The Book Club

Book Review: Daniel J. Levitin's This is Your Brain on Music

Title: This is Your Brain on Music

Author: Dr. Daniel J. Levitin

Publisher: Plume/Penguin (2007)

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, Science

Sub-Genres: Anatomy, Biology, Music, Psychology

Summary: Levitin started his career as a music producer but ends it as a cognitive psychologist studying how the human brain reacts to music. In This is Your Brain on Music, Levitin covers a variety of musical topics from why we like certain music, what makes a musician, and how music relates to our emotional and linguistic developments. He takes all types of music, from Mozart to Motley Crue, and shows the reader just what our brain does with it.

What I Liked: For a science book that had to deal with two horribly advanced sets of terminology (music terms and anatomy terms), this book was utterly readable. From what could have been a horrible mess of confusion, Levitin manages to create a straight-forward, well-planned book that covers a variety of topics that generally makes sense to the reader. And the bonus is that the book covers topics that your everyday person would find interesting, as his base of musical knowledge is so broad that he can explain the science without talking down to the reader.

The breadth of topics broached in this book are also quite impressive, with the 9 chapters divided up into smaller sections. Levitin conveys a lot of information in a short space (the book isn't really that long for nonfiction) and does so with a down-to-earth tone that I think a lot of readers would enjoy. This isn't a professor talking to a student, but rather an expert teaching their friend about what they do.

I also truly appreciated the way Levitin looks at both science and music. There's this awe in his tone that must come from the author naturally, because that's the way he feels - there's no guile or trickery-in-style here, just straight-forward love of what he does. And the way he can describe the music of the Beatles, Bach, or Bon Jovi in equal terms is refreshing. All music for Levitin is worthwhile, from prehuman drumming to the atonal madness of the 20th century. And it's that appreciation for his subject that brings this book to a higher level.

What I Didn't Like: The book goes by too fast. There's so much in here, that Levitin sometimes does get lost in his topics - going on too long in some sections about music terminology that didn't even grab my attention as a musician or a long discussion on the anatomy of the brain, throwing out way too many words that the average reader won't take the time to understand. When he gets into these pigeon-holed segments, especially in comparison to the other parts of the book where he's so focused, the reader (like me) will start to skim and probably miss something important.

Similar Books: Other Levitin Books: The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature

Other Music and Psychology Studies: Music, The Brain, And Ecstasy: How Music Captures Our Imagination, The Tao of Music: Sound Psychology, and Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, Revised and Expanded Edition.

Buy It Here!: This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession

Last Thought: If you love music and want to feel smart at a dinner party, this is a good place to go.

Book Review: Mary Karr's Lit

Title: Lit

Author: Mary Karr

Publisher: Harper (2009)

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction

Sub-Genres: Addiction, Family Drama, Religion, Writing

Plot Summary: Karr tells her own tale of tackling an addiction to alcohol. She details, although she never actually tried to commit suicide and how much she cared for her son, how she was utterly, truly messed up, thanks in part to her mother's own wild ways. Karr also tells the story of how she became a literary success and how she found her way from being an atheist to joining the Catholic church.

What I Liked: This book was on most of last year's Best Of lists, as well as my own Top 10 List of Books I haven't Read Yet (4 down, 6 to go!), and I have to say, I agree with all the praise. This memoir is a nice balance of the same tropes we've seen (the bad homelife, the bad marriage, the horrible addiction) but Karr manages to elevate it to new levels with her own humor, style, and prose.

For a lot of memoirists, it's the story that sells the book. In other words, their actual writing might not be that great, because the editors are more worried about a saleable idea than beautiful prose. Karr, as a poet first and memoirist second, is the antithesis of that ugly cycle. Her words are uniquely chosen in that way only poets can do, but she doesn't manage to let that bog down her plot. Her stories moves along at a face clip, allowing her to cover large portions of her life and dreams without letting the poetry stop coming.

I also thoroughly enjoyed the letter to her son at the opening. As a writer, it's hard to let your family read your work. We write from experience. Memorists have it even worse, because their own lives are the story, which means that family members suddenly become characters. And while we could pull an Osborn family (where the elder sister never once appeared with her family on the show and everyone pretended she didn't exist during shooting), it feels like lying - well, at least to me. I thought it was a smart and welcome addition and set the book's tone - as this book was really about Karr's relationship to her own mother.

