Behind the Beautiful Forevers

This exceptional book by Katherine Boo reads like an absorbing, fascinating novel yet is, almost unbelievably, nonfiction.  Boo, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and writer for the New Yorker, lived in Mumbai and delved into the lives of the residents of Annawadi, a small slum beside a lake of sewage, adjacent to a very busy international airport serving Mumbai.

"Everything around us is roses" is how Abdul's younger brother, Mirchi, put it.  "And we're the shit in between."

In an afterward, Boo describes her research, interviewing and filming residents with the help of translators and student interns, for four years, then piecing together this extraordinarily vivid and clear-eyed account of key events in the life of Annawadi, including suicides, a murder, a tragic accident involving horses painted like zebras, and always the crushing power of poverty, inequality and pervasive corruption.

As Abdul and his family had already learned, the police station was not a place where victimhood was redressed and public safety held dear.  It was a hectic bazaar, like many other institutions in Mumbai, and investigating Kalu's death was not a profit generating enterprise."

Boo's aim is to understand how globalization and world economics shape the lives of those at the lower end of the economic scale and her insights are penetrating and empathetic.  This is a beautiful book, though heartbreakingly sad.

H is for Hawk

This extraordinary nonfiction book by Helen Macdonald creates its own genre: a very personal memoir of grief that focuses on the training of hawks and makes extensive reference and comparison to T.H. White, author of The Sword in the Stone, and a tortured, repressed man who also authored a book on his sad and difficult experiences in training a goshawk.

Macdonald is devastated when her father dies unexpectedly.  She had had a lifelong, deep interest in falcons and, out of this passion and as a distraction, she decides to acquire and train a goshark.

When you are broken, you run.  But you don't always run away.  Sometimes, helplessly, you run towards.

The goshawk was an unusual choice.  Macdonald explains and explores the idea that falconry has been the domain of the nobility, partly because large tracts of land - estates - are necessary for hunting, and the language and customs of falconry are precise and mannered.  Modern falconry is steeped in this aristocratic history, which for some, promotes a special kind of identity that tends to exclude outsiders.  Falconry was a passion and source of style in Nazi Germany.  But, unlike the noble falcons, the goshawk, Macdonald explains, is a low, murderous bird

They were things of death and difficulty: spooky pale-eyed psychopaths that lived and killed in woodland thickets.

Because it needs only short flights to run down its prey, a goshawk can be trained on small properties.  Hunting with goshawks is thus possible for commoners and is, basically, low class.

Compared to those aristocratic falconers, the austringer, the solitary trainer of goshawks and sparrowhawks, has had a pretty terrible press.  'Do not house your graceless austringers in the falconer's room', sniped the fourteenth-century Norman writer Gace de la Bigne. 'They are cursed in scripture, for they hate company and go alone about their sport.  When one sees an ill-formed man, with great big feet and long shapeless shanks, build like a trestle, hump-shouldered and skew-backed, and one wants to mock him, one says, "Look, what an austringer!"'

Macdonald herself is pretty feral and her grief over her father's death drives her to some outrageous and heart-rending behavior.  But her reflections are sharp and the descriptive writing is brilliant - fresh and vivid.  And though this is a dark book, it is laced with humor and, ultimately, is optimistic.  A terrific read.

Graphic Novel Round-Up: Marbles, Fun Home, Are You My Mother?

I have read 3 interesting graphic novels this summer, reviewed briefly below:

Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, and Me - Ellen Forney

Marbles is Ellen Forney's exploration of her struggles living as an artist with Bipolar I disorder (the more severe of the forms, characterized by true mania, as opposed to hypomania, and potential psychosis). More particularly, she wrestles with the question of whether or not Bipolar symptomatology is an essential part of her identity as an artist, integral to her work, something special that she shares with other renowned artists (the "Van Gogh club," as she calls it), or whether it is an illness to be treated and managed. Her story had personal resonance for me to some degree, and it was an interesting read, although I am not a huge fan of her style of illustration.



Fun Home - Alison Bechdel

In Fun Home, Alison Bechdel explores her developing queer identity against the backdrop of her father's repressed homosexuality and turbulent childhood. I found this novel utterly fascinating, and the graphic style highly evocative. Would definitely recommend.



