Page 99: Stiff and Spook

Right now I'm in the process of reading Mary Roach's third research novel Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex. I love love love her writing style and how she presents information. Love. So I thought I would Page 99 her two previous books Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers and Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife so you can get an idea of what I'm talking about! Review for Bonk should be up soon!

Stiff

"Oh, yes," he answers. "I mean, I would never use this kind of stitch." He has begun stitching more widely spaced, comparatively crude loops, rather than tight, hidden stitches used on the living.
I rephrase the question: Does it feel odd to perform surgery on someone who isn't alive?
His answer is surprising. "The patient was alive." I suppose surgeons are used to thinking about patients- particularly ones they've never met- as no more than what they see of them: open plots of organs. And as far as that goes, I guess you could say H was alive. Because of the cloths covering all but her opened torso, the young man never saw her face, didn't know if she was male or female.
While the resident sews, a nurse picks stray danglies of skin and fat off the operating table with a pair of tongs and drops them inside the body cavity, as though H were a handy wastebasket. The nurse explains that this is done intentionally: "Anything not donated stays with her." The jigsaw puzzle put back in its box.
The incision is complete, and a nurse washes H off and covers her with a blanket for the trip to the morgue. Out of habit or respect, he chooses a fresh one. The transplant coordinator, Von, and the nurse lift H onto a gurney. Von wheels H into an elevator and down a hallway to the morgue. The workers are behind a set of swinging doors, in a back room. "Can we leave this here?" Von shouts. H has become a "this." We are instructed to wheel the gurney into the cooler, where it joins five others. H appears no different from the corpses already here.*

*Unless H's family is planning a naked open-casket service, no one at her funeral will be able to tell she's had organs removed. Only with tissue harvesting, which often includes leg and arm bones, does the body take on a slightly altered profile, and in this case PVC piping or dowels are inserted to normalize the form and make life easier for mortuary staff and others who need to move the otherwise somewhat noodle-ized body.

Spook

Mason published a three-part article, including discography, on the topic of seance recording sessions. While the early efforts were merely recorded documents of the sittings- one particularly vigorous medium held forth sufficeintly long to fill nine twelve-inch double-sided 78s- very soon the mediums took to singing while in trance, in the persona and voice of the spirit guide. Not surprisingly, given the preponderance of female mediums, the spirit guides (most of them male) tended to be tenors. It was an odd coupling: the high, sweet tones of handles like Power or Hotep. Perhaps this explains the appearance, in 1930, of an Italian spirit guide. Sabbatini, the Italian tenor, began turning up at the seances of prominent Cape Town medium Mrs. T. H. Butters. Mason quotes a description of a Sabbatini performance in a 1931 issue of The Two Worlds, the newspaper of the Spiritualists' National Union: "While the sitters by singing Italian songs in a ringing tenor voice, and so powerful were the manifestaitons that in March this year the friends of Mrs. Butters decided to make a gramophone record of the voice." The recording quality was diminished somewhat by Mrs. Butters's tendency to stray from the microphone and move about the room "making operatic gestures," but was otherwise deemed to be of excellent quality.
This obsure musical genre reached its peak on April 3, 1939, when London's Balham Psychic Research Society held a seance inside the studios of the Decca Freocrd Company. Presaging

So what do you think, about Stiff, Spook, Mary Roach? Go ahead, judge by their pages 99!

Thoughts: Animal Farm

I finally got around to reading George Orwell's satire on the Russian Revolution, Animal Farm. For those shy to anything labled "satire," have no fear; this book is an easy read, with the original title containing A Fairy Tale as the subtitle. Even if you know nothing of Stalin and the rise of Communism in Russia, you will be able to point out everything that goes wrong in this book.

Animal Farm is created after farm animals, tired of the way they are treated by their two legged master, revolt and take over the farm. At first the animals are excited and happy, creating their own laws that would make a reign like the one they suffered impossible to occur again. But the tides change once the clever pig Napoleon declares himself leader.

Like mentioned before, this is a very simple read. And quick, my copy at less than one hundred pages. But don't let that turn you away; the entire time I wanted to jump into the story and try to set everything straight. The story can be applied to any kind of political system really; it shows the importance of challenging government and making sure power is with the people. A good prereq before diving into 1984, where there are more details in a distopian society.

