Saturday, April 7, 2018

Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee


Not read in entirety, although it is a very good book. I note here that the section on gender is quite adamant that it is biologically determined, not a social construct, and gives good evidence for that position. Section on epigenetics is a useful primer, though this is an "evolving" area of inquiry.

Artemis by Andy Weir


Not as good as The Martian but will make a fun movie. Fun characters, but the heroine is a little too flawed for my taste. Good integration of the science, though some may be bored by that.

The Grave's a Fine and Private Place by Alan Bradley


(read aloud - review written for the March 2018 meeting of Cozmic Writers II)

Alan Bradley was writing about an English family and was describing the front entrance of their imposing estate mansion. He happened to notice a girl he thought to be about 11, sitting on a low wall next to the driveway. When I say noticed I am of course talking about his imagining, but it is an "imagining into being," the creation of someone real. And he was so taken by her he started over and wrote about her as the central figure of his novels.

Meet Flavia de Luce, rhymes with Batavia, who lives at Buckshaw, an estate outside a small English village with her widower father and her two older sisters. And she is real. Because if she is not real, how can I know her too? And I do know her, or think I do.

It is impossible to tell where Alan Bradley's genius ends and Flavia's begins. After 8 books, we are still surprised at her wit, wisdom and precocity, but she is ever and always the young girl.

These are murder mysteries and Flavia is an amateur sleuth. She is unperturbed by dead bodies and well-versed in chemistry, particularly poisons. But her secret weapon is that as a young girl, she is socially invisible, and with her mother deceased and her grieving father psychologically absent, she and her trusty bike Gladys have the run of the countryside.

We see the world through her eyes as she describes her thoughts and exploits. But reading between the lines we see that many of the adults are looking after her in a way that she is perhaps only partly aware of. And though her father loves her deeply, we can see that Flavia reminds him so much of his wife it is almost unbearable. Her mother was a wealthy heiress who was an adventurer, airplane pilot, and explorer, a force of nature. She went missing on an adventure years before and her body was only discovered in the sixth book. Her place in the novels is as a looming presence or more precisely an absence. Her mother's Rolls Royce is sitting in the garage untouched and covered with dust, a symbol of past opulence and present grief. Buckshaw is slowly decaying. Flavia's world is a contradiction. On one hand the joy of a young girl making sense of her world and decorating it with exciting murder investigations and chemistry experiments. And on the other hand a blanket of deep sorrow. Her father and his valet were both severely traumatized in the war and have an unshakeable bond of shared suffering. This valet, Dogger (once a military physician), is Flavia's most dependable support but at times it seems she is taking care of him and her father as well of only by giving them a reason to carry on.

Flavia notices everything. She reads science books and has made a chemistry lab in her quarters in an abandoned wing of the mansion. She learns culture from her older sisters who are interested in music and literature, also escaping into worlds of their own as their father's situation is collapsing.

But Flavia is irrepressible, her mother reborn, life is an adventure. Every person is a possible suspect, or witness, or clue, or confidant. So we follow her around Buckshaw, around the village of Bishop's Lacey, visiting the Vicar, running into the Inspector and his wife, meeting her imposing Aunt Felicity at the railway station, and predictably, finding dead bodies, sometimes in the first chapter. The authorities arrive and do their job but it is Flavia who finds some telltale clue, spirits it up to her lab and using her bunsen burner and microscope finds some anomaly that she offhandedly leaks to Inspector Hewitt and the case is solved with none but us insiders the wiser.

So I say this to you Flavia, don't grow up. We need you. You delight in the world. You see people in their unguarded moments. Reading about poisons may have given you a feeling of power. But your real power is giving joy to your readers. I'm glad Alan Bradley saw you sitting by the side of the lane. Keep coming to visit.

On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder


Twenty historical lessons about authoritarian regimes and how they start. Good lessons, but his application to today is completely opposite to mine. It is thinly veiled opposition to our current president and as such curiously dated. Will he issue a new edition every 4-8 years? One of us is reading fake news and I think it is Mr. Snyder!

Slow Medicine by Victoria Sweet


Very good and I enjoyed it a lot, but mostly the same as God's Hotel.

The Rooster Bar by John Grisham

(read aloud)

Story of law school debt, immigration, for-profit law schools. A fun read but not Grisham's best.

Apollo 8 by Jeffrey Kluger


Inside the decisions and plans with the dangers and uncertainties exposed. The whole Apollo effort was remarkable. It doesn't seem we have the will or social cohesion to do something like this now.

Uranium: War, Energy, and the Rock that Shaped the World by Tom Zoellner


Everything about Uranium and the history of its mining and use.

