"Barron's Firefighter Exams"

I realize that it may be a bit of a stretch to call Barron's (The Leader in Test Preparation) Firefighter Exams (2009) a book in the Cannonball sense of the word, but it's got at least 200 pages of information that doesn't even include the hundreds of pages of tests that I painstakingly worked my way through. And if you add the fact that this isn't one of my Cannonball books for this year's challenge, since it isn't November yet, and that I'm only an unofficial participant in Cannonball anyway, I feel I'm justified to write about, well, anything, really.

Now this is all pretty random and sudden, but I've been technically a lawyer--both employed and unemployed-- for over four years now and it never quite fit. I went to law school thinking that it would be interesting, and it was, but I've always liked school and I never stopped to think whether I'd actually want to do law as a career. And my subsequent jobs have shown me that I tend to find desk jobs tedious and boring. So many months ago I sat down and tried to think of what kind of jobs I could really enjoy and find satisfying. I love physical challenges and am somewhat addicted to working out, so something physical quickly came to mind. I briefly thought of the military or police but the enforcing and killing doesn't exactly fit with my personality.

Then I thought of firefighters, and the idea sounded interesting, but I wasn't immediately sure if it was a good fit. First, I didn't know if Denver even hired women firefighters. I've seen firefighters responding to emergencies all over downtown Denver, and I had never seen a woman firefighter. The second problem was that all the firefighters I did see were huge, burly men. I might like to work out, but I'm pretty tall and thin, and when it comes to pure strength I couldn't imagine keeping up with guys like that. However, a recent recruitment meeting for women firefighters in Denver convinced me. I was finally excited about a job and the fit felt right. Sure, 96% of the firefighters in Denver are male, but I didn't get the sense that there was any institutional hostility towards women. So, in about an hour I went from floundering around looking for a law job I wasn't excited about to a full focus on being hired as a firefighter. And the first step is to take a written test--the first of which is this Monday. I generally test well, especially for these kinds of things, but I so want to be a firefighter and with the minimal hirings occurring these days, I feel like I really need to make up for my lack of experience, training, job knowledge, etc. with a really, really good score. Hence, this book.

Barron's was recommended to me from a number of sources as being a good prepatory aid for the firefighter exam; so I got it from the library because I am way too cheap to buy a study guide. I don't have a lot to compare this book to and I haven't even taken the test yet, but it did have a lot of information including a diagnostic test, explanatory chapters, and six practice tests. I certainly know a little more now about the responsibilities and duties of firefighters. But by the time I finished going through this entire book, I was so annoyed with it, I was ready to throw it across the room. The drawings are often poor representations and difficult to see, and the explanatory chapters could have been a lot more detailed. Instead of describing how belt drives work in the "Mechanical" chapter, the text's only explanation states that they "work a lot like gears."

The most frustrating aspect, however, were the constant typos about rather important things. The glossary says that the area of a circle is equal to the diameter times the circumference or radius squared times the circumference. That's really interesting because diameter and radius squared is not the same thing. The other problem is that the actual formula for the area of a circle is (found through a reliable google search) pie times the radius squared. I couldn't really trust the book when it got something so simple and so fundamental so blatantly wrong. There were also at least 5 or 6 practice test questions where they had the wrong letter as the right answer and that wasn't apparent until you went to look at the explanations. And then there were some questions and answers where the word "not" shouldn't have been used or where the answer was blatantly wrong. It was sloppy and infuriating, and Barron's needs to do a much better editing job, especially on some of those practice tests. As for if it helped me or not, I guess I'll see on Monday.

"The Worst Hard Time" by Timothy Egan

I found The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl (2006) by Timothy Egan while I was wandering around the "award winners" display table in a book store a while ago. The Worst Hard Time had won the National Book Award and looked like a pretty interesting piece of history, so I put it on my to-read list.

I have, of course, heard and read about the Dust Bowl and the "Okies," and I've seen some pictures and read The Grapes of Wrath, but I don't think I ever understood how bad the reality of living in the midst of it really was until I read this book. Egan jumps between the personal stories of a number of individuals and families as their lives trickle down into need and then despair as the land around them turns into desert. Egan also looks at the bigger picture: the government policies that first killed the buffalo, pushed out the Indians, and then encouraged farming on land that could not sustain it; the millions and millions of acres of grassland that were overturned in the wheat boom in the twenties; and the millions of tons of topsoil that were blown away and lost. On the whole, I found this book fascinating and easy to read. It immediately captured my attention, and although In the Heart of the Sea is still probably my favorite non-fiction book, I never felt like I was slogging through dense, boring history.

Now that we are enduring an "economic downturn--as bad as we've seen since the Great Depression", this book certainly helped me to put things in perspective. The unusually wet years of the late 1920's along with the booming price of wheat due to the war brought about the quick settlement of parts of Southeast Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas that would not have happened otherwise. Families plowed up the land, planted their wheat and made some money; so then they bought tractors in order to plow up more land. When the wheat prices started falling, the farmers compensated by plowing up even more grass and planting even more wheat. When the wheat prices really fell to nothing and the drought came and dried everything up, it left people with nothing but debt.

