girl in greenwood

The House of Hope and Fear: Life in a Big City Hospital
by Audrey Young


I loved this book and read it in a few hours becuase I was so fascinated. I work at the hospital that Dr. Young describes with honesty and affection. In her stories about patients, doctors, families, and aspects of society, the reader gets a view inside a public hospital and the people who work and are treated there.

There are two reasons why I would recommended you read this book: First, it would help you understand why I choose to work at the county hospital and why I am so proud of the work I do. The other reason is more political: reading about the patients who end up at the county hospital seeking primary care - the homeless, the addicted, the mentally ill, the underinsured, the unemployed, the desparate - is the best argument I can think of for universal health care.

Just one fact pulled from the book: the United States spends more than twice as much on health care than any other country, and yet our health outcome and life expectancy statistics are nowhere near the best in the world.

Labels: book reports, medical

Baby Catcher: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife
by Peggy Vincent

I enjoyed this book so, so much! One of my classmates recommended it to me while we were in our labor & delivery clinicals in nursing school. I was fascinated and moved by the author's description of her work as a nurse-midwife. I had several realizations while reading this book: I am not cut out to be a labor & delivery nurse; it's a shame that the medical establishment is reabsorbing the homebirth movement; I really don't want to have a medicalized birth when I have my own child; and I feel like my labor & delivery clinical experience was a freakin' joke.

I'm not cut out to be an L&D nurse because I feel too inexperienced. I know that the author of this book went into the field without having birthed her own children yet, but I really don't feel I could do that. I'm also not sure that I want to become such a specialized sort of nurse, especially considering my anti-medicalized birth rant that is forthcoming.

Part of what Vincent writes about in this book is her experience with being an L&D nurse in San Francisco during the 1970s, where she met women who wanted to take charge of their own birth experiences and refused drugs, IVs, and confinement to bed. She was frustrated with (mostly male) doctors who imposed their concepts of how labor "should" progress on women in labor. Most memorably, one of the doctors told Vincent that a normal birth was always a retrospective diagnosis, and that he considered birth to be complicated and unsafe until proven otherwise. Inspired by these women, Vincent went to midwifery school and started her own business as a midwife and delivered thousands of babies at home.

But as medical malpractice cases increased and insurance carriers refused to insure nurse-midwives, practitioners like Vincent found themselves unable to continue their businesses. Vincent is upfront about the fact that she continued to deliver babies for friends and previous clients, but informed them that she was uninsured ("going bare"). There are still midwives available in some places, such as here in Seattle, but medical insurers are making it more and more difficult.

Which brings me to my personal preferences... I am well aware that I have never given birth, so all of this is basically a**talk. But it's well-educated a**talk. When I think "hospital birth," I think IV, continuous fetal monitoring, contraction monitor, limited ability to get up and move around, doctors wanting to deliver the baby in a certain timeframe and on a certain schedule, encouragement to use narcotics or an epidural, nothing to eat or drink throughout the entire labor, episitomy, 30% or higher rate of caesarean section, and delivery flat on my back with my feet in the air. When I think "midwife birth," (and let's be clear, I have no intention of giving birth at home, I would much prefer to go to a birth center) I think eating & drinking what I want, intermittment fetal heart monitoring, no drugs, no IVs, ability to move around, get in the shower or tub, get down on the floor if it feels right (knowing what I know, I would NEVER get down on the floor in the hospital!), and laboring at my own pace in the positions of my choice. This sounds way more comfortable to me. I fundamentally trust that my body will know what to do and do it well, and I don't need a hospital for that. If something were to go wrong, there are more hospitals in Seattle than you can shake a stick at, and I could be transferred by ambulance in a very short time.

Finally, I feel really let down by my clinical experience after reading about Vincent's student nurse experiences. I did witness one baby's arrival during my clinicals, but it was a c-section and the mother was not in hard labor at the time the decision was made. I didn't see any women in serious labor. I didn't see any vaginal births. I didn't even care for any postpartum women who had had vaginal births, so I didn't even get to see what stiches that repair lacerations look like. I thought it was going to be a really educational, uplifting quarter and it just wasn't. All I learned in the hands-on way was that I really don't want to give birth in a hospital.

My nurse opinions aside, this is an excellent book and I would recommend it to anyone wanting to read honest and open descriptions of lots of different births, including a few that didn't go well. Plus there's a bonus recipe in the back of the book for caramels that sounds really yummy. And there's a lot of resources for additional information - articles, websites, and other books.

Labels: book reports, nursing

The Body Farm
by Patricia Cornwell

Eh, it was ok. I picked this out of the many Kay Scarpetta novels because of the title - the Body Farm is a research facility where forensic scientists study the decomposition of bodies in a variety of settings, which I learned about when I read "Stiff" - but this book was only so-so. And there wasn't very much about the Body Farm itself.

For all the snide comments I've made about the Temperance Brennan novels, I am going back to them with open arms. At least Tempe does real science and tells us about it!

Labels: book reports

Glasshouse
by Charles Stross

Very clever sci-fi book that deals with issues of information, privacy, and gender. In the 27th century, people live primarily as information and can modify their bodies in nearly limitless ways (e.g. the character who chooses to live as a fluffy pony). Backups of one's consciousness can be made, as well, effectively creating multiple identities for any given person.

The main character is Robin, a man who wakes up in a memory erasure clinic with very little memory of his previous life. He volunteers to live in an experimental community, the "Glasshouse", based on 1950's-era Earth. He is placed into the Glasshouse as a woman, and struggles with the experience of living as a suburban housewife. As the story unfolds, Robin wonders if his/her enemies have created the Glasshouse as a prison or a distraction, or worse.

This novel kept me guessing the entire time, and also made me laugh with its dry humor, especially regarding "meaningless ancient customs" like wearing pantyhose. Hee.

By the way, I didn't realize when I read this book that it was a sequel to a book called Accelerando. I definitely plan to read that one next, although I wonder if I might have been less confused if I'd read Accelerando first.

Labels: book reports

Black Swan Green
by David Mitchell

I originally got this book from the library because I had enjoyed Mitchell's other books (Number9Dream, Ghostwritten, etc) so much. I spent the first half of this book being disappointed that it was so much smaller in scope and so much less extravagant in structure than his other books. But despite myself, I got caught up in the story.

Jason Taylor is a 13-year-old boy in a small town in England in 1982. He is not having a good year. He has a stutter which he battles daily, he broke his grandfather's watch in a stupid accident, and his parents' marriage is breaking down. He also has to deal with school bullies and continually fails to live up to his older sister's perfection.

This is one of those "coming of age" stories, and it's gorgeously written. I still like Mitchell's more creative works better, though.

Labels: book reports

Seeing Voices
by Oliver Sacks

This book really didn't do much for me. I've read several of Sacks' other books and found them fascinating, but in "Seeing Voices" Sacks seemed so enamored with ASL (American Sign Language) that other facets of Deafness as culture, experience, or disability were virtually ignored. The one aspect of the book I did find scientifically interesting was Sacks' observation that many of the Deaf people he studied who use ASL, a language that has a spatial dimension that spoken language cannot, have a much better sense of spatial relations than their English-speaking counterparts. This appeared to signify that the ASL-speakers' brains had changed to accomdate a spatial sense that spoken-word-users brains may not use or possess.

Other than that, I thought this book was kind of repetitive and not that interesting, and also cut out the validity of the experience of Deaf people who choose to read lips, speak, use Signed Exact English, or use hearing aids or cochlear implants. Sure, ASL is neat, but it's not the only choice the deaf have for communicating.

Labels: book reports

Witches Abroad
by Terry Pratchett

This wasn't the best Discworld novel I've read. It was fine, but Pratchett didnt' seem to have a very specific target for his usually laser-focused satire. If you like the concept of twisted fairy tales, like "Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister" and so forth, you'll probably like this book. There are fairy godmothers and everything!

Labels: book reports

A Suitable Boy
by Vikram Seth

I love this book. I've read it three times in the past 12 years, I believe. It is such a powerful portrait of Indian culture and a glimpse into the myriad cracks and divides in Indian society.

The two main plotlines revolve around a young woman from a Hindu family who is in love with a Muslim man, and a man from a Hindu family who is in love with a Muslim courtesan. The "suitable boy" of the title is the man that the young woman's family is trying to find for her to marry, so she will not ruin her life and disgrace her family by marrying her Muslim boyfriend.

The book is very long and touches on a lot of tiny facets of Indian culture that most Americans would not encounter... from the veggie cutlets that the girl's mother eats because she's a vegetarian, to the low status of leatherworkers, to the type of songs that the courtsan sings. Really fascinating and moving.

