White Noise by Don DeLillo

White Noise by Don DeLillo tells the story of Jack Gladney, a middle-aged professor of Hitler Studies (a department that he himself created). He lives in suburbia and is married to his fourth wife, Babette, with whom he has a large blended family. After being exposed to an "airborne toxic event" Jack develops an intense fear of death.

I liked this book, but I've found it difficult to approach. There are a lot of "ideas" in the book and even though I put it in air quotes I don't think that it's a bad thing. The title refers to the white noise resulting from a consumerist society. Also a majority of the book is focused on discussing Jack and other characters' fears of death. Although there are serious themes in the book, overall the book is written in a satirical fashion and it is comical though not laugh-out-loud funny.

I liked the book. It was a quick read. It was interesting. But, in general, I'm just not passionate about it. This is the first book of DeLillo's that I've read. Some of his other books sound really interesting, so I'll probably read one of those at some point. I just really don't have much to say on this book.

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

I just finished reading my first graphic novel, which was The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. Having never read a "graphic novel" before, although this was more of a memoir than a novel, I really didn't know how I'd like it. I loved it. The combination of drawings and minimal text was a powerful way to tell this story.

In Persepolis, Satrapi tells her life story beginning with her childhood in Iran at the time of the Islamic Revolution. She details how life changed during and after this event, including being forced to wear the veil and seeing friends and family members imprisoned for opposing the government. Satrapi's parents send her to Austria and she describes the difficulties she had fitting in there, until eventually, she returns to Iran. Satrapi goes on to describe the difficulties of being a young adult in Iran, including the difficulties of having romantic relationships.

Like I said, I really loved this book. I was familiar with the history of Iran to the point that it's described in the book, but it was interesting to see it from a little girl's perspective. It was also interesting to see the contrast of how people had to act in public compared with what they did behind closed doors. I also loved the drawings in this book, they are very simple, black and white drawings, but they manage to convey a lot of information. After reading Persepolis, I will definitely read more graphic novels, as well as more by Satrapi.

Sync by Steven Strogatz

Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order by Steven Strogatz was an excellent read. Strogatz is a professor of mathematics at Cornell University, and he has written this book about how many biological and nonliving processes have a tendency to synchronize. This book is packed with information and examples, yet it is still very engaging and easy to follow.

Sync covers a variety of topics. On the biological side, Strogatz describes how fireflies in certain geographical regions flash in sync with one another and how a person's circadian rhythms are regulated by environmental cues and body temperature. On the nonliving side, Strogatz describes how lasers are made by harnessing synchronous atomic emissions and how superconductivity results from electrons moving in sync. Strogatz then goes on to analyze how human behavior can sync up such as in the spread of fads or in how traffic jams develop. Throughout all this, Strogatz describes the scientific research that led to these discoveries including his own research.

I found this book to be very interesting. The actual examples of sync and their explanations were fascinating, but what I enjoyed even more were the descriptions of the experiments leading to these discoveries and the descriptions of the scientists working on these problems. Strogatz did a great job of explaining the concepts behind sync. He would first describe a theoretical concept and then he would rephrase it using everyday objects. He also emphasized the difficulty of the math involved, even for him, and how he and other scientists need to simplify things in order to understand it. Although the topics in this book are very complex, Strogatz made them understandable for the average reader.

Challenges: I read this book originally for the Dewey Decimal Challenge (Its # is 003). At the time, I didn't realize how scientific this book was, so I will also use it for the Science Book Challenge.

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

I just finished reading The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. I received this book as a Christmas gift from my mom. She has a weird habit of giving me philosophy-related, classic novels as gifts. Last year, she gave me The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing. I was curious to read this book -- I've heard so many negative things about Rand, like that her novels are just a vehicle for her to espouse Objectivism, the philosophical system that she developed. The Fountainhead was published in 1943, which is before Rand officially established Objectivism. I haven't done much research into Rand's philosophy, so I'm going to refrain from commenting on it and just focus on the novel.

The Fountainhead is basically a study of the interactions between several characters who are archetypes of different ideals. It primarily follows the career of Howard Roark, an architect with a unique style who refuses to compromise with what the general public wants or expects. Because of this, he is admired by some and persecuted by others. The book also follows the career of Peter Keating, another architect coming up at the same time as Roark who gives the public exactly what they want and expect. Ellsworth Toohey, an architectural critic who champions the voice of the public, tries to influence and control both Roark's and Keating's careers. Gail Wynand is the owner of the newspaper that Toohey writes for who panders to what the public wants for the money, while he considers himself to be above that. Dominique Francon is a woman who falls in love with Roark and tries to destroy his career at every chance, to see if he will persevere.

