Tina Recommends

Andy Dahl is a newly-assigned ensign on the Universal Union's flagship in the star fleet, the Intrepid, in the year 2400-something. He and his fellow ensigns soon learn that new crew members of the Intrepid, especially when on Away Team missions, or if they happen to be present on decks 6 through 12 if the ship is under attack, have a near-100% mortality rate. Rather than take this with the fatalism of the more seasoned crew members, Dahl investigates.

It seems the Intrepid and its crew are actually the stars of a television show written in 2012, and when The Narrative takes over, they are helpless to control their actions, and are swept along in it. He develops a bold plan to go back in time from 2400 to 2012, and stop the Hollywood production of the show that runs their lives.

Obviously, for you Star Trek fans out there, this is an entire book based on the very old fan adage, that the poor characters wearing the Red Shirts on that show (usually ensign rank), always died first on Away missions or in battle. It's the cleverest danged thing I've read, well, since the last John Scalzi book I read. Loved it.

It's impossible to review this book in any depth without spoiling one of the numerous plot twists. It's a thriller, it's riveting, it's readable and totally engaging.

As a water-cooler or book club discussion focus, this book is a gold mine. Insights into marriage? Check. Point of view switching? Check. Unreliable narrator(s)? Check. Also do-I-like-them-or-not characters, will s/he won't s/he, oh-no-you-DIDN'T, and much more, handled with adroit skill by former Entertainment Weekly reviewer Gillian Flynn.

The woman is a helluva novelist.

The Buying Director for Book Passage was in the store one Sunday, and passed me a little book she'd received called The Pig Did It, by Joseph Caldwell.

I'd never heard of Caldwell, but a peek at the book's opening intrigued me so, I took it home and finished it in one sitting. It's a slim little thing at 212 pages and a fast read. Caldwell's a brilliant writer whose prose you can really wallow in—simultaneously cynical, comic, and lyrically poetic. He just crafts these amazing turns of phrase that have you admiringly re-reading passages, in spite of how much you want to get on with the story.

Our hero, such as he is, is Aaron McCloud, a writer of the literati type in New York with several minor awards to his credit, and a writing teacher. He goes to visit his Aunt in County Kerry, Ireland, in order to wallow in self-pity because a woman he'd hand-picked from one of his classes, and set out to impress and charm, did not fall for him.

Aaron's quite a piece of work, really someone you DON'T want to like because he's so enormously self-centered. But he's also sort of charmingly bemused when things don't go his way, like when his plans to get straight to the cliffs near his Aunt's home, and get to the wallowing, are interrupted by a herd of pigs in the roadway blocking his bus, being led to market by an enticing redheaded female swineherd. One of the pigs follows him home to the Aunt's cottage. And then digs up a body in her garden. Things get more and more Irish and outrageous from there, just great comic fun.

The Pig Did It is just perfect for lovers of quirky comedy, light mystery, and beautifully drawn Irish settings and characters mixed with excellent writing. Book clubs could really have a ball with this one.

This is, without a doubt, one of the most compelling books I have ever read. It's not just that it's well-written (which it is, brilliant), but that the subject matter is so unbelievable and staggering and has such implications from our medical past, and for the future of medicine.

Henrietta Lacks was a black woman living in rural Virginia in the 1940s and ‘50s. A wife and mother of five, she died at the age of 31 at Johns Hopkins medical center, in the black ward, of cervical cancer. A few months before she died, her doctor retrieved a tissue sample from her cervix and gave it to one of his assistants—something they did routinely at this teaching and research center—to place the cells into a culture and see if they could grow and replicate. Such cells usually died in a matter of hours, but if they could be kept alive, were increasingly useful in the new field of virology.
 
Henrietta’s cells lived, and were named HeLa.
 
From the moment the doctors at Johns Hopkins started using them, and giving them out to other researchers to use, they began to spread exponentially. HeLa cells are now so prevalent and common in medicine that nearly every researcher in the world has touched them, and they’ve gone up in space. They have been bought and sold, replicated and shipped worldwide. They have unfortunately also contaminated other cell lines, causing uncounted millions of dollars in damage to vital research.
 
And for decades, her family didn't know, and then they didn't understand. Science writer Rebecca Skloot heard snippets of information which got her interested in the HeLa cells, realized the significance of their story, and spent more than 10 years researching and composing this book, interviewing Nobel laureates, pharmaceutical techs and CEOs, lawyers and medical ethicists, and most importantly, the family of Henrietta Lacks.

