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Powell's Staff:
Five Book Friday: In Memoriam
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Every year, the booksellers at Powell’s submit their Top Fives: their five favorite books that were released in 2023. It’s a list that, when put together, shows just how varied and interesting the book tastes of Powell’s booksellers are. I highly recommend digging into the recommendations — we would never lead you astray — but today...
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Brontez Purnell:
Powell’s Q&A: Brontez Purnell, author of ‘Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt’
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Rachael P.:
Starter Pack: Where to Begin with Ursula K. Le Guin
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Tonstant Weader has commented on (46) products
Axioms End Noumena Book 1
by
Lindsay Ellis
Tonstant Weader
, July 22, 2020
Axiom’s End is the story of humanity’s first contact with alien life. The first thing that makes this a completely fresh story is that it has already happened. The story begins in 2007 with Cora Sabino, a twenty-something who is living with her mother, two younger siblings, and two dogs she adores. They all have taken their mother’s last name because their father is an infamous hacktivist who fled abroad after posting a memo revealing that aliens are here. The entire family knows they are under scrutiny and Cora wants nothing to do with it. However, it’s not just the FBI and the CIA that seem to be looking at the Sabinos as she thinks she spotted an alien while looking for her dog. Things move quickly and while her family is taken into custody, she becomes the only human to communicate with the alien who is named Ampersand. The rest you will have to read for yourself I love that the aliens are so different, in ways we don’t quite understand. It is refreshing to see not only a different biology but also a different ethos, social structure, and imagination. The way different Fremdans play different roles for example. This is exciting stuff. The story is fast-paced and internally consistent. The story is told through Cora’s experience and it fitted that the language was the kind of language a 20-something drop out would use. I think Lindsay Ellis ticked the boxes for the first in what promises to be a great series. I received an ARC of Axiom’s End through Shelf Awareness.
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Ice at the End of the World An Epic Journey into Greenlands Buried Past & Our Perilous Future
by
Jon Gertner
Tonstant Weader
, July 08, 2019
The Ice at the End of the World is a history of the exploration of Greenland’s massive ice sheet and the scientific research conducted there. There are many articles and books about climate change and rising sea levels linked to the melting ice of Greenland, but Jon Gertner takes a different approach. He goes back to the beginning to the first explorers and the kinds of research findings they brought back. This puts the research that alarms many today into a context of historical inquiry and fact-finding. Most articles focus on current research and the conclusions of contemporary scientists. This takes it out of the context of history and the slowly dawning awareness that the ice is shrinking. Gertner restores that context, allowing readers to understand that researchers did not go to Greenland to prove climate change was happening. They went to Greenland to measure the ice and measure it over time. There measurements forced the realization that climate change is happening and at a greater, more alarming rate that previously thought. The Ice at the End of the World is a fascinating history. I have a long obsession with the Arctic and Antarctic exploration that also includes Greenland. Exploring terra incognita is always fascinating, but even more so when it is so inhospitable. The challenge to just survive is immense, but then to stop and measure the ice, the temperature, and take soundings at the same time is heroic. Imagine, you’re short on food rations, your eyes burn from the sunlight on the snow, anywhere your skin is exposed is damaged and in pain, and your cold, so cold, and all a normal person would be thinking would be about getting warm and getting food, but you are stopping to take measurements, even in extremis. Climate change is the most urgent issue facing humanity. Thankfully, most other countries don’t have a 24-hour propaganda machine telling them it’s a hoax, so outside the U.S. this is not a controversial statement. It is accepted as fact, as it should be. One reason people are so credulous and eager to believe the climate change deniers is they don’t understand how science works. They don’t know how it’s done and think grand international conspiracies involving nearly every scientist on the planet are possible. This history is an antidote to that kind of ignorance. Gertner’s book benefits from avoiding dogmatism. Climate change is real, reading about how the measurements, the facts, came first before the explanations is a counter to the conspiracists. I received an e-galley of The Ice at the End of the World from the publisher through NetGalley.
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Nearly Normal Family
by
MT Edvardsson, Rachel Willson Broyles
Tonstant Weader
, July 07, 2019
A Nearly Normal Family is a legal thriller depicting the title’s nearly normal family, a pastor husband, lawyer wife, and defiant high school senior. Whene Stella, the daughter is arrested accuseed of murdering her 34-year-old lover, the family reaches a crisis that tested their values and faith in each other. The first part is told by Adam, the father who reflexively lies to give his daughter an alibi and runs about town seeking clues and an alernate suspect. Usually the amateur “detective” is important in solving the crime, but Adam is fairly inept. The second part of the story is told by Stella, the daughter. She describes her relationship with her father, her friendship with best friend Amina, and her time in jail. Much is made of her therapy sessions. Since she first got in trouble, her parents didn’t really trust her, particularly her father. Their distrust and strictness led to more defiance. Then the third part is told by the mother and is focused more on the trial. She describes her history with her daughter and how she has sometimes preferred Amina, who is so much easier. She thinks she knows what happens and takes a big gamble to save more than just her daughter. It seems completely realistic, however, that when one of the possible suspects went to the police to accuse him of abusing her, she was dismissed and disbelieved. Her efforts to warn the girls is perceived as stalkerish. Women are simply not believed, even in Sweden. She makes a good potential suspect. So does best friend Amina who seems to cause trouble for Stella by telling tales. Of course, Stella is also a likely suspect. Perhaps this is a cultural difference, but I was shocked by how little attention was paid by the police, the family, and the lawyers to the age difference between Stella and the man she was on trial for killing. Stella and Amina are high-school seniors and though Stella is eighteen, the idea that it’s no big deal that this man was dating Stella is strange. You would think the police, the neighbors, and the media would see something vile about the murder victim, but it seems to never come up. Essentially the story is about trust. Can the father, mother, and daughter learn to trust each other? I received an e-galley of A Nearly Normal Family from the publisher through NetGalley.
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Van Apfel Girls Are Gone
by
Felicity McLean
Tonstant Weader
, July 06, 2019
There are hundreds of books that tell of children in jeopardy, children who disappeared, who ran away, were lost, stolen, or murdered. The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone is a fresh approach to that common storyline as it is told from the outside, by a young friend of the girls. The novel begins in the present when our narrator Tikka Molloy chases a woman she is certain is her lost elementary school friend, but she was mistaken, as she has been mistaken again and again and again. She jumps back and forth from the present to 1992 when her friend disappeared. The 1992 narrative has two threads, one leading up to their disappearance and one following it which allows McLean to reveal as little or as much as she wants to. Yes, the Van Apfel girls are gone and have been since 1992 and as the narrative goes back and forth, the story gets more and more complicated. We learn their father is a religious fanatic who uses his faith to justify his abuse of his daughters, particularly Cordie, the middle one. Tikka’s older sister Laura is best friends with the oldest Van Apfel, Hannah. Tikka is closest to Cordie, though Cordie is a bit older and wiser. The youngest is Ruth. She is the only van Apfel girl to be found, shortly after they disappeared, after what seems to be a fatal fall. Even though we learn more and more about how and why they disappeared, we are left with more questions than answers, just like Tikka. Which might be why the book closes as it begins, with Tikka giving chase to another glimpsed Cordie in another city. There is much to love in The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone. There is the comedic contribution of childhood misunderstandings of language and context. The young girls are interesting young women and Tikka is quite something. The relationship between Laura and Tikka is a lovely mix of sibling contempt and camaraderie. The children are convincingly childlike. Then there is how slowly we realize exactly how bad the Van Apfel family life has become. The true creepiness of Mr. Van Apfel’s relationship with Cordie is slowly exposed. It makes her name, Cordelia, seems chosen to remind us of the daughter King Lear loved and hated, though I don’t see this Cordelia ever returning to forgive him. We also learn about a complicating factor, a teacher named Mr. Avery whose own role in the Van Apfel’s disappearance is an open question. Everything Tikka learns just opens up more questions, but isn’t that the essence of mystery? I received an e-galley of The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone from the publisher through Edelweiss.
