June 2019 books
How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveller by Ryan NorthMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Absolutely charming and definitely lives up to its blurb as the only book you need to redevelop civilization from scratch after an unfortunate time machine accident ("for which no legal liability can be assigned"). I loved the premise and the book's commitment to it, with reminders throughout that principles, theories, quotes, songs, and maneuvers can now be attributed to YOU rather than whichever famous person has the credit in our current timeline.
After you've read the introduction and understand the premise, you could read this book in any order - it really is like a quick reference guide. I chose to read it straight through and while there were some parts I was less interested in, most of the rest was downright fascinating - animal husbandry, medicine, bread, beer, childbirth, philosophy. This book has literally everything! I also enjoyed the perspective this book gave on certain human achievements that developed quickly in certain societies and not others, or which took humans an inordinately long time to figure out, and why.
A note about format: I originally got this on my Kindle but after the first chart I put it down and ordered the physical book format instead. This is the kind of book you want to flip through, and refer back to a previous page, and follow the charts as they're meant to be seen across multiple pages.
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The Last Stone by Mark BowdenMy rating: 1 of 5 stars
I have all the respect in the world for Mark Bowden but this book was just NOT for me. I should have remembered after Bringing Adam Home that I can't handle books containing descriptions of violence against children, and that is essentially ALL this book is. I had to skim most of it.
So that one-star rating is mostly me. If you can handle heavier true-crime non-fiction, then you might do better with it than I did. However, I am noticing a new trend (I saw it with American Radical, too) where books rely heavily on court/interview transcripts with very little commentary - it's just paragraph after paragraph of verbatim statements by cops, detectives, and suspects. When I pick up a book like this, I want the author to summarize, interpret, contextualize, humanize - there was none of that here! Just page after page of the suspect describing, in different ways, how he hurt children. It was a horrible experience for me. But your mileage may vary.
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Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden KeefeMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
WHAT a book. This is ostensibly a book about the disappearance of a woman during The Troubles but there is so much more here than meets the eye. There are three main threads running through the story: an oral history archive at Boston College, a widowed mother of ten, and a pair of revolutionary sisters. The book circles back on each thread three times: first, the bare facts of what happened, then how these facts evolved as time passed and more information was revealed in fits and stars, and finally one last turn in which all is made clear. It is a story of a disappearance but it is recursive, thoughtful, and highly contextualized.
I was touched and, I'll admit, surprised at the level of care and detail given to all the characters' experiences but especially the sisters' struggles with a hunger strike in prison. I think many books would have looked away after the strike was over, but this one lingers and gives room for the ensuing disordered eating and anorexia that plagued the sisters for the rest of their lives. It was very female gaze-y (the author is a man) and I loved the warmth and regard for humanity it brought to the story - even regarding members of humanity who have done horrible things.
This is one of those gasp-out-loud books, a book where you clap your hand over your mouth in awe/sadness/shock/empathy throughout. Truly excellent.
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Stepping on the Cracks by Mary Downing HahnMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Nteenth reading: this was one of my childhood favorites and it was fun to re-read it! As an adult I find myself wondering how autobiographical this book is, given that the main character is the same age as the author (10ish years old in 1944) and lives in the same town she grew up in. It's also interesting to see how the central question about the moral justification for desertion in the time of war is essentially left unanswered here.
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