What Are You Reading / Reviews - October 2018

[Book Concierge]

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Read any good books lately? We want to know about them.
How about real stinkers? We want to know about those too!


Enter your reading list and/or reviews here. Did you like it? Hate it? Feel lukewarm?

Share your thoughts with us.

Happy reading!

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[Melissa]

Empire of Storms (Throne of Glass #5) by Sarah J. Maas
5 ★

Aelin Galathynius and her court head north to reclaim her throne, but it doesn't go as planned. It seems she is not wanted there. From there she heads south to look for the Lock to the Wyrdkeys. There is so much going on in this book that I don't know where to start. Sarah J. Maas knows how to weave a story. Aelin is a very clever person and the reader is as shocked as the characters in the book when Aelin's plans unfold. Only she know what is needed for the Lock to work and she keeps it to herself to protect the others. The reader learns more about Nehemia and her part in everything and some of Aelin's old allies are back. I did miss Chaol though. Hoping he'll be back in the next book.

[Book Concierge]

Exit West – Mohsin Hamid – 4.5****
What an inventive and interesting way of telling a tale that examines issues of immigration, war, and love. Hamid uses a framework of a political unrest, where outsiders are quickly blamed for all that goes wrong. It’s uncomfortably recognizable and plausible, but also has a mystical / ethereal quality.
LINK to my review

[Book Concierge]

Educated: A Memoir – Tara Westover – 5*****
In this memoir, Westover recalls her childhood and personal journey to become an educated, independent woman. It’s amazing that Westover survived some of the episodes she relates; it’s a testament to her inner strength and determination that she managed to prosper. Her story is fascinating, compelling and inspiring, but there are scenes that left me shaking my head or cringing in fear.
LINK to my review

[James]

Book Concierge wrote: "

Exit West
– Mohsin Hamid – 4.5****
What an inventive and interesting way of telling a tale that examines issues of immigration, war, and love. Hamid uses a frame..."

I loved this novel.

[James]

Richard Rutt, Virtuous Women: Three Classic Korean Novels [1974] 445 pages [e-book]

This is Richard Rutt's translation of three seventeenth century works from Korea, Kim Man-Jung's A Nine Cloud Dream, and the anonymous Queen Inhyun and Chun-hyang. After I read the Nine Cloud Dream in the 1922 Gale translation in August for a Goodreads group, I mentioned in my review that there was a newer version which would be available next year. One of the other members pointed out that there was a third version translated by by Rutt which was available as an e-book on Google play, and that is this book (I had seen a mention of it on Amazon but there it was out of print). I won't repeat my review of A Nine Cloud Dream since I read it so recently, except to say that whether it was a better translation, the more complete introduction, or the fact that I was reading it for the second time, I got more out of it this time, especially with respect to the conflict of the three religions, Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism. I also learned from the introduction that the original was probably written in Chinese, or at any rate all the existing Korean versions seem to be translations of the Chinese version. The Gale translation was in fact based on a Chinese not a Korean version (that isn't mentioned in the introduction to that as far as I can remember) and this was based partly on an older (but more recently discovered) Chinese version with some input from the Korean versions.

The second and shortest of the three works here, Queen Inhyun, is a historical novel, the most literary of several versions of a story that is based on a real queen of the early seventeenth century who was deposed in favor of a favorite concubine but later recalled to the throne. The introduction explains that this was based on a factional struggle between two parties of the aristocracy from different areas of the country, but in the novel it is all personal.

The third work, called Chun-hyang (Spring Fragrance) after the name of the main character (and also known as "the constant wife"), exists in many different versions as well, seemingly all based on an oral tradition; it has also been adapted for operas, films, and many other formats. It is a folklore-type story about a newly married wife who is left alone, tortured by a lust-filled governor, and eventually rescued by the return of her husband. It is also set in the early seventeenth century.

All three novels taken together give a good sample of classic Korean literature and some insight into the mores of the period.