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The Wreckage of Eden
by
Norman Lock
Tonstant Weader
, June 24, 2019
U.S. Army Chaplain Robert Winter had the misfortune of meeting the young Emily Dickinson, for whom he developed a lifelong attachment, one that endured years of separation while he served in several wars, his short marriage, and Emily’s determined resistance. The Wreckage of Eden is his narrative of their history and addressed to Emily. Winter himself decribes it as an argument in the case of Winter v. Dickinson, a sort of Airing of Grievances in their relationship. Winter is the saddest sort of sad man, a chaplain who has lost his faith. He recounts his service in the Mexican War, the Mormon Rebellion, and at Harper’s Ferry, the abortive slave rebellion led by John Brown. In many ways, he is a man of his time, indifferent to the genocide of the indigenous tribes and while he may note the hypocrisy of calling atrocities by the enemy a massacre while calling our own atrocities a battle, nothing leads him to challenge the presumptions of Manifest Destiny. He is honest in describing his relationship with Dickinson, a very assymmetric relationship. He is infatuated and made inarticulate by passion. She is oblivious and treats him as a friend and confidante. She is brilliant, her facility with language leaving him tongue-tied and resentful. The reader can only be relieved that Dickinson avoided what would have been a hideous marriage with a man who was made angry by her quicker, brighter wit. Winter is also the Era of Good Feelings very own Zelig, living in Springfield, Illinois, and befriending Abe and Mary Lincoln. He takes a trip with his wife and has a conversation with a young Mark Twain. He meets Robert E. Lee and John Brown. The movers and shakers of the era show up everywhere in the book. His meeeting with John Brown the night before Brown is hung for his insurrection is critical because it helps him understand his role as a chaplain without faith. I enjoyed the writing in The Wreckage of Eden. I think Norman Lock did a good job of evoking that time with his use of language. He also did a great job of mirroring the thoughts and phrasing of Dickinson. She came alive in the story. Nearly ninety years ago, Miguel de Unamuno wrote about a priest who lost his faith but continued to serve his community, giving sermons, leading prayers, baptisms, and last rites while never betraying his loss of faith to the townspeople who got so much succor and security from their religion. Winter is another San Manuel Bueno, Martir, but a resentful martyr, not a willing one like Manuel and Lazaro, his friend who takes over for him after his death. John Brown makes an argument that San Manuel might have made, but for Winter, his continued service as a chaplain does not feel like that of a martyr for his flock, but more the kind of slogging in place of a person who made a bad career choice, but lacked the imagination to change. I did not like Robert Winter, he does not hide his weaknesses and failings in his narrative, but I sure did like The Wreckage of Eden. I received a copy of The Wreckage of Eden from the publisher.
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Above the Ether: A Novel
by
Eric Barnes
Tonstant Weader
, June 02, 2019
Above the Ether takes place the day after tomorrow, or so it seems. An earthquake in the gulf at the same time as a hurricane creates an epic wave that devours the gulf coast. Never-ending fires render communities unlivable. Drought devastates farmland. Dandelions and mollusks and nature in general seems to have run amok. Eric Barnes describes a dystopic future that is only a tick of the clock from our present, a future where the climate catastrophe we have done little to avoid arrives. And yet, Barnes does not use the word climate once. This is not a polemic, this is a story. Above the Ether follows six narratives, a father and his kids fleeing the gulf, a husband and wife seeking their runaway son, a callous investor checking out the potential for disaster dividends, refugees finally getting their release from a border detention facility, carnival workers working their route, and a restaurant manager just doing his job as best he can. These disparate people move by happenstance and necessity toward an unnamed city where they converge in a crisis, finding hope in the midst of despair. Nothing and no one has a name. People are described solely by the roles. Every location is unnamed, leaving it to us to situate it in our own cultural geography. So why is it so compelling? Why did I read this in one sitting, skipping dinner and reading to the end? I think we value what we work for. I remember being taught to put a notecard over the bottom third of the text while I was studying, covering the serifs that make reading easier. My professor explained that if I was forced to engage and infer while I was reading, I would remember what I studied better. He also said in the end, I would learn to read faster. He was right. There is this idea in pedagogy that instilling a “desirable difficulty” in the work makes it easier to remember. The concept of desirable difficulty might not be related to writing, but I think it captures the magic of Above the Ether. It is as though Barnes took the writing advice of “show, don’t tell” to its ultimate expression. He won’t even tell us who is who and in some chapter fragments, it can be hard to tell. But that effort makes us more engaged. So much is unexplained, we must bring ourselves into the reading process. We cannot just sit back and read. We have to think while we read. We care about these people because we have worked to know them and their situation. We understand the catastrophe because we had to integrate our own experience. Add to that, the prose that is as simple as a hymn and as musical. There is poetry on these pages as well as great understanding of humanity and compassion for the human condition. Above the Ether is painful in many ways, especially since this dystopia seems inevitable given our desire to consume the inheritance of the next seven generations all in one. It feels grounded in the reality of likely outcomes and human potential. Above the Ether will be released June 11th. I received an e-galley from the publisher through NetGalley.
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Unpassing
by
Chia Chia Lin
Tonstant Weader
, May 31, 2019
The Unpassing, by Chia-Chia Lin, is an extraordinary story of the disintegration of a Taiwanese family who came to America, choosing Alaska for their immigrant dream. It is narrated by Gavin, a young boy who fell sick and into a coma, waking up a week later to discover his younger sister Ruby had died as well. His school had an outbreak of meningitis. Because as a child, he lacks the words to express his feelings of guilt and his parents are too full of their own grief, anger, and guilt, they have no space to understand their children are also suffering, this book overflows with unexpressed pain. Gavin’s family is poor, their small and narrow home surrounded by open space and woods. The anticipated development of a neighborhood as unrealized as all the rest of their dreams. Their poverty is exacerbated by a personal injury lawsuit against the father who is accused of a faulty septic tank installation that poisoned a young child. The father feels hopeless to defend himself, “;Once we entered that room, you see, it was over. It was their room, not ours.’ Gripping the wheel now, he shifted and straightened. ‘And when has a room ever been ours?’” I loved The Unpassing even though it broke my heart time and again.This family was so close, living on top of each other in space and time, with very little relief in the form of outsiders. The kids had a few friends, a relatively affluent white family on the oher side of the woods, but the parents were isolated even from each other. They were, as Lin said in another context, ” too close—so close we couldn’t see each other.” Lin does a phenomenal job of writing in the language of a ten-year-old without sounding juvenile or false. Gavin thinks deeply and says many profound things in the simple language of childhood. Even when it is clearly adult reflection on childhood, Lin maintains the beautiful language of simplicty. There is deep understanding of grief and alienation in The Unpassing as well as deep compassion for people in despair.
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Waiter
by
Matias Faldbakken
Tonstant Weader
, May 28, 2019
Matias Falkbakken has written two other novels in addition to The Waiter but is the only one translated into English. I mention this because for a moment, I thought it must be the novel that inspired Pete Buttigieg to learn Norwegian so he could read an author’s other books. Then I recalled it was published late last year, so it came too late for that story. Nonetheless, it is a book that could inspire someone to learn Norwegian. Very little happens in The Waiter. There is a restaurant named The Hills, one of those historic grand European restaurants with a generations-old tradition of good service and haute cuisine, complete with a musician who plays piano on the mezzanine above the tables which are covered with old linens kept spotless by The Waiter using his table crumber in his uniform whose manufacture is unchanged from the past. The constancy of The Hills is ideal for The Waiter, a sensitive soul whose job has two criteria, as he explains, “I have to show pride in my work, and I have to be self-effacing. The pride in my work makes me adhere to rigid routines which are vital for my well-being, since being highly sensitive means that I don’t like surprises or change. The self-effacing aspect means that I can interact with and serve people without having to get involved.” This all comes crashing down when a young woman comes to The Hills and moves from one table of guests to another, so regulars become irregular by interacting and not just with each, but with The Waiter. This creates the “complex social contexts” that creates the “inner collapse” of our narrating waiter. Over the course of five days we proceed from the constancy he loves to chaos and crisis, though really, it’s just some people eating at a restaurant. Describing the plot of The Waiter does it an injustice, it’s magic is that with almost no plot, a tense, suspenseful story of inner turmoil and collapse is woven with prose that takes my breath away. I think The Waiter is one of those books people either love or hate. It is mostly the inner monologue of the waiter who is stuck in his routines but who is also deeply steeped in culture so he can marvel at the fractal design of romanesco and the particulars of art, music, and history. He is never boring as he natters on, but the most peril he faces is going to the storage cellar for some wine and pinching the outside of his hand in a drawer. The Waiter is a compelling book. I was perhaps a fifth or less into the book, wondering what it was going to be about when the next thing I knew, I was done without coming up for air and I enjoyed every minute of it. I received an e-galley of The Waiter from the publisher through NetGalley. ★★★★★
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The Last Thing She Remembers
by
J. S. Monroe
Tonstant Weader
, May 28, 2019
The Last Thing She Remembers is an exciting suspense thriller that rockets from character to character, taking the unreliable narrator trope up a notch or two. A woman takes a train to Willshire, an English village, and goes to a house, knocking on the door, claiming she lives there and that she does not remember her name. She does not remember anything about her life. Worse, each new day is a clean slate requiring her to keep notes from day to day so she can remind herself what happened. The homeowners are Tony and Laura. At first, Laura is welcoming, but when Tony suggests the stranger looks like a Jemma and the local doctor wonders if she could be Jemma Huish who used to live in that house, Laura wants nothing to do with her. For good reason! Jemma Huish is infamous for repeatedly calling to warn she feared she would kill someone before she slit her roommate’s throat. The antipathy that should have been directed at the mental health system that left her out to dry was instead directed at her and the suggestion this young woman could be her stokes village fears. Irresponsible police and dire public warnings put the newly minted Jemma on the run, seeking help from Tony whose own fears of hereditary Alzheimers makes him fascinated by memory and memory loss, thus fascinated by Jemma. But is she a murderer? Is she Jemma Huish and if she’s not, why did she come to Willshire? To add to the confusion, another local thinks she might be his daughter, a daughter he never knew he had. Still another local speculates she is a Russian mole. There is plenty of misdirection in The Last Thing She Remembers and all of it is perfectly fair. Because it is so fair, we perhaps begin to discern the outlines of a scheme at play. Or more accurately, more than one scheme. The plot never stops adding to the tension, propelling the reader forward and compelling us to keep reading without stop. No sleep for you! It all hangs together and people act as you might expect them to act. It was a good, strong mystery. It is weakened, however, by too much epilogue, too much wrapping up the loose ends and telling us what happened. The plot was ingenious so long as it was not reviewed in retrospect. Trust us readers to understand the story without tying up everything in a neat package with an epilogue bow on top. I received an e-galley for review from the publisher through NetGalley.
