Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss–and the Myths and Realities of Dieting by Gina Kolata

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is much less angry and lyrical than Paul Campos’ The Obesity Myth, but it is just as powerful, partly because it takes the reader by surprise. Even the title, “Rethinking Thin,” seems designed to lull the complacent who are going to be confronted with the need to rethink fat. And, it saves its best ammo for the end. Not only is weight loss rarely possible in the way it is advertised, not only are the causes unknown, but the best evidence is that heftier people are healthier than the skinny. The mortality rates are U shaped with overweight in the middle of the valley and the thin and extreme obese at the higher ends (where a rise indicates greater mortality).

This book is never boring, but if you at all know that you like human interest stories, you can be confident that you will find Kolata’s writing fascinating. Also, this is the first book I’ve found that gives some historical/cultural information about when and how views of fat changed in American life. It is all fascinating.

I didn’t give this book five stars because I wasn’t happy with some aspects of Kolata’s happy ending. I think the people who learned to exercise more, eat more healthy, snack less between meals, and accept the results without trying to become skinny, were inspiring. But in that mix Kolata included people obsessed with calorie counts who instinctively interpreted food as caloric numbers. I don’t think that is mentally healthy. (I’d only take off a fraction of a star if that were possible.)

Kolata’s book is short, engaging, and disruptive to the superstitious world in which she lives we live [not sure why I wrote “she lives” originally]. One of her stories involved a statistician in the 1800s who discovered that bleeding did not help the diseases it was supposed to help. He immediately reported that this proved people weren’t being bled soon enough or as much as they needed to be. That is the world we live in today regarding health and fat. All the best evidence is that we are actually hurting ourselves but the thin-regime will never give up the political and economic power they have.

Take it away from them.

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Economics For Dummies by Sean Masaki Flynn

So far (2 chapters) I’ve learned that the modern explosion of productivity is due to 1) widespread public education and 2) patents for inventions that give inventor a monopoly. I’ve also been told that monopolies are bad and inefficient.

Bizarre.

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Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher’s Journey through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling by John Taylor Gatto

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I’m not sure how to say enough good about this book. It doesn’t just criticize public education; it challenges our temptation to conform to the corporate fascism of the modern world. And it is a personal encouragement. The book will give you confidence both that your children can learn and that you can do so too.

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Jump the Cracks by Stacy DeKeyser

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Pretty cool story. Could have been a thriller but was more of a relatively realistic drama about a daughter of divorced parents. Interesting use of some low-key Christian content. The issue seems to be finding faithfulness. Not sure if I like the ending. One could say that she sells out. Still thinking about it.

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(PS. one might also complain that the book is too positive about the State grabbing kids from “unfit” parents. It stayed ambiguous enough not to repel me.)

All the Rage by F. Paul Wilson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Despite my problems with the hero’s morality, I had to give this another chance. This story found him in a monogamous situation, and I’m surprised I didn’t like the novel more. It reads like a anarchic version of Xfiles. What’s not to love? But I didn’t love it. A lot of authors I like really love “Repairman Jack,” but something about him creeps me out. This got better toward the end but once I reached the ending I was disappointed.

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How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Heroic Role From the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe by Thomas Cahill

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Was this the ideal of total accuracy? No. And much of the book didn’t seem to have much bearing on any single thesis. That is why it wasn’t just good, but awesome. It was like pulling up a stool at a bar (an Irish pub) and buying a beer for the talkative fellow next to you because he is highly entertaining and highly knowledgeable. Aside from feeling sick at how familiar the description of the decline of Rome sounded, this was a wonderfully cheerful book that opened up a great deal of history. While I think his title was overstated, as were several other observations (i.e. sex and Christianity in Ireland), it was still an awesome book. Even its overstatements were valuable. (Didn’t Nietschze say the mistakes of great men are better than the successes of the small?)

My only regret is that I listened to this on audio while driving. It would have been more appropriate to read it with book in one hand and beer in the other.

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The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This seemed way too evil and disturbing for younger readers. But it was an amazing read once you got past the fact that the protagonist was making horrific decisions at such a young age. It was hard to imagine a modern teen being so calculating in the face of such trials. But Collins was, nevertheless, convincing. Reading Stephen King’s “The Running Man,” tempts one to believe that this kind of plot can never be written with too much realism. But Collins has done it, and done it well and even as a YA book. I am quite impressed.

Collins portrays a future in which the rulers of North America (from a capital in the Rockies) control all the other sections of the country, exploiting most of them so that they are left with severe poverty. They run an annual arena which the populace is required to watch on TV. A male and female teen from each sector are drafted and required to participate if no one volunteers to take the victims place. They are forced to fight until only one survivor is left. However, because this is a TV show, the “gamemasters” have ways of making sure the conflict does not slow down. Furthermore, the audience can help out their favorites so that one is constantly working them as well as fighting. Violence and lies are the only hope for life.

I won’t give this away except to say that Collins manages to give the reader a glimmer of triumph over tyranny while, at the same time, entangling the protagonist in enough moral compromise to make the victory questionable.

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