I also really like Karr's style of not using quotation marks, because it would be impossible to remember actual quotes (or, at least, that's why I'm assuming she did it). It's a little hard to read at first, but I think it speaks to this being her memories, a point she references many times throughout the novel, like when she blacks out and can't tell the reader what happened. She's not the first to use this trick, but she used it well.

What I Didn't Like: I haven't read Karr's other two memoirs, and being the detail-oriented reader I am, I felt like I was missing a few pieces of the puzzle overall. To be a truly standalone book, I feel like nothing should feel out of place or go unexplained. There are a few moments in passing that just brought me short - mostly because I had no clue what she was talking about.

To go along with that, once Karr begins her recovery, her personal world explodes with new people. The book's cast literally quadruples in about three chapters, and well, it's kind of hard to remember who everyone is. While Karr does a good job of describing people, she usually only does so once, when we first meet them, so when they show up later, sometimes it's hard to remember who in the world these people were. It's a continuity issue that causes the reader to remove themselves from the book at times. A few more descriptions (or less characters) might have helped.

Similar Books: Karr's Other Memoirs: Cherry and The Liars' Club: A Memoir.

Books by People in the Novel: Karr's Poetry: Sinners Welcome: Poems, Viper Rum, and Tobias Wolff's Memoir: This Boy's Life: A Memoir.

Drinking Memoirs: A Drinking Life: A Memoir, Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood, and Drinking: A Love Story.

Buy It Here!: Lit: A Memoir

Last Thought: An excellent memoir about family, addiction, finding god, and finding a voice.

Literary Terms: The Differences Between Memoir, Autobiography, and Biography

While memoir has been a popular genre for the last fifteen years or so, suddenly blowing up out of nowhere thanks in part to bestsellers like Prozac Nation and Running with Scissors, there has always been a bit of confusion about just what the difference between a memoir and an autobiography is.

But to understand that, first you have to understand the difference between an autobiography and a biography.

A biography is a nonfiction story of a person's life. To be considered biography, the biography must be as true as possible, based on factual evidence. Most biographies today are split into two types: popular nonfiction books about celebrities, politicians, and historical figures and academic works based on scholarly research. Usually, the popular books have more of an artificial or controversal slant, like the new biographies of Malcolm X and Gandhi, who proclaim that both might have gay love affairs.

An autobiography is a nonfiction story of a person's life, written by that person. In other words, the author is writing about their own life. The autobiography falls into the same trappings and styles as the biography. Both tell the story a life from birth until death - or to the present day, in the case of the autobiography.

A memoir, on the other hand, is written by an author about their own life, but has more in common with narrative nonfiction than biography in terms of style. Instead of telling about the entire life of a person, the memoir tells only about a certain period of time or bout a certain story arc of the author's life. Many memoirs deal with depression, abuse, or drugs, or on the other end of the scale, extraordinary, life-changing events. They can also come from celebrities and famous figures, but these are generally limited to books that are ghostwritten by someone else. These books simply adopt the less formal style of the memoir for mass market appeal. Memoirs are more individualized in style and tone than autobiographies, with the latter being more creative and less formal.

Memoirs, unlike academic biographies or autobiographies which are meticulously researched, come from the writer's memory and often contain known falsehoods. The writer will manipulate their own past to better the story - either moving events around, merging several people into one, or changing the scene of an event to create a better emotional climax. These are considered valid changes in a memoir, as long as the majority of the story isn't fabricated, as it was in the case of James Frey's A Million Little Pieces.

Book Review: Michael Larsen's How to Write a Book Proposal

Title: How to Write a Book Proposal

Author: Michael Larsen

Publisher: Writer's Digest Books

Genres: Art, How To, Nonfiction

Sub-Genres: Publishing, Writing

Summary: A book written by a NYC agent that describes the basics of how to write a winning book proposal for nonfiction books. Book proposals are generally done for either agents or publishers. In nonfiction publishing, book proposals are generally written before the book is written, making them invaluable for selling the book.

