"The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" by Junot Diaz

I had some pretty high expectations when I finally got around to reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007) by Junot Diaz. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the recipient of fantastic reviews from every corner, I was prepared to be wowed. And in the end, I was, although I was a bit underwhelmed for the first hundred pages or so.

Oscar is an overweight fantasy/science-fiction loving nerd, whose mother came to New Jersey from the Dominican Republic. Burdened by cultural expectations as well as his exceeding romanticism, Oscar longs for sex and love and delves into depression and despair when he can't change his life into something else. But the book is about a lot more than just Oscar, allowing vivid glimpses into the history and culture of the Dominican Republic, the story of Oscar's mother and grandparents, and moving relationships between friends, siblings, lovers, and family.

Now that I'm looking back on this book, I can appreciate it, but for awhile I was feeling lost and worried that this was one I was going to have to force myself through. The biggest problem, for me, is that I can be somewhat anal-retentive. The author was constantly throwing in references to science-fiction and fantasy (Fortunately, I have read The Lord of the Rings, which allowed me to pick up on some of them.) as well as a lot of Spanish or Dominican slang that I could not understand. I felt like I was missing out on a lot of the book. And to make matters worse, the book kept skipping around. I couldn't tell who the narrator was, the book jumped without warning to Oscar's sister, Lola's, point of view, and then jumped back in time to the Dominican Republic. It also wasn't clear on people's names or relationships, and I wasn't sure whether I had somehow missed out on some of these explanations in the slang and Spanish, or if I wasn't supposed to know.

"For those of you who missed your mandatory two seconds of Dominican history..." Yup, that would be me. I knew so little about the Dominican Republic, that two pages into the novel I had to pause for some quick internet research in order to give me some context. I love learning and reading the history of places I know almost nothing about, but, again, I had some trouble with this in the beginning of the book because the author's style made it hard to see what was exaggerated fiction and what might be historically accurate.

Fortunately, as the book moves along, the story comes back and answers all of my questions. I stopped feeling lost and jerked around and got more involved in the characters and the plot. The novel is actually much richer for first seeing Oscar's mom through Oscar's and Lola's eyes before hearing her full story. After whiling away the days, trying to read the first half of this book, I couldn't put it down for the second half. It was intense, honest, and moving, and I can see why it won the Pulitzer Prize

"Unaccustomed Earth" by Jhumpa Lahiri

Short stories aren't usually my favorite genre. They tend to go by too quickly, so by the time I get involved with the characters and story, it's over and I'm already struggling to ground myself in the next story. Unaccustomed Earth (2008) by Jhumpa Lahiri somehow sucked me into each story but also left me satisfied with their brief length. This was my first foray into Lahiri's writing, although I have seen the movie The Namesake, but I am now looking forward to reading Interpreter of Maladies (1999).

Unaccustomed Earth consists of eight short stories, the last three of which center around the lives of two recurring characters, Hema and Kaushik. The stories focus on the private, family dramas that change our lives and shape our personalities but are rarely detected by those around us. The first story describes a father's week-long visit to see his daughter after his wife, her mother, unexpectedly dies. It's amazing what true and different emotions and themes Lahiri could pack into this short story. There's the loss of a parent and a spouse, the staleness of marriage and roles in the marriage, the push and pull of cultural expectations, the constantly changing roles of parent, caretaker, and child, the silence that surrounds important issues, and understanding and forgiveness. The other stories explore an aging marriage, the love (or crush) of an unhappily married woman, alcoholism, and a housemate's view of a failing relationship. The final three stories visit Hema and Kaushik at different turning points of their lives.

I sometimes have a hard time describing books that I've really liked. I don't have anything negative to say, and anything I could say to describe it wouldn't be as good as actually reading the stories. These weren't exactly page-turners, but quiet, insightful, and emotional stories about people that I could relate to, feel for, and understand. I enjoyed reading them and was very impressed by my first reading of Lahiri's work.

