Reading about reading and how we use language

42. How Language Works: How Babies Babble, Words Change Meaning and Languages Live or Die by David Crystal.


 This is a well-balanced and coherent look at all the elements that are included in the concept of language. Crystal discusses these language elements in short chapters, more to give an idea what the issues are about rather than to take an in-depth look at them. For a language teacher the sections about physiological elements such as where sounds are formed in our mouths is always intriguing and a good reminder that although our letters look the same, we might produce them differently. This is something I learned while trying to teach American English speakers to roll an R by telling them to first keep on repeating meaningless babble with /d/ in it, such as "dadadadaaa dididiii," just to train their tongue to go to the right place in the mouth for a rolled r. Soon I realized, though, that the Finnish /d/ is produced somewhere else than the English one although it sounds very similar. Unfortunately, you need the Finnish /d/ to know how to roll an R if you are having problems with it... So we had to go back to learn a Finnish /d/ although the learners had already been producing wonderful sounding Finnish words with /d/ in them.

As this book works as a handy guide to what language really is, I admit to just skimming the parts where there is nothing to be disputed anymore, really: how words are formed, how we hear sounds, and what kind of language groups there are in the world and what their histories are. I found the chapters on more debatable issues more intriguing, such as the status of sign language and how non-signing people often have misconceptions about it; how and why was language born; how we give meaning to words and how we mean something else than what we say; and of course my favorite, the issue of what is "good" language, which is of course largely dictated by prestige and not any universal value of the language. Although I did enjoy Truss's Eats, Shoots and Leaves and I'm a grammar nerd, I had to nod in agreement when Crystal points out that such demonization as shown by Truss of people who do not follow an arbitrarily constructed model chosen by a prestigious class would not fly if it was applied to gender or race, but apparently it's fine in the realm of language.

Yes, Crystal takes prescriptivist to task. There is nothing wrong in writing or speaking good, understandable language, and we all should strive for making ourselves understood--which is where grammar and punctuation comes in to help us. The problem with prescriptivists is, however, that they apply their very strict rules even to situations where everyone understands the message. As a descriptivist, I agree with Crystal--which is not a surprise to anyone who has been reading this blog. Clarity in communication is important, but when someone begins to moan about how people collectively use a word wrong*, it makes me wonder whether these people ever heard of such a phenomenon as constant changes in language and vocabulary. Nobody is up in arms about the word "hilarious" now being used to describe something knee-slappingly funny and saying that we should go back to the old, Latin-based meaning of simply someone being "cheerful." But I'm sure at the point where people began to use the word differently the Trusses of the time were predicting the downfall of civilization.

Another issue that is closely related to "good" language is how we view dialects, and how one dialect always rises above others to be used as the standard (and we promptly forget that it's a dialect, too, and start mocking people who speak in another dialect or with another accent...)

The other sections I enjoyed were focused on bi- and multilingualism and how to protect or revive languages.

All in all, the book is a wonderful guide to all the issues you might encounter when you think about language: the way speech is produced, the way language is heard, the way we give meanings to words and phrases, and what we do with language in general.

A special Tut-tut to the editor: the book refers to African American English Vernacular (AAEV) for two pages, and then later on the correct usage, African American Vernacular English (AAVE), pops up. How did this error manage to slip through the cracks?

(*I may moan about this, too, when I am editing a text that is supposed to follow certain writing conventions or a style sheet. Or worse, when the person thinks that the non-standard way is the only right way to do it...)

Two tiny books

40. Translation in Practice: a symposium, edited by Gill Paul

A wonderful booklet created from a translation symposium. It details the best practices for a fiction translator. I was already familiar with most of this information, but it was nice to get all the pointers and discussions on problematic translation issues within one book.
The symposium discussed issues that translators often run into, such as how to translate puns and jokes (if the equivalent does not exist in your target language, you should rather leave them out rather than confuse the reader) to how to deal with novels where awkward phrasing has been used for an effect (don't translate it into awkward target language--everyone will think you're a bad translator. Explain the awkwardness somehow). In addition to these problems and some dos and don'ts bullet lists for translators, the book also discusses the business side of translation, namely how to deal with the author of the novel, the acquiring editor and the editor/proofreader.

41. Laulajan paperit by Anja Erämaa

Let me preface this by saying that I do enjoy poetry every now and then. When I was in high school, I went on a real Pablo Neruda binge--I just loved his style (or rather, the style of the Finnish translations).

This poetry book by a small Finnish publisher, though, did nothing for me. The poems are in paragraph form, so they read like very short, one-page long stories. Except that the author uses very free-form, "poem" punctuation. Now, I understand than in writing prose the author has much more leeway in punctuation and style than in writing nonfiction. And that's fine. But some of the punctuation was just so random that when I encountered a spacing error it read to me more as if nobody had proofread or edited the book (even the author herself) than the punctuation being an artistic choice.

Reviews have described the poems absurd and ironic. I found them very self-conscious, especially when some of the rhymes seem to have been thrown in not for their meaning, but just because they rhyme and may sound funny to the reader.

With that said, there were a couple of poems that I really liked, where the author seemed to stop thinking about how she's a Real Poet who Writes Poetry Really Seriously, and where she was just being honest. No gimmicky language, just wonderful descriptions and fresh metaphors.

Fictional psycopathy beyond Dexter

39. We Need to Talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver

I'm a sucker for books that instantly reveal a horrifying event, and the rest of the story is dedicated to tracing the steps that lead to the event. The thrill of the read is to find out how and why the characters get into a situation. And yes, I have begun reading John Dies at the End, which seems at first glance to be the most extreme example of this kind of storytelling--it's all given away in the title, for heaven's sake! I love it!

This fiction offers the reader a chance to be an armchair psychologist. The mother of Kevin, a teenager who sits in jail for a school shooting, writes letters addressed to Dear Franklin, who is soon revealed to be Kevin's father. Eva, the mother, writes about her struggles in continuing with her life after the school shooting and about visiting Kevin in the prison, but the majority of any single letter focuses on retelling Eva and Franklin's history together, how they decided to have a child and then another, and how for Eva it was clear that Kevin was growing up to be a disturbed individual, whereas Franklin would dismiss Eva's concerns as exaggeration. In these letters Eva reveals secrets she kept from Franklin in order to either protect him, or to avoid confrontation. Or who knows why. For leverage, maybe. While it is obvious that Franklin is clueless and his behavior seems to worsen the situation with Kevin and only Eva sees Kevin as who he really is, Eva is unable to discuss her rearing methods and reactions to Kevin objectively--which leaves this job for the reader.

It is an absolutely thrilling a job to figure out what Eva thought the reasons behind Kevin's behavior were, and to also read between the unstressed, subtle and not-so-subtle cues of how Eva's behavior toward the child might have had an effect of some kind as well.

Also, I'm very much used to epistolary novels being used for romantic purposes (not their sole purpose, I just associate them thus), so the format of this novel was a great choice. It completely disagrees with the cold, calm, very unemotional tone of Eva's letters.

This novel is a real heart-pounder to the very end, where what we already know is going to happen happens. And yet the shooting is much more chilling than I had imagined. A wonderfully written book, if that adverb can be used for a book about multiple murders and other horrifying events perpetrated by a sociopath.

I'm bad at titles, so let's just say I've been reading nonfiction.

36. Don't Shoot the Dog! The New art of Teaching and Training by Karen Pryor

I saw a friend read this book on a camping trip, and at first sighting I bought it from a second-hand store. It's a wonderful book on positive reinforcement, and how it has longer lasting results in training than punishment or negative feedback which, according to Pryor, often leads the person who gives negative feedback to intensify it even when it is not needed. A good example of this is the mother who whines when her children are visiting her, "Why won't you ever visit me?"

