Review 642: The Armchair Birder

The Armchair Birder: Discovering the Secret Lives of Familiar Birds by John Yow
My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Just a few thoughts for now...This book was okay, but maybe I'm not the target audience. I'm not a birder, nor have the desire to become one. But I am interested in learning about birds, their lives, especially those common ones around us. This book does reveal some of that, but there are so many birds discussed the book seemed more like an encyclopedia or a compendium of birds. Each bird was not given much description and some was about how the author saw the bird, or what it did around his place.

Review 641: The Genome Defense

The Genome Defense: Inside the Epic Legal Battle to Determine Who Owns Your DNA by Jorge L. Contreras

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book was a bit outside my comfort zone. The subtitle did say what the book was about, the legal battle, so this was very law focused. The law suite was brought on by the ACLU against the company Myriad who had a patent for a genetic test. This was the BRCA test for breast cancer. Can companies patent DNA or test for DNA? There's a bit of science involved in the book, but it's mostly the nitty gritty of a lawsuit. The author did try to make it readable, and it wasn't boring, but still my eyes glazed over more than once.

Review 640: The Yellow House

The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The book is an autobiography and perhaps one could make the argument it is of the house and not the author, or of the neighborhood in New Orleans East.

Sarah Broom grew up as the youngest child in a house that had 12 kids between both her parents. Her mother, Ivory Mae, bought the house for cash when she was 19, with the life insurance when her first husband died in 1960 while in the military. Two, perhaps three of the children were born of this man, but most likely the third was of her second husband, Simon Broom. He had three of his own, although the eldest boy would never live with this family. Between the two of them they had seven more children.

The house suffered a flood many years before Katrina came along. When it was repaired Simon added a small second story, which became the boys area. Much of the work was never complete fully. The house was not what Ivory Mae had envisioned for her ideal home. But it was her home.

Katrina becomes a focal point in the book. The Yellow House was flooded up the rafters, along with nearly all of New Orleans East. Afterwards the city would come and bulldoze down the house before anyone had notice. Despite living in New York City at the time, this devastation to the city, to the Broom family home, affects her and her siblings. Most had been living in New Orleans prior to Katrina. Years later only a couple have remained or returned. Sarah does for a while as well. The book is a remarkable tale of just one family before and after that devastating hurricane and flooding.

Review 639: The Definitions

The Definitions by Matt Greene
My rating: 2.75 of 5 stars

I finished this book a week ago and took some time thinking about it, because it’s not your typical short novel. It is reminiscent of I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman. I started my review of Harpman’s book with “A dystopian book, without a lot of answers.” And that line fits well with this book as well: short and left with ambiguity and more questions in the end. Seems also to be not really my kind of book.

A virus has rendered people amnesiacs. They don’t remember anything, so are at this facility to learn how to behave in society, maybe regain their memories of who they were before. They take new names. The narrator, however is unnamed. They are unsure about the virus, there appears to be a new version that may reinfect or not.

There is a lot of focus on words. The narrator and a friend are focused on the meaning of a few, such as chair and bench. How to define exactly these words and what they represent.

It felt like the students at the center aren’t being told the full truth. Things are going on in the outside world they don’t know about, at least anymore, and are sheltered or given a new story. It’s hard to tell since we as readers never get the full story either.

This will likely work better for some people, while others who don’t like vagueness and obscurity, this may be a pass.



Thanks to Henry Holt and Co. and NetGalley for an uncorrected electronic advance review copy of this book.

Review 638: Artemis

Artemis by Andy Weir
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I like Weir's books, as they can be fun science fiction and high octane. This one is also high octane and off-world located on the moon, a small city called Artemis.

The main character is Jazz Bashara who is a porter, moves things for a living, and on the side is also a smuggler for extra cash. She’s young and maybe mouthy, stands up to just about everyone. When her top client offers a million credits (slugs) for disabling some heavy equipment she says yes, even though that type of job is way outside her norm. And things go sideways, of course it does.

This plot device of things failing to go as planned seems to be Weir’s m.o. in writing. Then goes into how to fix things. And since you’re in a small enclosed area where live is easily endangered things are amped up.

It usually works in his books, but didn’t work as well here. Not sure if it was the character who seemed unbelievable, or just the plot line overall. I did like how there were many women as the main characters and major areas, but they mostly acted like men just with female names.

I listened to the audiobook, which is the best way to read Weir’s books as they do enhance the reading experience.

Review 637: Anyone: A Novel

Anyone: A Novel by Charles Soule
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

A sci-fi thriller book that has an interesting concept - what if you could *flash* into someone else's body? Their consciousness is taken over by you, they go inert, same with your original body, your prime.

Well, the way the book was written the tech wasn't explained very convincingly and overall the writing felt sloppy and kinda phoned in. I would have quit reading except I did want to see how it would play out.

Maybe I will add a few more notes, but not sure the book is really worth it.