Still More of What I Have Been Reading....

My Great Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer by Christian Wiman. So I picked up this book because an author who I like (he wrote a really interesting book about living in CS Lewis' house on Oxford Campus) mentioned it on his instagram. I was so in over my head with this book. I didn't realize that the author was a poet or else I wouldn't have even tried to be honest. For as much as I love reading, beyond 2 or 3 that I really enjoy, I just haven't been able to find my groove with poetry ever. This book was very poetry heavy and kind of windy and very introspective so I felt lost alot. May have gotten a couple decent book recommendations out of it though. So I guess we will see? Or maybe I'll get bamboozled again. 

The Great Divorce by CS Lewis. If I had to rank my favorite CS Lewis books this one is always very near the top. I would say that this one is my favorite CS Lewis book that DOESN'T make me cry. (Looking at your Mere Christianity and Screwtape Letters!)I think that the descriptions in this book are just so amazingly vivid and some of the behaviors of the humans of this book are very familiar (like in a bad way). I figured I was do for a re-read that I knew I loved, since I have been a little hit or miss with the books lately! 

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno Garcia. This book was pretty buzzy and I was excited enough for it to plop myself on a long wait list at the library for it. I spoiled, rich, cultured young woman in 1950s Mexico city goes to the rescue of her cousin who has married into a English family that lives in rural, wooded Mexico in genteel poverty.But obviously, nothing is quite as it appears. I honestly was a little disappointed in this book. I thought it squandered an interesting concept and setting for something kind of meh.

William Gibson's Archangel. *Apparently William Gibson is a pretty fiction writer which explains the title I guess?* So, our version of the world is in ruins after a nuclear war so technology was developed for a person to time travel back to where things go real wrong to try to save us from that eventuality but turns out that guy is evil and it doesn't go great. Lots of badass female characters in this one. Can't take that for granted with some graphic novels.

Book Review: "From the Underground Church to Freedom" by Tomas Halik

This book came across my radar because this man was mentioned in another religious book that I had read recently. The author and subject of this book grew up in Prague during the Communist occupation (a time where religion was seriously suppressed and the secret police LOVED imprisoning religious leaders and believers), came to faith through the Catholic Church, and eventually was ordained as a priest - all in secret because he could have been tortured to death for like, a 1/3 of the amount of things that he had done. A story about giving the middle finger to foreign occupation in one of my favorite places in the world? Yes please, sign me up.

Okay, so the guy telling the story is Tomas Halik. He was born to an upper crust intelligentsia family in Prague. He was a nerdy kid who loved history and books. This was post WWII which means the Czechs had recently traded the Nazis for the Communists. This means that there was really no religions allowed to practice in the open and Stalin had a particular hatred for priests so he looked for any opportunity to stifle any underground churches and loved to imprison and torture religious folks. Through a series of events Tomas becomes involved in an underground Catholic church, comes to faith, decides that he wants to be a priest, goes to like, an underground catholic seminary, becomes and priest and can't actually be a priest until the Communists leave in the late 80s. The first president post communism, a playwright named Vaclav Havel was a family friend of Halik's and so Halik was pretty high ranking in czech society and has met popes and the Dali Llama and a bunch of other famous people. 

Aside from the story of Father Halik there were two really interesting things that I keep thinking about from this book.

- When the Velvet Revolution happened in Prague (when the Communists finally left the Czech Republic in 1989) the citizens would gather in Wenceslas Square and shake their keys in a "it's time for you to go now" move to the governing bodies. I like this because a)it's such a flex and b) in high school at our basketball games if we were winning a game by a ton everyone would pull out their keys and do this. Very similar circumstances, obviously.  

