The Kinsey Millhone series is set in the fictional town of Santa Theresa, California, where Miss Millhone has her office and her one-car-garage-turned-apartment. This book is no exception to that rule. What Grafton has done here for the first time in the series is introduce a series of flashbacks as clues for the reader.

Personally, while I enjoyed the flashbacks as short stories and glimpses into the events that happened thirty-four years before Kinsey opened her investigation, I found it hard to keep track of what Kinsey did and didn’t know about the original events surrounding the disappearance she was investigating. When the end of the book came, it was not easy to determine whether I’d been given enough information to figure out the who-dunnit on my own, or if Grafton had pulled what I call a ‘Scooby-Doo’ (because, in the Scooby-Doo TV series, the writers never gave the audience a fair shot at figuring out the culprit’s identity and in their final exposition, the characters always referred to events and clues that the audience had never seen — totally unfair!).

Despite what I took as a lack of her usual clarity, Grafton still manages to deliver a fun read. As I’m still unsure if she was “?playing fair’ or not, I’ll have to re-read the book, eventually, to confirm or correct my first impression. If that’s what she was aiming for, an audience with a reason to pick the book up more than once, she was certainly successful.

The other novels in this series vary in quality, but I’d recommend them anyway. I enjoy a good mystery once in a while. It’s something else to think about and focus on that requires brain power, besides the inevitable school work and I’ve never felt that Grafton seriously let me down. It’s not hard to identify the books in this particular series. They are referred to as her abecedarian series because of their titles, each of which begins with a letter of the alphabet. There is no need to begin with A is for Alibi and work your way through to the end though. That will put them in chronological order, but each novel stands pretty well on its own.

I do, however, idly wonder whether Grafton will stop after the 26th installment of this series, or if she has a plan to continue past ‘z’. If she does, what would it be? Double letters? Numbers? Punctuation marks?

This book is worth borrowing from the library, but I wouldn’t buy it in hardcover unless you need to have the complete set. Wait for the paperback before you purchase.

Reference
Grafton, S. (2005). S is for Silence. Kinsey Millhone Mysteries. New York: Penguin.

One of the books I was gifted with was the novelization of the motion picture Mr. and Mrs. Smith that is still playing in movie theatres as I write this. The film stars Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie who play top-secret assassin-spies, married to each other, who have each kept their true job a secret from the other spouse. They appear to be regular fairly-well-off office types, but they are actually stereotypical action heroes. As the plot in the film runs, they are assigned the same target and wind up each assigned to eliminate the opposition. The result is Mr. and Mrs. Smith are trying to take each other out.

I really enjoyed the movie. It has lots of explosions, which is usually a selling point for me and my hubby, who is an action-hero wannabe. The book (as is generally the case) was slightly better.

The film, by necessity, is done in a rather third-person voice. It’s hard to know at any given time what either Mr. or Mrs. Smith is thinking or feeling. The novelization, on the other hand, is framed as two therapeutic journals, written by the Smiths in the course of their couples’ therapy. Each Smith has some issues with the other, and they aren’t able to talk them out without help, so their therapist suggests diaries. In the course of the first-person dialogues, the reader gets a much better sense of the characters’ motivations. Certain exchanges (of words or of bullets) that make little sense on the big screen are more clearly explained by the Smiths’ ‘own words.’

Honestly, this book is brain candy, with little or no literary or educational value. But what else do you want from an easy holiday read? It gave me a couple of hours to myself (literally under the covers with a flashlight, my Mom has a one-bedroom apartment and there were five of us living in it over the holidays! It was certainly worth the huddled posture!

I wouldn’t run out and buy this book, but if you need some alone-in-the-tub-with-a-glass-of-wine reading, and aren’t planning to watch a movie with explosions instead, this novelization might fit the bill.

Reference
Dubowski, C. E. (2005). Mr. and Mrs. Smith. New York: Harper Entertainment.

I’m back in non-fiction mode this week, possibly because I haven’t been working enough on my course work, and feel guilty. At least when I read non-fiction, I know I’m getting my mental exercise.

I read An Anthropologist on Mars, by world-renowned neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks. This collection of case studies and personal anecdotes has been out for a long time, but if you haven’t read it yet, you really ought to pick it up.

Dr. Sacks believes in getting to know the whole person who is referred to him. He visits his patients, spends a lot of time with them, observes them in their own environments. Most of all, he wants to understand not only the problem that got them the referral, but also what effect or effects that problem has had on other parts of their lives.