And yes, the book is not just about training dogs and other animals: it's about how positive reinforcement works on rowdy kids or on a messy roommate. Some have criticized positive reinforcement as manipulative (because you can't tell your target that you are trying to reinforce him or her--if you do, they'll probably start acting exactly the opposite way just to show you who's boss), but then again, isn't negative reinforcement also manipulative? Or heck, isn't any other way of trying to make a change in behavior manipulative unless the person whose behavior is going to change is in a complete vacuum and decides him- or herself to suddenly change?

The most delightful bits in the book are Pryor's anecdotes about training "untrainable" animals such as hermit crabs and chicken to do a variety of things, simply through positive reinforcement. Also, she explains why people think that cats are untrainable--it's because punishment doesn't work on cats. They just don't really get the point of punishment as dogs do. But if you use a clicker and do any of the positive reinforcement methods mentioned in the book, you'll soon have a cat who thinks she has the power to make you use the clicker with her behavior. Yes, the cat thinks she's training you.

Oh, and the bits about the reinforcement game are also hilarious. Anybody want to play it?

I also enjoyed the comparisons of a multitude of traditional training or conditioning methods compared to positive reinforcement. Pryor of course acknowledges that there are times and cases where positive reinforcement might not work as well as some other methods, so she lists a variety of scenarios and the outcomes of them when you use different conditioning methods.

I'd highly recommend this to anyone with animals and people around them. Now I really can't wait to get a cat and a clicker!

37. Colorblind by Tim Wise

Just like Between Barack and a Hard Place, Colorblind is a small book that is stripped of any tangents or rambling. There is nary a spot in the book where the opponents of its message could refute it. If they wanted to, they would have to refute all the scholarly work and statistics that accompany Wise's thesis.

And what is that message? It's that post-racial liberalism, which relies heavily on the flawed concept of colorblindness*, is not merely just short-sighted in its attempt to solve economical problems, but in the worst case scenario it ends up promoting racism. By saying that eventually people of color (POC) will also see improvements in their living standards if we remain colorblind and help all poor and low-income families, regardless of race, we will eventually create negative sentiments toward POC if and when they still are not doing as well as white people from working classes or poor backgrounds. The only reason for their challenges is then thus in their race: there's something wrong with POC if they can't succeed like the white people can.

One of the strongest arguments for why this thinking is faulty is the idea of privilege and inherited wealth.
The G.I.Bill is one of the examples Wise gives. This bill provided education and unemployment benefits as well as loans for houses or to start a business for veterans returning from WW2. Except that black veterans were disproportionally denied the benefits of the bill compared to their white veteran counterparts. So let's say your imaginary average white grandfather was in the war, came back, and got a good loan to buy a house. Now he owns property. In addition to that, he got his schooling (whether college or vocational) paid by the government. Compare this to your imaginary average black grandfather, who came back from the war, did not get a G.I. loan and could not buy a house; the same person also could not collect unemployment money or get a college education funded by the government. Now, whose kids are going to have an easier time getting college education and monetary support from their parents?

This book is not out to guilt trip white people--even if you disagree with Wise, there's still a lot of food for thought there. The book attempts to open a dialog about race, and how we cannot afford to be colorblind. Colorblindness is just paying lip service to structural, societal problems that POC face every day, and ignoring a person's race is not going to help them get past problems that have been created by racism.

Problems do continue to exist because of racism. Wise goes on to discuss a variety of research done on prejudices, varying from psychological testing on people's reactions to various races to finding out that hiring practices in companies are still benefiting white people much more than any people of color (even if your friend is now the president of the United States it doesn't mean that on average POC are doing great). All the research points out to this: people love to say that they don't think about race, and that race does not matter--but it does. And if race does matter, we should then have an honest dialog about it instead of hiding behind colorblindness.

This book was written after Between Barack... and I felt like Wise had probably gotten people attacking his book for not being clear enough on some issues, because he revisits quite many of them in Colorblind, but this time with a lot more details.

(*Colorblindness: not seeing the color of the applicant, your student, your employer while dealing with him or her. Ideally this would mean that everyone is treated equally. But this is not what happens because people are biased, even when they say they are not (and this has been proven through research). What happens is that you will treat everyone as you would treat a person of your own race, or of your own background--which is bound to fail because your experiences are not the same as that person's who does not share your background. And then you are left wondering why that other person just doesn't get ahead in life the same way as you have.)

38. The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan

We happily spend 2 dollars for a cup of coffee at Starbucks, but if we have to pay more than 2 dollars for a dozen of eggs, we are suddenly up and arms about it. When did food, which is so essential to our well-being, become an item that we must get as cheaply as possible? How did we become consumers who do not have any idea of how and where our food is raised or grown?

Pollan goes from the macro to the micro in his search for good food: at first he attempts to follow the path of a steer he bought, and to find out how the steer will end up as beef in the huge cogs of the meat industry machine.

As that fails (because no large slaughterhouse lets outsiders to come in to view their practices--lest someone be appalled and/or gives their cows a disease of some kind in additional to whatever bacteria they are already carrying), he goes to a small farm where all animals are free-ranged, naturally fed and slaughtered, and where the farmer actually invites the meat buyers to see how their animals are raised and slaughtered. This they do partly so that the consumer can make an informed, ethical choice: do I approve of the way this animal was raised and slaughtered? We can postpone thinking about that when we see a vacuum-sealed, artificially tinted slab of meat at the grocery store.

Lastly, to minimize any middle man in the process of acquiring food, Pollan attempts foraging and hunting, and admits freely that he is pretty embarrassed by the flowery prose he comes up with for the imagery of hunting.

The title refers to the dilemma omnivores have: we can eat almost anything, but we have to find out by trial and error what it is that we can consume. The dilemma originally meant a simple choice between dying upon eating a mushroom or making a wonderful snack out of it, but now the dilemma is behind multiple turns in the road because we don't have direct contact with our food anymore. If I want to buy just cheap meat, am I willing to risk my health because feedlot cows spend their days ankle-deep in their own much, and are fed antibiotics so that they wouldn't get sick, which means that viruses might get more immune because of the amount of antibiotics that I unknowingly eat? By supporting the genetically modified corn industry, am I really willing to take the risk that the beef that was raised on purely corn and not grass (the food cows were evolved to eat) might be carrying E.Coli because its stomach's bacteria is all messed up?

These days the omnivore's dilemma also extends to the ethical treatment of animals (even if you didn't care about it much, you would care that the meat just doesn't taste as good and is not as healthy for you if the animal has been raised in terrible conditions), so in in addition to looking at the evolution of the American meat industry from small farms to humongous, mostly unregulated (health-wise) complexes Pollan also discusses the ethics of vegetarianism and veganism.

The book was a breeze to read, from all the historical insights to the food industry in the US to Pollan's personal experiences at feedlots, in killing chicken, and his mushroom hunting trips. The book does not promote a certain kind of a diet or a style of living: it promotes thinking about where your food comes from, and making eating decisions based on that.

When your texts control your register

I've been playing around with predictive text input in various cell phones of late. In order to predict the word you want to create with just a couple of key strokes, the phone uses a frequency list of most common words in the language that the user has selected.

Most of these frequency lists come from written sources that are known to employ a wide variety of vocabulary: newspapers and magazines. And the top of the list usually reflects spoken language word frequency accurately as well.

