Amanda's Reads

John McPhee's Coming Into the Country

Coming into the Country

John McPhee

I'm a fan of John McPhee's writing. I've already read several of his books, including the Control of Nature and Looking for a Ship. I found this book at Goodwill and picked it up on his name alone. I'm glad I did. Out of the three books, I enjoyed this one the most.

John McPhee's Coming Into the Country is a book about his experiences in Alaska in the 1970s. McPhee, who is currently a staff writer for the New Yorker, has written 29 books on various subjects ranging from basketball to freight carriers.

The book is divided into three sections. The first is about his experiencing camping and canoeing a stretch of the Yukon River. The second section details his association with the people, both for and against, the moving of the Alaskan capital, Juneau, to a new, more central location. The final section is about his experience in the bush in the small town of Eagle, Alaska, which is near the US-Canada border. Mixed within all these sections and stories is the story of the mostly white Alaskan settler.

The first section, which is probably my favorite, is about a trip that McPhee took with several men, each who came from a different stasis in life. Most of them were government workers of some sort-- not exactly the 'mountain men' you would imagine taking a trip down the Yukon. McPhee's ability to describe the scenery, wildlife, and weather of Alaska was almost good enough to transport me to the Yukon River with him!

The second section discussed the fight to move the capital of Alaska to a more centrally located area, such as Fairbanks or Anchorage. I did not find this as interesting as the previous section-- mostly because I know things turned out. Juneau is still the capital of Alaska!

The last section details the workings of the very, very, very, very little town of Eagle, Alaska. McPhee chronicles the stories of each town member in turn, discussing their lives and opinions how one should really 'live' in the Alaskan bush. Each member has  their own story about how they got out there, how they learned to live in the wilderness, and how they continue to survive and thrive. He also discusses the mostly universal small town politics.

What impressed me the most about the entire book is the immensity of it all. It's almost impossible for me to understand how huge the state of Alaska really is-- and how small the town of Eagle-- even the city of Fairbanks--- really is-- compared to it. According to Wikipedia.org, Alaska is over 663,000 square miles. Wisconsin, in comparison, is 65,500 square miles. Alaska is over ten times larger then Wisconsin. Alaska is bigger then everything but 18 sovereign nations. If you placed it on the continental US, it would stretch-- distance wise, from the coast California to Jacksonville, Florida. A map really doesn't do it justice. In my attempt to understand where everything was, I consulted my road atlas. The powers-that-be at Rand McNally decided that the entire state of Alaska should be on one page. Even Wisconsin gets two. Years and years of looking at the Wisconsin map has given me a good  idea of the distances traveled within the scale of the map. The distance between Fairbanks and Eagle looks like the distance between Milwaukee and the Wisconsin/Illinois border. In reality, it is nearly 200 odd miles compared to 30. And this is just straight across the map-- who knows how long it would really take!

Bruce Feiler's Walking the Bible: a Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses

Walking the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses (P.S.)

Bruce Feiler

Okay, I'm going to state this right up front. I'm not particularly religious. I believe in God, but not necessarily in every tenant expressed in the Bible. With that out of the way, I can get to the book review.

Walking the Bible: a Journey By Land Through the Five Books of Moses is Bruce Feiler's journey through the Middle East, mostly Israel, Jordan and Egypt,  to the places detailed in the five books of Moses. His travel companion, Avner Goban, is a diplomat, historian, and biblical archaeologist, has connections and knowledge that make the trip much easier.

Feiler and Goban travel throughout the areas of the Middle East associated with the Bible. They contend with  many different people from the Bedouin of the desert to the government officials of many different countries. They contend with present day wars and ancient grudges. Each person that they meet has their own beliefs and ultimately questions about the physical places mentioned in the Bible. Feiler sets out to answer his own questions, while trying to understand his connection, as a Jewish man, to the land.

Another area that Feiler tries to discover his how the climate and land could have shaped the events while they were occurring. The desert, an almost constant presence in the Bible, molded and defined the people as they were exiled. The ever present quest for water, protection from their enemies and the unrelenting heat and wind shaped the paths that they took on their journey.

I really enjoyed reading this book. I don't think I could do the book any justice even if I was in a better mood to review this book! Feiler's well written descriptions of the desert and it's people are the best parts of the book. His quest to ultimately accept the Bible is also very uplifting. I would highly recommend this book to anyone mildly interested in history or travel writing.

Spencer Johnson's Who Moved My Cheese: An Amazing Way to Deal With Change in Your Work and Life

Who Moved My Cheese? An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life

Spencer Johnson

This is another book that has existed in my life for quite some time without ever having the littlest bit interest. Again, I think sometime in my teenage years, my mom had to read it for work. Again, I quickly learned where the book was when I first started working at a bookstore. But the book never really appealed to me. The cost, $19.95, for such a slim book with enough margins and white space to hide another whole book, also turned me off. But one day, while browsing the clearance books at Goodwill, I saw this for 99 cents! Then the book was mine!

