Becca

Well, if you told me you had a Margaret Atwood book about paleontologists falling in love, I would tell you you had my new favorite book. But apparently, it was not to be. The difference between this book and Atwood's later works is vast - this is redundant, with shallow characters and a flimsy plot. And the dinosaurs are shoehorned into a kind of annoying allegory

This was the year of Mary Roach for me: I had always been hesitant about her books - Bonk seemed to flippant, Stiff irreverant and she was altogether too popular - always a sign that a pop science author doesn't know what she or he is talking about.

So I picked up Packing for Mars because one of my friends was insistent that Mary Roach was actually a great author, and by the title it seemed the least likely to offend, and, to be perfectly honest, there needs to be a new law of physics to describe the force that over time pulls me in to any book on astronomy.

To say I was pleasantly surprised is an understatement. Roach is clearly a scientific writer, rather than a scientist, which is a niche in need of more authors: she writes with a fluidity that is lacking in some popular science books written by scientists, but more than that, she functions in this odd way as an audience surrogate - bringing with her the curiosity (sometimes scatological) of her readers and commenting along the way about her anticipation for meetings, her rationale for her questions and a description of how she finds out the information that she shares. It is a unique authorial voice and one that I enjoyed thoroughly.
The content itself is a complete exploration into the NASA space program - short on hoopla and long on (sometimes scatological) details. Roach is complete, explaining, for instance, every type of food tried, the nutritional assessments, texture and composition of astronaut food, followed up by how it is actually eaten, including concerns about the ability to swallow in space, and which were substantiated and which were not.

Yes, she is a little long on the scatology, but I think that bothers me more than it does the average reader. And while there is a heavy dose of humor, it is mostly witty and tongue-in-cheek, more than gross-out humor. I've been converted: Long live Mary Roach!

Alex, if not Irene Pepperberg, is a household name. I vaguely remember in middle school watching the famous Alex videos and having all of my ideas about animal intelligence challenged. My dad eagerly tells of his experience meeting Irene Pepperberg (I'm sure I'll get an e-mail from him reminding me that he knows her personally after I publish this review), so they're both definitely household names in my life. Therefore, there is little attempt to familiarize the reader with the story of Alex or why he is important and the attempt that is made (a painfully long intro/eulogy) is unnecessary.

I was expecting the book to largely focus on the science of working with Alex and how Dr. Pepperberg formulated the work as she had and what she has concluded. Instead, Dr. Pepperberg makes the decision to really write a memoir, which turns out to be a fascinating look at how much being a scientist requires overcoming opposition and how favored one is by lucky coincidences. Most interesting, to me, at least, is Pepperberg's explorations of the setbacks she faces, especially as a female scientist, and the unconventional methods she turns to to get funding and faculty support. It is really very telling about the state of American science that as famous of a scientist as Pepperberg is, she still reverts to private funding and adjunct faculty positions.

It all depends on why you read Neal Stephenson. If you read Neal Stephenson because you can't handle going to work at your software engineering film and hearing “did you read the newest Stephenson novel?” all day without breaking (or because you have a completionist attitude towards top ten lists or a bevy of related reasons) this is going to be the most painful novel you've ever attempted to read.

If you read Neal Stephenson because you love his Neal Stephenson-ness and the fact that there is no detail too small to be explained in depth and no side plot too irrelevant to devote 50+ pages to, this is Neal Stephenson at his Neal Stephenson-iest.

I, however, am in the middle. I love the idea of reading cyber-cultural tomes and I have a weakness for info-dumps. So there were things I loved about the book: the central importance of an MMORPG and the exploration of the sheer diversity of a player base. I loved the exploration of startup culture and the info dumps on Chinese ethnic minorities and the intricacies of flight planning. I took the seven plus main plotlines with complaint - at least they were largely presented in serial, rather than parallel.

However, I took exception to the fact that this book is fat. Not just large, and not just Neal Stephenson-y crammed with details, but seriously in need of editing. When an entire paragraph is dedicated to whether or not a character pulled the shower curtain closed, you have to seriously consider what sort of editing failed to happen. And when I say that there was nothing too trivial to write about, it's like in order to explain what I ate for dinner, I first had to explain my cooking process (with a twenty page aside into the biochemistry thereof), then my shopping trip, the motivations of my grocery store clerk, but also the entire pedigree of the cow that provided my milk and the intrafamilial fighting of the farming clan that raised said cow. And now pretend that such 100 page long diversions are occurring when you last left the characters that you cared about in a boat stranded in the Philippine Sea, out of fuel.

