Bragan reads everything in 2015, part 4

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Bragan reads everything in 2015, part 4

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1bragan
Oct 1, 2015, 11:50 am

Well, here we are in the last quarter of the year -- although I'm not entirely sure how that happened! -- and it's time for one last new thread to round the year out. (Continued, for the record, from here.) It's looking iffy for my stated goal of reading everything in 2015, but I will continue to press on!

We start October off with a book that is at least appropriately titled for the month that ends with Halloween:

106. The Transitive Vampire: A Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed by Karen Elizabeth Gordon



This grammar guide's quirky gimmick is that the example sentences are all dark and supernatural-themed, Victorian-flavored, vaguely erotic, or just plain weird. (E.g., "To nuzzle flagpoles is her secret desire," "If I die first, will you tuck me into my casket?" and "The werewolf had a toothache.") This is at least more interesting than the standard "John gave the ball to Mary" stuff, but it didn't necessarily work all that well for me. If anything, it's kind of distracting, and it doesn't make up for the fact that the grammar lessons themselves are very dry and focused more on providing names for all the possible parts of a sentence than on teaching you how to use them well. Plus, unsurprisingly, there are points upon which it gets overly pedantic. There are definitely better, and livelier, grammar guides out there. Still, it'll be worth hanging on to in case I need to quickly look up the difference between a participle and a gerund, or if I ever meet a Goth in need of grammar lessons.

Rating: 3/5

2wandering_star
Oct 1, 2015, 5:49 pm

Amazing.

One of my prized possessions is a "Practical English Grammar" published in China in 1979, ie right at the beginning of the opening up to the West. Opening it now at random, here are a few of the sample sentences:

He always sides with the oppressed and the exploited.

This was a great blow to social imperialism.

In any society in which classes exist class struggle will never end.

If we hadn't followed Chairman Mao's revolutionary line, we wouldn't have won such victories.

3SassyLassy
Oct 1, 2015, 7:13 pm

if I ever meet a Goth in need of grammar lessons
What a great thought! I think I need that book and wandering_star's book just for the curiosity shelf.

4bragan
Oct 1, 2015, 8:13 pm

>2 wandering_star: Now, there's a book that shows its origins! I suppose at least the vampires feel less propagandist. :)

>3 SassyLassy: It is definitely a curiosity, whatever else it might or might not be.

5bragan
Oct 7, 2015, 12:52 pm

107. Fragment by Warren Fahy



A group of scientists filming a sea-going reality TV series comes across a remote, unexplored island where life has been evolving in isolation practically since the Cambrian Explosion, producing lifeforms unlike those seen anywhere else on Earth. They, and the folks who come after them, then proceed to do all the usual sorts of things for this kind of novel: making interesting discoveries, getting eaten by monsters, starting love affairs, blowing things up...

This was more or less the right kind of book for a busy vacation: readable and undemanding, with some moments of mildly exciting action. I can't remotely call it a good book, though. It's way too full of thoroughly predictable developments, "as you know, Bob" dialog, and descriptions that read like the author was envisioning the Hollywood movie he hoped would be forthcoming, complete with product placements. Not to mention the absolutely ridiculous bad guy. I also get the impression that the author doesn't quite understand how television works. He's better on the science, but even then, the scientists in the book seem to think that researching the island's lifeforms is mostly a matter of putting them in a cage with more familiar animals and watching them fight.

The critters themselves are interesting, though, and a lot of thought has clearly been put into imagining them and their history. There are also a few really excellent drawings of several of them, which helped a lot in envisioning it all.

Rating: 2.5/5

6FlorenceArt
Oct 8, 2015, 1:51 am

I'm pretty sure I won't read that book, but your review made me smile!

7bragan
Oct 9, 2015, 12:23 am

>6 FlorenceArt: Thank you! You're really not missing much. :)

8bragan
Oct 9, 2015, 11:41 pm

108. Buried in Books: A Reader's Anthology edited by Julie Rugg



A collection of snippets and quotes related to books and reading, taken from both non-fiction works and novels, from the contemporary to the very old. A wide variety of opinions are represented, from the celebratory to the snobbish (and not excluding some sexist comments about women readers from men of less enlightened times). A surprising number are simply paragraphs in which a book or two happens to be mentioned, without having anything much to say about them, which seemed a bit out of place. Still, the overall effect is midly charming, even if I did sometimes wish I were just reading some of the works it's quoting instead.

Rating: 3.5/5

9bragan
Editado: Oct 13, 2015, 7:25 pm

109. Firestarter by Stephen King



In the 1960s, Andy McGee volunteered to be the subject of a psychological experiment in which he was injected with an experimental hallucinogenic substance. He got two things out of that experience: a meeting with the woman who would be his wife, and an ability to influence people's minds. Now, he and his wife (who received some minor telekinetic abilities) have a daughter whose abilities far exceed either of theirs: she can start fires with her mind. And the evil government organization that originally ran the experiment is very, very interested in that little girl.

This was an OK read, not King's best and not his worst. It lacks any of the sense of creepiness that he sometimes does so well, but, although it's not exactly a taut novel, it also lacks the bloat that characterizes a lot of his later work. There are some nice, well-done details about the way the characters experience their psychic abilities, but other, larger, aspects of the story are far less convincing. And the whole premise has a slightly tired, entirely unoriginal feel to it that's unusual for King, although I suppose it was less of a cliche in 1980, when the novel was first published.

Rating: 3.5/5

10dchaikin
Oct 15, 2015, 8:04 pm

I seem to remember a movie on Firestarter, except I don't think I ever saw the movie. I only remember advertisements. Anyway it makes sense that it feels less original now that it might have then...or is it just leas fashionable, so to speak?

11FlorenceArt
Oct 16, 2015, 4:28 am

Yes, I think the movie was called Carrie. Or it was called Carrie in France maybe.

12RidgewayGirl
Oct 16, 2015, 4:32 am

>11 FlorenceArt: No, Carrie is a different King novel. Firestarter was made into a movie starring Drew Barrymore as a young girl. Carrie was made into a movie twice. An excellent version starring Sissy Spacek and a terrible, terrible version starring Chloe Moretz.

13.Monkey.
Oct 16, 2015, 6:33 am

>12 RidgewayGirl: You're also forgetting (the entirely forgettable) 2002 remake. It starred Angela Bettis, as a 30 yr old woman playing a 17? yr old girl. :|

Anyway, it's about a bullied girl with telekinesis. Not related to Firestarter.

14bragan
Oct 16, 2015, 12:06 pm

I've never seen the movie version, although now I'm thinking it might be interesting to sometime. Drew Barrymore at that age seems like a pretty good choice for the role.

>10 dchaikin: I'm not sure about "less fashionable." If anything, I'd say the opposite. The whole "evil government organizations covering up and/or exploiting extraordinary stuff" really has become quite a cliche, and I don't think it's one that's gone out of fashion yet. I mean, they are reviving The X-Files...

>13 .Monkey.: There are maybe some similarities between Firestarter and Carrie, though. I kept thinking of Carrie while reading Firestarter, actually, mainly because I expected it to have a similarly destructive ending

15dchaikin
Oct 16, 2015, 8:58 pm

it was just an idea, based on your comment that the whole premise has a slightly tired, entirely unoriginal feel to it that's unusual for King, although I suppose it was less of a cliche in 1980, when the novel was first published. I thought was it really more original then? Surely not (this was my thought, it could be completely wrong). While I don't think the evil government is out of fashion, the way one deals with that in stories has some timestamp aspect to it.

16bragan
Oct 16, 2015, 10:13 pm

>15 dchaikin: Surely not entirely original then, but maybe a bit less done to death? I don't know, I'm probably not the best person to judge, as I was young enough in 1980 that pretty much anything might have seemed fresh to me then.

17bragan
Oct 17, 2015, 8:15 pm

110. Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie



This is book three in Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch series. I loved the first two volumes and could hardly wait to get my hands on the conclusion, and I'm pleased to say it didn't disappoint. Admittedly, it did start off a little slow -- although, fallible as my memory is, I appreciated the time it spent recapping the events of the second book at the beginning -- but from there it unfolded towards a satisfying ending, with a lot of great little moments along the way. I'm actually rather impressed with how well Leckie pulls that conclusion off. Fifty pages from the end, I was wondering how in the world it would be possible to wrap the entire series up in any remotely effective way before we ran out of pages, but it all fell into place beautifully.

Even if I am pleased with this as an ending to the series, though, I think there's still plenty left that could be done with this world and these characters, and I'm holding out hope that Leckie might be willing to give us more of them sometime.

Rating: 4.5/5, although I admit that's more a rating for the trilogy as a whole, than just for this installment.

18bragan
Editado: Oct 22, 2015, 12:52 pm

111. The Only Woman in the Room: Why Science Is Still a Boys' Club by Eileen Pollack



Eileen Pollack grew up as a bright, curious child who was very interested in science, then went on to be one of the first women to graduate from Yale with a physics degree, in the 1970s. But by the time she received that degree, she had come to feel discouraged and out-of-place, and instead of going on to become a theoretical physicist, as she'd planned, she switched to a career in writing, a field in which she felt more welcomed. This isn't an uncommon sort of story, even today. Men still outnumber women in fields like physics, and far more women than men who start out studying these subjects fail to go on and pursue them as a career.

So, this is a very real, important issue that merits a lot of discussion, and I think Pollack has some good things to say about it, but overall I found this book frustrating. Because the bulk of it consists simply of Pollack telling us, in great detail, her life story. Said story is certainly illustrative of some of the experiences that women studying STEM subjects have, and does provide a look into one woman's feelings and perceptions about trying to enter a male-dominated field, and in that it's valuable, but spending two thirds of the book recounting this story (and a fair bit of the rest looking back on it) harms the book considerably, in my opinion. When it comes to complex, subtle effects like the ones that discourage women from pursuing science, one person's story is never going to give you a clear, definitive picture. Indeed, just reading her story, it's depressingly easy, if one is so inclined, to dismiss many of Pollack's negative experiences as being specific to her life, her psychology, her experiences, rather than indicative of a wider, still-persistent social problem.

There's also the problem that, in making so much of this about her personal narrative, she is, inevitably, putting that narrative out there as representative. Which... Well, I should say here that I am also a woman who grew up, twenty years after Pollack, as a nerdy little girl interested in science, got an undergraduate degree in physics at a college where men still massively outnumbered women, and then didn't actually become a scientist. And some of the experiences she recounts are eerily similar to mine (right down to enthusing over the same children's SF book as kids), but my perceptions and responses to a lot of those experiences were very different from hers. Because of course they were; every woman's experience is her own. Focusing on only one person's experience, I think, glosses over that entirely too much.

