Review 712: The Ephemera Collector

The Ephemera Collector by Stacy Nathaniel Jackson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was an unusual and unexpected book format, reminded me of a post-modern style book, but it wasn’t that. It is not a straightforward book by any means.

There are pages of images, some that repeat are a timeline that I found helpful to understanding the full story. There are other images, maybe some from a dream journal. There are poems and excerpts, from a journal maybe. It’s not very clear where these textual parts.

There are two stories here. The main frame of the book is with Xandria Anastasia Brown, who is an archivist at Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. In 2035 she's been having health issues, particularly memory lapses, and passing out, when an event happens at the library. It has to do with BlackoutWika, which she established but wasn’t involved in this event. She became locked in her office, which happily contains essentials for surviving for a few days. Xandria doesn’t understand what is going on. Yet she still strives to continue working with the archives, she is focused on the work.

The very opening of the book has Xandria talking in an interview on her 300th birthday. Something happened to her medically that caused her to stop aging.

The second story takes place further in the future, at Diwata, an underwater community that was built to escape the devastation on the surface. While other communities went into outer space, this group, the Black Reconstruction Collective, established themselves off the coast of California.

There is an audiobook for this but I’m not sure if that would translate well as there is much here that is visual, not just what was mentioned above, but also with the formatting. There are bots that communicate which is identified by brackets, maybe audio can adapt that part. Anyway, not sure this is one to attempt in audio.

Overall, there were parts of this book I liked, some I did not. There was some repetition, which I didn’t like, and some parts of the book were confusing. I found the bot named sassafras interesting.

Review 688: The Madness Pill

The Madness Pill: One Doctor's Quest to Understand Schizophrenia by Justin Garson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Solomon Snyder, or Sol, was on a quest to find a cure of schizophrenia. In order to do that he thought he needed a drug to mimic what the illness does. So he searched in psychedelics for a while, but it wasn't quite right. When speed came about and psychosis from too much speed, well, this drug was closer.

I liked the succinct way the history of psychiatry was explained. Basically two types of approach to mental health, the environmental factors which talk therapy helps; and the biological approach, which is solved with medication. The later helped move the field into a more acceptable scientific field. This book covers many of the medications that were developed.

The book was divided into the two parts: psychedelics then speed, providing a short history and some of the people that were involved in the development. The book did not solely focus on one doctor, Sol, as there was a cadre of people working in this field, but it did keep coming back to Sol’s work. The organizational method of the book made sense, but it also meant that the timeline wasn’t completely linear.

The tail end of the book became a whirlwind of different drugs all with similar sounding names. It was hard to keep that all straight, but otherwise this was a fascinating and informative book.


Thanks to St. Martin's Press, Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for an uncorrected electronic advance review copy of this book.

Review 680: Unbearable

Unbearable: Five Women and the Perils of Pregnancy in America by Irin Carmon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book looks at being pregnant in the United States post revoking Roe v. Wade, where abortion is now nearly impossible in many states. Unfortunately, some state laws are going even further, which give more consideration to unborn, even when the woman's life is endanger.

The focus in this book is not about women being forced to carry to term babies they did not want. Instead it is about how these changing laws give preference to the babies in gestation over the mother’s health.

The book follows five women throughout multiple pregnancies and how the laws and being pregnant has effected each of them. Unfortunately, there is also a huge divide of care based on color of skin, and wealth (of course).

The book is shocking and appalling, to say the least. For these women profiled, and women in similar locations and situations, their life is endangered every time they get pregnant.

The book is too heavily centered on Alabama and New York City. It may have done better to expand to a couple other areas in the country.

Review 667: Doctors Cry Too!

Doctors Cry Too!: Essays from the Heart of a Physician by Frank H. Boehm
My rating: 2.5 of 5 stars

The author co-writes a column for his local newspaper in Nashville, Tennessee related to being a doctor. This book is a compilation of some of the essays that appeared there that he wrote. Each essay is fairly short, only takes a couple of minutes of reading. The grouping of the essays is into four sections, with the last the longest part of the book, titled “A Personal Point of View”, however, all of the essays could fall into that category.

The book is somewhat dated, since the essays were written mostly in the late 1990s. Medical advancements and understanding the human body have improved since then, making some of the advice not accurate any longer. But for the most part what he says, such as living life the fullest, is always good advice.

Many of the essays are personal, discussing his family and friends, as well as his own life. The book was okay, very heartfelt from the author, but not too sure how much I truly got out of the book. If it was a longer book not sure I would have read it entirely.

Review 649: The Shift

The Shift: One Nurse, Twelve Hours, Four Patients' Lives by Theresa Brown
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you ever wanted to know what it was like in a day of a nurse, this may be a good book to read. This nurse, Theresa Brown, works in oncology hematology, which is blood cancer. The hospital floor where she works may also get patients with rare blood disorders, such as one of her patients in this book.

