Bad Science by Ben Goldacre

It took me a while to finish Bad Science, because I got stuck on the homeopathy bit. I've always been into homeopathy and took some time to kind of shift my way of thinking about it. I was able to come to terms with the science of it without disregarding it completely and I'm happy with the compromise. I'm also happy that I was able to get past these chapters, because the rest of the book was simply mind-blowing.

In Bad Science, Ben Goldacre deals with the way that the media and other authority figures use scientific facts, research and statistics in incorrect ways. Sometimes on purpose. This includes loads of subjects, including one that hit close to home, nutrition. I was one of the people who bought into the whole nutritionist thing, hoping to find easy weight-loss solutions. I considered myself knowledgeable, but I hadn't actually looked into the science behind some of the claims. This is a good many years in my past and since then I have myself learned to apply a lot more common sense to my life, but the science part of it was still a real treat. If you've read the book, I particularly enjoyed the chapter on anti-oxidants - what a fascinating eye-opener!

There was a lot that was disturbing in Bad Science. It really is disturbing to see how people will lie to achieve their own ends, even if their lies hurt thousands of people. I was shocked by many of the examples given by Goldacre... it's sad that this is the world we live in. It's sad that these sources that we all depend on and believe are the ones that are multiplying the lies. Where can you get trustworthy information from then?

It amazed me to see that even the most obvious nut jobs have huge followings. What does that say about our society? Do we question nothing? Do we really believe so blindly? Is that how desperately we need to belong to a movement, a group, an ideology?

I love ben Goldacre for trusting me with the bare facts. I'm not too stupid to understand the science behind the stories. Why is the science dumbed down for us?

I am recommending this to everyone. It's a book that I hope everyone will read as it has information we should all have. They don't teach this stuff in school but it's crucial to our everyday choices. Plus Goldacre's style is great and you'll get a few laughs out of the experience too!

The Best Friends' Guide to Surviving the First Year of Motherhood by Vicki Iovine

I really like this series of books about pregnancy and motherhood by Vicki Iovine. Last year, I read the Guide to Pregnancy and found it very helpful and honest. I'm happy to say that this book was just as helpful. And honest. :-)

Iovine provides information in an informal way, telling us about her own experience and the experiences of her friends. It's a fun and honest discussion of the beginnings of motherhood and includes the tough bits too. Getting lots of different stories means you get various perspectives but no judgment. Plus you see that you're never alone in what you're experiencing and that there are people who experience extremes of all situations. Sometimes things are better and sometimes things are worse.

The only criticism I have is that most of the book was really about the first 6 months. I've done that now and would have liked some more information about what to expect in the coming months. The title says 'first year' so I assumed it covered more.

I won't go into details here, since the subject matters appeals to such a small number of people, but if you're ever in need of such books, this series is a good choice. Not as good as Naomi Stadlen's What Mothers Do, Especially When it Looks Like Nothing, but still worth getting. It made me laugh out loud a good number of times and a new Mom sure needs that! :-)

The Beekeeper's Apprentice

This is one of those books that everyone in the blogosphere seemed to be reading a while back - I only got to it in January and managed to finish it a few days before going into labor - thankfully, as it would have taken me weeks to get back to it and I would have forgotten the story by then. And since it's a mystery the story is kinda important.

Actually the mystery isn't the most important aspect of this book; for me it was the relationship between Sherlock Holmes and Mary Russell that mattered. I loved how they needed each other and I loved how their relationship developed over time. Oh and for those of you who don't know about this book, it takes place in 1915 and features a retired Holmes living as a recluse in the English countryside. What a great idea.

I really enjoyed the classic Sherlock Holmes case-solving, as both he and Mary figured things out based on the tiniest clues.

Anyway, I had a great time reading this. And The Beekeeper's Apprentice is the start of a series and the next book is already on my list.

