Chapter Two Hundred One: Caesar's Last Breath: Decoding the Secrets of the Air Around Us

I listened to Sam Kean's (nonfictional) account of air and gasses more generally, Caesar's Last Breath, on audio, and I found it to be a really interesting listen.  Kean includes plenty of real-life stories about various unusual people (usually, though not always, scientists) who have been involved with the study--or consequences--of gasses, including a man who lived on Mount Saint Helens and refused to evacuate before the eruption.  (They never found his body.)  There's plenty of actual science content, though, including clearly-explained information about the nature of various elements and molecules in their gaseous forms.  Mostly following a chronological sequence, Kean chronicles the various gasses that formed earth's previous atmospheres as well as exploring the gasses that comprise its current, life-enabling atmosphere.  He also includes events such as the discovery of oxygen (or, more properly, how humans finally figured out what oxygen is), the first hot air balloon flights, the career of a French performer known as the Fartomaniac, the fallout of atomic bombs and subsequent atomic bomb tests, and the purported Roswell flying saucer incident.  In the final chapter, Kean gets a bit fanciful, considering potential futures for our planet and how humans might respond to the atmospheric changes that result from human activity (climate change), but overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book.  The bonus PDF that comes with the audiobook version includes Kean's works cited and all of the numerous (black and white) illustrations from the printed book, which are definitely worth a look.  If you're looking for some quality science writing, definitely consider Caesar's Last Breath.

Chapter Two Hundred: Bird Box

So I read Josh Mallerman's Bird Box for a book club, and I'm so glad I did!  This sort of apocalyptic horror story is not my usual fare, but that didn't stop me from being totally absorbed into Bird Box.  Not only was the premise--that some mysterious creature has appeared on Earth, driving anyone who sees it to madness and then suicide--original and totally creepy, but the story of one woman's struggle to adjust to this new state of affairs is masterfully told.  I especially appreciated how we get two timelines: Mallorie's life about five years ago, when the creatures first started appearing, and her life in the story's present, when she and her two young children are trying to escape down a river, blindfolded, to a place where Mallorie hopes she'll find safety for them all.  Of course, I don't want to say too much more for risk of giving away key information, so I'll just conclude by urging you to check out Bird Box, even if you're not typically a horror reader. 

Chapter One Hundred Ninety-Nine: To Be Where You Are

Basically, as soon as another Mitford novel is published, I'm already anticipating the next one, so I was super excited for Jan Karon's latest, To Be Where You Are, and it definitely delivered the entirely enjoyable read I was expecting!  As this sprawling series (I believe this is book 14) progresses, the cast of characters whose perspective we get widens, which I really enjoy--especially because it keeps me on my toes each time I have to figure out who's narrating now.  If you haven't read the previous books, I wouldn't start here, since there's so much previous knowledge you'd need about all of the characters, but the flip side of this is that, for someone like me who's been following Karon's Mitford  stories for more than a decade now, they truly feel like real people who could actually be living in (fictional) Mitford, North Carolina, and as always, I was so happy to return to them once more.  If you're looking for a homey, small-town kind of read for this winter, and you've got time to spare, I'd definitely give this series (the first is At Home in Mitford) a try--I certainly enjoy it.

Chapter One Hundred Ninety-Eight: Jane Bites Back

If you read the title of this post and are thinking that this can't possibly be/absolutely must be a Jane Austen vampire story, then you're so wrong/totally right.  After all, when a novel in which Jane Austen is still alive in the modern day because she'd been turned into a vampire two hundred years ago wanders across my desk at work, what else am I supposed to do but read it?  (Tagline on the cover: "It is a truth universally acknowledged that Jane Austen is still alive today... as a vampire.")  This novel by Michael Thomas Ford was actually much better than I thought it would be, although it's pretty silly, even by my standards.  Let's just say that Jane Austen is not the only undead famous author to appear in the pages of this book...  Despite (oh, okay, because of) this and other silly story elements and plot points, this is a fairly enjoyable light read, with elements of horror and paranormal as well as romance.  If you're looking for some silliness or if you just want a fairly light but not totally insubstantial read, you might give Jane Bites Back a try.

Chapter One Hundred Ninety-Seven: William Shakespeare's Star Wars (audio recording)

So those of you with long memories may remember that I've posted about Ian Doescher's William Shakespeare's Star Wars three years ago.  For those of you with normal memories, click HERE to see my original post on the trilogy--my comments from three years ago pretty much still stand, except now I've had the delightful experience of listening to this trilogy as an audiobook, and it makes for excellent listening!  While you lose some of the visual information you get from reading the play (seeing that Yoda speaks in haiku, for example, while most of the characters speak in iambic pentameter), the audiobook makes up for this by adding great sound effects, including some fun Shakespearean-era music (where appropriate), music from the original John Williams soundtrack, and occasional R2D2 soundbites.  After listening to the very good but very intense Radium Girls (see previous post if you haven't already), William Shakespeare's Star Wars was exactly the sort of lighter, good-vanquishes-evil listening that I was wanting, and if you enjoy Star Wars or Shakespeare's plays or both, or if you're looking for something fun and quite unusual, give this a listen.  I really can't recommend it enough.