Theresa was professor at Tufts University with a doctorate in English and made the unusual shift to becoming a nurse after having twins. Brown first thought about being a maternity nurse but the more challenging care is in the cancer wards.

This book covers just one day, one shift, beginning and ending at home. There are all the minute details of what goes on throughout the day. For some people this level of minutia may be a little too much, but it was fine for me.

The book title says four patients, but in the end there really are five. One goes home and a new patient is admitted, actually she gets two new patients that day, although both were already known to her as they had been previously admitted. The very last part of the book give a follow-up of where these patients are now, at least at the time of the writing and publication.

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 554: Gut

Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body's Most Underrated Organ by Giulia Enders
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

This was an informative book, with a somewhat entertaining writing style. Although the focus was the gut, it covered much more, starting with the mouth and worked downwards. Although the book was comprehensive still felt like there was parts left out. I'm tempted to read another book about the same topic, but not sure I'm fully interested enough.

I read this in small bites, so as to not be overwhelmed by too much information all at once with an unfamiliar topic. Also, followed along with the eBook occasionally while listening to the audio. The book has line drawings by the author’s sister, sprinkled throughout, they are cute images.

It was a bit odd as the audio and the eBook were different in some areas, definitely some heavy editing between the two. The audio was European, (the author is German) while the eBook was for an American audience. But there were more changes than just changing a phrasing or measurement for the American audience. Nothing that really changed the content, just found it interesting.

Review 553: Possessed by Shadows

Possessed by Shadows: A Novel by Donigan Merritt
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Not entirely sure how I came across this book. Goodreads has only one other review and that’s from the author, so technical no reviews, although there are some ratings. In any case, I did read this slightly short book.

This novel is told in two narratives, two halves of a married couple – Tom and Molly. Molly was just diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. She is still young, mid-thirties and doesn’t want to spend her last days with treatments and hospital visits when it won’t extend her life much anyway. She wants to spend her final days doing what she’s always done, which is climbing. Her narrative is what she wrote about her life, starting not really from the beginning, but sometime as a teenager.

The other side, Tom’s narrative begins with the diagnosis in 1989 and continues forward, so we do have a split with the timeline. They decide to return to Czechoslovakia, to the Tatra Mountains. There they meet up with Tom’s good friend Štefan Borák. Molly’s good friend Saŝa was from a village near Prague, although died a while back in a climbing accident.

Climbing was in the center of the book. In fact there was a glossary in the back to define the various climbing terms, although it seemed to me that the terms were self-explanatory. In Molly’s portion went into explaining how different rocks or routes were named.

This book cannot be called a light read with so much death in the book, with a youngish person facing their own eventual death, plus her good friend, along with her father she was very close to growing up. Yet, it was marginally interesting. Maybe if I was into climbing the book would have worked for me better.

Review 547: Beyond the White House

Beyond the White House: Waging Peace, Fighting Disease, Building Hope by Jimmy Carter
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

With the recent passing of former President Jimmy Carter I figured it was a good time to read one of the books I’ve had sitting on my shelf for awhile unread. This book was a good introduction to the work Carter and his wife Rosaylnn has been doing through the past several decades, and it is remarkable work.

The first chapter is a bit of an eye opener at the state of the Carter’s affairs after leaving the President’s office. They had to remove themselves from his farming business during his term and what had been a lucrative business free of debt was now over $1million dollars in debt. So he was broke. Plus needed to raise funds for a Presidential library, and left the office as an unpopular person. He decided to not use his experience for an monetary gain, but instead to be benevolent or work in some non-profit way. This became the impetus for starting The Carter Center.

The Carter Center has several aims and goals, which basically come down to improving people’s lives, particularly in impoverished areas. The book covers some of the work they have been involved in since the founding of the center. It’s quite impressive.

The list is long: such as being mediators in war zone areas, preventing or stopping wars, overseeing and helping democracy in areas previously run by dictators, trying to eradicate the overlooked diseases in poor nations, not to mention human rights, women’s equality and much more. Due to the amount of work and the many different countries Carter has worked in, the book feels more like a summary instead of a detailed account.

Or course, this work was not done by Jimmy Carter alone. There were many people that helped, interns at the Center, doctors that lead the charge in helping with the diseases, and partnering with Emory University. But his name and position has helped tremendously in some areas and places, allowing him access where others would be denied, or it would take much longer to get to a point of talking with other leaders.

An informative book about a remarkable man. Too bad more ex-Presidents would take his lead as an example of what that clout can do. Thankfully Carter had a long life and was able to make a lasting change in many people’s lives.

