Dr. Reisman combines human anatomy with travel stories and nature metaphors to explain the complex, beautiful ecosystem of the human body. Each chapter explores an organ or bodily fluid intertwined with stories from the author’s years as a doctor and his adventure travels and ends with some kind of life lesson. I particularly enjoyed the patient stories tied into each chapter. I did NOT particularly enjoy his strange urge to eat the (animals’) organs he discusses (I am a vegetarian).
This is a quirky, multi-faceted look at the human body. Dr. Reisman doesn’t try to explain all the functions, parts and diseases of, say, the heart. Instead he describes the situation of the heart in the body and what its challenges are. It may seem counter-intuitive, but describing the body by means of metaphor makes it less abstract.
If you prefer learning about your body without a lot of scientific terminology or if you already have a grasp of human anatomy and enjoy a literary approach, you will appreciate “The Unseen Body”. Plus the author appears to be a generous and thoughtful physician, the kind of primary care physician I’d like to have.
Indriðason is my absolute favorite Icelandic author!! I love all his books. In this one, the 8th in the Inspector Erlendur series, Erlendur explores an obvious suicide and the disappearance of two unrelated young people thirty years ago. There are no raging maniacs with axes, no serial killers, and no serious threats to the people of Reykjavik – and, thankfully, Indriðason’s style is NOT like Stieg Larsson's "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" series!
“Hypothermia” isn't a flash-bang police procedural. Instead we follow Erlunder's thoughtful process as he tracks down seemingly unconnected threads and deals with his dysfunctional family life. All of Indriðason’s books have great character development and original subject matter tied to Icelandic myth and culture – that is why he is one of my favorite authors!
During Christmas break when I was in the 6th Grade, I read 12 Nancy Drew books, each one TWICE! This month I reread “The Clue in the Diary” in preparation for a Halloween party – I was going dressed as “Nancy Drew.” If you note the cover of this edition, Nancy is wearing a simple dark blue skirt and light blue sweater. All I needed was a blonde wig. Voila!
Actually, Nancy Drew was as good as I remember it! Nancy and her friends, George and Bess, are driving home from a carnival when they come across a house fire. They stop to see if someone needs to be rescued when Nancy notices a man running away. She chases him but he gets away. Then she finds a red diary he has dropped – the first clue! Except it is written in Swedish. Ned Nickerson (conveniently) has also stopped at the house fire and moves Nancy’s car away from the inferno, they meet and the rest is ... a typical Nancy Drew mystery!
This is the second book I have read by Pacyga about Polish immigrants and their descendants in Chicago as part of my genealogy studies. In this book, he follows Polish immigrants from the Civil War era until today, focusing on how three major waves of immigrants, refugees, and fortune seekers shaped and then redefined Polish-Americans. Pacyga also traces the movement of Polish immigrants from the peasantry to the middle class and from urban working-class districts dominated by major industries to suburbia. He depicts a people who are deeply connected to their ancestral home and, at the same time, fiercely proud of Chicago. My mother, while half Swedish, was living evidence of Pacyga’s words, “While we were Americans, we also considered ourselves to be Poles. In that strange Chicago ethnic way, there was no real difference between the two.”
Written by one of my English favorite authors, this is the 7th in the Inspector Wexford series. In this book, Inspector Wexford is attempting to recuperate from a mild stroke he suffered as a result of, according to his doctor, overwork and overindulgence. He has been put on a 1,000 calorie-per-day diet and urged to put all thoughts of police work and stress out of his life for at least 30 days. The doctor’s orders leave Wexford depressed and bored.
So he and his wife go to stay with his nephew and his wife in London. However, his nephew is also an Inspector who is trying to solve the case of a young woman murdered in a cemetery mausoleum. Wexford is asked to be an “advisor” on the case and he willingly obliges.
No one has come forward to claim the dead woman as a family member, friend, or neighbor. The police aren't even sure of her real name. This is a complex case and more than once Wexford is totally mistaken and follows the wrong trail entirely. It's also a typical Inspector Wexford mystery in that there is no evil mastermind, no unmotivated villain, only people acting in character who end up doing terrible things. As always, Rendell's novel is infused with a great sense of humor and humanity. An excellent read!
This is a strange, sad novel about a young girl, Rima, in the middle of the war in Syria. She doesn’t speak (but can sing the Qur'an), she walks compulsively (OCD?), and narrates her story in a strange and disjointed way. Because of her walking compulsion, Rima is tied to window bars while inside and to her mother’s or brother’s wrist while outside.
One day while on a bus with her mother in Damascus, a soldier opens fire and her mother is killed. Rima, wounded, is taken to a military hospital and then her brother leads her to the besieged area of Ghouta. There, she survives a bombing and a chemical attack. She is left alone and tied to window bars in a cellar. There, between bombings, and unable to escape, Rima writes her story.
As the story continues, we can see her hopes fray as she descends into further desperation surrounded by loss and destruction. Her “planet” melds the magical with the tragic to create a truly harrowing story of war’s brutality.