Except in Finnish. The problem with Finnish is that it comes in at least three variants:

First is the so-called "book language," that only politicians and news anchors actually speak--otherwise, you'll see it only in written form in newspapers, magazines and novels.

Then, there is the "standard spoken language," which is fairly close to the book language, except for the variation in personal pronouns and the way verbs are conjugated. Also, some slangy expressions might be included. Listen to Finnish teachers speak: this is probably the diction they will use in a classroom. It's not as stiff sounding as the book language, yet it still retains an air of authority and a subtle indication about the speaker's level of education.

On top of that we have all the regional dialects.

In English, people might pronounce the word "I" differently, but it will be typed like that, regardless of where you are from. That's why predictive text works really well in English. In Finnish, the "I" can look like this: minä, mie, mää, or mä. All depending on the register the speaker is using. And in personal, written communication between friends and family members, people tend to use their dialects or some spoken variant of the language.

The problem with predictive text in Finnish is that there is not a single dictionary that is able to include all of these variants in it. If the dictionary memory was large enough and they could include all words, it would simply create a mess: instead of now giving you multiple alternatives of different words, the dictionary would offer you five different dialect versions of the same word--just because they might have only one letter difference in them. And as a South Karelian dialect speaker, I really don't need to see Savo dialect options pop up as my alternatives.

In the past I would never use predictive text: the words from either standard spoken language or from my dialect were not recognized by it, and even worse, the dictionary would throw me words that were not even close to what I wanted. I'd input, say, "Hello!" and the output would be "Closet!"

Why would anyone write in dialect, by the way? The answer is in being economical. Some Finnish words are damned long, so people simply cut the endings off when they speak. Also, in a country where most text messaging and phone calls are handled with a pay-as-you-go plan, you can save money on texts by cutting out as many characters from your text message as possible to keep your story within the character count of one text message. Dialects do this already for economical speaking.


A lot has changed in the past ten years, and the predictive outputs are really good these days. The dictionaries include standard spoken language pronouns, and even dialect pronouns in them. I actually enjoy using the predictive text now, as it gets me better than ten years ago.

There's however one but. As soon as I start using the predictive texting method, I stop using my dialect. There are two reasons for this. First, the frequency dictionary will most likely give me a "book language" version of anything else except some pronouns. Second, it will give me that word in a split second.

So, now I need to weigh typing shorter words which both saves me money and time (because I don't have to type for so long) against inputting only three characters and immediately getting the word that I want--except that it's just not in my dialect but instead in the standard that everyone understands. And this is because it comes from the frequency list that has been lifted from written language.

To save even more time, I may simply begin to write in the book language without even attempting my dialect version, just because I know that the dictionary will definitely get the book language form.

Everyone will understand me, but it's not anymore I who is writing the message; it's some very uptight person who is talking like a robot! Yet, because it is so much faster to compose the message by using a good, predictive method, I will most likely opt to using the frequency list dictionary, and lose my voice. It's just less of a hassle that way.

When authors began writing books in dialect and slang, people grew concerned: is this now the death of Finnish "book language?" Will dialects all take over and soon we will have no common language? As everyone above 7 years old has a cell phone in Finland (only a slight exaggeration, by the way...), and texting is a ridiculously cheap and a quick way of getting touch with everyone, I wonder if the opposite will eventually happen; that predictive texting will create a generation of kids who prefer using book language when they communicate with their friends or family in writing. How long would it take for book language then to seep into the spoken variants?

Will there be a time when, just out of being too lazy to type out words and we'll just accept whatever the dictionary gives us, Finns will begin to speak a very proper version of Finnish?

I suppose that would be a day when learners of Finnish would rejoice: finally, the language taught in the textbooks matches what they hear on the streets.

34. Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama by Tim Wise

Tim Wise (a white American male) reframes the question heard often during the previous presidential elections, "Is America ready for a black president" as "Under what circumstances is America ready for a black president?" As the elections showed us, the black president needs to be someone who "transcends race" (read: does not behave black) and "moves beyond race" in his topics (read: does not bring up race because it would be unpatriotic, make people feel guilty or just annoyed). In other words, the black president should do his utmost to make people forget that he actually is black (and although he is biracial, he is still regarded as black and not white, nor biracial.)

This small and very to-the-point book is a perfect read for people who either think that we should stop discussing racism now that there is a black president, as if having one was evidence enough that minorities have an equal standing in America with the rest of the people, while also being the perfect read for people who might think that having a black president will somehow educate people more about tolerance and racial prejudice, and open the gates to a post-racial society--a word that was thrown around liberally during the presidential elections.

As Tim Wise describes it, Obama's presidency is problematic because he has had to be this "model black person." This might cause white people to hold all black people, regardless of their social status or background, to the same regard before they are given a time of day. It might make white people think that if Obama was able to become a president, then that black kid who can't even get a job interview because his name sounds black is just being lazy and should pull himself up by his boot straps. Obama did it--why don't these lazy bastards do it? 

After these initial questions, Tim Wise takes the reader on a short trip to the black American experience, including plenty of research and statistical evidence to back up his stories. Black high school graduates are less likely to be selected for a job than a white high school drop-out, even if they are exactly the same in manner, dress and qualifications. In fact, a black person needs to have 8 years more of work experience than a white person with same qualifications before he or she is treated equally; black people are more likely told to get a sub-prime mortgage than their white counterparts, even when they have the same income;  doctors are less likely to suggest heart surgery for black people than white people, although they complain of the same symptoms (one doctor said he didn't recommend the surgery because the "woman seemed lazy and would not have followed care instructions"--she was an actor who was instructed to act exactly the same way as the white patient).

It's like telling someone to pull themselves up by the bootstraps while handing the boots without any bootstraps on them.

Wise discusses two types of racism, which is the reason why we can easily say that we are now a post-racial society and still behave racist. There's Racism 1.0, which we all know: the Ku Klux Klan, school segregation, black people at the back of the bus, the openly-racist person who thinks minorities are worthless. That is a rarity, but that's what many think when they hear the word "racist." But then there is also Racism 2.0, which allows exceptional black people like Obama to succeed; it might even let people think they are not behaving in a racist manner. But whenever racism is brought up by minorities, white people are still eager to discredit another person's personal experience even when they do not have the experience themselves--"he probably didn't mean it… are you sure he's not just lazy… maybe he triggered that encounter somehow… aren't you being a bit racist yourself by suggesting that?" Racism 2.0 is thinking that now that cross-burning has ended and we all have the right to have schooling and jobs and a happy life, that the work of an anti-racist is done, and people really should just shut up about race already. Or even better, they think that black people have it too easy these days. They think it's hurtful for the national psyche to be reminded of the fact that the United States was built up by slave labor; an act that has left scars to all of its subsequent generations, either through using black people for medical experiments even until 1970s, to believing that a black person is not really as intelligent and hard-working as a white person with the same credentials. This triggers the bias effect, where if a person is told that they suck because they are X, they are not going to succeed in whatever they are doing as well as people who were told nothing like that (same experiments have been done with women, who performed better in math tests when they were not told "women are bad at math" before the test.)

I'd love to talk about this book more, but I'll let you read it yourselves. It's a quick read, and goes very quickly to the point. I have read Tim Wise's blog before, but none of his books. I should take a look at the other ones. 

 34. Club Dead by Charlaine Harris

Ya'll know already what I think of these book covers, so let's skip that rant. 