Spencer Johnson's Who Moved My Cheese: An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life is an analogy of the struggle to accept change. The path to your goal or reward may change, but if you accept this and adjust, obtaining the goal is still possible. Just hold on and your goals can still come true.

I don't know if it has something to do with my upbringing, an underlying pessimism, or something to do with years of finding this book for stupid customers, but I wasn't terribly impressed.  I'm sure that my local bookstore alone has sold thousands of this book. Businesses buy hundreds of this book to make their employees read. I think there are business philosophies based on this book. I'm sure that Spencer Johnson sent his children to college on the profits of this book alone. But I wasn't impressed. I don't think it was very well written-- certainly not for the price that you have to pay. The lesson-- accept change-- and buy this book for 99 cents somewhere!

Cheryl Katz's Dirty Wow Wow and Other Love Stories

Dirty Wow Wow and Other Love Stories: A Tribute to the Threadbare Companions of Childhood

Cheryl Katz

I have the Amazon.com RSS feed that arrives at my livejournal web page to thank for this book. I was instantly drawn to the lovelorn expression on the stuffed dog on the cover. Torn between the $12.95 and the story behind the puppy, I pondered my purchase for a few days. But as it nearly always happens, the book and the puppy's story won.

Dirty Wow Wow and Other Love Stories is a book detailing the stories behind fifty stuffed animals, blankies, and other assorted bits of fluff. They've followed their owners through various adventures-- being tossed out a window-- being laundered-- and several encounters with dogs. Rover, the cover dog, accompanied several generations of the same family through childhood. Others were randomly picked by their adoring owners. Some were gifts. All of them became cherished belongings that comforted and soothed the often difficult passage to adulthood.

It's a cute little book. It's not too much to read, and the pictures aren't wonderful, but it has a lot of heart. It's obvious that the authors share the same affection for the 'threadbare companions of childhood' as their owners do. It would make a very pleasant gift for someone who has a little bit of their childhood left in their heart!

Anna Quindlen's A Short Guide to a Happy Life

A Short Guide to a Happy Life

Anna Quindlen

I am a fan of Anna Quindlen's non-fiction. I've read How Reading Changed My Life, and Imagined London. Both were highly entertaining and immensely readable. A Short Guide To a Happy Life, while less literary, was also very entertaining.

Quindlen's main point of the entire book-- at least to me, of course-- is to slow down, enjoy life, and take care to tell the important people in your life how much you care. Life is too short to worry about small, superficial things.

It's a slim volume, containing only a few full pages of text. It has pretty photographs, mostly reminiscent of the 1950s. It makes a lovely graduation gift-- much better then the highly overrated Oh the Places You'll Go. It would also be a pleasant gift for one of those people who have everything.

I enjoyed reading this book. It was a quick read that I would recommend to anyone who needs a quick pick-me-up or an assurance that life does not need to be lived quickly!

Anneli Rufus' A Party of One: A Loner's Manifesto

Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto

Anneli Rufus

I've always considered myself somewhat of a loner. I've never been totally anti-social, but I do prefer company on my schedule. I've never had or wanted many friends. To me, it is more of a quality over quantity. I found this book on amazon.com while browsing for books on introversion. A few clicks and a few days patience, and this book was at my door.

Anneli Rufus' A Party of One: A Loner's Manifesto is a book about the loner's place in society and what it means to be a loner in different situations and areas of your life. It is not as much as a self-help book as it is more of a social and personal commentary. There is not a lot of advice, but more of a general 'you-are-not-the-only-one-that-feels-that-way.'

The beginning of the book chronicles the stigma behind the use of the word 'loner'. People who maim, hurt or otherwise do things that are outside of society's norms are labeled 'loners' immediately by the media. It is much easier to deal with the fact that someone out of the same society you exist in can do something so terrible if they didn't have a lot of friends. Friends and family come to the defense of the killers who are labeled 'loners'. "They have friends," they insist. They might have killed 30 people, but they sure weren't a loner! Rufus gives several different cases where the press labeled someone a loner but they were actually very social people.

The rest of the book is about how being a loner affects the rest of your life. It is also about how the rest of society wants to make loners become part of the collected society itself. From the environment you live in, (your house or apartment) to the way you search (or not) for a mate, being a loner affects the choices that you make and the way that other people see you.

