Review 389: The Empire of Dirt

The Empire of Dirt by Ekin Oklap
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Odd little book.

A young girl in the countryside in Italy turning from a girl to a woman, aged 12 during a momentous summer. There are a few jumps around in time, and it is more than just the summer. Swarms of different types of insects and things infest their house. The girl believes she is responsible.

A few other bits and bobs about this book:

The grandmother is just as important as her mother

The village think they are witches (but really?)

                 her father leaves

(SPOILER: later her mother says it is her fault the infestations, and she made her husband leave, she was pregnant and had an abortion after her left. she lost a baby years prior.)

Review 388: Immortality, Inc.

Immortality, Inc.: Renegade Science, Silicon Valley Billions, and the Quest to Live Forever by Chip Walter
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

First off, I really disliked the writing style and tone of this book. It felt hokey and the analogies were of putting, sometimes didn't make sense. I had hoped there would be more science covered, but instead it was more a biography of the people who decided to try to hack death.

There is a lot of space devoted to how the companies were formed, the meetings and all sorts of boring details. Maybe it's interesting for some people, but I really didn't get much out of this book. Plus, whatever science was in here is now dated. Likely current state of some of these companies too. Science and tech start-ups move fast!

It was hard to keep straight the multitude of companies and connections and the little graph in the beginning of how these key people are connected didn't include all the company names. So that wasn't helpful.

There are better books out there, even on this topic, skip this one.

Review 387: The Winter Sea

The Winter Sea by Susanna Kearsley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This was enjoyable enough book. 

A modern day successful writer, lives where her books take place, and this time in the Scotland Highlands off the east coast, near Slains Castle. 

There is a dual time line, the book being written and the writer's life, and oddly enough the fictional book being written turns out to be exactly as history made it. The writer doesn't know how to explain it, she hears her ancestor's voices. 

The audiobook was nicely done, with the exception of male voices, they all tended to sound very similar.

This book is the first is a series of 3 (as of 2023) and I did read the last one already: The Vanished Days

The series is titles: The Scottish series.

Each book is it's own tale, of sorts. They don't follow one after another, so it doesn't matter if read in order or not, such as I have done.

See: my review of The Vanished Days 

Review 386: My Last Innocent Year

My Last Innocent Year by Daisy Alpert Florin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a story looking back to the late 1990s when the main character, Isabel Rosen, finished up her senior year at a small college. She is studying writing, while finding her way in life. The book starts with a sexual encounter with a male friend, that Isabel was very lukewarm about engaging in, but didn’t make her feelings known either. It wasn’t good, and when she returns to her dorm her feminist roommate makes it out like it was rape.

With this sets up for the book one may expect more, yet this subject is glossed over more than examined. Then we have Isabel getting into a sexual relationship with a visiting professor. There are other heavy topics in the book, such as stealing, and class differences, and being Jewish, but are all dealt with very lightly. I would have expected much more.

There are some good turns of phrases in the book, the writer seems to know what she is doing, yet the content fell short. It felt like the writer had something to say about all these topics but didn’t know how to do it exactly, and instead of focusing on one thing, threw in more, such as the stealing. That came up so late in the book, I probably shouldn’t even have mentioned it.

There are even more topics than I mentioned. Anyway, I appreciated some of the quality of writing and maybe the next book will be a stellar one. This one wasn’t too bad, just fell short for me.

Original short post:

There is some good writing here, but the story fell a little short. The set-up was there, but it wasn't followed through.

Review 385: Purity

Purity by Jonathan Franzen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the first novel of Franzen's I read and while much of the content was not to my liking, there was something there with his writing style and ability. I was pulled into this story, a young girl who knows her mother is hiding something as she absolutely won't tell her who her father is.

We get to know intimately several other characters, mostly her real father and this other guy, an East German man who turned into a Snowden/Assange type person. Incidentally they are mentioned as well, and Wolfe is considered the guy that looks great to the media. Unfortunately, it isn't true, he has many skeletons in his closet. From the start this was not a favorable character and he took over the book. In fact the book was more about him than the young girl the book is titled after.

After reading the book I glanced at some reviews, and it seems Franzen has much better books out there, so I should try one of his other novels. I did rate this higher than the content should allow, due to how well his writing struck me.

Review 384: The Wind Whistling in the Cranes

The Wind Whistling in the Cranes by Lídia Jorge
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The writing style of this book didn't appeal to me, and I nearly set the book aside. Yet I continued on and found in the end I quite enjoyed the book. This is a translation from the Portuguese, taking place on the coast in Portugal.

The reading was slow going for me, due to the style with the action/plot being slow as well. The beginning was the hardest, and the pacing improved as the book went on. One of the reasons for the slowness was the repetition, oh so much repetition. I went along with it, continuing to read, as this is a different culture, perhaps things go at a different pace than one I am accustomed to.