The third installment of the Sookie Stackhouse novels deals with the disappearance of Bill the Vampire, Sookie's boyfriend. In her search for Bill's captor, Sookie needs to cooperate with the slick vampire Eric Northman, and a werewolf whose ex-girlfriend--a human--has gotten engaged to a really bad-ass werewolf and is obviously taking vampire blood as a drug. Somehow the vampire king of Louisiana is also messed up with the werewolves, and he might just be the key to Bill's disappearance.

It's hard for me to keep these books straight, because I keep on getting the stories of the TV show and the books mixed up. The most recent season of True Blood dealt exactly with the storyline from the third book, but it ended up with events and a cliffhanger that are coming up later in the books. Which is why I just bought novels 4 and 5... 

These books are so much fun, and always quick reads. I guess Charlaine Harris is my Danielle Steele. 

Books that I have worked on but never finished 

The Delighted States: A Book of Novels, Romances & Their Unknown Translators, Containing Ten Languages, Set on Four Continents & Accompanied by Maps, Portraits, Squiggles, Illustrations & a Variety of Helpful Indexes by Adam Thirlwell

I barely managed to read the title before I had to get it back to the library! I got it because I thought it would be an interesting look at how people translate books, and... in a way, it is. But at the same time, the book meanders from one story to another, from one author to another, and it takes a while before the first translators and their work is produced. The writing style is oddly dry compared to the promisingly witty title, and it just did not work for the current state of my attention span. Maybe another time!

The Watercooler Effect: A Psychologist Explores the Extraordinary Power of Rumors by Nicholas DiFonzo, Ph.D.

Again, a promising premise. I've been interested in rumors since I took a class on pragmatic linguistics, where we spent some time on Deborah Tannen's wonderfully pop-sciency books on communication between men and women, and especially on the topic of rumors. I was interested in reading more from a psychologist's point of view on why people believe even the bizarrest, sure-to-be-untrue rumors, and what is the function of telling rumors (Tannen: building rapport between people, in general.)

I did not get very far in the book as I got fairly tired to its pattern, which was this:

1. Author introduces a question about rumors, such as "But why do people believe crazy rumors?"

2. He gives an example of a crazy rumor, such as the "Paul is dead" rumor about the Beatles in the 60s.

3. The author says something akin to, "Isn't it crazy that people believe this??"

4. Does not really dedicate any space for answering or analyzing the question he has posed. 

5. Asks another question, "But how do rumors begin?"

and the same cycle begins again. 

Within the 30 or so pages I did learn many a rumor that has made the rounds in our inboxes, but no analysis on them. Even Tim Wise's tiny book gave a more analytical look at the crazy rumor about black people murdering and raping each other in New Orleans after Katrina (which turned out to be completely untrue, yet many people happily believed it, including news reporters--Wise discusses what allowed this to happen, DiFonzo just goes, "Crazy, huh?" Not a direct quote, by the way.)

I guess I'll just need to re-read that Tannen book.

EDIT: Ugh. This is the last time I compose these entries in a Word processing tool that Blogger apparently can't handle. 

Jet lag to the power of 2

32. Pattern Recognition by William Gibson

Lent to me by Wasabi Prime for a travel read, I had to occasionally lift up my head from the book and quietly chuckle at how appropriate the book was for traveling purposes: the mood of the book is hazy and often dreamlike, to reflect the protagonist's continuous and ever-worsening jet lag as she zips between Japan, Britain, the United States and Russia, both physically and mentally. So, to get the most of this book, try reading it while being jet-lagged yourself! It's quite a sensation.

The novel's protagonist, Cayce, makes a living by recognizing trends and evaluating how effective company logos are--a true 20th century occupation. Outside of her professional life she is literally allergic to logos and brands (breaking into sweats when even hearing the name Tommy Hilfiger), and she is obsessed with items that are clean of any branding. Which is probably why she is so wrapped up with mysterious, short clips of film of people barely in focus that are posted online. She and her fellow enthusiasts analyze and over-analyze these clips in an anonymous online message board, trying to figure out who the people in the clips are and who on Earth could be making them. There doesn't seem to be any pattern to the clips, which is what throws Cayce off and makes the clips even more intriguing to her.

Once a coder finds a watermark in one of the clips, she is hired to find out the maker of the clip. She suspects that the motivation of her employer is anything but noble: clips that have millions of people waiting for them with baited breath should surely be harnessed for viral marketing and branding. Still, Cayce herself and her compatriots are eager to find out the origins of the clips, so with the money given to her by her employer, she begins to travel the world to find out what kind of a genius has such power over people with only a few frames of film at a time.

Branding, logos and viral marketing--as well as the female protagonist--made me think of Popco, which is a really cool book about code-writing and breaking and marketing, among other things. While Popco was a breeze to read, Gibson's run-on sentences and his comma-comma-comma-comma-comma-chameleon writing style was often just exhausting to read. William, we won't think of you as any lesser a writer if you'll use full stops every now and then!

This was the first book I had read by Gibson, and I did enjoy it. It obviously was also a cathartic writing exercise for him, as the novel ties in the events of 9/11 in a manner that somehow just did not seem to meld with the rest of the story, although the ending tries to make the most of it. It seemed like a topic Gibson needed to get out onto the paper, and used Pattern Recognition as a vessel for it.

When K. heard that I was reading a Gibson book, he asked, "Is there a character who is a disgustingly loathsome social outcast, has some kind of a neurosis or an eccentric problem, and preferably is a real genius hiding from the government?" All I could say was, "Does Gibson get extra points if he's also Russian?"

33. Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris

(Ugh, the cover again. What's with this crap? When does Sookie even wear pants like that in this novel? Or ever?)

The second installment of the Sookie Stackhouse novels! Same old, same old--but in a good way. I could copy and paste my previous post about Harris here, because I had the exact same reactions to Living Dead in Dallas as I had to this one: the book has elements from the second season of the film version, but the film version completely took off with the manaead storyline, creating it an issue with Tara more than with Sookie, and leaving Sookie to deal with the case of the missing vampire that was most likely kidnapped by a church. A church that preaches peace and love, and getting rid of vampires by exposing them to the sun while they are strapped to a big cross. The cross-burning reference here is obvious.

It continues to amaze me how easily Harris intertwines the incredibly silly and the socially critical. This book was a very quick read partly because it is written in a fairly straight-forward manner, without any crazy bells and whistles, yet it still manages to make interesting points about prejudice, whether it is toward people or things we don't understand and fear, or toward people we deem of lower status than ourselves.

Unfinished business and detours into vampire land

I'll be most likely not updating this blog for the next month, because I'll be traveling. My travel bag has been supplied with books and zines, so I should be good--I just might not have a chance to update until I get back.

30. Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris

Although I've read some Anne Rice and enjoyed The Little Vampire books as a kid, I was never a vampire-story fanatic. There are some genres that I will keep on reading even if I've had bad experiences with them, but vampires-as-a-genre was never my thing. Which is unfortunate, because my prejudice had kept me away from the Sookie Stackhouse novels.

Had we not started watching True Blood, series based on the Stackhouse books, I might have never given them a go. Especially after seeing that cover. My God, what is that supposed to be? A book about vampires for 12-year-old girls? Why is the vampire pictured as a stereotypical Bela Lugosi-creature wrapped up in a cape, when in the book Bill walks around in his Dockers khakis and is trying his best to "mainstream", to be like humans?

