The Women's Room - Marilyn French

I have to give this book the #1 rating of my reads this year.

Over the summer while traveling in Alaska, I'd read a later book by this author, In the Name of Friendship and enjoyed it so much I sought out this more famous earlier work.  Millions of copies were sold in the 70's at the height of the feminist movement.  The acclaim is well deserved.

The story revolves around Mira, a conventional 50's wife and mother who finds herself divorced and returns to college.  She collects a group of friends who share their experiences as women and in doing so, illuminate the issues and revelations of the women's movement.  I found it a powerful read and highly recommend it.  I had many pages marked to share quotes.

In the preface, the author notes that "women's work" was and still may be considered illegitimate as subject matter for serious literature and "..the fact that it is trivialized in literature is directly related to the fact that this work is unpaid.  Women comprise a huge slave labor force throughout the world."

At the time the book was written, "Mira understood - what young woman does not?--that to choose a husband is to choose a life".  The story reflected the times, written with a woman's voice and from a woman's perspective.

Quotes

"Loneliness is not a longing for company, it is a longing for kind.  And kind means people who can see you who you are, and that means they have enough intelligence and sensitivity and patience to do that.  It also means they can accept you, because we don't see what we can't accept, we blot it out, we jam it hastily in one stereotypical box or another."

"No matter what life does to you, if you cry, you're crazy."

[I've got more but I want this to be posted for 2018]

More pages with quotes:

p.220 "The problem is that these women think too much about men.  I mean, their men are everything to them.  If the men, think they're attractive, they are: if they don't, they're not.  They give men the power to determine their identities, their values, to accept or reject them.  They have no selves."

p.239 "Loneliness is ll in the way you look at it.  It's like virginity, a state of mind."  "And sometimes when you are alone, aren't you feeling sad mostly because society tells you you're not supposed to be alone?  And you imagine someone being there and understanding every emotion of your heart and mind.  Where if someone was there he - or even she- wouldn't necessarily be doing that at all?  And what's even worse.  When somebody is here and not there at the same time."

p.260 "The point is that if only what endures is real-then only death is real.  All the rest is image, transient, mutable."

p.272 "..the two mainsprings of behavior are sexuality and aggression..or Fear and the desire for pleasure.  Aggressiveness comes out of fear, predominantly, and sexuality out of the other."

p,282 "a space to be and a witness.  It was enough, or if not enough, it was all, all that we could do, in the end, for each other."

p 360 "They accepted the peculiarities of the people they live with."

p 399 "Is it possible to live with somebody whose values you don't share?"

p 404 "Because wounds do leave scars and scar tissue has no feeling.  That's what people forget when they train their sons to be "men" by injuring them.  There is a price for survival."

p 427 [on rape]

p 448 "Love is a golden rain that comes down when it will, and as it spatters in your open palm you exclaim over its brightness, its wonderful moistening of your dry life, its glitter, its warmth.  But that's all.  You can't hold on to it.  It can't fill all of you."

p 458 "Nothing really changes.  She took his hand.  " it does, it does.  It just takes longer than we do."

Published: 1977  Read: 2018  Genre: Fiction, social commentary

Almost Famous Women - Megan Mayhew Bergman

This was a different and strange read.  The author created fictional stories about unsung, real women from history to illuminate their lives, women like Joe Carstairs, Beryl Markham, Norma Millay and James Joyce's daughter, Lucia.  I enjoyed learning about these obscure women and found the stories to be instigation for further research into their fuller lives. 

Published:  2015  Read: December 2018  Genre: Biography

The Sound of Glass - Karen White

A young widow, Merritt, inherits her husband's childhood home and when she arrives at it, discovers he had a brother she never knew.  She's joined by her widowed stepmother and half-brother who move in despite her wishes to be alone.  Throughout the book, we're given clues about Merritt's abusive husband and other abusive men in her family's past. 

I thought the story was contrived and found the characters either too good, too distraught or too unbelievable.  It's an okay read but only for entertainment.

Quote:

"...every time we remembered something, we weren't remembering the event itself but the last time we'd remembered it.  It was our way of creating filters between our past and present, creating what we chose to recall and what we'd rather forget."

Published:  2015   Read: December 2018  Genre: Fiction

Before We Were Yours - Lisa Wingate

This is the fictionalized story of children taken from the parents and put up for adoption in the infamous Tennessee Children's Home Society.  A woman named Georgia Tann trafficked children taken from their parents in questionable circumstances for over 30 years. 

The book uses a writing technique I don't like of going back and forth chapter by chapter between the past early life of the children and the present day, really annoying.  The author could have done a more scholarly work and used real stories of the children affected. 

Published: 2017  Read: December 2018  Genre: Historical fiction

This Will Kill You - HP Newquist and Rich Maloof

Sub-title: A guide to the ways in which we go

A humorous and morbid look at the many ways humans die, from disease to accident to the absurd.  The authors use a template describing how each way kills, the cause of death, science of it, time, risk, lethality, stats, notable victims and horror factor.

Published: 2009  Read: November 2018  Genre: Non-fiction

Joy Enough - Sarah McColl

This was a book written from grief, a slow unfolding of the relationship between a dying mother and daughter and that daughter and her own soon to be divorced husband.  I got an advanced copy at the Nashville Festival of Books 2018.  It is reflective and dreamlike, struggling to stay afloat while the anchors of her life a set adrift.

Quotes: 

"Our marriage, in the end, had echoed with loneliness.  How many times had we been restaurant silent, the couple that dines wordlessly, then beams up into the server's face at the offer of more water and dessert?  To feel the absence of affection between us where once there had been so much, florid and overflowing - that was lonely.  This was just being alone."

Published:  2018  Read: November 2018  Genre: Memoir

The Radium Girls - Kate Moore

Sub-title:  The dark story of America's shining women

I read this for my Ladies of the Club book group..over 25 years we've been meeting!

The true story of the young teenagers and women who painted luminous dials with paint brushes they "pointed" by "lipping" - wetting them with their mouths.  The were poisoned by the radium powder used and suffered horrendous illness and disfigurations and death while their employer denied any ill effects.  Their case led to worker's rights legislation.  A powerful read.