Labels: book reports

Olympos
by Dan Simmons

This was a tough book for me to get through. I did read the previous book, Ilium, but I didn't remember it very clearly by the time I got around to reading Olympos. I did think the concepts Simmons explored were pretty interesting, especially the idea that human thought and creativity can actually create alternate universes. And as a former lit major, I did appreciate the literary references, and there were a lot of them.

But I got tired of the constant switching between the multiple plot lines, and the quantum physics stuff didn't ring true to my (admittedly nonexpert) ear. I would have liked more about Harman and Ada's plotline and less about the Trojan War that went awry.

Still, if you like science fiction and you happen to be a literary nerd too, you'd probably like this book. Read "Ilium" first so you have a clue what is going on.

Labels: book reports

Apex Hides the Hurt
by Colson Whitehead

This was a quick, clever little read. It's about a nomenclature consultant - a guy who names products for a living - who has recently undergone a "misfortune" and stopped working for some time. He is easing back into work by taking a contract with the town of Winthrop, which is in the process of deciding whether or not to change its name to reflect its changing demographics (a successful software company is headquartered there). While this is a story that expresses both affection and disdain for marketing, it is also a story about race. Our main character is black, and many of the townspeople are white, although Winthrop was originally founded by ex-slaves who named it Freedom. I enjoyed the book and I loved the naming stuff, but I thought it was too short. Not that the story left anything out - I just would have enjoyed staying with the characters a bit longer.

Labels: book reports

Intuition
by Allegra Goodman

I thought I was going to love this book for the first couple of chapters. It's set in the mid-1980s in a research laboratory and the descriptions of the lab, the lives of the grad students and postdocs, the monotony and sense of humor that develop simultaneously around scientific research... all of these struck chords with me based on my experience haunting various labs with my dad. Even the descriptions of the smells were pleasingly right. The main conflict of the story is between Cliff, a possibly corner-cutting postdoc who appears to have discovered a possible cure for cancer, and Robyn, a postdoc who has been in the lab longer than Cliff but whose experiments have been going nowhere. They have a romantic releationship but it ends badly, and then Robyn begins to believe that Cliff might be faking or manipulating his data. Both sides of the conflict pick up various supporters, until it mushrooms into an investigation that includes testimony before Congress. You would think that a massive conflict would create a pretty compelling story, but it really didn't do much for me. Most of the conflict is expressed via different characters' inner monologues about their ethics and beliefs and feelings. It just wasn't a very interesting way to examine the ethics of research. Also, it made me really glad that I did not choose to go into science in an academic setting.

Labels: book reports

The Book Thief
by Markus Zusak

This is a very creatively-written book aimed at a young adult audience. It's a little edgy for young adults, I think - there is a lot of death and profanity for a YA book. Okay, so most of the profanity is in German.

The book is set in a small German town in the days leading up to the Holocaust, and is narrated by Death. The main character is a little girl who steals books. When I first started reading it I thought it was gimmicky, but I got sucked in and really liked it by the time I got to the end. Well done.

Labels: book reports

As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl
by John Colapinto


This book was super interesting. I'd seen the TV story on the boy in question, but this book went into way more detail.

The gist of the story is that at 8 months old, baby boy Bruce was getting circumsized to treat an excessively tight foreskin, but there was an accident with the electrocautery machine and his penis was horribly burned and could not be saved. The baby's parents sought medical advice and ended up consulting with Dr. John Money at Johns Hopkins, who counseled the parents to have the baby's testicles removed and raise him as a girl. So they did. Money followed the case for years and cited it as proof that gender identity is mutable in early childhood, and that babies with damaged or ambiguous genitalia can be assigned to one sex or the other without difficulty.

Unfortunately, Money was full of baloney. Baby Bruce, renamed Brenda, never took to being a girl. "She" liked to play with boy toys, got in fights with boys, preferred masculine clothing, and always felt she didn't fit in with the girls. She even preferred to urinate standing up even though she had no penis. Brenda was treated by a parade of psychologists, and over time, they began to believe that Brenda needed to be told of the circumstances of her injury and reassignment. Her parents informed her at age 14, and she immediately declared her intention to live as a boy. She began her transformation as a teenager and took the name David, as in David and Goliath, because he had such a large obstacle to overcome.

This story was amazing to read, and really made me think about gender identity. Most significantly, it made me believe that intersexed babies should not be surgically reassigned until they are old enough to decide for themselves if they are a boy or a girl.

Labels: book reports

The Alienist
by Caleb Carr

This is the first Caleb Carr book I've read and I enjoyed it very much! It's a murder mystery set in New York City in the 1890s. The "alienist" of the title refers to the then-budding field of psychology. Scientists were just starting to grasp the fact that a person's childhood experiences have a huge effect on their adult behavior. The group of main characters in the novel is like a proto-CSI unit... they use a variety of techniques such as behavioral analysis, profiling, fingerprinting, and many other concepts that were not yet widely accepted.

As a bonus, Carr is a terrific writer and really made me feel like I was experiencing New York 100 years ago. Even the dialect stuff that he threw in, which often drives me up a wall, seemed natural and enhanced the characters. It was an exciting book to read!

Labels: book reports

Mountains Beyond Mountains
by Tracy Kidder

This book was so inspirational. Dr. Paul Farmer is a physician and activist who has devoted his life to improving care for some of the world's poorest people. The main problem he tackles during the course of this portrait is multiple-drug-resistant tuberculosis among the poor in Haiti, but other diseases and other nations catch his attention as well. I was astonished by the descriptions of how hard Dr. Farmer has been working for so many years, and was gratified to hear that his organization received a big grant from the Gates Foundation. I know this sounds like a really dry, sad subject to read about, but it's actually kind of uplifting. Kidder has a droll way of writing and really brings Dr. Farmer off the page - I feel like I would recognize him in an airport. Highly recommended.

Labels: book reports

The Accidental
by Ali Smith

This book was odd. It was creatively structured with a brief intro, sections called "the beginning", "the middle", and "the end" with some other odd bits stuck in. One chapter is written entirely in verse. Another is a summary of the history of cinema in a few pages.

So what is the point? The Smart family (author mother Eve, professor stepfather Michael, teenage son Magnus, adolescent daughter Astrid) are in a boring small town on their summer vacation. A mysterious woman named Amber (maybe) shows up at their vacation house and both Eve and Michael assume she is the other's guest. Amber fascinates Astrid, and deflowers Magnus. Michael desires her and Eve is both enthralled and disgusted by her. When the Smarts return from their vacation, they find their home completely empty and assume it was Amber who robbed them.

It's an interesting book. I don't know if I liked it, exactly, but it was an interesting read.

Labels: book reports

Grave Secrets
by Kathy Reichs

I think I may be losing my taste for these Temperance Brennan books. It's not that they're bad, and I am still intrigued by the science stuff (this one had a bunch of information about measuring fetal bones and what you can learn from them! fascinating!) but the plots are so melodramatic. If I got into as many dangerous situations and nefarious plots as Brennan, I would retire. I'll probably keep reading, though - might as well see what happens next.

Labels: book reports

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
by J.K. Rowling

I thought this was a great way to wrap up the series. Rowling did a good job of wrapping up the loose ends, of bringing the conflict between Harry and Voldemort to a final resolution, and of explaining their strange connection. I was also pleased that many of the minor characters (Luna, Draco, Neville) also got to develop and change. Finally, even though it was cheesy, I loved the epilogue. That will be an extremely cute scene in the movie when they get to that point in the films.

Labels: book reports, Harry Potter

To Say Nothing of the Dog
by Connie Willis

I loved this book! It is a tasty package of time-travel, science fiction, British history, and silly Victorian romance. Perhaps not everyone would appreciate such a mish-mash of genres, but with my range of interests, I thought it was fantastic. I have enjoyed everything I've read by Connie Willis - and this was one of my favorites.

Ned Henry is sent back to Victorian England to find out what happened to the bishop's bird stump from the Coventry cathedral that was destroyed by Nazi bombers in 1940. In the future, where time travel has become a valid scientific pursuit, a Lady Schrapnell has found the diaries of her many-times great-grandmother whose life was forever changed by a visit to Coventry's cathedral in the 1880s. Lady Schrapnell takes it upon herself to recreate the destroyed cathedral and wants every detail to be perfect.

It's a charming, funny, and satisfying book. The loose ends get mostly wrapped up and there's all kinds of literary in-jokes for those who are so inclined. Loved it.

Labels: book reports

The Time Traveler's Wife
by Audrey Niffenegger

I loved this book! It appealed to me on two levels - first as a science fiction concept, and second as a love story.

Henry is the time-traveler of the title, who jumps around unpredictably in the timestream, appearing in the future or the past at random. Clare is his wife, who he first meets when Clare is a child and Henry is an adult. Eventually Clare grows up and meets Henry in his "normal" place in time. They get married and begin trying to go through life with Henry's strange condition. Their marriage is challenged by Henry's inadvertant disappearances and their difficulty in conceiving a child due to Henry's condition.

