A Walk in the Park

A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon

By Kevin Fedarko 

A deeply moving account ever of walking the Grand Canyon, a highly dangerous, life-changing 750-mile trek.

The Grand Canyon is an American treasure, visited by more than 6 million people a year, many of whom are rendered speechless by its vast beauty, mystery, and complexity. Now, in A Walk in the Park , author Kevin Fedarko chronicles his year-long effort to find a 750-mile path along the length of the Grand Canyon, through a vertical wilderness suspended between the caprock along the rims of the abyss and the Colorado River, which flows along its bottom.

Consisting of countless cliffs and steep drops, plus immense stretches with almost no access to water, and the fact that not a single trail links its eastern doorway to its western terminus, this jewel of national parks is so challenging that when Fedarko departed fewer people had completed the journey in one single hike than had walked on the moon. The intensity of the effort required him to break his trip into several legs, each of which held staggering dangers and unexpected discoveries.

Accompanying Fedarko through this sublime yet perilous terrain is the award-winning photographer Peter McBride, who captures the stunning landscape in breathtaking photos. Together, they encounter long-lost Native American ruins, the remains of Old West prospectors’ camps, present day tribal activists, and signs that commercial tourism is impinging on the park’s remote wildness.

An epic adventure, action-packed survival tale, and a deep spiritual journey, A Walk in the Park gives us an unprecedented glimpse of the crown jewel of America’s National an iconic landscape framed by ancient rock whose contours are recognized by all, but whose secrets and treasures are known to almost no one, and whose topography encompasses some of the harshest, least explored, most awe-inspiring terrain in the world.

It would be hard to say that any book or video (but especially a book without many pictures) can do justice to the experience of being at or inside the Grand Canyon but Fedarko gives it a good go. There's a point at which he says that he realizes that he's been trying to "experience" the Grand Canyon at its most pure, i.e., by walking through it, but eventually comes to acknowledge that even the casual hikers who skim just the merest part of it can still find real appreciation of its natural beauty and power. 

Speaking as one of those casual hikers who, upon approach to the Grand Canyon was immediately awestruck, I appreciate the concession.  The Grand Canyon is aptly named. It is so magnificent a landscape that I cannot conceive of a thinking, feeling person who, when confronted with it, is not in some way awed and amazed.  

That being said, I really don't think even reading this book (or any book) can do justice to it, so it's no fault of Fedarko's that it falls short. There is just no replacement for being in the canyon itself, something is apparent when we hear about the people who are drawn, again and again, to hiking and exploring it, regardless of the dangers. We learn about several people who did in fact die while exploring it, who are only small steps of association away from the author himself. It's sobering and comes at a point when you almost feel that the risks are overstated.  Fedarko admittedly likes to cast himself and his hiking partner Pete McBride as somewhat hapless, unprepared "off the couch"ers, which can be amusing at points, but I think also does a disservice as it understates the preparation and fitness required to make an adequate attempt at what they achieved. 

The first sections are mostly scene setting and the first initial foray into the planned through-hike, which ends in disaster.  The latter sections, as Fedarko and McBride get further underway (and more comfortable) also explore the connection of the native tribes to the land (for better or for worse) and the prospect of further development and commercialization. There's an upsetting couple of chapters as they hike past Grand Canyon West, the skywalk and helicopter tour on Hualapai tribe land, which begs the question of whether and how tribes and other landowners should be allowed to profit off of the Grand Canyon (given the deterioration of the canyon unders also the kind of non those conditions), especially when the policies of the American government towards the tribes has created the conditions of poverty and social ills which they seek to escape by commercializing the only asset left to them. 

 If nothing else, this book certainly does not make me want to hike the Grand Canyon. Preserve it, yes. Boat through it, maybe. But definitely not walk through it. As far as non-fiction books about hiking misadventures go, I think Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods sets the gold standard. A Walk in the Park, while paying homage, fails to meet the high standard set. But still, it calls up memories of one of the most wondrous places on Earth. And even a fainter echo is still something special.

46: A Book Where Nature Is The Antagonist

The Woman They Could Not Silence

The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear

By Kate Moore

1860: As the clash between the states rolls slowly to a boil, Elizabeth Packard, housewife and mother of six, is facing her own battle. The enemy sits across the table and sleeps in the next room. Her husband of twenty-one years is plotting against her because he feels increasingly threatened - by Elizabeth's intellect, independence, and unwillingness to stifle her own thoughts. So Theophilus makes a plan to put his wife back in her place. One summer morning, he has her committed to an insane asylum.

The horrific conditions inside the Illinois State Hospital in Jacksonville, Illinois, are overseen by Dr. Andrew McFarland, a man who will prove to be even more dangerous to Elizabeth than her traitorous husband. But most disturbing is that Elizabeth is not the only sane woman confined to the institution. There are many rational women on her ward who tell the same story: they've been committed not because they need medical treatment, but to keep them in line - conveniently labeled "crazy" so their voices are ignored.

No one is willing to fight for their freedom and, disenfranchised both by gender and the stigma of their supposed madness, they cannot possibly fight for themselves. But Elizabeth is about to discover that the merit of losing everything is that you then have nothing to lose...

Kate Moore writes about women whom history has forgotten, women who have suffered and whose lives have changed the course of history and whom, despite that, we know very little about. Her first book, The Radium Girls was distinguished more by the subject matter than by the writing. Moore's style is a bit flat here too - she cites constantly from the source material but in so doing, I find her use of quotations more distracting than anything else. I would much prefer her to present the facts and cite by footnotes than constantly insert quotations like a Zagat's Guide. There's almost too much focus on Elizabeth and her own thoughts. It's not a short book, although it does go pretty quickly, but in the last few sections, Elizabeth is released and we broaden our scope to her lobbying efforts. It's certainly less interesting, so I don't fault Moore for spending relatively little time on it, but it would be nice to get more of a sense of the effect these laws had on the systems and any long term impacts her anti-asylum groups had.

 

That being said, once again Moore has chosen an excellent subject. Elizabeth Packard is wholly compelling personage and, as seen in her own writings, eloquent and persuasive.  We see very little of her life prior to her institutionalization and perhaps a bit more background could have helped to explain why she felt so called upon to resist, especially given how common it seems it would have been to keep a low and biddable profile in order to return home. Moore's author's note indicates that she wrote, then cut, an entire beginning section that dealt with Elizabeth's church discussion groups, which seem to kick off the schism between Elizabeth and her husband.  Were there other moments of resistance before this that paved the road?

 

It's inspiring, and intentionally so. Moore writes that she deliberately chose a story with "a happy ending" for which I commend her. Nothing like reading about women needlessly thrown into asylums without proof to make you crave a happy ending.  Elizabeth's courage is manifest, but it's still a tragedy that she endured so many years of separation from her children. I did find it amusing that once her husband Theophilius accepts that she cannot be squashed, they seem to be able to live if not comfortably, at least compatibly.  It just goes to show the damage that a weak man, with all the tools of an unjust system, can do in the pursuit of his own protection. If only he had been able to admit that Elizabeth was always the stronger of the two, perhaps all of this could have been avoided. Maybe it was Theophilius all along who held the insane views since his belief in his own superiority was clearly contrary to the truth.

But Moore's central thesis, which she hammers hard at the beginning and slightly again at the end, that "insanity" is merely a convenient way to dismiss and thwart those who would challenge those in power, is a convincing one. It begs each of us to consider all the ways in which our own prejudices and judgments are informed not by truth but by habit. I find myself uncomfortably close to the subject matter right now, as I find myself advising a family that - for her own protection - a woman needs a guardianship. But Elizabeth's example should be a guide here as well - regardless of the circumstances, to treat everyone with kindness and dignity even if they cannot manage themselves.  

 

And if ever we needed a reminder to keep fighting, the book itself is proof that, as Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "The Arc of the Moral Universe is long, but it bends towards Justice." 160 years later, it is Elizabeth Packard's name, not the good doctor MacFarland, whose name adorns the Illinois state asylum in Springfield. 