Review 542: Eleanore of Avignon

Eleanore of Avignon by Elizabeth DeLozier
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Didn’t know what to expect with this historical fiction, and was pleasantly surprised by it

The location is in the title, Avignon, taking place during 1347-1348. The main character is Elanore, so the title describes the basics. What it doesn’t describe is she is a twin, and although they are identical they are vastly different people.

Eleanore takes after their mother, who was a healer, herbalist and midwife. The twins are still morning her passing. It wasn’t entirely clear how long ago that was, but probably not too long ago.

Eleanore meets the most famous doctor in Avignon, who is interested in learning more about her herbal remedies. When the plague hits Avignon their world is turned upside down. An absorbing book with good pacing. Excellent debut novel.

I listened to the audiobook which was well narrated. Perhaps that’s why I found the book so absorbing, enjoyed listening to it.

Review 490: Sixty: A Diary of My Sixty-First Year

Sixty: A Diary of My Sixty-First Year: The Beginning of the End, or the End of the Beginning? by Ian Brown
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

While I’m not there yet, this age will be in my future (baring something catastrophic), so why not read about one man’s experience with living the age of sixty. This diary is more contemplative than what happened each day, although there is that in the book as well.

Ian Brown lives in Toronto working at the Globe and Mail. He keeps active, sometimes biking to work when he’s at home. Near the end of the book I started to wonder how many days does he actually stay at home? He travels quite frequently, and mostly for pleasure, although there is some work related travel, such as a month-long stint at Banff as he leads the literary journalism program for the fifth year.

Of course aging is a recurring topic, as is health issues, and studies that show what declines and what point – generally everything sooner than you think, just the results don’t start showing until later. Other topics he keeps returning to is sex, his family (a given) and money, worrying about enough to retire. But the primary topic seems to be his own death is on the horizon.

It's quite the readable book, and well done, especially for a diary, but it’s not just a diary. It was written and edited with an eye to publication from the start.

Review 427: All Waiting Is Long

All Waiting Is Long by Barbara J. Taylor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars



When I plucked this off my bookcase to read this past week I had no clue what it was about. A historical novel taking place around the time of the depression in Scranton PA and Philadelphia. 

It starts with two sisters at a catholic infant asylum for unwed women to finish out their pregnancy and leave their babies. Only the younger sister is pregnant but the older is there to help and watch over her. The writing is well done, and many issues are brought up, such as eugenics, and of course women and pre-martial sex. 

Initial brief review:

many issues are brought up in the book, but the characters take the center stage. Well written. Perhaps more thoughts on this soon.

but...i read this during a lull in reading and reviewing...feel a little stuck

Review 412: Glowrushes

Glowrushes by Roberto Piumini
My rating: 4 of 5 stars



A strange fairy-tale/fable type book for kids. Very sad actually as the main character, a kid, is dying from an unknown disease. He is allergic to nearly everything and must stay inside his room in the castle. 

Takes place in Turkey but written by an Italian, also old, a classic. 

Review 400: Transplanted Man

Transplanted Man by Sanjay Nigam
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is centered around a hospital in New York’s “Little India” with the doctors, patients, and other workers as the characters. There are several themes in this book, primarily seems to be about sleep disturbances and relationship problems, but that is not all. Yet there is a lot of humor in the book as well, perhaps as taking life to an extreme, such as one of the first couples in the E.R. we meet is where the man took a severe bite on his wife’s buttocks. This bite, of course, does lead to problems in the marriage.

Sonny is a resident doctor, who sleepwalks, and has a healing touch. One of the main patients is a politician from India with so many transplanted organs he is known as the Transplant Man. Thus, we get the title of the book, but it is a double meaning, as most of the people are transplants from India.

We follow Sonny with a relationship with an English Indophile nurse, Gwen, who loves literature but found her calling with helping people instead. She has her own unknown illness which caused relationship issues before.

There are many characters in the book, seemingly follow them all, but it doesn’t become confusing as they are distinct enough and introduced slowly. The book doesn’t seem to have much of a plot itself, we just follow these characters and see what happens, much like a year in the life of type story. Everyone does have some transformations of sorts, so it is not static in any way. An entertaining book.

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 369: Big Girl

Big Girl by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a sad book. We have a young girl Malaya who is overweight, so is her mother. The focus of the book is on food and the weight, but also the family. It is told from the girl’s point of view, so there is not complete understanding of things. She seems to try to disappear, hardly talks about herself or feelings, things that happen to her.

The grandmother is a mean person, hardly says a kind word to her granddaughter only platitudes and focus on how large Malaya is, how she needs to lose weight and eat only a small amount of healthy foods. Unfortunately, she stays with her grandmother during the summer, so she is subjected to this meanness. 

Malaya worries about her parent’s relationship; she makes herself feel better with food. Her other outlet is drawing and art.

