Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us by Michael Moss

Reading Salt, Sugar, Fat is like devouring a murder mystery – only you’re the intended victim.  Yes, a book packed with chemistry and research can be a page-turner.  This book is as addictive as the foods it studies so the paradox is that readers are essentially learning about their own demise.  That may not make it seem an appetizing read but the book is also similar to the “Choose Your Own Adventure” series you or your children may have read.  Based on the information the book provides, you can choose which path to follow – that of allowing the food giants to hook you or of knowing their tricks and how to avoid them thus choosing a healthier life.   This is not a diet book, a fad of the month self-help tome, nor is it an easy fix.  It is instead the careful reporting of what’s inside the foods we eat.

Some facts presented in the book will probably surprise you:

“On average, we consume 71 pounds of caloric sweeteners each year. That’s 22 teaspoons of sugar, per person, per day.”   Not me, I said to my sanctimonious self.  I rarely eat cookies, cake, pie or dessert.  Ha, little did I know of the places that the big food conglomerates hide sugar.  Campbell’s Prego spaghetti sauce is probably found on the shelves of many American homes. “The Prego sauces – whether cheesy, chunky, or light – have one feature in common: The largest ingredient, after tomatoes, is sugar. A mere half cup of Prego Traditional, for instance, has more than two teaspoons of sugar, as much as three Oreo cookies, a tube of Go-Gurt, or some of the Pepperidge Farm Apple Turnovers that Campbell also makes.  It also delivers one-third of the salt recommended for a majority of American adults for an entire day. Some of the meat versions of Prego have even higher amounts of sugar and salt, along with nearly half a day’s recommended limit for saturated fat.”

I also learned that I can’t rest after ascertaining that a product is low in fat or salt or whichever of the big three I’m avoiding at the time.  When the public starts clamoring for less fat, the food giants lower it but to keep us buying, they up the salt and/or sugar so the product will still taste good. Those labels on our favorites can change without us ever suspecting because the products taste the same.  The food giants use terms that sound good to make us buy.  The “2 percent” labeling (in milk) may lead you to believe that 98 percent of the fat is removed, but in truth the fat content of whole milk is only a tad higher, at 3 percent. Consumer groups who urge people to drink 1 percent or nonfat milk have fought unsuccessfully over the years to have the 2 percent claim barred as deceptive.” 

Michael Moss, a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, is the father of two boys ages ten and thirteen so he knows that it isn’t easy to avoid processed foods.  One of the beauties of this book is that he doesn’t preach and he never makes the reader feel guilty for consuming salt, sugar, or fat.   Instead, Moss provides powerful information that will allow the busiest of us to make decisions about what we put in our bodies.

He shows us that the food industry won’t change because salt, sugar, and fat are cheap, interchangeable, and they make food taste good.  “They are huge, powerful forces of nature in unnatural food... They may have salt, sugar, and fat on their side, but we, ultimately, have the power to make choices.  After all, we decide what to buy.  We decide how much to eat. Kirkus Reviews calls this book “A shocking, galvanizing manifesto against the corporations manipulating nutrition to fatten their bottom line—one of the most important books of the year.”  I thoroughly agree and urge everyone to read it and to choose it for your next book club discussion.

Summing it Up:  Read this book to save yourself and those you love from being manipulated by the food giants.  Read it to learn how to avoid the progressively addictive attraction of the foods at eye level in our grocery stores.  Read it because it’s an addictive treat that reads more like a bag of potato chips than a bunch of raw kale.

