detailmuse-ing in 2015

**On to 2016 -- please join me here!**

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Welcome! My reading tends toward contemporary literary fiction, memoir, social history and science-y nonfiction. I especially like debut novels, workplace settings, lush illustrated works and originality of any kind. For more about my recent reading, see my Club Read 2014 thread.

Books Read in 2015:

Fiction
64. Different Seasons# by Stephen King
63. So Long, See You Tomorrow# by William Maxwell
62. Charlotte's Web# by E. B. White
55. True to Form# by Elizabeth Berg
54. Big Stone Gap# by Adriana Trigiani
51. My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout
47. Mothers, Tell Your Daughters by Bonnie Jo Campbell
45. Like Family by Paolo Giordano
43. Thirteen Ways of Looking by Colum McCann
40. Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
37. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins (3) (See review)
33. The Plot Thickens# (3)
29. Little Women# by Louisa May Alcott (4)
28. Goodbye Stranger by Rebecca Stead (3.5) (See review)
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (re-read)
25. Albert Angelo# by B. S. Johnson (3.5)
19. Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont# by Elizabeth Taylor (4) (See review)
13. Satin Island by Tom McCarthy (3.5) (See review)
11. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo# by Stieg Larsson (3.5)
8. A Small Indiscretion by Jan Ellison (3) (See review)
4. The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro (2.5) (See review)

Nonfiction
65. A New Earth# by Eckhart Tolle
61. Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson
60. The Liar's Club# by Mary Karr
59. The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr
58. Everyone Wants to Be Me or Do Me# by Tom Fitzgerald/Lorenzo Marquez
57. Impoverished State of Mind# by Torri Stuckey
56. Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter by Kate Clifford Larson
53. My Degeneration: A Journey Through Parkinson's by Peter Dunlap-Shohl
52. Not My Father's Son by Alan Cumming
50. Rising Strong by Brene Brown
46. Apples of Uncommon Character# by Rowan Jacobsen
44. On Immunity: An Inoculation by Eula Biss
42. The Making of Home: The 500-Year Story of How Our Houses Became Our Homes by Judith Flanders
41. The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food by Dan Barber
39. New York Diaries: 1609 to 2009# ed. by Teresa Carpenter (3.5) (See review)
38. Thunder & Lightning: Weather Past, Present, Future by Lauren Redniss (4) (See review)
36. Out on the Wire: The Storytelling Secrets of the New Masters of Radio by Jessica Abel (4) (See review)
35. What If?# by Randall Munroe (5) (See review)
34. The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer# by Siddhartha Mukherjee (5)
32. Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh (5) (See review)
31. The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo (3.5) (See review)
23. The Seven Good Years: A Memoir by Etgar Keret (4.5) (See review)
22. Social Security for Dummies by Jonathan Peterson
21. Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!# by Richard Feynman (5)
20. The Eureka Factor: Aha Moments, Creative Insight and the Brain by John Kounios and Mark Beeman (4.5) (See review)
18. Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany# by Bill Buford (4.5)
15. Mad Men on the Couch# by Stephanie Newman (3.5) (See review)
14. How Google Works by Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg (4)
12. Less Medicine, More Health: 7 Assumptions That Drive Too Much Medical Care by H. Gilbert Welch (4.5) (See review)
10. The Universe in a Nutshell# by Stephen Hawking (4)
9. Live Right and Find Happiness by Dave Barry (3.5) (See review)
6. A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes# by Stephen Hawking (3.5)
5. Screening Room: Family Pictures by Alan Lightman (4) (See review)
3. Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us# by Michael Moss (3.5)
1. The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves# by Stephen Grosz (3.5) (See review)

Other
49. NPR Classic Driveway Moments
48. The Big Book for Growing Gardeners# by A. Vogel
30. Bellevue Literary Review (Vol 13 No 2; Fall 2013)# (3)
26. Becoming a Graphic and Digital Designer: A Guide to Careers in Design by Steven Heller and Veronique Vienne (5) (See review)
24. Bellevue Literary Review (Vol 12 No 2; Fall 2012)# (3)
17. Rome 2015 by Rick Steves and Gene Openshaw (5)
16. Rome Antics# by David Macaulay (4) (See review)
7. Pogue's Basics by David Pogue (4) (See review)
2. Humans of New York# by Brandon Stanton (5) (See review)

# = read from my TBRs (acquired pre-2015)

2015 Non-book Reading
I’ve taken to going through my magazines and, instead of stopping to read longer articles, I tear them out and save them for later. Then I tend to read a bunch at a time. Some are more satisfying than book-length nonfiction, and I look forward to getting to some dozens of them again this year.

1. The Tampon, A History: the Cultural, Political and Technological Roots of a Fraught Piece of Cotton by Ashley Fetters, theatlantic.com, June 1, 2015

2. "Why a Generation of Adoptees Is Returning to South Korea" by Maggie Jones, The New York Times Magazine, January 14, 2015

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2015 Non-reading
I always intend to memorialize links to interesting a/v, TEDTalks, etc. Here’s a space for them.

Last year, I drafted a shortlist of 11 books I planned to read, and I did read 10 of them -- 6 of which ended up in my overall favorites of the year. I also made a longlist, and though I read only 3 of those 23, 2 of them were also in my overall favorites. So, sticking with what works...

A number of my intended reads are more suited to dipping in and out of, than reading straight through. I’ll probably be reading these over months (or, for the first one, over the full calendar year).

      

✔ New York Diaries by Teresa Carpenter (excerpts from diaries written over the course of hundreds of years, organized by day of the year)

Working by Studs Terkel (collection of oral histories)

Stories of Anton Chekhov (short story collection)

Appetite City: A Culinary History of New York by William Grimes

✔ Apples of Uncommon Character by Rowan Jacobsen (almost an encyclopedia on apples; beautiful rustic photos plus Jacobsen’s terrific writing)

Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History by David Christian

The Open Door: One Hundred Poems, One Hundred Years of Poetry Magazine

And a mid-length list of others that especially appeal:

Fiction
One of Ours by Willa Cather
✔ Albert Angelo by B.S. Johnson
✔ Rome Antics by David Macaulay
The Periodic Table by Primo Levi
The Ladies’ Paradise by Emile Zola
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Nonfiction
✔ Humans of New York by Brandon Stanton
What to Listen for in Music by Aaron Copland
The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert
Power Sex Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life by Nick Lane
✔ The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee
The Snoring Bird: My Family’s Journey Through a Century of Biology by Bernd Heinrich
Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life by Eva Jablonka/Marion Lamb
Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction by Jonathan Culler
Script and Scribble: The Rise and Fall of Handwriting by Kitty Burns Florey
The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century by Steven Pinker
Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose

Happy New Year, MJ.

You have some good ones on your list.

Edited to fix typo.

Great set of short lists. I think you'll like Maps of Time. Look forward to following your thread again this year. I promise to keep up better.

>5 NanaCC: Cheers to you too, hoping some of your grandkids are near enough to get a hug at midnight?

>6 stretch: I still remember how much you liked it. I'm excited to begin.

Hi MJ! Several of your TBRs have tickled my imagination. Looking forward to your comments!

Happy New Year, MJ.

I have already wish listed two of your books above: The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century by Steven Pinker and New York Diaries by Teresa Carpenter.

I have been reading, on and off, and intend to read all of The Country Diaries: A Year in the British Countryside, edited by Alan Taylor. It is a similar type of book, consisting of excerpts from diaries written over the course of hundreds of years, organized by day of the year.

I enjoyed that edition of Chekhov's stories this past year. Looking forward to following you reading once again.

>Suzanne, Edwin, Rebecca -- happy new year! Looking forward to much more Club Read.

>9 edwinbcn: oh VERY interesting! I read two similars (Rural Free from a 1960s Indiana farm; More Scenes from the Rural Life from contemporary upstate New York), both interesting and pleasant and I'm interested in more.

As time goes on I hope you'll have more to say about The Country Diaries. You have piqued my curiosity!

A lot of interesting books on the list. I'm hoping to get around to some Primo Levis that are in the TBR pile this year. I found What to Listen for in Music to be very clear and informative - also good to have around as a reference.

>13 DieFledermaus: welcome! I've started The Periodic Table twice and put it aside because it's ... so good! Partly I want to save it, partly I want to better savor it (really look at the elements to add meaning to their respective chapters).

>13 DieFledermaus: I've had What to Listen for In Music for at least 25 years and have never read it! Maybe I should. The only Primo Levi I've read is The Periodic Table, and that was many years ago; a scientist friend recommended it. And I forgot to mention that I loved Reading Like a Writer (>4 detailmuse:).

The Emperor of All Maladies was possibly my favorite book of 2010. Claire (Sakerfalcon) read it last month and loved it as well. I look forward to your comments about it.

>16 kidzdoc: Hi Darryl, I'm already betting it'll be that for me too. How do I get so distracted by new-and-shiny and keep something this good on my shelves for so many years?!

1. The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves by Stephen Grosz, audio read by Peter Marinker, ©2013, acquired 2014; discovered on rebeccanyc’s thread

{T}he deformities of leprosy were not an intrinsic part of the disease but rather a consequence of the progressive devastation of infection and injury which occurred because the patient was unable to feel pain.

In this collection of case-study vignettes from his psychoanalytic practice, Grosz shows how the inability (or unwillingness) to feel psychic pain causes progressive emotional devastation. He writes well and with compassion, distilling each case to its moment of epiphany and then ending abruptly. Again and again, I felt myself taking in a little psychic gasp at the “aha” moment ... and then feeling frustrated while he went on to the next case before I could exhale. Interesting, if a little unsatisfying.

I worry about the low self-esteem of society today, and the hollow praise given so freely, and appreciated that Grosz suggests we just have to be present with one another:

{S}he talked to the child. But more importantly, she observed, she listened; she was present. Being present builds a child’s confidence because it lets the child know that she is worth thinking about. Without this, a child might come to believe that {an} activity is just a means to gain praise rather than an end in itself.

