The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs can be simply yet accurately described as an amusing book. It follows the misadventures of German Philology professor Dr. Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, author of Portuguese Irregular Verbs, a self-involved yet affable character who is too much the stereotypical academic to be identifiable but enough to be somewhat believable. I particularly appreciate that while Igelfeld is shown as arrogant and bumbling, he’s also shown to be an actually respected scholar. His one and only book may be tedious and ultimately insignifcant, but it is well regarded by those few who’ve read it. The point being that Igelfeld is amusing without being a buffoon.
The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs is the 2nd book in the Igelfeld trilogy, the first one is called Portuguese Irregular Verbs and tomorrow I’ll rush to get it out of the library. I have a feeling that its pure silliness is exactly what I need to pick me up when I’m feeling a bit down.
Finally, for some reason the humor of this book reminded me of Dom Camillo by Giovanni Guareshi, the humorous stories of a parish Priest in Italy and his arch-enemy the communist mayor. I hadn’t thought of that book in years, even though I named my last baby Camila, but now I’m set to read those ttories all over again.
Category: Books (Page 8 of 11)
My blog has become mostly a series of book reviews. Alas, I’m not doing much lately beyond going out with my girls or reading. And my memory has become so flitting, that if I don’t write about the books I read I’m afraid I’ll forget about them soon. Not that I’d mind forgetting about Out, a novel by Japanese writer Natsuo Kirino. With paper thin characters and an absolute lack of suspense, it was one of the most boring crime novels I’ve ever read.
The novel concerns four Japanese women who work at the night shift at the factory, and deal (or avoid dealing) with their own issues of loneliness and alienation from their families and society at large. When the husband of one of them turns abusive after gambling all the family savings away, the wife kills him in a fit of anger. For different reasons (including monetary) the other three women help the killer by dismembering the body.
We know who the women are, and soon we find out enough about them to make us feel we know them, so there is no “whodunit” aspect to the novel. The women are presented as shallow characters, burdened by difficult lives and perhaps depression, but without enough depth to make their involvement in the murder a psychological thriller. The same thing can be said about the couple of men, both former gangsters, who fortuitously get involved in the situation. They seem more like stock characters (alas, with a Japanese flair) than actual people. But what makes the novel really maddening is how every character seems to have an uncanny ability to figure out what everybody else has done and how they function psychologically. This takes away even the pleasure of seeing a character follow clues and slowly (or even through a moment of insight) figure out what�s going on. Everyone knows everything, everyone�s motives are shallow and base, and there is no payoff at the end.
Still, Kirino is a famous writer in Japan and this book was even nominated for an Edgar when published in English, so there may be something good about it. Perhaps you need to have a deeper understanding of Japanese culture to “get it”, whatever “it” be. Or perhaps you just need to look at the book from another angle than that of a mystery or thriller. In any case, it didn�t work for me.
Salon is one of my favorite sources for information and I particularly like them for their seasonal book recommendations. They’ve guided me to some very unusual and interesting books such as The Hamilton Case and The Ghost Writer. But they failed me completely in recommending Cast of Shadows. Its author, Kevin Guilfoile, is a Salon contributor so I am somewhat suspicious that the good review is due to editorial bias. Still, the book has gotten good reviews at Amazon and apparently (at least according to its website) has been well received by book critics. Let me then be the lone voice of decent who calls it like it is: “Cast of Shadows” is a lousy techno-thriller and Guilfoile a wannabe poor man’s Michael Crichton.
The novel concerns a doctor who specializes in cloning human beings. After his daughter is killed by an unknown assailant, he decides to clone the DNA left on the scene so that, one day, he’ll be able to know what his daughter’s killer looks like. The premise isn’t bad, but the plot – including its few twists and turns – is whole predictable. There are absolutely no surprises, everything is telegraphed chapters ahead so that there is no “thrill” left in accopanying the characters through their journey. Moreover, the characters themselves are shallowly drawned, they are basically stock characters with no inner lives or complexities, adding that to the fact that we know what will happen to them makes it very hard to care for their fates.
The language in the book doesn’t flow well and reading it sometimes becomes cumbersome. The dialogue seemed forced and it was often tedious to read. This is Mr. Guilfoile’s first novel, so I wonder if the techniques of non-fiction writing just don’t translate well into the fictional realm.
