Eva's 2012 Selected Book List. Order is not significant, but non-fiction is grouped before fiction.
1. Fun Home, A Family Tragicomicby Alison Bechdel ©2006 232pp (Large Print). A graphic memoir. The family business was a funeral home, though her father was also an English teacher. Alison’s father, who seems to have committed suicide, is the central character. The memoir is peppered with references to great books. The parent’s sexual history has bearing on the child’s. In this I would compare the book to J.R. Ackerley’s My Father, Myself. The last panel says “He was there to catch me when I leapt, illustrated by a 10 yr old Alison jumping feet first into a pool with her father in the water arms ready.
2. Freedom by Jonathan Franzen. 19 CDs, 25 hours. The story of the marriage of Walter and Patty Berglund, with a lot about current issues—the outsourcing of the Iraq War, the dilemmas of conservation. Walter works for the Cerulean Trust for awhile. It plans to buy up land in W. Va. And allow MTR ( Mountain Top Removal) on it so long as the land really is restored to habitat for the cerulean warbler in perpetuity. Patty, a basketball star at U. Minn., was attracted to Walter’s McAlistor College roommate, rock musician Richard.
3. Intuition by Allegra Goodman, ©2006 344 pp. It’s set in a fictional research lab in Cambridge MA. Goodman raises debatable questions. Should the government watchdog science? Should colleagues snitch? How perfect do lab records have to be? I liked the way the characters' personal lives had a bearing on events in the lab, but the novel’s focus was on the workplace. Robin loved research so was devastated when Marion said, “Sounds like you should go into teaching.”
4. Wesley the Owl, the Remarkable Love Story of an Owl and his Girl by Stacey O’Brien ©2008 224 pp. Non-fiction. The author, a recent Biology grad, worked in the owl lab at Caltech when a 4-day old Barn Owl with nerve damage to its wing that would prevent it ever thriving in the wild showed up. Stacey added him to her existing pet menagerie. They bonded and lived together for 19 years until Wesley died of liver cancer. Stacey reported her observations and made sound recordings new to science of Wesley’s vocalizations. There are photographs. This is also a memoir of the author's first 44 years.
5. The Big Year, a Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession by Mark Obmascik, ©2004, 248 pp. This is the book on which the movie of the same name was based. I enjoyed them equally, and I don’t think it would have mattered in which order I partook. The movie was faithful. The movie did not invent the competitive element after all! I learned a lot about El Nino. One tidbit: It often occurs at Christmastime, hence the name. There was a whopper of an El Nino in 1998 when this big year occurred, and Attu was still open.
6. The Girl with the DragonTattoo by Steig Larsson. 13 CDs, 16.5 hours. Mystery about the disappearance, 40 yrs ago, of Harriet Vanger, young scion of one of the wealthiest families in Sweden. Michael Bloomquist and Lisbeth Salander solve the case. I was riveted. There’s a side story about Lisbeth being categorized as an incompetent adult, although she’s 24 and a computer genius, and what she does to stop her guardian from sexually abusing and monetarily controlling her.
7. Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry. Discussed at the Peteets’. A quiet novel about everyday life on a farm in KY, and how marriage and children played out. The two courtships were nicely done. Hannah’s two husbands both served in WW II. Berry, of course, is well known for lamenting the “Get big or get out” trend in American farming.
8. Life Itself by Roger Ebert, ©2010. A memoir of my favorite movie reviewer, near contemporary, and fellow Illinoisan on 12 CDs, 14 hours. Ebert is open about his love life, religion (lapsed Catholic), politics, career, alcoholism, and medical history.
9. State of Wonder by Ann Patchett, ©2011 353 pp. Kathy McCann recommended this, and envisions a movie with Kathy Bates as Dr. Swenson. MaryDan’s thumb is down. I’m with Kathy. I was absorbed throughout. Dr. Marina Singh, a 42 yr old pharmacologist working in Minnesota, is sent to the Amazon to reign in her old nemesis, who is not forthcoming enough on her research into a new fetility drug. Marina’s also looking into the reported death there of the previous emissary, her colleague Dr. Anders Eckman.
10. In Code, A Mathematical Journey by Sarah Flannery with David Flannery, ©2001. Sarah wrote this in the gap year between High School and College (Cambridge) about her high school science project. The project, on RSA cryptography, won the top prize in the all-Ireland Science Fair. Sarah’s father, David, is a lecturer in math at Cork Polytechnic. Her mother was supportive too, as a non mathematician listening to Sarah practice presenting the material, and also guiding her through the media frenzy. Sarah has four younger brothers. There are photo plates. When she started she had to look up “matrix.” For the project she started programming (in mathematica). It’s a masterful account of unfolding mathematical enlightenment, of how one gets hooked.
11. A Singular Woman, the Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mother, by Janny Scott, ©2011, 367pp. Stanley Anne Dunham’s (1943-1995) work and strengths are so different from my own that it was an eye-opener to me to see how the other half lives. The photos fascinated. It took awhile for Anne’s many friends to realize, starting with his DNC speech in 2004, that the rising star in the Democratic Party was Anne’s son Barry! The emails flew. Richly researched and unsentimental. Janny Scott is a NY Times reporter.
12. Unbroken, A WWII Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand ©2010, 11 CDs, 14 hrs. Louis Zamperini (1917- ), troubled youth, 1936 Olympian, survivor in a raft in the Pacific for 44 days in 1943, POW for more than two years. After the war he married, overcame alcoholism, and is still living a full life. I like sports stories, survival stories & biography. Great read!
13. Wonder Girl, the Magnificent Sporting Life of Babe Didrikson Zaharias by Don Van Nutta, Jr. 10 CD’s, listened to on my iPod walking to and from work. Babe (1911-1956) died of colon cancer. She won a major golf tournament by 12 strokes after her colostomy, and started a cancer foundation. Babe was not always a good sport, and she boasted, but she won two Olympic gold medals and a silver in LA in 1932 (MaryDan recalls Aunt Lyd reminiscing about visiting Marge Bugg that year, and seeing Babe throw the javelin), was a star basketball player, and the first American to win the British Woman’s golf tournament in Scotland.
14. Who Got Einstein’s Office, Eccentrism and Genius at the Institute for Advanced Study, by Ed Regis, ©1987, 289pp. I admire Robert Oppenheimer (framed; great administrator) more after reading this, and Einstein less. Lee and Yang, who jointly won a Nobel Prize, had squabbles about priority. Wolfgang Pauli and Solomon Lefschetz were not nice. Freeman Dyson is admirable.
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Last revised: June 9, 2013