Are You My Mother? - Alison Bechdel

Bechdel's second graphic novel is much more philosophical than the first, and I did not enjoy it as much. Some of the material was quite interesting, and I was inspired to purchase a copy of one of her sources (Miller's The Drama of the Gifted Child). Overall, however, I lamented that the book strayed so far from the personal narrative, and ruminated so extensively on (what I found to be at times rather dubious) psychology. However, her analysis of her fraught relationship with her mother was compelling, even painfully so, and I would still recommend it.

Aurora - Kim Stanley Robinson

Aurora is KSR's latest novel, published in summer 2015, and the only other book of his that I have read, other than the genius Mars trilogy. Aurora is just as delightful, and satisfyingly familiar in tone, with its hyper-detailed yet highly readable descriptions of technology, and the incisive and compelling character depictions, which elevate the book from tech porn to high literature.

Aurora is the story of a generation of families born on a spaceship in the middle of a 159+ year colonizing trip to Tau Ceti, led at this point in their journey by brilliant yet troubled scientist Devi, who keeps their aging vessel in working order through hundreds of daily repairs. Unlike Mars, with its numerous protagonists, this novel focuses primarily on Devi and her daughter, Freya. In a unique and engaging narrative twist, the tale's chronicler is the ship itself, an AI called simply "ship."

The action begins in Freya's youth and young adulthood, in the final years of the journey to Tau Ceti. A deeply interesting and moving tale, which I highly recommend to all sci-fi enthusiasts!

A Spy Among Friends

This account of the Cambridge spies, focusing on Kim Philby, the infamous Third Man, is fascinating and highly readable.

Spy stories, both fictional and nonfictional, interest me, and I suppose many others, because they deal with treachery, deceit and betrayal.  And I believe this interest is intensified in people who in childhood have experienced or been exposed to powerful family secrets or deceptions.   A Perfect Spy, reputed to be LeCarrè's most autobiographical novel, deals explicitly with this topic.

So it's no surprise that many people are riveted by the story of Kim Philby's decades-long career as both a highly placed leader in Britain's MI6 and a double agent who passed thousands of secrets to the Soviets and cost the lives of hundreds of British agents.  This betrayal was especially shocking because of the close-knit and completely trusting relationships among the British upper classes who filled many of the MI6 positions.  Vetting often consisted simply of confirmation that the candidate came from "good people".  Philby survived so long as a double-agent not simply because he was a consummate actor, but also because he was so fully a member of the public school educated gentry. His friends and colleagues considered it to be simply impossible that "one of them" could be a traitor and they closed ranks to protect and defend him.  (This superior attitude and disregard of incriminating evidence infuriated members of the more working-class MI5 section, charged with investigating Philby).

MacIntyre's account of Philby's recruitment, advancement, betrayals, and eventual undoing is fascinating.  But what drove Philby to this extraordinary duplicity remains essentially unknown. After he was revealed as a double-agent and fled to Russia, his third wife Eleanor asked him if he had to choose between the Party and his family, which he would choose, and he unhesitatingly replied, "The Party, of course".  Eventually, he came to acknowledge the evils of Communism as practiced in Russia, but rationalized them as the errors of men, rather than flaws in the system.  Surprisingly, then, he had minimal interest in or knowledge of the theory of communism.  Such a life, which appears to derive satisfaction from betrayal alone rather than betrayal in the service of a cause, suggests, to this armchair psychiatrist, that Philby was almost certainly driven by powerful forces from his childhood rather than an intellectual conviction.  MacIntyre depicts Philby's father, a distinguished Arabist who was an advisor to King Ibn Saud, as an irascible iconoclast and an extremely demanding yet absent father.  After his father's sudden death, Philby, a heavy drinker at the best of times, immediately plunged into despondency and alcoholic stupor.   The origins of Philby's extraordinary duplicity must be more complex, intense and unusual than this, and it would be fascinating to understand the development of his personality but, of course, the master of keeping secrets from his friends offered no grist for speculation.

All the Light We Cannot See

This book by Anthony Doerr is written simply, but with the emotional power and magical intensity of a fable or fairy tale. The book is set in World War II and centers on two main characters, a blind French girl and a talented young German soldier, who are eventually drawn together and meet in the walled city of St. Malo. The structure is a little unusual, with short chapters that switch from one character to another and back in forth in time, getting closer and closer to the moment of meeting.  

There's a very interesting interview with Doerr that was published in the Powell's Book Blog.   At one point, the interviewer, in asking him about the short chapters, says perhaps they "can allow for more lyricisms and/or experimentation with language in some ways than longer chapters because you get that cessation. Doerr agrees that his writing in this novel is very lyrical and says "I know that's demanding, so this was a gesture of friendliness, maybe. It's like I'm saying to the reader, "I know this is going to be more lyrical than maybe 70 percent of American readers want to see, but here's a bunch of white space for you to recover from that lyricism." [Laughter].