Sorry for the disjointed review - baby Shane doesn't allow me much writing time in one go, but if I didn't at least start bloggin again now I'm afraid I'd never come back, so here I am, horrible writing and all! :-)

Missing reviews

I want to tidy things up before the end of the year, so here are some quick thoughts on the last few books I read... and never reviewed.

Misconceptions: Truth, Lies and the Unexpected on the Journey to Motherhood by Naomi Woolf

I was looking for something about the misconceptions about pregnancy and early motherhood, since I was finding pregnancy so different from what I expected. This book is more about the American health industry though so, although interesting, didn't do that much for me. (***)

The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar

This is ine of those books that I thank the blogosphere for - if I hadn't needed a U author for the A-Z challenge I would have never picked this up in the used bookstore and would have really missed out on a gem. It's a beautifully written heartbreaking story of the realities on life in India - many of you enjoy world literature, seriously, if you haven't read this, put it on your list for 2010. (*****)

Fables volume 1 - Legends in Exile by Bill Willingham

Between Nymeth and Kailana's raving, I couldn't not read this at some point. Charming and original, can't wait to continue the series. Have you watched Who Framed Roger Rabbit, by the way? :-) (*****)

A Break With Charity by Ann Rinaldi

A non-fiction book for teens, I picked this up when we were in Boston earlier this year. It's a story of the Salem witch trials - it had the same characters as The Crucible so I looked things up and it turns out that those characters actually existed! Fascinating. This book isn't exactly well-known and I recommend it for its simplicity and historical interest. (*****)

Shadows in Bronze by Lindsey Davis

The second in the mystery series set in ancient Rome. I like the idea of this series but to be honest I thought that the first book was only mediocre and I couldn't even finish this one... I'm told that it starts getting really good by about book 4. Apparently the historical aspect of ancient Rome is really well-researched and that's very attractive to me so I think I'll persevere... (**)

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Omnibus, volume 1

What can I say, besides 'Buffy rules!'? :-) After watching the show a million times, I have now discovered the associated comics - not only the new Season 8 ones, but also these, older, ones.

Volume 1 of the Omnibus gathers together several comics with stories that happen before Season 1 of Buffy starts. One is about Spike and Drusilla, one is more about Dawn and the others are about Buffy's beginnings as the slayer. I loved every minute of every one. And I'm amazed at the art work - just wow.

There's nothing more I can add, except that I love Buffy on so many levels. As most of you know because I keep going on about it. If you haven't seen the show, watch it. And if you have and you want more, this series is perfect for you.

Challenges: 2010 Countdown Challenge, Graphic Novels Challenge, My Year of Reading Dangerously, R.I.P. IV

Some chick lit

I've read two chick lit novels in the past week or so - guess I was just in that kind of mood! They're both pregnancy/motherhood-related... I bought them a long time ago in the hope that I'll one day be able to read them without sadness. And here I am, that day has arrived, yay! :-)

The Rise and Fall of a Yummy Mummy by Polly Williams is the story of Amy and how she copes with the chaos of early motherhood - especially when everyone around her seems to be calm, collected and problem-free. She negotiates her way to having some sort of life again, complete with shopping splurges and not-so-smart decisions. I liked the character a lot and I understand that these kinds of books have to have a happy ending, but I must admit that I enjoyed reading about Amy's problems and struggles and being unsure much more than I enjoyed the solution parts. Any guesses about my current frame-of-mind?? :-)

Bed Rest by Sarah Bilston is about Q, a successful 6-months-pregnant lawyer living in Manhattan. It turns out that there is some problem with her pregnancy and Q is put on bed rest for three months. Plenty of time to discover what's truly important, with lots of thinking hours built in! I enjoyed this one too, the character of Q certainly had her quirky, sarcastic moments, which I always like. I think I'm chick-lit-ed out for a while now though!

There are few things as comforting as a good, intelligent totally girly book. Both of these are recommended, if you like this sort of thing, of course.

