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I thought of starting this review by saying "Hi, I'm Kerry and I'm an introvert" but that's glibly disrespectful of people in 12-step (and other) programs, and besides, it perpetuates the bias against introversion. It's unfortunate that our society equates noise with quality.

This book ought to be read by those who tend toward the extroversion end of the scale. (I suspect that introverts would read this book and nod their heads, saying "Yep. Yep. True statement.")

I found the first half of the book very enjoyable. The exposé of Tony Robbins was entertaining and scary at the same time. He's figured out a way to monetize our society's discomfort with quiet! I also found it unsettling to read the portrait of Harvard Business School's uniform methodology.

I was less interested in the second half, which dealt with personal case studies.

I thought of starting this review by saying "Hi, I'm Kerry and I'm an introvert" but that's glibly disrespectful of people in 12-step (and other) programs, and besides, it perpetuates the bias against introversion. It's unfortunate that our society equates noise with quality.

This book ought to be read by those who tend toward the extroversion end of the scale. (I suspect that introverts would read this book and nod their heads, saying "Yep. Yep. True statement.")

I found the first half of the book very enjoyable. The exposé of Tony Robbins was entertaining and scary at the same time. He's figured out a way to monetize our society's discomfort with quiet! I also found it unsettling to read the portrait of Harvard Business School's uniform methodology.

I was less interested in the second half, which dealt with personal case studies.

It's going to be difficult to write this review without coming across as a cold-hearted crank.

This just was not my kind of book.

The story was a little too “girly” for me.

Memories of the dead overshadowed everyone in the story, but I never really felt the depth of anyone’s character. Tom and Isabel, the protagonists, were faced with intense moral choices but I would have preferred getting more into their heads, rather than just reading about how they stared off into space. The final chapters had a lot of melodrama, including (cue dramatic music) a thunderstorm!

On the plus side, I “heard” the characters speaking with charming Australian accents.

I so admired the moral compass of Socrates Fortlow! He'd be the first to admit that he's not perfect; he spends most days regretting the actions that put him in prison. His code of "right" and "wrong" may not always be the same as mine, but in his world he's a beacon of hope.

I so admired the moral compass of Socrates Fortlow! He'd be the first to admit that he's not perfect; he spends most days regretting the actions that put him in prison. His code of "right" and "wrong" may not always be the same as mine, but in his world he's a beacon of hope.

This issue of McSweeney’s is an outstanding tribute to the power of storytelling (although I found it to be more a catalog of experiments than masterpieces of short fiction).

The premise of the experiment was to take a story and have it translated it into another language, then translate the result into yet another language, again, and again.

The introduction describes the parameters: each translator received only the piece immediately preceding; the entire series was not available to the translators until the end. The instruction was to preserve the story’s style, “to provide an accurate copy that was also a live story.” What exactly that meant, however, ended up varying widely. Did specific words get translated? Usually. But what about the story, the tone, the ambiance, the sound, the feel? Yes, no, sometimes. The various translators added and subtracted photographs, footnotes, chapter numbers, locations, and characters’ names. Editor Adam Thirlwell wrote: “The ethics of the novelist-translator may well be different from the ethics of the translator-translator.” As translator Dave Eggers said in his followup note: “I took some liberties.”

Just reading the titles, I saw things morph. The most striking examples: The Four Seasons, Without a Summer turned into Four Seasons with Two Summers; the story titled Umberto Buti was reborn as Tian Huaiyi (and these from the original Italian Incontrarsi, which appears not to be the character’s name at all).

Several of the stories seemed to be selected because of their strong cultural underpinnings, as a challenge the translators to test the limits of the transformation. The story sets I enjoyed the most were the ones that ended up in parallel universes. I could see the previously mentioned Tian Huaiyi was the psychic twin of Umberto Buti, transported to a different time and place. My favorite was translated by David Mitchell, who (because of his familiarity with Japanese culture) was able to transform a story written by Kenji Miyazawa into English while retaining its basic plot elements and melancholy tone.

The translators’ notes added greatly to the reading experience.

--Péter Esterházy: “I wanted to make it obvious that this was a translation.”

--Laurent Binet: “I believe translating is rewriting. My own voice has to be there.”

--John Wray: “Translation is a creative act.”

The physical book is itself a creative act. The layered flaps on the covers are an integrated part of the design, the interior text appears in two colors of ink, and two versions of each story appear side by side. The non-Latin typefaces included Urdu, Hebrew, and Chinese.

Highly recommended, particularly if you are fluent in another language!