Brain Storm

Brain Storm / Elaine Viets 305 pgs.

Angela Richman is having a bad day...she is beset with migraines and working a death scene with a young, beautiful teen as a victim and others with horrible injuries.  She ends up at the E.R. where a doctor tells her she is too young to suffer from a stroke and sends her home.  There, she proceeds to have multiple strokes and wakes up 19 days later in the hospital post brain surgery, head shaving, and feeling pretty bad.  During her recovery, the doctor who made the horrible misdiagnosis in her case, is murdered.  Angela isn't really up to investigating but the prime suspect is the Dr. Tritt who saved her life and operated on her brain.  She is determined to save Tritt from being framed even though he is the obvious perp.  With a tough talking best friend, a love of a decent margarita and a brain that is having a little trouble telling fact from fiction, Angela is a great character.  Set in a fictionalized St. Louis, I was sad to read the idea for the misdiagnosis and later multiple strokes is based on the author's actual experience.  I saw Viet's speak once at a library and she is great.  This book is, I believe, the first since her personal medical travails.

Seoul man

Seoul Man: a memoir of cars, culture, crisis, and unexpected hilarity inside a Korean corporate titan / Frank Ahrens 336 pgs.

Frank Ahrens was a happy journalist bachelor when love struck.  In the span of a few months, he got married, changed jobs and moved across the world to Seoul, Korea.  That is a LOT of change.  This memoir talks a lot about his new job in the P.R. department of Hyundai motors and the differences in culture between Korea and the United States.  Frank had always been a journalist so P.R., the auto industry and corporate life were new to him as was Korea.  Some of the insights into the Korean rise to a formidable economic power are excellent.  Stories about the auto industry and Hyundai's goals to move up to a more respected position in the industry were also interesting.  Korea is a country that has undergone a lot of change in a generation.  Frank's personal stories of his life in Korea and the shelter given to the normal ex-pat struggles by living on a U. S. military base are insightful.  At some point, however, this book seems to veer off into the personal story about how fatherhood makes you grow up (even at 49) and begins to focus on the importance of Christian belief in the author's life.  That is all fine but is not mentioned in any of the marketing of this book.  I think the book suffered from a lack of focus or maybe I'm just not amazed to hear that having a child changes your life when I thought I was reading about cars and culture.

The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society and the Birth of the Modern World

The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society and the Birth of the Modern World by Edward Dolnick  378 pp.

This is the story of how Galileo, Sir Isaac Newton, Johannes Keplar, and Gottfried Leibniz invented science as we know it and the Royal Society provided a way to disseminate the knowledge to others in similar pursuits. Those early scientists and mathematicians were not pursuing science for science's sake. Rather they saw their task as a way of breaking the unknowable codes of God's creation thereby creating a stronger connection to deity. However, some, such as Galileo, ran afoul of the church when theories countermanded then current belief. Much of the book involves Newton's and Gottfried Leibniz's creation of calculus, the mathematics that allowed for explaining the movement of the planets, objects in space, and gravitational force. While this book does contain mathematical and technical formulas, they are presented in an easy to understand way. What could have been a dry tome is actually quite readable and interesting. And it has a cool cover.

Maurice

Maurice by E.M. Forster  256 pp.

This novel about a young homosexual in early 20th century England was not published until 1971. Forster died in 1970 and never sought to have it published because he considered it unpublishable during his lifetime. Aside from the taboo subject of same-sex love, the book is mainly about the class system and how crossing the class boundaries is considered shocking and "just not done." To be honest, I found this book to be as big a snore as A Passage to India and Howard's End. I guess I'm just not a Forster fan.

Lab Girl

Lab Girl by Hope Jahren, 290 pages

Lab Girl is ostensibly the memoir of a female botanist coming into her own as a scientist. And in many respects it is: we certainly get plenty of Jahren's recollections of her education, her early years creating a lab of her own, and her lifelong love of plants. But really, this is a story of a friendship that spans her entire adult life. She discusses meeting Bill when he was a student, and the multiple moves they made together to build new labs together across the country. That friendship, which is so closely knitted that "friend" isn't quite the appropriate word for them (though nothing else really works either), is what binds this book together. And it's a fantastic book. I learned a lot about plants, and I enjoyed the saga of the friendship that reeled out over these pages.

Unmentionable: the Victorian Lady's Guide to Sex, Marriage, and Manners / Therese Oneill, 307 pp.

Oneill invites her readers to time travel and experience day-to-day life as a(n upper-middle-class) Victorian woman.  In chapters covering topics such as contraception, table manners, the toilet (or lack thereof), masturbation, menstruation, and, of course, sex, Oneill makes the point that life is better now, or at least less disgusting.  Although many passages are laugh-out-loud funny, she's assembled a substantial amount of research.  Fun photos with silly captions round this out.  Quick and fun.

Wait for Signs

Wait for Signs: Twelve Longmire Stories by Craig Johnson  183 pp.

This collection of short stories about the iconic Wyoming sheriff made popular on the A&E and now Netflix television series is introduced by Lou Diamond Phillips who plays Henry Standing Bear on the show. His introduction is as good as the stories. The stories vary from crimes to interesting chance meetings to comical events. Each one gives more insight to Walt Longmire, the man, the sheriff, the father, the friend, and the widower. The final story involving a fishing trip, a bear, an owl, and an outhouse is hilarious.

Mister Monkey

Mister Monkey by Francine Prose, 285 pages

Back in the 1970s, a Vietnam vet wrote Mister Monkey, a children's book about an orphaned chimpanzee who comes to New York to be raised by a widower and his children. Decades later, the book has been twisted into a sad musical, with mediocre acting, garish costumes, and taped music. Prose's book comprises the stories of the people involved with or impacted by this pathetic theatrical production, from the aging actress who plays Mr. Monkey's lawyer to the hormonal kid who plays Mr. Monkey, from a grandfather whose grandson talks loudly at an inopportune time during the show to a waiter who was given free tickets by Mister Monkey's author. It's alternately hilarious, thoughtful, and absurd, but somehow always realistic.

My only complaint is that chimpanzees are not monkeys: they're apes! (This is one of my biggest pet peeves when I go to the zoo. I won't go into the full rant here, but if you really want to hear it, let me know.) This has always been my primary complaint about Curious George too, and perhaps (hopefully?) Prose is deliberately copying H.A. Rey's egregious error; there are certainly other parallels between the two primates' stories. That said, this is the first book I've read by Prose, who has dozens to her name, and I can guarantee this won't be the last of hers I pick up. (Assuming that the primate confusion doesn't continue through the rest of her books, of course.)

October results!

Christa  10/3728

Kara  7/3244

Karen  16/5180

Kathleen  5/1984

Linda  6/1757

Patrick  4/1102

Total: 48/16,995

Ghostman

Ghostman / Roger Hobbs 321 pgs.

We really never know the name of the main character of this book.  He changes identities like you change your clothes.  He is an experienced bank robber but made a mistake on a job 5 years ago.  Now he owes the "boss" of that former job.  He gets called in to "clean up" a situation in Atlantic City as payback.  The Atlantic City job was a casino and the money has gone missing.  As the Ghostman investigates, he realizes there was even more at stake.  Now racing against the clock and hounded by a federal agent, he is trying to play all the competing forces against each other and come out the other end alive and debt free.  Lots of adrenaline in this story.