The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World

The next book on my list is The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible, by A.J. Jacobs. If you read Esquire (or EW before that), you know (editor-at-large) Jacobs' work. He's pretty hilarious. Before I start blogging about The Year of Living Biblically though, I thought I should post about his previous book: The Know-It-All.

I enjoyed this book so much. His wit, his humor, his candor made me laugh out loud so many times. Jacobs took a year to read the Encyclopedia Britannica from beginning to end. The book is broken up by entries in the Encyclopedia, and Jacobs explains how many entries affected him - or whether they did at all.

If the book wasn't packed away for a big move we have coming up, I'd provide an example or two. Maybe in a month or so. For now, here's the review from Publisher's Weekly:

Imagine, the original Berserkers were "savage Norse soldiers" of the Middle Ages who went into battle stark naked! Or consider the Etruscan habit of writing in "boustrophedon style." Intrigued? Well, either hunker down with your own Encyclopædia Britannica, or buy Esquire editor Jacobs's memoir of the year he spent reading all 32 volumes of the 2002 edition—that's 33,000 pages with some 44 million words. Jacobs set out on this delightfully eccentric endeavor attempting to become the "smartest person in the world," although he agrees smart doesn't mean wise. Apart from the sheer pleasure of scaling a major intellectual mountain, Jacobs figured reading the encyclopedia from beginning to end would fill some gaps in his formal education and greatly increase his "quirkiness factor." Reading alphabetically through whole topics he never knew existed meant he'd accumulate huge quantities of trivia to insert into conversations with unsuspecting victims. As his wife shunned him and cocktail party guests edged away, Jacobs started testing his knowledge in a hilarious series of humiliating adventures: hobnobbing at Mensa meetings, shuffling off to chess houses, trying out for the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, visiting his old prep school, even competing on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Indeed, one of the book's strongest parts is its laugh-out-loud humor. Jacobs's ability to juxtapose his quirky, sardonic wit with oddball trivia make this one of the season's most unusual books.

More on Jacobs' attempt to live by the Bible (will he kill magicians or sacrifice oxen?) in a future post.

The Female Brain, Finale

I finished this book last night. I really enjoyed it and learned a lot. After she talks about the teen brain, Brizendine goes into talking about women's brains and love and sex, pregnancy and motherhood, perimenopause and menopause, as well as sexual orientation and postpartum depression.

It's amazing all the changes our brains go through in our lifetime. Our brain is completely different in structure after we have a baby. It's then again different - due to decreasing estrogen - after menopause. While I was reading this book, I found myself nodding my head so many times, because she was talking about the exact feelings I feel. Or the exact behaviors I've seen in mothers I know or more mature women.

You know, I seriously believe, more than ever, that we're pretty amazing people considering what all goes on inside our heads. I look forward to reading The Male Brain, which Sarah said Brizendine is currently writing, and learning whether or not men have any brain changes as drastic as ours.

R.I.P. Jon Hassler

Here is a post I wrote about Jon Hassler back in November, featuring an article from MinnPost, about his health problems and his will to keep writing.

Here is his obit in today's Star Tribune.

Fiction vs. Memoir

Margaret B Jones (real name: Margaret Seltzer) is the latest memoir writer to come clean about some fabrications in her book, Love and Consequences. Turns out Seltzer took inspiration from the lives of people she knew and pretended those moments were her own. Several authors have come under fire in regards to this issue (you had to be living under a rock not to hear about Oprah's throning and dethroning of James Frey).

Memoir is a difficult genre. Is it memoir if you are truly writing about yourself, yet you make up some of the dialogue you just can't remember from age 5? Or, maybe that in turn makes your story fiction?

Two of my favorite books, Shannon Olson's Welcome to My Planet and Children of God Go Bowling, are strongly based on her life. Yet, because a few fictional elements are included, the books are considered fiction. I heard Olson speak once after her first book came out. Being mostly about her struggle to find love, her book could also be thought of as a little hopeless - thought it's hilarious at the same time. For this reason, her editor suggested Olson give readers hope by putting some sort of happy love moment near the end. So she did - but it didn't really happen to her. And her book is fiction. For good reason?

What are your thoughts? Can memoir take any liberties?
Do you have a favorite memoir? Do you question any of its content?

The Female Brain, Part II

This book is so full of information. Here are a few more things I found interesting. It looks like a lot, but I'm hardly scratching the surface.