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The Guest Book
by
Sarah Blake
Tonstant Weader
, May 18, 2019
Sarah Blake’s The Guest Book is an ambitious multi-generational family saga that looks at American life through the experience of three generations of one patrician family, the Milton family of Crockett’s Island. The island is off the coast of Maine and was purchased in the 30s after Ogden and Kitty Milton lost their eldest son in an accident–a sort of fresh start, a place to heal and rebuild. That they could buy an island in the midst of the Great Depression gives you an idea of their power and privilege. The second generations story is told over the spring and summer of 1959. Moss, the son, is supposed to go into the firm but who wants to be a songwriter. Not just that, he wants to write the music of a new, free, and liberated America. Joan, the middle one is falling in love, but all her life she has been told she cannot have children because she is epileptic and should not pass that on. Evelyn, the youngest is engaged to the boy next island and could not be happier. The third generation’s story is told in the summer of 2018. Joan’s daughter Evie and Evelyn’s four children have inherited the island, but the wealth is gone, the trust is running dry, and they need to decide what to do with the island. It is ironic that Evie is a historian, too, given how little she knows about her own family and how resistant she is to questions her husband raises about them. Four other people come to the island at pivotal moments. There are Elsa and her son Willy, the daughter of Ogden’s investment partner in Germany, in German steel. She’s married to a Jewish man who has already been arrested. She asks Kitty to take Willy, to protect him. Kitty’s decision will haunt the family through the generations. The other two are Len Levy and Reginald Pauling. Len Levy is a Jewish man who works for the firm and who falls for Joan. Reginald Pauling is his friend and also a friend of Moss, who invited them and who is, possibly in love with him. Their 1959 visit will change everything. The Guest Book is beautifully written with a sense of place painted in fresh and original prose. Place has tremendous power and the contrast between Manhattan and Crockett’s Island is critical to the story. Character is also important and the main characters are complex and vivid people who can surprise the reader. The true magic of the book, though, is how these simple encounters expose the festering poisons that have infected our nation from its beginning. The Miltons are polite people, raised to be kind, to never make anyone uncomfortable, but also with a privileged sense of how the world is supposed to be. They are aware of their privilege, but with good manners, they will never flaunt it. They believe, for example, that Black people should have equal rights, but must they be so loud about it. Ogden, Kitty, Joan, Moss, and Evie face moral crises where privilege meets prejudice. There is generational change, but will it ever be enough? From one perspective, it is easy to see each failure on their part as simple prejudice, but from another, it is more complex. To give one example from early in the book, is Kitty’s moral failure the result of prejudice or grief or a mix of both? It looks different from either side of the question and Blake makes us recognize how we may tell ourselves stories to assuage our guilt. It is likely that The Guest Book will be the best book I read this year. It is rare to find a book with such beautiful language and such complicated and powerful characters in a story that has so much significance. Blake explores the weight of history and family and how polite silence can hide monstrous acts. I could not stop reading even though I did not want the book to end. What more can you ask for? I received an ARC from the publisher through Shelf Awareness.
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Night Before
by
Wendy Walker
Tonstant Weader
, May 18, 2019
The Night Before is a fast paced suspense thriller that switches narrative between two sisters, Laura and Rosie and between times. Laura’s narrative begins on Thursday night and moves through her preparations for a first date with a stranger arranged through an internet dating site. Rosie’s narrative begins at 5 A.M on Friday morning when Laura has not returned home. A third interstitial narrative presents dialogue between Laura and her therapist from four months earlier. The pace of Laura’s narrative is slow and reflective taking us through her date night step by step and conversation by conversation. The pace of Rosie’s narrative is much faster, covering more time as she frantically begins a search for her sister. As the dual narratives progress, we learn that it is entirely possible the person in danger may not be Laura, but her unsuspecting date. We discover that when she was in high school Laura was suspected of murdering her boyfriend until another suspect was found. Some still wonder if she was guilty. The man charged with the murder asserted his innocence until his death in a mental institution. Laura’s own memory of the murder is sketchy, she sometimes wonders if she could be guilty. The Night Before is a good suspense thriller that moves fast. The suspense is real and it is entirely possible to suspect Laura has fallen into the hands of some awful internet predator or Laura has done something that can not be undone in a rage. It works on that level very well. On the other hand, it pushed every feminist button I had. As a child, Laura intervened when her friend Gabe was being beaten by his brother. As a result of that and her fierce personality, she is perceived as dangerous. Her mother comments on how she is hard to love because of her anger. We learn, though, that her father left the family and neither her mother nor father seemed to love her as much as her sister Rosie. Rosie marries her childhood friend, has a child, and fulfills the feminine role. Laura is professionally successful, unmarried, does not want children.But it’s more than that, it seems as though Laura is punished for being strong, for being fierce. That seems unjust and while Laura’s therapist tries to persuade her that she is not responsible for what others do, you wonder if Laura will ever understand that. I received an ARC from the publisher through Shelf Awareness.
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Sync
by
K. P. Kyle
Tonstant Weader
, May 16, 2019
Sync begins on a dark and stormy night as Brigid is driving home after visiting her mother in a nursing home. She is distraught because her mother failed to recognize her, her Alzheimer’s exacerbated by the late time of day. The sleet combined with her own tears, impairing her vision so she nearly struck a hitchhiker, coming to a stop after swerving to avoid him. Repentant, she offers him a lift. He is filthy and she soon realizes he is also starving and penniless. She feeds him and offers him a place to shower and sleep until morning, however before morning, someone breaks into her home. She soon learns he is on the run from some very suspicious and dangerous characters. In fact, he was one of ten subjects in a study exploring the multiverse, but new researcher came on board, things went awry, and now he’s on the run from law enforcement and some very thuggish and violent people. Brigid throws herself into rescuing him and the pair along with Brigid’s dog, Lithium, head straight into the eye of the storm. Let me start with what I liked about Sync first. The actual conspiracy is a good one. The conspiracy takes place in Chicago where after Homan Square no fictional police corruption will ever match reality so it’s no surprise that the conspirators can enlist law enforcement. The conspirators do an excellent job of tidying up loose ends to avoid detection. I also like the idea of exploring the multiverse as something that could be done for pure or applied research, for good or ill. But then, the rest falls apart. First, the characters seem not just unrealized, but unrealistic. For example, rather than allowing Brigid to be an empathetic person feeling for a hitchhiker on the roads in a storm, her motivation is given as a desire from some distraction and excitement in the face of losing her mother to Alzheimer’s. Like an encounter with a rapist/serial killer might be a diversion from her troubles? It’s as though the author decided not one person was allowed to act out of altruism. Altruism is how humanity has survived, don’t erase it. It often seems as though K. P. Kyle needed the characters to do something and cast about for an explanation, not really considering if the explanation made sense. Brigid seems foolhardy and obtuse. Jason seems alternately feckless and stubborn, someone who should never be asked to fend for himself. The other characters, except perhaps Jason’s sister, are equally puzzling. Then, since the story depends so much on the theory of the multiverse, it would help if it were ever adequately explained. Explanations are proffered by Jason and Ana, the professor who headed the original research project. Neither of them is up to the task which is odd as the theory is not that complex or hard to understand at all. Jason talks about Schrödinger’s cat and Ana mentions the double-slit experiment before deciding they’re too complicated to explain. They are not. The story rests on a very specific theory of the multiverse called many-worlds theory. The explanations sound like research notes from someone who didn’t understand the concept but memorized it for the test. The physics we are all used to, gravity, thermodynamics, entropy, and so on explain the world as we can see it with our senses. However, with the technology to observe atoms and inside atoms, we discovered the particles did not follow those rules. A whole new physics called quantum mechanics was developed to identify the rules governing how the world worked at that level. String theory was created to unite the old and the new physics, but it only works if there are more dimensions than the four we are used to. Somehow those dimensions occupy the same space as the dimensions we can see, either because they’ve been smooshed or they’re not within our sensory range or the range of our technology. They occupy the same spatial and temporal dimensions, but differently and we don’t know how. This is not as weird as it sounds, we can’t detect radiation without a machine, we can’t see these dimensions, but we can measure their effects such as dark matter. There are at least six more dimensions, but some think there may be an infinite number. So the theory explored in Sync is the many-worlds theory. Basically, the idea is every action we take creates another world where we chose differently. Of course, all the rest of the people in history and today are also acting and making decisions and creating new alternate realities. Every reality is like a tree, branching out into new alternate realities into an infinite omniverse of every possibility. These are not alternate histories, but simultaneous histories all happening at the same time. This is not a difficult idea, though it is more a thought experiment than something science is going to prove any time soon. However, if many-worlds were true, the idea that someone could go back to one they have visited is not sustainable. Their presence changed it irrevocably and possibly ended its existence as soon as they left. The test of understanding is being able to explain to another. Kyle failed the test. I received a copy from the publisher through LibraryThing.
