Book 209: Catch Me If You Can by Frank W. Abagnale

I just finished this book. It was 277 pages and I read it in a few hours while recovering from a stomach bug. 

Truth be told, I loved the Tom Hanks/Leonardo DiCaprio/Christopher Walken movie version of this book. But for once, I wasn’t disappointed when I picked up the book after seeing a movie, or vice versa.

For those of you that don’t know the story already, Frank Abagnale was one of America’s most successful check forgers. He made millions by forging and cashing thousands of checks around the world. He impersonated an airline pilot, a doctor, and a state prosecutor. And he did it all before he turned 21.

While the book doesn’t provide an ending to the story, it does provide much more detail about how the illustrious conman got away with his scam for so long. He kept moving, using the banking system to cover his tracks while he was on his way to his next destination… and target. Over and over again, he repeated his scam and refined it, with nothing but confidence and research on his side.

Things have changed quite a bit since the 1960s due in part to Abagnale’s criminal endeavors. He helped uncover weaknesses in the banking system that allowed him to succeed in cashing two and a half million dollars worth of fraudulent checks in five years’ time. 

A fascinating tale - though I don’t know how much of it was accurate. Seemed like an awful lot to remember. 

Book 206: The People of the Abyss by Jack London

Jack London is best known for his exploration of the unknown. Today, he'd be known as an "immersion experience junkie." I came across this book while reading another classic and took a break from that behemoth to read this beautiful little book. I'd highly recommend The People of the Abyss. 

The East End of London in the early 1900s was a terrible place, rife with poverty and starvation. News of the conditions reached Jack London in the United States, and he decided to embark on a journey to see the conditions for himself. He boarded a boat in 1908 and rented a room in a safe house near the East End. He purchased ragged clothing and assumed the identity of a lowly laborer immerse himself fully. With an emergency guinea (about a shilling and one penny) sewed into his sleeve, he stepped out into the streets to experience life in the most derelict corner of the "civilized" world.

At the time, the British Empire was still thriving, and it claimed had landholdings throughout the world. I'm not sure how it was received at the time of its publication, but The People of the Abyss certainly made it known that all was not well on the home front. Jack London does a fair job of making it clear that none of the wealth of the British Empire trickled down to the city of London's neediest citizens.

Jack London visited the infamous workhouses of London and met other "casual" workers who were daily fighting for their next meal and a safe place to sleep. He wrote about the gradual weakening of the workers by hunger, fatigue, and unjust, arbitrary laws like the one that made it illegal to sleep in public places during the day. The situation was so bad that huge numbers of people were committing suicide or killing members of their own families rather than allow them to suffer. Until I read this book, I didn't know the history of the East End.

This book was fascinating because it was a snapshot in time of a region that has been the subject of so many literary, television, and film projects. It also struck me that the socioeconomic situation documented within this book parallels our own right now - how the world's wealth is held by the top 1% of the population and everyone else is just trying to skimp by. Jack London does not mince words - he closes his book with an expression of his own opinion that if a country is truly civilized, there should be no abject poverty.

This e-book is available for free on Project Gutenberg (go to https://www.gutenberg.org/) and you can download it in several e-book formats. 

Book 205: Retrograde by Peter Cawdron

Let's talk science fiction. If you've read this blog for any length of time, you probably know I don't read many science fiction books. In fact, I've turned down multiple sci-fi book review requests because I just can't get into them.

Well, Retrograde is the exception, perhaps because it is actually half sci-fi and half mystery. One chapter in, I was hooked. It was imaginative, other-worldly, and had a lot of solid research behind it. Mars is inhospitable for most creatures. However, it seems it is the perfect place for inorganic life forms to thrive.

At first, this book confused me. Then I realized the author was playing games with my head. He gave me tidbits of information at the same time the main character was getting them. While she was trying to make sense of her situation, I was along for the ride. I took every wrong turn with her, until she was able to determine the source of the problem. A male author, Cawdron wrote Retrograde in female-first-person-narrative, which is not something I've come across very often. 

I'd die before giving you Peter Cawdron's secret, so you'll have to read this gem for yourself. If you're confused, it's because the author wants you to be confused. Hang on, push on through it, and you'll see that it's all worthwhile.

Book 204: The Likely Resolutions of Oliver Clock by Jane Riley

Dear readers, if you know anything about me, you know I love dynamic characters!

Oliver Clock is a sweet, gentle, middle-aged man with an overbearing mother and a family business to run. He is a funeral director, and a darn good one at that. Everything is going swimmingly, until it's not. Beyond his own grief, he finds a new direction for his business (among other things) and is no longer the same man we meet in the beginning of the book.