You've made me very curious, it is now winging its way to my Kindle.

Sounds like an interesting book, MJ. That bit of info regarding leprosy is fascinating. Of course I realize that is not the main subject, but just saying . . .

I'm glad you liked the book, MJ. I had forgotten that I enjoyed it (and had gotten it confused with some other book).

>18 detailmuse:But more importantly, she observed, she listened; she was present. Being present builds a child’s confidence because it lets the child know that she is worth thinking about.

Not just with children but with anybody. So difficult though when the other person does not hear a word you are saying.

The Examined Life sounds quite interesting. Definitely adding that to my list.

Gosh I love your lists. I'm very interested in your response to The Emperor of All Maladies. And you remind me that I really want to read Primo Levy...I came very close to buying a book of his, any book, at a Barnes&Noble...but they didn't have any in stock.

Hi all, happy to spread the word about any book :)

>22 baswood: your comment reminds me of another excerpt I wanted to include but couldn't reduce it to a short quote -- Grosz comments that some people's actions so clearly show you who they are / what their problems are.

>24 dchaikin: I've been so disappointed that B&N stocks so few books outside big sellers, and/or that the one copy of something I do find is often shelf-worn because people think B&N is a library. I so grieve for Borders.

Well, i broke down an ordered his first book, Survival in Auschwitz, through the evil empire today (amazon).

The Examined Life does sound interesting. More for my wishlist I think.

>14 detailmuse: - I know what you mean about wanting to learn more before you read a book - I bought The General in his Labyrinth maybe around high school? college? and thought I'd learn a bit more about Simon Bolivar before I read it. Well, that hasn't happened. I should probably just read the Wikipedia page, then the book, like I did for other ones.

>15 rebeccanyc: - What to Listen For in Music went pretty fast and it's also a book you can pick up and put down, since each chapter is a different musical form. Maybe subway friendly?

>17 detailmuse: How do I get so distracted by new-and-shiny and keep something this good on my shelves for so many years?!

You're preaching to the choir, MJ. I've done that the past few years, and last year was a disappointing one for me, as I read far too many so-so books and didn't get to the ones in my TBR collection that I wanted to read the most. By setting up the challenges that I did I hope to read far more TBR books, and at the same time I want to limit the books I purchase to those that I intend to read this year.

Nice review of The Examined Life. However, in keeping with my statement in the previous paragraph I won't buy it anytime soon.

>28 DieFledermaus: Thanks for that info!

>26 dchaikin: Look forward to your comments. I'm very interested but hesitant, after Night.

>28 DieFledermaus: I have a couple annotated editions (of Walden, of Flatland) that seem like a wonderful idea but loom like a "project."

>29 kidzdoc: It's the hardcovers that frustrate me! I hate hardcovers anyway (too big, heavy, spiny), but to buy them because I want the book at publication ... and then not get to it for years?? argh.

Humans of New York by Brandon Stanton, ©2013, acquired 2014

When content is collected from a blog into a book, I’ve seen results that are hit, miss and meh. This one is a hit. This photo sold the book to me (but note how many post-its at the top hold places of other favorites):



It’s a collection of hundreds of color photographs of people in the five boroughs of New York City, many accompanied by a short biographical caption (he’s as good an interviewer as photographer). Like another favorite (The Oxford Project), this proves everybody has a story, and it’s usually surprising.

Stanton continues to expand his collection (blog, Facebook, Instagram), and his online content often has slightly longer bios -- paragraphs instead of sentences. I’m following his blog because there he presents both image and story without additional clicks, with the image first to engage my imagination before the words.

You would think I would have run right out to buy that book, and I don't know why I haven't, and your review certainly makes me want to remedy that situation! I think he's working on a Humans of the World project now; I seem to remember hearing him interviewed on public radio.

ETA Looked it up -- it was a UN-sponsored tour, and here's the link: http://www.wnyc.org/story/humans-new-york-and-world/

>33 rebeccanyc: oh that looks good. Thanks Rebecca!

I was motivated by your review to request Humans of New York from the library.

Oh...and i had to return Survival in Auschwitz. I wasn't careful and picked a new edition from bn publishing. Well, turns out it is something of a scam and it's poor translation full of ridiculous typo's. Guess i need to be more careful on what editions i select on amazon.

>35 dchaikin: that disappoints me about B&N! (Or I wonder if some knockoff has misappropriated B&N's name until they get caught?) I think my copy of Babbitt is by B&N, it seems fine and with some supplementary material.

Not Barnes & Noble- it was "bn" - they are tricky

>37 dchaikin:

Out of copyright translation, OCR-ed and just printed as it is - without manual corrections... way too many of those can be found in Amazon's "new" editions unfortunately.

It's a new translation, but ...apparently without corrections.

This is the (evil?) site: http://www.bnpublishing.net/

and here is the key review on amazon about this edition: http://www.amazon.com/review/RSRXG2UXA5RB1/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=95...

A dangerous thread here, MJ. I had to buy The Examined Life for Kindle, and I downloaded a sample of Humans of New York, not the ideal way to experience the book, I'm sure, but hopefully I'll be able to determine if it's something I want to buy.

I loved Emperor of All Maladies, and I'm pretty sure you will too.

I'm wondering whether it's possible to read How To Listen without having the musical samples at hand to listen to.

>40 arubabookwoman: welcome! True about music samples -- when I read This Is Your Brain on Music, I did listen to snippets on iTunes and that worked pretty well. Now the iTunes samples are 90 seconds in length, even better!

Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us by Michael Moss, audiobook read by Scott Brick, ©2013, acquired 2014

The title and subtitle say it all, and the “how” is explored through corporate business/marketing case studies (plus a little regulatory action), with less on the science aspect.

This was much better written than The End of Overeating, which I read years ago, but for me had less to take away. There are several others I’m still interested in reading on the topic: The Big Fat Surprise and Fat Chance (both on nutrition) and The Third Plate (on sustainable agriculture).

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro, arc ©2015, acquired 2015

I was excited to see this novel. I'd finally read Never Let Me Go last year and liked Ishiguro so much that I'm exploring his backlist (up next: An Artist of the Floating World). But details about this new novel were vague; all I knew going in was its post-Arthurian English setting, which appealed to me. And, indeed, the very first paragraph plunged me into the Middle Ages and the story of an older couple who, on the margins (physically and emotionally) of a village in decline, embark on a personal quest.

I was intrigued enough for the first hundred pages as Ishiguro explored Saxons and Britons and slowly dropped clues that seemed to develop an allegory on aging. Then suddenly it genre-jumped to full-on fantasy, including dangerous forests, ogres, pixies and a dragon. Honestly, I kept envisioning ... Shrek! I realize I strongly prefer realistic fiction, but I'd expected Ishiguro's writing to keep me engaged. Instead, I never connected with a character (except maybe the unnamed narrator...); I wasn’t drawn into the exploration of “memory: good or bad?”; I didn't highlight even one passage in the book; there was repetition that became tedious.

I had a similar experience with Colson Whitehead, whose writing I love but whose dystopian zombie novel (Zone One) was as difficult for me to finish as this by Ishiguro; the endings of both were only slightly satisfying considering the persistence needed to get there. If you do enjoy folktales, legends and fantasy, your experience will vary from mine. But I doubt you'll find Ishiguro's writing as strong as in his other books.

>43 detailmuse:. Well that is disappointing, MJ. I will pass this one by.

I didn't like Never let me go but very much enjoyed An Artist of the Floating world so the jury is still out for me. I would not be tempted by his new book especially after your review.

>Nana and bas yes disappointing. I may cleanse my palate earlier than planned with An Artist of the Floating World. Bas, I thought of you and Poquette while I read, of appreciating medieval legends and storytelling, and thought you're the audience if anyone.

Screening Room: Family Pictures by Alan Lightman, arc ©2015, acquired 2015

I had two groups of friends, the artists and the scientists. The artists read unassigned novels and poems, acted in the school plays, reacted impulsively to people and events. The scientists relished math, built gadgets, demanded logical explanations. I loved the dark and mysterious back alleys of the arts, but I also loved the certainty of science, the questions with definite answers. At times, I could feel something flip in my mind as I switched from one group of friends to the other.

That’s Alan Lightman, theoretical physicist and creative writer, who returns to his childhood hometown for an uncle’s funeral and stays for a prolonged visit that becomes this memoir (or is it a novel?) of his family and 1960s Memphis.

I loved Einstein’s Dreams and liked Mr g, and this narrative is similarly structured as a collection of short vignettes. It seemed like a light read, and with less dreaminess and less memorable language than his other books ... until I collected my notes to write this review and discovered I’d marked a dozen passages that were separately striking and collectively substantive.

It also seemed less a memoir and more a documentation of Lightman’s paternal lineage (particularly a prestigious movie-theater business) and the R&B/rock-and-roll and civil-rights history of Memphis. Still, the history is interesting and, like Paul Auster’s Winter Journal, the ordinary and personal events of family become universal and profound, and prompted memories of my own life. And while Lightman-the-scientist says the stories of his immediate family are for the most part true and the Memphis aspects are historically accurate, Lightman-the-artist is here, too, imagining other aspects including some made-up relatives that were, curiously, my favorites.

Enjoyed your excellent review of Screening Room I note that you are the first to post a review.

Thanks bas. To continue the metaphor: I think the realist side of me expected memoir and was a little bewildered that the focus wasn’t on the author, plus annoyed to discover the author’s fiction. Then the artist came in to write the review and got on board with it :)

If we thought about {our place in existence}, we would be unable to speak. We would be unable to write our few feeble words, build our flimsy cities. We would just wait for our minute of life and awareness to pass.

That’s also from Lightman’s Screening Room (above), but it’s exactly my reaction to the first section of Maps of Time, David Christian’s book on “big history” --

{W}hat distinguishes big history most decisively from world history is its interdisciplinary nature and its search for an underlying unity beneath the various accounts of the past told in different historically oriented disciplines

-- which so far feels like the best book I’ve ever read.