She’s done a brilliant job weaving Henrietta’s story, those of her children, and the progress of science and the HeLa cells, into a moving, riveting, personal narrative. Her access to, and eventual closeness with Henrietta’s children was a dangerous course for a journalist needing objectivity to tell this story, but she handled it well. I may even forgive her for making me cry. Twice.
 
Skloot is particularly good about the clarity of her scientific explanations for the layman, and the timeline of important scientific events and discoveries made by the use of HeLa cells. And in a strong Afterword, her even-handed examination of the legal and moral ramifications of human tissue handling, and the desperate need of science to have access to human tissue to serve the needs of us all, is thought-provoking in the extreme. I can’t get it out of my mind, in fact, and will probably be thinking about it and discussing it for the rest of my life.
 
It’s that important.

How did the Imperial Russian court and the revolution, cabaret clubs, a breakthrough in molecular chemistry, a convent in the South of France, the flower fields of Grasse, American GIs and German troops in World War II, contribute the to creation and worldwide popularity of this iconic fragrance? Mazzeo tells all in this fun slice of history.

Knowing there are more definitive biographies of Coco Chanel already written, Mazzeo wisely gives us just enough of her background to show how and why she developed the fragrance, and what she meant to convey with it. The author also dispels a lot of old myth and rumor about the famous fragrance.

I really enjoyed the background information on chemistry, perfume categories and development, and the rich feel of the 1920s and 1930s that Mazzeo captured and conveyed. This book and a bottle of the fragrance would make a lovely gift for a Chanel No.5 fan!

[Publisher blurb:
New York City, 1972: A dabbler in mathematics and chess, Catherine Velis is also a computer expert for a Big Eight accounting firm. Before heading off to a new assignment in Algeria, Cat has her palm read by a fortune-teller. The woman warns Cat of danger. Then an antiques dealer approaches Cat with a mysterious offer: He has an anonymous client who is trying to collect the pieces of an ancient chess service, purported to be in Algeria. If Cat can bring the pieces back, there will be a generous reward.

The south of France, 1790: Mireille de Rémy and her cousin Valentine are young novices at the fortress-like Montglane Abbey. With France aflame in revolution, the two girls burn to rebel against constricted convent life - and their means of escape is at hand. Buried deep within the abbey are pieces of the Montglane Chess Service, once owned by Charlemagne. Whoever reassembles the pieces can play a game of unlimited power. But to keep the Game a secret from those who would abuse it, the two young women must scatter the pieces throughout the world. ©1988 Katherine Neville]

Tina adds: What you read in the blurb is the tip of the iceberg of this complex, fast-paced, exciting book. It's full of real historical figures as characters, AND each character becomes a living chess piece of a sort; the young novices are pawns, their abbess is the White Queen, Catherine the Great of Russia is the Black Queen, and Jean Jacques Rousseau is the Black King, and so on. Even if you know absolutely nothing about chess, you will LOVE this book. It's completely fun.

Diana Bishop is a hereditary witch in denial of her powers, so she's taken up an ordinary life as an academic, in the field of science history, ironically with a concentration in historical literature of the age when alchemy gave way to hard science. At Oxford for a year's research, she calls up an old alchemical manuscript from the archives, only to find it's bewitched and reacting magically to her touch. She sends it right back. And is suddenly surrounded by witches, daemons, and vampires, who are hovering about waiting for her to call it up again.

Matthew Clairmont is a respected physician and DNA researcher based at Oxford, who also happens to be a 1,500-year old vampire. Bemused by Diana's attitude toward her witchcraft, he takes on the role of her protector from the other creatures pressing about her for access to the manuscript. His DNA research is focused on the four species—witch, daemon, vampire, human—and how they differ at the most basic DNA level, and what their evolution has been, in hopes of finding out why the three non-human species seem to be dying out.

The book Diana so easily called up in the Bodleian library reference collection is the legendary key to it all, long lost by all three species, who want to get their hands on it.

And the adventures begin.
 
This is marvelous stuff, full of classical literature, science, alchemy, and historical references both fictional and real. It's well-written, fast-paced, chock full of great quotes, songs, poems, languages, and historical tidbits I am going to have to go and look up (most happily), and filled with a large, vibrant, believable, intense cast of characters who draw you in.

The librarians and armchair historians I know are going to devour it. I loved it. Can't wait to read it again, and look up those tantalizing bits I want to know more about.

Highly recommended.