Category Archives: nonfiction

The Code Breaker

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Inspiring and difficult, Walter Isaacson’s The Code Breaker brought me back to graduate school, but this time the reading was not compulsory for a course, but for my sense of wanting to learn. Science is not my favorite subject; I favor literature, but Isaacson’s conversational style easily led me through the story he wanted to impart.

Although the title identifies Jennifer Doudna as the focus, the book is more than her biography. The subtitle may have been more telling – “The Future of the Human Race.” Isaacson neatly uses Doudna as the fulcrum for the emanating circle of collaborators and influencers in her life and work. I read this book very slowly, trying hard to digest all the information. Despite Isaacson’s easy style and simplified explanations, it still required my concentration and focus. I wanted to understand, and, in the end, I did.

Doudna’s journey as an educator and researcher had some connections that resounded with me, but her level of dedication and enthusiasm clearly soared beyond the norm, and she deservedly won the Nobel Prize. But Isaacson is able to draw out her personal background with arrows pointing to progress and success in her professional life. She is human, after all, and Isaacson does not shy away from her mistakes or misjudgments. Her meeting with James Watson later in life when he is ninety and she is well revered, was poignant; here was the man whose book The Double Helix had inspired her as a girl to study science, yet his prejudices had destroyed his reputation.

Isaacson inserts his own conclusions and predictions in many of the chapters, but especially when discussing the possibility of gene editing, not only for improving health but also for improving the human species. That controversy was paused when the coronovirus took hold of scientists’ and the world’s attention, but it is still there. Dava Sobel’s book review for the New York Times is titled “A Biography of the Woman Who Will Re-Engineer Humans.”

Reading this book in real time has been strange. While reading, Doudna and her collaborators created a test for Covid-19. While reading about her efforts to create the vaccine, I actually received mine. And the news of two women receiving the Nobel Prize made the evening news not long ago. For a while, we all wondered who would win the race – the virus or the vaccine, but Isaacson closes his story saying we should be cautious, slow down, especially with the genetic engineering that helped create those recent saviors.

The book encompasses so many ideas and people, it would take a second read to capture all the details of biotechnology. But I probably won’t read it again – after all, there is no test I need to take on it, and I can always go back to find what I need in its extensive index. It is worth reading at least once, however; the story will leave you in awe and with a new appreciation of science.

Review of the Year That Shall Not be Named – in Books

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With the end of a year like no other, I am again looking back to list the twelve books, one for each month, I especially loved reading.  This year, however, is tinged with the evolution of 2020 from high expectations at January to slow disintegration as the months wore on.

One of my favorite authors, humorist Dave Barry, offered his observations in his Year in Review 2020 – giving a few laugh out loud moments in following his monthly reminder of a year gone awry.  He inspired me to think about how my reading morphed with my own view of the world as history marched through a challenging year.

Here is my list of twelve books read and reviewed (click on the title to read the review) throughout the year.  My favorite has a star.

January:  What better way to start than a book with January in the title and doors magically opening to new worlds- Alix Harrow’s The Ten Thousand Doors of January

February: The world news was getting a little scary, so I kept escaping to fantasy land with A.J. Hackwith’s The Library of the Unwritten

March: The world was really looking grim by now, so I turned to Jose Saramago’s story of how it all could be worse in Blindness

April: Spring didn’t really look like a flowery bower, so I buried myself in Eric Larson’s epic observation of Winston Churchill in The Splendid and the Vile

May: As the pandemic raged on, many of us wondered what life would have been like if 2016 had brought a different president; Curtis Sittenfeld filled the void with Rodham

June: By now, I was looking for a fictional world I did not live in; thankfully, Anne Tyler, one of my favorite authors, came through with a delightful The Redhead by the Side of the Road  *

July:  We all knew the pandemic was real when we heard beloved actor Tom Hanks had it in March, but his recovery led to his role in the movie adaptation of Paulette Jiles’ News of the World in July.  In July, I enjoyed Jiles’ new book Simon the Fiddler 

August:  By now it was clear my European travels were going to be curtailed for a while, but my dreams of Paris were fed vicariously by Liam Callanan’s Paris By the Book

September: Although I couldn’t visit my Los Angeles family, I could revisit favorite landmarks in Abbi Waxman’s The Bookish Life of Nina Hill

October: Graphic novels with short but philosophical views of life are hard to find these days. Calvin and Hobbes is in retirement, but Allie Brosh has her own brand of art and humor, easy to read and fun to explore, in Solutions and Other Problems

November: By now I was watching more TV than reading, and Netflix lured me into a series called “The Undoing.”  When I discovered it was based on a book, I had to reread Jean Hanff Korelitz’s You Should Have Known

December: The year is finally coming to an end, and I have been drinking a lot of coffee to wash down all the cookies, but none taking me back into the past like the Japanese translation of Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s Before the Coffee Gets Cold

* Although I am still careful to drink up all my coffee before it gets cold, Anne Tyler’s Redhead by the Side of the Road was my year’s favorite.

What books do you remember from this year?  Any favorites to recommend?

From the Top Ten Books of 2020

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Nothing is quite the same this Christmas.  I tried an Iced Gingerbread energy bar with a glass of cartoned egg nog for breakfast.  The bar smelled somewhat like what I remember gingerbread did, but the taste was just like any old energy bar – a little like cardboard.  The egg nog could have used some rum to perk up the flavor, and a little whipped cream on top – but I am out of both.  Substitution is the next new normal as the year grudgingly tries to finish with snow falling on the East Coast, and virtual classrooms calling for a virtual snow day.