Published: 2017  Read: November 2018  Genre: History

The Perfect Girlfriend - Karen Hamilton

Juliette is obsessed with her former boyfriend Nate, convinced he will return and if not, determined to convince him. A creepy but compelling read of someone who can't let go and move on. 

Published:  2019  Read: November 2018  Genre: Fiction

Upstate - James Wood

Picked this up in the library on the New listings shelf.  A quiet, thoughtful story of a father and his daughters dealing with the fall out of his long ago divorce from their now deceased mother.

Quotes:

[comment on nursing home] "It was all pretty good, or as good as it can be when one's whole life has been reduced to souvenirs of selfhood."

"Wel, religious is just someone else's definition of what is sacred"

"You're only as good as your suppliers, all the way down the chain.  Sort out who supplies you, find the people you can really trust, and that's half of the work done there." 

 

Published: 2018  Read: November 2018   Genre: fiction

A Girl's Guide to Missles - Karen Piper

Sub-title:  Growing Up in America's Secret Desert

This was a fun read. The author grew up in China Lake, a secret, restricted military installation where missiles were built, like the Sidewinder.  It's an other worldly childhood, growing up and working in a town where everyone and everything is shrouded in confidentiality.  Entertaining, chilling and touching.  I got this as an advanced copy at the Nashville Festival of Books 2018.

Quotes:

[talking about the recruitment to Amway by Dick DeVos and the use of religious analogies] "His daughter-in-law, Betsy DeVos, would become US Secretary of Education and push for funding schools that use Accelerated Christian Education in order to 'advance God's Kingdom' ."

[When her sister goes into a coma after childbirth] "My sister held my memories in her brain.  Even though she fought with me about what had or had not happened, without the fighting, no one would even care about those memories, what was true or unture, what was mine and what was hers."

 Published:  2018  Read: October 2018  Genre: Memoir

Fear - Bob Woodward

Yes, I read this, I was given it as a gift.  My first impression is that it was hastily written, not really a story but a series of interviews and research strung together in a sort of chronological order.  I liked the explanation and background on several policy issues, e.g., Korea, Afghanistan, Iran and immigration.  The personality of Trump was not a surprise; my takeaway is that he isn't deliberately malicious, his narcissism and ego supersedes any larger thought.  Not recommended.


Published: 2018  Read: October 2018  Genre: Non-fiction, politics

A Year by the Sea - Joan Anderson

Sub-title: Thoughts of an Unfinished Woman

My sister recommended this story and it was well worth the read.  A middle aged empty nester decides to finally embrace her own life.  She leaves her husband to live by the ocean in the NorthEast alone to ponder what she really wants out of life and who she is. 


Published:  1999  Read: October 2018  Genre: Memoir

Killers of the Flower Moon - David Grann

Sub-title - The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

This book was recommended to me by a newsman who found it a compelling read and I agree.
The Osage Indians were given reservation land in Oklahoma which later was found to have huge oil reserves underground.  The tribe had wisely preserved their rights to the oil and for a period of time in ?? were some of the richest people in America.  All that wealth brought out the worst in fortune seekers.  White men came to Oklahoma to marry tribal members and a plot unfolds in the story on how they resorted to murder to claim riches. 

It is also the story of the beginning of the FBI and the men who pursued the criminals.  Great read.

Published:  2017  Read:  October 2018  Genre: History

Mrs Keppel and her Daughter - Diana Souhami

I picked this up on our wanderings in Alaska this past summer.  It's the story of Alice Edmonstone Keppel and her daughter, Violet Keppel Trefusis.  Alice was the mistress of King Edward VII, the great grandfather of the current Queen Elizabeth.  In an interesting twist, Alice's other daughter, Sonia, is the grandmother of Camilla, the mistress (and now wife) of Queen Elizabeth's son, Charles. 

It was valuable to me as an example of the Victorian era and the mores of that society.  Anglophiles would enjoy.

Published:   Read: September 2018  Genre: Biography

Pachinko - Min Jin Lee

This book is a history lesson of Koreans who lived in Japan from shortly before WWII through the 1980s.  I had not known they were treated as 2nd class citizens, even those born and raised over multiple generations.  To cover the time frame, the book is over 500 pages and at times dragged on without moving the story forward.  Often chapters would end and jump ahead many years without any transition.  I liked learning about this period but felt it could have been covered in fewer pages.

Published:  2017  Read: September 2018  Genre: Fiction

Driving Mr Albert - Michael Paterniti

Subtitle: A trip across America with Einstein's brain

What a strange, weird, story, and better yet, it's true!  When Albert Einstein died, a pathologist Thomas Harvey performed the autopsy and preserved the brain and later took it and kept it.  This book chronicles a road trip with Harvey and a journalist across the U.S. to return the brain to an Einstein family member.  A truly quirky read.

Some quotes:

"Only occasionally can you glimpse through the embrasures of an otherwise perfectly polite person to see the cannon aimed out...Only in our solitary hungers to we find ourselves capable of the most magnificently unexpected sins."

"Is it that genius is really nothing more than a matter of seeing as simply as possible, that somewhere in this world the image already exists waiting for the cameras, or the profound idea already exists waiting for the mind to happen on it?" 

Published: 2000 Read: September 2018  Genre: Memoir

The Violinist's Thumb - Sam Kean

Sub-title: and other lost tales of Love, War, and Genius, as written by our Genetic Code

This was a delight!  I'm crazy about genetics and DNA and this science writer has a wonderful way of making complicated subjects into entertaining stories.  I'd read his debut book, The Disappearing Spoon about the periodic table of the elements in 2015.  In this book, he uses anecdotes to illustrate principles and discoveries of DNA and genetics.  The title comes from the uniquely ability of Paganini, the violin virtuoso whose thumb flexibility is attributed to a genetic mutation.  The author takes us through history and the evidence provided by DNA in a variety of settings.  Even the notes at the end of the book are great reads! 

Some quotes I marked:

"Zipfs law says that the most common word in a language appears roughly twice as often as the second most common word, roughly three times as often as the third most common word...etc.  In English the  accounts for 7 percent of words, of  for about half that, and a third of that."