Challenges: Chick Lit Challenge

My News

Well. It sure has been a tough year so far - and you all know it too, what with my constant complaining about being tired, stressed out or simply in a bad place. My concentration has been on and off, I can't seem to keep my mind on reading like I used to. And I have a good reason. I'm pregnant.

It feels so amazing to finally be able to write that. I've been waiting until after the infamous 12-week scan and here I am, at 14 weeks now, able to finally announce it to the world. :-)

Why were things so hard? I won't bore you with details, but the gist of it is that we did an IVF cycle pretty much right after moving house. So basically we had all the stress we could possibly have had at once. It was a horribly diffcult time and I don't particularly want to think about it. But we survived and hey, it worked!

I am thrilled and looking forward to what these next months will bring. I don't expect any huge improvements in concentration, but hopefully things will settle down a bit at least.

I do have thoughts on a pregnancy-related book too, I hope they count because as you can imagine with my addiction I bought pretty much every book I could find.

I now finished reading The Best Friends' Guide to Pregnancy by Vicki Iovine. The subtitle says 'Or everything you doctor won't tell you' and it lives up to the expectation. This book tells you how things will actually feel, not just what will happen to you. It's a funny take on the experience and after reading so many clinical books (which are also important) I totally needed this. I definitely this is one to read when pregnant.

It fits into a couple challenges too! :-)

Challenges: 999 Challenge, Non-Fiction Five challenge, A-Z Challenge

The Book of Lost Things

Wow, I managed to finish another book! I'm SUCH a slow reader these days, I can't concentrate on anything... To all of you reading this who believe in positive energy/thinking, I need some of both desperately this week. It's a waiting week for me and I am SO not good at waiting.

Anyway, the book - John Connolly's The Book of Lost Things. It was a huge hit in the blogosphere last year, I think, and it's been on my shelf for ages. It's the story of David, who is very lonely and angry and lost after his Mom dies and his Dad starts a new family with Rose. David loves stories (he learned that from his Mom) and ends up in a world where some of these stories exist. The twists and turns aren't all happy though, the tales have taken on darker aspects and the story world isn't as cheery as it should be.

The Book of Lost Things is a fairy tale for adults. I'm sure children read it too, but I don't think they can get all the messages and I also think that they'd be really scared in some parts! I wasn't too crazy about the book until David actually found the book of lost things. It all came together for me then, I understood the story more I guess and I really enjoyed reading it until the very end. I even read the extras, including the authors comments on the fairy tales included in the book.

I marked two quotes somewhere at the beginning of the book, both about stories:

Stories wanted to be read, David's mother would whisper. They needed it. It was the reason they forced themselves from their world into ours. They wanted us to give them life.

and

The stories in books hate the stories contained in newspapers, David's mother would say.

I enjoyed the book in the end - and now want to read more about the origins/meanings of fairy tales. Any recommendations?

Challenges: Once Upon a Time III, Dewey's Books

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes... But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes

These two books were written by Anita Loos, the first was published in 1925 and the second in 1927. They are both diaries written by Lorelei Lee, a pretty flapper living it up in the 1920s. The subtitle of the first book is 'Diary of a Professional Lady', so I'm sure you get the idea.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is Lorelei's diary about her day-to-day life, her relationships with various men, her trip to Europe and her getting married. She is hilarious - she is striving for intellectual knowledge and loves to learn things. She thinks she is educated and fairly high-class, which makes her social gaffes even funnier. She is very likable. I enjoyed listening to her adventures and her interpretation of how the world works and what men are for.

But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes is in Lorelei's voice once again, but tells the story of her friend. I thought this was much, much weaker... kind of more of the same.

Apparently, Anita Loos got the idea to write these books when she noticed that all the men around her were falling over the blonde in the room and paying no attention to her, a brunette, even though she was pretty and intelligent. I liked that bit of information, I like knowing where an author is coming from.