Until I read this book, I never really understood why people were so offended by my habit of just not talking in social situations. I don't mind being out in a group of people. But I just want to people watch. I don't feel any need to mindlessly blabber on and on. I really have nothing to talk about. My job is interesting only to people who I work with. Book customer jokes, i.e. 'where's the non-fiction section?' makes absolutely no sense to anyone who hasn't worked in a bookstore for umpteen years. My interests, books, sewing, farming, etc., also only interest a few people. I can see it in people's eyes when all of a sudden they drop out of a conversation mentally. I don't have any need to bore people like that. It's always offended people. I got into a yelling match-- well, as much as I can-- with a friend of a friend of mine over the fact that I didn't talk. One of my co-workers was offended because I don't talk enough. According to this book, it's a part of the majority of society's urge to make the people who are different meld into their masses.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who considers themselves a loner, knows a loner, or wants to know how that guy or girl can sit in the corner and be by themselves for hours on end. Anyone who wants a biting social commentary on minority groups would also enjoy reading this book. Rufus almost bristles with dislike for the way media and the majority treat loners. It was certainly affirming for me to read this and understand that there are other people out there who feel the same way!

Sidra and Hal Stone's Embracing Your Inner Critic: Turning Self-Criticism Into an Asset

Embracing Your Inner Critic: Turning Self-Criticism into a Creative Asset

Hal Stone

While I have never thought that my inner critic was all encompassing or all controlling, I've always been aware that for some people, it's much more quiet. As a child and teenager, it was much stronger. As I've gotten older and much more aware and accepting of who I am, it has quieted down. But when I saw this book, I was intrigued.

Sidra and Hal Stone's Embracing Your Inner Critic: Turning Self-Criticism Into a Creative Asset is a book about quieting and transforming that annoying voice inside your head that belittles and nags your every move and decision. It discusses what makes up your inner critic and how it develops into a force to be reckoned with. It also discusses parts of your personality that gives information and fuels your inner critic's attacks.

The next part of the book is how to understand and transform your inner critic. It details several different journaling exercises and a discussion technique they call 'voice dialogging'. It is a process where two people, one a facilitator, and the other the dialoguer, discuss different issues that the dialoguer's selves have. The facilitator is the voice of reason and instructs the 'selves' how the person feels about their opinions.

This book is most about accepting yourself for who and what you are and living life to its fullest. Outside opinions are important, but not something to plague your thoughts. Your inner critic should be supporting rather then lethal. It should help you rather then harm you.

My inner critic is pretty calm for the most part. Reading this book made me much more aware of it's attacks. It also helped me understand the critic attacks of other people. I will probably never be able to turn my inner critic completely into a 'creative asset' though. The voice dialog process seems too artificial to me.

The only real problem -- and it may be something that I just don't understand-- is the difference between your inner critic and the voice that keeps you moving forward. I think it probably has something to do with strength and tone of the voice. In moderation, a little criticism isn't too bad. I really think it can be the voice that keeps you going forward. I guess embracing your inner critic can keep it in check!

I enjoyed reading this book. It's certainly not something that I am going to read over and over again. I also on't think I would have bought it at retail either. The $3.99 I spent at Goodwill is enough. If you want to understand the nagging voice in your head this is a good book. I think renting it from a library or buying it secondhand is just a better idea!

M.R. Montgomery's A Cow's Life: The History of How Black Angus Came to Be Home on the Range

A Cow's Life: The Surprising History of Cattle, and How the Black Angus Came to Be Home on the Range

M. Montgomery

I have a bit of a hobby. It's pretty minor at this point, mostly confined to reading. Someday, I want to be a hobby farmer. It started out with wanting to have a flock of various birds-- chickens, ducks, and geese-- but now has progressed to something a bit bigger. I'm not considering large scale dairy farming or anything like that. I think a horse or two-- maybe a few cows. It's nothing that I ever expect to make me a fortune of money. It'll probably always be merely a side hobby.

To satisfy my curiosity, I enjoy reading books about different aspects of farming and agriculture. M.R. Montgomery's A Cow's Life: How the Black Angus Came to be Home on the Range is one of those books.

I'm not particularly a cow person. My cows in  the future hobby farm of my dreams will be miniature cattle. Since I am a Wisconsinite, I am probably genetically imprinted with some kind of appreciation of the bovine species.  Angus cattle are a type that I am already familiar with before I came into my minor farming curiosity. While the black and white Holsteins are much more frequent then Angus, I've seen them on various farms in my travels around Wisconsin.

Aberdeen Angus cattle started in Scotland as a tough, small, black cattle commonly called 'sleekies'. Naturally polled, (sans horns) with docile natures, they were well suited for the cramped farming that would develop in Europe. Several different men throughout the history of the Angus became important for their herds. Their 'stamp' of ideas for breeding, conformation, and durability can still be seen today.

