The Violinist’s Thumb:
And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code
by Sam Kean
Genre: Science
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Publish Date: July 17, 2012
Format: Hardcover | 416 pages
Rating: 5 of 5
In The Violinist’s Thumb, Sam Kean has done an extraordinary job of taking a complex subject and presenting it in an engaging, witty and conversational style without a lot of scientific jargon. It is filled with interesting stories and anecdotes written for the layman.
The book is structured so that each chapter is inclusive and covers one topic. Skimming a chapter or moving along to the next one does not compromise understanding the material. I confess, I skimmed through some of the information on recombinant DNA and was none the worse for it. Yes, there is ‘science’ in here but there won’t be a test. This is science to be enjoyed!
I had no trouble understanding the material and it’s been many years since I had taken a biology class. I was struck by how much new information had been discovered in the past 20 years. This is fascinating stuff, and easy to comprehend. I realize I’m gushing about a science book, but it’s not all facts and figures; nothing text-book-like at all. One doesn’t even have to understand the science of genetics and DNA to enjoy this book. There are many fascinating stories and real-life examples that keep the pages turning.
The title of the book comes from the story of violinist Niccolo Paganini. He could play a thousand notes a minute due to a genetic disorder that gave his fingers extraordinary strength and dexterity. Unfortunately that ability came with a price as the disorder also caused a host of other health problems and a shortened lifespan. This is just one of the many anecdotes.
- Did you know that a prominent DNA researcher and pioneer in the field was a Dominican Nun? And that she was the inventor of Preparation H? I didn’t.
- Modern cryptology has its roots in genetics as a former genetics researcher built on the statistical skills he gained in genetics as a code breaker for the US government.
- Due to a DNA mutation in polar bears, we never want to dine on polar bear liver. Not much of a problem for most of us but arctic explorers found this out the hard way.
- 8% of our genome is not human. It’s viral and there’s a good reason why that happened.
- Learn about a fascinating theory on the cause of animal hording and the story of a couple that once owned 689 house cats.
I could go on and on but if you are still reading, you get the picture. This is a book that’s accessible and enjoyable for everyone. Even if you don’t love science, I’m sure there is someone you know that does. I guarantee thy will thank you for pointing them towards this book.
About the Author
Sam Kean spent years collecting mercury from broken thermometers as a kid, and now he is a writer in Washington, D.C. His work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Mental Floss, Slate, Air & Space/Smithsonian, and New Scientist. In 2009 he was a runner-up for the National Association of Science Writers’ Evert Clark/Seth Payne Award for best science writer under the age of thirty. He currently writes for Science and is a 2009-2010 Middlebury Environmental Journalism fellow.
Giveaway Information
The publisher has generously provided two copies for me to give away to my readers.
- Contest is open to those with an address in the US or Canada (No PO boxes).
- To enter fill out the form below. For an extra entry, tweet or blog the giveaway prior to 8/23.
- The deadline for entry is Friday, August 24th. I will draw two random winners who will be contacted by email and will have 48 hours to respond with a mailing address. One winner per household.
[Contest Has Ended]
Winners: Natalie and Stacy
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Source: Review copy.
© 2012 Under My Apple Tree. All rights reserved.
Almost wordless: Lots of baby critters in my yard this year. Bunny and chipmunk cautiously check each other out.
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More Wordless Wednesday. © 2012 Under My Apple Tree. All rights reserved.
Mad Women
The Other Side of Life on Madison Avenue in the ’60s and Beyond
by Jane Maas
Narrated by Coleen Marlo
Genre: Memior
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Publish Date: February 28, 2012
Format: Audio, 5 hours | 37 minutes
Audio Listening Level: Easy
Rating: 4 of 5
Jane Maas was one of the pioneering women in advertising during the 1960s, beginning her career as a copywriter and working her way up to Creative Director at Ogilvy & Mather. Her talent, tenacity and a supportive family helped her to succeed in a field that most women could only dream of entering.
I am a huge fan of the television show Mad Men and the staff at the fictional advertising firm of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. Ok, it’s my favorite show. While I never worked in the field, advertising/marketing was my business major and I did interview for a few jobs in product brand management in the late 1970s. I can confirm it was as sexist as ever back then and can remember leaving one horrible interview nearly in tears. The giant consumer products corporation will remain nameless, and I boycott them to this day. But my interest in the field remains.