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Milwaukee Noir
by
Tim Hennessy, Shauna Singh Baldwin, James E Causey
Tonstant Weader
, May 16, 2019
Milwaukee Noir is the latest in the Akashic Noir series that explores the world through noir fiction. As with every edition in the series, a local is chosen to enlist writers in the project and shepherd their work to completion. However, this time the editor is a reader, a used bookstore owner, who I think brings a new and positive sensibility. Tim Hennessy is not trying to impress us with himself but with his city and its writers. There are fourteen stories in three sections. The first, Schlemiels and Schlimazels, may recall LaVerne and Shirley but there is no nostalgia in these down and out stories of foster children, out of work newcomers, seniors eking a living, and low-rent workers. The stories feature more or less decent people trying to do the best they can so in that way they are like the Happy Days duo, but they live in a city that no longer wants them. The stories in Sweet Misery Blues will make you wonder for the future of humanity. What Made Milwaukee Famous gives us stories of neighborhood feuds and lost children, stories that are close to home. The stories that really stood out for me were Jane Hamilton’s Friendship which revealed just how much or little friendship can mean. Cristi Clancy’s Mocking Season has the neighbors love their lawns altogether too much. It seems odd, but Nick Petrie’s The Neighbor also focused on lawn maintenance but with a far different outcome. I liked both stories a lot and was amused by how emotional people can get over their patch of green. I was excited to see Larry Watson, a favorite author, included in the anthology but I thought his Night Clerk was one of the weaker stories. I didn’t much care for Frank Wheeler, Jr.’s Transit Complaint Box which began with a tired joke and a transit cop’s initial “lesson” to his probie that was recycled “Blue Lives Matter” rant dismissing legitimate concerns about racism in law enforcement. The character’s actions did not reflect his political persona, but that’s no big revelation. It’s the reason the country is full of racists with one Black friend. All in all, I liked Milwaukee Noir a lot and I think choosing an independent bookseller to edit was ingenious. He did a great job. Every collection has stories readers like more or less than others and this anthology had many more that I liked a lot. Even Watson’s disappointing story was only disappointing relative to expectations. Unlike most of the books in the series, I have been to Milwaukee and while I did not experience the noir side of the city, reading this did recall the neighborhoods with houses shoulder to shoulder and the streets of old brick storefront that I remember. I know I have said this again and again, the Akashic Noir Series is a wonderful way to do your armchair traveling. I received an e-galley of Milwaukee Noir from the publisher through Edelweiss
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All the Fierce Tethers
by
Lia Purpura
Tonstant Weader
, May 14, 2019
All the Fierce Tethers is a breathtaking collection of personal essays by Lia Purpura. There are twenty essays that illustrate how someone capable of extraordinary insight can travel the galaxy while walking the dog. The title essay “All the Fierce Tethers” in a few short pages takes us from the particular to the universal in magical ways. She starts by recalling how insignificant we all are in the grand scheme of things, how we live lives that are looping over and over in humdrum repetition like the lives of so many other people. He perspective changes to see how that sameness is a kind of greatness, how the humdrum anchors us to memory, history, and each other. Then she amplifies that idea to consideration of ants, hares, and the vastness of the ecosystems we are heedlessly degrading. “To understand ruin, know first what it is that’s being ruined,” she writes and asks for our investment–using the etymology of that word to ask us “to encounter the holy.” The first essay “Never Minding” considers how often we turn away from things that make us feel bad and decide not to mind. She writes of how the ubiquity of Munch’s “The Scream” has deracinated it, sucking the life and meaning from it. When despair is a design on a mousepad or coffee mug, commodified and never-minded. I loved All the Fierce Tethers. Lia Purpura is one of those authors enamored of words. She is one of those people who is struck by words. Take this example, “Come to be held. Hear that? Beheld?—the intensified form, the stand-back-so-as-to-see-the-light version, or angle that promises by holding a thing, I’ll be held by it, that attention swings both ways at once. And what to do with that thought?” She explores words and plays with them, she delights in metaphor but also suggests we can never see an eagle so long as we want it to mean something. We will see its meaning, not its essence. William Blake wrote about seeing the “world in a grain of sand.” Lia Purpura does that and then she shares it with us shimmering, lambent prose. This is a book to linger over and I did. It is a book you can read aloud just to hear the music in the words. Do not rush through All the Fierce Tethers because there is magic there not to be missed.
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America Was Hard to Find
by
Kathleen Alcott
Tonstant Weader
, May 14, 2019
What drives people to achieve greatness or infamy? In America Was Hard to Find, Kathleen Alcott tells the story of a brief love affair and the child who resulted. It beings in the late Fifties where Vincent Kahn, a married jet pilot marking time while hoping to join the space program has an affair with a young woman named Fay Wren. Fay does not tell him she is pregnant, aware of the harm they have done Vincent’s wife and, perhaps, realizing how unworthy he is. Strangely both of them will become famous, one for walking on the moon and the other for political terrorism. The story is told in three parts. First the love story, then the story of Vincent and Fay achieving the fame and infamy that seem fated. Fay raises their child Wright in precarity, with the future uncertain, often on the run and underground. Vincent achieves his goal, but seems to be emptied out, an empty man. Wright grows up longing for normalcy. One of his big rebellions against his mom is going to a public school for a day. He gets that normalcy when he goes to live with his grandparents, but it’s not all he hoped for. No one has ever told him who his father is, but time and again, people tell him he looks like the famous astronaut, the first man who walked on the moon. He suspects they may be on to something He seems alienated from himself, even as he begins his own self-discovery in the San Francisco of the Eighties. I liked America Was Hard to Find a lot even though it left me with so many questions. I cared about Fay and Wright and even Vincent. I wondered how differently their lives would have progressed if they had been honest about their emotions. That is what I want from a book, the questions and sometimes the anger about how a character behaves. I was angry with Vincent, Fay, and even Wright. Alcott does a great job of setting the stage in terms of the history and the social milieu. She based Shelter on Weather Underground and did a lot of research and interviews with astronauts to get an authentic sense of who Vincent would be. The main characters seem emotionally broken and I wonder if that is the point, that they cannot be so obsessed with their causes if they were not broken. I received an e-galley from the publisher through Edelweiss.
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Pickle's Progress
by
Marcia Butler
Tonstant Weader
, May 14, 2019
Pickle’s Progress begins with a bang, a literal bang as Stan and Karen McArdle collide with the George Washington Bridge when startled by a young woman on the bridge. They call Stan’s brother Pickle, who conveniently for them, is a cop and practiced at getting them out of tickets. He lives nearby and is on the scene to keep his family safe from any breathalyzers. The young woman, Junie, explains that her boyfriend has just jumped to his death. Karen embraces the woman and installs her in their home as she recovers. And so, with that bang, the four characters are introduced and three are established in the brownstone where Stan and Karne live, a brownstone that is half-owned by Pickle who is supposed to move into the upper two floors, but the renovations are constantly postponed and delayed. He is focused on getting that renovation done soon. Stan’s injuries mean he is taking pain pills, so both he and Karen are trying sobriety – an unnatural state for both of them. Junie is depressed and lethargic and Karen and Pickle separately set themselves to getting to know her and help her get back on her feet. Stan finds her strangely calming. The foursome continues to circle each other. We learn that their relationships are much more complicated than it appears on the surface. They also seem very unlikeable. Pickle seems most conflicted, wanting to love one woman and unable to stop loving another. Karen seems torn and Stan seems lost and befuddled. The writing in Pickle’s Progress is sharp and witty. There are moments of truly incisive commentary, particularly from Pickle. However, some of their actions are inexplicable and when we learn the reasons behind their actions, they feel more like excuses than reasons. It’s true that over time I came to care a little more about them, but still found them unappealing. Much of what I dislike about the book is tied up in the denouement where Karen’s motives are revealed and there we are looking at a grand mess. Then, to make it worse, the epilogue that takes us three years into the future when Junie writes a letter showing how some of the mess was cleaned up without the story of how that happened. That story would have been more interesting. I received a copy from the publisher through NetGalley.
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November Road A Novel
by
Lou Berney
Tonstant Weader
, October 08, 2018
November is the saddest month. The exuberance of harvest is over, the excitement of Christmas and the New Year are to come. When Kennedy was assassinated, that November 1963 was even sadder than most. That is the background a road trip romance when mob fixer Jim Guidry takes to the road to avoid his loose end being clipped. He meets Charlotte and her two daughters when their car is broken down and sees the advantage of traveling as a family rather than the single man whose being tracked by a mob hitman. As they travel Route 66, Guidry and Charlotte are drawn to each other. They bring out the best in each other. Charlotte and her daughters remind Guidry of another life. Guidry's admiration builds Charlotte's confidence. The reader cannot help feeling hopeful for them both. Meanwhile, the hitman Barone is on the trail, leaving carnage in his wake and we are reminded that Guidry keeps some very questionable company. The writing is beautiful, the character development is complex, and the evocation of time and place is near perfect. Even better, though we come to understand our characters, they continue to surprise us. I loved this book. I received a copy of November Road from the publisher in a Shelf Awareness drawing.