- Girls understand tone of voice right away, boys don't. This is why boys don’t respond when you tell them no sternly, and why girls realize when you’re sad and show empathy at such young ages (this is due to the high levels of estrogen that flow throughout girls for 24 months during infancy, while boys only have that for nine months).
- Baby girls need eye contact right away, while boys like to look at everything else. This stays with girls throughout life, so if parents/boyfriends/spouses don’t look us in the eye or don’t 'hear' us, we feel we’re doing something wrong and we try everything we can to make them see us.
- Baby girls in the womb and those just born can feel their mom’s stress and this affects the kind of child they become. If one daughter is born when mom is happy and carefree and another is born during a period of stress and depression, the two girls will take on those corresponding demeanors.
- The author also talks about why females tend to shy away from confrontation (we’re lovers, not fighters – seriously, hormones in our brains make us this way). She doesn’t leave out our bad traits either - how we can be bossy and manipulate others to get what we want. This starts at a very young age for girls, and whether we learn to curb it or not probably depends on our parents and ourselves.

- The next chapter dives in to the teenage years. Whoa. I now understand why I was the way I was when I was a teenager – and I wasn’t even as bad as some other girls. Our estrogen surges take a back seat between ages 3 and 13, and then it goes out of control again. These monthly fluctuations of estrogen are what makes us desire to be liked by the opposite sex and feel the need to have a close circle of girlfriends.
- I thought it was very interesting when the author talked about how teenage girls NEED to gossip and talk with their friends for hours each day because it gives off a major happiness in our brain. If our friends are taken away from us (either by moving, grounding, fighting, etc.) we’ll become impossible to deal with – moody, depressed and angry. She stresses that this doesn’t mean teenage daughters should have the run of the house, but that it’ll take a little understanding and compromise to keep them healthy and happy.
- She also talked about cliques. In the days of cavemen and women (and currently with primates as well), females banded together to protect their young from any sort of predators. Because we’re lacking in the confrontation department (we don’t want to risk ruining our relationships), these cliques are our way of protecting ourselves. We know our girlfriends will stand up with us against any bullies.

This all makes perfect sense to me. I’m so glad I’m learning this now because when my niece reaches this age (or if I were ever to have a daughter myself), I feel I’d be better prepared for the nightmare that can be teenage girls. But at the same time it also gives insight into boys, and I feel I understand my little nephews better, too.

The Female Brain

I've switched gears now, and I'm reading The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine, M.D. I was walking around B&N yesterday and there was a table of books just about the human brain. This one caught my eye; I've always been interested in the differences between the female and male brain. In this book, Brizendine talks about the physical differences between our brains, as well as the hormonal differences. I've only just begun, but here are a few things I've learned so far:

- Some parts of the female brain change up to 25 percent every month. This is why sometimes we can feel jerked around easily - near tears one moment, happy the next.

- The hormones in our brain are so strong, they can dictate what we find important and hold value to.

- Men and women use different brain circuits to solve problems, process language and store emotion.

- In the brains centers for language and hearing, women have 11 percent more neurons than men. We also have a larger hippocampus - the part of the brain that helps with memory (why you remember more details than he does) and observing emotion in others. Men, on the other hand, have larger processors in the amygdala, which triggers aggression.

- While boys and girls are equally intelligent, throughout life females may choose more social careers over those in the maths and sciences because their brain/hormones want them to find a career where they can interact with others and one that will allow them to raise a family and take care of others.

The Florist's Daughter

Sorry for the lack of posting. Too much work and winter sickness has kept me from reading anything this past week. But I started The Florist's Daughter, by St. Paul author Patricia Hampl, this morning. I've never read Hampl's work before (which is probably a disgrace for a writer from the Twin Cities) so I'm excited to get going on this one. Here's the synopsis from B&N online:

From Patricia Hampl, the author of Blue Arabesque, comes this thoughtful and affecting memoir, a meditation on the death of her parents. As Patricia holds on to her dying mother's hand with one hand, she begins to write her obituary with the other. "She would have expected nothing less," Patricia explains. "For the dutiful writer-daughter scribbling in the half-light, holding the dying hand while hitting the high points of her subject’s allegedly ordinary life that is finally going to see print."

From here, Patricia reflects on growing up middle class as the daughter of a florist and his wife in St. Paul, Minnesota. Whereas her father, a true artist, was obsessive about his flower arrangements, he was also inattentive to the outside world. She recounts the Midwestern values he clung to, even as he was losing his business to cheats. She also begins to understand how her mother, the feisty and distrustful daughter of Czech immigrants with an uncanny ability to tell a good story, almost lost her mind fighting their enemy.

In The Florist's Daughter, Hampl once again exhibits her ability to capture the complexity and depth of her subjects, suggesting that what is most personal, can also be most elusive.