"Because of the parallels between DNA and language, scientists can even analyze literary texts and genomic 'texts' with the same tools. These tools seem especially promising for analyzing disputed texts...the scientists delved into the contentious world of Shakespeare scholarship, and their software concluded that the Bard did write The Two Noble Kinsmen...but didn't write Pericles, another doubtful work." 

"mtDNA opened up whole new realms of science as well, like genetic archeology.  ...because scientists know how quickly any rare changes do accumulate in a mitochondrial line - one mutation every 3,500 year - they can use mtDNA as a clock: they compare two people's mtDNA, and the more mutations they find, the more years that have passed since the two people share a maternal ancestor.  In fact, this clock tells us that all seven billion people alive today can trace their maternal lineage to one woman who lived in Africa 170,000 years ago, dubbed 'Mitochrondrial Eve.'  Eve wasn't the only woman alive then, mind you.  She's simply the oldest matrilineal ancestor of everyone living today." 

In his notes, the author also recommended Nine Who Survived Hiroshima and Nagasaki by Robert Trumbull and Mendel's Legacy by Elof Axel Carlson.  This one is a keeper!


Published: 2012  Read: May 2018  Genre: Science

Veronika Decides to Die - Paulo Coelho

Strange title caught my eye, and I'd read The Alchemist back in 1996 by this author.  In this story, a young woman plans her suicide and fails and ends up in an institution.  She and other there learn over time that they are just as sane as those on the outside.  Not particularly interesting, would not recommend.

Published:  1999 Read: August 2018  Genre: Fiction

Dear Exile - Hillary Liftin and Kate Montgomery

This was a little gem!  Two 20 something's exchange letters between one seeking a career and love in New York City and the other serving in the Peace Corps in Kenya.  They were college friends before striking out on different paths.  I loved their spirit and up beat outlook despite what life throws at them.  A great read.

Published:  1999  Read: August 2018  Genre: Fiction

The Clarks of Cooperstown - Nicholas Fox Weber

Sub-title: Their Singer Sewing Machine Fortune and their Great and Influential Art Collection and their Forty-Year Feud

The topic of this book fascinated me as I used to make all of my own clothes and loved sewing.  Edward Clark was the business person that partnered with Isaac Singer and ended up owning over half of the company. He had only one son, Alfred, who had four sons.  Two of Alfred's son's, Robert Sterling Clark and Stephen Clark were art collectors.  Sterling left a foundation that today is valued at $98 million.  His brother Stephen's descendants administer The Clark Foundation which is estimated to have funds in excess of $440 million.  The lives of people with those staggering sums at their disposal always seem to go astray in each succeeding generation, and this family was no exception. 

Unfortunately, the book is not about their lives as much as it is about the art they collected and left to museums, the Museum of Modern Art and Metropolitan Museum in New York and Yale University's collection.

The author is a well-known art expert and describes the paintings they acquired and gave away.  I found it quite fawning, as if he was flattering the current generation for donations as he repeatedly described how wonderful it was for them to share their paintings - without mentioning the tax breaks they likely got for doing so.  

It was worth reading but I could have skipped large parts and I still feel I didn't really get to know the Clarks.

Published: 2007  Read: August 2018  Genre: biography

A Bridge for Passing - Pearl S Buck

Many times when reading older books (this one was published in 1961) the dated references make the story unreadable.  Not this one.  Buck wrote this memoir after the death of her second husband.  It's not stated, as it would be today, but it appears that he died of dementia, so she had lived through his decline and his death was expected.  At the time, she was in Japan working with the film crew for her first book, The Big Wave, about a tidal wave hitting a small fishing village in Japan.

In a gentle, soft voice she describes her feelings of grief, loss, and loneliness. She does not mention him by name only refers to him, wondering if he sees and hears her, missing his companionship.  So different from the direct, raw words that would be used in these times.

Some tidbits of information from this story:

• Obama is a city in Japan, about 6 to 7 hours from Tokyo.
• Mother Hubbard's are a style of dress with high yoke and collar and loosely flowing to the floor, intended to cover as much of the body as possible
• Homecoming is a book by Jiro Osaragi

Having been raised and lived until her early 40's in China, she brought a unique perspective to the American public on Asia.  Her writing was particularly enlightening after the horrors of WWII left bad impressions of Japanese.  She shed light on Chinese culture as the communist era was rising.

Her second husband, Richard Walsh, was her editor who had founded the John Day publishing company.  She describes them as finishing each other's sentences and hurrying home from work to share their day.  I noted this description of how she dealt with her grief:

"A desperate weariness was creeping into my bones, the weariness of acceptance, the acceptance of the inescapable, the conviction of the unchangeable.  From now on I must never again expect to share the great moments of my life.  There would be such moments as long as I was alive, moments of beauty, moments of excitement an exhilaration; above all, moments of achievement.  In such moments he and I had turned to each other as instinctively as we breathed.  That was no more to be...It is not true that one never walks alone.  There is an eternity where one walks alone and we do not know its end."

Sadly, her loneliness led her to seek companionship later in her life when she took up with a man many years her junior who took advantage of her, resulting in an argument over her will which left everything to him.

I'm glad I read this and learned more of this popular, Nobel prize winning author.

Published: 1961  Read: August 2018  Genre: Memoir

Digging to America - Ann Tyler

Two families adopt Korean baby girls and become friends after meeting at the airport as the children are delivered.  One family is American as apple pie; the other headed by an Iranian immigrant whose only American-born son and daughter-in-law embrace modern American ways.  The story is primarily about Maryam, grandmother to Suzanne, one of the girls.  The author uses a recurring celebration of the girls arrival anniversary to display the different feelings of her characters as they meld into the society.

I remember reading other books by Tyler and disliking her too tidy wrap up of story in a predictable ending--this one is no different.  When I was ready to yell at Maryam near the end, the author reverses course and puts a bow on the story. 

Since it was written in 2006 it is a perspective on immigration that is worth reading.

Published: 2006  Read: July 2018  Genre: Fiction

March - Geraldine Brooks

Now here's a book I could really sink my teeth into!

