If You Tell: A True Story of Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisterhood

www. amazon.com

It took me some time to finish this book because it's hard to read. Not because it was badly written, but because reading about what the three sisters in this story went through for years is not for the faint-hearted or squeamish. While I like reading and watching true crime stories, I had to put down the book several times because the details were just too much.  

If You Tell chronicles, the abuse three sisters had to endure while living with their sadistic mother.  The mother, Michelle "Shelly" Knotek, is someone who could go  "zero to sixty, from calm to rage, in less than five seconds."  She subjected her daughters Nikki, Sami, and Tori to all kinds of abuse, torture, and degradation. Such acts of sadism extended to relatives and friends, which eventually led to murder and her incarceration.  As manipulative as she was, she even convinced one of her daughters to participate in one of her crimes.

Gregg Olsen described the events in a raw, graphic, and sometimes sordid way.  He interspersed the recollection of people who knew Sherry, including her stepmother, her daughters, and her ex-partner. You'd be forgiven to think that the book is fiction, but it's not. It all happened. What happened to the sisters was so horrific that normal everyday objects would trigger memories of their fears and anguish. He also underscored that despite the horrific events,  the sisters remained resilient and how, through the strength of the bond between them, they became empowered to end their mother's reign of terror.  To this day, they remained in contact with each other.

I just wonder how such terrible acts could happen, and nobody could even notice it.  Especially that these events happened in a small, rural town in Washington where everybody supposedly knew each other. Of course, nobody could blame the sisters because years of manipulation and mental abuse would make them submissive to their mother.  In fact, the police and other authorities did not act when the sisters reported to them earlier and acted only after someone has died.

While the narrative is simple, the details became repetitive in several parts and did not contribute to the story anymore.  Olsen also did not completely tell what drove the mother to such heinous acts.  Was she born evil? Was her troubled past responsible for the behavior her stepmother already noticed when she was still very young?  Clearly, the book was not to psychoanalyze Shelly or her victims.  However, these are unanswered questions that should have been addressed to better understand how this monster came to be. 

If You Tell: 

A True Story of Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisterhood

Gregg Olsen

Publisher: Thomas & Mercer 

Publication date: December 1, 2019

Kindle Edition (File size: ‎ 4464 KB)

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Animal, Vegetable, Junk: An Account of Man's Relationship with Food

This book takes a long look at how we have transformed the way we get and consume our food.  Bittman -- a bestselling cookbook author, journalist, and food writer--  gives a comprehensive account of how man obtains his food, from hunter-gatherers to early agriculture and industrial farming.  He argues that the food we eat now is not the same as what our early ancestors ate.  He noted that deceptive marketing techniques made us unhealthy through the years.  How we presently produce our food is also not sustainable and harms us and the environment than good.

Bittman also touched on the politics of American agriculture.  He cited how its expansion excluded black Americans from some government programs and how current practices continue to disadvantage certain groups.  His most damning arguments include how the US Department of Agriculture continues to favor big companies and disregard the people’s and the environment’s welfare.  

Despite painting a bleak scenario for the agriculture industry, Bittman says that a systemic overhaul of the sector could still save it.  He offers an ecological solution he calls "agroecology.” However, he admits that there would be resistance, especially from those in power.  

Most parts of this book sound like a scathing criticism of modern agriculture and American politics by an outraged man. To be fair, Bittman did a lot of work and research to cover not only agriculture and food production but also the underlying socio-political issues. The effort shows in the number of references he cited and the pages dedicated to his endnotes. However, he started proselytizing his ideas in the final chapters and sounded like a propagandist for veganism and social organizations. 

ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, JUNK

A History of Food, From Sustainable to Suicidal

By Mark Bittman

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Kindle Edition (4087 KB)

Published on February 2, 2021

A Man- a novel on identity

amazon.com

I just finished reading the novel, A Man by Japanese writer, Keiichiro Hirano.  This is Hirano's first novel translated and published in English, but he's written several books already.

