I read a lot of history and a fair amount of medical books, so the combination of the two is something I particularly seek out. So I was particularly pleased to see one in the latest set of book excerpts I was provided by BzzAgent, Molly Caldwell Crosby's The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, The Epidemic That Shaped Our History. I knew a little bit about yellow fever from the section on it and Walter Reed's proof that it was carried by mosquitoes in Microbe Hunters, but Crosby's book gives a lot more historical surroundings for the disease. She opens in 1878, an extremely virulent year in the Americas for a disease that affected those of European ancestry far more than those whose African ancestors had developed the ability to deal with the virus, and affected those moving into the South more than those who had grown up there. The description of the great Mardi Gras celebration inaugurated that year gives a deeper understanding of what it was like for the people living in that time and place and the doctors faced with the epidemic. And the situations described once the epidemic hit Memphis resemble something from a horror novel. It is, however, a story I want to finish, rather than just reading the excerpt.

Bill Lamond's Born to Lead: Unlock The Magnificence In Yourself And Others was the next excerpt in the set, and it was definitely not my cup of tea. It is mostly aimed at women, to help them lead and accomplish things (the introduction says "You have a new assignment -- to save the world by ensuring that it goes on for your children and grandchildren.") through "a new style of leadership" that "combines the strengths of the feminine and masculine models to become whole." I've got no problem with any of those concepts, and I am a dedicated believer in women's equality. I just wouldn't normally choose to read a book about learning to lead and act -- I see myself as a member of the "geek" subset of humanity, where male and female stereotypes have less hold on our behavior and the difficulty in dealing with society is more likely to be learning to speak non-geek than crossing the gender divide. I agree with most of what Lamond says; it's just not all that new to me. This is a book for someone who hasn't read stuff about models versus reality, or about how gender differences may or may not be culturally prescribed.

Elliot Perlman's The Reasons I Won't Be Coming is a story collection; the excerpt I read was the story "I Was Only In A Childish Way Connected To The Established Order," narrated by a middle-aged poet who has had some psychotic episodes that landed him in a mental hospital -- but he doesn't sound all that abnormal to me. Stuck in a life where he doesn't fit in, certainly, but comprehensible and sympathetic. I read reviews on amazon.com which praise Perlman's ability to create distinctive voices in his work, and this story definitely fit the bill there; I believe I will have to seek out more of his work.

Another set of excerpts from BzzAgent and Penguin. The only one I liked enough to talk about is Charlaine Harris's Grave Surprise, the second in a series starring Harper Connelly, a woman who can supernaturally find bodies, or if their location is known tell how the person died. I haven't read the first book, but I have enjoyed Harris's Southern Vampire series starring Sookie Stackhouse as a Louisiana waitress who has a lot of vampires and similarly supernatural creatures in her life. This series seems to be set in a more normal setting, meaning that Connelly is surrounded by people who may not believe in the supernatural (rather than the supernatural being accepted as it is in the other series) and closer to a sort of detective story, though most detectives can't actually sense when they have found a buried body. The excerpt I got (the first four chapters, 68 pages) definitely made me want to read the rest of the book and find out what happens, or what happened, since the book opens with the discovery of a modern body in a centuries-old cemetery where Connelly is giving a demonstration of her ability for a college class.

I've been a fan of Lois McMaster Bujold since I read her book Barrayar serialized in Analog magazine in, I think, 1992. That was science fiction, of course (or it would not have been likely to be in that magazine) -- the story of Cordelia Naismith of Beta Colony dealing with her new husband Aral Vorkosigan's backward home planet of Barrayar and the harsh politics of the aristocracy she's married to.

Bujold's newest, Beguilement (The Sharing Knife, Volume 1) is a fantasy novel, but it has a lot of similarities to Barrayar. It is, essentially, the story of a man from one culture and a woman from another figuring one another and developing a relationship. Here, though, it is magic rather than technology that forms part of the difference between Dag, a patroller from the Lakewalkers, and Fawn, a girl from an ordinary farm in a medieval or Renaissance-equivalent world. The other difference is that the Lakewalkers are a mobile force that protects people against soul-sucking monsters, and the rumors about Lakewalkers among the rest of the population suggest that they're nearly as bad as the creatures they fight.