The story starts out with the death of the matriarch of a well to-do family, Regina Leandro. One of the sons is the mayor of the town. Everyone is out of town and unreachable, so the only person left is Milene. She is a simple-minded woman, although it took a bit to realize this. I was annoyed by her character at first, found aggravating, later though she did grow on me.

The opening scenes take place in the Old Factory, as this is where Regina was found, and Milene went there to find some answers. The Mata's now live there, the third wave, an extended immigrant family, and they too were out of town at first.

Milene becomes quite attached to one of the Mata's, a young widower. The courtship is not a typical one by any means. And him being black means not only class, but race could be a problem.

Review 383: Towards Another Summer

Towards Another Summer by Janet Frame
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

I saw a documentary about Janet Frame several many years ago. I've wanted to read some of her work since then, and finally I did get to one book.

This one Frame considered her most autobiographical and did not want it published while she was alive.

The book that takes place over a weekend. A New Zealand writer, Alice, who is living in England goes to visit a couple in their house. She hardly knows them, so it's a little awkward, oh there are kids!

There is so much inner life, all the worries and anxieties, plus she seems to always be thinking about when she was growing up. There is a comparison often, of this couple to her parents. So in this one weekend, just hearing the main character's inner thoughts, we get a sense of what it was like for her growing up and how dysfunctional, and unusual her family was. And yet there was something to identify with, we all have unusual family experiences and these inner thoughts Alice has, well haven't well all had some of these anxieties? Rehash over and over what was said and not said?

Oh, and the language, such wonderful turns of phrase and descriptions. The words Frame used, that alone was worth the read.

Review 382: A Forest Journey

A Forest Journey: The Role of Trees in the Fate of Civilization by John Perlin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Very comprehensive in covering thousands of years of cutting down trees.

This book had a new edition released in February 2023 by Patagonia, which adds many photos and images in addition to text material. It’s hard for me to determine exactly all that is new, but certainly anything that is dated after the original release in 1989.

The book covers just about all of human civilization, going way back to when people started using trees for nearly everything. From building fires to keep warm, houses and buildings, tools, furniture and really just about everything. When we reach the iron age wood is needed for fuel to burn in the furnaces. In the later centuries wood was needed for ship building, particularly large trees for masts.

Wood has been part of human life and civilization growth since the beginning, and yet it has always been treated as an endless source that will never disappear. Perlin shows us that is otherwise, how landscapes have changed.

There is a bit of focus on the clearcutting that went on since the beginning of human civilizations with a focus on the west. Perlin does try to cover the globe but misses a few areas, several I wished he did cover (Easter Island for one). The bulk of the book discusses England then a larger section, nearly a third of the book, is about North America.

It seems humans have learned nothing about destroying forests, about what happened in the past, nor about how acting only for the immediate now will effect the future.

At times I found the information overwhelming in repetition of deforestation, and other times amazed at how many things wood is used for. I learned about countries and history and without forests, trees, wood, we would not able to sustain our way of life today. And yet we cannot regrow ancient forests, quickly. Some trees need to be left to grow, and certainly we can have some for use.

Did I mention the beautiful photographs? This is an incredible book.

Thank you to Patagonia and NetGalley for an advance review electronic copy of the book. However, I did listen to audiobook version for reading. I used the eBook for viewing the amazing images and photographs.

Review 381: Revenge of the Librarians

Revenge of the Librarians by Tom Gauld
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Mostly cartoons about writing, some on reading and being a book person, and not many about librarians. The title doesn't exactly fit. But the book is enjoyable. I really did laugh out loud several times.

All are just one page image cartoon. A few are reimagined titles of classic books with a twist. Quite a lot about editors, or not not writing.

I really enjoyed the style of the art as well. I may have to look for more of Gauld's work.

Review 380: Birnam Wood

Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book takes place in New Zealand. I haven’t read many books where this is the setting, so that was appealing. The main description was about an activist gardening collective, called Birnam Wood, that plants in unused land, also sounded interesting.

We start out with two of the main Brirnam Wood people, well it seems like they are the only people involved, but that isn’t the case. These two women live together and are fully enmeshed in each other’s lives, but at least one of them is not happy with the current situation. It feels set up that the book is about these two, but it’s more than that.

We get an omniscient point of view that practically tells the entire story. We do switch characters, a limited number at least, and get each of their personal thoughts, but there is less interaction between the characters, and hardly any dialogue.

It is these thick paragraphs that bogged down the reading for me, with hardly any breaks just endless thoughts and ruminations on past or present circumstances and philosophies.

The action comes later, and yet still somewhat slowed. The book was listed as a mystery/thriller but that isn’t quite true. Although there is something a bit unknown. There is practically no tension in the book.

I suppose I took the book too seriously, as it did have a light-hearted type feel to it, despite some of the content. After finishing I realized I didn’t really like, nor connect with, any of the characters. And I thoroughly did not like the ending. Yet I don’t feel it was a waste to have read the book. I found a moment or two where I learned something about New Zealand, the character of the people there.

But the ending...did not like that one bit.

Thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for an uncorrected electronic advance review copy of this book.