Let me rant a second...

Go ahead and label me a bad blogger- I have this for a short time and then disappear. Sorry, finals week is a bitch. But it's summer break now, and time to book binge. I borrow some books from a friend and made a trip to Borders... here's what you can be expecting in the next few weeks... let me know what you think :)

Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
The Feng Shui Bible, Simon Brown
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
The True Story of Hansel and Gretel, Louise Murphy
Personality: What Makes You the Way You Are, Daniel Nettle
Animal Farm, George Orwell
Choke, Chuck Palahniuk
Bonk, Mary Roach
The Complete Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi

Thoughts: American Gods

Shadow is man with a past. But now he wants nothing more than to live a quiet life with his wife and stay out of trouble. Until he learns that she's been killed in a terrible accident.

Flying home for the funeral, as a violent storm rocks the plane, a strange man in the seat next to him introduces himself. The man calls himself Mr. Wednesday, and he knows more about Shadow than is possible.

He warns Shadow that a far bigger storm is coming. And from that moment on, nothing will ever be the same...

Quotes

Ah, Neil Gaiman. One of favorite authors.

And to be honest, American Gods did not hit me as quick as the other books. This one is as dark as others, but written without the regular lightheartedness. It's still wonderful.

Here's how it goes: Once let out of prison and learning of his wife's death, Shadow becomes the body guard and odd job man of a stranger called Wednesday. From there, he is launched into the middle of a storm, a big one, where Gods of all religions, cultures, and ways of life who have been brought to America by their worshipers are arguing and deciding on their own fate.

What I absolutley love is how Gaiman got the idea- America has no gods, just people who believe in them. Gods from all over the world have migrated with those that believe in them to America, where slowly over the centuries, they are becoming diminished and forgotten. New forces- forces of the industrial age, of the science age- are in the minds of America's people now. But what of the old gods?

Gaiman has a great way of making his characters like people you once knew, but lost track of over time. They're real, and you know they've always been real, even before you started reading about them. It's a perfect skill to have, when you're creating a world where Gods have struggled to survive among real, modern day people. Shadow is also a great character to follow; I was rooting for him the whole way, sorry that he had been thrown into this ordeal without him having to seek for my pity.

Even the epilogue was great. It tied up a few things to make a bang ending, a reminder that Gods will be Gods.

Okay, you get it, I loved it. My one problem: the climax, the storm- I don't know how much of a spoiler this is- but if you've read The Stand by Stephen King, the storm ends in a similar way. After all the build up, it's a bit of let down to have things end peacefully. And I'll leave it at that.

Thoughts: A Typology of Domestic Violence

In this path-breaking reassessment of thirty years of domestic violence research, sociologist Michael J. Johnson argues the domestic violence is not a unitary phenomenon. Instead, he delineates three major, dramatically different forms of domestic violence- intimate violence terrorism, violent resistance, and situational couple violence- and shows that the failure to distinguish among these types of partner violence has produced a research literature that is plagued by both overgeneralizations and ostensibly contradictory findings. By creating the theoretical framework to differentiate among types of partner violence, this volume represents the crucial first step to a better understanding of domestic violence among scholars, social scientists, policy makers, and service providers.

Okay, so A Typology of Domestic Violence doesn't seem like a read you want to snuggle under the covers with, and probably sounds like something that might be taught in a family violence course. For me, this book qualified in both categories, and happens to be the best late night/early morning cram session book I've ever read (yes, I know, not saying much, but here me out). At a short 86 pages, I read this in one sitting and actually enjoyed it. I thought I would fall asleep after two pages of more domestic violence statistics and research, like other texts for this class, but this book was excellent. It's about different types of violent partners, something that has not been researched thoroughly or enough, according to the author. It does not require you to know any theories related to family violence, and is written for someone who has never studied the topic. And, best yet: It's actually an interesting read!

Now, I'm going to assume most people are not sold on this book, and that's understandable- it's certainly not something I would pick up off the shelf if my grade didn't depend on it. But I would recommend it to anyone who wants a better understanding of domestic violence, for personal reasons or otherwise. It was an enlightening read and was enjoyable at the same time. There is one account given as an example of one typology, and there is a warning before reading- pay attention to that warning! I felt sick after reading it, and it was the first time I had felt uncomfortable after taking a semester on the topic.