false 7 58 57 true 5731008 read 1 true 1595639 currently-reading 0 true 1595638 to-read http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/33004471 to: And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic (Paperback) by Randy Shilts
If you don't already hate Reagan, this book will do the trick. Actually, it will crush a lot of faith that you might have in human kind in general. It's the story of the first years of the AIDS epidemic, mostly in America, and how human nature conspired again and again against science, common sense and humanity.

A massive and impressive piece of investigative journalism, the book reads quickly as an almost day-by-day account of the epidemic.

No one escapes blame: from the homosexual community infighting for appearances to the blood industry obsessed with money to the political leadership that failed not only the 12,000 people who die within the span of the book's story, but the millions who have died since.

A few heroes do emerge: Don Francis and Selma Dritz being my favorites. I also highly recommend the HBO movie based on the book. Read this and dream what might have been if Ted Kennedy had gotten the nomination. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/33003829 to: One Hundred Years of Solitude (Hardcover) by Gabriel García Márquez
By the end of the hundred years, I really liked this book. Unfortunately, I had a very hard time getting into it at first. First of all, I couldn't keep track of the characters (since pretty much every one has the same name and most of them are inbred with each other). The magical realism annoyed me, I've seen it employed in other books better (Leslie Marmon Silko comes to mind). Here, it felt gratuitous, which is odd, because I think Marquez may have invented it within the modern novel. I often wondered if I just got a bad translation (with lines like, "She was so beautiful, they called Remedios the Beauty..."). But by the end, in the last 50 pages or so, the lyrical quality of the writing came through. I liked watching the family slip back into dust and oblivion with the town, almost as if it had never happened. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/33003419 to: Oscar Wilde (Paperback) by Richard Ellmann
As usual, Ellmann produces the definitive biographical work, this time on Ireland's witty, outrageous, doomed Oscar Wilde. You can expect plenty of detail, culled from letters, diaries, first-hand accounts etc. What's sad is, if you've read his Joyce biography, it's hard to believe that THIS is the guy who ends up in prison for "unnatural acts". What comes across, through all the bon mots, is Wilde's generosity and good nature. You feel twice as bad for him for watching his friends abandon him after he's been so good to them. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/33003129 to: Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists (Hardcover) by James Geary
A great reference organized in an unusual way. Instead of grouping these aphorisms by topic, Geary creates general categories (artists and poets, for example) and then provides multiple aphorisms for each person listed within the category. He also note recurring themes, although sometimes these seem to be a bit of a stretch.

I found it most useful to read through the book cover to cover, marking my favorites. The biographical snippets are interesting, too. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/17375666 to: The Devil and Miss Prym: A Novel of Temptation (Hardcover) by Paulo Coelho
A modern fairy tale in which a young woman is given the opportunity of escaping her small-town existence at the expense of the lives of the townsfolk themselves. Unremarkable in style and content. The only question it raised for me was, if people have been outsmarting the devil since at least Daniel Webster, why does he keep coming back to match wits with us? ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/22477811 to: The Lost Life of Eva Braun (Hardcover) by Angela Lambert
I thought I should know more about the woman my car is named after, so I picked up this biography. It's done in a fairly unique way, since the author's mother was born at the same time and very near to the same place as the subject. So it covers a lot of ground about what it meant to be a German woman at this time, and I think makes some interesting points about what these women — even Eva Braun — could have known or done about the Holocaust that was happening all around them. It doesn't absolve these women of blame, but it puts them in some context, and it certainly makes one wonder what one would do in a similar situation.

I found it fascinating how the Nazis struck out at their own weaknesses — Goebbels club foot, Hitler's inbred family — by persecuting people for their infirmities, among other things. Freud would have had a hey day.

Amid all this was Eva — eager to please, fatally in love with a charismatic, but truly psychotic, man. There's a tragic fatalism to her story, as if from almost the beginning, she was resigning herself toward and unhappy end, although I don't think anyone could have predicted the horror that lay ahead.

The book reads quickly and the device of pairing Eva's story with that of the author's mother is unique. I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a different perspective on Germany during the war. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/22478249 to: The Grapes of Wrath (Paperback) by John Steinbeck
Let me start by saying I wasn't the biggest Steinbeck fan coming into this. His writing had always felt a little cold to me. However, I did really enjoy this book and I think, being longer than some of his other work, he had the chance to move a little deeper into his characters, bringing them better to life and painting some nice pictures. His description of coming into California after the trek across dust bowl and desert was particularly vivid.

The women in this book are the silent sufferers, and I can't help but feel that there was a parallel meant between the rape of the land and the abuse of so many of the female characters in this story. But in the end, it's a man's tale and a man's world. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/22477926 to: Judgment of Paris: California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting That Revolutionized Wine (Paperback) by George M. Taber
The true story of the 1976 blind tasting in Paris that put California on the wine map. It's an interesting history for oenophiles, recounting the stories of the wineries that moved away from producing sugary zinfandels and dessert wines in favor of Burgundian cabs and chardonnays. It drags on a bit long in some places, but otherwise an easy read. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/22477836 to: Click (Hardcover) by Linda Sue Park
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