Still, I knew what I was getting into, and it must be said that Neal Stephenson is definitely one of the Authors of Our Time - the advantage of the glut is that he hit on almost every major trope in current culture, making this probably one of the most relevant books today.

I'm not a huge chick-lit fan, and ultimately, that's what this was. The characters were fairly superficial, each an archetype of a female cliche, with a Central Theme and not much further expansion. There were romances and friendships, and, well, exactly what I imagine the generic chick-lit book to be. It wasn't bad in any sense, just, okay.

I read it for the knitting, and the nice thing about it being such a superficial read is that I could knit while reading it, which was nice, because it made me crave knitting.

This book was fascinating read. Gregory in very plain language explains her childhood, from the point of view of a child. Others have criticized that the ways in which Gregory's parents have abused her are not made explicitly clear by the book, but what makes Sickened such a powerful memoir is that it is written from Gregory's point of view, and therefore all along the reader is left equally in the dark as Gregory herself as to what is actually wrong with her, versus what is inflicted upon her by her parents. Gregory's slow realization that she is, indeed being abused is both the turning point and the most poignant part of the book.

This is a very well-written book, but since I share the same job as Dr. Marion, it really just felt like a slice of my life. The cases designed to highlight extraordinary, rare diseases are very much part of my daily life. I was hoping for a little more insight into how our job shapes our lives and reflections regarding taking care of a population of patients that is almost entirely children with disabilities.

Miller writes at times extremely movingly about the impact that reading has especially on the juvenile mind. I particularly liked her exploration of the differences between reading as a child and reading as an adult and the way in which children inhabit a fantasy world of a novel with a passion and without any degree of removal or eye towards literary criticism.

Her description of her relationship with religion and how it impacted her to realize that Narnia was about religion (and more to the point that it was rife with symbolism and additional meanings) and overall her maturation in her reading style was poignant.

Also interesting was the exploration of the relationship between Lewis and Tolkien - Miller really uses the men as foils to each other to explore their distinct religiosities and views on their manifest to write. In addition, she talks about the different approaches to writing and the relative importance of different components of a story's structure. It made clear to me that the reason I've always liked Lewis and never liked Tolkien is that Lewis is committed to a narrative, whereas Tolkien was truly a setting simulationist.

On the other hand, once she had dispensed with her central thesis, the remainder of the book really lagged and seemed to be the same key points in repetition.

This was really cute and unique. A perfect blend of tenement historical fiction, with really spot on accurate Jewish American history with a kid's fantasy book, with all the bells and whistles of typical YA fantasy.

Major props for the creativity - this is probably the only book ever written to combine a Dybbuk and Thomas Edison in more or less the same plot. Also, the magic feels well thought out with a clear culture of how magic is and isn't used and how this varies among the upper and lower classes. Finally, the tenement culture felt familiar and true to the historical nonfiction that I'm familiar with.

The weakness was the pacing - the entire book feels like a build up to the “to be continued” that occurs at the end. I think it probably would have been more satisfying to wait until the series was finished and read it all at one go.

This was one of those books that I wanted to love. It was a book about how narrative shapes one's identity and the identities that are forced upon us to perform, the identities we envision for ourselves and the distance between these idealized selves and the way in which we're perceived. Or, at least that was the book I wanted it to be.

In reality, this book was more like an Austen novel: focused on British women and their prospects. Which, I mean, is fine, if you like that sort of thing.

I guess I'm also not enough of a historical fiction lover. The creepiness with which Charles Dodgson was portrayed made my skin crawl. I half wanted to shake the book and say: “You know he was a real person, right? You can't just make up whatever you want about him.” I think the way that Dodgson (and JM Barie) tend to be portrayed in retrospective fictional pieces as sketchy pedophiles says a lot of really negative things about our society and without getting into a feminist rant, it was hard to read this book without internally getting into a snit over it.

This book deserves high praise just for how novel it is - I have never seen an ostensibly young adult book explore such abstract concepts, such as the sacrifices that the “good guys” make for victory. I found the role that Katniss was cast in and the tension between the role she had to perform and her own goals and personality particularly compelling. The use of media and “spin” by both sides was done in a very subtle, well-handled way.

I continue to object to Collins' writing style - her word choice and her decision to very explicitly explain concepts as she goes along both play to a much more juvenile audience than the audience who would be able to appreciate the concepts in the Hunger Games anyway, so I am not sure why that choice was made.