But, more than that, there are ways in which I'm genuinely uncomfortable with Pollack and her story representing me, or women in general. Specifically, there is a recurring motif throughout her narrative about how she was motivated to continue her studies by having crushes on various professors, wanting to please and impress them because of that, and harboring hopes of sparking romantic interest in them. This pattern apparently began with her high school debate coach, a man to whom she became close in ways that most people today would probably see as inappropriate, began a romantic relationship with while still in her teens, and probably would have married if he hadn't eventually admitted he was gay. About this man, she says, "Every girl who ends up majoring in English instead of physics does so because she has a teacher like Barry Talkington." Which is wrong in so many, many ways that I can't even articulate them all and find myself just sputtering incoherently when I try. That's not an isolated, out-of-context comment, either. At one point, she actually offers up the thought that one of the reasons why young women are more likely to major in literature than physics is because English teachers are easier to fall in love with. Which... Aaargh. OK, Pollack's experiences are her experiences, and a culture that, in the 60s and 70s, encouraged women to think about everything in their lives in terms of whether they'd encounter and attract men who are good marriage material is surely part and parcel of the problems she faced. But I am just not OK with this as a general representation of what women are like and what motivates us in our studies. I'm not OK with that at all. Maybe I'm too hung up on this one particular detail, but I think that's what happens when one lets one's one personal story stand in for everyone else's experience the way that Pollack does here.

The book works a lot better in the final few chapters, when Pollack, having finished telling her own story, actually talks to other women and examines some statistics and starts looking at the bigger picture. I just wish that the entire book had taken that approach, with her own experiences scattered throughout as a way to illustrate a larger point or to make the statistics seem more personal, rather than essentially writing a memoir with some broader discussion tacked on. A memoir, that, to be brutally honest, feels like it was written more as a therapeutic outlet for an author who really needed to get her own story out than because it's the best way to show us why science is still a boys' club.

Rating: 3/5

(Note: This was a LibraryThing Early Reviewers' book.)

19SassyLassy
Oct 22, 2015, 3:38 pm

That sounds so disappointing. It also raises the question of whether attitudes like hers contribute to the reluctance of men in the male dominated STEM fields to admit women. How can you just get on with the job with such silliness in the room?

20bragan
Oct 22, 2015, 3:52 pm

>19 SassyLassy: It's such an incredibly difficult, complex, touchy topic.

I really don't want to blame Pollack having the feelings and experiences she did, or for being honest about them. I think we're often far too quick to blame women for that sort of thing, and surely that itself is part of the problem. But I admit that I had to struggle with that as I read the book.

21LolaWalser
Oct 22, 2015, 4:30 pm

>19 SassyLassy:

I'm sorry, but I have to say I find that comment as bad as the book bragan described. It's not up to "men" to "admit" women anywhere--they are not "guardians of reason" by a long shot--and even if Pollack's inclinations were quantifiably present among women in science (I'm one of those and I've never heard any female--or male--colleague say that about women), it would still say nothing about women in general.

And there are all kinds of silly reasons men as well as women pick up subjects and even enter professions, this is not the only, nor, at least in my experience, the most common brand at all.

22bragan
Editado: Oct 22, 2015, 5:42 pm

>21 LolaWalser: It's very true. Much as I'm bugged by Pollack giving off the sense that she's attributing her own idiosyncratic (and, to me, somewhat distasteful) quirks to women in general, men can and do bring worse kinds of "silliness" into the room. Often kinds that make it hard for women to just get on with their jobs, but of course nobody suggests that that means men should be kept out.

I do worry that it's very easy to get all baby-with-the-bathwater and dismiss the real, genuine concerns and complaints of women like Pollack just because they show up in association with some less-palatable attitudes. In that sense, I might wonder if she's hurting more than she's helping. But, y'know, it's not remotely OK to use the existence of those attitudes as an excuse to exclude women, and, even if I wish she'd written the book differently, it's not reasonable to blame Pollack if men do use such excuses. The fact that I found myself fighting not to do that repeatedly while reading the book disturbs me.

23LolaWalser
Oct 22, 2015, 9:26 pm

>22 bragan:

If I understood you correctly, this woman (btw, how far did she go, grad school or just undergrad?) hasn't spent a day working as a scientist, so I'd say that her experience is utterly insignificant to us.

24lilisin
Oct 22, 2015, 9:46 pm

>18 bragan:

Interesting review (and conversation) about a book I'm likely never to read but whose topic does concern me.

Interestingly enough my science career was inspired by intelligent women and then almost derailed by women. In high school I was surrounded by smart girls who were my friends and I thought it was so neat how good they were at these cool looking subjects so I aspired to do the same. I ended up pursuing chemistry in college which unfortunately ended up being the wrong path as I was better in physics but I didn't know any girls in physics. In grad school, the my class was split evenly between guys and girls and so were the following classes. (At least this was the case for organic chemistry). However I went through hell as the girls in my class were utter bitches to me gossiping about me and spreading rumors about me behind my back. What in my life was so interesting to them, I still don't know, but they made life and lab miserable for me and so I left with my masters and said I would never work in a lab again. Lo and behold I followed my dream at 30 by moving to Japan and now I'm working in a lab again. Funnily, lab is a lot more tolerable when not everyone hates you. Strange how that works.

On that note though, I've never had any negative feedback from men. My quantum professor, he even continues to lament to this day that I never became a quantum chemist so I definitely even had positive feedback.

However, not holding a PhD, I don't hold a position of "power" in the lab so perhaps that allows me to go along unchallenged (by men and women alike). A friend of mine who does hold a PhD in theoretical chemistry (which is more male-dominated) is often mistaken, or rather, is taken for the secretary and will be asked for the PhD scientist at which she has to say in a stern voice that that would be her.

In any case, that's my experience in the field of science. And bragan, interesting to finally discover that you are a woman! It is so difficult to tell the gender of LT members.

25bragan
Oct 22, 2015, 9:50 pm

>23 LolaWalser: She got a BS in physics, then switched fields. Aside from some minor undergraduate projects and some summer internships, she never really did do science. But the whole point she's making is that there are social and educational factors that work against women going on to become scientists, and the fact that there aren't more women than there are in fields like physics surely is significant.

26bragan
Oct 22, 2015, 10:10 pm

>24 lilisin: Everybody's experiences are so different. In my own case, I never felt that teachers did anything but encourage me in science and technological fields precisely because I was female, but boy did the kids in elementary school and junior high teach me that it wasn't socially acceptable to be smart and nerdy. Which mainly led me to the conclusion that I was never going to be acceptable and should attempt to be invisible instead, which surely did me no favors in life. At the time, I never thought much about there being anything gender-related about it, although in retrospect that seems a bit naive to me. And I can see now how I also internalized the idea that anything related to being a girl was not for smart, nerdy me, that there was an either/or dichotomy between being a science brain and actually thinking of yourself as female. I'm afraid I picked up some unhealthy attitudes towards and stereotypes about people who are girly, which I am now trying to undo.

These days, I actually wish someone had discouraged me from studying physics, not that I probably would have listened. I went into it for a lot of unrealistically idealistic reasons, but the truth is, I never had the makings of an astrophysicist. I really, really should have studied computer science instead.

27janemarieprice
Editado: Oct 22, 2015, 10:20 pm

"Every girl who ends up majoring in English instead of physics does so because she has a teacher like Barry Talkington." - I have no words...lots of verbal diarrhea but no words. But interesting review. It's unfortunate how many things often push people off a track they have interest in, and I agree with you that I think it's an important topic.

ETA: I can relate to the idea that it wasn't socially acceptable to be smart or interested in school. I never thought about it as a gender issue, but I wonder how my male friends found things. We've never really discussed that particular aspect of growing up.

28bragan
Oct 22, 2015, 10:31 pm

>27 janemarieprice: I know, right? I actually bookmarked that page and kept going back to boggle at it, but I never got any more able to form coherent words in response to it.

And, yeah, there are so many things, often very subtle things, or small things building up over time, that can put people off. One generalization Pollack makes that I think, sadly, probably does have some real truth to it is that it can be a lot easier to undermine a woman's confidence than a man's, when it comes to STEM subjects, even when they're both equally smart and equally good. If only because men get to see a lot of examples of men being successful at it and are less likely to question if it's something that's for people like them.

29RidgewayGirl
Oct 23, 2015, 3:53 am

My daughter is heading for a career in the sciences (physics is very much her best subject) and I'm hoping she's stubborn enough to withstand the possible pitfalls. She's already been told by a boy in her class that she talks too much and she shouldn't answer so many questions.

I think that there is a false competition introduced among women against each other - with fewer women in the field, it can be seen as "there's one space for a woman, and I'm going to get it" rather than seeing it as a competition among everyone. This is changing, but slowly, along with the idea that to be a scientist, you can't also like traditionally feminine things. I was a philosophy major (a field with a poor male/female ratio) and there was a fair amount of that -- with the girlfriends of the phi majors wearing make-up and pretty clothes to parties and the few phi majors who were women pointedly not wearing make-up and pretty clothes. There was one woman who did, but it was my perception that she was not taken as seriously - which may just as easily have been my own insecurities telling me this. And I very much hope that that does not hold true anymore.

30LolaWalser
Oct 23, 2015, 11:26 am

>25 bragan:

the fact that there aren't more women than there are in fields like physics surely is significant.

Absolutely, but this woman's opinions on why it is so, given your review and the fact that she merely got an American undergrad degree and never worked in the field, surely aren't.

There are NOT too few women in sciences because they don't find there enough material for romantic involvement or people to "seduce" them into it, if that's--as it appears--her conclusion.

I want to add that I see nothing wrong with getting into something, be it a hobby or serious study, for almost any reason, including romantic attachment to another person--the important thing, what counts, is what makes you stay with it.

31LolaWalser
Oct 23, 2015, 11:34 am

>29 RidgewayGirl:

She's already been told by a boy in her class that she talks too much and she shouldn't answer so many questions.

Ha! So have I! Tell her she's doing great so far. :)

32bragan
Oct 23, 2015, 2:26 pm

>29 RidgewayGirl: That's something you kind of see in Pollack's memoir, too, this weird, illogical sense of resentment she admits to sometimes having felt on seeing another woman entering or succeeding in physics, like it makes her less special. It's an ugly bit of psychology, but perhaps understandable when you've sort of had to build your self-esteem around being "the only woman to..."