The story and characters are so captivating that All the Light We Cannot See is hard to put down.  When I had finished and was thinking over the book, it seemed to me that it differed from many books in that it had no strong themes.  One line spoken by a character in the book has been repeatedly quoted by readers and reviewers:  “Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.”  The title and this statement clearly relate to the blind girl, but I finally came to feel that they also describe a central "theme"of the book: that life is magnificent; joyous and heartbreaking, meaningful and random, kind and cruel. Although Doerr is not Tolstoy, and All the Light We Cannot See is not War and Peace, the power of the writing nevertheless grips us and invites to embrace the variety of life.

Northwest Coast Indian Art

The only thing in my entire life that I believe I was fated to do was to buy this book by Bill Holm.

On my last visit to Seattle, I went to the Burke Museum of Natural History on the campus of UW. The museum is small and cozy with specialized, excellent exhibits.  One that I especially enjoyed was a new permanent collection of Northwest Coast Indian art, named in honor  of Bill Holm, a longtime professor at UW and a revered scholar and beloved mentor to many native American artists.  There was also a temporary exhibit of paired pieces of native art - several contemporary native artists had been invited to stay in residence at the Museum, to study iconic pieces in the collection, then choose one and create a responsive piece - an update, a variation, or some kind of modern riff on the piece.  Many of these works were highly inventive and visually stunning.

While I was browsing these exhibits, I noticed an older man and two women who were examining pieces and commenting animatedly on them - and in a personal way.  Comparing this group to the pictures accompanying the Bill Holm Collection, I realized that the man was Bill Holm himself!  I exchanged a couple pleasantries with him and his friends and took the picture you see below.

The exhibit had indicated that the founding of the Bill Holm collection had been coupled with a special commemorative edition of Holm's famous book, Northwest Coast Indian Art.  I was interested in the book and inquired at the Museum desk if they had copies for sale, although, at $35, the price was a little higher, truthfully, than my level of interest.  The woman at the desk said no, unfortunately they had sold out of them, though they were expecting a new shipment in a couple days.  Somewhat relieved, I went to a different section of the museum to see an exhibit on the geology of the northwest coast.  A few minutes after, the woman from the museum desk caught up with me in the exhibit and breathlessly announced that I was in luck - the delivery had just arrived!

Well, I have been reading my copy of Northwest Coast Indian Art rather slowly.  Holm made a meticulous study of more than 400 high quality artifacts, recording and eventually collating detailed information on the "rules" that he discovered underly the stylized designs.  These principles are almost invariant, but like other rigorous forms such as the sonnet, the gifted Indian artists were able to create stunning and distinctive designs while working within these constraints.  Holm's deep knowledge of the forms, his humility and his respect and generosity toward the Indian artists made him a honored figure and valued friend.  I feel grateful for this fleeting moment of contact with him.

Red Rising - Pierce Brown

My bookclub's April pick is Pierce Brown's Red Rising (see our full calendar here). When I first picked up this book, I was turned off by the clunky, dialect-heavy feel of the dystopian Mars mining colony - it reminded me a bit of the feral children's irritating ramblings in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome about "tomorrow-morrow land."

"I's looking behind us now, into history back."

However, the book's scope explodes beyond this point, and I became very engrossed in its exploration of the themes of social control, exploitation, and revolution.

Personally, I thought the movie Hunger Games was insipid, but I would recommend this book to HG fans, and any other survival enthusiasts.

Old Man's War - John Scalzi

I was somewhat underwhelmed by Hugo Award nominee Old Man's War - although the book has some interesting nuggets, and nicely rounds out the treatment of the consciousness-divorced-from-physicality concept explored by works such as Rudy Rucker's Software and Morgan's Altered Carbon, I did not find that it has much staying power.

Altered Carbon - Richard K. Morgan

Our Department Chair noticed my interest in sci-fi novels, and recommended two books to me, including Altered Carbon, which turned out to be drop-dead amazing. AC is set in a future where the technology to download a person's mind and personality into a "cortical stack" at the base of the brain, and transfer this chip between physical bodies (or "sleeves"), has extended life for most, and made immortality possible for the few who can afford continual re-sleeving and personality back-ups. These immortals, or "meths," are hundreds of years old, and are hated by the general populace for their cold and detached attitude toward morality. Just Takeshi Kovacs' luck, therefore, to awake from storage and find he has been re-sleeved at meth Laurens Bancroft's expense, with an ultimatum for a contract - solve the mystery of Bancroft's apparent suicide, or be returned to the shelf. 