 

32: A Book About An Overlooked Woman In History

The Book of Delights

The Book of Delights

By Ross Gay

The winner of the National Book Critics Award for Poetry offers up a spirited collection of short lyrical essays, written daily over a tumultuous year, reminding us of the purpose and pleasure of praising, extolling, and celebrating ordinary wonders.
In The Book of Delights, one of today’s most original literary voices offers up a genre-defying volume of lyric essays written over one tumultuous year. The first nonfiction book from award-winning poet Ross Gay is a record of the small joys we often overlook in our busy lives. Among Gay’s funny, poetic, philosophical delights: a friend’s unabashed use of air quotes, cradling a tomato seedling aboard an airplane, the silent nod of acknowledgment between the only two black people in a room. But Gay never dismisses the complexities, even the terrors, of living in America as a black man or the ecological and psychic violence of our consumer culture or the loss of those he loves. More than anything else, though, Gay celebrates the beauty of the natural world–his garden, the flowers peeking out of the sidewalk, the hypnotic movements of a praying mantis.
The Book of Delights is about our shared bonds, and the rewards that come from a life closely observed. These remarkable pieces serve as a powerful and necessary reminder that we can, and should, stake out a space in our lives for delight.

I am finding it hard to write a review. When I recall the book, I have a sense of remembered pleasure, but moreso than anything it engenders calm and peace. I find myself relishing inactivity, breathing in and out and content to be at rest. A lassitude and quietude. Which of course ruins any hope of productivity. 

The Book of Delights is a series of short essays on the delights of daily life which may occur to you if you simply open yourself. I feel as though they are something like secular homilies, although this description does them no service. It falls short of the talent Gay displays in the transcription of his ideas, the poet's talent for wordplay, for following thoughts like twining vines, up and over and out again.

Below is an entire excerpt from one such essay, which is probably not the best in the bunch, but serves since it is so short and still amusing:

When my brother and I were little kids, maybe nine and seven, one of the big kids (this description has almost none of the gravity it once did, when kids actually went outside unsupervised and uncoached and so the small ones would on occasion be thrown by the big ones into the sticker bush or dropped into a sewer for sport) caught us in the woods and pinched us on the backs of our arms until we cursed, which we adamantly and unusually for our neighborhood did not do. (I wonder, in retrospect, if we acted a bit superior due to our linguistic chastity.)

"Asshole!" we screamed into the woods behind the apartments. "Shitbag!" The tears making our faces shine as this big twelve-year-old twisted the meat on our arms. When we went home crying to our mom (my brother more from the pinching than the cursing, which I suspect he was glad for the excuse to do), she found the kid and read him the riot act, calling him a gutter mouth, telling him that Rossy and Matty are not going to be little gutter mouths like him, before telling him he would probably grow up to be a child molester. She was fucking his ass up. I remember him listening quite calmly, almost demure, calling my mother Mrs. Gay and suggesting he would not become a child molester. I think Tim was probably right, and was just in a  sadistic phase, not unlike my own at around twelve.

But mostly I offer this story as a kind of background against which to enjoy the easy way my mother described her granddaughter's, my niece's, third-grade teacher, who evidently could sometimes not be very nice to some of the kids, as a real dickhead.

 It feels like a rope, a hand stretching out to pull us from the despair and pessimism of These Times and remind us not to sink into depression but to remember the point of life and remember to enjoy what we may while we have it. It is like a small flower, growing amidst adversity, and with love, and hope, I am fortified against the hordes once more. 

01: A Book About A POC Experiencing Joy And Not Trauma

The Puzzler

 The Puzzler

By A.J. Jacobs

What makes puzzles—jigsaws, mazes, riddles, sudokus—so satisfying? Be it the formation of new cerebral pathways, their close link to insight and humor, or their community-building properties, they’re among the fundamental elements that make us human. Convinced that puzzles have made him a better person, A.J. Jacobs—four-time New York Times bestselling author, master of immersion journalism, and nightly crossworder—set out to determine their myriad benefits. And maybe, in the process, solve the puzzle of our very existence. Well, almost.

In The Puzzler, Jacobs meets the most zealous devotees, enters (sometimes with his family in tow) any puzzle competition that will have him, unpacks the history of the most popular puzzles, and aims to solve the most impossible head-scratchers, from a mutant Rubik’s Cube, to the hardest corn maze in America, to the most sadistic jigsaw. Chock-full of unforgettable adventures and original examples from around the world—including new work by Greg Pliska, one of America’s top puzzle-makers—The Puzzler will open listeners’ eyes to the power of flexible thinking and concentration. Whether you’re puzzle obsessed or puzzle hesitant, you’ll walk away with real problem-solving strategies and pathways toward becoming a better thinker and decision maker—for these are certainly puzzling times.

I'm cheating, I suppose, or at least, bending the rules in myriad ways. Fitting, probably, for a book that is all about solving puzzles by thinking outside the box. Using your creative brain to figure out mind teasers and word benders. As to how I'm bending the rules, well, the book came before the ending lines. I didn't read the book because of the ending, but you have to admit as endings go, it's a pretty good one. And yes, it's not the last line of the book, but I'm considering everything after to be more like... appendixes. The final final line, is the solution to the puzzles that have come before (and one I freely admit to not solving myself).  And finally, it's not one line, but two:

"Only 1,298,074,214,633,706,907,132,624,082,305,018 moves to go.

After that, I promise to quit puzzles."

I'm obviously the target audience but I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. Typically when someone writes a whole book about puzzles it seems like they try to compensate for the subject matter by taking an ultra scholarly approach to it, which sucks all the fun out of the fun in the first place.  In The Puzzler, Jacobs knows what we're here for: puzzles! Some hard ones, so we have a challenge, some easy ones, so we can feel triumphant.

I appreciated not only the approach but the scope of it. Clearly he can't cover every puzzle type ever but I think within the constraints that he had, there was good coverage. I will however admit to some outrage on the absolute travesty of not including logic problems,  which are both a favorite of mine as well as, I think, a classic in the genre. But of course, jumbles, acrostics, word searches and others (not to even mention Tetris and other video game puzzles) didn't make the cut either. And even the ones that were included couldn't be fully plumbed either. 

I will say that as much as I appreciated the light, personal tone of the book, it was vastly more political than I expected. I wasn't surprised by content of the comments so much that they appeared at all. In a world where it often seems like everyone who is even mildly in the public eye must be sanitized for broad consumption, it offered a little insight on our erstwhile puzzler. And he struck the right balance, I think, of humility and curiosity (of which he mentions the importance of multiple times) and is an engaging guide for those of us interested in the games people play. He reminds us about how much joy there is in solving puzzles for the sheer sake of solving them. Even if, as he admits, we have to bend the rules a bit to do it (like getting someone else with more experience to solve it for you).

I certainly hope that Jacobs has as much fun writing it as I did reading it. As a lifelong puzzle addict myself (although not as dedicated to the wordplay puzzles as Jacobs is, I will admit to already knowing the difference between labyrinths and mazes before picking this up) I'm newly appreciative to the creators and the others who love and support the puzzlers. By coincidence, I'm entering my first speed puzzle competition next week. Fingers crossed I don't come last. 

2: A Book You Want To Read Based On The Last Sentence

The Innocents Abroad

The Innocents Abroad, or A New Pilgrim's Progress

By Mark Twain

A detailed narrative of a long excursion with a group of fellow travelers to the Holy Land shortly after the Civil War aboard the vessel Quaker City. The humorous account covers his visits to Paris, Italy, Greece, Egypt and the Holy Land. At times irreverent, it is always entertaining.

So I finally, finally finished The Innocents Abroad. I think it took me longer to read it than it took Mark Twain to get on a steamship, sail over to Europe, tour the continent, head out to the Holy Land, visit approximately one million sights of interest, and return to the United States. It's a long frickin' book!  And it's a wee bit old-fashioned, so you sometimes get ahead of yourself if you skim too much.  And the second half is basically all biblical, which I have very little interest in or knowledge of, so that part was semi-nonsensical to me.

