Book 23: "Drive"

One day about six months ago, my mother handed me a book. I was in the early stages of my "Summer of Reid" planning, and she gifted me a relatively thin, nondescript book with the title "Drive" printed on the front cover. She's given me plenty of motivational/self-help books in the past, and I've read almost none of them. Usually, I prop them on my book shelf and use them as stucco for the mosaic that is my book collection. (I feel guilty admitting that now.) Then, the weirdest thing happened. I left the book I had started reading, "The God Delusion," in the car and didn't have a book to read before bed. I looked through the bookshelf and felt a strange attraction to Daniel Pink's book. Once I started it, I couldn't put it down--I started it on Monday and, despite all of the other things I'm doing right now, finished it today (Thursday). I used over 150 Post-It tabs over the course of 226 pages, so there's quite a lot I found worth revisiting. 

Rather than highlight all of my favorite quotes from the book, here is the "Twitter Summary" that Pink provides in the book: 

"Carrots & sticks are so last century. Drive says for 21st century work, we need to upgrade to autonomy, mastery and purpose." 

Here's the quickest summary I can write:

Scientists have discovered that "intrinsic motivation" is more powerful than rewards and punishments. Business is outdated because it relies on external rewards and punishments, which fail because they extinguish intrinsic motivation, diminish performance, crush creativity and crowd out good behavior. They also encourage unethical behavior, create addictions and foster short-term thinking. The external system does work with rule-based routine tasks. Type X behavior is concerned with external desires and rewards, whereas Type I is concerned with inherent satisfaction. Autonomy is needed in the areas of task, time, team and technique. Engagement leads to mastery, which requires flow (Goldilocks tasks matched to our abilities). Mastery requires to realize that abilities are not finite but infinitely improvable. It is also a deliberate practice and can be represented by an asymptote. Humans also seek purpose maximization, which can exist alongside profit maximization. Purpose motive is expressed in goals, words and policies that encourage purpose beyond self interest. 

Glossary of words to remember:

Baseline rewards

FedEx days

Goldilocks tasks

"If-then" rewards

Mastery asymptote

Motivation 3.0

Nonroutine work

"Now that" rewards

Results-only work environment (ROWE)

Routine work

Sawyer effect

20 percent time

Type I vs Type X behavior

This book is so amazing that I think everyone should read it. I love the theory behind the book, and it would be amazing and strange (at first) if the business world were to move towards this operation style. I'm not a boss or leader of anyone, but I found myself seeing so many ways in which I can improve for the future. In particular, there is a self-assessment section that asks questions and provides activities one can utilize to step out of Type X behavior and move towards Type I. It's quite possibly the best book I've read thus far!

Rating: A+

Bonus: here's Daniel Pink's TED Talk:

"The Puzzle of Motivation"

It's over 18 minutes long, but remains one of the top most-watched videos on Ted. 

Book 22: "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running"

The philosophy of running.

I'm kind of on a health/wellness trend right now with the books I've been choosing. The last three books I've read are all "imports" from NYC, as in, I bought them there and lugged them all the way back home. Being in NYC (and gaining 8 lbs(!) while I was away) was a wake up call for me. I realized how unfulfilled I feel living in Hawaii, and I saw how much the island mentality has infiltrated my lifestyle. I didn't have any specific encounters that led me that conclusion, but I thought about the people I passed on the street, and how they all had somewhere to be. They all seemed to be directed by a very strong internal force. (The closest thing I can liken that to is the scene in Donnie Darko where Donnie sees the predestinations of everyone around him, they all seem to be led by a translucent power.) 

Whereas in previous trips to NYC I felt as though I belonged there, this time I felt like a small fish in a big pond, more of an outsider than ever before. It hurt me to see how quickly the years have gone by, how I've willed myself to work one more semester at dead-end student jobs with the intention of saving for my future, only to see those possibilities evaporate due to foolish spending habits and poor money management. If not for the grace of my parents, I seriously doubt I'd be able to avoid homelessness. Being in NYC made me question everything I've been doing up to this point, but at the same time, it gave me more clarity than I ever had trying to "figure it out" at home. I saw what I did and did not like about my life back home, and being in the city refilled my tank of internal motivation. 

I also thought about my attitude. As Haruki Murakami states in his book, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, "It's pretty thin, the wall separating healthy confidence and unhealthy pride." Have I been too prideful, self-confident, maybe even cocky all these years? I did get used to a certain level of prestige and "status," both in my academic and extracurricular lives. Maybe a part of me still views myself through the lens of who I once was in brighter times--the top tennis player, president of an honor society, multi-tasker, etc. Maybe having earned those titles was the worst thing that could have happened to me because they created the illusion that I had time, that I could hold off everyone else, and life itself. We know what ill fates bely those who stay stagnant, (we're all sharks--if we're not swimming, we're dying), yet time and time again, I surge when given new tasks, only to fade once I get comfortable. Maybe what I need is to get a reality check. Maybe someone needs to tell me to my face that I'm 24, have not worked a full time job and am not on any life trajectory except one of the guy who lives at home and is labeled as a "loser" by society. 

It's sad to find myself at this crossroad, but not unexpected. I'm smart enough to know when I'm pushing things to the side in avoidance. I know what I SHOULD be doing, and I have every means to get started, but my disdain for uncomfortable feelings and a general unwillingness to "put myself out there" has gotten in the way of maximizing my potential and making my visions come to fruition. Knowing what I'm capable of, and feeling the internal workings of my mind grind away at the speed it does, tells me that I'm coasting in the far right lane on the freeway when I belong in the far left. It's frustrating to know you're not doing what you should, but it's not as easy as getting off your ass and doing whatever you need to. There's a psychological barrier that cannot be called "laziness," either. At first meeting, some people tell me I come across as being bitchy, confident, intimidating and harsh, yet I often feel the exact opposite. So maybe I'm simultaneously scared of the world, but the walls I put up exude the things I wish I were? It's certainly not on purpose that I come across this or that way, I'm always just being myself, or is that a subconscious manifestation of an internal delusion that also keeps me from going after what I want?

So, what is it that I want? I know I want to read a lot of books I can learn from (I never did like fiction much), do the best job at the new job I've been at for a couple weeks now, take time to reflect and reevaluate, exercise and lose weight (my BMI is overweight!), stay calm, and appreciate life. Maybe I don't have it all figured out, but I know what I don't want. I don't want drama in my life. I don't want to be in a relationship, or at least I don't feel the need to be in one, or to be close with anyone in particular. Establishing relationships with people who emanate negative energy are a distraction from all that I want to accomplish, and could accomplish, on my own. Trying to establish kinship and finding the good in people for the purpose of companionship and love is also a waste of time. I have far more pressing things to do, like finding a career calling. I'm also tired of the Hawaii "scene." I'm not so useless and incapable of impacting the world that i have to resort to being a socialite and hobnob my way to the top. 