Rating: 5 stars   

Category: Nonfiction, Five Stars, Super Nutrition, Book Club

Publication date: February 26, 2013

Author Website: http://michaelmossbooks.com/

Excerpt: http://michaelmossbooks.com/resources/salt-sugar-fat-excerpt/

New York Times cover story by the author: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.html?_r=1&

Reading Group Guide: http://www.randomhouse.com/book/219368/benediction-by-kent-haruf#discussionquestions

What Others are Saying:

Interview on PBS NewsHour: http://michaelmossbooks.com/2013/02/watch-michael-on-pbs-newshour/

Interview on National Public Radio: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/02/26/172969363/how-the-food-industry-manipulates-taste-buds-with-salt-sugar-fat

Kirkus Reviews: http://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/michael-moss/salt-sugar-fat/

Publishers Weekly: http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-4000-6980-4

Question and Answer with the Author in the New York Times: http://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/25/behind-the-cover-story-michael-moss-on-addictive-foods-and-what-he-eats-for-breakfast/

Question and Answer with the Author in Time Magazine: http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/26/salt-sugar-fat-qa-with-author-michael-moss/

Ten Food Secrets You Need to Know: 

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/tip-sheet/article/56249-10-food-secrets-you-need-to-know.html?utm_source=PW+Tip+Sheet&utm_campaign=f0a3593649-UA-15906914-1&utm_medium=email

Benediction by Kent Haruf

“Benediction – the utterance of a blessing, an invocation of blessedness” is the epigraph that opens Kent Haruf’s new novel.   When I read the last page of this gem, I felt the "invocation of blessedness" in getting to share in the life of the quiet community Haruf has created in Holt, Colorado, also the setting of his acclaimed novel Plainsong.  Like Plainsong, Benediction is replete with everyday characters capable of stealing your heart. 

The main character, Dad Lewis, gets the news that he has terminal cancer in the book’s opening lines:  “When the test came back the nurse called them into the examination room and when the doctor entered the room he just looked at them and asked them to sit down. They could tell by the look on his face where matters stood.”

When Dad and his wife, Mary, return from the doctor, she takes him a tray of food and a bottle of beer.

“He looked at the beer bottle and held it in front of him and took a small drink.
 
I might get me some kind of better grade of beer before I go. A guy I was talking to said something about Belgian beer. Maybe I’ll try some of that. If I can get it around here.
 
He sat and drank the beer and held his wife’s hand sitting out on the front porch. So the truth was he was dying. That’s what they were saying. He would be dead before the end of summer. By the beginning of September the dirt would be piled over what was left of him out at the cemetery three miles east of town.”

Everyone in Holt calls Dad Lewis “Dad” even the employees at the hardware store he’s owned for decades.  It’s an apt moniker as hardware store owners remain among the few who listen to our problems and offer us simple solutions or force us to face the reality that we might just need a bigger fix – just like our own “Dads” or the “Dads” we wish we had. Haruf’s writing provides the gift of making us feel that a man like Dad is someone we'd like in our own lives - well, most of the time. 

Food is an essential element in Benediction. In towns like Holt, people still bring food when someone is ill, still sit down together for meals, still have potlucks at church, and still tell people they love them by bringing them a covered dish.  When Mary ends up hospitalized with exhaustion, neighbor, Berta May, arrives at Dad’s door with a plate of food and questions: “Are you sick or something? Are you going to die?”  That’s how it is in Holt, Colorado; people get to the point and they take care of one another. 

After Mary’s hospitalization, daughter Lorraine comes home to help.  She’s still not over the death of her own daughter at the age of sixteen in a long ago accident.  Her marriage isn’t strong and she’s had no recent contact with her brother, Frank, who’s long been estranged from their father.  Dad’s health fails and he begins to sit and watch the world from his window while contemplating the mistakes he’s made and savoring the love of the people around him.  That Haruf has been a hospice volunteer is evident in the care with which he depicts the process of dying, death, and the details of lovingly caring for the terminally ill.

Neighbor Berta May has taken in her eight-year-old granddaughter, Alice, after her mother’s death from cancer. Lorraine is drawn to the child but young Alice sees parallels in Dad’s condition that bring back painful memories so she tries to avoid the Lewis family. The Johnson women, an old widow and longtime church friend and her daughter, begin helping out and they take Alice on picnics, out for ice cream, and buy her a bicycle that allows her freedom and burgeoning happiness. 