What I Liked: This book is handy for any nonfiction writer who is seriously considering trying to get published. The advice is frank and realistic, and Larsen doesn't bother to sugarcoat the fact that it's much easier to get a nonfiction book published if you already have a national platform and damned hard to get published if you don't.

The book itself is written decently well, with its greatest strength being that it's pretty much as straight-forward as you can get. It comes with example book proposals and lists several other resources in the categories it covers. The author also continually updates the book, now in a fourth edition, meaning that it's still timely and decently up-to-date on the latest trends in publishing.

What I Didn't Like: The advice the book has is good, but it's really a skimpy book. I'll be perfectly honest and say that I picked up my copy at a used bookstore here in NYC and frankly, I'm not sure it's worth the 8 bucks I paid for it. You can find most of this advice on several agent blogs if you look for it, including examples of book proposals. Unless you're someone who needs a physical handbook instead of an online one, I'd stick to the internet for this one. Cause it's free.

Similar Books: Other Michael Larsen How Tos: How to Get a Literary Agent.

Other Book Proposal Guides: Book Proposals That Sell: 21 SECRETS TO SPEED YOUR SUCCESS and Write the Perfect Book Proposal: 10 That Sold and Why, 2nd Edition.

Other How to Get Published Guides: Thinking Like Your Editor: How to Write Great Serious Nonfiction--and Get It Published, The Forest for the Trees (Revised and Updated): An Editor's Advice to Writers, and Get Known Before The Book Deal: Use Your Personal Strengths To Grow An Author Platform.

Buy It Here!: How to Write a Book Proposal

Last Thought: Good advice, but not worth the money, cause the internet is free.

Book Review: Andrew Pettegree's The Book in the Renaissance

Title: The Book in the Renaissance

Author: Andrew Pettegree

Publisher: Yale University Press (2010)

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, History

Sub-Genres: European History, Publishing, The Reformation, The Renaissance, Writing

Summary: Pettegree examines the history of publishing in Renaissance Europe, by examining different aspects of books: production, shipment, translation, censorship, the building of libraries and collections, and how we know about the books that no longer exist. He covers a wide range of publishing, from manscripts and books to pamphlets and broadsheets, and covers topics such as religion and music.

What I Liked: The main strength of this book is that it's a scholarly book that's still easy to read. There was never a moment in this book where I simply couldn't understand. As someone who knows only a small amount about the Renaissance, I'd say that's a pretty large accomplishment.

Pettegree's style is straight-forward and simple, examining each area of publishing in individual chapters, while sometimes trying to link them together. The best parts of the book are when he actually goes on tangents covering the lesser known aspects of publishing, like the first attempts at printing music with staves and notes, or on little histories about the bit players in the larger publishing or European worlds. He manages to paint a picture of not only the publishing world but of the majority of Renaissance Europe without losing his main focus.

What I Didn't Like: Pettegree covers so many topics that he doesn't really have a unifying principle in the book beyond "This is about publishing. In the Renaissance." I just feel like there's no central argument in the book, besides hints that publishing was (and is) much more driven by profit (rather than art) then scholars have previously suggested. While this is a fine argument, it doesn't always come through,  and the book therefore suffers a lack of wholeness.

The other major issue with the book was that I simply wanted Pettegree to make some comments on how publishing then connects to publishing today. Because, frankly, it has barely changed since its inception. Sure, major publishers don't publish broadsheets, but seriously, the major principles for publishing a book simply have not changed in the centuries since then. It's so amazing the sheer amount of similarities that could have been drawn that I just wish Pettegree would have done it. Sadly, that's not what historians do, so that's more of a genre issue than Pettegree's fault, really.

Similar Books: Books about the Beginning of Publishing: The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing, 1450-1800, Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England, and The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe.

Renaissance Histories: The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, and Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture.

Publishing Histories: Book Business: Publishing Past, Present, and Future, The Business of Books: How the International Conglomerates Took Over Publishing and Changed the Way We Read, and The Case for Books: Past, Present, and Future.

Buy It Here!: The Book in the Renaissance

Last Thought: An excellent and thought-provoking take on the beginning of publishing that's easy to read for even non-scholars.

Great Quotes: Anais Nin on Perception

 

 

"The artist is the only one who knows that the world is a subjective creation, that there is a choice to be made, a selection of elements."

