Barbara Lipska (2018) The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind. [Audible]. Emma Powell (narrator).
I loved this narrator. What could have been a dry retelling of a medical anomaly became a story that readers (listeners) can connect to. The content was a fascinating look at mental illness from the inside. The author suffered damage to her brain from a number of metastasized melanoma tumors. That she survived is a wonder; metastatic melanoma is notoriously deadly. For eight weeks, however, Lipska, whose life work was researching the brain regarding schizophrenia, experienced many of the symptoms of mental illness as tumors attacked every region of her brain, most destructively, the frontal cortex. After an astounding recovery, she was able to remember her emotions and feelings in the middle of a mental breakdown that was far more terrifying to her family than to her. It's not a long book, and is definitely worth the listen, especially for people who are touched by any form of mental illness.
Heather Morris (2019) Cilka's Journey. [Audible]. Louise Brealey (narrator).
Very loosely based on a real person, this novel is too much "triumph of the human spirit" and too little horror of concentration camps and gulags. It is unquestionably fiction, and not of the historical variety. The good people are too good to be true and the bad people are evil. There is little nuance and even less of the horrific choices people felt compelled to make to survive.
What is accurate: Cilka did exist and she did spend time at both Auschwitz-Birkenau (1942-1945) and a Soviet gulag. She did meet her husband in the gulag. Beyond that, the story is wholesale fiction, so much so that her stepson filed a lawsuit against her (the author replaced his father with a fictional character in response) and The Auschwitz Memorial published about the book that it is "almost devoid of any value as a document."
Madeline Miller (2012) The Song of Achilles. Ecco.
I picked up this book because I loved Miller's book, Circe (2020). This one was good, although the love story angle was too much for me. To be fair, it was Miller's first book. By the time she wrote Circe, she had worked out a better balance of man, myth, and storytelling. I will probably pick up her version of Galatea (2022) as well at some point.
I appreciate how Miller stuck to the ancient myth rather than the more modern iterations. Her character's voices are clear and distinct and the war is described as terribly gruesome, the way all narrative wars should be rendered.
Barbara W. Tuchman (2004) The Guns of August. [Kindle]
I slogged through this brilliant work of scholarship over several weeks, trying desperately to understand the first world war. Tuchman was a first-rate historian, and this book was definitely written for people fascinated by WWI. Nearly 20% of the book's pages are devoted to a bibliography. For me, it was too much. I love history, which is why I chose this book. However, I wasn't prepared for a 700-page deep exploration of the first month of the war. I was halfway through before I figured out that WW1 began because the Germans wanted to remake Europe in their image, but the Russians (who had their own plans for continental domination) and the French were in the way. German leaders figured France would be an easy target, so they ignored their treaties and began a march through Belgium that mobilized the French (and eventually the English). Germany planned for a six-week war. It didn't work out as planned because a series of blunders in the first month set the stage for a much longer and deadlier conflict.
Tuchman herself described her challenge in writing the book: "The historian gropes his way, trying to recapture the truth of past events and find out 'what really happened.' He discovered that truth is subjective and separate, made up of little bits seen, experienced, and recorded by different people. It is like a design seen through a kaleidoscope; when the cylinder is shaken the countless colored fragments form a new picture. Yet they are the same fragments that made a different picture and moment earlier. This is the problem inherent in the records left by actors in past events. That famous goal, 'wir es wirklich war,' is never wholly within our grasp" (p. 634).
Andy Weir (2021) Project Hail Mary. [Audible]. Ray Porter (Narrator).
A friend recommended this book and the minute it began, I knew I had listened to it before. I didn't care. It's a great book with a fabulous narrator. It's speculative fiction at its best with just enough science to sound possible (although completely implausible) and a storyline that unfolds brilliantly through flashes of memory and an unexpected friendship.
If I were still teaching this audiobook would be on my recommended list for parallel or extracurricular readings. Several of the motifs would fit neatly into curriculum standards, particularly around ideas of diversity, problem-solving, language development, writing dialog, story arcs, and critical thinking skills. Plus it's just fun.
Simon Wiesenthal (1998) The Sunflower. Random House.