Scott Bembenek, The Cosmic Machine [2017] 360 pages [Kindle]

I read a lot of science popularizations, and this book was quite different from most. While most of the popular books I have read, even the better ones, skim quickly over classical physics and atoms (if they cover this territory at all) to get to the "trendier" subjects of elementary particles, the big bang, and speculations about string theory and multiverses, Bembenek takes just the opposite approach. He is a chemist, and while most of the book could be loosely categorized as "physics", it is physics the way a chemist thinks of it -- most of the book is taken up with classical thermodynamics, the structure of the atom, and the beginnings of quantum theory. Einstein is important here -- for the photoelectric effect, his comparison of light to an ideal gas, and his other contributions to quantum theory; relativity, special or general, is hardly mentioned, and there is no cosmology, no quarks, and no strings. This is not by any means a criticism; the book is a good complement to the others and I learned more than I have from most. The treatment is largely historical.

The one real fault is that the book shifts gears; the first few chapters on basic physics are very simple and I was already composing a review in my head recommending the book as a low-level popularization for beginners and middle-school to high-school students, but once he gets to thermodynamics it becomes a mid- to high-level popularization, which would I think be difficult for anyone without at least a high-school course in physics or chemistry to follow, especially the footnotes. As someone whose major interest in college was the Presocratics, I found his treatment of Greek science a little too traditional; judging from the bibliography, that part of the book was researched mainly in encyclopedias of philosophy. The book could also have benefitted from some rigorous copy-editing as the author is occasionally rather loose with formal grammar; at times it almost gives the impression of having been based on a course or oral lecture. Nevertheless, I would highly recommend the book and although I read it on my Kindle for free I will be buying the print edition for the library where I work.

[Melissa]

Alone (The Generations Trilogy #3) by Scott Sigler
3 ★

Em and the Birthday Children have fought for their planet and just when they think they have won, a new threat arrives. There are more ships headed toward Omeyocan, so they must fight again. Mysteries about the planet are revealed and new allies are made. An interesting conclusion to the trilogy. It wasn't what I was expecting or really what I hoped for. I was expecting more and found myself disappointed by the ending.

[James]

Cho Se-hui, The Dwarf [1978, tr. 2015] 248 pages

A best-selling novel and virtually a classic of modern Korean literature, The Dwarf was originally published as twelve separate stories which were later combined into a novel. It concerns the period of Korean history under President Park Chung Hee, when the country was being transformed from a largely agricultural economy to the industrial, technological country it is now. The forced modernization of the country created extreme class differentiation and class struggles, similar to those in the West during the Industrial Revolution (the parallel is discussed in the novel) as well as those in Jamaica during the fifties and sixties, and Egypt and India at about the same time: I was reminded of Mahfouz's Midaq Alley and Mistry's A Fine Balance. The book is largely about labor struggles, but as in those two novels the advanced style keeps it from being a simplistic "worker's novel" in the sense of "socialist realism." (It's suggested in some reviews of the book that the style was partly to disguise the political criticism in stories written under the repression, but I can't really believe that it wouldn't have been quite apparent to any half-competent censor.)

The first and last stories feature a math teacher talking about Mobius strips and Klein bottles, which establish a sort of symbolic theme of the interior and exterior becoming one, and two disabled persons, Squatlegs and Hunchback. The second story introduces the character of a poor house wife Shin-ae, who hires a dwarf to fix her outdoor faucet so she can get water. We next meet Yun-ho, the adolescent son of a well-off lawyer who is trying to get into the University. This story also introduces the character of his tutor, Chi-sop, who plays a role later in the novel. Through Chi-sop, Yun-ho meets the Dwarf Kim Pul-i (of course a symbol for the "little people", but also developed realistically as a character) and his wife and three children, the Eldest Son Yong-su, the younger brother Yong-ho, and the sister Yong-hui. The incident which begins the plot of the novel is when the slum neighborhood in which the Dwarf lives (ironically named Felicity Precinct of Eden District) is torn down as part of an Urban Renewal Project. Of course, there is much corruption involved and the compensation which the residents receive is not enough to get the apartments they are supposedly entitled to. As a result, the family moves to Ungang, an industrial area of toxic pollution, where the Dwarf dies (unclear whether by accident or suicide, but the latter is strongly suggested) and his three children get jobs in the factories of the Ungang group. This forms the longest story in the novel, "The Dwarf Launches a Ball", which is frequently published separately. (The Wikipedia article on the novel appears to confuse the two.) While the novel shifts among all the characters (it is sometimes difficult to follow who is doing what) the main focus is on the conditions in Ungang and the struggle against management and the complicit company-union, and the story of Yun-ho gets lost. Near the end, one story is about the leader of the Ungang group and his family.



