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16
It’s Eclectic! *woogie woogie woogie*
2011 at 5am Posted by Rebecca Joines Schinsky
This week shall henceforth be known as Rebecca-attempts-to-put-her-ducks-in-a-row-because-she-cannot-imagine-going-to-BEA-with-a-review-backlog Week. Thanks to some new (and very good) things happening in my professional life, I’ve been awesomely sucktastic at managing the whole “reading books and writing about them” thing. I know that if I don’t write about a bunch of (mostly great) stuff I’ve read this spring before I leave town next week, I’ll never do it. Book Expo leaves me happily exhausted and desperately in need of a week of hermitude (yeah, that’s a word now), so it’s time for me to put up or shut up. And I think we all know that shutting up is not an option.
To start: a threesome of nonfic quickies for your reading pleasure. (Or: further evidence that this will never be a niche blog.)
Kraken by Wendy Williams (Abrams, March 2011)
I never expected to become fascinated by giant squid, but I can pinpoint moment it happened for me. One Sunday in the second half of 2005, the husband (then boyfriend) and I were observing our lazy Sunday ritual of not getting out of bed until at least noon. He had long since won the battle over having a TV in the bedroom, and we were watching a Discovery Channel documentary about a scientist whose life’s work obsession was finding and studying the elusive architeuthis. His name may as well have been Ishmael.
Maybe it was the Sunday morning happiness washing over me, but I was captivated. In Kraken: The Curious, Exciting, and Slightly Disturbing Science of Squid, Wendy Williams takes all the goodness of a Discovery Channel special and wraps it into a fun and engaging book that plumbs the depths of squid lore and profiles the scientists who chase and study them. Kraken is jam-packed with information—squid-related discoveries that led to advances in human medical technology, quirks of squid behavior that reveal previously unknown truths about life in the deep, explanations of what, exactly, scientists do to capture and study these animals—and the thrill of the chase is palpable. Kraken is the kind of single-subject nonfiction that proves that good writing can make anything interesting—even if you don’t think you want to know about squid, trust me, you want to read this book.
Blood Work by Holly Tucker (W.W. Norton, March 2011)
That statement about good writing making any topic interesting? It applies here, too. Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution is part history, part biography, and all reminder of why you are glad you live in these medically advanced times. Tucker takes us back to mid-17th century Europe and plunges us into the rivalry between the English and French physicians (and scientists and barbers…yes, barbers. Betcha didn’t know red and white barbers’ poles harken back to a time when barbers routinely performed surgeries) who competed to make blood transfusions successful and survive-able. (That second part is key, you know.)
Tucker focuses predominantly on the years 1665-1668 and places her subjects squarely within social and political context, highlighting the lingering effects of the Plague and the impact of religious superstitions on scientific exploration. She details the gruesome, misguided, and downright crazy early experiments in blood transfusion (trigger warning: these people did truly horrible things to dogs) and reveals the backgrounds and motivations of the characters who populate her story. This is fascinating stuff if you can stomach it, and Tucker’s writing brings it vividly to life.
Reading Women by Stephanie Staal (PublicAffairs Books, February 2011)
This book hits two of my favorite reading categories—feminism and books about books—at one time, and for that alone, it is awesome. When, in her early thirties, Stephanie Staal finds herself floundering in her life as a married mother of a toddler, she returns to her alma mater to retake the Feminist Texts course that profoundly impacted her worldview more than a decade earlier. Reading Women: How the Great Books of Feminism Changed My Life is essentially Staal’s synthesis of the experience.
Staal structures her book—part memoir, part reading journal—around the multi-semester course’s syllabus and highlights many of the titles she read, often comparing her present responses and interpretations to her original encounters with the work more than a decade prior. She also discusses the ways in which her readings of these classic texts vary from her younger classmates’ take on them, and one wonders if it wouldn’t have been more productive for Staal to undertake this project with a group of women who could all view the readings through a similar lens of marriage and motherhood. Of course, the logistics of that would have been more complicated, and she wouldn’t have had the benefit of college-level instruction, but still, one wonders.
Though flawed, this book is satisfying in that it will remind many readers of the books that also shaped their early thinking about feminism and will send them running for the shelves to reread them through whatever new lens adult has delivered.
Related posts:
Heather at Raging Bibliomania just reviewed that Kraken book, and I just shook my head. Not the book you would run out and read, right? But she loved it too. THAT is one hell of an author, to make a book about squid interesting. And yes, Blood Work, I bought that book at the UCF Book Festival and got a chance to talk to Holly. What a fascinating woman. The whole panel, which was about solving hundred year old cold cases and making it into killer non-fiction books, was spectacular.
So. Are you going to tell us this great new about your professional life?
Sandy´s last [type] ..Sunday Salon- The Calm Before the Storm
I adored Kraken (http://curiositykilledthebookworm.blogspot.com/2011/04/kraken-curious-exciting-and-slightly.html) and Blood Work sounds really interesting too.
Ellie´s last [type] ..It’s Monday! What Are You Reading
The Kraken book sounds so interesting! I read Cod by Mark Kurlansky a few years ago and it was surprisingly fascinating. Thanks for the recommendation!
Brooke´s last [type] ..Book Review- The White Bone
I love the sound of ‘Kraken’… Consider it added to my wishlist! Have you read ‘The Highest Tide’ by Jim Lynch? I’m fairly sure a giant squid made a major appearance in that one.
P.S. I LOVE that you’re not a niche blog IN ANY WAY. Variety is the spice of life, after all… Plus, it makes me feel better about the weird comments I got when I threw ‘Practical Falconry’ into the (already eclectic) mix of my reviews fairly early on!
Ellie´s last [type] ..Dreaming of Rivendell