Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern Indiaby William Dalrymple (Alfred A. Knopf, 2010) Broadcaster and travel writer William Dalrymple’s new book is a “fascinating and sometimes painfully moving” collection profiling nine people living on the Indian subcontinent—four of them women—whose disparate stories have a common theme of religiosity. Each subject has “found refuge in a world of mystic extremes.” There is the Jain who, in the wake of her companion’s death, is so “afflicted with the sin of intensely missing her,” that she begins purifying herself through slow starvation. There is the untouchable—an Indian of the lowest class—who, for three months every year, is worshipped by India’s elite when “he becomes the incarnation of the god Vishnu.” Reviewer Colin Thubron finds a more specific commonality between the lives; through them, Dalrymple seems to be showing that, “no degree of suffering or deracination can quench the devotees’ conviction of the benevolence of their gods.” Although Thubron discounts Dalrymple’s intention to remove all authorial voice from the interviews, he sees the book as a vivid and poignant success: “This is the India we seldom see, populated by obscure people whose lives are made vivid by their eloquent troubles and reckless piety.”
The French Revolutionby Matt Stewart (Soft Skull, 2010) This “sophomoric,” unsubtle, and undemanding novel can be admired only for its original incarnation as a series of 140-character entries on Twitter, according to reviewer Mameve Medwed. In his recounting of a San Francisco family whose lives mirror well-known players in the French Revolution, Stewart achieves tepid success only with his description of the food that has fattened protagonist Esmerelda Van Twinkle to obesity. Other than that, the novel is best summed up by Medwed in a Twitter-sized last line: “it’s liberté, égalité, gimmickry.”
The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Inventionby William Rosen (Random House, 2010) Reviewer Jeff Vandermeer admires Rosen’s ability to demystify the Industrial Revolution, in this “energetic,” “riveting,” and “educational” book which manages to make seemingly dull topics, like patent law, “interesting, even exciting,” and a “young Steampunk’s dream.” But the book succeeds in more than just avoiding being dull. Convincing and engaging, “the playfulness and invention… carry over into chapters rich in detail and imbued with a sparkling intelligence.” Vandermeer takes issue with Rosen’s outlook for the future, where he favors further invention over an attempt to rely on current energy alternatives like wind and solar power. But Vandermeer, who has written three books on Steampunks (a subgenre of science fiction that, today, has heavy influence on art and design), forgives a fellow obsessive, affectionately calling the book an “author’s passionate love for the intricacies of invention and applied science.”
The Flavor Thesaurusby Niki Segnit (Bloomsbury, 2010). “Even if you know your 4,851 flavor pairings backwards to the point of ennui, or, conversely, have no intention whatsoever of cooking anything in your life, this is still a book that can be read for pleasure alone,” writes critic Nicholas Lezard. So tempting are the 99 (a number chosen arbitrarily) flavor pairings described within, that the book “is not so much a cookbook as an inventory of human inspiration.” From the exotic globe artichoke and mint, to the familiar bacon and egg, Segnit wins with her offbeat and affable writing, at one point comparing coriander and lime, a common Asian pairing, to a refrain from a Rolling Stones song. Although Lezard protests a few descriptions, in the end he is as satisfied as after the dessert course of a big meal: “everything here is just right.”
Hamlet’s Blackberry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Ageby William Powers (Harper/HarperCollins Publishers, 2010) Smart phones and other technology might distract us from nature, but is it in our nature to be distracted? Powers, a journalist, thinks so; he asserts that it is part of our survivor instinct “to pay attention to new stimuli, thereby helping us to respond quickly to predators or to nab a potential meal.” Although the reviewer wishes Powers had been less distracted himself by the details of contemporary life, Powers’s “ruminations are penetrating, his language clear and strong, and his historical references are restorative.” And she admires his stubborn reliance on pen and paper as much as she confesses to loving her iPhone, and checking it often while reading Powers’s book.
