The Ninth Life of Louis Drax, by Liz Jensen (2004)
At age 8, Louis Drax has already had many near misses: he nearly dies at birth, but is saved by c-section; he nearly dies of crib death; he nearly dies of food poisoning; he is nearly electrocuted. Again and again he survives--lucky, we suppose. At age 9, he is in a coma from his latest lucky near miss.
The plot surprises are easily anticipated, but they add significantly to the tension of the story. I thought it was a great book, though it was the sort that makes you wonder why some human beings are so deeply flawed.
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner (2005)
You've heard of this book already, probably. It's stirring up controversy all over the place as the economist Levitt theorizes freely in fields outside his area of expertise.
It's one of the most page-turning non-fiction books I've ever read. He hits the ground running by declaring that the reason there was a drop in U. S. crime in the '90s is that Roe vs. Wade made it possible for all those fetal criminals to be aborted. He goes on to explain that parenting has little affect on children. He informs us that we are silly to worry about children playing with guns, since they're more likely to be killed by swimming pools. He briefly promotes some baby-naming urban legends, such as that there really are twin boys out there named Orangejello and Lemonjello.
It's heady stuff, but is it really economics? He claims to be applying boring economics methods to interesting fields, but it seemed to me that what he was actually doing was dabbling directly in the other fields, using methods that ALL fields use, such as addition and subtraction. The concept of "correlation," for example, doesn't belong exclusively to economists, and using correlation in analysis doesn't turn the topic into economics.
Perhaps the most irritating thing about the book was the between-chapters propaganda telling us how truly awesome Steven Levitt is. The book is fun and interesting to read, but let's not get carried away.
Chore Whore, by Heather H. Howard (2005)
Usually I make myself read 50 pages of a book before I give up on it, but I could only make it through 25. It's one of those utterly one-sided fiction-autobiography things where someone who had a shut-up-and-take-it kind of job spews acid all over the place like a possessed lawn sprinkler.
If celebrities are as truly sub-human as this former celebrity personal assistant claims, I guess I don't care.
Understanding Genetics: A Primer for Couples and Families, by Angela Scheuerle, M.D. (2005)
I was unimpressed by this book, which attempts to be Genetics 101 for people who want to know less about pea plants and fruit flies, and more about birth defects and genetic disorders.
The book is full of hard-to-understand sentences such as "Pathologic (disease-related) short stature is a length or height less than 3% for age...." It took me a couple of re-readings before I realized we were talking about percentiles. At least, I THINK that's what we were talking about.
There are also many sentences easily understood from context but poorly written: "Having one sex or the other, or one sexual orientation or the other, is not a disease."
And many sentences showed me that the author wasn't paying attention to what she was writing: "Adulthood is a long time, however, so such a condition may affect 25-year-olds, 80-year-olds, or anyone in between." She's unintentionally exluding adults younger than 25 and older than 80.
Finally, I was disappointed: the cover shows a man holding what appear to be twin babies, but twins are not covered at all.
I could have tolerated all those annoyances, though, if the book had been INTERESTING. Genetics is a field I find very interesting (I even enjoyed the pea plants and fruit flies), and yet I was bored silly.
The Rock Orchard, by Paula Wall (2005)
This book falls into the category of "books I couldn't wait to get back to." Whenever I wasn't reading it, I was thinking about when my next reading opportunity would be.
Normally I'm not keen on the concept of sexual healing. But the family of Belle women, known for their doctorates in this field, are such an appealing group, I was soon nodding my head in agreement with the whole idea. They're funny and interesting and eccentric, and they can do good tricks like putting a hand on a newborn's heart and seeing its future. And the whole town goes along with it--"You know those Belle girls"--which makes it seem cute and loveable rather than kinky and threatening.
The writing is highly colorful, packed with metaphor and imagery. Done wrong, this can bug me: one too many "hair the color of a thunderstorm" and I'm gone. This, though, is done right: little surprising punches for seasoning, nothing forced and nothing dippy.