The Emperor of Maladies by Siddhartha Mukehjee

 100 Best Books of the 21st Century (New York Times)

The Emperor of Maladies (2010)

by Siddhartha Mukehjee

#84

   I'm wrapping up the non-fiction portion of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century (New York Times) list.  I'm not sure if I'm going to do the fiction portion, since most of the books I haven't read from that part of the list are books I already know about and don't want to read.   I'm busy enough with my day job these days that I don't feel compelled to read as much during my leisure time.  I listened to the Audiobook version over a period of months.  It's a 22 hour listen, and frankly, 22 hours of listening to the history of the treatment of cancer proved to be a bit of a slog. 

   The take-away is that curing cancer is incredibly complicated because cancer itself is incredibly complicated.  Really, the history of cancer is the history of medicine itself.  No disease has attracted more attention from scientists seeking a cure, and The Emperor of Maladies was written at the cusp of the modern period, where a decline in the cost of genetic sequencing of individuals has made "curing cancer" a realistic prospect for a small but growing cohort of sufferers.   The major issue, as it turns out, is that each cancer is genetically different, and a cure requires sequencing the genetics of the cancer cells for a particular person.  

   Mukehjee does have lots to say about the causes of cancer, which can either be incredibly reassuring or the equivalent of a death sentence with no execution date.  Genetics plays a huge role in who does or doesn't get cancer, as do environmental factors and personal choices, but it really isn't only one thing or the other.  One fact I did take away is that family history is super important- if cancer runs in your family you are susceptible to it no matter how hard you try to stay away from risk factors, conversely, if no one in your immediate family has had cancer, you are more likely to get away with risky personal choices and environmental exposure. 

The Director (2025) by Daniel Kehlmann

 Audiobook Review

The Director (2025)

by Daniel Kehlmann

  I think Daniel Kehlmann is my favorite German-language author.  I enjoyed both Measuring the World- which is a 1001 Books to Read Before You Die pick, and Tyll, his medieval jester novel.  I like his take on historical fiction, dark, but also funny.  The problem with historical fiction is that it typically treats the past like we view the present i.e. a perfectible world with characters who possess a positive attitude about the capabilities of humanity to solve its own problems.  Of course, no one thought like this until well into the mid/late 20th century, and yet in work after work of historical fiction the protagonists evince an eagerness to investigate and solve problems that, IMO simply didn't exist in the past.  People just accepted shit, back in the day.

  The Director is about German auteur G.W. Pabst who inauspiciously left Hollywood right before the beginning of World War II to return to the embrace of the Reich, which chose to overlook his past indiscretions (he was own as "Red Pabst" because of his Communist sympathies) and co-opt his talents. After a slow start, The Director really picks up in the second act, when Pabst begins working for the regime.  After that point, it's a wild ride.

Eviction (2016) by Matthew Desmond

 100 Best Books of the 21st Century (New York Times)

Eviction (2016)

by Matthew Desmond

#16

  The overriding theme of the non-fiction portion of the 100 Best Books of the 21s Century by the New York Times is "getting to know the underclass."  It is poverty, more than race or gender, which interests the voters for this project.  Like Nickle and Dimed by Barbara Eisenreich,  Eviction is a laser-focused sociology-inspired work of reportage from the front lines of the housing crisis as represented by Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  Desmond moved into a particular trailer-park for some of his time researching this book, and the trailer park really takes center stage.

  My abiding conclusion after listening to Eviction is the same thing James Baldwin said, "Poverty is expensive."  In other words, if you can't exist on a day-to-day basis you end up paying MORE for things like food and shelter.  The best example from these pages is the practice of landlords having tenants' possessions removed to a storage unit facility, where they are then charged for keeping their possessions even after they are rendered homeless.  

Purple Cane Road (2000) by James Lee Burke

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Purple Cane Road (2000)

by James Lee Burke

New Iberia Parish, Louisiana

Louisiana: 4/30

    Purple Cane Road is one of 24 volumes in James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux series- about a Louisiana sheriff's deputy who isn't afraid to use investigatory techniques that should probably get him fired.  This being Louisiana, he does, not, apparently get fired in this or any other book.  He is also obsessed with the solving the mystery of who murdered his Mom (aren't we all?)  This book weaves what can only be described as a familiar mix of police procedural and criminal deviousness, with a well-mannered hit man and a loose-cannon sidekick filling in the cast.  I listened to the Audiobook- which- like some other parts of the country, I like because the narrators do accents that I could not do in my head.

