Five Stars

“Tears. I’m not going to say whether they are tears of joy or sadness, but just know. Tears.”

I said that to my husband about five minutes ago, when I finished this fucking fantastic novel. I loved it. I started it last night around 7:30. I finished it five minutes ago. During that time I slept, worked a nine-hour day, and read this book.

I don’t really read science fiction. And I don’t even know if that’s how I’d categorize this book. Yes, it is fiction, and yes, it is all about the science. And it is set some days in the future, enough days that we can already be sending a third mission to mars. But it’s not, I guess, how I pictured science fiction could be.

The Martian is the tale of Mark Watney. He was left behind when the other five members of his crew had to make an emergency evacuation from Mars. They thought he was dead. But he’s not. The story is mostly told from his entries into a computer log. The first lines of the book, in fact, are: “I’m pretty much fucked.” And indeed he is. Six days into a 31-day mission. So he’s got, what enough food for that long, for six people? That’s about it. He doesn’t have any way to communicate with Earth, or the crew that left him back.

What would you do?

Mark is amazing at keeping his sense of humor. He’s a guy I’d want to know. And his will to figure out a way to first, survive and then to get off the planet is amazing. It’s a nearly 400-page book, so you can imagine that shit happens. Not every second, but often enough to keep the book believable but totally engaging. And the science! Oh the science. It’s just a joy to read. So fun. So captivating. I’m sad it’s over.

However … apparently it is being turned into a movie. DO NOT look at IMDB until you’ve read the book, but I can say that I think the casting is perfection.

Five Stars

My first five-star book of 2015! I was a little worried about picking up a long, dense, science non-fiction book after so much young adult reading the past week or so. But this book was fantastic. I found it at Powell’s in the health and medical section and I’m just so glad I did.

Ms. Ravage does a really excellent job of describing what really goes on when someone is burned. I imagine that when most of us think about a burn injury, we picture a sunburn, or a blister on an arm that bumped up against the oven when pulling out a tray of cookies. Some of us might think about tragic events like the Rhode Island nightclub fire, or perhaps people who have jumped from burning buildings. But how many of us really know what goes on when someone is seriously burned? It’s likely that if you or a close loved one hasn’t experienced it, you don’t know much about it.

This book focuses on the burn unit at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, which is unique in some ways. For example, they don’t use water tanks for debridement (the cleaning and scraping of wounds), whereas most other units across the country do. But the unit is an amazing, close-knit community of nurses, burn techs, doctors, psychiatrists and others offering support for those who are burned and their family members.

I knew a little bit about burns – that they can leave scars, that large wounds need to be cleaned and that it is excruciating. But I didn’t really know about the physiology of burns. Like the fact that the first week isn’t actually the worst; many can survive the first days but then die from the injuries. The impact on the respiratory system is can be huge if smoke or other chemicals are inhaled; the burns themselves trigger all sorts of haywire reactions, like the rushing of fluid to the site (causing major swelling), and metabolism that can start eating through lean muscle. The book also described what shock actually is which, frankly, I didn’t really understand until now.

Through all of this, Ms. Ravage is telling two stories: one of Dan O’Shea (not his name) and one of Mike Parent. Dan was burned while passed out after a night of drinking and was kept sedated for a couple of months; Mike was injured when a pot caught fire, creating burns on his arms. Their stories are interesting and provide a way to apply the knowledge Ms. Ravage is imparting to real people.

If you have any interest in medicine, or in quality science writing, I just cannot recommend this book enough.

Three Stars

It’s an etiquette book with a cute cover. I couldn’t resist.

This is a fairly basic etiquette book that apparently is targeted at those just starting out in their careers, so it isn’t fair for me to judge it based on other etiquette books. But I still will. If you’re going to get an etiquette book, and you’re a young woman who doesn’t mind the occasional f-bomb, you should get The Fabulous Girl’s Guide to Decorum, which includes this gem about breakfast after sleeping with someone: “If the sleepover occurred at your place, you really should offer him something no matter how you feel. You fucked him, you can pour him a glass of orange juice.”