Pretty Little Mistakes, Part III

I'm still cranking away at this book - the book with 150 possible endings. I probably have only gotten through half of them? I'm really enjoying it, even more now that I've figured out the best way for me to read it (see previous post). I thought I'd use today's post to share some of the ways I've kicked the bucket in the book:

1. Drowned
2. Suicide
3. In my sleep/old age
4. Choked on a mango
5. Choked on elk jerkey
6. By a terrorist bomb
7. Food poisoning
8. Car accident
9. Struck by lightning

Some very interesting ways to go, if I do say so myself.

Pretty Little Mistakes, Part II

What else has happened to "me" while reading Pretty Little Mistakes?

1. Joined a cult
2. Moved to Duluth and baked pies at Betty's Pie Shop
3. Lied about a pregnancy to get a guy to marry me
4. Taught art in Minneapolis
5. Had an affair with an Italian millionaire
6. Designed shoes for Bergdorf's

I've figured out a better way to read this book. At least better for me. Instead of reading straight through a scenario and then starting over again, I mark my pages at each "choice" page. Then when I'm finished with one route, I go back to the previous section and choose the alternative. Once that route ends, I go back two sections and choose the alternative, and so on. I like this tactic because then I get to read the multiple endings to one storyline right after another - it feels more satisfying to me, plus it's easier to remember what paths I took. I'm not sure how long it will take to finish this book, but it could also be a good book to set down for awhile and pick up again later, since it reads so fast and it's more like a group of short stories, instead of a novel.

Pretty Little Mistakes

I started reading Pretty Little Mistakes this week. The book is written by Heather McElhatton, a producer for Minnesota Public Radio and a frequent contributor to NPR's This American Life. Do you remember Choose Your Own Adventure books from when you were younger? Pretty Little Mistakes is like that, but for adults.

Definitely for adults.

You start at high school graduation. Should you go to college, or travel? After you make that choice, 150 possible endings exist. So far, I'm enjoying it. It's a quicker read then I expected. I can get through one "life" in less than 20 minutes, which is nice for bus rides or reading before bed. Once you get through one life, you start over again. It's humorous, too. The one thing I find interesting is that so far I've tried to make the responsible choices: going to college, not dropping out, etc., and it ends up not working out so well for me. (These are just three examples, and out of 150 possible endings, I don't think it's spoiling things too much.)

Story 1:
I choose to go to college. I major in art. I form an artists' club. Other members decide to make a statement by streaking at the next football game. I choose to stay behind at club headquarters. While alone there, I'm sexually assaulted. The police never find the guy. Since I don't feel safe, I buy a gun. I see my attacker, but choose not to kill him. I choose to testify. The stress kills me and I die on the witness stand. I'm curious to find out what would happen if I killed him (or chose not to testify)?

Story 2:
I choose a science major, which is very stressful, but I choose not to drop out from the stress. Instead, I get addicted to meth. I graduate and become a pharmaceutical rep. I choose not to give doctors incentives to buy my product. I get fired. I get cancer from all the meth-taking. This story does end better, as I survive the cancer and make a difference in the end.

Story 3:
I choose to travel. I go to England. I meet an Indian transvestite and travel with her to her home country. I eat an apple there. I get hepatitis and die.

These ones just cracked me up, and as my first three trips through the book, made me wonder if any of my "lives" would end up happy. But, I've had some good stories, too. I'll keep you posted.

The Zookeeper's Wife, Finale

I finished this book over the weekend. I really enjoyed it. I liked that while reading something that felt like a novel, I learned the true stories of Warsaw during the war. I learned of the cruelties and of the bravery.

I learned about the Ghetto Uprising when the Jews fought the Germans with rocks, sticks and fists (they had no weapons) and held them off for nearly one month. After the Ghetto fell, the Poles took over with the Warsaw Uprising, in which Antonina's husband Jan went and fought.

I learned that while the Soviets were fighting through from the East, for political reasons, they stopped short of Warsaw and didn't help the Poles fight. They watched thousands die, the rest eventually surrender and then be shipped off to POW camps (including Jan).

After the war was over, people estimate that the population of Warsaw fell from 1.5 million to 500,000. These people came back to a city bombed to the ground. They lived in caves, holes in the ground, etc., because their homes were ransacked and destroyed. The city was then under Soviet rule. The kids went to Soviet school where they were taught that parts of the war never happened.

It was a moving, interesting story. The author really makes you connect to the characters, specifically Antonina. Some parts of it can be a little staggered when she throws in some historical references or jumps to other characters suddenly, but overall, it doesn't take away from the very importance of the story.