But to the book. I am completely hooked on the series, so it's hard for me to write about the book without comparing the two: although True Blood's Season 1 follows Dead Until Dark fairly faithfully plot-wise, Alan Ball went ahead and used some creative license in the screen version with the supporting characters and in leaving some issues from the first book to be handled in the second season. For once I feel like both of the versions work equally well. They both are still about Sookie Stackhouse, an ordinary waitress at Bon Temps, Louisiana. Except for that mind-reading part. Her town is one of the last places in the United States where vampires are now roaming around like any other human beings, which is not to say that they are tolerated. Although Harris draws comparisons between racial prejudice and the fear and hatred of vampires, the screen version is more heavy-handed in pointing out the parallels. And why not: while I read the book, I can stop and think of the words and implications more, whereas on screen the same treatment could be overlooked.

I was surprised to see that Tara is not in this book, and that some events that had a big effect on Sookie and Bill's relationship proved to be originally acts of other people, which meant that the story does not take us forward at the same speed as it does in the on-screen version. Also, Bill is much meaner and scarier in this book. I chuckled when the bookstore clerk told me I'd find the Harris books in the horror isle--now I know why! Although True Blood has plenty of blood and gore in it, Dead Until Dark was occasionally genuinely frightening when Bill seemed to be totally out of control. Alan Ball decided to save that for much, much later.

In both versions, Sookie Stackhouse's character is great. I've read so many portrayals of waitresses/barmaids that can fit only into two groups that it's getting tiresome: either she's an angelic girl who's just stuck at a waitressing job until something better comes along (because only uneducated, unambitious people are waitressing!), or she's the girl who's seen it all and slept with all, and who will either become the angelic girl at the end, or somehow get her comeuppance. So it's refreshing to read about Sookie, who is proud of being good at waitressing, of being able to flash a fake smile on for tips all the while reading people's minds and how they judge her as a piece of white trash and borderline retarded. She almost could fall into the first group of stereotypical waitresses, the angelic good girl who's just in bad company, if she just wasn't so horny all the time and prone to occasional temper tantrums. All of those features make her even more lovable--she seems like an actual human being! In her world, being modest and wanting to wear a sexy dress out on a date are not exclusive, and neither is being a good person and being someone who is ready to kick some butt.

Not only is the story fun, fast-paced and a refreshing look at the vampire mythology, the story is just written really well. Not once did I find myself rolling my eyes at word choices or storytelling (OK. Once, when Sookie makes the same Godfather joke twice within two pages). Which brings me to...

The book I did not finish this time. Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
This was recommended to me by an acquaintance who loves this book. I got it from the library, and I will need to return it before I leave on my trip, and I doubt I'll get it again. I have heard people talk about Murakami in awed tones, so I figured I'd give it a try.

The story itself did not seem bad at all: your usual Bret Easton Ellis-style fair, focusing on a college kid who is stuck in a rut like all other college kids, with the exception that he's really insightful and smart and has to alleviate his weltschmertz by having sex with all the girls he can. Did I say "exception?" I meant, the same old story since Holden Caulfield. This story is just set in Japan, so what I found most interesting was when the narrative veered from the usual "omigod he's so torn and smart!" and became tangled with Japanese values and mores (such as when an almost 30-year-old woman laments how she cannot be married off to anyone at that age, especially after having been in a mental institution).

I was, unfortunately, unable to see past the horrible writing. Or maybe it was the English translation? I hoped I could read Japanese so I could see whether it really was Murakami who wrote like this, or whether it was the translator. There was a lot of this:

First page:
"Just feeling kind of blue." Kind of, huh? Well, that's forgiveable--it's a line the narrator says, and that sounds like something a person would actually say. 
But by page 4, the things and the hedging words were killing me.
"It almost hurt to look at that far-off sky."
"Memory is a funny thing."
"I never stopped to think of it as something that would..."
"Scenery was the last thing in my mind. Now, though, the meadow scene is the first thing that comes back to me."
"...these are the first things that..."
"How could such a thing have happened?"
Page 5:
"I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them."
"...like all the other things she used to spin..."
Page 6:
"...the image of a thing I had never laid eyes on became..."
Naoko and the protagonist talk what it would be like to fall into a well and die:
"Things like that must actually happen."
"The best thing would be to break your neck, but you'd probably just break your leg and then you couldn't do a thing."
(from the first paragraph on page 7:) "Somebody should find the thing and build a wall around it."

AARGH. And it doesn't stop. Everything is a "thing." And once I started paying attention to "things", the "kind ofs" started popping up, too, although the line from the very first page should have warned me about it. He was kind of tall but kind of shy and kind of cute and the sky was kind of blue and the sex was kind of good but the alcohol was kind of better... Stylistically, this book is the hedgiest I have tried to read in a while. I don't oppose to using the word "thing" in general, and sure, people talk with "things" a lot, I just find it's very sloppy work to have one word be repeated so damned often that it can take a reader out of the story and wonder, "Do I know anyone who is as vague or 'thingy' in his or her speech as all these characters? No, I don't."

My bet is on a translator who went on a literal translation spree without thinking of how to rephrase the sentences. What kind of an author would not change The best thing would be to break your neck, but you'd probably just break your leg and then you couldn't do a thing into at least "It would be for the best if you broke your neck, but you'd probably just break your leg and then you wouldn't be able to do anything" to avoid repeating the same expression so many times on a single page? Even if this was a calculated move by the author (or the translator), it still does not sway me to finish this book because I was so bored by the style. Maybe someday I'll attempt to overlook it and find out what happens in the story itself.

The oddest experiments; attempting to define "bad" writing style again

28. Elephants on Acid and Other Bizarre Experiments by Alex Boese

The cover and the title should give you an accurate feeling about the book: the experiments in the book are truly bizarre, they are often described fairly shortly so that you can use this as handy bathroom reading (chapter 8 is specifically designed for this), and headings are in a bubble-gum purple hue.I think the typesetter/designer wanted to really get the readers into the acid mood.

I was afraid the book would be way too quirky--or just stupid--for my tastes, but I found I was unable to put it down. The bizarre experiments drew me in, and Boese's writing style balanced well between the humorous and trying-too-much-to-be-witty. Although I ended up reading most of his final sentences in in my head in the puts on sunglasses -style, the punchlines were not annoying enough for me to give up this book.

The experiments range from the well-known ones (the terry cloth mom experiment with monkeys; the severed dog head that continued living; trying to raise a chimp as a human child to see if it would begin to behave like humans, etc.) to the more obscure (testing LSD on elephants, testing whether a tapeworm learns new stuff if it is fed a piece of another tapeworm with the knowledge, and so on).

My favorites were among the human psychology and sociological experiments. I heard of the Stanford prison experiment the first time when I saw Das Experiment (insert obligatory <3 Moritz Bleibtrau)which is loosely based on the real experiment. It freaked me out in a way that made me want to know more about the exam. By the way, I got that movie poster as a gift from a friend, and it was so depressing I could never put it up on my wall. Onward!

Originally, the experiment was to see what factors lead to prison abuse. Is it because people working in prisons are naturally violent and nasty, is it because the inmates are naturally violent and nasty, or could the environment affect their behavior? Completely normal and mentally stable men were chosen for the experiment, where half were given gowns to wear with no underwear (the prisoners) and the other half were given khakis (the guards). The only instructions for the guards were that they should not use violence and they should not let the prisoners escape. Although during the first day of testing the "prisoners" were simply sitting and playing cards, chatting about the experiment, within a couple of days the guards had put them in isolation chambers for punishment, made them pee in buckets and leave the buckets in their "cells" and forced them to do humiliating acts (such as sexual acts). The experiment that was supposed to last for two weeks was canceled after six days, because the "prisoners" were facing such abuse and psychological stress from their "guards." Even their yells, "This is just a simulation!" would not calm the guards the eff down. 