Jane begins the book with her description of a typical hectic day rising at 6am, walking her daughter to school on her way to the office and often working late into the evening or entertaining clients. She confirms that a lot of what we see on the show Mad Men is the way it really was, but that they occasionally got a few things wrong. There was a lot of sex, drinking and smoking, and always a few annoying, difficult to please clients. Jane once worked for Leona Helmsley and said something along the lines of, “She wasn’t as bad as people say, she was worse”.
What set Jane apart from other women of the era was that she had a very encouraging husband and the financial means to hire a housekeeper. She admits that work came first, then her husband and finally her children. Without this attitude and assistance at home, it’s doubtful she would have been able to reach such a high level of achievement. Most women were not in this situation; she mentions that she was one of the few moms at her daughter’s school that worked full-time and was often made to feel guilty about it.
At only 5½ hours, the audio was a quick and easy listen. Coleen Marlo’s narration was pleasant and enjoyable to listen to, her voice reminding me of the character Joan from Mad Men.
Informative and at times shocking to realize this was how the world was for women in the not so distant past, this was a provocative and entertaining trip through the advertising world of the 60s. Mad Men fans will enjoy it and most readers should find it interesting.
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Source: Public Library.
© 2012 Under My Apple Tree. All rights reserved.
Mailbox Monday
Mailbox Monday was created by The Printed Page. It is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their home last week.
Mailbox Monday is currently on tour, hosted by a different blog each month. The July host is Jennifer D @ 5 Minutes for Books.
From Goodreads for review:
1222 (Hanne Wilhelmsen #8)
by Anne Holt
1222 meters above sea level: train 601 from Oslo to Bergen careens off iced rails as the worst snowstorm in Norwegian history gathers force around it. With night falling and the temperature plummeting, its 269 passengers are forced to abandon their snowbound train and find shelter in a centuries-old mountain hotel. Before dawn breaks, one of them will be murdered. Trapped by the killer within, trapped by the deadly storm outside, Hanne Wilhelmsen’s unease is mounting. Why was the last train carriage sealed? Why is the top floor of the hotel locked down? And, of course, what if the killer strikes again?
Two audiobooks from Penguin for review:
The Absent One
by Jussi Adler-Olsen
A brother and sister were brutally murdered two decades earlier, and one of the suspects—part of a group of privileged boarding-school students—confessed and was convicted. But once Mørck reopens the files, it becomes clear that all is not what it seems. Looking into the supposedly solved case leads him to Kimmie, a woman living on the streets, stealing to survive. Kimmie has mastered evading the police, but now they aren’t the only ones looking for her. Because Kimmie has secrets that certain influential individuals would kill to keep buried . . . as well as one of her own that could turn everything on its head.
One Last Thing Before I Go
by Jonathan Tropper
Silver has begun to accept that life isn’t going to turn out as he expected. His ex-wife is about to marry a terrific guy Silver can’t quite bring himself to hate. And his Princeton-bound teenage daughter Casey has just confided in him that she’s pregnant—because he’s the one she cares least about letting down. With the wedding looming and Casey in crisis, this broken family struggles, bonds, and comes together only to risk damaging each other even more. Lives begin anew, change radically, or in Silver’s case—as he discovers that he could die at any moment without an operation he refuses to have—may be about to end in an instant.
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It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?
It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.
Share what you read last week and what you are currently reading.
I haven’t been reading as much as usual the past week. Yesterday I spent the day at an old fashioned picnic at a forest preserve, happily unplugged from the internet and the phone. A few people were tapping away on their smartphones but I was enjoying the outdoors and the nice day.
The oppressive heat and humidity we have had most of this summer has been limiting my time in the garden and sitting out on my deck reading. Even my morning walk, which is normally a daily routine, has been cut down to a few days a week. I never thought I’d say this, but I’m ready for some cool autumn breezes.
Reading/Listening Last Week:
Last week I reviewed Shine Shine Shine, a wonderful and unique story. I finished listening to Mad Women, a memoir about what it was like for women in the advertising industry in the 1960s.
