January Books...

The Coma:
Alex Garland has written some great stuff, but this experimental novel really never took off for me. A great idea- a nonlinear narrative of consciousness in a coma, but it ended up feeling like it was trying too hard to be something it wasn’t. The book also took about an hour to read, which was a little disappointing as well.

Social Intelligence:
This is the best semi-popular book on psychology I’ve read in a long time. Sometimes it seems like I just read basically the same book about psychology over and over again, that cite all the same studies and research, but this really pulled them all together well. Although it references all the studies and researchers I already find interesting: Ekman, (4 horsemen guy), Baron-Cohen (Simon, not Sascha), and others, it distills them efficiently and makes useful and meaningful connections and offers applications to them all.

The Kite Runner: Khaleed Hosseini
Book as movie
I have very mixed feelings about this novel, the tale of an Afghan refugee who grows up in America, and his childhood friendship with a servant boy. Clearly, the book’s intention is to educate westerners about Afghan culture and recent Afghan history by telling a story filled with details that illustrate the rich culture and heartbreaking history of a nation. (Though I can’t help but wonder if another, political, agenda, to justify the war there- perhaps the author’s intent, perhaps the book was usurped in this way.) In the details, the book succeeds- by pulling no punches and including wonderful small written illustrations of life in Afghanistan over the past forty years, I walked away feeling like I understood much better. But the story taken by itself, was almost laughably absurd in its Hollywood-like plot, right down to the three-act structure and everything from the beginning coming perfectly full circle to the nauseatingly sweet and manipulative ending. It was like the writer went to a screenwriting workshop and then wrote a novel- is this what the novel has come to, an early draft of a Hollywood movie? The completely Western narrative structure superimposed on another culture ultimately felt forced, detracting and distracting the reader from what was recommendable about this book, which did make for an educational and quick read. I may spoil the end a bit here so stop reading if you plan to read the book but come on: He now has to fight his childhood enemy to the death forty years later? And I was thinking the moment the character was introduced If this guy comes back forty years later as the bad Taliban guy, I’m gonna throw up. Well, he did. Basically, this is a crappy epic movie in books form.

From a cultural standpoint of trauma, I also questioned the book. The boy is traumatized by the relationship with Assef- no doubt, but his trauma reaction is completely western- suicide attempts, silnce, etc. I’m not sure if the sequilae of trauma really unfold this way in a culture where child abuse/buggery is more integrated into /endemic to the culture. That’s not to defend the behavior with a kind of cultural relativism, just that I don’t think you can put an American trauma reaction on an afghan situation.