However, do not let that dissuade you from picking this up! I found it to be a delightful travelogue, and very comedic, a la his usual style, even if it did suffer at points from a light coating of racism and long-windedness.  To be fair, I don't think the racism was as bad as it could have been considering the time period and circumstances.  Twain is pretty cynical in general, and rarely complimentary of any ethnicity or country (with the possible exception of Russia, amusing in retrospect), and I would agree that western travelers can find traveling in eastern countries very disorienting and the begging to be unpleasant, so I didn't find it (myself) to put me off the book entirely. I mean, The Egg and I raised a lot more of my eyebrows and that was written by Betty MacDonald in 1945. 

This is one book that I would really love to read an annotated version of. From the beginning, just when he's talking about the hooded women of the Azores, and sights of Pompeii, and then going into the valleys of Damascus and Syria, and the seashell path in the Caucuses, I just really wanted to see pictures of what he describes so evocatively, and chart their path, and get historical background.  I found myself on wikipedia getting lost in the history of the tsars and looking up old black and white pictures, and color pictures and maps and just taking a thousand little trips as I joined Twain on his journey.  

It is very, very long, but it was never tiresome, and there's a tartness to it that cuts through a lot of the length. And it did feel immediate too - even early Twain was a master at pinpointing just the things which make you feel like you're there with him and his fellow "pilgrims". 

2: A Book Set on a Plane, Train, or Cruise Ship

Dopesick

Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America

By Beth Macy

In this extraordinary work, Beth Macy takes us into the epicenter of a national drama that has unfolded over two decades. From the labs and marketing departments of big pharma to local doctor's offices; wealthy suburbs to distressed small communities in Central Appalachia; from distant cities to once-idyllic farm towns; the spread of opioid addiction follows a tortuous trajectory that illustrates how this crisis has persisted for so long and become so firmly entrenched. 

Beginning with a single dealer who lands in a small Virginia town and sets about turning high school football stars into heroin overdose statistics, Macy sets out to answer a grieving mother's question-why her only son died-and comes away with a gripping, unputdownable story of greed and need. From the introduction of OxyContin in 1996, Macy investigates the powerful forces that led America's doctors and patients to embrace a medical culture where overtreatment with painkillers became the norm. The unemployed use painkillers both to numb the pain of joblessness and pay their bills, while privileged teens trade pills in cul-de-sacs, and even high school standouts fall prey to prostitution, jail, and death. 

Through unsparing, compelling, and unforgettably humane portraits of families and first responders determined to ameliorate this epidemic, each facet of the crisis comes into focus. In these politically fragmented times, Beth Macy shows that one thing uniting Americans across geographic, partisan, and class lines is opioid drug abuse. But even in the midst of twin crises in drug abuse and healthcare, Macy finds reason to hope and ample signs of the spirit and tenacity that are helping the countless ordinary people ensnared by addiction build a better future for themselves, their families, and their communities.

I think that description is balderdash.  It's a much bleaker book than the blurb appears.  The "once idyllic" farm communities are actually coal mining areas, beset first by the terrible working conditions of the mines, and now by the even worse specter of no working conditions at all. Maybe they're scenic, but they were never idyllic.  There's also very little hope in the book.  Although there is greater recognition of opioids and laymen are more familiar with the dangers of Oxycontin, Macy doesn't seem to think the epidemic is slowing at all. I suppose it will burn itself out eventually, as fewer people get on the opioid track to begin with, but there's nothing promising real diversion from that track once began. 

I was wrapped up in the book; although it's fairly dense Macy manages to keep it pretty zippy and move things along.  The first section focuses on the pushed over-prescription of opioids for low-level issues, the incentives behind the American medical system for companies and individual doctors to upsell drugs and the gaps in oversight which let it happen (and the financial incentives to keep doing it this way). The second section is more about individuals who, once hooked for whatever reason, are now sliding deeper into addiction, and the third section was more about what options there are for diversion, rehab, prison, getting clean, etc. The third section felt the weakest, less focused and more self-insertion, as to what is or is not an appropriate way to treat people.  The whole fentanyl thing was also confusing - fentanyl is another opioid drug, but also, any amount included in heroin will kill you? Or is it just fake fentanyl? It felt like the topic was so big another book could have been written on it, so including just a little bit was like getting only one or two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. 

One criticism I will level is Macy's habit of introducing a character, diverting almost immediately onto another topic or segue, and then come back to the character.  It was annoying for several reasons: (a)  I couldn't keep everyone straight and that made it harder to connect who I'd already been reading about versus who was newly introduced (b) it felt like she was doing an injustice to their personal stories by leaving us on these sort of "cliffhanger" notes, like they weren't real people with heartbreaking problems, and (c) she'd sometime bring us in in the middle of an event, like an overdose, and I struggled to figure out if we'd read any background on these people or not.  Was I supposed to remember that they had been in fifth grade together? Whose mother was it that this person was relying on? Although honestly, it wasn't all that relevant, since basically anytime a mother was mentioned, they had an adult child who was addicted, and they were all helping out other parents and children.  No explanation was given as to why fathers were never involved.  Were these all single parent households? Did the fathers just not care about their children? Is any of that relevant to these kids' addiction stories? Who knows?

For all that I criticize, it is a good, engrossing, important read.  There needs to be more attention paid to the systemic problems pointed out in the book - the incentives to push drugs for profit instead of health, the bias towards jail instead of rehabilitation, the reluctance to commit resources or medicines to combat the problem, the idea that the addicted are somehow deficient, rather than victims. Although I certainly don't feel as sympathetic for teens who just took random medication at pill parties as those who were over-prescribed opiates by trusted physicians, I also don't think that anyone deserves to be reviled for a single bad decision, especially one when made at the height of peer pressure and immaturity. Like I said, it's a depressing read, but a worthwhile one. Hopefully it will help change minds and allow doors to open that create better results for the addicted than what we currently see.

31: A Book Featuring A Man-Made Disaster

 

Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come

Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come

By Jessica Pan

An introvert spends a year trying to live like an extrovert with hilarious results and advice for readers along the way.

What would happen if a shy introvert lived like a gregarious extrovert for one year? If she knowingly and willingly put herself in perilous social situations that she’d normally avoid at all costs?  With the help of various extrovert mentors, the author sets up a series of personal challenges (talk to strangers, perform stand-up comedy, host a dinner party, travel alone, make friends on the road, and much, much worse) to explore whether living like an extrovert can teach her lessons that might improve the quality of her life. Chronicling the author’s hilarious and painful year of misadventures, this book explores what happens when one introvert fights her natural tendencies, takes the plunge, and tries (and sometimes fails) to be a little bit braver.

 

 I fell into this one because I loved the title, and the book didn't let me down.  I felt Pan's pain, as I, too, would rather not, and doing improv and stand-up comedy sounds like a terribly bad time.  It's funny, but also blends in both semi-science and tips/suggestions so that people looking to expand their social skills and friend groups could probably use this as a guidebook as well.  I don't know that the science adds very much - it feels a little shoehorned in, a little teach-y in a book which would otherwise work well as a straight memoir, but at least it doesn't detract much.  

Pan begins the book bemoaning her lack of social life, but more importantly, her loneliness.  As someone who would certainly qualify as an introvert, I sympathized strongly with both the desire for close friendships and support, but also the anxiety that comes with trying to find those people and the effort of putting yourself out there to strangers over and over.  

For all that it dealt with social anxiety and trying to overcome loneliness, it's pretty funny. Bits like this made me laugh:

When I tell other people I'm going to try stand-up comedy, they always touch my arm, furrow their brow, and say, "You are so brave," followed by, "That is my worst nightmare," just in case I was considering making them do it, too.

As far as using the book like a self-help book, I felt pretty good about myself for the first part of it. I don't have a problem talking to strangers or making presentations (although I choose not to; I'm definitely guilty of pretending not to speak English when confronted by a friendly stranger in a foreign country, but honestly? I like being alone. This is how my husband and I are different: when he comes home,  he tells me about random people he meets in bars and on planes and at races, and I am like, "That sounds awful." but he enjoys it.  He still calls himself an introvert, a term I took exception to, until reading this book.  Apparently he would qualify as a gregarious introvert or "grintrovert". I am happily still a shintrovert.) and I have less than no interest in doing either improv or stand-up comedy. It is a bit wistful though, I mean, it sounds like for all that it does sound unpleasant, Pan has a good time, in the end.  And if not a good time, then at least a good story. You have to respect someone who so boldy faces their (and my) worst fears.