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Embattled Vote in America From the Founding to the Present
by
Allan J Lichtman
Tonstant Weader
, October 01, 2018
With the American democratic experiment at a precarious moment, Allan J. Lichtman’s The Embattled Vote in America From the Founding to the Present is a timely and important book. Neither Hillary nor Trump received as many votes as Nobody, the choice of all the millions of people who stayed home. This undercuts the legitimacy of government, yet many in government make concerted efforts to prevent people from voting. Lichtman traces the history of American suffrage from our founders choosing to leave voting decisions to the states and the states established all sorts of different standards. After the Civil War, African American men won the vote, though states crafted rules to keep them from exercising it. Fifty-six years later, women won the right to vote. In 1971, voting age was lowered to 18, recognizing that young people were dying in a war started by politicians they could not vote for or against. In 1965, the Voting Rights Act was passed to make good on the promise of the Thirteenth Amendment. Since the Voting Rights Act, there has been a constant struggle on the part of the Republicans to disenfranchise minority voters through various schemes and corresponding energy from Democrats to expand the franchise and legally combat the voter suppression efforts of Republicans. How are votes suppressed? Gerrymandering lets politicians choose their voters so voters feel their votes make no difference. States pass laws taking the right to vote away from felons, not just while they’re in prison, but also while on parole, and permanently in some states, so a person’s right to vote can depend on where they live. Closing polling places so voters wait in long lines is a huge burden. In Arizona, some polling places served 21,000 voters! Shortening early voting, restricting voter registration and requiring burdensome ID requirements also function to reduce voter participation. Lichtman reviews the several methods of expanding or restricting participation. He also examines the canard of voter fraud, exposing it as a two-pronged effort to decrease confidence in our electoral system which reduces participation and provides a rationale for policies that make it harder minoritized voters to vote. This is an excellent review of the history of voting reforms, good and bad. It is full of the details that make a history interesting with examples of different politicians making their arguments, some blatantly and proudly racist. It covers the voting wars up to mid-2018 and proposes reforms for the future. I get so irritated by books that are full of the problem and have no solutions. There are solutions and Lichtman looks at them carefully. Lichtman’s writing is clear and lively. He has an opinion and isn’t afraid to share it. This makes for an interesting book even though it’s maddening to read about legislators researching exactly how best to keep Black people from voting and justifying it as being not racist because they only tried to disenfranchise Blacks because they’re Democrats, not because they’re Black. I highly recommend The Embattled Vote in America and there could not be a more important time to read it. I received a copy of The Embattled Vote in America From the Founding to the Present for review from Harvard University Press.
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The Great Rift: Literacy, Numeracy, and the Religion-Science Divide
by
Michael E. Hobart
Tonstant Weader
, April 30, 2018
The Great Rift: Literacy, Numeracy, and the Religion-Science Divide traces the history of how we understand, record, and transmit information from early literacy to numeracy and how that changed how we think. Writing is about words and concerns itself with classification. When the modern Indo-Arabic numerals came along we began moving from concrete to relational and abstract thinking. Adding functions like the equal sign and concepts like zero enhanced our ability to think in the abstract. It was not just the symbols, though. It was also some key concepts that came from outside the academy: numbers and calculations from commerce, time notation from music, perspective and proportion from art, and time technology from astronomy. These developments were the cultural zeitgeist that Galileo surfed to his greatest achievement–not just his discoveries, but the development of the analytical scientific mind that broke down problems into objective measurable elements. The Pope was wrong about Galileo, it was not what he thought that was the danger; it was how he thought. With modern science, the way we think fundamentally changed and religion and science were forever separated, not by dogma, but by how we think. This is the fundamental argument animating Michael E. Hobart’s excellent history The Great Rift: Literacy, Numeracy, and the Religion-Science Divide. I am not completely persuaded that Hobart proves his case that it is numeracy that created the science-faith divide, but then I am naturally dubious of theories that explain everything. However, The Great Rift: Literacy, Numeracy, and the Religion-Science Divide does an excellent job of showing how numeracy changed how we understood science and made science possible. Imagine landing a man on the moon without a plus, minus, or equals sign! There is a difference between the mind of faith (Because I say so!) and the mind of science (Prove it!) and this shift was led by Galileo whose heresy was less about heliocentrism and more about saying there are absolute answers in nature. I am just not sure that it is numeracy alone. After all, Renaissance humanism studied the wisdom of Classical Greece and Rome. They may have worked to reconcile those old pagans with Christian theology, but still, they were finding wisdom in reading pagan classics, which in itself challenges the idea of God as the source of all knowledge. I think there can be multiple causes…and really, if you look at how Hobart suggests numeracy came about because of advances in art, music, commerce, and astronomy instruments, we see movement in multiple fields, working together. So how can I give so many stars to a book that I don’t agree with completely? It’s because it is full of fascinating information, some big and some trivial, but the sort of thing that got me sharing a tidbit I had just read with my doctor. Did you know that when they used a lunar calendar, they would need to add an extra month every third year they called it an embolus and made it an embolismic year? Now that can literally blow your mind! So, reading this book will fill up your stock of “did you know?” facts. What I found most fascinating was trying to fathom living in a world where their understanding of time was so different from ours. People in the classical world didn’t just lack air conditioning and cars, they didn’t have a zero. Giving us insight into that very different world is fascinating. Best of all, the math and science deals with concepts up to Galileo, so you will have learned all the concepts in high school, so while it requires attention, it is not confounding and is sure is fun. I was provided a copy of The Great Rift: Literacy, Numeracy, and the Religion-Science Divide by Harvard University Press.
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An Unkindness of Ghosts
by
Rivers Solomon
Tonstant Weader
, October 08, 2017
Can a book be both science fiction and historical novel? Before I read An Unkindness of Ghosts, I would have thought it unlikely, but I have learned otherwise in this remarkable novel by Rivers Solomon. The colony ship Matilda is transporting humanity to its salvation among the stars. It has many decks–specialized not just in purpose but in privilege. The higher decks house the White ruling class in opulence and comfort. The middle decks are a sort of business class, guards, merchants, tradesmen, scientists and the like. Aster is from the lower decks where the Black passengers work as slaves, their lives ruled by the guards who routinely rape the women. Yes, this is the antebellum South among the stars. An Unkindness of Ghosts is a magnificent science fiction unlike any other. Matilda, this colony ship, is an ingenious construction that transposes the past into the future, revealing far more about human nature and society than people will find comfortable. The characters are understood through their actions. Solomon trusts her readers to make inferences, to grasp the essentials with exposition and explanation. She shows instead of telling, forcing us to engage deeply, to sometimes go forward without necessarily understanding everything in the moment–just as Aster must. It takes courage to trust readers with uncertainty and the best writers have that courage. I received an e-galley of An Unkindness of Ghosts for review from the publisher through Edelweiss.
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Mercy of the Tide
by
Keith Rosson
Tonstant Weader
, January 27, 2017
I am very conflicted about The Mercy of the Tide. The character development is wonderful. I cared about the people in the story and not just the four who are the focus of the story. There’s Sam’s best friend Toad and his uncle whose own sorrows will wring your heart. Sam and Trina’s father struggling with his own grief while trying to raise his children alone. There’s the two women who died in that awful accident, gone but never forgotten, grief for their loss animating Dobbs, Nick, Sam, and Trina. These people are fully realized, complex, interesting people for whom we come to care deeply. But then there is the plot, which just seems to never decide what it wants to be. It would be a more suspenseful, tighter, and far finer story if the entire element of Native American folklore were excised. First, it’s not based on real folklore and the Native American tribe and reservation are fictionalized. That’s just not right. If you are going to write about Native Americans in Oregon, don’t erase the real ones. Add to that the alternate history of Ronald Reagan, and the plot becomes annoying. So, as I said, I am conflicted. The characters are wonderful, so human and real. I wish they were in another story. I received an advance e-galley from the publisher through NetGalley.
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Amazing Animal Facts Postcards: 50 Colorable Postcards
by
Maja S�fstr�m
Tonstant Weader
, January 26, 2017
Amazing Animal Facts Postcards is not a book, though it is based on one of Maja Säfström’s Illustrated Compendium of Amazing Animal Facts, a delightful collection of pen and ink drawings of animals accompanied by interesting facts about animals. These are fun facts, like bees never sleep. The postcards are in black and white and intended to be colored in. Many people find coloring a peaceful and meditative activity. Coloring postcards allows people to add a personal touch to the card they send, too. There are fifty postcards, two copies of twenty-five designs, five each from the sea, the forest, the field, the jungle, and the air. The designs are black and white illustrations that are simple and stylized, completely recognizable without being literal. The drawings are delightful. The facts are fun and interesting. I think sending personally colored post cards is a fun way to add a personal touch to a short bread and butter note or invitation. The one thing that would improve this would be to have more room to color. There are some very tiny spaces to fill in. I also think this is a lovely gift to give someone, so long as it’s not intended as a hint to write more often. The cards are not seasonal, so they can be used for any purpose. There is a nice filing box, with tabs for forest, field, sea, jungle, and air, keeping everything neatly organized until you read to color, write, and delight your friends with a personal message with a personal touch. I was provided a set of Amazing Animal Facts Postcards for review through Blogging for Books.