I read Rudy Rucker's Software not long ago, so Morgan's elaboration of the consciousness-divorced-from-physicality concept was a nice "sequel." I was especially intrigued by his portrayal of the ugly consequences of wealth inequality, in a world where the technology of immortality is largely limited to the economic elite. (Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy also fruitfully explores this issue.) 

I will definitely be checking out the other Takeshi Kovacs novels!

More delights from Arthur Upfield

Every Upfield Bony story is enjoyable, but some more than others.  Several Bony books, including The Death of a Lake, feature some kind of particularly unusual and characteristically Australian theme such as flash floods, rabbit migrations, fishing for swordfish or, in this case, a lake that forms every 20 years or so due to flooding, and then takes several years, but at an accelerating pace, to evaporate.  Rabbits visit the disappearing lake each night by the thousands, to quench their thirst - the descriptions of this scene and the opportunities it presents for trapping, are grippingly described.  Typically, however, these stories seem almost to have been written because of a strong attraction to the phenomenon, rather than in order to provide a strong setting to feature the mystery. The Death of a Lake has a couple vivid characters,  and there is tension as the lake vanishes as to whether a body that is expected will be found - but it's a limp mystery.

In contrast, The Battling Prophet is terrific - one of the best of the Bony stories.  A the outset, Bony is invited to stay, for a few days of fishing (!), with Mr. Luton, an old but extremely vital, tough man - a former bullock team driver (he's cracking the whip on the book cover).  Mr. Luton believes that his very old friend and boon companion, former bullock team partner and neighbor, Ben Wickham, has been murdered.   After their glory days together on the trail, Wickham, the Battling Prophet of the title, has become famous throughout Australia and the world for developing scientific methods for exceptionally precise weather prediction.  He has gained passionate adherents and bitter enemies - and several people want to get their hands on his methods.

The books starts quickly with an outrageous story about how Wickham died - and the seemingly wacky reason why Luton is convinced it was murder.  The mystery is excellent and the characters fascinating, particularly Luton and Miss Alice McGorr, who is recruited by Bony to pose as Luton's niece for the purpose of protecting him while Bony investigates.  Alice, a former delinquent turned extraordinary police woman is a complete, laugh out loud riot.  Wonderful story!!

The Call of Cthulhu - H.P. Lovecraft

My friend Terra is a huge Lovecraft enthusiast, and so at her suggestion (her Lovecraftian primer shared below), I have begun my exploration of the genre with The Call of Cthulhu, a very short novel which I greatly enjoyed. The protagonist of the novel is a Man of Science, who is deeply skeptical about his scholarly uncle's mysterious writings on a horrific beast known as Cthulhu. Full of atmosphere and delicious prose - a vivid and enjoyable tale that has definitely sparked my interest in reading more.

A Lovecraftian Primer for the Novice Scholar

Books & Stories

​Works by H.P. Lovecraft

(The following short stories are where I would recommend any budding cultist or bold investigator begin their journey. Many of HPL’s short stories can be found online here: http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/)

The Call of Cthulhu (Gives a good sense of the atmosphere and style in many HPL stories. The central source of the famed Cthulhu mythos.)

The Shadow over Innsmouth (A tale of intrigue and dread in a small town. Introduces some of Cthulhu’sfishier relatives.)

The Whisperer in Darkness (Dread terrors from above. While not explicitly about the King in Yellow, this is the only HPL story that contributes to his mythos.)

​Lovecraft’s Inspiratons

Ambrose Bierce (I’ve never read any Bierce, but I hear that HPL was enamoured of his stories.)

Robert Chambers (He wrote a collection of short stories entitled “The King in Yellow” which alternates between stories of the pallid king and tales of daily life in revolutionary Paris, for some reason. I would highly recommend the story “The Repairer of Reputations” from this collection.)

​Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft

(This list could go on forever – so much current fiction makes at least reference to Cthulhu or unspeakable horrors lurking beneath the waves or beyond the stars… here are a few examples I have enjoyed.)

A Study in Emerald by Neil Gaiman (Short story in Fragile Things, also available in a beautiful format here http://neilgaiman.com/mediafiles/exclusive/shortstories/emerald.pdf)

Rehearsals for Oblivion (Various short stories which all have something to say about the King in Yellow mythos. Highly recommended if the tattered king strikes your fancy.)