Frits Noske, French Song from Berlioz to Duparc [second ed., 1970] 454 pages

This book is an account of the evolution of the French mélodie from the romance in the eighteen-forties under the influence of Schubert and the German Lied, its gradual emancipation from German models, up to its high point in the songs of Fauré and Duparc. After a general introduction and chapters on the poetry and theories of prosody, it considers eighteen specific composers from Berlioz to Duparc. Some were so minor I didn't see why they were included, while others were less fully treated than it seemed they should have been. The longest section was on Gounod. The academic style, the emphasis on definitions and classifications, and the many unnecessary details make obvious its origin as a doctoral dissertation, but much of the information was interesting.

[Book Concierge]

The Trouble With Goats And Sheep – Joanna Cannon – 3.5***
What an interesting and inventive way to structure this mystery / coming of age novel. Cannon tells the story in dual timeframes (Summer 1976 and December 1967), and with multiple points of view. But in addition to the mystery Cannon gives the reader a coming-of-age story. I loved Grace and Tilly. The girls learn valuable lessons about friendship, responsibility and not being quick to judge.
LINK to my review

[Book Concierge]

Over the Edge – Michael Ghiglieri & Thomas Myers – 2.5**
The subtitle is all the summary anyone needs: Gripping accounts of all known fatal mishaps in the most famous of the World’s Seven Natural Wonders. The chapters are divided by cause: falls from the rim, falls within the canyon, environment (i.e. dehydration), etc. They have a pretty engaging style when they are recounting a specific scenario, but they tend to get preachy about the causes of most of these fatalities. Mostly it’s boring. My husband’s account of his raft trip is much better (read full review).
LINK to my review

[Melissa]

Ice Cold (Rizzoli & Isles #8) by Tess Gerritsen
5 ★

Maura Isles decides to spontaneously go on a ski trip with an old friend she meets up with at a medical conference and it doesn't take long for things to go horribly wrong. Maura finds herself and the 4 other occupants of the vehicle stranded on an unforgiving mountain covered in snow. Their only shelter is a few eerily abandoned cabins in a village called Kingdom Come. The group slowly learns about the occupants of the abandoned cabins through what has been left behind and it looks like they didn't leave willingly.
The story moves very quickly and I was surprised at how easily Jane Rizzoli accepted the fact that Maura was dead. There were too many inconsistencies. I was also pleasantly surprised by how Maura was able to adapt to her circumstances. She never seemed like the outdoorsy type to me. When Rat saves Maura's life, I think he saved more than her life. He really made he think about her life and what she wants. He also saved his own life. Maura became very maternal and I loved that. I loved seeing that side of her.
The ending of the book was very surprising. There is one character that is extremely sketching that I was right about, but not for what I was thinking. It wasn't even close to what I was thinking. I always enjoy the science part of these books and this one is no exception.

