reading notes, entry 6...

*The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years by Sonia Shah.

Why I read it now:

It came very highly recommended by Eva, and it fit into the medical/psychological issues theme month, and it was sitting right there on the library shelf taunting me.


Overall thoughts:

I loved this book! It was not only well-written and completely accessible, it was fascinating as hell. Nothing about malaria is uncomplicated. Every facet of the story is complex, from the continual evolution of Plasmodia to the pharmacologic efforts to stop it to the differing views of those who live day-to-day with malaria and those in the Western world who are so determined to wipe it out. Malaria has played major roles in world history, as well as major roles in personal histories. And Sonia Shah does a wonderful job relating all these facets of this much-feared disease.

I'd like to say that this is a hopeful book, but it's not. But what Sonia Shah produced with this book is a well-rounded and realistic look at malaria on this planet of ours.


Just a few of the interesting tidbits contained in its pages:

*Plasmodium has seven different forms during its life cycle.

*Once a mosquito is sated with blood, she flies to a vertical surface and spends 45 minutes excreting all the water from the blood so she is once again light enough to fly unburdened.

*While I already knew of malaria's connection to sickle cell, I had never before heard of its connection to favism. Actually, I don't believe I'd ever even heard of favism before at all.

*The Romans had some interesting "cures" for malaria. Being a vegetarian, I wold have had to choose the honeysuckle dissolved in wine over the liver of a seven-year-old mouse or the bedbugs eaten with eggs and wine.


New-to-me words:

transmogrify--to change in appearance or form, especially strangely or grotesquely

impluvia--a cistern or tank in Roman dwellings set in the atrium to receive water from the roof


Quote postcards sent:

Heather: 1 with "capricious"

tidbits and babblings...mostly on the never-ending battle for sanity...

*Never-ending feeling of being behind. On everything. Same old-same old. I get overwhelmed, barrel full-steam ahead in one area to make myself feel better, end up feeling worse because I'm then even farther behind on everything else. I know this is largely a problem within my own head, as opposed to outside of it. Ana put it perfectly yesterday when she said, "...I should know that holding on to 'shoulds' is the bane of my life..." 

*I started thinking about Christmas a couple days ago...and I nearly broke down. I'm already feeling like I'm way behind, and I just can't stand the thought of so much stress coming around as it does every year. Self-imposed stress, at that. So I made decision...and I'm going to try so damn hard to stick with it. I am taking this Christmas off. No, not from Christmas itself, of course. But from the "I have to do everything, and I have to do it all by my own hands" mentality. In other words, I am not making our Christmas cards this year, I am not making gifts this year (well, maybe just a couple...but not a couple hundred!), I am not making a dozen different kinds of cookies, etc. I'm just not. I'm not. I'm not.

*My physical health has, well, pretty much sucked the past few weeks. Even here I am my own worst enemy...I constantly do things I know I shouldn't do. I don't know when the very real fact that my stubbornness is doing me no favors will ever truly take hold in my head, but I know it needs to. 

*I am excited as all get out over the fact that there is now less than a month left of the school year!!! I only wish there wasn't still so much to do. :(  And of course, as soon as this year is over, it's time to start working on next year...but the pressure doesn't feel as crushing during that first month of summer vacation and I am greatly looking forward to that. :D

*I feel awful that I haven't been participating in Saturday Farmers Market as of late. (Just as I feel awful about not yet having sent a thank you note to my dear friend Jean for the wonderful surprise that arrived from her in the mail a few days ago, and about all the as-of-yet unreturned emails sitting in my inbox, and...) But hopefully next week I'll have a post up, as things have definitely changed since my last garden update. 

*I can't believe May is almost over, which means medical/psychological theme month is almost over as well. I didn't get all that many "theme" books read, but I enjoyed all the ones I did read, some more than others. And I have one I'm still hoping to finish as well, one I'm really enjoying. I didn't post about a cool moonlight by Angela Johnson, but I really liked it. It was sweet, but not saccharine. It had a unique feel to it, almost magical though it was set wholly in the realistic world. It was the first of Johnson's books I've read, but it definitely won't be the last. And happily, I know I already own a couple others. Another I read but didn't post about for this month's theme was Turn of Mind by Alice LaPlante. What a unique voice this book had! And I enjoyed it, but honestly not as much as I thought I was going to. I think that may have been a matter of false expectations though, as I really thought it was going to be more of a mystery. I was blown away by the author's ability to pull off this story from Dr. Jennifer White's point of view though. Which is the point of view of an intelligent, fiercely independent woman falling further and further under Alzheimer's grip. It was impossible not to feel deeply for this woman, and yet, I can easily say she wasn't a person whom I would have been friends with in real life. It's not so much that I disliked her, but we're two very different people. To be honest, I didn't feel like I would have been close to any of the major characters in this book, except maybe the policewoman (and she wasn't really a major character). Anyway, that means I read four books (Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance, A Cool Moonlight, Turn of Mind, and Silent to the Bone) for this theme (five if I finish The Fever in time). I am really looking forward to next month's glbt theme, and hope to read many more books than I did this month (but I make myself no promises). 