Its six sections explore: 1) the origins of time and space (the universe, galaxies, stars, earth); 2) life on earth; 3) human evolution; 4) agriculture and civilization; 5) modernity; and 6) the future. Few if any high-schoolers would read it, but it should be required reading. I think every area of science and history and art is going to be explored here, and I would have loved to be a young person encountering all these possible fields of study and seeing where my interests were strongest.

At the very beginning, all explanations face the same problem: how can something come out of nothing? The problem is general, for beginnings are inexplicable.

The moment of a (the?) big bang hasn’t been explained (and “moment” connotes waaay too long a time period), but evidence of the aftermath (from a billionth-of-a-billionth of a second later and all the way to today) has been observed. Christian describes the inconceivably fast and vast expansion of energy and matter that formed the universe; the competing effect of gravity (a billion years later) to collapse some clouds of hydrogen and helium into stars which then fused the gases to create heavier elements; the creation of our own sun (seven billion years later still), the coalescence/collision of the remaining cloud of orbiting matter into our planets, and the geological activity (especially plate tectonics) that continues today.

That's a few feeble words to summarize the book's first section, something I can come back to. But the thing is: Christian writes so well that I understood everything that underpins this summary. And I’ve slotted all the knowledge bits I learned elsewhere into a more cohesive narrative.

>50 detailmuse: Wow. I had never heard of this book, but most reviewers at LT seem just as awed as you are. I look forward to reading your thoughts about the rest of the book.

>50 detailmuse: ok, awaiting more commentary. Hope that doesn't put any pressure on you. : ) i realy should read this, i mean it's sitting right there above my computer...

>43 detailmuse: "Honestly, I kept envisioning ... Shrek!" - ha! Tough to take seriously after that, I imagine.

>44 NanaCC: I'm hesitant to read more Lightman, but appreciate your reader/reviewer dichotomy. Do his books just do better thinking about than reading?

>42 detailmuse: A relative by marriage has been saying for several years that fat is not the problem, and sugar is the root of all evil (health-wise, that is).

I don't think it's a good idea to focus on one single element and demonize it. The problem is overeating, and sugar and fat certainly have their place in it, but they can also be part of a balanced diet.

Here is a post on this subject that I find interesting.

Well, I didn't say I agreed with him! And of course you're right about overeating. Over the past year and a half, I've lost weight just by eating less, staying active, and trying to avoid really bad foods as much as I could.

>42 detailmuse:, >53 rebeccanyc: I read Salt Sugar Fat last year, and I think the biggest thing for us to remember about food is that when one of those things is reduced, the others are usually increased. So although people seem pretty aware of the fact that all those "low-fat" foods in the 80s turned out to be not very good for losing weight because the sugar was increased to make up for the lack of fat, they may not realize this sort of thing continues now, it's just presented/disguised differently. One of the interesting things he talks about in the book is that while humans have a "bliss point" for sugar, after which something will seem too sweet, we don't seem to have one for fat.

>51 FlorenceArt: awed
Exactly this. I want to get to more of the book, but after the cosmology section, I’ve turned to some related books that I’ve had forever. Comments on Hawking’s A Brief History of Time coming soon, and I think I’m going to keep going with his The Universe in a Nutshell, then maybe The Quantum Zoo and Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman.

>52 dchaikin: very interesting about your experience reading Lightman. I looked to see what you’d read (ack! Einstein’s Dreams, my favorite!) and thought the first paragraph of your review (the museum example) nailed it (observing but not engaging). Yet I really enjoy it (even while reading, usually), and true, you likely will not enjoy more by him.

>53 rebeccanyc:, >54 FlorenceArt:, >55 rebeccanyc:, >56 ursula: I think society is so busy and distracted that we crave rules (which we adopt as polar opposites that keep reversing poles!) ... but I so believe in the big, boring, willpower-sucking, gray area of moderation. And that humans have long, successful histories with proteins, fats and carbs -- except artificial types like trans fats, or abundant simple sugars. Sugar is my weak point, and when I heard it characterized as kerosene for inflammation, that helped :)

>47 detailmuse: Really enjoyed your comments on Screening Room. I too loved Einstein's Dreams and Mr. g for entirely different reasons. This memoir or musing or whatever it is sounds quite interesting as well, especially for its commentary on the differences between the scientific and artistic frame of mind because he has dipped his toe in both.

>50 detailmuse: Maps of Time sounds interesting as well. Your mention of the Big Bang theory puts me in mind of the most lucid discussion of it that I have read, which is also the most irritating book I have read, namely The God Problem. It is only irritating in the writing style. The author insists on repeating everything three times whereas if he would have just gotten on with it, the book could have been a lot shorter! When I say "lucid," obviously the writing gets in the way sometimes of the lucidity, but the actual explanation makes the whole concept quite understandable in layman's terms. It does take some effort to get through the layers of repetitiousness, but if you can do that, there is real meat there.

>60 Poquette: just fyi: the scientist vs artist is something that struck me, after seeing it in Lightman’s other books, but there’s not much comment on it. I more so noticed it in action, in his facts vs his style.

I'll keep The God Problem in mind and appreciate your disclaimers, I dread a repetitive tome. I feel I have a decent macro-understanding of the Big Bang/etc. and have been reinforcing it with some of Hawking’s books from my TBRs. Now after getting the same info with different slants from Hawking and others, I think repetition is a good reinforcing tool and wonder if Bloom intended it...

>61 detailmuse: If you do get around to The God Problem, you will find some interesting digressions, especially the one regarding the influence of a literary/scientific circle that included George Eliot and her paramour Henry Lewes and quite a few others.

 

A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes by Stephen Hawking, ©1988, acquired late-1980s
The Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen Hawking, ©2001, acquired 2001

I’m so glad to have finally read these two books (of three) I have by Hawking. Not because I found them fascinating and revelatory, but because I found Hawking a bit of both.

He comes directly into a topic and addresses it then builds on it. He thinks he’s teaching but it seems more like telling to me, and I took it in but didn’t fully understand it. I think I needed more lead-in; my tentative grip on the topics suffered, then came back and in the end advanced some.

A Brief History of Time is more substantive and historical (Galileo, Newton, Einstein) but dated, and feedback about it apparently led to a later illustrated edition. The Universe in a Nutshell was illustrated from the get-go; it’s lush and enjoyable, more contemporary in content and physicists (with which, and whom, I was happy to get caught up), but seems noisy and fractured from the interruptions of illustrations and sidebars.

Physics has so much theory and philosophy and I only know it through words. There are no equations in either book (except E=mc2), but the illustrations are strange enough that it struck me they represent the math, and that physicists talk in math not words. It also reminded me of a book I gave to my mathematician brother, Pasta by Design, where the author has done the math and shows the equations that represent dozens of shapes of pasta.

While the content was informative but not fascinating, I did find Hawking fascinating. He includes himself, his research and his disability, for example, a photo-illustration of several of him, in wheelchairs, spinning off the earth, and that:

Newton occupied the Lucasian chair at Cambridge that I now hold, though it wasn’t electrically operated in his time.

He’s funny (in a corny, dad-like way), and his liberal use of exclamation points show he’s clearly still awed by physics.

And speaking of dads: I found a note from my own dad in A Brief History of Time, probably from ~1990, commenting on the book and thanking me for lending it to him. A terrific find.

I enjoyed A Brief History of Time when I read it a few years ago. Being a maths lover I was actually a bit disappointed at the time about the lack of the equations, but I understand how that could put off most people. The information there was all interesting to me though. I'm thinking it's about time I got round to The Universe in a Nutshell.

I made the mistake back in the '90s of listening to an audio version of A Brief History of Time but it didn't work. My mind kept wandering and I realized I had picked the wrong format but continued to the end thinking I would eventually read the book but I never did. The lack of illustrations undoubtedly hurt. Oh well.

I listened to an audio version of The Universe in a Nutshell and really enjoyed it (I did a lot of backtracking and replaying.) But, I've never seen the illustrations.

Not sure whether I should try A Brief History of Time in audio or not. My concern up to now was that it would overlap The Universe in a Nutshell too much. I guess it can't hurt to try the free copy from the library.

>64 valkyrdeath: Even without equations, the illustrations there will get you closer to a feeling of math. I wasn’t thinking of reading my third by Hawking, Black Holes and Baby Universes, right away, but I just looked and its essays seem as much memoir as science, so maybe... A bookmark shows I read halfway through it at some point but I have zero recollection!

>65 Poquette: LOL I just finished listening to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and my mind wandered enough to miss half of it (but half was enough, there).

>66 dchaikin: Dan they share topics but to me it seemed A Brief History of Time is much more historical (what we’ve come to “know” over the centuries) while The Universe in a Nutshell is more contemporary (today’s physicists and theories). I appreciated A Brief History of Time more, but The Universe in a Nutshell was more fun.

I wish I had the courage to tackle A brief history of time. Enjoyed your review though.

>68 baswood: lol “courage” ... I summon it when I open your thread and am rewarded every time.

Apologies for my inactivity. I’ve spent some stressful months advocating for a relative going through a medical odyssey and now some HAPPILY stressful weeks preparing for a trip including southern Europe. I’ve been reading but not writing much ... it’s ridiculous how cobwebby my mind gets when I don’t keep up this thread, and that always brings me back. So: some reviews and some mere comments.

First, the fiction



A Small Indiscretion by Jan Ellison, Early Reviewers arc ©2014, acquired 2015

Forty-year-old Annie Black reflects on how her three months in London at age 20 have affected her current life in San Francisco.

It involves a small indiscretion, indeed. Small in real life, and way too small in the dramatic world of fiction. It’s short-story small, not enough to carry a novel, so it’s accompanied by teasing and withholding to create narrative intrigue, which I tend to like in a first chapter or two. But when I came to this on page 124 --

You’ll want to know how {the photograph} found its way to us, and why. You’ll want answers to the same questions that plagued me last summer,...

