read it - Kate Degelau-Pierce

Who are you?

What’s it about?
The Man in the Rockefeller Suit is a true crime novel about a German man who didn’t like who he was. So he pretended to be a series of other people, including a man called Clark Rockefeller. He implied that he was an illegitimate Rockefeller cousin, deceived a many, and conned a lot of others out of their money. He was caught when he tried to kidnap his daughter (after he lost custody of her in a divorce).

Why should you read it?
Because it’s a fascinating story, to think that someone could get away with impersonating American royalty for more than a decade without getting caught. It’s a news-y account – Walter Kirn also has a book about Clark Rockefeller, but his is more memoir-ish. This is a report of who Clark Rockefeller was and how he spent his adult life. I’m surprised that I hadn’t heard about him before reading this book, honestly. It seems like it would be right up American’s true-crime alley. It’s a good, light read.

Wuv. Tru wuv….

What’s it about?
Landline is an adult fiction book about marriage. It uses the story of a woman whose marriage is falling apart to talk about the emotional connection that two people make in a long-term relationship. It also uses the impossible: a landline to talk to the past. Georgie’s husband and children have gone to Nebraska for Christmas; Georgie has had to stay back in LA for work, an incredible opportunity that came up at the very last minute. When Georgie calls them via her cell phone, it’s the present-time husband. When she calls via an old rotary phone connected to the wall, she talks to her husband from their college years. It’s a magic trick the author uses to get the two of them to talk honestly about all the issues that a married couple has.

Why should you read it?
Landline is cute. I like that it’s about a long-term relationship, in a real way. It’s not about falling apart, not really, and it’s not about falling in love. It’s about the ties that come from a life spent together. You don’t see much fiction that concentrates on that, much less that compares it to a friendship of similar length. (I wish that friendship had been a bit more fleshed out.) Also, I was grumpy that the conflict in the marriage came from a woman putting her career first. Can we please stop that trope? But overall: cute. Fun. Not life-changing.

Science and Ethics

What’s it about?
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is two stories, really. One story is the history of cell cultures and how medicine uses them to research disease. The other story is about Henrietta Lacks’ family. Her cells revolutionized medical research, yet her family continues to be downtrodden and not compensated. They didn’t even know her cells had been taken for many years. It shows how institutionalized racism was (and is?) still in the US, and how that exists side by side with science.

Why should you read it?
Aside from the fact that everyone else already has? Because it’s an interesting story, particularly in conjunction with Ta-Nehisi Coates’ article on The Case for Reparations. The law around who owns your cells that have been taken for medical samples was non-existent for a long time. It’s still very, very young. It’s not just Henrietta Lacks and her family. There are other cases involving other people. Should they be compensated for the cells that would not exist without their bodies? Legally and ethically, it’s interesting. Would it be justice to start compensating the Lacks family? The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks both teaches you science and raises ethical questions. It’s worth your time.

Be yourself

What’s it about?
A Wrinkle in Time is a YA classic. If you need a refresher: Meg O’Keefe’s father has gone missing. Her mother and father are both scientists, she is the oldest of four, including twins, Sandy and Dennys, and the youngest, Charles Wallace. Events start one night during a late fall New England thunderstorm, when Mrs Whatsit visits to tell them all there is such a thing as a tesseract. Meg and Charles Wallace and their friend Calvin head off on an adventure with Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who, and Mrs Which to rescue Meg’s father.

Why should you read it?
It really is a classic. It’s wonderful for any scientifically inclined kids to see how their smarts can make a difference, it also illustrates how being different can make you uncomfortable, stand out in a crowd that you maybe don’t want to stand out of. But it ultimately leads you down the path that being different is what makes you you. It’s what makes us all wonderful and individual and worthy of love. And love is the most important thing. It’s a wonderful book.

A Grand Love

What’s it about?
The Last Great Dance on Earth is the third of three novels about Empress Josephine. This book remains a very intimate portrait of her and her family, their loves and lives. But it’s probably the grandest part of her story. She’s fully in the palace, living the life of an empress, haunted by what happened to Marie Antoinette. Her continuing inability to get pregnant with Napoleon’s heir (likely because of her imprisonment during the Revolution) leads to their eventual divorce, where she moves to a country house (still a small palace). Napoleon is shown to continue to love her – wikipedia even states that “he had married a womb” (of his second wife). Little mention is made of Napoleon’s love affairs. I suppose it is the French myth that a man can remain married to one woman while having sex with many; a woman must remain loyal to her husband. To be fair, the first book does address this point – Josephine learns that this is what is expected of a good French wife. This volume chronicles her downfall – the complications of life at court, his family’s continuing jealousy and scheming, and her eventual death at her home in suburban Paris.

Why should you read it?
Because the three books together make up one story. There is no drop-off in quality from book to book and they really do read as one whole, split into three to make them manageable. It wouldn’t surprise me to find that the publisher releases them all as a single volume some day. They are a lovely portrait of life in Revolutionary and Napoleonic France.