However. If you’re an auntie looking for a cute graduation present for your 18-year-old niece or nephew, this isn’t a bad choice. It includes some VERY basic items, such as handshaking, making introductions, and table manners. On the subject of table manners, I actually disagree with one of the author’s subjective claims: that the European style of eating (where the knife and fork stay in hand while taking a bite) is more elegant than the American style (where you cut a piece, set down the knife and transfer the fork). I have always thought that the European practice of keeping the silverware in one’s hands throughout the bite made the person eating the food look a bit like they were waiting for someone to steal their food and thus had to shove it all in at once.

Because of my mild obsession with manners there wasn’t a lot that was new to me, but I still enjoyed learning a few things, such as the proper way to eat different foods, as well as some tips and tricks about hosting meals. It’s a brief book with some great illustrations (and while I commend the illustrator’s recognition that not everyone is white, it’d be great if the illustrator also recognized that not everyone is skinny) and useful tips for those who would benefit from a bit of etiquette education.

Oh, one last thing. One of the authors is ostensibly Liv Tyler. Yes, that Liv Tyler. She offers a few little nuggets of wisdom here and there, but it definitely reads as though Dorothea Johnson did the lion’s share of the writing.

Two Stars

Again, Spoilers. All of them.

So at the end of the last book (book two in a three-book series), Shari/Jean was pushed from a balcony by Peter/Lenny. But she survived. In this book, she’s become a best-selling author, and is about to start shooting the film version of one of her hit books. She’s still a Wanderer, and she’s still getting guidance from mystical people from Southeast Asia, so that part’s still culturally appropriative.

What else. Well, here’s the thing – there are some genuinely interesting parts of this book. And then there is another story within a story, which is totally out of place and not really what I’m interested in reading about. There are sharks and shark attacks, obvious villains, and a story about aliens attacking the Earth. Mr. Pike is trying to do too much, which ends up meaning he does none of it really well.

Also, he refers, repeatedly, to a character in a wheelchair as a cripple. Really? In what world is that acceptable?

This one, apparently. At least in Mr. Pike’s version of it. I commented on this and my husband asked when the book was written, and I at least got an answer about why this book and book two seem so much … worse, really, than the first book. The original book, Remember Me, was written in 1989. I’m guessing that there was no real plan to write a sequel; maybe Mr. Pike wanted to write something about the meaning of life and figured he’d just tack it onto this one? Unclear. But either way, book two wasn’t published until 1994; this book was published in 1995.

I really don’t think either needed to be published. As I said, there are parts that are okay, but mostly the book meanders and tries to tell more stories than the book can.

I think I’ll still seek out some of the old Christopher Pike books to see if I really was deluded in thinking they were fun, entertaining books, or if more of them have the subtle bigotry, ableism and xenophobia I’ve seen in these books.

One Star

Spoilers. All the spoilers.

This book is not good. But I read it, and I’ll read the next one.

This book continues following Shari Cooper, although now she and Peter (her dead friend who helped her navigate being dead in the first book) are trying to tell us about the meaning of life. The premise is that Shari is to return to earth as a Wanderer, joining the body of an 18-year-old who ‘dies’ (but doesn’t really – her soul just leaves) so Shari can do some good. It’s almost shocking in its simplicity, as though it were written by a ten-year-old who had somehow gotten his hands on an intro to philosophy book. But I digress.

First, let’s talk about how offensive the basic premise is. Shari, a dead rich white girl, needs to inhabit the body of a Latina from south central L.A. named Jean so Shari can help make the neighborhood better. That is some bizarrely fucked up manifest destiny shit right there. Once Shari is in Jean’s body, she comments on how the neighborhood is sad, and that no one really cares, but that she will help make it better. Like people who are economically disadvantaged are all lazy, drug users, and criminal. Good grief.

Second, during the also bizarrely offensive chapters that deal with Shari and Peter in the afterlife, we get treated to ‘Misunderstanding Eastern Philosophy 101.’ Shari’s teacher is OF COURSE a wise Southeast Asian man. It’s like Eat Pray Love for the dead. And during their sessions, her Master (yup, that’s what she calls him) makes comments about other Wanderers (apparently all folks involved in social change are Wanderers) that veer dangerously close to racism. There’s also an inexplicable knock on the Middle East.

There is one pretty entertaining moment in the book – Jean / Shari write a short story that is actually good. As in, I’d read it and enjoy it on its own. It involves a writer whose muse gets fed up with not getting any of the credit. It was a bit clever and although totally out of place, at least made up for some of the other parts of the book.

