Neil DeGrasse Tyson

We all know that smart is sexy, but who knew we'd end up with a rockstar astrophysicist? Neil deGrasse Tyson is the best thing to happen to science since the apple fell on Isaac Newton's head.  He's even become the subject of memes in support of science in a time when anti-intellectualism is rampant.

 Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about how it was kind of creepy finding out he's the topic of a meme.

 This is Neil deGrasse Tyson's latest book. You can get it here.
Here he is talking about alien life.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

"It is easier to build strong children than repair broken men."--Frederick Douglass

 Thanks to Project Gutenberg, Frederick Douglass' monumental memoir--Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave--is available here.For more information about the statesman, you can start here or here. His home is a National Historic site.

Douglass is considered one of the great American orators and you can find his speech on "The Hypocrisy of American Slavery" is archived here.  Good Reads has a collection of his memorable quotes here.

"Without a struggle, there can be no progress."--Frederick Douglass

Signature has a list of the five best biographies of Frederick Douglass.

An interesting take on immigration...soon to be a movie

Sweetness in the Belly is an odd title, so it stands out when you see it turn up in "also reads" and "recommended" comments online. Camilla Gibbs' novel is about a young women raised in Africa who flees to England finds herself a stranger in a strange land. The  book is being adapted for a movie and will star the wonderful Saoirse Ronan as the protatonist.

Shakespeare, Time Travel, Macbeth

The Shakespeare Standard has an interview with Invisible Hand author James Hartley today, and his new "Shakespeare Moon" series sounds intriguing. The plot takes a contemporary kid back to Scotland and entangles him with the events of Macbeth. I think that's a fantastic idea. I never understood why high schools insisted on inflicting Julius Caesar on students as their first introduction to Shakespeare. Yes, yes, it's got "Friends, Romans, and Countrymen, lend me your ears" but it's really not one of the most riveting plays. But Macbeth?  It's got sex. It's got intrigue. It's got WITCHES. Start out with Macbeth and you might just end up with a kid who likes Shakespeare.

Here's the sales pitch:

The Invisible Hand is about a boy, Sam, who has just started life at a boarding school and finds himself able to travel back in time to medieval Scotland. There he meets a girl, Leana, who can travel to the future, and the two of them become wrapped up in events in Macbeth, the Shakespeare play, and in the daily life of the school. The book is the first part of a series called Shakespeare´s Moon. Each book is set in the same boarding school but focuses on a different Shakespeare play.

This is Dr. Seuss in 1941

NEVER FORGET

Today is Multicultural Children's Book Day

There are book lists and recommendations all over the Internet today, suggestions to widen the horizons of readers.

Because Science is not a Liberal Conspiracy

Because, science!!

Tuesday read

Hannah Arendt died nearly 42 years ago, but her book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, is newly relevant. Your local library almost certainly has a copy of the book, which is a landmark work of social criticism and analysis.

Here's the Wikipedia article about the book. Here's the book description from Amazon:

The Origins of Totalitarianism begins with the rise of anti-Semitism in central and western Europe in the 1800s and continues with an examination of European colonial imperialism from 1884 to the outbreak of World War I. Arendt explores the institutions and operations of totalitarian movements, focusing on the two genuine forms of totalitarian government in our time—Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia—which she adroitly recognizes were two sides of the same coin, rather than opposing philosophies of Right and Left. From this vantage point, she discusses the evolution of classes into masses, the role of propaganda in dealing with the nontotalitarian world, the use of terror, and the nature of isolation and loneliness as preconditions for total domination.

We are the storm...

I marched today in a sister/solidarity march for the Women's March in D.C. The crowd was packed with women and men and children, and dogs. The signs were an eclectic collection of pleas, protests, and observations about a variety of issues. Mostly, in line with the wishes of the organizers, there were no anti-Trump messages.
There was a lone Trump protestor who waved a black flag with Trump's name on it and randomly shouted, "Who did we elect?" He was drowned out by shouts of "Love trumps hate."
This poster art was shared with me by a fellow marcher. I don't know who the artist is, but I love the sentiment so I hope s/he won't mind that I've shared it here.
This is a movement.
We are not going away.
We will hold the president and his cabinet accountable. And we will not let the "new normal" destroy the country ALL of us hold dear.
Power to the people. 

Now more than ever...read!

The Bronze Horseman

I have been on something of a Russian history binge since reading Eva Stachniak's luminous historical novel about Catherine the Great, The Winter Palace. The Bronze Horseman is a novel that kept coming up when I was checking out sales rank on my own The Summer Garden. I'd always thought it had a handsome cover, and I finally read the description, which compares it to both The Thorn Birds and Dr. Zhivago. Juicy love stories both. I may have to get this book.

