Under the Skin, by Michel Faber

Not sure how I stumbled across this. I probably read it in an online review of another book. Like most good stories, the reader's perspective/feelings/orientation to the world changes with the telling. For me, the real strength of this tale is how Faber inexorably pulls you into a different place from where you started - the simple, taught, style of the narrative, along with its brooding milieu. A bit weaker is the thinly veiled social commentary; I suppose it reduces the story to allegory. Nevertheless, it is nicely crafted and worth the effort.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz

A great read, I would argue, on its own with its humor, pace, rich character development and craftmanship. Yet, even better is that almost every other page has some vague reference to a Tolkein tale or sci-fi adventure, both of which I am a fan. And much of the story takes place in NJ, my home for 35+ years, with a good swath in my own college town of New Brunswick (Rutgers). How nostalgic did I feel when Diaz placed Oscar in some geek-sponsored club meeting in the river dorm basement classrooms?

The Social Transformation of American Medicine, by Paul Starr

One of my colleagues gave me this book to read after tiring of listening to me kvetch about the complex, sometimes idiotic, and irrational structure of our health care system. Idiocy seeming to impact everything from hospitals and their push/pull relationships with providers to government regulation and payment systems (really? cost-based pricing?); not to mention the operational inefficiencies that seem to be such an ingrained part of every (well, maybe not every) hospital. I'm still baffled by it all, but it certainly makes more sense now that I've read this encyclopedic journey through the evolution of health care in the U.S. I don't suppose most people would find it terribly interesting and, admittedly, it really gets into the weeds at times - but for me, a physician and business person, it sure helps me frame my world a little better.

Dirty Snow, by Georges Simenon

A little boy, born to a prostitute, raised in a village by others and only infrequently visited by his mother. How can we expect good things to come of this? As the story opens we find Frank, now a late teen, living with his mother who runs a whorehouse out of her apartment in German-occupied France during the Second World War. Frank doesn't seem to have young male angst or teenage burdens of identity and acceptance. He is dangerously unfettered - the German soldiers, police, older men who frequent the taverns, mother's customers, prostitutes, Holst and his daughter, Sissy, who live across the hall all have potential to act as either physical or psychological influences on Frank. Yet, he has little or none. He only seeks the companionship of bad people who lurk in bars, who steal and connive, but doesn't try to impress. Frank does bad things - kills a man for no good reason and takes his gun. Kills a woman he knew as a child so that he may steal her watches. But his actions do not reverberate in his conscience; Simenon spends little time in allowing Frank to rationalize his actions. Does he have a developed amygdala? In many ways he is Camus' stranger - amoral, sociopath. However, one cannot help but to blame his environment. After being imprisoned for passing stolen currency, it is a woman in an apartment window keeping house in a building across from the prison that consumes Frank. He weaves a narrative of the woman's life, married with a small baby. We see in his fantasies his lost childhood and lost adulthood. He will never now have the opportunity to marry a woman and have a child of his own. And the time has past for a loving, nurturing childhood. Sissy, from across the hall, was Frank's one chance for love. And it is her love, or expression of love, that serves as the pinnacle, culmination, of his life. Somewhat ironically, it is his mother who seemingly spends more time visiting Frank and sending him stuff while in prison, now too late to make a difference. I don't read this tale only as an existential exercise. Nor do I think of Frank as a complete sociopath. The tale and its lessons are found in the simple grit and poverty of war and occupation and how a young person without guidance is at great risk of failing to develop a proper sense of self and conscience. 

A Song of Ice and Fire, by George R.R. Martin

I held out for years on the HBO series, not for any philosophical or ideological reason, and only have recently watched them - if you have seen the series, like it, and have not read the books, you should - there is an enormous amount of wonderful stuff missing from the show (understandably) - and, frankly, I don't know how you can watch the show having not read the books - way too confusing. I thought that if the series is that good, the book(s) are probably worth some time. And they are. Caveat - you have to be patient. The novels run some 800 to over 1000 pages apiece; the first 600 pages of the first volume (Game of Thrones) deal mainly with character development and the history of the land, Westeros - a necessity for the complexity of the story to come. Don't have much to say about the text itself - it's reasonably well written and paced (I guess) appropriately - though some will drown I suppose with the plodding course through the first half of Game of Thrones (the pace is veritably brisk when compared with Robert Jordan's novels - aagh, I gave up after four of those). The plot certainly picks up steam with the second installment, A Clash of Kings, and then roars through the third, A Storm of Swords, before settling down a bit in A Feast For Crows - nevertheless, the storyline continues to evolve with new characters appearing. The fifth book, A Dance with Dragons, is more of the same and makes me wonder if the story will ever resolve. I am a bit fatigued, but if you are interested in fantasy/adventure, these are worth your time.

Prelude to Foundation, by Isaac Asimov

You'd think I spent the summer lounging without a book; two months and counting since my last comment. I'm muscling my way through at least three books, one of which I managed to finish last evening. Embarrassingly, despite my affection for SciFi, I had read very little Asimov. I may have read one of his robot books a long time ago but cannot remember for certain and cannot pick it out from a list of the hundreds of books he wrote. I like this book for it's philosophical bent and its landscape is littered with cool little futuristic gadgets. The thrust of the story is the idea that the past, with appropriate statistical modeling, can be used to predict the future - when presented at a conference of mathematicians it sets off a cat and mouse chase. Crisp dialogue and some really thoughtful ideas on what it might mean to be able to predict the future make it appealing. Asimov also tackles the arc of history - humans had been settling the galaxy for over 12,000 years when the story takes place. One idea is that even though technology is excellent at recording history, the repeated reading and writing of the information to the media is still flawed and, over the millennia, old records are lost. I don't know how well that holds up to reality but it does call to mind DNA replication - despite its accuracy, the DNA polymerase still makes mistakes and the repair mechanisms are not perfect - introducing mutations and subsequent loss of fidelity. Repeat thousands of times and the product looks markedly different. I think I'll read Foundation next.

Endurance - Shackleton's Incredible Voyage, by Alfred Lansing

Makes pale in comparison any other trial. It's hard to imagine how they survived. A great tale.