"The idea that to be a scientist, you can't also like traditionally feminine things" is a particularly insidious one, I think. It's one I'm afraid I bought into without ever examining it very much for a long, long time, and it's definitely got to be one that works against women going into science. Because, gosh, surprisingly enough, some women do like traditionally feminine things, and that actually says nothing whatsoever about how smart or dedicated they are.

>30 LolaWalser: Well, I certainly don't agree with her opinion on the stupid "romantic involvement" thing, although to be fair, that's not actually her conclusion as to why women don't go into or stay with science more often, as she also talks about lots of other less stupid reasons. (Lack of encouragement, lack of role models, being socialized to be less competitive than men, the perception that a dedication to science is incompatible with having the kind of social life many young girls tend to want, etc.)

And, yeah, I do agree that whatever motivates you is fine (short of a mad scientist ambition towards world domination, I suppose), it's her projection of her own motivations onto women in general that's not at all fine.

But then, probably I'm not allowed to have opinions, on this subject, given that I only got an American undergraduate degree and haven't worked in the field (except in a supporting capacity). ;) No, seriously, I think a female undergraduate science washout is a reasonable person to have opinions on why there are so many female undergraduate science washouts! To the extent, that is, that any opinion is valid when it's based mostly on your own anecdotal experiences, which, of course, is my main problem with the book.

>31 LolaWalser: Amen to that! Here's hoping she never stops.

33LolaWalser
Oct 23, 2015, 5:29 pm

>32 bragan:

No, seriously, I think a female undergraduate science washout is a reasonable person to have opinions on why there are so many female undergraduate science washouts!

I don't think one qualifies as a "washout" unless one actually tries to have a career. Getting a degree is the least of it--tons of people get degrees in fields they never actually enter, for various reasons. In biomedical sciences, I'd say realisation that one doesn't like science all THAT much is tops. Lots of others, especially in recent years, actually plan from the start to use the scientific degree to boost some other interest or plan of action--MBAs, scientific illustrators, programmers etc.

But as far as this woman is concerned, perhaps I misunderstood what weight she gave to her romantic requirements in order to be motivated. I thought it bothered you so much because that was her main motivation.

As for American undergrad degrees, I mention that not because they are absolutely wanting in comparison to other, but because, for one thing, the system allows for much wider choices, sometimes so much so the students end up with far shakier foundations in the main field of study than they ought to; for another thing, it makes it easier for a student not to commit themselves to a subject completely. That's why the mere fact of an American undergrad diploma, in absence of any attempt to pursue a career based on that diploma, tells me nothing about how serious someone is or was in their endeavour to become a scientist.

34bragan
Oct 23, 2015, 5:42 pm

>33 LolaWalser: I don't think one qualifies as a "washout" unless one actually tries to have a career.

Well, that was my word, not hers. And probably an unfair one, really. Regardless, it is true that a higher percentage of women than men start out studying physics with the intent of making a career of it, and then don't. I think the reasons behind that are very much worth considering.

perhaps I misunderstood what weight she gave to her romantic requirements in order to be motivated. I thought it bothered you so much because that was her main motivation.

Ah, yeah. I getcha. Well, it does seem to have been a big motivation for her, the way she describes it, but she's not actually saying it's the biggest motivation for all women. It's the fact that she seems to be saying it's even relevant to all of us that I object to. I admit, it probably bugged me out of proportion to its significance in the book.

That's why the mere fact of an American undergrad diploma, in absence of any attempt to pursue a career based on that diploma, tells me nothing about how serious someone is or was in their endeavour to become a scientist.

Very true, but Pollack's intent when she started out was very much to forge a career based on that, and she's definitely not the only woman to get turned aside from that intention. I think the fact that there are so many reasons why someone might get that undergraduate degree and then not really pursue it makes the question of why women do that more than men very, very difficult to pick apart -- which is a big part of the reason why I think one anecdotal story doesn't help very much. It certainly doesn't mean it's not a legitimate question, though.

35LolaWalser
Oct 23, 2015, 6:08 pm

>34 bragan:

It's the fact that she seems to be saying it's even relevant to all of us that I object to.

Well, no wonder, I object too.

Pollack's intent when she started out was very much to forge a career based on that

Would this be around the age of eighteen? I think it's justified to have reservations about what people intend, no matter how passionately, at eighteen. From the most trivial, boring-logical point of view, you simply aren't going to know things at eighteen that you'll have learned four years later, to say nothing of what happens once you start looking for a job. Maybe your math game isn't that hot after all. Maybe you HATE lab work. Maybe rats scare you. Maybe you've discovered a never-suspected passion for Turkic languages or Mayan archaeology or landscaping or whatever.

I think it's only natural for MOST people who start out thinking about a career in science to fall off the track at some point. And, while it's true women specifically have additional obstacles to contend with, men don't invariably come through either.

36bragan
Oct 23, 2015, 7:42 pm

Would this be around the age of eighteen? I think it's justified to have reservations about what people intend, no matter how passionately, at eighteen.

I do agree. I know that my own decision that I wanted to go into physics, at the age of 18 -- actually, at least a couple of years earlier than that, as pressure to decide what you want to do about college starts midway through high school -- turned out to be ill-advised. Pollack, for whatever it's worth, seems thoroughly convinced that if she'd only been encouraged a bit more and felt a bit less out of place, she would have continued on with it and been completely brilliant at it. Is she right about that, or just kidding herself? I have absolutely no idea. Do plenty of men also discover that what they majored in isn't what they can or want to do with their lives? Absolutely. Does that fact mean it's not worth looking into why, statistically, more women fall off that track and whether there are ways of removing those obstacles so that women who could be productive and happy making a career in science will be more likely to do so? Absolutely not. My only wish is that the author had taken a different approach towards making this point, in part because, well, look how easy it is to let discussions about the details of her life and her not-all-that-meaningful-in-themselves experiences become the focus of the conversation, rather than the broader issue.

37avidmom
Oct 23, 2015, 9:21 pm

This is a very interesting discussion. One of the younger people in my life just switched her major from math to engineering after being very encouraged by her friends and a male teacher at the private university where she's attending. It's what she wanted to do but felt afraid to pursue it (she thought it might prove too difficult for her.) I thought it was interesting that her male teacher encouraged her (and went to bat for her in major ways to get her the classes she needed.)

38bragan
Oct 24, 2015, 12:36 am

>37 avidmom: Good for him (and for her)!

39rebeccanyc
Oct 24, 2015, 12:46 pm

Very interesting discussion indeed. I was biology major (in the 70s) but I didn't want to be a biologist after working in a lab and the field over summers. I didn't like the idea that science requires you to find an area that nobody else has studied, no matter how small. So I become a science editor and got to look at the bigger picture and broader areas.

40bragan
Oct 24, 2015, 4:56 pm

>39 rebeccanyc: It's a little bit gratifying, I must say, to find so many science-y women here at Club Read. :)

41NanaCC
Oct 24, 2015, 10:01 pm

>39 rebeccanyc:. I had a double major, Rebecca, in phy. ed. and biology. But, it was expected that I would teach, rather than anything else. This was in the mid 60s. One of my granddaughters is a high school senior this year. She goes to a magnet school that specializes in math, engineering and science. She isn't sure yet what she wants to study, but it will be in one of those areas. She is trying to narrow down her college choices now. I am looking forward to watching her journey.

42bragan
Oct 25, 2015, 3:07 am

112. Welcome to Night Vale: A Novel by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor



This is the much-anticipated novel -- or, dare I say, hopefully, first novel? -- based on the astoundingly popular podcast, Welcome to Night Vale. If you're unfamiliar, Welcome to Night Vale takes the form of a community radio program broadcast from the little desert town of Night Vale, a place where the bizarre is ordinary, the horrific is mundane, and all conspiracies theories are true, a place that, as one of the characters puts it in this novel, "is mostly made of the unexplained."

I'm a huge fan of the podcast and its compelling blend of surrealism, comedy, horror, humanity, heart, and bleak but strangely comforting existentialist philosophy. So I couldn't wait to get my hands on this book. The actual experience of reading it turned out to be a little weird, though -- in different ways than the ways in which Night Vale is weird -- because reading a Night Vale story in novel format at novel length turns out to be very different from listening to a half-hour podcast in which, as often as not, the plot gets resolved offscreen during the weather. (Which is music. No, I don't know why. It's Night Vale.) I think, because of that, I kept expecting things to happen faster than they did.

But never mind that. Overall, it was enjoyable, and very much in the spirit of the podcast, while also doing things that the podcast itself couldn't do as easily. It focuses primarily on two minor characters from the show: Jackie Fierro, the pawnshop owner who has been nineteen for a very long time, and Diane Crayton, the PTA mom with the shapeshifting son. And it's interesting to see Night Vale from their point of view, and to get a look a ordinary life in that extraordinary town without it being filtered through the reporting of a not necessarily entirely reliable narrator. It also answers a long-standing mystery from the series, namely the identity of the weirdly forgettable Man in the Tan Jacket, and provides some brain-breaking insights into the way that time works, or fails to work, in Night Vale. I'm not entirely sure how much these answers and insights actually make sense, but that, perhaps, is as it should be.

I should add that while there are plenty of familiar characters and little continuity references here for fans of the show, the book is deliberately written in such a way that one could pick it up and enjoy it entirely on its own. So if you're curious about Night Vale, but, for whatever reason, don't like the podcast format, this might make for an alternative worth checking out.

(PS: ALL HAIL THE GLOW CLOUD.)

Rating: 4/5

43bragan
Editado: Oct 26, 2015, 3:17 am

113. Tenth of December by George Saunders



This is an absolutely fantastic collection of short stories. I'm actually feeling a little frustrated at myself because I find I'm completely unable to articulate, even to myself, just how and why Saunders' writing is so good. If I say that his writing is simple on the surface but digs down deep into human nature, that makes it sound kind of boring and pretentious, doesn't it? And completely fails to convey how very readable it is, or how laced with humor. But saying that makes it sound sort of pleasant and light, and it's definitely not that at all. So... I don't know. I guess I'll just say that Saunders clearly understands human beings, with all our strengths and weaknesses and loves and self-delusions and absurdities, and that, man, he can write. And also that I really need to go find everything else he ever published sometime soon.

Rating 4.5/5, but it edges very close to the elusive perfect score.

44bragan
Editado: Oct 26, 2015, 5:55 pm

114. The Wonderful Future That Never Was by Gregory Benford and the editors of Popular Mechanics.



A compilation of snippets of text and pictures, all of which were originally published in Popular Mechanics between 1903 and 1969, all attempting to predict the future (which, of course, is now our present, or even our past).

