Are You a Geek? by Tim Collins
Having grown tired of reading heavy nonfiction books, I paid a visit to my local Barnes and Noble the other day in search of some light, humorous reading. I stumbled upon Are You A Geek? by Tim Collins, and having always considered myself a geek extrordinaire, I purchased it hoping to receive quick and concrete confirmation.
This 139 page gem (or 10001011 if you wish, as all page numbers are also written in binary,) is formatted like an online quiz. There are eleven sections covering topics such as “Social Life” and “Communication Skills.” Each section contains a series of statements the respondant either gains or loses points for agreeing with, such as “Your sex life was transformed when you got a broadband connection” (2 points.)
I got through this book in a matter of hours, laughing heartily throughout. Some of my favorite parts were the bonus point sections. In one of them, a bunch of popular geek movies, like The Matrix and the Star Wars franchise are listed and you get a point for each time you have seen each movie. Thanks to TNT and USA for their incessant airing of the Back to the Future trilogy, I topped 150 points in that bonus alone!
Most of the humor is generation specific so if you were born before 1970 this book is probably not for you. But for 27 year old me it was a howler! The next time I have friends over I am definitely gonna whip this one out and let us all laugh at how dorky we are. If you need a little more humor in your life I would highly recommend picking this book up.
And, just in case you were wondering, the test confirmed that I am, in fact, a geek. Live well and prosper.
Reversals by Eileen Simpson
The title of this well crafted memoir refers not only to the
author’s dyslexia, a learning disability that causes sufferers to transpose letters and numbers, but to her great turnaround from frustrated non-reader to eloquent writer.
The book itself serves as one of the biggest incentives to start and continue reading. Opening on a fourth grade classroom where her new teacher is ridiculing her in front of the class for not being able to read aloud, eventually reducing the eight year old Simpson to tears, the images are so strong and so heart breaking the reader automatically wants to find out how that scared little girl came to write such an engaging memoir.
Simpson’s trials as a dyslexic during the time when dyslexia was just starting to be recognized range from the damaging to the devious. There is the aforementioned classroom ridicule, learning to recite text from memory while looking at an open book in order to appear as though she was reading, and her reliance on cheating and buying term papers off of others in order to pass her classes in high school. Her struggles mirror those of the closeted homosexual or the light skinned African-American wrestling with the question of whether the benefits of passing as “normal” are worth the constant fear of exposure?
Her journey into literacy is remarkable in that it was almost entirely self-motivated and taught. Young Simpson learned to enjoy reading in college despite the frequent challenges of being unable to understand what she had read or keep names and situations straight. All that reading defintely paid off. Simpson has quite a way with words. She sprinkles the text with images and metaphors so memorable, so concrete they seem effortless.
Simpson’s continuing thirst for knowledge lead her to pursue a masters degree in psychology, and she eventually became a practicing therapist. Not long after, she began writing and publishing articles. She admits writing never is and never will be easy for her, but her desire to communicate has driven her to constantly battle a disability that attempts, and continually fails, to hold her back. Her story is not a simple or easy one, but it is gripping and will hold your attention till the final page.
The Hungry Gene by Ellen Ruppel Shell
When I plucked this title from the stacks at a college library book give away last week I was not expecting it to hold my interest. I found the title and subject intriguing but doubted the writer’s ability to bring the subject to life, for no other reason then I’d never come across a writer who could. Then again, I haven’t attempted to read many books on the obesity epidemic in America, so I probably have no business making such grand statements. In any case, I was immensely pleased to discover tight prose jam packed with scientific fun facts about obesity!
Don’t let the previous sentence fool you, this is no light read. Accomplished science journalist Ellen Ruppel Shell has written a book that will make you re-evaluate not just what you put in your mouth, but why you make the food choices you do and precisely how your particular tastes developed. She takes the reader on a fascinating journey through the weight loss industry starting with the science of weight loss surgery, continuing on to the search for obesity related genes, the manufacture and use of diet pills, and ending up discussing the way fast food is marketed to the masses.
