Review Me Twice - A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar

We always like to be brutally honest with our reviews here on Review Me Twice so here it is: I didn't finish the book.  Which is really telling unto itself because I think this is now a grand total of two books that I haven't finished in time on this blog, and the first one I had already read, I was just rereading to refresh me memory.

It's not that this book was bad or wasn't informative or even interesting.  It's just that it's not interesting enough to keep me interested.  It seemed like everything else was more interesting: My FFX game, my TV show, other books.  Things that don't usually distract me were constantly distracting me.  I just couldn't seem to buckle down and finish this one on time.

So it's definitely not one to read in a pinch.  A very meandering read, meant to be put down and picked back up and inturrupted, but definitely finished.  Just at its own pace.

John Forbes Nash Jr.

Our book this week is a biography about John Forbes Nash Jr.  I don't want to get into it too much, because, well, the idea is that you'll go read the biography and learn more about him.

However, whenever I read a biography, I personally at least like to have a little information about the person that I'm about to read about.  Kind of like a preview, or a warning.  It's like knowing what I'm going to be getting myself into.

Nash was a brilliant mathematician, and he showed his intelligence at a
young age.  He was only 22 when he got his PhD at Princeton, a dissertation on Game Theory that, eventually, won him a Nobel prize.  He did revolutionary work on manifold also, along with Game theory.

Eventually, Nash fell descended into extreme schizophrenia.  For years he succumbed to the mental illness, wandering the halls of Princeton Mathematics department.  It wasn't until the early 90s that he began to recover from his delusions, he says because of the environment that he was in as opposed to a regiment of drugs (which he had stopped taking).

It was in 1994 that he received the Nobel prize for his work on Game Theory.  It was a big deal not just because he was being recognized for his work, but because he had made such an amazing recovery out of the depths of fully onset schizophrenia.

Interviews with Malala Yousafzai

Don't get too excited... we didn't get to interview Malala Yousafzai. Can you even imagine? We wish. No, this is a collection of videos of interviews with her, because I think she's not only an incredible writer but also an incredible speaker, particularly in interviews. If you have problems with public speaking, take note: Malala interviews well in English (her third language), after being shot in the head (by a group that still wants to assassinate her and her father), about topics that are controversial in her home country, in front of the world with some of the best interviewers on television. Oh yeah... and she's only sixteen.

This is an interview with Malala from 2009, when she was 11 years old (and had not yet been shot).

This is one from The Guardian, the first interview after she was shot.

Here is my personal favorite: the interview with Jon Stewart on "The Daily Show" (the extended version).

And here's one from the BBC.

And here's Diane Sawyer's interview with Malala.

Of course there's overlap in the content, so it might not be necessary to watch them all, but at least watch a couple. She's a bright, brave girl with a lot of important things to say who can say them very well. Her aspirations at the time of writing her book were to be a journalist or a politician, and I think she would be incredible at both.

Favorite Biography

Since we're talking about I Am Malala this week, and her autobiography, we decided to talk about our favorite biographies.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a book we've read on this blog.  While technically it IS a biography, it's really seems like so much more than that.  You learn about her life, her death, her family and all the benefits and troubles that having the most famous cells in the world brought.

It was also interesting because it poses such a moral dilemma. Yes, it's wrong to take someone else's cells without their permission.  At the same time, if Henrietta's doctors hadn't done it, there would be so much today that we don't have that are due to her cells.  It's a touching book and heartfelt and is a good balance between the science and the story.

Well, we're starting the year on an easy note, because my favorite biography is also The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks!

There is so much in this book. Do you like science? History? Biography? Ethics? This book has it all.

If you want to hear more about what we think of it, we reviewed it in October of 2012.

By Its Cover: Super Boys

You can't see it very well in the image, but the cover has that dotted fill you get in old comic books before they changed the printing method (yes, you still get it sometimes depending on who's printing your comics). Obviously, the cover (the framing, the sketchy - not "creepy" sketchy, but literally "looks like it was sketched" - Superman at the top, the dotted fill, the predecessor-to-Comic-Sans font on the subtitle) is meant to look like an old comic book.

The only thing I would change if I were any part of designing this cover is that I would give "Super Boys" a starburst like it's an onomatopoeia (you know, like "BLAST!" or "BANG!" or "ZOOM!") Though, come to think of it, that might be a little more Silver or Bronze Age than Golden.

I think the cover was well done.  I like the comic book feel that it had, that it was Superman without being all about Superman.  I think it's a fun, and bright, cover.  The cover is what originally led me to decide read it.

I think the thing I like most, however, is the city.  It could be Cleveland.  It could be Metropolis.  It manages to be every city, and no city, that is important in Siegel & Shuster's lives.

Review Me Twice: Super Boys by Brad Ricca

It's not that this wasn't an interesting book.  It was, I think, just too close to home for Ricca.  He basically spent ten years researching this book about the men who CREATED Superman.  I mean, that must be an interesting story, right?

But I was three fourths of the way through and only then getting to the things that really made the book interesting.  Things like, the battle for the rights to Superman or what actually happened to Jerry's father.  These are the things that you really wanted to know.  And while, yes, the book is going to be about Superman to a certain extent, it should have been MORE about Jerry & Joe.  Specifically Joe because I felt like I learned next to nothing about him.  It was very much the Jerry Show.

There were some interesting things in the book.  You got to see where characters like Lois Lane came from, the similarities between Clark Kent and Jerry (and Joe, to some extent.)  You see all the influences they had during the creation of Superman.  There are strong men, and athletes and all sorts of other things inspiring them.

While an informative book, it was kind of a disappointing one.

My Bottom Line 2 out of 5.

As I feel is demonstrated in the author photo we used on Monday, Brad Ricca is so dramatic. I understand that he is really into this story. He spent a decade researching it; he better be into it. And after a while, either the dramatic flair died down a little, or I got used to it.

The tone aside, I liked the story. But I disagree with Cassy on which part was interesting. I preferred the first part, about the young boys meeting each other and testing their abilities with their amateur projects in high school. Some of the later stuff caught my interest too, but the first hundred pages or so were my favorite.

I've never liked Superman ("classic superhero" is definitely not my genre) but knowing more about where he came from makes him a little more interesting.