Tree of Smoke - Denis Johnson

As a general matter, I hate war and all things war related. For this reason, I have not watched many movies or read many books that deal with the Vietnam war. But, last month, my office filed a petition on behalf of a Vietnam vet. At trial, this client's attorney did not present anything to the jury about the client's experiences in Vietnam or his post-traumatic stress disorder. Out of interest, I read the petition, which included an over 100 page description of the client's service in Vietnam, his daily work flying a medical helicopter, picking up the dead and wounded, and putting himself in harm's way on every single trip. Simply reading about the situation gave me nightmares, and I can only begin to imagine the long-term psychological damage that war causes - not to mention, of course, the neurological damage caused by chemical agents. Recently, there has also been a lot in the media about the soldiers returning from Iraq and the damage that has been done to them as a result of chemical weapons and the general experience of being trained as a killer and witnessing and committing horrors abroad. It is not difficult for me while reading newspaper articles and watching programs on this issue to believe that these men and women will be my clients in the next 15-20 years. And so, it is with these thoughts and images in my mind that I picked up Denis Johnson's latest novel, Tree of Smoke, set during the Vietnam war. Johnson tells the story of Skip Sands, engaged in Psych Ops against the VietCong, and the Houston brothers, young and enlisted in the military. The book spans nearly a decade and over 600 pages. It took me awhile to get into the rhythm of Johnson's writing, and I found much of the story line scattered and full of seemingly unnecessary characters. But, as a picture of the war, this was a fulfilling addition to my new personal interest in war and its effects on individuals and our society.

A Chant to Soothe Wild Elephants - Jaed Coffin

I know I've admitted in previous posts that the narcissist in me loves to read books about people/characters that remind me of me. I was drawn to this memoir written by Jaed Coffin, a half-Thai/half-white boy growing up in Brunswick, Maine, who decides to return to his mother's village in Thailand to study as a monk, just as I am drawn to most books addressing the issue of mixed-raced-parentage and culture clashes. As I learned when I was in Thailand a couple years ago, many Thai men spend a period of their lives at a Buddhist temple, training as a monk. Some stay for a couple weeks, others stay for years. Coffin spends one summer hoping to become more Thai, and to somehow find answers to the questions about who he is and where he belongs. This book is roughly 200 pages, but I felt it could have been so much more. Part of the problem might be that it appears as if Coffin wrote the book many years after his experience, and it's possible he has not been able to recapture much of the struggle and loneliness that he felt. Monks in Thailand are so revered, it was interesting to get a glimpse into their daily lives - while full of rules, they seem simultaneously unstructured and quite varied from person to person. Coffin, while in this new environment, is never quite able to shed himself of his "other" label. He fights against the Buddhist teachings of his closest monk companion, while at the same time remains unwilling or unwanting to accept his American life. Ultimately, I suppose, it is always a struggle to reconcile, while also enjoying and appreciating, one's various cultures and belief systems. This book raised a lot of questions for me about Thai culture and relationships - questions of course that have many different answers depending on the person. It is a nice snapshot into Thai culture - but as with most memoirs - just one person's experience.

Swimming in a Sea of Death - David Rieff

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Sontag - David Rieff, a non-fiction writer and policy analyst, is the only son of Susan Sontag - a literary theorist that I had a love/hate relationship with in college. Swimming in a Sea of Death is Rieff's memoir about the last year of his mother's life and her 30+ year battle with cancer. Rieff's book, while divided into chapters, is more like a monologue of his various thoughts on life and death, and what it means to be a caretaker for the sick and ultimately, the one who is left behind. Desipte the fact that this book is quite short, I found it incredibly repetitive - like a person suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder who feels compelled to repeat and relive certain feelings or events from the past. The subject matter and language reminded me of Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking and Rieff quotes Didion on multiple occasions while strugging to put words to his emotions. Rieff focuses much of the book on his mother's attitude toward illness and death - her refusal to believe that she would one day die, and the miraculous recoveries she made from prior illnesses. Rieff also refers frequently to Sontag's powerful essay "Illness as Metaphor" in which Sontag argues that the various metaphors our society has created surrounding illness (most popularly the war metaphor) contribute to the suffering of patients and their reluctance to seek the treatment they need. I think reading this essay, along with Sontag's later essay "AIDS and its Metaphors," in conjunction with Rieff's book helps to understand better Sontag's approach to her illness and Rieff's often feelings of helplessness. This book is incredibly depressing, but it is a valuable viewpoint worth reading for anyone dealing with illness and lost.

