Getting in Touch With My Inner Fish

Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body by Neil Shubin

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
Shubin uses his simplest prose to point out what science has shown to be glaringly obvious: you have an inner fish ... AND an inner worm (well, let's just say we've all noticed the worm). I adored this book. Mine was the Kindle edition. I only wish the illustrations were a bit more legible (putting on the old reading glasses helped the majority of the time).

What did I learn? That the anatomy found on earth uses the same old pieces of the pie over and over again, just reshapes them to new use. Gill slits become inner ear bits, etc. ... The convolutions in our abdomens are millions of years of reorienting other bits.

Our evolution is written in our very bodies and footnoted by all the other species that went their separate ways.

Bah! I put it badly. Read the book!


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Just like a fish, I have a top, a bottom (hee, I said "bottom"), two sides, two eyes, a mouth ... etc.

Fat Girl Reviews Fat Kid Book

Fat Kid Rules the World by K.L. Going

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars
There was a brief article about the author in School Library Journal and we had two of her books in. I chose the one that seemed the least depressing. Our library copy had all the "cuss words" underlined in the beginning by some enthusiast - until there were just too many to bother with, I guess - heh! But this book is about kids in New York City and leaving that out wouldn't be an accurate portrayal of these kids. The NYer in me laughs when Troy takes taxis everywhere. NYC is the walkin'est, public transportationist place I've ever lived. The only time he seems to have use for the subway is to attempt suicide (okay, and once he takes the subway with Curt to show how Curt can leap over the gates and ride for free).
That aside, I can't tell how accurate any of the other bits are as a) I am not a teen and b) I know nothing at all about the popular music scene. I do, however, know about being fat. I can't say I found the fatness totally convincing, but the story was pretty good. Parents might be appalled by this book, but it's a light read and teens will go for the angst.
Troy, or Big T, is a big guy: he's over 6' tall and almost 300 lbs. Rather than being shunned, one would think he'd be feared, but instead he is too good-natured to be a bully and so turns in on himself. For no good reason at all, he's conscripted by a homeless prescription drug addict to be in a band. Troy's younger brother has no respect for him and his father, retired Marine Corps, despairs of getting the boy in fighting trim. (Now, how can that be? How can a kid totally cowed by his father like Troy is, not be sent out to run laps?) The HPDA is apparently a guitar genius and magically recognizes something punk in Troy's soul and tries to develop it. Troy tries to sabotage himself every step of the way. Now, that rings true.



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What On Earth Is a "Freak" Dinner?!

The Coming of Bill by P.G. Wodehouse

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars
Wodehouse apparently dabbled in domestic romance in the early days. You can almost see him wrestling with his sense of humor in this, trying to keep it straight. The ubiquitous prize fighter is there, the foolish rich folk and the fearsome middle-aged female are all there. The typical Wodehouse way of describing a baby (beautiful to the parents but generally giving the appearance of a boiled egg to others) is there. He's found the elements of his voice, but hasn't polished him the way he does later. I read once that Wodehouse would type up his stories and tape them up on the wall around his office. When he wasn't typing, he'd walk from one page to another trying to find a way to improve on what he'd written. When the pages were perfect, they came down. I mean, does any writer bother with that now? They probably figure that's what editors are for.

I wondered, of course, why I'm bothering to read something that just isn't funny (although the humor cracks through here and there) and then I started looking on this as a period piece and, finally, as a satire of our own times. Here is a story of how money ruins happiness. We get stories like this all the time, we have maxims like "Money doesn't buy happiness" but in this story, too much money actually kills happiness. Ruth and Kirk are happy in their relationship and with their (plainly average) child until a windfall inheritance changes Ruth back into the socialite. Kirk is forced to endure dinner parties with boring people whose only distinguishing feature is the amount of money they are worth. Ruth's sister-in-law gets caught up in the fever of wealth and splurges beyond her husband's capacity to keep up on "freak" dinners and baubles. No one is content with "just enough."

