Paging All Bookworms! discussion

On Beauty – Zadie Smith – 3***
“What are the truly beautiful things in life – and how far will you go to get them?” (from the book jacket) Smith’s novel focuses on the Belsey and Kipps families as they navigate the politics of an American university and the betrayals within and between their families. I was distracted by real life issues and didn’t give this the full attention Smith’s writing deserves, though I finished because my real-life book club will be discussing it next month.
LINK to my full review

American Like Me – America Ferrara (editor) – 4****
Subtitle: Reflections on Life Between Cultures. America Ferrara is the editor (and contributor) to this collection of essays. Some of the stories are humorous, some heartbreakingly touching. All are honest and poignant and heartfelt.
LINK to my full review

Robert Elton Berry, Yankee Stargazer: The Life of Nathaniel Bowditch [1941] 234 pages

Last year, I read a history of early New England science and engineering which talked about Bowditch and inspired me to add this biography to my reading list.

Nathaniel Bowditch (1773-1838) was one of the earliest scientists in the United States. He was a mathematician, astronomer, navigator, ship’s captain, businessman and member of the Harvard Corporation. His New American Practical Navigator, first published in 1802, is still a major reference for seamen, now published by the U.S. Government and in its 53rd edition as of 2017, which is carried on every U.S. Naval vessel. He spent the last years of his life translating the first four volumes of Laplace’s Mécanique Céleste.

Berry’s biography is well-written, not too technical and seems to be fairly complete. The “Foreword” claims it is the first biography of Bowditch, although I found an earlier one (1927) by Alfred Stanford listed on Amazon. I read it in the print edition, which is of course long out-of-print, but it is also available online from Open Library

See What I Have Done – Sarah Schmidt – 2.5**
Schmidt’s debut novel takes a look at one of the most infamous crimes in American history – the 1892 axe murders of Andrew and Abby Borden in Fall River, Massachusetts. I’m not sure I really liked the way in which Schmidt chose to tell this story. It felt very disjointed and left me with more questions than answers.
LINK to my full review

Maryse Condé, Desirada [1999] 280 pages

Reynalda, a fifteen-year-old, is rescued from drowning by Ranélise, a poor woman in Guadeloupe. Pregnant, she is afraid to return home and lives wih Ranélise until after the birth of her daughter, Marie-Noëlle. Shortly thereafter, she announces that she has signed up with BUMIDOM, a government employment agency, to go to work as a domestic in Paris, leaving Marie-Noëlle with Ranélise. The novel begins like Paul et Virginie without Paul; Marie-Noëlle grows up in a seeming garden of Paradise, loved by Ranélise and her sister Claire-Alta. When she is ten, her mother sends for her and she has to leave for Paris; her mother has no affection for her and she hates Paris. The novel is the story of Marie-Noëlle and her eventual quest for her identity. Gradually, through the stories of various persons in her life, we come to understand something of the life of Reynalda, and come to see that Marie-Noëlle is repeating the same pattern as her mother and her grandmother, and even farther back. The small and barren island of Desirada off the coast of Guadeloupe becomes a sort of symbol. Desirada is one of Condé’s best novels; all the characters are very well characterized although the novel is somewhat loosely constructed. As one might expect from Condé, there are no final answers or neat solutions.

Arabian Humanities, 19, 2024: Bahrein et ses voisins about 145 pages [Online, mostly in French]

I returned this week to my study of ancient Bahrain (the Dilmun of the cuneiform texts), which I read about in two books earlier this year. Arabian Humanities is an annual publication which is often devoted to a single theme; the 2024 issue is devoted to the papers from a colloquium on the history and archaeology of Bahrain and the neighboring regions of the Persian Gulf. (It is available online free at openedition.org) It contained nine articles of varying interest. (See my personal thread for details of the articles; pages are approximate.)

Mark Bowen, The Telescope in the Ice: Inventing a New Astronomy at the South Pole [2017] 424 pages

The Telescope in the Ice is a popular account of the building of the AMANDA and IceCube neutrino detectors at the South Pole. The book is divided into four parts. The first part gives a brief history of the concept of the neutrino up to its first discovery; the second part discusses early attempts to build detectors, including DUMAND, underground or undersea; the third and longest part is the history of the building of AMANDA, the first neutrino telescope in the ice, in the late 1990s and early 2000s; and the last part is about the building of IceCube, the present neutrino telescope, completed at the end of 2010, and the first results. There is an epilogue bringing the story up to 2016. It is mentioned that there are proposed upgrades; as of the present time (2025) they have not yet been approved, and with the drastic cuts to all scientific research under the Trump regime they are unlikely in the near future.

Most of the book is concerned with details of the construction, and there is a lot of biographical and anecdotal material about dozens of people who had some connection with the projects; I would have personally preferred more emphasis on the science and the results, which are somewhat sketchily described. The thread of the science and even the construction is frequently difficult to follow because of all the personal matter, and there are frequent digressions out of chronological order. Despite this, the book is an extremely interesting look at a major scientific project which is perhaps less known to the general reader than the LHC, LIGO, or the various satellite projects.

