Hello There: June Book Thread

[Oweena]

Yep, I'm starting it because I don't see one yet.

[Oweena]

Here is the May Book Thread

[Oweena]

The Lost Family: How DNA Testing Is Upending Who We Are by Copeland, Libby

Interesting book about the effects of consumer genetics testing. For adoptees (like me) it's been a door opened to all the info I've been denied my whole life. For others, who think they're merely testing for fun to see what ancestry they have it can be life-altering when you find out you aren't biologically related to your father (which happens more than people realize) either because they were conceived from donor sperm or an affair. And now the database is being used to solve crimes by tracking down relatives from DNA collected at a crime scenes, and to identify long-unidentified bodies.

The author does a good job of detailing the business from the big picture overview interspersed with stories of how DNA testing affected individuals. Some of those stories are crazy what their DNA revealed.

Americans are somewhat obsessed with these tests (based on sales). Other than the Irish, the UK, and Australia, the rest of Europe doesn't much care. And testers from Africa are woefully under-represented which makes the database much smaller and makes results less than optimal.

[Liiisa]

Thank you Oweena!

I noticed there wasn't one yet too but was waiting to finish this book, which is taking me a little while despite it just being a 200-page pulp sci-fi paperback.

[lillielangtry]

Thanks Oweena!

I listened to a podcast about a man who found out that his, now deceased, father was not his biological father from one of those DNA tests. And in fact that his biological father had been a colleague of his dad. And was of another race, so he had been enduring jokes about not looking like the rest of the family all his life. What a lot to deal with.

I'll be back to this thread with books at some point!

[ozziegiraffe]

Thank you Oweena. I currently have two I should finish this week.
As for DNA, it hasn’t yet helped much to find my biological father. Like you, I was adopted, and with the help of a friend who is a genealogist, found my mother’s family. I am going to pass on what I can find about my father to her, but it isn’t much. All the links I’ve found seem to be to relatives on my mother’s side.

[Liiisa]

17) James H. Schmitz, Agent of Vega

Four little classic sci-fi short stories about these galactic agents and the situations they get into. Occasionally a little confusing, but one neat thing about them is that they all have strong major female characters, which was unusual for sci-fi from the 60s written by a man.

[Liiisa]

Oops double post

[ozziegiraffe]

30. Murder by the Book, Lauren Elliott. Goodreads Cozy Mystery Corner choice. Interesting setting in a rare books shop, so the series could have interesting developments. The case involved a group of people trying to steal a rare first edition.

[Liiisa]

18) Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

It rained today and I’m on vacation, so I read this whole book.

Another book that uses elements from her other stuff, like Vancouver Island and at least one character. I love her stuff, so I liked this one too; they’re just a little strange, which is good.

[scrubb]

Is that new, Lisa? I've really liked her others.

[Liiisa]

Yes, it’s her new one — there are elements of it that will remind you of the previous one since one of the characters is on a book tour discussing a book she’d written about a fictional pandemic, just as a real pandemic is beginning.

[ozziegiraffe]

31. The Invisible Life of Addie La Rue, V E Schwab. I think this was an Audible free pick. Interesting concept, a French woman in the 18th century sells her soul to the devil so she doesn’t have to marry a man she doesn’t love. It follows her, and the unexpected consequences of her deal, through three centuries. A bit long, but quite engaging as an audiobook on my drives to work.

[Oweena]

Love Marriage by Monica Ali

Set in London and told from the viewpoint of a 20 something female doctor in training.
The family lore is of her parents love marriage and their overcoming the odds of making it to the UK and becoming middle class. But of course there are family secrets and mother/daughter father/son dynamics.
There are quite a few chapters dealing with the main character dealing with the bureaucracy of working in the NHS, that was eye-opening if even a small portion of it is reality.
Overall a good read.

[scrubb]

More, by Hakan Günday. A horrific story that I can't recommend to anyone, but at the same time I'm sort of glad I read it. The narrator, Gaza, grew up with his father telling him that his mother tried to bury him alive at birth. At age 9 he started helping his father with his people smuggling business (mostly Afghanis passing through Turkey on their way to Europe). He saw the ruthlessness and greed and inhumanity of his father and of the business. He learned that the refugees hated him. And then he became a monster himself, by the time he was about 14.

Possibly the reason it seemed worth continuing to read was that he was not self-forgiving, and somehow amid all the horror, the picture of the abused, unloved child who still clung to the few humans who'd been kind to him (before they died) made you wonder if he was redeemable. But I still skimmed through the last half

[Liiisa]

19) Ursula Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

Ooh, this was excellent — a man has dreams that actually do come true, and there are interesting and often problematic ramifications. I particularly liked that I’d waited to read it until now because it was set in Portland, Oregon, which I only got to for the first time this spring.

[lillielangtry]

I am envious of those of you who live in countries with really decent free offers on Audible. There never seems to be much here. Yes, we get the podcasts, although even then searching for the English ones takes you through various submenus.

Anyway, a couple of short books:

Jen Calleja and Kat Storace (eds) Scintillas: New Maltese Writing
I made a read effort to order this anthology from a tiny new press focusing on Maltese writers, but sadly found it disappointing.

Katja Oskamp: Marzahn, mon amour
I read this in German but there is an English translation available.
Oskamp was a not particularly successful writer, her daughter had left home and her husband was dealing with ill health. At a bit of a loss, she retrained as a chiropodist and started working in the Marzahn district of Berlin, famous for being the largest prefabricated GDR-era housing estate in the country. The book is just a series of portraits of her customers and colleagues. I'm taking it as non-fiction although I think the names and some details have been changed for confidentiality. I found it really moving, she has a way of describing the struggles of people who generally go unnoticed. Recommended.

