Mary Roach Books

Mary Roach is a charming writer who tells stories about science.  Her books are not "scientific" ... they tell stories that humanize science.  My favorite is Packing For Mars and my current read is Gulp.

I didn't like the first ones, Stiff and Bonk, but that shouldn't stop you from trying the two I mentioned.

BTW, I'm writing this because I haven't use the blog for a long time and need some practice.  Maybe you'll be motivated to add a book or two also.

Tyger, Tyger, Burning...Hostile? Vengeful? Really Angry?

This is partly a book rec and partly a test to see if the ever-talented and patient Chairman Ann solved my persistent can't-post-myself problem.

The Tiger, by John Vaillant, is the polar (OK, excuse the animal metaphor thing-y going on here) opposite of a fluffy book. And it's not even a novel--it's a true story. Sigh.

It goes without saying that if it wasn't this month's P-Town book group selection, I'd never consider reading it but...that's what book groups are for. Making you read books you'd normally kick to the curb.

Haven't finished it yet, but it's surprisingly an easy and interesting read. Picture a mystery where the bad guy is a Siberian tiger with the vengeful memory of an elephant. The victim is a deep-woods poacher with bad judgment. The detective is the head of the terretorial animal preservation agency with really laudable instincts and an appreciation of the true natures of both beasts and poachers. Wtih a flexible moral code.

Plus, it's only 300 pages long. Almost as long as my customary review, so, Chairman Ann, I'm going to aim this time for brevity. I think it's worth a read.

Caleb's Crossing is a great read. I got hooked on Geraldine Brooks after reading People of the Book. As soon as I read the review of Caleb's Crossing in the NYT, I downloaded it to the Kindle - all from my bed on a Sunday morning. This is a great historical novel, but it does not get bogged down in historical facts. She does a remarkable job drawing out the characters and placing them in the right time, but with universal personalities. I had started the book, but I really made great progress when I flew to Phoenix and back to DC in less than 48 hours. I was so involved in the story on the flight back that I did not fall asleep, even though I was exhausted.

I don't make a recommendation about the medium - my only recommendation is to read it!

June is Fluffy Book Month

First of all:  eReader conclusion.  As you know, the iPad was rejected, the Kindle was returned, the Nook was returned, the iPad was rejected again ... but, FINALLY, the Kindle is on order again.  This is the end of the saga ... well, except to start talking about where to get free books and when Amazon will open up library books. 

June truly was a month of fluffy books suitable for beach reading. 

Fifth Avenue, 5 a.m. by Sam Wasson
This book was sitting on the librarian recommendation shelf and was a pleasant surprise.  It's one of those "behind the scenes" / "making a movie" book ... sometimes they're really interesting and sometimes you don't get past the first 50 pages.  And the movie in question is Breakfast at Tiffany's.  Maybe I liked it because I liked the movie, liked Audrey Hepburn or am a sucker for movies with good roles for cats.  Anyway, the book was just as charming as the movie.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/books/14book.html
 

Still Life With Murder by P.B. Ryan
This is the first in a seven book series set in Boston just after the Civil War.  It's almost more historical fiction than mystery.  There's a lot about what it's like to be Irish in America then, about class distinctions and manners, with lots of twists and turns in the plots.  Again, it's not a serious book by a major author ... just something fun to read on the beach ... or in our cases, on the virtual beach.
 
And here's a link to get the first book as a free ebook:
 
http://www.amazon.com/Murder-Sweeney-Mysteries-formerly-ebook/dp/B003UV98MM/ref=sr_1_1_title_0_main?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1309458949&sr=1-1

The Continuing eReader Saga

I have no explanation as to why this decision is so hard for me. 

The Nook did not please. 

The touchscreen was limited and sometimes unpredictable.  The buttons were hard to press.  Their claim to 80% less backflash was not true.  I do not like the Barnes & Noble website.

The Nook went back.

Then I got the iPad bug again.  I borrowed my sister's iPad yesterday and I think it was just a 24 hour bug ... the iPad is no longer on the shopping list.

OK.  I am now safely back in Kindle camp.  Susan and Bethie, you were both right.  Brenda, the pressure is still on ... or did Bethie convince you when you were in Washington?

And now the pressure is also on Amazon ... I need those library books!

