Eva's 2013 Selected Book List.  Order is not significant, but  non-fiction is grouped before fiction.

 

1.       The Idea Factory, Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation by Jon Gertner © 2012 360pp. I based a 7 minute Toastmasters speech  on  the way this book put markers on the timeline of my life reminding me when certain technologies came into play. For example, in 1947 two minor employees of Bell Labs wrote a paper addressing the scarcity of radio frequency spectrum that the FCC allocated for mobile phones such as police and cabs used. They pointed out that an area of mobile coverage need not be a circle with an antenna in the middle. It could be a honeycomb of small hexagons, each with its own range of frequencies. A frequency  could be re-used in any non-adjacent cell. Mobile radio did not have to be local, it could be national. In 1971 a team of engineers drove around Philadelphia in a trailer stocked with radio equipment trying to set up the first working cell phone system.

2.       The Nobel Duel by Nicholas Wade ©1981 283pp.  An account of two rivals, Andrew Schally and Roger Guillemin, who shared the 1977 Nobel Prize for Medicine with Rosalyn Yalow for identifying the hypothalamic releasing factors predicted by Geoffrey Harris. Telling last sentence of the book: “In attaining …that award they were denied the…final triumph over the other that each also craved.” Only Rosalyn looks radiant in the photos of Stockholm. This is a wonderful piece of science and interpersonal dynamics reporting, but I cannot imagine that either Schally (US citizen b. 1926 in Poland)  or Guillemin (US citizen b. 1924 in France) gave this book as presents to their friends.  Even the highest achievers make scientific blunders and have blind spots and personality foibles, in spades. 

3.       Cracking the Genome ©2001 by Kevin Davies. In 1900 British zoologist Wm Bateson tracked down Mendel’s writings from 35 years earlier and within two weeks had delivered the lecture to the Royal Horticultural Society that fired up a wide interest. The draft human genome was announced in 2000.  100 years from now we’ll still be mining this big data for insights into nature. Sydney Brenner said “When all this genome mania dies down we’ll get back to normal hypothesis-driven science.”  The engineering advances to cope with the drudgery of sequencing are spectacular too. Ethics, Medicine, forensic applications all fascinate. Why are there only 4 letters in the genetic alphabet? Each protein is coded by a sequence of three of them. So there could be 64 proteins. But there are only 20 in nature. Why? It’s kind of scary that by 2001 we had already begun creating artificial proteins and toying with adding another letter…But I see how it helps to understand why.  I’m looking for a book like this giving an overview of the last 12 years.

4.       Lucky Child, a memoir of surviving Auschwitz as a young boy by Thomas Buergenthal (1934- ) © 2007 228 pp.  Buergenthal became a judge at the international court of justice in the Hague.  His mother, Gerda, survived the Holocaust also. Mother and son found each other 1.5 years after the war ended.  I was impressed by the friends and alliances Thomas made in these trying conditions.

5.       Elsewhere by Richard Russo.  ©2012 243 pp. Memoir by the Pulitzer prize-winning novelist (for Empire Falls in 2002). Russo, b. 1949,  grew up in upstate New York, only child of a mother who dreamed making a better life “elsewhere.” His father was absent but they were surrounded by relatives. By the end of the book we’re acquainted with his long marriage, his two daughters, b. in the 1980’s, are married,  and we’ve learned about the challenges of his  mother’s old age.   In retrospect he realizes his mother had OCD.  

6.       A Genius for Living, The Life of Frieda Lawrence (1879, Germany-1956, Taos, NM) by Janet Byrne.  ©1995  416 pp.  She was a von Ricthofen, cousin to the WW I Ace The Red Baron. Frieda never wavered in her love for her original family, though she famously left her own three children—the oldest was 11---to run off with D.H. Lawrence, 6 years her junior, in 1912. Her children were subsequently cared for by the large Weekly family. Earnest had several maiden sisters and  his parents were part of the large household as well. In their adulthoods  Monty, Elsa, and Barby  related to Frieda as well as many offspring who have not been abandoned in childhood. Frieda had so many friends and lovers I had a hard time keeping them straight. There were also interpersonal conflicts. Lots of people thought she wasn’t intelligent enough for D.H. Lawrence.  Lots of people felt her 3^rd husband, Angelo Ravalgi, was not intelligent enough for her.  Georgia O’Keefe recalled the first time she saw Frieda: “She was not thin, and not young, but there was something radiant and wonderful about her. ”

7.       Heart and Fist by Eric Greitens ©2011 9 CDs, read by the author. Greitens was a Rhodes Scholar and a Navy Seal.  He did not go into the military until he was 27.  When Eric was 18 he was an exchange student in China. While at Duke and Oxford Universities Eric’s sport on the side was boxing.   He wrote his Ph.D thesis on humanitarian aid and intervention. He volunteered in Bosnia and Rwanda helping refugees. He did stints with Mother Theresa’s outfit and helping the poor in Bolivia. He emerged from all this believing the bad guys needed to be stopped before the refugees and genocide happened.  His blow by blow description of Navy Seal training, aka “Buds,” really impressed me.  Most candidates understandably drop out.  After a purple heart and a bronze star  acquired in four deployments, Eric returned to civilian life and founded The Mission Continues, an organization that helps veterans. 