The community church’s new pastor who’s been sent to Holt as a last-ditch maneuver for his “inappropriate” sermons offers companionship but then commits the cardinal sin of preaching on the Sermon on the Mount and expecting his congregation to believe it.  “People don’t want to be disturbed.  They want assurance.  They don’t want to come to church on Sunday morning to think about new ideas or even the old important ones.”  They certainly don’t want to be told to turn the other cheek and love their enemies.  They call Pastor Lyle a terrorist and can’t understand why he doesn’t hate Muslims as they do.  Only the Johnson women and a rule-bound usher stand by the pastor and the reader sees that Holt, like places everywhere, isn’t utopia.  Holt is a metaphor for the universality of cities, small towns and suburbs where everyone must deal with living, dying, and accepting the hand we’ve been dealt.

It’s easy to see that Haruf grew up as a preacher’s kid in a small town like Holt where people love and take care of each other but are often bound by the chains of small ideas, rules, and fear.  The minor characters sins loom over the landscape and provide the reader with a deeper understanding of Dad and this community he so loves.   My favorite play, Our Town, always reminds me that nothing matters more than this day.  Benediction offers the same reminder wrapped in a package that allows us to see it clearly.

Summing it Up: Kent Haruf is the master of the quotidian: celebrating and sharing the lives of ordinary people doing ordinary things.  Read this novel to share in the rhythm of the land and the people and to rejoice that there are still writers who carry us with them into a world both completely familiar yet new enough to stun us into contemplating our own lives.  Haruf’s writing is grace personified.

Rating: 5 stars   

Category: Fiction, Five Stars, Gourmet, Grandma’s Pot Roast, Soul Food, Book Club

Publication date: February 26, 2013

Reading Group Guide: http://www.randomhouse.com/book/219368/benediction-by-kent-haruf#discussionquestions

What Others are Saying:

The Boston Globe: http://bostonglobe.com/arts/books/2013/02/23/book-review-benediction-kent-haruf/uCct8vWp22cJh4GQ728jgL/story.htm

Denver Post: http://www.denverpost.com/books/ci_22592569/book-review-benediction-by-kent-haruf

Kirkus Interview: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/rural-lives-urban-problems/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=cta&utm_campaign=032013

Milwaukee Journal: http://www.jsonline.com/entertainment/books/kent-harufs-benediction-once-again-brings-small-town-to-life-c38phd1-192556541.html

New York Times:  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/books/review/kent-harufs-benediction.html?ref=books

The House Girl by Tara Conklin

“Mister hit Josephine with the palm of his hand across her left cheek and it was then she knew she would run. . . The blow came without warning, no reason that Josephine could say.”

Josephine had tried to run once when she was twelve or thirteen.  As the novel opens, she’s a seventeen-year-old house slave who tends to her mistress, an artist named Lu Anne Bell, on a Virginia plantation in 1852. Josephine’s attempted escape and the tales of the people who aided or thwarted her gird this section of the novel.

In the alternate story set in 2004, Lina, a first year associate in a New York law firm, must find a face for her historic case seeking reparations for the descendants of American slaves  Lina and her artist father have lived in their Brooklyn house her entire life; it’s her rock in an uncertain world.  Lina’s father soon helps her discover that the famous, surviving paintings by Lu Anne Bell, portraits of slaves on her plantation, may actually have been the work of Josephine, the slave. 

Lina is certain that one of Josephine’s descendants would be perfect for the lawsuit so she sets off to find one.  In her quest she learns about Josephine’s life in 1852 and discovers parallels with her own complicated story including that of her mother’s mysterious death when she was very young.  

Josephine’s story is evocative of the period and Conklin’s writing soars in her descriptions of plantation life.  Her reliance on actual slave diaries is evident and she makes the characters seem real and important.   She’s less successful with Lina’s life which seems almost an afterthought and that surprised me since Conklin herself was once an attorney much like Lina.