It's an irresistible topic. I don't know about you, but I feel an endless fascination with the prognostications of the past, a never-ending amusement at its failures and surprised delight at its successes. Books like this always send me into a highly entertaining fantasy in which I somehow travel back in time, smugly inform the writers about what actually happened, and then demonstrate the awesome technological magic of my smartphone.

All that having been said, though, I found this book a little disappointing. A lot of the snippets aren't actually all that interesting, and many of them get a bit repetitive after a few pages. (Yes, I get it, we were all expected to be commuting to work by air by now!) SF writer Gregory Benford's introductions to the book and the various chapters (on future cities, communications, transportation, etc.) don't actually add much, and are poorly edited, to boot. Plus, while the book is fun to flip through -- it's glossy and colorful -- the layout isn't great for reading straight through.

Rating: 3/5, although, honestly, it's that high only because of the subject matter, not the execution.

45Nickelini
Oct 26, 2015, 6:53 pm

>16 bragan: Surely not entirely original then, but maybe a bit less done to death? I don't know, I'm probably not the best person to judge, as I was young enough in 1980 that pretty much anything might have seemed fresh to me then.

I read Firestarter in 1981 and thought it was amazing at the time. I wonder what I'd think of it now.

46Nickelini
Oct 26, 2015, 6:56 pm

>42 bragan:. Hmm, interesting. I think I don't need to read this. I was listening to Night Vale for a while, but it's kinda dropped off my interest list. It didn't feel like it was going anywhere (I think I'm 12 episodes in?).

But of course, All Hail the Glow Cloud!

47AnnieMod
Oct 26, 2015, 7:07 pm

>42 bragan:

Ah. That was the podcast I could not remember the name of. Thanks for the reminder!

48Nickelini
Oct 26, 2015, 8:31 pm

>1 bragan: I think I like the idea of the Deluxe Transitive Vampire better than the actual book. I did come around to like the same author's The Disheveled Dictionary: A Curious Caper Through Our Sumptuous Lexicon

49bragan
Oct 26, 2015, 8:46 pm

>45 Nickelini: Maybe you should re-read it and report back!

>46 Nickelini: I think it has done a lot more going-places since episode 12. But then, I've also seen quite a few people who've grown disenchanted with it recently. Not me, though. I like it when it's got a feeling of forward momentum, and when it doesn't. It hits a lot of my buttons really well, either way.

>47 AnnieMod: You are welcome! (To Night Vale!) :)

>48 Nickelini: Yeah, liking the idea better than the actual book describes my own reaction to it, too. I think I'll probably skip her other book. I've already got enough books of that sort to last me for quite a while.

50bragan
Oct 27, 2015, 8:50 pm

115. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson



The old Blackwood house was once home to a large family, until most of them were poisoned one night at dinner. Now there are three of them left: pleasant, domestic Constance, who was acquitted of the murders but can no longer bring herself to leave the house; young Mary Katherine (aka Merricat), much given to magical thinking and wishing people dead; and their old Uncle Julian, who survived ingesting the arsenic, but has never been the same since. The family's relations with the nearby village have never been the same, either, as they are hated, and gawped at, and feared.

It's a weird, weird book. A wonderfully creepy one, too, but it's a kind of creepiness that, well... creeps up on you. It starts out as a gentle sort of creepiness, more intellectual than visceral, but as I reached the last page, I was literally shuddering. What's odd is that I'm not sure entirely why I was shuddering. It feels like there are depths here that my conscious mind only dimly understands. Uncomfortable depths, hinting at uncomfortable realities.

It's pretty darned brilliant.

Rating: 4.5/5

51avidmom
Oct 27, 2015, 9:21 pm

>115 bragan: Oooh... you've pushed me over the edge! My library has this available as an e-book and if I wasn't so deep into East of Eden, I would get it now!!!

52janemarieprice
Oct 27, 2015, 10:00 pm

50 - Nice, sounds like perfect Halloween reading.

53bragan
Oct 28, 2015, 12:02 am

>51 avidmom: I haven't read East of Eden yet -- it's on my TBR shelves -- but, yeah, even Shirley Jackson probably isn't worth interrupting Steinbeck for. Maybe after that. :)

>52 janemarieprice: It did feel quite appropriate to the season, in a very non-traditionally-Halloweeny way.

54rebeccanyc
Oct 28, 2015, 9:29 am

>50 bragan: As I've said elsewhere, I LOVED We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Delightfully creepy, as you say.

55bragan
Oct 28, 2015, 11:45 am

>54 rebeccanyc: I'd seen a lot of praise for it, so I was looking forward to reading it... What's interesting is that it turned out to be great in entirely different ways than whatever it was I went into it expecting.

56SassyLassy
Oct 28, 2015, 4:00 pm

>21 LolaWalser: Just getting back here. Unfortunately in my case, and later than Pollack's, it was men who did the admitting. Despite agreement over academic qualifications and recommendations, I was told by the male Head of Graduate Admissions, also Head of the Department in which I was interested, that his department had never admitted a female graduate student and he saw no reason to change that policy as long as he was head. Needless to say the policy changed when he retired, but by that time I had moved on to a different area of study, despite that one being my real passion. This happened at a well regarded Canadian university.

This is not to make this experience representative of what others have experienced, rather to clarify why I used the word admit, probably without consciously thinking of the reasons. I would say though that the fact that that particular department had never had a female graduate student does say that at least some other women out there had the same rejection, but may not ever have questioned the committee as to why.

57bragan
Oct 28, 2015, 4:42 pm

>56 SassyLassy: Ugh. Just... ugh. At least it's harder for men to get away with a statement like that these days. As frustrating as things might still be, that's definitely progress.

58dchaikin
Oct 28, 2015, 9:59 pm

>56 SassyLassy: That's terrible! I feel bad for you that you had to go through that.

Betty - What a great thread you have going here. Hope you've gotten over the shuddering. Your review of Tenth of December is one of those kind reviews that just unique to you. Very encouraging too.

59bragan
Oct 28, 2015, 10:56 pm

>58 dchaikin: Thanks! At least, I hope that's "unique" in a good way. :) And, yes, I believe I am done with the shuddering now, but I do think that book is going to linger in my brain for a little while.

60LolaWalser
Editado: Oct 30, 2015, 12:48 pm

>56 SassyLassy:

That's too bad. However, I do want to make clear that such things don't justify thinking "men" somehow own science (or jobs in general) and women aren't beholden to some standard of behaviour or opinions specifically palatable to "men" as "men".

I'm not saying you think this, just that that's the way your remark about silliness came across.

If anything, precisely because they dominated the professions for so long and still do, and because cultures everywhere give males special dispensation for poor behaviour in regard to sexual matters, it's indubitably men who are more often indulging in "silliness in the room".

Even when the room is the Oval Office... :)

61bragan
Nov 4, 2015, 12:02 am

116. Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen



The word "zoonosis" refers to diseases in animals that "spill over" to infect humans, and a lot of familiar and frightening diseases qualify, from Ebola to AIDS to influenza to SARS. David Quammen looks at all of those and more in this thorough examination of zoonoses. He traces the history of individual diseases, delves into the science of disease transmission and evolution, talks to many people engaged in researching the subject, visits the sites of outbreaks, and accompanies scientists into the field. It's all very detailed, sometimes a bit technical, and very calm and measured (despite that sensational-sounding "next human pandemic" thing in the subtitle and the frankly terrifying cover), but also written with style and entirely comprehensible even if you don't know much about medicine or biology. It's also pretty fascinating. I will say that 520 pages on the subject does seem like a bit much, but everything's interesting and informative enough that I honestly can't imagine what I might advise cutting out.

Rating: 4/5

62Nickelini
Nov 4, 2015, 1:18 am

520 pages is pretty long for a book of that type, so good job! What animals did SARS jump from? Last I heard, they didn't know, and then that disease sort of disappeared. Is it still around?

63bragan
Editado: Nov 4, 2015, 1:36 am

>62 Nickelini: Apparently what animal serves as the reservoir for SARS has been a big, huge puzzle, but the answer is probably bats. Actually, if I have learned anything from this book, it's that, when it doubt, you should bet on the bats.

And while SARS seems to have kind of fizzled, the scary thing about zoonoses is that they hang around in other species, lurking, possibly to make a reappearance in the future.

64RidgewayGirl
Nov 4, 2015, 8:01 am

Catching up (again) and just wanted to second your endorsement of Tenth of December. I was lucky enough to have gotten that as an ARC, so I read it some time ago and there are certain stories that are still vividly in my mind. Saunders is some writer, and his earlier short story collections are also worth reading. That story about the dog, gah, it's still in my head.

65bragan
Nov 4, 2015, 11:16 am

>64 RidgewayGirl: I had already read the title story in a collection elsewhere, and barely felt like I needed to re-read it, it was so memorable.

66rebeccanyc
Nov 4, 2015, 12:30 pm

>61 bragan: Years ago, I read The Coming Plague by Laurie Garrett, so I'm not sure I'm up for another book on somewhat the same subject, even though I enjoyed Quammen's The Song of the Dodo, which I also read years ago.

67bragan
Nov 4, 2015, 1:52 pm

>66 rebeccanyc: The Coming Plague looks interesting, but, yeah, I think one long, detailed book on that subject is enough for me for right now, too.

68ELiz_M
Nov 4, 2015, 8:30 pm

>64 RidgewayGirl: I thought "the dog story" in Tenth of December was perfect.

69bragan
Editado: Nov 6, 2015, 12:08 am

117. Hot Six by Janet Evanovich



This is book number six in Evanovich's series about yet-to-master-her-job bounty hunter Stephanie Plum, and anyone who's read this far into the series will undoubtedly get precisely what they expect from this installment. There's a rather thin plot -- this time featuring Stephanie's bounty-hunting comrade and sometime lust object Ranger being suspected of a murder -- that's wrapped up pretty quickly at the end, but not before lots of wacky hijinks occur. They're mostly the same kinds of hijinks that always occur, but I find that, so far, at least, I'm not minding the formulaic nature of these books at all, because they're just so gosh-darned fun. Heck, the running joke about cars constantly being destroyed by, because of, or around Stephanie started out funny, got a bit old after a couple of volumes, and then just kept going until it got funny again.

I wasn't super-thrilled with the one minor character who's a little bit of a wacky cultural stereotype. Or with the love triangle stuff, because, seriously, why does there always have to be a love triangle? But the former wasn't too bad, and the latter was mercifully low-key as such things go, and neither kept me from enjoying this for the ridiculous, thoroughly entertaining brain candy that it is.