I tremble for my country

Serpent on the Rock by Kurt Eichenwald

I would say this book should probably be required reading as we head into the Trump presidency.

This is the sales pitch:  A real-life thriller—the story of kickbacks and payoffs, of shady deals struck in secret with known felons; a story in which half a million people lose enormous sums—some their life’s savings—in the largest securities fraud of the 1980s, with names like Onassis and Bush numbered among the victims.

So many book lists!

I live in the Pacific Northwest, which is blessed with wonderful bookstores, including Village Bookstore in Bellingham and Powell's Bookstore.  The Powell's staff in Portland, Oregon has an outstanding book blog, and they have this great list. I've only read a couple of the books on the list, so clearly, I have some reading to do.

Dismissing women in science isn't a new thing...

Matt Taibbi's New Book

Read a little bit about Insane Clown President at Rolling Stone.

An Agatha Christie mystery

Not written by Agatha Christie--but using Agatha Christie as a character.Not only is this a GREAT cover, but the sales pitch makes it sound really fun:

Hoping to make a clean break from a fractured marriage, Agatha Christie boards the Orient Express in disguise. But unlike her famous detective Hercule Poirot, she can’t neatly unravel the mysteries she encounters on this fateful journey.
Agatha isn’t the only passenger on board with secrets. Her cabinmate Katharine Keeling’s first marriage ended in tragedy, propelling her toward a second relationship mired in deceit. Nancy Nelson—newly married but carrying another man’s child—is desperate to conceal the pregnancy and teeters on the brink of utter despair. Each woman hides her past from the others, ferociously guarding her secrets. But as the train bound for the Middle East speeds down the track, the parallel courses of their lives shift to intersect—with lasting repercussions.
Filled with evocative imagery, suspense, and emotional complexity, The Woman on the Orient Express explores the bonds of sisterhood forged by shared pain and the power of secrets.

Mysteries with Senior Sleuths

My mystery book club is meeting today and our subject is Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg's "International Bestseller" The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules. One of the club members suggested it, and it's a fun book but it is not super mysterious.  Here's the sales copy:

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel meets The Italian Job in internationally-bestselling author Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg’s witty and insightful comedy of errors about a group of delinquent seniors whose desire for a better quality of life leads them to rob and ransom priceless artwork.
Martha Andersson may be seventy-nine-years-old and live in a retirement home, but that doesn’t mean she’s ready to stop enjoying life. So when the new management of Diamond House starts cutting corners to save money, Martha and her four closest friends—Brains, The Rake, Christina and Anna-Gretta (a.k.a. The League of Pensioners)—won’t stand for it. Fed up with early bedtimes and overcooked veggies, this group of feisty seniors sets about to regain their independence, improve their lot, and stand up for seniors everywhere.
Their solution? White collar crime. What begins as a relatively straightforward robbery of a nearby luxury hotel quickly escalates into an unsolvable heist at the National Museum. With police baffled and the Mafia hot on their trail, the League of Pensioners has to stay one walker’s length ahead if it’s going to succeed….
Told with all the insight and humor of A Man Called Ove or Where’d You Go Bernadette?, The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules is a delightful and heartwarming novel that goes to prove the adage that it’s not the years in your life that count, it’s the life in your years.

Reading the book made me think--where are all the books featuring older sleuths? Yes, yes, there's Agatha Christie's "Miss Marple" series and Dorothy Gilman's wonderful Emily Pollifax novels. But the only books that came to mind were Daniel Friedman's terrific Buck Schatz novels, Don't Ever Get Old and Don't Ever Look Back.  I reviewed Don't Ever Look Back for Criminal Element nearly three years ago and I've been waiting for another book in the series ever since.

I decided to go Googling around to see what else is on offer and the answer is, not a whole lot. Rita Lakin and Madison Johns and Lorena McCourtney all write cozy mysteries staring LOL (Little Old Lady) detectives. And the books sound like fun reads. But where are the books that feature senior citizens who aren't cozy and cuddly. I have a strong dislike for all the euphemisms used to describe old people. I grew up in a three-generation household and believe me when I tell you, I learned early that being old is not fun and it's not for the weak-willed. But I also learned that old people could be fearless and tough and wily and smart and funny and inventive. I learned to value them.  Every time I see movie ticket prices broken out into "child/adult/senior" I think--is a senior a defective adult? Why not just do the age group thing? Under 12/Over 50? And if I ever hear the phrase "Ninety years young" applied to me, I might vomit all over the person who says it.
But I digress--a habit I have that will likely only get worse as I age but I tell you now, it's been with me since I was a child, so you won't be able to attribute it to my advancing years. Where are the mystery books with protagonists who are no longer young? If you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them.


 

Free mysteries, thrillers and horror stories

This offer will be up for a week. Check out the offerings here.

MLK meme for MLK Day

Monday meme