onebookeveryweek

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Title: Morning Star

Author: Pierce Brown

Page Count: 518

Keeping in line with my efforts to finish up series.... I finally finished up the Red Rising trilogy!  It’s been a while since I read the second one, so parts of this were a bit confusing, but that’s my own fault.  It’s still deeply violent, with a lot of issues of trust and betrayal.  It felt as though the very end was a little rushed, as the build-up went on for a long time and then the final climax seemed to be over fairly quickly.  But overall, I was satisfied with the end of the series.  I think in reality, it would take a long time for any semblance of society to rebuild after all that, though.  

Sometimes, that’s what I think about in these dystopia books.  Sure, it might be difficult to tear down the oppressive society you find yourself in, but how much harder is it to build up the one you ultimately want?  How long does it take before you finally reach your dreams?  How many decades do you spend working on policies and budgets, city planning and economics, before you create something that actually works?  It’s easy to glorify a revolution, but no one wants to think about what comes next.

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Title: A Man Called Ove

Author: Fredrik Backman

Page Count: 337

Emmy’s been telling me to read this book for ages.  It’s a Swedish book that has a similar story to Up.  A grumpy old man loses his wife, and has to develop a sense of community to find his purpose again.  It was beautiful, emotional, and well-written.  Definitely worth a read.

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Title: A Court of Wings and Ruin

Author: Sarah J. Maas

Page Count: 699

Fun fact, I accidentally preordered this book twice.  Oops.  Nevertheless, I was excited to read the third book in Maas’s series.

The beginning is Feyre conspiring and setting things up, which is awesome.  Then there’s a lot of preparation for conflict, followed by the conflict itself.  Overall, I enjoyed it, although I was disappointed by how she dealt with Amren at the end.  I loved Nesta, and I loved the creature under the library.  I also appreciated the allusion to Swan Lake with Vassa.  She’s said that she’ll be writing other books about this world, although it seems as though we’ve pretty much wrapped up everything with these characters.  I think it was a good way to wrap it all up.

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Title: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Author: Rebecca Skloot

Page Count: 328

I think this is the best nonfiction book I read so far this year.  I knew nothing about HeLa cells when I started, although it’s clear they’ve been important to our medical history.  They’re cells that were “immortal,” and continued to reproduce in test tubes, unlike many other cells that scientists tried to cultivate at the time.  This made them the ideal subject for research, and led to HeLa cells being used to create vaccines for polio and research AIDS, cancer, the effects of no gravity, radiation, and so much more.

But who provided the cells for HeLa?  Or rather, who did scientists take HeLa cells from?

Henrietta Lacks, a poor black woman in Baltimore.  This book is one part her life, one part her family’s struggle for truth, and one part a history of ethics in medicine.  Or perhaps I should say the lack of ethics in medicine.

During my psychology classes for my major, we discussed a number of dubious studies.  The most famous, of course, is the Stanford Prison Experiment, where Zimbardo randomly selected healthy, college age men as “prisoners” and “guards” and watched the fallout, calling off the experiment after a few days.  Lesser known ethical concerns arise with baby Albert, a nine-month-old classically conditioned to fear white rats and other fluffy animals, and Milgram’s famous obedience study, which was before debriefs were mandatory and some of the participants left thinking they had actually killed someone.

As far as medical studies go, the most well-known is of course the Tuskegee syphilis study, where scientists studied black men who had contracted the disease instead of treating them so that they could “watch the disease play out.”  I learned about a number of other ethically terrible studies in this book, including one where a doctor injected his patients with cancer cells.  You know, as one does.  

I found the whole thing fascinating.  When I did research for my university, I had to go through the ethics board, and I remember the experience being time consuming and bureaucratic.  I was irritated by the whole thing.  But when I look back at it, the fact that the ethics board exists is so important, and I respect what they’re doing for the benefit of science as a whole.

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Title: One Day We’ll All Be Dead And None Of This Will Matter

Author: Scaachi Koul

Page Count: 237

And the award for “Longest Title” goes to....

This was a Book of the Month pick, and it features a series of essays about growing up as a first-generation Indian immigrant in Canada.  I found Scaachi’s voice to be interesting and likeable, but I think I was imagining this as more humorous when I ordered it.  It was funny, but it also examines identity, rape culture, and other heavy topics in the context of her life.  In general, I appreciated it as a look into her life, and found it to be a relatively quick read.