This is a heart-wrenching narrative followed by a multitude of philosophical responses. The essence of part one is set in the Lemberg concentration camp in Poland. Simon Wiesenthal is taken to the bedside of a dying Nazi who wants absolution for his horrific actions from a Jew — any Jew. Wiesenthal left the room without a word. He almost immediately questioned his response to the man who was haunted by one particular atrocity. She he have offered the forgiveness the dying Nazi sought? Should he have vehemently denied him? Was his silence answer enough? The question of part one, “What would you do?” is answered in part two by more than 50 respondents from multiple perspectives.
There are two dominant points of view on the question of whether Wiesenthal’s silence was appropriate. One: Wiesenthal had no authority to forgive; only those directly harmed by the confessor have that right. Since the Nazi’s victims were dead, there could be no forgiveness. The second point of view was variations on a theme of “forgiveness, yes, but.” Yes, forgive, but never let the world forget the vile nature of his crimes. Yes, but only after long punishment. Yes, but only because he was young and brainwashed by an ideology. My personal response was shock at the audacity of a dying man to ask forgiveness of “any Jew,” including one from the death camp where he was hospitalized. I think stunned silence might have been my response, too.
One thought came through in several responses: the idea of cheap grace. I will be pondering this idea for a while.
Dara Horn (2021) People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present [Audible] Xe Sands (narrator)
I have thoughts about this one. The Jewish race is probably the most successful marginalized group in the history of the world. Countless times from the beginning of Genesis (well, chapter three anyway) and today, Jewish people have been exiled, exploited, enslaved, and unsuccessfully exterminated. At one point the author's daughter says, "Some people hate Jews." She's not wrong.
It is also this line that identifies the primary issue I have with this book. Some people do hate Jews. Some people hate Muslims, Some people hate Christians. Some people hate black people. Some people hate immigrants. Some people hate conservatives and some people hate liberals. The point is this: Some people hate. The author, in relaying her experiences through the lens of Jewish history and literature, begins to sound like she believes anti-semitism is the only hate in world history.
Human history is replete with invading conquerors who treat their captives brutally, cruelly, and violently. Most of the time, the conquered groups assimilate, disappear, or tribalize to become conquerors themselves. Jews are unique in that they continually held fast to their faith, prayers, traditions, and heritage no matter how horrific their circumstances. Historically, they have always returned from exile and built new lives based on ancient texts. Surely they are still God's Chosen!
There is a tremendous amount of new-to-me information in the book, like the Russian Jews who built Harbin, a city in northern China (Manchuria), and then were exiled when they had outlasted their usefulness to both Russia and China. There's a historical pattern of “use-and-discard” in Jewish history and it is sobering. The question I'm left with, however, is what next? Not just for Jewish people, but for any group that is hated by another group. Are the ghosts of Jews more powerful than the ghosts of involuntary immigrants from Africa? Or the ghosts of wars in Europe? What about the ghosts of American and Canadian Indians?
How do we create a world where hate does not result in violence? Spoiler alert: We don't. Hate will always lead to some form of violence. Hate (and violence) have many disguises, which is why reading books like this one will always matter.
A.R. Shaw (2023) Jessie's Last Signal. Arbooks.com
Yes, another "cozy apocalypse" novella from A.R.Shaw. I'm on her ARC team, so I get them all in digital format as soon as they publish. Sometimes it works out, but sometimes a little more research and editing is needed.
Shaw is a master of creating sympathetic and believable characters. This book is no different. Jessie is a war veteran (of a war yet to come in the U.S.) whose PTSD led him to self-medicate with alcohol. At some point he abandoned his wife and son and became a tramp, running from his fears and hiding from the law which has become anarchic and corrupt beyond measure. When Jessie happens upon a signal station for a long-forgotten train, he settles in for a few days of binging on stolen alcohol and resting. He comes across a group of feral children in the Alabama forests whom he saves first from pokeberries. This is Shaw's first research error. Feral children may appear after an apocalypse, but pokeberries are spring toxins, and the first chapters of the book proclaim the cold of winter is fast approaching.
The bigger research error is part of the climax: a winter hurricane. Living in the South, I know hurricane season is from June to October. A quick Google search revealed the latest hurricanes in recorded history are in November. I can suspend belief for a lot in fiction writing, but not seasonality. For fiction to work, some things have to be accurate-ish. Pokeberries and hurricanes in winter just make me roll my eyes.
No spoilers, but the ending is just stupid.