[Book Concierge]

Black and Blue – Anna Quindlen – 3***
The abused wife of a New York City detective flees with their son to a new life in a new state with new identities. Quindlen gives the reader a reasonably suspenseful story arc, but I had some problems believing in the characters. I was interested in how it would play out, but I won’t remember this book for long.
LINK to my review

[James]

Patrick Moore, ed., 2007 Yearbook of Astronomy [2006] 309 pages
Patrick Moore and John Mason, edd., Patrick Moore's 2010 Yearbook of Astronomy [2009] 376 pages

The late Patrick Moore (Sir Patrick Alfred Caldwell-Moore), astronomer, television personality, and right-wing eccentric (according to Wikipedia) was the host of the BBC astronomy show The Sky at Night for over fifty years, from its beginning in 1957 to his death in 2012, and the British equivalent (and forerunner) of such television science-popularizers as Carl Sagan and Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Among the spin-offs of the show was this series of yearbooks of astronomy. Designed for amateur astronomers, most of the books are given over to star charts and descriptions of the positions of the planets and other features of interest to people with small telescopes; these aspects are of course obsolete after the year for which they are intended, which is why these books are now in my garage rather than the library's collection. They also contain other items of interest though; the descriptions of the planets and constellations often contain interesting facts, and there is a section of general articles on astronomy, both recent discoveries and the history of astronomy (with an accent on telescopes and equipment), which are the reason I read them. Not the most important books around, but fun to read and quick to get through, and more up to date than most of the books I have on astronomy.

[James]

Patrick Moore, The Sky at Night: Stories about astronomy based on recent episodes of the longest-running TV show in history [#13, 2010] 169 pages

Another series based on the BBC program The Sky at Night; from the Introduction it appears this is the 13th edition, although that is not stated anywhere else in the book, and this is the only one the library has. It seems that the series is published about every three years, and contains short (3-4 page) chapters based on each of the monthly shows; there are 37 chapters, and they provide a snapshot of the state of astronomy during the period 2006-2008 (I'm not sure why there is such a delay in publishing them.)

While the content is interesting, there is a major problem with the book, which is why I won't be asking the library to buy the latest edition as I had thought I might. There are at least three or four major sense-affecting typos on every page of this book: wrong words, words and parts of sentences omitted, or duplicated, words out of order, "unimportant" words like "no" and "not" omitted reversing the meaning, and so forth, not counting the minor errors such as sentences broken into fragments, omission of virtually all commas, etc. Astronomers study "comic phenomena". Space probes fire their "retro-pockets" (some kind of fashion statement?) In some cases it was difficult to follow what was being said, although there were only three or four sentences I couldn't manage to decipher at all. Perhaps the worst problem was with the numbers, which might escape notice: the distance to a distant galaxy is 16 million miles (less than a fifth of the distance to the sun!) -- probably the correct figure is 16 million trillion; the Keck telescopes are "100 meters"(!) while the larger Very Large Telescope in the Atacama Desert is "8 meters" (correct figures are 10 meters and 18 meters) and Neil Armstrong walked on the moon in July, 1959! This is the sort of thing I would expect from a free e-book on the Internet, not an overpriced print book from Springer.

[Book Concierge]

The Cider House Rules – John Irving – 4****
I love Irving’s writing, and don’t know why this one languished on my TBR for so long. What I really like about the novel is how the characters are portrayed. The reader gets a clear idea of how Dr Larch came to his decision. The reader also clearly understands why Homer makes a different decision, how he struggles to love this man who is like a father to him, once he makes that decision. And the reader watches the painful separation that all parents face when they send their offspring out into the world to make their own way. How a parent’s hopes and dreams may not always be embraced by that child.
LINK to my review

[Melissa]

The President is Missing by James Patterson and Bill Clinton
4 ★

As the president is being investigated for possibly making deals with a terrorist and impeachment looms in front of him, a new problem arises. An act of cyberterrorism that would destroy the US. The president goes missing during this in order to deal with it quietly and to figure out who the traitor in the White House is.
I enjoyed this book a great deal, even though the possibility of it happening is very real and very scary. It is extremely fast paced ordeal over the course of 3 days and so much happens that some may have to take notes. I did like how the chapters alternate between certain characters. It makes the story flow easier. I did find some of the story line a bit unrealistic, but with Bill Clinton as a co-writer I would hope that the presidential parts are at least close. There are also a few twists that caught me off guard, but in a good way. Surprises that the reader doesn't see coming are always good in my opinion. There are great characters in the book, even some of the bad guys are likable. Especially Bach, the assassin. I found myself feeling sorry for her and her circumstances.
I found the best part of the book was the speech the president gives at the end. It was extremely well written.

