I picked up a used copy today of ** Vengeance**, a novel about the Helsinki Homicide Squad, written by Jarkko Sipila in Finnsh originally and translated into English.
Has anyone read this, or his previous novel Against the wall?
Man, that’s just depressing. I had thought about picking up the Debbie Nathan book because I remember reading the original Sybil book when I was a kid. I thought it would fun to learn more about what seems like an obvious hoax now, but scared the dickens out of me as a kid. Learning that Shirley Mason was so victimized puts the situation in a much more somber light.
Thanks for the nudge, I just finished this and it did get a lot better when the Whitcombs hove on scene.
Next, I have Dead Aim by Joe R. Lansdale. It’s a tiny novella, 102 pages, which is probably all I have time for anyway before going out of town. And then when I am travelling, I ought to get through a lot more reading than usual. Looking forward to it!
It does. That’s not to say that she doesn’t bear any of the blame: she told people what they wanted to hear all the time and rarely stood up for herself. I’m sure stemmed in part from psychological weakness but I’m sure that sometimes she was just doing what she wanted. She signed off on the Sybil book, which diverged from the truth as she understood it. She was one of the principals of Sybil Inc. (yes, really) and took her share of the profits. But of the three people behind Sybil she had the least capacity to understand what was happening and she suffered the most as a result of the publicity and everything else. It’s possible to feel some pity for the others, too. The journalist was a pretentious fabricator, but she was an extremely lonely woman who felt unloved all her life. The psychiatrist was horribly unprofessional but she was raised by parents who told her she wasn’t smart enough to be a doctor and became desperate to prove them wrong. Nobody seemed to quite understand why they were doing what they were doing. They happened to come together to create a largely fictional story that resonated with a lot of people.
You know what Nathan feels was actually wrong with this woman? It’s on Wikipedia but you’d probably never guess otherwise:
Pernicious anemia. She had other problems, but that was the only physical problem. It can cause disorientation, blackouts, and some of the other symptoms that the psychiatrist blamed on multiple personalities and repressed memories.
Sam… I’ve read most of Michael Connellys work, he is a very good writer. Yes, Blood Work is very good, Read The Lincoln Lawyer if you’ve not. Great book. I have not read his in order and it doesn’t really matter, though many are sequels of other books he’s written. That makes him a superior author in my estimation. 
Shakespeare’s Tremor and Orwell’s Cough: The Medical Lives of Famous Writers by John J. Ross, M.D. Interesting stuff, although quite a bit of it’s speculation, of course. Still, it’s interesting how themes of disease (whether or not the author actually suffered from them) are woven through various works.
I finished reading volume 2 of Ghost Stories of an Antiquary by M.R. James. Really enjoying reading along with the podcast. Incidentally, most of his works are available free, but the ebook edition A Pleasing Terror is well worth the money. It has his complete works with excellent annotations, translations of Latin passages etc.
I’m now re-reading Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness, since Ian D. mentioned it earlier in this thread and I’ve long forgotten most of the details.
I finished Gods Behaving Badly yesterday. I loved that book so very much. I may have to add it to my “buy this” list.
Right now I have We Have Always Lived in the Castle on hold at the library. Slowly but surely I’m whittling down my Goodreads to-read list.
Yes, the Lincoln Lawyer series is good, especially now that it’s begun overlapping with the Harry Bosch series. I’ve read all the Connelly books except the last two Harry Bosch – not counting the one to be published this year – and am saving those for Japan next month. Connelly is an excellent substitute for Tony Hillerman now that Hillerman is dead.
I did indeed finish What Money Can’t Buy that evening, and I’ve just finished Clouds of Witness last night, and The Storytelling Animal this afternoon.
I’m loving reading Dorothy Sayers. Two things really struck me with this book. 1) Lord Peter Wimsey and Bertie Wooster actually have similar locutions from time to time. The chief difference, of course, is that Lord Peter is intelligent and Bertie is, well, likeable. 2) Lord Peter and his servant Bunter are archetypes for Martha Grimes’ characters Melrose Plant and Ruthven.
The Storytelling Animal has a lot of really interesting ideas behind it, but I couldn’t help comparing it (unfavourably) to the outstanding Daniel Levitin’s This Is Your Brain on Music and/or Oliver Sacks’ Musicophilia. I’m fascinated by the neurological and anthropological basis for our fixation with story; I just didn’t feel that this book did much more than scratch the surface.
I’ll finish Way to Wisdom sometime this week; meantime, I’ve started Justice - What’s the Right Thing to Do? by Michael J. Sandel, and Fahrenheit 451, which is the Toronto Public Library’s ‘Community Read’ book for this year.