Rating: 4/5

70bragan
Nov 9, 2015, 10:20 pm

118. Defender by C. J. Cherryh



Book five in Cherryh's Foreigner series, in which two groups of humans and one group of aliens deal with messy politics, a push for technological advancement, and a lurking external threat. This one is set something like seven years after the previous volume, and features some shocking, well-kept secrets finally coming out. It feels very much like a transitional part of the story, a setting-up for what comes next, but despite that, and despite the fact that even for this series the ratio of things actually happening to people sitting around talking is very low, I found it a surprisingly fast and engaging read. Maybe that's because those were some darned interesting shocking secrets. Or maybe I've just gotten thoroughly into the groove of Cherryh's leisurely, decades-spanning storytelling. Either way, I'll be interested to see where it goes from here.

Rating: 4/5

71bragan
Nov 11, 2015, 7:04 pm

119. Sleights of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals About Our Everyday Deceptions by Stephen L. Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde (with Sandra Blakeslee)



The authors, a husband-and-wife team of neuroscience researchers, became interested in stage magic because they were curious about whether the tricks that magicians use to fool people could be useful in setting up psychological experiments. But they quickly came to realize that magicians actually have a remarkable amount of practical knowledge of how human perception works, and that there's a lot for scientists to learn from studying their art. So they flung themselves into the world of magic, learned the tricks of the trade, and, with this book, they report back on what they've discovered in the intersection between science and sleight of hand.

It's a pleasantly written, very readable book, with just the right amount of personal touch. The writers are fun people to hang out with for a couple hundred pages, and clearly enthusiastic about every aspect of their subject matter. It's completely impossible not to smile when they describe the charmingly dorky brain science-themed stage act they themselves developed and performed.

There is a bit less technical depth than I'd expected going in. There are, in the early chapters, some explanations about how the firings of our neurons makes up our picture of the world, but it's not all that detailed, and for the most part the book sticks to fairly broad descriptions of how perception, attention, and memory work. A lot of that stuff I was already familiar with, but it was extremely interesting to view it through the lens of magic, and to view magic in light of the science. Also interesting were the discussions of how certain kinds of magic tricks are done, and why the nature of the audience's brains allow them to work. The authors, by the way, are scrupulously careful to label each such explanation with a spoiler warning, according to the magician's code of ethics, which says that no one should learn the secrets of a trick by accident. But, personally, I find that learning how this stuff is done enhances, rather than spoils, my appreciation for the magician's art.

Definitely recommended for people who are interested in human perceptions and/or magic, but want to read something that's not too technical about either subject.

Rating: 4/5

72bragan
Nov 14, 2015, 9:19 am

120. The Armageddon Rag by George R. R. Martin



It's the early eighties -- both the setting of the book and its publication date -- and ex-hippie writer Sandy Blair is hired to pen an article on the bizarre death of a band manager who was a big shot in the sixties, mainly due to his involvement with a legendary band called the Nazgûl. As Blair investigates, he discovers that there's some weird occult stuff behind the murder, and that the past is not nearly as dead as he thought.

It's an odd, interesting book, one that starts out looking like it's going to be a murder mystery, and ends up as a sort of dark fantasy. It's pretty gripping on both counts; I found myself turning pages compulsively at the beginning, and then again at the end. It's also about the power of rock 'n' roll, and on that level, it's downright amazing. Describing music in words is an incredibly difficult task, but Martin does it so well that I feel like I'm right there listening to it. Then I feel bad when I realize I'm not, and can't. Because, man, I want to hear this band; they're described so vividly that it's actually a little difficult to remember that they're fictional.

Beyond all of that, though, it's also a book about the idealism of the sixties, and the question of where all that idealism went. Which worked a little less well for me, probably because I was born in 1971. In theory, I find the question of how the flower children of the sixties became the "me generation" of the eighties both sociologically and psychologically fascinating. In practice, there is apparently a limit to how much tolerance I have for Boomer navel-gazing, even when it's well-written, thematically interesting Boomer navel-gazing, and I do feel like the book bogs down in places as the protagonist stops to revisit everyone he knew from the sixties to see what they're doing now. I imagine, though, that someone who was actually there (whether they remember it or not) might feel very differently.

Rating: 4/5

73rebeccanyc
Nov 14, 2015, 10:49 am

>71 bragan: Sleights of Mind sounds intriguing but I have so many books on my TBR I'll have to just enjoy your review.

74bragan
Nov 14, 2015, 9:48 pm

>73 rebeccanyc: I recommend it if you ever get your TBR down, but I'm glad if I can tide you over in the meantime.

75bragan
Nov 15, 2015, 5:01 am

121. Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut



Mother Night is the fictional memoir of one Howard W. Campbell, Jr., written as he sits in a cell in Israel awaiting trial for war crimes. Campbell, you see, was recruited by the United States to infiltrate the Nazi propaganda department so that he could insert coded messages into radio broadcasts, but he was such an effective propagandist that he probably did more harm than good.

As a story, there's not really much to this. But as an examination of the nature of human good and evil and the question of whether we are more defined by our actions or our intentions, it's nuanced, thought-provoking, and unsettling.

Rating: 4/5

76arubabookwoman
Nov 18, 2015, 6:38 pm

I just finished Spillover--a very chilling book, despite the fact that he presents it all in a calm and logical way and even reminds us that, for example, some other books on, say Ebola, (The Hot Zone), tended to sensationalize matters. And yes--it's probably a good idea to stay away from bats. What I took away from the book is that what has saved us so far from a devastating pandemic is that most of the emerging diseases have not be easily transmittable from human to human.

Enjoyed the discussion about women in science--my two daughters are both scientists. My younger daughter is getting her Ph.D in genetics, and loves pure research. My older daughter is a medical doctor specializing in developmental pediatrics who does some clinical work with patients and some research, primarily into autism. Of course, neither of these areas are physics. I love to read science fiction, I am in awe of anyone who can actually understand quantum mechanics or the speed of light or whatever. Neither of my daughters has indicated to me that they have experienced any negativity in their fields due to their gender. I will say that I entered law school in 1970, right on the cusp of the huge changes wrought by the early feminist movement. I was one of only 5 or 6 females in my law school class, and more than one male student asked me whether I felt bad for taking a man's place in the class, since I wasn't going to have to support a family (!!???!!). There were several professors who were what I would say was openly hostile to female students including me. It was gratifying to return to my school 5 years after I graduated to recruit, to find that more than half the class was female.

77bragan
Nov 19, 2015, 11:29 am

>76 arubabookwoman: I was kind of amused, actually, by the way Quammen manages to disparage the sensationalism of The Hot Zone without ever actually taking a disparaging tone about it. I suspect my own main takeaway from reading the book is that all those apocalyptic-plague SF novels I've read are, in fact, disturbingly plausible.

And I've been really interested to see everybody's personal responses in response to the women-in-science conversation, and hear their personal stories. However imperfect things may still be, it's certainly clear that we've come a long way in the past few decades!

78bragan
Nov 22, 2015, 3:49 pm

122. In a Different Key: The Story of Autism by John Donovan and Caren Zucker



The "story of autism" told here is perhaps more accurately described as the story of society's responses to autism, its conceptualization of what autism is and what it means, and its treatment of those with the condition. In that, it covers a lot of ground, from the story of the first child to be given the autism label in the 1930s, through the era of hiding the impaired away in institutions and blaming their problems on insufficiently loving mothers, to new (and often rather disturbing) forms of therapy invented in the 50s and 60s, to the rise of advocacy groups, to the paranoia about vaccines, to the modern neurodiversity movement. Throughout, it intersperses factual, big-picture content with descriptions of the experiences of various parents, doctors, and activists that read a great deal like fiction. I personally think maybe the authors lean a little too much on the latter as a narrative device, but I can't deny that it does help to highlight the human side of the subject. And, like, the rest of the book, those sections are well and smoothly written. (It is, however, interesting and a little disconcerting that, up until the final chapters of the book, none of the voices we hear actually belongs to anyone with autism.)

While this is an impressive overview of the topic (and a fairly hefty book), it's surely not the definitive work on autism, or even about every way in which autism has interacted with the larger society. I know that the vaccine controversy, which is the part of this that I knew the most about going in, is portrayed well overall, but leaves out many details that interested readers might want to fill in by reading other works that explore the subject in more depth. Still, it's at least a very good starting point, and I have to give props to the authors for the way they remain calm and even-handed throughout even the most difficult or controversial parts of their story, maintaining exactly the right balance of sympathy and objectivity and treating all of their subjects -- even the ones who violently disagree with each other -- with respect.

Rating: 4/5

(Note: This was a LibraryThing Early Reviewers book.)

79arubabookwoman
Nov 22, 2015, 9:14 pm

Have you read Neurotribes? I have that on my Kindle (unread), and am wondering if there's much overlap.

80bragan
Editado: Nov 23, 2015, 11:45 am

>79 arubabookwoman: I haven't, although having seen people mentioning it in a few other LT reviews of In a Different Key, I'm wondering if I should.

81valkyrdeath
Nov 24, 2015, 8:49 pm

>42 bragan: I saw the Night Vale book in the shop and I liked the title and cover, but had no idea it was based on a podcast. I'm tempted to check it out.

>71 bragan: Sleights of Mind has been on my wishlist for a long time, so I'm glad to see a positive review of it. As an amateur magician it appealed to me straight away, and I've always found the psychological aspects of magic to be some of the most interesting.

>75 bragan: Glad you liked Mother Night. I was surprised how much I enjoyed it when I read it.

Somehow I forgot to star this thread when you moved to part 4 so I've had a lot of catching up to do!

82bragan
Nov 24, 2015, 9:33 pm

>81 valkyrdeath: Hey, maybe you should check out the Night Vale novel. I do think it's reasonably accessible even if you don't know the source material. And who knows, maybe you'll like it well enough to want to listen to the podcast, too.

I suspect that if you have some experience as an amateur magician, you're likely to know as much about the magic aspects of Sleights of Mind as I did with the neuroscience stuff (having already read a lot of neuroscience books), but I suspect it'll still be just as worthwhile coming at it from that perspective.

Anyway, glad you found me!

83bragan
Nov 27, 2015, 12:53 am

123. Putting on the Ritz by Joe Keenan



This is a sequel to Joe Keenan's Blue Heaven, but you don't have to have read that first to enjoy it. (You should, because it's great. But you don't have to.) As with the first one, the narrator, Philip Cavanaugh, finds himself going along with a very bad idea proposed to him by his friend Gilbert. This time, it involves two feuding billionaires, a high-society gal desperately dreaming of a glamorous singing career despite her less-than-glamorous voice, and a little amateur espionage. It then spirals wildly out of control from there.