The Hastur Cycle (A more scholarly approach to the King in Yellow mythos. Each story is accompanied byan editor’s note explaining its literary/historical context. This collection includes “The Repairer of Reputations” as well as “The Whisperer in Darkness”.) 

New Cthulhu 2 (This is a short story collection by various authors that I happened across at the library. These stories take HPL themes and legends and address them in a modern setting. I found most of them to be quite enjoyable.)

Locke and Key (Graphic novel which draws from some HPL mythos, also includes a lot of magic that is not from HPL.)

Films, Shorts, & Audio

​Feature Films:

The Whisperer in Darkness (Adaptation by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society (2011))

Die Farbe (Adaptation of HPL’s “The Color Out of Space” (2010). Filmed in Austria; subtitled)

Dagon (Inspired by “The Shadow over Innsmouth”(2001). I have not seen this one yet but it is supposed to be quite good)

Re-Animator (Adaptation of HPL’s “Herbert West – Reanimator” (1985). A classic gore-fest.)

The Burrowers (Info here: http://hplfilmfestival.com/films/burrowers)

Short Films:

(While most of these are not strictly Lovecraft, they are definitely Lovecraftian and worth a viewing. If you enjoy any of these, consider coming to the H.P.Lovecraft film festival in Portland in October!)

Fat Rabbit 

(http://www.adampetke.com/#!fat-rabbit/c1qfk)

Frank DanCoolo, Paranormal Drug Dealer

(Full 8 minute film is somewhere on the internet if you look hard enough. Clip can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZmASfMOpxw)

Silas and the Tomb(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlNQecZ6Rj4)

Dirty Silverware (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXkl_j02pNE)

Flesh and Bone (Music video.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzJYFGx2pQ4)

The Mill at Calder’s End (I don’t know if you’ll be able to find the full film online, but here is a trailer https://vimeo.com/ondemand/themillatcaldersend)

Thresher (https://youtu.be/SqNdbHHWtBc?list=PLKikQyzc03Rq50vrHUZ5jVeOazbsKq4qf)

Escape from Midwich Valley (http://lovecraftzine.com/2015/12/28/free-to-watch-escape-from-midwich-valley-inspired-by-the-shadow-over-innsmouth/)

The Earth Rejects Him (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcDXYYPhdAs)

The Call of Farqunglu (Lego spoof of the genre, very well done. https://youtu.be/n7o6ERhuEN4)

Roe (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nn5IemrVVbc)

August Heat (https://vimeo.com/151533546)

Autumn Harvest (Very dark. http://zombiehamster.com/reviews/indie/watch-lovecraftian-noir-autumn-harvest/)

Dark Adventure Radio Theater

A product of the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, these radio programmes never fail to provide an evening’s entertainment. More info here: http://www.cthulhulives.org/radio/DART/index.html

The Boys in the Boat

This book is terrific!  Well, I often run from "uplifting" books, but this is so well written, with different narrative threads providing resonance with the rags-to-glory story, that it's exceptional - and I was absorbed and stirred by the book.

In brief, it's the story of a collection of young men, most very poor and from logging camps, farms and mill towns, who were members of the 8-oar crew at the University of Washington in Seattle, which ultimately won the gold medal at the infamous 1936 Olympics in Berlin.  The events are set against the backdrop of the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the Depression and the turmoil wrought by the devastating Dustbowl storms.

The story of Hitler's frustration by the gold medals of Jesse Owens is well-known and this is a parallel story, though along the way, these young men first had to conquer the skills and superior attitudes of crews from elite East Coast schools.  While Owens' story demonstrates the superlative achievements of one man, The Boys in the Boat emphasizes what can be accomplished by a group working in a harmony that is almost spiritual.   The central character is Joe Rantz, whose upbringing provides first a heartbreaking story of abandonment and poverty that is overcome by determination, resourcefulness and strength, which commands admiration and respect.  Joe's early struggles and doubts, eventually followed by triumphs and a fulfilling marriage, mirror and enrich the story of the crew.

The story is extremely well-researched and documented and is driven by it's improbable and ultimately joyful and heroic achievements.  YouTube offers a very nice presentation by the author, who reads from a portion of the book.   Very highly recommended!