-I heard about this next part when Quinn and I were in Prague, but I had forgotten about it until I read about it in this book. When the Communists left there was an option for you to see what your secret police file said about you. I've talked about this with a couple of different people, would you want to see your file or not? What if one of your friends denounced you to the police? Your parents? Your spouse? I decided that if someone denounced me under duress (aka torture) I wouldn't be mad, but if someone denounced me because, like, they wanted the apartment I lived in or because I was dating their ex-boyfriend and that somehow landed me in prison I would want to know. Even though I have a feeling that would make me incredibly bitter for at least a little while. 

What I have been reading...(Summer Reading Program Edition!)

The summer reading program for adults is happening at my local public library so we are going for quantity and not book reviewing so maybe we can win a prize! So unless there is a book that is AMAZING only snippet reviews until it's over :)

The Only Woman in the Room: Why Science is Still a Boys Club by Eileen Pollack. So this woman busted her ass her whole life and got into Yale (in the 70s) for Physics. She was one of the very few women in the "hard science" departments and she really struggled in part to the systematic sexism that she came up against. There were some definitely good and valid points in this book but I couldn't get over the fact that when she was at Yale and there were so few women she looked at all of them as competition like, she really wanted to be the first woman to graduate from Yale with a BS in Physics. And the whole time I'm sitting here thinking "oh, you feel isolated and stupid and unprepared and so damn lonely I bet those girls feel that way too. So maybe get off of your own pedestal of eliteness and go talk to those girls and make yourself a support system and help support them too!". It REALLY irritated me.

Time Travel: A History by James Gleick. I picked up this book because the author was one of the talking heads on a documentary series that I was watching about science fiction movies and I thought it sounded interesting. It was interesting but there was also a lot of physics in it. I learned a lot though! A few quick facts: 

-Mark Twain had a telephone installed in it's house the very year it was patented (maybe the first in a private residence?) and two years before he got a typewriter!

-There is a section about Daylight Savings and Time Zones - did you know that when the Nazis invaded France they had everyone reset their clocks to the same time as Berlin? Megalomaniac power move.

-Isaac Asimov invented the word "robotics". (Was also a bit of a toolbag, wrote great stories though)

-Ursula LeGuin went to the same school as Philip K Dick

Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters by Mark Dunn. This is indeed a novel of letters. It's told in letters back and forth between people. And it's also about a town that's whole life changes once letters start falling off of a statue. That town council (who be cray) tell the residents that once a letter falls off it can never be used again. Then in the letter between people there are no mentions of that letter ever again. Like when the "D" falls off and they have to rename all of the letters of the week. I thought this book might be a little gimmicky but I was intrigued by the premise. I was really pleased when I found it to be a super compelling book about a city gone mad.

I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong. Microbes are EVERYWHERE. In your eyelashes, on your hands, on your pets in your car. These tiny microscopic organisms influence your life and health in more ways than you possibly know. I am not a person with a lot of scientific background but have worked at a medical school with neuroscience researchers for the last 5(!) years and have grown to really appreciate interesting science writing, so I picked this book up. I was surprised (but shouldn't have been) by all the way that neuroscience factored into this book. The brain and your gut (the gut microbiome, as the cool kids call it) are linked closely, often in ways we don't understand. Someday maybe I'll tell you how I ended up with the job of "secondary poop wrangler" for a study that involves that exactly.

Two real interesting things from this book - did you know that your emotional state effects your rate of digestion? We know this in part because there was a guy in the 1800s that got shot in the stomach and it never healed right so a doctor could physically watch his stomach acid digest food. Sometimes even dangling food through the hole and pulling it in and out. (It was a big hole). Secondly, there was a very interesting study about pregnant mice - if a pregnant mouse was injected with an infection (measles, influenza - something microbial) the baby mouse would develop just fine but then at adolescence would start developing symptoms that to scientists look like schizophrenia and autism in humans. One of my coworkers is getting his PhD and is studying schizophrenia in developing brains and does a very similar study to try to figure out if we can do anything to prevent or predict if someone will get schizophrenia. Science ya'll. We are doing big things when we can go to work. Damn pandemic.