The Drunkard's Keith

The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules our Lives, by Leonard Mlodinow.  Every once in a while I like to mix things up and read some non-fiction, mostly about interesting phenomena and how they influence our lives.  I've read all of Malcolm Gladwell's recent work, also Freakonomics and Predictably Irrational, all of which I highly recommend.  The Drunkard's Walk is another such book, and Mlodinow explains how purely random things can happen to change our lives everyday.  He explains wine reviews, bell curves in grading, the lottery and the stock market in the view of pure randomness.

Mlodinow gives many examples and anecdotes from his own life to illustrate the points he is making, although it is clear that it is a brilliantly gifted scientist and mathematician speaking and not an author.  Some of the stuff can be very difficult to follow and it gets very in depth.  Mlodinow also spends a lot of time speaking about the history of the study of chance, focusing on many different individuals from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries in Europe.  I thought there was too much history and not enough real world applications at times.

However, one thing I will take away from this book is this fascinating mathematical riddle: Suppose you are on a game show, and you are shown three doors.  The host explains that behind one door is a grand prize, and behind the other two are nothing.  He asks you to make a selection.  You pick Door #1, let's say.  The host then opens Door #3, revealing that it contains nothing.  The host then gives you a second chance to change your answer.  Should you stick with Door #1, or change your answer to Door #2?  Now for many people, including myself at first, the answer seemed obvious.  There would be no difference between the doors, there is a 50-50 chance either way, so there is no mathematical advantage in switching.  Wrong.

When you first made the selection of Door #1, there was a 33% chance you guessed correctly.  There was a 66% chance you guessed incorrectly.  When the host opened Door #3 he removed it from play and manipulated the playing field.  Now, Door #1 still has that 33% chance of being correct, but Door #2 has a 66% chance of being correct, so it logically follows that you should change your answer and choose Door #2.  Unless of course, you are feeling really lucky.

Different from my normal repetoire of books, but good in it's own way.  Three out of five stars.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Keith

Extremely Loud & Incredible Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer.  I bought this book at the Washington Book Festival back in September, where he was one of the speakers.  I also bought Everything is Illuminated, which I am planning on reading soon. 

This book was told from a few different perspectives, but mostly centers around Oskar Schell, a brilliant but eccentric nine year old in New York City, who loses his father in the 9/11 attacks.  His father left behind a key that Oskar found, and it leads him on a quest around New York so he can find the lock that it belongs to.  Ultimately, Oskar meets many interesting characters in the city, and he also discovers more about his own family and his father.  There is also the backstory of the love between Oskar's grandfather and grandmother, who fled from Dresden during World War II.  His grandfather, who was mute and communicated with only his notebooks and the tattoos of 'yes' and 'no' on his hands, left his grandmother to raise their son (Oskar's father) on her own, and only returned after his death.

The novel was told mostly through the voice of Oskar.  There are many catchphrases that he uses often, such as 'heavy boots' for being sad, and 'a hundred bucks' for being happy.  Oskar is very naive and courageous at times, venturing all around the city by himself and meeting strangers, although all the strangers that he meets are very nice and accomodating, which gives the book a very optimistic tone, although he is very cautious about other things, like bridges and elevators.  Oskar is also extremely bright, and is a walking encyclopedia of facts.  He is pretty emotional as well, keeping a picture diary of things that happened to him (and he shows the pictures in the book, which is a great touch), and listening to his dad's answering machine messages from after the tower was hit.

My favorite part of the book is some of the magical realist stories that are told throughout.  I loved the story of the sixth borough of New York that floated away.  I loved the story of how Oskar's grandfather lost his ability to speak word by word, until all his vocabulary was gone and he had to use notebooks to communicate, and he would flip back to certain phrases used over and over again.  It is a very creative book, and Foer uses many little gimmicks, like throwing in photos, shrinking text size to barely readable, to
showing the phrases from the grandfather's notebook.

In the end, Oskar discovers that the key belonged to someone else, and his father acquired it by mistake.  But this seems to put Oskar at peace since he was able to solve the puzzle his father left behind.  It is an optimistic book, even though it deals with some weighty subjects and ends with a flip book of photos of a person jumping out of the World Trade Center.  But actually the flip book is reversed, so the person is going upwards, not down.

An enjoyable and interesting, although different, read.  Four and a half out of five stars.

Keith Shall Know Our Velocity!

Actually You Shall Know Our Velocity, by one of my favorite authors Dave Eggers.  I read this book a couple of weeks ago, I am just very backed up on these books.  I got three reviews I need to write still, although I am currently reading The Name of the Rose, which is a long book so I should be able to catch up soon.