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Mortifications A Novel
by
Derek Palacio
Tonstant Weader
, October 12, 2016
The Mortifications asks, answers, and asks again all the important questions about life, love, family, and fate. Why again? Because the answers change which is what you would expect when a story goes from Cuba to Connecticut by way of death threats and hostage-taking in three paragraphs. The usual American migration story focuses on the immigrant struggle to succeed and prosper in their new home. There’s not much about the longings of exile, how their lost home can be like a missing limb, an aching void, an itch that can’t be scratched. Palacio’s The Mortifications not only recognizes that aching emptiness, he sends the exiles home to scratch their itch. The Mortifications is an excellent, engrossing and deeply moving novel. Palacio has an ability to write you deeply into a scene so you feel the wind, the heat, hear the sounds and smell the bouquet or the stench. There is a lot of stench, but you won’t care. You will sink into his book and not come up for air. I don’t recommend trying to read a chapter or two before bed because you will find yourself at 4 a.m. wondering where the night went. I was provided an ARC through NetGalley.
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Aliens Are Coming The Extraordinary Science Behind Our Search for Life in the Universe
by
Ben Miller
Tonstant Weader
, September 16, 2016
This is an insouciant, enjoyable and downright funny science book. You can’t help but enjoy this book. It cracks me up at times, for example, when talking about dark matter, he wrote, “Whatever dark matter is, it’s definitely the boss of you.” Yup. Much of The Aliens Are Coming may be surprising in its focus on life on Earth, but it’s what we know about life here that informs our ideas of life out there. We used to think there were far more narrow limits for the kinds of environments in which we can find life. Now, having found life at the deep bottom of the sea and in the deadly heat of Yellowstone, we know there are forms of weird life, of extremophiles, that can take the heat or the lack of light. Because of what we know about evolution on Earth, we can make some assumptions about evolution elsewhere. Because we know about gravity, chemistry, biology, language and so on, we can make solid guesses about what kind of planets we need to look for to find life. I liked The Aliens Are Coming a lot. It’s smart, witty and fun. It does not oversimplify or talk down to readers. It does start with the assumption that readers are new to much of the science and walks through the assumptions researchers are making so readers understand that SETI, for example, is not some weirdos waiting for E.T. but serious science searching for signals that may reveal there is someone somewhere out there. And like us, they may be listening. I received an e-galley from the publisher via NetGalley.
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Ziggy Marley and Family Cookbook: Delicious Meals Made with Whole, Organic Ingredients from the Marley Kitchen
by
Ziggy Marley
Tonstant Weader
, September 15, 2016
When I saw that Ziggy Marley had a cookbook coming out, I was so excited to get an insight to a different side of this musician whose music has given me a lot of pleasure over the years. The Ziggy Marley and Family Cookbook is a collection of recipes from his circle of family and friends, bringing in several influences The emphasis is on healthy ingredients with lots of vegetables bringing bright colors and visual appeal to the dishes.Marley’s recipes rely on lots of spice to add flavor. For example, the usual roasted cauliflower recipe usually suggests some olive oil and kosher salt. Marley adds garlic, pepper, cumin, paprika, and curry powder. Yum! The photos are an integral part of the cookbook. The food looks so delicious, colorful, bright, and bold. I love that the baking pans are old and discolored with countless use. This is not the antiseptic cooking of a catering kitchen, it is family-style with pans that have done their duty for years and show it. This is a great cookbook. The recipes are all pretty easy and realistic for home books. Some are super simple like the fennel salad that simply fennel, salt, olive oil, and lemon juice. Others are slightly more complex, but none will require hours of detailed preparation. There’s an assumption that whoever is cooking these recipes has a life outside the kitchen and is probably multi-tasking while they cook. I was provided advance e-galley through Edelweiss.
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Only the Road / Solo el Camino: Eight Decades of Cuban Poetry
by
Randall, Margaret
Tonstant Weader
, September 14, 2016
This is a timely book. We are opening up to Cuba finally, so it is incumbent on us to understand it better and how better than through its poetry. And for those who are traveling there, the best way to travel is with the poetry of the place you are going to read ahead and to read when you are there. There is an uncanny magic reading a poem in situ. Solo el camino begins with Tengo, a poem by Nicolás Guillén that captured the simple exultance of victory, the satisfaction from going without to having and of having not just material things, but having dignity. It is anthemic. Then there is the beautifully romantic tragedy of Emilio Ballads writing of the impossibility of gay love in mid 20th century Cuba in De toro modo. “Can you fathom the deaf grayness of that stone: never?” It is a poem that goes from romantic joy to broken despair in just a few words. The poetry comes in all forms, long, short, angry and joyful, political, and romantic. It is representative of humanity, and of course, of Cuba. This anthology is also an exemplar in how to be mindful of diversity of voices. There are many women poets, a rarity in anthologies unless specifically anthologies of women writers. The introduction by Randall has a lot to teach anthologists about how to be mindful and how to do real outreach. I received an e-galley of Only the Road/Solo el camino from the publisher via NetGalley.
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Strange Things Done
by
Elle Wild
Tonstant Weader
, September 08, 2016
Josephine (Jo) Silver is a reporter whose decision to withhold a story at the request of police may have led to a woman’s murder and quite definitely led to her dismissal and disgrace. She retreats to Dawson, the near-mythical Yukon city that hosts about 60,000 residents in the summer and shrinks to a little over a thousand during the winter when it is cut off, the road closed, the river frozen, and the air service suspended. Like many small towns, social life centers on the bars in Dawson and the first chapter begins with Jo sleeping off a hard night’s drinking. Unable to remember what, if anything, happened after she accepted a ride home with the handsome, mysterious, and very tempting Christopher Byrne, she finds herself providing him with an alibi of sorts for the murder of a local woman. She would be so much happier about that alibi if she remembered what happened that night. Strange Things Done is filled with all sorts of herrings, red and otherwise. There is also a great group of characters. Wild does an excellent job of bringing Dawson City to lifel. You can feel the biting cold, hear the whistling wind and envision the dancing lights. Wild brings all fives senses into her descriptions and integrates the setting into the narrative so it is a constant presence and as lethal a threat as the killer. I was provided an e-galley by Edelweiss.
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All Under Heaven Recipes from the 35 Cuisines of China
by
Carolyn Phillips
Tonstant Weader
, September 06, 2016
All Under Heaven is a comprehensive guide to the cuisines of China, all 35 of them. Did you even know there were 35 Chinese cuisines? Cynthia Phillips does and she wrote the book. The cuisines are organized geographically, starting with the North, and the Manchurian Northeast, down the Yangtze River and Environs, down to the Coastal Southeast, across the Central Highlands and off to the Arid Lands of the West. There is also a huge section on the fundamentals of Chinese cuisine. There’s also valuable tips you won’t find everywhere, such as removing boar bristles and pinfeathers or how to fold a chopstick wrapper into a chopstick holder three different ways. This is an outstanding cookbook, one of those that will be a classic that anyone serious about learning Chinese cooking will invest in. It is written with authority. The variety of recipes is vast and vegan and vegetarian recipes are noted in the sectional recipe lists, making it easier to select what you like. Phillips also notes when you can substitute pork for chicken, for example. This is important because cooks need to know they can stray from the recipes. Good cooks learn best from cookbooks that are not too prescriptive, but allow for options. I received a copy of All Under Heaven from Ten Speed Press through Blogging For Books.
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Children of the New World
by
Alexander Weinstein
Tonstant Weader
, August 30, 2016
I hardly ever give 5 stars, saving it for unique books that are unlike anything I have read before. This is that kind of book. I was giggling, laughing out loud and then felt heartbroken, all just in the title short story alone. The creativity and imagination that permeate this collection of short stories is so compassionate, humane and downright funny that I am adding Weinstein to my Read-Everything-He-Writes list. I giggled out loud with the spam that knocks on your door and in “The Pyramid and the Ass” there is an intimate scene (if you can call it that) involving sending files back and forth. “I love it when you send me slow downloads.” “Ooh, baby, I’m a torrent player.” Just thinking about it makes me laugh again. I received an e-galley from the Macmillan-Picador through NetGalley.
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We Gon' Be Alright: Notes on Race and Resegregation
by
Jeff Chang
Tonstant Weader
, August 28, 2016
We Gon' Be Alright is a hopeful demand for liberation, not just for those who are oppressed, but also the liberation of the oppressors. Chang believes that we need the grace of truth and love. He finds his inspiration in the works of James Baldwin and the idea that love is not an emotion, but an action. Love must be the motivation for revolution. Black people must love themselves enough to demand liberation not just for them, but also their oppressors. As Baldwin wrote, "To love all is to fight relentlessly to end exploitation and oppression everywhere, even on behalf of those who think they hate us.” The broad scope of We Gon' Be Alright makes this a difficult book to review. I think I highlighted about three or four thousand words that I thought were important, that I thought would be nice to include in a book review that might end up as long as the book. I guess the point is that you just have to read the book. What is truly amazing though, is that this is a relatively short book, written with an urgent and fast-moving pace that propels you through the book, unable to look away. Set aside some time when you sit down, because you won't want to stop until you finish. Let me finish as Jeff Chang finishes, with his question we must ask ourselves. "Each of us is left with the question: can we, given all the pain that we have had inflicted upon us and that we have inflicted upon others, ever learn to see each other as lovers do, to find our way towards freedom for all?"
