"Born Together, Reared Apart" by Nancy L. Segal was an interesting and not too completely over my head scientific look at the fascinating study of twins who are separated while still very young and then raised separately. Segal and the rest of the staff of the Minnesota Twin Studies department looked at how much genetics influences our decisions as far as career, hobbies, tastes in food, religion, politics, etc. It was pretty good, and I was proud that I understood most of it!
"Off the Road" by Carolyn Cassady documents her life married to Neal Cassady, immortalized in Jack Kerouac's books like "On the Road". She put up with a lot of BS while married to Neal, more than I would have put up with, but she did get to hang with Kerouac and Ginsberg, so that's pretty cool. Like most teens, I was profoundly into the Beats and thought I was the first person ever to discover how awesome they were. As I got older, and especially while reading this book, I realized just how immature they really were. Neal was forever running off and fathering babies with random women that he had no way of taking care of. Stuff like that really irritates me. But it was a great read, very interesting.
I was so disappointed by "Growing Up Dead in Texas" by Stephen Graham Jones. I had heard really good things about it, but it fell very flat for me. It was disjointed and confusing (now mind, I read *Faulkner* and understand it) and I had no idea what was going on. Something about a fire? And maybe child molestation? I don't even know.
"Fate of the Princes" by P. C. Doherty was a fictionalized account of King Richard III's close friend and adviser, Francis Lovell. Richard asks Lovell to investigate the disappearance of his nephews from the Tower of London, which Lovell does and comes up with a satisfactory explanation as to what could have happened to the boys. I thought Richard was very nicely portrayed in this. I'm keeping an eye on developments in Leicester as to the possible discovery of his body. Amazing after all these centuries!
"The Unfaithful Queen" by Carolly Erickson was a decent but heavily fictionalized account of Queen Katherine Howard's short life and sad death. It was okay, nothing particularly memorable about it.
"Mister Pip" by Lloyd Jones was another disappointment. It came highly recommended but I couldn't really get into it. It was just too sad for my taste. A young lady named Matilda is living on an island in turmoil. The only white man on the island, Mr. Watts, offers to take over the school and reads to the children from Dickens' classic "Great Expectations". Matilda really loves the book and connects with it, which was great, but I'm not a big Dickens fan, so I failed to see the charm of the book. That might have been part of the problem.
No comments:
Post a Comment