This is the first I've read of Jane Riley's books, and I hope it isn't the last. Her writing is excellent, and I especially appreciate her skill at forging descriptions of people and settings. I felt as if I could step right into Oliver Clock's funeral parlor. Even the smells were poignant - I don't think I've encountered a book that challenged my own olfactory memory in such a way.

I loved this book, and Jane Riley, you are a gem.

Book 202: Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital by Sheri Fink

I like books about healthcare. I work in healthcare in a non-clinical capacity and I absolutely love what I do. I always wanted to help others through my work, and I'm proud to say I finally found the career that allows me to do that.

With that being said, having worked in a hospital setting, this book was pure hell for me to read. It is the story of Memorial, a community hospital in the heart of New Orleans, during and immediately after Katrina hit the region. It is also the story of the bureaucratic nightmare of a response from both the U.S. government and Memorial's corporate leadership.

I had absolutely no idea that people were stuck in hospitals with no power, limited oxygen, and utterly foul conditions following Katrina. So much of the media focused on the people huddled at elevated sections of highway and sheltering at the Superdome. I never knew anything about Memorial or the other hospitals discussed in this book. In writing this book, Sheri Fink enlightened me on why hospitals now commit whole teams to creating emergency preparedness plans. 

This book is disturbing. If you have any emotional trauma around death or dying, don't read it. If you have a hare-trigger gag reflex, don't read it. But if you want to appreciate a community hospital and the people who do the work to care for others, read this book. The author profiles so many medical professionals who were faced with impossible odds and no way out, and still found the energy and compassion to save lives. But it isn't all heroism. Five Days at Memorial is a stark reminder that a lack of accountability and communication can be a death sentence to those who are in our care.

If you are a healthcare professional, you will be moved to tears multiple times in reading this book.

Book 201: Less by Andrew Sean Greer

I will remember this book forever, for two reasons:

• I felt so close to the character in his bumbling yet determined exploration of the world to find himself.
• Nothing could have surprised me more than the twist at the end of the book. (For all of you "reverse readers" out there, do NOT read this book backwards. But DO read it twice.)

Andrew Sean Greer, you are a freaking artist. I absolutely loved this book.

The story of Arthur Less and his extraordinarily bad search for meaning through world travel is one that will leave you teary-eyed. You might be crying because you're laughing so hard, but it could also be because he is so desperately naive and sweet that you want to reach out and hug him.

I'm not totally sure that Greer was doing this on purpose, but I felt that Less was written to show all of us that we are not in control of anything within our lives. Life is total chaos. Sometimes that chaos works out to our benefit, sometimes it embarrasses us so badly we want to crawl into a hole and die.

Whatever its intent, Less is a hell of a book, and one I would highly recommend.

Book 199: Hiroshima by John Hersey

This is one of those books that SCREAMS for your attention long after you've finished reading its pages.

On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped the atomic bomb on both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. These bombings, a few days apart, absolutely leveled both islands. This book features several true accounts of people who - against all odds - survived the Hiroshima bombing.

I still don't know how anyone could have survived such a disaster, but they did. One man happened to be caught under a mattress when the house around him was obliterated, collapsing on top of him. He and many of his neighbors wandered around, stunned, while trying to figure out what in the world happened. They tried to help other survivors, but some were too far gone. The author, John Hersey, described their catastrophic injuries in detail. Nothing can prepare you for these graphic details.

I have read quite a few books about the U.S. war with Japan, including accounts of American prisoners of war, who were held in deplorable conditions and tortured. After reading Hiroshima, I am more convinced than ever that war is horrible for all involved, and that people do awful things to each other for reasons I will never understand. War is tragedy. No one really wins.

This was a short book that I read in a weekend, and I'd recommend it, if you think you can handle the really gory parts. It's not a horror novel, it's real life, and it really happened.

Book 197: Paper: Paging Through History by Mark Kurlansky (Audiobook read by Andrew Garman)

Mark Kurlansky has written exhaustive books on everything from the history of the American oyster to the story of Clarence Birdseye and frozen food. Usually his books are interesting, but this one felt like a chore. The book was longer than it needed to be, and narrator Andrew Garman did not help, either. This audiobook was a drag. I couldn't wait to be through with it.

Despite the almost complete bore fest, there were a few tidbits hidden within the pages of this book that had to deal with watercolors, which is one of my interests. (Read this article on Medium.) Through Paper: Paging Through History, I learned that watercolors were used for a long time in other countries (Japan, China) and finally "adopted" by British artist Turner, who made watercolor a more widely  accepted art form. (Professional grade watercolor paper is usually made made of cotton, not wood, because it absorbs the water and leaves the pigment behind.)