[Melissa]

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
4 ★

Eleanor and Theodora both experienced supernatural events in their pasts, so Dr. Montague has asked them to join him at Hill House for an experiment. He is eager to write a book about a true haunting. Joining them is the future owner of Hill House, Luke, who will inherit it one day. What starts off as a fun adventure for Eleanor, the first she has ever had, soon turns deadly.
I enjoyed the book and the mind games the house played on Eleanor, but I was a bit disappointed by the lack of true suspense. I guess that happens sometimes when you watch the movie first. Anyway, the book takes place over the course of a week and much happens. The house seems to focus on Eleanor. I feel as if the house wasn't so much haunted by ghosts, but possessed as a whole and it messes with Eleanor's mind and makes her see and hear things that aren't there. I wasn't a fan of Theodora either. She came across as fake and not really a true friend to Eleanor.
Overall, it was a fun, quick read that I'm glad I finally got to. I have always enjoyed Shirley Jackson's writing and this is no exception.

[James]

Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye [1970] 224 pages [Kindle]

The Bluest Eye is a realistic depiction of the life of Black women (probably soon after World War II) in a small city (Lorraine, Ohio.) The novel is ostensibly an autobiography of the narrator, Claudia, and her sister Frieda, over the period of a year (the book is divided into four chapters titled with the four seasons) but in fact is actually focused on her slightly older friend Pecola Breedlove. What Morrison is showing is the how forces of racial and sex discrimination act to destroy the self-esteem of these young women. Although racism certainly plays a role, the book is actually at least as concerned with feminist issues; the main problem is that Pecola is, or at least is convinced she is, "ugly". The first time she is introduced into the narrative, we see her and Frieda admiring a picture of the beautiful little white girl, Shirley Temple, and discussing other white symbols of beauty. The narrator is disgusted with this; she hates her white dolls, and there is a fairly long interior monologue about the fact that she has nothing in common with them. She feels no attraction to the idea of taking care of a white baby. Later, there is an episode where her mother disregards her and her sister while tenderly comforting a whiny white girl, the daughter of her employer. The title of the novel comes from Pecola's prayer to have blue eyes, so she would be beautiful like the white girls.

This is Morrison's first novel, I believe, and it has some faults which I attribute to that. The book is narrated by Claudia, but has third person omniscient sections, including flashbacks to the history of Pecola's parents; I don't think this is a deliberate technique of disorientation, as it was in the last novel I reviewed (Cho Se-hui's The Dwarf) but rather due to a lack of experience in writing. While the book is very literary and poetic, Morrison sometimes seems to be trying too hard, as at the beginning of the chapters. Nevertheless, the effect is really powerful and I am looking forward to reading several of her other novels this year (the goal is The Beloved which is the book for the Lehi Library Book Club in February.)

[Book Concierge]

The Handsome Man’s Deluxe Cafe – Alexander McCall Smith– 3***
Book # 15 in the popular No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series has the ladies investigating a case of amnesia. In the meantime, Mma Grace Makutsi has decided to open a new restaurant. I love this series. The cases the agency works on are less important in this series than the relationships between the characters. I feel like I’m spending time with old friends when I open one of these books and become immersed in their lives. They are my reading comfort food.
LINK to my review

[James]

