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Thursday, September 19, 2013
big damn recap
I'm not going to individually post for everything I've read since February. At this point, I'm pretty sure this page only exists as a personal log of what I've read (it's existed longer than Goodreads, and nobody tracks me here). A gift of a nook for Christmas let me go through lots of books I downloaded from the library, and our new building has a little library in the basement. Between those, and a couple real books, I've read:
All of Michael Connelly's novels published up to today. Echo Park was my favorite. Good characterization and dialogue. The novels which do not fit into one of his series tend to be a bit weaker than the rest, but Harry Bosch is still the king of the Connelly version of LA. Mickey Haller makes a good read, though his slippery ethics make me a little uncomfortable sometimes, but even he can't hold a candle to his half-brother the cop. They have a combined story coming out this fall, The Gods of Guilt, and I look forward to it, but more for the detective than the somewhat shady defense attorney. Haller's a fun character, but there's a pattern to all of his stories, while Bosch continues to get into new situations, with unique twists and clever plots.
The first two books in Sue Grafton's Alphabet series. A little dated, but fun. Made me wish more of her books were on the shelf downstairs.
I've caught up with Alan Bradley's Flavia De Luce series (the most recent to date being Speaking From Among The Bones). Still entertaining, and he finally got to the twist I predicted in the first book, but I will have to wait until the next book (The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches), due out next year, for any resolution.
Craig Johnson continues to amaze me with Walt Longmire. I've read up to the short story Divorce Horse, wedged into the series between Hell Is Empty and As The Crow Flies, and, as always, Johnson inspires and intimidates me. As I read his books, I want to be able to write that well, and am constantly dogged by the feeling that I can't. However, Divorce Horse was a little disappointing. I'm glad I didn't spend any money on it. Too much guessing is left in the resolution (even calling it a "resolution" feels like a sham), and it feels too much like what it is: table scraps thrown out to keep ravening fans busy until the book release. I'm still two books (and a few short stories) behind in the series, but Steamboat Springs is due out next month. If I play my cards right, I think I'll be ready for it when it gets here.
Lamb, by Christopher Moore, is just as clever, funny, ribald, and entertaining as everything else I've read by him. I liked the new take on Jesus's youth (not being a religious person, I could tell there were several references I didn't get, but I was still pleased with the story and the references I did get), but I think the part that was most personally significant for me was the Author's Bio at the end, which assured me that Moore was a "late-blooming child prodigy" who published his first novel in his mid-thirties. That's about where I am, so I feel a little better about my late start in writing. Hopefully, I can get my book out to agents soon, and maybe I'll be a late-blooming child prodigy, too.
I think that's everything that matters. I've also been re-reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series on my nook, because sometimes I feel like reading, but I don't have a fresh book handy, and I've read that entire series so many times that I can dip in and out of it with aplomb, and not even care if I finish a chapter (though I usually do).Labels: decomposing bodies, demonic possession, ethics, girl power, mystery/detective, poison, western, young protagonists
posted by reyn at
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Wednesday, February 01, 2012
you and me and Smelly makes three
Title: Very Hard Choices
Author: Spider Robinson
Bookmark: that business card, again. It was handy.
A few months ago, I started an office library. People could bring in books they owned, add a Post-it with their name, and drop them on a shelf for anyone to access. Knowing how some people treat books (curling the covers of paperbacks, dribbling food in them, smashing bugs between pages--I even know someone who used to read in the shower. Appalling.), I was hesitant to involve books which were important to me, but I sent a cautionary email about handling other people's stuff, and the project has gone pretty well. It gets less use now that someone has claimed that room as an office and moved all the books to a bottom shelf, hidden behind his desk, but I still managed to find a book with the coolest author name ever. I would have read it just for that. As it turns out, there's plenty of reason to read a Spider Robinson book.
Sure, his politics are all through it, but there are great lines (even paragraphs) comparing the US and Canada, and sentences which simultaneously mock and laud our neighbors to the north. The book can be both hilarious and terrifying, and despite the fact that it's a sequel, I had convinced myself while reading that it only seemed that way. The story is so complete on its own that it doesn't need something else to lead into it, although I admit that I spent most of my time wishing I knew the story to which they kept alluding, because it seemed even more wrenching than Very Hard Choices.