I have enjoyed other books by this author, most recently People of the Book and Year of Wonder.
This is the story of the father of the "little Women" book by Louis May Alcott.  Mr March, invisible mostly in Alcott's story, tells of his life, from a young man peddling wares in the South through his meeting and marrying Marmee, to his service as a chaplain during the Civil War.

What I truly admire about Brroks' writing is her extensive research and deft weaving of facts of the historical times she portrays into the lives of her fictional characters.

Her story draws inspiration from the life of Alcott's real life father, Bronson Alcott whose diaries and writings she read and researched as the basis for the March character.  I had read the biography of Louise and her father, Eden's Outcast and was delighted to see it as the framework for Mr March.  I don't think she ever gave him a first name.  Highly recommended.

Published: 2005  Read:  July 2018  Genre: historical fiction

The Secret Scripture - Sebastian Barry

Shortlisted for Man Booker Prize

I picked this up as it was on my TBR list, though I don't have a record of how it go there; a book group perhaps.

It's a story of a 99 year old woman who has been in an asylum for over 60 years.  She is secretly recording her life history while a psychiatrist struggles to determine her suitability for release, as the hospital they have shared is to be demolished.

I felt the book went on and on with too many adjectives and flowery phrases that the author just enjoyed putting together. This style of writing is described as "lyrical" and "poetic prose" that I can only take in small doses and only when it moves the story along.  It was a powerful story of lives lost unnecessarily, to misjudgments with drastic consequences. 

Some quotes:

"We have neglected the tiny sentences of life and now the big ones are beyond our reach."

"Like many a man in authority, he was sublimely happy as long as he was presenting his ideas, and as long as his ideas were meeting with agreement." 

"It is one of the graces of married life that for some magical reason we always look the same to each other.  Even our friends never seem to grow old." 

I was really annoyed that the author presented a twist at the end that required very careful reading to "catch" the impact; he could have had the same twist without expecting the reader to remember the details required.  An "okay" read, but not my cup of tea.

Published:  2008  Read: July 2018  Genre: Fiction

Listen! The Wind - Anne Morrow Lindberg

This is the first-person account of the Lindbergh's flight in 1933 across the southern Atlantic Ocean from Bathurst (now called Banjul), Gambia on the western shoe of Africa to Natal, Brazil in South America in 18 hours.  It was one leg in a series of trans-oceanic trips taken to explore the various routes.  It's quite short and the bulk of the story is their preparation and false starts before leaving from Africa.  I appreciated how Anne was treated as an equal partner, even flying the plane for part of the trip.  Her musings on waiting and disappointment when they couldn't leave from the Cape Verde Islands are like being in her head as she reconciles her feelings and regains her optimism. 

This volume was privately published as a book of the year by a small publisher, Westvaco in 1990.  There is a lengthily explanation of the typeface, front pieces, and end papers styled to reflect the Art Deco period of the 1930's and has its own case.  A joy to read and admire.

Published: 1990 (this edition, originally 1938) Read: July 2018  Genre: Non-fiction

The Emperor's Children - Claire Messud

I kept hoping this story would get better but I was ultimately disappointed.  Three friends who met in college are approaching 30 and wondering what to make of their lives.  One is a gay Eurasian man, another a transplanted Ohioan woman and the third a spoiled only child of a well-known writer.  They lament their lack of meaningful love and work lives while living in NYC.  It all seems like a lot of belly button gazing intended to poke fun and at the same time make some statement.  It fails on both accounts.  Not recommended unless you are into NYC culture.

Published:  2006  Read: July 2018  Genre: Fiction

The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish - Elsie Blackwell

This was a quiet book, told in first person by Louis Pryor as an old man reflecting on his life.  As a seventeen year-old boy, the levee in his small, Louisiana town was deliberately dynamited unnecessarily in turns out, during the 1927 Mississippi flood.  The damage altered his life and comes to symbolize his loss of innocence.

I was impressed at a woman writer's ability to speak as a man.  She captured perfectly his sorrow and regret at what was lost, decisions made that changed the trajectory of his life.  I liked his father, an illiterate, poor, farmer who becomes superintendent of the logging company.  He explains to his son when criticized that his choices have always been "take it" or "leave it".  He's always chosen to take it as it moved him up in the world regardless of the compromises made.

I would recommend reading this one and will look for the author's first book, Hunger.

Published:  2007  Read: July 2018  Genre: fiction

The Glass Universe - Dava Sobel

Sub-title: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory took the Measure of the Stars

I got this book just over a year ago at the Tucson book fair, a recommendation from my brother-in-law, Tom.  I really enjoyed the author's other books that I read, Longitude and Galileo's Daughter. 

This novel tells the history of the women who worked at the Harvard Observatory analyzing and cataloging glass plate images of the stars. The plates were created by images captured by the observatory's telescopes in Massachusetts, Peru and South Africa.  Over 500,000 plates were created over several decades, a collection that is now being digitized including the paper sleeves they are stored in and the accompanying notes and card files.

The original observatory's efforts were made possible by ongoing donations from Anna Draper, the wife of Henry Draper, in honor of her husband.  She was very involved throughout the rest of her life in the programs.  Many women worked as "computers" to analyze and record the information on the stars.  It made me realize that astronomy involves a lot of math and physics.  I was struck with the education and skills of these women in the late 1800's and into the early 20th century and compared them in my mind to my women ancestors of the time, most of whom did not even go to high school.

There's mention of a Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin that I'll have to research as "Yerkes" is the middle name of my 2nd great-grandfather.

The women were not treated as second-class, although their pay was far less than their male counterparts.  The author features several who received doctorates in Astronomy and were instrumental in developing techniques for quantifying and cataloging the stars and who discovered many. 

A good read and history lesson.

Published:  2016  Read: July 2018  Genre: non-fiction, science

In the Name of Friendship - Marilyn French

Why have I not heard of this author before?  She was a major influence on feminism with her 1977 book, The Woman's Room.  She wrote many, many scholarly articles and books as well as works of fiction.  I am so glad I found this one! 

