Families

Ketchup is My Favorite Vegetable - say that out loud and I dare you not to smile.  On the cover, a photo of two cute boys who look so much alike they must be brothers.  One has his arm draped over his brother's shoulder and the younger boy is wearing (duh) a Heinz ketchup t-shirt.  And underneath the title, A Family Grows Up with Autism. 

The book sat on my desk for a few days.  I've known many families affected by autism or special needs children.  Maybe I should just check out the new Harry Potter book instead. 

No, I picked up Ketchup is My Favorite Vegetable and started to read.  And I couldn't put it down.  It's a beautiful book - yes, parts are painful, but Liane Kupferberg Carter writes with elegance, honesty, and humor.  I was amazed at the resilience of her family, their love and perseverance and most of all, Liane's autistic son Mickey, who you follow from birth to young adulthood.  By the end of Mickey's journey you want to shout, "Woo hoo!" 

Sometimes you feel sick when Mickey is bullied or takes a step back in his progress.  Or reading about Liane and her battles (such battles!) with school bureaucracies and finding proper therapies and therapists - she is a wonderful, fierce advocate - I kept thinking of her as Joan of Arc.  But she doesn't pretend to be saintly and that's another lovely thing about her memoir, the idea that life with an autistic child is sometimes overwhelmingly difficult and it's okay to admit that.  But then you take a deep breath and go on. 

One of the things I liked best about Ketchup is My Favorite Vegetable was learning how a family deals with an autistic child who ages out of schools and programs and therapies.  Then what?  What options are available to a young adult with autism?

I cried, but I also cheered.  And you will, too, when you read this book.  Woo hoo, Mickey. 

So You Want to Read About Eugenics?

Sometimes it would be easier if we only read fiction.  Happy fiction, books that take us to a place where we don't have to think.  We can fly, be kings or princesses, fall in love overnight.

Fluff.  Lots and lots of fluff.

Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck by Adam Cohen is not fluff.  Sadly it is non-fiction - a story of the history of the eugenics movement in the United States and a Supreme Court decision that led to the forced sterilization of a woman who was considered an imbecile - and as Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously declared, "Three generations of imbeciles are enough."

So at twenty-one, Carrie Buck was sterilized.  Were the three generations imbeciles?  Carrie, her mother, and Carrie's daughter Vivian, a product of rape, who was "tested" at eight months and found to be mentally defective?  Most likely not.  But they were poor and had no one to speak up for them.

The eugenics movement wanted to produce better human beings and what better way than by purifying the white race?  Eugenists produced a list of people who should be prevented from reproducing - including criminals, deviants, people with disabilities, including the deaf, blind, epileptics, people in the low range of I.Q. tests, as well as immigrants from non-Nordic countries.  This faux science led to over 60,000 forced sterilizations in the United States. 

And if sterilization couldn't keep the United States pure, the eugenics movement also helped set up immigration restrictions and quotas.  They were in place in the 1930s.  Otto Frank (father of Anne) wrote letters to U.S. officials begging to immigrate.  His letters went unanswered.  Hitler read books by eugenists and used portions in Mein Kampf.  Racial hygiene laws were put into terrible practice in Nazi Germany.  (Holmes's quote about "Three generations of imbeciles..." was used as a defense argument by Nazis at the Nuremberg trials.)

Reading this book wasn't easy.  Almost every page made me angry.  But it's an important subject and if you turn on the news these days, too familiar.  Building a wall.  Genetic modification that can lead to designer babies.

Take a chance on this book.  It may make you uneasy, but sometimes that's a good thing. 

When a Book Moves You

Moves you isn't exactly right.  When a book blows your mind.  Blows your head off.  Makes you cry, makes you want to start reading it again from the beginning.  When you want to buy copies for your friends and say, "Read this, read this right now, what are you waiting for, I am so not kidding."

Seriously.  I am not kidding, have you started reading it yet?

I finished The Year of the Runaways by Sunjeev Sahota this afternoon.  Yes, I cried.  Partly because I didn't want it to be over, but also because the ending was so beautiful.