Where did all this come from? Reading Murakami's book didn't explicitly tell me I'm not where I want to be, but his musings put me in an introspective frame of mind. It's worth reflecting, especially with where I am in my life, and if I got anything out of reading this book, it's the opportunity to be honest. Here are a few of the quotes that got me going: 

• On being a gentleman: "A gentleman should keep quiet about what he does to stay healthy. A gentleman shouldn't go on and on about what he does to stay fit."
• On pain: "Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional."
• "To keep on going, you have to keep up the rhythm. This is the important thing for long-term projects. Once you set the pace, the rest will follow. The problem is getting the flywheel to spin at a set speed--and to get to that point takes as much effort and concentration as you can manage."
• "I'm the kind of person who likes to be by himself. To put a finer point on it, I'm the type of person who doesn't find it painful to be alone."
• "If you think about it, it's precisely because people are different from others that they're able to create their own independent selves...Emotional hurt is the price a person has to pay in order to be independent."
• "I'm the kind of person who has to totally commit to whatever I do...I had to give it everything I had. If I failed, I could accept that. But I knew that if I did things halfheartedly and they didn't work out, I'd always have regrets."
• "I only began to enjoy studying after I got through the educational system and became a so-called member of society. If something interested me, and I could study it at my own pace and approach it the way I liked, I was pretty efficient at acquiring knowledge and skills."
• "I'm struck by how, except when you're young, you really need to prioritize in life, figuring out in what order you should divide up your time and energy. If you don't get that sort of system set by a certain age, you'll lack focus and your life will be out of balance."
• On recommending running as exercise: "No matter how strong a will a person has, no matter how much he may hate to lose, if it's an activity he doesn't really care for, he won't keep it up for long. Even if he did, it wouldn't be good for him...If they're not interested in it, no amount of persuasion will make any difference."
• "The most important thing we ever learn at school is the fact that the most important things can't be learned at school."
• "Muscles are hard to get and easy to lose. Fat is easy to get and hard to lose."
• On pretending to run a marathon for media attention: "Sometimes the world baffles me. I can't believe that people would really do things like that."
• "Focus and endurance are different from talent, since they can be acquired and sharpened through training...In private correspondence the great mystery writer Raymond Chandler once confessed that even if he didn't write anything, he made sure he sat down at his desk every single day and concentrated."
• "Most runners run not because they want to live longer, but because they want to live life to the fullest. If you're going to while away the years, it's far better to live them with clear goals and fully alive than in a fog, and I believe running helps you do that. Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: that's the essence of running, and a metaphor for life."
• "The healthy and the unhealthy are not necessarily at opposite ends of the spectrum. They don't stand in opposition to each other, but rather complement each other, and in some cases even band together. Sure, many people who are on a healthy track in life think only of good health, while those who are getting unhealthy only think of that. But if you follow this sort of one-sided view, your life won't be fruitful."
• "I'm not a human. I'm a piece of machinery. I don't need to feel a thing. Just forge on ahead."
• "Break one of my rules once, and I'm bound to break many more. And if I'd done that, it would have been next to impossible to finish this race."
• "Just as I have my own role to play, so does time. And time does its job much more faithfully, much more accurately, than I ever do. Ever since time began, it's been moving ever forward without a moment's rest. And one of the privileges given to those who've avoided dying young is the blessed right to grow old. The honor of physical decline is waiting, and you have to get used to that reality."
• "It's a little strange, perhaps, to make this claim at such a late date, but The Great Gatsby really is an outstanding novel. I never get tired of it, no matter how many times I've read it. It's the kind of literature that nourishes you as you read, and every time I do I'm struck by something new, and experience a fresh reaction to it."
• "Instinct has taught me only one thing: Use your imagination...I imagine myself, along with thousands of other runners, going through Brooklyn, through Harlem, through the streets of New York. I see myself crossing several steel suspension bridges, and experience the emotions I'll have as I run along bustling Central Park South..."
• "On the body of the bike is written '18 Til I Die,' the name of a Bryan Adams hit. It's a joke, of course. Being 18 till you die means you die when you're 18."
• "People say that most of the problems that earth is facing are, more or less, due to global warming...What the world needs is a set villain that people can point at and say, 'It's all your fault!'"
• "I've carried this character around like an old suitcase, down a long, dusty path. I'm not carrying it because I like it...I've carried it with me because there was nothing else I was supposed to carry. Still, I guess I have grown attached to it...I'm still lugging around that old suitcase, most likely headed toward another anticlimax. Toward a taciturn, unadorned maturity--or, to put it more modestly, toward an evolving dead end."
• "Once when I was around sixteen and nobody else was home, I stripped naked, stood in front of a large mirror in our house, and checked out my body from top to bottom. As I did this, I made a mental list of all the deficiencies--or what, to me at least, appeared to be deficiencies...As I recall, when I got to twenty-seven items, I got sick of it and gave up. And this is what I thought: If there are this many visible parts of my body that are worse than normal people's, then if I start considering other aspects--personality, brains, athleticism, things of this sort--the list will be endless. As you get older, though, through trial and error you learn to get what you need, and throw out what should be discarded. And you start to recognize (or be resigned to the fact) that since your faults and deficiencies are well nigh infinite, you'd best figure out your good points and learn to get by with what you have."
• "It doesn't matter how old I get, but as long as I continue to live I'll always discover something new about myself. No matter how long you stand there examining yourself naked before a mirror, you'll never see reflected what's inside."
• "It's precisely because of the pain, precisely because we want to overcome that pain, that we can get the feeling, through this process, of really being alive--or at least a partial sense of it."
• "Even if, seen from the outside, or from higher vantage point, this sort of life looks pointless or futile, or even extremely inefficient, it doesn't bother me. Maybe it's some pointless act like, as I've said before, pouring water into an old pan that has a hole on the bottom, but at least the effort you put into it remains."

Thought provoking, easy read that the reader will interpret and internalize in the framework of his/her own life. Rating: A-

Book 16: "The Botany of Desire"

Food is... 

Introduction

• Coevolution: In a coevolutionary bargain like the one struck by the bee and the apple tree, the two parties act on each other to advance their individual interests but wind up trading favors. Consciousness needn't enter into it on either side and the traditional distinction between subject and object is meaningless. 
• Evolution doesn't depend on will or intention to work; it is an unconscious, unwilled process. Design in nature is but a concatenation of accidents, culled by natural selection until the result is so beautiful or effective as to seem a miracle of purpose.
• Our grammar might teach us to divide the world into active subjects and passive subjects, but in a coevolutionary relationship every subject is also an object, every object is a subject. 
• Fitness: the ability to get along in a world in which humankind has become the most powerful evolutionary force. Artificial selection has become a much more important chapter in natural history as it has moved into the space once ruled exclusively by natural selection.
• Nature's success stories from now...if species have a future, it will be because of human desire; strangely enough, their survival now depends on what amounts to a form of artificial selection. 

