Summer Reading from bookish, a weblog by George Girton

Summer Reading . . . . . jun 17 2003 — bookish79.dat

Coming up is a short summer, considering all the summer reading flying in over the transom. And I'm not even talking about you-know who!

When your physician writes a book, you have to read it, right? Even though I'm told I won't want to eat raw fish after reading it, I still ordered a copy of ManEater, My Life in Infectious Disease and Other Stories [buy at amazon] , by Pamela Nagami. Since I actually know (knew) someone who was killed by man-eating bacteria, this really ought to be a gripping read.

While ordering ManEater, I did something I rarely do. I ordered ANOTHER book, too. Really! I harldly ever do that!

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, [buy at amazon] , by Mary Roach. Mary is billed as the funniest science writer alive, and while the book is certainly methodic I don't know if I would necessarily call it science writing, even though the scientific use of human remains is one of the (the?) unifying theme for the book.

Nor does the book make the best gift for, say, aging parents on Father's Day or an upcoming birthday of an aging parent. And is it suitable for a parent to give a child? Maybe so, maybe no. It all depends on the child's sense of humor, the age of the child, and whether you want the child to grow up to be more or less normal.

This is too bad because Mary Roach is funny as hell in the writing department, even though I didn't really think the opening chapter, where medical students and other physicians practice face-lifts on 40 human heads on trays, was as funny as other people seemed to. Don't worry, read on, there are laughs galore in Stiff! I would cheerfully run out and buy any book and eventually perhaps all books that Mary Roach has written. I like to laugh, and I like to learn, and I have done both with Stiff.

Also on the summer list are Urban Tribes [buy at amazon] , by Ethan Watters which will publish in September and Einstein in Berlin [buy at amazon] (previously mentioned in these pages) by Thomas Levenson, which has just published and somehow,silently and suddenly appeared one day on the vast black stone table in the living room, waiting to be picked up and read. I'll let you know more about these and more books, as the pages turn, and in the meantime,

Happy Summer Reading, everyone!

By the way, no doubt due to the immense popularity of television, not to mention cars, The Honda Ad: Cog has driven a flurry of sales activity of the "Way Things Go" video that I reviewed some time ago. This is one popular video, but just remember this: before it was a popular video, even before it was a car commercial on television, it was art.

Index of Previous Journal Entries

If you like what you read, click here to sign up for our mailing list and we'll notify you when we post new book reviews