And I appreciate anyone who is game for a scenario like this:

Kate goes through the order list. Vivian volunteers to go first. And then there's silence. Kate studies the rest of us.

"I need the people  who brought a lot of friends to perform last so that their friends stay the entire time. Who has no friends? I want you to go in the first half."

I put my hand up.

30: A Book with the Name of a Board Game in the Title

You'll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey: Crazy Stories about Racism

You'll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey: Crazy Stories about Racism

By Amber Ruffin and Lacey Lamar 

From racist donut shops to strangers putting their whole hand in her hair, from being mistaken for a prostitute to being mistaken for Harriet Tubman, Lacey is a lightning rod for hilariously ridiculous yet all-too-real anecdotes. She's the perfect mix of polite, beautiful, petite, and Black that apparently makes people think "I can say whatever I want to this woman." And now, Amber and Lacey share these entertainingly horrifying stories through their laugh-out-loud sisterly banter. Painfully relatable or shockingly eye-opening (depending on how often you have personally been followed by security at department stores), this book tackles modern-day racism with the perfect balance of levity and gravity.

This book somehow manages to be incredibly funny despite just being a horrible, awful, putrid list of racist shit that happened to Lacey (and sometimes Amber, but mostly Lacey).  And recently! It's a bit like The Witches Are Coming (and that other one she did) by Lindy West, but more intentionally funny than angry.  I showed just the first page to some people last week and they cracked up laughing, but in an incredulous way. 

Although both Ruffin and Lamar are technically co-authors, and Lamar has her own voice, Ruffin does all the heavy lifting, taking Lamar's stories and then adding a wink and a nod, like, "Can you believe this shit?!" which are sorely needed to lighten the mood.  Ruffin's career as a comedy writer clearly shows here, giving it a very conversational tone, like you're just gabbing with friends and then they start busting stories out.  (I feel like "conversational tone" gets overused, but it definitely fits here).

It defies belief that these stories happened (a) to one person (b) recently!  I cannot say enough good things about the way that Ruffin presents these stories, which are truly awful.  She manages to tread the fine line of being amusing while also being educational and not making you want to go out and kick the nearest person, which is a FEAT after some of these, I swear.  

I can't recommend this book enough. Go out and read it!

 

Ten Second Reviews

Storybook Style: America's Whimsical Homes of the Twenties

By Arrol Gellner

Storybook Style, the rambunctious evocation of medieval Europe in American housing, was born in the early 1920s and almost forgotten by the late 1930s. It took its inspiration from the Hollywood sets that enthralled Americans of the period and that still appeal to our jaded modern eye. Half timbered and turreted, pinnacled and portcullised, these houses owed their fanciful bravura to architects and builders with theatrical flair, fine craftsmanship, and humor. In Storybook Style, architectural information enhances the stunning color pictures by Bungalow and Painted Ladies photographer Doug Keister to impart a wealth of information and enjoyment.

So this was a little off the beaten path, in the sense that it's an architectural coffee table book but I checked it out because of an interview with the creator of McMansion Hell, which I enjoy perusing quite a bit.  I'd never heard of Storybook Style, but I was immediately charmed.  

The problem with Storybook Style is that it is both expensive to keep up and not well suited to mass production, so there aren't so many examples and pictures that I would have liked.  Don't get me wrong, there's like, eight chapters, but each of them spends a lot of time on just two or three houses, and in comparison with, for example, bungalow books, which are dense with historical information and pictures, this felt much more minimal.  I do like pictures the most though, since I'm not an architectural student, so I liked that the ratio of pictures to text was so high, I just wanted more and more pictures.  More fantastical creations!

That being said, Storybook houses are pretty great, and we should have more of them.  I think I may be able to convince my husband to convert our front door into a faux-medieval style one, and from then on it's just a slippery slope to mythical creature iron sconces, cobblestone paths and a hedge maze!

The Witch Boy

By Molly Ostertag

In thirteen-year-old Aster's family, all the girls are raised to be witches, while boys grow up to be shapeshifters. Anyone who dares cross those lines is exiled. Unfortunately for Aster, he still hasn't shifted ... and he's still fascinated by witchery, no matter how forbidden it might be. When a mysterious danger threatens the other boys, Aster knows he can help -- as a witch. It will take the encouragement of a new friend, the non-magical and non-conforming Charlie, to convince Aster to try practicing his skills. And it will require even more courage to save his family... and be truly himself.

I don't know why so many of my recent books have witches and wizards in the titles, although I do like a good fantasy!  This one, eh, not worth the time.  It's a graphic novel, and geared towards (I assume) younger readers, like middle-grade, given the style, characters, and plot.  

It felt pretty simplistic to me, that Aster wants to break out of the gender-specific roles he's been assigned, only to discover that he can help, if he uses his "women's" magic, and the bad guy turns out to be (SPOILER!) a similarly situated man who was denied the right to use women's magic and turned to the dark side as a result.  Nothing too ground-breaking, although I guess it's fine to re-hash older tropes in new formats for new readers.

Honestly? Fairly forgettable for me. 

Shrill

Shrill

By Lindy West

Coming of age in a culture that demands women be as small, quiet, and compliant as possible -- like a porcelain dove that will also have sex with you -- writer and humoristLindy West quickly discovered that she was anything but.

From a painfully shy childhood in which she tried, unsuccessfully, to hide her big body and even bigger opinions; to her public war with stand-up comedians over rape jokes; to her struggle to convince herself, and then the world, that fat people have value; to her accidental activism and never-ending battle royale with Internet trolls, Lindy narrates her life with a blend of humor and pathos that manages to make a trip to the abortion clinic funny and wring tears out of a story about diarrhea.

With inimitable good humor, vulnerability, and boundless charm, Lindy boldly shares how to survive in a world where not all stories are created equal and not all bodies are treated with equal respect, and how to weather hatred, loneliness, harassment, and loss, and walk away laughing. Shrill provocatively dissects what it means to become self-aware the hard way, to go from wanting to be silent and invisible to earning a living defending the silenced in all caps.

Hand to god, I read The Witches are Coming last year (or the year before??) and had no idea that this was written by the same person.  I have no idea where my mind is.  Now, admittedly that is because after reading The Witches are Coming I was not interested in reading more from West, but that's not because it wasn't good.  It was good.  It just made me really depressed.  In fact, I typed that last sentence just now before re-reading my review, and had completely forgotten about the "GODDAMN DEPRESSING" exclamation.  At least I'm consistent!  

But this was different in a couple of important ways: 

(1) It wasn't as funny. 

This felt more like memoir than TWAC, which makes sense, because it kind of is.  It tracks West's "up-and-coming" years, when she got famous and got slammed and made her mark.  Shrill is the book which got developed into the TV show.  TWAC is the book that was written after she went so mainstream even I had heard of her.  Not that I'm living under a rock.  I just don't follow the comedy scene (for reasons very clearly laid out in Shrill) and I noped myself off of Jezebel when they changed their commenting rules, although now, in the distant fog of time, I can't remember what it was that I didn't like, since I never commented anyway.  I was definitely part of the Great Exodus though, which took me to Hairpin, which took me to Billfold, which took me to Ask a Manager, only dipping my toes into the Toast occasionally but not becoming a fanatic, and now that I've dredged up all that, some internet archaeologist can probably tell you my exact age and identifying details.*  Anyway, all of that is to say, I'm definitely in West's demographic but hadn't really known much of her biography until reading Shrill.  So I was a bit surprised that it was more biography than comedy, since "comedian" was my only frame of reference for her.  

TWAC reads more like a series of riffs on various topics. I mentioned the Adam Sandler one in my previous review, but her page-long screed about her husband's trumpet playing is also pretty amazing. Shrill is more raw, more personal (and therefore not necessarily amusing) and although it is funny, feels more like the goal was to explain, than entertain. 

(2) It wasn't as depressing.