Sweetness / The Apple

• The Red Delicious has been described as "sweetness without dimension."
• Apples were something people drank--hard cider was the fate of most apples grown in America up until Prohibition.
• Every seed in an apple contains the genetic instructions for a completely new and different apple tree...If not for grafting (cloning), every apple in the world would be its own distinct variety.
• Heterozygosity: genetic variability accounts for its ability to make itself at home anywhere. 
• Much like the Puritans, who regarded their crossing to America as a kind of baptism or rebirth, the apple couldn't cross the Atlantic without changing its identity--a fact that encouraged generations of Americans to hear echoes of their own story in the story of this fruit. The apple in America became a parable.
• Before [sugar and honeybees arrived in the late 19th century] the sensation of sweetness in the lives of most people came chiefly from the flesh of the fruit . And in America that usually meant the apple. 
• The word sweetness denoted a reality commensurate with human desire; it stood for fulfillment. 
• Anthropologist have found that cultures vary enormously in their liking for bitter, sour and salty flavors, but a taste for sweetness appears to be universal. 
• The fact that the apple was generally believed to be the fateful tree in the Garden of Eden might also have commended it to a religious people who believed America promised a second Eden
• It wasn't until this century that the apple acquired its reputation for wholesomeness--"An apple a day keeps the doctor away" was a marketing slogan dreamed up by growers concerned that temperance would cut into sales.
• In Swedenborg's philosophy there is no rift between the natural world and the divine. Much like Emerson...Swedenborg claimed that there were one to one correspondences between natural and spiritual facts, so that close attention and devotion to the former would advance one's understanding of the latter.
• For Chapman the natural world even at its wildest was never a falling away or a distraction from the spirit world; it was continuous with it. 
• Johnny Appleseed was no Christian saint--that left out too much of who he was, what he stood for in our mythology. Who he was, I realized, was the American Dionysus...Under Dionysus and his wine, all nature answers to our desires...Sometimes the cause of civilization is best served by a hard stare into the soul of its opposite.Some such principle may have underwritten Dionysian revelry in ancient Athens--and the impulse to invite someone like John Chapman into one's home in nineteenth-century Ohio.
• The American orchard, or at least Johnny Appleseed's orchard, is a blossoming, fruiting meritocracy, in which every apple seed roots in the same soil and any seedling has an equal chance at greatness, regardless of origin or patrimony.
• Thousands of apple traits, and the genes that code those traits, have become extinct as the vast flowering of apple diversity that Johnny Appleseed sponsored has been winnowed down to the small handful of varieties that can pass through the needle's eye of our narrow conceptions of sweetness and beauty.
• The domestication of the apple has gone too far, to the point where the species' fitness for life in nature has been dangerously compromised. Reduced to the handful of genetically identical clones that suit our taste and agricultural practice, the apple has lost the crucial variability--the wildness--that sexual reproduction confers.
• The best technology in the world can't create a new gene or re-create one that's been lost.
• "In wildness is the preservation of the world," Thoreau once wrote; a century later, when many of the wild places are no more. Wendell Berry has proposed this necessary corollary: "In human culture is the preservation of wildness."
• There can be no civilization without wildness, such a tree would remind us, no sweetness absent its astringent opposite. 

Beauty / The Tulip

• The boy's-eye view has the wintry weight of rationality on its side: all this useless beauty is impossible to justify on cost-benefit grounds. But isn't that always how it is with beauty?
• Sexual selection--evolution's favoring of features that increase a plant's or animal's attractiveness and therefore its reproductive success--is the best explanation we have for the otherwise senseless extravagance of feathers and flowers...the expense of beauty is usually paid for by sex. 
• Evolutionary biologists believe that in many creatures beauty is a reliable indicator of health, and therefore a perfectly sensible way to choose one mate over another. 
• Symmetry is also a sign of health in a creature, since mutations and environmental stress can easily disturb it. So paying attention to symmetrical things makes good sense: symmetry is usually significant.
• Though we self-importantly regard domestication as something people have done to plants, it is at the same time a strategy by which the plants have exploited us and our desires--even our most idiosyncratic notions of beauty--to advance their own interests.
• Shame seems to be the going price of achievement, particularly the achievement of knowledge or beauty.
• "The tulip remained itself, the poetry of Nature to which vulgar utilitarianism is foreign," Herbert. The tulip is a thing of beauty, no more, no less.
• "Beauty always takes place in the particulars, and if there are no particulars, the chances of seeing it go down," Elaine Scarry. 
• The tulip is all Apollonian clarity and order. It's a linear, left-brained flower, in no way occult, explicit and logical in its formal rules and arrangements, and conveying all this rationality the only way conceivable: through the eye. 
• The Greeks believed that true beauty (as opposed to mere prettiness) was the offspring of Apollo form and Dionysus ecstasy held in balance, where our dreams of ecstasy and abandon come together. 
• With the advent of the flower, whole new levels of complexity come into the world: more interdependence, more information, more communication, more experimentation.
• Beauty has emerged as a survival strategy.
• Without flowers, the reptiles, which had gotten along fine in a leafy, fruitless world, would probably still rule. Without flowers, we would not be.
• Apollo and Dionysus were names the Greeks gave to these two faces of nature, and nowhere in nature is their contest as plain or as poignant as it is in the beauty of a flower and its rapid passing.