The comparison that actually came to my mind after finishing this novel was to Jean Auel's historical (or more accurately pre-historical) Earth Children's books, the series that started with Clan of the Cave Bear and continued with The Valley of Horses, The Mammoth Hunters, The Plains of Passage, and The Shelters of Stone (with one more eventually due). While Bujold is only supposed to make two volumes out of The Sharing Knife (and boy, is it obvious that the end of this first volume is far from the end of the story), the coming together of two people who originate in different cultures with deep distrust or even fear of each other is common to both authors' series. I found the views inside the main characters' heads to be very interesting as they figure out how to interact with each other and those who are close to their new friend, and Bujold's settings to be very well-thought-out and believable (so is Auel's, except for her tendency for Ayla and Jondalar to be the center of every new invention or advance in the entire prehistoric world, but then Auel has archeology to rely on while Bujold has to create everything). I will definitely read the sequel to Beguilement as soon as it is available.

A completely different kind of story is found in Julia Fox Garrison's memoir Don't Leave Me This Way: or When I Get Back on My Feet You'll Be Sorry, the story of the stroke she had at the age of 37 and the process of trying to get as much of a normal life back afterwards as possible. There are a lot of autobiographical books about recovering from physical problems, but this one has a black humor that isn't often seen in such "inspirational" stories. Nicknaming the professionals she deals with "Dr. Jerk" and "Nurse Doom," cursing at the aide who reprimands her for trying to get a drink of water during a transfer out of bed, and generally refusing to be treated like a child or an idiot, Ms. Garrison is much more how I would expect a normal human to act under the difficult circumstances of suddenly being half-paralyzed, and that makes her more interesting to read about than a saint who accepts every difficulty quietly. She makes jokes with family, friends, and hospital/rehab center staff and only cries in private, and so the doctors (and even one friend) feel she's in denial, rather than just trying to salvage a bit of dignity. This is difficult in a place where the start of menstruation makes the nurse get a diaper rather than a tampon. But Garrison is persistent and refuses to accept blanket predictions as to her future, and indeed is able to fight those of her doctors who want to push her into treatments for conditions she hasn't been shown to have. (And she and the one doctor who treats her like an adult turn out to be right, too.)

Coming home to her husband and preschooler son is not the end of difficulty, either. Her problems include dealing with a wheelchair, needing help in the bathroom in public places, not having her driver's license automatically revoked, and her husband having to be her caretaker ("The insurance company is unwilling to offer home nursing unless there is no other avenue for household needs. In other words, if you have relatives, you don't need a nurse.") Just making a bed is a major triumph. Getting more physical therapy than the doctors and insurance companies want to offer is a long battle. But she walks again, cooks again, and does nearly all the things that she was originally told she would never do again. Not everything -- eventually she accepts that she and her husband will not have any more children, for example. But her achievements make her an impressive example, and her advice at the end of the book on how to deal with medical professionals (and her open letter to doctors asking for patients to have an equal voice in the treatment of their own bodies) is a truly nice touch.

Another set of excerpts from BzzAgent to review:

• Maureen Dowd's Are Men Necessary? : When Sexes Collide

  The first chapter of the excerpt was not terribly interesting to me -- it just went on and on about the same thing over and over (how independent women are not finding relationships with men). I've never been much for the mainstream dating scene. I find my fellow geeks are generally more interested in intelligent, talented women who understand geek conversation than in the stereotypical bimbo. (Of course, this may be because I select for a certain type in my friends and lovers pretty strongly myself.)

  The second chapter, painting the Bush administration and politicians in general as petty catfighters, was much more interesting and funnier. I like that kind of stereotype-breaking (and anything that makes fun of Republican politicians). If the book continues in a vein like that, I'd enjoy it. From just the two chapters, though, it seems like only a 50% chance that I would. I've gotta agree with the Amazon reviewer Kim Hughes' comment that "In the end, though, one wishes Are Men Necessary? went beyond simply grocery listing examples of sexual disparity to offer concrete suggestions for change."

