mcahogarth

Driveby Reviews

Added 2017-03-17 17:59:11 +0000 UTC

I read for my major source of entertainment, so I go through a lot of books (to the point where I often run out of them). I decided after my Bookbub promotion to subscribe to Bookbub and see what deals they sent me, and I strike out on 90% of them but I'm finding enough to keep going. Here's some stuff I enjoyed lately!

In Memory of Bread: A Memoir by Paul Graham - Written by a foodie locavore carb-loving English professor who got diagnosed with celiac. Gorgeously written, very vivid, and such descriptions of food (and candor about how difficult it is to give up a food). A lot on the privileged side (see: "foodie locavore professor"), but still worth it. I haven't yet seen my own emotional struggles so clearly captured, in relinquishing my attachment to something so emotionally and culturally embedded in Western society.

This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession, by Daniel Levitin - Fascinating guide written by a (yes really) sound engineer/studio producer turned neuroscientist who studies why music affects us, how, and how we make sense of it. (I never really wondered how it is that we can recognize a song even if it's an octave higher, in a different key, or played at a different speed... but in retrospect, that is pretty amazing, isn't it? The book is full of questions like this.)

A Burglar's Guide to the City, by Geoff Manaugh - A work on how architecture and geography creates and facilitates crime: really eye-opening for people curious about crime, or who want to write believable crime. I enjoyed this entire book right up to the epilogue where the writer reveals with astonishment that burglary is an awful crime that is nowhere near as romantic as society's (read: his) internal narratives. I read that whole chapter with disbelief, wondering if we've become so dissipated as a culture that obvious things like "people stealing your stuff is awful" doesn't occur to people. But the rest of the book is intriguing and will make you think about crime, particularly in cities, in entirely new ways.

Violence: a Writer's Guide, by Rory Miller - This book didn't teach me much because I'm already apparently well-read on violence? But it was a great condensation of all those things for people who might not be familiar with it, and the chapters on the differences (hormonal and cultural) between women's reaction to fear and men's was worth the price of admission alone. That was super-interesting. Anyway, if you want to write believable violence, fight scenes, and personalities who engage in violence, this is a great resource.

The Grammar of God: A Journey into the Words and Worlds of the Bible, by Aviya Kushner - I am about halfway through this one, which is about a Jew who grew up reading the Old Testament in Hebrew discovering the English-language Bible and being shocked at how different it is in translation. In each chapter, she transliterates one passage from Hebrew, gives several different English translations, and talks about the nuances in the translation (interspersed with anecdotes from her own dinner table discussions with her family about linguistics). A very readable book, and respectful, and fascinating.

Oddly, I haven't yet gotten a good fiction recommendation from Bookbub yet, and am mostly re-reading old books I liked or my own work to refresh my memory in that department.

What are y'all reading? :)