The reviews of this novel are almost as divided as the issue of slavery was in 1852.  Kirkus loves it and Kirkus is unrelentingly tough so when it gives a book a starred review, it means it. IndieNext made it the top pick for February.  But Publishers Weekly wrote one of the most scathing condemnations I’ve read in that publication -- calling it “trite, predictable, and insensitive at its core.”  This reader believes there’s truth in all their observations and reasons galore for many to love this book and for others to find it wanting.

It seems to be a case of split personality, a tale of two eras, two house girls.  Lina can leave her house but doesn't.  Josephine wants to leave but can’t.   Who’s free?  Who’s enslaved?   

I really cared about Josephine and her quest but I didn't feel there was enough information or character development in Lina’s story. I wish the author had simply written Josephine’s story and allowed her powerful words to illuminate the horrors of slavery.

Summing it Up:  Read the excerpt.  Decide for yourself.  Enjoy learning about the life of Josephine, the artist and slave, in 1852 but don’t expect as much from Lina’s world today.

Rating: 3 stars   

Category: Historical Fiction, Grandma’s Pot Roast, Super Nutrition, Book Club

Publication date:  February 12, 2013

Author Website: http://www.taraconklin.com/

Read an Excerpt: http://www.scribd.com/doc/111935726/The-House-Girl-by-Tara-Conklin-Excerpt

Reading Group Guide: (Warning: it contains spoilers!) http://www.harpercollins.com/author/authorExtra.aspx?authorID=39628&isbn13=9780062207395&displayType=readingGuide

Interview on NPR: http://www.npr.org/2013/02/10/171396947/house-girl-ties-past-to-present-in-tale-of-art-and-slavery?ft=1&f=1032

What Others are Saying:

Bookpage: http://bookpage.com/interview/dreams-of-freedom-that-wouldn%27t-die

Kirkus Reviews: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/tara-conklin/house-girl/

Publishers Weekly: http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-06-220739-5

Rhapsody in Books: http://rhapsodyinbooks.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/black-history-month-review-the-house-girl-by-tara-conklin/

Seattle Times:  http://seattletimes.com/html/entertainment/2020311892_bookhousegirlxml.html

Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/tara-conklins-the-house-girl-reviewed-by-ron-charles/2013/02/12/681005e4-6ecd-11e2-ac36-3d8d9dcaa2e2_story_1.html

Happy Valentine's Day!

Eric Carle recently posted this delightful picture on his blog.  His new book, Friends, will be out this fall.  Till then, find a child and reread one of your Eric Carle favorites or visit Carle's blog for pictures to brighten the dreariest February day. 

Catherine the Great by Robert K. Massie

With some trepidation, my book club voted to discuss Catherine the Great knowing full well that its 625 pages might present a time-management challenge.  Thus I was thrilled when all eleven who gathered for lunch had enjoyed the book and would recommend it to others.  If it hadn’t been a snowy January day, I’d have suggested heading to a Russian restaurant in Chicago where we could have savored borscht, blintzes, tea and a Napoleon torte while pretending we were dining at the Winter Palace.  Then we could have walked to the Art Institute to see paintings by Rembrandt. Rubens, Van Dyck and masterworks similar to the 4000 paintings Catherine procured for the palace and her newly created Hermitage gallery.  

Our discussion of Robert K. Massie’s biography might have seemed to the waiters serving us more like gossip about the Kardashians than talk of an eighteenth century monarch.  We chatted about Catherine’s affairs, her jewels, her furs, her unconsummated marriage, her husband’s drinking and playacting, and the more expected subjects of her intelligence, her political savvy, her expansion of Russian borders and her tenacity.  