A Man revolves around a family lawyer, whose former client asked him to investigate the mystery behind her dead husband. The family of the dead man informed the woman that her husband was not their kin. The lawyer had to solve two puzzles: the real identity of the dead man, and what happened to the person whose identity and past he claimed as his. Through his investigation, the lawyer learned the meaning of our identity and the memory and legacies we leave,  

 Hirano covered a lot of topics, aside from the meaning of identity, he also touched on racism, middle life crisis, and relationships. It also gave us a glimpse of the complicated Japanese law on the family registry system. A Man is a great read, especially if you enjoy a good mystery.

A Man

by Keiichirō Hirano, Eli K.P. William (Translator)

295 pages

Note: I read the Kindle edition of this book, available through the Kindle First Reads program under my Amazon Prime subscription

You Now Need to Shop at Least $45 at Amazon to Avail of its Free Shipping Option

If you are someone like me who shops on Amazon,com and avails of their free shipping, you will now need to buy at least $45 worth of items before you can have your item shipped for free.  Let me make it clear though that this offer is available only in the US of A or when you ship your items to a U.S. address.

Add at least $25 of books in your cart and all other eligible items in the order also ship free, An eligible item has a "FREE Shipping" messaging on the product detail page, that is fulfilled and shipped by Amazon and contributes to your free shipping order minimum.  The site says the method takes about 5 to 8 business days but per my experience, most of my orders take only five days maximum.  

The online retail giant did not offer any explanation for the increase but many suspect that it's a way to lure more customers to their Prime service.  Amazon Prime offers a free two-day shipping for it's members. Aside from this, the $99 annual membership also comes with free music and video streaming.  Be warned however that again, the free streaming is only available for customers who are in the U.S.  

For more information on this, click here.

Amazon Echo: Speaker, Virtual Assistant, and Shopping Companion in One

The big news this weekend in the tech world was the announcement of Amazon on its website for its new product, the Echo.  

from amazon.com

The Echo is a cylindrical device that is basically a speaker that could fill an entire room with music. Just say the magic word, "Alexa" and the device wakes up to provide you with weather report, play music from your Amazon music library, and yes, go shopping with you on Amazon.

There are seven microphones on top of the Echo and it uses beam-forming technology to pinpoint your voice and make sure it can hear you no matter where you are in a room. It has an enhanced background noise cancellation so it can follow your commands and requests even when it is playing music.

The device is always connected to Amazon’s cloud-based web servers where most of the processing of data occurs.  The more you use  the better it understands your speech pattern and the more adept it becomes in identifying and responding to your commands over time. Let's just hope it won't be as buggy as Siri which took some time to recognize my speech pattern,

Music can be streamed through either WiFi or Bluetooth.  That includes music from iTunes and even Spotify.

It also comes with a remote control with a built-in microphone, music playback and volume controls.  There is also a companion app for iOS and Android gadgets and desktop PCs so you can further personalize your Echo experience.  

from amazon.com

Right now, the Echo is available for US$199 (roughly PhP8,900 at US$1=PhP44.5) and for a limited time, it is available to Prime Members at US$99.  Take note that getting the device is by invitation only and you may request it from the official site.  There's no word yet if it will be made available internationally but the way I look at it, Amazon must be testing first if they have a market for this and whether the Echo will work in the real world.  Maybe they were burned enough by the Fire Phone that they're being more cautious this time.

But being always on and with the capability to pick up one's voice where ever he is inside a room, will it be possible that someone could start listening to us 24/7 soon?  Maybe not as long as you don't have anyone in your household named "Alexa".

from amazon.com

"What If?" Answers some of the most bizarre questions

I just finished reading this very amusing book named, "What if? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions"

The author, Randall Munroe, is a physicist who used to work at NASA as a roboticist. He created the webcomic xkcd, which features stick figures and deals with science, technology, and math themes.  Alongside this webcomic, he created whatif where he answers questions sent to him by his readers.

The webcomic actually has a cult following and has already received over 70 million hits.[citation needed]  The book is a compilation of some of the more bizarre questions he's received and answered since he started the project.