Intoxication / Marijuana

• There it is, right in the middle of the word "intoxication," hidden in plain sight: toxic. The bright line between food and poison might hold, but not the one between poison and desire.
• A powerful, death-dealing toxin can exert such a strong selective pressure for resistance in its target population that it is quickly rendered ineffective: a better strategy might be to repel, disable or confound.
• To succeed in North America, cannabis had to do two things: it had to prove it could gratify a human desire so brilliantly that people would take extraordinary risks to cultivate it, and it had to find the right combination of genes to adapt to a most peculiar and thoroughly artificial new environment.
• Entheogens--"the god within"
• In a sense, the rapid emergence of a domestic marijuana industry represents a triumph of protectionism. 
• The reason for drawing the bright line here and not there [regarding mind-altering plants] generally make more sense within the culture itself, rooted as they are in its values and traditions, than they do outside it. 
• Steve Pinker proposes that evolution has endowed the human brain with two (formerly) unrelated faculties: its superior problem-solving abilities and an internal system of chemical rewards, such that when a person does something especially useful or heroic the brain is washed in chemicals that make it feel good. Bring the first of these faculties to bear on the second, and you wind up with a creature who has figured out how to use plants to artificially trip the brain's reward system.
• Allen Ginsberg suggested that the negative feelings marijuana sometimes provokes, such as anxiety, fear, and paranoia, are "traceable to the effects on consciousness not of the narcotic but of the law."
• The sensation of pain is, curiously, one of the hardest to summon from memory. Howlett speculated that the human cannabinoid system evolved to help us endure (and selectively forget) the routine slings and arrows of life "so that we can get up in the morning and do it all over again." It is the brain's own drug for coping with the human condition.
• Forgetting is vastly underrated as a mental operation--indeed, that it is a mental operation, rather than, as I'd always assumed, strictly the breakdown of one. Forgetting is also one of the more important things healthy brains do, almost as important as remembering.Think of how quickly the sheer volume and multiplicity of sensory information we receive every waking minute would overwhelm our consciousness if we couldn't quickly forget a great deal more it than we remember.
• Nietzsche on drug transcendence: "All is so palpable, close, highly colored, resounding, as though he apprehended it with all his senses at once." Some of our greatest happinesses arrive when we feel as though we've sprung free from the tyranny of timeThis thoroughgoing absorption in the present is (as both Western and Eastern religious traditions tell us) as close as we mortals ever get to an experience of eternity.
• Boethius, the sixth-century Neoplatonist, said the goal of our spiritual striving was "to hold and possess the whole fullness of life in one moment, here and now, past and present and to come." 
• Likewise, in the Eastern tradition: "Awakening to this present instant," a Zen master has written, "we realize the infinite is in the finite of each instant." 
• Very often, the conclusions or concepts come first, allowing me to dispense with the sensory data altogether or to notice in it only what fits. It's a form of impatience with lived life, and though it might appear to be a symptom of an active mind, I suspect it's really a form of laziness.
• "Nature always wears the colors of the spirit," Emerson. We never see the the world plainly, only through the filter of prior concepts or metaphors.
• Banality depends on memory, as do irony and abstraction and boredom, three other defenses the educated mind deploys against experience so that it can get through the day without being continually, exhaustingly astonished.
• Memory is the enemy of wonder, which abides nowhere else but in the present...wonder depends on forgetting...[drugs] work by subtracting some of the filters that consciousness normally interposes between us and the world. 
• The reducing value keeps us from being crushed under the "pressure of reality," but it accomplishes this at a price, for the mechanism prevents us from ever seeing reality as it really is.
• The workings of consciousness are both more and less materialistic than we usually think: chemical reactions can induce thoughts, but thoughts can also induce chemical reactions.
• Spiritual knowledge comes from above or within, but surely not from plants. Christians have a name for someone who believes otherwise: pagan.
• Paracelsus's grand project, which arguably is still going on today, represents one of the many ways the Judeo-Christian tradition has deployed its genius to absorb, or co-opt, the power of the pagan faith it set out to uproot. (Pharmaceuticalize marijuana, find a way to harness its easily accessible benefits, synthesizing the active ingredients in plant drugs, allowing medicine to dispense with the plant itself--and any remainders of its pagan past.)
• Friedrich Nietzsche once described Dionysian intoxication as "nature overpowering mind"--nature having her way with us.

Control / The Potato

• "Tell me what you eat, I will tell you what you are," Anthelme Brillat-Savarin.
• "Man does not actually produce variability," Charles Darwin.
• Perhaps, as some biologists believe, the purpose of keeping species separate is to put barriers int he path of pathogens, to contain their damage so that a single germ can't wipe out life on Earth at a stroke. 
• One way to look at genetic engineering is that it allows a larger portion of human culture and intelligence to be incorporated into the plants themselves. So while my genetically engineered plants might at first seem like alien beings, that's not quite right; they're more like us than other plants because there's more of us in them. 
• Political economists framed their arguments in somewhat more scientific terms, their rhetoric betrayed deep anxieties about nature's threat to civilization's control. Malthusian logic started from the premise that people are driven by the desires for food and sex; only the threat of starvation keeps the population from exploding. The danger of the potato, Malthus believed, was that it removed the economic constraints that ordinarily kept the population in check. This in a nutshell was Ireland's problem: "the indolent and turbulent habits of the lower Irish can never be corrected while the potato system enables them to increase so much beyond the regular demands for labor."
• Political economists like Adam Smith and David Ricardo regarded the market as a sensitive mechanism for adjusting the size of the population to the demand for labor. The problem with the "potato system" is that, under it, the Homo economicus who adjusts his behavior to the algebra of need is replaced by a far less rational actor--Homo appetitus, as Gallagher calls him.
• In the eyes of the political economists, without the discipline of commodity markets, man is thrown back on its instincts: unlimited food and sex leading inexorably to overpopulation and misery.
• Uncertainty is the theme that unites most of the questions now being raised about agricultural biotechnology by environmentalists and scientists. By planting millions of acres of genetically engineered plants, we're introducing something novel into the environment and the food chain, the consequences of which are not completely understood. 
• Jumping genes and superweeds point to a new kind of environmental problem: "biological pollution," which some environmentalists believe will be the unhappy legacy of agriculture's shift from a chemical to a biological paradigm. Harmful as chemical pollution can be, it eventually disperses and fades, but biological pollution is self-replicating. 
• NewLeaf potato biological pollution leads to the evolution of insects resistance to Bt, an insecticide that organic farmers depend on. 
• The true cost of this technology is being charged to the future--no new paradigm there. Today's gain in control over nature will be paid for by tomorrow's new disorder, which in turn will become simply a fresh problem for science to solve.
• Monoculture is at the root of virtually every problem that bedevils the modern farmer, and from which virtually every agricultural product is designed to deliver him.
• Whether in evolutionary terms a monoculture really represents long-term success for a species is an open question. 
• With the "Terminator," as the new technique quickly became known, genetic engineers have discovered how to sop on command the most elemental of nature's processes, the plant-seed cycle by which plants reproduce and evolve. Now viable seeds will come not from plants but from corporations.
• The Food and Drug Administration operates on the assumption that genetically modified plants are "substantially equivalent" to ordinary plants, the regulation of these foods have been voluntary since 1992...the FDA doesn't even officially regard the NewLeaf as a food...since the potato contains Bt, it is nota  food at all but a pesticide, putting it under the jurisdiction of the Environmental Protection Agency. 

Michael Pollan has already established himself as an author with a fascinating way of making food alluring and interesting. After having read three previous works by Pollan, it took me all of the first line to slip right back into his signature style, which I can now categorize as West Coast intellectual (suitable since he lives in Berkely). The Botany of Desire was published in 2002, and it isolates itself in that time period with its references to NewLeaf and marijuana. The early 2000's was also before the Global Warming revelation, as well as California's legalization of marijuana, which could probably add width to this book should Pollan ever consider an update. And, so, I consider this somewhat of a history book. The mythology and anthropology are everlasting, and Pollan is at his philosophical best in considering whether we change (and continue to change) plants, or they changed (and continue to change) us. Attached to those musings is an avalanche of ethical considerations about how the natural and human world is changing. Of course, all of that is worth considering, but there's a lot of artistic, romantic language to wade through, which can be a bit distracting. (I imagine if Jonathan Safran Foer wrote this book it would be 50 pages shorter, but much more depressing and fatalistic in tone. Some would argue that it would be more likely to incite change, as well.)