For example, in the first case study of a man who suddenly became colourblind after an accident, Dr. Sacks explores not only the physical causes of the man’s colourblindness, but also the depth of loss that the patient felt–which was, conceivably, more than most people would, considering that he was a professional artist who mostly worked in oils. Pigments were essential to his creative self, and, in his concept of himself, which was deeply tarnished by his sudden loss.

There are seven stories in this volume, all of which are different, but all written with care and deliberation, by a greatly intelligent, kind, perceptive man who obviously genuinely cares about the people he sees. He speaks of different kinds of people–an artist, a surgeon, a “dropout” from the 60s, a blind masseur, and of many different neurological problems, as well. This is a very readable primer in some (fairly) common neurological problems, but primarily, it is about treating the whole person.

While treating the whole person is not a new idea, and it sounds a bit warm-and-fuzzy for a serious science book, this collection of narratives really helps the reader understand the problem with a conventional hands-off medical head space. If Dr. Sacks had behaved as a typical neurologist with his patients, he would not have been able to make them come alive on the page–and he would not have been able to treat them with the kindness and compassion that seems to be his trademark.

This book is an old favorite that I decided to re-read. It is between these pages that I first “met” Temple Grandin, who is well-known as a designer of slaughterhouses, because of her almost empathic connection with cattle. She understands them very well, knows what will scare them or confuse them, and thus works to make the experience as pleasant as possible for the animals–much kinder than nature. The fact that Grandin is autistic is interesting, and has shaped her whole life, but almost as much time is devoted to her profession as her condition. This book also contains the story of the man who was blinded as a toddler, but became sighted as an adult. One can read about how babies learn to see in a psychology textbook, but it is much more meaningful to hear about one man’s experience, and how he felt about it (bewildered, mostly).

There are some interesting adventures between the pages of the book, as well. Dr. Sacks scrubbed in on surgeries performed by a surgeon with Tourette’s”?and took a ride in a plane with the same surgeon at the stick. He took the “last hippie” to a Grateful Dead concert in New York. Life is not boring, I guess, when you’re a world famous doctor and author.

Dr. Sacks’ works include The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Awakenings, along with several others. All are warm and human, and worth reading. Not only are they accessible and interesting as stories of exceptional people, but they also contain some curiosity-rousing science.

Reference
Sacks, Oliver. (1995) An Anthropologist on Mars. Toronto: Vintage Canada.

The first book I read was very easy-to-read. It was approachable in tone, rather positive and upbeat. Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation, by Don Tapscott (1999) apparently is an international bestseller of which I’d never heard of. It is a 300-odd-page work of futurism. The author questions, “What will today’s [American] children bring unto the world?”

One of the strengths of this book is that it is not written in a vacuum. Sometimes I get the feeling that authors sequester themselves in a shed out back to begin a book, and don’t surface until the first copies are rolling off the presses. Tapscott did a great deal of research (via the Internet, of course) and interviewed a great number of people, most of them being children and teenagers. This is important, not only because his book addresses the new generation that is growing up connected to the Internet, but also because the reader gets the impression that Tapscott bases some of his ideas on actually listening to young people, which could be the best way to predict their future behaviour.

One thing Tapscott predicts really hit home for me. Education, he believes, will have to change radically in order to keep up with the new reality of Internet access, cell phones, and kids capable of multi-tasking from a very young age. The industrial revolution model of education that we currently have in our bricks-and-mortar schools will go the way of the dodo bird. Tapscott thinks, among other things, that distance education (as we know it at AU) and home schooling (as most of society calls it when the students are elementary-school aged) is the low-frequency rumble that will become a sweeping avalanche. Major reforms, according to Tapscott, are coming “?- and sooner, rather than later.

Tapscott delves into many other aspects of the Net generation (he calls them the N-gen for short), their work, play, communications, learning, shopping and creating. He even discusses how the digital divide (the disparity between those with the economic wherewithal to have computers with Internet access constantly available, and those without such access) will affect the N-gen.

Perhaps especially, the N-gen differs from their Gen-X or Gen-Y parents in terms of their culture. Exposed to interactive media (as opposed to passive broadcast media, like radio and TV) for most, if not all of their lives, the N-gen needs to participate in the generation of its entertainment. No couch potatoes, these! If the N-genners are watching TV, then they’re also on their cell phones, and chatting online with friends, usually while listening to music and doing their homework. An experience, to the N-gen, isn’t an experience until it’s been shared.