Literary Legends

I received a press release about a new series presented to the Twin Cities by The Loft Literary Center and the Hennepin Theatre Trust: Literary Legends. From March to October the series welcomes literary greats for special in-person appearances. I'm really excited about this, not only because I would love to see a few of them speak, but because I think gaining access to authors is a cool experience for many of us. Here's a bit from the press release:

Literary Legends launches March 30 with Mary Oliver, the beloved American poet acclaimed for her lyrical connection to the natural world, and recipient of the Pulitzer, a Guggenheim Fellowship and the National Book Award. The series continues on June 23 with the groundbreaking Armistead Maupin, who is now back with more eagerly awaited “Tales” in his 2007 book “Michael Tolliver Lives.” October 2 brings a not-to-be-missed opportunity to hear David McCullough, two-time recipient of both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, comment on the U.S. presidency as the country prepares for an historic election. October 17 offers another special highlight with Khaled Hosseini, the Kabul-born author of two recent worldwide best-sellers—“The Kite Runner,” just released as a hailed yet provocative film, and “A Thousand Splendid Suns.” On October 19, David Sedaris, the funny and sardonic perennial favorite of the literary world, reads from his much anticipated next collection “When You Are Engulfed in Flames.”

Minnesota Public Radio also offers up great authors to Twin Citizens through Talking Volumes. One I would love to see: Judy Blume. In June she talks about her new children's series, an off-shoot of her hit "The Pain and the Great One." I read that book so many times when I was little.

What author would you love to see if you had the chance?

The Zookeeper's Wife, Part II

Just a few thoughts:

1. The bravery: In this book, Jan risks his life every day, sneaking into the Warsaw Ghetto (a space no larger than 15 blocks, filled with disease, that holds thousands of Jews) and sneaking out with one prisoner at a time. I want to think if faced with a situation like this, I would be one to be brave, but it's hard to know for sure. Anyone who survived this time (or any forms of genocide that exist today) are true heroes.

2. The number of Germans who also risked their lives by looking the other way. Jan couldn't have sneaked into the Ghetto if it weren't for a very powerful Nazi covering for him. It's a least a bit hopeful knowing they weren't all bad.

There was a marathon of Band of Brothers on the History Channel this weekend. An excellent series about Easy Company's fight throughout WWII. In one of the final episodes, the company comes across a concentration camp. It's 1945. The troops have never heard of these camps. They didn't know this was going on, even when they landed in Normandy, even when they fought in the dead of winter at Bastonge. If any of those soldiers had any doubt about why they were fighting, I think those doubts must have vanished when they saw all the dead bodies and the hundreds of starving people. It made me think of this book. At least people like Jan and Antonina saved a small percentage.

The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story

This true story takes place before and throughout WWII when the Germans invaded Poland. Married couple Jan and Antonina love animals and own Warsaw's zoo. When the animals are lost because of the war, the couple starts hiding Jews within the walls, caves and cages of the zoo - saving hundreds from a dreadful fate.

Author Diane Ackerman takes notes from history, scenes from Antonina's diary and snippets of interviews with the survivors. She discusses the family's love for animals - they had some amazing ones on display for the 1930s, I think. She also teaches the reader more about the war, and how Hitler felt this ethnic cleansing was necessary. At the same time, there are other zoologists in Germany who are trying to do the same with animals - recreate extinct species by killing off the weak herds and mating only the most dominant, the most pure.

Jan was a solider in his younger days, so as a leader of the Resistance's Underground, not only does he help hide and transport Jews to safety, he hides weapons under the Germans' noses, derails trains with bombs and poisons Nazis with worm-infested meats. And he gets a real kick out of it. :)

This book is a fast read - and I'm loving it.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Finale

I finished! How I feel (not in totality, just a few points):

1. If our medical system had a better interpreter policy in place, things may have turned out better for the Lees (and many others in similar situations).

2. Perhaps we truly are over-medicated as a population? While I would want doctors to work their hardest to cure me, maybe all the meds they pump into us hinder our health, too?

3. There is a high population of Hmong in Pennsylvania. They sew products for the Amish, so they can still be labeled "made locally." I thought this was hilarious, and hubby made a comment about how sad it is when even the Amish "outsource."

4. We all need to be more tolerant. A huge discussion in the book was about the thought that because a majority of Hmong are on welfare, they're lazy freeloaders. In actuality, we're the ones who forced them out of their mountain homes in Laos. We're the ones who brought them here. We're the ones who put them on welfare. The Hmong families Fadiman talked to in the book just want to work - they want to grow their own food, work in their own fields, build their own homes. We definitely don't make this easy for them.

5. However, in terms of No. 4, we can only be more tolerant if we're fed all the information. Our leaders keep these sorts of things pretty hush hush. So, we need more books like this one - and they need to be read.

It was an eye-opening book. I was pulled in many different directions - still am. It's definitely worth a read. Once you do, come back and tell me what you think about it. I'm dying to hear other people's opinions.