Nothing Remains the Same - Wendy Lesser

I have the following conversation with my mom probably on a weekly basis: one of us asks the other, "so what are you reading?" The response is given. Then one of us says, "There are so many books to read, I need to quit my job and just read." Then we talk about how many books we have to read and how we'll never get through them all. You'd think that reading was a torturous endeavor, as opposed to the exciting relaxing one that we all know it can be. Yet, despite all the books I have yet to read, I do find myself often wanting to go back to books I read when I was younger. Sometimes I do this with disastrous results - discovering that a character I once identified with and admired is now simply irritating and immature (Holden Caulfield, Howard Roark). Other times, I find that a book I struggled to get through and found boring is suddenly transformed into a highly relevant story (anything by Dickens). So, I was interested in reading this book - which is about the very act of re-reading old favorites. While the author chose many books that I was either not familiar with, or ones that I should have read but have never gotten around to (for example, she lists Anna Karenina as one of those books that everyone wants to re-read - and I admit I have never read anything by Tolstoy) - I still found her observations and reactions to re-reading books, sometimes nearly 40 years after her first reading, quite insightful. Lesser has a deep literary background having studied at Harvard, Cambridge, and Berkeley, so sometimes her references are a bit esoteric, but I thought she really captured the idea that as readers, we like books that remind us of ourselves. As a young 20-something in a tumultuous relationship, she identified with free-spirits, while decades later she finds their choices impetuous and ill-conceived. Also, with more years under belt, came more reading, and as a result more points of reference from which to enjoy or criticize a given book or author's perspective. Nothing Remains the Same is a good concept book to me. I wouldn't say that I loved it or found it incredibly fascinating, but I like the idea of reflecting on reading - what books mean to me and why - and how as life changes, so do the things that are important and bring meaning to us.

In Defense of Food - Michael Pollan

The down-side of this book is that it's a lot of the same information/message I felt that I got from Pollan's previous book, The Omnivore's Dilemma. The up-side is that it's about 300 pages shorter. I think I'm a little saturated with books on food politcs (pun intended!), so I probably didn't get as much out of this as I would have had I waited another year or so and then read it as a refresher crash-course about how getting back to the source of real food is the key to healthy and nutritious living. Pollan provides a lot of background about how we got to where we are with food - and our mega-grocery stores with so many pre-packaged and processed items. Ultimately, he recommends shopping around the outside of the store (where the produce and meat hang out) and avoiding anything in the store that your great-grandmother would not recognize as food. It is excellent advice, but as with most things organic and health-oriented, there aren't a lot of suggestions for those of us who are pressed for time - and don't just feel like eating salad or baked chicken. But, I think we can all use more reminders to be more thoughtful about our eating - whether it's about how nutritious the things are that we put in our mouths, or about what the choices we make mean for the environment and for the animals that we consume. That being said, I just really love chicken nuggets. Bad food habits are hard ones to break, but with Pollan's help, I'm just taking it one meal at a time.

New Moon - Stephenie Meyer

This is the second book in the teenage vampire romance that started with Twilight. In an effort they hope will keep Bella safe, her vampire boyfriend Edward flees Forks, WA for parts unknown. Bella suffers terrible heartache, but finds solace building motorcycles and engaging in other death-defying behavior with her friend Jacob. Jacob is two years younger and has an incredible crush on Bella, who finds that she increasingly enjoys the young boy's company. Then something strange happens and Jacob no longer wants to see Bella. The author spends a good 150 pages describing Jacob's hot/cold behavior and Bella's inability to understand what's going on. The problem is that the reader already knows that Jacob is turning into a werewolf, because she told us it was going to happen at the beginning of Twilight. So, needless to say, I found this part to drag on a little more than necessary. Like the first book, this one is filled with ridiculous conversations, and for a girl who I think the author is trying to portray as independent and strong, Bella is constantly wallowing in self-pity and turning feminism back about 150 years with her need for male attention and support. That being said, I do like the vampire/werewolf battles, and I will read the third book in the series soon to see how this all continues.

Helping Me Help Myself - Beth Lisick

Knowing that I love memoirs so much, Raz recommended this one to me. This is one woman's quest to become a better person through self-help guides and personal coaching gurus. Married in Berkeley with a 4-year old son, Lisick is a writer who moonlights as a banana and does various other odd jobs to barely pay the minimum on her bills every month. So, for one year she decides that each month she is going to pick one area of her life to focus on imporving - she will read the self-help books, but she will also, when possible, seek out the masters themselves by attending workshops. She flies to Chicago to attend a seminar for the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People; focusing on her physical well-being, she takes a week-long cruise with Richard Simmons; she learns new parenting techniques; she draws financial advice fom Suze Ormon; and in my favorite month, she takes a photograph of every room in her house and consults a specialist in organization. Each month Lisick's self-help vocabulary grows, and while she abandons each project when her 30 days are up, she appears to carry small lessons from one month to the next. Lisick has a very good sense of humor, and while she is resistant to change, she is very aware of her personal problems. At times, she can be a bit crass, but this book actually provided me with a little motivation to organize my own closets and to be a little better about trying to make the changes I know I need to make in my own life.