A team of six archaeologists and researchers from the United States, England and Scotland are searching for traces of a lost Norse settlement at an isolated site in Greenland. There are no roads and the only way in, or out, is by air. Meanwhile there is a pandemic of some sort going on in the rest of the world (this book was published in 2009, ten years before COVID!)
Creepy things happen and some of the characters begin to see and hear ghosts. Are they the spirits of the long-dead Norse who do not like their graves being disturbed? Equally scary is the fact that the internet suddenly stops connecting and the satellite phone doesn’t work – is this a result of the pandemic? The researchers gradually lose contact with the outside world and with their families at home. In response, they each write what may be their last letter.
This is a survival tale and a ghost story all in one. It blends Norse history with a believable near future (for 2009). By incorporating a pandemic into the plot, Moss was ahead of her time on that count! Even without the pandemic element, this was a tense, atmospheric novel. I read this book in two sittings, I was completely enthralled. However the ending was a definite let down. Still, it was an engaging, satisfying and worthwhile read.
In a Swedish archipelago, an elderly man, Fredrik, awakens on his small, private island to find his house ablaze. He escapes his cherished home, built by his grandfather, wearing two left boots and loses everything. Who set his house on fire?
Eventually we find out but the mystery is not in the forefront of this story. Instead we learn about the people in the life of a 70-year old man. Many of the characters come off as selfish and not very likable. In particular, Fredirk’s daughter, Louise, was very snarky and just down right mean, but I kept reading anyway. It includes numerous vignettes from Fredrik’s past that have no particular connection to the mystery but the memories are important to him. Moving slowly, it seems that the mystery is secondary to Fredrik’s ruminations on aging, loss, love, and death.
“After the Fire” is quite different from Mankell’s other mysteries. The focus of this book is on approaching old age and death - as I imagine Mankell must have done as he faced his own mortality while writing this reflective mystery. I'm glad I read it.
In under 200 pages, this book tells the heartbreaking, disturbing, and unimaginable truth of life inside the Nazi death camps as experienced by a prisoner, Dr. Gisella Perl. Dr. Perl was a Hungarian Jew, gynecologist and one of the first women, in 1948, to share her Holocaust experience in English. Her memoir is remarkable and provides poignant and heartbreaking insight into the lives of women at Nazi death camps. Her story is told in vignettes, each chapter telling a different story. *Perl's memoir was one of at least eight similar accounts by female prisoners, corroborated by the testimonies of other women.
She is best known for temporarily saving the lives of hundreds of women by aborting their pregnancies, as pregnant women were often beaten and killed or used by Dr. Josef Mengele for vivisections. If she hadn't performed the abortions (without any medical equipment nor medicine), both the mother and the baby would die at the brutal hands of Dr. Mengele, who conducted heinous medical experiments on fetuses and babies. Perl's memoir goes into great detail into her role in that regard, describing how regretful and disgusted she was by the conditions she had to work in, by the fates of the women she treated.
“I Was A Doctor in Auschwitz” is a first-person account of a different side of Nazi death camps that people don't often hear about: the forgotten world of women and their health. Definitely an enlightening read.
*In 1951 Dr. Perl became an American citizen. She began work as a gynecologist at Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, starting as the only female physician in labor and delivery, and becoming a specialist in infertility treatment. Perl was also the sole author or coauthor of nine papers on vaginal infections published between 1955 and 1972. Perl was later reunited with her daughter, Gabriella Krauss Blattman, whom she managed to hide during the war. In 1979, both moved to live in Herzliya, Israel. Perl died in Israel on December 16, 1988, at the age of 81.
I expected this book to be a biography but instead it is a general history of America in the second half of the 19th century. This history is told within the context of Richard Gatling and the invention of his famous Gatling Gun.
“Mr. Gatling’s Terrible Marvel” is wide-ranging social history about the man and his times, the application of patent law, the rise of industrialization, the internal workings of weapons procurement by the American military establishment, and the role of military technology in the expansion of our American “empire.”
Overall, it’s a good read, especially for people interested in the constant intertwining of technology, society, and war.
Andrew, an English teacher, moves his family back to his small Maine hometown and finds that the town’s lobster man, Ed Thatch - a high-school dropout - is now the town’s wealthiest man. How did that happen? Soon he unravels the dark truth behind Ed’s wealth. This is mystery, a crime drama and a family saga all rolled into one.
“The Midcoast” moves backward and forward in time from various points of view, which was occasionally a bit confusing, but I couldn’t stop listening! It is character driven with an enthralling, atmospheric narrative and has somewhat ambiguous ending. But even the ending works. I heartily recommend this book.
I try to read a “cozy” mystery once a month as a break from “serious” reading. So when I saw “Murder at the Lighthouse” was the first in a series and set in England, I borrowed it upon sight.
While my excitement and expectations were high, I was soon let down. There were way too many leaps in logic, it made no sense other than giving the main character something to do. Plus, the other characters were unconvincing and the setting nondescript. On a positive note, it was short.
Well, another month of reading is on the horizon with another opportunity to find a “cozy” mystery I truly like!
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