The plot itself is lots of fun (even if parts of it do make me cringe a bit for some of the characters), but it's the execution that's truly brilliant. Keenan's writing is marvelously, hilariously witty; there were long stretches where I found myself laughing out loud at least once per page. It feels a little bit like P. G. Wodehouse, if Wodehouse had combined Jeeves' erudition and Bertie's tendency to get drawn into wacky schemes into one single character. And made him a gay songwriter in 1990s New York.

Rating: 4.5/5

84bragan
Nov 28, 2015, 12:19 am

124. Feynman by Jim Ottaviani and Leland Myrick



A graphic novel biography of the quirky, brilliant, much-beloved physicist Richard Feynman. Although I'm not sure "biography" is quite the right word, as the text consists, as far as I can tell, entirely of snippets of Feynman's own words, talking about his life and his work and delivering general-audience lectures on science. They're good words, and the illustrations are fairly charming, but, structurally, it doesn't all hang together in a particularly coherent fashion. I did enjoy reading it; as a little dip back into the world of Feynman, it made me smile. But I think that, unless you're really, really into the graphic novel format, you're better off going to the source material, especially Feynman's two collections of thoughts and anecdotes, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! and What Do You Care What Other People Think?, neither of which I can recommend highly enough.

Rating: 3.5/5

85dchaikin
Nov 30, 2015, 10:04 pm

I still need to read Surely You're Joking. But I agree about the Graphic biography. I thought it didn't really manage to capture him, somehow.

86bragan
Dic 1, 2015, 11:45 am

>85 dchaikin: I think if you've already read Feynman, it'll remind you nicely of some of the great stuff about him, but I wouldn't recommend it as an introduction to the guy.

87dchaikin
Dic 1, 2015, 1:04 pm

You know, I actually did use it as an introduction to Feynman. It wasn't a good one.

88bragan
Editado: Dic 7, 2015, 10:41 pm

125. Explorer by C. J. Cherryh



Book six in Cherryh's Foreigner series.

It's funny... Almost nothing at all happened in the previous book, Defender, but I found that one a surprisingly quick read. Whereas lots of important stuff happens in this one, but, at least for the first 2/3 of the book, it dragged very badly for me. That might be partly down to my mood or something, but I think a lot of it was that, finally, the characters have come to a place where they can learn the answers to a lot of the fundamental questions of the series so far, but Cherryh continues to keep both them and us in a near information vacuum for a good, long chunk of the novel. Eventually, connections are made, action happens, progress happens, and things pick up a lot, but the wait to get there was kind of frustrating.

Rating: a possibly unfair 3.5/5

89bragan
Dic 7, 2015, 11:23 pm

126. The Myths That Stole Christmas: Seven Misconceptions That Hijacked the Holiday (and How We Can Take It Back) by David Kyle Johnson



Christmas is a pretty great holiday, but, let's face it, there are ways in which can be kind of... dysfunctional. Like finding yourself involved, year after year, in a tedious, wasteful exchange of gifts nobody actually wants. Or the annoying phenomenon of people judging each other over how much of a religious focus they give the holiday, or raising a ridiculous stink over "the war on Christmas." David Kyle Johnson thinks we could do Christmas better if we were less focused on gift-buying and more on charity, less interested in policing others' attitudes towards the holidays, and less locked into some of the habits and traditions (many of them artificially manufactured) that have accumulated around the holiday.

To that end, he address a series of "myths" that he sees as shaping people's ideas about Christmas in negative ways. His discussions of these myths range from explorations of historical fact, to speculation, to personal opinion. The myths themselves include the ideas that our Christmas traditions are ancient and unchanging (if perhaps a bit more commercialized these days) and fundamentally all about Jesus, that there is a "War on Christmas," that the story of Santa Claus comes from St. Nicholas (and is thus also ancient and essentially Christian), that it's an unquestionably good thing for children to believe in Santa, and that the yearly frenzy of Christmas spending is good for the economy.

I found the historical explorations of Christmas stories and traditions and where they came from fascinating, even apart from their relevance to the argument that Christmas, despite the name, is not a holiday that has ever belonged strictly to Christians. The economic reasoning and the author's pronouncements about how Christmas can and should change, however, felt a bit less solid to me. And his argument about why it's bad for kids to believe in Santa Claus seemed more than a little overblown (and I say that as someone who actually agrees with him).

And even though he genuinely bends over backwards trying to avoid it, I still sometimes found his tone a little... Curmudgeonly? Supercilious? It is, admittedly, difficult to point to why. Maybe it's just that, as he points out, being critical about Christmas is almost taboo and instantly predisposes people to think of you as as a Scroogey killjoy. Maybe even I, who have never considered myself a paragon of Christmas spirit, am not immune to that.

Regardless. It's an interesting book, with some really cool examinations of where our current conception of Christmas comes from, and whether you agree with the author or not, he raises some topics that are worth thinking about.

Rating: 3.5/5

(Note: This was a LibraryThing Early Reviewers book.)

90bragan
Dic 9, 2015, 3:13 pm

127. The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley



This short novel from 1919 is a sequel to Morley's Parnassus on Wheels, but it's not entirely necessary to have read that one first. It does feature the characters from the first book, who have now settled down and started their own bookstore in Brooklyn, but ends up focusing a bit more on a young man who shows up to try to sell them advertising and ends up hanging around for various reasons, most of which involve their attractive new shop assistant.

So, there's a bit of romance, which is amusingly written (although the complete lack of depth on the part of the female half of the pairing is a little disappointing). There's also a sort of mystery plot, involving a book that keeps mysteriously disappearing and reappearing, which is reasonably entertaining, although not exactly too difficult to figure out. But mostly the appeal of this book is in the often very droll writing style, and in bookseller Roger Mifflin's amusing, passionate, entirely charming ramblings about books and the noble bookseller's calling. (Admittedly, you probably have to be a certain kind of book person to be charmed by them, but I most definitely am.) There are also some extremely poignant thoughts about the recently-ended WWI and the hope for peace in the world -- which are made all the more poignant by the fact that neither Mifflin nor Morley could have known what was to come in the next few decades, but I, looking back from the future, do.

Rating: 4/5

91bragan
Dic 10, 2015, 9:22 pm

128. Darwin Slept Here: Discovery, Adventure, and Swimming Iguanas in Charles Darwin's South America by Eric Simons



Eric Simons -- apparently for no other reason that than he was young and bored and thought Charles Darwin was interesting -- set out to travel through the various parts of South America that Darwin visited during his journey on the Beagle.

The resulting travelogue is... okay. Simons' adventures aren't really all that adventurous, and while he writes with real enthusiasm about Darwin's scientific curiosity and his appreciation for the places he passed through, he doesn't exactly manage to bring Darwin's adventures vividly and compellingly to life. I did learn a few interesting tidbits about Darwin, and about South America, but none of it felt particularly deep. Maybe that's enough for a fairly short, quick-reading book like this one, but I think I was hoping for something just a little bit more.

Rating: 3/5

92.Monkey.
Dic 11, 2015, 3:14 am

>91 bragan: Well that's disappointing! I actually just bought a Darwin book from the UCP "Great Chicago Book Sale," Darwin's Sacred Cause: Race, Slavery and the Quest for Human Origins, here's hoping it's much better! xP

93bragan
Dic 11, 2015, 1:31 pm

>92 .Monkey.: I thought some of the most interesting and actually informative parts of Darwin Slept Here involved Darwin's thoughts on slavery, so that sounds like it might be a very worthwhile read. I'll be interested to hear your thoughts on that one when you get to it.

94.Monkey.
Dic 11, 2015, 2:04 pm

I will certainly be posting when I read it, though it may not be this coming year. It has to get to my mom first (should be soon), and then from her to me - and there's a whole box along with this one and a whole stack already waiting to be sent. Oops? >.> So it may not make it over here for a while, lol.

95bragan
Dic 11, 2015, 2:20 pm

>94 .Monkey.: Believe me, I know all about books one keeps not getting to for years. And in my case, it's usually not even because they go to my mom. Well, sometimes it is. I'm currently really hoping I'll have cleared off some space on the TBR shelves for that space opera series I lent her before she gives it back to me. But not usually. :)

96.Monkey.
Dic 11, 2015, 2:37 pm

Hahaha yeah a great many of my books sit around for a while before being read! But these were such interesting titles on such a good sale that I couldn't resist them! xD

97bragan
Dic 11, 2015, 6:20 pm

>96 .Monkey.: Well, of course you couldn't! You wouldn't want to regret not buying them later.

98.Monkey.
Dic 12, 2015, 4:16 am

Exactly!!! XD

99bragan
Editado: Dic 12, 2015, 3:05 pm

129. The Returned by Jason Mott



The dead are returning. They're not ghosts, not zombies, just our departed loved ones -- or perhaps reasonable copies thereof? -- suddenly reappearing, all over the world. One of the Returned is Jacob, an eight-year-old boy who died fifty years ago and is suddenly once again part of the lives of his now-elderly parents, who'd thought they'd lost him forever.

It's a fantastic premise for a novel, and I was eagerly looking forward to reading it. Unfortunately, the execution disappointed me greatly. There were, perhaps, tiny hints here and there of the book it could have been -- something subtle and deeply emotionally complicated and full of a sense of the mysteries of life and death and love -- but it just never quite got there for me, and I found that terribly frustrating.

I think a big part of the problem is that I just never found any of the characters emotionally convincing. For example, the boy's mother, Lucille, is deeply religious and starts off the novel ranting about how the Returned are tools of Satan and a sign of the End Times, only to immediately do a one-eighty and declare her no-longer-dead child a miracle sent by God when he shows up on her doorstep. Now, that's not a change of heart that's hard to believe in, but the problem is that we're never given any sense of what's going on in her mind as that happens, or how she justifies it to herself (or fails to), or how it feels in any really deep way. Even though we spend a lot of time in that character's head throughout the course of the novel. And she's not the only one I felt that way about, either.

And then there's the child himself. I think my sense of unease about this story really started when he shows up after having been dead for fifty years and immediately throws himself at his parents yelling "Mommy!' and "Daddy!", with absolutely no acknowledgment that they've aged so much they should be nearly unrecognizable to him. He's like that through the entire book, too. A hollow, depthless, plot device of a character. Which actually could have worked really well, if there were a sense that we were supposed to find him disturbing and uncanny, or if we were used really, really well as a mirror to reflect his parents' emotions. But if that's what Mott is going for, he doesn't exactly pull it off.

Mostly, what the story ends up focusing on is a program put in place by the government to round up the Returned in camps, in part because so many people fear and resent them. But, while we're told about this fear and resentment, the reasons for it never felt particularly well-grounded. And, as social commentary, this storyline feels kind of shallow and over-familiar. I couldn't help thinking, the entire way through, how much better the TV show In the Flesh handled similar themes with actual zombies as the returned-from-the-dead characters.