This helped a lot.  Honestly, although I found parts of TWAC to be hilarious, Shrill felt more cathartic.  It started sort of slowly for me, but once the chapters start becoming closer, chronologically, it felt like it really picked up steam.  The last quarter or so of the book, with the sections on the trolls and the break up and her dad's death, and the remorseful troll, felt more hopeful to me than anything in TWAC.  Maybe it was good I read this one second, because it made me optimistic.  Reading TWAC now I feel like I would just get bombarded with everything that hasn't changed since Shrill. In writing this, I went down a few rabbit holes of feminist websites and writers from the early-mid two thousands, and I really miss those kinds of sites - I can't really think of any that have adequately replaced what is now defunct.  They were a haven, in many ways, from the misogyny and dick-swinging that categorized most of the rest of the internet.  I hope that there will be something to replace it for our younger generations. 

*I totally high-fived myself for remembering all that without looking it up, but turns out I have just as terrible a memory as I claim to: I think The Awl was somewhere in there too, and who knows what detritus of other short-lived but beloved sites.  The whole thing has come full circle though, since both founding members of The Hairpin now write advice columns for Slate, which I started reading long before they joined (although why I was reading it I have no idea. That one must have been a random recommendation).

Ten Second Reviews

Semiosis

By Sue Burke

Colonists from Earth wanted the perfect home, but they’ll have to survive on the one they found. They don’t realize another life form watches...and waits...

Only mutual communication can forge an alliance with the planet's sentient species and prove that humans are more than tools.

Ooo, I liked this one a lot, especially in the beginning, which is when it was really out there.  Towards the end I felt like it became more conventional sci-fi-y with a struggle against another colony, but the beginning, where you just don't know what it going to happen next??? Fabulous!  It felt really fresh too, like a whole new idea (although I'm sure that something somewhere had the same germ (haha, no pun intended) of an idea) and even when we do get to the point where they're in constant communication together and they're pretty clear that there isn't going to be another betrayal, it's a well written story.   I'm waffling on reading the second, mostly because the reviews are iffy and frankly, this doesn't need a sequel.  But on the other hand, it was a fun, fascinating world to spend time in, and even just reading about their day-to-day survival was entertaining in Burke's hands. 

The Witches Are Coming

By Lindy West

From the moment powerful men started falling to the #MeToo movement, the lamentations began: this is feminism gone too far, this is injustice, this is a witch hunt. In The Witches Are Coming, firebrand author of the New York Times bestselling memoir and now critically acclaimed Hulu TV series Shrill, Lindy West, turns that refrain on its head. You think this is a witch hunt? Fine. You've got one.

Hmm, what to say on this one? It's undeniably funny, well-written, and passionate.  But so GODDAMN DEPRESSING. Not unrelentingly depressing, or I would have stopped reading.  But notice that West had to end the book on a couple of chapters whose throughline is basically "Don't give up! The world is not a complete dumpster fire yet! There are still some nice things (trees) even though we are rapidly killing them and everyone else and heading towards total annihilation of all that we currently enjoy - oh wait, this is depressing again."  I don't know if the intent was to energize and electrify, but all it did was depress and demoralize.  It was a funny depression though.  Okay, I'm gonna be real here: I am hungover and mentally checked out on this review.  What is my review? That I liked the writing but the message was sad and I would read something else by her, and it had nice short chapters.  Honestly what I should have done was pull quotes because they're all hilarious nuggets, but obviously, I ain't doing that.  I really liked the Adam Sandler chapter, because IT IS VERY TRUE.  WHY IS HE ALWAYS SO MAGICALLY GIFTED?? HE IS AVERAGE, MAKE HIM AVERAGE.

Ten Second Reviews

A Broken Vessel & Whom the Gods Love

By Kate Ross

The second of the Julian Kestrel, regency detective mysteries, I enjoyed this one too. Although there were BY FAR too many clues, that was part of the mystery, and acknowledged by the characters partway through.  It was also entertaining how Kestrel investigated the upper class suspects, his valet Dipper managed the regular tradespeople, and Dipper's prostitute sister Sally handled the underbelly - I thought the use of each of them in their respective spheres was fun.  Kestrel is this time investigating an anonymous note which Sally stole from one of three clients, alluding to a woman in desperate trouble.  She's just died when they find her, and it quickly becomes a murder investigation instead.  Again, some coincidences, but the writing and characters still hold up - I'm checking out the third one as I write.


Aaaaand now I've finished the third, I'm checking out the fourth, and sad that the series will end soon.  Again, far, far too many coincidences (two sets of twins in this one? Not to mention that Kestrel magically lands upon the exact right madhouse by simply wandering around town, ahem) but for whatever reason, I guess I just don't mind them! These feel like dense books, since there's SO MUCH interviewing and discussion, but they're also pleasantly engrossing, especially as the clues start picking up.  I have to say though, these book jackets are driving me crazy, since all the book descriptions give spoilers about the victim and events in the book that don't become really clear until at least halfway through.  I did also guess some of the answers, but was still wholly surprised by the motives, so I'm happy both to be right and to be surprised.  Spoiler here, but I was really put off by the Jewish banker turned rapist subplot.  It felt really out of character and poorly explained how he could actually go through with it, and frankly, left the book on a pretty low note.  But onwards to numero quatro!

Predictably Irrational

By Dan Ariely

Why do our headaches persist after we take a one-cent aspirin but disappear when we take a fifty-cent aspirin? Why do we splurge on a lavish meal but cut coupons to save twenty-five cents on a can of soup?

Dan Ariely refutes the common assumption that we behave in fundamentally rational ways. From drinking coffee to losing weight, from buying a car to choosing a romantic partner, we consistently overpay, underestimate, and procrastinate. Yet these misguided behaviors are neither random nor senseless. They're systematic and predictable—making us predictably irrational.

Soooo, this was fine.  Probably my impression of it is coloured by the fact that I was trying to get my husband interested in it, and it was a complete loss.  I also felt like some of the research was kind of glossed over, in terms of, for example, the chocolate pricing one in the free chapter.  I assume that they controlled for people who came to the table and didn't buy any chocolate when it was 1 and 15 cents respectively but did just pick up a free one, right?  Like, I feel like the total numbers of people getting chocolate had to have gone up (versus those who paid even just one penny) but there isn't really an explanation as to how they covered that, aside from making the sign very small so people had to get close to see it.  But I do find the ideas fascinating, even if more broadly than specifically applicable (like, not everyone is a sucker for advertising) and the chapter on placebos oddly affecting.  Frankly, we should do more experiments with surgery (with knowledge and consent of course) because unnecessarily submitting people to the knife is awful.  But I think the message, that we're all unconsciously doing these things and in some cases, the only cure is to be more conscious, is one that's hit home.

Ten Second Reviews

Cut to the Quick

By Kate Ross

Julian Kestrel is the walking definition of a Regency-era dandy. He cares about little beyond the perfection of his tailoring, he lives for the bon mot, and his life has the specific gravity and the fleeting charm of a soap-bubble. At least that's what he'd like you to think. In fact, it rather suits Kestrel to be perpetually underestimated, particularly when as in this instance his weekend at a glamorous country estate is spoiled by a dead girl's body being found in his bed.

I did like this one - it was a nice break from modern day thrillers, which can be so overwrought.  This one is much more of a classic mystery, with interrogations and secrets discovered, although there is still the confrontation of the murderer, here, it's with the guise of an actual magistrate's duty.  It feels like a pretty chunky book - there's a lot to the back story, which comes out in pieces (and more than a few coincidences, but they aren't the most egregious), so it took me a while to get through it.  Overall, I enjoyed the Regency setting, and the characters, enough to look into the sequel.  Onward and upward!

Comics for a Strange World: A Book of Poorly Drawn Lines

By Reza Farazmand

 

This follow up in the Poorly Drawn Lines series was not nearly as good as the first, for some reason.  Possibly because it felt like it focused more on robots and technology than absurdist humor.  So-so, but I would get the first book and skip this one.