She tells the story of four women friends, from their late 70's to early 30's.  Their voices are so real, their conversations intimate, kind, meaningful.  It is a book written completely from the female perspective, with no apologies or stereotypes - so refreshing!  I bought another one of her books and will read her first.

She did a dissertation on James Joyce's Ulysses and has written extensively on feminism in Shakespeare. 

I liked this quote :

"What really happened in aging was that every day your got more and more amenable to dying."

Published:  2005  Read: July 2018  Genre: Fiction

 

People of the Book – Geraldine Brooks

A book conservationist is hired to examine and repair an ancient Jewish book, the Sarajevo Haggadah.  The story tells of her discoveries of minute evidence of its past hidden in its pages which are explained in flashbacks to their origins.  The story is based on a true precious relic that has been a symbol of the various faiths living in harmony for centuries.  This is a work of historical fiction, so the author creates fictional characters to populate the facts.

Brooks has written other books of historical fiction: March which tells the story of the father of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women; Nine Parts of Desire, which I don’t think I’ve read and Year of Wonders, about a town during the Black Plague. 

People of the Book tells of the terrible tragedies of wars and hatred and the enduring strength of the people who persist despite the hardship.  I learned more about all religions – Jewish, Christian, Muslim and how much they are intertwined.  A wonderful read, highly recommended.

Published:  2008  Read: June 2018  Genre: Historical Fiction

Trail of Crumbs - Kim Sunee

Sub-title: Hunger, Love and the Search for Home

A Korean adoptee seeking a feeling of belonging becomes the girlfriend of a rich older Frenchman and lives the high life in Europe for a decade before returning to America.  As a young woman she becomes an excellent cook and today is a food editor for a magazine in Alaska.

This was a moving read.  I enjoyed hearing the story of a much younger woman coming to terms with her feelings and relationships.  It was disturbing to read how much control over her life she gave to the man she was with although he was just trying to make her happy.  A good read.

Published:  2008  Read: July 2018  Genre: Memoir

Money, A Memoir - Liz Perle

Sub-title: Women, Emotions, and Cash

Liz got divorced suddenly, becoming a single Mom without an income overnight.  The shock forced her to re-examine her relationship with money.  She realized that she'd been in denial about being financially responsible for herself, hoping to let someone else take care of her and her finances.

She worked in publishing and began interviewing women about the relationship with finances and discovered that many baby boomers had the same expectations and had cobbled their emotional needs together with the financial responsibilities.  Over time she was able to separate the two, and let money just be money, finding her fulfillment in family and friends.

I was saddened to learn that the author died of breast cancer at only 59 years old in 2015.  It was a good read for the interviews with other women and a flashback 12 years to just prior to the 2008 crash.

Published:  2006  Read: July 2018  Genre: non-fiction

Blind Corners - Geoff Tabin

I picked up this adventure book in a great used bookstore in Kenai.  It's a brief memoir by an amazing man who not only conquered the Seven Summits but is also an eye surgeon.  It was written while he was early in his medical career, after graduating from Yale (undergrad) and Harvard (doctorate) and attending Oxford - whew!  He chose the title to advocate for taking risks by pursuing your dreams and testing your limits.  It was inspiring and at the same time intimidating.  At times he seemed reckless but his belief in his abilities and willingness to challenge himself has served him well.

He currently heads a philanthropic project to eliminate preventable blindness in the poor of the world and visits Nepal each year to perform cataract surgery on what is now thousands of people. 

He would be a fascinating person to meet, I plan to listen to his TED talk.

p.s.  He also is responsible for "inventing" bungee jumping!

Published:  1993   Read: June 2018  Genre: Adventure

There's A (Slight) Chance I Might Be Going To Hell - Laurie Notaro

I love this girl.  She is so darn funny and smart and a great writer.  This was her first fiction novel, according to the cover; she'd done several Idiot Girl books before this one.  It's obviously based on her move to Oregon.  Maye, moves with her husband, Charlie, to a small town in Washington where she can't seem to make a single friend.  She decides to run for Sewer Pipe Queen and enlists a prior stellar winner, Ruby, to be her coach.  All the usual Lori craziness ensues.  Fun read.

Published:  2007  Read: June 2018  Genre: Fiction

The Girl Below - Bianca Zander

Did you ever start reading a book and thought, "I don't like this character" but kept reading to see if it got any better?  Well this one didn't.  It's a story about a self-indulgent, whining, wimpy, poor-me 30 something with flashbacks to falling into a air-raid shelter before being pulled out by her father.  She keeps screwing up her life; drink, drugs, men, insomnia.  Yes, she's depressed, I get it, but she does nothing to help it.  The reader's guide reveals its partly auto-biographical so there's a real person walking around.  A wasted read, don't bother.

Published:  2012  Read: June 2018  Genre: Fiction

A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived - Adam Rutherford

This is the history of our genes and the their discovery and research.  It's about genetics, DNA, epigenetics and the scientists who discovered them and those that continue to research them.  It weaves history, beginning with Darwin and the Origin of the Species right up to the latest research.  It is "real" science, not the sensational or commercialized versions of the same.  A detailed learning tool for those interested in how the field started and where it is going.  Highly recommended.

Some areas I noted are:

Chapter 3 - These American Lands details the history of Native American genetic studies.  Because of abuse of data donated for the study of diabetes in the Havasupai Indians, the Native American tribes have discouraged broad scale studies which would help in determining the migration of Homo Sapiens to the Americas.  The author recommends Native American DNA by Kim TallBear as the definitive analysis of genetics in relation to the people of the Americas.

Chapter 4 - When We Were Kings discusses the math of population and explains how a thousand years ago, Europeans shared all their ancestry.  We are all descendants of a handful of people who lived in the past.  He debunks companies that claim to identify royal heritage based on DNA.  He calls their claims "largely unsupportable, possibly true, or generically accurate for millions, and underwritten by thinly stretched DNA data.  The Forer effect is a psychological phenomenon where people conclude that broadly true statements are accurate for themselves personally, when they are in fact generically true for many people."

