Little Princes

Full disclosure:  I haven’t read Three Cups of Tea and I’m not a fan of Eat, Pray, Love.  That being said, I know how outrageously popular they are and how many people have been moved by Mortenson and Gilbert’s journeys, especially the spiritual aspects.  Conor Grennan’s Little Princes certainly fills this niche for the 2011 publishing calendar.

Grennan recounts the story of what begins as a self-indulgent trip around the world after working and saving for a few years.  He decides to justify the frivolity of the trip by planning to volunteer at an orphanage in Nepal for three months before jetting off to Thailand to travel and party with friends.  But the children of the Little Princes orphanages and their stories get under his skin and open his eyes.  Grennan learns that the children were taken from their homes after promises were made to their parents offering education and safety from the civil war raging around them.  In reality, the children were taken to Kathmandu and either used to beg for money, which they then turned over to their captors or abandoned all together.  Families left behind believed their children were dead after years of silence.  Many of the children believed they would never see their families again.  

Grennan himself helps rescue seven orphans only to find out the child trafficker who brought them to Kathmandu originally got wind of his plan and took them from their safe house.  Their loss haunts him and brings him back to Nepal and Little Princes after his world travels.  Grennan’s life is forever changed and he commits to not only living in Nepal, but to finding the seven lost orphans and creating a truly safe place for them and others like them and, ultimately, reuniting them with their families.  

I was inspired by Grennan’s clear-eyed recounting of his transformation from a guy with some money in the bank who wanted to experience adventures around the world into a man committed to helping the children of Nepal while recognizing the intricacies and limitations of the country’s culture, traditions, and abject poverty.  His personal journey is compelling and his physical journey through far-flung Nepalese villages to find the families of many of “his” orphans was a tense, but inspiring read.  Little Princes is a satisfying and (here's that word again!) inspiring book that will make you want to get out your wallet and make a donation to New Generation Nepal, Grennan's organization.

Holiday Gift Guide: Food and Drink

For the Foodie

Encyclopedia of Pasta by Oretta Zanini De Vita
From the rich red cover to the amazing recipes and culinary insights inside, this book is something a true foodie will want to hand down to future generations.

The Flavor Bible: The Essential Guide to Culinary Creativity, Based on the Wisdom of America's Most Imaginative Chefs by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenberg
The ultimate book for the foodie nerd in your life.  This isn’t about cooking; it’s about tasting and experimenting.

Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies by Alice Medrich
All other cookie books will seem superfluous after using this one.  The recipes are sophisticated without being needlessly complex.  Medrich also provides useful guidance when it comes to ingredients, measurements, tools, and recipe modifications.

For the Booze Hound

How to Booze: Exquisite Cocktails and Unsound Advice by Jordan Kaye and Marshall Altier
As the appreciation for a good bartender and a great cocktail grows, How to Booze is the perfect companion.  This one is full of both cocktail recipes and sage, irreverent advice from a couple of bartenders who have seen it all.

Boozehound: On the Trail of the Rare, the Obscure, and the Overrated in Spirits by Jason Wilson
From Wilson’s Boozhound column comes a book packed with stories of travel and tippling.  His passion for booze can be seen in the distances he travels in order to learn and taste, as well as the collection of recipes he includes.

Speakeasy: The Employees Only Guide to Classic Cocktails Reimagined by Jason Kosmas and Dushan Zaric
This is the book for the amateur home mixologist who wants to take it to the next level.  Advice and recipes come from New York City bartending royalty – the owners of Employees Only, who helped start the mixology craze.

Stuff

Stuff by Randy O. Frost and Gail Steketee had me on the verge of a panic attack for 290 pages.  Their examination of hoarding as a growing psychiatric disorder in the United States was a balance of legitimate scholarly study and fascinating anecdotal evidence of what may cause hoarding - PTSD; OCD; a cold, withholding parent; perfectionism; genetic predisposition; or physiological damage to the brain.  There is no clear answer, but the study alone brings hope to those who hoard and the people affected by their hoarding.

Irene, one of the first participants in their study was especially fascinating.  The authors sift through her life the was she herself tries to sift through the piles of papers, mail, newspapers, and other detritus entombing her in her own home.  Her childhood is examined, especially her relationship with her withholding father.  Additional clues to her hoarding lie in how she coped with a childhood move that left her lonely and unmoored.  Another layer is revealed when examining her college years and her inability to finish her senior thesis because the information and possibilities of her research completely overwhelmed her natural perfectionism.  Her skill and pleasure in finding and organizing information took an ominous turn during her career as a librarian.  Irene could organize and weed library materials, but nothing was ever thrown away.  Instead, she brought everything home with her, excited by the sheer possibilities of each scrap of paper.  Even divorce and the possibility of her children being taken away did not stop her hoarding.  The authors describe Irene the person and provide fascinating insight into the creation and everyday existence of Irene the hoarder.  Reading about her attempt to come to grips with her hoarding provides an understanding of both Irene and the disorder.

The authors are able to bring this same insight into each case they highlight in Stuff.  The people on the other side of the “goat trails”, paths of papers and trash created in order to move around their homes, are more than hoarders, more than their “stuff”.  Frost and Steketee do an excellent job helping readers understand what “stuff” represents for hoarders, but also for society.  Their writing style is accessible and the narrative arc created in the book ensures an interest in both the idea of hoarding and the people studied from beginning to end.

