Asymmetrical Information

I dunno, among the things I'm reading now I am in the process of re-reading "Heart of Darkness," and while the story is gripping I keep noticing how dreary the prose is - the whole book is like one of those stretches of Tolkein where he talks about the landscape. It's the kind of book where I sometimes realize I've read an entire page and not absorbed a whit of it.

O'Rourke's book, on the other hand, is the best explanation of American government you could hope to read. You can't top his analysis of farm policy, for example. Although I'm sure he now regrets saying that you pay attention to Afghanistan at your peril.

I hate to hijack a comments section, but it's only slight -- does anyone have any good suggestions for 'lawyer fiction' for an early teen? I have a sister who is unusually precocious and who currently desires to be a lawyer; she's too old for Harry Potter and this seems to be the next good idea.

suggestions to dnjco@yahoo.com; thanks all.

Persepolis: The story of a childhood. I don't quite know where to put this: it's a semi-autobiographical graphic novel by a woman who grew up in Iraq . . .

Marjane Satrapi grew up in Iran.

Yipes! Now fixed.

Klug,

I don't know of any "lawyer fiction", but The Art of Cross-Examination by Francis Wellman is easy reading and utterly fascinating. It's non-fiction and only exposes the reader to litigation/criminal trials, but it's very well written and (to me) a fun read besides.

Tolstoy is for me the greatest novelist ever, still I don't think the major novels are as wonderful as his novella Hadji Murad, read that twice, most of the subtleties escaped me the first time through. It is remains of relevance to terrorism, Russia, the Caucasus, and the contemporary Middle East.

Oh, come on now Jane. Nobody reads War and Peace, it's sole purpose is to level out legs on tables or to make pressed cuban sandwiches.

I am however, currently re-reading Churchill's History of the English speaking Peoples. Which by the way is also excellent for the aforementioned purposes.

How We Got Here, by David Frum. [...] In the process, I've developed an enormous crush on David Frum.

Yikes. This isn't going to turn into an Elizabeth Spiers/Christopher Hitchens thing, is it?

1) O'Rourke's chapter on farm policy is one of the best - and unfortunately, most timeless - pieces of political writing ever.
2) Did you ever read Pollack's previous book?

Pie? Did someone say pie? Best fall pie ever. This is a variation of my current favorite: Apple Sour Cream Pie

Yield: 8 servings

Ingredients:
Crust:
Prepare single 9 inch pie crust for baking.

Filling:
Mix the following:
3/4 cup sugar
2 Tbsp flour
1/8 tsp salt

Beat and combine the flour mixture:
1 cup dairy sour cream
1 Tbsp vanilla
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1 egg

Stir in:
2 cups chopped tart apples

Pour in pastry shell. Sprinkle with brown sugar. Bake at 375 degrees for 45 minutes.

I've long thought "Heart of Darkness" as, word for word, the finest novel in the english language, and to think that a non-native english speaker wrote it leaves me feeling more than a little wanting. I'd highly recommend reading a Conrad biography, which is in itself a great story.

If I remember correctly, O'Rourke finishes his great, great book with the apt words of, "The whores are us."

Also, a screamingly funny read is Joe Queenan's "Red Lobster, Blue Lagoon", the idea for which began as Queenan passed under the marquee for "Cats" for the 5000th time, and wondered, "How bad can it be?". What follows is a hilarious exploration of American pop culture.

I'm a big Conrad fan, and while I agree with Will that HoD is a fantastically written novel, it's not even close to being my favorite Conrad book-- probably because it's the tool of so many heavy-handed English teachers. That, and HoD books like it are Conrad at his most nihilistic-- characters have no forseable future. "The Outpost of Progress," and his first book, "Almayer's Folly" are like that. Bad things happen to people on rivers in Conrad's novels.

I love his supernatural fiction, like "The Shadow-Line" and "The Secret Sharer," and I feel like weeping at the thought of some of some of his tragedies, especially "Freya of the Seven Isles," followed by "The End of the Tether."

For his novels, "Lord Jim" and "The Rover" are among his best, but "The Secret Agent" and "The Arrow of Gold" are superb works of characters and setting, to say nothing at all of his plots, which are minimal, but adequate to let the rich characters do their own thing.

And for sea-stories, there's the amusing short "Youth," which is told by Charlie Marlow of HoD, the surreal "Typhoon," and the absolutely top-notch "The Nigger of the 'Narcissus'" which will never get its full recognition because of its anachronistic title.

Once I got over having been assigned HoD in school, I since realized that I should've been reading Conrad as soon as I learned to read. I've still got a few of his books ahead of me ("Chance," "Victory," "The Black Mate," "Nostromo," "Under Western Eyes"), so w00t!