All in all, I learned a lot about apples, tulips, marijuana and genetically modified potatoes. Part of me wonders why Pollan never considered a sequel to this book, instead taking his investigative journalism in other directions. If he wrote a whole encyclopedia about the history of our food, I'd buy (and read) it. 

Rating: B+

Book 21: "Wheat Belly"

Yeah, that's not a wheat belly!

After reading Novak Djokovic's book, "Serve to Win," I knew I wanted to explore the gluten-free diet further. The Forward in Djokovic's book is written by Dr. William Davis, one of the preeminent experts on the effects of gluten on the human body. His book, "Wheat Belly," was a New York Times bestseller when it came out in 2011, so it seemed like a logical next step for me.

What I learned:

• Wheat belly is visceral fat contained within abdomen and encasing abdominal organs.
• Visceral fat provokes inflammatory phenomena, distorts insulin responses and issues abnormal metabolic symbols to the rest of the body.
• Inflammatory signals and abnormal cytokines (i.e. leptin, resistin and tumor necrosis factor). The more fat present, the greater the quantities of abnormal signals released into the bloodstream. 
• GI is the nutritionists's measure of how much blood sugar levels increase in 90-120 minutes after food is consumed. 
• Whole wheat bread (glycemic index 72) increases blood sugar as much or more than table sugar (GI 59).
• Hypoglycemia--inevitable drop in blood pressure after high insulin levels.
• Test animals fed glyphosphate-tolerant soybeans show alterations in liver, pancreatic, intestinal and testicular tissue compared to animals fed conventional soybeans.
• "Complex" means carbs in wheat are composed of polymers of the simple sugar, glucose, unlike simple carbs such as sucrose, which are one- or two-unit sugar structures. 
• Of the complex carbs in wheat, 75% is the chain of branching glucose units, amylopectin, and 25% is the linear chain of glucose units, amylose. Both are digested by amylase enzyme. Amylopectin is rapidly converted to glucose and absorbed into the bloodstream, amylose is less efficiently digested, moves to colon undigested. 
• Not all amylopectin is the same: A, B, C types. C (legumes) is least digestible, B (bananas, potatoes) resist digestion to some degree, A is most digestible, raises blood sugar the highest. 
• Complex carbs of wheat are no better than simple sucrose.
• Pasta elevates blood sugar for 4-6 hours after consumption.
• The higher the blood glucose after consumption of food, the greater the insulin, the more fat is deposited. The bigger your wheat belly, the poorer your response to insulin, since visceral fat is associated with poor responsiveness to insulin, need more and more insulin, leads to diabetes. Wheat belly inflammation leads to heart disease and cancer. 
• Gluten is degraded to polypeptide "exorphins" that can penetrate the blood-brain barrier. They bind to brain's morphine receptors.
• Digestion > Exorphins > Opiate receptors > Mild euphoria, when receptors blocked, people experience withdrawal.
• Naloxone (immediately reverses effects of heroin or opiates) blocks binding of wheat exorphins to morphine receptors.
• Naltrexone (oral naloxone) blocks mesolimbic reward system, people can no longer feel pleasure from opiates and exorphins.  
• Don't replace amylopectin A with rapidly absorbed carbs of rice starch, cornstarch, potato starch and tapioca starch that also yield insulin and visceral fat deposition. 
• Researchers found that celiac-triggering gluten proteins are expressed at a higher level in modern wheat, while non-celiac triggering proteins are expressed less. 
• Gliadin protein triggers intestinal release of zonulin, which disassembles tight junctions and increases intestinal permeability. Unwanted proteins enter bloodstream, lymphocytes begin inflammatory process against "self" proteins, leading to celiac, thyroid, joint diseases and asthma. 
• "Immune-mediated gluten intolerance" is an umbrella term that includes celiac disease. Can include non-intestinal conditions, such as, dermatitis herpetiformis, liver disease, autoimmune diseases, insulin-dependent diabetes, neurological impairment, nutritional deficiencies. 
• Remove wheat > less blood sugar spikes > no exorphins to drive constant consumption > no glucose-insulin cycles > appetite shrinks > calorie intake reduced > visceral fat disappears > insulin resistance improves > blood sugars fall. Poor glucose metabolism disappear, such as, high blood pressure, inflammatory phenomena, glycation, small LDL particles, triglycerides. 
• Early phase of growing visceral fat and diabetes accompanied by 50% increase in pancreatic beta cells for insulin production. 
• High blood sugar above 100 mg/dl leads to glucotoxicity (damage to pancreatic insulin-producing cells). Beta cells are never replaced once damaged. 
• Lipotoxicity, loss of beta cells due to increased triglycerides and fatty acids. Carb diets increase VLDL particles and triglycerides. 
• Beta cells also killed by inflammatory phenomena, such as oxidative injury, leptin, interleukins, tumor necrosis factor.
• Diabetes starts when less than 50% of beta cells are left. 
• Elimination of carbohydrates not only improves blood sugar control, but can erase the need for insulin and diabetes medications in adult diabetes. 
• If sufficient pancreatic beta cells remain and have not been destroyed by glucotoxicity, lipotoxicity and inflammation, it's possible to be cured of diabetes.
• Normal body pH is 7.4. Metabolism creates acids, driving pH down, body draws from alkaline stores (i.e. bicarbonate in blood and alkaline calcium salts--calcium carbonate and calcium phosphate--in bones), leading to acidosis.
• Acids also come from diet: soda (carbonic acid, phosphoric acid), animal by-products--meat (uric, sulfuric acid) and cheese.
• Alkaline foods are vegetables and fruits, neutralize animal product acids.
• The higher the ratio of protein intake from vegetables to protein intake from animal products, the fewer hip fractures.
• We build bones till 18, then break it down when acidosis occurs. Demineralization results in osteopenia (mild) then osteoporosis (severe) then frailty and fractures. Taking calcium supplements does not reverse bone loss. 
• Bone density declines start at 25 for women and 40 for men, accelerated at 70 onward.
• Wheat is the only plant to generate acidic by-products (sulfuric acid).
• Urinary calcium loss increases by 63% after eating bread.
• Inflammation from wheat belly visceral fat leads to joint inflammation through tumor necrosis factor-alpha, interleukins, leptin is the worst (higher BMI, higher leptin).
• Having belly fat = greater risk of arthritis. 
• Joint cartilage susceptible to glycation, do not recover.
• Advanced Glycation End Products (AGE) cause atherosclerosis, cataracts, dementia. 
• High blood glucose leads glucose to bind to proteins, creating glucose-protein molecule--AGEs, which form chains and accumulate as debris. 
• The higher blood glucose, more AGEs accumulate, faster decaying. 
• AGEs lead to expression of oxidative stress and inflammatory markers. Receptor for AGEs (RAGE) lead to inflammatory cytokines, vascular endothelial growth factor and tumor necrosis factor, leading to heart disease, cancer, diabetes and more. 
• Fructose increases AGE formation several hundred times more than glucose.
• Foods highest in AGEs: animal products that have been heated to high temperatures, cooked longer.
• Hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) is an index for glycation. When HbA1c is glycated it is irreparable. Measuring percentage glycated shows how high blood sugar has been in the past 60-90 days. The higher HbA1c, faster you're aging. 
• Small low-density lipoproteins (LDL) cause heart disease (heart attacks, angioplasty, stents, bypass, etc. atherosclerotic coronary disease). 
• Small LDL are 8x more susceptible to endogenous glycation. Small LDL formed when plentiful carbs in diet, also increase blood glucose that glycates small LDL. 
• Very low-density lipoproteins (VLDL) are parents of small LDL, released by liver. Anything that increases liver production of VLDL or increase triglyceride content of VLDL leads to increased small LDL. 
• Carbs have few triglycerides but stimulate insulin, which triggers fatty acid synthesis in the liver, leading to increased triglycerides in the blood. 
• Visceral fat is a repository, triglycerides go in and out of fat cells, liver exposed to higher levels of triglycerides, further drives VLDL production. 
• Destructive immune response in celiac disease can be directed at the brain. 
• Antigliadin antibodies from gluten bind to Purkinje cells found only in cerebellum, do not regenerate. Leads to loss of balance and coordination and other symptoms of cerebellar ataxia. Can lead to gluten encephalopathy. 
• Peripheral neuropathy: wheat-triggered immune reaction in nerves of legs, pelvis, other organs, caused by diabetes. 
• Nerve damage > reduced sensation, diminished control over blood pressure and heart rate, sluggish emptying of stomach.
• Japanese-Okinawans, longest lived on earth, only consumed diet of diverse vegetables, sweet potato, soy, pork and fish > no acne. 
• Insulin > release of insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-I) > stimulates tissue growth in hair follicles and dermis, sebum > pimples.
• Other skin problems: rashes, alopecia. 