I found the end of the book really sad. But the book was so good that I recommend it heartily despite the sadness. Now that I think about it, it's probably time to re-read this book.

Labels: book reports

Fatal Voyage
by Kathy Reichs

Another Temperance Brennan novel. This time, Tempe is part of an investigation of an airline crash with no survivors. The bodies are scattered all over a wooded area in the rural south. Temperance turns up a couple of odd clues that don't seem to match with the plane crash - some bones that are too old to be part of the crash scene, and a mysterious lodge in the woods that doesn't appear on any map.

The story is sort of unbelieveable, sure, but it's still entertaining and exciting. I'm amused by the reviews of this series that say, "But that could never happen!" (and yeah, I've said that about these books too)... because that's really not the point. It's fiction.

Labels: book reports

Men at Arms
by Terry Pratchett

Another fun Pratchett book. This one is all about the Night Watch in Ankh-Morpork. Their captain is about to retire to a life of luxury as the husband of a noblewoman, and the Watch is in turmoil due to recent affirmative action hires of a troll, a dwarf, and a werewolf.

The plot is not really the point, as usual with the Discworld books - instead, it's about the satire. This book features scary clowns, a talking dog, a new weapon, dwarf vs. troll politics, and a possible new king. It's funny.

Labels: book reports

Lost and Found
by Carolyn Parkhurst


I enjoyed reading this book a lot. I picked it up after reading Dogs of Babel, and was hoping it wouldn't be as sad. Happily, it wasn't!

The premise of the book is that the characters are on a reality TV show called Lost and Found, which is a lot like the Amazing Race. Each team consists of two people and they receive clues to locate their next destination or task. The narration of the book changes to a different contestant every chapter, which allows the reader to see the action from different points of view. Nearly every contestant has a secret that they're keeping.

Cassie is a teenager competing with her mother, Laura. Laura thinks that by going on this adventure, she and Cassie will redevelop their bond which was shattered when Cassie had a baby after hiding her pregnancy for nine months. Cassie is not so convinced that anything is going to change her situation with her mother.

The most interesting characters to me were Abby and Justin, a married couple who met at an ex-gay ministry. Abby believes that Justin is strong in his conviction of being straight, but she is not as certain. However, Justin is hiding his doubts and his lapses from Abby.

The whole story was pretty interesting. I know Cassie was supposed to be the main character, but honestly I was most interested in the ex-gays. That entire concept fascinates and horrifies me.

Labels: book reports

The Paperboy
by Pete Dexter

For some reason, I end up reading a lot of books that I don't really like all that much. This was one.

It's set about 30 years ago in a small town in Florida. Jack is 19, recently dropped out of college, and is working for his father who runs the hometown newspaper. His older brother, Ward, is a journalist in Miami. Ward comes home to the small town to investigate the conviction of a hillbilly swamp guy for the murder of the county sheriff - there are questions about the fairness of his trial. Swamp guy has acquired a fiancee/pen-pal named Charlotte, who has apparently made a hobby of befriending murderers in various prisons. She says she wants to help them.

Jack and Ward get caught up in Charlotte's zeal to get her swamp murderer boyfriend a new trial, but none of it works out as well as they had imagined. By the end of the book, Charlotte and Ward are both dead and Jack is just as confused and lost as he was at the beginning.

It was certainly interesting, and had some things to say about the nature of trust and sexuality and human motivation... but I can't say I enjoyed reading it.

Labels: book reports

Decipher
by Stel Pavlou

I borrowed this book from my dad when I realized that I was about to depart on a family vacation without a book to read. My dad volunteered that he had a novel he hadn't started yet, and I traded it for The Forge of God so he would have something to read, too.

This should have been a decent sci-fi book but it wasn't. The author is apparently a screenwriter, so the story came across very visually, which was cool. But the meta-dialog ("She revealed" "He shouted loudly" etc) was pretty stilted and crappy. I tried to skim the dialog and stick to the action, which worked out okay.

So, the story. It's about the impending doom of planet Earth which is about to be bombarded by a storm of solar flares, the likes of which has not been seen in 12,000 years. There's some interesting stuff about how many world religions point to the current time (the novel is set in, um, 2012? something like that) being the end of days. You've got your Armageddon, your Kali-yug, your end of times on the Mayan calendar, and so on. I did enjoy that aspect of the book. The sort of silly, action-flick part was about the discovery! of! Atlantis! which for some reason was stashed at the South Pole under a mile of ice. Oh, and it's made out of diamond-like carbon material. And is inhabited by sentient nanobots. Or golems. Or something.

It was an okay vacation read, and it did pique my interest in reading up on world religions, especially the genesis of pre-Christian stories that got absorbed into Christianity (did the Sumerians really have a Great Flood story, minus Noah and his meathead sons?). I just wish I could've imagined someone other than Jeff Goldblum as the nerdy guy.

Labels: book reports

Deadly Decision
by Kathy Reichs

This was not my favorite Temperance Brennan novel, although I was caught up in the story. This time, Tempe is investigating the murder of a 9-year-old who was caught in the crossfire of a biker gang war. She gets drawn into various other biker issues (apparently motorcycle gangs are a big problem in Quebec? And North Carolina? I did not know this. And have my suspicions about its accuracy) including an old unsolved murder from decades before.

Maybe I just don't care about bikers as much as nuns, but this plotline didn't do as much for me as Death Du Jour. It's pretty exciting, though, especially if you like motorcycles and people shooting each other.

Labels: book reports

Death Du Jour
by Kathy Reichs

I am currently reading the 4th book in this series (Death Du Jour is the 2nd) and so far I think I have liked this one the best. The book begins with Tempe Brennan looking for the buried bones of a Quebecois nun in a Montreal churchyard - she's up for sainthood so they need to find her bones! But the nun's bones are not where they are supposed to be. Next up on Tempe's caseload is a horrible house fire that has killed a lot of people... soon followed by the disappearance of a young graduate student who may have been sucked into a cult.

The revelation about the nun's personal history is the most interesting bit of the book, although there were lots of good twists and turns in the story. That's why I'm still entangled in the series.

Labels: book reports

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
by Haruki Murakami

This is, I believe, the second Murakami book I've read. The first was Kafka by the Shore, which was just... weird. This one was also weird, but more satisfyingly so. And it wasn't quite as disturbing, or the distubing bits seemed more normal to me, or something.

The main character is a "calcutec" - someone who does freelance data processing with some kind of brain implant - who gets caught up in an adventure with a crazy neuroscientist and his odd granddaughter. These chapters alternate with a parallel story set in a fantasy land of the Town, where people must separate themselves from their shadows and then their shadows die. Ordinary objects like paperclips take on an unusual significance, as do musical instruments.

It's all very creative but I ultimately found the book a bit unsatisfying. It was like eating a highly seasoned snack that really didn't contain any nutrition. That said, I'll probably pick up more Murakami books just to see what other crazy ideas he's come up with.

Labels: book reports, science fiction

The Electric Michaelangelo
by Sarah Hall

I'm really behind on my book report list. I read this book like a year ago. The strange thing is that I remember not liking it very much but finished it anyway. I just went back and read the Amazon reviews of the books and now I remember - the writing was really beautiful and the book introduced me to a world - a couple, actually - that were completely unfamiliar to me. But it was a sad and dark and disturbing book, and I think that's why I remember not liking it very much.

Cy is a child of a single mother in a small seaside town in England early in the 20th century. His mother runs a hotel that is more of an infirmary for tuberculosis patients who have come to "take the sea air" in hopes that it will help their disease. When Cy gets a little older, he becomes the apprentice of the town's tattoo artist, an engaging and creepy character. He teaches Cy all there is to know about tattooing, including how to give oneself a tattoo with ink and a hammer and a nail.

Cy ends up in New York City and gravitates to Coney Island, where he meets an entertaining assortment of carneys. One of them is Grace, who does an act with her horse that she keeps in her apartment. Yes, really. Grace gives Cy the opportunity to craft his masterpiece - a tattoo that will cover Grace from the neck down. He agrees and falls in love with her... but their romance is not meant to be.

It's a sad book. Sad things happen to nearly all of the characters. I suppose that is true in nearly everyone's life, however...

Labels: book reports

Passage
by Connie Willis

I felt a strong connection to this book, as it dealt with many of the issues I've been pondering over the past couple of years: medicine, end-of-life issues, what happens in near-death experiences, Alzheimer's disease, how survivors deal with loss when someone dies, hospitals...