Russel Walker, a reclusive national columnist, was college roommates with Zandor "Smelly" Zudenigo. Smelly never bathed, and is described as looking like the Michelin Man with a childlike version of Winston Churchill's head. Oh, and he's a telepath. But Walker doesn't learn that until the previous book, when Smelly comes to him for help after discovering that a very bad man is planning to do very horrible things to a completely innocent family. They enlist the help of police constable Nika Mandic to stop the bad guy.
This book covers what happens next, after the bad guy is no longer a problem, but a new bad guy appears on the scene, and he wants Smelly (usually referred to as "Zudie" in this book, because his island hermitage, far away from the noise of other minds, allows him to have a more conventional hygiene schedule, as he had previously used the stench to keep people away while protecting his secret mental powers). Russel, Nika, and Russel's son Jesse must deal with the mysterious agent tracking them across the island of Heron Rock, contact the elusive Zudie, and figure out what to do to protect themselves and each other. The whole book (except for a couple obligatory flashbacks) takes place over one night. It's excellent, even if the ending is a bit pat.Labels: action, decomposing bodies, espionage, secrets, special abilities
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Monday, July 28, 2008
one of these days I'll give in and get that degree in medical anthropolgy...
The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic - and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World
by Steven Johnson
I'm always amazed by how much science has changed in the past 200 years. At the time of London's worst and last cholera epidemics, almost the entire scientific community was convinced the disease was carried via "miasma", or noxious odors. The fact that there was raw sewage being pumped into the Thames or sitting, festering, in peoples' basements because they couldn't or wouldn't pay for it to be taken to the countryside for disposal, had nothing to do with the spread of disease. Riiiiight.
There was an outbreak of cholera in Soho in 1854; John Snow, an epidemiologist, and Henry Whitehead, the local preacher, worked against each other and then together, as they learned more, to backtrack the spread of the disease. Snow was looking to disprove the misasma theory and Whitehead had intimate knowledge of the community, and together they determined that, after victim zero, the disease had spread to hundreds of nearby people via one particular pump. This involved tracing where people got their water, and when, and learning how the pump became infected (remember those nasty basements I mentioned above? a diaper from a cholera-infected baby infected the ground water in her basement, which passed into the well below the pump, which in turn killed hundreds of people). This was not an easy task, but there were helpful indicators. For example, a local brewery employed many men, and supplied them with all the beer they wanted while they worked, and didn't draw its water from the infected well. Those men drank enough beer while at work that they weren't thirsty at other times, and, despite being very close to ground zero, weren't affected. A former resident of the area thought the water from that particular well tasted better than other water, so her sons would regularly bring her a jug of the water. She died of cholera in the countryside.
Snow's research methods were unprecedented - though it seems obvious now, he was the first to plot the deaths on a map, and then determine which households were closer to the Broad street pump than any other, tracing that radius on the same map. The enclosed area was not a well-defined circle, but a jagged shape due to the intricacies of the streets, and pretty much enclosed the entire area suffering the cholera deaths, and only that area. Freaking brilliant.
Of course, the powers-that-be were still fixed on the miasma theory, and, despite Snow and Whitehead's work, it took another ten years or so for it to be accepted as crap. Snow died before receiving true recognition.
But once accepted, the issue of disease transmission via water was responsible for the construction of London's sewer system in the 1860's or so, much of which is still in use and now handles the waste of millions and millions of people. It led to the general clean-up of cities around the world, and enabled them to grow to the immense sizes they are today.
