, of not being accepted.

The story pivots around the school’s practice of inviting great writers to speak at the school. Surrounding this visit is a writing contest, the prize consisting of a personal interview with the writer. The boys work furiously before each of these visits, intent to be the chosen one.

Our unnamed narrator’s desire to win reaches a feverish pitch when it’s announced that the next visitor will be his hero, Ernest Hemingway. How he handles this, and what follows, changes him forever.

I enjoyed the book all the way through, but the final chapter brings it home, in more than one way. It seems as though the protagonist changes, or possibly that the real protagonist was finally identified. The shifting works because the story of the student is the story of the teacher, just as the story of the young man is the story of the established writer.

The story is also the reader’s as well as the author’s. In a sense, we are all the prodigal.

(Originally published in Connections, June 2006)

(Six Easy Pieces from) The Feynman Lectures on Physics, by Richard Phillips Feynman

Published at February 27, 2008 in Physics and Science for Everyone. 0 Comments

SEL Books: QC21.2 .F49 1989

I just finished Richard Feynman’s Six Easy Pieces, and to my surprise and consternation, our library doesn’t carry it. But don’t despair. The six lectures presented in the book I wish to recommend are contained in the SEL book listed above.

You may remember Feynman from his role in the investigation of the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion. He was the one who succinctly illustrated the problem by dropping the O-ring in the glass of ice water to demonstrate how brittle they become in the cold.

In these Six Easy Pieces, Feynman presents some of the most basic ideas of physics in a way that is both engaging and easy to understand. As someone who began my academic career as an engineering major, most of what I read was review, with the exception of the lecture on quantum theory. But it brought back that sense of excitement I had when I first began studying the physical world, and how awe-inspiring it was for me. With a bit of imagination, studying physics opens up new worlds of ideas.

I remember how amazed I felt when I understood that most of what we understand as the material world is really vacuum, that solidity is an illusion, and that the subatomic world is nothing like what we understand as “reality.” These ideas challenged many of my cherished notions of reality, and so changed utterly my entire world-view. It takes one’s breath away.

If you get The Feynman Lectures on Physics and want to read the six lectures I’m recommending, here is a list of the six easy pieces: Atoms in Motion, Basic Physics, The Relation of Physics to Other Sciences, Conservation of Energy, The Theory of Gravitation, and Quantum Behavior. The book also contains many other lectures, including six that were collected in Six Not-So-Easy Pieces: Einstein’s Relativity, Symmetry, and Space-Time (SEL Books: QC 793.3 .S9 F49 1997), which I have not yet read.

For those interested in this fascinating, brilliant, and well-loved physicist, but don’t want to read about physics itself, I recommend you pick up two delightful autobiographical works Feynman wrote with Ralph Leighton: “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!” : Adventures of a Curious Character (LCD: QC 16 .F49 A37 1986) and What Do YOU Care What Other People Think? : Further Adventures of a Curious Character (LCD: QC 16 .F49 A3 1988).

(Originally published in Connections, June 2006)

Them: Adventures with Extremists, Jon Ronson

Published at February 27, 2008 in Nonfiction. 0 Comments

Central Books: HN49.R33 R66 2002

This book is an odd combination of humor and terror. I found myself laughing out loud and then strangely reluctant to turn out the lights.

Jon Ronson spent many years tailing around different extremist leaders. Most of these people do not describe themselves as extremists—in fact, some of them deride extremists. Ronson’s criterion for selecting subjects was that other people had called them extremists.

On the surface, this group seems a motley collection. We meet various KKK members, a Northern Ireland Unionist minister, an Islamic extremist, survivors of Ruby Ridge (where the FBI surrounded a family, killing the mother and a 14-year-old boy), members of the Aryan Nation, and more. We even meet a man who believes that the world is run by a group of alien lizards in human form.

But they do have at least one thing in common—each one believes that the world is run by a small group of people who will use any means necessary to increase its power and achieve its ends. Our extremists merely disagree upon who is part of this powerful group.

And Ronson decides that, if this secret group exists, then maybe he can find it. This journey takes him to a Bilderberg meeting at a Portuguese resort and an owl-burning ceremony attended by George Bush, Sr., and Dick Cheney.

Ronson’s courage amazed me. I doubt I would be brave enough to infiltrate the ranks of these people. Yet he is Jewish, which means he belongs to a group of people targeted by many of these groups. I held my breath when he was “outted” at a jihadist training camp. I knew he survived to write the book, but I feared for him nonetheless.

This book is fascinating—sort of like a train wreck. You just can’t look away.

(Originally published in Connections, May 2006)

A Tour of the Calculus, by David Berlinski

Published at February 27, 2008 in Mathematics and Science for Everyone. 0 Comments

SEL Books: QA303 .B488 1995

I wish my instructors had assigned this book those many years ago when I was taking calculus. My grades may have risen above C’s. I learned to take derivatives, but I never really understood the concepts behind the formulas I was working.

If reading a book on calculus sounds dry and dull, you may be pleasantly surprised. This book is written for the general public. And aside from his acumen in mathematics, Berlinski is a gifted writer. Don’t take my word for it; read a bit of his prose for yourself:

Before the seventeenth century, everything is squid ink and ocean ooze and dark clotted intuitions; but afterward, a strange symbolic system erupts into existence and floods the intellectual landscape with a hard flat nacreous light. Communing with the powers of the night and the dark undulating rhythms that flow across the sky, the mathematician—of all people!—emerges as the unexpected master of those symbols, the calculus his treasure chest of chants and incantations, fabulous formulas, wormholes into the forbidden heart of things.

