French Women Don’t Get Fat

by Mireille Guiliano. Abridged on Audio Adventures, read by the author. Random House 2005.

When I lived in France from 1970 until 1973, I observed that the statement “French women don’t get fat” is indeed true, for the most part. I can’t remember meeting or even seeing any fat men, women, or children while I lived in France. In fact, I picked up a nice French habit (or maybe I shed an American habit) while I was there that kept me relatively slender for years after I returned: never eating between meals. I don’t remember deciding not to snack; the opportunity just never came up. I also observed that French people tended to have rather small portions of many foods (rather than large portions of a few foods), and they never had seconds (unlike the Swiss, who, if you ordered a fish in a restaurant, would insist on bringing you two fish). Moreover, those fancy pastries were not a daily thing with them but were only brought out for special occasions, and even then–only one per person!

Mireille Guiliano, married to an American and living now in New York, confirmed my observations and added many of her own. None of what she advises is new, but taken all together it constitutes a very rational and reasonable approach to food (eat wholesome food, organic if possible, and take pleasure, not guilt, in it; and if you overindulge at one meal, then compensate by cutting back on another) and exercise (don’t worry about joining a gym or getting sweaty, but build additional activity into your daily life). One can easily see that by following her advice, one would be able to maintain one’s weight at a comfortable level.

Guiliano spends rather a lot of time singing the praises of wine (especially champagne; she is the CEO of Clicquot Inc. in New York), which I don’t like and never drink if I can avoid it, and (high-quality, dark) chocolate, which I am very fond of. If you need to justify your consumption of either, this is the book for you.

The audio narration is well done and I enjoyed listening to Guiliano’s accent, but am not sure if someone unfamiliar with French would be able to understand everything she says, as she pronounces some English words the French way and sprinkles the text with plenty of French phrases, not all of which she translates (most would be obvious from the spelling if you were to read the book, but if you were only listening to it and did not know any French, you might not understand).

A nice book, lots of good advice. It makes me want to have a copy so I can refer to it from time to time. In the meantime I am trying not to take shortcuts to save steps.

What Is the What

by Dave Eggers (and Valentino Achak Deng), Vintage 2006

This book is this year’s First Year Book at the University of Maryland.  It was a difficult read, because it describes such cruelty and human suffering.  It is about the civil war in southern Sudan, told from the point of view of one of the “Lost Boys of Sudan”, who escaped the mayhem of the war only to encounter more mayhem walking across their arid country, wanted by no one, across the border to Kenya where they lived for years in a squalid refugee camp.   I’ve categorized this book as both fiction and nonfiction because I don’t know which it is.  In his forward to the book, Valentino Achak Deng explains that it is his story as he remembers it, but that since he could not remember the conversations as they were spoken when he was so young (it begins when he was seven), Eggers and he had to call it a novel.  As a result, it’s difficult for the reader to know what is novel and what is not.  Some of the events narrated in the book seem impossible–for example, that Achak and his childhood friends keep finding one another, or that any of them actually survived.

I can’t say that I enjoyed this book, but I learned a lot about the terrible situation in Sudan from reading it, so I am very glad I did read it.

 

This is a video (almost an hour in length) of a speech by Valentino Achak Deng.

The Body Has a Mind of Its Own: How Body Maps in Your Brain Help You Do (Almost) Everything Better

by Sandra Blakeslee and Matthew Blakeslee (Random House 2007)

This is a fascinating book.  The authors, a mother and son science-writing team, endeavor (mostly successfully) to make some of the latest developments in neuroscience accessible to the lay reader.  It is now well established that everything our bodies do, both inside (circulatory systems, &c) and outside (movement, language, &c) corresponds to “maps” in the various parts of our brains.  Poke the map in the right place, and something happens; apply the proper stimulus (movement, touch, graphic image…) and neurons in the corresponding map can be observed to fire.