Growing Up Digital is not all roses and sunshine. There are some problems coming for all of us as the world adjusts to the N-gen and their way of doing things. Tapscott, however, offers solutions to some of these problems. He is not afraid to carefully construct his arguments, show his reasoning, and address some of his opponents’ probable arguments. This book is definitely worth a look, especially if you have children you’re having trouble relating to. You may find out why, exactly.

Reference
Tapscott, D. (1999). Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation. New York: McGraw-Hill Companies.

Shatner, best known as Captain Kirk from the original television series Star Trek, is emphatically not a scientist, yet this book takes on the challenge of describing many cutting-edge technologies and the theories behind them. Many of the scientists he interviews were kids in the late 1960s when Star Trek was on the air. They were inspired to improve the world and its technologies by the futuristic science they saw on their TV screens.

If you, like Shatner, know absolutely nothing about science, you may find this book interesting and informative. He often repeats throughout the book that he does not understand technology, is not a scientist, and doesn’t understand the theories that he explains (though the book was reviewed by the scientists he interviewed for accuracy). If you have any knowledge of science (for example, if you’ve ever read an issue of Scientific American or Discover magazine) you may find this text horribly oversimplifies some pretty complex theories and ideas. It’s rather like reading your son’s or daughter’s grade four science text in that it’s accurate, mostly, as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough.

Personally, I found the book condescending. Its constant repetition of the theme “I don’t get this, and so you won’t either, but here are the broad outlines of the idea” was insulting in the extreme. It does touch on some interesting science, though not in nearly enough detail. Shatner’s constant references to his days in the captain’s chair on the Enterprise seemed cute at the beginning of the book, but by the end of it, I was thinking “enough already!” I was even such a Trekker in my teenage years that I was a member of a fan club (Star Trek Winnipeg) and held a “commission” as a lieutenant aboard a fictional starship. If I found it tiresome, how must non-fans of Star Trek feel?

To be fair, Shatner’s television program How William Shatner Changed the World aired November 13, 2005 on the Discovery Channel. The show presented most of this same information in a much more appropriate way. Most of the condescension in the book came across as cute, funny, and approachable in a more visual medium, though the surface-level analysis still made me cringe.

I wouldn’t recommend this book, unless you dropped out of high school in grade nine and for some reason want to learn about what’s happening at JPL and other high-end labs. If you stuck out grade eleven science courses, you probably know more about what’s going on in the high-tech world than Shatner does.

To each his own, there’s probably an audience for this book out there someplace. But I’m not it.

Reference
Shatner, W. and Walter, C. (2002). I’m working on that: A trek from science fiction to science fact. Star Trek Press.

More a biography of Galileo Galilei than of his daughter, Virginia (who was known for all of her adult life as Suor Maria Celeste), this book is based on actual letters from a daughter to her father. The author mentions that S. Maria Celeste’s collected letters from her father were disposed of by her Mother Superior, a tragic loss to history.

While this biography explores Galileo’s life, describing his publication history, his ideas, and his deep beliefs in science, the scientific method, religion and the Church, it also describes the homely details one would expect in letters from a daughter to her father. The biography includes how many collars she had starched for him, admonitions to return a basket he’d been lent, and pleas for money from the nun (a member of the Poor Claires).

Primarily, this book reminds us that Galileo was not always lauded as the father of modern science. First, he was a man. It reminds us that Galileo’s supposed statement after his guilty verdict at his heresy trial, “But still, it moves!” is apocryphal, and would have been a very, very bad idea (especially with the judges, who could have had him killed, standing right there). It also reminds us that Galileo was not killed for his revolutionary scientific ideas. Instead, he was imprisoned for them, mostly in a very comfortable embassy, though he was charged for at least part of his upkeep.

Galileo’s daughter loved her father very much. It is obvious in the excerpts from her letters printed in the book that she was very fond of him and likewise he of her. Despite the fact that Galileo never married his children’s mother, he clearly cared deeply for all three of the children. He had the Pope legitimize his son when the young man reached adulthood. He also did his best to help the children financially and politically.

Sobel writes in a fairly dry voice, but it’s worth plugging through to see the love and affection between one of the foremost thinkers of the Renaissance and his beloved eldest daughter. The book is also an interesting peek into life in the 17th century: communications technologies, travel, economics, religion and politics. The figures, diagrams and illustrations, including scanned copies of some parts of the original letters, add a great deal to the impact of this historical memoir. The timeline at the end of the book enhances the experience, letting the reader better place certain events in their historical context. Did you know, for example, that Galileo died on January 8th, 1642 and that Isaac Newton was born on December 25 of that same year?

