So glad I stuck it out! Yay me!

Gone Girl
by Gillian Flynn

It's a rare book that has me (a) almost giving up in the beginning--it was just too dull--and (b) nearly crying at the end, and (c) laughing out loud at the "last word."  And another thing--when I listen to a narrator for too long, I find myself picking up patterns of their speech.  A British narrator has me dropping my haitches; a few German words have me interspersing my speech with Dunderkopf's.  So this book, much as I hate to admit it, added some very annoying speech patterns into my conversational repertoire.

Hint: most started with a b- or f-.

In spite of that, I heartily recommend it.  It is truly a head trip.  Just don't take it too seriously.

Cold. Hungry. Lost. Rinse. Repeat.

In the Kingdom of Ice:
The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette

by Hampton Sides 



I know it’s a coincidence that I keep reading books about near-starvation and survival under incredible odds—and I’m on a diet.  I sure wish I could send those people some of my uneaten food.

But that would involve time travel, so I’ll just chuck it in the trash and carry on.  Like those poor adventurers on board the Jeannette, sailing and steaming to the arctic in search of the North Pole.  It wasn’t as stupid as it sounds and they weren’t stupid people.  In those days (1880's), it was a common belief that once you got past the ice, the arctic opened up into a warm, very salty sea.  There were some convincing theories to explain it.  So off went Captain De Long and his heavily fortified, ice-crunching ship Jeannette.  They were well prepared to overwinter in the ice, if it came to that.  And not all that poorly prepared for what actually happened.  So it's a long, harrowing story you'll have to read for yourself--and stay off Wikipedia until the last page is history.

Short and sad. But it happened.

Whose Names Are Unknown
by by Sanora Babb, Lawrence R. Rodgers

I never read The Grapes Of Wrath, but I was suprised to learn that this book was written in 1939 but not published because Random House felt that Steinbeck had already said it all! What a feeble, short-sighted notion.  Recovered from obscurity and published in 2006 by the University of Oklahoma press, this is a worthwhile, first-hand account of a national disaster--happening in person's lives.  All of the prejudice and pain, foolishness and greatness, of an entire nation, wrapped up in a few short pages.  It deserved to be published long ago.

It was pretty brave to pile all your belongings in a car and head across the desert to compete for a job at a farm laborer wage.  But more interesting to me was what came before--the waves of dust, whole days and even weeks of unending dust.  Chickens couldn't scratch in two feet of heavy dirt.  That dirt was probably highly fertile topsoil, but without rain, it couldn't be farmed--it only smothered.

I wonder if there's a story of the people who didn't go west, but instead chose to go back east or south?  Did any of the Okies end up in Florida, Georgia, or East Texas?  I'd love to hear their stories as well.

Another question--was this occurring at the same time as the great migration of southern sharecroppers moved north, to the factories of Chicago and Ohio?  I'll check in a bit.

Not 17 buttons, mind you

Napoleon's Buttons: How 17 Molecules Changed History
by Penny Le Couteur, Jay Burreson

Got my chemistry fix for the month!  

It starts out with a refresher course in organic chemistry and the notation used to describe molecules, then jumps into the seventeen molecules.  How they chose the seventeen is anyone's guess, but it must have been a lot of fun.  Dye, opium, silk--I don't think of silk as a molecule, but apparently it is.  Salt, of course.  But oleic acid?  Isoprene? 

Jump in for a world--literally--of fun.  Science fun.

For kids only, I'm afraid

Incantation
by Alice Hoffman

Alice Hoffman has a habit of showing big and tragic events through very small eyes, full of touch and detail.  But there's a lacking of emotion that baffles me.  How could I read this story without feeling?  But I did.

It's an episode during the Spanish Inquisition, in a tiny village in Spain, where Muslims and Christians coexisted in a manner that seemed, on the surface, harmonious. Secreted in the midst of them were secret Jews, the Conversos, Jews who had converted to Christianity to avoid persecution.  Many of them, no doubt most, continued to practice their religion in secret.  But none of that mattered to the Inquisitioners or the ignorant, intolerant, peasants who were easily incited to violence against their neighbors.  Open Jews, converted Jews or secret Jews--they were all the devil.

So much evil done in the name of Jesus.  If there were a heaven, I'd imagine he and Muhammad are up there now, swapping sad stories and crying bitter tears.

Grueling and worth it

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
by Laura Hillenbrand

Call me faint of heart, but for first time in an audiobook, I actually had to skip forward a few times.

Let me explain.  This is the true story of Louie Zamperini, an Olympic mile runner and air force bombardier who ended up a captive of the Japanese during World War II.  That much too much isn't telling, is it?  It would be on the book cover.  The story begins with his boyhood pranks, so numerous and flamboyant that in another time and place he might have been arrested for juvenile delinquency.  During the first few chapters, you also learn then that this author, Laura Hillenbrand, likes the detail.  (I won't call it minutia, it's not the kind of detail like the exact brand name of each pack of cigarettes he stole, but it is: each pack of cigarettes he stole.)

I'm not exaggerating much.  It was entertaining to hear, for a few hours, but then you just wanted her to get on with the story.  So when the bad stuff started happening and she was relating the daily, sometimes hourly, episodes of beatings, humiliation, and senseless violence he endured at the hands of his Japanese guards, I could only take so much of it.  I either had to turn the player or skip forward a little in time.  Not much, but enough to keep me sane.

The book explains a little of the mystery of how, after so much hatred and suffering and watching people die, the Americans and Japanese because strong allies and trading partners. Part of the push came from the Cold War and fear of communism, but not all. We need to study this phenomenon; learn from it; reproduce it.  It's our only hope.

Great book. Sad though.

Telling: A Memoir of Rape and Recovery
by Patricia Weaver Francisco

The highly personal story of a woman who survived and even overcame--after a long, long time--a rape by a stranger who broke into her house when her husband was out of town.  And by extension, the stories of many other women.  I'm not saying their stories are alike, only that they all share certain elements that lingered long after the bruises and pain should have faded.

Feeling of powerlessness, worthlessness, irrational (and rational) fear.  A marriage on the edge despite a strong, supportive husband.  She quotes a certain statistic about marriage after rape that I won't write here, because that would deprive you of the impact it had on me when I read it in context.  Nightmares, flashbacks, bad therapists.

Her rapist was never found, but ten years after the event she attended the trial of a serial rapist in a nearby neighborhood.  He had a similar approach--watch the house or apartment, enter when he was fairly sure a woman was alone, cover her eyes, and steal whatever money or sell

able property was around.  In the one case where there were two men in the apartment attacked, the difference between the men's reaction and hers was shocking.  They all fought back--she had fought desperately and blindly, finally suffering a cut so deep that the attacker had to wrap it in a sheet.   But the two men bided their time, caught their opportunity and found with effectiveness.  (And a hockey stick.)  

 That trial alone made the whole painful book worth enduring.  Read it.