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Title: The Girl Before

Author: JP Delaney

Page Count: 326

Well, you can file this one under “Great Concept, Poorly Executed.”

Here’s the concept: two women who’ve experienced trauma find themselves gravitating toward the ultimate smart apartment.  One is “then” and one is “now,” and the woman currently living there must figure out what happened to the previous tenant.

Here’s the execution: a controlling and perfectionist guy named Edward, use of the word “daddy” in sexual situations, a reference to “human sperm sacs” (can I go vomit yet), and almost nothing about the apartment itself, which I thought was the strongest idea in the whole thing.

When I read the description, I thought it was going to be a much better book.  The ending was alright, and if it hadn’t been for some of the squicky sex stuff earlier, I might have given it a slightly more favorable review.  I didn’t sign up for a B-list Fifty Shades of Grey, which for the record I have read and I don’t remember any “daddy, yes” lines in there.  Seriously, gross.  I liked the character before the author introduced that bullshit in there.  I just wanted a thriller with a smart apartment.  I was imagining sort of a murderous version of the movie Her, which I think would be a great idea.  @ Stephen King?  Please help me out here.

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Title: Reading Lolita In Tehran

Author: Azar Nafisi

Page Count: 343

I’ll be perfectly honest, I didn’t know much about the Iranian Revolution.  I knew there was a period of instability in the 90s, and I knew some of their laws, but I never knew what it was actually like for women there.  Having now read this, it sounds awful.

This book is part memoir and part literary analysis.  Some of the commenters on goodreads said that they thought that it should have come with a reading list, and I agree that portions probably are more enjoyable having read the book.  She analyzes Pride and Prejudice, The Great Gatsby, and Lolita, as well as Daisy Miller, which was the only one of the four I hadn’t read.  She speaks of these novels as the foundation of her teaching, both when she was teaching literature at the universities there and when she started an unofficial book club/literature class for promising young women who liked to learn for the sake of learning.  She tells bits and pieces of their stories as well as her own, and it’s quite compelling.  I really felt for these women, who were growing up oppressed and didn’t have all the opportunities they should have.  I would definitely recommend it.

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Title: Drums of Autumn

Author: Diana Gabaldon

Page Count: 880

Halfway through the Outlander series!  I apologize for the terrible picture.

We’re in the U.S. now, which was confusing since I’ve always associated this series with Scotland.  I maintain my view that wanting to go this far into the past sounds insane.  In general, I liked this book, although it was a little slow to get going.  I liked the arguments between what was considered acceptable back then versus their modern views (1970s), but overall it seemed like if they had just been more open to communication/less naïve, a great deal of the conflict at the end would have been resolved without nearly the same level of difficulty....

[onebookeveryweek]

Title: The Godfather

Author: Mario Puzo

Page Count: 568

So, I’ve never actually seen these movies.... but after reading this book, I really want to!  I finally understand so many references (the “you come to me on this, the day of my daughter’s wedding” one from Zootopia, the horse scene, Fredo as referenced in The IT Crowd, etc).

The book was great.  It follows the Corleone family through ebbs and flows of power.  I found myself rooting for them at times, which was a weird position to be in for someone who wanted to be a prosecutor at one point.  The book examines family connections, morality, and delves right into the nefarious world of organized crime.  I found it gripping from the very beginning.

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Title: First They Killed My Father

Author: Loung Ung

Page Count: 238

This was this month’s choice for the biography/memoir category.  It’s all about the Khmer Rouge taking over Cambodia.  Full disclosure, I know very little about Cambodian history, and had no idea that the regime was so violent until I was standing in the Holocaust Museum in DC, looking at photos of dead bodies from this genocide.

Loung was a young child when this began, and her perceptions of what’s going on reflect that.  She believes that they’ll be able to go home and that everything will be normal again at first.  As time passes, she describes lying about her family’s background, difficult manual labor, malnutrition, starvation, attempted rape, and many other awful experiences.  It was eye opening, and made me interested to learn more about the transition to communism in Southeast Asia.  On the other hand, knowing that Cambodia is now a huge tourist hotspot and they’ve turned the country around is somewhat comforting, and gives me hope about many of the dangerous regimes out there currently.

[onebookeveryweek]

April 2017

Total Books Read: 16

Total Pages Read: 6029

Other Accomplishments: Volunteered at the ballet, chose our next book for book club, cleaned the apartment well enough that my parents were impressed when they visited, ordered my train ticket for Japan.