-- I thought, GET ON WITH IT. And when she didn’t, and I came to this on page 248 --

I see that there is nothing left to do but to set down what happened...

-- well, I was glad to have just the 70 or so pages until the novel wound down (note: vs. built up) to its finish, with a surprise that wasn’t earned.

That said, the pages of this debut novel moved along and some passages struck me.

People say a mother is only as happy as her least happy child.

There were other things I left out {...} it was all ancient history now, anyway. Of course it is upon the rubble of ancient history that the present stands.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, translated from the Swedish by Reg Keeland, audiobook read by Simon Vance, ©2005, acquired 2010

I read 200 pages into this book four years ago then set it aside when by that time the story still hadn’t really started. I began again now on audio, and actually looked forward to my “audio time” with this easy, interesting (though still over-long, and annoyingly withholding) crime novel that’s become part of global pop culture. If my TBRs weren’t calling, I’d consider more of the series just to encounter more of Lisbeth Salander.

Satin Island by Tom McCarthy, arc ©2015, acquired 2015

{I}ncomprehensible is no better than banal -- it’s just its flip-side. But maybe, just maybe, {...} in between understanding so completely that an object’s robbed of its allure (on the one hand), and (on the other one) not understanding anything at all -- there might be some “ambiguous instances” in which the balance is just right.

That’s the narrator, U (“Call me U”), an anthropologist at a contemporary London consulting firm, comparing how well (or not) observers and those observed understand one another. But I also wonder if it’s the writer, McCarthy, commenting on how well (or not) readers understand novels? For me, the allure of experimental fiction is that it’s never banal. I enjoy the struggle to get myself toward some center of comprehension, and even then be left with a resonance that “there’s still more to this” that tempts a re-read.

So it is with my experience of Satin Island. Here, U is tasked by the firm to document the contemporary zeitgeist into a “Great Report.” The task is huge and ambiguous, and U takes inspiration from the work and processes of other anthropologists, for example his hero, Claude Levi-Strauss, and Bronislaw Malinowski who advised, “Write everything down” (because the importance of something often is known only later). And so he does, creating dossiers of his ruminations on technology, oil spills, the company, his office, his colleagues, his lover, his dying friend, the murder of a parachutist. And in the process of presenting these vignettes, he reveals the zeitgeist.

I'm so glad to have finally sampled McCarthy, his intellect and originality. But a lot of what carried me through this book is my interest in workplace premises, and I'm undecided about reading more by him unless there's another good-fit premise.

I learned of {Petr’s} death by text. {His estranged wife must} have been handed his mobile phone, and sent the announcement out to everybody in the contacts file {...} To almost all intents and purposes, the sender was Petr. His existence, at that moment, was impressing itself on me, and on hundreds of others, with as much force as -- if not more than -- at any other time. All we need to do to guarantee indefinite existence for ourselves is to keep our network contracts running, and make sure a missive goes out every now and then.

{A}lthough {the parachutist} hadn’t actually been killed until the moment of his impact, to all intents and purposes, he had {from the moment someone cut his parachute cords}. For the last hours -- days, perhaps -- of his life, he had (this is how Schrodinger would formulate it) been murdered without realizing it.

{I cleared and cleaned my desk} to transform it into a tabula rasa upon which I might compose a great, momentous work. {...} Sitting at it, I looked out of the window at the sky. This was blue too -- clear blue with the odd wisp of cloud. I angled myself so as to face the largest uninterrupted stretch of sky, then turned so as to align myself exactly with the desktop, so that the borders and perimeters of this ran parallel and perpendicular to those of my gaze. I sat there for a long time, luxuriating in the emptiness of first one space then the other: desktop, sky, desktop.

Now, a few miscellaneous:



Pogue’s Basics by David Pogue, ©2014, acquired 2015

I loved Pogue’s 6-minute 2013 TED Talk, 10 Top Time-saving Tech Tips, and this book has 200+ more. They relate to hardware (PC and Mac computers; phones; tablets; cameras) and software (web browsers; websites; smartphone apps; email; Office; Google; Facebook; Twitter), mostly with the goal of increasing efficiency or decreasing annoyance, usually by revealing alternative navigations/commands that keep your hands on the keyboard instead of bouncing back and forth from keyboard to mouse. Of the group, a dozen or two were as helpful as the ten mentioned in his TED Talk.



Rome Antics by David Macaulay, ©1997, acquired 2014

A birds-eye tour of Rome’s architecture via drawings by the fabulous Macaulay. Specifically, it’s a homing pigeon’s-eye, and it’s a bird on a mission, developing into a narrative with a sweet surprise ending.



Rome 2015 by Rick Steves and Gene Openshaw, ©2014, acquired 2015

Who ever reads a travel guide cover to cover? Me, with this one. Really good stuff. My only quibble is a caution that his specific recommendations (hotels/restaurants/etc.) weren’t always as highly rated by users on online reviewer sites.

And the nonfiction:



Live Right and Find Happiness by Dave Barry, arc ©2015, acquired 2015

I always look forward to Dave Barry's end-of-year summaries and I've also enjoyed his book-length works (though haven't tried his fiction). This book is a very short collection (200+ pages with wide margins and lots of white space) of nine essays that reads very fast. I most enjoyed five of the essays:

-- two of which felt like classic Dave Barry (one a comparison of his (below?)-average looks with (above!)-average men (specifically, David Beckham) that made me laugh out loud; the other about the frustrations of home ownership that actually spurred me to complete a repair I'd been putting off);

-- two longer essays on non-US cultures that felt noticeably deeper (one on his World Cup soccer experience in Brazil, which is fun prep for next year's Olympics there; the other a sort of cold-war-reminiscent writer's tour to Russia); and

-- another that is well-timed to read as the TV series Mad Men comes to an end -- a comparison of the Greatest Generation with Baby Boomers, specifically how the former lived hard (even recklessly) but had fun, whereas Boomers live so carefully and unhappily.

Serious Dave Barry fans will splurge on this book, but I'd borrow it from the library and (like Dave himself might) put the money toward a beverage-of-choice that would take longer to consume.

Mad Men on the Couch by Stephanie Newman, ©2012, acquired 2014

A psychoanalyst’s view of the characters and culture of TV’s Mad Men. It’s okay; it’s a basic analysis with a couple points that stood out for me: 1) the contrast between how Peggy and Joan become powerful -- Peggy through her own work and Joan through affiliation with powerful people (men); and 2) the current ubiquity of narcissism (entitlement; decreased personal awareness/responsibility).

Written after the fourth season, it stays true through the seasons that have aired since, and it was also good timing to read in advance of this final half-season of episodes.

How Google Works by Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg, read by Holter Graham, ©2014, acquired 2015

A business leadership/management book about how Google hires and operates its workforce. Interesting to see Peter Drucker’s “knowledge workers” updated now to be “smart creatives.”

Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany by Bill Buford, read by Michael Kramer, ©2006, acquired 2009

Terrific memoir of Buford learning to cook, some of which is in Mario Batali’s kitchens. Includes behind-the-scenes restaurant-kitchen info, and Batali’s hard living that calls to mind Anthony Bourdain; but it also has lots of food history, especially Italian.

Less Medicine, More Health by H. Gilbert Welch, Early Reviewer arc ©2015, acquired 2015

You might think that the biggest problem in medical care is that it costs too much. Or that health insurance is too expensive, too uneven, too complicated -- and gives you too many forms to fill out. But the central problem is that too much medical care has too little value.

Welch characterizes healthcare as a U-shaped curve, with high potential for harm at both low- and high-utilization. He argues against the “7 Assumptions That Drive Too Much Medical Care,” of the book’s subtitle:

1 -- All risks can be lowered
2 -- It’s always better to fix the problem
3 -- Sooner is always better
4 -- It never hurts to get more information
5 -- Action is always better than inaction
6 -- Newer is always better
7 -- It’s all about avoiding death.

What healthcare policy book is fascinating? gripping? witty? This one. Some of it feels counter-intuitive; but when explained, it flips nearly to common sense. My only quibble is that I needed just a little more explanation/documentation to convince me about some of the most counter-intuitive material (for example, the low value of mammography). This easy book is a must-read.

>72 detailmuse: I was going to ask where you're headed, but I guess this answers at least part of it!

>70 detailmuse: I managed to read the second book in the series relatively soon after the first (within a year, I think), but have never managed to pick up the 3rd one.

Enjoyed catching up with you're reading! I also liked Heat, but it's the only book I've read of the ones you've reviewed.

>78 ursula: ha! you are correct! Also some Spain, France and other Italy. I need to review kidzdoc's 2014 posts on Barcelona before I go...

>78 ursula: I hear there's a (posthumous) 4th in the series, by a different author. Bah.

>79 rebeccanyc: Thanks -- I'd recommend the TED talk linked in >72 detailmuse:, and Less Medicine, More Health just to give one pause.

>80 detailmuse: Pogue used to write a column for the NY Times in its Thursday technology section and I always turned right to it. I also have a couple of his "Missing Manual" books, so I'm already a fan. Thanks for the link to the TED talk and the info about the book. And Less Medicine, More Health did sound intriguing too.

The Rick Steves's books are perfectly good for armchair traveling. I just used his Tuscany guidebook last week. And we are still visiting locations from the 1989 version of Europe Through the Back Door. His Facebook feed is pretty fun, too.

>80 detailmuse: Yeah. re: the Larsson. I didn't read the article about the 4th book when I saw the headline, so I don't know if this is one of the manuscripts that was left after his death or what. I remember it was quite the long, drawn-out tangle about who owned the rest of Larsson's writing, but I believe there were supposed to be a few more books he had written (so not sure if this one being published is unrelated to those books or what).

Sounds like a lovely trip you have planned!

