Four short reviews

 

I honestly haven't been reading as voraciously as usual and I've neglected writing many reviews for those books I have read. This post serves as an attempt to clean up my back files of late reviews.

Strange Planet by  Nathan W. Pyle

Published by Morrow Gift, 2019

Back in the midst of the worst of COVID-times this little graphic book came to my attention. I immediately added it to my TBR since I was on the hunt for lighthearted reads that would help bring me some levity. I should have ordered the book instantly because that is exactly what it did.

Imagine a planet not all that dissimilar from ours, practicing our patterns of speech, celebrations, and habits except with an alien twist. I originally thought the aliens were on our planet and were trying to copy human attributes, not understanding they were doing things a bit wrong. Then I was set straight by my daughter who is a fan of Nathan W. Pyle and his Instagram account 'Strange Planet.' I thought I was going to show her something when I found the comic (below), knowing she'd be delighted with it as a cat lover. She knew all about the cat and how it worked by vibrating and then explained about how she follows Strange Planet on Instagram.

 

© Nathan W. Pyle

I'm ready for more from Strange Planet. I see the library has the second book, Stranger Planet, and now I'm seriously considering joining Instagram so I can get my daily fix of these delightful aliens.

 

5 out of 5 stars

 

 

The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight For Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear by Kate Moore

Blackstone Publishing Audiobook, 2021

 

In 1860 as the states in our union were marching toward war, Elizabeth Packard was also preparing for a personal war which would last for many years. Her husband of 21 years had her committed in a mental institute not because she was mentally ill, but because he was threatened by her intellect, her independence, and her willingness to share her opinions with others. Women in those days had no rights and it wasn't uncommon for husbands to have their wives committed, often to just get them out of the way. Elizabeth, the mother of six children, thought her commitment would last only a few weeks or a month, but dragged on for years. She however never resigned herself to her plight always writing and seeking support for her freedom. When she did finally win her freedom, she continued her work on behalf of other women, helping change the laws around involuntary commitments of women.

If you haven't read anything by Kate Moore, I can highly recommend both this book and her other nonfiction, The Radium Girls, which is about the girls who painted radium on watch dials and in the process where poisoned by the radioactivity. Both books are impeccably researched with pages and pages of source notes and reference materials as proof, but are also very readable.

4.5 out of 5 stars

 

 

 

 

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

Published by HarperAudio in 2013, originally published in 1934.

Is it possible that I was the last person alive who had never read or seen the movie of the most famous of Agatha Christie's novels, The Murder on the Orient Express? That is the way it seemed, anyway. When my husband and I decided to listen to it on a a recent car trip, I was shocked that he hadn't read the book, either, nor did he remember the plot from the movie, which he watched back in the 1970s.

We both enjoy mysteries and, of course, Agatha Christie novels. This one features Hercule Poirot, Christie's famous detective, who always seems to be at the right place to help investigate a murder. So when he secures the very last berth on the train named the Orient Express leaving Istanbul heading toward Paris, everyone on board should have known there would be a murder on board. Ha! And as it turns out I am right. Take that as a hint.

We both gave the book a 5 out of 5 rating.

 

 

 

 

Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future by Elizabeth Kolbert

Published by Crown Publishing Group, 2021 

Elizabeth Kolbert is a spectacular author, writing on really tough subjects related to our environment and climate. Back in October of 2020 my book group, which was meeting on my back deck even in the cool autumn weather, read her Pulitzer Prize winner, The Sixth Extinction, which is a very worrying book about what mankind is doing to our climate and how we are on a trajectory to cause the next cataclysmic extinction, the sixth experienced on earth. It was not a cheery topic and I worried before the meeting that everyone would hate the book since we were all living in a world overtaken by a pandemic. But the book is ultimately hopeful and we had a great discussion.

In Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future Kolbert once again looks at what man has done/is doing that affects nature and our climate. This time, however, she highlights things mankind has done to correct one problem, which in turn has caused a new and worse problem. Now man is trying to undo or mitigate the damage from the new problem caused by the fix.

[Kolbert] meets biologists who are trying to preserve the world's rarest fish, which lives in a single tiny pool in the middle of the Mojave; engineers who are turning carbon emissions to stone in Iceland; Australian researchers who are trying to develop a super coral that can survive on a hotter globe; and physicists who are contemplating shooting tiny diamonds into the stratosphere to cool the earth. [She] examines how the very sorts of interventions that have imperiled our planet are increasingly seen as the only hope for its salvation. (Goodreads).

Though discouraging, Under a White Sky is ultimately a hopeful book as it highlights the ingenuity of man and our last best changes to save our planet. If I could step aside from the depressing message, I found myself completely fascinated by the information Kolbert shared here.

4.25 out of 5 stars

-Anne