Orleans (2013) by Sherri L. Smith

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Orleans (2013)

by Sherri L. Smith

New Orleans, Louisiana 

Louisiana: 3/30

   This is a YA post-apocalyptic title, set in a New Orleans which has been disenfranchised from the rest of the country after a series of horrific hurricanes and the consequent emergence of a fever which infected all the remaining residents.  I could not believe that this book- which is almost entirely about tribes divided by blood types and the raids that go back and forth as people try to steal blood from one another.  The narration is split between a local teen and an outsider, Daniel a scientist with the military who is researching a cure for the fever.

   Again, I was startled that a book marketed to teens would contain so many scenes of cringe-inducing blood theft and minors being raped as a matter of course, but what do I know.

The Long-Legged Fly(1992) by James Sallis

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Long-Legged Fly (1992)

by James Sallis

New Orleans, Louisiana

Louisiana 2/30

   I have adjusted my approach to completing the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America to reflect the fact that I am now driving less than I have been over the past decade.  I have less time to listen to Audiobooks in the car, and that makes me more selective about the titles I choose.  No more YA fiction or struggle narratives in Audiobook format, it's quicker and easier to just glide through the print copy since that category of book rarely takes more than an hour to read, but multiple hours to listen.  SO, while I read at one end of this chapter, Georgia, I'm listening at the other end: Louisiana.  And by Louisiana I'm mostly talking about New Orleans, which boasts 13 of the 28 titles in this subchapter.  Also I'd be willing to wager that many of the other Louisiana books set somewhere else on the map have significant action inside New Orleans.

   New Orleans is not a first-tier American literary city but it is certainly in the group after the first tier- I'd put in the same group as Boston, San Francisco and Seattle.  It's an interesting place, and it has historically drawn writing talent attracted to the anarchy of New Orleans.  The Long-Legged Fly, by underrated author James Sallis, is a great way to kick off the festivities.  Sallis is best known today as the author of Drive-which was made into the Ryan Gosling movie.  The Long-Legged Fly was his first novel, about African-American detective Lew Griffin.  Fly is anything but a conventional detective novel, taking place across the decades to give a fuller portrait of the detective.  This is a great example of how good the 1,001 Novels project can get- because I'd never heard of Sallis before reading this book, and now I think I'll go on and check out his other books. 

Hunchback (2025) by Saou Ichikawa

 Audiobook Review

Hunchback (2025)

by Saou Ichikawa

Translation by Polly Barton

  It's been a slow year for literary fiction- compared to last year- by this point in 2024 I'd read 14 books published in the current year.  This year the comparable number of books is four, and none of them were particularly memorable.  Thus, Hunchback arrived as a minor revelation, a book which boldly does what fiction ought to do- generate empathy and understanding for a point of view which has been previously neglected or ignored.  Ichikawa, who suffers from congenital myopathy, has written a book which redefine the way most readers think about the severely disabled.  It's not a rah-rah look at me I'm amazing situation, nor is it inordinately bleak.  Ichikawa's protagonist and narrator is wry, self-aware and very horny- a situation which is exacerbated by her side hustle of writing porn for the internet. 

  The plot is slight, as one would imagine in a book written from the POV of a person who is basically stuck in her room all day. Basically, the narrator wants to have sex and then there are consequences. I think it's likely to be a memorable read for most readers.  The Audiobook was great.

Say Nothing(2018) by Patrick Radden Keefe

 The Top 100 Books of the 21st Century: New York Times

Say Nothing: 

A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland (2018)

by Patrick Radden Keefe

#19

   I visited Belfast over the Christmas/New Years Holiday period last year.  While I was there, I took a "black cab" tour where a local takes you on a tour of both sides of Belfast- Catholic and Protestant.   You see plenty of murals, and it's clear that conflict by proxy continues- the Catholic side is filled with Palestinian flags and the Protestant side with Israeli flags.  Keefe's account of the "troubles" which is a period in Northern Ireland history that generally corresponds to the time between the 1960's and the dawn of the Good Friday agreement signed in 1998,  has been hailed as a classic, and its inclusion on the Top 100 Books of the 21st Century- I think as the only non-American history book on the list... and the recent Hulu television version.