Although I still have a few hard cover books on my shelf I have not read, I received a “skip-the-line” offer from Libby, the library’s online manager; the online library is my latest substitution. Without the availability of the hallowed halls with stacks of books and timeless opportunities for roaming, the ebook library must suffice.  With only four days left and not a lot of motivation, I’m not sure I will finish Lydia Millet’s A Children’s Bible. The editors of the New York Times Book Review chose it as one of the ten best books of 2020, so I should try.

“In Millet’s latest novel, a bevy of kids and their middle-aged parents convene for the summer at a country house in America’s Northeast. While the grown-ups indulge (pills, benders, bed-hopping), the kids, disaffected teenagers and their parentally neglected younger siblings, look on with mounting disgust. But what begins as generational comedy soon takes a darker turn, as climate collapse and societal breakdown encroach. The ensuing chaos is underscored by scenes and symbols repurposed from the Bible — a man on a blowup raft among the reeds, animals rescued from a deluge into the back of a van, a baby born in a manger. With an unfailingly light touch, Millet delivers a wry fable about climate change, imbuing foundational myths with new meaning and, finally, hope.”

The other nine on the list included only two I plan to read, when Libby sends an alert:

  1. Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet
  2. Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half
  3. Ayad Ahktar’s Homeland Elegies
  4. James McBride’s Deacon King Kong
  5. Barack Obama’s A Promised Land
  6. Margaret MacMillan’s War: How Conflict Shaped Us
  7. James Shapiro’s Shakespeare in a Divided America
  8. Robert Kolker’s Hidden Valley Road
  9. Anna Wiener’s Uncanny Valley

Have you read any on this top ten list?

 

 

 

A Short but Important Pile of Books

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Reading Truth Through the Election and Covid

Today I heard the beloved Alex Trebeck died, and his biography is in a small pile of books accumulating by my television – all nonfiction. The white book on the bottom is the reverse cover of Woodward’s “Rage.” I am done being angry but don’t want to forget how easy it would be to slide back into that emotion.

Although this is only a sampling of books on my shelves, they are front and center when I watch the news.

  • David Attenborough’s “ A Life on Our Planet”
  • Alex Trebeck’s “The Answer Is…”
  • Maxwell King’s “The Good Neighbor”
  • Bob Woodward’s “Rage”
  • Ina Garten’s “Comfort Food”
  • Pete Souza’s “Shade”
  • Bryant Johnson’s “The RBG Workout”

Reading Through the Noise

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Sometimes the noise of politicians and news broadcasts can be overwhelming, and turning off the dial and turning into a book can be a salve.  A few books I’ve read lately:

Magic Lessons by Alice Hoffman

Halloween may be the same for those in denial, but for many who are cautiously protecting themselves and their loved ones, the old traditions of partying or trick-or-treat from house to house are over.  Witches prevail, however; they are everywhere, both good and bad, and Alice Hoffman reminds readers of their trickery and power as well as the history of their persecution in colonial Massachusetts and seventeenth century England.  In Magic Lessons, Hoffman focuses on the ancestors of the characters from Practical Magic, famously converted into a movie with Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock.  The story combines historical fact with fictional lives, complete with spells and potions, as well as romance, intrigue and betrayal.  If you are a fan of Hoffman’s other witching stories, you will find yourself happily submersed, as I did, in an old world with magical possibilities.

A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future by Sir David Attenborough

Writing a book at ninety-four years of age is in itself an accomplishment, but Attenborough’s short tale, complete with pictures, not only recalls the highlights of his amazing adventures through the lens of the tragedy facing the environment and the world, he also proposes a solution.  After chronicling how the world was and how it became desperately what it is today,  Attenborough leans into his own experiences to define the planet’s evolution within his lifetime.   I had expected a large heavy book, and was surprised when the small tome of under three hundred pages arrived.  Attenborough is his usual charming and succinct self, not wasting words or emotions, but calling attention to the world’s dilemma and what we can do to save it.

Leave It As It Is by David Gessner

I listened and watched a zoom discussion of Leave It As It Is sponsored by Powell Books with David Gessner in conversation with Teddy Roosevelt (played by an actor).  As they bantered about Roosevelt’s comment at the Grand Canyon (“leave it as it is”) that lead to creating national monuments throughout the West, they brought the discussion to the environment and the future of caring for the land.

Gessner mentioned the 1906 Antiquities Act,  used by Presidents to designate national monuments that reflect the full measure of the country’s history. President Theodore Roosevelt, who signed the Antiquities Act into law, created 18 monuments, including the Grand Canyon and Olympic National Park in Washington, totaling more than a million acres. Since then, sixteen presidents have used the act for preservation and protection.  The Trump administration is now trying to rescind Obama’s declaration of Bears Ears in Utah as a protected area.

Like Attenborough, Gessner wants to motivate readers to be aware of the importance of preserving the natural beauty of the land, with the same urgency Teddy Roosevelt felt for future generations when he said: “I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land; but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us.”

I downloaded a sample of the book, and it follows the same conversational tone the author established in the zoom interview, often including Teddy Roosevelt quoting his own famous lines. Gessner and Teddy Roosevelt on the zoom call were entertaining as well as educational.

More reviews of books by Alice Hoffman:  Alice Hoffman