Terry Pratchett, Small Gods [1992] 272 pages

The thirteenth book in the Discworld series -- I skipped 9-12 -- and a stand-alone. It is the best of the series so far. It is a satire on religion, featuring the Great God Om in the form of a tortoise and his conflict with the Church he allegedly founded through a series of prophets, who actually (surprise!) made up their prophecies. He teams up with a novice brother named Brutha, who turns out to be the only person in Omnia who actually believes in him as opposed to believing in the Church (and this is the most accurate part of the satire) to combat the "Quisition" led by the evil Deacon Vorbis. The problem with the novel is that it is based too much on the mediaeval/early modern Catholic Church, which has little relevance today; Protestants and modern Catholics have much more sophisticated means of propaganda and control than actual force and torture, which would be a better (because less easy) target for satire. There are some interesting reversals -- the Church insists on the superstitious idea that the world is a sphere rotating around the Sun, while the scientific opposition finds increasing evidence that it is a flat disc carried on the back of four elephants on the back of a giant turtle. (This is Discworld, after all.) The parody of the Ephebean (i.e. Greek) philosophers certainly misses its mark and seems rather juvenile, which is a minus for the book. After reading this, I can somewhat understand why the series has such a following, which was a mystery to me after the first eight. I have one more available from the library (#18, Soul Music) before I get to #20, Hogfather which is the library book club reading for December. I may read others if I run into them by chance, but I won't be seeking them out as a series.



Yi Sang, The Wings [tr 2001] 85 pages

The MA thesis on surrealism in The Dwarf by Forsyth which I read last week mentioned this as one of the first important modern works of Korean literature and an example of Korean surrealism; it is certainly both. The free pdf version I read, in the Portable Library of Korean Literature, actually contained two other short stories by Yi Sang as well as this novella, "Encounters and Departures" and "Deathly Child." All three works, written in the 1930's, are much more closely related to the surrealist tradition than the novel by Cho. They all deal with a narrator (probably based on Yi Sang himself) and his relationship with his wife; traditional Korean gender roles are reversed in that the wife works and supports the idle husband (and in the novella "Wings" he is essentially enclosed in the "inner room" which is where the wife is kept secluded in the traditional home). The distinction between the outside "real" world and the imaginary world in the mind of the narrator is blurred as it is in European surrealist works, and the language is filled with absurd metaphors and comparisons. Yi Sang died at the age of 27 of tuberculosis after a period of imprisonment for "thought crimes" against the Japanese colonial government; a major Korean literary prize is named for him.

[Book Concierge]

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe – Fannie Flagg – 5*****
This is actually the third time I’ve read this book and I love just as much now as I did the first time. Flagg does a marvelous job of developing these characters, and the reader feels the love between them. I was hooked from the beginning and engaged throughout.
LINK to my review

[Melissa]

The Journals of Eleanor Druse by Eleanor Druse
3 ★

An interesting book with a few spooky parts. It's a quick read and the time line works well. Eleanor Druse finds out much about herself in these journals. Lost memories that might explain her seizures. I was disappointed that her stay as a child at Kingdom Hospital wasn't explored more and that the identity of the child is not revealed. I found the ending to be quite sudden with no real conclusion. It leaves the reader with so many questions.

[Book Concierge]

How to Fall In Love With a Man Who Lives In a Bush – Emmy Abrahamson – 3***
Julia is a Swede living in Austria where she teaches English at Berlitz. One day, while waiting on a park bench she meets a smelly, dirty homeless man, Ben. This was a quick, fast read and mildly entertaining. I shook my head at the chances Julia took, but recognized what she saw in Ben. He was clearly intelligent, caring, giving and willing to work at the relationship. She, on the other hand, was pretty closed off to any change in routine, and visibly embarrassed by him. All told it’s a decent chick-lit, new-adult romance.
LINK to my review

[Book Concierge]

50% Off Murder – Josie Belle – 3***
A typical cozy mystery where the lead amateur sleuth just cannot keep her nose out of police business, despite specific warnings to steer clear. There are plenty of suspects, including Maggie’s old high-school nemesis. I thought this was a bit formulaic, but maybe I’ve been reading too many cozies lately. The old rivalry with Summer Phillips irritated me no end; they’re 40 years old for heaven’s sake and they are STILL hashing out high school drama?! I figured out the culprit long before Maggie or Sheriff Sam Collins caught on. Still it was a fun, fast read and if another book in the series fits a challenge task, I’ll read it.
LINK to my review