"Skinny Bitch" by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin

Even with my particular interests in health and nutrition, Skinny Bitch (2005) by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin would not have been a book I picked up on my own. The cover and title screams out in a trendy, superficial way to trendy, superficial women who only care about being thin. When Doreen Orion included Skinny Bitch in her list of recommended books at the back of her book, the title sounded interesting, but I knew nothing about it. It was when my father bought this book (an action made even more curious because the cover describes itself as, "[a] no-nonsense, tough-love guide for savvy girls who want to stop eating crap and start looking fabulous!") that my curiosity got the better of me and I borrowed it from him.

There are so many things wrong with this book that it's hard to even know where to start. The bookcover sucks in potential readers with the promise of trendy diet tips, but with no warning it turns into a vegan propaganda tract. The authors are two ex-models, one of whom holds a degree in nutrition obtained from an unaccredited college through correspondence courses. I'm sure I'm showing off my natural snobbishness when it comes to education, but if I'm going to take advice from someone, especially on something as complicated and contradictory as nutrition, I want them to know more than me. A look at their sources reads like a high school report, with them basing most of their information on a small number of one-sided secondary sources, many of them websites, including Peta.org and milksucks.com.

Freedman and Barnouin are so focused on their agenda that they are often contradictory and one-sided. They go on and on about the horrors of processed foods, but many if not most of their recommended foods are processed "fake" meats. They also list a ton of recommended soy products with only one short sentence barely mentioning its possible negative side effects. Many of the bad things they say about meat and animal products are exaggerated or do not apply to the organic variety. Although I am a vegetarian and could relate to some of what they say, it's not a book that gives concrete, helpful nutrition advice, and I found it more frustrating than anything.

Yet for some reason, I still didn't hate this book. They made some real points about problems with factory farming, our food supply, and what we eat today. They focus on health and feeling good about yourself, encouraging people to read ingredient labels, eat lots of organic fruit and vegetables, and to think for themselves. And if you know nothing about nutrition and eating healthy, I can see how following the authors' advice could be a step up: eating organic fruit for breakfast has to be better than a poptart...or a doughnut. I guess the danger comes when people blindly accept all the information in the book as true.

I have never seen reviews on Amazon split so evenly between 1 star and 5 stars before. The one-star reviews complained of its tone and lack of science while the five-star reviews claimed that the book changed their lives. In my opinion, a much more enlightening look into the food we eat comes from Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma. I've also found a much more even-handed and informative guide for healthy eating at the non-profit and independent website, "The World's Healthiest Foods" (www.whfoods.com).

"Merle's Door" by Ted Kerasote

I love pretty much all animals, especially dogs, so you'd think I would have already read Merle's Door (2007) by Ted Kerasote. I had definitely seen it at Target, but by then I had already read Marley and Me (which I enjoyed), and from the cover, I just assumed it was a cheap rip-off of Marley and Me, trying to make some bucks off the earlier success. I find animals and especially animal behavior fascinating, but there are only so many life stories of family pets that I want to read, especially considering that I know how they're all going to end. But then my father bought and read Merle's Door and couldn't stop talking about it, so I borrowed it from him. And I ended up loving it.

Ted Kerasote was on a river trip with some friends on the San Juan river in Utah when a young dog joined their group. After taking the dog down the river with them, Kerasote adopts him, brings him home to the Tetons in Wyoming, and names him Merle. Merle is a smart, independent, exuberant dog that loves to hunt elk, hike, and ski, and is a perfect partner for Kerasote.

Although I quickly fell in love with Merle, I was struck by Kerasote's sensitivity in detailing his dog's life and feelings, his own life and feelings, and his love for the outdoors. I appreciated the way Kerasote thinks about his relationship to the animals and world around him, and I enjoyed vicariously living the independent, active, rugged life that he described. Even with all the detail provided, I found myself wanting to know more about Kerasote and his life. I'm not sure how this interest would translate to others who don't share the same views or love of animals, dogs, and wilderness, but I'll definitely be reading more by him.

"The Crossing" by Cormac McCarthy

I am usually impressed, amazed and disturbed by Cormac McCarthy novels, and I have been working my way through his entire oeuvre, but The Crossing (1994), the second book in his border trilogy, was relatively disappointing and frustrating for me.

Sixteen-year-old Billy Parnel lives on a rented ranch in New Mexico with his parents and younger brother Boyd. Always fascinated with the wild, but quickly disappearing wolves, when Billy gets his hands on one, he sets out to Mexico to bring it home. When he finally makes it back home, his home is not what it was and Billy continues on a somewhat confused and lost journey back and forth across the Mexico border.

