Word: isn
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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Like his first book, The Unnamed requires that you buy into its premise up front. If your reaction is "Gimme a break," get out now, because Ferris is not going to give you a break. The walking thing isn't played for laughs. (See the top 10 nonfiction books...
...Ferris isn't actually interested in Tim's disorder as such. This isn't a book about neurology. Ferris is interested in the blast radius around the sickness, the damage it does to Tim and his family. The longer it resists a cure or even a diagnosis, the more dense the walking becomes with multiple meanings, until it's a pulsating black hole at the center of the novel. It could stand for depression, mania, lust, rage, any alien element that lives within a marriage and tries to tear it apart. It could stand for the author's compulsion...
...Unnamed isn't a grim novel, exactly, but it's grim-ish. Only rarely does Ferris show the nice touch with a comic digression that he gave free rein to in Then We Came to the End. (Though there is a one-off about a man named Lev with a sexual fetish involving exotic snakes, which I choose to accept as an hommage à moi.) It's as if Ferris is testing his range to make sure the bass end is there as well as the comic treble. It's present and accounted for and suitably rich and profound...
...declining menhaden population isn't the only concern swimming around fish-based omega-3 supplements. Mercury consumption is another, as are the needs of vegetarians. The good news there is that plant sources like flaxseed and canola oils have one of the omega-3 fatties, alpha-linolenic acid (ALA). The bad news is that they don't contain docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) or eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), the more important omega-3 nutrients. Our bodies can convert ALA into DHA and EPA, but the process is limited and slow. (See "The Year in Health 2009: From...
Presidents seldom get the presidency they hoped for. They don't manage their inbox; it manages them, and they have to adjust to the paradox of power: as soon as they get it, they discover they rarely get to decide how to use it. This isn't what I came here to do, a President sighs, to which the answer is, Too damn bad. Lonely and frustrated is what being President means, and when Obama summons his predecessors' ghosts late at night, they can tell him how it went. (See who's who in Barack Obama's White House...