If you're interested in the days of the pioneers, I heartily recommend "Old Jules", by Maria Sandos. It's non-fiction, Sandos' biography of her father, the scion of a wealthy family who dropped out of college and and went to western Nebraska in the late 1800s. Gives you a feel for not only how rough it was on the frontier, but how terrible it must have been everywhere else that people were willing to go out West. Jules Sandos was a thoroughly unpleasant person, but Maria still loved her father.

Robin Hobb is such an excellent writer and that series is just top, top notch. I was a little worried when I saw the first person narrative, but it won me over quick.

Its been the best series since I read George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series.

For non-fiction, I would strongly suggest The Balkan Wars: Conquest, Revolution, and Retribution from the Ottoman Era to the Twentieth Century and Beyond by Andre Gerolymatos. Its an amazingly well-written history that reads like a novel.

As for lawyer fiction, how about the novels by Peri OShaughnessy?

I'll confess to mixed feelings about War and Peace, but largely because the discussions and tests were in Russian. So Megan is on the right track on that point, although one wonders if War and Peace would have been as highly acclaimed as it was had it been published under its original title: War---What Is It Good For?

"Lawyer fiction"? Try Henry Cecil's A Woman Named Ann, which is set rather effectively in a 1960s British divorce court. It is neither too thick nor too thin, and the prose moves quickly with ample wit, finishing off with a nice crisp plot twist. I'm not sure if it's still in print, although it's available from Amazon.com Marketplace vendors. Or maybe try a library. (Cecil has written other works of legal fiction although I haven't read them -- I probably should.)

Cookbooks: The Betty Crocker cookbook should be a staple in every kitchen. It doesn't exactly rhyme with 'exotic' but it has lots of recipes that always turn out just as they ought.

Balzac - anything by Balzac.

And Stendhal - anything by Stendhal.

Klug - Try John Mortimer's Rumpole books. With the laudable side effect that the kid'll be quoting Wordsworth all the time.

Heart of Darkness was a turkey, but the movie was good. But what do I know? I'm just an errand boy. Sent by grocery clerks. To collect a bill.

What I'm Reading (or re-reading) Now:

According to my count, Jane is now reading (not counting the poetry and cookbooks) twelve different tomes. Is that possible? I'm a one-book-at-a-time dude myself, blind ambition notwhithstanding. If I even open up a second book before finishing the first, the completion of both books is at risk.

And War and Peace really is a tremendous read, FWIW. And yes, it can be too short (it was for me) in the sense of "gosh I don't want this really great book to end".

Jane, the best opening line of all time comes from Anthony Burgess' _Earthly Powers_:

"It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me."

When _Anna Karenina_ first came out (I mean the Pevear translation) I managed to email him and ask when he was going to translate _War and Peace_. He told me someone else was already on the job, but it's been a couple years since then and I'm still waiting to read it. Maybe he'll pick up the translation after all, given the recent popularity of _Anna_ after Oprah picked it up.

My favorite cookbook these days is the Dean & DeLuca Cookbook - comfort food for the new millenium, is what I call it.

If you're looking for a good cookbook, try Alton Brown's "I'm Just Here for the Food". It's not so much a collection of recipies (although it does have some) as an introduction to various cooking methods. Brown explains the science behind cooking, but in a very entertaining way. He also has a series on the Food Network ("Good Eats"), which, aside from being an excellent guide for beginning or intermediate cooks, is also laugh-out-loud funny.

I have to second the recommendation of P J O'Rourke; Parliament of Whores is an hilarious and revealing book. I must say that Eat the Rich is still my favorite--the description of Albania alone ("such a mess that Italians driving around in armor-plated vehicles made it safer") i salmost worth the purchase price.

"History of the English-Speaking Peoples"; what history, done by a master writer with a point of view, can be like. May be the best history book I've ever read.

"Lawyer Fiction"; it's probably not what you have in mind, but several of Dickens novels have court proceedings as key parts of the plot--most notably "Pickwick Papers" and "Bleak House".

There's actually a trick for reading Russian literature. I ran into it serendipitously while working on Solzhenitsyn's 1914 (trying to work on it and the time-synced bits of Churchill's The Global Crisis at the same time).

The trick is to read it drunk or tired. Yes, really. Most of it was probably written drunk as well (remember, that wasn't such a shocking idea back when it was written, maybe even now in Russia).

Anyway, if you read it drunk, 1914 and a test chapter of War and Peace become right page-turners. Maybe I'll have to take advantage of the holidays to make some progress on War and Peace...

Oh, I do strongly recommend Churchill's The Global Crisis and Second World War. His earlier River War, on British Victorian involvement in the Sudan, however, is merely good.

I haven't read anything she's written under the name Robin Hobb - I've been hesitant to start long series in the last few years, focussing mainly on short stories and stand-alone novels. But her early novel written as Megan Lindholm, Wizard of the Pigeons, is also a great fantasy - homeless people in a Pacific Northwest city (Seattle, I think) using interestingly constrained magic to fight off an encroaching evil that nobody else seems to notice.

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