Y.S.K.O.V. was a great read with a really interesting premise.  Will and Hand are two best friends who lost their other best friend recently in a car crash.  Will got a lot of money for some ad recently, but he has been too depressed to appreciate it, so he decides to travel around the world giving out all the money, $40,000 to the poor.  The problem is that they only have one week to do it.  There are elaborate plans of trips to Siberia, Greenland, Madagascar, Cairo and many other places, all in one week.

The plan is based on speed, and quickness of action, but realistically it cannot work.  There are not flights going at all hours of the day to each of those remote places.  Most flights need to go through the hub at London, which is time they are not willing to waste.  Will and Hand go to Senegal, then up to Morocco, then a little bit in Eastern Europe.  They have hopes of bribing someone to let them up on Cheops in Cairo for a sunrise, but that plan falls through too.  Then there is the problem of who to give the money to.  Will finds many reasons not to give the money to certain people, always thinking there is something better around the corner.

There are tensions between Will and Hand.  Hand is all about action and doing things without thinking.  Will, the narrator, is stuck inside his head.  He is hung up on their friend Jack's death, as well as a recent beating he received from some strangers in Chicago, that he blamed on Hand.  Will's Mom, who he talks to on the phone throughout the trip, serves as a voice of reason to his wild plans.  In the end, they give most of the money away through crazy schemes, such as reverse haggling, cart leaping, basketball, and pirate treasure hunts in Latvia.

I love Eggers' storytelling.  A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is one of my all time favorites.  Keith is the Keith comes from the book What is the What, which I read recently.  I especially loved the story at the end about the natives from Patagonia who moved around trying to fly and suck in all the air that they can.  They ran and leaped, and thinking they were the fastest on Earth, left a message for the invading Spaniards: "You shall know our velocity!" 

Sometimes we are stuck in Will's head too much, and there is too much repetition of his sorrow and depression.  And sometimes the book moves too slow, but maybe that is what Eggers was trying to do, convey the frustration that Will and Hand must have felt at not being able to move as quickly as they wanted to.

Four out of five stars.

Keith Matters!

Everything Matters, by Ron Currie Jr.  What a fantastic read from a book that I just happened to pick off the shelf because of the cool cover design.  I had never heard of this book, or this author, until I stumbled upon it one day in Barnes and Noble.  Many of the reviews on the inside page compared him to Kurt Vonnegut, so I knew I had to give it a shot.

It is the life story of Junior, who, when in the womb, was told by some voice (God?) that the world would be hit by an asteroid and obliterated around when he is 36 years old.  This voice talks to Junior throughout his life, giving him inside information on everyone around him.  But it's also the story of others close to him as well, like his brother Rodney who was a young coke head and then turned into one of the greatest baseball players ever, even though he wasn't all there in the head.  Also his alcoholic mother, and his Vietnam vet father who is a baker at night and works in a warehouse during the day.  And the love of his life Amy.

I really enjoyed the setup of this book.  There are different chapters from each person's point of view, and there are also chapters of just the voice talking to Junior, in numerical bullet points that count down to the end of the world.  There are neat plot twists, as well as a complete reversal toward the end of the story.  Junior gets a chance to do it all over again, and even though the ending wasn't what I was expecting, he learns the lesson that he had been missing all his life... That everything matters.  Even if you know the world is going to end, it is important to realize what you have in this life, and keep them close.

There are many over-the-top elements in the book, like the baseball star Rodney, to Junior curing cancer, and Junior designing a spaceship to leave Earth and emigrate to another planet.  But in the end, it is a very heartwarming book, and even a little sad at times.  Very good read.
Four and a half out of five stars.

Keith

Ok this title was a bit more tricky.  Actually, since it was only one word, there was only one combination.  You'll probably see that title a bunch on this blog.

Pygmy, by Chuck Palahniuk.  This is the story of 'Operative Me,' or nicknamed Pygmy, a secret agent from an undisclosed totalitarian state sent to the U.S. on a mission of terrorism.  He is disguised as an exchange student in the midwest, in the Cedar family, with the cow-like father, the mother that uses all the batteries in the house on her vibrator collection, the sex-crazed brother, and the sister that he falls in love with.  Of course this allows Palahniuk to poke fun of the American culture through Pygmy's eyes.  Walmart and consumerism, Church and molesting priests, teenagers that only care about sex and drugs.  Pygmy and his fellow operatives would have no problem manipulating these Americans to carry out their plan, except that he falls in love with a girl and the culture, and it is revealed that he never was very keen on that totalitarian state he was brainwashed into loving in the first place.