I really expected to hate this book, but I ended up liking it fairly well. I thought the characterizations were really strong although unrealistic. The message of this book to me is that the majority of society is really dumb and will like and want whatever they're told to like and want. I hate to say it because it's really mean, but I generally tend to agree with that viewpoint. The character that I liked the most and was the most appalled by was Ellsworth Toohey, who recognizes this fact and tries to use it to control society. This book is really long (727 pages). I don't think it needed to be that long, but the story sucked me in more than I expected it to. I expected this book to take me about a month to get through, but it only took about two weeks. I didn't find it to be too heavy on philosophy, although others might disagree. I will probably end up reading more by Rand, but I'm not in any rush to do so.

Blackbird House by Alice Hoffman

I've wanted to read Blackbird House by Alice Hoffman for awhile (I forget where and when I first heard about it), and I finally got around to it as part of the What's in a Name 2 reading challenge. I thought I had never read anything by Hoffman before, but one section of the book was about a little girl with leukemia and it reminded of a book, At Risk about a young girl with AIDS. I looked in the front of the book and sure enough, Hoffman had written At Risk. My mom had that book, and I read it many times between the ages of 10 and 13 (I had a weird love for books about kids with terminal illnesses). Anyway, it was odd and kind of cool that I recognized Hoffman's voice in one small passage after all these years.

Anyway, I really liked Blackbird House. This book is a collection of interrelated stories that all take place in the title house, located on Cape Cod, Massachusetts from colonial times until the present day. The stories are about each successive occupant(s) of the house and tells how they got the house from the occupants in the previous story. The stories generally focus on the women or girls in the house who tend to be eccentric and to fiercely love their families. The house gets its name from a white blackbird that appears in most, if not all, of the stories.

This book was a very short, easy read. I really enjoyed all of the stories, there wasn't one I disliked. I thought that the characters in all the stories were well developed. The stories themselves were emotionally engaging and I teared up during quite a few of them. I'm really glad I finally read this book and also that I was reminded of At Risk, which I now want to reread. I will definitely be reading more by Hoffman.

Decades '09 Challenge

Another challenge that I want to do in 2009 is the Decades '09 challenge. The goal of this challenge is to read a minimum of 9 books from 9 consecutive decades, excluding the 2000's.

I like reading books from a variety of time periods, so I think I will enjoy this challenge. I'm not sure yet which books I'm going to read, but I'm going to try to cover the whole 1900's.

Science Book Challenge 2009

I've found another reading challenge that I just have to do. It's the 2009 Science Book Challenge. The goal of this challenge is to read 3 non-fiction science books in 2009. That's definitely something I planned on doing anyway, so it will be fun to join in the challenge and see what everyone else reads. I love science. I study biology and hope to pursue a career in the sciences, so I really love this challenge.

The books I plan to read for this challenge (subject to change) are:

• Monster of God by David Quammen
• Alex & Me by Irene Pepperberg
  
• Parasite Rex by Carl Zimmer
  

Dewey Decimal Challenge

I've decided to join the Dewey Decimal Challenge. The goal of this challenge is to read one book from each of the Dewey Decimal categories which are listed at the host blog linked above.

I think this will be a fun challenge because I do like to read non-fiction but sometimes I forget about it. With this challenge I'll be able to read books on a wide variety of topics. I'm not going to choose my books ahead of time. When the time comes, I'll just browse that section of the library until I find something that interests me.

What's in a Name Challenge

I've decided to join the What's in a name? 2 reading challenge. I've never done any kind of challenge before and it sounds like a lot of fun. I have lists of hundreds of books that I would like to read, so it was easy for me to pick a book to fit each category.

The Challenge: Choose one book from each of the following categories.

1. A book with a "profession" in its title.
my pick: The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien

2. A book with a "time of day" in its title.
my pick: That Night by Alice McDermott

3. A book with a "relative" in its title.
my pick: The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing

4. A book with a "body part" in its title.
my pick: White Teeth by Zadie Smith

5. A book with a "building" in its title.
my pick: Blackbird House by Alice Hoffman

6. A book with a "medical condition" in its title.
my pick: The Plague by Albert Camus