In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. ~T.S. Eliot

A Great Hear (or Why I’m Now Multi-Tasking With Eyes and Ears, in Cyberspace)

The Help (Kathryn Stockett) has been clogging up all possible venues—print, electronic, audio—since it was published in 2009. At our annual Christmas party and book-pick, where every member of the P-Town book group must come armed with some kind of food and two solid book recommendations, we usually end up considering ~30 books for the next 11 month cycle; this time, half of the nominators came armed with The Help. It was like a literary electoral landslide. I had it on my list even though while it was residing peacefully on my Kindle in audio-book form, I hadn’t really gotten all that interested in actually reading it. I nominated it because it had gotten stellar reviews, sounded interesting, and I figured maybe getting on the to-be-read list might actually make me read it.

With 50% of the group lobbying for it, it obviously made the cut and June was our The Help month. As I have mentioned in prior posts, too much fame tends to put me off, so I avoided getting going until 5 days before our meeting. And then, I realized that I only had it in audio form and maybe I would like it better if I read it, after all. But I’m trying not to spend money on hard copy or even electronic books for my Kindle, because I’m in between earning sources this year: severance and unemployment are long gone, and I decided to wait on Social Security until I can get the full amount, which will be next month. So: be frugal! The public library and Kindles don’t have a good relationship at the moment—although Amazon.com assures us that by the end of 2011, they will update their operating system to allow library eBook downloads and then the world will be a much sunnier place. Until then, live with it, suckers! However, after attending a little workshop recently at the library on electronic books, I realized that I can reserve and download an eBook onto my laptop, even if it still speaks a language foreign to the Kindle. So, 5 days before our June meeting, I grabbed an eBook from Overdrive.com and was set to go. I figured that between an eBook and an audio book on my Kindle, one or the other of them would work.

Ha! 5 pages into the audio book, I realized I was completely hooked. The audio book has an unusual amount of narrators—usually, 1 person just does all the various voices in an audio book, by being excellent actors. But for The Help, and I don’t know why, Audible.com decided to go with 4 different narrators. And each of them does an exceptional good job. But because there is a lot of dialect dialog, I noticed that I was occasionally not sure what someone had said. So then I thought I would open up the eBook so that I could look up the occasional missed word. And voila! A new form of reading was born: reading along while a virtual play was being performed just for me in my own living room. While I was dressed like a hobo. I finally settled on listening, doing some needlepoint, and following along in the eBook so I could just look up when I wasn’t 100% sure of what I heard.

Would I have taken this much trouble for just a so-so book? Nope. But The Help is an amazing book, and, even more surprising, it’s the author’s first novel. I’m going to assume that if I know about the general idea, you all do too, so I won’t go into any great details except to say that this is what I loved about it:

*Believable characters--although there are some that are possibly a bit over the top—just the nasty ones though, and who doesn’t like someone that you really get to hate, full-on? The author placed a couple of really evil people squarely in the middle of the action, who take great pleasure in messing things up badly for everyone else

*Beautiful structure—the novel has 3 separate rotating narrators, and their individual voices are really handled distinctly. When Skeeter is narrating, or Aibeleen, or Minny, it’s always immediately clear who is carrying the story burden at that moment. And the use of shifting perspectives on the main events of the story really adds depth and complexity to what might otherwise have been a decent but still one-sided account.

*Engrossing story—by setting the story in 1964 in Jackson, Mississippi, the author does something that is really magical for folks that are our age. While I don’t think any of us lived in highly segregated worlds, there was still a clear line drawn between plain old vanilla white people and everyone else, and the Caucasians were firmly in charge. Most of the families of the women in the P-town book group had hired help when they were growing up in the 60s and early 70s, and most of them felt like their hired help were kind of surrogate mothers or grandmothers. Still, I think that that world no longer exists. But in 1964, things were starting to change, and I remember that change really well. I remember the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, I remember the march on Washington, I remember the “I Have a Dream” speech, and I obviously remember the Kennedy assassination and its aftermath. The events in The Help take place almost 50 years ago, but we were there and beginning (I think) to use our brains. There’s a scene when someone introduces the rebellious white girl, Skeeter, to Bob Dylan. I mentioned in the book group that my boyfriend at that time made me listen to Bob D’s first album when I visited him at home in Boston the summer after my first year of college, which was in 1964. And our most erudite member, the main librarian for the Stanford Business School, said that that was exactly how she first learned about Bob Dylan—she grew up in Boston and her boyfriend in 1964 told her the guy was going to be a god, so listen up! I told my boyfriend that I didn’t think Dylan’s voice was good enough for him to have a real commercial career. See, even then, I was colossally wrong about emerging trends!