[James]

Frederick Copleston, Contemporary Philosophy: Studies of Logical Positivism and Existentialism [1956; rev. ed. 1972] 230 pages

I'm not sure whether these are the essays which were republished by one reprint house as the tenth volume of his History of Philosophy, but it would be understandable if they were; they begin about where the seventh, eighth and ninth volumes end and discuss many of the major figures up to the date it was written (the revision only affected the first chapter, and it doesn't so much add any new figures as look at the philosophers he treats with a bit more hindsight.) The restriction to the logical positivists (with a good deal of discussion of the analytic tradition, if only to distinguish them) and the existentialists (in a broad sense of the term) doesn't matter so much; he wouldn't have covered the Marxist tradition anyway, and I'm not really interested in the neo-Thomists -- who else really was around in the 1950s?

However, it is a very different kind of book. Where the History was primarily descriptive, and very scholarly with two and three footnotes per page and a dozen pages of bibliography (this book has no bibliography, and the few footnotes are mainly in the rewritten first chapter), these studies -- the ones of existentialism were a course of lectures -- are basically polemical, trying to show what is wrong with those tendencies from Father Copleston's Catholic perspective. Of course there is nothing wrong with that, and he does try to approach them honestly on their own terms without presupposing Catholic theology; he succeeds in showing many of the weaknesses of those traditions, and if he isn't convincing in his defense of the traditional metaphysics and belief in God, it's because he's defending a view that isn't really defensible -- his arguments are probably the most intelligent framing of the case for religion I've read for a long while. He does have an annoying habit of disclaiming responsibility for his own criticisms -- it's almost comic the way he attributes many of them to "some Marxists"! -- and as in volume 9 of the history he has a particular animus against Sartre.

The chapters on logical positivism are general and treat the movement as a whole, without referring to any specific philosophers except (occasionally) Carnap, while the chapters on existentialism are focused on individuals -- Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Jaspers, Marcel, Sartre and Camus.

[Book Concierge]

Before We Were Yours – Lisa Wingate – 3.5***
This historical novel is based on a shameful episode in Tennessee history, when babies were sold for profit and powerful people looked the other way. I was engaged and interested from the beginning, but … Of the two time lines I much preferred the historical story arc set in Depression-era Tennessee. I did not care for the contemporary story arc featuring Avery and her uncertain / conflicting love interests. Most of the characters seemed to come straight from central casting. Still, our F2F book group had a lively discussion.
LINK to my review

[Book Concierge]

The Monster of Florence – Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi – 3.5***
In the early 1980s the residents of Tuscany were terrorized by a serial killer every bit as brutal as Jack the Ripper. Known as the Monster of Florence, the psychopath was never caught. Preston and Spezi put their journalism skills to the test, and for their troubles, became the focus of criminal investigation themselves. There are some elements of the book that rival the best true-crime books, but in the end I was left feeling ‘meh.’
LINK to my review

[Book Concierge]

I, Robot – Isaac Asimov – 4****
I’ve never been a great fan of science fiction but this book has been on my tbr for ages. The thread that weaves the chapters together is Susan Calvin, PhD – a specialist in “Robopsychology.” As the narrator relates Dr Calvin’s fifty years of experiences in the field, the reader gets a sense of the slippery slope humanity has embarked on by relying more and more on these highly intelligent machines. It’s fascinating, frightening, thrilling and thought-provoking.
LINK to my review

