{"id":1237,"date":"2020-08-31T19:30:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-31T23:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/?p=1237"},"modified":"2024-07-05T17:12:57","modified_gmt":"2024-07-05T21:12:57","slug":"august-2020-books-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/2020\/08\/august-2020-books-read\/","title":{"rendered":"August 2020 books read"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><em>Crazy Rich Asians<\/em> &#8211; Kevin Kwan, 2013. I like the trailer for the movie but still haven&#8217;t watched it, and I wasn&#8217;t planning on picking this up until I read <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/magazine\/archive\/2020\/07\/kevin-kwan-crazy-rich-asians\/612229\/\">an interview with Kwan<\/a>. His  description of the &#8220;fun and name-droppy&#8221; writing voice (&#8220;nothing like what he thought of as his &#8216;real&#8217; writing voice&#8221;) coming first and making the novel possible intrigued me. I enjoyed the read but the extravagance got a little much and I wouldn&#8217;t go on to the sequels when the world is so full of things to read. (But if I were stuck in a B&amp;B and that&#8217;s all there was&#8230; I would!)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Most Secret<\/em> &#8211; Nevil Shute, written 1942 but published 1945. Shute is one of the authors I love so much that I read and re-read everything of theirs, but this is one of his darkest novels and this may only be the third time I&#8217;ve read it. My favorite bit is the rabbit Geoffrey.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>In the Pleasure Groove: Love, Death, and Duran Duran<\/em>. John Taylor, 2012. Very enjoyable! I was a DD fan early on and saw them at the Peppermint Lounge in July 1982 &#8211; it&#8217;s still one of the tightest live performances I remember. Taylor wishes he had stuck with his birth name, Nigel. Nice depiction of both youthful raw ambition and long-lasting friendships. Funny bits: his wife Gela, not interested or impressed by musicians, getting their names wrong &#8211; I wish I&#8217;d written down all the malapropisms (Bruce Springfield, Three Blind Mice for Third Eye Blind).<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Miss Hargreaves<\/em> &#8211; Frank Baker, 1940. Recommended by Jonathan; it was so much fun to talk to him about this completely bizarre, often-delightful book. And then we got to enjoy the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=jKPhu0Tm9Y8\">TV adaptation<\/a>, which is completely different but also bizarrely good in its own way. The closest analogue to MH is probably <a href=\"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/2020\/05\/may-2020-books-read\/\">The Bront\u00ebs Went to Woolworths<\/a>; no wonder Bloomsbury Publishing re-issued them both as part of <a href=\"http:\/\/popbetty.com\/2011\/05\/beautiful-books-the-bloomsbury-group.html\">The Bloomsbury Group<\/a> (a misleading name!)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>The Fear Factor: How One Emotion Connects Altruists, Psychopaths, and Everyone In-Between<\/em> &#8211; Abigail Marsh, 2017. Absolutely fascinating book about psychopaths and altruistic kidney donors, who are according to Marsh represent the ends of the spectrum of under-and-overactive amygdalas\/ability to recognize fear in others. Her <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ted.com\/talks\/abigail_marsh_why_some_people_are_more_altruistic_than_others?language=en\">TED talk<\/a> is great; the book is even better!<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>The Life of the Fly; With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography<\/em>\u00a0&#8211; Jean-Henri Fabre (translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos), 1913 \u2013 For Nature &amp; Enviro. Quotes marked, tbd<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia<\/em>\u00a0&#8211; Samuel Johnson, 1759 \u2013 For Great books; quotes marked, tbd<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>The Quare Fellow<\/em> (1954) &amp; <em>An Giall (The Hostage)<\/em> (1958) &#8211; Brendan Behan  \u2013 For Irish Writers; quotes marked, tbd<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>How to Be an Anti-Racist <\/em>&#8211; Ibram X. Kendi, 2019. Interesting and in-depth exploration of various kinds of racist ideas and their intersections, many of which Kendi shows himself believing and then rejecting; the autobiographical element was compelling and tied the whole thing together.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Crystal Singer<\/em> &#8211; Anne McCaffrey, 1982. Comfort re-read of an old favorite. The food descriptions are mostly great but get lazy; it&#8217;s a common mediocre SF fault (other genres as well?) to introduce something  like Yarran beer, and then no matter who is speaking or what planet you&#8217;re on, everyone can only drink\/request\/talk about Yarran beer. Steakbean, pepper fruit, Alderbaran paste with Forellan biscuits, and milsi stalks all sound interesting &#8211; there&#8217;s not enough description to find a real-world cognate, but the names are evocative.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monthly-lists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1237"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4082,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1237\/revisions\/4082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}