The main character, Joanna, is a nurse working on a research project interviewing people in the hospital who have had near-death experiences. She believes in her work but is often frustrated and thwarted by a colleague who contaminates the subjects' stories by blathering about angels and spirits and generally convincing everyone to follow his script of a near-death experience. Joanna meets a new researcher, Dr. Wright, and gets involved with his project which involves creating near-death-like experiences using drugs and sensory deprivation. He is trying to discover the biolgoical purpose for near-death experiences. Joanna and Dr. Wright try to find unbiased subjects on whom to experiment, but have a lot of trouble finding volunteers who are not biased by the angels/light/tunnel script or do not have trouble getting into the near-death-like state. So, Joanna volunteers to undergo the experience herself. She has no difficulty reaching the correct mind-state, but perplexingly, always finds herself on the Titanic just before it sinks whenever she undergoes the procedure. Joanna has the feeling that the Titanic is somehow related to something she learned in a high school English class, but when she goes looking for her English teacher, she finds that he is now in the throes of Alzheimer's disease and can't explain to her what she wants to know.

Then something really sad happens.

I was completely entranced by this book. It was clever and smart and touching and sad all at the same time. It probably helped that I read it during a power outage when I was feeling sort of displaced and confused already. And I love the way the book wrapped up, with an answer of sorts arising out of the Really Sad Thing.

Labels: book reports, nursing, science fiction

The Forge of God
by Greg Bear

I haven't yet read "Anvil of Stars," which many people seem to feel is a better story than this prequel. I thought "Forge of God" was quite interesting, if a little too wordy, and a little too loose in the ending.

The book is set in the last several months before the destruction of the earth by a mysterious race of "planet-eaters". Humankind is initially contacted by two constructs made by the planet-eaters' opponents - one construct seems like a sci-fi movie alien, and the other is a group of ovoid floating silver robots. Both constructs self-destruct, leaving humanity mostly in the dark about the fate of the Earth.

As the world wonders what is going to happen after the warnings from the faux aliens, some individuals encounter tiny spider-like robots that "bite" them and integrate them into a network of humans worldwide. Via this network, the chosen humans take on the tasks of rounding up data and genetic samples from all over the world and loading them into containers for evacuation of the planet.

I won't give away the ending but I bet you can guess what happens next...

Labels: book reports, science fiction

The Known World
by Edward P. Jones

This was a hard book to read. It's a novel written in the style of a historical account about a group of slaves, white slave owners, and free black people in Virginia just before the Civil War. I found it painfully honest and explicit about the horrors of slavery, including some rarely-discussed practices such as free blacks buying their own slaves, and free blacks being kidnapped and sold back into slavery.

I believe the title refers to the small area that contains all the characters and action of the book - a few plantations and their slave quarters in one county. Though the geographic area may be small, the depth of feeling and the effect on the reader are enormous.

Labels: book reports

The Brontë Project: A Novel of Passion, Desire, and Good PR
by Jennifer Vandever

I didn't love this book, but I did like it. It's about Sara, a graduate student who is trying to track down lost letters written by Charlotte Bronte. She is engaged to Paul, another grad student with a much more workable thesis proposal. They are planning to get married within the year, when suddenly Paul decides that he needs some space to decide if Sara is really the one for him. Sara suspects that Paul was motivated by flirtatious comments from Claire, the sexy French "Diana Studies" expert (yes, that's Diana as in the princess who died in the car accident...). So Paul departs for some sexy research project in France and Sara comes unglued and discovers that a bad breakup removes one's sense of irony. For example, she had never realized what a deep and profound meaning could be found in REO Speedwagon's "Keep On Loving You".

From there the plot gets sort of lame... Sara hooks up with a movie producer, realizes he's a jerk, goes to France to find Paul, blah blah blah. Chicklit ending.

But Vandever is a good writer, and there were several bits of this book that made me laugh out loud. There was the REO Speedwagon revelation, and there was Sara's teenage devotion to "Wuthering Heights" and her therapist parents' response: "Now how could Cathy and Heathcliff used their communication skills to improve their relationship?" If she writes another book, I'll check it out. I just hope she improves her plot-writing skills a bit first.

Labels: book reports

The Bone Collector
by Jeffery Deaver

I remember hearing about the movie that was made from this novel, which starred Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie. I didn't see the movie for some reason, but I thought the concept was interesting... a former detective, Lincoln Rhyme, is confined to his home after being seriously injured on the job which turned him into a quadraplegic. Some of his former coworkers bring him a murder case that appears to contain clues leading to another murder in progress, and ask for his help solving the case. Rhyme asks for Amelia, the cop that found the first body, to act as his eyes and ears on the scene. Through this partnership, Amelia becomes a better police officer and Rhyme re-connects with the world outside his bedroom.

The mystery totally had me going - even though there was a pretty big clue planted in the book, I didn't know who the murderer was until he revealed himself to Rhyme near the end of the book. Maybe I'm just a sucker, I don't know. I enjoyed the forensic details and medical details regarding Rhyme's disability, although those details might turn some readers off.

I understand this is a series... I think I'll read some more of them.

Labels: book reports

Broken For You
by Stephanie Kallos

I got this book from the library after having a six-degrees-of-separation sort of connection with the author. (For HIPAA reasons I can't explain further.) And it has stuck in my head ever since, for an assortment of odd reasons.

The main character, Margaret, is an elderly woman who lives alone in a Seattle mansion filled with valuable antique porcelain pieces. She has been diagnosed with a brain tumor and places an ad for a roommate so she won't be alone. The young woman who moves in is Wanda, a stage manager who pretends she is completely self-reliant but is actually trying to find the man who left her. As Wanda and Margaret become closer, they both grow and change and begin to examine themselves and their secrets. Margaret is eventually forced to reveal that she is dying, and Wanda rises to the occasion.

A lot more happens, but you'll enjoy the book more if I don't tell you all about it. There are two reasons that this book stuck in my head, one of them meaningful and the other is so tiny as to be silly. The meaningful one is the portrayal of the end of Margaret's life - Kallos handles the subject beautifully. The silly one is that Wanda makes her coffee in a French press with lots of cinnamon, which I do as well, and so I think of the character every time I make coffee.

Labels: book reports

Beyond Black
by Hilary Mantel

I was excited to read this book, as it was described as a funny and mysterious story about a psychic who actually communicates with the spirits. But I was pretty disappointed with it. The writing is tight and evocative, but the plot is hardly extant.

The main character is the psychic, a woman named Alison who was horribly abused as a child by the men who were the clients of her prostitute mother. At a performance, Alison meets Colette, a brittle, angry woman who has just left her husband. Alison proposes that Colette become her manager, and Colette accepts. Colette takes over Alison's business matters and makes her very successful, but both of them continue to be sad, angry, and unable to examine their own problems.

While the world that Mantel describes is fascinating,and her writing is very good, the book left me cold. Neither Alison nor Colette change very much during the course of the book, which takes place over 7 years. Usually a story sees some change in a character, or something interesting happens, but that is not the case here. Kind of a letdown.

Labels: book reports

The Lovely Bones
by Alice Sebold

I am once again very late to the party. I know this book got all its critical acclaim several years ago, but I just read it fairly recently.

Susie Salmon is a 14-year-old girl walking home from school when she is lured into a cornfield by her neighbor, Mr. Harvey, who subsequently rapes and kills her. Susie narrates the rest of the book from heaven, which she finds is a lot like life but more dull. She doesn't have much to do except watch her friends and family from above.

This book is so, so sad, but so, so good. I thought perhaps all the press about it when it was new was just hype, but it really is a creative and well-written book.

Labels: book reports

The Glass Castle: A Memoir
by Jeannette Walls

This book blew my mind. I knew Jeannette Walls by name from her gossip column at MSNBC.com. But I had NO IDEA that her childhood was so incredibly bizarre.

Walls' parents were, ah, eccentric to say the least. They kept their family on the move all the time, saying something vague about "the tax man" or "the government". The family lived in serious poverty, often going without food or shoes because they couldn't afford to buy them. Surprisingly, the parents were not uneducated or incapable of supporting themselves - they were more like hippies out on the road. They taught their kids to appreciate art and books, but often made them change schools multiple times in the school year.

It's fascinating to read about this family's extremely unconventional, sometimes upsetting lifestyle, and how Wells went on to become conventionally successful as a journalist. I found myself angry with the parents, who were so phenomenally self-centered and devoted to their "ideals" that they subjected their children to awful conditions and deprivation. And yet, one factor that keeps coming up throughout the story is that the family members genuinely love each other. In most scenarios I would say that genuine family love is more important than anything, but in this case... I don't know.

Anyway. Good read. I recommend it.

Labels: book reports

Codex
by Lev Grossman

I loved this book! It's about an investment banker who is about to start a new position in London, but in the meantime takes what he thinks will be a quick consulting job for a client. It turns out to be not so quick and also not so financial, as he discovers that his client(s) have a large collection of very old books that they wish for him to catalog. They are seeking a particular medieval codex which may or may not even exist. While trying to come up with any information at all about the codex and its author, Ed the banker meets Margaret the literary scholar. She gets sucked into his story even though she believes that the codex doesn't exist. The mystery develops multiple layers as Edward plays an addictive videogame that seems to be related to the mysterious codex; Margaret becomes involved in the search; it's revealed that the duke and duchess who are Edward's clients are actually working against each other, and so on.