This was a nice follow-up to the Hunger Games. As a bridge between Hunger Games and Mockingjay, it begins to explore the price of victory and the various costs of publicity. The supporting characters introduced also help add nuance to those main themes. I read this back-to-back with Mockingjay, which says a lot about the easy readability, but Mockingjay sticks out better in my mind, so the majority of my review will be there.

Given that I have an entire shelf for adult literature with child protaganists, the concept of a child narrator was not the novel part of this book for me. But what really stood out was that Donoghue made Jack a very normal five year old. He was in no way a prodigy or wise beyond his years. Instead, we were given access to the routine-oriented rigidity of a five year old. The description of Jack's life inside of Room was interesting - with his routines and his properly named personified objects and his perceptions of events that were much darker than he could understand. However, what made the book was his perception of the world following his rescue and his adjustment to the world outside.

My only objection was the occasional detour into preachy land - Jack notes how tired adults are in the outside world and how they don't have enough time to spend with their kids and I wonder what the author's trying to imply? That women would be happier if they were locked in a room with nothing to do other than play with their kids? I don't think that's her point, but it comes uncomfortably close to reading that way.

Joseph Priestley discovered carbon dioxide, breathable air, invented carbonated water, was a best friend of Benjamin Franklin and instrumental in the founding of the Unitarian movement. Nonetheless, despite living in Benjamin-Franklin-opolis (AKA Philadelphia), I had never heard of him.

Johnson's biography is fascinating - a true examination of the life, beliefs, political allegations, science and religion of Priestley. In addition, there is another book nestled above the level of the biography: a book primarily about the process of science. Johnson explores how the process of science has evolved since Priestley's time, the factors that were instrumental in setting Priestley up for success, the model of the paradigm and the development of ecosystems as a model of thought.

Huh. I think I may have read this too close to [b:The Robber Bride 17650 The Robber Bride Margaret Atwood http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1320478077s/17650.jpg 1119196] to properly appreciate it. Both books have women carefully selected to contrast each other. Both focus on their childhood, their adolescence and then their adulthood, starting with adulthood then going back to childhood and working their way forward. Both grapple with dark themes and child abuse. In contrast, Two Girls, Fat and Thin has beautifully vivid writing, particularly in the chapters narrated by Dorothy where her imagination roams free, but less substantial characterization.

The entire first part of this book was completely fascinating. I was completely in love with the first significant chunk - about a man who loses his hippocampi in a traumatic accident, but still manages to go for walks around the block, make food and hold conversations about computers, all without being able to remember such details as where he lives or how old he is or what year it is. A Oliver Sacks-worthy story illustrating the power of habit in determining how we live.

Duhigg goes on from there to illustrate, using animal experiments in rodents and monkeys how habits are formed and how we can form good habits and extinguish bad ones. He perfectly balances practicality with intriguing science and anecdotes.

The latter two halves of the book spiral off in a multitude of directions. How is having willpower a habit? I'm not really sold. Some of his anecdotes read like they would belong better in Blink or the Tipping Point and it undermines the strong, consistent definition of a habit from the first third.

Also, some of my favorite parts of the book - the febreze model and the target/pregnancy story are available online on NPR & NYTimes magazine and excerpted on lifehacker. (I had read them prior to this and hoped that the rest of the book would be the same quality)

I was pretty invested in my desire to read this book - I told my husband, look she's just like me: married, recently moved to a new place, unable to make any close friends there, relying on long distance friendships and then she makes friends! I want to be like her! And her self-description was so promising: we're both young professional bibliophiles, who like yoga and are Jewish with an affinity for people who share our curly hair. I wanted [a:Rachel Bertsche 4789751 Rachel Bertsche http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1314039364p2/4789751.jpg] to be my BFF and if not her, then I wanted her to share her secrets about how to make friends like her.Unfortunately for me, the similarities between myself and Bertsche pretty much end in the one-liner. She's the sort of woman who only has female friends and uses terms like “Gay BFF” unironically and gets mani-pedis; I'm the sort of woman who uses terms like “heterosexism” and consider happy hours a sophisticated form of torture. Also, she gets a huge boost in her friend count from people she already knows in Chicago - friends of friends, coworkers, her husband's friends - and from people who read her newspaper article; not exactly strategies I can utilize. So on that hand, a disappointment. On the other hand, her research on friendship is fascinating. I particularly was interested in the search for a definition of “best friend,” the discussion of social role support and face-to-face versus side-to-side friendships.

Much of this is pedestrian YA, but the part that really struck me was the reality TV aspect. Collins excels in this area - exploring what it is like for her characters to be in life or death situations, but have to focus on how the TV audience will react and how that affects the situation. The concept is novel and really has room for exploring private vs. public self. I'm definitely going to finish off the series

I had trouble getting into this book - I picked it up and read a page or two and then abandoned it more times than I can count. But, all of a sudden, by about page 20 it was compulsive reading.