I had a hard time with this book. Wolves are my favorite animal and the first 130 pages, although pretty interesting, were hard for me to read. And after the wolf section of the story, I just lost interest. I didn't feel much if any connection to the characters and the constant, untranslated conversations in Spanish just made me feel lost. Of course, some of the descriptions and words were still amazing, but I felt that most of the themes had already been done in All the Pretty Horses and even Blood Meridian. On the whole, this was a slow read and I had to push myself through to get in the end. I kept getting distracted by other books I wanted to read more. I'm still going to finish the rest of McCarthy's books, but I'm hoping this is the worst of the bunch.

"Enter the Zone" by Barry Sears

There are many reasons that I avoid diet books: my understanding is that most of them prey on people's insecurities, throwing useless quick-fix tips at people in exchange for a fast buck. You can find a "study" or advice that contradicts every other "study" or advice out there, which is all incredibly annoying. I very much enjoyed Michael Pollan's books that focus on eating nutritious, whole foods and relying on common sense. So, it took me quite a while to even consider picking up, Enter the Zone (1995) by Barry Sears, Ph.D. with Bill Lawren. I had heard of "the Zone" earlier, but had always lumped it in with "the Atkins diet" and whatever other fad diets were out there. It wasn't until my workout group consistently talked about the Zone and I saw some clips of Barry Sears speaking that my interest was piqued enough to read his book and get a better idea of his nutrition plan.

So it was with some trepidation and a great deal of skepticism that I started reading about the zone. I should say first, that I work out all the time and am pretty thin. My interest in the zone diet stems primarily from the possibility of living healthier and increasing performance. I'm not interested in losing weight.

Sears argues that we, as Americans, are eating way too many, quickly-digested carbs that quickly turn into sugar in our bloodstream, causing an insulin spike that has innumerable negative consequences for our health, including gaining weight and fat, heart problems, diabetes, etc. His diet is focused on keeping your insulin level steady and in control, which somehow (I'm not any kind of doctor, and Sears explained this stuff relatively simply, so I have no idea how much guessing or exaggerating he does in his book) affects other hormones in our bodies which makes us healthier and happier in every way. In order to achieve this balance, Sears prescribes a diet with "adequate protein intake" depending on your weight and lean body mass, with 30% of your calories coming from protein, 30% from fat, and 40% from carbs.

When I first read about the specifics of the diet, it seemed pretty reasonable to me. I mean, it still called for more carbs than protein, which sounded better than Atkins. But then I started paying attention to how many carbs I was actually eating; even the foods I thought of as high protein, like my chocolate soy milk and hummus still had way more carbohydrates than protein. It was also a bit of a shock to discover that my favorite vegetable snack food--carrots--just happened to be the one vegetable loaded with carbs with a high glycemic index (which means they turn into sugar really fast in your bloodstream, making your insulin level spike and your body feel hungry again more quickly).

There were a number of things I found a little sketchy about this book. There is no question that Sears is in the business of selling something, and it often comes off as too good to be true with very little evidence to back Sears up. Sears also talks a lot about weight loss, which I am not interested in and makes me wonder whether he's just sucking in those poor souls who are looking for some magic powder. Finally, I have always favored eating whole, nutritious foods. Even though Sears discusses micronutrient quality and eating lots of fruits and vegetables, which I liked, he also seems to think it's fine if vegetarians get all their protein from soy protein powder. He doesn't seem to care so much about where you get your food--or that you're eating a ton of soy protein, which might have negative consequences--as long as it's got the right combination of macronutrients.

All in all, I was somewhat convinced by Sears' more humble boasts about his diet program. I go throughout the day constantly hungry and if I don't eat enough I have a headache for the rest of the day. Now that I've looked into it, I can see that I've been eating mostly high glycemic carbohydrates, which explains how I can eat so much and still be hungry. I'm also probably pretty low on my protein intake. So, I've decided that it wouldn't hurt to try his program for two or three weeks and see how I feel. If I really do feel a difference, then I'll try to stick with it. I need a little time to figure out all the complicated details, but my plan is to give it a fair shot.