In the first chapter, the concepts of maps, body schema (your perception of your body), body image (your belief of how your body looks) and body mandala (the network of body maps in the brain) are introduced.  The subsequent chapters each take up different aspects and research areas of these, such as how your body image may not correspond to reality (why you still feel fat when you’ve lost excess weight, for example), how mentally rehearsing movements and skills can be almost as effective as actually practicing them (think of athletes’ or musicians’ visualizations), and how what you wear or carry or wield literally becomes an extension of your body, as far as your brain is concerned.

Chapter 9, “Mirror, Mirror: or, Why Yawning is Contagious” was especially interesting to me.  It deals with mirror neurons, special brain cells that represent not only one’s own actions but also those of others.  These mirror neurons allow us to understand the body language of other people and thus to anticipate what they might do, because their actions are mirrored in templates in our own brains. A dysfunction in these cells is suspected in autism and may also be involved in the inability of people with nonverbal learning disorders to read body language.

Favorite quote:  “When you watch dance, your brain dances.” (p. 170)

The webpage for this book is here. It includes excerpts, links to interviews, reviews, and more.

Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution and How It Can Renew America

by Tom Friedman.  Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2008

I loved both The Lexus and the Olive Tree and The World Is Flat, so I was looking forward to reading Friedman’s newest book.  I found it harder to read than the other two, mainly because it is quite depressing, especially in the first part where he outlines the problems facing us: first and foremost, global warming (which Friedman would prefer to call “global climate disruption” because it sounds less cozy); and this is exacerbated by “petrodictatorships” nourished by our addiction to dirty fossil fuels which are driving global warming,  a skyrocketing world population with increasing demands for decreasing energy and other natural resources, “energy poverty” for what we used to call “the third world”, and a skyrocketing loss of biodiversity.  The “flat world” described in the previous book refers to the rise of the middle class around the globe, made possible by the internet; this is turn gives rise to the problem of “too many Americans,” which does not refer to the U. S. population but to the many millions, soon to be billions, who aspire to live our lifestyle.  Who can blame them?  But the Earth is simply not big enough, and we have no place else to go.  Reading about this, as well as being reminded of the United States’ ostrich stance in the face of the threat (“We’ll deal with it when we get around to it”), depressed me. I look around my own neighborhood and observe how most of my neighbors turn on their airconditioners without even venturing outside to see if they need them.

But Friedman’s point is that instead of being depressed and pessimistic, we should be seizing the opportunity to do what America does best: innovate and lead by shining example.  In Part III, “How We Move Forward,” he provides many examples of how we could do this, but notes that without the government to pass serious legislation and set serious policy, we cannot succeed.  He was writing during the last years of the Bush administration; now we are in the first year of the Obama administration, but Obama’s government is hogtied by the economic crisis brought on by the previous administration’s addiction to tax cuts + expensive wars.  It’s difficult to see how anything can be accomplished (as I write, healthcare reform is taking a beating) in this atmosphere of partisan politics and looking the other way.  Americans want Obama to solve their problems without inconveniencing them.  As Friedman points out, 100 (or however many) Easy Ways to Save the Earth won’t cut it without the policies, laws, and regulations that seem impossible to establish.

I hope President Obama has read this book, but even if he has, and even if he wants to do the right thing, I can’t help but think it will be too little, too late.  It seems that no one has the power to make it happen.

Friedman’s site is here, with links to reviews and excerpts you can read and listen to.

The Wikipedia entry is incomplete but has many links to audio or video interviews.

The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World

by Eric Weiner (Twelve, 2008)

It always amazes me how some people persuade other people (publishers?) to foot the bills for extensive travel and purchases so that they can write books or articles about them–like the person who got his publisher to pay for a horrifically expensive bottle of very old wine so he could review it (he wasn’t impressed).  Eric Weiner somehow got funding to travel around the world to the Netherlands, Switzerland, Bhutan, Qatar, Iceland, Moldova, Thailand, Great Britain, and India (not to mention the United States), as well as to purchase a Ridiculously Expensive Pen (which he subsequently lost)–so he could reflect on that experience.  Life is tough.  I loved the book, though, so why am I complaining?