>69 detailmuse: I suspect your review of A Small Indiscretion is more interesting than the novel itself! I am always intrigued by novels with San Francisco as a setting because I spent most of my life there, but maybe I'll pass this one.

>72 detailmuse: Rome Antics sounds very good. Your reading leaves me breathless!

I was thinking of you while reading Little Kingdoms by Steven Millhauser, which turned out to be a collection of "quirky dreamy novellas." And how! The best thing I've read since I got on that QDN kick! Have you by chance read any Millhauser?

I learned some tips from that TED talk. Great review of Satin Island and very interesting about Dave Berry's latest. I used to read his columns in the Miami Herald as a teenager.

Hi MJ! I only just came across your review of Etgar Keret's The Seven Good Years - which I really liked. Keret is a favourite of mine as well, so I've wishlisted this new one of course! Hope all is well.

>86 Polaris-: Thanks for your kind comment! I'm fine but some people around me are fine-ish or worse and it takes a toll. You inspire me to bring my thread up to date, thanks Paul!

“The Tampon, A History: The Cultural, Political and Technological Roots of a Fraught Piece of Cotton” by Ashley Fetters, theatlantic.com, June 1, 2015 (read it online)

Favorite passage: that “NASA engineers asked {Sally Ride} whether 100 tampons would be enough for her weeklong journey on the space shuttle Challenger" !

Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor, ©1971, acquired 2013, discovered on Nickelini’s thread

Every day for an infant means some new little thing learned; every day for the old means some little thing lost. {...} Both infancy and age are tiring times.

{S}he knew that, as she got older, she looked at her watch more often, and that it was always earlier than she had thought it would be. When she was young, it had always been later.

A short novel about a widow who moves into a London residential hotel. Its exploration of the social dynamics of the group of elders there is comical; its examination of aging is devastating.

The Eureka Factor: Aha Moments, Creative Insight and the Brain by John Kounios and Mark Beeman, ©2015, arc acquired 2015

”Eureka!”*
-- Archimedes
* Greek for “I have found it!”

I'm fascinated with insight and moments of awareness and have been thrilled by occurrences of it in my life. So I was interested to see this book-length work on the science of "what happens in the brain at the instant when a person solves a problem with a flash of insight."

The authors describe insight, an unconscious thought process of quantum leaps that deliver a revolutionary idea in abrupt clarity, and contrast it with the conscious, deliberate, evolutionary process of analysis. They discuss the problem-solving styles of "insightfuls" and "analysts" (and the errors of omission and commission they make when they run out of time when working out a problem: the insightfuls offering no solutions and the analysts offering half-baked solutions), and use EEG and fMRI data to describe what's going on in the brain and where.

Then they devote perhaps half of the book to methods that increase insight, for example, getting as much life experience as possible (so as to better recognize patterns), taking a break/taking a nap (your unconscious will keep working the problem), scheduling your creative work for when you're typically tired (i.e. your censoring analyst is tired, allowing insights to bubble up), and further reducing the censor by developing a positive mindset and an unconstrained, long-term outlook.

It's fascinating and a lot of fun to read.

>89 detailmuse: I have not actually read Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont but I saw the wonderful movie with Joan Plowright. Did you happen to see it? I have been afraid to read the book because the film was so great.

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard Feynman, audio read by Raymond Todd, ©1985, acquired 2008

I loved this memoir of the physicist’s life of curiosity -- from a childhood scientific experiment gone wrong in his bedroom while his mother played bridge with friends in the living room; to social interactions*; to college days and workplaces including universities and the Manhattan Project. I haven’t heard Feynman’s voice but this audio reader absolutely nailed a combination of matter-of-fact mixed with curiosity, excitement and awe. I’ve wishlisted some more books by Feynman.

* The book’s title comes from an interaction with his college dean’s wife -- when the relatively unsocialized Feynman requests both milk and lemon in his tea, the woman giggles nervously and replies, “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman.” It’s his first alert to a social miscue, and as he continues to prompt similar giggles, he begins to use the cues to learn about social interactions.

>91 Poquette: well 2+ months after finishing the book I still feel a sweet/sad satisfaction so I do recommend it. I've found the DVD at my library and will watch and let you know :)

The Seven Good Years by Etgar Keret, translated from the Hebrew by Sondra Silverston, Miriam Shlesinger, Jessica Cohen and Anthony Berris, ©2015, arc acquired 2015

I don't consider writers to be "Favorite Authors" until I've especially enjoyed at least two books by them. This is my second by Keret, and click! -- he's been Favorite-d.

My first was Suddenly, a Knock on the Door, his most recent collection of flash fiction, which delighted me with surreal premises and imaginative twists. This book is a collection of 36 similarly short pieces, but here they're memoir-ish essays about the titular seven years between the birth of his son and the death of his father. They're not only poignantly optimistic, they're often outright funny.

His observations from Tel Aviv on family -- his Holocaust-survivor parents, adored older brother and ultra-orthodox sister; his lioness wife and wise, tender young son -- stun me with their guy-next-door universality. They remind me of other writers whose landscape is family. But those others don't have stories of family road trips interrupted by air-raid sirens and the need to stop and lie at the side of the road until the bomb explodes, all the while distracting the anxious son by recasting the situation, Life-Is-Beautiful-like, as a game of "pastrami sandwich" where the child is protected between the adults.

Plus, it's a treat to read Miranda July's Q&A with Keret in the opening pages. They're two unique individuals indeed, and I especially liked this from Keret:

The best trait I got from my mother is her confidence. Not the kind of confidence that makes you lead the rebels' attack on the death star, but {...} that your choices, no matter how strange and different they may be, are perfectly all right. {...T}hat all those people around me who gave me good advice on how to be better {at being myself} were to be taken seriously, while all those who were simply asking me to {change} were to be ignored.

I'm eager to read more of Keret's fiction, but now I yearn to read more of his memoir.

Albert Angelo by B. S. Johnson, ©1964, acquired 2013, discovered on charbutton’s thread

A novella about a 28-year-old architect who’s instead working as a substitute teacher at some rough schools in London. It’s experimental in style and structure, the various sections (vignettes) rotating through every narrative point-of-view one can imagine, easily a dozen of them, including student feedback, direct address by author to reader, and pages separated into columns of simultaneous external dialogue (a geology lesson that was quite interesting!) and sarcastic internal monologue.

I appreciated the experimental style but began to tire of it ... hmm at about the time the main character was himself burning out (and maybe the author, too), so maybe it was effective :)

Becoming a Graphic and Digital Designer: A Guide to Careers in Design by Steven Heller and Veronique Vienne, review copy ©2015, acquired 2015

{Graphic d}esign is not decoration but, rather, the intelligent solution of conceptual problems; it is the manipulation of type, image, and, most of all, the presentation of ideas that convey a message.

It was from IDEO CEO Tim Brown that I first heard stressed that design is not a tweak, made near the end of a process to fine-tune or make pretty, but rather is a substantive, beginning-to-end way of thinking. It discourages me to see that designers still have to fight that characterization. But this book encourages me, with its collection of Q&As with ~80 designers, and hundreds of full-color examples of their work, that showcase the substantive contributions of graphic design.

The subtitle says it’s “A Guide to Careers in Design,” but I think it’s closer to “An Exposure to Careers in Design,” specifically graphic design. It’s not a mind-focusing, how-to book; it’s a mind-blowing primer on possibilities. It exposes the potential design student to a wide variety of content such as design genres and sub-genres, both print and digital, from fonts to images to layouts and installations. It touches on design markets like publishing, packaging, commerce and advertising. It also considers the workplace experience as an employee vs. independent vs. with partner, and how to stay inspired and motivated.

As a reader and writer, I enjoy author interviews for their behind-the-curtain peeks at other creatives at work. So it was for me with this book, where the creatives are curious designers. One who has stayed in my mind is the French typographer Pierre di Scuillo, who seeks to convey sound through his letterforms:

Practically, you cannot combine a traditional phonetic alphabet with correct spelling, but you can use intuitive graphic notations, such as the thickness or the relative height of letters, to indicate tone of voice and pitch. My goal is often to delight the eye and stimulate the voice.

 

Bellevue Literary Review (Vol 12 No 2; Fall 2012), ©2012, acquired 2012
Bellevue Literary Review (Vol 13 No 2; Fall 2013) ©2013, acquired 2013

Two more issues of the literary journal. The most evocative aspect of each issue is often the cover photo, always pulled from the hospital’s archives, and I especially liked the 2012 cover:

Open spaces for children to play were in short supply in New York City. Here the pediatric patients from the Chest Service have galvanized to demonstrate the need for playgrounds. The children are dressed as doughboys and field nurses -- images that were popular in World War I liberty posters, as well as tuberculosis posters.

An area for pediatric patients and neighborhood children to play, with space for events like ice cream socials, was established on hospital grounds.

From the 2013 collection, themed “Multiculturalism,” my favorites were Cristina Negron’s essay, “So Far,” which begins with the evocative:

Shortly after I was born, I realized I was living with a memoir-worthy family

and continues into her mental breakdown; Midge Raymond’s “Examining Rooms,” a story about being a standardized patient in the training of medical students; Pepper Trail’s poignant poem, Wound Healing; Hal Sirowitz’s sardonic Being Respectful of Other Cuisines.

Great to catch up with your reading!

>98 rebeccanyc: Hi Rebecca, I've been thinking of your family camp and imagining you're relieved that area manhunt is over.

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, audio read by C.M. Hebert, ©1868, acquired 2011

The classic novel about four sisters who grow from girls to women just after the American Civil War. I didn’t know until after I read it that it was actually two novels, published 6 months apart, which may explain why the first half about girlhood seemed lively and interesting and the second about young adulthood preachier, almost boring. I don’t think I read it as a child and I’m glad I now have. I may try to find Alcott’s Hospital Sketches, based on her experiences as a Civil War nurse.