These books are the pre-cursors of chick-lit - all about men and going out and getting jewellery - entertaining and fluffy.

Challenges: A-Z Challenge, Audiobook Challenge, Classics Challenge, Decades Challenge

The Bad Beginning

The Bad Beginning is the first book in the series called A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. It's about kids and for kids and reads so quickly that I had it finished during my bedtime reading the other night.

This first book introduces the Baudelaire siblings, Violet, Klaus and Sunny, and starts off their story. Unfortunately, their story starts off sadly with their parents dying in a fire and with them being carted off to a distant relative no one has ever heard of. Needless to say that they are mistreated there. Why? Well, their parents had been very wealthy so maybe someone is out for their money!

I borrowed this from a friend's son, as I was intrigued. I was told that if I liked the Harry Potter series then I'd like this too. We'll see, I'm planning on getting the next one on audio.

One thing I did like about the book is the way it how it includes more difficult vocabulary and explains the words as part of the narrative. I didn't find it obtrusive, in fact I liked the way some of the definitions were phrased. It seems a good way to get some vocab development in!

Lemony Snicket is a pseudonym of author Daniel Handler - he's also one of the characters in the books. I haven't seen him there yet, but he's the narrator too so his voice is there!

I'm curious to read about these children's next adventures. And I really hope they manage to escape from this relative they are living with!

Challenges: 1st in a series, A-Z Challenge, 999 Challenge, Young Adult Challenge

Briar Rose

Many, many thanks to the blogging community for writing about books such as Jane Yolen's Briar Rose. I would never have heard of it otherwise and I would have missed out on so much. Briar Rose was a real page-turner, which I completely wasn't expecting. It had mystery, love, history and so much more. And parts of it took place in Poland which I thought was very cool, of course.

Briar Rose is part of The Fairy Tale Series created by Teri Windling. In the series, modern authors re-tell fairy tales in unusual ways. Briar Rose is the re-telling of Sleeping Beauty - Jane Yolen must be a genius, I certainly would never have thought of Sleeping Beauty in the way she did.

Basically, the book is about a grandmother who dies and a grand-daughter who tries to find out where her Grandma (her Gemma) came from. Gemma always said that she is Sleeping Beauty and that she came from a castle where everyone fell asleep, until she alone was wakened by a prince's kiss. Now if you want to see how this fits in with Nazi Germany, read the book. I won't tell you any more!

I loved that parts of the book that were set in Poland. Yolen describes Poland and its people and atmosphere exactly right. But many of the accents on Polish words were wrong - including on the one Polish word used most often. I would think that they could have checked that a bit better.

I loved this story and book. I could not tear myself away from it. I'd linger outside my building each morning reading, until I absolutely had to go into work. It's definitely one of this year's favorites and I can't wait to read more in this series and more by Jane Yolen. Any recommendations?

Challenges: Mythopoeic Challenge, Bang Bang Book Challenge

Black Water

Black Water was my first Joyce Carol Oats book - and my first book for the only challenge I'm hosting, the New Classics Challenge. I can definitely see why this book ended up on that list.

The story is told through flashes of past and present and I was surprised that in the end I had a complete picture of what happened and of the characters involved. What happens involves a Senator, a young naive girl and a car accident.

But it's not really what happens that makes this worth reading - it's the language, the way it's written. The author jumps from using very long, stream-of-consciousness-like sentences to pointed, short, effective ones. When they are alternated like that they really make an impression.

And the way thougths and feelings and memories are described... I've never read anything quite like it. Plus, how Oats managed to at the same time comment on society and politics is beyond me.

This was a short book, a quick read, and I'm looking forward to discovering more of this author's work.

Challenges: New Classics Challenge

The Blind Assassin

Since Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin took me half of October to read, I'm doubly glad at what an an amazing experience reading it was. I wouldn't leave out a single bit of this lengthy book; it should really become a classic, I do wonder whether it will stand the test of time...