Foods to eliminate, besides wheat: 

• Cornstarch and cornmeal
• Snack foods
• Desserts
• Rice
• Potatoes
• Legumes
• Gluten-free foods
• Fruit juices, soft drinks
• Dried fruit
• Other grains

Foods to eat:

• Vegetables
• Some fruit--8-10 blueberries, 2 strawberries, wedges of apple/orange (avoid banana, mango, pineapple, papaya)
• Raw nuts--as much as you want; filling, fiber, monounsaturated oils, protein; reduce blood pressure, reduce LDL cholesterol. 
• Oils, generously--extra-virgin olive oil, coconut oil, avocado oil, cocoa butter; avoid polyunsaturated oils like sunflower, safflower, corn and vegetable.
• Meat and eggs--grass-fed (omega-3 fatty acids, less hormones/antibiotics), no frying.
• Dairy products--cheese, unlimited; limited others, unprocessed.
• Soy--fermented (tofu, tempeh, miso, natto) that have less lectins/phytates 
• Others: olives, avocados, pickled vegetables, raw seeds.
• Flaxseed--made of protein, fiber and oils, free of carbs
• Limit carbs to 50-100 grams per day.

Some perspectives on agriculture:

• "Agriculture yielded surpluses and allowed division of labor, it also entailed working harder and longer hours...narrowed crops that could be cultivated ..introduced new diseases."
• "We have unwittingly struck a Faustian bargain with nature, trading abundance for health."

Wheat can be found in:

• Beverages: ales, beers, lagers, blood Mary mixes, flavored coffee/tea, herbal tea, malt liquor, vodka distilled from wheat (Absolut, Grey Goose, Stolichnaya), wine coolers, whiskey. 
• Cereal
• Cheese: blue, cottage, gorgonzola, roquefort.
• Coloring/fillers/texturizers/thickeners: artificial coloring/flavors, caramel coloring/flavoring, dextrimaltose, emulsifiers, maltodextrin, modified food starch, stabilizers, textured vegetable protein.
• Energy, protein and meal replacement bars: Clif, Gatorade, GNC, Kashi, Power, Slim-Fast.
• Meats: breaded, canned, deli meats, hot dogs, imitation bacon/crabmeat, hamburger, sausage, turkey (self-basting).
• Sauces, salad dressings, condiments: gravies, ketchup, malt syrup/vinegar, marinade, miso, mustards, salad dressings, soy sauce, teriyaki sauce.
• Seasonings: curry powder, seasoning mixes, taco seasoning.
• Snacks and desserts
• Soups: Bisques, broths/bouillon, canned soups, soup mixes, soup stocks and bases.
• Soy and vegetarian products: veggie burgers (Boca, Garden, Morningstar Farms), vegetarian chicken strips, vegetarian chili/hot dogs/sausages/scallops/steak. 
• Sweeteners: barley malt/extract, dextrin/maltodextrin, malt/malt syrup/malt flavoring.

I'll spare you (or the future me) a look at my belly, but I'm pretty sure it qualifies as a wheat belly. I've been having the hardest time getting rid of, what I thought was, subcutaneous fat. I dedicated myself to working out regularly at the start of the new year, but despite a fairly consistent effort and multiple cycles of changing workouts and diet plans, I've haven't really slimmed down. It's especially frustrating to see friends' "before and after" pictures on Instagram, and realizing that I haven't had the same dramatic transformation to the body of my dreams. What I like about the Wheat Belly diet is that a lot of it is based on common sense, which is a build up of what I already know. Putting all the pieces together and realizing that, to a certain extent, I fit the ideal clientele for this diet, was a relief. Since the book is based on hard science, I'm more apt to think it'll work. At this point, I can't say for sure if the Wheat Belly diet will work for me, but I plan on taking it slow, cutting out wheat products (and definitely sugar drinks, i.e. sweetened coffee or tea) from my diet. If I see a change, I'll try to cut down on the rest of my "indulgences," like rice. 

Even if the Wheat Belly diet doesn't work for me, the book is an engaging read that builds up from beginning to end. Like any diet/lifestyle book, it felt a little exaggerated at times, almost as though Dr. Davis wanted to instill fear and panic in the audience in an attempt to sway them towards adopting his plan. The reasoning behind his statements are based on scientific studies and real-life experience. I'm not capable of accurately judging his determinations, but I think it goes without saying that it's up to the reader to decide whether or not the prescriptions are suitable for their life. I'm certainly at a point where I'm open to trying a new approach, so the book felt beneficial and substantive at the end. (Note to vegetarians: the Wheat Belly diet will be extremely limiting, and I think more challenging to adhere to). 

As a bonus, the author included a sample meal plan and recipes for dishes a Wheat Belly participant can partake in. 

Rating: A-

Book 20: "Serve to Win"

Tennis pro turned author, Novak Djokovic, doesn't eat wheat and claims to love his severely restricted diet. 

