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HAF Book Club: March poll and discussion

Started by Sandra Craft, February 15, 2019, 02:09:15 AM

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Sandra Craft

Genesis: The Scientific Quest for Life's Origin, by Robert M. Hazen
Life on Earth arose nearly 4 billion years ago, bursting forth from air, water, and rock. Though the process obeyed all the rules of chemistry and physics, the details of that original event pose as deep a mystery as any facing science. How did non-living chemicals become alive? While the question is (deceivingly) simple, the answers are unquestionably complex. Science inevitably plays a key role in any discussion of life's origins, dealing less with the question of why life appeared on Earth than with where, when, and how it emerged on the blasted, barren face of our primitive planet.

The Invention of Nature, by Andrea Wulf
The acclaimed author of Founding Gardeners reveals the forgotten life of Alexander von Humboldt, the visionary German naturalist whose ideas changed the way we see the natural world—and in the process created modern environmentalism.

Kickback:  Exposing the Corporate Bribery Network, by David Montero.
The World Bank estimates that rich multinational corporations pay hundreds of billions of dollars in bribes every year to officials overseas. The perpetrators are not a handful of rogue companies, but many members of the Fortune 500. Kickback is a sweeping, global investigation into corporate bribery around the world and how backdoor financial transactions undermine democracy and the free market system by lining the pockets of some of the world's worst dictators and criminals.

Levels of Life, by Julian Barnes. 
Winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize, this is a book about "ballooning, photography, love, and grief; about putting two things, and two people, together, and about tearing them apart". 

Miss Leavitt's Stars: the untold story of the woman who discovered how to measure the universe, by George Johnson. 
At the beginning of the twentieth century, scientists argued over the size of the universe: was it, as the astronomer Harlow Shapley argued, the size of the Milky Way, or was there more truth to Edwin Hubble's claim that our own galaxy is just one among billions?
The answer to the controversy—a "yardstick" suitable for measuring the cosmos—was discovered by Henrietta Swan Leavitt, who was employed by the Harvard Observatory as a number cruncher, at a wage not dissimilar from that of workers in the nearby textile mills.


Sandy

  

"Life is short, and it is up to you to make it sweet."  Sarah Louise Delany

Icarus

Kickback is an accumulation of disturbingly revealing accounts of dirty pool as played by many.  I recommend it, with this warning:  It could cause you to become angry or create a sense of futility or possibly a wish to get in on the game.

Sandra Craft

OK, so I'm choosing Levels of Life.   I need a break from the science-y stuff.
Sandy

  

"Life is short, and it is up to you to make it sweet."  Sarah Louise Delany

Davin

Always question all authorities because the authority you don't question is the most dangerous... except me, never question me.

Davin

The first bit was a bit jarring. Seemingly random paragraphs, one after the other. Eventually they started to make more sense and be connected thicker and thicker strands. Maybe that was then intention for the start. Bit of a meta experience, which I am a fan of, and in this case it worked for me. It was bit of a history lesson that focused on a few small things.

When I got to the second part, the jarring style was all but gone, coming back here and there when it felt appropriate. The love story between the balloonatic and the actress seemed to be less about love and more about attraction. And then there was barely a mention of the woman the balloonatic eventually married. But it made me feel sad for her, to not entirely have the person she married because of his unrequited commitment for another woman. However I do agree with how he handled the situation of rejection, it was nice to see blame placed on him for imagining too far... for counting his chickens before they hatched.

The third part was like going through the mind of someone who lost the love of their life. I've been there and I've felt the same way about how people tried to make me feel better. How I tried to avoid making people feel bad by keeping things to myself. There was a good emotional connection for me. However I did not agree with the tenuous links to his lost one and the ballooning stuff. It was stretched too far.

Funny thing about the coincidences thought, I had made a prototype of a game loosely based off of Orpheus and Eurydice just last month, and while that's not very obscure, it's not one of the more commonly repeated Greek myths. So it was a bit odd to see mention of that in this book.

It was a good short read.
Always question all authorities because the authority you don't question is the most dangerous... except me, never question me.

Sandra Craft

I enjoyed it enormously, but then I was pretty sure I would since Barnes is far and away one of my favorite writers.  I liked how he used the early history of ballooning and photography to develop the theme of two things that have never been joined before coming together to create something entirely new, and then used that to go full bore into the touchy and difficult subject of grief over the loss of a loved one -- what happens when the two things are pulled apart -- using his own experiences of his wife's sudden and unexpected death.

There was a lot I could relate to, and had wondered about myself.  Like his friend who was told, when she was still crying six weeks after her father's death, "I thought you'd be over that by now".   Seriously, six weeks to get over the death of someone you've known and loved all your life?  I still cry sometimes about DeeDee the cat, and she's been dead for 5 years.

Or that thing about people who've been happily married getting remarried within six months of the partners death.  I know this happens, one of my own uncles got remarried within a few months of my aunt's death and they had always seemed like a happy couple.  Barnes' thought it was due to the constitutionally required optimism of Americans, but that would still be way, way too fast for me.  To me it seems that what such people enjoyed was the state of being married more than the companionship of a specific person who cannot be replaced, but what do I know?
Sandy

  

"Life is short, and it is up to you to make it sweet."  Sarah Louise Delany