'A Naked Singularity' Book Review

Sergio De La Pava's novel's beginning chapter opens up with the passage: "the system, needed to be constantly fed former people in order to properly function so that in a year typical to the city where the following took place about half a million bodies were forcibly conscripted. And if you learn only one thing from the ensuing maybe let it be this: the police were not merely interested observers who occasionally witnessed criminality and were then basically compelled to make and arrest, rather the police had the special ability to in effect create crime by making an arrest almost whenever they wished." With this quote you come to realize that "A Naked Singularity" is not a normal novel.

The book, which is a three-part narrative, follows the story of a public-defense attorney named Casi (which is Spanish for "as if"), and opens by following him during a regular day as he confers with a series of clients through the merciless process also known as the New York criminal justice system. The critique of the U.S. justice system and the problems with fiercer designs of law and order are told in great detail exposing all of its naked ugliness.

The first 250 pages of the book continue following Casi through his day. We are introduced to his neighbor, a Colombian psychology student who decides toward the end of the book to change his major to physics to find the greater truth in things We are also introduced to Casi's family, who come from Colombia and have personalities just as spicy as Colombian food.

Part two of the novel digresses into numerous topics about the issues in today's society. The novel talks about how those flaws are apparent when depicting the descriptions of a beautiful girl walking through a room. It also discusses the problem with the war on drugs, and how hard it is to quit any kind of drug, including caffeine, once a person gets started on it. It discusses why everyone, including McDonald's, likes criminals.

Part three concludes with a crime and all the crazy things that happen after the incident. At the focal point of the book, there is a complicated argument with the close of an exciting crime. The final pages will make your heart race, and the conclusion puts everything together.

At the end of the novel, the back cover reminds us that "you have to decide, this instant, who and what you are. Are you saint, sinner, or something in between, because nothing's worse than in between. To disappear into the lumpy, undefined center when the lure is so clearly found at the edges. No one aspires to mediocrity. Mediocrity withers and dies with nary a notice; its practitioners rendered mute by their race to the middle. Sinner or saint, that is your question."

Book review: 'Known and Unknown'

Book review: 'Known and Unknown' by Donald Rumsfeld

Donald Rumsfeld has served as White House chief of staff and twice as secretary of Defense, the youngest and the oldest man ever to hold the post. He has been a trusted diplomatic envoy and successful private sector executive. Throughout it all — indeed, for most of his 78 years — he has borne with courage and almost preternatural fortitude the burden of always being the smartest guy in the room.

It's wearisome always being right, particularly when so many others are so wrong, so often — at least that's the impression a reader is most likely to draw from Rumsfeld's exhaustive, exasperating but vigorously written memoir, "Known and Unknown."

The title derives from a frequently parodied Rumsfeld response to a reporter's question about whether there actually was evidence of any link between Saddam Hussein and terrorists seeking weapons of mass destruction. The Defense secretary responded: "Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me because, as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don't know we don't know."

It is, of course, a logical fallacy to multiply categories beyond necessity, but it's one Rumsfeld has rhetorically mastered to create a self-conscious reputation as a fearless questioner of received truths, one he's amplified with a flair for impenetrably gnomic aphorisms. That, plus a cloying — but purely verbal — deference to questions of institutional loyalty are calculated to conceal as knife-sharp a set of elbows as any accomplished bureaucrat ever swung.

One might suppose, for example, that the "unknown" Rumsfeld intended to explore in these memoirs would be unrevealed facts about the six years during which he ran the Defense Department for President George W. Bush — particularly since nearly two-thirds of the book deal with that relatively brief period in the author's life. But, as Rumsfeld writes, he's "never much of a handwringer, I don't spend a lot of time in recriminations, looking back or second-guessing decisions made in real time with imperfect information by myself or others." As seems typical of so much here, that's partially true; the author has no taste for self-criticism or second-guessing himself.

Masterful bureaucratic survivor that he was until he ran out of room to maneuver, Rumsfeld delivers a memoir that is all about shifting blame and settling scores.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, later secretary of State, are two colleagues who come in for a particular bashing — the former chairman of the joint chiefs as a self-interested operator, Rice as ineffectual and inexperienced. Rumsfeld's contempt for her ability to function effectively as National Security Council chief is thoroughgoing, and he implicitly attributes some of Bush's poor decisions to the fact that Rice was usually the last person to whom the president spoke. Powell's closest deputy, Richard Armitage, also comes in for his share of knocks. In fact, according to Rumsfeld, at one point Bush had to intervene when Powell and the Defense secretary got into a spitting match about which of their deputies — Armitage or Paul Wolfowitz at Defense — was leaking the most damaging stories about the other's boss. The president, we're assured by Rumsfeld, took his side.

