Review 557: Octavia E. Butler: H is for Horse

Octavia E. Butler: H is for Horse by Chi-ming Yang
My rating: 4.25 of 5 stars

This is a slightly academic biography, not only the author, but also of her early writings as well. Yang dove deep into Butler's archives held at the Huntington Library and have presented here an insight into how Butler's writing grew into the published books. Yang provides summaries on many of Butler’s juvenile writings, as she was writing stories since grade school.

The book is short and presented in 26 chapters, one for each letter of the alphabet, such as the subtitle. It’s a different way of organizing a biography, as it goes forward or backward in time as it fits into the chapter letter.

Any fan of Butler can find something here to appreciate and help to understand the author, and the origin stories of her books.

I listened to the audiobook which was well narrated. My only complaint is that there were references to images I could not see. I may have to seek out a copy just to peek at the images I missed while listening.

Thanks to HighBridge Audio and NetGalley for an advance review audiobook.

Review 556: Isola

Isola by Allegra Goodman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An enjoyable historical fiction book taking place in the 16th century, which begins in France. Marguerite is a noblewoman, but an orphan and all alone. She has servants, a large estate, lands and much riches, but no family other than a cousin who is serving as her guardian until she marries, then she will inherit her vast holdings and estate.

Marguerite is being raised by her nursemaid, her mother’s before she died in childbirth. After some time her guardian grants a teacher so Marguerite can learn to read and write, and the teacher brought her young daughter. The two become fast friends, more like sisters.

But Marguerite’s life is ruled by her unscrupulous guardian and before long she is sent to live in a small portion of her house and the rest of the estate has been leased to another family. Her guardian has squandered her riches.

The book is thick with the how Marguerite has no control over her own life. The lives of her teacher and nursemaid, the women, have little options.

It says in the overview that Marguerite is stranded on an island in the New World, but what leads up to that and other aspects is best to be discovered by the reader.

Without giving away any more of the entire plot, I will say this was based on a true story that took place in the 1500s. Maguerite de la Rocque de Roberval’s story was written down by Queen Marguerite of Navarre and a priest. Their stories differ and not much is entirely known, so this is a fictional retelling of what happened and how the circumstances came to be.

Quite an enjoyable writing style. Haven’t read any of Goodman’s other works, but certainly will now.

Review 555: The World Until Yesterday

The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? by Jared Diamond
My rating: 4.25 of 5 stars

Somehow I have admired Jared Diamond’s writings without ever having read one of his books. Or maybe I just thought I admired it. I did see a documentary that was based on his book Guns, Germs, and Steel and I have a copy of the book a friend gave me, but have yet to read it. I bought this book, in audio form, over ten years ago. So it is nice to have finally read some of his work.

I did enjoy the book for the most part. It is on the longer side which is why I have avoided it for so many years, but I should not have feared its length as it went quickly. His writing style is very readable. And with this book the concepts are simple, maybe too simple?

Much of the book looks at traditional societies and how they conduct their lives and compare to our modern, western lives. These traditional societies are living mostly as they have been for thousands of years, how our human bodies have evolved. Today in the modern world suddenly we have a different way of life, as far as evolution goes, very sudden.

Diamond is clear that the traditional ways are not always the best ways, and there is much in the modern world that is better. However, we may have left behind a few ways of living that would serve us better if we took that practice back up. One example is by speaking more languages and raising children in multilingual households. It is common for immigrant families to have the children speak only the dominant language and not to learn the family language, but there are many reasons why being exposed to more than one language since birth is good.

The last part of the book goes into a lot of detail about food, eating and the diseases that come from the sedentary modern lifestyles. It feels like this over use of salt and sugar is very common knowledge, yet Diamond uses very compelling examples of how the modern diet effects human bodies. When a traditional society, such as Papua New Guinea, suddenly becomes integrated into a more modern society the rise of diseases previously unknown in their society start to show at alarming rates. There is a shift from communicable diseases in the traditional world, to non-communicable, such as diabetes and heart diseases. I found it interesting what he says about rates of cancer are virtually unknown in traditional societies. Yet, the average life span is also at least 20 years less, and cancer is more prevalent the older you become.

There are some very incredible stories in here too. The chapter on dangers was quite fascinating, which Diamond relating several stories about how he was unaware of the danger he was in until much later. Also, a harrowing story of an overturned boat and his hope to make it out alive.

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.