So! Here's all the books I've been reading that I haven't been able to write about. I'm going to break this up into 2 posts so it doesn't get too long.
Good Calories, Bad Calories
by Gary Taubs
This book will change everything you ever thought you knew
about food and nutrition. It goes against everything we have been told about
dietary fat, cholesterol, carbohydrates, and even salt. While I already knew much
of this going into the book, I still learned quite a lot and I will never look
at my food the same way again. I will certainly never look at nutritional
"studies" the same way again.
This book does not focus exclusively on what studies do and
do not find (which is all you'll ever find in a newspaper). It looks at how
those studies were conducted, who conducted them (who paid for them) and what
they actually found. The terrifying thing is the discovery that many studies,
which are used as cornerstones for certain dietary mantras, have actually been
misinterpreted in order to fit the dogma of the time.
Honestly, this book scared the bejesus out of me. Like I
said, I'll never look at my food the same way again.
Kushiel's Justice
by Jacqueline Carey
Carey is back! I'm so glad! As I said in my post about
"Kushiel's Scion", I was really disappointed by that book. I had been
expecting so much more from Carey. Here, she delivered! Although, this book
still was not the fast-paced, page-turner that her first three books were, at
least it kept moving. I was never left wondering why I was reading this and it
contained one whole, cohesive plot.
It's also a plot that I quite enjoyed. I don't know why
Carey is so good at doing tortured lovers but she is. I was totally rooting for
the two love-birds throughout the book and I can't wait to see how they face
their challenges in the next book. Well done, Carey!
My only complaint is the poor editing. You can always tell
when an author has started to make some real money because the editors suddenly
just stop caring. There were a lot of typos and stupid grammatical mistakes in
this book and that's really disappointing. Come on people, how much you do your
job should not be inversely proportionate to how much money you make!
The Bonesetter's Daughter
by Amy Tan
Oh my god, this book! It has officially gotten me onto the
Amy Tan bandwagon. I know everyone raves about "The Joy Luck Club"
but, honestly, it didn't do much for me. Maybe I just wasn't old enough to get
it. Or maybe it was the fact that Tan tried to develop several characters and
relationships in the space of a fairly small book. By the time I got invested
in one character, she'd switch to another.
Then I read "Saving Fish From Drowning" in a fit
of determination to understand the genius of Amy Tan. It was an odd book, but I
liked it better than "The Joy Luck Club".
"The Bonesetter's Daughter" is about another
mother-daughter relationship but it focuses on just one relationship. That's
why I think, for me at least, it works better than "The Joy Luck
Club". Because it was devoted to one relationship, the book had time to
thoroughly explore that relationship. It delved into a huge chunk of the
mother's history, enough to explain her quite damaging behavior towards her
daughter. It also devoted a sufficient number of pages to the daughter's POV so
we could understand her feelings and motivations. By the end of the book, the
reader doesn't blame either the mother or the daughter for the terrible pain
they have wreaked on each other. And the characters understand that there is no
one to blame. It is sad, but there is still love and time to heal.
It's a beautiful story and I highly recommend it.
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