Intimacy and Grandness

What’s it about?
Tales of Passion, Tales of Woe is the second of three books about Empress Josephine, of Napoleon & Josephine fame. The three books make up one seamless story of Josephine’s entire life; this volume covers the time she marries Napoleon until just after he is crowned Emperor of France. It’s a surprisingly intimate look at their lives, given the sweep of events that lead Napoleon from a capable general to Emperor of France. We learn about their passion for each other as well as the petty jealousies of the Buonaparte family. Though, I suppose, when an empire is at stake, can the jealousy really be petty? It sure reads like it, though.

Why should you read it?
Because all three books are a good overview of what the French Revolution must have looked like, at least a little bit, from the inside. Not to mention that Josephine is an awfully likable character. You feel for her dread of telling her children she’s remarried, her pain at not being able to get pregnant again, her growing love for her husband. It’s a pleasant historical fiction about a very famous woman.

A state of grace

What’s it about?
Ostensibly, it’s about a woman in a small town in Iowa, falling in love with a preacher who is much older than her, getting married, and having a baby. But it’s also about so much more. It’s about loneliness and how you connect with other people. It’s about why things happen in the first place. It’s about a very practical, and very loving, version of Calvinism – religion is everywhere in Lila but it’s quiet and practical and encourages everyone to get along. It’s a version of church that’s about fellowship, not ideology. And yes, the baby being born is very symbolic of Jesus’ birth to be a savior. Even if the little boy is only saving Lila.

Why should you read it?
Because Marilynn Robinson is easily one of the best writers ever. She writes both intimately and expansively. The little town of Gilead could be the biggest city in the world because it has everything she needs to tell her story. Her characters remind me of my grandparents, who lived in rural Iowa: loving but reserved, deeply but not outwardly religious. I love them all. I loved Lila.

Reduce, reuse, recycle

What’s it about?
Junkyard Planet is about the global scrap trade. It’s an industry I knew nothing about before I read the book; now I feel like I have an at least rudimentary grasp of it. Scrapyards are amazing places. My favorite story to repeat is about car recycling: before 1958, there was no effective way to recycle a car – they were left to rot or they were burnt. In 1958 a machine to shred cars – thus making their metal available to sell – was invented. In 2007, the backlog of all the abandoned cars in the US was finally finished. America got caught up. The industry is largely in China these days; it can cost less to ship a container of recycled metal to China from LA than to ship a train car full of it to the East Coast.

Why should you read it?
It’s fascinating. Junkyard Planet was much more engrossing than I thought it was going to be. It hits the recycle loop of reduce, reuse, recycle. Where does all the stuff go? How does recycling help reduce mining and drilling and logging? What can be recycled? But he also explains that reduce, reuse, recycle is a list of ordered terms. If you want to go green, reducing your consumption is more important than reusing what you have, and then recycling. Recycling alone can’t save the world.

May I suggest that you read the WSJ’s business-focused review of Junkyard Planet? I try to keep these short; they have lots more space.

Gossip, shmossip

What’s it about?
Hatching Twitter is an oral history of Twitter. It’s more interesting than you might think. I knew it’d grown out of Odeo (an early podcasting company, killed when iTunes launched), but I hadn’t realized that so many of its early employees were, in fact, anarchists. Nor did I know how much of that ethos made it into its corporate culture – the aversion to making money, insisting that twitter is first and foremost about communication, its management’s disorganization, and, of course, why the fail whale was so prominent for awhile. This is the story of how Twitter started and how it’s grown up.

Why should you read it?
Look, most books about specific businesses or business people are gossip. This one’s no different – but it’s really, really GOOD gossip. There really is betrayal and friendship and money, and I’m sure there’d’ve been more sex if there had been more than one female early employee. In some ways, Twitter comes across as close to the platonic ideal of a Silicon Valley start-up: moving fast, trying to change the world, dominated by big egos. (Jack Dorsey does not come off well.) If you want to know how the Silicon Valley tech/internet industry works, it’s not a bad primer.

Your favorite detective is back

What’s it about?
Veronica Mars and the Thousand Dollar Tan Line was written to appeal to fans of the series – it came out around the same time as the movie. It takes place after the film, so it’s a way for fans of the series to continue to get a glimpse into Neptune, CA. The actual plot is probably irrelevant to its target audience. (It’s Spring Break, all the undergrads have come to Neptune to party and tan, and a girl goes missing. The sheriff is particularly incompetent, so the local Chamber of Commerce hires Veronica.)

Why should you read it?
It turns out that Rob Thomas actually wrote a couple of YA books before moving on to television. While Veronica Mars and the Thousand Dollar Tan Line isn’t great, it is enjoyable and well constructed. All the plot threads tie up at the end. All your favorite characters are back. (Though there’s a depressing lack of Logan. Ah, Logan…) If you haven’t seen the show and movie, you’ll probably be at least a little confused – it doesn’t do much world building. Yes, it appears that this will become a book series, and yes, I’ll read the next one.