Books December 2011

03 Jan 2012 2 Comments

by Cathy in life Tags: Books, reviews

• Feed by Mira Grant. A clever, insightful book on human nature, Internet culture, and politics cleverly disguised as Bloggers of the Zombie Apocalypse. I want to use this book in school to teach about blogging, bias, news reporting, and identity construction. Even though I hate zombie films.
• The Viral Storm: The Dawn of a New Pandemic Age by Nathan Wolfe. Roger recommended this to me. I drive him home every week after dance class and we talk about books. He likes scientific and medical non-fiction, and Spanish language mysteries. I like fantasy, sf, and non-fiction about history, society, and culture. I usually read what he recommends because I would never choose these titles on my own. I need to branch out somehow.  This book was well written, understandable by a science layperson (me) and was full of references to studies if you wanted to go read more.  Wolfe wrote about his experience studying viruses and how viruses are transmitted from animals to humans. It was fascinating. I could only read one chapter at a time; there was so much to understand and digest. My mind was on fictional zombie plagues when I read this book, so there were times I wished I could just live in a plastic bubble.
• Snuff by Terry Pratchett. Sam Vimes goes to the Country. Pratchett satirizes the British Class System, Jane Austen,  country houses, and so much more.
• The Weight of Silence by Heather Gudenkauf. I didn’t enjoy this one. Child abduction story with small town interpersonal relationship crap. And lots of triggers.
• The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht. I heard lots and lots of hype about this book: NPR, blogs, The Atlantic… everywhere. It was OK. Reading it, I can see why there was so much hype. It was a vampire story (but not really), it was literary, it was about war, it was about growing up and family, it was very post-modern, it didn’t really resolve.

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