Angus cattle were imported into America in the late 1800s to improve the already present British Shorthorns that populated the West. The bitter cold, poor grazing, and disease were taking down herds and the cattlemen wanted something to make them tougher. As time passed, American cattlemen began to prefer pure blood Angus.

Montgomery goes on to tell of his experiences at a cattle ranch owned by some of his relatives in Montana. From their easy calving abilities, to  their habits of staying in a tight herd, the Angus suited the ranch well.

This is more more of a point to consider rather then anything for or against the book. About half way through reading, it dawned on me that the author worships these cattle. It's certainly in a very innocent way, but it's some serious worshiping. Every other breed of cattle pales in comparison to the Angus. Civilization in Europe was almost built on the flesh of the Angus. The American West was developed from the profits of the Angus herds driven across the plains. The world as we know it would not exist if it wasn't for the Angus cow. It is kind of sentimental and overblown sometimes, but it doesn't take away from the book too much. It does make me want to find a book about Jerseys or Holsteins to see if they walk on water too!

I really liked this book. A passing appreciation of cows is probably needed to read this book, but the history embedded in it makes it very interesting. I have to say that I appreciate Angus cattle much more after reading this book. They're no longer just a black cow!

Elizabeth Wagele's The Happy Introvert: A Wild and Crazy Guide

The Happy Introvert: A Wild and Crazy Guide for Celebrating Your True Self

Elizabeth Wagele

I bought this book online. Every once in a while I feel the need to read a book that affirms a particularly sensitive part of my personality, being introverted.

Unfortunately, Elizabeth Wagele's book The Happy Introvert: A Wild and Crazy Guide for Celebrating Your True Self, is only partly about being introverted. It is mostly a book explaining the differences between being introverted and extroverted. It discusses the many different types of both introversion and extroversion.  It does talk about some of the positives about being introverted, but it also discusses the positives of extroversion. It does mention different ways to deal with the opposite of your personality.

This is much more then just the Happy Introvert. It's more Happy Person. The title is misleading. I think that a reader has already decided that he or she is introverted when they decide to pick up a book titled the Happy Introvert.  He or she does not need the criteria for being extroverted. I don't think the way that she portrays introverted or extroverted people is very kind either. Not all extroverted people are devilish and out to get all introverted people, nor are all introverted people solitary recluses. There are many different degrees. I also don't like the silly line drawings.

I am not calling this a book a waste of paper or anything equally dramatic. It wasn't the book I thought it was going to be. Perhaps it addresses the need for information  for someone else. If you want to read a book about being a happy introvert, read Marti Olsen's  the Introvert Advantage instead.

Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People

How to Win Friends & Influence People

Dale Carnegie

I remember my mom going to a series of Dale Carnegie meetings when I was a middle schooler. Her work sent her there. I really don't remember much, besides the tons of paperwork she brought home. I have to say that Carnegie's books were just to or three more books on my mother's bookshelves. They weren't much of an interest to me for much of the rest of my teenage years. Even throughout my bookselling career, they weren't much more then just a few titles on a shelf.

It wasn't until this semester and my Psychology of Human Relations instructor. My teacher wasn't a very exciting, sit-on-the-edge-of-your-seat kind of guy. When we got to Carnegie's part in revolutionizing the human relations movement in the workplace, he got as close to enthusiastic as I ever thought he would get. He went on and on about what an impact Carnegie made for a good twenty minutes. I thought that if his books made him that happy, I should read them for myself. Since I'm almost always open to reading suggestions (at least with my employee discount) I picked up a copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People.

I came up sorely disappointed. Since it was written a good 70 odd years ago, I know a lot of things have changed. I also know that I am already basically a nice person. I also know that while I could never make it as a commission based salesperson, after eight years of retail, I am a pretty good customer service person. I can talk about nearly anything book related to nearly anyone. I don't judge other people by their reading tastes and I can pretend that I enjoy every genre that book-selling throws at me. (And I actually enjoy most of them.) But Carnegie's rules for winning friends and influencing people seem artificial and fake. I don't want people to flatter me just so I do or buy something. I don't want to suck up to people so they like me. I know he's got several different rules, but they all seem to carry the same message. Perhaps I am already using Carnegie's rules subconsciously.  Perhaps my mother trained me well!

I think that every book I read has some purpose. None of them are waste of my time. If anything, reading a book teaches me to avoid reading an author again. (As with William Faulkner!) Reading How to Win Friends and Influence People has been an affirmation that I treat people well. I might be able to take his rules to the point that I can 'win friends and influence people' every time, but I can keep on doing what I do to be a generally peaceful person.

If you feel yourself at wits end with nearly everyone you meet, then this book may give you some pointers in dealing with humanity. Otherwise, I think skipping it would be a good plan of action. I'm sure there are plenty more relationship or business books that will help you learn how to have more friends and influence people!