Y is for Yesterday by Sue Grafton

(read aloud)

Kinsey is again pursuer and pursued. Her investigation is slow to unfold and the stalker thread is harrowing, but not well-integrated into the plot. Overall we enjoyed it. We finished it on the day Sue Grafton died, so we were surprised and saddened. According to her daughter, "the alphabet will end at Y."

On the Incarnation by St. Athanadius - forward by C. S. Lewis


The forward is delightful and states that reading from other periods is a very beneficial matter and can be a corrective as different eras have different blind spots. He says reading future works would also be helpful but alas that option is not available to us!

On the Incarnation is a spiritual tour de force with a devotional thrust. He speaks of the outstretched arms of our Saviour on the Cross. Of his humiliation, of his public suffering. Of his perfection. His Glory. An appendix letter about the Psalms is valuable.

Shoe Dog by Phil Knight


The story of Knight and Nike. Steeped in Oregon and Oregon track lore, a story of a dream of a shoe business, and slowly but finally, a smashing success over big obstacles. As you might expect, he found some talented collaborators, some very unlikely. Well-written by Knight himself. Bowerman, Prefontaine, Jordan, Tiger, Agassi, all have a place, especially Bowerman. He called his father on the phone almost every evening.

Lab Girl by Hope Jahren


This is quite an unusual book. The author is a very accomplished botanist. She is a very good writer. She has bipolar disorder. Chapters about plants are interspersed with her account of her career, written in an interesting sketchlike manner. Her entire career has been working with the same assistant, Bill, with whom she has an extremely close, quirky relationship. She marries and has a son and writes it all in a way that engages the reader.

Cool Tools by Kevin Kelly


Whole Earth catalog reborn, wonderful collection of interesting tools and books and maps and all things technical and innovative.

Pinpoint: How GPS is Changing Technology, Culture, and Our Minds by Greg Milner


A fascinating tale of the origins of GPS, how it developed, and how it is transforming life. As the only global "utility," it is at the same time curiously vulnerable and quite robust. It seems there is now no going back. What could go wrong? There are some backups being made, but dependence on GPS is becoming very deep. Written at just the right level of technical detail for my taste.

Last Night in the OR by Bud Shaw, M.D.


I thought this was going to be the usual surgical ego trip book seen so often, and the early chapters about the perils and rigors of surgical training seemed headed that way, but the rest of the book was a pleasant surprise. Shaw's accomplishments were if anything understated and he tells story after touching story of mortality, loss, short-lived victories, and self-doubt. His own lymphoma, his sister's illness, his father's Alzheimers, his divorces, tell a human story. His writing is good and he is transparent to an astonishing degree. His life is opened like an autopsy to speak for itself.

American Kingpin by Nick Bilton


This book was very well-written. It is the story of the Silk Road founder; technology in the hands of an amoral young man who begins the perfect crime and of course makes mistakes and is caught. Using encryption, Tor, and bitcoin he makes a website where anything can be bought and sold anonymously. The protagonist is thoroughly unlikeable, his capture is inevitable, so the only compelling thing about the book is the good writing. I look forward to books by this author about people worth his talent.

The Story of San Michele by Axel Munthe

(read aloud)

This is a long autobiography written in an old style. It is very self-referential of course, and quite uneven and episodic. It is often a series of stories, some so amazing as to tempt disbelief. However I think it is all true, and certainly the medical parts seem solidly believable. Those reservations aside, this is an amazing book about an amazing man who lived at a time of ferment and turmoil. He lived at the center of civilization of his time, in Paris and Rome. He associated with the giants of his time, Pasteur, Charcot, and others. He was doctor to royalty and the very rich, but had a special heart, even a love, for the poor, the simple, the peasant. Nothing surpassed his love for animals. He worked bravely through rabies attacks, earthquakes and cholera epidemics; describing himself as terrified he belied this by his obvious bravery and unrelenting efforts to help the most hopeless situations imaginable. He was proud of his unbelief but often his actions spoke more of a deep faith.

He had perhaps what we would call "burnout" and moved to Anacapri and built a mansion, lived with simple people he loved and understood, and built a bird sanctuary and had his own menagerie at his home.

His views of medicine and his closing chapters about the approach of his own death are outstanding.

This is a long book, some parts are better than others but the willing reader who can understand the "romantic" writing style will be greatly rewarded in the reading.

Deliverance to the Captives by Karl Barth


Loaned to me by my pastor when I asked about Barth. As he said, this collection of sermons shows his heart more than his technical theology. Most of the sermons were delivered to services in a prison, hence the title. The sermons are wonderful, thoughtful and moving. He speaks methodically about a brief text and exhorts the listener to believe the good news. Some major emphases point to his central thoughts. Everything is centered in Christ and what he has done for us. This is the Word of God. Apart from Christ we cannot know or understand or receive God. In Christ we can be saved from our awful state. This is given to everyone without cost, without exception.