This is the first time I encountered Munroe and his work, so I am pretty amused by his writing style.  He answers questions that if I or anyone asked a school teacher, I would be immediately dismissed as impertinent.  Consider the following questions:

• What would happen if everyone on Earth stood as close to each other as they could and jumped, everyone landing on the ground at the same instant?
• How quickly would the oceans drain if a circular portal 10 meters in radius leading into space were created at the bottom of the Challenger Deep, the deepest spot in the ocean?
• If someone's DNA suddenly vanished, how long would that person last?
• How much physical space does the Internet take up?
• What would happen to the Earth if the Sun suddenly switched off?
• If an asteroid was very small but supermassive, could you really live on it like the Little Prince?

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

And my favorite: What would happen if you made a periodic table out of cube-shaped bricks, where each brick was made of the corresponding element?    His answer: You can stack the top two rows without much trouble; The third row would burn you with fire; the fourth would kill you with toxic smoke; the fifth would do all of those and give you a mild dose of radiation; the sixth would explode violently and; Do not build the seventh row.  He gave a more detailed explanation of these answers in the same chapter.

All of these and the rest of the other main questions were answered meticulously by the author using scientific facts and his brand of humor.  Yes, sometimes the reader needs a little background about the things he says but this won't stop you from enjoying the book.   Also, don't forget to read all the footnotes, which were also as entertaining as the main texts. There's even a running joke about his constant use of [citation needed]. 

In between the questions are inserts called "Weird (and worrying) Questions From the What If? Inbox," and these contained even stranger questions (example: What is the total nutritional value of the average human body?) which Munroe answered with some funny stick figures or even deliberately left unanswered.

And one more thing, many of the questions and answers lead to scenarios of the destruction of our home planet, which may be the reason why the author, after discussing the effect of the different magnitudes of an earthquake (Q. What if a Richter magnitude 15 earthquake were to hit America at, let's say, New York?),  ended his book with, "Sometimes it's nice not to destroy the world for a change."

I really enjoyed reading this book.  I laughed and learned a lot while reading it. Even if it's your first time encountering the author and his work, you will still find the book very interesting.  

What if? by Randall Munroe

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 303 pages

Available from amazon.com

Kindle Unlimited: Over 600,000 Books Available But...

I recently received an email from amazon.com inviting me to avail of a 30-free day trial of their new service, Kindle Unlimited. The idea is great for any book lover: for thirty days you are free to read as many books as you want (and can) from 600,000 titles. After the trial period, you only need to pay $9.99 per month as subscription.  It also comes with a complimentary three-month Audible membership, which gives access to additional 150,000 audiobook titles.

from amazon.com

This is good news for someone like me who loves reading and at the same time owns a Kindle reading device.  Yes, you can also read through any of the free reading app from the company and the audiobooks are available to those who own Kindle Fire. 

So what is the "but" on the title for?  For three reasons. First, although 600,000 title seem a lot, at present I couldn't find the kind of titles I am interested in and want to read.  I expect Amazon will improve the selection later but right now it is extremely limited.

from amazon.com

Second, if I choose to stop the subscription, I will lose all the books.  This is because I don't own them and only rent them from the service.

Lastly and related to my second reason, the price of the subscription.  I like reading books at a leisurely pace or at my own pace. If I really like the book, I can finish it in one to three days.  Sometimes, I read it only when I have the time. Most of the books for Kindle are at or near the $9.99 price point, the same amount as the subscription.  I do not see myself buying one book per month so that means that there will be months that I'd be obligated to pay for the service which I cannot use.


I am not discouraging anybody from trying the service.  You may want to take advantage of the free 30-day trial subscription for now.  I am sure that heavy readers would find Kindle Unlimited as a great way to enjoy reading books and save money at the same time.

Fall of Giants and Winter of the World: A Review

I just finished reading Ken Follet's works one after the other: "Fall of Giants" and "Winter of the World", which are part of the Century Trilogy.  Both books are massive. Kindle gives a reading time for each book at 16 hours.  It took me weeks to finish them.

The books are about five families in different parts of the world, Russia, Germany, Britain and the USA, which were intertwined by events of the last century.  Follet introduces them to us in Fall of Giants, which took place in the 20s and 30s and pretty much covered events leading to and during World War I, the Russian Revolution and political events that changed the course of history, including women's suffrage.