   I listened to the Audio book, and it works well in that format, since much of the writing seems to come from transcribed interviews.  The major narrative thrust beyond documenting the historical facts involved (from the perspective of the Catholic side) involves the fate of a handful of "disappeared" including a single mother of seven children- Keefe's desire to "solve" these disappearances is the tension-inducing narrative device that elevates Say Nothing above an ambitious oral history.

Far From the Tree (2012) by Andrew Solomon

 New York Times 

100 Best Books of the 21st Century

Far From the Tree (2012)

by Andrew Solomon

#67

  This is a 41 hour Audiobook.  I have been trying to get through it since November 20th of last year.  I finally finished a couple days.  Four separate check-outs.  Truly a beast of an Audiobook and depressing as hell, but I totally get while it was included.  Solomon, known for his journalism and his memoir about depression tackles this project charting societal attitudes towards "children who are different than their parents" with characteristic ambition.  Each chapter was an average of eight hours.  He covers deafness, dwarfs. down syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, disability, prodigies, rape, criminals and transgenders with book-ending chapters about his own experience growing up gay and later experience as a gay dad of a very modern family.

  As Solomon repeatedly acknowledges, his sample is limited by parents of these different sorts of children and the children themselves who want to sit down to extensive interviews with a nosy journalist asking all sorts of extremely private questions.  Solomon is right on top of his major theme: Which is that even allowing for the need of humans to find meaning in cruel fate, parents of these children are by in large grateful for their experience.   One group that was noticeably, noticeably absent from every single chapter of this book was any input from the "normal" siblings of the subjects of this book.  As one of those siblings, and a reader of this book, I was astonished how every chapter featured the parents DESCRIBING how the normal siblings felt or what they thought they felt, but that almost none of them actually were asked anything.

   One of the justifications, traditionally, for warehousing children in these various categories was that it would have a negative impact on the "normal" siblings, which means that in each chapter that viewpoint is explicitly ruled out and ignored.  In some chapters it makes sense- I would hope and expect the hearing and normal sized siblings of the deaf and dwarves would be able to make a go of it.  The next four chapters: down syndrome, autism, schizophrenia and disability- which means basically vegetables, could have used some perspectives from the children in these families who have to watch their parent's lives irrevocably altered and generally ruined.  Of course, the parents can and do need to come to terms with it, but I would have liked to hear how out that ceaseless attention impacted the later lives of the siblings.

   The chapter on Prodigies is a clear outlier in that Prodigies carries a positive connotation, but paradoxically this is the one chapter where the parents often come off as manipulative and selfish. The last three chapters- rape, criminals and transgender were almost impossibly cruel in their details.  I think actually the transgender chapter was the hardest of all- hearing from parents who'd had their whole world destroyed because they lived in a small town and had a child who decided He wanted to be a She at a young age.  Published in 2012, I was still frequently shocked by the treatment experienced by the transgender families with young kids.  I certainly won't forget Far From the Tree.

Moon of the Crusted Snow (2018) by Waubgeshig Rice

 Audiobook Review

Moon of the Crusted Snow (2018)

by Waubeshig Rice

  I think I discovered this book via the "recommended" tab in the Libby library app- which is pretty good if you are reading books in translation or literary fiction.  Moon of the Crusted Snow is a typical end of the world type book with the exception of the perspective, which is that of a Anishinabbe community living in northern Canada (not far northern Canada, just regular.) The protagonist is Evan Whitesky, a regular joe type who lives and works in his native village, a place relatively recently connected to the modern world via the wonders of the internet and power from a nearby hydroelectric project.  Evan and his tribe/band first know something is wrong when the cable goes out, then the power.  Winter is setting in, and deliveries from the outside world have ceased, when confirmation finally arrives from two residents attending college in the nearest patch of so-called "Civilization."

  Of all the many works of post-apocalyptic fiction I've read, I would be hard pressed to name another volume that is so low-stakes.  One of the funniest moments in the entire book comes when one of the village elders asks Whitesky to explain this term "apocalypse" means that the young people are bandying about, and when he defines it, she laughs and says that her people/his people have been through at least two others, the first when they were moved north, the second when the Canadians took their children away to Indian schools.  

  Danger arrives in the form of a white survivalist/homesteader type who follows the tracks of the returning college students, and the drama is in the form of the dwindling food reserves the tribe has socked away for just such an occasion.