On the novel's first page, we find out from Iris that her sister Laura drove a car of a bridge ten days after the war ended. Over the following 600+ pages, we discover Iris' story and Laura's story - how they grew up between the wars and how their relationship changed over the years. Their stories include many examples of what love can do to people - and how a sense of family duty isn't always the right path to follow.

The story is in fact two stories intertwined, each revealing a different side of events. I liked how information was communicated to the reader through various means, including the two stories, various letters and excerpts from newspaper articles. The technique added to a sense of action.

But what makes the book so beautiful is more than technique and more than Atwood's incredible use of the English language. The book is haunting because the emotions are so raw and yet so removed... whatever they are they cerftainly stay with the reader.

I'm always a sucker for history as well so I enjoyed the historical aspect too - life in Canada between the wars, the rise of communism, the power of capitalism, the ridiculous lives of the very rich, and the tough lives of the very poor. Including all this as background to an already emotionally powerful story makes the book brilliant.

Challenges: 888 Challenge, 10 out of 100 out of 1001, 1% Well-Read Challenge, Chunkster Challenge, Man Booker Challenge, Naming Conventions

The Book Thief

One of the best books I've read this year. Everyone has been raving about this, but I only got to it now... Markus Zusak's The Book Thief is a book about World War II, a book about trying to explain the unexplicable, a book about growing up. I didn't think that it was possible to do anything new and creative about Germany and the Second World War but Markus Zusak did it and he did it extremely well.

The story, which is predominantly the story of Liesel, is told by Death. To be honest, I had to get used to this notion. At the beginning of the story I viewed it as a gimmick of some sort, I didn't see the need for Death to narrate Liesel's story. But as I continued reading, it made more and more sense. Now I don't think the story in its entirety could have been told by anyone else.

Liesel is an orphan who comes to live with Hans and Rosa. She is smart and gutsy and has a good heart. She has to grow up in Hitler's Germany - not a great place for little girls with good hearts. During the course of the war she has to witness many things, some beautiful and some horrible. I think the beautiful moments she witnessed were made even more so by the sheer difficulty of finding beauty in a world like Liesel's. I don't know if I would have been able to do the same, although they say that people are capable of so many things that are only tested in extreme circumstances.

I think that because the book was narrated by Death, it benefited from a good dose of realism and matter-of-factness - rare in books about Hitler's Germany. This style made the writing very powerful, even though the reader knows perfectly well where the story is going. Reading The Book Thief isn't about surprise endings or twists in the story; it's about experiencing life like Liesel did.

Very highly recommended.

Challenges: A-Z Challenge, Bang Bang Book Challenge, Chunkster Challenge, Historical Fiction Reading Challenge, Orbis Terrarum

Back When We Were Grown-ups

On Monday night, I finished reading Anne Tyler's Back When We Were Grown-ups, started reading Neil Gaiman's Stardust (which I'm loving so far) and decided to give up on the Polish book I was reading - Rzeź Bezkręgowców by Joanna Chmielewska. It wasn't doing anything for me and since I have so many other things to read, I decided to move on. I used to love this author, but she's another one who's been using the same formula forever and it sounds forced by now.

When I started reading it, I didn't like Back When We Were Grown-ups. I didn't like that there were so many characters with strange names or nicknames, I found it hard to keep track and it seemed forced to me.

But it grew on me. The story was simple, in fact nothing really happened, the action mostly took place in the mind of the main character, Rebecca. She was doing a lot of thinking about whether she took the right fork in the road when she married her husband and about how different life would have been if she'd married her high school sweetheart. It's about the highly-addictive 'what-if' game that many of us play (I can't be only one!) and Anne Tyler takes it to a beautiful place. The book goes quickly, the simplest things in life are are beautifully described, all in all it was enjoyable.

I'm giving it 3 1/2 stars because I enjoyed it and would read something else by Anne Tyler at some point, but it didn't wow me.