The $12,000,000 Stuffed Shark, Non-Fiction

The $12,000,000 Stuffed Shark refers to the price paid for Damien Hirst's taxidermic shark embedded in formaldehyde.  This engrossing & mystifying book by Don Thompson, examines "The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art." Thompson seeks to clarify the definition or parameters of contemporary art as well as the intent of art.  He delves into the factors driving the interest & monetary value of contemporary pieces of art. Thompson rationally dissects the emotional calculations of the purveyors in the art world as well as its consumers.  The candor of the author is beguiling, "I have long been puzzled by what makes a particular work of art valuable."  The value I gained from this book is priceless.  I came away with some keen insights into an enigmatic & compelling world to which I'm already drawn.  However, I came away feeling further perplexed.  Art holds the power to to illuminate & align both our thinking & visceral responses.  Contemporary Art has blurred the boundaries between business and visual creations.  "Never invest in a business you can't understand.  Only buy something that you'd be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for ten years."  W. Buffett  

The 12 Tribes of Hattie Oprahs Pick/not mine

When Oprah speaks, people listen.  A book selected for Oprah's Book Club becomes a best seller.  Ms. Winfrey is a positive force for constructive change.  Oprah is credited for getting more people reading.  However, that doesn't mean Oprah's picks are divine.  I appreciate why the The 12 Tribes of Hattie, by Ayana Mathis, was chosen.  The novel touches on many significant issues affecting African Americans'  lives; Jim Crow Laws in the Southern States and dire poverty endured by the multitudes who came north hoping for a better life.  Hattie migrated north to escape the horrors of the south.  One of Hattie's 12 children notes, "they left because of the whites, only to spend the rest of their lives being hostalgic for the most banal and backwoods things.  The North was cold and colorless."  Mathis touches briefly on numerous struggles in addition to racism: a self-imposed class system, stubborn pride,"unseemly failed" males, church charlatans, unwed mothers & limited options for a better life.  Hattie concluded ""60 years out of Georgia, and there's still the same wounding and the same pain."  Mathis covers too many issues through too many lives that their impacts becomes diluted.  I recommend "To Kill a Mockingbird, or the Help instead.  People listen when Oprah speaks, but those who speak to Oprah, do not always speak the truth (Sir Lance Lies-a-Lot.)  I on the other hand, can be trusted.

The Attack by Yasmina Khadra

The central character in the novel, The Attack, is Amin Jaafari, an Arab naturalized Israeli citizen who becomes a surgeon in Tel Aviv.  Amin earns respect with his colleagues. Amin & his Palestinian born wife, Sihem, form friendships in Tel Aviv.  Nonetheless, he does suffer 2nd class citizenship amongst the general public who view him with disdain & distrust for his Arabian heritage. Still, Amin has been happily married for more than 10 years to Sihem, until his marriage & his life are irrevocably shattered.  An exploison erupts in close proximity to the hospital Amin works & it becomes an immediate triage for the severly wounded.  The blast takes the lives of dozens of innocent victimes & children & the life of Sihem.  Sihem, however, was not an innocent victim.  She was the fundamentalist suicide bomber to the complete horror & total disbelief of Amin. "We had no secrets from each other," Amin tells the polic Capt.  Therein lies the guise for understanding the deep rooted hated between Israelis/Palestinians.  Amin's quest for answers leads him to his Arabian relative complicit with Sihem who explains why. "Humiliation.  It takes away your taste for life.  Other people are trying to confine them {Palestinians} to ghettos until they're trapped in them for good.  The reason why they prefer to die.  When dreams are turned away, death becomes the ultimate salvation.  She died for others." Yet, Amin maintains, "Every Jew in Palestine is a bit of an Arab, and no Arab in Israel can deny that he's a little Jewish. So why so much hate between relatives?" The Attack is somewhat preachy but it does serve to open vital dialogue.

The Border of Truth by Victyoria Redel

The novel, The Border of Truth, is a present day story set in NYC juxtaposed against the time in Europe just prior to WWII.  The current story centers on a single, middle aged woman, Sarah.  Sarah is a Prof. researching the writings of a famous writer who died in Europe during the war.  Sarah is also in the midst of adopting a child from any war torn country that will permit an adoption.  The Holocaust escape story is told almost entirely in letters by a 17 year old Belgian boy, Itzak, who is fleeing Nazi persecution via whatever means necessary.  Itzak is writing his life's story to Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt while pleading for her assistance to enter the U.S.A.  Itzah is travelling alone on board the Quanza, that  landed in NYC in Aug. 1940.  Entrance for most of the immigrants on board was denied.  The obvious irony to the reader, unbeknownst to Sarah, is Itzah, a.k.a. Richard, her father, has not revealed to her his true history.  Itzak's letters reveal his life as a boy in Brussels, his amazing means of escape and his guilt  for self-preservation.  The Border of Truth examines how history is recounted, what constitutes a family and why understanding the past matters.  Itzak wrote the First Lady, "Sometimes I think we need to tell our stories more than any one needs to hear our stories.  Maybe just so that anticipation or happiness can be reached for again."  The intertwining stories in The Border of Truth compell the reader to question how we discern perfidy in our lives & the world in which live.

Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy

Lucy Grealy was diagnosed with a rare & most often times fatal cancer, Ewing Sarcoma, in her left jaw @ age 9.  Lucy endured 5 years of cancer treatment and underwent 30 reconstructive surgeries on her face.  Her initial cancer surgery removed most of her left jaw, leaving her terribly disfigured, or in her words "repulsive."  Lucy talks about her idenity being "…my face, my ugliness.  I was my face."  We sympathize with Lucy's isolation, depression & torture she suffered from the hands of her doctors & the cruelty of her peers.  However, I would not categorize her bio as a book of self-pity.  Rather, this is a beautifully written book of self-awareness & growth.   She writes with sensual abandon the love she had in caring for her horses and their total disregard for her appearance.  I was tuned to her philosophical quest for love & its meaning.  In her college years Lucy formed deep friendships.  "Through them I discovered what it was to love people.  There was an art to it, I discovered, which was not really all that different from the love that is necessary in the making of art.  It required the effort of always seeing them for themselves and not as I wish them to be."  Reading Lucy's autobiography dissolve away her physical constrictions & draw you deep into her poetic soul.  "I used to think truth was eternal…most truths are inherently unretainable, we have to work hard all our lives to remember the most basic things."

Train Dreams, a novella by Denis Johnson

Train Dreams is a gem of a tale by Nat'l Book Award winner, Denis Johnson.  Johnson takes us back to the old American west beginning in 1917 towards the end of the 20th C.  Our hero, Robert Grainer, was orphaned early on & raised amongst various "cousins."  He found labor as a young man cutting down trees prior to railroad construction .  Grainer lived a solitary & nomadic existence for most of his life except for the few years he married & had a baby girl.  Sadly, both perished in a devastating fire that engulfed an entire region.  Johnson's prose is both clear & ephemeral.  We view the changing landscapes and developments of the 20th C through the eyes of Grainer.  Train Dreams is a little jewel and should be valued for both its lyrical prose and magical glance back into our country's western expansion.

Let's Pretend This Never Happened, a Mostly True Memoir

This mostly absurd and irritating memoir by Jenny Lawson, happens to be a total waste of time.  I can appreciate irreverence & the bizarre, but this incredulous memoir lowers the bar somewhere below potty humor & outlandish bigotry.  Wait, you say I'm envious of her wit - bullshit - oops, I mean malarky.  I should have heeded Lawson's own early warning, "If you're easily grossed out, I recommend skipping this entire section - Or maybe getting another book that's less disturbing than this one."  What a fool, I didn't take her advice.  I didn't find her amusing, only confusing if not problematic:  "Like, did you know that Angelina Jolie hates Jewish people?  True story. {Editor's note:  Angelina Jolie does not hate Jewish people at all, and this is a total fabrication."  Still, I forged on, only to seriously question if Lawson is anti-Semetic.   She recalls her grandmother describing Hitler "as a sad little man who probably didn't get hugged enough."  Enough already, I usually read at least 100 pages before I set a book aside.  Don't be a fool, forget this rule, forget this "mostly true memoir."  I can't fathom how this memoir ever happened to be published.

The Siege of Krishnapur by J. G. Farrell

J. G. Farrell's Booker Prize winning novel is based on the true uprising of Muslim soldiers on the British compound in Krishnapur in 1857.  The novel depicts bloody battles between the British & Muslim soldiers and the months of resistance & isolation of the Brits. The holdout depict the slow demise of civilization from hunger, disease & despair.  Farrell brilliantly writes of the British imperialistic convictions and the transformation of ideas of progress & equality.  England is far from being the only nation quilty of foreign domination or a prevailing class society.  The killings of so many Brits made it apparent "India itself was now a different place; the fiction of happy natives being led forward along the road to civilization could no longer be sustained." While under siege, issues of class and living in harmony are vigorously debated.   Many of the British captives maintained their's "a superior civilization…our advances in science and morality have so obviously found the best way of doing things." Yet, others came to differing epiphanies. "How alike we all are, really…There's so little difference between one man and another when one comes to think of it." This historic & discerning novel depicts an epic revolt amidst the downfall of varying convictions.