Ed has posted the first of five installments of a round table discussion of Richard Power’s new book The Echo Maker, which was just nominated for the National Book Award. I can’t speak for the other books, not having read them, but this book by Powers is definitely deserving of the award. It’s one of the most thought-provoking books I’ve read this year. His previous book The Time of Our Singing is one of my favorites. I didn’t think he could surpass that one, but he’s managed it with this new one.

After reading Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma this past summer, I wanted to do a bit more reading about sustainable living. Luckily, Pollan has posted a reading list on his website, which included Gussow’s This Organic Life, written in 2001.

Joan Gussow does not beat around the bush. She manages to live almost entirely off the vegetables and fruit she and her husband grow in their suburban backyard and spends most of the book telling you how she does it. It’s not an easy task, but she maintains that people don’t think hard enough anymore about where their food comes from. Gussow wants to be an example that raising your own vegetables and fruit year round can be done, even in New England. Eating locally grown food makes the most sense environmentally, ecologically, and economically. She demonstrates that with her careful research into food transportation. Transporting asparagus from South America in the winter (out of season) costs more in energy calories in shipping than you’d get eating it. Plus that asparagus will probably lack flavor having been refrigerated for at least a few days. Not to mention the impact on the farmers growing the produce in South America.

I only wish that Gussow’s book had a little more focus. She covers many subjects: buying her first and then second home, moving into her second home, planting the gardens at each home, the problems within the food system of the US, and the death of her husband. It goes back and forth in time, even within a chapter, and it can be confusing at times. Plus she can come across a little holier than thou and she seems behind the times, even taking into account this was written in 2001. Nevertheless, her overall message is clear and a good one and the passion that came through when she talks about her garden makes this book worth reading.

I finished reading Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra earlier this week. The book checks in at 900 pages or so, but it’s definitely worth hauling this book around. My arms almost fell off several times while I stood on the subway reading this book. I’ll try to write something longer about it this weekend. The short version is that it’s about cops and robbers. People make comparison’s to Mario Puzo’s Godfather, but I think that’s only on the surface. It deals with all sorts of themes—religion, sex, gender, violence, money—and it’s one hell of a read.

Also if you’re in the market for something gifty, The Sweeter Side of R. Crumb showed up on my desk earlier this week. It’s a nice volume with some of R. Crumb’s less scurrilous drawings. Why would you want non-dirty pictures? To me, it’s an interesting side of Crumb, that isn’t often exhibited.

It’s difficult not to associate John le Carre with British spy novels. With titles like The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, it’s no wonder. I’m sure I’m not the first person to suggest that le Carres recent books surpass the genre and I don’t use the word “surpass” to disparage spy novels. I just think that his themes go beyond a simple tale about a spy.

His latest book The Mission Song (on sale 9/19) attempts to expose the dynamics of multinational corporations and their hold on governments and politics. He explores this theme through language—what’s spoken and unspoken and the subtexts with his narrator Bruno Salvador, a young translator born of an Irish priest and a Congolese woman. Married to a rising star in journalism, he works for a variety of companies including the British government. The novel revolves around one job he does for the government as an interpreter at a secret conference of African warlords attempting to wrest control of the Congo before the upcoming elections. As I was reading the book, I expected more action, but the conference takes up about two thirds of the book and most of the action is their conversations. Bruno listens in covertly on secret talks between the various warlords, even overhearing one man be tortured. Growing disillusioned with the government, Bruno decides to take some action, but I won’t give away what happens.

Le Carre uses Salvo’s occupation as an interpreter to show the power language has especially with regards to governments and corporations. Both can use language to persuade, to convince, to lie, to subjugate, and most often to control (I sound paranoid I know, but the current government has made me this way). Salvo never really belongs, in his life as the husband of the rising journalist, in his childhood in the Congo as the bastard son of a priest, even as a spy. And I think that’s to reinforce the idea that Bruno is a conduit. He’s interpreting statements—repeating what others say, not formulating his own. Suddenly he’s forced to make his own statement and it’s his background as a Congolese that informs it. It suggests that though we may have clear opinions about the way the world works, what would we do if we could actually have some impact on it? Perhaps I’m overthinking the book, but these are the themes that came to mind as I finished The Mission Song, obviously a thought-provoking read.

No, we’re not married, but it’s too much fun calling him Mr. Bookdwarf. He’s been reading a great deal lately and in what I hope will become a regular feature, I’ve asked him to write up each book in a few sentences:

• Deogratias by J.P. Stassen: Haunting graphic novel set in post-genocide Rwanda. Brilliantly done in a style that looks like old woodcuts.
• Abandon the old in Tokyo by Yoshihiro Tatsumi: The second in a series of influential early manga, translated to English and published in the US for the first time. The stories are short, cryptic, and haunting.
• The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan: This is a life-changing book that examines in great detail what Americans eat and where it comes from. Despite the fact that the fourth section doesn’t live up to the promise of the first three, this book earns comparisons with Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. If enough people read it, maybe we’ll get some better food policy in this country. Maybe.
• Shenzhen by Guy Delisle : Homesickness and alienation are the order of the day as a French artist supervises outsourced Chinese animation workers. Comes across as self-involved sometimes.
• American Born Chinese by Gene Yang: A teenager hungry for acceptance is faced with a visiting relative who represents every awful stereotype he’s trying to leave behind. In stories that bring together mythology and popular culture, Yang gives us a sensitive look into the life of second-generation Chinese-American teenager–plus a monkey who’s a kung-fu expert. Enough said.
• Chinatown Beat by Henry Chang: I’m not usually a mystery reader, but this is very well-written. Set in the NYC Chinatown. The author does tend to overuse brands (the Fury police car, the CK sunglasses, etc. etc.) as setting, but that’s forgivable: you can almost smell the tofu cooking.

