Eva's 2018 Selected Book List, in no
special order, except non-fiction is first. Compiled Nov. 18, 2018
1. The Book of Separation by Tova Mirvis ©2017, 302 pp. Memoir about leaving her marriage and “Modern Orthodoxy.” The setting is Newton, MA and environs. I intend to seek out Tova Mirvis’s novels.
2. Half-Life, The Divided Life of Bruno Pontecorvo by Frank Close, professor of physics at Oxford. ©2015, 400 pp. In 1950, a few months after Klaus Fuchs was convicted in England, Bruno Pontecorvo (1913-1993) disappeared behind the iron curtain with his family (3 sons, the oldest 12) and Swedish wife Marianne. Bruno, an Italian Jew, had been a student of Enrico Fermi in Rome. He escaped fascism for Paris where he worked in Frederic Joliot-Curie’s lab. He joined the Communist Party in 1937, but after leaving Paris in 1940 with Marianne and son Gil and getting, with difficulty, to America via Lisbon, he stopped talking about politics. He got a civilian job in Tulsa using nuclear physics to explore for oil. When the US got into the war the FBI came to his home to vet him for war work. They noticed a lot of literature on Communism on his shelves and wrote it up but that memo got lost. He worked with Klaus Fuchs on building a nuclear reactor at Chalk River in Canada. The Soviet Union got the blueprints for the Chalk River reactor, and it was determined not from Fuchs. After the war Pontecorvo worked at Hartwell in England, a job that required security clearance. He lived to see the communist experiment fail. From 1950-55 he was not allowed to write to his parents. Then for the next 20 years he was allowed to write and receive visitors, but not travel abroad. In 1978 he was allowed to travel to Italy. Bruno lived the life of the elite in the Soviet Union—luxury vacations within the Soviet Union, special stores, an apartment in Moscow, and a big house in Dubna, 70 miles away. Marianne had a breakdown. She spent much of the time in Russia in asylums. After his father’s death, son Tito moved back to America where he’d been born. (He’s on YouTube as a horse breeder). Gil, a physicist, never married. Son Antonio had a family in Moscow. Pontecorvo thought of Communism as a science, then as a religion, and finally said of himself, “I was a cretin.” Neutrinos, nuons, pions, & the weak force, are also mentioned in this book, in a way I did not skip over.
3.
Bend, Not Break, A Life in two Worlds by
Ping Fu, with MeiMei Fox ©2012, 288 pp. Memoir. Ping was
born in China in 1958. She had great parenting until she was 8, then her happy
family was dispersed by the cultural revolution. By her early 20’s she felt
darn lucky to be a University student in China, but she got into political
trouble. She emigrated to the US at age
25. She studied Computer Science and English at the U of NM, waiting tables.
Later she worked full time while working on more degrees. In 1997 Ping, by this
time married with a child, founded Geomagic. I see on the web Ping’s account of
her experiences in China have been questioned. Whether she was exiled or just left
is not a sticking point for me. Frank McCourt got into trouble with Irish
apologists who felt he made the Irish look bad with Angela’s Ashes. My take is
he’s a Pulitzer Prize winner—the Irish should be proud.
4. A
Mathematicians’s Lament by Paul Lockhart ©2009, 140pp.Recommended by
Mark Molloy. Paul Lockhart is Emmett’s kids’ math teacher. He was awarded Teacher
of the Year by the American Go Association in 2015. His sons are director and a subject, resp., of
the Go Movie The Surrounding Game. Lockhart makes
great points about how school turns a lot of people off math, though I
disagree with him about geometry, in particular, being damaging. Here’s an
example of a proof Lockhart endorses: What portion of the area of
the box is taken up by triangle ABC? 
Answer? 50%. Proof: 
;
The third diagram above is Lockhart’s proof that the sum of the first n odd numbers equals n2.
5. The Snoring Bird, my family’s Journey through a century of biology by Bernd Heinrich (1940- ) ©2007, 452pp. Bernd’s father, Gerd (1896-1984) was a naturalist who collected for museums. By the time Bernd got his Ph.D. in zoology in 1969 naturalists were observing and theorizing. In 1961-62 when the Heinrichs collected in Tanganyika, Bernd and Gerd carried only shotguns, not binoculars or camera. But the book is so much more than a personal account of the transition from 19th to 20th century science. I loved Bernd’s account of his personal development. Gerd’s experiences in the Luftwaft in WW I, and the family’s escape from the Russians at the end of WW II, and immigration to Maine in 1951, all fascinate. Gerd’s love life was remarkable. Bernd’s was more conventional (serial monogamy). You can see Bernd on YouTube in his cabin and pursuing his hobby, extreme marathon running.