A is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie

By Kathryn Harkup

 

This is an alphabetically arranged examination of the poisons used in Agatha Christie's books (funny: you'd never know it from the title).  I really liked this one - first of all, I never realized that Christie was a chemist, and that she kept her poison use really factual and close to reality.  Maybe this is a little embarrassing, but I barely noticed the actual murder weapon when I was reading  - it almost felt superfluous sometimes, since motive seemed so much more important (and Christie always made sure multiple suspects would have been capable of the means).  Harkup goes into detail not only in how Christie used the poison in a particular book/story, but also into the poison itself, famous real life murders, effects on the body, etc.  I have just one complaint, which is that Harkup gets into the chemical properties of the poisons more than is really necessary for most laypeople (and geez, I hope all of her readers are laypeople and not budding young poisoners looking for tips) so I tended to skim the passages about enzymes and receptors and molecules.  But the rest is highly enjoyable, although I would recommend against reading it while sitting with a dying relative receiving morphine, because it will give you bad dreams.

Bad Blood

Bad Blood

By John Carreyou

In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the female Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup “unicorn” promised to revolutionize the medical industry with a machine that would make blood testing significantly faster and easier. Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in a fundraising round that valued the company at more than $9 billion, putting Holmes’s worth at an estimated $4.7 billion. There was just one problem: The technology didn’t work.

A riveting story of the biggest corporate fraud since Enron, a tale of ambition and hubris set amid the bold promises of Silicon Valley.

I finally finally finally got back into reading again (you may have noticed that recent reviews were lackluster, if I even finished the book at all) thanks to Bad Blood.  This one was re-energizing, and you kinda spend the whole thing doing that, "What. the. fuck??" look that I always reference from Chris Rock in Nurse Betty when he sees his dad, played by Morgan Freeman, dancing with no one on the side of the Grand Canyon. Just that sense, you know, that someone very close to you has lost all of their marbles. In this case, that WTF applies to all the people who fell for the cult of Holmes.  For years!  For years they went along with this, although to be fair, it was both a very desirable and beneficial pitch, and also it wasn't immediately apparent that it was rotten to the core.  Although it seems like even a slightly more than cursory look would have taken care of that...?

In retrospect you go, how did they sucker this many people for this long? And the answer apparently is, a combination of complete intimidation of those over whom they held power, and complete ingratiation of those who could have destroyed them.  It's incredible!  When I first heard about it, I definitely gave it a brush off:  pfft, who cares about whether another start-up is toxic and also lied to consumers.  Same shit, different day.  But no!  This was an incredible and incredibly engrossing tale of malignantly bad behavior.  Props to Carreyou for his work, he takes an almost ten year long journey about medical devices and makes it captivating from beginning to end.

For all I've complained in the past, I feel like I have to praise Carreyou's organization of his book, which is both chronological (thank you for an easy to follow and logical progression!) and, because he knows you forget people who only pop in and out occasionally, heavy on the "John-who-ran-the-Edison-room" reminders about who the various people are.  Thank you, Carreyou, for recognizing that I can only retain so much at one time, and minor characters' names and identities in books is not one of them.

Like Five Days at Memorial you kinda leave the book doubting that the villains of the piece even realize that they are in fact the bad guys.  As in that case, Elizabeth and Sunny seem to have kind of doubled down on the position that they've done nothing wrong, although I suppose anyone who has the brazen confidence to do it in the first place doesn't have a lot of room for self-doubt or even second thoughts.

The one thing I wish we'd gotten in this is a bit more wrap up of where the key players stood, particularly (for me) George Shultz, who practically disowned his grandson for whistleblowing this whole house of cards to the ground.  I can't say for sure that I'd have the wherewithal to do what he and Erika did in reporting the misdeeds, but to be personally punished for doing right strikes me as so unfair.   So much collateral damage done.  And for what!  A miracle product that didn't work? Such dishonesty in professing to care about people's health while actually causing harm indiscriminately.  Not to mention poor Ian Gibbons, who carried the shame of it to his death.  It makes you mad, it gets your (forgive the pun) blood up!  And this, for god's sake, explains why regulatory bodies, while annoying, are absolutely and completely necessary. 

Ten Second Reviews

As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride

By Cary Elwes and Jay Layden

Essentially Cary Elwes' behind-the-scenes look at his role and interactions in The Princess Bride, and, although it certainly has the benefit of a built-in, forgiving audience, it also manages to tread the same fine line of the movie, that is: it's sweet without being sappy, funny without being mean, and gentle without being weak.  It gives you the same "This world may be populated with fundamentally good people after all" feeling that The Great British Bake-Off does.  It makes you nostalgic, and definitely in the mood to re-watch the movie.  Even though it's not "juicy", there's plenty to make you feel like you were there during filming, and you do get a sense of the various personalities on set.  A lovely, nostalgic, easy read.

The Extremely Inconvenient Adventures of Bronte Mettlestone

By Jaclyn Moriarty

Ten year-old Bronte receives the news that her mostly absent adventurous parents have been killed by pirates - and that their Last Will and Testament requires her (under pain of her town collapsing) to visit her father's ten aunts and deliver gifts to them.  But as she visits orange orchards, dragon hospitals, cruise ships, water sprites and musical kingdoms, she begins to realize there's more going on that she originally suspected. This one was delightfully plotted - although the generous hints throughout the book mean that you'll probably guess what's happening long before we get to the reveal (except one where I was completely surprised - happily so) there are so many strings and sub-plots that it's never boring.  Plus, in addition to the book-long narrative, each aunt is like a mini-adventure, including a crime puzzle, an avalanche, tidying up for depressed people, fleeing pirates, saving babies, and learning magic.  It's a real confection of a book, as Bronte's instructions include many restaurant recommendations along with travel tips, and the master spell reads like a recipe.  There's some darker points as well, which, although it makes sense there would be, given that the book is about events set in motion by the murder of her parents, does feel a little off sometimes, given the upbeat and candy-colored attitude the rest of the book has.  Given the large cast of characters, it also doesn't get confusing or crowded, and it's a pleasant and ultimately feel-good way to spend an afternoon. 

The Woman Who Smashed Codes

The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America's Enemies

By Jason Fagone

In 1916, a young Quaker schoolteacher and poetry scholar named Elizebeth Smith was hired by an eccentric tycoon to find the secret message he believed were embedded in Shakespeare's plays.  She moved to the tycoon's lavish estate outside of Chicago expecting to spend her days poring through old books.  But the rich man's close ties to the U.S. government, and the urgencies of war, quickly transformed Elizebeth's mission. She soon learned to apply her skills to an exciting new venture: codebreaking - the solving of secret message without knowledge of the key.  Working alongside her on the estate was William Friedman, a Jewish scientist who would become her husband and lifelong codebreaking partner.  Elizebeth and William were in many ways the Adam and Eve of the National Security Agency, the U.S. institution that monitors and intercepts foreign communications to glean intelligence.

In The Woman Who Smashed Codes, Jason Fagone chronicles the life of this extraordinary woman who played an integral role in our nation's history - from the Great War to the Cold War. He traces Elizebeth's developing career through World War I, Prohibition, and the struggle against fascism.  She helped catch gangsters and smugglers, exposed a Nazi ring in South America, and fought a clandestine battle of wits against Hitler's Reich, cracking multiple versions of the Enigma machine used by German operatives to conceal their communications.  And through it all, she served as muse to her husband, a master of puzzles, who astonished friends and foes alike. Inside an army vault in Washington, he worked furiously to break Purple, the Japanese version of Enigma - and succeeded, at terrible cost to his personal life.

This one was a gift to me from my mother, who sometimes gets me non-fiction books that I am less than wholly interested in, but this was a pleasant enough read.  It's a biography of Elizebeth Friedman, who was apparently instrumental in early American code-breaking.  I do sometimes struggle with non-fiction because in life, unlike in a story, you have to tell an interesting story from the things that actually happened - which can be sometimes very boring, and frequently changes are made of things that were pieced together through myriad small incremental details, which doesn't always make the most exciting narrative: "We're about to enter early married life - now let's describe the ten background characters who you need to know in order to understand what happened next - but they'll never be mentioned again!"  It's understandably hard to keep the balance between the actual facts and a good story in nonfiction, so I'm somewhat sympathetic when I inevitably don't feel the same "high" from a nonfiction as I do a good fiction book.  For example, I really enjoyed Show Me a Hero and Personal History, but was a little let down by Killers of the Flower Moon and The Radium Girls, both of which are boosted by built-in dramatic storylines involving death and cover-ups.  And Ben Macintyre's books, Operation Mincemeat and Double Cross, were both okay, but honestly I barely remember them.  I just don't generally find myself mulling over a good nonfiction book or wanting to re-read it afterwards, and I don't think TWWSC will defy the odds. Sidenote: it's interesting to me the similarities with A Personal History - both women quietly getting things done while their husbands suffered nervous breakdowns, although Graham's work came after and as a direct result of her husband's deterioration, while Elizebeth is just quietly getting shit done 24-7. 

