Monthly Archives: November 2009
Books of the Month – November 2009
Of course, I have to start with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, a rich, horrible, nicely exotic (Swedish), convoluted mystery, followed by Naming Nature, a fascinating history of how we organize plants and animals (trust me: it reads like … Continue reading
Filed under New fiction
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
What a pleasure to end the month of November with a great mystery! The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a long, brutal, complex story about at least two mysteries: an old murder in a very dysfunctional family and a … Continue reading
Filed under Mystery
Half-Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls
By the author of The Glass Castle, Half Broke Horses is the story of her maternal grandmother, told as a novel for lack of detailed historical documents. It’s a wild story of a girl born in a dugout on the … Continue reading
Filed under True story
Parallel Play by Tim Page
Parallel Play is the memoir of a successful journalist who was diagnosed with Asperger’s at the age of 45 after a lifetime of struggles. He starts with his early childhood, highlighting his attentive parents, and helpful and less helpful teachers … Continue reading
Filed under True story
What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20 by Tina Seelig
I picked up What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20 because my older daughter’s turning 20 next week and I thought I should get appropriately educated. What a disappointment: the author starts by recommending to take a wide … Continue reading
Filed under New fiction
Manhood of Amateurs by Michael Chabon
Manhood for Amateurs is a collection of personal stories about the author’s children, parents, and personal experiences. Most are tone-perfect, especially the ones about his children. I liked the one where he bemoans the advent of complicated Lego kits that … Continue reading
Filed under True story
When Everything Changed by Gail Collins
When Everything Changed tells the story of women in the US from 1960 to the present (including Hillary Clinton’s and Sarah Palin’s presidential campaigns. It’s a rather messy book that combines historical narratives and individual women’s stories, some puzzlingly mundane, … Continue reading
Filed under Non fiction
Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew Crawford
The author of Shop Class as Soulcraft makes some points that I completely agree with: that pushing all teenagers to college is counter-productive, that what we pompously call knowledge work is often plain silly, that the feeling we have after … Continue reading
Filed under Non fiction
Dead Aid by Dambisa Moyo
The author of Dead Aid, a Zambian-born woman with several advanced degrees in economics,starkly stakes that traditional, government-to-government aid, simply serves to line the pockets of corrupt leaders and chokes the economies of the receiving countries. She makes a very … Continue reading
Filed under Non fiction
The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
The Lacuna tells the life story of a teenager to young man who makes his own way in the world between Mexico and the United States, thanks to a Mexican mother whose main purpose is to find a husband and … Continue reading
Filed under New fiction