6. In the Darkroom by Susan Faludi ©2016, 417pp. The author’s father was born Istvan Friedmann in Budapest in 1927. He left Hungary after WWII—he was Jewish and had had a rough time of it—eventually settling into a successful career as an art photographer in New York. He changed his name to Stephen Falludi, married, and had two children. He emigrated back to Hungary in 1990. In 2004 Susan, a writer, got an email from her estranged father with the subject line “Changes.” He dropped the bomb on her that he’d just had a sex-change operation in Thailand! He wanted her to write his story. Susan spent considerable time with Steffi until Steffi’s death in 2015. I learned a lot about the Hungarian Arrow Cross during the war, and the far-right Jobbik party today.
7. Far from the Tree by Andrew Solomon ©2012, 712 pp. Solomon interviewed about 500 parents who had a major identity difference from a child of theirs. He includes just enough detail for each case study, interspersed with genetic, sociological and ethical discussion—but never lingering too much. The chapters are Son (his own background—he’s gay), Deaf, Dwarf, Down Syndrome, Autism, Schizophrenia, Disability, Prodigies, Rape, Crime, and Transgender. He limits the prodigy examples to music prodigies, because he has some background in that, whereas he has none in, say, chess or sports. Parenting is challenging!.
8. Without a Map by Meredith Hall ©2007, 220 pp. A memoir. The author, a heretofore college-bound 16-year-old, gave birth in 1966. She was kicked out of high school and the baby was put up for adoption. Thanks to a Waldorf boarding school in NH that took her in (with a gag order about her past) Meredy did finish H.S., but her life was thrown off track for years. She finally got a degree from Bowdoin College at age 44, then taught. Her firstborn, Paul, eventually found her. Meredy’s mother was a great mother until she threw her daughter out and never apologized. Years later Meredy helped her mother through 18 years of MS, always hoping for an apology. Meredy never had the big fight with her mother she probably should have had when her mother was strong.
9.
In America, Tales from Trump Country by
Caitríona Perry ©2017, 218pp. This Irish journalist went around America before
and after the 2016 election taking the temperature of the electorate. She only
recounts the points of view of Trump voters she deems representative. She is
writing for her Irish audience, which gave the book a perspective. She captures
the regionalism of the US. The chapters are Pennsylvania, Michigan, Texas,
Florida, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Wisconsin and New York. I still have a
hard time with the belief of Trump voters that Trump is “incorruptible.” The border
patrol in Texas wants 1000-2500 more border patrol agents rather than a wall.
Coal miners know coal is not coming back, but they like Trump for talking about
their issues. This book says Barack Obama deported 3 million undocumented
immigrants, George W. Bush, 2 million. In 2015, the last year for which she had
stats, Obama deported 333,000, only half of whom had criminal convictions. That’s
not an open border policy!
10. It’s Not Yet Dark by Simon Fitzmaurice ©2014, 165 pp. Memoir. I reviewed the documentary of the same title in my 2017 movie list. Reading the book afterwards was not repetitious. They are two different mediums about the same subject. Simon wrote about ALS, which struck in 2008, but also described all he’d loved in life. He left that for his kids, Jack, Raife, Arden, Sadie, and Hunter.
11. I Found My Tribe by Ruth Fitzmaurice ©2017, 213 pp. How Ruth found the time to write this memoir with a husband with ALS and five children I can’t imagine. When she could not sleep with all the machinery Simon required, she left the marital bed, feeling awful about it. She admits she might have thrown herself out of a window if at least one of her last born, the twins, was not a girl. Simon’s friend Galen became a paraplegic after a bicycle accident. His wife is a member of Ruth’s Tragic Wives Club, as is her lifelong friend Aifric, whose husband is fine. The Tragic Wives Club swims in the cove at Greystone, Co. Wicklow, 12 months/year. Ruth suffered from the lack of privacy, with all the nurses in and out of their home. She liked one of them, others not so much.