reading notes, entry 4...

Silent to the Bone by E.L. Konigsburg.

Why I read it now:

Because I love Konigsburg's books, especially The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, which was one of my very favorite books as a kid. Seriously, the amount of time I spent daydreaming that I lived in a museum after reading that book for the first time = A LOT. Plus it fits the broad medical/psychological issues theme month.

Overall thoughts:

Okay, right up front--the use of the femme fatale trope annoyed me. But now that that's been said, I have to admit that I still loved this book. I loved the things it had to say about friendship and about family and about communication and about silence.

Thirteen-year-olds Branwell and Connor have been friends since nursery school, though as of late there has been a change, a strain on their relationship. And Connor doesn't exactly know why Bran is pulling away.

But when Branwell ends up in a behavioral unit unable to speak, there is no hesitation on Connor's part--he is there for Branwell. Nikki, Branwell's infant sister, is in the hospital in a coma. What happened is the question. The au pair says Branwell dropped her, but Branwell has said nothing. Connor believes in his friend--believes he did nothing to harm Nikki, and just as importantly, believes his muteness is real, not an act.

The way Connor stuck by his friend, never gave up trying to find the real story, was wonderful, yes, but it was also realistic. There were times he felt frustrated and times he felt under-appreciated. But his love and respect for his friend always won out.

Favorite character:

Margaret, Connor's much older half-sister. She was smart, and a bit of a smart-ass. Still, after all these many years, harboring hurt feelings when it comes to her father leaving her mother for Connor's mother, she has never held it against Connor. Margaret's and Connor's relationship is filled with not just love, but respect and trust, and I pretty much loved every scene where they were together.

New-to-me words:

peruke--a type of wig for men, fashionable in the 17th and 18th centuries

Quotes I loved:

"Since Branwell's silence, I've thought a lot about listening, and I've decided it is an art. Just as our English teacher told us you can put too many adverbs and adjectives into a sentence--it's called overwriting--you can put too many meanings into a statement. I call it overlistening." (p. 180)

"Waiting takes up a lot more energy than people give it credit for." (p. 208)

"No one said anything, and even though I thought I had gotten quite used to silence, this one had a peculiar ache.
Tina pulled back the blanket that had been shielding Nikki's face from the cold, and Nikki looked up and smiled at Branwell, and the silence suddenly seemed musical." (p. 260)

reading notes, entry 3...

Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance by Atul Gawande.

A few reasons why I loved this book:

*It was well-written and informative.
*But even more importantly, it was insightful, passionate, and thoughtful...and it never felt heavy-handed.
*It reaffirmed my love of essays.
*It made me think about issues I'd never before considered.
*It reminded me that there are always more than one side to a story.
*While the essays all fit his overriding theme of what it takes to be a good doctor (his opinion is that there are three major qualities--diligence, doing right, and ingenuity--and the essays were divided into sections based on these qualities), there was a wonderful variety of topics covered, from the care of soldiers in war zones to doctors who participate in executions and from the continuing battle against polio to the state of childbirth in the United States, to name just a few.
*I was impressed with the author's honesty, and with his humility.

A couple things I am grateful for:

*I already own his collection Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science.
*I'm not a doctor.

*****
So May is "medical/psychological issues theme month." And yes, as always, we're (by we, I mean Chris and I, as happily for me, he decided to join me in this themed reading experiment) trying to keep the themes very broad...so issues such as dealing with trauma and the like are also included. I gathered up the books from my shelves that jumped out at me for this month:

I haven't even raided Rich's shelves yet. Of course, let's face it--I don't actually need to. It's already the 8th day of the month...and yeah, I've finished *one* book. I think I'm going to read A Cool Moonlight by Angela Johnson next. It's pretty short though, so is there anything in that pile that you'd strongly recommend for after that?