• Singing with the Top Down is set in the 1950s and told from the point of view of 13-year-old Pauly Mahoney, the self-designated worrier of her family and eseentially the caretaker of her younger brother Buddy, even before her parents are killed in a freak accident. The four-chapter excerpt only gets as far as the kids' finding out that they will be living with their Aunt Nora, who they've never met before their parents' funeral, and leaving Oklahoma for Nora's California home, but I am genuinely curious about how things go with two scared children and the family free spirit, who decides that the drive to California will be a camping trip to see the sights of the western U.S. and a chance for everyone to get to know one another. Pauly is a very believable voice, the child who has had to be the parent, and I really want to see how her new experiences will change her.
• I've enjoyed John Hodgman on The Daily Show, but The Areas of My Expertise is the first time I've seen him in print. This almanac parody is definitely a book to enjoy on paper (tables printed in landscape orientation are difficult to read on a monitor where they are sideways). But I enjoyed the bits that were easier to read; I like this randomly wacky style of humor that takes the standard list of plot situations found in all fiction and adds an additional item: "Man vs. Cyborg." It's not for everyone, as the love-or-hate Amazon reviews indicate, but for the right audience it's really funny.

I've read a lot of animal books, including several by veterinarians. However, Bradford Brown's While You're Here, Doc: Farmyard Adventures of a Maine Veterinarian is the first one to make me think, "I'm surprised the vet is still alive after all that." Brown's practice was in rural Maine in the 1950s and 1960s, meaning that first, a large number of his patients were farm animals, and second, the weather could cause major problems getting to and from the farms, and third, the roads were not necessarily up to ideal standards. This book is not for the faint of heart, because not only does it deal bluntly with the medical problems the animals encountered, but the damage done to Dr. Brown by stubborn patients, winter weather, and being in a hurry to get to the site of an emergency. It's kind of amazing that bruised ribs are the worst individual injury Dr. Brown mentions suffering, but he does point out that the general stress of the work caused him to retire early when his own doctors said he would probably not live to fifty if he didn't slow down. Despite all that difficulty, Dr. Brown really seems to have loved his work and the help he could give animals and their owners; the title comes from the many additional tasks he was asked to perform for other animals on the farm, or even the neighbors' farm, after having already made a call for some specific reason, and he seems to have retained a wry sense of humor about all those extras and all the other things that could happen. The book is full of entertaining characters, not all of them human, and gives an interesting look at farm life when it was still a family endeavor.

More Penguin book excerpts from BzzAgent (who were cool enough to send me a full copy of Beneath A Marble Sky, which I liked best out of the last batch of excerpts).

The first one in this batch is Goodbye Lemon by Adam Davies. The excerpt was sort of horribly fascinating in its introduction to Jack Tennant, his two brothers, one of whom drowned in childhood, his mother, his father, from whom Jack is estranged, and Jack's girlfriend, who can't understand why Jack would even hesitate to go home (for the first time in 15 years) when the news arrives that Jack's father has had a stroke. A family this twisted is hard to look away from, like a train wreck. An Amazon reviewer comments that "You want to simultaneouly hug all of the characters and also shake them and kick them for their terrible decisions," and I agree. It's difficult to imagine what will happen in the rest of the book but I am kinda curious, though it might turn out to be the sort of book I have to put down because how stupid people are sometimes really gets to me.

I never read The Da Vinci Code (out of a sort of snobbishness that if so many people who aren't big readers liked it, I probably wouldn't, as well as a general lack of interest in Christian-oriented books). So I can't judge the comparison to that book that The Begotten: A Novel of the Gifted seems to invite. The BzzAgent site says that author Lisa T. Bergren wrote this The Begotten because of the "heretical 'truths' the author set forward" in The Da Vinci Code. I'm also not a Christian, so I can't vouch for heresy or lack of it, but a historical novel set in 14th-century Europe has to deal with Christianity to be accurate, and in the five chapters given in this excerpt I didn't find this book to be preaching to the reader. There are supernatural powers clearly related to the Christian God and Satan, though, so it's probably not a book for the sort of atheist who doesn't wish to read of something they'll consider fantasy. But as a fantasy novel, it seems pretty interesting.