I also learned about xuan paper, which is made from the bark of blue sandalwood in China, and it takes two years to prepare the raw materials to make the paper. Part of the process is laying the materials out on a hillside for months at a time and turning them periodically. (Professional watercolorists use double xuan, which is more absorbent than the single ply version.) Of course, I immediately had to find a xuan paper maker that would ship to Delaware. For $55 a sheet, I could have my very own xuan paper. Ummmm....

One more fairly interesting thing was that paper was initially made from rags, like the kind you might have sitting in your basement waiting to be used for dirty work - ripped up tee shirts and the like. There were people who went around collecting rags for paper mills, which cooked down materials until they were basically sludge and then put them into trays to dry to make paper. The idea of using wood fibers to make paper wasn't introduced to the western world until the late 1800s. In the U.S., the first operating paper mill was in my hometown of Philadelphia, near where I grew up. And they routinely ran out of rags and had to reach out to housewives to get them to save their rags to make paper.

Not every learning experience is a pleasant one, I suppose. Kurlansky's book was like that for me.

Book 195: A Case of Need by Michael Crichton

Last week, I mentioned this book to my boss and told him I thought it was one of Michael Crichton's last books written before he died. I was completely wrong: this was one of the first books Crichton ever wrote - and in fact, he wrote it when he was still in medical school.

The book was a quick read, but a good one. It is the story of a pathologist (someone who figures out what kind of illness or cancer or infection a patient has based on evidence) that finds out that a colleague has been arrested on charges of performing an illegal abortion... because the patient died of a hemorrhage. He knows his colleague is innocent of the charges and decides to stretch the boundaries of his job description a bit to solve a murder and clear his friend's name.

I am the Ardent Reader, and I am very fussy about the books I read. I start and put down more than I finish, just because I know life is short and my bookshelf is stuffed with books I must finish before I die. I tell you this because I don't often find books that are as intense and engaging as this one - and it hooked me from the very first page. I don't want to spoil the book for you, but I'll tell you one thing: it definitely had momentum... and a ton of twists. And, like most Michael Crichton books, A Case of Need was filled with all kinds of real science, so I learned a thing or two along the way.

There were some hints here and there that the story was not set in today's modern healthcare setting. For one, the doctors all smoked inside and stowed flasks in their desk drawers. Abortion was also illegal in this book, so I knew it had to be set sometime before Roe v. Wade. In fact, Crichton wrote this book in 1969, which I didn't find out until the end. 

A Case of Need was available on Amazon Prime Reading, so I borrowed it for nothing! I hope you'll put it on your list of books to read. I found it fascinating.

Book 191: The Shape of Water by Guillermo Del Toro and Daniel Kraus (Audio book)

The movie was beautiful, poignant, and well made, but the book had more of an impact on me. I was happy to have it as company on a really long road trip. And it was really good.

This book is unique, because its author was also the director of the movie. Guillermo Del Toro - who made the most disturbing movie I've ever seen (Pan's Labrynth) - has created a book that is engaging on so many levels.

In the book, some of the characters are more well cultivated in the book than they were in the movie. Some characters are more interconnected than I originally thought, and at least two did not exist at all in the movie but appeared prominently and were in fact instrumental to the story in the book.

The story of the Gill God, Eliza, Giles, Zelda, and Strickland and his wife Elaine is an incredible one. It begins in the jungle and ends in Baltimore sometime in the 1960s. On their regular rounds as custodians for a scientific research facility, Eliza and Zelda encounter an amazing creature being held captive in a lab. When Eliza - who is mute - discovers that she can communicate with the creature, they become inseparable. The story that unfolds is one of courage, strength, and resilience in the face of overwhelming odds.

I hope you'll pick up this book because it was worth reading, even after seeing the movie and having a preconceived notion of what things looked, felt, and sounded like.

Book 190: The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen (Audiobook)

I am so-o-o-o lucky to have a coworker who is happy to share her advanced listener's copies of audio books. That's how I got my hands on this fantastic book.

It started out a little bit slow... but in no time I was hooked on the story so cleverly assembled by the authors. Every time I had to get out of the car, I was upset that I didn't have more time to listen.

The Wife Between Us is the story of two women who fall in love with the same man. Their stories are interwoven in such a way that it's almost impossible to tell them apart. And when the surprises come, they aren't just surprises... they're thrills... the kind that give you goosebumps when you realize you've been wrong all along.

I can't tell you much more without blowing the big secrets in the book, but the themes are clear. Abuse comes in many forms. Perception is everything. And people who will lie about the little things will lie about big things.

Definitely, definitely, definitely pick this up and read it. And pay attention.

