by Susan Neiman

This was a good defense of old-school liberalism – universalism, specifically.

by Joe Nocera & Bethany McLean

It needed to do a better job sticking to the topic. I strove and failed to be interested in how private equity took over all the nursing homes. I wanted to hear more about the science of lockdowns and masking, and was it ever possible we could have kept it all from becoming politicized?

Interesting to hear about the lack of science behind boosters. Pfizer and Moderna wanted to keep selling shots – is this why we were encouraged to boost ourselves so frequently? I have lost count of how many shots I’ve had by now. Were ANY boosters really necessary? Something about long-lived T cells being more important than short-lived antibodies.

On that topic, they didn’t explicitly mention “First Shots First” – which some were wisely calling for, while instead we boosted people who were first in line for the first shots. We should have been getting as many shots into arms, as they say, as possible, period. This is me talking now. We did need some order and prioritization, but doses going to waste, that was a crime.

Maybe the worst way we screwed up, in hindsight, was closing the schools for so long. But I worried about the teachers.

by Normal Maclean

I picked this up because I read that it was about Montana. I have a soft spot for Montana ever since I visited Bozeman and Yellowstone. I pictured the grand canyon of Yellowstone throughout all of this.

The story, though – haven’t we heard this one before? Troublesome kid brother?

by Paula Hawkins

If I had a dime for every time someone in this book made a bad decision. “It doesn’t feel right to say these words out loud” but of course she does. “I’m ready to hang up the phone, but” of course she doesn’t. I shouldn’t go buy a drink, but I do, I shouldn’t trespass and spy and lurk, but I do.

There are three women in this story and two men. The men are both awful. The women are all awful decision makers. Actually there are four women, if you count the bit part of Rachel’s flatmate Cathy, who probably makes the worst decisions of them all, since she tolerates the awful Rachel who pukes on her carpet. And there are three men, if you count the bit part of the red-headed man Rachel can’t recall how she knows from her drunken stupors. That guy is the only decent specimen of the male sex.

Oh well. It was supposed to be a mystery/thriller, not a character study. It was fairly exciting. Just, of course, not my kind of book. Obviously another book club pick.

by Nicola Griffith

Hard to follow. But an impressive piece of work. Felt very true to 7th century. The only anachronism that jumped out at me was mention of a ‘mosquito’ (preferable would have been ‘midge’ or ‘gnat’). The concept of “gemaecce”, two women in a formalized friendship, had me searching the internet, and led me to the author’s blog. Her tiny author bio, and the book’s appendix, had already given a glimpse of her personality and voice – she seems super fun and clever.

by Hannah Stowe

A nice book about my favorite book topic: a woman doing stuff. Something like the Bechdel test, I have a little test: whether it be fiction or non-fiction, I want a book about a woman doing stuff a) not related to a boyfriend or husband, nor related to finding a boyfriend or husband; b) not related to having a baby, having had a baby, nor wanting to have a baby; and c) not related to having been a baby. Preferably the woman should be partnerless and childless, although these aren’t deal-breakers as long as she shuts up about it. In a nutshell, not about relationships. Just about a woman doing stuff.

Oh! So, the book. In this case, the woman Goes to Sea. She hires herself out on boats, and learns about whales and albatrosses. She suffers a terrible surfing injury, and mostly recovers.

The author grew up on the Welsh seashore. There is no author photo on the very charmingly designed hardcover. However I discovered a black-and-white photo hidden on the last page. She’s beautiful, and now lives in Dresden, Germany, where she paints (art), and sails her own boat.

Sing huzzah for the life of a woman.

by Dwight Garner

“On Eating, Reading, Reading about Eating, & Eating While Reading.” Shut up and take my money! This book was so awesome – eating and reading in one place, by someone who truly savors both. “I go to bed thinking about what’s for breakfast.” OMG, I’d be ashamed to agree if I weren’t emboldened by him putting it in print; it’s often the only thing that motivates me to get up off the couch and go to bed (“Only 8 hours till oatmeal…”).

“People who grow up with too much good taste miss out. They don’t get to make discoveries on their own.” Yes, this was why I warmed to Dwight Garner and not to his wife, who was groomed from birth to prefer Annie’s macaroni & cheese to Kraft.

Those were quotes from him; a huge proportion of the book, though, is given over to quotations by others. He is a voracious reader, after all.

He divides his book into sections – “Breakfast, “Lunch,” a few interludes, and “Dinner.” I was nearing the end when I started to realize there would be no dessert. Indeed he admits to having no sweet tooth, and I struggled to think of a single place in the book I had read anything about something sweet. I part company here with the author. I do not understand people who have no interest in dessert – as he and I would agree that we feel like a different species from those who have no particular interest in food. Dessert is the BEST food. Other foods WISH they were dessert. It’s overwhelmingly men who don’t care for dessert; I’ve always wondered if it was just a matter of feeling too unmanly if you admitted, yes, you want some damn creme brulee.

(Yes, so it’s come to this – I picked up a book on menopause.)

This was a disappointment. I thought that “Mayo Clinic” would indicate something of more heft. I want to know why I am getting headaches. I want to know how estrogen affects the vascular system. What about the effects of long-term oral contraceptive use on menopause?

Instead, it’s mostly a 3000-foot view of things that might be happening to you, but little “why” or “how.” Lots of stuff about aging in general that you might find in a throwaway newspaper advice column. An entire weight loss chapter with things I’m sure you NEVER thought of, like eating more fiber and avoiding sugary drinks. For this I bought a book by the Mayo Clinic.

by Zeke Faux

I enjoyed it. It was a nice counterpoint to Michael Lewis’ Going Infinite – some of the details are identical, right down to the chickpea korma SBF apparently liked for lunch. But SBF wasn’t truly the focus. The focus was Tether. He kept waiting for Tether to self-destruct, and it never really did. Except, of course, that everything kinda did.

Epilogue: “The technology was as old as WhatsApp or Uber, which had long since wormed their way into our everyday lives so thoroughly their nanmes had become verbs. But no one had invented a mainstream use for cryptocurrency. So many smart people had spent so many thousands of hours working on crypto – and yet shockingly little use had come of it.” Count me among them, I guess, for those dreamlike 10 months I spent at TechLab.

by Ursula Parrott

Extra-marital sex. Abortion. Substance abuse. Skepticism about the sexual revolution, and how it sure seems to just screw over women.

Is it the 1960s? The 1970s? No – it’s 1925.

Definitely a fascinating look at sex and the (newly) single girl and the city back in your grandmother’s day. It starts with our protagonist’s husband’s exit, and has a very nice twist of an ending, but the middle was too long and made me very impatient with Patricia’s endless, mindless promiscuity. And I wish the heroine could have been given a bit more going for her besides her looks – that got very tiring to read about too. I was super sick of hearing about her “creamy” shoulders, and super sick of every man she met gushing over her beauty.

Good lines:

“New York’s a jail to which, once committed, the sentence is for life; but it is such a well-furnished jail, one does not mind much.”

“Great Lovers – men who’ve known a hundred women, and boast of it – they remind me of the man who wanted to be a musician and so took one lesson on each instrument in the orchestra… He couldn’t play a tune on any of them in the end.”