Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood

by Koren Zailckas

I don't know why I'm drawn to stories of troubled girls. I just am. Maybe it's the need to reassure myself that there's ALWAYS someone out there more f%$#ed up than I am (although this book aptly demonstrates that just because all your friends are messed up, and you're less so than they are, being comparatively less messed up does not make you more of a prize). Actually, I don't even think of myself as that f%$#ed up anymore, which I guess, is a good thing. Regardless, this book reminds me of Prozac Nation, which I liked, but disagreed with. And this one seems to frame the solution to the problem a little simply, but hey, I guess if it works for her.

The book is about being an "alcohol abuser", not an alcoholic. Specifically, what it does to a girl's emotional development (and her subsequent relationships) when she develops a habit of binge drinking. She claims that she was emotionally dependent, not physically dependent. And she uses a variety of ways to liken alcohol to a lover. It's an interesting comparison to think about. It made me sad, though, and scared me a little, 'cause I sympathized with her at several points in the book(as if by sympathizing with her, it meant that I was admitting a problem).

"That's the thing about social drinking: In the end, it's the drinking that creates the scene, not the other way around. Your grow to relish the buzz, regardless of the situation. Once you're there, really there inside that moment, with its neighborly wamth and conversation, it's hard to tell what's responsible for producing emotion. What's responsible for the light-headed feeling? Is it the Molson, or the boy who is running his fingers through the ends of your hair? Are you chatty because you're drunk, or because you're connecting with someone on a level that you have never before experienced? To an outsider, the distinction is an easy one to make. But when you're fifteen and female, when you experience these feelings first and later only when you are drinking, it becomes a question of which came first, the liquor or the Greg?"

"Elle is the ideal friend to have in moments of melodrama. She will dive into conflict with you so that you'll have company, instead of pulling you out. She will smack down her MasterCard on the bar and tell whoever is listening to "Keep 'em comin'." She happily play the decoy so you can maintain some semblance of self-respect, making the big distracting bang that prevents people from noticing while you drink until you're gone.

Elle is not the friend who puts one hand on your cheek and coos "It will be okay." Elle is the friend who stands on the bar stools and hurls bottles, the one who understands pain so completely, even when it's not directly her pain, that she doubles over and sobs. She reminds me that this is not okay, that 'This is bullshit.'"

Conversations at random: survey research as interviewers see it

by Jean M. Converse and Howard Schuman.

So, my part-time summer job, (which I have in addition my regular one, which extended its summer hours for me to full time) involves interviewing people for a research study. It's studying how parents make decisions about their children's health (particularly with respect to the environment). It seems like an interesting project, and something that's important to know about. Something that might better the world, somehow. But I have no experience interviewing people - I've had classes where we talked about it, and how to avoid bias, but never really done it. I thought this might be my chance, and a chance to be inside (and not from a design perspective) a huge federal research project.

So the project director recommended a few books for me. One was a chapter from a book called "Asking Questions: A Ppractical Guide to Questionnaire Design" about how to ask threatening questions (or questions that people may feel uncomfortable answering). And another book she recommended was this one - she hadn't read it, she just picked it from our library's meager resources, thinking it looked interesting and relevant.

And it was. It talked more about the kind of social science research where you would go sit in people's homes for an hour or so and ask them questions than the type of interviewing I'll be doing, but it was fascinating. It discussed common mistakes that interviewers make (like getting too close to the respondent or trying to stay too distanced from), and injecting their own bias and expectations into their responses, or getting caught up in situations or disagreements of the respondents. I really liked the book, and I think it'll be helpful in my experience, and it made me even more excited about the job, about the peeks it will offer into other peoples' experiences and thoughts.

Man Walks into a Room

by Nicole Krauss

This is an amnesiac novel - the main character loses 24 years of his memory to a brain tumor. He's found wandering in the desert, not knowing his name, not knowing his wife or what he does.

I don't really know how I found this novel. I think Amazon.com recommended another one of this author's books, and I could only find this one in the Georgia Library System, and so, in a fit of frustration, I requested that it make a journey to me from UGA. And it was there, so I read it. And I'm glad.

It's a really good book. The end tends to drag a bit (there's only so long that a person could reflect on their loneliness without starting to frustrate people.) And the characters at the end were well drawn, but seemed more like archetypes in terms of the plot line... It's like the author couldn't help fleshing them out, but didn't really know what to do with them once she got there. But it was beautifully written. Made me want to give everyone I know and love a hug, try to fix them in my mind against the possibility of this sort of thing happening.

"'You know, sometimes I get the feeling that we're just a bunch of habits,' she said. 'The guestures we repeat over and over, they're just our need to be recognized.' Her eyes fixed on the TV, as if she were reading subtitles. 'I mean that without them we would be unidentifiable. We'd have to reinvent ourselves every minute.'....

She exhaled and dropped the cigarette into a glass, where it fizzled, and as she got up to brush her teeth she leaned in close and breathy as a nightclub and kissed his neck....The kiss stayed there with no place to go, no sensory reserve tha could absorb it and file it a way as a common act of intimacy, a thousand times received. He knew what Anna was asking: whether you could love someone without habits."

"'The misery of other people is only an abstraction,' Ray insisted, 'something that can be sympathized with only by drawing from one's own experiences. But as it stands, true empathy remains impossible. And so long as it is, people will continue to suffer the pressure of their seemingly singular existence.'

'And mistreat each other, won't they?'

Ray nodded. 'Horrendously."

Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination

by Helen Fielding

Fun book. Much more so than the last two. Kind of a chick-flick meets action/adventure. Made to be turned into a movie. I enjoyed it though, and had a hard time putting it down, even after bitching to Bettsie about how silly it was. Did like the Rules for Living though:

"1. Never Panic. Stop, breathe, think.
2. No one is thinking about you. They're thinking about themselves, just like you.
3. Never change haircut or color before an important event.
4. Nothing is either as bad or good as it seems.
5. Do as you would be done by, e.g., thou shalt not kill.
6. It is better to buy one expensive thing that you really like than several cheap ones that you only quite like.
7. Hardly anything really matters: if you get upset, ask yourself, 'Does it really matter?'
8. The key to success lie in how you pick yourself up from failure.
9. Be honest and kind.
10. Only buy clothes that make you feel like doing a small dance.
11. Trust your instincts, not your overactive imagination.
12. When overwhelmed by disaster, check if it's really a disaster by doing the following: (a) think, 'Oh, f#*@ it,' (b) look on the bright side and, if that doesn't work, look on the funny side. If neither of the above works then maybe it is a disaster so turn to items 1 and 4.
13. Don't expect the world to be safe or life to be fair.
14. Sometimes you have to go with the flow.
15. Don't regret anything. Remember there wasn't anything else that could have happened, given who you were and the state of the world at that moment. The only thing you can change is the present, so learn from the past." (p. 79-80)

Lucky

by Alice Sebold

This is a book about a rape and its aftermath. About a college freshman and her struggles to get past being a victim.

It's a hard book to read. The first 50 pages made me feel physically ill. I had to put the book down and take a break from it. Remember that people aren't awful. But I wasn't able to put it down for long. There's a very developed sense of connection to the reader, as if by listening to her story, by hearing her out, I could lessen the pain for the young coed who reminded me so much of girls I knew. So I started the book on Friday and finished it on Sunday.

The Lovely Bones (her previous novel) made me cry. This one made me ill, and made me angry. I don't have any quotes from it because it's not so much that particular turns of phrase made me think, but the work as a whole. Not a fun book to read, and I don't really know who I would recommend it to, but as a work that absorbed the reader and conveyed an awful experience, it was amazing.

Identity

by Milan Kundera

Same guy who wrote "The Unbearable Lightness of Being". A friend of mine went on a Kundera kick, and recommended a few of his books to me, and when I saw this one at the used bookstore, I hoped it was one of those.

It's an interesting book about people in love, about people growing older, and about how people view themselves in the light that others view them. Don't know that I liked the end of the book - seemed more symbolic than a real course of action that these people would take.

A couple good quotes from it:
"It is always that way: between the moment he meets her again and the moment he recognizes her for the woman he loves, he has some distance to go... If, before that one-on-one encounter, he had spent much time with her as she was among other people, would he have recognized her as the beloved being? If he had known her only with hte face she shows her colleagues, her bosses, her subordinates, would that face have moved and enchanted him? To these questions he has no answer."

"To ensure that the self doesn't shrink, to see tha t it holds on to its volume, memories have to be watered like potted plants, and the watering calls for regular contact with the witnesses of our past, that is to say, our friends. They are our mirror; our memory; we ask nothing of them but that they polish the mirror from time to time so that we can look at ourselves in it."

"Everything changed when I met you. Not because my little jobs became more exciting. But because everything that happens around me I turn into fodder for our conversations." "We could talk about other things!" "Two people in love, alone, isolated from the world, that's very beautiful. But what would they nourish their intimate talk with? However contemptible the world may be, they still need it to be able to talk together." "They could be silent." "Like those two, at the next table?" Jean Marc laughed. "Oh, no, no love can survive muteness."

"Why are we living? To provide God with human flesh. Because the Bible, my dear lady, does not ask us to seek the meaning of life. It asks us to procreate. Love one another and procreate. Understand this: the meaning of that 'love one another' is determined by that 'procreate.' That 'love one another' carries absolutely no implication of charitable love, of compassionate, spiritual, or passionat love, it only means verys simply 'make love!' 'copulate' (he drops his void and leans to her) 'f[#%&]!'" (Like a devout disciple, docilely, the woman gazes nto his eyes.) "That, and that alone, constitutes the meaning of human life. All the rest is bulls[#%&]."

American Tabloid

by James Ellroy

Be prepared - it's bloody. Maybe it's just because I finished it the same weekend I saw Kill Bill 2, but geez... I guess that's what you get for reading books about the Mafia, the Kennedys, J. Edgar Hoover, spooks, and Hollywood. I got sucked in, and I want to read another one of his books, but I feel like I'll have to put rubber gloves on and lay plastic sheeting down before I do.

You got to Dance with Them What Brung You

by Molly Ivins

Great fun. Still on my way through it, but it's set up in nice little chunks that make for quick reading. Texas (liberal) political commentary, and hilarious.

"The impulse to make ourselves safer by making ourselves less free is an old one, even here. When we are badly frightened, we think we can make ourselves safer by sacrificing some of our liberties. We did it during the McCarthy era out of fear of communism. Less liberty is regularly proposed as as solution to crime, to pornography, to illegal immigration, to abortion, to all kinds of threats. But we shall not let evil cowards make us less free.

Fanatics have always said, 'Things have to get worse before they can get better.' Such evil nonsense. And mothers have always replied, 'Not with my child's life.'"

"Hate speech is fertilizer for bombs."

Code

by Lawrence Lessig

Read for my Internet Policy class, Fall 2004.

This book argues that the libertarian origins of the Internet (anti-Big Brother and all) created a state where the private sector has more power in that arena than the government. Which wouldn't be too bad, except it's not as transparent (or at least, not required to be) as government entities are... So he argues that the code that programmers write is becoming as important as the laws that legislators write, in terms of defining options about what will exist for the future of technology.

It's an interesting arguement. Not sure that I buy it completely, but good food for thought. It's hard to think of code as an immutatble force (one protected by proprietary agreements), but it does frame the debate about who should control the Internet in a new way (at least for me).