We are inundated with messages of consumption everyday and I think readers will find the individual stories compelling and horrifying. It offers a chance to think about “stuff” in a new way.  Hoarding is not about materialism; it’s about how people connect to inanimate objects and the degrees of these connections.  As an extension of that idea, Stuff will challenge readers to think about mental illness, exploring how someone can use inanimate objects as a way to cope, with larger mental health issues.

Supplementary information:

Hoarding: When Too Much "Stuff" Causes Grief on NPR'S Fresh Air

The Joy and Pain of Things by Randy O. Frost on the Huffington Post

Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead

Frank Meeink and Jody M. Roy tell of Meeink’s story childhood spent raised by alcoholics and drug addicts on the low-end of the working class spectrum in Philadelphia. Despite a loving extended family, no one protects Meeink from savage beatings from his stepfather, the emotional abuse and indifference from both his mother and father, and the constant fear he lives in as he bounces around low-performing, dangerous elementary and middle schools. An all too brief childhood filled with severe violence and neglect makes him an easy target for recruitment when he visits his cousin in rural Pennsylvania. Older neo-Nazi teens are interested in his development and protection, something he hasn’t regularly experienced in his life. They act as mentors, friends, and a de facto family as they indoctrinate him into the movement.

Upon his return to Philadelphia at 14, Frank becomes, for the first time in his life, a leader, a strategist, an entrepreneur, and an absolutely feared person as the head of the local neo-Nazi movement. Meeink takes the reader on a horrifying journey of rage and hate, allowing a look behind the curtain into how a virtually homeless teen boy finds a sense of family in a group created around a twisted ideology of white identify. The book provides fascinating details about The Movement – everything from fashion to regional differences in organizing. Meeink does not censor the rage and alcohol-fueled actions he committed for years as the leader of Strike Force, a gang of neo-Nazi teams he created and led. In fact, he recounts the pride he felt when a neo-Nazi leader, freshly released from prison, joins Meeink and his friends in savagely beating homosexuals outside of a bar. “Shoulder to should with my comrades, back up against the wall, awaiting my first trip to juvie in the glow of Scott Windham’s approving smile, I felt proud, truly proud, for the first time.”

Eventually, Meeink’s actions in Philadelphia finally force him to flee (with the help of a neo-Nazi mentor) to the Midwest, where he descends further into violence and madness. After brutally kidnapping and torturing a member of his new group of recruits, or freshcuts, Meeink lands in prison. As he headed to prison, Meeink was a leader in the young neo-Nazi movement, an alcoholic, and soon-to-be father. He was 17.

His innate street smarts and his role as a neo-Nazi leader outside prison walls ensured he survived and, in many ways, flourished during his time in prison. But the neo-Nazis who protected him inside and revered him outside couldn’t foresee the epiphany he would have behind bars that would ultimately lead to his redemption. During his time in prison Meeink ends up playing football with Vice Lords and becoming close friends with two African American teen prisoners. They commiserate, like teens everywhere, about what their girlfriends are doing when they aren’t around, and helping each other decode secret messages of infidelity in letters and phone calls home. For the first time ever, Meeink lives with the “mud” he had been indoctrinated to hate and the holes in the neo-Nazi ideology he had held so dear become quickly apparent to the middle school dropout.

Of course, it’s not that easy to walk away from the only life Meeink has known. Upon his return to Philly, Meeink reunites with the Strike Force, but he’s not the only one who has changed. Friends and family have died, become strung out on drugs, or left the Movement. Meeink quickly turns to drugs and returns to drinking to numb his confusion and rage. He can’t live as a leader in a movement he doesn’t believe in anymore and his day of reckoning is violent and appalling, giving him another excuse to lose himself in drugs and alcohol.

Meeink’s ideological redemption ran parallel to his descent into drug addiction and alcoholism. As he found meaning in his work with the Anti-Defamation League, telling the truth about his actions as a neo-Nazi, he becomes an even bigger liar as he spends days shooting up and stealing Oxycontin from his mother. Just as it did with the neo-Nazis, Meeink faces a day of reckoning with his drug and alcohol use that is violent and heartbreaking.

Fans of Edward Norton's American History X will find this book even more compelling than that movie. 

Listen to Frank Meeink on NPR and read an excerpt.

Shit My Dad Says

Shit My Dad Says is, hopefully, a hint of things to come – an excellently conceived, written, and edited memoir based on a Twitter feed. All that being said, it is one of the most soul stirring, balls-out funny books I’ve ever read. I laughed. I laughed so hard I cried. I cried on the subway from laughing. I laughed and cried during rush hour in New York City and I wanted very badly to read the book aloud to my neighbors on the crowded train. Luckily, everyone was giving me a very wide berth.

Justin Halpern skillfully takes the hilarious, often lewd sentiments that come out of his Dad’s mouth and uses them as a funny foundation on which he recalls pivotal moments in his childhood, teen years, and young adulthood. It’s clear that Halpern himself finds his Dad hilarious, but he takes his amusement and crafts a truly poignant read. He manages to relate a fully fleshed out Sam Halpern – a kid who grew up poor, a Vietnam veteran, a scientist and doctor, and a passionately loving husband and father. In addition, Halpern is fully willing to relate stories of his own follies and stupidity, showing over and over how his Dad set him straight or saved him in his own, unique fashion.

Shit My Dad Says is Halpern’s story of growing up, but it’s also the story of his growing love and appreciation for his father. He manages to make his profanity-laced twitter feed and the obvious admiration has for the father that originates those hilarious bon mots into a book full of love, laughs, and (dare I say it?) life lessons.