[onebookeveryweek]

Title: Bad Feminist

Author: Roxane Gay

Page Count: 318

This is a collection of essays.  Some deal with her life, such as her experiences as a professor or her participation in competitive Scrabble tournaments.  Let me tell you, after that essay I felt like mock trial was way less nerdy....although I greatly enjoyed her anecdotes of being a professor.  Then another portion was essays about politics and social issues, and the third category was her analyses on pop culture based on race and gender.  The pop culture portions were thought-provoking if I was familiar with whatever she was talking about, since I could reflect and then decide for myself on whether I agreed with her (which I didn’t always).  But if it was something I hadn’t watched, it was a lot less engaging, which I guess is my main complaint for it.  There was a long chapter on Tyler Perry, and another on the television show Girls, and I found myself skimming over portions of the chapter because I had no idea what she was talking about.

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Title: A Moveable Feast

Author: Ernest Hemingway

Page Count: 236

This was my first foray into reading Hemingway, and I chose it because I wanted to start with his work about Paris.  I must say, I’m not crazy about his writing style.  I don’t have a problem with simpler language, but it felt like an endless series of run on sentences.  Anyway.  My favorite parts were probably his anecdotes about his time with Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.  And of course, I love Paris more than any other city in the world, so I enjoyed the descriptions of that.  I may still check out The Sun Also Rises at some point.  They sold that literally everywhere when I was in Pamplona, and after that, I’m a little curious.

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Title: I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

Author: Maya Angelou

Page Count: 289

Like many of the books on my list of classics, this is one I’ve heard about for years and never read.  It details Maya Angelou’s childhood, growing up in poverty in Arkansas.  It seems like a terribly challenging life, with the rampant racism and challenges in every aspect of life.  When I looked at it on Goodreads, there was a lively discussion of whether to allow high schoolers to read it due to the rape scene, especially considering her youth during that experience and the graphic way she discusses it.  I feel like that’s important to be aware of, not that it would have stopped me from reading it in high school.

The ending felt fairly abrupt to me.  While most of it was fairly reflective, the last chapter had a lot happening and then no real wrap up.  Overall, though, she lived a pretty interesting life, and I have a lot of respect for her ability to get past a lot of the challenges in her youth.

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Title: How Google Works

Author: Eric Schmidt & Jonathan Rosenberg

Page Count: 260

I got this from my work library.  I knew we modeled ourselves after Google in a number of ways, since one of our top execs came from there, but I never realized that we pretty much took their entire set of values and cultural models and reproduced it.  Snippets and OKRs come from Google, as does our entire set of values on recruiting, telecommuting, and transparency.  It was bizarre to realize how deep those values ran in our organization, and to see that those had come from Google.  Very informative.

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Title: The Bourne Identity

Author: Robert Ludlum

Page Count: 599

I saw the movies a long time ago, and I believe they were my first introduction to Matt Damon as an actor.  So when I saw the book at the library, I was interested in checking the series out.

It really is a great concept.  A man with amnesia, who has a set of mysterious and deadly skills and the numbers to a Swiss bank account on microfilm, and who is hunted across Europe by a renowned assassin.  I think it was perhaps a bit long, though.  I feel like the story lagged on occasion, but overall it was original and interesting.

The main problem I had with it was the character of Marie, who I felt was totally unrealistic.  You meet this guy, who kidnaps you and almost gets you killed, and then he saves you once, and suddenly you’re in love with him?  So you help him commit felonies and stay with him through immense danger?  Literally what?  Did you have nothing going on for you in your normal life?  I spent a good portion of the book being very confused by her actions.

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Title: Revival

Author: Stephen King

Page Count: 403

As I’ve probably mentioned here before, I love Stephen King’s writing.  As in, I’ve read the vast majority of his work.  So of course I couldn’t miss the chance to read Revival.

It’s a distinctly creepy concept.  The preacher, obsessed with lightening and electricity.  The terrible loss that makes him a bit unhinged.  And his subsequent experiments with strangers, who come to him in their times of need.  I think King does a great job with the characterizations.  For obvious reasons, he can write a compelling recovering addict, and the conman personality was convincing as well.  The ending was an eerie look at that possibility, and was a mental image that has continued to stick with me beyond finishing the book.  Which, in this case, isn’t great, because it’s not exactly pleasant, but so it goes.  Much shorter than most of his books, and I enjoyed it overall.