Volume 1, Issue 5. Book Reviews for Beach Bums: Love. Spies. Social Media Addictions.
July 29, 2019
We are back, and back just in time for your final summer stretch of beach reads. I am very excited that we have a guest Book Jammer today, Valerie Shaindlin. Valerie is a bit too qualified for us so we were excited to have her join us and hopefully she’ll be back doing more in the future. Valerie has a master’s degree in Library & Information Science (MLISc) from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and she runs the quarterly, multi-city book club, Books By Women. Find her online instagram @ValerieBrett and with #ValerieBrettBooks.
A couple important takeaways:
- Send us your favoritest favorite books of all time. We would love to read them.
- We took out the joint review. Thoughts?
- Spread the love, and share this with friends.
Until the next page turn,
Max, John, and Valerie
The Gist: Celestial Bodies is a story that follows three Omani sisters through the pivotal stage of marriage. In Oman, a religious Muslim country on the Persian (Arabian) Gulf, marriage is initiated by the parents to whomever they see fit. Alharthi shares three distinct perspectives and interpretations to the muslim customs for marriage. Mayya, the eldest, marries Abdallah and follows her duties with an intentional reluctance — focused on being a great mother but a distant wife, and by naming her daughter London, which is a bold break from tradition. Asma, the middle daughter, was a willing receptor of the marriage process. Her character follows the religious education and subsequent customs. Kahwla, the youngest, is torn to shreds with forlorn love and desire. This love is for her cousin who moved to Canada with the promise to return. Her plot line highlights an ironically unreligious, yet religious-like commitment to a love relationship.
Alharthi included three sub narratives, two of which were of male figures and one of a house maid. Abdallah, Mayya’s husband, was a peculiar and emotional character. The abuse from his father, the mysterious disappearance of his mother, the callousness of his childhood maid, Salima, and the emotional distance created by his wife, would cripple his confidence. His mercurial long-winded tirades, in the form of 1–3 page intermittent chapters, provides a depth to the male role in muslim and Omani culture for which Abdallah felt the constant pressure to fulfill. The girls’ father, Azzan, was portrayed as a societally respected man, in contrast to Abdallah, yet he was a philanderer and absent father, again quite the opposite to Abdallah. And the final sub-narrative, is Salima the maid. Somewhat free of the normal conventions of the muslim nuclear family as she was the daughter of slave brought over from Africa. She is portrayed as one of the strongest willed characters yet not void of her own controversies.
The Take: It would be far too confusing for me to attempt to share the breadth of narratives that Alharthi exposes during the book. Yet Alharthi manages to patch together these manifold stories into a wonderfully poetic and contemplative commentary on Muslim and Omani culture. Since she jumps across three generations, which at times you may find yourself lost in time. But as you push through the ambiguity, you understand why she talks about a nondescript woman locked up in a cage-like structure, or why she talks about Salima’s uncompromising independence (which is a beautifully profound and complicated human story), or why she belabours Abdallah’s suffering. It is like any society with its normal trials and tribulations, but the story is steeped in distinctly Omani muslim history. She refrains from glorifying either the love marriage or the arranged marriage, and focuses on the reality of the current social transition and not on judging this transition. I would read this. I think it’s beautiful. I think its raw. And to experience a bit of history for yourself, she is the first Omani woman to have her book translated and the first to win the Man Booker International prize.
- Max
The Gist: Odell, an artist, writer, and teacher at Stanford University, discovered a way to escape exhausting self-commodification, without “dropping out” of society. Her premise — that we render our reality by what we choose to pay attention to, and that we can “escape laterally” by staying in place but shifting our focus — results in a book that is a political manifesto, philosophical essay, self-help book, artist statement, naturalist memoir, and how-to guide. She succeeds in combining these disparate genres without overwhelming the reader. The book is academic in tone, yet completely accessible.
Odell explains that productivity may lead to over-participation in the attention economy and a reduction in wellbeing. Unlike other books that make similar arguments (I’m thinking of 10 Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now), Odell takes an optimistic approach. She focuses not on the evils of algorithms and surveillance, but on the possibilities of human connection — with each other, and with the natural world. She is not against social media, or the internet. She just thinks that we have lost our physical bearings. She wants to remind us that we exist in a physical reality, one that we too often turn our attention away from (with dire consequences). She shares her experience learning where her water supply comes from, for example, and noticing the birds she shares her city with. She believes that our abusive stance toward the environment is due to averted attention, capitalism, colonialism, and loneliness; if she’s correct, a case can be made for better-quality social interactions as a possible antidote to climate change.
The Take: Odell has a knack for diving into topics using complicated interdisciplinary theory. Yet, she is able to distil it down and make it relevant to our lives. The best aspect of this book is that its ideas are deep and well thought-out, but presented in a contemporary way that makes the book approachable and quick to read. You’ll want to read with a highlighter, and talk to a friend about the book once you’ve finished. You may start to realize parts of your surroundings that before went unnoticed. You may start to notice how often you aren’t present in the moment. I found myself wondering: Do I really need to be listening to podcasts at all times, or can I maybe walk to the pharmacy while looking around, smelling, hearing my surroundings (even if they’re unpleasant!)?