The writing didn't exactly thrill me, either. We'd get paragraphs or pages of slightly artificial-sounding dialog and okay but uninspired prose, then it'd seem like the author would suddenly realize he was supposed to be a "literary" writer and would throw in some odd, fancy turn of phrase or metaphor that, often as not, just would not work. (My favorite: "'Colonel Willis!' Lucille said, calling the man's name like shouting for a tax auditor." I mean... what?)

Sigh.

Rating: 2.5/5. And, OK, I feel kind of bad about that. It's not an awful book, I guess. I'm probably punishing it simply for not being the book I wanted to read. But, man, it was really, really not the book I wanted to read.

100baswood
Dic 12, 2015, 7:20 pm

Shame about The Returned

I am wondering if the book is a spin off from the hit French TV show "Les Revenants" which is being aired in England as The Returned.

101bragan
Editado: Dic 12, 2015, 8:43 pm

>100 baswood: There's a US TV show based on the book, apparently, which I haven't seen. (And probably won't, either, as the aspects of the book which seem most easy to adapt to television are the ones that feel most cliched to me.)

I hadn't heard of the French series, but having quickly looked it up on Wikipedia, it looks like a very different story. Possibly a more interesting one.

102baswood
Dic 13, 2015, 3:55 am

I get confused with The Returned and the American series The Leftovers. I am persevering with the leftovers and have got the last two episodes of the second series to watch and I still don't know if I like it.

103bragan
Dic 13, 2015, 2:42 pm

>102 baswood: I think the American series based on The Returned, the book, is called Resurrection. Maybe that's because the English-language version of the other French show had already used The Returned and they wanted to avoid confusion. Which I'm thinking they may have failed at, if so. :)

I haven't seen The Leftovers, either. Mainly, I think, due to my habit of not bothering with TV shows until they've been on for a couple of seasons and people start reporting back to me that they're worth watching. (This may be part of the reason why my DVD queue on Netlix is so large.)

104bragan
Dic 15, 2015, 4:43 am

130. The Devil & Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession by David Grann



This fascinating collection of articles poking into strange and sometimes very dark corners of life is some of the best, most compelling non-fiction I've read in quite a while, and I think the only way to give any sense of it all is to describe what the individual pieces are about. So here's what they're about:

* The death of one of the world's leading Sherlock Holmes experts, under circumstances so bizarre and mysterious they seem like they belong more in a Holmes story than they do in real life.

* A man who was convinced of setting a fire that killed his three small children, and whose case seems absolutely open and shut until you learn some truly horrifying things about arson investigation.

* The exploits of an adult man who repeatedly pretended to be a teenage boy, eventually taking on the identity of a child who had been reported missing years earlier and living with his family for months.

* A firefighter suffering from amnesia after being buried under rubble during 9/11 and haunted by the question of whether or not be behaved courageously.

* A marine biologist in a desperate, obsessive search for a live giant squid.

* The "sandhogs" of New York City who are slowly, laboriously digging a new tunnel through which to channel the city's water supply. It's taking decades, and meanwhile... Well, let's just say that learning about the state of the city's current water supply infrastructure has made me glad I don't live in NYC.

* An elderly bank robber who apparently could not bring himself to retire from the stickup biz.

* A once-great baseball player who refuses to abandon the game, or his hope of returning to the majors, even though his career has fallen as far as it is possible to go.

* The Aryan Brotherhood prison gang and the truly horrifying level of organized violence they've managed to perpetrate from behind bars.

* The astonishing levels of Mafia influence in Youngstown, Ohio, and the career of a transparently corrupt politician that many people there somehow managed to view as a hero.

* A former Haitian warlord with a job selling real estate in Queens, much to the distress of his neighbors, many of whom fled Haiti because of him in the first place.

Somehow, Grann, in his clean, detached journalistic style, makes most of that even more interesting than it sounds. Which is kind of impressive.

Rating: 4.5/5

105.Monkey.
Dic 15, 2015, 7:43 am

Ooh that sounds interesting!

106japaul22
Dic 15, 2015, 8:29 am

Interesting. Is there a common thread through the stories? Just wondering how the author chose what he included.

107bragan
Dic 15, 2015, 8:53 am

>105 .Monkey.: I do recommend it!

>106 japaul22: There are some obvious repeated themes -- obsession and crime being the big ones -- but I don't know that there's one unifying concept, exactly. The articles were originally published in various places, and there's a note in the acknowledgments about an editor having thought they'd make a good collection.

108rebeccanyc
Dic 15, 2015, 6:51 pm

>104 bragan: I'm a big Sherlock Holmes fan and I'm scratching my head about why he's in the title. What am I missing? The second article you mention, about the arson investigation, rings a bell. Was the article from The New Yorker? I might have read about it there -- or somewhere else.

109bragan
Editado: Dic 15, 2015, 7:48 pm

>108 rebeccanyc: The first article is about the dead Sherlock Holmes expert, and there's a lot about Holmes and Holmes fandom in that one. The "devil" part comes from the final article about the Haitian death squad guy, who people often referred to as "the devil."

I think the arson one did, in fact, originally appear in The New Yorker, and it got a lot of attention at the time it was published. At least, it's the only one of the pieces I'd read before, myself, and I don't usually read The New Yorker, so someone must have linked me to it from somewhere. It was just as interesting, and just as angering, the second time.

110bragan
Dic 16, 2015, 7:29 pm

131. Seven Up by Janet Evanovich



Book number seven in Janet Evanovich's über-popular series about still-not-very-good-at-her-job bounty hunter Stephanie Plum. This time, Stephanie goes after an elderly mobster while also dealing with two missing friends, a visit from her sister, and pressure from all sides about planning a wedding. Also, there's mud wrestling.

The plot is entertainingly ridiculous, maybe even more so than usual, and there are some nicely funny moments. I also like the fact that Stephanie's family is getting a little more development, especially her mom.

I am, however, losing patience with the love triangle thing. Not only is it a cliche, and one that shows every sign of being dragged out for the next umpteen volumes, but it's not doing any favors for the characters of the guys involved. I'm finding them both annoying now, and am especially disappointed by the fact that a character who was perfectly okay for the first few books has become downright skeevy now that he's a love interest. Or lust interest. Whatever.

Rating: 3.5/5, because I'm knocking off half a point for the love triangle.

111dchaikin
Dic 17, 2015, 11:27 pm

Enjoyed catching up. I'm very intrigued by the David Gann book.

112bragan
Dic 17, 2015, 11:52 pm

>111 dchaikin: Thanks! It's a very intriguing book.

113bragan
Dic 19, 2015, 3:53 am

132. Size Matters Not: The Extraordinary Life and Career of Warwick Davis by Warwick Davis



Warwick Davis's career really has been extraordinary. His very first acting gig was on Return of the Jedi at the age of eleven. He was hired just beause he fit into an Ewok suit -- he'd top out as an adult at three foot six and was even shorter then -- and impressed everybody so much they decided to have him play Wicket when the actor who was originally supposed to do it came down with food poisoning. He then went on to star in Willow when he was only seventeen, and has since done all kinds of interesting things, including playing Professor Flitwick in the Harry Potter movies.

Davis talks a lot, in this memoir, about all the amazing projects he's worked on, and about palling around with the likes of George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Val Kilmer, and Ricky Gervais, but he never comes across as egotistical or name-droppy. Instead, every page oozes with charming, forthright enthusiasm. This is a guy who can't believe how lucky he is and how much fun he's having -- except maybe when they're trying to drown him in a storm scene or suffocate him in hot foam costumes on 100-degree days -- and is happy to take his readers along for the ride. He comes across as marvelously likable, funny, down-to-earth, and, despite having suffered his share of personal tragedies, irrepressibly upbeat. It was an utter, utter delight to hang out with him for a few hundred pages, and I'm still grinning after finishing it.

Rating: 4.5/5. It was just that surprisingly delightful.

114.Monkey.
Dic 19, 2015, 5:13 am

That's the kind of autobio I love, definitely interested, he's a great actor!

115bragan
Dic 19, 2015, 5:22 am

>114 .Monkey.: He really is good, and clearly a guy who takes pride in his work as well as having fun with it. (Even if he's in a deliberately bad movie, apparently. I watched some clips of the Leprechaun movies after I finished the book. Wow, are they schlocky. And, wow, is he doing a great job of being gleefully, dementedly evil under a ton of prosthetics while uttering the world's stupidest dialog.)

116.Monkey.
Dic 19, 2015, 5:49 am

Hahahaha I love Leprechaun, I have the whole lot of them on DVD. XD They're hilariously awful, you just have to laugh. I mean the first one did make a sort of effort to be scary, though in a very...um, odd, way, lmao, but after that they knew it was just hokey but they had an audience so they kept just making them worse and worse, hahaha.

117bragan
Dic 19, 2015, 6:28 am

>116 .Monkey.: I'd heard of them, but I'd never seen any. (And was surprised to learn from the book just how many of them got made!) I'm tempted to actually watch them now, but I think that would be best done with bad-movie-loving friends and possibly some adult beverages.

118.Monkey.
Dic 19, 2015, 7:51 am

You could watch the first one safely just for fun, but the rest, yeah, definitely would benefit from cheesy-movie-loving friends, haha.

119dchaikin
Dic 19, 2015, 8:31 am

Wait, the lead actor in Willow was 17 years old?! Fun review.

120bragan
Dic 19, 2015, 9:06 am

>118 .Monkey.: I do have some of those! But they've probably already seen them, and once is probably enough. :)

>119 dchaikin: I know, I was shocked to find that out, too!

121FlorenceArt
Dic 19, 2015, 9:11 am

I had never heard of Leprechaun, now I think I've got to find and watch at least the first one!

122.Monkey.
Dic 19, 2015, 9:22 am

Nah, they're good fun, can watch plenty! Just like the later Chucky movies!

123bragan
Dic 20, 2015, 12:02 am

133. How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found by Sara Nickerson



I'm not at all sure how kids' books are classified these days, but I think you'd probably call this one a middle grade novel. The dust jacket seems to indicate it's recommended for fifth graders and up, and that seems about right to me.

The story features two girls whose father drowned four years ago under circumstance their depressed mother never talks about; a crumbling, spooky mansion their mom has apparently just inherited; and a mysterious hand-drawn comic book about a half-man/half-rat creature and a drowned ghost.