I could just stop here, but I’m kind of invested, so let’s see if we can get through the third one without xenophobia, racism, and simple tropes. I don’t have high hopes though…

Three Stars

This is the first of three books in a Christopher Pike trilogy. To be able to really review the books, I’m going to need to describe the plots, which means the next two reviews at least will likely contain spoilers.

I have been looking for Christopher Pike books for a while. I was fairly obsessed with his books when I was in high school; they weren’t horribly written, they were quick reads, and the characters (as I recall) were pretty interesting and dealt with some odd stuff. They were meant for, I believe, high school students, but they talked about things like sex and abortion. No chaste Twilight-level stuff here. At least, not that I can recall.

I found this trilogy (in one GIANT volume) at Powell’s today. 300 pages later and I’m done with book one, Remember Me. I definitely have read this before, as bits and pieces stood out as familiar.

Remember Me follows Shari Cooper. She’s dead, and everyone thinks she killed herself, but she didn’t. And she’s pissed about that, so she’s trying to figure out a way to solve her murder and essentially clear her own name. The killer could be one of many people, including her best friend or her boyfriend. In the end, her killer tries to kill Shari’s brother as well, and that sequence is a bit thrilling but also kind of weird.

There’s obviously a supernatural component to this, but it’s mostly set as much in reality as it can be. And despite the final (seemingly unnecessary) weirdness, I actually really enjoyed this book, and not just because of the nostalgia factor. The writing isn’t horrible. It’s not great, but I didn’t ever catch myself rolling my eyes. I think it helped that the book is written in the first person, so this high school student’s observations actually feel pretty true to what an 18-year-old straight rich white girl might think about her own boyfriend, her best friend, her brother’s girlfriend, the girl who might be stealing her boyfriend, and her parents. She’s superficial, but realizes it.

One thing that is a bit disturbing is how Mr. Pike addresses economic differences. All but one of the main characters comes from a well-off family, and you can imagine that the one who doesn’t is the one who becomes the biggest suspect. Mr. Pike also doesn’t seem to have the best understanding of nuance in terms of how young women relate to each other – are women always just jealous of each other because of men? That perspective is probably not the best thing for young kids to be reading.

The book isn’t ground-breaking, and at times it veers into the super weird. But I still enjoyed it, and I’m looking forward to reading book two.

Three Stars

Who doesn’t want to start the year with a book about pre-WW II Nazi Germany? I mean, what better way to ease into an attempted double cannonball?

Despite the subject matter, this book is not a challenging read. I read Mr. Larson’s book about the Chicago World’s Fair (Devil in the White City) either last year or the year before and found it to be good but tough to get through. This book flowed better, although it didn’t really end. I mean, obviously, it did, but it felt more like I was reading a very long and exquisitely researched magazine article than a book with a narrative arc.

In the Garden of Beasts follows the U.S. Ambassador to Germany from 1933-1934. William Dodd was a history professor in Chicago when he was asked by President Roosevelt to serve; he brought his wife and two adult children with him to Berlin. The story follows Mr. Dodd and his daughter Martha as they navigate Nazi German, when Hitler was Chancellor and there was still a President who was ostensibly in charge.

The main point of the book is that Dodd wasn’t the typical old boys club rich kid ambassador and as such was a bit less interested in the economic issues that the U.S. State Department wanted to address and was more concerned with what was going on with Hitler, the SS, the SA and all the players who we now know were instrumental in WW II and the Holocaust. I have not read a book on WW II or the Holocaust since Diary of Anne Frank, so I can’t claim that everything in the book is wholly accurate, but Mr. Larson is known for writing truthful and well-researched historical non-fiction by telling the stories of the people involved, so I assume it is mostly correct.

I’m not sure if I really learned much new by reading the book. I suppose I learned that the U.S. government was primarily concerned with getting back money from Germany as opposed to the oppression and murder of German residents. But I wasn’t surprised to learn that. It sort of matches the priorities the political elite have always had: money first, then people – maybe, eventually, if there is time.

If you like history, and are interested in Germany just before WW II, I’m certain you could do worse than this book. Just don’t expect a real beginning, middle and end. And be prepared, if you get the non-kindle-version, to mark out the swastikas on the cover. I get not burying that reality, but damn. I don’t want to give people a heart attack while reading a book walking down the street that has a few scattered Nazi symbols on it.