book reviews and current queues
Feb. 26th, 2005 12:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anotheranonFinally whittled away most of my last stack from the library. Results:
Didn't care much for Queen Christina. Nothing wrong with the book - it was well written and I did finish it, but the historical character was disappointing, IMHO. I had in my mind a powerful personality who did what she wanted, everyone else be damned. Instead, she was an insecure, arrogant woman who intrigued ceaselessly and ineptly, wasted her money on grandiose schemes, etc. I suppose I should be glad that the author wasn't afraid to show Christina's warts, but it just wasn't the story of a strong, independent woman that I wanted it to be.
Vaccine A - regrettably I used up all my renewals and had to turn it back in just as it was getting interesting. Turns out that even though squalene is a simple oil, it has profound effects on the immune system when injected. It seems that vaccine designers tried to make an anthrax vaccine with squalene to get an immune response without having to use actual killed/attenuated anthrax baccili, winding up with a vaccine that did little to prevent anthrax but a lot to screw up the immune system. U.S. soldiers were involuntary guinea pigs for this vaccine during Gulf War I, and the author's argument is that this vaccine is what caused much of "Gulf War syndrome". I will most likely check this one back out to finish it!
Currently on deck:
Sarah Waters' Affinity, a gift from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
shemhazai which I just started last night. Not very far in but the writing is excellent; already I'm "seeing" in my mind's eye the forbidding prison in which the story is based :)
Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues (audio version), another from Shem that I (as well as just about everyone else) has heard about but I'd never actually heard. Been listening to it on the way to work and it is....disturbingly intimate, tales from many women about their experiences and attitudes towards sex, their sexual organs, and more than I can say - both happy and sad. I've finished the first disc but the 2nd starts with a harrowing story from a Kosovo rape survivor that I just can't make myself listen to.. yet. Necessary because it is so revealing.
Laura Antoniou's The Catalyst and Other Stories. I saw the author speak back in December and chose this as an introduction to her work. Fiction and non, highly revealing, snarky, funny and hot. Go get!
David A. Vise's The Bureau and the Mole, about the career of Robert Hanssen, a CIA employee arrested in 2001 for selling secrets to the former Soviet Union. A local story, I couldn't resist - so far, quite well written, with interviews with family members and colleagues that will hopefully give some idea of why someone would betray their country so horribly.
Didn't care much for Queen Christina. Nothing wrong with the book - it was well written and I did finish it, but the historical character was disappointing, IMHO. I had in my mind a powerful personality who did what she wanted, everyone else be damned. Instead, she was an insecure, arrogant woman who intrigued ceaselessly and ineptly, wasted her money on grandiose schemes, etc. I suppose I should be glad that the author wasn't afraid to show Christina's warts, but it just wasn't the story of a strong, independent woman that I wanted it to be.
Vaccine A - regrettably I used up all my renewals and had to turn it back in just as it was getting interesting. Turns out that even though squalene is a simple oil, it has profound effects on the immune system when injected. It seems that vaccine designers tried to make an anthrax vaccine with squalene to get an immune response without having to use actual killed/attenuated anthrax baccili, winding up with a vaccine that did little to prevent anthrax but a lot to screw up the immune system. U.S. soldiers were involuntary guinea pigs for this vaccine during Gulf War I, and the author's argument is that this vaccine is what caused much of "Gulf War syndrome". I will most likely check this one back out to finish it!
Currently on deck:
Sarah Waters' Affinity, a gift from
shemhazai which I just started last night. Not very far in but the writing is excellent; already I'm "seeing" in my mind's eye the forbidding prison in which the story is based :)Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues (audio version), another from Shem that I (as well as just about everyone else) has heard about but I'd never actually heard. Been listening to it on the way to work and it is....disturbingly intimate, tales from many women about their experiences and attitudes towards sex, their sexual organs, and more than I can say - both happy and sad. I've finished the first disc but the 2nd starts with a harrowing story from a Kosovo rape survivor that I just can't make myself listen to.. yet. Necessary because it is so revealing.
Laura Antoniou's The Catalyst and Other Stories. I saw the author speak back in December and chose this as an introduction to her work. Fiction and non, highly revealing, snarky, funny and hot. Go get!
David A. Vise's The Bureau and the Mole, about the career of Robert Hanssen, a CIA employee arrested in 2001 for selling secrets to the former Soviet Union. A local story, I couldn't resist - so far, quite well written, with interviews with family members and colleagues that will hopefully give some idea of why someone would betray their country so horribly.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-02-26 08:07 pm (UTC)Do let me know what you think of the latest Company. If I remember rightly, the 2nd is less about Mendoza and more about Joseph, her Facilitator. I enjoyed it, especially the section of history she chose to build her story around, because it was something I knew NOTHING about!