Worst of all, the book missed a great opportunity to at least present the issues on the human cloning debate. It showed religious fanatics opposing it and killing doctors who cloned people (a la abortion providers), and a scientific community that universaly approved of it, but it didn’t make a case (much less a good case) for either side. Most importantly, it never even asked, much less answered the question of why cloning was a better alternative than artificial insemination.
In all, I found this book boring and formulaic and I cannot recommend it.
I’m not a big reader of parenting books but I saw Unconditional Parenting at the library, was intrigued by the title and impressed by its long list of references. If somebody is telling me how to raise my children, I’d like to see what they say justified by some research.
The book presents a very simple idea: parents should not just love, but approve of their children unconditionally, and should therefore not subject them to either negative or positive judgements. That means, parents shouldn’t punish or criticize their children for bad behavior, but also that they shouldn’t reward them or praise them for good behavior. Ultimately, parents shouldn’t be trying to control their children.
Despite, or perhaps because I am a pretty controlling and judgemental person, I completely agree with this philosophy. I find many problems with the concept of controling a child. First, I think that it destroys trust. Ultimately, I want my child to do what I say because she trusts that I do know best in that specific instance and that I have her best interest at heart, not just because I say so. I want my child to question authority – be it the government’s, her teacher’s or mine – and I want to learn to trust my child, so that I can help her build trust on herself. Controlling her goes against that core idea.
For the first 2 1/2 years of Mika’s life, I never really had to face the issue of discipline. My expectations of Mika are fairly low (or, as I would say, realistic given her age) and she never really did anything “bad”. But we started having some behavior issues after the baby was born – her disobeying me, throwing things to the floor, deliberately peeing and pooping in the floor of her room, crying all the way home. I must confess that at first I didn’t react well to this behavior. The baby (the probably cause of the behavior in the first place) was consuming much of my time and I was too tired and sleepy to engage Mika. So instead I “punished” her. By this I mean I showed her I was angry at her, I yelled at her and even sent her to her room in several occasions. Yes, they were terrible things for me to do and I’m quite sorry and ashamed of it. And of course the behavior didn’t improve. Finally (after getting some advise from others) I decided to deal with the cause of the behavior rather than punish her for it, so I started being more sympathetic towards her, responding to her aggression in a more loving way, accepting her issues, and generally engaging her more throughout the day. The “bad” behavior stopped.
Indeed, “working with the child” is what Mr. Kohn recommends. That requires trust both on the child and yourself as a parent, and having the energy and the time to put into it, but I do believe that it pays off in the not-so-long run.
I was also glad to read Mr. Kohn’s views against using “rewards” to control a child’s behavior. I’ve always been uncomfortable with the idea of rewards, which seem to be little more than bribes to me. Now, I have used bribes in the past and I’m sure I’ll continue using them (in a more limited basis, I hope) in the future, but I hate the idea of having to pay my child to comply with my requests. Plus it creates a bad precedent and they seem to go against self motivation.
But I am more uncomfortable with Mr. Kohn’s position that “praise” is no different from material rewards, and should not be given to modify a child’s behavior. I understand his point. On the one hand, we should not be judgemental of our children. We should approve of them unconditionally and not reward them with our praise (approval) just when they do something we like. Moreover, children should develop their own internal motivators and praise, as an external motivator, may impede these from arising. On the other hand, I am not sure whether I actually use praise to encourage specific behavior as much as to show my overall approval of her. I mean, I praise her whenever she does anything she choses to do, not just things I want her to do. I praise all her accomplishments because everything she does is impressive to me (Hmm, does this show her I have low expectations of her?). Kohn says that instead of praising, I should engage her, commenting or questioning about what she does. And that makes sense, though of course praise is more expeditious.
Anyway, I have been trying to not praise her so much, but it is really hard.
A possible criticism of the book is that it doesn’t really provide specific alternatives to the reward-punishment system. What Kohn says is that you should work with your child and while that’s fine and dandy, and I think it’s likely to work in our specific case, I’m really not sure it will work with all children. There are kids who are just naturally “wilder” than others, less empathic, less adept at copying behavior – more prone to runing down the street or hitting their siblings. I think parents need a bit more guidance of what to do, if not reward or punish, in those cases.
Still, by the end of the book I was pretty satisfied with my own parenting methods. What I’m left wanting, though, is a book that will tell me how to control my impatience and my anger when I find DD difficult so that I can work with her productively.
Recent Comments