It's well-written, in a way that doesn't talk down to its young audience, the story's interesting and odd, and the snippets of the comic that are integrated into the story are very well-drawn. I kept going back and forth a bit on whether it was entirely working for me or not, though, I think mainly because I wasn't quite expecting some of the slightly surreal aspects of it. Well, that, and I'm not really in the book's target demographic these days. I suspect I would have really liked it when I was 12.

Rating: 3.5/5, but that's from jaded adult me. I would, in fact, recommend it to kids of the appropriate age, if they like slightly weird and off-kilter stories (and aren't too afraid of rats).

124bragan
Dic 20, 2015, 3:03 am

134. The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler



This is the book version of Ensler's popular stage show, in which she talks about, well, vaginas. It features some of her own thoughts, a few anatomical facts, and several pieces based on interviews she did with other women, although it seems as if most of those stories are somewhat fictionalized, or interpreted, or maybe just paraphrased.

And... OK, first off, I have to say, I very much approve of what Ensler's trying to do with this. Like a lot of girls, I grew up with the distinct sense that my genitalia were something dirty and shameful, or at the very least something embarrassing and taboo, an implicit but fairly clear message that that particular piece of human anatomy should not be named, touched, or even thought about more than strictly necessary. And that ain't right. It especially ain't right in a society in which male genitalia come with associations of pride and power. (And other associations as well, of course, but those are definitely there in a way that they're not for women.) Demystifying women's bodies, making a vagina something that's nice to have and fine to acknowledge having, that's a good thing. Ensler also talks about sexual abuse and rape and genital mutilation, and these are also things that should be acknowledged and talked about and not turned away from. So, in principle, I'm all for this.

In practice, however... I have to say, most of it did very little for me. There weren't really any moments where I felt she tapped into something that I, personally, could relate to, and there's a bit too much mysticism and flowery language and weird metaphor for me. My vagina is not not a seat of power, it's not a fragrant meadow, and it doesn't wear a beret. I just cannot make myself take that sort of thing seriously. I did, somewhat to my surprise, quite like the poem about childbirth. But otherwise... Well, maybe it's better if you actually see it performed live. Or maybe I'm just not the right audience for this, whatever anatomy I happen to be possessed of.

Rating: a subjective 2.5/5.

125RidgewayGirl
Dic 20, 2015, 6:54 am

I love your review for The Vagina Monologues!

126bragan
Dic 20, 2015, 7:29 am

>125 RidgewayGirl: Thanks! I actually almost feel bad that I didn't appreciate it more, but, well...

127janemarieprice
Dic 20, 2015, 9:16 am

>126 bragan: I've never liked The Vagina Monologues for the same reasons you state here - I'm just too analytical for that kind of language to work for me I guess. It is interesting performed, but I find since it's such a seminal work it's usually overdone.

128bragan
Editado: Dic 20, 2015, 9:31 am

>127 janemarieprice: It's kind of nice to know I'm not the only one who thinks that.

I imagine it could be much more affecting when performed, but it also seems like it would, in fact, be very, very easy to overdo.

129Nickelini
Dic 20, 2015, 6:17 pm

>124 bragan: Great comments. I've always thought that was one that I should like, but it just seems so not me. Now you've confirmed it, so thanks.

130bragan
Dic 20, 2015, 8:55 pm

>129 Nickelini: There should be a version for women like us, doggone it!

131bragan
Dic 22, 2015, 2:13 pm

135. Little Bee by Chris Cleave



The story of a Nigerian girl who flees to the UK seeking asylum after her village is destroyed, and of a white British woman whose life once intersected with hers in a horrible, violent way.

I kept going back and forth a bit on how I felt about this one. Sometimes Cleave's writing would strike me as beautiful and insightful and perfectly apt, but more often, I'm afraid, it seemed a little overdone, its metaphors a little too obvious, in ways that made it kind of hard to believe in his characters as people and not as symbols animated entirely by the will of their author in order to make a point. Even if it's a good point -- and one that's even more timely now than in 2008 when the book was first published -- that's not exactly satisfying. I'm also not 100% sure how I feel about the ending, although, in fairness, it's hard to imagine how it could have ended in a way that would have avoided that.

(I'm also less than happy with the cover copy, which gives the impression that it's some kind of thriller with an OMG GIANT PLOT TWIST that we're exhorted not to spoil for people. It's not. Even though there are some things that are revealed partway through the novel, it's just... really, really not. Although that, at least, isn't the book's fault.)

Rating: 3.5/5

132dchaikin
Dic 22, 2015, 9:37 pm

Another very entertaining review Betty. You haven't made me want to read Little Bee (even though there is a copy in the house somewhere ) but I was glad to read your take.

133bragan
Dic 22, 2015, 10:42 pm

>132 dchaikin: Thanks! I fear I may have been a little harsh on it, honestly, but that was a hard feeling to shake.

134Nickelini
Dic 22, 2015, 11:53 pm

>131 bragan: I read Little Bee a few years ago for my book club, and I didn't particularly want to read it, but I got a free copy, so grudgingly did. It wasn't as bad (trite, predictable, manipulative) as I expected it to be. I know what you're talking about, but this is one that a few years later has stuck with me. Also, it's good to know what refugees go through when they arrive in the west (which I think was the author's biggest agenda item). So in the end, I rather liked that one.

135bragan
Dic 23, 2015, 12:31 am

>134 Nickelini: I think it did feel a little more manipulative than I expected it to be, and that was a big part of my problem with it? Maybe lower expectations would have helped. I do approve of the author's agenda, and of calling attention to such things, I just wish his presentation of it had felt a bit subtler to me. Or something.

136Nickelini
Dic 23, 2015, 1:05 am

> I agree that it is indeed manipulative -- I just expected it to be more so, and I didn't expect it to be as interesting and well written in the between the agenda parts. And as you say, the agenda is a good one. But more subtly would have been a good thing. I think it comes down to you having higher expectations, and I had very low. "Subtler" is key, I think.

137bragan
Dic 23, 2015, 11:16 am

>136 Nickelini: Mind you, I've always maintained that manipulating the reader -- making us think something or feel something -- is exactly what we want a book to do, so calling a story "manipulative" like it's an insult has always seemed a little odd to me. What it really means is that it manipulated the reader unsuccessfully, or called too much attention to what it was doing in the process. For me, this one definitely did that second thing, at least.

138bragan
Dic 26, 2015, 10:25 am

136. Mission to Mars by Michael Collins



Astronaut Michael Collins of Apollo 11 fame outlines the challenges and rewards of mounting a manned mission to Mars, and describes how it could and should be done. His writing is very clear and readable, and, in the sections where he's talking about why we should go to Mars, he gets downright eloquent. I do wish, though, that he hadn't included the multi-chapter fictionalized account of a Mars mission, or had at least kept it much shorter. In general, I think this sort of dramatization is a temptation that non-fiction writers really ought to avoid. It almost never ends up being as fun to read as it must have been to write.

The main thing to note about this book, though, is that it was published in 1990 -- something I didn't quite realize when I picked it up. That means it is very dated... Although not necessarily in the ways you might think. Technology has marched on a bit, yes, but the basic challenges and necessities of a Mars mission are still pretty much the same. We do know more about both Mars and about the effects of long-term spaceflight on the human body, which are perhaps more relevant. But the most significant thing is how much the political landscape has changed... and this book is very grounded in the political landscape of its time. It's a slightly odd experience to read through all the many, many pages Collins devotes to talking about the Soviet Union -- as a competitor, as a potential (if not fully trusted) partner in space, as a nation with a burgeoning space presence and a shiny new shuttle program -- knowing that even as the book hit the stands the USSR was already collapsing and that nothing would come of those shiny shuttles at all. Also, hey, remember Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (aka "Star Wars")? Remember the first President Bush making all kinds of grand plans (or at least big noises) about getting to Mars? Remember when the International Space Station was going to be called Freedom and be almost exclusively a US project? I almost didn't, to be honest, until Collins reminded me about it all.

Rating: I'm calling this one a 3/5, with the note that it would certainly be higher if I were rating it in 1990.

139dchaikin
Dic 26, 2015, 2:42 pm

How much the world has changed.

I remember Bush senior's call for Mars, but I didn't think anyone took him seriously. I remember it as just an empty statement.

140bragan
Dic 26, 2015, 3:02 pm

>139 dchaikin: Collins was, apparently, skeptical about it, yet hopeful that maybe it could be taken seriously. Too bad...

141avidmom
Dic 26, 2015, 3:23 pm

>136 Nickelini: Hey! I remember that guy from Carrying the Fire. :)

142bragan
Dic 26, 2015, 3:26 pm

>141 avidmom: Yup, that's him! I'd definitely recommend Carrying the Fire over this one, though. And then probably Liftoff.

143bragan
Editado: Dic 30, 2015, 12:55 am

137. The Dark and Hollow Places by Carrie Ryan



Book three in Carrie Ryan's post-zombie-apocalypse YA series.

I thought the first book, The Forest of Hands and Teeth was not bad (and had what may well be the best title of any zombie story ever), but found the second book, The Dead-Tossed Waves, underwhelming. When I finished that one, I thought, y'know, if I didn't already have the third book on my to-read shelves, I don't think I'd bother with it. But I did have it, so I did finish out the trilogy and, well... My instinct when I finished book two was correct. Because this one mostly just annoyed me.

Which is a shame, because I do like the concept and the setting, and there are some very cool little worldbuilding touches that feel like they belong in a much better book. But ye gods, did I get sick of the overwrought, unconvincing, melodramatic teen romance, and the overwrought, unconvincing, melodramatic teen angst. And, yes, I know, these books are aimed at teenagers, so what did I expect? But I guarantee you, I'd have been rolling my eyes at it just as hard, or possibly harder, back when I was a teenager.

Something about the first-person narration irritates me, too. The main character tells us repeatedly all about what she is thinking and feeling and seeing, but she does it in a way that somehow feels entirely too abstracted, and events and emotions that should feel immediate and vivid seem distant and unengaging instead, to the extent that the action often only became at all interesting if I made an effort to picture it as a movie, rather than trying to find any satisfaction in looking out through the character's eyes.

And then there are the flat, cartoonishy evil bad guys...

Yeah. I don't know if there will be more in this series or not, but either way, I'm done.

Rating: 2/5

144lesmel
Dic 30, 2015, 9:45 am

>143 bragan: Oh. That's a shame. I have the first book on my wishlist; and I think it just fell off.

145bragan
Dic 30, 2015, 12:28 pm

>144 lesmel: All three books stand very much on their own, and I thought the first book was by far the best of the three, so if you're interested in reading it, you shouldn't necessarily let me stop you! But I might advise skipping the rest.