This is not the first book from Chuck Palahniuk that I've read, so I am used to his graphic and sensationalized style.  The book starts out on a high note, with Pygmy raping the school bully in a bathroom, then easily segues into tweens flashing their boobs before a bloody school massacre, then to Pygmy rummaging around in his adopted mom's 'private areas' while she is roofied.  It is brutal stuff, but presented in Palahniuk's carefree, comical style.  You gasp, but you laugh too, and feel a bit guilty. 

The language was the difficult part of the book.  It is written in the voice of Operative Me, a strange accent with technical terms, lack of grammar and sentence structure, that barely resembles English.  I had to read over a few passages in order to figure out what was happening.  However, as the book went along, I was able to pick up on the style, and the reading became easier. 

It was a quick read, and a bit more light-hearted than Naked Lunch and the Corrections before that, so it was like a welcome vacation.

Three and a half stars out of five.

Naked Keith, or Keith's Lunch

I like the first title better, but the latter is more PG, even though this book is more like XXX. 

Naked Lunch, by William Seward Burroughs.  A hallmark of the Beat Generation, and also a strong weapon in the government's War on Drugs.  Cause who would want to try those hard drugs after reading something like this?  Naked Lunch is not a story in the traditional sense.  It is more of a series of vignettes centering around a character named Lee (Burroughs), and others, in a trip from New York to Mexico to Tangiers to a city called Interzone that exists solely in his drug-addled, demented state.  I had to get most of this summation from the back of the book and other reviews, because it is really difficult to follow in the book itself.

Most of Naked Lunch are rambling scenes of drug use, gay sex, and capital punishment.  How many scenes of young boys being hanged while shitting and coming can you fit in one book?  Before I read Naked Lunch, I would have guessed none, but now that illusion (and my innocence) has forever been shattered.

Now, this is not a disparaging review however.  Literature isn't always pretty and easy to read.  Though the passages could be disturbing, they can be very poetic at times, not to mention imaginative.  It's honest, and brutal, and a revealing look into the mind of an addict and a genius.

I read the 'restored text' version of the book, and I loved reading the backstory behind the making of the book.  The title was credited to Jack Kerouac (one of my favorite authors), and Burroughs was in love with Allen Ginsberg, writer of the famous 'Howl' poem.  A few months ago I went to an exhibit at the National Gallery of Ginsberg's photos from the 1950's and throughout his life.  Burroughs was in a few of the photos, as well as Kerouac.  Together, Ginsberg helped Burroughs write, organize and publish Naked Lunch, even though he spurned the love of Burroughs.  It is fascinating to think that three friends were the leaders of an entire movement in literature.

Naked Lunch was a very interesting read.  I won't say I regret reading it, although I hope I don't have too many nightmares.

Three and a half out of five stars.

Keith's Corrections

No, I am not correcting my previous post.  It is perfect, as are all my posts once published.  It is an insult that you would even consider that I made a mistake.

My first book that I am going to write about is The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen.  As you will see, I like to throw my name into the title of the book and use it as the title of the blog entry.  It is my gimmick that will make me famous.  You'll see.

Anyways, so the Corrections.  Wow.  A very hefty tome.  It was a slow start for the book, I'll admit.  Took me awhile to really get into the story, but once I did, I was flying through it.  The characters are some of the most developed I've ever read.  This book is basically five life stories all rolled up into one story of one family.  The main crux of the story takes place within a four month period, where the mother, Enid, tries to get her three adult children to come home to the mid-west for one last Christmas together at their home.  The father, Alfred is suffering from Parkinson's and demetia, and won't make it to another most likely.  Yet the children all lead their own, strange lives, and there are many problems.

There are some strange parts of the story, such as the trip to Lithuania, and Denise flip-flopping in her love life, and early references to Pandora.  Also the talking poop.  These were funny, but overall strange, and kind of brought me out of the story a little bit.  I loved the ending though.  Enid's final monologue and thoughts on her love with Alfred reminded me of the final chapter in Joyce's Ulysses.

As it just so happened, I saw Franzen speak on the night after I finished the Corrections.  He was promoting his new book Freedom on a local campus and I went and heard some of it.  Seems pretty good, like something I will check out later, once it comes out in paperback and the price comes down.

So, The Corrections.  A very strong book with likable, though flawed, characters.  How will I use it in my own work?  Obviously the development of each character, even the smaller supporting ones.  But also the non-traditional time structure of the plot.  I'm not going to analyze all the themes and motifs and plot structures of each book, just overall impressions.  Someone on the street asks, "How was that book you are reading?" and you respond with "It was good."  Well, Why?  Why is it good?  Should I read it too?

4 out of 5 stars.