Goodbye Stranger by Rebecca Stead, arc ©2015, acquired 2015

I enjoyed Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me for its science-y premise and its complex narrative structure. In this new novel, also for tween readers, Stead keeps the complex structure (chapters told in alternating points of view, including one in epistolary format and another where the character isn’t identified until the end), but trades science for the relationships of 7th-graders (family, friends, even budding romance). It’s an enjoyable read that, despite exploring a couple areas of deep water (sexting; grandparent divorce), stays steady and optimistic. Innocent, even; maybe more so than Little Women.

>99 detailmuse: Thanks for the thought, MJ, but the escaped prisoners were many hundreds of miles away from us. Our family house is in the Catskills, a mere 100+ miles from NYC, and the manhunt was in the very northern Adirondacks, up near the Canadian border.

>88 detailmuse: Thanks for the link to the tampon article. I'm reading it right now, and it's interesting. Not to mention the fact that it's refreshing to see such a topic discussed directly, as opposed to being treated as an icky woman's thing not to be referred to anywhere the poor men might get grossed out by it. :)

>92 detailmuse: I'm glad to hear you loved the Feynman book. He's always been a great favorite of mine; there haven't been that many people who are that brilliant and that likable. His actual voice is well worth hearing, by the way. I find it quite as charming as the rest of him. If you're at all curious, it should be very easy to find video of him in the internet.

>102 rebeccanyc: oh I thought you were in the Adirondacks! I took my mom on a road trip there some years ago and always "revisited" it a little when you posted that you were getting away :)

>103 bragan: The whole thing, still taboo. You might like Flow: The Cultural Story of Menstruation -- not deeply substantive, but fun and nostalgic to browse through.

>His actual voice is well worth hearing
well this is interesting, I'll look!

>104 detailmuse: Thanks, I think I'll add that to the wishlist. It's a subject that is of less personal relevance to me since my hysterectomy, but still of intellectual interest.

I really enjoyed all these new reviews. The Eureka Factor is now on my wishlist. Noting another nice review of Elizabeth Taylor, but this one more than any other entices me. The Keret review is very inspiring.

Just catching up - you've read some really interesting books lately. And I enjoyed the tampon article - I have an image in my head now of a sausage like string of tampons floating around a shuttle in space....

>94 detailmuse: - Good review - sounds like an interesting work. Besides Suddenly, a Knock on the Door, I read and enjoyed The Nimrod Flipout. He is certainly different.

I also have never read Little Women and need to - it is on the pile somewhere.

Hi and thanks >106 dchaikin:, >107 AlisonY:, >108 DieFledermaus:! I would read more by Elizabeth Taylor and I really want to read Keret's The Nimrod Flipout. DieF, Keret is much less "different" in these memoir stories.

The Plot Thickens, ©1997, acquired 2003

I finally pulled this 1997 anthology of 11 mystery/suspense/thriller/procedural short stories (each supposedly incorporating a thick fog, a thick book and a thick steak) from my TBRs to see if I might get interested in some of the authors.

It didn’t happen (except for, maybe, Lawrence Block, especially combined with Rebecca’s recent reviews). I realized I continue to like suspense stories best (here, Mary Higgins Clark and Ann Rule), though they tended to be of the woman-in-peril variety with contrived/convenient plots, which I loved in young adulthood but later gave up on.

Bummer. Hope it was worth the experiment, if I can call it that.

I looked forward to sampling Janet Evonovich but the narrative voice of Stephanie Plum in the story so annoyed me I dnf'd it ("did not finish").

Sorry it didn't work for you (I maybe could have predicted that from the gimmick you mentioned), but I'm glad you're intrigued by Lawrence Block.

>113 rebeccanyc: true! It was a fundraiser project for Literacy Partners.

The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo, audio read by Emily Woo Zeller, ©2014, acquired 2015

Effective tidying involves only two essential actions: discarding and deciding where to store things.

Marie Kondo and I agree on that. And I agree with her philosophy of keeping only things that “spark joy” (where she acknowledges that “joy” can be of the utilitarian sort {e.g. legal documents}, as well as emotional {e.g. objects of art or nostalgia}). Everything else should be discarded/donated and, in the future, not even acquired.

And I agree (theoretically) with her rules about how to tidy, which are to: 1) evaluate possessions by category (e.g. clothing, books, documents); and 2) evaluate absolutely everything in a category altogether, not little by little or room by room. That means pulling every item of clothing, or every book, from its space and bringing it to a central space where it is individually evaluated re: joy. Seeing the overwhelming enormity (and duplications) of a collection, and feeling the underwhelming joy, can be, as the book’s title says, life-changing.

It’s all very Zen and pleasant to imagine. But to do it? Kondo’s everything-at-once approach seems unlikely to happen in a busy life, and her my-way-or-the-highway mandate just inspires me to take what fits and move on. She has rules about storing items that I might try, for example specific ways to fold (vs. hang) clothing and how to place it in a drawer for maximum visibility. And fyi: she says the best time to read a book is when it is acquired (I agree; but the majority of my TBRs still spark great joy) and tsk-tsks that “people have far more unread books than they once did, ranging from three to more than forty.” HAHAHAHAHA!

>115 detailmuse: I've just recently started finally tidying up and getting rid of stuff, but judging from what you've said I think I'll avoid this book for advice. Getting everything out from all rooms at once sounds amazingly impractical. And I just can't see having unread books to look forward to as being a bad thing.

Strange, I would never have thought of books to be read as a good or joyful thing. For me they are a hindrance and an obligation that weighs on me. I enjoy looking for new books to buy, but feeling guilty about unread books reduces this pleasure. That's probably why I don't have as many books in my TBR list as some of you guys.

I have a friend who swears by that book (although she hasn't applied it to her apartment as far as I can tell). I do need to do some serious getting rid of stuff, but it's so hard to do . . . And as for books, it comforts me to have them around (but maybe not in such numbers).

Lugging everything up and down stairs seems impractical and I'm just going to have to agree to disagree with her on the topic of unread books. In my own version of de-cluttering, which occurs a few times a year, I go more with whether an object is useful and/or beautiful rather than joy. Which may be the same thing.

My closets are way overdue for a clear out, but I always get distracted. There are always too many things that I just "can't" part with.

The "Japanese Art" of decluttering sounds like a rather dubious recommendation, given how cluttered Japanese interiors usually are. And I agree that her method sounds highly impractical. But I am not qualified to judge, given my own complete failure at decluttering.

>121 FlorenceArt:

You beat me to it! I wanted to ask what was "so Japanese" about this decluttering technique of hers as I also have only seen messy Japanese homes. If there is any country that excels at useless and space-taking objects (just think of all the endless omiyage that isn't food), it's the Japanese!

The number of Japanese friends who are shocked at how they can come over to my house whenever and without warning as my house is always clean and uncluttered. And in turn I have to wait weeks before they even start their "katatzuke" (cleaning up).

---

I have however seen the technique done on those clean house shows where they pull everything out of the house and place it in the yard so that owner can separate things into three piles: keep, donate, trash.

It seems very effective but they are on a tv show where there are a lot of people on hand to help out. So I prefer the clean and declutter as you go method.

>118 rebeccanyc:, >121 FlorenceArt:, >122 lilisin: lol! I think the book's enormous appeal is that it feels so good to imagine it all getting done. But people aren't actually doing it. An approach I like is Marla Cilley’s FlyLady -- a pretty noisy website, but she suggests you start where you are and take baby steps. (>122 lilisin: your friends might benefit from her CHAOS (can't have anyone over syndrome) solution!)

What is the saying about decluttering -- that "three moves are as good as a fire"? Our basement sump pump failed about 15 years ago and that was pretty effective too :( Now I embrace more frequent clear-outs. Though I do see my TBRs as an area of beautiful abundance.

>123 detailmuse: I love that saying about moves! I have found for me that three intercontinental moves are as good as a sinkhole. :)

>124 ursula: ha!

In many weeks over the past couple of years, I've set a goal of filling my big trash can before trash day. One project I remember is that I'd kept all my pay stubs/etc from all my jobs ever, and I shredded everything (except for the auditable past) other than end-of-year pay stub and tax return. It was fun to reminisce about the jobs. I was able to file with a 1040-EZ a couple of years (do they even offer that now?) and that form looked ridiculous! -- like a tear-sheet from a first-grader's arithmetic workbook!

Out on the Wire: The Storytelling Secrets of the New Masters of Radio by Jessica Abel, Early Reviewers arc ©2015, acquired 2015

If people don’t get out on the wire...well out on the center of that wire, where it’s bouncing...if they just walk across the floor...people won’t listen.

This “documentary comic” (think graphic novel) is about how the best “sausage” of today’s radio storytelling is made. It’s basically a meta-interview where writers and producers talk about their stories from This American Life, Radiolab, The Moth and others (including a terrific excerpt from “Radio: An Illustrated Guide,” Abel's 1999 look behind-the-scenes at This American Life). In the process, it illustrates:

• where ideas come from and the difference between a topic and a story;
• how character, voice and story structure are used to generate and maintain interest; and
• the critical aspects of sound and editing.

There is excellent information here but be forewarned that it’s visually dense -- packed with detailed comix illustrations and balloons of tiny text. (The sample below is about the densest, but it’s also one of the most fascinating -- about editing, and the difference between pauses and breaths.) It's not something to read in an hour; instead, read a section at a time and let it percolate before moving on.

Out on the wire sounds terrific.

Interesting to see the decluttering book reviewed and discussed here. My wife really took to it with her clothes and other house stuff, got rid of a ton and doesn't miss it. My scepticism turned to a bit of jealousy of her nice simple clean side of the closet and her nice neat desk and office space. I think you need to be brave to do this kind of stuff.

She has a point with books. They are best read, for me, as I acquire them. When they sit they accumulate guilt and baggage. Perhaps I need to dump a bit...or some therapy. Dumping is much cheaper.

