Moonshot - Albert Bourla

 Sub-title: Inside Pfizer's Nin-Month Race to Make the Impossible Possible

I'm an optimist, and this book supported my search for positive information about the pandemic. Dr Bourla is the chairman and CEO of Pfizer pharmaceutical company.  The book is his first person account of the development of the coronavirus at the fastest pace ever for a vaccine.  I was impressed with how the world coordinated their efforts in science, manufacturing, distribution and investment to develop the vaccine.  

Some may critically say the companies that developed the vaccine made lots of money and I call foul.  As commercial entities, yes, they will make huge profits; however, as the book illustrates, they also took huge risks in choosing the development path and ignoring financial concerns in favor of pursuing the best path for development.

The company adopted the phrase "Science Will Win" and we should all be grateful that it did.

Published: 2021  Read: March 2022  Genre: Science, History

This is How It Always Is - Laurie Frankel

 This was a hard book to read.  It's the story of Claude/Poppy and his/her family.  The youngest of 5 boys, Claude sees himself as a girl.  His loving, caring parents are determined to accept him as he/she chooses and he navigates kindergarten with his gender diaspora supported by the school administration and unremarked by his classmates.  That is, until he's separated from his best friend who has a homophobic father with a gun.  His mother, a doctor, and his father, a writer, move the family to a "friendly" state and he starts school as Poppy.  At 10, a few years older, she's "outed" after years of her family keeping the secret.  Like any pre-teen, she has to navigate her reality in a world not necessarily accepting of who she is.

While my heart ached for her and her parents, it was a moving, honest, and enlightening story of the life a transgender child.  The author has a transgender child herself but the book is a fictionalized version of the many obstacles faced and solutions her and her family have created.  Highly recommended.

Quotes:

"...children being the enemies of plans and also the enemies of anything new besides themselves."

"They say it is what you never imagine can be lost that is the hardest to live without."

"He realized this was what his father hand been up to all these years, not entertaining his children [with his stories] but perfecting his world.  If you wrote your own characters, they didn't disappoint you like real people did.  If you told your own story, you got to pick your ending.  Just being yourself never worked, but if you made yourself up, you to go be exactly who you knew yourself. to be."

"All life.  You are never finish, never done.  Never become, always becoming.  You know?  Life is change so is always okay you are not there yet".

"...this was what stilled for her, smooth and clear as glass.  Dispelling fear.  Taming what was scary not by hiding it, not by blocking it or burying it, not by keeping it secret, but by reminding themselves and everyone else, to chose love, choose openness, to think and be calm.  That there were more ways than just two, wider possibilities than hidden or betrayed, stalled or brokenhearted, male or female, right or wrong.  Middle ways.  Ways beyond."

Published: 2017   Read: March 2022  Genre: Fiction

Poison for Breakfast - Lemony Snicket

 

This was cute and quirky.  The main character finds a note under his door that says "you had poison for breakfast".  We goes on a journey to find out how and why and when and in the process reflects on life in all its bewildering glory.  

Published: 2021  Read: March 2022  Genre: Fiction, Philosophy

In Five Years - Rebecca Serle

A young, successful, woman lawyer (Dannie), engaged to the perfect, considerate man (David) experiences her future one evening - and she's with a different man, in a different place.  She's shaken to her core and we she meets that future man (Aaron) she's convinced she can alter the future.  This was a clever take on predestination and what we think we can control in our lives.  I finished it up in a  couple days. Her relationship with her best friend since childhood (Bella) plays counterpoint to her structured, managed life.

Clever, quick read.

Quote:

"You mistake love.  You think it has to have a future in order to matter, but it doesn't.  It's the only thing that does not need to become at all.  It matters only insofar as it exists.  Here. Now. Love doesn't require a future."

Published:  2020 Read: March 2022  Genre: Fiction

Living with Our Genes - Dean Hamer and Peter Copeland

I picked up this book at the genealogical society in Green Valley, Arizona. They were clearing out their collection of older books and duplicates and I picked up a bunch!  Reading older published works highlights the progress that's been made over the past 20 plus years since this book was released.  The scientist, Dean Hamer, is a cancer researcher from Harvard and still operates a program doing genetic research.  He was controversial, claiming he had identified genes that may be associated with sexual orientation and intelligence.  The books's claims are considered glib and over-generalizations, but at the time were quite sensational, much like the claims of early 19th century snake oil salesman.  Not worth reading except for a gaining a perspective on how science evolves and can be exploited on the way.

Published: 1998  Read: March 2022  Genre: Science