So the good things: it's a well-told story, manages to keep your attention throughout, and doesn't feel too long.  If anything, it feels oddly incomplete, which is maybe not a total surprise when talking about a codebreaker whose work was highly classified until relatively recently.  But although we hear about Elizebeth's affinity for codes, only one or two types is broken down and explained to us as readers, and some of the leaps in deduction (figuring out what codephrase or book is being used for a code in another language) are so little touched on that they seem practically miraculous.  Maybe they were, maybe they weren't, but I can't help but wonder if the author left it out because he thought it would be too boring or difficult to understand to the lay reader, or if he himself didn't know how she did it - after all, her materials wouldn't necessarily have a step by step manual for her thoughts.  I think it would have made a good appendix - to walk us through a (short) puzzle and see exactly how some of these mysteries were cracked.

The other problem with telling Elizebeth's story is that, frankly, although she did an important and thorough job as codebreaker during the second world war, there were no threats or danger lurking if she failed, no personal stakes, aside from the ones she sets herself.  She gets in, is very competent, and then gracefully exits when the war is done.  The decisions about when to crack down on the South American spies was made over her head and by a separate department.  I'm certainly not going to fault Fagone for not having better facts, but it is true that it is just always going to be hard to write a gripping story about someone who went to work in an office everyday and then came home, even though (or maybe especially because) their office consists of a lot of detail oriented paperwork.  It's also sort of difficult because both big "breakthrough" moments for Elizebeth and William in the war - cracking Enigma and Purple, respectively, fall flat, as Enigma was cracked simultaneously by Bletchley Park, and Purple's decoding does nothing to prevent Pearl Harbor, because of government red tape.

Fagone's style is.... definitely something.  There's a strong modern feminist bent, and a few interjections of swearing, so you do get a little more personal than most biographies, but that adds to its charm, not detracts.  Hss pu hss, h nvvk zahya mvy zvtlvul thrpun h kpcl puav jyfwahuhsfzpz!

29 - A Book With "Love" In The Title (or sub-title, I cheated a bit on this)

Five Days at Memorial

Five Days at Memorial

By Sheri Fink

This was an incredibly gripping book on the doctors, nurses, and patients at Memorial Hospital in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent investigation into the numerous deaths there and accusations that patients were being euthanized (just as rescue helicopters were evacuating people again).  It's less concerned about pointing fingers or assigning blame than it is in warning how American social mores and patient care practices can break down in less than five days and how it might be prevented (or likely to occur) in the future.

Do I think that Dr. Anna Pou and her two assistants murdered at least nine and potentially eighteen patients? Yes.  Am I going to second guess her actions? Probably not.  However, although I was sympathetic to the conditions in Memorial (and in fact, all over the city, as this was not the only facility facing "suspicious" concentrations of morphine and midazolam in the bodies left behind), and I understand that the potential murder charges hang over her head, what I most aggrieved by was the complete lack of remorse, guilt, or doubt expressed by them and by their supporters after the fact.  Yes, you did what you thought was right at the time, and I don't doubt that you were despairing, after five days in post-Katrina conditions, fear, rumors, and foul smells, but when you left that hospital and realized that help had been available, that not everyone descended into chaos and death, I think that should have given you pause.  You made a mistake.  And it was life or death, and you chose poorly.  Face it.

It was only as we near the end of the book and you realize that not only did she have tunnel vision at the time, she's become entrenched into her position that I lost my sympathy for her.  Maybe it's a defensive mechanism to avoid having to examine her own actions more closely, but Fink's argument that this attitude of refusing other perspectives in end-of-life decisions can cause more harm than it purports to solve is a fairly persuasive one. There's a good argument that doctors, unfortunately, are human like the rest of us - (over)confident in their own skills, brought low by disaster, unending work and stress, and, while willing to make the "hard" decisions, unwilling to open that decision to criticism.  Of course, other actors in the justice process fucked up too, and maybe it could have been an opportunity for a discussion, but instead the whole indictment just screwed everybody over. This review is a bit longer than intended, and the book is no novella either, but it's worth a read.

The Hunger

The Hunger

By Alma Katsu

Evil is invisible, and it is everywhere.

That is the only way to explain the series of misfortunes that have plagued the wagon train known as the Donner Party. Depleted rations, bitter quarrels, and the mysterious death of a little boy have driven the isolated travelers to the brink of madness. Though they dream of what awaits them in the West, long-buried secrets begin to emerge, and dissent among them escalates to the point of murder and chaos. They cannot seem to escape tragedy...or the feelings that someone--or something--is stalking them. Whether it's a curse from the beautiful Tamsen Donner (who some think might be a witch), their ill-advised choice of route through uncharted terrain, or just plain bad luck, the ninety men, women, and children of the Donner Party are heading into one of one of the deadliest and most disastrous Western adventures in American history.

As members of the group begin to disappear, the survivors start to wonder if there really is something disturbing, and hungry, waiting for them in the mountains...and whether the evil that has unfolded around them may have in fact been growing within them all along.

What was incredibly startling to me was how little of The Hunger was made up.  There was so much bad shit going on with that wagon train from Day 1, a supernatural explanation was practically required. Mysterious deaths, fraudulent trail blazers, literal SIGNS telling you to go back?  Honestly, this book is spooky in all the right ways; I had nightmares after reading it.

The Hunger may not be completely surprising (I mean, I did have to tell my thirty-three year old boyfriend what happened to the Donner Party, but I think that's because he emo'd his way through grade school and didn't pay attention in class) but it incorporates real events and horror very seamlessly.  There's a lot of characters involved (there were around 80 members of the Party) but Katsu wisely focuses on just a few narrators.  Some of the ominous forebodings do turn out to be red herrings - Stanton's early dalliance with Tamsen Donner and subsequent significant looks winds up having no bearing on any of the action later.  Nor, in fact, does anything have to do with Tamsen's supposed witchcraft.

Did I guess who the evildoer was?  Um, not really, even though it was perfectly clear from the prologue.  Again, the facts aligned so easily, I'm not even sure how you explain his actions and survival in a non-supernatural way.  That being said, Katsu's job had to have been incredibly hard, to interweave the truth and fiction as well as she did. Although I imagine it helped to have a truth stranger-than-fiction. 

I very much enjoyed it, although for whatever reason I didn't find the last half as quietly engrossing and unsettling as the first half - perhaps because I anticipated death, perhaps because the monster you see is not always as frightening as the one you imagine. There's also relatively little gore, it seems like a lot of it takes place off-page.  All-in-all a very engrossing and semi-unusual horror story, given the setting and characters.  Five (severed and eaten) thumbs up!


38: A Novel Based On A True Story

The Cruelest Miles

The Cruelest Miles: The Heroic Story of Dogs and Men in a Race Against an Epidemic

By Gay Salisbury and Lainey Salisbury

When a deadly diphtheria epidemic swept through Nome, Alaska, in 1925, the local doctor knew that without a fresh batch of antitoxin, his patients would die. The lifesaving serum was a thousand miles away, the port was icebound, and planes couldn't fly in blizzard conditions—only the dogs could make it. The heroic dash of dog teams across the Alaskan wilderness to Nome inspired the annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race and immortalized Balto, the lead dog of the last team whose bronze statue still stands in New York City's Central Park. This is the greatest dog story, never fully told until now.

I was actually set to read something else for this prompt (Overnight Float, if you must know) but as the Iditarod rolled around and I found myself reading the Wikipedia page about the original Serum Run and sobbing, I thought, well, why not just completely wallow in it?  What better than to really immerse yourself in the shared terror of small choking children slowly dying without life saving medicine which is only available through gale force winds, 60 degree below zero chills, and the luck of some dogs' noses?