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) - Oscar Wilde

The Faustian tale of Dorian Gray is my bookclub's pick for February 2016. In it, young, innocent, Adonis-like Dorian sits for a painting by his friend, the worshipful Basil Hallward. The painting is Basil's masterpiece, but this sitting is the occasion for a fateful encounter - Dorian meets and is corrupted by the glib hedonism of another of Basil's friends, Lord Henry. Utterly taken in by Lord Henry's poetical musings on the supreme value of youth and beauty, Dorian impetuously makes a wish that changes his life forever:

"How sad it is!" murmured Dorian Gray with his eyes still fixed upon his own portrait. "How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June.... If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that- for that- I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!"

Although the plot is very simple, Wilde's prose is magnificent, and this short (213-page) novel is utterly captivating. It is also interesting how delicately Dorian's sins are portrayed - everything alluded to rather than shown, perhaps due to the publication in 1890, when the work was decried as obscene - amazing how standards for the depiction of sex and violence have changed in the past century.

Perhaps the most enjoyable part of the novel is Lord Henry's indulgence in cynical epigrams, such as, "the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it." Although his wordplay is delicious, Lord Henry's amoral fascination with beauty, and his artistic interest in the destruction of Dorian's life, is frightening - he would have done well to learn from his contemporary, Tolstoy, who said “It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.”

Heap House - Edward Carey

My bookclub's first book of 2016 was Edward Carey's Heap House. Clod Iremonger is the 15.5-year-old protagonist of this delightful and deeply original young adult novel. Clod lives with hundreds of his relatives (both noble "Uppiremongers" like himself, and multitudes of more distantly-related servants), in a sprawling hodgepodge of a mansion. The family's estate is the focal image of the novel - built from relocated pieces of London homes, riveted together with steel girders, it spreads across an immense landfill ("the heaps"), basis of his family's garbage scavenging empire. Clod is driven to avoid his family members by the cacophonous voices he alone can hear emanating from their "birth objects," household items assigned at birth and carried upon one's person until death.  Thus, Clod spends much of his time wandering alone over the estate, until he one day meets a spunky serving girl, Lucy, and together they begin to uncover the grim foundation of his family's wealth.

An engaging tale with compelling characters that vividly explores the dangers of greed, xenophobia, and blind obedience to authority.

One Weird Trick (Sex Criminals Volume 1)

When Mark and I visited Arizona over the holiday break, we hung out with his friend Jordan, who works at a comic book store in Tempe. He recommended this smart, fresh, graphic novel to me. One Weird Trick is about a young woman who wants to save her library from foreclosure, her unusual superpower, and her sexcapades with a likeminded young man she meets at a party. A fun and flirty caper with nice illustrations, this is my bookclub's February pick (along with The Picture of Dorian Gray), if anyone wants to read along!

The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History - Katherine Ashenburg

The Dirt on Clean is a delightful account of hygiene throughout history, from the sumptuous baths and strigil of the Romans, to the hydrophobia of the Dark Ages, to today's neurotic obsession with sterility, and everything in between. The course of humanity's love/hate relationship with cleanliness is surprising, fascinating, and sometimes repellent. Packed with diverting factoids, quotes, and anecdotes, this book makes for very pleasurable light reading.

Lauren's Bookclub 2016 Plan

Hello all -

My bookclub met tonight and we set our reading plan for 2016. I'm sharing it here, in case anyone would like to read along with us, and we can discuss!

DATE	BOOK
Sunday, JAN 31, 4pm	Heap House (Edward Carey)
Saturday, FEB 27, 7pm	The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde) + Sex Criminals – Volume One – One Weird Trick (Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky)
Saturday, APR 2, 7pm (“MAR”)	Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America (Richard White)
Sunday APR 24, 6pm	Red Rising (Pierce Brown)
Saturday, MAY 28, 7pm	Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith (Jon Krakauer)
Saturday, JUNE 25, 7pm	Radiance: A Novel (Catherynne M. Valente)
Saturday, JULY 30, 7pm	The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America (Timothy Egan)
Saturday, AUG 27, 7pm	Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, and Me: A Graphic Memoir (Ellen Forney) + Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama (Alison Bechdel)
SEPT 24 or 25, TBD	A Canticle for Leibowitz (Walter M. Miller Jr.) *previously reviewed by Colin, here.
Friday, OCT 21, 7pm	Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War and Death (Susan D. Moeller)
Saturday, NOV 19, 7pm	The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (Stephen Greenblatt)
Saturday, DEC 17, 7pm	Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, Revised and Expanded Edition (Oliver Sacks)

- Lauren