I find this absolutely fascinating, just as the Milgram experiment where completely ordinary people ended up giving electric shocks they thought were deadly to people, all just because a man in an authoritarian position told them that he'd take the blame, and the subject was simply obeying his orders. When asked whether they could ever kill a person, they would probably have answered--as all of us non-psychopaths would--with a no. These experiments just show us that there is a lot about ourselves that we don't know or understand. These experiments--although the results are shocking and appalling--should help people in designing situations where people's behavior would not be allowed to escalate so easily into abusive situations. Unfortunately, the results also give an idea of how easy it is to manipulate a person to behave against his or her will.

The book is a fun read, but I did not say it was a light read! 

Speaking of fun...

29. The Accidents of Style: Good Advice on How Not to Write Badly by Charles Elster

If you want to read a book on style, please read any of the other ones I have written about. This mentions all the old hats of proper English usage as they do, but in addition, the author barely hides his loathing toward spoken varieties of English. He begins by stating that this book is for writers, whether you write for newspapers, blogs or you just write emails. But every now and then, he slips in snide comments about the bad ways people speak English (when the "bad" is actually just a vernacular of some type, or a shorthand). Elster, your agenda is showing.

Sometimes the author simply sounded like an old curmudgeon.He has a big chip on his shoulder (and he would slap me for that cliché) about blogging: the multitude of insulting terms he has come up with for bloggers is quite astounding, and he rarely forgets to mention that he came up with those terms all by himself! What a guy!

He takes swipes at Mignon Fogerty because whoever wrote her grammar book's dust jacket copy described the book as--wait for the dry heaves from Elster--a "fun book." (You can't use "fun" as a regular adjective, he mutters between his spew-covered teeth.) His disgust toward lexicographers is hard to avoid: Elster's descriptions make them seem like a bunch of namby-pambies who allow anything to be printed in dictionaries. I'm fairly sure I used the word "namby-pamby" wrong there, and he would make ruthless fun of me.

Elster seems to believe that dictionaries should act as teaching material on what proper language is like. I think that dictionaries should reflect language as it is used. Our views on language are fundamentally different. He is absolutely right with many of his examples, such as the ones where people don't get it that the idiom is toe the line, not tow the line (because the latter makes no sense--not that idioms are always sensible). But every now and then he seems to forget that language develops and evolves constantly, and if majority of people nowadays think it's OK to use "fun" as an adjective to describe objects, then protesting against it will only make you sound like someone who thinks that the English from a decade ago is something we should try to preserve, whatever the cost.

So, if you think that there is only one way to speak and read proper English (and that English must be from somewhere well post-U.S. colonization, pre-...now), then this book is for you!

Radio plays and poetry--yes, this is 2010.

25. and 26. Melua mekossa and Sen pituinen se by Leila and Annukka.

Now a defunct radio station, Radiomafia was quite the anarchist in the Finnish world of broadcasting: they would assign a program devoted to heavy metal at prime time, or start your Sundays with a dose of progressive rock. The weirdest parts were the radio plays and sketch shows. You would not find any Prairie Home Companion here, that's for sure. One of my favorites back then was a show created by Johanna Reenkola and Tiina Siikasaari (who also gave voices to the characters) about two absolutely clueless women in their early 40s, Leila ja Annukka. Now, reading the books that are basically transcripts of the show revealed to me how much they actually played around with language, and how often they veered into Monty Python-esque absurdism.

Millionaire-heiress Leila Makkonen is a stick-figure of an egotist, for whom nothing is more important than looks and men, and status. She's also a horrifying lush. Annukka Ahlqvist is her well-meaning, but unfashionable friend whose parents still own a dairy farm and whose appetite in both food and men disgust Leila. So far, the premise sounds pretty predictable, doesn't it? Yet, the stories managed to be absolutely hilarious, and often the dialogues were peppered with poignant bits about homophobia, how advertising preys on the ones with low self-esteem, and even bigger political issues such as the European Union and Finland's role in it. Then they'd immediately get back to silly dialogue that would just escalate into worst possible scenarios. The characters are kind of like two female versions of David Brent. Unfortunately I can't translate the bits I like the best, because Leila uses very, very bad language in them... But here are a couple of tamer excerpts:

Leila and Annukka are at a neighborhood pizza place:
Leila: Well there you finally are! I already managed to down one drink, I was so thirsty. What would you have, the usual?
Annukka: Yeah, thanks.
Leila: Gianni! Una cerveza and eine kleine cocacola! Bitte hurry, chop chop!
Annukka: Wow, people can really tell you've traveled the world.
Leila: I like to keep up my language skills.
Annukka: And it's so nice for the Italians to hear their native language here in cold Finland.

Annukka is getting ready for her graduation ceremony from the aromatherapist course...
Leila: Move it! What are you going to wear?
Annukka: I'm already wearing it.
Leila: Oh my god. I thought that flower-patterned salsa dress was your home outfit.
Annukka: No, it's not. Just this Saturday I bought it from the second hand store for exactly this event. Imagine, it was only 20 marks! They asked for 25, but I haggled off a fiver, because there's a stain on the chest. But ta-daa, I put this butterfly brooch over it and you can't see the stain anymore.

It's one of those things that are probably funnier when you hear them or you hear the voices acting the play out in your head...

27. Kutsuvat sitä rakkaudeksi by Arno Kotro ("They call it love")
Arno Kotro. I vaguely remember a column he wrote for the major teachers' union paper (he is a teacher himself) that smacked of anti-feminism: it was one of those writings exploring the reasons why boys are not doing as well in schools as girls are, and instead of really looking at the reasons, he basically blamed it on feminism and women teachers emasculating and favoring girls (My school years were peppered with statements like "Women can't chew gum and walk at the same time" and even at college level, I had a teacher tell in front of a class full of women how she wished we'd stayed at home and made babies, and had given "boys a chance" to get into the university. So I wasn't exactly agreeing with Kotro's statements.) His odd arguments made me vow that I'd never read his stuff. I had totally forgotten my sentiments when I got this three-poem book from a friend of mine, and surprisingly ended up reading it in one sitting. Save for the strawmen arguments against feminism at the center of the book, I really enjoyed the poems.

The book is in three parts, each a poem of its own: first is about him falling in love, the second leads into the breakup, and the third is about post-breakup meetups, friendships and moving on (or the inability thereof). I often don't read poetry because majority of poetry just has not done much for me, but then sometimes there are poets who have these amazing sentences that make me think, "Huh, I never thought it that way--but that's the best way to describe it." Pablo Neruda is someone I could read endlessly, because his poems are so raw and delicious. I would read more of Kotro because of his word plays that instead of making me laugh and think how smart he is, they make me feel terrifyingly sad. Quite the opposite of the way puns and plays on words usually are used. Also, I felt like this was a brave book to write as it obviously is very autobiographical (or is it?), and it sounds very honest in its examination of feelings of love, betrayal and obsession.

On bilingualism and dictionaries

My work stole me away from the Internets for a while, but I'm back! Unfortunately, work also slowed my reading down a bit, so here are the only books I have finished recently...

23. Bilingual: Life and Reality by François Grosjean

A great, great book for everyone who is interested in bilingualism, is bilingual, or is someone who is struggling to figure out a good way to raise their children bilingual or maintain their own bilingual abilities. The author refers to his more academically written book for more information, analysis and statistics while this book is kept very accessible on purpose.