Weiner did his homework concerning research on happiness, and he asked informants in all those different places whether they were happy, how happy they were, what made them happy, and so on–not very scientific, but it makes for very interesting reading.  In the end, he sums up what he learned: Wealth does not ensure happiness, especially if Culture is absent.  Familial and social connectedness are necessary to happiness, as is trust; envy makes happiness impossible. If we think too much about happiness (or anything), it will elude us.  That last comes mainly from the chapter on Thailand, which also yields the expression, mai pen lai, or “never mind”.  If we don’t let the bad stuff get to us, if we just let it roll off our backs–mai pen lai–we can be happier.  I think I will try it (although I am pretty happy, generally–maybe a 7 or an 8 out of 10, depending on the day).

English language learners may enjoy reading the chapters about their own countries–although they may not always like what Weiner has to say about their compatriots!

I’d definitely recommend this book.

Sister Bernadette’s Barking Dog: The Quirky History and Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences

by Kitty Burns Florey (Harvest 2006)

I am of the generation that was taught English grammar through diagramming.  Unlike Kitty Burns Florey, I don’t remember particularly liking it at the time.  As a matter of fact, I was not a born grammarphile; I became one after I started teaching ESL in the 1970s.  I am well aware of the research that tells us that explicit grammar instruction is not particularly helpful for ESL students, yet I persist in explicitly explaining; my students do not remember or apply the rules I try to teach them, but that doesn’t seem to stop me.

At one time, I became intrigued by the idea of using diagramming with my ESL classes, but I never actually did it.  The main reason may have been phrasal verbs.  I remembered how to diagram prepositional phrases, but what about two-word verbs?  Do you diagram “She ran into her old friend” the same way you diagram “She ran into her old house”?  Obviously not.  So what is “into” in the first sentence?  We ESL teachers would call it a particle.  I don’t think the rules of diagramming included particles.  Would Reed and Kellogg have called it an adverb, and put “friend” in the direct object position?  Or would they include it as part of the verb (my preference)?  It was these kinds of questions that stumped me, so I never actually used diagramming with my students.  But I did enjoy reading about it.  Florey also concludes that diagramming sentences does not result in better writing, but that gives students the perception that they control the sentences. Also, she claims that it’s fun!  Maybe for her it was. In any case, I enjoyed deciphering the diagrams in the book, and it was interesting to realize that diagramming, like new math, was an educational fad that I happened to experience when I was a kid in school.

Unless

by Carol Shields.  Fourth Estate, 2002.

I think I enjoyed The Stone Diaries, but I had trouble getting excited about Unless.  (I didn’t notice until I was almost done with it that all the chapter titles were adverbs, with a few preposiitons thrown in for good measure; but what the titles have to do with the chapters themselves wasn’t obvious.)  Carol Shields was a woman writer writing about a woman writer (Reta Winters) writing about a woman writer (Alicia something or other) writing about…. you get the picture.  Except that Reta’s eldest daughter has inexplicably dropped out of college and started begging for a living on the streets of Toronto.  This is hugely disturbing to Reta, her husband Tom, and their two younger daughters.  (While I am sure it would indeed be very upsetting, I can think of lots of worse things that could happen to one’s child.  As Reta points out, she knows exactly where her daughter is and can go and see her whenever she wants, even if the girl refuses to talk to her.)  In the end, the reason for Norah’s rejection of family, friends, home, and education becomes clear and all ends “happily.”  I thought the ending was too pat, actually.