The second book, Winter of the World introduces us to the next generation and mostly offsprings of the characters in the first volume.  We also see changes in the lives and social standing of many of the characters.  For me, this is darker than the first book because it dealt about the atrocities of the Nazi Regime, the terror of World War II and the savagery of the Red Army which was supposed to liberate Berlin after the war.  Oh, and it also set the stage for the cold war with the introduction of the atomic bomb.

Follet described everything in vivid imagery.  He is a master of description: from the darkness of the coal mine pit, to the battlefields in France, the blitzkrieg, and the harsh Russian winter.  Follet described everything so well that you could almost even smell his characters when he says that they haven't bathed for weeks.  

I think this is why I got hooked with these books and kept me turning page after page.  Follet made me feel like I was part of the events as they unfold.  It felt like, I was sitting beside the Dewars while they were negotiating for the establishment of the United Nations or when the British Parliament was debating whether to unseat Chamberlain or not.  It does help that the reader knows basic modern history but it is not necessary.

This brings us to the next point I want to make.  Follet made the reader learn history and the behind the scenes stories about the events without the reader noticing it.  I learned a lot about the conditions of the miners in Wales and how the British women won their right to suffrage by reading this book.

Spending weeks reading these books also made me feel that I knew these families well enough that I am interested to what would happen to them. "Winter of the World" ended in a hopeful note, on Christmas Day, with Carla von Ulrich surrounded by her family singing a Christmas Carol.   

I am looking forward to the third and final installment of the trilogy.  

Fall of Giants and Winter of the World are both available for Kindle on amazon.com.

Severe Thunderstorms down Instagram, Pinterest

Thanks to Mother Nature two of my favorite  web sites went down today.

Severe thunderstorms in North Virginia caused an outage to the Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud, which took down Instagram, Pinterest, Netflix and other cloud based sites.  

Although the sites have a local hub here in Asia, it appears that all services are still routed to North America. Hence, this problem. 

I tried loading some pictures on Instagram and either I waited for eternity for the site to come up or I just got pieces of it.  Netizens expressed their frustrations on Twitter and and the affected companies also took to social networking sites to send their messages that they're having some technical problems and were fixing it.  

It's not the first time that Amazon's cloud server was affected by outages due to weather. Many tech experts are beginning to worry that this may lead some industries to have second thoughts on embracing the cloud technology.

Defending Jacob: A Family Drama (SPOILER ALERT)

Defending Jacob by William Landay is a court drama, a family story, a suspense-thriller all rolled into one. The story is told to us by the father, Andy Barber, the First Assistant District Attorney of a small town in Massachusetts whose life and career took a bizarre turn when his 14-year old son was accused of  murdering a schoolmate.

Landay tells how this once happy suburban family became a portrait of a troubled family.  While he was able to keep his son out of jail and keep his family intact, it resulted to the loss of friends and colleagues. The reader could earlier surmise that what ever the outcome of this trial, Barber is finished.

Landay keeps everyone guessing whether Jacob actually killed his classmate thus laying out the groundwork for everyone to make a judgement.  And then he pulls out a twist.  While Barber insists that his son is not capable of murder, it turned out that violence do run in the family.  It was revealed that Andy's father and Jacob's grandfather is behind bars because of killing a girl.

This revelation will ultimately result in an horrific ending that one would probably not see coming.

The book is a real page turner, the details of what goes on in the life of a defendant in a murder case and how it could impact in the family will keep the reader involved.

(Defending Jacob by William Landay 421 pp.)

Amazon announces four new Kindle Readers

I woke up this morning to some great news from Amazon.com.   The company announced not one (as earlier posted) but four new Kindle e-readers, with prices starting at US$79.  On the Amazon website, CEO Jeff Bezos called the new devices the "best Kindles we've ever made." 

The top of the line among the new Kindles is the Kindle Fire.   The Kindle Fire offers Wi-Fi connectivity and a web browser called Amazon Silk which will use cloud computing to speed access to content over the Internet.  The device is basically a souped up version of the Kindle with a 7-inch color touch screen.  Many pundits are claiming that this gadget is the only real threat to Apple's iPad.  For one, at US$199 it is really way cheaper than Jobs's tablet.  However, Kindle Fire does not come with a camera, a microphone and a 3G connectivity which may not appeal to those who want to these features.  