Each of the three main characters, Tony, Roz and Charis teeters on the edge of being a cliche, and the contrast between the three of them pushes them further into familiar territory; however, each of them is written so realistically that I forgave the slightly worn feeling of the tropes.

Each character gets a story in three parts - childhood, emerging adulthood and maturity with Zenia a constant, toxic presence; a measuring stick, by which growth is charted.

A biting satire of modern literature.
I was a little worried that a novel satirizing modern literature might be a little on the meta side, but How I Became a Famous Novelist is down to earth and veers to keep a wide berth from being self-referential.
The fictional novels clearly give nod to real world counterparts and their titles and descriptions are the funniest part of the book.

For once, reading about a complete self-absorbed, under-productive scumbag is entertaining, rather than tedious. Likely, the insight into his own odious nature helps make the protagonist less tooth-grating.

I am NOT the sort of person who reads or watches Westerns. I vaguely knew Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp, The OK Corral and “Get out of Dodge” as concepts, but I could probably only give you a 50-50 bet on whether they were fictional or not, and I certainly had no clue that they were connected. That the OK Corral was a shootout completely exhausts my a priori knowledge of all things Western.But, Mary Doria Russell is one of those authors for me. If I could only read one book for the rest of my life, it would probably be [b:The Sparrow 334176 The Sparrow Mary Doria Russell http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1333578682s/334176.jpg 3349153], so I wasn't going to let something like a genre get in my way. That was a good move on my part. Doc is filled with rich, vivid characters. None of them are better than they ought to be, but none of them are caricatured lawless villains either. Doc is my favorite - quiet, quick to take insult, but quicker still to lend a helping hand, proud and frail, but simple, virtuous Wyatt and temperamental, brilliant, very rarely tender Kate are also beautifully depicted. To say nothing of a host of supporting characters.I am, by nature, partial to cleft lip/palate stories, and Russell's description of Holliday's cleft repair and his diction difficulties following is precision embodied. It goes without saying, given that Russell taught anatomy at my own alma mater, that her treatment of historical dentistry leaves nothing to be desired. This is, after all, a Russell novel, so it is meticulous in detail, flawlessly researched, accurate to a T. Of course, there are original characters, who, of course, include a Jesuit and multi-ethnic characters who challenge our understanding of race and racial relations. These characters flirt with being a little too perfect, especially in light of their historic setting, but overall add to the flavor (shockingly, there is no unlikely Jew of even more unlikely ethnic extraction. I kept waiting for it.)My only criticism is that, for people like me who come naive to Westerns, the book almost completely omits the OK Corral and the events directly leading up to it. Since it represents everything I will ever know about the genre, probably for the rest of my life, I would have liked Russell's take on that central piece of the Doc Holliday mythos. Nonetheless, it is by far the best book I have read that heavily features Nevadan prostitutes this month (cough [b:The Lonely Polygamist 6944566 The Lonely Polygamist Brady Udall http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1291169474s/6944566.jpg 7178069] cough_

This was another book that did not live up to the premise of its (totally awesome) title. In fact, I found it so boring that I've apparently put off reviewing for two weeks.

What I expected was an exploration of polygamy, emotions, and the idea of being lonely when surrounded by people. Maybe also, being a Jewish woman from the eastern half of the country, and therefore having very little exposure to Mormons and known to FLDS, I have a bizarre fascination with them.

What I got was a quality author acting like he could get away with the most basic of midlife crisis plots by adding a couple extra wives. With four wives and a potential fifth, a mistress, a mob boss, an anarchist bomber and 20-somthing children, you'd think that at least some of the supporting characters would have something in the way of character development. Unfortunately, it was mostly a bumbling, completely unsympathetic putz of a main character and the son cast in his own image with no characterization of the remaining cast.

On the other hand, Udall's use of nuclear experimentation as a foil for interpersonal dynamics worked beautifully (if not a little on the wordplay side of things.)