12. The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert ©2014, 276pp. The author travels around the world reporting on experiments related to climate change. For example, a forest ecologist is running a study of seventeen 2.5-acre tree plots from Cuzco down to Manu in Peru, each at an altitude 800 feet down from the next plot above. Plot 4’s annual average temperature is 53o, Plot 3’s is 51o. He started in 2003. He thought of it as a long-term project and could not imagine that much of interest would be found in just four years, but in 2007 one of his grad students sifted through all the data anyway. A phenomenon known as the Birnam Wood scenario was already measurable: the trees in each zone started moving upslope! The average genus was moving up at a rate of 8 ft/year. One genus was moving up at 100 ft/yr. Only the most fleet-footed (rooted) trees can keep up. Kolbert went to a place in Italy where a natural volcanic vent was putting a lot of CO2 into the water. The gradient of shellfish life, calcification of shells, etc. was measurable as one approached the vent. I filled two pages of my notebook with fascinating tidbits. Warming today is taking place at least 10X faster than at the end of the last glaciation. Rate is crucial. There needs to be enough time for adaptation.
13. Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry, illustrated by Wesley Dennis ©1947, 173pp. I saw documentaries touching on this material at the Chincoteague NWR visitor’s center. Misty was real. The Beebes were real, Paul and Maureen were real.
14.
Commonwealth by Ann Patchett ©2016,
322pp. A family saga covering 52 years. From what I read elsewhere, this is Ann
Patchett’s most autobiographical novel. Bert Cousins, L.A. District Attorney,
starts an affair with Police Officer Fix Keating’s beautiful wife. Fix is an involved father of Franny, age 1,
and her older sister. Bert is an uninvolved father of 4 including a newborn. The two families break up. We learn what
happens to the three resulting households, and the blended family of 6
children, who live 4 and 2 during the school year but come together every summer
in Virginia. As a young adult Franny has a long affair with
an acclaimed writer. She tells him about
her family. He writes a novel claiming
it is all from his imagination. Too late Franny realizes she gave away something
private. We learn what became of the 6
kids and the 4 adults in the families introduced in the first chapter.
15. The Little Red Chairs by Edna O’Brien ©2015, 297 pp. Fidelma, 40ish, lives in a small town in Sligo. Her boutique went down in the financial crisis. She’s twice miscarried during her long marriage to much older Jack. She longs for motherhood. Vlad the healer, a foreigner, comes to town and rents her closed shop. Fidelma falls for Vlad. Telling Jack she’s going on a retreat, she goes off with Vlad. She’s getting up the nerve to tell Jack she’s pregnant when Vlad is unmasked as a notorious Serbian war criminal. She’s rejected by Jack. She loses the baby violently. She moves to London where she takes menial jobs and meets people through her housing situations. She attends Vlad’s trial in the Hague. There were parts of this book so dark I had to put the book down.
16. Plain Truth by Jodi Picoult ©2000, 14 CDs. I like Amish settings. I could have done without the romance between Coop & Attorney Ellie Hathaway. Katie Fisher, 18, is accused of the murder of her own 2 months-premature newborn who was birthed in secret in the barn. Katie either dissociates or lies about it. She was being courted by Samuel. Her older brother Jacob has left the Amish community, and was disowned by his father. Katie’s mother sends Katie once/month to State College to visit Jacob and report back, telling her husband Katie is visiting Aunt Leila, whom Aaron also shuns for marrying a Mennonite. Courtroom drama.
17.
The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
(1933-2018) ©2004, 391pp. Same milieu (Newark, 1940’s) and
family (mirrors the configuration of Roth’s own family) as American Pastoral for which Roth won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize. But
this book veers into alternative history, imagining that celebrity candidate and
America Firster Charles Lindbergh beat FDR in 1940. An uptick in anti-Semitism
is unleashed by the attitude of the Administration. Families are unable to have
dinner together civilly when one member supports Lindbergh. Jews are pushed to
assimilate. One family in their circle moves to Canada. Others cling to the
conviction that “it can’t happen here.” Ribbentrop was fęted at the White House.
Lindbergh and Hitler met in Iceland.
18. Waking Lions by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen ©2014 in the original Hebrew, English ©2016, 341pp. My book group chose this. A novel about a marriage, contemporary Israel, and immigrants. Eitan Green, a thirty-something neurologist, loves his wife Liat, a detective, and their two sons. They live in a suburb of Beersheva. One night after a hard shift, Eitan tore around the dirt tracks in the dessert in his SUV. He hit and fatally injured Asun, an Eritrean. Asun was unconscious but not dead yet when Eitan left him, rationalizing that there was no sense ruining two lives. What he did not know was that he dropped his wallet at the scene and Sirkit, Asun’s wife, had witnessed the whole thing. Liat is assigned the hit and run case. Sirkit blackmails Eitan into running a clinic for undocumented immigrants in an abandoned garage. He lies to both his boss and his wife to make time to do it. Even though it’s been 46 years since I spent a year in Israel, I recognized the place. A page-turner with moral dilemmas.