[Liiisa]

20) Thom Yorke and Stanley Donwood, Fear Stalks the Land!

A little book of drawings, song lyrics, and poetry from the late 90s/early 2000s that Thom from Radiohead and Stanley, the artist who does their album covers, put together. I had it on the Kindle and was reading it in off moments between other books. Some of the poetry is a little meh, like "ah I see why you decided not to use that as song lyrics," but I enjoyed reading it since I'm very fond of their work.

[Liiisa]

21) Denise Mina, Rizzio

A very short retelling of the events around the murder of David Rizzio, an aide to Mary, Queen of Scots, written by this Scottish crime novelist. Interesting stuff, written compellingly, which caused me to read more about Mary's life and reign.

[Oweena]

Angels of the Pacific: A Novel of World War II by Elise Hooper

I got this one because the author lives in my neighborhood and I felt I should support her. I had low expectations and was pleasantly surprised.

It covers the war years of 1941-1945 and is told from the POV of US Army nurses in the Philippines, and is based on what really happened. They worked under brutal conditions and were eventually POWs.

The secondary plot covers what the citizens went through in Manila, and how they had a fairly well-oiled resistance to the occupying Japanese.

Other than the all-wrapped-up-in-a-bow ending I enjoyed it.

[mei]

Two new books to add!

#9 The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich. Unknown book & author for me, but found it in a hotel and apparently it won an award? Anyway, I was interested because the story is set in a native American reservation in the early 1950s. It's a part of US history I know nothing about so it was interesting to learn a little about life for this group at that time. There were a lot of characters which sometimes made it feel a bit fragmented, but also showed a lot of different perspectives. I enjoyed it.

#10 'Colonizing the future' by David van Reybrouck. Okay, maybe I shouldn't count this as a complete book as it was just a short essay but anyway: it's very good. It argues that we are currently 'colonizing future generations' in terms of using up resources which future generations will be unable to use and they will be faced with a much less liveable world - all because we are focused on our own wealth and are unwilling to make changes to our politics and lifestyle. he also offers four solutions to how we can take responsibility.

[scrubb]

Mei, I've become a real Louise Erdrich fan in recent years. Her first couple books didn't thrill me but I've really liked the last couple that I've read. Not sure when that one was written - I hadn't heard of it before.

[Liiisa]

22) Chuck Wendig, The Book of Accidents

Yup, I just read a 500-page novel in two days, which tells you I liked it and had a very hard time putting it down. This is kind of a horror novel, though, so CONTENT WARNING about abuse and violence and gross stuff. But love wins over in the end, though all the ends don't tie up perfectly (which I thought was effective).

[lillielangtry]

Dervla Murphy, Full Tilt
The Irish travel writer Dervla Murphy died recently aged about 90, and I had been meaning to read her work for ages. This book, her first, was the only one available as an audiobook. It's her classic account of cycling from Ireland to India in 1963, armed with a pistol (yes, across international borders!) and her trusty steed, bicycle Roz - from which she had removed the gears!!
She was one tough woman, living extremely simply on her travels and getting to India with just a couple of episodes of heatstroke, three cracked ribs, and some lice.
Absolutely fascinating.

SIDE NOTE: this book has generally aged quite well, I think - she does muse about the "lack of civilization" in countries like Afghanistan, but her love for them also comes across more than clearly. BUT the N-word is used twice, both times as an adjective just to describe the colour of something ("N-brown"!). While I'm not generally in favour of editing published works, it seems to me that these instances add nothing to the book itself and are just distracting to the contemporary reader. I think they could/should have just been removed and a note to that effect put at the back or something.

[scrubb]

Rudy Ruiz: The Resurrection of Fulgencio Ramirez. Enjoyable, but almost ruined by the over the top ending where things don't just tie up with a bright red ribbon but there's whipped cream and a cherry on top and then more caramel sauce and more cream and more sprinkles and... Plus, the central event of the whole book is a really stupid unbelievable misunderstanding, much like the one in Captain Corelli's Mandolin, that irked me a lot.

It's got lots of good elements though - some magical realism, a main character who it seems can do anything, but who has a family curse preventing him from being lucky in love. Set in southern Texas and Mexico in the '50s and the '80s, going back and forth to show the budding romance between Fulgencio and Carolina, gradually unfolding what went wrong, and then seeing him set about trying to fix things. A little more depth instead of schmalz, and it would have been a really good book.

[Liiisa]

23) Richard Powers, Bewildered

A neurodivergent kid undergoes neurologic training that enables him to be less angry and also gives him this mystical appreciation for the environment. The ending was honest and realistic, but made me throw the book across the room, like what the hell, Richard Powers?!

Edited the next day to add that the descriptions of nature are beautiful and interesting, but I'll admit I started skimming the frequent intervening chapters about fantasized environments on other planets (the kid's dad was an astrobiologist).

[ozziegiraffe]

32. Death at Wentwater Court, Carola Dunn. Quite a good murder mystery set in 1920s upper class England.

[lillielangtry]

Intriguing, Liisa!

[Liiisa]

Jun 17, 2022 12:27:09 GMT -5 lillielangtry said:

Intriguing, Liisa!

It both irritated and fascinated me. The happy book I wanted it to be wouldn't have reflected real life the way it ended up doing, but damnit we need to catch a break sometimes.

[lillielangtry]

Yeeees, I totally know what you mean, and that doesn't make me want to run to read that book. Anyway, I haven't read The Overstory yet, so if I've going to read a Powers it will be that one.