The Laws of Medicine - Siddhartha Mukherjee

Siddhartha Mukherjee is very smart, very thoughtful, and a very talented writer, with an ear for the telling anecdote.  (We have previously reviewed his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Emperor of All Maladies).  The Laws of Medicine is a focused reflection on how medicine has changed over the past 80 years, viewed through the lens of Mukherjee's desire to identify "laws", specific to medicine, that govern its practice.

The book is serious and thought-provoking but also rather charming....and it's a fast read.  It's definitely a library book, not a worthwhile purchase - it's almost pocket-sized, it's thin, and it has some lovely textless illustrated pages to add space for personal reflection between one chapter and the next.  Purchasing it ($16.99) would be a good way to support the TED Talks (from which this book was adapted), but I was happier to delight in Mukherjee's reflections, on the library's dime!  To offer a little substance to this review, here's a nice thought, snatched from the book:

Priors. Outliers. Biases.  That all three laws of medicine involve limits and constraints on human knowledge is instructive.

I definitely recommend this highly.

The Mountains Have a Secret - Arthur Upfield

Two young women, hiking in the Grampian Mountains of western Australia vanish after staying a couple nights at a swank but isolated resort.  The immediate search and investigation turn up no sign of the women and no leads at all.  A few weeks later, a police officer investigating the disappearance is shot in his car......related to the disappearance or an isolated incident?  Bony, once again posing as a sheepman on vacation, begins to investigate.

Bony's strengths are nicely summarized by this glorious sentence:

His career as an investigator of violent crime had been unmarred by a single failure, and this was due much less to keen reasoning and keen observation, than to the inherited lust for the chase, bequeathed to him by a race of the greatest hunters the world has ever known, a race which has had to employ reason, patience, and unbreakable determination to gain sustenance in a country where food was ever hard to win.

This story includes several colorful characters and a nice mystery, though the resolution features some outlandish events inspired by World War II.

The Clue of the New Shoe - Arthur Upfield

Another interesting and thoughtful mystery featuring Bony, the half-aborigine Detective-Inspector.  A dead body is discovered in a nearly hidden cupboard along the stairway of a lighthouse that is unoccupied and inspected at six-month intervals.  The lighthouse is located in a small resort town that, during winter, is occupied by a small number of close-knit families - yet no one can identify the body and the initial police investigation is fruitless - leading, of course, to Bony visiting the town disguised as a vacationing sheepman - a part he sustains very knowledgeably and convincingly.  How he solves the mystery is interesting, but even more interesting is his growing friendship with the local carpenter - an old man who makes inexpensive coffins....but also rich, beautiful coffins.  This man is steeped in wisdom but his relationship with Bony takes surprising turns.  Quite a nice read!

Freeware

Several months ago, Lauren reviewed and recommended Software by Rudy Rucker.  I read it and thought it was a hoot - wildly creative, screamingly funny and unexpectedly thoughtful in exploring the idea of whether consciousness is unique to "living" beings.  Well, Freeware is the second (NB: actually 3rd - see comments) in a series of four books by Rucker and continues these trends, with this startling first sentence:

Monique was a moldie: an artificial life form made of a soft plastic that was mottled and veined with gene-tweaked molds and algae. 

Freeware starts with a diagram of the family trees of the main characters in the four books, including Staun "Sta-Hi" Mooney, who, after his outlandish adventures in Software, is mentioned in Freeware as the author, while serving as Senator of California, of the Moldie Citizenship Act.  Other entries in the family trees and in the story include additional moldies and aliens with exceptional body forms and life experiences.

Unfortunately, I didn't find Freeware to be nearly as intriguing as Software.  There was less humor, less interesting consideration of life forms and consciousness, and a lot more really outlandish stuff that I couldn't connect with.  Oh well.