It tackles all the most pervasive myths about bilingualism in both adults and children, such as that bilingual children will develop slower than monolingual children, or that being bilingual means you have to be a perfect speaker of two languages and anything else is not true bilingualism. For the author, bilingual is a person who uses every day (more or less) two languages. Because most people use different languages in different situations--such as one at home and one for official business--it automatically means that they cannot be perfect in both languages. Or rather, a person who is perfect in all the languages he or she is using is a rarity. As a personal example, I can talk about computers easily in English, but I was totally screwed back in Finland when we were trying to buy a motherboard. I had no idea what it would be called in Finnish--the language I had been primarily using up until my twenties!--and not only that, I had a hard time even explaining what I wanted to the shopkeeper without sounding like a dimwit (plus he tried to sell me a hard-drive when I knew for sure that's not what I wanted, so he didn't seem to know what was going on, either...). I realized that there was no Finn in my life with whom I would have talked about computers as extensively as I had done in English. The reverse happens when I try to talk in English about, say, building structures: not only are homes often built differently in the US and Finland and thus would require different vocab, I just had not had an opportunity to talk to anyone in English about building materials before someone asked me whether Finns sauter their pipes... The problem was not that I don't understand the concept of sautering--it's that I had never heard that word before in English.

I had never dared to call myself a bilingual before because of these myths: how could I be truly bilingual when I was not raised bilingual at home or in my living environment. I was told, even on college level, that if the language you have learned was learned at school, you can't call yourself bilingual. I can't be a true bilingual because there are situations where I don't know the vocabulary. I can't be a true bilingual because I have an accent. Reading this book was a huge relief for me and a revelation: duh, of course I am bilingual because I communicate in two languages on a daily basis. That's all you need. What a relief!

24. The Lexicographer's Dilemma: The Evolution of "Proper" English from Shakespeare to South Park by Jack Lynch


After the fairly dry history of how the first English dictionaries came about (except the part that disses Samuel Johnson in very delicious terms!) the book dives straight into the debate of what is proper English and what is not, and who are to blame for some very nonsensical rules. The best parts of this book were the sections where Lynch discusses why English spelling reformation will never, ever happen although it should, and why criticism of non-standard Englishes like AAVE (African-American Vernacular English) usually is nothing more than attempts at trying to thinly veil one's classicism and racism in academic concerns on the status of "proper" language usage. Somehow when a black person says "I axed" it's an infuriating bastardization of language, but it's fine if Samuel Johnson has so said and written back in the day.

Also, Lynch takes on people who believe that English language is going to hell in an iPhone docking station because of the language kids use in text messages. Curiously enough, the much-advertised high school essay that was full of gr8ts and LOLs has never been found, and Lynch deems it nothing but a "a friend of a friend of mine once saw..." urban legend. It seems that kids still do understand that most of the time there is a time to use the standard English they learn at school, and that it's fine to play around with language in other venues. As an example of this, Lynch mentiones LOLcats, where you take a picture of a cat, and photoshop a caption onto the picture in ungrammatical English. Although some academics have gotten their ascots in a twist over this and see lolcats as definite proof of English's downfall, Lynch reminds people that lolcats creators know how English language works, and they write badly on purpose. If lolcats peeps really did not know how to write standard English, they would not be able to write hilarious captions where horrible sounding English has a logic (such as use an -s plural for irregular plurals, like in my favorite lolcat where a budgie stands in a plate of mac and cheese, saying "IM IN UR MACARONIS WARMING MY FEETS.")

Oh, and about the English spelling reformation. I did not know about this: apparently the reason why English spelling is so messed up is because the first printing presses used only letters found in Latin. People were too lazy to hew additional letters to match English sounds, and thus they ended up discarding letters like the thorn and frantically tried to come up with letter combinations that would reflect the same kind of a sound. Tut tut. Also, one of the reasons (and you should check out the book for the rest, because they are all fascinating!) for the spelling reform failing is that people are not aware of how they pronounce words, and thus they would not be able to produce in writing accurately what they say (reformers want English to be written the way it's pronounced.) Most people would think that to make plurals out of dog and house is the same: you just add an -s. But when you now pronounce the new words, the -s is pronounced differently in these words. For houses it's more like a z. So, I guess after spelling reform, people would be spelling house as haus or hauz. Additionally, there would be even more variety because spelling reformers seem to have forgotten that there is no one English in existence: there is a ton of variety. Even within the United States. So in order to start implementing a "one letter-one sound" rule for English, they would have to choose one lucky variety of English that everyone would need to learn to pronounce in order to communicate with each other in writing. Otherwise, writing would be nonsensical because every dialect would write words down differently (just think of a simple word like house: haus, hauz, aus, oos, haas...). Had the printing press boys just carved those extra letters and used them in printing English texts, we would not be in a mess where a kid is lauded nationally for being able to spell a word correctly upon hearing it...

Lynch has a very level-headed approach to English language, especially when it comes to varieties: we should not be talking about "bad" English if someone does not speak like we do. Instead, we should talk about appropriate English, because not all varieties of English--including standard English taught at schools--are appropriate at all times.

Let me have a fan-girl moment here. Lynch <3

21. The Lost Art of Walking by Geoff Nicholson 
Geoff Nicholson ties his own interest and motivations for walking together with great and zany historical walks in this semi-autobiographical book about, well, walking. Although such a basic human activity, using your feet as a method of transportation or going out for a walk for fun might get you odd looks in the United States. Walking is often done on treadmills, or then while wearing spandex--and then the motivation is to look good. Whatever happened to just aimlessly wandering down streets, wonders Nicholson. If you are wondering whether this will be yet another curmudgeonly book about "things ain't what they used to be" lamentations, you are happy to find that this is not the case. Nicholson does not tell everyone should be walking--heck, he lives in L.A. and knows that sometimes it is impossible to walk without being accosted by the police who think you are up to no good, strolling about like that. Instead, he talks about what he finds so enjoyable about walking, and in the midst of this narrative he takes some side steps into psychogeography, into people who walk streets in patterns, and he also looks at the history of professional walking and odd bets, such as "bet I can walk around the world while pushing a baby stroller and while I wear an iron mask." That sort of a thing. 

Walking is a wonderful activity; a cheap hobby that can be done at any age (providing that you have learned how to walk, or you are able to do it). Still, it should not be looked down upon: the author himself got his arm broken in a manner that puzzled surgeons, only because he fell over while walking. His mother's death was most likely also sped up by her insistent walk up a Sheffield hill during winter storm. 

The book is a fun and clever read about a simple aspect of human life, and the meaning of it for people, from Hollywood stars to street photographers and speed walkers. The only thing that made me suspect the author's cleverness was the point where he refers to "evidence" about what "really" was said between Houston and Neil Armstrong--the exchange Nicholson reports sounds oddly similar to this satire by The Onion.... And no, Nicholson does not seem to be joking, as he also states that who knows, maybe the evidence will turn out to be a hoax. Considering his writing style, had he been joking he probably would have mentioned the article by its name, or the publication, but this was just an unquoted reference to it. So. That was kind of sad. 

22. The Sound on the Page: Style and Voice in Writing by Ben Yagoda

Yagoda is trying to tackle an issue that is almost untackle-able: what is style in writing, how do we recognize good and bad style (is there objectively such?), and how do authors cultivate their styles. He knows that this is a crazy task, but still goes ahead with it, interviewing numerous authors from all walks of writing (journalists, novelists, even lawyers) and giving his personal opinion on all matters of style. Poor guy. He knows the answer already at the beginning: good style is whatever people appreciate. And different people probably don't appreciate the same styles. 