Later this week I’ll have a review and giveaway for The Violinist’s Thumb, a fascinating look at genetics and DNA written in an interesting and easy to follow narrative.
I’ll be starting the new Nicci French novel, Tuesday’s Gone, this week and I’m currently listening to City of Women, historical fiction set in Berlin during the second World War.
What Are You Reading?
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© 2012 Under My Apple Tree. All rights reserved.
The Indigo Bunting is a small, stocky bird found in the eastern two-thirds of the US and southern Canada and is a member of the finch family. In the winter they migrate to southern Florida and the tropics.
During breeding season the male is a brilliant blue and can often be found singing from the tops of trees or power lines. The female is a light brown and from a distance almost looks like a sparrow.
They are fairly common birds and I often hear them singing or catch of quick glimpse of the male but I rarely get a good opportunity to photograph them.
Last weekend I finally found a cooperative bird singing his heart out at the top of a willow tree. Unfortunately he was almost out of range of my zoom lens. While the photo is not as sharp as I would like, you can still see how brilliant and beautiful he is, almost blending in with the sky.
Saturday Snapshot is hosted by Alyce at At Home With Books. Visit her blog to see more great photos or add your own.
© 2012 Under My Apple Tree. All rights reserved.
Shine Shine Shine
by Lydia Netzer
Narrated by Joshilyn Jackson
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Publish Date: July 17, 2012
Format: Audio, 10 hours | 53 minutes
Audio Listening Level: Easy – Intermediate
Rating: 4½ of 5
When Maxon met Sunny, he was seven years, four months, and eighteen-days old. Or, he was 2693 rotations of the earth old. Maxon was different. Sunny was different. They were different together.Now, twenty years later, they are married, and Sunny wants, more than anything, to be “normal.” She’s got the housewife thing down perfectly, but Maxon, a genius engineer, is on a NASA mission to the moon, programming robots for a new colony. Once they were two outcasts who found unlikely love in each other: a wondrous, strange relationship formed from urgent desire for connection. But now … (t)heir marriage is on the brink of imploding, and they’re at each other’s throats with blame and fear. What exactly has gone wrong?
Sunny is not having a good day. While driving her mini-van with her autistic son, Bubber, onboard she is involved in an accident. The impact of the crash causes her wig to fly off (Sunny is bald) and fall in a puddle of muddy water. She is pregnant and worried about the baby, Bubber is upset, and there is no one to call for help. Her mom is in the hospital, near death, and her husband is on a space ship to the moon. She is tired of pretending to be ‘normal’. The wig gets thrown away and she is taking Bubber off his meds. They are going to be themselves even if it makes them ‘different’.
Shine Shine Shine is the story of Sunny and Maxon and their unusual families. A quirky, wonderful story with unique, well-developed and likeable characters. There is joy, sadness and occasional laugh-out-loud humor. Much of the story is told from Sunny’s point of view and every so often switches to Maxom. We jump back and forth in time between the present and flashing back to the past to learn about Sunny’s birth in Burma, her mom moving them back to the US, growing up ‘very different’, and eventually marrying Maxom.
This is a difficult book to classify. I have seen it called science fiction, but it’s not scifi. The setting may be a few years in the future, but the story is contemporary fiction. It’s about relationships, family, being different, and makes us ask the question, “what is normal, anyway?” If this all sounds a bit unconventional, well, it is. But it works.
The audio was beautifully done and a pleasure to listen to. Joshilyn Jackson’s skillful narration made it easy to follow the different characters and the flashbacks in time. Her vocalization for Bubber, who is described as sounding like a duck if a duck talked like a robot, is not to be missed. The audio is excellent.
The ending was a little abrupt or maybe I wanted more and wasn’t ready for the book to end. In spite of that, it is a wonderfully charming read that reaches across multiple genres and should appeal to a wide audience.
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Source: Review copy.
© 2012 Under My Apple Tree. All rights reserved.
Following are the winners of the giveaways that ended earlier this week. Thanks to everyone who stopped by to enter.
[Winners were selected by random.org.]
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
Jayme @ Beachreader
Gale Nelson
and
Joy F.
Wrighty from Wrighty’s Reads
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© 2012 Under My Apple Tree. All rights reserved.
Under My Apple Tree 