8.       Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali  ©2007, 353pp.  The author was b. in Mogidishu in 1969.  As a little girl she was “excised” (female circumcision) behind her mother’s back at the order of her grandmother.  Her family lived in Saudi Arabia and Kenya. As an adolescent she sought to practice and understand Islam by joining discussion groups with other searchers. She knows the Muslim Brotherhood.  She sought asylum in Holland to escape an arranged marriage.  She made a 10 minute film with Theo Van Gogh.

9.       Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, An African Childhood by Alexandra Fuller.  ©2001, 9 CDs.  The narrator, Bo Bo (b. 1969), grew up in Africa with her unconventional British immigrant parents Tim and Nicola and her siblings. Rhodesia became Zimbabwe during Bo Bo’s childhood.  There were terrible personal tragedies and also the political uncertainty, and farming failures. Nicola became an alcoholic (but only after several dead children and the terrible stresses) but the family stuck together, and the flavor of their life comes through, as does their love for Africa.  There are strong positive memories and images in the mix I have not recounted.   

10.    Behind the Beautiful Forever, Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo © 2012, 7 CDs, 8.5 hrs. Boo is a Pulitzer prize winner. She spent 3 yrs interviewing residents of the Aniwaddy slum next to the modern  Mumbai Airport.  She weaves a multi-threaded non-fiction narrative.   Globalization in the trenches.  Abdul recycles garbage. Bribery is everywhere. There’s a false accusation grounded in jealousy, and a long drawn out court case.  A studious young woman lives there.  Her mother vies for power. 

11.    My Dog Tulip by J.R. Ackerley   © 1965 190 pp. This is a great dog book, but it’s also literature. Ackerley writes uninhibitedly (after all, it’s a dog) about Tulip’s bodily functions and sexual fulfillment, always with the personality of the beloved given primacy. God knows Ackerley tried to find a human he could live with and mutually love intimately but (I’ve read his biography) he never did. 

12.    The Future by Al Gore. I’d like to discuss this with a thoughtful conservative, but I can’t see one of the two I know reading it. In an interview I watched this year, Henry Kissinger said he does not see any leaders today who look ahead 50 years and lead towards what the leader sees as important in the long run.  Too bad Al Gore is a “recovering politician,” because he would be such a leader. Kissinger‘s examples were FDR, DeGaulle and Churchill. I would add Teddy Roosevelt to that list myself.  Gore gives examples of how corporations have hijacked our democracy. For example livestock grow fatter on low doses of antibiotics and we don’t have a law against it even though it contributes to drug-resistant bacteria.   The book is chock full of issues worth pondering.

13.    The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, Vol 3,The Defender of the Realm 1940-1965 by Paul Reid and Wm. Manchester. At this writing I’m on disc 31 (of 42!), and it’s still 1943.  Herman is listening too. When Hitler turned on Russia, relieving the pressure on Britain, Churchill cried, “Eastward, Ho!” There are many points in the war where it could have gone another direction. I like Winston.

14.     Patrimony by Philip Roth © 1991, 238 pp.  A warts-and-all account of the last two years of the author’s father’s life, with flashbacks. Herman Roth (1901-1989) died of a non-malignant brain tumor. It paralyzed one side of his face, then interfered with balance, breathing, mobility and continence.  I had not  known before that Roth was married to acclaimed  serious actress Claire Bloom.

15.     Leaving a  Doll’s House by Claire Bloom (b/1931 in England) © 1996, 202 pp.  Memoir/autobiography which I read in counterpoint with the Blitz portion The Last Lion. Claire knew acting was her vocation since childhood. I like reading about the path to artistry. Her love life, not enviable by my lights, is chronicled. This memoir was written in the aftermath of her 18 yrs with Philip Roth. Roth does not come off well, but supposedly a novel he published in 1998 rebuts her portrayal, so don’t worry about Roth in a pen fight.  