Catherine the Great, the larger-than-life Empress of Russia, began life in 1729 as Sophia, a minor German princess.  Joanna, her mother, was just sixteen when Sophia was born yet her ruthless ambition superseded her age and character.  When childless Empress Elizabeth began searching for a bride for her designated heir, her nephew, Peter, the only surviving son of Peter the Great, Joanna shamelessly pushed for then 14-year-old Sophia, noting her “freshness, intelligence and discreet, submissive manner. “  Sophia soon ingratiated herself into Empress Elizabeth and the Russian people’s hearts via her unstinting quest to learn everything Russian – language, culture and even the Orthodox religion to which her conversion was required.  Upon that conversion, the Empress christened Sophia as Catherine and her rebirth as a Russian princess resembled a fairy tale.  But, Peter, her 17-year-old husband and heir to the throne, was no knight in shining armor.  Instead he was a mentally unstable adolescent who played with toy soldiers, tortured pets, favored all things German over anything Russian, and was both unwilling and physically unable to consummate their marriage.

Still thwarted by Peter and remaining a virgin, Catherine began the first of a dozen affairs she was to have to bring love into her life and she at last gave birth to a son in 1754.  Empress Elizabeth immediately took him from Catherine not allowing her to see him for almost a week. Catherine, depressed from being denied any role in her son’s life, turned to books for solace and read Voltaire, Montesquieu, and histories of the Roman Empire that later helped her form her enlightened approach to governance.  

Massie makes Catherine real to the reader by using her own copious diaries and the letters written by famous leaders of the time.  He meticulously illustrates Catherine’s astute powers to gain what she wanted through her intense study of a subject before making recommendations.  Catherine’s rule was larger than life. When a small pox outbreak threatened her subjects, she herself was inoculated with the new vaccine so the people would see that it was safe. When Voltaire needed cash for his daughter’s dowry, Catherine bought his entire library.

Her desire for love led her to Gregory Potemkin who was ten years her junior and whom she may have married: "Their romance, their relationship, was extraordinarily passionate. Many of their letters are included in the book — "they're almost burning the page," noted author Robert K. Massie.

When her inept husband ignored a conspiracy and continued his childish pursuits, Catherine mounted a white stallion and led 14,000 soldiers to arrest and unseat him.  After the coup she ruled for thirty-four years packed with intrigue and the expansion of her empire. This book reminded me of Walter Cronkite’s “You Are There” television show of the 1950s that reenacted history by making the viewer feel a part of it.  This biography makes the reader feel “there” at the creation of a Russian port on the Black Sea, at meetings with the great leaders of the world, and in the drawing rooms of the palaces where Catherine’s acumen accomplished seemingly impossible tasks.  Lovers of historical fiction including the Philippa Gregory novels will enjoy making the leap to nonfiction as this biography proves that truth can be more exciting than fiction.

Summing it Up: When the august New York Times opens its review of a biography with “How delightful to discover that Robert K. Massie, 82 years old, hasn’t lost his mojo.” you know you’re in for something special and this book is more than special, it’s a masterpiece.  This biography will make you feel that you’ve floated across the snow in a fleet of sleighs heading south toward the Black Sea.  It will feed you with savory facts about the French Revolution, the changing boundaries of Eastern Europe and court life during the 1700s.  I challenge you to read it and to beg your book club to discuss it.  

Rating: 5 stars   

Category: Nonfiction, Five Stars, Super Nutrition, Book Club

Publication date: November 11, 2011

Reading Group Guide: http://www.bookbrowse.com/reading_guides/detail/index.cfm/book_number/2663/catherine-the-great

What Others are Saying:

Charlie Rose Interview: http://www.charlierose.com/view/clip/12411

Kirkus Reviews: http://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/robert-k-massie/catherine-great/

National Public Radio Interview: http://www.npr.org/2011/11/05/141992986/catherine-the-great-first-she-read-then-she-ruled/

The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/books/review/catherine-the-great-portrait-of-a-woman-by-robert-k-massie-book-review.html?pagewanted=all

Publishers Weekly: http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-679-45672-8

TheTelegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/historybookreviews/9364528/Catherine-the-Great-by-Robert-K-Massie-review.html

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

After Clay Jannon loses his web design job to the ravages of the recession, he walks San Francisco’s streets in search of help wanted signs.   He spies a 24-hour bookstore sign seeking HELP WANTED Late Shift ~ Specific Requirements ~ Good Benefits.  Jannon says “Now; I was pretty sure “24-hour bookstore” was a euphemism for something. It was on Broadway, in a euphemistic part of town. . . the place next door was called Booty’s and it had a sign with neon legs that crossed and uncrossed.”  Still, he walks into the store and finds “no bodices, ripped or otherwise. . . there was a stack of dusty Dashiell Hammetts on a low table.  That was a good sign.”  He meets Mr. Penumbra, the custodian of the place and tells him he’s looking for a job.