Published:  2017  Read: June 2018  Genre: Science

Joe Jones - Anne Lamott

This book was written a long time ago, maybe at the beginning of the author's career.  It was a joy to read.  Anne Lamott paints her characters which such great detail and pays close attention to how people interact with each other.  Her story here is simple; an unfaithful man is trying to get the courage to come back to the people he betrayed.  Their lives were affected by his presence and his absence.  I found the story touching and very real.  A good read from a great author.

Published:  1985  Read: June 2018  Genre: Fiction

All She Ever Wanted - Rosalind Noonan

I wanted to read this after reviewing the teaser write up on the back because it is a story of a new mother suffering from postpartum depression, something I have first-hand experience with.  The author did a good job of describing the feelings and thoughts of a new mother suffering with this horrible condition, which took up the first two-thirds of the book.  As a consequence of her state, an incident occurs (I won't spoil it) that give dramatic drive to the story.  Worth the read for an understanding of the state of mind of the mother and the way she appears to those around her.

Published:  2013   Read: June 2018  Genre: Fiction

Ellen in Pieces - Caroline Adderson

This tells of the life of a woman through the people in it.  I didn't like it at first; it jumped from one part of her life to the next abruptly, sometimes with years in between; I felt liked I'd missed something, that there were no transitions.  By the end of the story I realized that was the whole point.  Her life is revealed by the stories of her family members and friends, their "pieces" of her puzzle.  I was very satisfied with the writing at the finish.  A good read.

Published:  2014  Read:  June 2018  Genre: Fiction

Inheritance – Sharon Moalem

Sub-title: How our genes change our lives and our lives change our genes

I got this book as a Christmas present, I think, it feeds my obsession with genealogy and DNA.  The author is an MD specializing in rare genetic and metabolic diseases.  He makes a case for studying these conditions, not only to help the patient, but as a means of discovering information that can be applied more broadly.  Of particular interest to me, is the explanation of genetic expression and epigenetics.

Genetic expression is the concept that while we may inherit a gene related to a specific disease or condition, the degree to which that disease or condition are manifest is determined by extent our genes articulate the effect.  In short, some people carrying a gene may get the related disease and others not and even others to varying intensity.

Epigenetics is the newer science examining the effect of our lifestyle and events on our genes.  Traumatic experiences of a mother as well as her diet can affect her unborn child.  There are studies that found children of parents who has experienced starvation before having children can still pass on genetic impacts.  The author defines it as “the study of changes in gene expression that result from life conditions”. 

One anecdote I enjoyed was about Dr. John Kellogg, considered a health guru in his lifetime, he lent his name to the brand.  He was an advocate for whole body vibration, or shaking the sickness out of his patients using vibration therapy.  While discredited in the past, now vibration therapy is being advocated for patients with osteoporosis because it could possibly activate the gene expression that breaks down and builds up bone.

The book provides several case studies of rare diseases that are genetically related and gets repetitive in the telling of the stories.  An interesting read with food for thought.

Published:  2014 Read:  June 2018   Genre: Science, Medicine

The Last Days of Dogtown - Anita Diamant

I'm reading up a storm this month as we are traveling in our RV and the nights are long and quiet. 

This book is the story of a group of lonely outcasts in Boston in the 1800s.  It's loosely based on fact, as there was a place called Dogtown that had a poor reputation and lingering stories of misfits.  It's gone now and the author used some of the real tidbits to recreate their lives.

There's a long-suffering spinster who mourns her lost love, young men abused and mistreated by family, mean-spirited ruffians and sweetheart caretakers.  Their lives are a struggle that likely parallels those of today's downtrodden and discarded people. 

By the end, the town has faded from existence, its occupants moving on or ending their lives.  A quiet read with interesting characters.

Published:  2005   Read: June 2018  Genre: Fiction

The Atlas of Love – Laurie Frankel

Three English Lit PhD candidates become friends and when one of them turns up pregnant, decide to co-parent the baby.  This is a wonderful story of friendship, family, relationships and living, with a big dose of literary references. 

A couple of quotes for thought:

[After comparing history to literature studies]

“History does teach you though that threads and connections are trickier than they seem.  Meaning, what seems relevant and meaningful now isn’t a very good indicator of anything.  Things that look like signs usually aren’t.”

[After watching the movie Memento with her students]

“My students’ conclusion was that knowing what happens is meaningless, unless you understand why.  I said all literature is this way because all life is this way—the mystery isn’t what but why.  My students disagreed.  They said in life you understand the why all along because you live it every day, and you’re in your head; you’re just desperate to know how it will turn out.”

I gobbled this up in one day, the luxury of being able to read as long as I want!

Published:  2010 Read:  June 2017 Genre: Fiction

Rocket Boys - Homer H Hickam, Jr.

This was a joy to read!  It's a memoir of the author growing up in a coal town in West Virginia in the late 50's, shortly after the Russians launched Sputnik.  He and his friends are inspired to build rockets and with the help of their teacher and school, acquire the knowledge to do so.  They experiment with launching their rockets to hone their skills, while their coal town home is moving toward oblivion. 

I loved learning some rocketry and finally can name a use for trigonometry and calculus, not that I ever took those classes!  The relationship of the boys to each other and of Homer to his parents is genuine and moving.  I learned too of the hard lives of coal miners, giving me a new appreciation for my relatives who worked in the mines in Pennsylvania in the late 1800s. 

Some lucky person will pick this up in the next campground we visit!

Published:  1998  Read: May 2018  Genre: Memoir

Travels in Alaska - John Muir

I started this book on our second trip to Alaska, being an admirer of the author and wanting information on the state. It details three of his trips to the Wrangell area beginning in 1879. He uses the flowery language of the 19th century to describe the beauty of the glaciers he studies. His stamina and determination is remarkable. He speaks of hiking 17 miles a day to 7 and 10,000 feet elevations, sleeping outdoors on frozen rock, eating only bread and tea. He was enthralled by nature seeing it as evidence of the divine master plan. It made me wonder how much things have changed as they inevitably will.

