Three new readers joined us this month! That was a real treat. Joelle is new to Mensa, having just joined in May. She and her husband Micah, who also joined us, are both avid readers. And they’re both from Kansas City.
Things are a bit fuzzy, as I was listening as opposed to taking notes, but I believe Joelle has two Masters degrees and is now working as a therapist. Before that she worked at the National Museum of Toys and Miniatures here in town, which is a really cool place. There were a bunch of other interests she talked about; my kind of Mensan. Her husband Micah is a data analyst. (Hope I got that right.) They both also attend lectures at the Linda Hall Library, so I hope to meet them in person there some day.
AND! Diane joined us from Des Moines and Central Iowa Mensa, which was my first chapter. She is now retired for I think 10 years or thereabouts, so she now has plenty of time for reading books. She is also a member of an in-person book club, which has been going strong for 20 years at least.
Stalwarts Beth, Peggy, Cynthia, and Linda rounded out the group.
Doug was on travel. But he let me know he has mainly been reading technical documentation for Web Sockets, Go, and Kotlin. Web Sockets I’ve heard of, but the rest? Better ask Doug.
I also heard from Anita. Like Doug, she has many, many books. While she usually can’t join us, she does enjoy the various book-related emails I send out to our group.
Jim and Michael were no shows. Hard to tell what is going on with them. Hopefully we’ll see them next month.
The full list of the 30 books reviewed/discussed can be found here:
https://www.mamensa.org/category/book-lovers-sig-book-talks/
Book Lovers SIG always meets on the second Sunday of each month; our next get together will be August 9. We meet online using Zoom, so it is easy to join us.
Folks generally start checking in around 2 p.m. for a bit of socialization. Book discussions begin around 2:30 p.m., more or less, or when Peggy says, “OK, let’s talk about books!”.
To join us on Zoom, simply click on the link shown below:
https://tinyurl.com/BookLoversSIG
You can also open your Zoom app and use these parameters:
Meeting ID: 946 0436 4344
Passcode: 844358
Beth
Everything is Tuberculosis, John Green. A history of TB, told through the case of one patient, and one hospital is Sierra Leone. A very good picture of what this disease is, and how humans have handled it, and the challenges going forward.
I Am Not Your Enemy: A Memoir, Reality Winner. Reality Winner tells her story, and how she got caught in the crossfire and was made an example to scare others. On the one hand, she was incredibly naïve in how the world works, even though it was on display every day. However, given what she saw in the military, and later in intelligence work, she did not have great examples (role models) to work with, except her mom.
A Man Who Fell to Earth, Walter Tevis. An alien comes to earth to get resources to save his planet. He realizes that like his people, humans are so flawed that they can’t be saved.
A Quitter’s Paradise, Elysha Chang. A man and woman come to America, with a very distorted version of what they will find and what they want. Nobody gets what they want and (we) just muddle through.
A Court of Thorns and Roses, Sarah Maas. This is a different take on Fairie and watching how things work out as various creatures battle the evil, vindictive Fairie queen who has mortals by their short hairs. Interesting.
Cleo McDougal Regrets Nothing, Allison Winn Scotch. An ambitious woman, congressperson, senator at age 31, plots a run for President. It’s really about women wielding power and what that might look like if you don’t want it to rule your life. She goes on an apology tour to establish that she’s human and ends up learning where to apply power and when to bring it to human.
Peggy
Whistler, by Ann Patchett. When Daphne and her husband visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, they notice an older, white-haired gentleman following them. The man turns out to be Eddie Triplett, her former stepfather, who had been married to her mother for a little more than a year when Daphne was nine. Now fifty-three, Daphne hasn’t seen Eddie for many years, not since the fateful event that changed the direction of both their lives. Now that they are reunited, they have no intention of ever being separated again. Ann Patchett frequently writes about her relationships with her fathers, both biological and step.
The Swans of Harlem; Five Black Ballerinas, Fifty Years of SIsterhood, and their Reclamation of a Groundbreaking History, by Karen Valaby. Before Misty Copeland, these women worked to find a place in the white world of ballet.
Bertie’s Theory of Ice Cream, by Alexander McCall Smith. Bertie is older, but others are still determined to manage his life. His mother wants Irish culture lessons, and Olive wants him to join her book club. As new plans and schemes unfold at 44 Scotland Street, the residents stumble through potential romances, the missing part of the Stone of Scone, and Bruce’s real estate misadventures. Not the best in the series but still a pleasant read.