Later we see Malaya as a teenager, nearing the end of her high school. She is smart, been in a gifted school all through the years, but it doesn’t translate into anything we see in the book.

I kept wishing Malaya would speak for herself, would do more for herself. The few moments that she does is a shining light. 

Review 335: Upgrade

Upgrade by Blake Crouch
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Having read this book some months ago, I found it has stayed with me. While part of the premise of the book may be similar to “Flowers for Algernon” it is a vastly different book. One may say the question this book is attempting to answer is: what happens when humans become super-intelligent?

The book is fast-paced, and I read it quickly. There is a bit more “preachiness” than one would want, and there are some similar tropes, or formula to the overall arc of the book. Yet, there are a couple of themes that can be pulled out and are concepts worthy of deeper consideration. 

The obvious one, yes, what if humans become super smart, would we lose our humanity, our emotional connection to others? This may be pertinent as we approach technological advances, with computer AI and possible integrating humans with computers. Also, one could ask: why allow something to happen to others that would vastly change their life without their consent? Even if it is for the better? And ultimately, is it better?

The end may leave an opening for a sequel, but we shall see. If there is one, I will definitely grab that book.

Read in March, review posted in July.

Review 330: How High We Go in the Dark

How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu
My rating: 5 of 5 stars



This book surprised me. It’s almost a series of short stories, as every chapter begins with new characters, yet it is all the same world and time advances. It begins around 2030 with a father going to the artic where his daughter recently died, and an ancient girl was discovered. Unfortunately, the remains had a virus that ends up creating a pandemic.

Here is where I wondered if I should stop reading. Did I really want to read about a fictional pandemic while in the (hopefully) tail end of a real one? Well, the writing pulled me in, quickly connecting strongly with the characters.

Later as the years pass, decades, there may be a connection to previous characters, such as the father’s granddaughter is a main person in a later chapter. These recurrences and calls to previous chapters help knit the book together in an interesting way.

I will definitely look for and read what Sequoia Nagamatsu writes next. Maybe even read this one again.

Read June 27-28, 2022

Review 317: Where No One Should Live: A Novel

Where No One Should Live: A Novel by Sandra Cavallo Miller
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While there is a bit of a medical mystery at the heart of the book, what has more focus in the romantic interest of the main character, the doctor Maya. We see the lives of several doctors, but the main two are Maya and Alex. Maya works in the Arizona Public Health Department while seeing patients at the clinic on Thursdays. Alex works at the clinic, which also has a number of resident interns, and it seems that something odd is going on at the clinic.

This is not a fast-paced book, it is more of a day-to-day reveal, with the doctors going about their routine. Maya lives on her family ranch, with an elderly horse, visiting her folks on Sundays a few hours away.

The heat of the place is almost a character of itself, mentioned frequently. Along with other safety concerns that doctors, particularly those in public health try to protect the citizens. Some of Maya’s keen interests in trying to get a helmet law passed.

The book grew on me, although the writing style was one I had to get used to. This is not a particularly long novel, but it almost asks you to sit with it for a while, to embrace the slower pace.

Thanks to University of Nevada Press and NetGalley for an uncorrected electronic advance review copy of this book.

Review 309: Take My Hand

Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This historical novel is based, inspired by real life events. It’s shocking to find there were some programs set up to sterilize women deemed unfit. Who are defined as unfit for motherhood? Most often it is the poor, people of color, disabled that are targeted. Stories like this help to highlight travesties of the past, to humanize what happened, and help to ensure these flawed decisions and actions are not repeated.

The setting is Birmingham, Alabama, with the frame of the story told by Civil Townsend, to her twenty-something adopted daughter, about her life when she was around the same age. Looking back to the early 1970s, when Townsend started her first job as a nurse at a family planning clinic. Civil’s first assigned home visit takes place in the country to give birth control shots to two sisters. What she finds transforms Civil’s life trajectory.

The two sisters are young, not of age, and one is mute. They live in abject poverty and don’t go to school. Civil feels her duty to help this family and get them into government housing, so the father, grandmother and girls no long have to live in a one-room shack with an outdoor toilet. Civil becomes embedded with this family, quickly questioning why they need birth control at such a young age, before the younger has even started her periods. Then one day the girls are sterilized, the father and grandmother being illiterate, hardly knew what they signed for. Civil, along with the family, file suit against the clinic where she works. It turns bigger than this case and their lawyer sues on behalf of the hundreds of other women found in a similar situation.

The story is heartbreaking, yet wonderfully told. There are moments when the past is broken with the present, speaking to Civil’s daughter, and a few times it felt awkward, but it comes together at the end.

Thanks to Berkley Publishing Group and NetGalley for an uncorrected electronic advance review copy of this book.