“Tell me,” Penumbra said, “about a book you love.”

Thus Jannon becomes the night clerk, the one who rolls a ladder down the floor, climbs it, and then leans to grasp the volumes requested by a small band of seekers who visit the store. The odd visitors “arrive with algorithmic regularity. They never browse.  They come wide-awake, completely sober and vibrating with need.”  They don’t purchase; they seek and check out volumes looking for pieces to the puzzle they’re trying to solve.

Jannon’s job description also requires that he log the appearance and manner of each person entering the store.  Soon he decides to engage his tech-savvy friends in a complex analysis of the customers’ behavior and the volumes they borrow and thus to solve the mystery they all seek. They take their information to Mr. Penumbra and the merry band makes a pilgrimage to New York in pursuit of clues at the underground headquarters of the group overseeing Mr. Penumbra’s work. 

Sloan imbues the novel with clever banter, just enough to keep the book light, as in his description of Jannon’s girlfriend upon their arrival: “Kat bought a New York Times but couldn’t figure out how to operate it, so now she’s fiddling with her phone.”   

Occasionally the novel’s cleverness pulled me away from the storyline but my affection for Clay and Mr. Penumbra always drew me back to the fairy tale unfolding before my eyes.

This book takes Saint-Exupery’s “what is essential is invisible to the eye” and turns it slant for the 21^st century.  It’s a joyful exploration of friendship, life, and work done well that reminds us that the secrets of life are there if we’ll just bend a bit and lean toward them.  

Summing it Up: If you’re looking for something new and different, yet as familiar as the tattered copy of the first book you ever loved, then Robin Sloan’s blend of bookish secrets, early fonts, and advanced Google search engines will engage your imagination.  Enigmatic Mr. Penumbra and hip, young Clay Jannon will find their way past your internet-challenged attention span and into your heart.  

Footnote: Sloan knows that book buyers today want compelling reasons to purchase books  in hardcover so Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore's cover glows in the dark. 

Rating: 5 stars   

Category: Fiction, Five Stars, Grandma’s Pot Roast, Dessert, Sushi, Book Club

Publication date: October 2, 2012

Author website: http://www.robinsloan.com/penumbra/

Reading Group Guide: http://media.us.macmillan.com/rggguides/9780374214913RGG.pdf

What Others are Saying: 

I rarely quote an author in a review but Robin Sloan’s words say it all:

I wrote this book because it’s the one I wanted to read, and I tried to pack it full of the things I love: books and bookstores; design and typography; Silicon Valley and San Francisco; fantasy and science fiction; quests and projects.  If you love these things too, I hope and believe you will enjoy a visit to the tall skinny bookstore next to the strip club.

The Economist: http://www.economist.com/node/21564531

New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/books/review/mr-penumbras-24-hour-bookstore-by-robin-sloan.html?_r=0

Los Angeles Times Interview: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/oct/17/news/la-jc-robin-sloan-mr-penumbras-24-hour-bookstore-20121017

NPR Interview: http://www.npr.org/2012/10/09/162233599/mr-penumbra-bridges-the-digital-divide

Fobbit by David Abrams

Do you watch Jon Stewart to understand the “why” of current events?  Was “Good Morning, Viet Nam” one of your favorite movies?  Did you love Catch 22 (the book or the movie)?  If so, then Fobbit, David Abrams’ razor-sharp comedy novel of the war in Iraq, is the book for you.  Abrams retired in 2008 after serving twenty years in the Army as a journalist.  He was named the Department of Defense’s Military Journalist of the Year in 1994.  In 2005, he joined the 3^rd Infantry Division in Baghdad.  The journal he kept during his year in Iraq formed what he calls “the blueprint” for the novel that became Fobbit. Abrams’ experience makes the novel exude the truth of life on a base in Baghdad. That truth is evident from Abram’s first paragraphs:

They were Fobbits because, at the core, they were nothing but marshmallow.  Crack open their chests and in the space where their hearts should be beating with a warrior’s courage and selfless regard, you’d find a pale, gooey center.  They cowered like rabbits in their cubicles, busied themselves with PowerPoint briefings to avoid the hazard of Baghdad’s bombs, and steadfastly clung white-knuckled to their desks at Forward Operating Base Triumph.  If the FOB was a mother’s skirt, then these soldiers were pressed hard against the pleats, too scared to venture beyond her grasp.

Like the shy, hairy-footed hobbits of Tolkien’s world, they were reluctant to go beyond their shire, bristling with rolls of concertina wire at the borders of the FOB.  After all there were goblins in turbans out there! Or so they convinced themselves.

Supply clerks, motor pool mechanics, cooks, mail sorters, lawyers, trombone players, logisticians: Fobbits, one and all.  They didn’t give a shit about appearances. They were all about making it out of Iraq in one piece.

The novel’s main character, Staff Sgt. Chance Gooding is a true, stay-back, stay-safe Fobbit who reads Cervantes and Dickens while penning reports designed to make the deaths around him look sensible to readers back home.  He works in one of Saddam’s former palaces, sleeps in air-conditioned comfort and gets his choice of great food shipped in to keep his ilk happy. He follows orders and files news releases that make the war seem winnable.  His diary tells the true story and may be keeping him sane with entries like: What was life like in Baghdad? “A car bomb every day. Sometimes three on religious holidays.”

Gooding’s fellow soldiers include Lt. Col. Eustace Harkleroad, a spontaneous nose bleeder, “a thick man, thick the way a bowl of risen dough is said to be thick.  When he leaned back in his chair, other soldiers flinched, afraid a button would pop off, come flying across the room, and put out an eye.”  Capt. Abe Shrinkle, a complete failure who fires first, thinks later and whose name could become synonymous with military ineptitude, provides comic relief while showing the most absurd details of the war.  Lt. Col. Vic Duret, whose brother-in-law died in the World Trade Center, offers a more nuanced view of the kind of men serving with honor.

Fobbit was published as an original paperback making it accessible to a wide audience. It’s a debut novel and the book Abrams seems born to write. It’s a hilarious, yet searing picture of an upside-down world where winning “hearts and minds” while killing and fearing Iraqi terrorists (or are they insurgents) is a contradictory goal that eats at the guts of those sitting safely inside a fortress.

If you possess a brain and a heart, you’ll laugh out loud, shed some tears and find a quiet place to contemplate the lessons of this astute novel. Book Clubs – this may be the best choice you’ve ever made.  Caveat: it might be too sardonic for avid Bush-Cheney supporters.

Summing it Up: Read this to bear witness to the absurdity of war. Relish it for the word pictures that will put you “up close and personal” in Baghdad.  Ponder it to make sense of the increasingly strange world we inhabit. That David Abrams could have served and survived in this environment then could speak to it with humor and dispassion is a great gift to readers. Make sure you open that gift.

Rating: 5 stars   

Category: Fiction, Gourmet, Super Nutrition, Sushi, Book Club

Publication date: September 4, 2012 (original paperback)

Author’s website: http://www.davidabramsbooks.com/index.htm

What Others are Saying:

Kirkus Reviews: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/david-abrams/fobbit/

Los Angeles Times: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/sep/17/entertainment/la-et-jc-fobbit-david-abrams-book-20120917

Seattle Times: http://seattletimes.com/html/books/2019334704_br04fobbit.htm

Washington Post: http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-10-01/entertainment/35502242_1_fobbit-book-review-official-language