Chapter Two Hundred Six: Spinster

When Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own by Kate Bolick came across the circulation desk at work, I knew I had to check this book out.  While women are increasingly writing about their experiences as single women and studying the experiences of single women more broadly, there still isn't an overabundance of books, at least that I've encountered, on the topic, and I was interested to read Bolick's take on the matter.  She takes an interesting approach, interspersing her own experiences as a never-married woman from her twenties through her early forties with the lives of five successful female authors from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  (Many of these women authors did marry at some point, though few of them stayed married for the duration of their lives.)  By no means a manifesto against marriage or coupledom or cohabitation or family life, by no means a long and rambling screed against men (whom Bolick generally portrays kindly), Spinster instead strives to consider how marriage (or its absence) still shapes a woman's personal and professional lives.  Bolick isn't out to tell anyone else how to live her life; rather, by considering her own life thus far as well as the lives of the five female authors she's found particularly inspirational, as well as her late mother's short life, she offers a way to think about modern womanhood that includes but is not limited to marriage.

Chapter Two Hundred Five: Code Girls

When I started to listen to the audiobook of Liza Mundy's Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II, I was a little concerned it would be a dreary reckoning of all the ways that the U.S. government benefitted from the labor of women during WWII without according them the full benefits received by male civilians and veterans alike.  While that's true, Mundy's account focuses more on the positive attributes of the work done by these women, focusing on a smaller handful of them by way of examples.  If you're looking for a fascinating account of one of the lesser-known aspects of America's involvement in World War II, namely its female code breakers, or if you simply want a true story of deep friendships and fulfilling work, read or listen to Code Girls.

Chapter Two Hundred Four: Turtles All the Way Down

Of course I had to read the newest John Green book when it came out!  While YA realism isn't my favorite genre, I've been reading Green for long enough that I had to at least give Turtles All the Way Down a try, and I was hooked from page one.  I appreciate what feels to me to be Green's honest attempt at portraying one teenage girl's experience of mental illness from the inside.  Whatever faults this portrayal may have--and I haven't had enough time to parse it all out yet--I appreciate that Green has his protagonist, Aza, explicitly refuse to glamorize her mental illness while also having her explicitly state that some days are better than others and that there is no miracle cure on the bad days and that she is not merely her mental illness but a person with other elements to her.  I don't want to say much about the plot for fear of giving anything essential away, but if you've read Green's other works, you should definitely try Turtles All the Way Down (if for some reason you weren't already planning to), and if you're new to John Green but want to know what all the hype is about, I think Turtles All the Way Down is an excellent place to start.  It may even be my favorite John Green book to date.

Chapter Two Hundred Three: Jane, the Fox, and Me

So I noticed this large-format middle-grade graphic novel when someone else requested it at the library, and I was so attracted to the something about its illustrations that I decided to request it for myself.  I don't read graphic novels very often, though I tend to enjoy them when I do read them, and that's certainly the case here.  Jane, the Fox, and Me by Fanny Britt and Isabelle Arsenault comes to us out of Montreal (translated from the French by Christelle Morelli and Susan Ouriou) and tells the story of Hélène, a preteen girl whose schoolmates have turned on her for reasons not mentioned in the story (and possibly unclear to Hélène herself). Alternately taunted and ignored by her classmates, Hélène finds comfort in books--Jane Eyre, in particular--but there's no escaping the torment of a two-week long class trip to a nature camp. Eventually, Hélène finds a friend in a girl who no longer wishes to put up with the antics of the mean girls and also realizes that the weight problems her classmates tease her for are non-existent.  While that particular point of plot resolution felt a bit too easy to me, and while the overall story arc is not terribly original--ostracized girl finds a friend--I found the illustrations to be so evocative of Hélène's suffering while tormented at school and joy while escaping inside Jane Eyre that they made the whole book a worthwhile read for me. 

Chapter Two Hundred Two: Rust: The Longest War

So, pairing nicely with the audiobook Ceasar's Last Breath, I listened to another science book on audio, Jonathan Waldman's Rust: The Longest War.  If you're thinking, Surely, not a whole book on RUST???, that's what I was thinking when I picked this up, but, really, it is a whole book on rust, and it was quite interesting.  After all, almost any metal you interact with on a daily basis is subject to rust, and Waldman focuses on several interesting real-life examples of the problems caused by corrosion and various people's efforts to combat corrosion.  Did you know the Statue of Liberty nearly rusted out in the 1980s but was successfully restored?  Did you know that pop-top cans (like soda comes in) will corrode around the opening if stored on their side for a few months?  (Did you know how many people find dead mice in their sealed soda cans???  Please, pour canned drinks into a clear glass before consuming!!!)  Did you know how tricky it is to find and prevent weakening areas in the Trans-Alaska Pipeline before they become actual leaks?  (It's really tricky.)  Did you know that LeVar Burton of Reading Rainbow and Star Trek has also acted in movies about corrosion made by the U.S. government?  These are some of the many the fascinating tidbits in Rust, and I especially appreciated the audiobook version because the reader keeps a slight undertone of humorous incredulity in his voice--like he's thinking, Really, I'm reading a whole book about rust?--and this really added to my experience of the text.  If you want solid science writing full of quirky characters and amusing anecdotes and useful information about a super-common element of daily life, definitely check out Rust: The Longest War. 

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.