Jennifer Government by Max Barry

Jennifer Government, by Max Barry, is a dystopian novel where Corporations and Big Business run the world and the Government is a small player, usually relegated to playing catch-up.  Our protagonist, Jennifer Government, is a Government agent who is out to stop the evil forces of “Capitalizm” after John Nike decides that killing a few of his customers might lend street cred to the latest and greatest Nikes. It’s the ultimate marketing ploy!

 From the author's website:

“The world is run by American corporations; there are no taxes; employees take the last names of the companies they work for; the Police and the NRA are publicly-traded security firms; the government can only investigate crimes it can bill for.

Hack Nike is a Merchandising Officer who discovers an all-new way to sell sneakers. Buy Mitsui is a stockbroker with a death-wish. Billy NRA is finding out that life in a private army isn't all snappy uniforms and code names. And Jennifer Government, a legendary agent with a barcode tattoo, is a consumer watchdog with a gun.”

The novel starts off pretty fast, which is a good thing. My problem with a lot of authors who like to create worlds is that they can be so self-indulgent in their attempts to create a realistic (yet fake!) world that they drone on and on (kinda like this sentence) for chapters about "this land and those people" and then you fall asleep because it’s taking FOREVER to get to the good stuff. Jennifer Government has a lot of action and humor and Barry does a good job of not burdening the reader with too many details.

Usually with dystopian novels, the author attempts to raise awareness of some kind of potential future problem with society, technology, government, religion, etc. These kinds of books can sometimes feel like lectures, and Jennifer Government does have a few moments like these, but it’s the nature of the genre and it isn’t heavy handed.  The big ideas that Berry is taking on here are consumerism and greed. So, nothing new or groundbreaking, but a rather timely book as the role of business and government are such a big deal in politics nowadays.

I really didn’t buy (see what I did there?) any of the characters. Jennifer Government was fleshed out the best, but still just a stock character. Every time I pictured John Nike, I saw this guy from the Matrix:

The rest of the characters were more like caricatures. But maybe that’s the point? Maybe Berry is smarter than I think he is and by making the characters shallow and stereotypical (the dweeb acts like a dweeb, the bitch acts like a bitch, the suicidal guy finds a reason to live (love!)), he is showing us what will happen to us if we let consumerism run unchecked! Yeah! Or maybe I'm just giving him way to much credit and he isn't that good of a writer. The dialogue was pretty lame, too.

I don’t think I would recommend this book to the average reader, but I would recommend it to fans of dystopian novels. This novel isn’t on the same level as George Orwell’s 1984 or Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, but it’s an entertaining novel nonetheless if you are a fan of the genre. 

Next up Jennifer Government by Max Barry. This book was recommended Amanda Russell. It's about 320 pages and a work of fiction.

I double checked my ILL request for the Italo Calvino book, but it looks like it was dropped. I'll request it again, though.

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand

The spirit of the book Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand can be summed up by this quote from the book:

"On Kwajalein, Louis learned a dark truth know to the doomed in Hitler's death camps, the slaves of the American South, and a hundred other generations of betrayed people. Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen. The stubborn retention of it, even in the face of extreme physical hardship, can hold a man's soul in his body long past the point at which the body should have surrendered it. The loss if it can carry a man off as surely as thirst, hunger, exposure, and asphyxiation, and with greater cruelty"

Unbroken tells the miraculous and terrifying true story of Louis Zamperini, a one time thug turned Olympian who goes on to serve his country in WWII. Louis's harrowing saga begins by surviving 47 days at sea with very little food and water, fighting off sharks, and avoiding being killed by Japanese planes. Eventually Louis and one other man arrive to some islands in the South Pacific only to realize they are controlled by the Japanese. Louis becomes a prisoner of war. He is starved and beaten for the next two years. His biggest challenge is to survive the sadistic attention paid to him by one captor in particular, Bird.

Louis does survive and eventually returns home and tries to put his life back together. Louis is still alive today, he's in his 90's and is a renown motivational speaker. Here's a great video of Louis on CBS Sunday Morning.

It seems appropriate that I start this crazy project with Unbroken. The Olympics are going on as I type this, Michael Phelps is winning his 21st medal, and I wonder how many medals Louis could have won if he had been given the chance, if the world hadn't been set on fire by hate and megalomania.  

What stays with me most after reading this book is the idea of dignity, and how we Americans are so good at destroying it in one another. We lash out at one another's gender, age, skin color, culture, language, ideas, and social class. We allow ourselves to get wrapped up in vitriol, we've stopped thinking for ourselves. We've stopped listening with our hearts. As Louis says in the video, we "Americans don't forgive enough...hate is self-destructive. You aren't hurting the person you hate, you're hurting yourself." 

All of a sudden I find myself having a decision to make. Being the father of one, and soon two, do I teach my sons to give as good as they get? To hate and lash out at others as much as others will hate and try to harm them? Or do I teach them to listen with their hearts, to respect the dignity of others at the risk of losing their own? 

Read this book.

 I had to request the Calvino book through ILL and request Jennifer Government from another library.

So my first book for this challenge is actually the 3rd book on the list. Here's a description from Wikipedia for Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. :


"is a 2010 non-fiction book by Laura Hillenbrand, author of the best-selling book Seabiscuit: An American Legend. Unbroken is a biography of World War II hero Louis Zamperini, a former Olympic track star who survived for more than two and a half years in several brutal Japanese internment camps as a prisoner of war."

This book was recommended by Karen Nye. The book is about 400 pages long. I'll be back to let you know what I think about it.

As this project grows and evolves, I may change the rules a bit. I don't think I'll put a cap on the list, but I will try to read as many of the books as I can before the 12 months is up. I have a bad habit of reading multiple books at once, so I haven't decided yet if I will be faithful to one book. I think I may just focus on one book at a time, live in the world of that book, let it get into every pore, and give it a good, honest read. Okay, I think I just convinced myself to read one book at a time.

Again, I'll try my best to stick to the order, but if I can't get my hands on a book right away or not at all, then I will skip around to a book that is readily available.

New rule: I won't purchase the book, these must be books I can check out from the library, including InterLibrary Loan, or borrow from someone. The book can be analog or digital, no audio books.

This thing starts tomorrow, these are my thoughts for now.

Welcome to The Reader's List. Beginning August 1st, I will attempt to read only books that have been recommended to me for a whole year. I've got a pretty good list going already, check it out over on the left hand side of the blog. I will try to read them in the order I received them (from the bottom up). However, if a book  is unavailable to me, I will have to skip that title.

Why am I doing this? Three reasons: I want to add more variety to my reading preferences, I want to read what my friends and family think are important books, I believe this challenge will make me a better librarian.

I will post my progress here with notes and reviews, I hope you'll check in every so often to see how I'm doing.

And away we go!