Anais Nin, The Diary of Anais Nin, Vol. 5: 1947-1955

Review: Cantor's The Last Knight Needs an Editor

Title: The Last Knight: The Twilight of the Middle Ages and the Birth of the Modern Era

Author: Norman F. Cantor

Publisher: Free Press (2004)

Genres: History, Nonfiction

Sub-Genres: Middle Ages, Royal Studies

Summary: Through the life of John of Gaunt of England, uncle to King Richard II and father of King Henry IV, Cantor tells the story of the decline of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern world. He covers topics ranging from the medieval church, politics, women, and Gaunt's relationship with Chaucer.

What I Liked: I've been in a total history book mode lately, which is strange, considering that's never happened before. So I picked up this book hoping to learn something new - which I did.

I like the narrow focus of this book - by seeing the Middle Ages through just one person, it gets about as close to a narrative history that one can get without being biography or fiction.

Cantor also manages to view medieval life through a variety of lenses: he covers the role of women, the military, royal history, government, and society life for the rich and the poor. And he does this all through easy to understand, common voice. Never does Cantor drift into a high level academic voice that could have distanced himself from the reader.

What I Didn't Like: But Cantor really needed an editor. He covers a wide-range of topics, yes, but he also repeats himself within those topics, like each chapter was written to stand alone, instead of as a single functioning book. I'm not sure what happened in the creation of this book, but Cantor repeats the same facts over and over (Gaunt's relationship to Chaucer comes to mind - and then, he devotes the entire last chapter to it) so that it's easy to get annoyed with this book. It's like having a teacher who thinks that by repeating a fact over and over it becomes easier to understand, when really, you already get it.

Also, the book as a whole doesn't really make sense. It's about John of Gaunt, yes, but Gaunt's life only seems to serve as a function of the book. Cantor never delves fully into Gaunt's life, except by pointing out juicy tidbits here and there - like the fact that he has a bunch of illegitimate children and that while he protected his nephew's throne, his own son came and took it from his cousin after Gaunt's death. By skimming over the details that make Gaunt fascinating and only briefly mentioning them, Cantor is effectively teasing the reader. This would have been fine, if he had eventually come out and told the reader all the details. He never does.

Also, if you've studied the Middle Ages, even just a bit, some of Cantor's assertions can be called into question. If I'm going to read a history, I'd like to know I can trust the text. I'm not sure I can do that here - Cantor's overgeneralizations make it hard to believe his arguments.

Similar Works: Biography of John of Gaunt: John of Gaunt, His Life and Character

Medieval Histories: The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century, The History of the Medieval World: From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade, and The Oxford History of Medieval Europe.

Other Cantor Works: The Civilization of the Middle Ages: A Completely Revised and Expanded Edition of Medieval History, Inventing the Middle Ages, and Medieval Lives: Eight Charismatic Men and Women of the Middle Ages.

Buy It Here!: The Last Knight: The Twilight of the Middle Ages and the Birth of the Modern Era

Last Work: Overgeneralized, unedited history book that could have been a whole lot smarter.

Review: Umberto Eco's On Literature Goes Over My Head

Title: On Literature

Author: Umberto Eco

Translator: Martin McLaughlin

Publisher: Mariner Books (2005)

Genres: Art, Nonfiction

Sub-Genre: Literary Critique, Writing

Summary: In this collection of essays about literature and writing, Eco takes a look at a large range of topics, from Dante's Inferno and Wilde's metaphors, to Italian views on American writing and how he writes himself.

What I Liked: Eco touches on a lot of different topics here, with each essay practically in its own world. It allows the book to go really in-depth on a variety of topics which aren't normally found in a collection of essays. Normally, the collection sticks to one or two topic areas and doesn't divert. Here, Eco switches back and forth from focusing on actual writing processes to the study of literature to breakdowns of culture and art. It keeps the reader on their toes and a good introduction to Eco's thinking.

I also thoroughly enjoyed a lot of Eco's worldviews. His belief that popular culture has obviously influenced how we read and write (in nearly every essay, there's allusions to film, television, and/or comic books) is evident. And he never once argues that this is good or bad. It is what it is, and I like that. He also doesn't go for the usual high art as great art idea, but rather, it appears Eco believes more that art is just art. We should enjoy it for what it is, study it for pleasure, but never take it so seriously that we actually lose sight that it is still art. I can seriously get behind both opinions.