Actually, the Iditarod truly is a phenomenal feat of athleticism, by both dog and man.  It is also one of those things which, avoiding excessive commercialism and set in some of the country's wildest territory, manages to still feel pure in the sense that watching the World Series definitely does not. The Cruelest Miles manages to take the story and bog it down with facts and history and reality, which all distracts from the feel-good sports win mentality of the thing.

That can be a difficult thing with books about specific historical events: you want to get more detail and background than you can with, for example, a deep dive through Wikipedia, but you also want to keep things zippy, or else you're going to lose readers.  Killers of the Flower Moon kind of runs into the same problems: it's an incredibly interesting situation and events, but in an effort to make it novel-length, the pacing can get dragged out and lose suspense.  Which I know is a ridiculous thing to say about a non fiction account of a historical event that you can definitely just look up and see how it ended.  But still!  One I read last year, Destiny of the Republic, manages to straddle this line well, I think partially because it really did take that long for Garfield to die (spoiler alert!), but it too got draggy there towards the end.

Anyway, if you want to know all about turn of the century and 1920s Nome, this is the place to start.  Honestly, nothing about how it is described sounds appealing.  Not only are you encased in snow for seven or eight months months and cut off from outside contact, contagious diseases also run rife through town.  

Once we skip past the introductory information and get to the dogsled race against death, it does pick up the pace, pun very much intended.  What's interesting is that, because the authors were working with whatever historical materials were available after the race, you can kind of see how some of racers get overlooked for the "celebrity" ones.  I have to assume that some of this was probably because of the native heritage of the non-celebrity dogsledders.  (I know that there is a better term for that but I already returned the book to the library, so we're sticking with "dogsledders").  There were twenty plus racers on the route, but only a few are highlighted.  Maybe the Salisburys had more they didn't want to include for fear of bogging it down, but I would read all twenty racers' recollections and not be satisfied.  From the accounts included, a lot of them also felt that it was simply a necessary task, and perhaps didn't know at the time just how much publicity it was getting in the lower 48, but stoicism is the bane of the historical record.  You gotta get out there and get those memories down, because everyone dies. 

The dogs get their proper dues in the book as well.  Due to the kerfuffle between Balto and Togo (and Seppala and Kaasen), the authors definitely have to explore that aspect of it, but since they don't really come down on one side or the other, I think in an effort not to tarnish anyone's efforts or memories, it doesn't really add much to the story.  The authors do discuss the second batch of serum, but don't really go into that relay at all.  There's definitely also a sense that they spent a lot of time on airplanes for nothing, since they were never used in the Serum Run, and I can see that they were trying to foreshadow the Serum Run as the last hurrah of the sleddog era, but it's an unnecessarily long detour away from the real action.

Anytime you have sleddogs and unforgiving nature, you want to spend as much time as you can on that story.  You have only to look at this year's race, where the front-running team decided to go on strike to realize that the dogs, loyal, clever, and brave, are the real heroes.  Which is what Seppala was arguing about all along - without them, would Nome still be on the map? Or would it be another ghost town, a cautionary tale about living beyond the edge of the world?


Cancer Ward and The Cruelest Miles have been, well, not depressing, exactly, but definitely not as light and frothy as some of my other selections (ahem, My Lady's Choosing) have been.  As a preemptive strike against gloominess, I'm now reading two very silly books: a YA crime mystery and a chick lit epistolary novel.

21: A Book By Two Female Authors

Tiny Beautiful Things

Tiny Beautiful Things:Advice on love and life from Dear Sugar

By Cheryl Strayed

Life can be hard: your lover cheats on you; you lose a family member; you can’t pay the bills—and it can be great: you’ve had the hottest sex of your life; you get that plum job; you muster the courage to write your novel. Sugar—the once-anonymous online columnist at The Rumpus, now revealed as Cheryl Strayed, author of the bestselling memoir Wild—is the person thousands turn to for advice.

Tiny Beautiful Things brings the best of Dear Sugar together in one place and includes never-before-published columns and a new introduction by Steve Almond.  Rich with humor, insight, compassion - and absolute honesty - this book is a balm for everything life throws our way.

Cheryl Strayed is a heck of a memorialist, but I can only say that if I had actually written in to her for advice, I would definitely have been sitting there with her answer, crumpling the paper, screaming, "Get to the point!" She takes each letter and starts off basically with a "let me tell you about a seemingly (and in fact sometimes actually) unrelated event that happened to me, and after several pages of that I will analogize it to your problem".  I was so struck by this method, I'll attempt to recreate it for this review:

I read, regularly, certain advice columns.  This has not always been the same column, as it depends on those that I can most easily access, but for the last few years, it has included Dear Prudence, which used to be written by various other people, and then was written by Emily Yoffe, and then, most recently and dramatically, it was taken over by Daniel Mallory Ortberg (formerly Mallory Ortberg of The Toast).  Words cannot express how inadequate the advice given at the beginning of Ortberg's reign was.  It was so uniformly awful that there the site moderators had to tell people (repeatedly!  They left this as a message at the top of comments for weeks!) not to make derogatory comments about Ortberg's skills as an advice columnist and ask for Yoffe to come back.  It truly was a rocky road.  (Note that Dear Prudence's overlords at Slate seem to think "terrible advice column" is a successful business strategy,  as they are employing it once again with a sex column answered by two people, who, in one now infamous example, told an older heterosexual man who was having trouble connecting with his wife to "try a glory hole".  And yes, that is how "try a glory hole!" has become shorthand acknowledgement of shitty advice on one small corner of the internet.  I think broadly speaking though, that's going to be shitty advice 99.9% of the time, so feel free to expand its reach.)

As the wheel turns, gradually Ortberg became better at the job, being less sarcastic, and has mostly stopped uniformly recommending that people having communication problems with their significant others simply break up with them (I suppose as an alternative to having a difficult conversation, but I don't think we should encourage breaking up, since it's already such a tempting way out).  He's still hot on lengthy speeches for people to give, although we're hoping to wean him off those eventually too.  When he first started he was short and snappy and kinda fun, albeit somewhat too snappy in some cases.  I think the backlash from the appearance of flippancy has made him backpedal into the quagmire of five minute explanations of why you need space from your friend, when really, all you have to (and in most cases, should) say is: "I need some space."

All of this is to say that there's definitely some columnists who set the bar low, and give you confidence that you could easily do this job yourself.  Strayed (and Dear Sugar) is not one of them.  She is empathetic, sympathetic, warm, funny, and insightful.  Now, you do have to wade through a ten year history of Strayed's life to get there, but there is a great place to be. 

I did think it was kind of hilarious early on when she does a list of FAQs (sidebar: why do we say FAQs? It's always plural. Never has anyone typed FAQ and meant "Frequently Asked Question".  And yet, I feel compelled to make it clear this is a plural situation going on here. Society's mores are killing creativity!) and one of the questions is: "Are the letters you publish really sent in by anonymous people? Most are so well written that it seems you or The Rumpus writers must be creating them." Her answer (basically, she has so many that she can choose the most well written, and yes, aren't they all lovely) is a delightful eliding over the fact that the letters all kind of sound the same, too.  "I'm not smart, but I know what love is" and "please be honest, blunt, and give me a new perspective on my multifaceted problem" and "how do I reconnect with him in a genuine way?"

I have to say that it seemed unlikely to me, too, that all these people writing in were so erudite and clear in their desperation, but it doesn't detract from my enjoyment of her answers.  Her responses are such that I found myself on the edge of tears more than once. It's not only that she gives good advice - though she does, frequently telling them not what to do, but how to decide it - but that she allows the reader to view their problems with the same compassion and generosity of spirit that Strayed sees them. What infinite patience Strayed has for the person who overheard their friends talking about them behind their back, for the woman who likes kinky sex, for the person whose father is telling them things they don't want to hear, for the high schooler whose friends are messy. 

Or for the person who is afraid to say the word love:

"We're all going to die, Johnny. Hit the iron bell like it's dinnertime."




Footnote: I don't mean to be unduly harsh on Ortberg - he really was just awful when he started, but he's gotten a lot better since!  There's very few columns now where he strikes out more than once.

10: A Book With "Pop" "Sugar" Or "Challenge" In The Title