I came into this book with high expectations. Let's face it - it has probably the best title of any memoir in approximately the history of the universe.Unfortunately, the rest of the book does not live up, particularly. Raskin's epistolary memoir mostly focuses on his scummy, womanizing ways and his desire to make up for them. Somehow, he finds the motivation to make reparations for past misdeeds by writing a series of monologues addressed to Momofuku Ando, the inventor of instant ramen. Why Ando is a question frequently asked but never answered. Similarly, the “fixed my love life” subtitle may be a little oversold: the book seems to be more “How My Imagined Version of the Inventor of Instant Noodles Set Me on the Path to Fixing My Love Life, But I'm Certainly Nowhere Close to Fixed Yet, Because as an Adult Closer to a Midlife Crisis than a Quarterlife One, I'm Counting a Six Month Relationship as a Success.” I mean, I'm just saying...Interspersed with that is a series of anecdotes about Momofuku Ando's life, which are fascinating, but conveyed in a rather dry tone. The best part of the book are Raskin's frequent trips to Japan and his perception and description of the Japanese culture. But honestly, Japan as a comedy of manners has been done before in both fiction and nonfiction before. (e.g. [b:If You Follow Me 6391014 If You Follow Me Malena Watrous http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1278442263s/6391014.jpg 6579433])

I'm usually very deliberate about my book rankings. I think about what I like and what I didn't like and assign and deduct points to come up with a final opinion. The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet is NOT that kind of book. T.S. Spivet gets five stars for the room-feeling of the book. Yes, it deserves them for introducing concepts such as room-feelings, for its unique approach, and for its gutsy nature. Yes, it deserves high recognition for depicting the portrait of the scientist as a young man - the coming of age of one young scientist from a obsessive prodigy who values science above all else into a nuanced adult who seeks to be a part of the world as well as depict it. It is amazing to me that I have never even heard of another book focusing on the development of a scientific mindset within a character in a way that is nuanced and treats science respectfully, rather than a foil for robotic rationalism or an idol for intelligence. Larsen uses every single trope of a conventional coming of age story, which adds to the power.12 is such a perfect age for a child protagonist. Larsen depicts the emergent adulthood of a 12 year old almost perfectly (there are a few stumbles). Like a true tween, T.S. at times acts like an adult and at others acts like a toddler, with very few in between moments. It's rare to capture the true granular nature of coming of age, where childhood falls away chunk-by-chunk and memes of adult life settle in, rather than as a linear progression.But despite all of that, the best thing about T.S. Spivet is simply a ton of fun. We're having a bad week at work. Everyone is cranky. Usually, the worse of a mood I'm in, the less I read (and the more I use pure escapism that doesn't require reflection) But even after long, cranky calls, all I wanted to do was read about T.S. I laughed out loud at points on his reflection on adulthood, science and cross-country travel. I flipped through to find my favorite illustrations. I smiled when he name-checked Paul Ekman (a Duchenne smile, of course.) Pure enjoyment.There are a lot of criticisms that one could level at T.S. Spivet: it is a pretentious novel, built on a schtick. In fact, built on a ton of schticks. It's like someone got a deal on schticks: there's the child protagonist, who is a prodigy, and may also have an autistic spectrum disorder, the maps/illustrations, secret societies, a book-within-a-book, just to name in a few. Luckily, I am a sucker for pretentious novels built on schticks, so it is going to go right next to [b:Special Topics in Calamity Physics 3483 Special Topics in Calamity Physics Marisha Pessl http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1309200115s/3483.jpg 910619] on my shelf. More bitingly, there are several narrative threads in T.S. Spivet that never satisfyingly come together on the level of the plot: the Emma thread, the Mother as a Writer and Mother but Not as a Scientist thread, the Wormhole thread and to be honest, the Layton is Dead thread. They are all tied up from a thematic level, but I would have liked more literal closure.

I have developed an obsession with Lucy Grealy. Two years ago, I found [b:Autobiography of a Face 534255 Autobiography of a Face Lucy Grealy http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175606552s/534255.jpg 95778] in a Goodwill, and picked it up simply because of how cool the title was. And then I got hooked. I think of Lucy almost as someone I know and am friends with. I feel like I know her, and her foibles are therefore half exasperating, but half endearing. Like, there she is, Lucy, being a little self-involved again. So Lucy.So from that context, As Seen on TV is everything I expected. She goes on stream of consciousness asides that wander maybe a little too much, but similarly, that's endearing. Her personality spills out everywhere in the book and that's probably its greatest strength. The essays absolutely feel raw, and in a lot of ways, that makes them more readable. However, I'm less able to gloss over the uneveness of the collection. There are some stellar pieces about a lost brother, about being on TV, about horseback riding, but some completely useless pieces. I felt that way especially about the last few essays, which are completely dry and use a lot of pseudointellectual jargon without saying much of anything. Lucy is lovable for her lack of editing and her closeness to her subject. Anything beyond her creative autobiographical nonfiction just falls flat for me.