I really enjoyed the story because it was both exciting and smart. I hope Grossman writes another novel soon. Although I suppose his day job is kind of excellent, reviewing books for Time Magazine and all.

Labels: book reports, mysteries

Anansi Boys
by Neil Gaiman

I just love Neil Gaiman's writing. I enjoyed American Gods and especially Good Omens, so I was so pleased when I found out he had another novel out. This book was reminiscent of American Gods, only this time the gods in question are from the African tradition. The main character "Fat Charlie" Nancy is a mild-mannered workaholic with a sweet fiancee who won't have sex until after their wedding and an evil boss described as an albino ferret in an expensive suit. Charlie calls home to invite his father to his wedding, only to discover that his father has died. Charlie goes to Florida to attend his father's funeral and things take a weird turn when Charlie disovers that his dad was actually an incarnation of the African trickster god Anansi (A. Nancy, get it?). Not only that, but Charlie has a brother named Spider who has their dad's magical abilities. Spider gleefully attaches himself to Charlie and tries to ruin his life, not out of malevolence, but out of enthusiasm and fun.

Labels: book reports, science fiction

Woken Furies
by Richard K. Morgan

This is the third book in the Takeshi Kovacs series. I apparently haven't reivewed the other two on my blog. The first two are Altered Carbon and Broken Angels.

The setting for this series is far, far in the future, where humanity is scattered across hundreds of plants and everyone has a backup module installed in their brains, allowing their consciousness to be downloaded into new bodies for fun or profit. Our hero Taki wakes up in a new combat-ready body and goes on a voyage to his homeworld. He meets a woman who may or may not be carrying the consciousness of a prophet from the planet's revolutionary past... and Taki becomes entangled with her mission.

All three of these books have been good quality sci-fi. I heard that the movie rights to Altered Carbon have been sold - I think it would make an awesome movie.

Labels: book reports, science fiction

Fledgling
by Octavia Butler

This is the last book published by Octavia Butler before her death, sadly. It's a creative vampire novel, about a young female vampire with dark skin who can tolerate exposure to sunlight. In Butler's concept of the vampire myth, vampires are a separate species from humans that have special abilities. The main character is a hybrid of vampire and human parents who has strengths from both races.

I enjoyed this book a lot. It was similar enough to existing vampire stories that I could enjoy it as a familiar retread, but it also had unique ideas that made it more interesting. As usual with Butler's books, there were characteristics that made me a bit uncomfortable... like the sexual bond between the vampires and their human companions, and the fact that the main character had the appearance of a pre-pubescent girl but still had sexual relationships with her companions.

I would've liked to read more stories in this series. It's so sad that Octavia Butler died in such an untimely fashion.

Labels: book reports, Octavia Butler, science fiction

Deja Dead
by Kathy Reichs

I love the TV show "Bones" and decided to read the series of books on which the show is based. "Deja Dead" is the only one I've read so far. I was put off at first by the noticeable differences between the characters in the book and the characters on the TV show - but once I managed to stop thinking of the main character, Dr. Temperance "Bones" Brennan, as the same person from the show, I enjoyed the book quite a bit. I know some people find these books boring because of all the forensic detail that Reichs includes, but I liked that and found it interesting. Also, the plotline in this book was *way* more exciting than anything from the TV show. Interestingly, the Bones character has been made younger and actually weirder for the television show. In the book, she is in her 40s, separated from her husband, with a teenage daughter off at college. In the TV show, she is in her 30s, never married with no kids, and quite socially awkward. Interesting choice.

Anyway, I will most likely read the rest of this series next summer, when school is not in session!

Labels: book reports, mysteries

Motherless Brooklyn
by Jonathan Lethem

I've read some other books by Jonathan Lethem. And I can see from my previous book reports that I wasn't quite sure how I felt about them. Well, I finally found a Lethem book that I liked.

Lionel Essrog is a self-taught private investigator with a raging case of Tourette's Syndrome. He's also the narrator of this book, which makes for a very interesting read. I found Lethem's portrayal of Lionel's disorder to be completely believable and compelling. The title of the story comes from Lionel's childhood - he is an orphan who lived at a "school for boys" with other orphans. Lionel and a few of his classmates take up with an older guy, Frank Minna, who uses them for (really) odd jobs and eventually drags them into his world of petty crime, under the cover story of running a car service. (They answer the phones, "No cars!") Minna refers to the boys collectively as "motherless Brooklyn." When Minna is murdered, Lionel decides to investigate his death and try to take revenge on the killer. This wild goose chase takes him from the hospital to a zendo to the Maine coast, ticcing madly the entire time.

The plot of the story is not very complex, and you'll probably figure out the whodunnit before Lionel does. But that's not really the point of the book - the point is the glinting, kaleidescopic view into Lionel's freaky brain. And that is worth the read.

Labels: book reports, mysteries

On the Black Hill
by Bruce Chatwin

I can't remember where I heard of this book. I have a feeling that it was from Quev, but I also can't remember why I think that.

The story is set in Wales circa World War II and follows the lives of two brothers, Benjamin and Lewis. We first meet them near the end of their lives, when they are two elderly bachelor farmers who work the land, keep the house, and even sleep in the same bed. Then the book retraces their lives from childhood up through their later years. I know this sounds really boring, but it's not. Chatwin lays out the factors in the brothers' lives that caused them to end up alone together in their old age, but allows the reader to draw her own conclusions about what it all means. I appreciated this approach to the story - I found it much more engaging than moralizing or too much access to the the brothers' thoughts would have been.

Labels: book reports

Atonement
by Ian McEwan

This is another book I picked up after seeing it on a list of Booker Prize nominees. I'd also seen one of my commuter bus compatriots reading it last year. It opens with 13-year-old Briony writing a play called "The Trials of Arabella" which she plans to stage with her cousins for her family at their posh British estate. Briony's nerves are on edge as she imagines impressing her relatives and friends, and pleasing her distant mother who is in bed with a migraine. I found this first part of the book fairly painful, remembering the agony and self-consciousness that is being a 13-year-old girl.

I'm not going to try to recap the plot of the book - it unfolds as you read and it shouldn't be given away. I will say that Briony grows up to be a nurse and then a writer, and that the book spans many years and a great deal of history. McEwan is a very gifted writer, and I was inspired to read more of his books. But they are emotionally heavy and I can't read too many of them all at once.

Labels: book reports

Kafka on the Shore
by Haruki Murakami

I have been hearing people go on and on about Murakami for years. I had kind of come to the conclusion that his books were pretentious faux-intellectual novels for hipsters. I'm not sure that reading Kafka on the Shore really changed my opinion, but I was pretty intrigued by the story. And the writing (albeit in translation) was really quite good.

In this story, a 15 year old boy who has renamed himself Kafka runs away from home. His distant father has told him he is cursed to kill his father and sleep with his mother and sister, like a modern Oedipus. Kafka's mother and sister left Kafka and his father when Kafka was a small child, and he hasn't seen them since.

In a different plotline, an old man named Nakata lives in a government-subsidized apartment and talks to cats (who talk back), even though he cannot read or write. As a boy, Nakata was involved in a mysterious event in a forest, where an entire class of schoolchildren lost consciousness for no apparent reason. Nakata's and Kafka's storylines begin unconnected, but become interwoven as the novel progresses.

So here's the thing. There were a lot of elements to this book that I enjoyed - it was fresh and creative and not like any other story I've read... but I ultimately felt like I was missing the point, or perhaps that Murakami didn't have a point to make. I was frustrated when the book came to an end. I was expecting something fairly profound or at least an explanation of some of the mysterious events, but it didn't happen.

Labels: book reports

A selection of the health-care nonfiction I've read recently.

Cutting Remarks: Insights and Recollections of a Surgeon
by Sidney M. Schwab

Dr. Schwab is a well-known blogger who has written a book reflecting on his medical career. I checked out his book after I read someplace that he lives in Western Washington - which is a dumb reason to pick up a book, but I really enjoyed it, so I'm glad that the reason presented itself. There is a stereotype that all surgeons think they're God and are assholes to the nurses, the med students, etc... but either Dr. Schwab is an exception to the rule, or he's in deep denial. He writes about events in his career with a sense of wonder and humility. And he's had a lot of events, including a stint overseas during the Vietnam War. Best of all, the man is FUNNY. I really liked this book and am now a devoted reader of his blog, too!