Galileo’s Daughter is definitely worth a look, but I’d borrow a copy, rather than shelling out for the book.

Sobel, D. (1999). Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love. New York: Penguin Putnam.

I was asked to review Chaim Potok’s My Name is Asher Lev, a favourite novel of one AUSU member’s. I ran right out and got a copy:from the bookshelf in my home office. I own this book. I love it. An excuse to re-read an old favourite I didn’t need, but I was happy to take advantage of the situation!

This novel tells the story of Asher Lev, an only child in an Orthodox Jewish family, who is extremely artistically gifted. It describes his early childhood, from his own perspective. His father is actively involved in freeing Soviet Jews from their horrible situation and bringing them to the United States. His mother is a housewife, happy raising her son and keeping house for her husband. As Asher ages, his mother becomes more involved in her husband’s political activism, goes back to school, and starts to do her own good works in support of her community.

Asher’s artistic talent is finally accepted (with difficulty) by his parents, who eventually give in to his constant requests to be taught artistic techniques. Sent to live with a (non-Jewish) art teacher, Asher learns and blossoms and eventually presents his own art show. But what he chooses as his subject, well, it wasn’t the best choice for a good Orthodox Jew.

The book is extremely interesting from a socio-cultural perspective. It offers a non-Jewish person a sympathetic glimpse into the Orthodox Jewish culture of the fifties and sixties. I think anyone who didn’t grow up Orthodox will learn a great deal from this novel. From a parent’s perspective, this book is also about accepting your child and his or her gifts, even if you do not understand them. It’s about the difficult path mothers navigate between having a happy marriage, a happy life, and happy children (for some reason, Asher’s father doesn’t seem as bothered by maintaining balance). Sometimes these goals overlap less than we’d like.

On another level, we learn from Potok the ubiquity of Christian influence in the world. One can’t learn art without knowing the New Testament; many of the great works in the art world are on religious (Christian) subjects. While Canada has no official religion, we are constantly exposed to religious symbolism in secular environments. Does your bank put up a Christmas tree? What about your children’s school? Are all the bank’s patrons Christian? Are all the staff and students at the school? Do those individuals erecting the Christmas trees ever stop to question ‘forcing’ Christian symbols on their non-Christian neighbours? Should they? Do they perceive it as ‘forcing’ their ways on those who do not share them? Do the non-Christians see these practices in the same way?

Any book that makes you stop and think, teaches you something. This book is extremely entertaining to read and is definitely worth your while. My Name is Asher Lev definitely does all of these things. I recommend it to you all.

Reference
Potok, C. (1972). My name is Asher Lev. New York: Anchor Books.

I haven’t done a lot of reading in the last short while. An inability to stay conscious for more than a half-hour cramped my reading style. However, this week I finally finished something new.

Survivor in Death, one of the latest “Eve Dallas” novels from renowned author Nora Roberts (who writes this “…in Death” series under the pseudonym J. D. Robb) is a near-future science-fiction whodunnit cop story. So it must be good, right? After all, near-future science-fiction is good, and whodunnits are good, and cop stories are good…so all of them together must be fabulous!

Well…yes and no. I really like Roberts’ near-future science fiction elements. She has a much more populous New York, with some subtle futuristic touches. People eat a lot less real meat, for example, and a lot more soy ‘simulated’ meats. Fashion is futuristic; some of the descriptions of people’s outfits are wild and crazy, but not that far off from what kids are wearing today (trust me, I work in a high school!). There are other subtle (and not -so subtle) technological advances that I find interesting to contemplate on a slightly deeper level than she chooses to deal with. What, for example, would be the effect of an AutoChef in most homes? Or the sociological effect of having robots as shopkeepers? I wonder. I’m not sure Roberts does. She seems to include them as part of the “well, it’s science fiction, it must have robots” kit.

I also enjoy the story itself. Most of the novels in this series are fairly fast-paced. They involve not only solving a crime (or a series of related crimes), but also a lot about the characters. While some of these are fairly flat, cookie-cutter types, some of the characters have actual growth. Even if they are quite static, the characters are lovable (or hateable, as their role dictates). The novels are all extremely plot-driven. That’s what I need sometimes.

In this particular installment of the series, a family is murdered in their beds, except for the nine-year-old daughter who witnesses the killings from her hiding spot. Eve Dallas, New York Police and Security Department cop, goes after the killers. With her ultra-rich husband, Roarke, whose criminal background is extensive as a civilian consultant on the case (his computer skills are unmatched), Dallas hunts down the bad guys, and takes them away in the end. Sorry to put out a spoiler, there, but you weren’t really expecting anything else, were you?