Dan, take a look in her chest of drawers and you might be even more impressed. Kondo says that hangers are inappropriate for many clothes; instead, much should be folded and stored in drawers. And not in stacks, but folded enough times so each individual piece stands on its own and everything stands side by side in the drawer, visible, not hidden under something else. I have (some) interest in trying that.

>127 dchaikin: I agree with you completely about books, Dan.

>128 detailmuse: Does she explain how to fold them? I have a lot of drawers, and it's such a mess inside that I often forget about some of their content completely. Once in a while I'll be desperately searching for something to wear and fish out something and think, oh wow, how could I ever forget about this, it's so cool! Not to mention the boxes under the bed...

>129 FlorenceArt: I listened on audio so don’t have it to refer to, but I recall it being sort of fold the sides in to make a long rectangle, then fold in halves, top to bottom, until it’s thick/stable enough to sort of stand up on its edge. Put them in the drawer on their edges, and then when you open the drawer you can see the edges of everything, nothing hidden. (I envision frustration when pulling out one item makes a mess of others.)

I “looked inside” on amazon and that section isn't viewable, but if you go to a bookstore look at pages 71-76.

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee, audio read by Stephen Hoye, ©2010, acquired 2010

A history of cancer (no, Mukherjee writes, a biography; cancer morphs like a living entity) from its earliest documentation in Egyptian papyrus at ~2500 BC through its evolution amid millennia of changes in culture, politics and science. No review here; I’m just going to write that it’s the best history-of-medicine book I’ve read -- informative and engaging. As good as And the Band Played On (about AIDS), and better than The Great Influenza.

An aside:

{Name of patient} was sitting in the waiting room, reading a book (he read fiercely, athletically, almost competitively, often finishing one novel a week, as if in a race).

Another HA! and this one surprised me more, because Mukherjee seems so well read, and this book is 500 pages of substantive (though accessible) writing which seemed to me to draw readers who would be “competitive” readers also.

Nice review of The Seven Good Years, MJ. I liked the one Keret that I've read, so I'll have to keep an eye out for this one.

Thanks for the reminder about the Bellevue Literary Review. I've subscribed to it for several years, but they have mostly sat untouched! Must change that.

I loved The Emperor of All Maladies.

>130 detailmuse: Thanks, I might try that. Well, some day.

I'll look for a copy of Out on the Wire.

And I've been eying The Emperor of All Maladies and will have to take the plunge soon.

>132 kidzdoc: Thanks Darryl. Mukherjee edited The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2013, which I also thought was very good.

>133 FlorenceArt: might ... some day
exactly! me too

>134 RidgewayGirl: re: EoAM, of course I had to buy it immediately on release, at hardcover price, only to begin to hate holding big clunky books about that time. Five years later, I now listened to the last 2/3 of it on audio. The reader is very good although he mispronounces some words -- which, even though they're medical, shouldn't happen!

Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh, ©2013, acquired 2015

I’d seen reviews that piqued my interest in this book (which came from a blog), but then browsed the blog and lost interest. Finally, something (maybe Bill Gates’s recommendations for summer reading) made me take the plunge and acquire it. I did not like Brosh’s art style, especially her main character (herself) that looks a little like a fish. Yet that art, even of herself, is wonderfully expressive and, very early on, I started to love Brosh and this book.

It’s a memoir -- graphic-style vignettes about “unfortunate situations, flawed coping mechanisms, mayhem, and other things that happened.” Some are everyday-ish but with clever perspectives or presentations that reminded me how much I'd liked Amy Krouse Rosenthal’s Encyclopedia of An Ordinary Life. A few explore serious topics, for example a prolonged episode of depression and a pervasive discomfort in her own skin. Many others are laugh-out-loud funny -- childhood hijinks with her younger sister and several scenarios with her dogs (“The Simple Dog,” who is intelligence-challenged, and “The Helper Dog,” acquired as a friend for The Simple Dog but who is crazy).

Definitely saving this to enjoy again.

>136 detailmuse: I read about Hyperbole and a Half here last year I think, but I was turned off by the drawings. So it's interesting to know that you loved it despite that. I might give it another look.

>137 FlorenceArt: Yeah my “did not like” her art style was close to “hated.” Now I can’t imagine not enjoying this book.

What If? by Randall Monroe, ©2014, acquired 2014

The creator of xkcd.com provides “Serious scientific answers to absurd hypothetical questions.” Yes, serious in intelligence -- Munroe is an incredibly smart guy with an incredibly smart group of math/science collaborators -- but playful in execution as they think waaay outside the box and ramp up nerdy questions to full-on exaggeration.

It’s surprising, very fun and quite informative, e.g. with reminders that, above a certain altitude, “your blood oxygen content would plummet {because} there’s so little oxygen in the air that your veins lose oxygen to the air instead of gaining it.” And that, with cable/etc. now instead of huge broadcast antennas, we’re no longer releasing all of our TV/radio signals out into the universe (to be stumbled upon by intelligent life).

It’s hard to choose favorites from the ~50 Q&As but here are three:

• “If every human somehow simply disappeared from the face of the Earth, how long would it be before the last artificial light source would go out?” -- turns into an overview of all of our power-generating technologies and ends up centuries into the future, with the light from nuclear waste.

• “What is the farthest one human being has ever been from every other living person? Were they lonely?” -- puts early explorers in the running, but then settles on “the six Apollo command module pilots who stayed in lunar orbit {...alone while the} other astronauts landed on the moon” -- about 3585 km apart. And no, since the pilots tended to be introverts, they felt solitude not loneliness.

• “What if a Richter magnitude 15 earthquake were to hit America at, let’s say, New York City? What about a Richter 20? 25?” After answering that a 15 would blow up the planet, Munroe turns instead to low-magnitude events, from Magnitude -1 (“A single football player running into a tree in your yard”) and moving entertainingly downward to Magnitude -15 (“A drifting mote of dust coming to rest on a table”).

What If? sounds like a fun read.

I suspect that if William "The Refrigerator” Perry ran into a tree in your backyard it would register considerably higher on the Richter Scale.

>140 kidzdoc: ha! He should have specified "one quarterback" !

I've had What If? on my radar for a while, and your review confirms that I would find it fun.

>142 rebeccanyc: I hope you do! btw I just started The Ladies' Paradise, it's a really good sign that I want to logoff here and get back to it, yes? :)

And that isn't even one of my favorite Zolas!

My ten year old daughter announced this morning, while flipping through, that What If was really good. : ) My eight year old son has been know to study it too, and he is otherwise not known to read anything but graphic novels (Tin Tin is a current favorite). Alas, I have barely touched it so far.

But I'm picturing one of the local high school kids running into one of my trees as I carefully register the affect on the ground. Not the Fridge, though. He might knock it over.

>145 dchaikin: WHAT?! At ages 10 and 8? Those are some amazing minds Dan. I especially like their curiosity. Between their dippings into What If? and Here, I can't wait to read their Club Read threads!

Anyway, an incredible coincidence that you just posted because I came with news you'll specifically like: that Patti Smith's new memoir will be out in October -- M Train. ✔Pre-ordered!

P.S. Dan: Also, Lauren Redniss is also out with a follow-up to Radioactive in October -- Thunder & Lightning about weather. I have an arc, lovely artwork again, atmospheric. Halfway through, not sure I love it as much as Radioactive, it seems looser and distant.

Great to catch up with your reading MJ. I liked your review of Seven Good Years and can recommend anything by Etgar Keret (I think he's one of the few authors I've read practically everything he's had published.)

The discussion on de-cluttering has been fun reading as well.

Thanks Paul! The Nimrod Flipout is in my shopping cart, awaiting the free-shipping threshold.

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins, audiobook read by several readers, ©2015, acquired 2015

I read very little popular fiction, but did succumb to Gone Girl two years ago and enjoyed it, especially its dark, twisty middle.

Alas, not so this summer with this novel of psychological suspense. What began as promising interwoven storylines about three women settled into a rut of: ride the train, obsess about someone, drink alcohol to blackout, create drama, lather, rinse, repeat ... until I was too bored to care about revelations or twists.

New York Diaries: 1609 to 2009 edited by Teresa Carpenter, ©2009, acquired 2014

Part of me thinks this curated collection of excerpts -- drawn from the diaries of more than 150 New Yorkers over four centuries: George Washington and other politicians, businessmen, the literati and glitterati and contemporary bloggers -- is a terrific volume of history and “armchair anthropology.”

Another part feels like it’s Facebook, except these 150+ Friends are people fairly unknown to me, and I have 400 years of their updates to catch up on since I last logged in.

Recommended for thoughtful readers willing to take it slowly. The appendix of sources is especially recommended for its short biographies of the diarists and referral to their written works.

Thunder & Lightning: Weather Past, Present, Future by Lauren Redniss, ARC ©2015, acquired 2015

I loved Redniss’s previous book, Radioactive, a history of Marie Curie and of radiation itself, told via historical, scientific and personal vignettes in an original handwritten-like font and hundreds of original illustrations evocative of the mystery and magic of radiation.

Redniss’s new book changes the topic to weather but continues the beautiful format and presentation, with a similar font that’s easier to read and artwork that is positively ... atmospheric :) There is the disorienting blindness of fog, captured in an extended series of gray-toned pages with minimal anchoring text. There is a section on “meteorological warfare,” where clouds are seeded to induce disruptive rain. There is forecasting, from medieval almanacs to the 1792 debut of the Old Farmer’s Almanac with its “secret forecasting formula.”

I’m fascinated by wind and enjoyed the section on trade winds, including when they meet near the equator and create the “doldrums” (a void; a still, windless zone) and also where they flow unobstructed, as swimmer Diana Nyad noted when she and her trainer once chatted with a sailor while waiting for favorable weather conditions between Cuba and Florida:

{She took us} out on the dock in Key West, on the Atlantic Ocean side, and she said, “Put your tongue out in the air.” So the three of us are standing there with our tongues hanging out in the breeze. And she said, “What do you sense?” We definitely sensed something grainy, crunchy, you know, in the mouth. And we said, “Wow, it’s the salt.” She said, “No. It is the Sahara dust.” Literally grains of sand from the Sahara Desert.