16.    And Furthermore by Judi Dench  ©2011 5 CDs, 6 hrs. The cast she was with when Judi Dench made the Queen’s honors list serenaded her with, “There’s Nothing Like a Dame.” When Peggy Ashcroft died, Judi informed the theatre audience. Instead of asking for a moment of silence she said she thought Peggy would prefer applause. 

17.    Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver © 2004, 12 CDs, read by the author. Kingsolver’s family became “locovores” for a year.   I got a renewed  appreciation for the turkey I photographed trailing chicks three years ago in Mile High Canyon, as the common domestic turkeys need help to breed! Barbara raised an heirloom breed that did reproduce the old-fashioned way.  Barbara’s records show  it is not more expensive to buy local food.  Her family ate well through the winter, in part because they had a large garden and Barbara canned.  She values knowing her supplier more than buying organic, a formal certification that’s hard to come by.  

18.    Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel by Jeanette Walls, narrated by the author in 8 hrs. © 2009. Lily Casey Smith, Walls’ grandmother, was b. 1901. She taught in a one-room Arizona school house & survived flash floods. Her first marriage was to a bigamist. Her second lasted.  This novel fills in that factual framework with imagination where the record is insufficient. The courtship of Rosemary and Rex Walls was fun to read about, knowing what follows from having read The Glass Castle.  A great read.

19.    Possession by A.S. Byatt   Winner of the 1990 Booker Prize. 555pp.  Roland is an academic researching  a (fictional ) 19^th century poet, Randolph Henry Ash. Dr. Maud Bailey is the world authority on an Ash contemporary, Christabel LaMotte. Roland and Maud team up when Roland discovers a heretofore unknown romantic relationship between Ash and LaMotte.  I enjoyed the obsession, the sleuthing,  the 19^th and 20^th century romances, the window into academia, and the English setting. MaryDan didn’t think much of it. 

20.    A Guide to the Birds of East Africa by Nicholas Drayson © 2008 202 pp.  A beguiling novel, a little gem. Herman read it too.  It’s like an account of a Big Year, only it’s a Big Week. Two guys are competing for first dibs on asking Rose Mbikwa to the Nairobi Hunt Club ball.  Harry Khan applies money and consultants to compensate for having less birding skill than Mr. Malik. The drawings of birds—sketches as in field notes—at the beginning of each chapter and on the book jacket are a delight.  A wonderful discovery. 

21.    Faith by Jennifer Haigh © 2011 318 pages. Herman and I read this aloud to each other as part of his voice therapy. Boston setting. A  book group pick.   I had liked another novel by J.H. a few years ago, Baker Towers. Faith’s plot turns on the  fact that almost every abuser was himself abused, but the association is much weaker in the other direction. Many victims never become abusers.  The novel paints a grim picture of sterile lives lead by priests and seminarians.  Arthur stands accused, and he hasn’t much recourse or support.

22.    The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling. © 2012 15 CDs. Rowling’s  first novel for adults and my first Rowling. Barry Fairbrother dies in the opening chapter. He was a beloved husband (though his wife resented the time he gave to others), father , friend, coach, & town councilor. Filling the “casual vacancy” on the council forms the narrative background.  There are political factions in the town.  The disaffected teenagers are well drawn.  Some hurtful postings hacked into the Council’s website signed “the ghost of Barry Fairbrother” distress Dr. Parminda Jarwahna and others.  At first I had a hard time keeping the characters straight but I got into it.     

23.    What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, by Nathan Englander.  Herman’s South African urologist, Dr. Siegel,  told me he’d found an author, N.E., who really speaks to him, “but maybe you have to be Jewish.”   Not so!  I generally prefer novels because short stories often get me to the point of being interested in a character or situation, then end abruptly.  But the three volumes of short stories I listed this year did not do that.  The title story of this collection was reprinted (twice!) in The New Yorker. 

24.    Hateship Courtship Loveship Marriage by this year’s Nobel Laureate in literature, Alice Munro. © 2001. 323 pp. Very Canadian. Short stories.  One is about a couple one of whom gets diagnosed with ALS. Another is about a woman in a long marriage who once, at the age of 29, had been unfaithful; In another adolescents, as a prank, fake letters from a suitor to a downtrodden  older woman.

25.    The News from Spain by Joan Wickersham.  We had a good discussion of this in my book group. Each of the seven stories has the eponymous title. In the first a character picks up a sea shell and holds it to his ear to hear “the news from Spain,” which is what his father used to say.  In another an old saw is recast as “The news from Spain this week is that Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead,” which reminded me of  my father  writing  me in 1972 in Israel  in a slow news week, “Anne Therese and Tom still married.”