Both of these books are rather short and badly overdue, so rather than attempt any real analysis, I’m caving to the big internet stereotype and going the “zero attention span” route. Two books in about 200 words apiece, go!

Bento Box in the Heartland: My Japanese Girlhood in Whitebread America: a food memoir
by Lind Furiya

The Devil in Dover: An Insider’s Story of Dogma v. Darwin in Small-town America
by Lauri Lebo

Linda Furiya’s memoir is a collection of roughly chronological stories about growing up in the only Japanese (and for a long time, only Asian) family in the tiny farm town of Versailles, Indiana, interspersed with family recipes related to each chapter. Two main tensions tie the stories together: Furiya’s attempts to reconcile Japanese and American culture; and her desire to explore the world, while her parents wish to keep her close to small-town life.

She’s also a newspaper food columnist, and her journalistic style serves the stories well: though told in the past tense and through the filter of age, each reminiscence is immediate and immersive.  Trips to visit far-off relatives in New York and Tokyo are some of the best parts of the book; the descriptions of these new places sparkle with possibilities.

My only small complaint: a printing error with the book. When she described her love of okonomiyaki, I was impatient for the end of the chapter, thinking I’d get a homestyle recipe for a dish I’ve only seen in restaurants. But alas, it was a duplicate page, with the gyoza recipe from the first chapter. (Though it turns out her web site has the recipe, so my disappointment was fortunately short-lived.)

Now, on to book two.

I actually live near Harrisburg, PA, and I paid half-attention to the case, though mostly to know which days traffic near the courthouse would be abominable. My background understanding had come in large part from scientist bloggers, so Lebo’s journalistic focus on completely different aspects of the situation (like the two local journalists who covered school board activity were accused of lying in their reports) added depth as well.

Interspersed with the facts of the case are sktches of the players, explanations of some curious aspects of central PA life, and ongoing tensions between the author and her devoutly fundamentalist father. While much of the science-versus-religion debate has little chance of meeting in the middle, Lebo holds onto the one fact that she hopes she can make her father see: the wrongness of a flat-out lie told by school board members. When the school board’s desire to alter the science curriculum was still known only locally, religious sentiment and the name Jesus Christ were openly invoked at school board meetings as the purpose for the change, but once legal counsel was involved, the board members claimed they never said such things, and nearly cost two reporters their credibility and jobs.

The local angle had some elements I liked and others I didn’t. Descriptions of places that I recognized felt strange in a book (especially the description of the jogging route taken each morning by one of the lawyers; Harrisburg is small enough that I know exactly which apartment building he lived in, and that seemed invasive). On the other hand, I was thrilled to read such detailed descriptions of the local people who defended science. I can only hope this will put a small dent in our image as a state full of backwater, narrowminded hicks.

So, two good, interesting books, both enjoyable and recommended for anyone with interest in the subjects.