Some notes about Alaska I took about the time I was reading this book:

• Feta Morgana an arctic mirage affect
• Revelations Mountain range west of Anchorage
• There's a polar ice pack albedo effect which means the reflecting power of a surface

Published:  1915. Read: May 2018. Genre: adventure nature non-fiction

Counting Coup - Kelli Donley

I've followed Kelli's blog for several years, she's an Arizona resident who spent some years in Africa before returning to work in public health.  I'd put this recent book of hers on my Amazon wish list and got it as a Mother's Day gift from my step kids.  It was a great read, made more rewarding by knowing the author and the efforts she went through to self-publish the book.

Counting Coup is a term used in Native American culture that says if you can sneak up and touch your enemy without them knowing than you have control.  It's a very daring and brave thing to do. 

In the book, the main character, Avery, is trying to help her aging great-aunt while juggling a research professorship.  She gets caught up in the stories of her great aunt and grandmother's lives when they taught briefly at the Phoenix Indian School in the 1950s.  Their bravery in face of hardship was a new discovery for Avery.

I enjoyed reading about places that were so familiar and so integral to the story. 

Published:  2017   Read: May 2018  Genre: Fiction

It's All Relative - A J Jacobs

Subtitle: Adventures Up and Down the World's Family Tree

What a great Christmas gift from my step daughter!  Genealogy and a good story - what's not to like?  The author stumbles into his family genealogy and then decides to host the largest family reunion ever.  The friendships he forms and the people he meets on his journey are funny, touching and oh so real.  We really are one big family!

Some quotes I flagged:

"...writer Andrew Solomon has a different language.  He talks about the 'horizontal family' (who share your passion or worldview or condition) and 'vertical family' (parents, kids, grandparents, etc.)."

"Yaniv Erlich...a geneticist at Columbia University...crunched the data from 13 million Geni relatives to figure out patterns of migration.  ...on YouTube [he has] time-lapse animation showing how humans have spread out onto all continents." 

"The Ancestor's Tale by Richard Dawkins...taught me a new word: concestor.  This is the common ancestor linking two species."

"Luca stands for Last Universal Common Ancestor". 

Published:  2017  Read: February 2018  Genre: Genealogy, non-fiction

Turtles All the Way Down - John Green

I bought this for my niece for her birthday but she's such a bookworm, she'd already read it!  Bill Gates had reviewed it and said it was a favorite of his daughter too.  I enjoyed following the mystery and being in the world of young people.  The main character, Aza, drove me nuts!  Her struggles with OCD felt very real and painful and I can only imagine how frustrating for her.  A good read.

Published: 2017  Read: April 2018  Genre: Young Adult

A Moveable Feast - Ernest Hemingway

Subtitle: Sketches of the Author's life in Paris in the Twenties

I enjoy reading classics and Hemingway is so sparse and exacting with his words.  I liked learning about the 1920's and the people he hung out with in Paris.  Some quotes:

"But even when you have learned not to look at families nor listen to them and have learned not to answer letters, families have many ways of being dangerous." 

"Since I had started to break down all my writing and get rid of all facility and try to make instead of describe, writing had been wonderful to do.  But it was very difficult, and I did not know how I would ever write anything as long as a novel.  It often took me a full morning of work to write a paragraph." 

Published: 1964  Read: February 2018  Genre: Memoir

The Death of Expertise - Tom Nichols

Sub-title: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters.

This looked interesting at the time, with discussion of anti-intellectualism buzzing around.  The author argues that while we have broader access to knowledge than any other time in history, it has resulted in declaring expertise without a depth of knowledge.

I was left with wondering if there was anything I could honestly consider myself an expert at.

Just recording some quotes:

p. 45 - the more specific reason that unskilled or incompetent people overestimate their abilities far more than others is because they lack a key skill called meta-cognition - the ability to know when you're not good at something by stepping back and realizing what your doing is wrong.

p. 77 Three-fourths of American undergraduate attend college that accept at least half of their applicants.

p 84  Students take correction as an insult; unearned praise and hollow success build a fragile arrogance.

p 112 Debunking does nothing

p 125  The distinction between lay people and professionals: volunteers do what interest them at any given time, while professionals employ their expertise every day.  Professionals are people who can do their best work when they don't feel like it.

p 217 - Disdain for education is not merely "anti-rational"; it is almost reverse evolution away from tested knowledge and backward toward folk wisdom and myths passed by word of mouth.

p 218 Faced with a public that has no idea how most things work, experts likewise disengage, choosing to speak mostly to each other.

Published:  2017   Read: August 2017  Genre: non-fiction, sociology

The Lost World of the Old Ones - David Roberts

Sub-title: Discoveries in the ancient southwest

I tried to get an earlier book by this author called In Search of the Old Ones that is a cult favorite among climbers and adventurers however its only available at the Heard Museum library for in-library use. 

This sequel chronicles the explorations of the author throughout Arizona, Utah and New Mexico looking for remnants of ancient civilizations.  He practises leaving artifacts as they are, instead of collecting and taking them away from where they were found.  An amateur anthropologist and archeologist, he seeks out the experts to consult and travel with to understand the cultures. 

A great read that gives me a new appreciation of the rich history of my part of the world.


Published:  2015  Read: May 2018  Genre: Adventure

Captivity of the Oatman Girls - R B Stratton

In 1851, a family of west bound Mormon settlers were attacked by Indians in the desert of  the Mexican territory, about 80 miles from Fort Yuma, which was just across the Colorado River from present day Yuma, Arizona.  Most of the family was murdered, though the 15 year old son, Lorenzo, left for dead, survived, and two daughters, Ann, 8 and Olive, 14, were taken prisoners.  Ann died of starvation after a year in captivity and Olive was ransomed after four years, returning to society to re-join her brother.

This book is a re-publication of the third edition of the original text that was published in 1859.  The story was a sensationalizing of the attack and her captivity.  The often displayed image of a young woman with tattooed stripes along her chin is of Olive.  The writing is in the flowery, pious style of the mid-19th century.  There's little insight into the life of the tribe as Olive tells her story to the writer, the emphasis being on her survival and reunion. 

I found controversy in more modern accounts, some claiming she had children while in captivity, others denying that story.  Maybe some targeted DNA testing amongst the Yavapai and Mohave tribes would reveal something!

