Factfulness, Rosling et al

 

Factfulness:  Ten reasons we're wrong about the world--and why things are better than you think by Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling, and Anna Rosling Rönnlund

Started: 2/26/2022
Completed: 3/1/2022
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By:  I picked this book up at a labor day book festival

Review:

You should start out knowing that Hans Rosling died as this book was being written and it was completed after his death.  It doesn't matter to the book, but it was a bit of a shock to me when the book ended with his death and it doesn't have to be that way for you.  Factfulness is a way of looking at reality that helps one decipher the details of the world into meaningful pieces.  It is not anything particularly novel--rather it is just a way of applying practical empiricism to raw data.  It is refreshing.

Detransition, Baby, Torrey Peters

 

Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters

Started: 2/22/2022
Completed: 2/26/2022
Recommendation: Not Recommended
Recommended By: Was on best seller lists and was long listed for the Women's Prize for Fiction

Review:

This book edges out of erotica and into pornography rather seamlessly.  I am not used to reading either.  I found the experience uncomfortable.  It did not help that I did not find the scenes themselves stimulating, interesting, or needed.  Meanwhile, I really understand what "cis" means now.  I think that this may kind of fit as a travel book, but the travel is into transsexuality.  I just didn't realize that this was the journey, so it wasn't for me.  I did not find the sexual acts described disgusting, inappropriate, or surprising--just not the kind of thing that would ever involve me, so adding them in became jarring and kept making clear that this book was not one for me.  Perhaps for a transsexual, these scenes are reassuring or validating.  It just wasn't for me.

Harlem Shuffle, Colson Whitehead

 

Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead showed up on a lot of year-end books as one of the best books of 2021.

Started: 2/20/2022
Completed: 2/22/2022
Recommendation: Highly Recommended
Recommended By: Many year end lists

Review:

This seems like a collection of short stories with the same characters.  It is an excellent novelization of small-time grift in Harlem and helped flesh out what things must have been like up to and after the 1964 riots.  The riots are largely incidental to the book, but they help frame the activity.  The story is well told and the characters develop over the course of the book.  It is interesting to me how the two cousins were both alike and different and how both tried to live with their hunger to move up in the world.

The Sentence, Louise Erdrich

 

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich is a book I picked up for no good reason.

Started: 2/18/2022
Completed: 2/20/2022
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

"I'm still not strictly rational.  How could I be?  I sell books."  What a fantastic few sentences for an author to write and attribute to her lead character.  Erdrich builds a very believable suite of characters and provides a window on their lives.  Nothing really starts or ends cleanly in the book.  That is OK, there is no real moral to be had, no greater lesson.  This is a book about struggle in self-owned adversity.  I enjoyed it and appreciated the angle of the American Indian response to George Floyd.

Bewilderment, Richard Powers

 

Bewilderment by Richard Powers is another of Powers' books.

Started: 2/15/2022
Completed: 2/18/2022
Recommendation: Highly Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

"Fierce as death is love" Solomon 8:6 seems like an excellent summary of this book (it is quoted near the end).  The prose is lovely and made me laugh out loud more than once.  The premise, that brain patterns could be captured and then learned was wonderful.  The corollary to "Flowers for Algernon" was obvious from the start and reinforced in the book itself.

Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler

 

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler.  I was looking at books that are considered classic and I have never read anything by Butler, so I decided to try this one.  Parable of the Talents was better received, but this book was written first and seems to be needed for Parable of the Talents to make sense.

Started: 2/12/2022
Completed: 2/15/2022 (Did not finish)
Recommended: Not Recommended
Recommendation: Classic Sci-Fi book list

Review:

I just couldn't take the murder and mayhem any longer.  I listened to this book for over 5 hours and I liked the writing, the characters were compelling.  The endless dying in gruesome ways became too much for me to take.

Sankofa, Chibundu Onuzo

 

Sankofa by Chibundu Onuzo is a book I picked up at random, I think it was highlighted by the library.

Started: 2/9/2022
Completed: 2/11/2022
Recommendation: Highly Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

I have to admit that I did not expect a reference to Thomas Beckett, much less an allusion to the plot of "Murder in the Cathedral."  It just seemed so removed from the context of the book, but it was a pleasant surprise.  This is one of many tantalizing details wrapped up in this story.  I'm sure I missed several more.  It seems likely to me that the father in the story is a soft version of Bokassa, but I don't really know enough of Bokassa's life to be sure.  In some odd ways this is a coming of age story, but at the end it remains broadly unresolved--not because there is a planned sequel, but, I think, because life isn't all wrapped up and handed to you with a bow.  The parts of the story that are left hanging are integral to the characters and it does feel like the story ended abruptly with a lot more to tell.  This is not unlike the diary that starts the story, so the diary serves, in a way, as a model for the whole book.  I really enjoyed it.

Popisho, Leone Ross

 

Popisho by Leone Ross is a book that was on a science fiction/fantasy book list.

Started: 2/4/2022
Completed: 2/9/2022
Recommendation: Not Recommended
Recommended By: a book list

Review:

This book is wholly alien.  Magic, yes, but mostly odd interactions.  Magic is sort of distributed to each person (think of talents Piers Anthony's Xanth series).  At heart it is the story of a chef who is celebrated by the community in which he lives.  He has come to his appointment by the gods.  Meanwhile butterflies are eaten kind of like alcohol is consumed (though alcohol is available as well) with similar effects.  Moths are eaten as a sort of drug.  This is also the story of love through the eyes of numerous people and yet love seems sort of lost in almost everyone but the newlywed.  Meanwhile there are ghosts and poison eaters and many other things that wander about in the story.  The heavy use of Jamaican style accents makes it hard to understand what is being said.  I really was mostly confused and spent too much time not understanding, so I did not enjoy this book.

Our Country Friends, Gary Shteyngart

 

Our Country Friends by Gary Shteyngart looked like a fun novel

Started: 2/1/2022
Completed: 2/4/2022
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

I like the way Shteyngart describes things.  Nothing particularly memorable in and of itself, but as a whole it is as a rich world.  I also enjoy when an author examines the same issue from multiple points of view--in this book it is love.  There are variations on romantic love, platonic love, friendship, and lust.  There were definitely too many masturbation scenes for my comfort and, frankly, I felt like a bit of a voyeur for several scenes, but I can see that in many cases the details were important.  There were also a few scenes that were guilty pleasures.

Unthinkable, Jamie Raskin

 

Unthinkable:  Trauma, truth, and the trials of American democracy by Jamie Raskin is a book from the prosecutor.

Started: 1/25/2022
Completed: 2/1/2022
Recommendation: Highly Recommended
Recommended By:  Nobody, c'mon, Maryland rep?!?

Reveiw:

There is no doubt that Jamie Raskin loved his son Tommy.  This book is an homage to Tommy.

This is a hard, but important read.  I met Rep. Raskin once (before he was quite so famous) and found him engaging, though the interaction was quite brief.  I feel like I know Tommy entirely too well after this book, but I see Jamie Raskin in ways I never did before.  He is a towering intellect and someone whom we should watch as his thinking marks him as a man destined for higher office.