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Blind Sight
by
Carol OConnell
Tonstant Weader
, August 25, 2016
Mallory is not usually interested in missing persons cases, but she is pressured to look into the case of a missing nun. Of course, no pressure would have moved her if she were not intrigued by a complicating factor, another person went missing at the same time and place, a twelve year-old boy who is blind has disappeared. Everyone thinks it is kidnap for ransom, but Mallory, as always, sees a bigger, more sinister possibility. Soon the bodies of four people are found on the Mayor’s lawn, their hearts removed. One of the bodies is the nun. The boy though is still missing and curiouser and curiouser, the nun is his sister, a sister he has never mentioned to any of his friends. Clearly the clock is running on young Jonah Quill’s life and Mallory will do anything to find him. This is an excellent volume in this series. Young Jonah Quill is a brave, intelligent young man. He is smart enough to talk to the killer, to get him talking and listening. He makes it hard for the killer, but you know, killers are killers. The question is whether Mallory can find him in time or whether he can save himself…or maybe the memory of his aunt can save him.
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Girl in Pieces
by
Kathleen Glasgow
Tonstant Weader
, August 25, 2016
Girl in Pieces is narrated by Charlotte (Charlie) Davis, a seventeen year old young woman and opens when her naked, bleeding body is left, wrapped in a sheet, at the door of a hospital in the sleet and snow of a Minnesota winter. She is soon placed at a special residential treatment facility for people who harm themselves, who burn, stab or cut themselves, using physical pain to manage psychic pain. We’re in Charlie’s head and it’s a very interesting head, curious, intelligent, questioning and plagued with self-doubt. She wants love, she needs love and has been disappointed by her parents. Her father loved her, but depression and despair were stronger. Her mother loved her, but was broken herself. Her friends love her, but they too have their own problems and finding their own way. With such need, Charlie needs to figure out how to be her own best friend and learn how to get out of herself, to reach out to those who are willing to help. I received an Advance Reader Copy of Girl in Pieces from the publisher
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Land of Careful Shadows
by
Suzanne Chazin
Tonstant Weader
, August 20, 2016
Jimmy Vega isa county sheriffabout fifty miles north of New York City. The book opens when he is called to the scene of a homicide, a body dumped in a reservoir, and tasked to support the lead investigator, Greco.Vega is a New Yorker of Puerto Rican ancestry. The victim is Latina and unidentified and Vega’s facility with Spanish is expected to help him identify her with help from the immigrant community. However, for them, his identity as a police officer trumps any shared language connection. I enjoyed this mystery. It’s fair and I figured out who killed our victim shortly before Vega, but then I was not under all the personal pressures and influences that made the real solution unthinkable. I appreciated the natural and organic way Chazin incorporated her point about immigrants and their status, about how the justice system interacts with them and how bias works in policing and in the community, sometimes in seemingly small ways like a person cheating people out of their pay or even their businesses because they have no legal recourse without legal status. It was all just part of the story, not added on with monologues from this or that character. I was given a e-galley of Land of Careful Shadows by NetGalley.
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Tenderness Of Wolves
by
Stef Penney
Tonstant Weader
, August 14, 2016
This is a beautifully written book. The mystery is fair, but not the most important part of the story. The people are complex. The sense of place is palpable. The language is evocative and powerful. A character tells the story of an abandoned wolf pup he raised. As a pup he was playful but as he grew up, he seemed to remember he was a dog, saying there is a Chippewa word, “the sickness of long thinking” the desire to return to the past, the known, to home. That idea is integral to the story as well, the turning toward home. There is so much humanity in this book, an understanding of people and so many people of understanding. I chose to read The Tenderness of Wolves because it was 97° and it seemed a good idea to read something taking place in a cold place. While reading does not change the actual temperature, it does make it more bearable, especially when there are magical descriptions like this. “The aurora shimmers in the north like a beautiful dream, and the wind has gone. The sky is vertiginously high and clear, and the deep cold is back; a taut, ringing cold that says there is nothing between me and the infinite depth of space. I crane skywards long after it sends me dizzy. I am aware that I am walking a precarious path, surrounded on all sides by uncertainty and the possibility of disaster. Nothing is within my control. The sky yawns above me like the abyss, and there is nothing at all to stop me from falling, nothing except the wild maze of stars.”
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Underground Railroad
by
Colson Whitehead
Tonstant Weader
, August 11, 2016
As a fan of Colson Whitehead, I came to this book with high expectations. He had me worried for a bit. It begins on a cotton plantation in Georgia where Cora is an ostracized slave with grit and determination. The Randall plantation is cruel, life is harsh and I began to fear that Whitehead was going to disappoint me with something ordinary. However, as soon as we get to the Underground Railroad, well, then you know you’re in a real Colson Whitehead novel. Why? Because the Underground Railroad is a real train. It’s underground, it’s a railroad, and it takes people to freedom, or to the next stop anyway. The first leg takes them to South Carolina, where the first thing they see is a skyscraper. That’s more like it. I loved The Underground Railroad for many reasons, but most of all because the black people who were saved, saved themselves. Yes, there were white people who helped with the Underground Railroad, who hid runaways and played the role of station masters along the route, but the real agency was in the hands of black people. Who built the Underground Railroad? “Who builds anything in this country?” is the answer. This is a story of a black woman building her future, of black people building their freedom against overwhelming odds. This is The No-Help book, the one where black people make the decisions and rescue themselves. I am sure it will be terribly shocking for some. I received an Advance Review e-galley from the publisher via NetGalley.
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Brussels Noir
by
Michel Dufranne
Tonstant Weader
, August 09, 2016
First, Akashic Noir is an amazing series and folks should read every single book in it. It explores the world, the idea of place in literature, though noir fiction. That said, this was the first issue in that series that disappointed me. I blame it on the editor whose choices, while varying in plot and character, had a sameness about them. No justice, just revenge. No hope, just despair. The enemy is too often all-powerful, the faceless state, the media, the society, the other. With the exception of the final story, it is dystopia all the way. For a crime series, there is a lot of science fiction in this one, but the editor is a sci-fi writer. Don't let this be your introduction to the series, but do read it, just not when you're feeling depressed. I received an e-galley from the publisher via Edelweiss.
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Tea Planters Wife A Novel
by
Dinah Jefferies
Tonstant Weader
, August 06, 2016
The Tea Planter’s Wife is essentially a historical romance set in colonial Ceylon between the wars. It tries to do more, to expose the racist heart of colonialism, with mixed results. It is also an addition to that ever-growing list of novels that exist because people do not talk to each other. There are secrets and suspicions and they never get discussed. What happened to Laurence’s first wife? Why is their son’s grave hidden and neglected? What is her husband’s relationship with that flirtatious widow? Why does her sister-in-law Verity seem to hate her? Why does her husband dislike Ravasinghe? Why does it take nearly a decade of marriage before Gwen has a truly honest conversation with her husband? Jefferies effectively captured my interest right from the beginning. From the first page through the first several chapters, I was swept up in the story. As a romance, it is effective. As a story about racism and colonialism, it is also effective at exposing racism at its most basic and elemental, racism at its most devastating and cruel. It is at times heartbreaking and very moving. Character development is the weakest element. The most complex character is his sister Verity, who is pretty much the villain in the piece, but at least she had conflicting impulses. Gwen is pretty much the plucky, kind, naive romance heroine and Laurence the strong, enigmatic and incommunicative husband. I received a review copy from NetGalley
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Mushrooms of the Redwood Coast A Comprehensive Guide to the Fungi of Coastal Northern California
by
Noah Siegel, Christian Schwarz
Tonstant Weader
, August 05, 2016
Mushrooms of the Redwood Coast is a beautifully designed reference work for fungi fanatics. Anyone who loves mushrooms will enjoy it, though it is most suited for those whose passion includes mushroom hunting and collecting. It begins with a comprehensive introduction including a taxonomy describing their morphology. The descriptions and illustrations are clear. They include directions on finding, collecting, identifying and even photographing mushrooms. This is a reference book, for browsing, for looking up, not for reading. Nonetheless, the authors bring a beautiful descriptive elegance to their work. For each mushroom, there is a description of its morphology for identification, a description of its ecology (where you will find it) and its taste. There are moments of poetry such as describing how one mushroom is hard to find because it’s hidden in the rotting leaves and humus that cover the forest floor but that its golden color seems to glow against the darkness of the duff. There are also moments that made me smile, like coming across a description of the taste of Sullus Umbonatus. “Nontoxic, but so are banana slugs.” How often do reference book writers show their human face? I loved that so much, I hugged my copy of the book I think many of the mushrooms will be found in Oregon as many of the trees they list as environments for the mushrooms are also found here. I was provided a review copy by Blogging For Books.