Rumsfeld takes particular offense at Powell's contention that he was misled by faulty intelligence into making the public case for the invasion of Iraq. "Powell was not duped or misled by anybody," Rumsfeld writes. "nor did he lie about Saddam's suspected WMD stockpiles. The president did not lie. The vice president did not lie. [ CIA Director George] Tenet did not lie. Rice did not lie. I did not lie.…The far less dramatic truth is that we were wrong."

Even so, Rumsfeld — who does reveal that Bush asked for Iraqi invasion plans within days of 9/11 — argues that removing Hussein was the right thing to do. He denies, however, that putting more troops on the ground there would have prevented the murderous chaos that engulfed Iraq, and he blames civilian administrator Paul Bremer's decision not to quickly turn control over to Iraqi civilians as well as the abrupt dissolution of Hussein's army for that. (In one of his rare forays into critical retrospection, Rumsfeld remarks in passing that he might have been able to stop that.) Rumsfeld flatly denies that any of his military commanders ever asked for more forces and categorically rejects the stories that Gen. Eric Shinseki was forced to retire for testifying to Congress before the invasion began that hundreds of thousands of troops would be required.

Tenet and Gen. Tommy Franks also come in for criticism over their handling of the Afghan fiasco at Tora Bora, where the United States botched its last known opportunity to apprehend or kill Osama bin Laden. Both the CIA director and the commander have said they were denied additional U.S. forces to seal off the area and prevent Bin Laden's escape. Rumsfeld has a different memory. He writes that he sent Tenet a memo saying that "we might be missing an opportunity" and wondering if more troops were needed. Rumsfeld alleges that he later learned a CIA agent on the ground had requested just that, but adds: "I never received such a request from either Franks or Tenet. And cannot imagine denying it if I had. If someone thought bin Laden was cornered, as later claimed, I found it surprising that Tenet had never called me to urge Franks to support their operation."

Rumsfeld's explanation? "Their recollections may be imperfect."

While the author goes out of the way to stress his loyalty to Bush and to express admiration for his personal qualities, he employs his best more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger tone to describe a president who too often failed to demand the best information, made decisions precipitously and then failed to see that they were wholly carried out.

The one colleague who is spared Rumsfeld's disapproval is Vice President Dick Cheney, with whom he served in Gerald Ford's White House. Apart from the observation that Cheney almost surely was the most influential vice president in recent history, he hardly appears in these pages. It's an odd omission.

Ultimately, Rumsfeld casts his net over a herd of scapegoats large enough to include his own family. He attributes his preoccupation in the days preceding 9/11, for example, to worry over his son Nic's relapse into drug addiction. His flippant, controversial dismissal of concerns over the looting of Baghdad's antiquities museum was, similarly, the consequence of distraction over his wife's ruptured appendix.

There is one unintentionally revealing anecdote from the tragic hours of 9/11 that actually serves as kind of coda to these recollections. The Pentagon, of course, had been attacked. Late that night, the dead still were uncounted and fires still burned. About 11 p.m. — 12 hours after the plane had slammed into the Pentagon — Torie Clarke, the veteran assistant secretary of Defense for public affairs, asked Rumsfeld whether he'd called his wife of 47 years? He admitted that he hadn't.

"Clarke looked at me with the stare of a woman who was also a wife. 'You son of a bitch,' she blurted out.

"She had a point."

She did, indeed.

The Girl Who Stopped Swimming: Review

Laurel Gray Hawthorne needs to make things pretty. Coming from a family with a literal skeleton in their closet, she's developed this talent all her life, whether helping her willful mother to smooth over the reality of her family's ugly past, or elevating humble scraps of unwanted fabric into nationally acclaimed art quilts.

Her sister Thalia, an impoverished "Actress" with a capital A, is her opposite, and prides herself in exposing the lurid truth lurking behind life's everyday niceties. And while Laurel's life was neatly on track, a passionate marriage, a treasured daughter, and a lovely home in lovely suburban Victorianna, everything she holds dear is thrown into question the night she is visited by an apparition in her bedroom.