Ragtime, by E L Doctorow. Published in 1975 and on the list of 100 best English language books from 1923-2005, Ragtime unfolds in the early 1900s New York, where an affluent New Rochelle family’s quiet life is upended by encounters with historical figures and two outsiders — a Jewish immigrant artist and a Black pianist whose fight for dignity spirals into a citywide standoff, binding all their fates. The musical based on the book is slightly different but is on its second Broadway revival.
The Things We Never Say, by Elizabeth Strout. Artie Dam, a high school history teacher is a lovely man who looks out at a world gone mad. When he discovers a secret hidden from him, he reconsiders his closest relationships. As always, a wonderful read.
Cynthia
Bossy Pants by Tina Fey. I expected this autobiography to be fun, and it was not. I found myself bored and not terribly interested in what she was writing.
The Sinners All Bow, Two Authors, One Murder and the Real Hester Prynne by Kate Winkler Dawson. Kate Dawson is a podcaster who specializes in researching true crimes. This book is her analysis of the murder she believes inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne to write The Scarlet Letter. As part of her research, she studied the detective work done by Catherine Williams, a young woman of that period. She strives to put together what she has learned with what Catherine Williams also learned and recorded. Throughout this story, Dawson weaves biographical information about Williams into her narrative. It is an interesting detective story, quite different from what I usually read.
An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz. This is a profoundly interesting, important and disturbing book as it helps me rethink everything. I’ve learned about American history and our current place in the world. The author quotes DH Lawrence, saying the essential American soul is … a killer who then proceeds to document the truth of his observation.
Linda
Mickey7, by Edward Ashton 4*
Reported earlier in this group — science fiction about planetary settlement involving a character who is Expendable.
Opal, by Patricia Wolf (DS Walker book 3) 4*
Murders are committed in an opal-mining community.
Nemesis, by Patricia Wolf (DS Walker book 4) 4*
DS Walker travels to Berlin to chase down the drug lord he has been trying to arrest for a long time, and reconnects with Barbara, a German cop from the first book.
My Antonia, by Willa Cather 3*
This is a story of early settlers in Nebraska, centered on a young Bohemian woman and her family. Much insight into what people’s lives were like in that time and place.
Joelle
The Story of Art Without Men by Katy Hessel. 5* due to untold histories.
Norse Myths & Legends: Tales of Heroes, Gods & Monsters Jake Jackson (Editor). 4* due to the readable 21st-century language and whimsy.
The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World by Dalai Lama XIV, Desmond Tutu, Douglas Carlton Abrams (Translator). 5* due to its hopeful way of cutting through existential despair and shining hope through the darkest times humanity has gone through.
Brad (66/22450)
Dark Matter by Blake Crouch ***** 343 p.
A physics professor from an undistinguished university is kidnapped and injected with something. When he wakes up, he is in the same place, only different. He finds his way home, but the interior is different. And his wife isn’t there. It takes him a while to figure out that he is now in a different reality, one that an alternate version of him created. Lots of twists and turns, with many realities visited in search of his one true home.
At its heart this is a story based on the multiverse and its infinite possibilities.
Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Readers’ Favorite Science Fiction (2016)
End of a Berlin Diary by William L. Shirer **** 342 p.
This is a follow-up up to Shirer’s Berlin Diary, a diary he kept in 1930’s Germany while on report for CBS Radio. He returned to Europe in 1944 to cover the end of the war, where he documented the denial of the German citizenry of what they had done. Visiting a town that had been devastated by Allied bombing, he expressed no sympathy for the civilians that supported the German war machine. He writes about the investigation into Hitler’s final days, as well as his firsthand observations of the Nuremberg trials.
Lots of German-captured documents are cited. All in all, a bit of an uneven effort, but an interesting editing of historical documents.
Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory (The Murderbot Diaries #4.5) by Martha Wells * 19 p.
I had no idea what was going on in this short story. As best as I can tell, it was edited out of an earlier book, then released as a short story to make a little cash.
A Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Woman by Lindy Elkins-Tanton **** 263 p.
The autobiography of our June Theodore Talk speaker. She’s a fascinating and extremely intelligent woman. For those that didn’t attend the talk, Elkins-Tanton is a Professor in Earth and Planetary Sciences and Director of the Space Sciences Laboratory at UC Berkeley and is Principal Investigator of the NASA Psyche mission. In 2017, when her mission proposal beat out 27 competitors for a spot in NASA’s Discovery Program, she was only the second woman chosen to compete and win such a mission.
