The library recommended Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory after I finished Brain on Fire, but it really reminded me more of Judy Melinek’s wonderful Working Stiff. Three fascinating books written by three talented women. Caitlin Doughty’s gets a little preachy towards the end, as she dives into her own personal philosophies on death and dying, but the information leading up to her own discoveries is interesting and delivered wonderfully. “Accepting death doesn’t mean you won’t be devastated when someone you love dies. […]
Maybe its disjointedness is on purpose?
Jon Ronson has also written a book about extremists called Them, which I’ve heard of but never read, and he wrote the book Men with Goats, which was adapted into a movie that I know I saw but possess no recollection of. I heard about this book — The Psychopath Test — on the Daily Show a few years ago. I placed it on my TBR list and pretty much forgot all about it until I saw it at the library this weekend. “Suddenly, madness was everywhere, and I was […]
Good story, terrible audio production
Orson Scott Card’s Shadow of the Hegemon continues the Bean-focused storyline from Ender’s Shadow, with a good focus on Peter Wiggin and Petra Arkanian as well. We have Achilles back as the bad guy, and Card does a much better job of fleshing him out this time around. “What a laugh, though. To think that one human being could ever really know another. You could get used to each other, get so habituated that you could speak their words right along with them, but you never know why other […]
The Girls You Left Behind
The Girl You Left Behind actually features two abandoned girls: Sophie Lefèvre, whose husband left her to fight in World War I, and Liv Halston’s, whose husband died after 4 years of marriage sometime in present day. While I personally found Sophie’s tale most engrossing (after all, she was the subject of Monsieur Lefèvre’s painting, The Girl You Left Behind), both women find themselves in some kind of battle, tied together by this incredible portrait. “Most days now his loss is a part of her, an awkward weight she […]