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Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko
by
Scott Stambach
Tonstant Weader
, July 30, 2016
The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko by Scott Stambach is one of those treacherous stories that sneaks up on you by being comic and sarcastic. It makes you fall in love with its narrator because of, not in spite of, his pure meanness. And then when you fall in love with Ivan, you fall, along with him, in love with Polina and you love them so much and then they break your heart every which way they can. Ivan is a young man and he has spent the entirety of his seventeen years at The Children of Mazyr Hospital for Gravely Ill Children in Belarus. But while he has never left, his mind has traveled though space and time. Polina is a leukemia patient whose parents have just died. She has come to the hospital to die. In spite of all this, they become friends. If you can make it through this book without laughing, you have no sense of humor at all. If you can make it through this book without crying, you have no heart. Often when I laugh and cry while reading a book, I can feel manipulated, recognizing the awful being piled on the awful, and will resent that manipulation, even if it is effective. But this is not awful on top of awful. It’s awful on top of good on top of silly on top of mean on top of wonderful on top of awful on top of wonderful and so on. It’s so very real, even if the idea of a legless, one-armed romantic hero seems unlikely, Stomach makes it not only likely, but compelling. I received an advance copy from NetGalley.
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Modern Potluck: Beautiful Food to Share
by
Kristin Donnelly
Tonstant Weader
, July 25, 2016
I love cooking and have a special place in my heart for cooks who aren’t afraid to try new things, so I fell in love with Modern Potluck. have a cooking blog and love to come up with something new and different that works. Somehow, reading these recipes, I picture Donnelly standing at the open fridge, as I do, with a piece of fruit or a vegetable in her hand and thinking, now what might work with this. Her recipes made me feel like I had met a flavor soul mate. Donnelly is not a dogmatic cookbook author. For example, instead of saying you should roast asparagus, onions and mushrooms, she gives you and A to Z of vegetables that you can roast with directions for each. She also explains how different choices in roasting, such as whether you use the center or bottom rack or whether or not you add a pan of water, will affect your roasted veggies. In her section on salads, she covers the many different grains that can be used in salads with the clear understanding that you have absolute permission to choose. Any cookbook can give us recipes that we can make. A great cookbook, though, will inspire us to take risks, make our own choices and experiment within the parameters of the recipe, using the ratios with a change her or there. This is that kind of cookbook. I received a promotional copy of Modern Potluck from Blogging for Books.
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Velvet Hours
by
Alyson Richman
Tonstant Weader
, July 18, 2016
I well remember the news stories of Marthe de Florian’s Paris apartment that was opened for the first time in decades, an unexpected time capsule of the past. As a former history teacher, it fascinated me. When I read about The Velvet Hours, Alyson Richman’s novel imagining her life and that of her granddaughter Solange, whose death in 2010, revealed the apartment to world. Solange is a young woman whose mother has recently died. To draw her out of her grief, he takes her to meet his biological mother Marthe de Florian, who gave him up at birth. She is a woman of the demimonde, elegant, beautiful and refined. Solange spends hours with her grandmaman, listening to her stories of her great love affair and the fabulous painting of her that hangs over her mantle. Solange, intrigued by her story, hopes to write a novel of her grandmother’s life. Meanwhile, while the Belle Epoque continues in Marthe’s apartment, the rest of the world is heading toward World War II. There are many stories of pre-World War II Paris, the anxiety about if or when the Germans would invade, whether the Maginot Line would hold. For Parisian Jews, the anxiety was even more intense. The Velvet Hours attempts to capture that anxiety when Solange discovers her recently deceased mother was Jewish and falls in love with Alex, a Jewish son of a bookseller who knew her maternal grandfather.
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Angels Die
by
Yasmina Khadra, Howard Curtis
Tonstant Weader
, July 15, 2016
The Angels Die opens with Turambo, the narrator and hero of our story, preparing for his execution by guillotine. It is written by Yasmin Khadra, who has written more than twenty novels. This is the story of Turambo's rise and fall, from absolute poverty to fame and fortune to the guillotine. Well, that's the storyline. It's really about the destructive power of poverty, oppression and racism. Khadra is a painstaking prose stylist. He writes sentences that beg to be carefully lettered and illuminated on parchment, framed and placed on the wall. Characters offer short soliloquies on the meaning of life that seem crafted more for critical discussion in a classroom than something a living, breathing person would say. know that Khadra is deliberately making an unlikable protagonist to push us into thinking more clearly about how oppression brutalizes humanity. Still, I feel a visceral dislike of the character, not so much for his anger at the outside world, but for his attitude toward the women he thinks he loves. Three times he fell in love and three times he expected the women to be grateful and reciprocate. Three times the women asserted their independence and agency and yet, he never really got it. Even when he does come to recognize what Irene was telling him about boxing, he still does not recognize that other people outside himself have motivations, needs and demands that do not center on him. I received an advance e-galley from the publisher through NetGalley.
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Tasting Rome: Fresh Flavors and Forgotten Recipes from an Ancient City
by
Katie Parla and Kristina Gill
Tonstant Weader
, April 21, 2016
Tasting Rome provides a rich narrative story of the neighborhoods and culture of Rome as a side dish to the recipes that are the main course. With an untraditional framework organized around the culinary geography of Rome, the book has sections street food, the classics, immigrant fusion cuisines, recipes using offal, veggie dishes, bread and pastas, sweets and cocktails. The authors have the confidence to highlight simple recipes like cacio e pepe that expose food at its more pure. On the other hand, they also include a recipe for making guanciale, the cured pork jowl that enlivens many of their recipes. Unlike many contemporary cookbooks, there is a nostalgic aesthetic to Tasting Rome. The photos are more naturalistic and if anything desaturated, unlike the intense vibrancy of today. The font for the recipe titles is thick and rounded. It is all very comforting and welcoming and suits the mood of the book with its blend of history and cultural tourism. I wish there were more vegetable sides and entrees and more recipes overall, but the 80 plus recipes that are included are a good mix of old and new, easy and complex, and all clear and easy to understand. There seemed to be a bias in the recipe select toward recipes with unusual and unfamiliar ingredients. My favorite parts of the cookbook, though, are the stories of Rome, like the prince who would not make change at his wine shop. Those kinds of details are priceless. I was provided a review copy by Blogging For Books.
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Mapping the Heavens The Radical Scientific Ideas That Reveal the Cosmos
by
Priyamvada Natarajan
Tonstant Weader
, April 16, 2016
One of the central points she makes is that science is provisional and self-correcting. Throughout the history of science, new technologies enable the collection of new data, new data creates new insights and discoveries, and meanwhile old ideas resist change. There is a clash of ideas, sometimes people suggest a middle way, but ultimately, the best data and explanations win out because science chooses what is replicable and empirical even when it is uncomfortable. This is radical stuff, revealing that scientists are some of the wildest and most radical thinkers on the planet. But isn’t that what science is? Taking what we know, what we can observe and then getting freaky with it? Always presuming of course, the evidence backs it up. I recommend this book highly. Natarajan has a way of taking theory and all its complexity and explaining it so this non-scientist can easily understand it. She effectively explains the ideas that develop and the historical and technological waves that eventually erode those past explanations and replace them with new constructs, new ideas. She makes the process of interesting, human and fun, with little tidbits of gossipy details that bring revered scientists to life. I have always loved physics, took one astronomy class in college and worked at a planetarium so I am not intimidated by science, but I have no real science background, no expertise, and yet never felt overwhelmed by the science.
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Ways To Disappear
by
Idra Novey
Tonstant Weader
, April 12, 2016
In the novel, we realize there are really many ways to disappear. Beatriz not only disappears into a tree, but as Emma learns more about the role of the editor in the author’s process, there is another kind of disappearance. For Raquel, who has never read her mother’s books, (Why read her books when she can just talk to her?) there is another painful kind of disappearance. Add kidnapping, hired contract killers, gunfire, extortion and there are a lot of serious threats and dangers.Meanwhile, the tone if often more caper than thriller, with moments of slapstick and moments of poignancy, all of which made it somehow less than it should have been. I like so many elements, the writing, the humor, the theme, the plot and yet, put together, the book is inexplicably dissatisfying. It is less than the sum of its parts. That is disappointing because I really loved so much about it. My favorite parts are the interstitial definitions of words like between and transcribe, all highly personal and so much fun. I think Ways to Disappear is a good novel and well worth reading as I suspect Idra Novey will write more and better novels in the future. It is funny, at times downright charming and as fast-paced as you could hope for. There is a disconnect between tone and story that makes it just a bit off, but I expect her future books will have more congruence and it is worthwhile to get to know a good writer from her very first book.
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Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
by
Matthew Desmond
Tonstant Weader
, April 11, 2016
Matthew Desmond’s ethnological study of the lives of low-income renters in Milwaukee in the tradition of Elliot Liebow’s Tally’s Corner. He follows the lives of several tenants, people paying as much as 80% of the income in rent, struggling to feed their children and keep the lights and water on. The landlords are a complex combination of casual generosity in small things combined with capricious callousness in big things. They will bring some groceries to people they are evicting in a Wisconsin winter. The tenants are more fascinating, the sort the public prefers to disdain so they pretend they deserve their lot in life, disregarding the many hurdles in their way. As you get to know them, you realize they are strong people who cope in any way they can, with resilience that inspires. Their ability to persevere in spite of one obstacle after another gives them a nobility and dignity that society may not value, but should. They may be reeling with despair, but they find the grit they need to endure and keep on. This book brought me to tears time and time again. I want to know what happened to the tenants. I want them to be living in homes now, warm and dry, with running water and solid floors and doors that don’t fall on them. I want every elected city and state leader, every senator and representative, every governor and presidential candidate to read this.My hope is that many people read it, are motivated by it and put the pressure necessary to make the changes we need.
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