Nursing America: One Year Behind the Nursing Stations of an Inner-City Hospital
by Sandy Balfour

I was excited to read this book based on the description - I haven't had any experience with the nitty-gritty of nursing in an inner-city hospital and so I'd like to learn about it. But while Balfour did a great job of portraying the personalities and convictions of the nurses he shadowed in Memphis, he shied away from the medical details. For example, I was intrigued by the burn unit nurse who said, "I love to clean a dirty burn!" but there was no following description of what she would actually DO. However, Balfour did hit on some very serious and pertinent issues in nursing in a public hospital, such as the constant budget strain, race relations, noncompliant patients, and the stress of working under all of those pressures and more.

Forensic Nurse: The New Role of the Nurse in Law Enforcement
by Serita Stevens

This book was informative, but I didn't think it was very well written. I did learn a lot about an area of nursing I had previously not been aware of - forensic nursing. Forensic nurses contribute to law enforcement by collecting evidence and testifying in court. For example, a forensic nurse might examine a rape victim and testify about the evidence that she found at trial. Or an FN might examine a child or vulnerable adult when abuse is suspected, or even examine a corpse for evidence of homicide. The case examples were very interesting and did a great job of clarifying the role of the forensic nurse. However, the book could have used a tighter edit - it was kind of repetitive and I was distracted by the "political" remarks that the author made. I don't mean political as in about government politics, I mean political as in airing complaints about different factions in the nursing community. I found that a bit jarring. Overall, though, this book is worth a skim if you're interested in learning more about the field of forensic nursing.

Labels: book reports, medical, nursing

Population 485: Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time
by Michael Perry

Perry is an author and humorist who moved back to his tiny hometown in Wisconsin after living in the Big City for years. He realized that he couldn't really be a native of the town without belonging to the fabric of the place in some way, so he joined the volunteer fire/medic department. He proceeds to tell the most vivid, heart-rending, detailed stories of his experiences with fires and accidents. There are very few EMTs or doctors or nurses or firefighters who have the advantage of being gifted writers as well... and so while I have read stories of fighting fires and saving lives (or not) before, I have never read anything like this.

The result is an incredibly touching book about a community, a guy, his family, and his coworkers. I highly, highly recommend it. Have kleenex nearby when you read it.

Labels: book reports

The Stolen Child
by Keith Donohue

Every time I visited Amazon.com in the last several weeks, they tried to sell me this book. Finally I said to myself, "Fine, fine, I'll get it from the library."

Wow. For once, Amazon knew what I would like. This book is about a changeling - yes, a child who was stolen by hobgoblins and replaced with one of their own. The story is told in alternating chapters by the stolen child and by his hobgoblin replacement. Each of them feels alienated and lost - Original Henry bewildered by his new faerie life, and Imposter Henry trying to adjust to living in a human world but never forgetting his past as a goblin in the woods.

I thought it was particularly briliant to set this book in relatively modern times - one of the troubles that the goblin gang faces is the encroachment of human civilization on the woods that they call home. Imposter Henry's lifelong discomfort with the woods (will the goblins come back for him?) competes with his desire for a normal life in a house built in the new woodsy development.

This book doesn't really have an ending, exactly, but for once that is perfectly okay. Reading about the development of these two lives is enough. I can't wait to read what Donohue writes next.

Labels: book reports

Impossible Things
and
Inside Job
by Connie Willis

I read Bellwether by Connie Willis some time ago and liked it. So I thought Impossible Things, a collection of some of her short stories might be just the thing for me. And it was! I really enjoyed every single one of the stories in this collection, which is very unusual for a book of short stories. I know I've griped about collections before, that some of the stories are good and some are bad and some are just whatever... but I honestly thought this book was solid all the way through.

I think maybe I should stick to her collections and not try to read her novellas as stand-alone pieces. I checked out Inside Job based on a description of the material - professional debunkers encounter a "spiritual leader" who appears to be channeling a real spirit - but it was so short! I read it in a blink of an eye! Which isn't to say it was bad at all... I just wanted to enjoy it a little longer.

Labels: book reports, science fiction

Son of a Witch
by Gregory Maguire

I wrote about the predecessor to this book, Wicked, a while ago. And at that time I happily noted that there was a sequel. And here it is!

The focus of this book is, obviously, Elphaba's son Liir. After Dorothy inadvertantly kills Elphaba and her whole party troops back to see the Wizard to get their heart's desires granted, Liir is left aimlessly wandering in the Emerald City. He decides he wants to find Noor, his (maybe) half-sister who was taken away by the army before Elphaba's death. This tentative goal leads Liir into all kinds of odd circumstances, eventually landing him badly injured and unconscious on the plains of the Vinkus. He is found by a travel guide and handed over to the nuns at the same nunnery where Elphaba took refuge during her pregnancy. The nuns tend him, giving most of the responsibility for his care to a mute girl named Candle, who tends to him and plays music to draw him back to consciousness.

I didn't like this sequel as much as I liked Wicked. Liir is not as compelling a character as Elphaba was, partly because he is practically an empty vessel, and partly because I didn't have a mental image of him already in place because he wasn't in the Wizard of Oz movie. Perhaps a failure of imagination on my part, I don't know. Anyway, I was intrigued by Liir's story and the experiences that he had, and I especially liked the very last paragraph of the book - but I just wasn't as riveted by Son of a Witch as I was by Wicked.

Labels: book reports

The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials)
by Philip Pullman

I first ran across this series of young adult novels in a sort of odd way - every so often, I get a newsletter in the mail from the English department at the university where I got my BA in English several years ago. And one of their regular features is a section where some of the professors describe a book they've read recently. Usually they're super hoity-toity and talk about some impenetrable poetry collection, or a new work of literary criticism, or an unbelievably depressing novel that is helping them to build character, or whatever. But one of the profs said he was reading this charming young adult novel that had a polar bear on the cover. So I put it on my holds list.

That was The Golden Compass. I was sucked in from the very first page, where we meet Lyra and her daemon Pantalaimon (what's a daemon? you get to figure it out as you read!). Lyra lives at Oxford College, an orphan being raised by the professors. Her world is related to ours but clearly not the same... and Lyra gets caught up in a secret struggle between forces of good and evil. Evil in this case being a beautiful woman with a golden monkey daemon, who kidnaps children and does medical research on them. Lyra is brave and strong and sneaky, and totally warmed my heart as a little-girl heroine who doesn't succeed through her cuteness or her empathy for others, but through her hard-headedness and cunning.

After racing through The Golden Compass, I couldn't wait to read The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass. The Subtle Knife introduced Lyra's partner in adventure, a boy from our own world named Will. Together, they proceed much further down the path to figuring out the big conflict between good and evil, and make some heart-breaking discoveries about themselves, each other, and their worlds.

Then in The Amber Spyglass, the religious themes that had been developed in the first two novels come to the forefront. And many people will be offended by the anti-organized religion stance that Pullman takes. As a non-religious person myself, I was actually excited to read about an alternate view on spirtuality and morality. However, I did think the second half of this book got a little "out there" and confusing, which was disappointing after the taut and focused writing of the first two books. The ending, however, was heartrending and memorable, and tied up the story beautifully, if not happily-ever-after.

I'm so happy to find that people are still writing books that are filled with challenging ideas, magic, and difficult situations. I don't read a lot of kid's books at this point in my life, but the ones I do pick up seem to be so fluffy ("yay! you're special! life is great!") or issue-oriented ("drugs are bad" "lesbians are parents too!") or non-controversial ("let's all be nice to each other") that I wonder what kids would actually get out of reading them. I would rank this book up there with some of the British children's lit I read when I was a kid - like The Secret Garden or The Little Princess or that book about the little British girl whose parents die in a cholera epidemic in India and she has to come back to England and live with some creepy family... or is that The Little Princess? Anyway - this series was good and I look forward to my own child reading it someday.

Labels: book reports

The Inheritance of Loss
by Kiran Desai

Many years ago, I went to see Kiran Desai read from her first novel, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, at Elliott Bay Books. I loved that book - it was funny and sad and absurd and touching all at the same time. So I was thrilled when I heard that she had finally published another novel.

This novel is set in northern India in the 1980s, when the movement for an independent Nepal was in full swing. Sai is a teenaged orphan who is living with her grandfather, a retired judge who avoids nearly all human interaction and prefers the company of his beloved dog. Sai, bored with her isolated existence, strikes up an affair with her Nepali tutor Gyan, but the relationship self-destructs in a hurry when Gyan gets caught up in the political movement. Sai goes so far as to visit Gyan's neighborhood looking for him - and realizes that they are in completely different social classes as she walks around the slum where he lives with his parents and siblings. As the revolutionary movement gets uglier and the Nepalis turn on their Indian neighbors, Sai tries to shelter with her neighbors, two older Indian ladies who are more British in their lifestyles than Indian.

Meanwhile, the judge's cook's son Biju works at a series of menial jobs in New York City. He went to America to have more success than his father... but he is miserable and doesn't see any advantage of being in a new country.

