Keep putting these things on dead trees, publishers! There's still one user out here.And here we are! I am somewhat embarrassed to say I don't remember what my book goal was for 2019 but 27 is pretty decent, although slightly down from 32 in 2018. I was admittedly insanely busy for much of the year, and most of my travel (e.g.
driving to Wisconsin, too-short flights) wasn't amenable to knocking out a large amount of reading. I still achieved a lot, getting through long-wanted titles and keeping a steady if slow pace.
Ratings are also what I included in my LibraryThing account, but I haven't yet figured out how to crosspost reviews and other content from there to here, so you get to see them in this narrative format.
All Over Creation: A Novel by Ruth Ozeki
I finally ended my fiction drought of 2019 with this title! The main character grew up in Idaho with a potato farmer father and Japanese expat mother with an intense green thumb before GTFO at a young age. The aging of said parents requires her to return for the first time in 20 years with the children she now has, and everyone is suitably uncomfortable with the arrangement. It was a rich narrative with strong development of a lot of characters, even though we likely could have done without some of them.
4*How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell
Perhaps I'm already doing what the author proposes by stubbornly reading all these books in actual print. It is nice to slowly and aimlessly enjoy something even if it offers no remuneration or credentialing, and that's her point. It won't surprise you to hear Odell is an artist first, and this bit of unconventional writing reminds you of that.
3.5*Downtown: Its Rise and Fall, 1880-1950 by Robert Fogelson
The author claimed in the foreword of this title that
someone had to take on the project of chronicling how large urban downtowns came to be, but I'm not sure I agree. He also began with the personal history of visiting his father's midtown Manhattan office and wanting to explore the topic further from there. Admirable in theory, but it became something of a bore to get through the long justifications of why a central business district is not a downtown is not a financial district, and so on.
2.5*Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert Putnam
Probably the last of the older titles that has been on my reading list too long. Though it is dated in some ways, I was glad to finally get through this one and understand why so many planners have cited this. Putnam did have an ambitious undertaking here, and went through a serious amount of quantitative data to support his claims. A useful follow-up would be a new edition that takes into account where the trends in meeting people and forming clubs and associations have evolved now that the internet is as ubiquitous as it has become twenty years later. He did touch on the nascent changes that this was bringing at the time of publication, which was prescient.
3.5*What the Eyes Don't See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City by Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha
In a succinct narrative, the pediatrician that understood what had suddenly gone wrong with her many patients and worked against the State of Michigan to expose it. Despite having to cover technical aspects of water treatment, lead exposure in children, and a large state bureaucracy, this stayed suspenseful and original throughout. Part of what helps humanize it is the author linking her family's origins in Iraq and their emigration to the US to the main topic. And one great asset that Flint does have is Hurley Medical Center, which is rightly getting positive attention not just for their role here but in
other endeavors.
4.5*Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez
... and sometimes I do read the hot new non-fiction as soon as my library gets it. This was a sobering look at how the default human is male in most of what we still do today, and how that is literally deadly for women, including in pharmaceutical doses, military and police uniforms, car crashes, and more. Even the cover supports the claim in a very creative visual. It would, though, have been nice to get a little more about what solutions to public infrastructure this awareness could lead us to, as she did in other areas.
4*God's Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican by Gerald Posner
An exhausting but probably important look inside this insanely secretive organization. Financial histories can be tricky to write, and realistically there is no way the Catholic Church is going to allow enough of their records to become public for a comprehensive look at this topic. Still an admirable effort, but the hundreds of men and positions within the Vatican quickly started to blend together.
2.5*Downtown Owl: A Novel by Chuck Klosterman
Rather than getting straight to the hot new releases of every author, lately my tendency has been to start with their debut novels. This one was a little rough; although I liked the character development and the bleak setting (Klosterman grew up in a tiny isolated village like the titular location and it shows), the plot really didn't go much of anywhere until the final two chapters. Possibly a good read for a long flight, but I kept putting it down and struggled to get through it in multiple sittings.
3*Titles YTD = 27
busy