The best thing about this book is the extensive interviews of writers, who talk about their personal writing styles, who they look up to, and how they have cultivated their styles. I once tried reading a Bill Bryson book, and I got so annoyed with the whininess, the all-knowingness and the stuff he presented as "facts" that I could not finish it, and I have not touched his books ever since. After reading this book, however, I might give him another go, because he sounded like a sane, non-whiny person in the interviews, and talked about how the "I" in his books is not really him, but a very exaggerated character of himself. I might be able to read his books again if I think of him as a character who is pompous and ethnocentric to get you riled up...

Adventures in swampy lands of Finland and consumerism

19. The American Girl by Monika Fagerholm (read in Finnish, "Amerikkalainen tyttö")
Hazy and dream-like, the story takes place in a Swedish-speaking Finnish community in the 1960s, progressing all the way to the 2000s. Although the story starts off as a whodunnit when an American girl visiting the village disappears, and the murder suspects and accusers cannot handle the tragedy, it soon transforms into a coming-of-age story of two girls who meet through happenstance and begin to emulate this mysterious American Girl Eddie first through childhood games of dress-up and later, as the story of the missing American girl unfolds, in a more sinister manner and subconsciously.

All the people in the story are storytellers who are used to recounting their relationship with the missing girl to numerous strangers and friends throughout the years, up to a point where they are not even sure what is fiction and what is reality. I would love to talk about my reading experience on that more, but it would be spoilerish...

I especially enjoyed the anonymity of many people and places: many of the characters are referred to only as generic titles or nicknames (the Black Sheep), and some even have invented names for themselves (Inget Herrman, which is quite obvious to anyone who knows a lick of Swedish). Houses are called by their geographical locations or how they look like, such as the "Glass palace" and "The House on the Second Cape" and of course, "The House at the Sludge Edge" (I have no idea how these are actually translated into English). This works perfectly in the storyteller-framework: obviously, someone called a Swamp Mother would not be a nice person, and The Glass Palace would be something to envy by the people at the House at the Sludge Edge. They are not just places and people who exist in this story, but they are places and people in the lives of each of us readers--we can just fill in the blanks.

The story is terribly tragic, but also terrifyingly beautiful. At least the Finnish translation was so masterfully done that I could have read the story merely for the language used in it. I know someone who has read the English translation, and she said she did not enjoy the translation very much. I'd be interested in checking it out, because this book is just amazing.

20. Retail Anarchy: A Radical Shopper's Adventures in Consumption by Sam Pocker
How do dollar stores cheerfully charge a dollar for a 25-cent pack of gum? How do you get an entire car full of pudding for free?

Reading this made me think of this yuckily clichéd phrase: Sam Pocker is the modern-day Robin Hood! Except for the stealing part. In this book, he completely legally gets stuff for free from stores (or even makes money by buying items), and then he donates his carloads of cereal, shampoo and teriyaki sauce to the needy. His motivation is not all that altruistic, though: he is a consumer with a vengeance, and he is out to get the Big Box retailers. After getting gradually more frustrated with Big Boxes convincing the consumer that he or she is a part of their "family" and then offering nothing else in return except the privilege to buy their overpriced junk, Pocker goes out to the stores armed with the knowledge that most stores are so badly managed that they don't realize that combining a manufacturer's coupon and a store coupon AND a rebate would make the store actually pay the consumer to get the stuff off their shelves. In one week alone, Pocker makes $200 dollars by simply using coupons that are out there for everyone to grab.
Some have commented on this not being fair--you should pay something for merchandise and not cheat the stores. To this Pocker counters with stories of how big companies are more than happy to lie to their customers to get them pay more for products that are available for less next door. Why should the consumer act fair if the service provider doesn't? And constantly Pocker reminds the reader: not once has he broken the law by using these coupons and he gives the products away to people who need them. Which is something you can't say of the QFC's Thanksgiving program.

That made me sick. Have you seen those brown bags at QFC around Thanksgiving? You take one to the cashier, they ring it up for $10 and it's considered food that you have bought for homeless people. Except that the store keeps the money, and the value of goods inside those bags is nowhere near $10. Once Pocker opened one of these bags to see what was in them, and was appalled to see that the value of the goods (straight out of QFC shelves) was about $3. In his mind, we'd be better off buying $10 worth of stuff and donating it to a homeless shelter, rather than letting the store give the shelters crap and make a huge profit out of it. Gross. Again, this book came out in 2007 so I just hope that QFC has changed their policy since and stocks the bags better.

I enjoyed reading this book a lot, although Pocker's coupon enthusiasm goes a bit overboard for me sometimes (such as when he abandons a whole cartful of orange juice in the parking lot because he got them for free with coupons, and only then did he realize that he cannot donate it anywhere), as did his usage of "lame", "slut" and other supposedly hip but derogatory language. Still, I got a kick out of it, and I think this book would be useful not just for people who try to save a penny, but for everyone: we should be more aware of how we are manipulated by advertising, and people should learn to do more price comparison instead of being blindly brand-loyal. I especially enjoyed the section where Pocker asks teachers why they don't give parents the supply list for next school year at the end of the previous school year, when notebooks and pens are about third of the price compared to the first week of school. The teachers had not even realized that there is a price shift (July/August: old stock is sold for cheap out of the way of the new stuff, which is then sold during the first week of school for lots more). And these same teachers were teaching kids how to manage their money and save it!

A book I did not finish: Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping by Judith Levine
A really interesting title, isn't it? I was all antsy when I saw this at the library, especially after having read the Pocker book which was so much fun, and which had a really good point. So I was wondering, how on Earth did someone not shop for a year? 

Meet my arch-nemesis, the bad thesis statement. On page seven, the author states what she is set out to do: "Starting January 1, 2004, Paul and I will purchase only necessities for sustenance, health, and business--groceries, insulin for our diabetic cat, toilet paper, Internet access." (Emphasis mine)

What? Are you planning on cutting out anything? Even the toilet paper option becomes a debate: do we really have to buy the store brand instead of the really nice kind?

Although it's probably supposed to be witty banter, the chapter that debates whether wine, hair gel (of course their hair will be professionally cut despite the project) and olives constitute a necessity only managed to piss me off. This couple is so privileged with their two homes (one a large farm house in Vermont) and three cars that they cannot even imagine a year without paying for a movie, so the rationalization begins immediately: it might be OK to go see movies if they are (a) organized by a non-profit, local cinema and (b) if paying a ticket would be a donation, which then means they did not actually buy anything. I get it. If we can redefine what "buying" means, then this project is eeeasy! How insulting is that to people who actually have to save to buy necessities? Ugh. And it did not take too long for the author to rationalize why they absolutely need three cars, either.

Essentially, they are not even going to plan on cutting back enough to be inconvenienced.

Ms. Levine: Please change the title of your book to My Year Without Shopping Every Single Thing I See and Can Afford, and I'll get back to you. Nothing, save crappy writing, annoys me more about books than false advertising. I wanted to read a book about someone trying to not buy anything; not a book about someone debating whether wine is a necessity just because her boyfriend is Italian.

I might give it a better go at some point, but right now this book fell to the bottom of my reading list. I might glance through to see what happens in it. The premise in general sounded fine, and it sounded like there was going to be some righteous rage on the pages about mindless consumerism. Unfortunately, the first pages just seem like the rantings of a person who has no idea what "living without" actually means.

ETA: Haha! Wish I had read the Amazon reviews of this book before I started reading it and wrote my entry. They are hilarious, and pretty much everyone calls the author a whiny, patronizing yuppie. I'm so glad I read Colin Beavan's No Impact Man earlier: not buying stuff is possible, and it can be done with less flailing and having temper tantrums.