Big Questions by Anders Nilsen

Big Questions is another graphic novel from the 2011 Best Of lists. It's a 15-year work of love from Nilsen, about a flock of birds who dine on seeds and donut crumbs provided by an old woman who lives in a remote shack with her idiot son. Their world is fraught with natural perils such as owls and crows. On philosophical bird asks Big Questions of the others and has a hard time finding an audience for his ideas. Unfortunately he asks an owl these questions and is promptly eaten.

Into this scenario, a bomb drops (unexploded) and is misinterpreted as an egg. Later a plane crashes and the pilot becomes part of the story. Thus the birds are unwittingly part of a war, (or maybe just a wayward pilot on a practice run?) but they interpret events through their bird filter and get it all wrong.

The story is (seemingly) simply drawn and is sparsely told, having many pages with no words at all. It falls together well, though there are some digressions (such as a friendly snake with what appears to be a den of bird souls) that I am trying to understand.

Overall, Nilsen seems to be making a statement about assembling stories based on what we see. The birds do not understand the happenings around them, and some place fanciful interpretations on the events and invite others to believe and act upon these beliefs, with dire consequences. This is indeed a danger in the human world as well, but if Nilsen is trying to indict all religious beliefs, his argument is too simplistic.

It was an enjoyable book, and despite its 600 pages, it can be read in a couple of hours. I borrowed it from the library and finished it on 1/22/12.

Daytripper by GABRIEL BÁ and FÁBIO MOON

Daytripper is a graphic novel created by twin brothers. It's a beautifully illustrated treatment of the life and deaths of the protagonist Brás de Oliva Domingos, an obituary writer for the newspaper who aspires to be a novelist. And "deaths" is correct--at the end of each chapter, Brás meets his demise, always at a critical moment in his life, such as the day his father dies and his first child is born. The next chapter picks up, sometimes following the prior chapter by a few years as though the prior tragedy had not occurred but instead been resolved nicely, and sometimes earlier, with a different tragedy befalling Brás earlier in his life.


The nicely woven vignettes of the important days of Brás' life create a set of counterfactuals that point out the mortality of man--he could die at the moment of a near triumph or at the time of a different tragedy. Or in an "ordinary" time, of course, though the authors do not present us with that sort of death for Brás. 



We learn that Brás was a "miracle child" who literally turned on the lights for the whole city at his birth, and we gradually learn what that means and its significance to his family. And we learn how he will be remembered from his obituary at the end of each chapter.  Though he is a miracle child, he is fallible and mortal, and makes many mistakes along the way.  He aspires to be a novelist like his famous father, and in some of the counterfactuals, he makes a strong beginning. 


That Brás always dies at some critical juncture of his life, when he is filled with hope or joy, or stepping out in hopes of finding the perfect woman he saw across the bakery or recovering a lost friend, says something about the hopes of men and the empty joys of this world. They are fleeting, and at the moment they seem to be ours, they could be taken away in an instant. The authors do not seem to follow any particular spiritual outlook, but the stories remind me of the parable of the man who stores up grain and builds bigger barns, and then learns that that very night his life is required of him. It happens to Brás again and again in a sort of reverse "Groundhog Day" way. 

This graphic novel was at or near the top of some year-end 2011 wrap-up lists that I saw. I picked it up from the library and  finished it on 1/21/12. The beautiful art is worth a second look and this would be a good book for a group discussion. 

The Haves and the Have-Nots by Branko Milanovic

The subtitle of this is "A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality." Branko Milanovic is an economist at the World Bank, and he brings an interesting review of inequality of incomes throughout history and across the globe. He introduced me to the Gini coefficient, a measure of income inequality within and between countries. If all income were equal for everyone in a country, their coefficient would be 0. If one individual managed to wrest all of the income and leave the rest of the population with no income at all, the Gini would be 100. 

The most egalitarian countries in the worlds have Ginis of 25-30. The Gini coefficient for the US reached its low of 35 in the late 1970s, and has risen to over 40 since the Reagan era. 

The recent Occupy Wall Street protests obviously reflect the increasing disparity. What they fail to do is propose any solutions. The book also provides few solutions or even suggestions, but describes the concerns quite well. He has three main sections, each with an overview of the economic theory and some statistics, followed by a series of "vignettes" that help to understand the concept. It's a good format, since the impacts can be somewhat abstract, and the vignettes help bring the concepts to earth.  

I wonder if some of his analysis of the strength of the EU holds up. He touts the EU's ability to "absorb" lower income countries with much weaker economies, but the problems with Greece and Italy this year seem to call that into question. (The book came out in early 2011.)

My friend and former colleague Don Cole wrote about this book on his blog (http://mediarealism.blogspot.com/) and got me interested in it, to I reserved it from the library. Finished on 1/21/12.