Thanks to Elendil’s Heir recommendation, and after reading Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch I requested an ILL loan of A Year with the Queen - by Robert Hardman, written to accompany the PBS series of the same name. Chock full of photos, the book takes its readers on a journey through the daily life of Queen Elizabeth II - not only her visits abroad and her hosting of foreign dignitaries, but her interactions with the Government and the public as well. I really got a feel for how much work she and her family do in terms of recognizing public service, both at home and abroad. Hardman also highlights the Royal staff and includes them in the process of maintaining the Monarchy. I found it to be quite a fascinating book, and a good co-read with the QEII biography I read earlier this year.
Thanks to bup’s recommendation, I’m currently working on a library copy of Animal Wise: The Thoughts and Emotions of Our Fellow Creatures by Virginia Morell. I find explorations of animal cognition and emotions interesting in and of themselves, and Morell has found some excellent research to write about - including laughing rats and grieving elephants. I found the story of Alex the grey parrot fascinating - and wonder how much more we could have learned if he hadn’t died early (age 30 vs the 50-60 year expected life span) of heart problems. Morell writes engagingly about her interactions with these researchers and (when applicable) with the animals themselves. It’s becoming more obvious that a large range of animals have cognitive abilities far beyond those traditionally thought - even into the realms of fish and insects. Definitely recommended to anyone interested in animal psychology.
My current audiobook is ***The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America *** by Timothy Egan, which I picked up based on Delphica’s recommendation. I’d read Mornings on Horseback (a bio of Roosevelt’s childhood thru his early manhood) some time ago and wanted to find out more about his involvement with the Forest Service. So far, the book has been very engaging, starting with the story of the titular fire, then veering back to Roosevelt’s early political career, and his involvement with Gifford Pinchot, an eccentric naturalist who became the perfect man to head the brand-new US Forest Service. I’m up to the point where Teddy is in his first years of the presidency and facing off against the lumber, mining and railroad barons who see the wilderness as theirs for the taking. Egan’s writing and Robertson Dean’s narration are keeping my interest quite well and I’m looking forward to learning more about the rangers’ early days.
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. . . (And I’ve just noticed that someone decided to separate the bibliography on the Wiki pages into “Novels”, “Novellas”, and “Collectioons”. Irritating–I guess I’ll have to rely on the Wolfe Pack bibliography now.) . . .
Because of electronic formats, it’s now possible to buy a single short story or novella. The separation is to make it easier to tell, at a glance, how long the work is. My favorite readers’ source Fantastic Fiction is doing the same thing. The problem for someone who favors the print formats, though, is that many of the newer short stories and novellas are only available in electronic format.
In the middle of Freud’s Blind Spot: 23 Original Essays on Cherished, Lost, Hurtful, Hopeful, Complicated Siblings.
Rereading Ice Crown, by Andre Norton. It’s one of Baen’s two-in-one editions, with Brother to Shadows; not sure if I’ll go on to reread that one as well.
I finished The Loved One last night: somewhat entertaining, and (as mentioned) a quick read, but overall kind of…meh. The “twist” made me yawn. I won’t reach for more Evelyn Waugh any time soon.
I also started The Rook last night: I’m only a few pages in, but it’s promising. 
I’ve never read any Virginia Woolf, but have just started To the Lighthouse.
Thanks for the rec for The Last Man on Earth Club, found it for cheap for my Kindle, and breezed through it. Thought-provoking, well-written, a bit funny too! The author is apparently hard at work on another novel, which I might read if I remember.
Oh, and then the dog ate my Kindle, so I am on hiatus for a week or so while the replacement comes. Fft.
Because someone requested it, my review of When America First Met China: An Exotic History of Tea, Drugs, and Money in the Age of Sail :
Someone please tell me Dolin did NOT just defend foot binding after giving a graphic and nauseating description of the process.
The book is highly readable and written in a very non scholarly fashion even though it is footnoted and sources listed in the back. Dolin’s style is chatty and laconic with just a touch of humor. The title is a little misleading since the POV switches to the British when he approaches the Opium Warm of 1844.
If I were to lodged any criticism of the book it is that the POV is entirely from the American and Britsh perspective. Don’t go into this book expecting to learn anything about China, it’s history, civilization or culture. What little Chinese perspective there is, revolves entirely around Canton and the trading “factories” there. There are hundreds of American and British men referred to by name but only a handful of Chinese. This may, of course, be a reflection of the availability of source materials, but it does flatten the book somewhat.
I’m enjoying it, I just yeah.
I’m reading Lunatics, by Dave Barry and Alan Zweibel. It’s astonishingly silly and light as a meringue cookie. But I can’t lie, I’m laughing like a loon.
So glad you liked it!
I just finished Les Miserables. Towards the very end, I started skimming some of the digression chapters because I was too impatient to find out what happens in the end of the story! If I ever read it again, I would definitely go for a version with lots of footnotes and annotations rather than the Project Gutenberg version; there’s a huge amount of wordplay and historical references that I didn’t pick up on.
I was going to start Middlemarch next, but the prologue and the first page of the first chapter were so turgid that I decided to put it away for now. I’ll go with Nicholas Nickleby instead.