I know it's been a really long time since I last posted :( Between my trip to NYC and LA and the start of my new job, I haven't had much time to read. Somehow, I managed to finish two books in the last week and a half, so that's nice. 

The first book I read since the trip, "Serve to Win," by Novak Djokovic was a really easy read. I finished it on the plane ride from LAX to HNL, even with a nap, lunch break and "Star Trek: Into Darkness." I bought the book because I thought it was going to be partly autobiographical, maybe a look into his life up to this point. Unfortunately, the book was light on personal epithets, and readers even vaguely familiar with his life's story will not have any revelations about who Djokovic truly is. All threads of personal information serve to support his triumphs as a gluten-free athlete and number-one tennis player in the world. I give him a few concessions: 1) He's still a current player, so revealing too much could be potentially disruptive for his career (on- and off-court); 2) His story is still "unwritten" in that, who he ends up being and what legacy he leaves in tennis has yet to be determined; 3) The (hidden) point of "writing" the book is to testify for the gluten free lifestyle, not to shock and awe; and 4) English is not Djokovic's first language, so everything is a bit basic. 

The true issue I had with the book is that there's so much self-promotion, so much repetitive muck to wade through, in order to get to the good stuff. Yes, Djokovic had a very good 2011 season, and yeah he's the current world number 1 (as of 09/23/2013--a dethroning is almost guaranteed when Rafael Nadal surpasses his points total by years-end) and will most definitely go down in history books as one of the best tennis players of all time, but I like my heroes humble, not obnoxiously self-elevating (how many times can someone repeat that they are a "tennis great" before people throw up?). (Nadal, by contrast, is always humble and concedes to reality.) There are a few unbelievable, "wow," moments in the book, such as when he recounts the daily air raids in Belgrade, but far too little of it to count this as a truly great autobiography. Perhaps years after he retires, he'll come out with a "tell-all," but I sincerely hope he doesn't try to write gluten-free books after this. 

What I liked about the book was that it contains plenty of gluten-free recipes, many of which I intend to try. I could also vaguely relate to Djokovic's desperation in finding the perfect combination of physical, mental and nutritional inputs that would allow him to perform at his peak. Although most people will never have to put out at his level, everyone can relate to his dietary struggles and exhaustive effort to maximize his potential as a human being. 

In the end, though, there aren't enough recipes or hard science about gluten-free diets, nor are we given enough to digest about the author himself to justify giving "Serve to Win" a prominent place on my bookshelf of fame. 

Rating: B-

Congrats to Djokovic, who is now engaged to Jelena Ristic, his long-time girlfriend.

Book 19: "A Thousand Splendid Suns"

"Miriam" from A Thousand Splendid Suns. I doubt she wore mascara, though...

Welcome back, Reid! After a 6 week hiatus (thank you, summer school), I've picked up where I left off with Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns. I guess I'm kind of going backwards in his anthology, first And the Mountains Echoed and now this. Will I read The Kite Runner next? Hmm maybe. 

Knowing nothing about the premise/plot of A Thousand Splendid Suns, it was interesting that I noticed a major clue: the author's dedication to "the women of Afghanistan." Hosseini's books are always derivative of history, the reader is guaranteed to know about history and life in the Middle East through contextual details, time jumps and through the eyes of many characters. Whereas And the Mountains Echoed was written in the vein of Babel or Crash, with interwoven stories and the conclusion that "everyone is connected," to me, A Thousand Splendid Suns seemed to be a socio-political statement, a spotlight or maybe even a defense of the "untold stories" of the real casualties of the recent conflicts in the Middle East: women and a stable society. 

Without going into too many details about the plot, I really liked a quote in Part 4 of the book: "A woman who will be like a rock in a riverbed, enduring without complaint, her grace not sullied but shaped by the turbulence that washes over her." And turbulence was in no short supply. At one point, I felt like I was back watching Precious (the movie) with disaster after disaster piled on the characters. Just when you think it can't get worse, it does, and just when you think something good will finally happen, the women are faced with new lows. The thing is, it didn't feel like a season of Grey's Anatomy (or any ABC drama) where the orchestrator of the plot is forced to rely on progressively more extreme, contrived calamities to drive the story and heighten viewers' fear for the characters' lives. The devastatingly tragic lives of Miriam and Laila are probably more or less average representations of the women of Afghanistan. Voting and suffrage are nothing compared to rape, beatings, public humiliation, absolute subservience, burqas, mutilation, illegitimate children, being left in a ditch, getting blown up or being executed by firing squad. In it's darkest moments, I felt like I was on the verge of tears. I could feel the brass knuckles, the impact of the belt, the dehydration and desperation. In regards to the portrayal of womens' suffering in Afghanistan, the story hit me square in the stomach. I almost felt compelled to donate to the author's refugee charity. 

The other way in which A Thousand Splendid Suns impacted me was in providing perspective into the situation in the Middle East. Ever since September 11th, we've been inundated daily with news from that region of the world. Whether it be Afghanistan, Iraq or Pakistan, or more recently, Egypt, it's probably difficult to keep up if you aren't aware of the historical circumstances and relevant basic information (Who is on who's side? How do you pronounce their names? Who are the good guys?). I'm willing to bet that the majority of Americans wouldn't be able to tell you what is happening halfway around the world, much less within the U.S. After reading the book, I have a general idea of how Afghanistan and the U.S. came to a head on September 11th, 2001. I also have vivid visuals about the landscape before and after the takeover by the Taliban. it's hard for younger people (myself included) to even remember a time before we had legions of troops in the Middle East, before 9/11, but for "older" people, they might remember when there was peace and stability. The Middle East is the Soviet Union of our parents' generation, and the Germany of the generation before. We'll continue to see villains and movie plots originating in the ME, and maybe we'll be content to rely on stereotypes of bearded men in turbans and cloaks to symbolize the "bad guy." It's hopeful to get a glimpse of what the ME was like before the wars, devastation and suicide bombers. There was relative prosperity, rules for women in cities were progressive and it seemed as though they might industrialize and progress economically. Unfortunately, the breakdown of leadership and the ensuing coups destabilized the region. The rest of the world didn't help, or didn't know how to help effectively, and in some instances, problems were exacerbated. What happened in the ME is tragic, and seeking peace might be the global issue of my generation. 

Overall, A Thousand Splendid Suns gets an A-. The ending was just too weak to bring me to my knees and convince me that it will change my life. Part 4 was basically the author's wrap up of loose ends. Laila visiting Miriam's old kolba was a cinematic ending, written for the full effect of bringing the reader false satisfaction. It was impossible for me, having read 390 pages of horror, to let the plot touch down safely. I feel like there was a way to end the book without overdoing the sappiness and putting out the drama. 

Rating: A-

Social Media Obsessed

I've been away from this blog for quite some time now. I got stalled in the middle of reading George Orwell's 1984 when summer school started, so I've kind of put the Summer of Reid book portion aside for the time being. That doesn't mean I've stopped reading, however! My nose is just deep in a couple of text books on economics. I'm still developing, but not literature-ly. 