Elkins-Tanton received her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. from MIT, and later spent five years as an MIT faculty member, where she was named Outstanding MIT Faculty Undergraduate Research Mentor.
She has been an Astor Fellow at Oxford University, is a fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the American Mineralogical Society and is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.
In other words, she is wicked smart.
If that weren’t enough, asteroid (8252) and the mineral Elkinstantonite were named in her honor.
Keep in mind, when the time for college applications came, her guidance counselor gave her a career questionnaire; forestry was one of the suggested areas.
Directed by James Burrows: Five Decades of Stories from the Legendary Director of Taxi, Cheers, Frasier, Friends, Will & Grace, and More by James Burrows *** 353 p.
I saw a news article that Burrows had died. This autobiography was mentioned in the obit.
Most interesting, especially his early background. Turns out his father was a famous director on Broadway, and as a kid he got to watch his father work a lot. This is where he really learned the business of directing.
He directed a LOT of television shows but got his start on The Mary Tyler Moore Show by writing them a letter and asking for a job. He directed more than half the episodes of Taxi, then co-created and directed almost every episode of Cheers. He went on to direct the pilots and multiple episodes of Frasier, Friends, Mike & Molly, The Big Bang Theory, and Two and a Half Men, plus all 246 episodes of Will & Grace. That’s just crazy.
This guy was in demand all of the time; he directed episodes of more than a hundred other shows.
Lots of humorous anecdotes, along with his philosophy of how he worked with writers and actors, which got a bit repetitious at times.
A Naked Singularity by Sergio de la Pava ***** 678 p.
So, when I first opened this book on Kindle, I saw that the average read time was over 16 hours, and I said to myself, “Oh crap.” Non-fiction I can understand, but 16 hours for a piece of fiction. What am I getting myself into?
Quoting from the Goodreads synopsis, “… reads like nothing else ever written,” and let me tell you brother, that hits the nail on the head.
The story is about a young public defender in New York City. I’d say there are over 500 pages of philosophical discussions of mundane things in life. Which I found boring beyond tears. But the author does a great job of capturing the voice of his characters. All of the dialogue reads true. Nothing comes across as contrived.
And that’s fine as far as it goes. We also follow the various cases he is involved in, as well as a heist he agrees to participate with a fellow lawyer who is in search of the perfect crime.
And then it just gets weird. It’s up to you whether you agree with how the novel ends.
I really didn’t like reading this book through at least the first half, but it started to grow on me. I guess that’s what good writing does.
You With the Sad Eyes: A Memoir by Christina Applegate ***** 296 p.
This is such a sad story, really tragic. You think a star of a big television show has it made, but man is that not the case here. Her life growing up gives a whole new meaning to the word dysfunctional.
And then she made a LOT of bad life decisions regarding men along the way which pretty much compounded her misery.
And then to top it off, she gets diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, which has left her bedridden and in constant pain.
Tragic, all the way around.
I gave it five stars for her brutal honesty. But really, what does she have to lose at this point?
Spirit Crossing (Cork O’Connor #19) by William Kent Krueger ***** 336 p.
The story starts innocently enough. Cork, his son Stephen, son-in-law and grandson go out to pick blueberries. But his 7-year-old grandson Waboo finds something else … a body. Who talks to him. Turns out, much like Cork’s son Stephen, Waboo has the gift. At first everyone thinks this is the missing daughter of an influential Minnesota politician. A white politician. Meanwhile, no effort is really being made of young Indian women that have also gone missing.
And yet Cork figures out that somehow the two are related.
The core of the story involves human trafficking. And of course, Cork’s family is in danger. And this time one of them dies.
Antimatter Blues (Mickey7 #2) by Edward Ashton ***** 298 p.
Two years later, Mickey has retired as an Expendable. His work these days mainly involves cleaning rabbit pens. Which is fine, but he could have sworn he saw one of them heading to a reactor chamber. That doesn’t sound right.
It turns out they are having antimatter problems. Big ones. With winter approaching, they are really going to need to get this problem fixed. So, Mickey is ordered to retrieve the bomb from the creepers. Who never really had it, but that’s what he told the commander in an effort to save his skin. Except when he goes to the hiding spot. It is gone. Hoo boy!
It turns out the creepers DID take it, and in turn gave it to an entirely different batch of creepers, who they have been in conflict with for hundreds of years. All hell breaks loose when Mickey tries to get it back from this new batch.
This was a great ending to this two-part series. Highly recommended.
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