This is easily the best memoir I’ve read all year (and you know I have a thing for memoirs). Andre Dubus the third tells his story in a very honest, very lyrical prose. He writes of growing up rough in Boston, living in poor neighborhoods after his parents got divorced. He writes of the moment that turned him into a fighter – when his brother got beat up on his front steps and he didn’t do anything about it. He writes of the conscious decision to become a tough kid, and how he started working out more and backing down less. He writes of how fighting affected him and how he started boxing. He writes of his father and how their relationship changed into friendship, even though his father never really understood how his leaving the family made life difficult for his children. His memories are written in such a way that it made me feel like a spectator in the shadows.

5/5
400 pages

It took me less than a week to read all three books in The Hunger games series, and I thoroughly enjoyed them. The series is about a girl (Katniss) and her family who live in a post-apocalyptic future dictatorship. Every four years the Capitol holds “The Hunger Games”, a sadistic fight-to-the-death between 26 contestants (2 kids from each of the 13 districts) held in a booby-trapped arena. The game continues until only 1 contestant remains. The books are beautifully written and full of suspense that lasts all the way through the final pages of the third book. Highly recommended.

1165 pages
5/5

Zeitoun: a remarkable story of a remarkable man. Zeitoun is a Muslim Syrian-born contractor with an American wife and four children who owns a successful business in New Orleans. This book details his Katrina story. Zeitoun stayed in New Orleans during Katrina in order to keep an eye on his home and his business – much to his wife’s dismay. He survived the hurricane without much incident, and then woke up to a city completely underwater. Setting off in a second-hand canoe purchased years ago on a whim, he finds elderly neighbors, abandoned dogs, resilient tenants, and cares for them all. Then all hell breaks loose. (I’ll let you read that part for yourself). All in all, his story characterizes the gross negligence of the local, state, and national governments in response to the Katrina disaster. It is a book I couldn’t put down. It is a book you should read. It’s a book I’ll read again.

5/5 (yep, haven’t used that one yet)
368 pages

Heard about this book on NPR, and then several scientist friends mentioned that it was really good. In a time far far away I was in bench science research, and I never once thought about the origination of the cells that I used in tissue culture (daily). I did not use HeLa cells (the immortal cell line that was started when a doctor at John Hopkins – Henrietta’s cancer doctor – took some cells from Henrietta’s tumors and put them in a petri dish, hoping they would grow) – but since they were the first established cell line I knew of them.

This book was a fascinating read – it details the life and times of Henrietta Lacks (and her family) and the many meandering roads the author had to take to parse out her story. That story – of a dying woman and her cells that make companies millions while her family remains poor – is a heart-wrenching one, and this book is highly recommended.

384 pages
5/5

The 52-in-52 book challenge is going great, despite my best efforts to keep busy with other things (see: learning japanese, moving to a frickin fantastic apartment). Em & I took a road trip up to Chattanooga to see Ani Difranco & Erin McKeown in a tiny venue, and I brought along my nook. Much to Emily’s dismay, I could hardly put this book down.

I first read about this diamond heist in a Wired article*, and when I saw the ebook on sale at barnes & noble, I had to read it. The story is fascinating, and this “true crime” book is really well written. It tells the story of the “biggest diamond heist in history”, masterminded by Leonardo Notarbartolo. The book never slows, and is filled with interesting tidbits about the diamond industry and history.

336 pages
5/5

*Flawless-the-book calls out the Wired article as being mostly made up by Notarbartolo, so it could be made into a movie, and he would have some legitimate income behind which to hide his robbery profits.

A well-written look at the Iraq war, by a reporter who spent a year embedded with army infantry battalion 2-16. I’ve been an opponent of the war(s) since before it they started, but having a brother in the military makes me a little more compassionate towards the people who fight our Leaders Battles. There’s a lot of compassion in this book, for soldiers who lost gave their lives, limbs, and sanity for the Leaders Battles. There’s even a little compassion for the Iraqi people, which made this wacko liberal’s heart go pitterpatter. But mostly reading this book made me realize how hopeless this war is, in the eyes of the people who oppose it, and those who are fighting it.

304 pages
5/5