The whole book is a commentary on class, on nationality, and on identity. The sad tone of the writing made it hard for me to finish reading the book - there is no big happy ending, although it isn't a tragedy, either. It's hard to tell what is going to happen to the characters when the novel comes to an end.

Labels: book reports

Shadow of the Wind
by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I had never heard of this book before my friend E* included it in a box of gifts she mailed me. E* has an unusual talent for selecting gifts for me despite the fact that we've only seen each other once in the past 10 years, and that I clearly do not hold up my end of the gift-giving exchange nearly as well! So when I discovered this novel in the box, I figured she knew what she was doing.

And wow, did she ever. I was rivted by the story - it opens with our narrator Daniel, a young boy at the time, awakening from a nightmare. His father, a bookseller, decides to comfort him by taking him to visit the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, where Daniel chooses an obscure novel by author Julian Carax to treasure as his own.

From there, the story quickly becomes more complex and convoluted. I thought at the beginning that it would be a novel of self-discovery, but it develops into more of a mystery and adventure than I expected. There are innumerable twists and turns. I had trouble putting it down, even at work. In fact, my coworkers at The Home teased me for holding the book with one hand and trying to eat my lunch with the other.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look as though Ruiz Zafon has any other books out, at least not in English. I would be happy to discover that I am wrong!

Labels: book reports, mysteries

Embroideries
by Marjane Satrapi

Marjane Satrapi is the author of the "Persepolis" books, which I enjoyed a great deal. So when I heard she had a new book out, I requested it from the library right away. But it really didn't do much for me... the thing that was so great about the Persepolis books was that the combination of her sparse, direct writing and her striking illustrations gave her story an immediacy that words alone could not. But in Embroideries, I didn't get that same sense of immediacy. The structure of the book might explain my problem with it - it is set as a conversation with a group of women, friends and family members, talking about their sex lives and sexual issues. But as each of them tells her story, the reader is taken out of the moment and pushed into a different experience, then yanked back into the group's conversation. I found it difficult to get involved with each character because there was such a short time with each one - especially in a graphic novel where words are few anyway.

Even though this is a pretty negative review, I'll definitely go looking for Satrapi's next book. She's got an interesting take on the world and I'm curious to see what she tackles next.

Labels: book reports

The Golden Notebook
by Doris Lessing

I really wanted to like this book. It's held up as a great, creative, boundary-breaking novel by a tremendously gifted writer. And I can see how the structure especially was ground-breaking when it was first published in 1962. The book is more like a collection of novellas than a single work - it encompasses the "real life" story of the main character, Anna Wulf, and long excerpts from each of the 4 notebooks that she keeps for herself. The notebook that I found most interesting was the yellow notebook in which Anna writes fiction. She wrote a very long fictionalized version of her years in Africa with other young European Communists in the 1950s... which was fascinating and completely outside my experience. But I was horribly frustrated by Anna's continued self-sabotage... not to mention the fact that I couldn't relate, at all, to the anguish she felt over her relationship with The Party. And her vivid descriptions of the revulsion and helplessness she felt with some of her lovers gave me a cold feeling in the pit of my stomach.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that this is a "good" book, in the sense that it is well-written and left an impression on me... but I didn't like it very much.

Labels: book reports

The No. One Ladies' Detective Agency
by Alexander McCall Smith

This book was utterly charming. I'd heard so much about it that I thought I would be disappointed, but I wasn't.

Precious Ramotswe is a woman from Botswana who decides to start her own business as a private investigator after the death of her beloved father. She investigates cases, makes some new friends, and even has a little romance. She doesn't have a lot of formal education, but does have a great deal of common sense and courage, which make her a success in her new line of work.

This is the first book in a series - I will definitely read the rest.

Labels: book reports, mysteries

Nurse
by Peggy Anderson

I read this book while in a frenzy of nurse-book-reading last year. This was a tough read for me - while it was published in 1990, the author reminisces about her beginning years as a nurse in the early 1970s. Man, things were different then. Not only did she have to wear a ridiculous uniform, the (all male) doctors treated nurses like crap, and there weren't as many technological advancement to treat severely ill patients as there are today. The procedures and techniques she writes about are mostly obsolete today (like when she makes fun of other nurses for putting gloves on to do peri-care [that's butt-wiping for those of you not in the health care field]) - but the emotional experience of being a nurse has not changed. It's still tough to see your patients lose their battles with cancer or heart disease, it's still hard to get chewed out by a family members, and it's still rewarding when you realize that you've made a difference in someone's life.

I was chatting with the director of the nursing program yesterday about my reading habits, and she was pleased to hear that I'd read some of these not-so-recent nurse stories. She made the excellent point that some of the nurses who were trained in the 1960s or 1970s are still working in the field today, and knowing what their experiences were like may help me see things from their point of view.

Nightingales: The Extraordinary Upbringing and Curious Life of Miss Florence Nightingale
by Gillian Gill

No nurse's historical background is complete without reading about Florence Nightingale. I personally didn't know much about her, just that she was considered the founder of nursing, and that she was known as the Lady with the Lamp.

The book begins with a detailed genealogy of Flo's parents and their families... which seemed boring to me but does have relevance later in Flo's life. One of the major familial themes has to do with the inheritance law in Great Britain at the time - since women could not own property in their own right, the ladies in the families were desparate to produce sons in order to preserve their own lifestyles. This sets the stage for Florence's mother's complete outrage when Florence refuses to marry. Florence had a sister, but no brothers, and so after the death of her father, her mother was out on her ear. Okay, not literally, but one of Flo's cousins inherited the family estate because Florence's mother could not legally inherit her husband's property.

Anyway, about the nursing stuff - it seems that Flo was always a very religious and very sensitive, guilt-ridden child. She decided quite early in childhood that she wanted to care for needy creatures, and took in countless pets. She also cared for her sister and her cousins (she was very close with many of her cousins) when they were ill, and seemed to take great pleasure in the act of caring. One theme that cropped up over and over in Flo's private writing was of her overwhelming guilt about some unnamed bad thing that she felt compelled to do over and over. I crassly interpreted that as masturbation, but the author believes that Florence had a deep tendency to daydream or fantasize, which took her away from the concerns of the material world, which caused her tremendous guilt.

Oh, right, the nursing stuff. Florence insisted on taking nurse's training, which caused her upperclass family no end of grief. At that time, nurses were either nuns (and the Nightingales were Protestant) or else they were "working girls" who were alleged to be drunken prostitutes and lousy patient advocates. Florence refused to back down and eventually her family gave in, reluctantly. After training, Florence immediately took on an activism role, advocating for sanitation, a healthy diet, and peaceful surrounding to help patients heal. During the Crimean War, British soldiers in Turkey were dying hand-over-fist, and with the help of her family's connection, Florence managed to get herself appointed to the hospital treating the wounded at Scutari. She loaded a ship with medical supplies that she convinced wealthy friends to donate, recruited a staff of women to train as nurses, and took off for Turkey. The Army's medical director was not impressed with Florence's demand that he give over operations of the hospital to her, but eventually changed his mind after she sad, mule-like, out on her boat in the harbor and refused to hand over the medical supplies.

Once she got inside the hospital, Florence insituted all kinds of changes. She insisted that each soldier needed his own bed with clean linens. She demanded that the dressings on the soldiers' wounds be changed regularly, and the wounds washed with soap and water and redressed with clean bandages. She insisted that the kitchen be sanitized, and that all the soldiers required a healthy diet to be able to heal. And most of all, she showed the wounded men that she cared, personally visiting each one of them. She got the name "The Lady of the Lamp" because she carried around a small lamp as she walked the wards at night visiting soldiers who couldn't sleep or needed comfort.

There's a lot more that Florence did to advance the profession of nursing. But since I'm not writing my own book on her, I'm going to stop there.

Labels: book reports, nursing

Madhouse : A Tragic Tale of Megalomania and Modern Medicine
by Andrew Scull

This book is about a horrifying chapter in American medical history. Psychiatrist Henry Cotton practiced in the early 1900s and became convinced that mental illness was caused by infection in other parts of the body, such as the teeth, the colon, the tonsils, and the uterus, and therefore recommended removing some or all of these organs in order to reverse the mental illness. He believed this so strongly that he had all of his childrens' teeth pulled out to prevent them from going nuts later in life. It's quite shocking, especially when it becomes evident that many other doctors and administrators knew that Cotton's data (that supposedly showed that his technique was successful) was hopelessly flawed. It's a terrific argument for the vital importance of truth-telling and accountability in health care.