The ghost appears to be her 14-year-old neighbor Molly Dufresne, and when Laurel follows this ghost , she finds the real Molly floating lifeless in her swimming pool. While the community writes the tragedy off as a suicide, Laurel can't. Reluctantly enlisting Thalia's aid, Laurel sets out on a life-altering investigation that triggers startling revelations about her own guarded past, the truth about her marriage, and the girl who stopped swimming.

Richer and more rewarding than any story from Joshilyn Jackson, The Girl Who Stopped Swimming is destined both to delight Jackson's loyal fans and capture a whole new audience.

'The Piano Teacher,' by Janice Y. K. Lee - Review

“That’s us, the British colonials, battling against our circum­stances, always,” the formidable Edwina Storch says to Claire Pendleton over tea one sweltering afternoon. Most of the colony’s British residents are cultivating a lifestyle of potted palms and potted duck. But not 28-year-old Claire. While her compatriots wilt and sweat, she glows. Hong Kong suits her. “Something about the tropical clime had ripened her appearance, brought everything into harmony.”

Janice Y. K. Lee’s first novel, “The Piano Teacher,” opens with the newlywed Claire traveling to Hong Kong in 1951 with her husband, Martin, an engineer. Of their marriage Lee writes, “She was not so attracted to him, but who was she to be picky, she thought, hearing the voice of her mother.” Soon Claire is hired as a piano teacher for the daughter of a wealthy Chinese couple, Victor and Melody Chen. Also in their employ, as a chauffeur, is an enigmatic Englishman, Will Truesdale.

In sleek, spare prose, Lee plays with the growing erotic tension between Claire and Will. Here he is approaching her, cutting “the space between them in half, and half again, coming at her with those hooded, sardonic eyes.” “Be good to me,” Claire cautions him. Will’s response is noncommittal. Claire is sexually charged and curious, the affair with Will her rite of passage. She’s also insightful enough to realize that the headier intoxication is with herself, the newly emerging Claire — a woman who indulges in petty thievery and has a lover; a woman more comfortable among the throngs of Chinese at the city’s wet markets than at the teas and cocktail parties on the Peak, where some of the colony’s wealthiest members reside.

Lee has made the bold (and successful) decision to write a novel in which none of her characters are particularly endearing. Will can be cruel and self-absorbed; Claire is often prejudiced. And the upper echelons of Hong Kong society, through which they both pass, are rife with pettiness and jealousy. Many of these people have been deeply scarred by the Japanese occupation — just how deeply Claire will eventually discover as she learns more about Will Truesdale’s past.

Will’s entree into Hong Kong took place in the summer of 1941 through his relationship with a quixotic Eurasian named Trudy Liang. Driven by deep insecurities, Trudy was part Holly Golightly, part Mata Hari — charming, insulting, scheming and above all captivating. In one of the novel’s retrospective scenes, at a party on the beach, conversation ceases as “they all watch her, rapt, as she plunges into the sea and comes up sleek and dripping — her slim body a vertical rebuke to the flatness of the horizon between the sky and sea.”

In December 1941, six months after Will met Trudy, the Japanese invaded Hong Kong. In small but riveting vignettes, Lee evokes the turmoil and fear that seized residents during the occupation, a time when Will and Trudy and the Chens made choices that have rippled through the war years and into Claire’s future.

“The Piano Teacher” is laced with intrigue concerning a hoard of Chinese artifacts called the Crown Collection that went missing during the war (like the artworks owned by the real-life Hong Kong businessman Paul Chater). But while the inevitable “who did what and when and why” that dominates the last third of the novel is satisfying because it answers all those questions, readers will be more enthralled by Lee’s depiction of Will’s relationships with his two lovers — “Claire, with her blond and familiar femininity, English rose to Trudy’s exotic scorpion” — and the unsparing way Lee unravels them.

Lisa Fugard is the author a novel, “Skinner’s Drift.”

Under the Tuscan Sun At Home in Italy

JACKET NOTES: UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN is one woman’s enchanting account of her love affair with Italy and the home that changes her life.

Frances Mayes - widely published poet, gourmet cook and travel writer - opens the door on a wondrous new world when she buys and restores an abandoned villa in the spectacular Tuscan countryside. She finds faded frescoes beneath the whitewash in the dining room, a vineyard under wildly overgrown brambles - and even a wayward scorpion under her pillow. And from her traditional kitchen and simple garden she creates dozens of delicious seasonal recipes, all included n this book.

