Cluster Critiques

 

All I Ever Wanted: A Rock ‘n’ Roll Memoir, by Kathy Valentine

Music has been a bright thread woven in and out of my life’s tapestry, but for guitar player, singer, song writer, band member of the Go-Go’s, and Rock and Roll Hall of Fam-er Kathy Valentine, it was all she ever wanted.  Valentine was raised in Austin by a mom of that generation who, in backlash to their parents 1950’s vice-grip morality, encouraged free-will in their children. Valentine's memoir, All I Ever Wanted, provides the resulting, mostly cringeworthy, yet interesting and well-written story of her unguided grope through a way-too brief childhood, and her adult grind from band to band, eventually finding her nirvana and fame writing songs and playing guitar - filling the spaces in between with drugs and alcohol. 

 

On the eve of adulthood Valentine joined the Go-Go's who became the first all-female band to play instruments themselves, write their own songs, and have a number one album, Beauty and the Beat which included "We Got the Beat" and "Our Lips Are Sealed." Unfortunately traveling the world as a celebrity and hanging out with the likes of the Rolling Stones, the Police, Rod Stewart, John Belushi and Rob Lowe magnified rather than fixed Valentine’s addictions. And then there was the devastating blow of the breakup of the Go-Go’s in 1985. Fortunately, grit honed on 30 years of survival steered Valentine back to her center – writing and playing music.

It stands to reason a person capable of codifying life to song stanzas could write a kick ass book – which is exactly what Valentine does in All I Ever Wanted. I look forward to what might spill out of her next.

 

Footnote: I recommend the audio book, as the music sound track is mesmerizing!

 

The Four Winds: A Novel, by Kristin Hannah

Elsa Wolcott, born in the panhandle of Texas on the 1920’s runway to the drought and great depression suffered heart-breaking discrimination and disdain by everyone in her life. Her parents and sisters didn’t like her because she was too thin, unattractive, “she’ll never get a husband,” and sickly. Then when she becomes pregnant by the first man to pay attention to her and must marry into his family, she is resented by her Italian husband and his parents because her pregnancy derailed her child's father's college plans, and also by his parents because she’s not-Italian. Then her eldest daughter grows to resent her when the dad abandons them. 

When the draught peaks and Elsa takes her teen daughter and young son to California to look for migrant labor, conditions become even worse. There’s more discrimination, this time from Californians resentful of the migration of so many drought-demolished farming families. “Get out of here you filthy Okie” was a common derogatory misnomer. The poverty they experienced was gut-wrenching. They lived in a horrific tent-city, surrounded by despair and starving families, walked miles each day to work for large farms that enslaved their workers by crediting against their wages for food from the company store, and by brutally breaking up efforts to unionize.

Although Hanna’s fans seem to enjoy reading about pitiful, victimized female characters living in horrible situations – and for sure Hanna has made a good living writing about them, I like my female characters with more grit and an occasional happy day. The writing is exceptional and the characters are vivid, I just couldn’t get past pitiful Elsa and the relentless sadness of this story.

 

Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, by James Nestor

In Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, author James Nestor explores the science of breathing.  I was fascinated by this book while  reading it, and for a couple of days after, but haven’t given it much thought since because, well, breathing is involuntary, and I have too many other more pressing things to think about. 

 

Nestor interviews practitioners of Pranayama, a breathing technique that can “supercharge” your body, Sudarshan Kriya, a “purifying” yoga breathing technique, and Tummo, breathing that, among other things, enables one to become so warm one can melt the snow around themselves. He also consults with archeologists who theorize that as generations of hunter-gatherers (meat-eaters) transitioned to agrarian diets (soft veggies) our jaws weakened and decreased in size causing us to be more prone to mouth breathing – which apparently is a very bad thing. Nestor participates in a really weird experiment to prove this point, breathing only through his mouth for 10 days, resulting in higher blood pressure, sleep apnea, loss of appetite, and a bad mood.

Also according to Nestor, and a lot of other sources, adjusting we way we breath can significantly increase athletic performance, keep us from snoring, and cure all sorts of maladies.  If you have the interest and headspace to change the way you breath, have a go at this book. 

The Code-Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race, by Walter Isaacson

Walter Isaacson, author of The Code-Breaker as well as several other  personal favorites of mine, Jobs, Leonardo da Vinci, Einstein, and The Innovators, can write no wrong, but I was attracted to Code-Breaker because it is focused on Isaacson’s first female subject, Jennifer Doudna, and on genetic editing, a topic that has intrigued me for a long time.

Doudna, an American, and Emmanuelle Charpentier, Frenchwoman, are two of seven women to win the Nobel Award in Chemistry in its 100-year history, and are credited with discovering the CRISPR-CAS9 genome editing tool, called “one of the most significant discoveries in the history of biology,” and critical to many medical opportunities (some very controversial), but most recently as relates to manipulating viruses, such as COVID-19.

 

Doudna, currently the Li Ka Shing Chancellor's Chair Professor in the Department of Chemistry and the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, grew up in Hilo, Hawaii. She was encouraged by the intellectual pursuits of her academia parents, and when she was in the sixth grade her dad left a copy of James Watson's The Double Helix on her bed, setting her path into molecular biology. In 2016, she was runner up for Time Magazine’s Most Influential Person of the Year.

 

In reference to the “very controversial” comment above, much of this book is dedicated to the ethics of tinkering with genes, sometimes called “Controlled Evolution,” which opens the door to genetic enhancement, such as a higher IQ, athletic prowess, and even changing skin color, but which could also be used to edit out devastating inheritable diseases. What is OK or not when it comes to gene tampering? There’s even the concept that frailties/faults could be the creator of exceptional abilities. Isaacson poses this question. If Steve Jobs hadn’t been such an ass hole, would he have had the capacity to also change the world through technology?  

 

Another issue prevalent in this book is the espionage and competitiveness between biomedical engineers jockeying feverishly to be the first to discover and patent the next big biomedical widget.

 

If you love learning about the mechanics of scientific discovery, the heroinic work of Jennifer Doudna, and the evolution of the science that gave us the COVID-19 vaccine, you’ll love this book. I sure did.

 

Greenlights, by Matthew McConaughey

I’m one of the few who didn‘t much like this book. It felt like “the gospel according to Matthew,” and another way for him to say “look at me.” 

Maybe I should have read it instead of listening to the audible version, which as he read it sounded like he was acting, and therefore, to me felt unauthentic.

 

Don’t get me wrong, I respect McConaughey's  acting skills and he’s certainly eye candy (although unattractively skinny of late). My favorites of his movies are “A Time to Kill,” “Reign of Fire,” and “U-571.” 

 

McConaughey doesn’t need my approval, but for me, Greenlights was not all right, not all right, not all right.

 

The Glass Hotel: A Novel, by Emily St. John Mandel

Here’s a summary of The Glass Hotel because honestly, although Emily St. John Mandel writes beautifully (Station Eleven is particularly exquisite), I couldn’t make any sense of this book and had a hard time finishing it. Lots of people loved it, and maybe you will too.

 

Vincent is a bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star lodging on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island. On the night she meets Jonathan Alkaitis, a hooded figure scrawls a message on the lobby’s glass wall: Why don’t you swallow broken glass. High above Manhattan, a greater crime is committed: Alkaitis is running an international Ponzi scheme, moving imaginary sums of money through clients’ accounts. When the financial empire collapses, it obliterates countless fortunes and devastates lives. Vincent, who had been posing as Jonathan’s wife, walks away into the night. Years later, a victim of the fraud is hired to investigate a strange occurrence: a woman has seemingly vanished from the deck of a container ship between ports of call.