There's an epilogue where Johnson goes on for a while relating cholera to terrorism and other stuff. Wasn't entirely sure where that came from, but the majority of the book (pretty much all the historical portions) was fascinating.Labels: bacteria, decomposing bodies, evolutionary biology, health, history, medical, non-fiction
posted by ket at
10:52 PM
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Monday, April 21, 2008
the book-reviewing backlog is a bit out of hand
I actually did try to keep track of all the books I've read in the past few months and haven't gotten around to reviewing. In the interest of getting back on track, we'll cover them ALL in a single post. Arbitrary "rating" system of webdings may or may not accurately reflect the quality of these books, but at least it makes the post more interesting...
In no particular order:
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (J. K. Rowling) PPP (except for the epilogue, which I wasn't a huge fan of - that gets maybe P)
On the Loose (Tara Janzen) bbbb
Shadow Music (Julie Garwood) O
Hello, Doggy! (Elaine Fox) CCC
Cutting Loose (Tara Janzen) JJ
Hot (Julia Harper) zz
Bones to Ashes (Kathy Reichs) pp
Simply Sexy (Linda Francis Lee) EEE
Delicious (Susan Mallery) A
I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You (Ally Carter) YYYY (Seriously. This one was fun.)
Tempting (Susan Mallery) SS
Puss 'n Cahoots (Rita Mae Brown) ll
Blame it on Chocolate (Jennifer Greene) Q Death Match (Lincoln Child) VV Simply Scandalous (Carly Phillips) jjjj Lost in Austen (Emma Campbell Webster) XX With This Puzzle I Thee Kill (Parnell Hall) LLL The Cat's Meow (Emily Carmichael) D An Assembly Such As This: A Novel of Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman (Pamela Aidan) mmmm Duty and Desire : A Novel of Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman (Pamela Aidan) qq These Three Remain: A Novel of Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman (Pamela Aidan) www Between You and Me (Jane Blackwood) G Kisses to Go (Irene Peterson) ee Creation in Death (J.D. Robb) NNNN The Dead Room (Heather Graham) BBB Night Swimming (Laura Moore) R I Do (But I Don't) (Cara Lockwood) jj An Ordinary Spy (Joseph Weisberg) - I remember something about this one! I didn't get past page 4 because every other freaking word was redacted, and it was just incredibly annoying. Not worthy of webdings. ...that might be all of them. Labels: anthropology, crap, decomposing bodies, historical fiction, hunky armed forces or government operatives, martial arts, murder, mystery/detective, princesses, romantic "suspense", trashy romance
posted by ket at
3:17 PM
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Tuesday, October 23, 2007
ket in an alternate life
Title: Beyond the Body Farm: A Legendary Bone Detective Explores Murders, Mysteries, and the Revolution in Forensic Science
Authors: Dr. Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson I think this is some of the most interesting stuff out there. This book is a non-fictional account of several forensic cases that Dr. Bass was involved with over the past 30+ years. He’s possibly the most respected and senior forensic anthropologist out there; he headed the University of Tennessee’s ground-breaking programs for decades, and was responsible for the creation of the world’s first body farm, where they study how bodies decompose (the basis for all the stuff you see on CSI and similar programs where they do things like determine time of death based on what bugs are on the body because years of observation have allowed them to standardize the life-cycles). Bass walks you through several cases, each using a different specialty, including analyzing cuts on bones, identifying body parts resulting from major explosions, making DNA-identifications, facial reconstruction, determining cause of death of a burned corpse, and so on. Ridiculously interesting – it’s stuff like this that makes me want to go back to school (seriously, why didn’t I go for the major in Anthro, rather than my minor??). Bass has also written some fiction, which I haven’t read but I’m guessing is much like what Kathy Reichs writes (aka the basis of Bones – another group of books that make me regret some schooling decisions…). It’s nice to get a realistic picture of what goes on with forensic cases, rather than the formulaic and delusional version presented to the masses on TV (“Sure, we can get that DNA processed and matched in about 20 minutes!”). It doesn’t get very graphic, so the squeamish ones out there should only be marginally uncomfortable with the subject matter, but it’s definitely detailed enough for the crazy gore-lovers like me to be happy. I’ll be tracking down the rest of his books ASAP. Labels: anthropology, autobiography, decomposing bodies, evolutionary biology, how-to, non-fiction
posted by ket at
5:26 PM
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