Chapter One Hundred Ninety-Six: Radium Girls

Kate Moore's non-fiction book Radium Girls makes for powerful listening--it was often difficult to bear because the subject matter was so affecting, even as I desperately wanted to find out the ultimate fate of the women at the center of this narrative.  The radium girls were teenagers and young women hired to paint watch dials with luminous, radium-based paint in the years following WWI.  They were taught to point their paintbrushes frequently using their lips, in order to paint the numbers as neatly and quickly as possible.  At first, it was the ideal job--it offered well-paid and well-regarded work in the company of dozens of other young women--but after a few years, several of the dial painters began to fall ill with strange, horrible, and--at first--unexplainable symptoms.  I don't want to give away much more, but this is basically an account of extreme corporate greed and baldfaced deceit, with a hefty dose of acute human suffering as the result.  At turns legal drama, medical thriller, and family saga, this book is not for the squeamish or faint of heart, but it tells a really important story of two groups of women in two different radium plants who persisted in their pursuit of justice for themselves and for future generations of industrial workers.

Chapter One Hundred Ninety-Five: The Romance Reader's Guide to Life

The Romance Reader's Guide to Life by Sharon Pywell is a novel that combines several genres: while historical fiction is dominant, aspects of suspense, mild romance, and the paranormal are present.  (For those of my readers also in the Boston area, this novel is set in Lynn, MA, adding some fun local flavor, too.)  But sisters Neave and Lilly are the main focus of the story, which follows them as, after losing their jobs to soldiers returning after WWII, they start their own very successful cosmetics business together, each complementing the other.  But Lilly, as you discover in the first chapter, is going to wind up dead, and Neave will be in danger as a result (hence the suspense aspect of the story).  Excerpts from Neave's favorite teenage romance novel, The Pirate Lover, are interspersed with the main narrative, connecting with Neave's life in interesting, if not always subtle, ways.  This was a darker novel than I'd expected based on its title and cover, but it certainly held my interest!  If you're looking for something a little different, you might consider The Romance Reader's Guide to Life.

Chapter One Hundred Ninety-Four: Boneshaker

I don't read a lot of steampunk, so I don't have much to judge it by, but I really enjoyed Cherie Priest's Boneshaker.  Set in an alternate-history Seattle circa 1880, the premise is that our heroine's late husband had been a mad scientist who had destroyed much of Seattle and unleashed a noxious gas that turns humans into zombies--perfectly and gruesomely referred to as "rotters."  Sixteen years later, Briar is left with a wayward son and a ruined reputation, and when her son ventures into the desolate Seattle to try to learn more about his shadowed past, Briar has to follow him to have any hope of rescuing him alive.  With air pirates, undead, a creative setting and a really kickass heroine, Boneshaker offers a gripping adventure story that, if you're at all like me, will keep you interested until the final page.

Chapter One Hundred Ninety-Three: Slade House

I didn't get what I was expecting (a story about a community of misfits) from David Mitchell's Slade House, but I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this twisted haunted house story.  Each chapter is from the perspective of a different "guest" at Slade House (hint: the so-called guests are never seen again), and we slowly get enough information to figure out what's been going on at the mysterious Slade House.  The end doesn't offer much resolution, so if that puts you off, this may not be the book for you, but if you're looking for a milder horror story, or  if you're already gearing up for Halloween, Slade House is a contemporary take on the creepy tale that is worth your time.

Chapter One Hundred Ninety-Two: The Wedding Bees

When The Wedding Bees: A Novel of Honey, Love, and Manners by Sarah-Kate Lynch came across the circulation desk at work, I figured it might make good light reading for an upcoming trip.  I didn't end up having time to read in while on vacation, but I really enjoyed it when I got around to it!  In addition to being well-written, it offers a fun (if implausible-seeming) New York City apartment building as its main setting, and the sort of loveably quirky and flawed cast of characters that I generally appreciate.  I think the subtitle sort of sums up the book, in which the well-mannered Sugar Wallace, an urban beekeeper with a knack for making friends and caring for neighbors, finally--with the help of her new friends and her bees--confronts her past romantic and social disasters.  It's not the most unpredictable plot, but I appreciated Sugar for her kindness to others and, as you've surely noticed by now, I'm a sucker for a happy story, so if you're looking for fun fiction with a heartwarming heroine, I'd definitely suggest The Wedding Bees.

Chapter One Hundred Ninety-One: Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002

Hello readers, and sorry for the long wait since my last post!  The summer was far busier than I expected, not that I haven't been reading and listening to a lot of excellent books!  But for now, I want to write about David Sedaris's newest, Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002.  I listened to this on audio--he reads his own work, which makes it so much more personal, as excerpts from someone's diary should be.  Really, give it a listen.  It took me a few discs to get really into Theft by Finding, but I felt my patience was rewarded and by the end, I was sorry to part ways with this book and found myself missing the sound of his voice in my car.  While some of the diary entries were familiar to me from Sedaris's other personal essays, many were not, and I always enjoy his wry observations on the absurdities of humankind.  And somehow, even describing some of the grimmer aspects of human behavior, Sedaris always leaves me with a sense of hope, if not for humankind on the whole, than at least for the possibility of finding the humor that's lurking in the people and situations around me.