What I Didn't Like: While I enjoyed the sheer scope of the essays, the book really didn't make sense as a collection. The essays didn't really speak to one another in any discernable way for me. Yes, they were all about literature and writing, and sometimes Eco used similar examples or mentioned ideas previously mentioned, but as a book, it just really wasn't a whole.

That being said, several of the essays just didn't do anything for me, like the essay on the nature of metaphor. I went into this collection looking for an intellectual challenge, and I definitely got one. Eco's ideas were sometimes hard to read, for their density (that's a good thing), but sometimes, his allusions to other works made me wonder just how in the world I have a degree in literature. But I think the problem there is that so many of his allusions to other works went by unexplained or unsupported, that the reader can't really follow. The book would have benefitted greatly from footnotes.

Alas, I think the central problem of the collection is that it is an academic study posing as popular nonfiction. This is a book of academia, not a book for the everyday reader. Unless you really love Eco, Italian literature, or literary critiques, I'm not sure you'd be able to get enough out of this book to truly enjoy it.

Similar Works: Other Eco Nonficiton Writing/Literature Books: Travels in Hyperreality, Kant and the Platypus: Essays on Language and Cognition, Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language, and Interpretation and Overinterpretation

Literary Critique from a Writer: Francine Prose's Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

Studies of How a Writer Writes: Stephen King's On Writing

Buy It Here: On Literature

Last Thought: Academic literary critique, posing as popular writing book, makes me feel dumber than I am.

Review: Outliers, The Story of (a) Success(ful Book)

Title: Outliers

Author: Malcolm Gladwell

Publisher: Little, Brown, and Company (2008)

Genres: Nonfiction, Science

Sub-Genres: Social Sciences, Popular Science

Summary: Gladwell explores the nature of success, by looking at Canadian children's hockey leagues, Korean pilots, and Bill Gates. The essential thesis is that people love the story of the underdog and most believe that people get success by sheer force of will. Gladwell asserts that this is not the case: that in reality, success (and expert skill) is created by 10,000 hours of work, your ethnic, family, and religious background, and being in the right place and the right time.

What I Liked: After being told all my life that all I needed was a good education and that I would be successful (given my natural intelligence and my talent for both music and writing), I was surprised to learn when I completed my master's degree that no one wanted to hire me. I purposely read this book to seek out some answers for myself, and what I found (though painful at times, wonderful at others) is remarkable.

The way Gladwell thinks is amazing, for he manages to throw out our preconceived notions that so often blind us to what is right in front of our face. He might crush the notion of the American Dream (by stating that hardwork and intelligence doesn't always work out to riches), but he also manages to be inspiring, by exploring how life can be completely unexpected, if you put yourself out there, and work really, really hard.

And he does this without ever once coming off like an elitist. This is surprising, considering, at the end of the book, Gladwellputs himself in the shoes of these so-called Outliers (the successes that seem to come from nowhere that change society). As he should, since his career is quite amazing.

Overall, the book is easy to read and while supported by thorough research, manages to come off as enjoyable. This is why so many popular science books fail - they become too much like textbooks and not enough like something people actually want to read. Or they go too far in the other direction, and become all fluff. Outliers doesn't have either problem.

What I Didn't Like: Gladwell partitions the book into several larger groups of chapters. I don't mind this, but it does seem to force Gladwell to repeat himself at times. When he circles back to previous ideas, he sometimes spends so much time illuminating the same story that it doesn't always seem like he's saying something new - or that the connections between the stories don't always seem natural. This is also true of when some of his stories seem to overlap - they don't all feel perfectly original and separate.

Similar Works: Other Popular Science by Gladwell Books: Blink and The Tipping Point.

Other Recent Popular Science Bestsellers: The World Without Us and At Home: A Short History of Private Life.

Other Books about Success: Success Is Not an Accident: Change Your Choices; Change Your Life  and The Real Truth about Success: What the Top 1% Do Differently, Why They Won't Tell You, and How You Can Do It Anyway!   

Buy It Here: Outliers: The Story of Success

Last Thought: A successful book about success. (Yes, I know that was trite. Still true, though.)