I've also never been in a book club, and so my thoughts on The Book Club Companion: A Comprehensive Guide to the Reading Experience may not be the best quide. But I think this book would be a huge help to anyone wanting to start a book discussion group; it not only lists books and questions to prompt conversation on them, but issues like whether or not knitting during the group meeting is appropriate, and what to do about pets when meeting in a home they occupy, and it offers recipes for meeting foods and beverages. This wide range of suggestions and thought-provokers seems like just about everything a person would need to get a book club running and keep it going, rather than petering out as so many good intentions do.

I've been visiting family for two weeks and I had a lot of time to read. I finished Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series. Well, all that were on my father's shelves -- he says he might have gotten High Five and Hot Six fron the library, but other than that he's got all from One for the Money to Twelve Sharp (and the Christmas special Visions of Sugar Plums). My dad recommended these after he saw me reading Carl Hiaasen's Skinny Dip, because the Plum books share some of the same wacky humor.

OK, these books aren't as wall-to-wall wacky as Hiaasen's work -- very few are. (Well, Tim Dorsey.) But the Plum series are interesting mysteries with fun characters. New Jersey native used to be a lingerie buyer, but she was laid off and needed a job. Since her cousin Vinnie runs a bail bond agency, Stephanie becomes a bond enforcement agent, also known as a bounty hunter, despite a lack of experience. Sometimes she's successful in tracking down people who didn't show up for their court dates, and other times she just gets violent criminals angry at her. And her mother makes the sign of the cross, her father buries his head in the newspaper, and her grandmother asks to come along (when her grandmother isn't trying to lift the lid at closed-casket funerals, that is). I couldn't put the books down, and as soon as I finished one I had to see what happened in the next volume, so I have to recommend these.

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On the way home, I was reading a book I own, Norman Spinrad's 1969 science fiction novel Bug Jack Barron. As happens eventually to all all books set in the future, enough time has passed to make this into an alternate history. The book was apparently quite controversial when it came out, and still has its moments, but not all of them are the type of controversy Spinrad wanted to provoke. The political ramifications of belief that science can achieve immortality for people (and a way to involve the corpses of those who could afford to have themselves frozen) and the effect of the media on people's political opinions -- all are still quite fascinating. But then on page 143, the main female character, Sara, comes out with this inner monologue:

"Power's a man's bag, she realized. Any chick that digs power, really feels where it's at, almost always turns out to be some kind of dyke in the end. Power's somehow cock-connected; woman's hung-up on power, she's hung-up on not having a cock, understands power only if she's thinking like someone who does. Power's even got its own man-style time-sense; man can wait, scheme, plan years-ahead-guile-waiting games, accumulate power on the sly, then use it for good -- if the man's good deep inside like Jack -- like a good fuck good cat can bring a frigid chick along, cooling himself, holding back when he has to, until he's finally got her ready to come. Man kind of love, man kind of delayed-timing thinking, calculated quanta of emotion and only when the time's right, and not like woman needs to feel everything totally the moment it happens -- good, evil, love, hate, prick inside her."

If I had met Norman Spinrad right when I read this, I'd have thrown the book right in his face and wished it were a hardback copy. On the next page, when Jack is telling a friend that he and Sara have reunited, "The thrill of being owned by her fated man went through Sara as he goosed her off camera." What kind of fucking slave mentality is this? I want to smack Sara too. None of this is necessary to her character; she is an idealistic person who retained her belief in the Committee for Social Justice left-wing political party and other progressive causes as she grew into her 30s. She's just not believable as willing to put herself into a man's power, and it would be so easy to have made her more believable by not putting in these lapses into submissive, sexist claptrap. If only she were 'supportive' of Jack rather than "worshipful"!

The other problem this book for me is that I suspected the big denouement about the immortality treatment far before the characters did. Maybe I've just read too much other science fiction about life extension and immortality (particularly Robert Heinlein's Lazarus Long stories) and this made me able to guess something that 1969 fans (and the characters) might not think about. But for someone who makes a living asking awkward questions, Jack Barron seemed to miss some really important ones. However, the novel was gripping -- I read it in a day not only because I was sitting in one airport or another most of that day, since I had other books with me, but because the story, the world it's set in, and the characters were truly interesting, despite the problems I note above.