What I never understood, though, is that not only were the people poor, but they were literally living in hell. The unanchored land blew into the air. Many days of every year there were horrible dust storms that whipped paint off houses, killed farm animals, smothered crops, and sucked the life out of everything. The dust would not stay out of houses or out of lungs. People wore masks and hung wet sheets over their doors and windows and were still dying left and right of "dust pneumonia." Livestock were found with insides so full of dust that the little food available could not be digested. The temperatures in the summer were often well over one hundred and the dust created so much static electricity that you couldn't touch anything, it could short out cars, and it would kill entire gardens. People lived on pickled tumbleweeds and rabbits--that somehow seemed to thrive. Everything was dead. There was no color and no beauty anywhere, only a harsh struggle for survival.

Intertwined with these harsh realities are the personal stories of a number of interesting personalities. It was the personal stories through the years that really grounded this book and made it more relatable. And although the book focused on the white, American farmers, Egan does discuss how the land was used and farmed by Native Americans successfully for centuries before us greedy, manifest destiny-loving Americans came and raped the land. It's rather ironic that one of the plans for the land after it became a wasteland was to give it back to the Indians. I found another anecdote completely shocking--even for the 1930's. Dalhart, Texas had a sign saying something to the effect of Blacks shouldn't let the sun go down on them in Dalhart. When two black men who were freezing and hungry got off the train in Dalhart, they were arrested and jailed for months. They went before the judge twice in this period and each time he made them dance for him--in the courthouse. I guess it's not that I'm surprised that there was racism in the 1930's in Texas, but that it would be so blatant and ugly in a court of law just blows my mind. I guess I just can't let go of my idealism.

Anyway, I'd recommend this one if you have any interest in America's past. It's well written, with an award to prove it, and full of details of lives I would never have imagined.

"The House of Mirth" by Edith Wharton

Oh dear, I've been drastically delinquent in my reading and postings to this blog. I can't even remember when I actually finished The House of Mirth (1905) by Edith Wharton, but it was at least two or three weeks ago. The only good news is that I haven't finished any other books in the meantime, so I'm not yet behind in writing up reviews. Actually, I seem to have developed a new obsession, and if everything works exactly the way I want it to, it just might blossom into a career. A career I'm actually excited about. I'll talk about it more when I write about one of the books I'm working on now, but it's the main reason I've been reading so little.

And then, after silently deciding to myself that I did want to participate in Cannonball Read again this year, because it's for a good cause, and 52 books sounds so much more reasonable than 100, I find out that Cannonball is already full. Oh well, I'll play on the sidelines. By myself. It's pretty cool that so many people are involved, though. I look forward to reading about the hundreds and hundreds of books I'll want to read but won't have the time for.

So, to get back to the topic at hand: The House of Mirth. I read The Age of Innocence many years ago (in college, maybe?) and loved it. The writing was amazing, and what I can remember of the restrained heartbreak was moving and memorable. So, I was expecting a lot when I picked up The House of Mirth, and although I was still very impressed by some of the writing, my interest and care for the heroine ebbed and flowed throughout, and I could never really buy into the plot. Although I definitely appreciated certain aspects of this novel, I'm afraid it's not one of my favorites. Seeing as how this book has been around forever and is pretty well-known, I'll be throwing in some spoilers below.

Miss Lily Bart is a twenty-nine-year-old socialite in fashionable New York City in the early 20th Century. Although Lily is orphaned and dependent on her wealthy aunt for everything, her beauty and style make her coveted and relatively powerful in the hierarchical and snobbish set in which she runs. Lily grew up with money and was taught by her mother that wealth, beauty, and presentation were more important than anything else, and Lily approaches her life knowing that success means securing adequate funds by marrying money. Although Lily is smart and tempting enough to accomplish this task, in the end, she is never able to force herself to play the game to its conclusion by tying herself to a man who bores the hell out of her. There is a man she cares about more than anything--Selden, and I believe that she truly loved him, but she doesn't consider him as a possibility because of his lack of funds until it is too late.

As the book unfolds, Lily misses or loses one chance after another to secure her future. As her prospects dim, her old "friends" turn away from her in judgment or disinterest, and the reader sees Lily's slow descent from the top pillars of society to barely scraping a living as a seamstress. Lily has too much pride to ask for much help, and she finally ends her life in despair, dying of a drug overdose.

Lily Bart is an intriguing character. She is one part Paris Hilton, a manipulative and shallow socialite who cares only about money and eschews love when she has it in her grasp. But at the same time, Lily is intelligent, witty, loving, and likable. The reasons Lily loses her position in society stem much more from Lily's conniving and mean-spirited acquaintances than Lily herself. In the end, Lily's tragedy stems primarily from the fact that she was too honorable to completely buy in to the social mores of the people around her. Although she had a couple chances of marrying into money and solving all of her problems, she could never bring herself to seal the deal. Lily also had the perfect opportunity to get back at a mean, cheating woman who was horrible to her, but she wouldn't do it.

And I guess this brings me to the problems I had appreciating some of the plot lines. The things that keep Selden and Lily Bart apart from each other felt a little manufactured. Selden hears something about Lily and then just happens to see her coming out of another man's house at the exact moment that it would look most damning. And then he makes some assumptions and doesn't talk to her for a couple years. But what I had the most trouble understanding was why Lily was so intent on being "honorable" to people who were horrible to her and whom she no longer had any contact with. Why was it more important for her to pay back some money to a man who would not even recognize her in society or even miss such a paltry sum, than it was for her to survive? Even when Lily is completely cast out of society--a society that acted with less honor and more hypocrisy than any group of people I've seen--the idea of restoring her honor is more important to her than living. I found this frustrating and difficult to understand.