This book combines a history of calculus with a primer on its concepts. Aside from the Appendix, which contains proofs, the book contains few formulas and a few graphs. It is full of stories used to illustrate otherwise difficult concepts.

It is that most wonderful of textbooks—one that conveys a lot of useful information and entertains along the way.

(Originally published in Connections, May 2006)

All Hallows’ Eve, by Charles Williams

Published at February 27, 2008 in Fantasy and Fiction. 0 Comments

Central Books: PZ3.W67144 Al4

As is always the case whenever I have just read a Charles Williams novel, I finished All Hallows’ Eve for the nth time and felt the need to share it with someone.

Williams’ writing is obscure enough that encountering someone who has read his work is a delight. When I meet someone who adores his work, I have found a kindred spirit. T.S. Eliot, who wrote the introduction to this novel, similarly admired Charles Williams—both the writer and the man.

Williams was a member of the Inklings—the group of Oxford writers, including C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, who regularly met to read and comment upon one anothers’ work. Despite this connection, his work is more akin to Chesterton’s or George MacDonald’s, set in the real world yet surrealistic in atmosphere. While immersed in his novels, I am awed by the immensity of eternity and, paradoxically, the significance of a single soul.

All Hallows’ Eve, though published in 1945 and set after WW2 ended, was written before the war ended and so was set in the near future. Our protagonist, Lester Furnival, has led a rather sheltered existence, spending little time thinking of others. But events unfold that stretch her, that afford her the opportunity to right some old wrongs and become a new person, or it might be more apt to say she becomes more like herself.

As with all of Williams’s novels, Hallows’ protagonist is an otherwise ordinary person who must face a dark power, typically someone seeking power over the material world, and often the metaphysical world, as well. A theme throughout all the novels is the redemptive power of love; it is the sanctity of love—not strength or power—that ultimately defeats evil.

In addition to All Hallows’ Eve, Williams wrote six other novels, four of which can be found at Central: War in Heaven (PR6045.I5 W37 1999), Many Dimensions (PR6045.I5 M3 1993), Shadows of Ecstasy (PR 6045 .I5 S48 1950), and Descent into Hell (PR 6045 .I5 D38 1949), The Place of The Lion (not in the collection), and The Greater Trumps (not in the collection). The UTA collection also contains many other Williams works, including poetry, literary criticism, and theology.

(Originally published in Connections, April 2006)

Rocket Boys: a Memoir, by Homer H. Hickam, Jr.

Published at February 27, 2008 in Biography and Science for Everyone. 0 Comments

SEL Books: TL789.85.H53 A3 1998

This is easily the most accessible book in the SEL collection that I’ve read so far. My 13-year-old nephew read parts of it for science class.

I particularly recommend this book for young people. I suspect that it could spark interest in the sciences for young people who previously believed themselves uninterested, in the same way that Sputnik captured the imagination of the young Homer “Sonny” Hickam.

But it isn’t a didactic work. Its purpose is to capture a time and space—a West-Virginia mining town in the late 1950’s. And it succeeds. Hickam looks with unblinking eye at the town that nurtured him, but that he longed to escape. Sonny’s struggle is personified in the figure of his father, who struggles with his own iron-fisted desire to mold his son into his own ideal.

More than anything, this book is about hope—how it motivates and transforms those whose circumstances are not conducive to realizing their dreams. One must have hope to transcend the mundane and reach (sometimes literally) for the stars.

(Originally published in Connections, April 2006)

Persepolis / Persepolis 2, by Marjane Satrapi

Published at February 27, 2008 in Biography and Graphic Novel/Comic. 0 Comments

Central Books: PN6747.S245 P4713 2003 / PN6747.S245 P4913 2004

Maybe you think you’re not interested in graphic novels. So did I. These two books by Iranian writer/artist Marjane Satrapi have convinced me to take a closer look at this increasingly respected genre.

Persepolis focuses on Satrapi’s early years, up until she was 15 years old, when her parents sent her to Austria to escape government oppression. Persepolis 2 picks up there, follows her adventures in Austria, her return to Iran, and ends with her leaving Iran again for an expatriate life in France.

Satrapi’s droll sense of humor had captured me by the first book’s second frame. The first frame of the author (as a child) in her scarf, followed by a second frame filled with a row of identical little girl in headscarves (with the author barely in frame), deftly illustrates—with a kind of heartbreaking humor—the loss of identity many girls felt when Iran began mandating the covering of women after the revolution.

The narrator’s voice changes as her protagonist matures. The child’s voice dominates in Persepolis—boisterous and belligerent, naïve and innocent. Marjane the child roars through life, determined to experience everything, and all but ignores the oppressive nature of the world around her. It is this very lust for life that her parents wish to encourage but fear will endanger her. She is sent away.

In Persepolis 2, Marjane’s voice matures. As she tries to find her way in a foreign country whose language she does not speak, her innocence slowly dies away. It is that loss we mourn, as she becomes emotionally, then monetarily, then physically destitute.

This description makes these books sound dark and morose, and yet there is always that sparkle, that twinkle in the eye that appreciates the absurd amid the saddest situation. Marjane’s story shakes its fist at life, defying it to tear down a strong and joyous spirit.

(Originally published in Connections, March 2006)