The Incredible Journey –Sheila Burnford – 4****
Three beloved family pets – a young Labrador, an aged bull terrier, and a Siamese cat – head home across 300 miles of wooded and mostly uninhabited territory in Ontario, Canada. This is a wonderful tale of adventure, friendship, loyalty, teamwork, and kindness.
LINK to my full review

Saturday Night At the Lakeside Supper Club – J Ryan Stradal – 3***
I really like Stradal’s writing. He is spot on in revealing the small-town Midwestern vibe. These are ordinary people, leading ordinary lives, full of hope, dreams, hardship, fights, reconciliations, tragedy, and perseverance. This novel is more about the characters and how they deal with what life throws at them, than it is about a particular plot point. So glad the supper club continues to be popular in Wisconsin!
LINK to my full review

Mile High – Liz Tomforde – 2.5** (rounded up)
A pro hockey player and the flight attendant on the team’s private plane hook up. Lots of sex, and they eventually realize there is more to this relationship. Tomforde also tackles issues of body image, social medial bullying/shaming, and celebrity culture.
LINK to my full review

Jean Piaget, The Origins of Intelligence in Children [1936, tr. 1952] 419 pages

The next book chronologically in my reading of Piaget, The Origins of Intelligence in Children deals with an earlier period than the previous five. While those books began with the acquisition of language or later, this one covers the period between birth and about two and a half years. It is also much more theoretical. Although there are interesting observations on his own three children, three siblings raised in the same household is not a particularly large or representative sample for drawing the major conclusions he draws.

The focus of the book is to prove an epistemological theory about how intelligence originates from the interplay of “assimilation to schemata” and “accommodation of the schemata”, which he contrasts to four other theories, which he describes as “Associationist Empiricism”, “Vitalistic Intellectualism”, “Apriority and the Psychology of Form” (essentially Gestalt theory), and “The Theory of Groping”. His own view he calls “The Theory of Assimilation”. I would say the book requires a background in philosophy rather than psychology, which fortunately is my case. Even so, it is a difficult book.

After a very abstract introduction, which I only understood after reading the final chapter of the book, he as usual divides the development into sequential “stages”. In this case there are six, which, to use his chapter headings, are: I. The Use of Reflexes, II. The First Aquired Adaptations and the Primary Circular Reaction, III. The “Secondary Circular Reactions” and the Procedures Destined to Make Interesting Sights Last, IV. The Coördination of the Secondary Schemata and Their Application to New Situations, V. The “Tertiary Circular Reaction” and the “Discovery of New Means Through Active Experimentation, and VI. The Invention of New Means Through Mental Combinations. He ends with a long chapter of conclusions, titled “Sensorimotor” or “Practical” Intelligence and the Theories of Intelligence.

According to the reviews, this was his most influential book, and it is worth reading for anyone with an interest in epistemology.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich [1962, tr. 1963] 203 pages

The first published novel of Solzhenitsyn (although not the first written), One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich created a sensation in the Soviet Union as the first novel detailing Stalin’s repression and the Gulag system to be openly published during the short-lived period of (relative) intellectual freedom under Khrushchev. It was banned after the fall of Khrushchev, and Solzhenitsyn was later exiled.

The novel was based on his own experiences as a political prisoner under Stalin. It was written in a straightforward realist style, and simply follows one day in the life of a prisoner in a “Special” high-security prison camp in Siberia. The tyranny of Stalin and the arbitrary treatment of those who had the misfortune to escape from German POW camps as spies is a major theme. The treatment is purely factual and there is no analysis of causes, which would not have been allowed even during the Khrushchev “thaw”; and given Solzhenitsyn’s politics in exile, it was probably just as well.

Apart from its political and historical importance, this is also a very well-written work of literature. I am moving on next to his actual first-written novel, In the First Circle, which was only published in exile, and is the reading for the World Literature group I am in on Goodreads.

Han Kang, We Do Not Part [2025, tr. 2025] 256 pages

The latest novel by the 2024 Nobel Prize winner in Literature, Han Kang, We Do Not Part is another powerful book similar to her earlier novel, Human Acts. On one level, it is a magical realist novel about two friends. Kyungha-ya, a novelist who has written a book about a massacre and is suffering from deep depression, having lost the will to live, receives an urgent text message from Inseon, a friend she has not seen for several years, to come immediately to see her in the hospital. Inseon asks her for a favor, to go to her home on a northern island and save her pet bird, whom she has left with only a day’s food and water.

This, however, is basically just a frame story; the real essence of the novel is in the memories of Inseon, which reveal the massacres of hundreds of thousands of Koreans carried out by soldiers, police and right-wing paramilitary groups between the end of World War II and the beginning of the Korean War. I would suggest reading this alongside Hwang Sok-yong’s The Guest.

The Egg and I –Betty MacDonald – 1*
Betty MacDonald’s “memoir” of her life as a newlywed on a chicken ranch in the Olympic Penninsula area of Washington was a runaway bestseller when it first appeared in 1945. I have to give her credit for making a life “in the wilderness” with the man she loves, despite her own background of relative privilege. But I was highly disappointed in the book. I do not at all like the way MacDonald portrays the local people, especially the Native American population. I know times were different then, but I don’t find denigrating others funny or charming or even excusable.
LINK to my full review

Ananda Devi, Fardo [2020] 65 pages [in French]

Le Musée des Confluences de Lyon has a project which commissions writers to produce literary works inspired by items in its collection. Ananda Devi’s Fardo is a series of meditations on death and funeral customs, and the fragility of human cultures, including our own, based on two items involving human remains, a woman buried in the Caucasus region of Russia sometime between 967 and 813 BCE, and the mummy of a woman weaver from Peru dating from sometime between 900 and 1470 CE. The book is a good short read, interesting and written in very poetic language, with quotations from Coetzee, Camus and René Char, but not as powerful as her fiction.