Book 166: White Trash History by Nancy Isenberg (Unfinished)

The loftier the goal, the more dismal the failure. (My failure, not the author's.)

White Trash History was a book I desperately wanted to finish but couldn't because the library loan ended and the book was so damn long. And it's my own stupid fault - I broke my rule - I kept reading long after I should have given up. It didn't hook me in the first chapter, then the second, then the third, and still I went on. I was 35% of the way through the book when the digital loan expired, and I decided to post a partial review because the reading I did accomplish took real effort.

Nancy Isenberg's topic was fascinating, and she gets points for exploring it in such grave detail that I don't know if anyone would ever be able to best her research. I learned about the foundations of American society, slavery, a good deal about the civil war, and more than I ever could have imagined about Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Davy Crockett, Andrew Jackson, and a little bit about Jefferson Davis. (Most of them were two-faced scoundrels.) I learned about the clay eaters of North Carolina, the anti-slavery laws in Georgia, American Indians, land bequests, and the use of America as a dumping ground for England's poor. The book was filled with nuggets of history that I had never come across before. I don't regret trying to read it.

At some point I do expect to pick this up and finish it, but it won't be in this year. Reading two books a week greatly depends on a book's length and momentum, and this one was simply too long and mentally demanding to accomplish in such a short period of time.

Props to you, Nancy Isenberg, for stopping the Ardent Reader in her tracks!

Book 165: All Fall Down by Jennifer Weiner (Audiobook) Read by Tracee Chimo

Another audiobook on loan from my coworker Sherry! This was a good one.

In Jennifer Weiner's book All Fall Down, Allison Weiss was a busy wife, mom, and blogger. She also had a little problem that was quickly ballooning out of control: an addiction to painkillers.

Through the character Allison Weiss, the author made it clear that anyone and everyone can be susceptible to addiction. In the parts where Allison's addiction is snowballing downhill, wide swaths of the story are missing, because Allison doesn't remember them. We - as the reader - are clued in later about the reasons some things happened the way they did. And we find out that not everything is not always what it seems.

I was in familiar territory as I immersed myself in this book. Not with addiction (though I do know it well, but not firsthand), but with the challenges of being a working mother, feeling like things are spinning out of control. I know the feeling of having deadlines to meet while children are begging for attention and a spouse or partner is mentally or emotionally checking out. I grew up in Philadelphia, I knew the landmarks embedded in the story's setting.

I loved this book through and through. The audiobook version, read by Tracee Chimo, was excellent.

And now, I'm caught up.

Whew.

So you are aware, reading two books a week is not getting any easier. If anything, it's getting harder. Thank goodness for insomnia or book 161 would have been delayed another day, which would have shortened the time I would have had to read my next book. It's a bit like trying to keep up with a speeding train, only I'm both the engineer driving the train and the idiot running behind it.

As soon as I finish one book, I barely have enough time to relish its completion before beginning the next one. That makes me a little sad, but writing about each book helps me close it out, say goodbye, and move on. I look forward to finishing the book so that I can write about it.

I've quickly realized that having two or three books in progress is the only way I'm capable of accomplishing this goal. Right now I've got a partially finished hard copy book on my nightstand and another on my desk at work, a Kindle e-book on deck, an audio book on CD in my car, and an Audible book on my phone.

Before I started doing this, I thought people who jumped back and forth between books were crazy. Now I'm doing it and somehow it's working. I do feel like more of my neurons are firing, so maybe my brain is reorganizing its neural pathways to keep up with this level of absorption. It's teaching me new ways of paying attention.

Onward!

Book 136: A Life in Parts by Bryan Cranston (Audiobook)

Bryan Cranston, whom most people know as the dad from "Malcolm in the Middle" and as Heisenberg in "Breaking Bad," has led a fascinating life. And no one can tell it better than him.

I was astounded when I saw this book in the new books bin at the library. My first thought was, Bryan Cranston wrote an autobiography? He's not even old! Knowing I'd never have time to read the book, I requested the audio version and waited for what seemed like forever for the book to appear at the front desk of my beloved Smyrna Public Library. The wait was worth it - Cranston did not disappoint.

The audio version of this book is read by Cranston himself, which I thought was a great decision. As he hashed out the details of his wild and crazy life, I developed a genuine respect for Cranston's career and his ability to grow and change as his many different roles demanded. I also better understood why he had not been successful earlier in life: he was extremely selective about the roles he chose to play. That's a lesson to all of us - jumping at every opportunity would have reduced the quality and value of his craft.

I am intentionally leaving out details, because Cranston's story was fun and surprising from beginning to end. I hope you will pick up this audiobook and enjoy it as much as I did.