I did enjoy this little eponymous paragraph:

“Unless is the worry word of the English language.  It flies like a moth around the ear, you hardly hear it, and yet everything depends on its breathy presence. Unless–that’s the little subjunctive mineral you carry along in your pocket crease.  It’s always there, or else not there…. Unless you’re lucky, unless you’re healthy, fertile, unless you’re loved and fed, unless you’re clear about your sexual direction, unless you’re offered what others are offered, you go down in darkness, down to despair. Unless provides you with a trapdoor, a tunnel into the light, the reverse side of not enough. Unless keeps you from drowing in the presiding arrangements. Ironically, unless, the lever that finally shifts reality into a new perspective, cannot be expressed in French.  A moins que does have quite the heft; sauf is crude.  Unless is a miracle of language and perception,…. It makes us anxious, makes us cunning….But it gives us hope. (pp. 224-225)

It’s a book to be passed on, not one I would keep on my shelf.

She’s Come Undone

by Wally Lamb.  Pocket Books 1992.

I didn’t much care for this novel about an obese, disagreeable girl who eventually undergoes psychotherapy, loses weight and becomes a good person.  I don’t generally like books about unpleasant characters (think Gone with the Wind), and I didn’t find Dolores’ transformation very convincing.  In the first half of the book, she is really obnoxious, treating people worse than they treat her (which is badly).  Is it supposed to be the psychotherapy that turns her into a kind and generous person?  Or just growing up?  Anyway I finished the book because I liked her better in the second half, but I’ve already forgotten most of it.

A Thousand Splendid Suns

by Khaled Hosseini – Riverhead Books 2007

I think it took me just three days to finish Khaled Hosseini’s second novel (the first being The Kite Runner).  I was very quickly swept up in the story of the humble but strong Maryam and the intelligent and beautiful Laila, the gentle Tariq and the despicable Rasheed, Afghanistan and the Soviets, the Mujaheddin and the Taliban.  It was very hard to put the book down.  I had read about the events in Afghanistan, but the novel allowed me to experience them firsthand, as it were, through the eyes of Maryam and Laila, the two protagonists, wives of Rasheed.   I experienced their shame and humiliation at his hands and at the hands of the Taliban, for whom women were no better than slaves, completely dispensable.  How else can we explain the utter disregard for them, as written into the laws once the Taliban took over:

You will stay inside your home at all times.  It is not proper for women to wander aimlessly about the streets. If you go outside, you must be accompanied by a mahram, a male relative. If you are caught alone on the street, you will be beaten and sent home.

You will not, under any circumstance, show your face.  You will cover with burqa when outside.  If you do not, you will be severely beaten.

Cosmetics are forbidden.

Jewelry is forbidden.

You will not wear charming clothes.

You will not speak unless spoken to.

You will not make eye contact with men.

You will not laugh in public. If you do, you will be beaten.

You will not paint your nails. If you do, you will lose a finger.

Girls are forbidden from attending school.  All schools for girls will be closed immediately.

Women are forbidden from working.

If you are found guilty of adultery, you will be stoned to death.

Listen. Listen well. Obey. Allah-u-akbar.

(pp. 248-249)

Whatever possessed these people to think that they had the right to restrict the activities of their fellow human beings in such a way?  Some of the rules are so petty and stupid (If you keep parakeets, you will be beaten. Your birds will be killed.) that it makes the reader want to laugh, but it was no joking matter, and we see just how serious the consequences could be.  Through the eyes of the two principal characters, we experience the powerlessness of Afghan women.

Hosseini, writing from a female point of view, captures well his characters’ feelings and perceptions.  It always amazes me that a male author can so successfully portray feminine experience.

A very special book, very worth reading.

Silver Wedding

by Maeve Binchy

This short novel is classic Binchy.  It takes a situation (the 25th wedding anniversary of Desmond and Deirdre Doyle) and chapter by chapter looks at that situation from the points of view of the various characters: the couple themselves, their three children, their friends, other relatives, and the priest that married them.  Everyone’s life has its tragic aspect.  The husband and the three adult children are struggling to free themselves from their mother’s insistence that they pretend they are something they aren’t.  Deirdre herself believes that she must pretend to satisfy her own mother, which turns out not to be true.  Amazingly, it all works out in the end.  Not my favorite Binchy, but a good one-day read.