The Year of the Runaways is a novel about a group of immigrants from India who end up in England.  And I don't want to say much more than that -  immigration is a hot button issue and this book isn't about an "issue."  It's about people.  About life and families and dreams and faith.  The writing is simple, but like poetry in its simplicity.  You're transported, you're reminded why you love reading.  Why reading is magic. 

Buy this book.  Or ask me and I'll send you a copy.  But now I'm going to go back to read and savor the last chapter again.     

Reading a (Mostly) Good Book About a Bad (But Talented) Person

Frank Sinatra wasn't Joseph Stalin bad.  But he was a jerk.  An awful guy.  Insanely arrogant, he treated women horribly - actually he treated everybody pretty badly.  He was a bully, he slept with possibly thousands of women - he married Mia Farrow when he was 51 and she was 21.  Ew.  He liked to provoke fights and punch people (a lot easier to do when you travel with bodyguards - I mean, "friends").  

The mafia stories - did he use "connections" to sever his contract with Tommy Dorsey?  Did he use other connections to get his Academy Award-winning part in From Here to Eternity?  Was he the model for Johnny Fontane in The Godfather films?

Sinatra was a creep.  But also talented and he worked hard at his craft - music meant something to him and when he sings, you can hear that.  After I read part one of James Kaplan's biography, Frank: The Voice, I bought a best of Sinatra CD and even though - duh - I knew he was a great singer, I became more of a fan.  Listen to "I've Got the World on a String" or "Witchcraft."  See what you think.       

I've just finished Kaplan's sequel, Sinatra: The Chairman, and it was a good read in a sort of "National Enquirer" way.  Juicy and filled with gossip, maybe a little too juicy and filled with gossip.  But entertaining.  And I liked reading about the business of recording music - Sinatra's work with Nelson Riddle was especially interesting. 

It's a big fat book, over 900 pages, so I was surprised when it was 1971 and suddenly the book turns into a "Coda" where the last fifteen years of Sinatra's life are very condensed.  Too rushed and unexplored. 

So as a person - not so great.  But as a singer, as an artist - fly me to the moon, Mr. S. 

A Dot Ham

In 2004 I bought Alexander Hamilton, the biography by Ron Chernow.  It's a massive book, with 700-plus pages of text and I couldn't wait to read it.  Except - boy, it looked... massive.  So it sat on the shelf.  And sat. 

How interesting could the book be?  Alexander Hamilton - Founding Father, Secretary of the Treasury, his picture is on the ten dollar bill, killed in a duel with Aaron Burr. 

There you go, that's what I knew.  So why was the book so big? 

Years pass.  And suddenly there's a musical about him.  A musical about Alexander Hamilton?  Seriously?  What was I missing?  I bought the Hamilton CD and pulled the dusty book from the shelf. 

After reading Alexander Hamilton, it makes sense people didn't know much about him.  Hamilton wasn't especially popular.  After his early death he lacked a huge fan club to champion the many things he accomplished.  Instead he had people (including Jefferson and John Adams) criticize him and call him a monarchist and an aristocrat and a womanizer.  (Slightly strange coming from Jefferson - an aristocrat who had children with his slave and mistress, Sally Hemings.)

Hamilton wasn't perfect.  Brilliant, yes.  But also arrogant and bad-tempered and often too eager to speak his mind.  He did cheat on his wife and announced his infidelity by publishing a pamphlet, Observations on Certain Documents.  Good idea?  Not so much.

Hamilton's early years in the West Indies are Dickensian before Dickens existed.  His mother's morals were questionable, his paternity a mystery - was his father James Hamilton, black sheep of a wealthy Scottish family or Nevis merchant, Thomas Stevens?  And yet Hamilton manages to make it to New York and have tremendous success - he helped create a new nation, whoa, this orphan boy who came from nothing.  It's one of those books you read and say to yourself, "He did what?  Why didn't I know that?  He did that, too?  You're kidding.  This guy is amazing." 

The book is grand.  You're happy to finish it, but also wildly disappointed because you know whatever you read next won't measure up. 