I’ve mentioned before that one of my favorite Fall reads so far has been Gregoire Bouillier’s The Mystery Guest. I’m not the only one. Maud only got to read the first 45 pages or so and adds a long quote from the author interview in her post. Mark lets us know about a video preview for the book. It’s kind of weird.

I read two short-ish books over the weekend, both good in different ways. The first book, The Mystery Guest by Gregoire Bouillier, is only 128 pages, yet it makes you pause and think and therefore took longer to read (this is not a complaint). back in 1990, the author receives a phone call from a woman who left him suddenly two years ago and she’s calling not to explain things, but to invite him to a party for a woman he’s never met. In each of the four parts—phone call, preparation, the party, the aftermath—Bouillier uses a combination of earnestness and hyperbolic prose to examine each moment. This true tale seems both absurd and poignant. It’s a book to savor.

In the second book Chinatown Beat by Henry Wang, the author takes us on a tour of the underbelly of Chinatown. Detective Jack Yu has been reassigned to his old neighborhood, where cops are not to be trusted. Using the murder of a high-up gang member Uncle Four, the author paints a portrait of the various inhabitants of Chinatown from the gangsters to the shopkeepers to the fortune tellers. Yu fits in neither the cop world nor the world of Chinatown. His in between status makes him a great observer. I wouldn’t call this book fun, but rather intense and highly enjoyable.

I’ll start off by saying that I loved this book—it’s definitely one of the best I’ve read all year. Readers will devour each of these six short stories as if they were their last meal. Chang, said to have transformed Chinese literature in the 30s and 40s, writes about men, women, and the ways even the smallest actions or words can transform relationships. The cultural divide in Chinese society between ancient patriarchy and the tumultuous modernity forms the vivid background. The stories seem to be about how life never works out. They’re bleak and yet you can’t help but be enchanted by the characters. One of my favorite paragraphs from the title story:

Not until the ship had finally reached the shore did she have a chance to go up on deck and gaze out at the sea. It was a fiery afternoon, and the most striking part of the view was the parade of giant billboards along the dock, their reds, oranges, and pinks mirrored in the lush green water. Below the surface of the water, bars and blots of clashing color plunged in the murderous confusion. Liusu found herself thinking that even just spraining an ankle would be more painful here, in this city of hyperboles, than elsewhere. Her heart began to pound.

Often when a book received the kind of press that Rory Stewart’s The Places in Between has, I’m usually skeptical. Fortunately the book deserves much of the praise it has been getting. Stewart’s account of walking across Afghanistan in January 2002 shortly after the fall of the Taliban is just one part of a larger trip. He spent sixteen months walking across Iran, Pakistan, India, and Nepal. Stewart had wanted to cross Afghanistan in December of 2000 but had trouble getting into the country after Iran took his visa away. He returned once he learned about the fall of the Taliban to finish his journey. It seems crazy, walking through a country that had been at war for twenty five years and with a new government only two weeks old. Everyone warned him that this trip could end with his death. And the most fascinating aspect to this story to me is that he didn’t do it because of the danger. For him, it was all about finishing his initial trek. He’s not after glory, he wants to understand the places and people. His odyssey seems more like a pilgrimage, but instead of arriving at a sacred place, the trek itself holds the importance.

It’s a fascinating book and Stewart writes well about a land that can seem exotic and backward at the same time. Rather than dismissing some of the people he met who by our Western account would seem ill mannered and politically backward (he meets several former members of the Taliban), he finds common ground between them. Stewart works hard to write about the average Afghani instead of focusing on Taliban bashing. This is a great book to give a human face to an area of the world I know little about.

I’m in the middle of reading Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma—it’s riveting information. I hate it when people say “this book really makes you think and has changed my life” because it’s usually applied to drivel books like Tuesdays with Morrie. This book however has made a difference for me. Working for an independent bookstore, I’ve already been thinking a great deal about shopping locally and have been trying to apply this approach to my food shopping as much as possible. I buy my food from a variety of places: Whole Foods, Harvest Co-op and a share in a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). Plus with the numerous farmers’ markets in the area, I can get fresh fruit and bread. So Pollan’s book didn’t share anything new in that regard. I’ve already been thinking about what I eat. The really interesting information in this book for me is how the whole food system works and how monoculture farms have changed the culture of farms. When you read about the “Grass” farmer, as Joel Salatin calls himself, you can see how farms should work compared with the farms that grow just one thing, be it corn or raising chickens, etc. Really, and I know it sounds cheesy, Pollan drives home how we really are what we eat. I hope everyone reads this book and, if nothing else, it makes people think about where their food comes from and its larger impact on the world.