Cocktails for Three by Madeleine Wickham

Very light novel about three friends living in London. A fourth girl enters the equation and bad things ensue. Not very believable, but a quick read that I started and nearly finished on the plane from San Francisco. Enjoyable? Not really. At the start it seemed like you could add songs and make a terrific light Broadway comedy from it. But then it got a bit too convoluted and petty to keep up the interest. ("My roommate whom I rescued / from a life of tawdry waitressing / brought flowers when she moved  in / and I'm sure that she is genuine! / Her cooking is a wonder / So despite my old friends' cautioning / I'm expecting Heather to be ... myyyyy neeewwww besssttt friendddddd!")

It has the air of being a side project written under a pseudonym, but after looking it up I find that it's by a famous author of chick-lit who also writes as Sophie Kinsella (there's the pseudonym). She writes a series of books about a shopaholic, of which this is not one.

How did I get this? I was looking for Wodehouse books at Half Price Books in December, and came across this in the W's. It looked interesting. It was an light read for the airplane. And it will go back on the next run to Half Price Books. Finished it 1/16/11.

Managing God's Money by Randy Alcorn

Managing God's Money is a trimmed-down version of two of Randy Alcorn's longer works, making it more accessible to readers. I've gone through Crown Ministries' materials a couple of times and pre-crown Larry Burkett information. This book is a good addition to that teaching, and very hard-hitting.

Alcorn does a nice job of setting up the biblical concept of the ownership of money and things--they are all God's. And then he exhorts us to use God's money for eternal purposes, and supports this with Luke 16 and many other scriptures. Like other authors on finance and the Christian life, I think he uses some parables too literally as being about money vs. being about idolatry, but he does point that out in the book. These are not talking ONLY about money, but for cultures across time, money and possessions can become idols.

Gave me lots to think about. I got it free from a Tim Challies' Friend of the Blog offer and found it well worth the read.  Finished this on 1/15/11 during a trip to San Francisco. I'll hang onto it if only to pass along to someone else.

Witness to an Extreme Century by Robert Jay Lifton

I read this on vacation in Florida over Thanksgiving 2011. Lifton is a well-known and groundbreaking psychoanalytical researcher, and he recounts his experiences in his studies as well as in areas like agitating against the Vietnam War (sit-in at the Supreme Court for example). He had four main areas of study, each interesting in its content and the techniques he pioneered.

1. Chinese Mind Control victims
2. Survivors of the bombing of Hiroshima
3. Nazi doctors
4. Vietnam veterans who oppose the war

I was not familiar with Lifton, but this made me want to read his previous books on Nazi doctors and on his concept of Totalism. 

Pinched by Don Peck

The subtitle is "How the great recession has narrowed our futures and what we can do about it." Peck writes for Atlantic magazine, and each chapter has the brisk pace and fact-ratio of an article on economics would in the magazine. Much of the book (almost all of it) recounts recent economic history, which is pretty depressing and mostly already top-of-mind for me. So that part was a little dull. Some interesting economics research is presented, such as stats on how people who graduate during a recession are have lower earnings for their entire careers, and the impact of long-term unemployment on willingness to hire by employers--a topic I've heard covered more on the radio lately, and which I confess I have a bias concerning. I've hired people on 4-5 occasions who seem good on paper and in interviews but who have been out of work for over a year. In each case, they did not work out for various reasons.

The "what we can do about it" chapter is OK, and presents no silver bullets for individuals or the economy. That's good, since there is not an easy answer, but I expected more in this chapter.

I got this from the library based on a recommendation from somewhere, probably the NYT book review.

Hark A Vagrant by Kate Beaton

My mother-in-law gave me this for Christmas  (yay for Amazon Wish Lists!), and I finished it Christmas night. It's a collection of Kate Beacon's webcomic of the same name, with the same commentary she included with the original postings. I'd probably read 90% of these online before, but it's nice to have in a shelvable copy.

Kate Beacon writes and draws these comics, which are based on oddball takes of historical events, comicbook superheroes, and Nancy Drew books, for example. These are worth a reread once a year.

It's comics, so of course I will keep it.

Witness To History by Rodney Castleden

Castledan's book has short first-person accounts of significant historical events. They are never more than a few pages long and include two introductory quote/photo pages per event and occasional sidebars. That makes this a coffee table book to me, but it's an interesting one. The witnessed events include events such as the Battle of Hastings and the execution of Mary during Elizabeth I's reign. I had seen the latter depicted in a couple of movies, and the eyewitness account was both interesting and chilling. More modern events include the D-Day invasion and the fall of the Twin Towers. The most distinctive thing about the book is that there is only a short description of the event, an introduction of the eyewitness, and then their first-person account. The only commentary on the account relates to whether the eyewitness is actually reliable and what biases he might have. 

I picked this up at a B&N closeout table for a few dollars, and I will probably hang into it for a while as some of the stories and language are quite quotable.