Secret Wizard Passing; Dry Delight; Gift Reader

[maribou]

The Secret History of Las Vegas, by Chris Abani
This book was SO good - one of my favorites of the year so far. Just enough science, just enough mystery, just enough thriller, just enough unsettling, just enough deeply weird. And luminously written.
(142)

A Wizard of Mars, by Diane Duane, read by Christina Moore(audiobook)
I am now caught up on these. This one was a bit more complicated than previous volumes, and thus a bit more difficult to follow on audio, but Christina Moore's voice is so mellifluous that I never minded skipping back a few tracks to figure out what was going on.
(143)

Disability and Passing, edited by Jeffrey A. Brune and Daniel J. Wilson
Some of these essays were splendid and some of them read like a way to add to someone's tenure file. But even the latter were passable, and I was very glad for the splendid ones. Also glad to be able to read academic writing for fun again - while I was in school, my brain would just *quit* if I tried to read something academic in my non-school time.
(144)

Dry Store Room No. 1, by Richard Fortey
This meandered way way way too much. Like listening to an elderly distractible relative who has you cornered at a family party. That said, there were some very interesting bits in here, and I have enough background in biology (both technical and "inside baseball") to enjoy the book even though it was all messy. I liked it but I can't think who I would recommend it to.
(145)

The Yalom Reader, by Irvin T. Yalom
This was neat. I skipped around a lot while I was reading it, and the book bore up to such treatment with good grace. As is often the case for me, I enjoyed the interstitial framing / introducing parts even more than the actual selections.
(146)

The Gift of Therapy, by Irvin T. Yalom
If there isn't a genre of "old people tell the rest of the world what they have decided is most important to share from their lifetime of expertise," there should be. Sometimes it works better than other times. This book and the Fortey book that I grumped about above both fall into that genre, but THIS book was splendid. Short, satisfying chapters. A bit of overlap from other writings by him, but not too much. The format was pleasantly reminiscent of a Peter Drucker book I read once, but the content was much more up my alley.
(147)

Delight, by J. B. Priestley
A marvelous little book. The binding was marvelous, the paper was marvelous, the printing was marvelous, the little ornaments separating the sections were marvelous, and many of the small sections describing various delights the author had experienced were marvelous. In the very literal sense that I often interrupted my reading to marvel at all of those things. The slight majority of the sections were merely funny, or charming, or sly, but I didn't mind. Needed some breathing room among the marvels.
(148)

Comments

[heyokish.livejournal.com]

I *loved* dry store room. I loved the ambling around between "famous beards I have known" to "why finding out you are wrong is Very Exciting". Have you read his book on trilobites?

[maribou]

I have not. I might try it eventually. Usually I like this sort of book very much but I needed him to have more of an attention span. Good to know someone loved it :)