The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness
by Jack El-Hai

This book is a biography of Dr. Walter Freeman, the psychiatrist turned "psychosurgeon" who popularized the use in the US of the lobotomy as a treatment of last resort for patients with severe mental illness. It's a disturbing tale. While Freeman seemed to genuinely believe that he was helping people, even following up on his patients decades later, his own accounts said that fewer than half of the surgery subjects were improved. Many suffered negative side effects such as seizures and loss of cognitive ability, in addition to the (desired) personality changes. It is amazing to me that this surgery was still being done less than a generation ago - there are still plenty of lobotomy patients alive in our communities today. Can you imagine going to the doctor for severe depression and being told, "I want to jam an icepick through your eye socket into your brain, and then you'll feel much better"??

Labels: book reports, medical

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
by Gregory Maguire

What a fun book! I read the Oz books over and over as a kid, so reading a "grown-up" take on Oz was fascinating. I'm glad this book wasn't around when I was a kid, though - the level of the writing was not too complex for me to have understood while still in grade school, but the subject matter would've been awfully disturbing to me, I think.

The Wicked Witch of the West begins life as a small green baby named Elphaba with pointy teeth and an inborn fear of water. Her parents are a slutty noblewoman and a zealous traveling minister. Elphaba is, unsurprisingly, not all that popular with the local kids, so she becomes a sort of loner/nerd. She goes away to school in the big city, where Glinda (the future Good Witch) becomes her roommate. They aren't friendly at first, but over the course of their time together in school, they become quite close. Elphaba's little sister, Nessarose, also comes to school a couple years later, but she has to be supervised by their childhood Nanny because Nessie lacks arms. Their father dotes over Nessarose and gives her the ruby slippers as a gift.

So what would I have found so disturbing as a kid? Well, for starters, there's a not-insignificant amount of sexual contact between various characters. It's not explicit or anything, but jeez, I don't remember any sex in Oz from childhood! There is also an ongoing debate in the society of Oz regarding the rights of Animals (the ones who can talk, e.g., the Cowardly Lion). The Wizard is portrayed as a dictator who came to power by a coup d'etat.

I really liked the backstory of how Elphaba became a Wicked Witch instead of just a green girl. She's a much more sympathetic character in this book that she was in the Oz books or the movie. Pretty fascinating on a psychological level.

Best of all, my friend E* told me on the phone yesterday that there is a now a sequel, about Elphaba's son!

Labels: book reports

Imago
by Octavia Butler

With the untimely passing of Octavia Butler, I plan to read more of her work. I both enjoyed and was repulsed by the Xenogenesis series, of which "Imago" is the third and final installment. I wrote about Book 2 here, and Book 1 here.

In this book, another one of Lilith's hybrid children, Jodahs, undergoes metamorphosis to adulthood and discovers that he is growing up to be an ooloi. The ooloi is the third sex of the Oankali race, and controls the reproductive capacity of the species. Jodahs leaves his family and runs into a secret human population. Due a genetic mutation, these people have been able to reproduce sexually, but the inbreeding has resulted in severe genetic disorders. Jodahs attempts to forge a connection with the secret population, in order to become a part of it.

This story is kind of an analogy for the larger story of the Oankali takeover of Earth. While Jodahs' intentions are not evil, the humans are not so sure they want any part of the trade he offers them.

I think I liked this book the best of the three. It was easier to focus on the idea of hybridization and the sacrifices demanded of the human population when it was taking place on an individual-to-individual level. And Jodahs seemed to grapple with the implications in a more personal, accessible way.

Labels: book reports, Octavia Butler, science fiction

Coraline
by Neil Gaiman

I read in Wired magazine that "Coraline" is being made into an animated movie. And based on how very much I have loved Neil Gaiman's novels for adults, I immediately rushed to the library (well, the website anyway) to request "Coraline" for myself.

Wow. It's really good. It's scary but not horrifying. Gaiman manages to be rather profound without being condescending or too intellectual for kids to grasp. Coraline as a character is strong without being violent, and smart without being a prig. I would have LOVED this book when I was about 8.

The short version of the plot - Coraline finds a door in her house that leads to another world - the other world is like a funhouse mirror of her house and her family. The "other mother" in the other world is evil and frightening and wants to keep Coraline with her "for ever and always." Plus, she's friends with the rats. Eeeeek!

Now I can't wait to see the movie.

Labels: book reports

Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles
by Jeannette Winterson

I actually didn't mean to read this book first. I meant to read "The Penelopiad" by Margaret Atwood instead. But then I saw "Weight" was part of the same Myths series and I had really enjoyed reading "Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit". So I grabbed "Weight" first. And honestly, I was disappointed. Don't get me wrong, I really like Winterson's conversation tone and deftness of imagery. And I loved the idea of Heracles just dropping by to see Atlas, out there in the universe with the world on his shoulder. But I thought Winterson put too much of her own feelings & story into the book... it was enough for me to know that she felt compelled to write about Atlas. I get it, she feels she has burdens of her own, we can all identify. But to rattle on about her process interrupted the story for me in an unpleasant way.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I still really want to read "The Penelopiad."

Labels: book reports

On Basilisk Station
by David Weber

I picked up this book after reading that Jo at Head Nurse enjoyed it. And I think Jo is the coolest so I requested it from the library right away.

At first the book moved kind of slowly - we're introduced to the main character, Honor Harrington, and there's a bunch of political plotting stuff that doesn't seem very relevant at first. But then Honor is assigned to a destined-to-fail position by an officer who has a grudge against her... and things actually got interesting! And Honor is a kick-ass starship captain. Best of all, there wasn't any hint of romance between Honor and anyone on her crew. It irritates the crap out of me when a romance is forced into an action novel just because there's a female character.

Apparently there's a whole series of Honor Harrington books - I plan on reading the rest with relish.

Labels: book reports, science fiction

The Family Tree
by Carole Cadwalladr

I think I spotted this book on some kind of bestseller list, and subsequently put it on hold at the library. I'm often disappointed when I read bestsellers - I'm looking at you, Da Vinci Code - but this was a nice surprise.

Rebecca Monroe is a pop culture researcher married to a geneticist. They're debating whether or not to have a child, which inspires Rebecca to take a closer look at her family history. She has a lot of material to examine - her mother committed suicide when Rebecca was little, and her grandmother and grandfather are first cousins. Rebecca wants to come down on the "nuture" side of the nature vs. nuture debate, especially since her husband is completely certain that everything is determined by genetics.

I enjoyed the story of the novel, but what I liked better than the story was the structure. Each chapter has some strange insert, like an annotated family tree or a blip from Rebecca's research about pop culture in Britain. I read this book all in one evening because I was so sucked in by the mysteries in Rebecca's family, and by the odd little additions to the story.

Labels: book reports

Bellwether
by Connie Willis

Bellwether is a look at how fads and those who follow them shape the fabric of society. Sandra is a scientist who studies fads for the HiTek corporation, where she is tormented by the incompetence of the mail clerk, Flip. Flip is a walking billboard for the current fad, whether it's her hairstyle, hair color, or a tragic fashion-victim outfit. Flip misdelivers a package to Sandra that is supposed to go to Bennett, a chaos theory researcher. Sandra and Bennett end up working together on the idea of predicting fads using chaos theory, with a flock of sheep as their guinea pigs.

This is in no way a deep or profound book, but it is a fun read and is filled with factoids about past fads. It also pokes fun at modern corporate culture, through the ridiculous mandatory company meetings at HiTek. Very entertaining. And the term "bellwether"? It refers to the leader of a flock of sheep - the one who guides the other sheep in a nearly subliminal way.

Labels: book reports

Never Let Me Go
by Kazuo Ishiguro

I picked this book from the list of Booker Prize nominees. I've never read anything by Ishiguro before, but I know he's held up as one of the best writers of our times... although honestly the only book I recognize that he wrote is "The Remains of the Day".

The book opens as a narrative by a youngish woman, Kathy. She is apparently an alumna from a private school called Hailsham, and is currently working in some kind of health care capacity. I'm not going to reveal the secret about the students, but it is clear from the beginning of the book that there is something special about Hailsham students. Kathy's narrative swings back and forth between reminiscing about her school days, and describing the work she does as an adult. She has particularly sharp memories of two childhood friends, Ruth and Tommy - but gradually she reveals that Ruth is now dead and Tommy is in the hospital.

The first two-thirds of the book was exciting, as I tried to figure out the secret of the Hailsham students, and piece together what Kathy was doing as an adult. However, near the end of the book, the story took a vaguely ridiculous turn, where a character from Hailsham is put in the role of explaining everything to Kathy and Tommy, and by extension to the reader. I found this device disappointing, since the excitement of the first part of the book was in trying to see through Kathy's eyes and figure out what she was missing about her own situation.

Ishiguro's writing is crystalline and spare. And the concept of the novel is a creative and topical one. But ultimately the book wasn't that compelling because everything was revealed in one big dump. I'll try other Ishiguro books based on the strength of his writing - does anyone have a favorite to recommend?

Labels: book reports, science fiction