There is also something spiritual about the ideas Odell explores and the conclusions she reaches, such as: “Sometimes it’s good to be stuck in the in-between, even if it’s uncomfortable.” The book felt almost Buddhist (though it didn’t claim to be).
A weakness of the book, if it is indeed to serve as an activist manifesto, is its reliance on individuals changing their own behavior, rather than a focus on changing the underlying capitalist system. While Odell acknowledges that refusal is a privilege, that problem is not quite overcome in her theorization. Still, this book is well worth a read (and re-read), even if only for the simple and refreshing reminder that, in this digital age, we are still embodied social creatures living in a material world.
- Valerie
The Gist: Agent Zigzag is a non-fictional account of Eddie Chapman, a criminal and con man turned double agent for the British during World War II. Macintyre is well-known for his historical writing on spies. This time Macintyre dives deep into a personal account of Eddie, who miraculously knew how to make his own luck time and time again. The classified files of spy correspondence, personal journals, and interviews made this book a very authentic insight into Chapman’s escapades. In the 1930s, Chapman built a name for himself as a criminal on the streets of London, dabbling in petty thievery, safe-cracking, and the like. He was also considering a cunning, wise, charming man with a taste for the high life.
The story starts with his trip to the isle of Jersey, off the southeast coast of England, where he is hiding away with a woman who is not his wife. The police, who were looking for him after exploding a safe back in England, found him and his friends. After one escape, then another, the police finally had him locked up in a jail in Jersey. Before his trial could take place, the Nazis invaded and took control of the prison. He is eventually sent to an internment camp in France, where he toils for over a year. He then manages to land a prestigious position in the Nazi spy division, the Abwehr, after befriending a Nazi official and convincing him that since he was on the run from the British he would be a loyal contributor to the demise of the British. As the story unfolds, Chapman endears himself to many of the Abwehr officials and gets caught up in the relationships himself. However, his first mission ended in a mishap in Cambridgeshire, England after parachuting in and then deciding to turn himself over to the police. He convinces the police to get in touch with the MI5 and ends up being accepted as an agent, Agent ZigZag, a double agent for the British. His contributions were significant, but his mercurial and unpredictable behavior were at the center of the saga during his time served.
The Take: Chapman’s story is absolutely remarkable. As a personality, he is entrancing, as a risk-taker, he is unparalleled. The idea of being chased by the police, captured by the Nazis, winning the Nazis over, being turned over to the British police, convincing them he is not a Nazi and that he would be their best ever double agent, and then successfully executing missions in the most dangerous of situations, is jaw-dropping and inconceivable. Macintyre also indirectly shines a deeper motif around the individuals who fight war and make war possible. From the intellectuals to the criminals, and magicians to the scientists. On both sides, it was clear there were people involved who didn’t agree to the ideologies or to the premise of war, but it becomes a hodgepodge community of people thrust together building unexpected relationships that transcend the evil of the circumstances. If you enjoy a good spy story, a thriller, or a good book of human feat this is worth reading. I enjoyed but I also somehow felt that there were a few too many lulls where the details of his daily activity didn’t keep me tightly engaged. Agent Zigzag is just one of many of Macintyre’s spy books, and I am sure I will give one more of his a go. And if you’re more like my dad, you’ll end up reading everyone of his books in quick succession.
- Max
The Gist: Dubbed by The New Yorker as ‘the greatest American novel you’ve never heard of,’ Stoner is about an English professor at the University of Missouri whose unremarkable life is remembered by few. The book traces William Stoner’s life, from birth to death, in beautiful, honest, and sometimes painful detail.
It starts with Stoner’s humble beginnings in the late 19th century, growing up in a dirt-poor farming family in central Missouri. From there, we watch Stoner as he attends the University of Missouri to study scientific farming. Against his family’s wishes, Stoner falls in love with literature and graduates with a Doctor of Philosophy degree — the high point of his academic career. For the next 46 years, Stoner stays at the university as an English professor, never rising above the rank of assistant professor. He marries (unhappily), has one child whom his wife pits against him, and dies in his mid 60s.
By most standards, Stoner lived an incredibly average life. A quiet and passive life. Maybe even a disappointing one. His story, however, is hypnotizing.
The Take: This book is a tough sell, because the magic is in the writing rather than a deeply compelling plot line. In the first page, something happens. You kind of sink into the sentences. It’s like listening to a beautiful song for the first time. You’re not so much ‘hooked’ or grabbed by the throat, as quietly hypnotized, subtly carried away by Stoner’s story like by a slow current or something. From page 1 to 278, I couldn’t stop reading.
This is from the first page and sets the scene for the story of our unlikely hero, William Stoner:
An occasional student who comes upon the name may wonder idly who William Stoner was, but he seldom pursues his curiosity beyond a casual questions. Stoner’s colleagues, who held him in no particular esteem when he was alive, speak of him rarely now; to the older ones, his name is a reminder of the end that awaits them all, and to the younger ones it is merely a sound which evokes no sense of the past and no identity with which they can associate themselves or their careers.
I hadn’t heard of Stoner before this year. It’s now one of my favorite American classics.
- John