Published: 1857 (original)  Read: March 2018  Genre: historical biography

Theodore Roosevelt for Nature Lovers - ed. Mark Dawidziak

Sub-title: Adventures with America's Great Outdoorsman

A short book with snippets and stories about living and loving being in the outdoors from the twenty-sixth president. 

One of the things I love about genealogy his how it leads me to research the historical context of my ancestors' lives.  T.R. was born in 1859 and died in January of 1919.  He was a child during the Civil War, fought in the Spanish-American War and died shortly after the end of WWI.  For my family, he was a peer of my great-grandparents and a source of childhood stories for my grandparents.  They saw the cartoons of him portrayed as a lion or a bear in the newspapers and were the first generations to have Teddy bears.

I enjoyed reading this book for the background on his love of the outdoors that lead to him becoming an avid conservationists and while president, establishing some of the first national parks.  So much good reading in a small package!

Published: 2017   Read: March 2018  Genre: biography

Homo Deus - Yuval Noah Harari

Sub-title: A Brief History of Tomorrow

This was a heavy book, figuratively and literally!  Harari has a PhD in history and specializes in world history.  He wrote an earlier book on the history of mankind called Sapiens.  This book is a sort of sequel, describing the future of the human species.  He presents many provocative ideas based on the evolution of industry and technology in the modern age.  I was fascinated and fearful of some of his predictions.  Here are some quotes and snipets I wanted to keep:

Page 54 - "A baby was conceived using the mitochondrial DNA of a 3rd person so she has biologically three parents (this procedures was subsequently banned in the U.S.)"

Page 58 - "This is the paradox of historical knowledge.  Knowledge that does not change behaviour is useless.  But knowledge that changes behaviour quickly loses it relevance.  The more data we have and the better we understand history, the faster history alters its course and the faster our knowledge becomes outdated."

Page 132 - "...the crucial factor in our [humans] conquest of the world was our ability to connect many humans to one another."

Page - 143 - "All large-scale human cooperation is ultimately based on our belief in imagined orders.  These are set of rules that, despite existing only in our imagination, we believe to be a real and inviolable as gravity [examples, God].  As long as all Sapiens living in a particular locality believe in the sames stories, they all follow the same rules, making it easy to predict the behaviour of strangers and to organize mass-cooperation networks."

When he talks of "imagined orders" he's referring to a belief that is intersubjective - a belief that depends on communication among many humans, money being an example.  He posits that religious and nationalistic beliefs are also intersubjective and cease to exist if we cease to believe in them.

He goes on from this explanation of how the species acts based on commonly held beliefs to describe "The Modern Covenant" - an agreement we have made "to give up meaning in exchange for power".  Religion and nationalistic beliefs gave meaning to human life but restricted their power.  By letting go of a belief in a great cosmic plan life has no meaning.  "The modern world does not believe in purpose, only in cause.  If modernity has a motto, its 'shit happens'."  From this, he surmises, humans can do anything we want. "On the practical level modern life consists of a constant pursuit of power within a universe devoid meaning."

Page 304 - "If you want to make people believe in imaginary entities such as gods and nations, you should make them sacrifice something valuable".

Page 350 - "Most scientific research about the human mind and the human experience has been conducted on people from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD) societies.  The study of the human mind has so far assumed that Homo sapiens is Homer Simpson."

Page 366 - "Modern humanity is sick with FOMO - Fear of Missing Out and though we have more choice than ever before, we have lost the ability to really pay attention to whatever we choose."

He ends with three challenging questions:

1. Are organisms really just algorithms, and is life really just data processing?
2. What's more valuable intelligence or consciousness?
3. What will happen to society, politics and daily life when non-conscious but highly intelligent algorithms know us better than we know ourselves?

Published: 2015   Read: March 2018  Genre: History, Science

The Solace of Leaving Early - Haven Kimmel

I'd begun this review and never finished it, found it in my Draft folder.

This was the first book written by the author of a A Girl Named Zippy.  That book was a memoir of growing up in Ohio.

A young woman leaves school just before getting her PhD and returns to her home, unwilling to pursue life.  A local minister is beyond the interest level of his parishioners and is enlisted by her mother to bring her out of her funk.  Between them, they try to help two little girls who've lost their mother to a violent murder.  It's a strange combination and it took a while before the implausible story hooked me.
There's a lot of reflection on life and religion and family in this story that makes it well worth reading.


Published: 2002  Read: February 2018  Genre: Fiction

Evicted - Matthew Desmond

Sub-title:  Poverty and Profit in the American City

I found recently that Bill Gates had recommended books to read from 2017.  This was one of those.

Evicted is a painful read that provides first-hand reporting of the daily lives of people struggling to afford a place to live.  In the past few years, the cost of renting has gone from the recommended 30% of income to the reality of 60-70% for the poor reported on in this story.  This are ordinary people that never get ahead and instead remain in grinding poverty largely due to the way renting living space is conducted in America. 

The author spent over a year living with these folks in a dingy trailer park and seedy apartments in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, not a place where I would think of poverty taking hold.  He follows eight individuals through their multiple evictions or moves to avoid it.  He contrasts their situations with that of a landlord making six figure income by aggressively exploiting this market.  It's a stark picture of a court system and assistance programs broken and ineffective. 

In the epilogue the author offers some suggestions for changes in policy but the call to action I'm afraid falls on deaf ears. 

Published: 2016  Read: January 2018   Genre: Sociology

A Midwife's Tale - Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

Sub-title: The Life of Martha Ballard, based on her Diary 1785-1812

Since I've immersed myself in genealogy over the last couple of years, I've upped my interest in history.  This book was recommended as insight to the lives of women in the early years of the United States.  The author transcribed sections directly from the diaries of Martha, a midwife in Hallowell, Maine.  She then analyzes the transcript to interpret Martha's day to day living.  It's a unique look at how women lived and prospered in early colonial America.  There are few other writings that provide this level of detail. 

Martha was not a writer; she was basically keeping a log of her work and travels for tracking purposes.  But her story sheds light on so much of the day to day struggles and attitudes of the time.  In 27 years she attended 816 births.  The book covers those births as well as religious groups of the time and legal and criminal activities.  A great read for a history nut.

Published:  1999   Read:  January 2018   Genre: History