One of the great strengths of this work is Shell’s ability to weave a story. The scientists profiled aren’t just M.D.’s, they are individuals who smoke cigars and garden in their spare time. She makes a point of describing their homes and noting their individual idiosyncrasies, creating a world full of characters the reader wants to follow into the lab, where we find professional backstabbing and greed.
Shell explains the science in a straight forward and easy to grasp manner. She writes of how genetics influence body weight and how environmental factors, such as an abundant intake of unhealthy food or a regular exercise regimen, can work with or against a genetic predisposition to obesity. Ultimately, Shell proposes food marketing and consumption be regulated much as the tobacco industry is, suggesting consumers pay additional tax on grossly unhealthy foods and putting limits on marketing directed toward children.
I am still trying to figure out if I agree with Shell’s conclusions. However, this book was so engaging, so well written; now I’m interested in delving further into the subject. Perhaps I’ll read a book that takes the opposing view that the obesity epidemic has been greatly exaggerated. This work got me thinking and I suspect that was one of Shell’s goals. Mission accomplished.
The Wounded Storyteller by Arthur W. Frank
On the third page of the Preface, Frank says flat out that “this is a work of theory.” His aim, as put forth on page 3, is to figure out how we can make ”sense of illness stories as being told through the diseased body.” With such an upfront description of what was to follow, I don’t know why I was surprised at finding myself frustrated with the material two chapters in.
At its core, Frank’s thesis is simple. He wants to convince the reader that the telling of illness stories is a moral act. He claims medical culture acts to silence the ill, and by finding the language with which to convey a story of illness, the storyteller enters into a moral relationship with the person to whom he or she is telling the story. By telling the story, the storyteller not only organizes his or her thoughts and feelings about a body that has become alien, but he or she acts as a witness to his or her own suffering. This testimony charges the listener to take the story and learn from it. Frank claims that a moral listener will hear of another person’s suffering and become mobilized to help others who are suffering. They can help by doing activist work, by telling their own stories, by helping the sick, or by simply listening to more people.
Obviously, the book was clear enough to leave me with a decent understanding of its contents. Even so, while the theory whore in me enjoyed most of the text, there were several aspects of it that kept tripping me up. One was Frank’s tendency to continually repeat the point he was making. He would make one point, than reiterate it in the following paragraph, and then again in the paragraph after that. Now, I can understand the logic in reiterating a point that was made in an early chapter but does not come into play until a later one. In that case a reader may need to be reminded. But considering that most people would not choose a theory book as pleasure reading, I’d think he would imagine his readers intelligent enough not to require the repeated explaining of a point two sentences after it has already been fully explained to them.
Another was his refusal to define words used throughout the text to describe his theory. For example, the term “postmodern” is used liberally yet, on page 4 he writes, “Illness has come to feel different during the last twenty years, and today the sum of those differences can be labeled postmodern. I make no attempt to define postmodernism; the utility of the term lies only in thick descriptions of the feel of the differences.” What? The problem with this is the word postmodern isn’t used solely to describe the narratives he references in later chapters. It is used to describe aspects of his theory and having no definition of the term makes those descriptions sound esoteric and meaningless.
And then there’s his decision to spend an entire chapter describing terms he uses maybe six or seven times throughout the course of the rest of the text, terms that could have been sufficiently described in a single paragraph!
What I’m getting at with all of this is Frank seems to have a skewed sense of what is important to the text and what is not. You need to provide the reader with definitions of otherwise nebulous terms you plan to use repeatedly. But, the reader is not stupid, so you do not need to over explain those definitions.
That aside, Frank has provided us with a fine theoretical framework within which to tell and listen to illness stories. After finishing this book I found myself applying Frank’s theories to other books and stories I was reading. And, though I’m not sure I whole heartedly agree with Frank that storytelling is a moral act, he gave me more than enough good material to chew on and experiment with. If you can get past all the extraneous content, you will probably enjoy this thoughtful book.
