Audiobook. This is the tale of an appealing character, a doctor who works in the lab of a pharmaceutical company in Minnesota. Marina Singh agrees to go deep into the Amazon jungle to find out how her colleague died and to complete his task. He was sent to determine how the uncommunicative Dr. Swenson coming along with research on the fertility drug that would make the company fantastically...
What a treat this was, a laugh-out-loud recounting of Bill Bryson's assault on the Appalachian Trail. He was accompanied by his high school friend Katz whose preparation involved having walked as a means of getting around Des Moines because his car had been repossessed. In their first day on the trail Katz fell behind and lightened his pack by tossing out much of their food...
Audiobook. Starting from one unadorned fact, that a Native American graduated from Harvard in 1665, Geraldine Brooks has spun a complex and satisfying story. The story is told by Bethia, daughter of an enlightened minister who cares for the tribe on their island. Bethia, as a young girl, befriends an Indian of her own age who shows her the best place to catch mussels and...
Set in a remote spot on Curlow Creek in New South Wales in 1827, this novel opens with the arrival of an officer who is to oversee the execution the next morning of the sole surviving member of a gang of bushrangers (outlaws). The officer, Michael Adair, spends the night in conversation in the hut with the condemned man, who like him is Irish. Daniel Carney, the condemned...
Audiobook. I was expecting one of those interesting "how strange it is to be immersed in a totally foreign culture" books, but Peter Hessler's account of his two years working for the Peace Corp in a remote part of Sichuan province in 1996-98 is much more than that. Yes, there are the funny bits about how he enjoyed teaching English to students who chose their own English...
The central figures in this novel are all familiar, having been the subjects of countless pulp fiction novels, TV shows, and movies. And some of the events are "known" to us, the wild times in Dodge City, where the cowboys brought the cattle to market and themselves to drink, gamble, and visit prostitutes. And the event looming over this story, the gunfight at OK corral in...
Audiobook. When Jennifer was 10 we traveled to Europe and spent a week in the Alhambra near Grenada. I had read this book and urged Jen to read it too. She was reluctant until we arrived, then she was transfixed by it and I enjoyed listening to again all these years later. In 1829 Washington Irving, in his words, "made a rambling expedition from Seville to...
The subtitle A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason gives both the substance and flavor of the book. Marietta gave me this book, noting my interest in the area. Well, it was a rare treat, the most exciting book I have read in years. Besides a sketch of Descartes' work and life, Shorto describes the bizarre journey of Descartes' bones after his death in...
Audiobook. Sarah Vowell does it again — history with her wry observations. This time she writes about Hawai'i from the arrival of 14 missionaries on the Thaddeus in 1820 to the overthrow by their descendents of the Hawai'ian royalty. She mentions food she encountered, including the loco moco, a hamburger patty topped with gravy and a fried egg, "a dish," she...
I heard Jasmin Darznik, an Iranian who arrived in the US at age 3, speak at the Charlottesville Festival of the Book this year as part of a panel on memoirs. She teaches English and creative writing at W & L. When her father died, as she was helping her mother move, she found a photograph that she eventually learned was her mother as a 13 year old bride. Her mother's...