The part of the novel that I really don’t like is the sex. Okay, it’s a Nora Roberts novel — what did I expect, right? Maybe I was canalized by the science fiction I read in my youth, but somehow I don’t expect characters in an science-fiction novel to be ripping the clothes from each others’ backs and indulging in some focused calisthenics, if you know what I mean. If you want a bit of action in your mystery novel, this might be up your alley, however. I guess what bothers me most about the ‘action’ is that it always has an urgent, angry feel to it, sort of an almost-rape twice per novel like clockwork. Granted, the participants are always a married couple (and it’s completely consensual), and the one initiating the almost-rape is usually the woman, but a little variety in the flavour would be nice.

All in all, this series is, to my mind, one step (perhaps a short step) up from a Harlequin “Passions”-type romance novel. It’s great brain candy, and because it involves a whodunnit, you can rationalize that you’re actually using some critical thinking skills. But, hey”?it’s fun! I wouldn’t run out and buy the whole series in hardcover. But if I happened across one I hadn’t read at the library, I’d probably take it home.

Reference
Robb, J. D. (2005). Survivor in Death. New York: Putnam.

We love to hear from you! Send your questions and comments to voice@ausu.org, and please indicate if we may publish your letter.

RE: STUDENT MOMS by Pam Pelmous

Wow!

I know that I admire all the OTHER moms out there who manage to balance work, family and community, but until I read this article, I didn’t think _I_ was doing anything special.

Thanks for this article–I really felt valued and appreciated reading it. I knew you were talking about ME, as well as all the supermoms I’d been
admiring!

Elizabeth Cousar

I read An Anthropologist on Mars, by world-renowned neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks. This collection of case studies and personal anecdotes has been out for a long time, but if you haven’t read it yet, you really ought to pick it up.

Dr. Sacks believes in getting to know the whole person who is referred to him. He visits his patients, spends a lot of time with them, observes them in their own environments. Most of all, he wants to understand not only the problem that got them the referral, but also what effect or effects that problem has had on other parts of their lives.

For example, in the first case study of a man who suddenly became colourblind after an accident, Dr. Sacks explores not only the physical causes of the man’s colourblindness, but also the depth of loss that the patient felt–which was, conceivably, more than most people would, considering that he was a professional artist who mostly worked in oils. Pigments were essential to his creative self, and, in his concept of himself, which was deeply tarnished by his sudden loss.

There are seven stories in this volume, all of which are different, but all written with care and deliberation, by a greatly intelligent, kind, perceptive man who obviously genuinely cares about the people he sees. He speaks of different kinds of people–an artist, a surgeon, a “dropout” from the 60s, a blind masseur, and of many different neurological problems, as well. This is a very readable primer in some (fairly) common neurological problems, but primarily, it is about treating the whole person.

While treating the whole person is not a new idea, and it sounds a bit warm-and-fuzzy for a serious science book, this collection of narratives really helps the reader understand the problem with a conventional hands-off medical head space. If Dr. Sacks had behaved as a typical neurologist with his patients, he would not have been able to make them come alive on the page–and he would not have been able to treat them with the kindness and compassion that seems to be his trademark.

This book is an old favorite that I decided to re-read. It is between these pages that I first “met” Temple Grandin, who is well-known as a designer of slaughterhouses, because of her almost empathic connection with cattle. She understands them very well, knows what will scare them or confuse them, and thus works to make the experience as pleasant as possible for the animals–much kinder than nature. The fact that Grandin is autistic is interesting, and has shaped her whole life, but almost as much time is devoted to her profession as her condition. This book also contains the story of the man who was blinded as a toddler, but became sighted as an adult. One can read about how babies learn to see in a psychology textbook, but it is much more meaningful to hear about one man’s experience, and how he felt about it (bewildered, mostly).

There are some interesting adventures between the pages of the book, as well. Dr. Sacks scrubbed in on surgeries performed by a surgeon with Tourette’s”?and took a ride in a plane with the same surgeon at the stick. He took the “last hippie” to a Grateful Dead concert in New York. Life is not boring, I guess, when you’re a world famous doctor and author.

Dr. Sacks’ works include The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Awakenings, along with several others. All are warm and human, and worth reading. Not only are they accessible and interesting as stories of exceptional people, but they also contain some curiosity-rousing science.

Reference
Sacks, Oliver. (1995) An Anthropologist on Mars. Toronto: Vintage Canada.