One of the things that stopped me from considering Kindle Fire is its backlit screen.  I have a first generation iPad and I have to admit that I find it hard to read on it for a long period of time.  Unless Amazon can transpose e-ink technology, I think this gadget will be good for consumption of other media, namely music, magazines and movies which does take long periods of time.

What I am considering is the new Kindle Touch.  This new addition to the Kindle family comes with an easy to use touch screen to make it easier to turn pages, all you need to do is tap to turn a page.  It still comes with e-ink technology and connects through Wi-Fi for access to the Amazon Store.  It is only 6 inches and is lighter at 7.8 ounces.  Battery life is also great - it can last for two months on a single charge without the wireless connection.  If you leave the wireless on, it will still work for 6 weeks on a single charge.

I would really want to know more about the X-Ray Feature of this gadget.  Amazon explains it as "a new technology that lets customers explore the 'bones of the book'."  It says that with just a single tap, readers can see all passages across a book that mention ideas, fictional characters, historical figures, etc. that interests them.  I think it's worth exploring.

A 3G enabled model of the device will also be available.  The Kindle Touch will be available at US$99 with special offers.  What this simply means is that you will receive special offers and sponsored screen savers.  However, these will only appear when you are not using your device or at the bottom of the screen.  Amazon promises that it will not interfere with our reading.  If you don't want these special offers then opt for the one that does not come with it, priced at US139.  Prices for the 3G enabled model start at US$149.  Both models will be available on November 21, 2011.

If you don't want a touch screen model, there's the Kindle.  The new latest generation Kindle is for readers who want the lightest, most compact Kindle at an incredible price. The latest generation Kindle features a new design that is 30 percent lighter at just 5.98 ounces, 18 percent smaller, and turns pages 10 percent faster. Kindle is now small and light enough to fit easily in your pocket and carry with you everywhere, yet it still features the same 6-inch, most advanced electronic ink display that reads like real paper, even in bright sunlight.  It comes with a price tag of only US$79 and is available starting today at Amazon.com.  

(all images from amazon.com)

Amazon Kindle Tablet coming in November

There have been a lot of rumors about Amazon.com releasing its own tablet this year.  Well, Techcrunch's MG Siegler seems to confirm it today in an article where he claimed that he has actually seen and played with the device.  Unfortunately, as part of their deal, he is not allowed to release any  photograph or image of the gadget.

Siegler reports that the device will sport a 7-inch, colored, and backlit capacitive multi-touch screen.  He describes it as something that looks more like the Blackberry Playbook than any other tablet around.  It will also run on a stripped down Android built specifically by Amazon without the help of the Google people, so it is not like any Android we've seen so far.  Instead, it is something that revolves around the Kindle application.

All the Amazon services will be a click away and that would make this different from the rest of the iPad wannabes.  Like Apple, Amazon has a host of available services that its loyal costumers are already using and they will offer them a simple to use device that will give them access to all of these services.  What other tablet can give you that?  It may not kill the iPad but it can give it good competition.

So what will happen to the Kindle Reader?  Siegler supposes, and I agree, that it will co-exist with this new device. 

Reportedly, Amazon is doing just some minor tweaking with the software before it releases the product in November.  The article added that it is not yet in production though.  Amazon Kindle Tablet will cost less than its competition at  around US$250.  I am very interested to have my hands on this baby!

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: Modern Fables from David Sedaris

In his latest book, David Sedaris stopped talking about his self and made animals do the talking for him.  The result is Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary a compilation of short fables that are more for adults than for children because they can be quite disturbing..

Disturbing because Sedaris gave the animals human qualities, weaknesses and problems.  We find an altruistic mouse taking care of a snake, a vain sheep meeting a manipulative crow, and a squirrel and chipmunk dating against the wishes of everyone around them.  The other characters are equally not so good models of good behavior.

Unlike in other stories where animals behave the way they naturally do, the ones in this bestiary are more human than animals.  I cannot blame anyone who, at one point while reading this, would ask why even use animals when human characters would do.