For fun, I've become a social media fiend. Whereas prior to summer school I was only on Instagram (reidlerster) and Facebook, I've created/worked on profiles on LinkedIn, Yelp, Foursquare, Pinterest, Twitter (reidlerstache) and Path. Phew I've been busy putting myself out there. Check them out, if you wish. 

Yelp

Instagram

Twitter

Pinterest

Book 8: "Crazy Rich Asians"

I usually don't read books like "Crazy Rich Asians." If this book had come out before or after this summer, I probably would never have heard of it until it inevitably found a second life as a movie or TV series (if not in America then possibly Asia). There are several reasons for this reasoning: 1) The cover is gaudy gold and hot pink. It reminds me of a mylar balloon gone Nicki Minaj; 2) The story is about, duh, foreign Asians, whom I typically loath reading about and; 3) Fiction is hit or miss so I tend to stay far away from books not already established as classics.

In some ways, I was wrong about Kevin Kwan's first book. The first few pages in, Kwan diagrammed the Young-T'sien-Shang family tree, and I found myself going back to it throughout the book, as characters are rapidly introduced, and chapters are named for where the scene takes place or from whose perspective events are being told. The frenetic Prologue drew me in so effectively that I did not need to read more before buying the $26 hardcover from Barnes & Noble. Kwan's characters are so vibrant and their excesses so extravagant that I felt suspended between embracing the fantasy and doubting that such attitudes and careless spending can possibly exist at a time when the entire world has been made self-aware of the dangers of indulgences. 

The title of the book refers to Asians who are either crazily rich or rich and crazy. Part of the attraction to a book like this is the hope that the author will somehow pull back a curtain on a class of people whom most of us will never join in our lifetimes. We are attracted to celebrities and the mega wealthy and we put them on pedestals in idolotry, but there's always a veil between us and them. Are they reallly how they are portrayed in the tabloids? Can we really know them through E! Channel biographies and can we really be sure or are we all being played by publicists? The recent HBO production, Beyonce: Life is But a Dream, was hyped as the long-awaited unveiling of the singer's most personal moments, but fans were disappointed to find that most of the material was recycled, and the interviews staged. (To make matters worse, we were remidned of the distance between her and the us when she banned all tour photographers). I think we feel entitled to be best friends with our favorite celebrities, so when they abruptly shut us out, we think less of them. Of course the characters in Crazy Rich Asians are not specifically about any true-life individuals, but you know in the back of your mind that it is based on the idea of Asians who are rich and crazy and crazily rich. 

The allure of Crazy Rich Asians has two specific things working for it before anyone opens to the book to read it. The first is that we are living through a global power shift from the West to the East. There is no need to go into specifics because we've all heard about double digit economic growth in Asia as the West flounders in bankrupcy and rising national debt. Even if you aren't specifically interested in Asia, we're all aware that it's there, poised to strike. And we've all heard about how insanely rich the Chinese (in particular) have become. Most of us probably haven't been to China, but we all saw the Beinjing Olympics, and have heard about their expanding metropolitan areas. Capitalism has fixed it's gaze on China and, as we learn more about their prosperity, it is inevitable that we're going to want to hear about what it's like to go through such rapid change. So, that's one reason anyone might want to read this book, Secondly, I think we're bored with hearing about the mega wealthy in America. Bill Gates, the Walton family and Warren Buffett have been billionaires for an era, but at this point, they're old money compared to the rise of the millionaires and billionaires in Asia. Singapore, where the book takes place, has the world's largest concentration of millionaires and billionaires, most of whom have acquired that wealth almost overnight. We wonder how they act with the sudden influx of cash, how they deal with newfound attention and what implications it has for the rest of the society they live in. Asia has been notorioulsy private and closed off, but it has become increasinly impossible and futile to avoid scrutiny. This book is our inside look, and even if it isn't based on anyone specifically, we all know that it's based on a real class of people. 

Overall, the plot was predictable. There are no cliffhangers or surprisng moments that become indelible in the mind of a reader, nor are there particularly memorable quotes. The book is an easy read--I cranked it out in less than two days, although there was definitely more momentum in the beginning than in the end. The synopsis of the book is somewhat deceiving because you're led to think that it's the story of an ABC (American Born Chinese) who suffers from culture shock when she accompanies her boyfriend to meet his super rich family in SIngapore. In actuality, Rachel and NIck are only the facilitators of the plot--she is the antagonist to his family and he brings a sense of redemption in the picture-perfect ending--but there are so many more elements I felt that stood out more. For example, I felt that the undercurrent of "old money versus new money" was much more significant among character relationships, yet the author spent most of the time exploring differences on a gradient of wealthy, really wealthy and super-duper wealthy. After awhile those comparisons become tedious and it made the plot feel empty and superficial. Maybe I was hoping for a revelation, but I was disappointed that there wasn't more substance to the plot. Even when Kwan had the opportunity to create meaningul moments, he skimmed over them in the way Disney Channel tv shows gloss over family tension. (I can no longer stomach Disney movies/TV shows because they never portray family life accurately). I walked away learning very little about those crazy rich Asians other than the fact that they look down on Chanel and drool over next season's couture. 

Tonally, the characters sounded a lot like American valleygirls and prep school boys. It's hard for me to believe that a culture so steeped in tradition and codes of conduct thousands of years old would  casually discard their consciousness and identiy in the presence of wealth. The young people run around rampantly flaunting their cash without any sign of self-deprecation? Does having money mean you have to become a character from Clueless? Does not having money mean you're always the voice of reason and that the rich must adopt a sense of groundedness in your presence? Do all young Asians clash with their old fashioned parents? Character-wise, litle went into creating unique personalities: there's the overbearing mother; the silent but powerful grandmother matriarch; the jealous, ugly female rival; the beauty with a failing marriage; yuppy mainland Chinese with horrific English accents; the handsome, fit playboys; the educated feminist who can't possibly simultaneously know a lick about fashion; and the rebellious son who shuns his family's wealth but lives out his individualism in, of all places, New York City. It is too easy to create fictional characters by borrowing from classic, culture-defining movies like The Great Gatsby, Mean Girls, Mulan and the aforementioned movie starring Alicia Silverstone but it takes way more talent and (for lack of a better word) balls to create characters from scratch. Of course, not knowing but knowing the characters helps to move the story along, and it did just that for me. I ended up being able to categorize each character and focus on the action rather than their internal hopes, dreams and conflicts, There are no subsurface meanings or messages in this book. Just as the cover art indicates, the spectacle is paper-thin and one-dimension, it's a saccharine-sweet candyshop of visuals that has one flavor through and through. In that way, maybe Kwan is poised to become the author of the summer not for the substance of his work but the escapism it provides. 

Rating: B+