And now I have to see the musical.  And read the book again.  And see the musical again.  Oh, dear.  This could go on and on. 

Do you understand the meaning of "A Dot Ham?"  If you've seen or heard the musical, you might.  There's a lyric in a song where Burr and Hamilton correspond with each other.  And A. Ham is Hamilton's signature.  Funny - it's the same signature as mine.

Here's a link to a Huffington Post piece I wrote about Hamilton the man, Hamilton the musical, and my hopeful possible genetic connection:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ann-lewis-hamilton/whats-your-name-man_b_9043314.html

Christmas Gift Ideas... and Endings

I have always been a fan of Robert Harris.  Fatherland (what if Hitler had won the war) is a novel I go back to and read again and again.  Hitler Diaries is also terrific - a nonfiction look at the famous Hitler Diaries - that turned out not to be written by Hitler.

Harris has also written novels about ancient Rome.  Pompeii, is like Chinatown set in Pompeii, just before the eruption of Vesuvius.  And he has written a trilogy about Cicero, focusing on Cicero's secretary/slave Tiro, who invented a system of shorthand (he also introduced the "&" symbol & and abbreviations like etc and e.g.).  The first book in the series is Imperium, the second is Conspirata and the third, Dictator, will be published in the U.S. in January 2016, but impatient me, I ordered it from Amazon.UK where it came out in the fall.  It's as good as the first two, but I was sad when I finished - it's like losing a friend when you get to the end of a series.

They should be read in order, but if you have a history buff on your Christmas list, Imperium would be a great start.

Ruth Rendell passed away this year and her last book, Dark Corners, was published posthumously.  I put off reading it because I knew when I was done, there would be no more from Ruth Rendell, one of the best mystery writers ever.  Dark Corners is about a bad tenant, a woman who lies about everything, a struggling novelist - typical Ruth Rendell, complex, filled with surprises, and moments that make you very uncomfortable.  She wrote more than fifty novels and seven books of short stories.  Her first book, From Doon With Death, introduced Inspector Wexford.  She also wrote novels under another name, Barbara Vine.  The first Barbara Vine was A Dark-Adapted Eye.

Dark Corners was very good, not my favorite (I was always a bigger fan of the Wexford books).  If you haven't read any Ruth Rendell or have a friend who hasn't, check her out.  Any of her books would make an excellent present.

Happy Holidays and hope you all receive a lot of books.

So You Don't Want to Sleep Tonight?

While reading Ted Koppel's new non-fiction book, Lights Out, he mentions a novel I'd never heard about, One Second After, by Willam R. Forstchen.  Ted Koppel's book is scary - what would happen to the U.S. in the case of a cyberattack that knocks out our power grid?  Well, we'd be in big trouble because we're not prepared.  It's an excellent book and I highly recommend it.

But don't read it before bedtime.

Another book to skip at bedtime, One Second After, is a novel set in a small town in North Carolina.  Life is great.  Until an EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) weapon is detonated, wiping out the electrical grid, computers, cars, cellphones, you name it.  How will our main character, college professor and retired military colonel, John Matherson, provide for his family, take care of his diabetic daughter, and help keep the town together?  Will food be rationed?  Should outsiders be allowed entry?  What do you do with looters?

The strength of the book is its smallness.  It's set in a college town with people who seem familiar - the doctor, the police chief, the college students Matherson teaches.  And suddenly everything that's normal - ice in your freezer, watching TV or listening to a radio, driving a car, air-conditioning, access to medicine - it's all gone.  Money becomes worthless - how do you buy something when the supermarket has nothing left?

One Second After isn't written especially well.  A lot of the writing is clunky and clumsy.  "Should of, would of" used over and over, that made me a little crazy.  You wonder if there was an editor for this book.  But I couldn't stop reading.  Who will survive?  And the bigger, more frightening fact - this could happen.  An EMP is real threat.  Are we set up to stop it?  And if we can't stop it, are we prepared for what to do next?

Yes, I highly recommend One Second After.  But like the Ted Koppel book, Lights Out, don't read it before you go to sleep.  Trust me.