6 posts from March 2008

The Age of American Unreason is about the dumbing down of the United States in many areas: belief in creationism

and in biblical inerrancy, the inability of students to locate countries on a map, widespread innumeracy, civic illiteracy, and the media's promotion of junk science, to name but a few examples.  She lays the blame on the video revolution, on the ascendancy of cultural studies in universities, and of course on the religious right.

She laments the passing of middlebrow culture, which encouraged non-academics to better themselves with good reading.  As a librarian, I'm also sad to see the end of that era, and to see how uninterested the library community is in preserving it.  These days, the public library culture is mostly about mass-marketing and giving 'em (the presumably stupid public) what they want, meaning what the publishers tell them to want. Read your James Patterson and like it, you dumb slob, because the library is going to buy 20 copies. Meanwhile, we're discarding our Michener books (Jacoby looks fondly on those fat middlebrow tomes) because they don't circulate enough.

Of all the books I've read about suicide attempts, A Long Way Down is the funniest.  Nick Hornby takes four disparate

characters, places them on a ledge on New Year's Eve, and lets them interact.  Fortunately, they don't jump - hence the title.  Having decided, temporarily, to live, they form an unstable and often hilarious alliance that helps each of them learn to survive.  Hornby is very conscious of not being hokey and inspirational, yet the book ends up being moving.  

I could have done with fewer pop culture references, but I'm told that's Hornby.

Today Bill Clinton stumped for Hillary in my town.  I arrived three hours early to ensure a good spot, and he was (predictably) about an hour late, so my poor aching back and my poor aching feet, oy vey.

But it was worth it.  Bill gave a good speech.  It wasn't bombast and cheerleading, it was very policy-wonkish and Clintonesque, and a good way to remind me why I'm for Hillary - it's the policy, not the charisma, that I favor.

The audience was heavily female, and I suppose the press would spin that negatively, but why? why?  Why shouldn't women unite and vote for someone who will uphold their interests?

(Oh, and I shook Bill's hand! Squee!)  

Darkly Dreaming Dexter has been languishing on my to-read list for a couple of years, and I finally picked it up.  The gimmick of the book is that the "hero" of the book is a serial killer, but we're supposed to sympathize with him because he only kills other serial killers. He's a blood-splatter analyst with the Miami police department.  In this book,

the first of the series, he gets involved with crime solving to help out his sister, who's trying to advance her career in the department.  I didn't care much for the book.  I saw the ending coming a mile away, the Miami setting didn't interest me, and amazingly enough, I didn't like the hero. Call me judgmental. Serial killers, I just have problems with them.

I'm voting for Hillary because of the breadth and depth of her experience, because her health care plan is the best one out there, and yes, because she's a woman.  I wouldn't vote for her just because she's a woman, but my goodness, doesn't it help?

Redemption is an indictment of the animal shelter industry in the United States, and a blueprint for creating a No Kill Nation.  As shelter director, Nathan Winograd  helped the Tompkins County (NY) SPCA become the nation's first and only No Kill/Open Admission shelter.  The book tells how they did it and how most other shelters in the country are

failing miserably.  I agree with the premise of the book and I understand Winograd's passion and urgency, but I wish the tone of the book were a little less strident. When he says, for example, that most shelter managers in the country should be fired, the very people who should heed him will stop listening.