I enjoyed Thunder & Lightning slightly less than Radioactive; its content feels born of a folder-full of stories about people, events and topics related (sometimes peripherally) to weather, accumulated over years, more than a real exploration of the topic. But it’s curious. Poetic. Beautiful. A satisfying experience.

Both New York Diaries and Thunder & Lightning sound intriguing. I love books about New York, and I too loved Radioactive (and I'm interested in weather). Thanks for the reviews.

Radioactive was a beautiful graphic book. I should go check out Thunder and Lightning, although it's not calling to me right now.

Wonder if the audio killed The Girl on the Train for you. I tried Gone Girl in audio and lasted about 30 minutes. Over-acted instead of read. Yuck.

Your Facebook reference with 400 years to catch up on made me smile.

Catching up on your interesting thread.

Thunder and Lightning sounds like a fun one, but I'm mostly glad of the reminder to pick up Radioactive!

Catching up on months of reading and trying to find my way to my Best of 2015 list. For my sanity (and yours), I’m limiting it to a sentence or two about each, with a link if I’ve posted a review.

First up is (thankfully) a group of one: books rated less than 3 stars:


Everyone Wants to Be Me or Do Me by Tom Fitzgerald and Lorenzo Marquez

I love TLo’s snarky blog but this book about celebrity life is just angry and dull.

Next are the “okays,” rated 3 or 3.5 stars, organized alphabetically by title:



Different Seasons by Stephen King
Collection of four novellas, two or three of which have been made into films (including “The Shawshank Redemption,” a favorite film). I’ve liked a couple novels by King but not these, either they were so true to films I’d seen and offered little new, or they were disturbingly dark or about the kind of 12yo boys I hated as a 12yo.

Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
Speech-y novel where a bunch of talking heads debate civil rights. Not enough scenes (showing) vs telling, not enough motivation for characters’ actions. Her editor back in the day was right: rewrite as Mockingbird. The Scout of Mockingbird is a curious sponge; the Scout here is petulant and spoiled (though right-minded). Lee’s writing shows promise; her scenes and descriptions of the South plunge you deep into it. Good on audio (read by Reese Witherspoon.)

Impoverished State of Mind by Torri Stuckey
A book-length letter of encouragement from Torri Stuckey -- a child of poverty from Robbins, Illinois; later a football player and graduate of Northwestern University -- to today’s impoverished African-American youth in middle- and high-school. Though over-long and under-proofread, it’s the most earnest and heartfelt message-in-a-book I’ve ever read.

Musicals: The Definitive Illustrated Story ed. by DK Publishing
Hardly “definitive” but trademark DK: lush illustrations and shallow text combine into a history of American/UK musical theater/film. (See review)

On Immunity: An Inoculation by Eula Biss
This read like a meditation -- a thinking-through about vaccines including side-trips to history, science (not technical) and culture, often without conclusion. Somewhat lovely and philosophical, not practical. Good on audio.

Rising Strong by Brene Brown
The third in Brown’s series on “wholehearted living,” this volume addresses failure and resilience.

So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell
Novella-length character study -- an old man’s reminiscence of a scandal that occurred in his rural Illinois childhood and the fallout, including his own regrets.

The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food by Dan Barber
A chef explores the best sustainable foods and methods of preparation. Not as memorable as others in the genre. Good on audio (read by the author).

True to Form by Elizabeth Berg
The third in Berg’s series about ’tween Katie Nash, a solitary girl whose mother died and whose father is a harsh career military man. Wise and comforting narration, although very close to being a children’s/YA novel than being an adult novel about a child.

Nice to see you back, MJ.

>159 rebeccanyc: Thanks, nice to be back!

Thankfully, the “good” and “great” group is large (4 stars and higher):



Apples of Uncommon Character by Rowan Jacobsen
A sort of encyclopedia on 100+ varieties of apples, including heirlooms, with the history/lineage of each and where they’re available/resurging. Plus recipes. I bought it last year but held off reading until this autumn, and I did so then while sampling apples from the farmer’s market. A beautiful book on luxe paper with plenty of info, fabulous rustic photos and Jacobsen’s terrific writing. Probably my favorite book this year!

A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle
In this follow-up to The Power of Now, Tolle encourages and guides the development of consciousness -- the part of us that “notices” what our ego-based mind is up to -- and then how to live in a state of consciousness rather than ego. Great on audio (read by the author; nearly a meditation).

The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr
About memoir writing, with excerpts from classic memoirs. Equally for writers and readers.

Big Stone Gap by Adriana Trigiani
I enjoyed this “comfort” novel about the quirky characters and goings-on in a tiny Appalachian town and the coming-of-age of its thirtysomething “spinster” pharmacist.

Charlotte's Web by E. B. White
I only acquired this sweet classic about friendship last year; don’t recall having read it in childhood. I pulled it from my TBRs now after a (brutal) scene referenced it in Mary Karr’s The Liars Club.

Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson
Collection of personal essays (maybe blog posts?) on topics from light and funny to serious (depression and mental illness). I was annoyed by Lawson’s previous book, Let's Pretend This Never Happened but enjoyed audio of this one (read with high energy by the author, who sounds like Reese Witherspoon) and look forward to more.

Like Family by Paolo Giordano
Novella about a man, woman and young son who face a cancer diagnosis in their household helper and touchstone, and discover the effects that her absence has on their family. There is isolation here, and melancholy, and prickly characters. And there is curious, philosophical searching, especially in the realm of memory and reality. (See review)

The Liars' Club by Mary Karr
This memoir (about Karr’s childhood with alcoholic and absent parents) launched the memoir trend. I finally read it 20 years after its initial publication, after reading her newest book, The Art of Memoir. It’s terrific.

The Making of Home: The 500-Year Story of How Our Houses Became Our Homes by Judith Flanders
In a smart (even scholarly) but conversational narrative, Flanders begins in post-feudal Europe and weaves politics, economics, technology, psychology, work and culture (especially marriage) into an understanding of how houses/homes have evolved in northwest Europe and North America. (See review)

Mothers, Tell Your Daughters by Bonnie Jo Campbell
I liked Campbell’s previous collection of short stories (American Salvage) and loved this one ... though I was chilled by their collective (and a bit repetitive) theme of women’s and girls’ vulnerability to men, and more so by the lengths women go to in avoiding and recovering from those harms. (See review)

My Degeneration: A Journey Through Parkinson's by Peter Dunlap-Shohl
Graphic-format memoir of Peter Dunlap-Shohl’s diagnosis with early-onset Parkinson’s at the age of 43 is surprisingly inspiring. (See review)

My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout
Novella of short chapters and abundant white space, in which a woman recalls a time in the mid-1980s that brought a brief reconciliation with her estranged mother and the chance to be curious and better understand both the family she grew up in and the family she co-created. But just because it’s a short and easy read doesn’t mean it’s simple -- lots here for a book club to sift through. (See review)

Not My Father's Son by Alan Cumming
Actor Cumming’s memoir of family, both within and outside of his participation on the UK TV genealogy show, “Who Do You Think You Are?” I was relatively unacquainted with him prior to reading, but I’m so fond of the book and now of him. Great on audio (read by the author).

Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter by Kate Clifford Larson
Fascinating and infuriating biography of several generations of the Kennedy family, with an emphasis on eldest daughter Rosemary. Good on audio.

Thirteen Ways of Looking by Colum McCann
A novella plus three short stories, each of which explores looking through different perspectives. In the stories, there’s the mind of a writer as he creates and bends and prunes a story; a nun who catches sight of the man, now renown, who raped her decades before; and a translator’s struggle to find, in any language, an equivalent to the Hebrew word, “sh’khol” (a parent whose child has died), even as she deals with her own missing son. In the novella, a day in an octogenarian’s life is interpreted through the lenses of numerous surveillance cameras. (See review)

My daughter just finished Thirteen Ways of Looking, and recommended it. Here it is on your best list, so that clinches it. Onto the wishlist. :)

I was going to use one of my credits for Alan Cummings' book. It sounds like it will be a good choice. I really like him.

>162 NanaCC: I'm not sure Thirteen Ways will make my year-end Top 10, but everything I've read by McCann -- recommended. I'll watch for your comments on Cummings' book. I may see if that UK episode is available, I'd like to see more of his story.

I've never read anything by McCann, although I have a few sitting on my TBR. I know that I'm in for a treat.

That's a lot of books. I loved Liars Club.

>165 dchaikin: over a lot of time, though. Hard to keep up here and then impossible to catch up...

About my 2015 Reading
This year’s stats are very similar to the last couple of years’ -- except author nationality, where non-USA is growing each year.

Total books read: 65
• Fiction: 21/32%
• Nonfiction: 35/54%
• Other/mixed: 9/14%
• I rated 55% of the books 4 stars or above (i.e. “good” to “great”)
• I set a goal of reading at least 30 books from my TBRs; I read 30, yay.

Original publication date:
• Pre-20th century: 2%
• 20th century: 17%
• 21st century: 81%

Date acquired:
• Pre-2000: 5%
• 2000s: 11%
• 2010s: 84%

• Female authors: 37%
• Male authors: 55%
• Mix of genders: 8%
• Author nationality: 35% were non-USA
• Authors new-to-me: 37 plus more in the anthologies
• Authors with more than one book in my 2015 reads: 2 (Stephen Hawking, Mary Karr)
• “Favorited” authors with books in this year’s mix: 3 (Rowan Jacobsen, Etgar Keret, David Macaulay)

Best of 2015
(hmm all nonfiction, though four are memoir)

• Apples of Uncommon Character by Rowan Jacobsen (BEST!)
• Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard Feynman
• The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee
• Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh
• What If? by Randall Munroe
• The Liars' Club by Mary Karr
• Heat by Bill Buford

On to 2016 -- please join me here!