There are some bad things that happen to good people in the book, and, gratifyingly, some really nasty things eventually happen to the bad guys, too. There are really heart-wrenching moments, and I have to admit that, by listening to it which always makes the narrative much more immediate, I had a mini-meltdown toward the end of the book and had to take a little time off so I’d stop weeping and let the story play out. But I can’t think of anything I’ve read recently that made me cry. Yes, I do cry at telephone commercials and fast-forward through any TV plea to help abused animals. But not typically when reading.

The movie version of The Help will be out in August. Sadly, I realized that I didn’t recognize any of the actors playing the younger roles, although I recognize ALL of the ones playing the older generation: Mary Steenburgen, Sissy Spacek, Allison Janney, Viola Davis, and Cecily Tyson. Can’t wait. Even if it’s disappointing, which is often the case, I still think I’ll see it.

So: final recommendation. Buy it! I think this WILL be one I will want to re-read (re-hear?) again, particularly after or maybe before the movie comes out.

(Editorial note:  Written by Susan, posted by Ann)

What Susan's Reading Now (And Why)

Welcome, Chairman Ann, to the wonderful world of eBooks. We’ll expect a pithy comparison of Kindle to Nook by the end of next week, at the very latest. I put my wordy (per usual) review of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks in my response to Bethie’s last post, so I’ll move on to current books.

The book group is doing The Help next week. It’s waiting for me on my Kindle in audio form, but I’m doing my usual procrastinating, so haven’t started it yet. In the meantime, I have been bouncing around reading Books of Consequence and Books of Inconsequence, alternately.


Books of Consequence: A very interesting novel with a nonfictional feel called Left Neglected, by Lisa Genova. The author has a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Harvard and is obviously putting her studies to good use. The basic bones of the story have to do with the impact of a traumatic brain injury on the quintessential Type-A superwoman: workaholic, mother of 3, torn between the demands of both roles and convinced she’s failing at both. She crashes her car on a rainy morning as she’s on her way to work, late for a meeting and held up by a traffic jam; to make good use of her time, she fishes out her cell phone to review her email, loses control of her car, and wakes up 8 days later, with a good chunk of her right brain damaged. She has a condition called “left neglect” (scientists among us: I think this is sometimes called Hemispatial neglect, also called hemiagnosia, hemineglect, unilateral neglect, spatial neglect, unilateral visual inattention,[1] hemi-inattention [1] or neglect syndrome, according to the Gospel of Wikipedia). She can no longer see anything to her left and cannot feel anything on the left side of her body. Otherwise, her sight is fine. It’s just that there’s only half the field to see, and it’s unlikely things will improve. She can’t read because she sees only half the page, if people stand on the left side of her hospital bed, she can’t see them, when she puts on makeup, she only puts it on the right side of her face because there IS no left side to see. When she forces herself to position her left arm so it’s within the right side of her sight line, she recognizes things like her wedding ring or her watch, but she can’t figure out why they are on someone else’s arm/hand. The book was recommended to me by someone who thought it sounded like what has happened to my dear friend Ben—Bethie, you may have missed this but he had a massive stroke last fall and now is “blind” except that he can see perfectly well in the instant he’s looking but the messages don’t reach his brain, so in a second, it’s gone. He can’t retain anything he’s seen. Dorothy and Garrett are turning up this weekend, and as my local medical consultants since Bethie left us behind, will know whether this diagnosis is accurate or not. In the meantime, and unrelated to Ben’s situation, it’s a fascinating book.


Books of Inconsequence: I have mentioned that the library’s stash of eBooks and audio books is fairly limited at the moment, so I am kid of stuck with books I might not be desperate to read. Last week, I read Blacklist by Sara Paretsky; haven’t read her in years. It was entertaining, not great. And then I read a young-adult book written by Wendy Lichtman, someone I met briefly when I was 18 and she was the best college friend of my high school best friend. Fast forward 47 years and she reappears as a Berkeley writer. She's doing a series of books called Do the Math with a 14-year old girl who solves mysteries based on mathematical principles. Pretty entertaining—did we not predict that the next genre of mysteries would be mysteries with pre-teen detectives? We are so on-trend, as Nina Garcia would say, condescendingly.


The worst Book of Inconsequence is Barbara Walters’ autobiography (hey, it was free), called Auditions. Don’t even bother. The End.


(editorial note:  written by Susan, posted by Ann)