Fact or Fiction?

I don’t know if you heard, but recently one of the authors that wrote a book that made it onto Oprah’s book club has been disgraced. One would imagine that being on Oprah’s book list would be enough but… The book was A Million Little Pieces. It was supposed to be a memoir about the author’s terrible life growing up. I don’t know who broke the news or how it got out but apparently it was pretty much all made up. He even went back on Oprah (apparently he was on the show as part of a book tour) and tried to defend himself. Oprah was acting all self-righteous and saying how hurt she felt, and really laying into him. (I should note that I don’t watch Oprah, they showed clips of the interview on The Daily Show. The most reliable news source I watch.) He was just saying that maybe not all of it was exactly right and that he may have changed parts of the story. I’m not sure what the big deal is. I mean if Dan Brown has taught us nothing else; he taught us that Americans have no ability to tell fact from fiction. I recently finished reading The Da Vinci Code. By recently I mean about 2 months ago. I read it at the urging of my friend Lori. She used the old “Pete, it wasn’t a very good book, you should read it” trick. So I read it and I’ve got to say that I understand why it was popular. It was short with short sections. It was not complicated. It was all about a conspiracy, even better it was about a religious conspiracy. Not that good over all though. I can’t believe that it’s been on the New York Times bestseller list for like 148 weeks. Definitely won’t ever be used to torture high school English students. I should write a book. I can write at least as well as Dan. I even have a plot in mind. I’m hesitant to say what it is. I mean, my blog is so widely read and I don’t want anybody to steal my idea.

I also recently finished End of Poverty by Jeffery Sachs. It was a very good book. Dr. Sachs talks about the possibility of ending the extreme Poverty that much of the developing world is stuck in. He has some great things to say. Though I did not agree with all of it. He says at one point that the Indian election of 2004 that resulted in Manmohan Singh becoming Prime Minister was largely the result of the population of India wanting economic change. On the list of reasons that people would give, that would be the last reason if it even made the list. The reason that Dr. Singh became Prime Minister is that Sonia Gandhi was the face for the Congress Party (in India they elect a party that forms a coalition government, the party picks a Prime Minister). Most voted for Sonia Gandhi because she is a Gandhi, even though she is Italian and married a Gandhi. That and the threat that if the BJP stayed in power, for like a 3rd or 4th term, they would be able to pass really strict laws about converting religions and laws about if you aren’t a Hindu then you aren’t Indian. That’s one of the rumors that was going around at the time. He also seemed somewhat naive about that prejudices of the US against Russia. He was surprised that the US government didn’t want to help Russia when the communists fell. People didn’t like Russians, just because they were Russian. I was also disappointed about one section where he says that someone he knows is having success using anti retroviral drug in the Caribbean to treat HIV/AIDS. One reason given for drug companies not just handing out the medicine like candy is that you have to take it on a specific schedule, which you can’t do without a clock. But that this guys has had success with treatment even in such a poor area. But there wasn’t any reference to a paper or even to the guy’s name. I was rather disappointed that I couldn’t find anything about it. For the most part I really enjoyed reading the book. It’s not any easy book to read. It’s not as simply written as Dan’s book. But it was an excellent book and I hope that important people that make foreign policies will read and listen to the book.