In the vibrant local markets and neighboring hill towns, the author explores the nuances of the Italian landscape, history and cuisine. Each adventure yields delightful surprises - the perfect panettone, an unforgettable wine, or painted Etruscan tombs.

Frances Mayes’s sensuous memoir takes you into the heart of Italy and tells of a renewal, not only of a house, but also of the spirit.

Reading festival debuts at Taipei book fair

More than 40 public reading sessions will be held during the upcoming Taipei International Book Exhibition, organizer Taipei Book Fair Foundation said Feb. 7.

It will be the first time in its 19-year history that TIBE has staged such an event, according to TBFF Chairman Wang Jung-wen.

“Public reading became a tradition following Germany’s Leipzig and Japan’s Fukuoka book fairs,” Wang said.

“In the future, the foundation could make a reading festival of Chinese-language literature part of its annual routine,” he added.

This year’s TIBE, with an expected attendance of more than 500,000 visitors, will feature the works of over 80 writers from Taiwan and abroad. Participants will read in various languages including English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Norwegian and Spanish.

At the Pavilion of Children’s books, ROC first lady Chou Mei-ching will read Feb. 10 from “On My Way to Buy Eggs,” an illustrated book by Taiwanese children’s author Chen Chih-yuan.

Noted writers from abroad, including Norwegian Jostein Gaarder and Australian Morris Gleitzman, are invited to speak at the event.

The Kingdom of Bhutan will be the Guest of Honor at this year’s TIBE. It will be the first time for Bhutan to participate in an international book fair, organizers added.

Ancient scriptures and texts by modern Bhutanese writers will also be featured at this year’s exhibition. In addition, Karma Ura and Kunzang Choden, two prominent writers in the landlocked South Asian nation, will read from their works.

Other highlights of the book fair include the Comics Festival, expected to draw over 300,000 anime fans, and the Digital Publishing Pavilion, which will showcase the latest reading technologies.

The six-day event will welcome some 800 publishers from 58 countries to the Taipei World Trade Center, organizers said, adding that 300 local and foreign writers will promote their books and meet with readers at the fair. (HZW)

Book fair is big deal in Danbury

The Danbury Elementary and Middle School Book Fair kicked off Monday morning with up to a thousand titles to choose from, librarian Pat Incorvaia said.

"This is a big deal for the kids," she said. "They start asking about it in November and December. I always do it in February."

Incorvaia said the fair, which features titles from Scholastic books for students of all ages, is an important fundraiser for the school. She said when the books, which are provided by Scholastic, are sold, the school receives a percentage of the sale price.

"The teachers use the money to buy DVDs and other stuff," she said. "Some of the books are used for prizes during Right to Read week in May."

The first group of book fair customers were from Vickie Kukay's third-grade class.

Olive O'Rourkesherf purchased a small stack of books, four to be exact. And they were all horse-related.

"Because I just love horses," she said. "I have a horse."

O'Rourkesherf said she didn't wipe out the entire equestrian section, though.

"I believe they have more," she said.

O'Rourkesherf said she purchased horse books at last year's book fair and is very likely to do so again next year.

Devin Whitaker, meanwhile, purchased two books -- one for himself and one for his little sister.

"I'm going to read it to her," he said.

Plus, Whitaker said, he didn't want to spend a whole lot since he has an entire shelf filled with books at home.

Margaret Warren, who graduated from Danbury in 1983, said she's been volunteering to work at the book fair for years.

"Because my daughter went to school here," she said.

Warren said big sellers include the titles "River Monsters," about giant fish in rivers around the world and "Guinness World Records."

In addition to books, pens, pencils, erasers and school supplies and gifts also are available. But Incorvaia said she tends to steer customers away from those items.

"We try to encourage them to buy books, then share with their friends," she said.

The fair will run daily through Friday with special evening hours from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday for parents and the public to attend.

3-day Book Exhibition at Jamia Millia Islamia

A 3-Day Book Exhibition has been organized at Jamia Millia Islamia from February 2-4, 2011 in the Dr. Zakir Husain Library.

Leading publishers such as Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Sage, Manohar, Orient Blackswan among many others are participating in the three day exhibition. The book exhibition not only showcases latest titles published in English but also presents books in other languages such as Hindi, Urdu etc.

The purpose of bringing publishers, distributors together on campus is not only to bring the world of books to its readers but to also invite teachers to recommend books to the library.

The book exhibition was inaugurated by Prof. S.M. Rashid, Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Jamia Millia Islamia on February 2, 2011and will be open to all till February 4, 2011.

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