It's also the outcome of the stories that they can be quite disturbing to the reader.  Somehow, because of  their bad behavior and weaknesses, the animals end up dead, eaten, clobbered or chained.  And everything was told in graphic and grisly detail.

Fans of David Sedaris who are used to his funny autobiographical musings will be surprised that his usual wry humor was stripped to the minimum in this volume.  The lack of humor may or may not be because the author decided not to be funny.  There are some moments here and there but on the whole, most of the stories failed to be funny.  One might think that Sedaris must be running out of things to say and decided to take the fables route.  Unfortunately, he was like a fish out of water.

Metropolis: Back to the Mothership

I have often wondered about "Metropolis," Fritz Lang's 1927 silent movie about a dystopian city of the future.  I've only seen some parts of it but never the entire movie.  I finally had the chance to see it in its entirety, and I confess that I instantly became a disciple.

Dubbed as the mothership of all science fiction movies, Metropolis tells about a city divided into two social classes: the elite who live leisurely in their futuristic city above and the workers living in horrible conditions underground.  A theme that still resonates today.  It says that the mediator between the mind and the hand is the heart.  

Metropolis is so much ahead of its time.  From the sets to the effects to the story and the music.  In fact, many of its elements can still be found in movies made 50 years after its release. There's a mad scientist who works in an art deco laboratory.  He created an evil she-robot (called  Machine-Man in the movie) which could pass up as the mother of  C3PO because of their striking resemblance.

The set of the underground where the workers toil obviously inspired one of Madonna's MTVs.  And, dig this, to see what his workers are up to, the ruler of Metropolis uses a telephone with video!  Yup, even before Steve Jobs was born, Lang has already used FaceTime in this movie!  Indeed, even critics agree that the movie remains one of the most influential in any genre.

The story of how Metropolis became complete is also a good one.  When it came out in 1928, some American film distributors deemed the movie to be too long to be commercially viable. They edited, no, chopped the film to a point where only 90 minutes out of the original, almost 3 hours running time was left.  Nobody has seen the movie the way Fritz Lang envisioned it since then.

Over the years, German film institutes tried to develop a version that is closer to the 1928 original.    In 2002, restorers came up with a much longer version using parts found in the then East Germany state.

Many have given up hope that they can restore Metropolis to the version Lang premiered in 1928.  Until 2008, a film archivist in Argentina heard of a rumor that their film archives have a 16-mm copy of the film, which was longer than any known copies.  They sent it to Germany, and indeed, it was an authentic copy of the movie with some scenes that were thought gone.  It added some 25 minutes to what was already.

The version I saw was this 2010 restoration.  It was given the state of the art digital treatment.  Unfortunately, the 16-mm copy was made in the 1970s straight from the original prints, and it included all the scratches and damages which cannot be remedied by today's technology.  One can easily see where the new scenes were inserted because the scratches were evident, and since they were copied from 16-mm negatives, they have a different size.  I really don't mind though, I would rather have these imperfections than not seeing these parts of the film.

So this is the closest we can get to the original film. I'd say that it is a must-see for everyone who loves cinema, in any genre.  With this version, Fritz Lang's vision can be seen again with all its glory. Hopefully, Metropolis would spring another surprise that another more complete version comes out in another country.

(images from www.kinolorber.com)

For Those Who Want It Small, Here's the LaCie MosKeyto

While browsing the Internet for new gadgets, I came upon an article on an interesting product from LaCie called MosKeyto, an ultra-small USB storage device.  It caught my interest because I like small gadgets and this one is is so small that one photo shows it as hardly noticeable when plugged in a USB port of a computer.  Reading it's specs however, I found out that it may be tiny in size but big in capacities from 4GB to as much as 16GB!

 

LaCie promises that you can keep this plugged in and it will not harm your computer.  It is also compatible with both Windows and Mac operating systems.  

I think I will look for one of these in the local stores if it is already available. Amazon.com offers it starting at US$15.33 for the 4GB unit,  US$23.43 for 8GB and US$48.18 for the 16GB model.

(photos from lacie.com)