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Orhan’s Inheritance – Aline Ohanesian – 3.5***
The novel moves back and forth between 1990s and the last days of the Ottoman empire. There are not a lot of fiction books about World War I (as compared to WW II), and only a small number that deal with the Armenian genocide. So, this is an interesting and informative subject on which to focus. What people had to do to survive and how the trauma affected them forms the basis for a compelling story. It made me wonder when, or whether, one can ever let go of past wrongs. Must hate and rancor pass from generation to generation because one’s grandfather hurt the other’s grandfather?
LINK to my review

[Book Concierge]

Mennonite In a Little Black Dress – Rhoda Janzen – 3***
The subtitle is: A Memoir Of Going Home. I’m not sure what I was expecting. One the one hand, Janzen is able to look at her life and the choices she made honestly and without (much) regret. She seems to genuinely like and cherish her family, and I really loved the relationship she had with her mother. On the other hand, I’m not so sure Janzen was truly over her husband’s having left for a guy he met on Gay.com. I enjoyed much of it and found her sense of humor about her own situation refreshing, but I didn’t love it.
LINK to my review

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Dark of the Moon – John Sanders – 3.5***
Book One in a new series featuring Virgil Flowers of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension; he only works “the hard stuff.” Sandford crafts a tight plot with several twists and turns, plenty of suspects, a little love interest, and a skilled, likeable lead detective. I like the way Flowers pieces together the puzzle. He’s deliberate and cautious, but aggressive when questioning a reluctant witness. He’s an astute observer and is careful when drawing conclusions. It certainly kept me guessing right up to the reveal.
LINK to my review

[James]

Three last books for October, on Halloween . . .

Montague Summers, The Werewolf in Lore and Legend [1933] 307 pages

The Werewolf, retitled by Dover for the reprint, follows on from the author's two works on vampires which I read a few Halloweens ago, also both retitled by Dover to emphasize "lore and legend", which is misleading -- Summers believed in the reality of both vampires and werewolves, as well as witchcraft and all the more arcane aspects of mediaeval Catholic theology (he claimed to be a Catholic priest, which has been disputed, especially by the Catholic Church). This book contains everything you would ever want (or not want) to know about werewolves and related shape-shifters in Europe from antiquity to the early twentieth century; the literary tradition of werewolves which is the subject of the final chapter is of course outdated since vampires and werewolves have taken over Young Adult and other novels and films in recent years (the Lehi Library has 260 books on werewolves and almost 1200 on vampires.)

I occasionally look up a word in a foreign language, but it has been a long time since an English word has sent me to the dictionary -- probably since the last time I read Montague Summers. I had to look up five words by page two of this book -- mournival, prolusions, zetetic, goetic, and veaking (which wasn't in any dictionary I could find). That, plus the untranslated quotations in Greek (ancient and modern), Latin, German and French, give an idea of his style; he compensates for the unusual subject matter with all the weight of apparent scholarship. Apparent -- of course he's a crank, with no critical faculty whatever, who believes every hearsay report he finds, twists quotations, and the book wanders about with digressions such as a long discussion of whether it is a sin to destroy the witches' equipment (which implies that the equipment is effective in itself, rather than through the intervention of demons), lamenting that witches and werewolves are no longer burned at the stake, and similar ideas. This would be a dangerous book if anyone believed it, but it does give a wealth of material on occult beliefs.


Terry Pratchett, Soul Music: A Novel of Discworld [1995] 373 pages

Rock music -- er, Music with Rocks In -- comes to the Discworld, and Death's granddaughter Susan has to do something about it, in this novel in the subseries about Death, the last I will be reading before Hogsfather in the same subseries. Not, as some of the blurbs imply, a satire, but rather a comic parody, this is a very funny book, full of allusions to the history of popular music and popular culture.

George Johnson, Miss Leavitt's Stars: The Untold Story of the Woman Who Discovered How to Measure the Universe [2005] 162 pages

Not exactly a biography, because very little is known about her, but a good nontechnical account of the discovery of Cepheid variables and their use as "standard candles" to measure the size of the Universe. Interesting as history, although the science is already very outdated after fourteen years. I will be reading a new book on the same subject in November.