This reminds me of the $2,000 shower curtain mentality of today's (well, back a bit farther than today) nouveau riche. "Just enough" is just plainly not enough.

And that's where people get into trouble. Fortunately, we have lovely fiction stories to show us the way, eh? Riiiiight. One wonders if Wodehouse was seeing this in his day, if he had friends or acquaintances whose lives were blighted by too much of the ready too fast. At some point, the grievous rift between Kirk and Ruth seemed so real (despite the grotesque exaggerations) and so deftly described, that it seemed Wodehouse had personal knowledge of this as well.

Still, I'm glad he learned to polish each page until they gleamed with a laugh or a delightful turn-of-phrase.


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Death In the Family

A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
Rather a thick book for Moore, I thought. I picked this up because I like Pratchett's character of Death and wondered what Moore would do with it. What he does is totally different, in some ways, but when you get down to it, it's still someone who separates souls from the bodies of the dead. Charlie Asher is just more a recycler. Despite the portents of the Doom of the Age of Mankind, the underworld creatures are wonderful characters and delightfully dim. Their dimness takes much of the scariness away, and that's fine with me. I was drawn quickly into the story and stayed up a couple of nights reading.

As for the Luminatus - well, I don't think that was very surprising, if indeed it was supposed to be.


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Royal Revolution

The Prince And Betty by P.G. Wodehouse

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars

Kindle Edition
Wow! What a little socialist Wodehouse was! And how much more violent his books were in the early days! Of course, because it's Wodehouse, the actual violence against the lead characters is kept to a minimum, but OMG! he almost killed one off! And his characters are trying to clean up what can only be described as a section of Hell's Kitchen on the east side!

After becoming Prince For a Day, our Mr. Maude rejects la vie royale once it's pointed out by the woman he loves that he's being a patsy. Then the story switches back to being about her (she started the book). Wodehouse gets you interested in one story and then jerks you out of it to another, leaving you wondering and wondering. But I thought this story was about ...

One thing I have to say about these early books is that Wodehouse appeared to be a big fan of boxing. Hardly a book goes by without a match or a retired boxer cropping up.


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Oops, forgot this one

Piccadilly Jim by P.G. Wodehouse

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
Premises don't get much more convoluted than this. It took 20 minutes just to set up the explanation to my husband. Then it all unravels at once, to the consternation of the private investigator and, perhaps, the reader, who would like it to go on a bit longer.

Jim has to adopt a false name to prevent the typical Wodehousian redhead he's fallen in love with from finding out what a rotter he is (rather, was). Then he has to adopt his true identity as a false one at her urging. Women! Honestly.


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Where's School Bully?

The Pothunters and Other School Stories by P.G. Wodehouse

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
Reading this just takes me back to Palin/Jones and "Tomkinson's Schooldays." Oh, and "If" - of course. What with all the sports (boxing, track) and the vocab, it's hard to picture these characters as kids. They sound more like college (oh, sorry, it is "college") - I mean, university students. I don't think it was adequately explained why Plunkett felt obliged to enjoy his crafty pipe-smoke not only out-of-bounds, but on the property of the crankiest anti-trespasser in town. Lovely period piece!
The sports reminded me of my dad, who ran track in high school and wrestled in college. Although his experiences came 20 years later, it was probably pretty similar (making weight, winning favor from the parental units by competing, etc.).
I upgraded the stars from 2 to 3 when I realized that I was so absorbed in the story, I didn't want to stop reading even to drive home for lunch. It occurred to me after I reluctantly mounted my trusty Corolla that I could turn the speech function on and listen to the Kindle mangle the prose. Ha ha! You should hear the program try to render a drawled "We-e-e-e-ell." And where a section was separated by a string of asterixes, it read each one separately! And the Writers' Guild is worried this will supplant a performed audiobook?!



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Looking at the Penguin cover I wonder why they're picturing a game of rugger when none occurs in the story ... ("dot dot dot")