Mona's Eyes by Thomas Schlesser

This is originally a French book by an art professor at École Polytechnic in Paris, translated by Hildegard Serle. It is actually a book that surreptitiously instructs on how to admire/study major works of art by interweaving a story in 52 chapters. Apparently, the ruse has worked and it was a best-seller in Europe and has been translated in thirty-eight languages.

Mona is a ten year old girl who suddenly loses her eyesight completely. As the parents are taking her to the hospital, the vision returns inexplicably after about an hour. Doctors cannot pinpoint the cause of the episode but guess at a TIA (transient ischemic attack). MRI does not reveal anything untoward. The doctor recommends that the parents consult a child therapist. 

An appointment with a therapist is scheduled for every Wednesday and Mona is to be taken to the therapist by her grandfather whom she calls Dadé. Dadé welcomes the task, except that he does not think that a therapist is what Mona needs. Instead he takes Mona to the museum and shows her just one work of art on every Wednesday. Mona must carefully study the work quietly for at least 10-15 minutes and after that both of them discuss the features of the piece. While Mona is studying the work, the author describes many details of the art, the artist and the reasons for the importance of the piece.  

The novel is structured in 52 chapters for the weeks in the year with each chapter devoted to the work visited by Mona and Dadé. Each chapter begins with a part about Mona and her time in school with her friends or when she is at home with her parents who are going through their own problems. Then the chapter continues with her and Dadé going to a museum where there is about a page-long description of the work of art and the following interaction between the two. This structure works quite well to keep the reader engaged, even though the accompanying story is not that interesting. But, a non-fiction book with 52 chapters that just describes different works of art could never hold a casual reader engaged. This structure appears to do that. 

The book jacket is a large double fold-out poster that has small reproductions of all the 52 works of art numbered in order of the chapters. So, it is easy to follow the description of each piece with its photo on the book jacket. However, all the photos are no more than about 2-3 inches in size and too small to see the details described in the text. It would have been much better if there were full page size photos with each chapter. 

The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant

One really should read this book after a visit to Florence, Italy and having some time spent there. This is a historical novel woven around the time just after the death of Lorenzo Medici, or Lorenzo the Magnificent who was a great patron of the arts during the Medicis' domination of Florence. That was when renaissance was in full swing.

The title of the book makes you think that the story has something to do with the painting of the same name by Sandro Botticelli. The painting is in the Uffizi museum in Florence. Neither the painting nor Botticelli plays any part in the story. 

The book is written in first-person by Alexandra as her autobiography. Alexandra is from a moderately wealthy family in Florence. She is too tall and not very good-looking, and she loves to paint, which is not something women of that age are expected to do. She is also well-educated in Latin and Greek. That is another quality that women are not encouraged to possess. Women are expected to find a good husband as soon as they reach child-bearing age. But, who would marry such a unique or unconventional woman? So, the mother marries her off to a much older man, Cristoforo, who is well-off. Not only does Cristoforo prefer men but he is also in love with Alexandra's brother, who was actually instrumental in suggesting the match! 

Alexandra is attracted to a reclusive painter. He was hired to construct the family's chapel and to paint the chapel's frescos that depict the family members in the roles of the religious characters in the frescos, as it was customary for wealthy families of those times. But as she is married off to Cristoforo she discovers to her shock of his proclivity for the other sex and she is only expected to produce an heir after one belabored sexual encounter with Cristoforo. The redeeming feature of this arrangement is that Cristoforo is erudite and perfectly fine with Alexandra's education and her desire to paint.

Anyway, I am not sure if I read the whole book with interest because the story is good as is the writing, or because of my recent visit to Florence this summer and my bingeing of the Netflix series, Medici the Magnificent, right after my return from Tuscany. As I read the book it felt as if I was back in Florence since I had recently visited so many of the places mentioned in the book and I could put faces, albeit of the actors in the series, to the characters in the book. But, I did pick up the book in the library because of its title and cover, which I have already said has nothing to do with the story, to support the old adage, "Don't judge a book by its cover".

Exiles by Mason Coile

I don't remember where I saw the reference to this book, but the description made it intriguing since it sounded similar to The Martian by Andy Weir. In this case there are three astronauts sent to Mars where their base is supposed to be waiting for them built by three robots sent three years earlier to build the base.

When the astronauts arrive on Mars they realize that something is not quite right. First, they try to enter the base and their code does not work since it has been changed by the robots. Second, one robot is missing and supposedly on the lam according to the two remaining robots. Third, the robots were originally only designated as 1, 2 and 3. Now they have all named themselves, Alex, Wes and Shay. The robots were supposed to be gender-neutral but one of them, Shay "claims to be a female". One of the three atraonauts is a female too and the two "females" appear to form a common bond, based on the gender-bias that is often seen between males and females. 

There appears to be an alien entity lurking outside based on external sounds, some damage to the base and also supposed sightings by Shay. Maybe the sounds and the damage was done by Alex, the missing robot and not a Martian. The narrator whose name we never find out, is the only female astronaut on the team and has a lot of issues related to her parents. Mother is dead and the father committed suicide. 

Anyway, I don't think that this book as going to become anyone's favorite, but it will kill some time if you keep at it. This is just a science fiction story and that is it. The Martian was at least a little bit inspiring if you wanted your kid to follow STEM studies.

Empress of the Nile by Lynne Olson

This was another book on my wife's book club. So, I read it. Before I read this book, I had never any overpowering urge to visit Egypt. But, now that I read this book, I decided to go see the treasures of Egypt and booked a two week tour of Jordan and Egypt. The book is about a French archeologist, Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt, who was an Egypt expert. She spent her life pursuing archeology in Egypt to uncover the buried ~4000-5000 year history of the Pharonic period. Her accomplishment were many but the main accomplishment that sticks out was her initiating the prevention of inundation of the Abu Simble temple when the Aswan dam was built.

Before her urging, the result that many of the old Egyptian treasures such as many of the Nubian temples were going to drown in the reservoir created by the construction of the Aswan dam on the Nile was accepted as the price to be paid for progress expected by the construcuction of the dam. Nobody had given any thought to the loss of priceless thousands of years of history when the reservoir waters would rise and the old temples built by the Nile river upstream of the dam would be underwater. If anyone gave that loss a fleeting thought, it occured to no one to try to save them. Not until a young archeologist from France who had been working in the area, raised an alarm and started pushing for the possibility of physically moving the temples. Remember that these temples were carved into the sandstone cliffs next to the river and many of them were immense. The four statues of Rameses II are each 66 feet tall. The statues in the smaller temple dedicated to Nefertari has six statue of the king and queen, each is about 33 feet high. Anyone who suggested moving these temples and the statues must have been laughed out of the room. However, she persisted and managed to cobble together a coalition of UNESCO and a number of nations to raise funds to move the temples. Jaqueline Kennedy was a fan of Egyptian history and she also got involved and convinced her husband, John Kennedy, who was the president at the time, to fund a large chunk of the money. Anyway, it is an interesting book and describes a lot more of Christiane's life including her involvement in the French resistance during the second world war and her encounters with the Germans during that time.

My little quibble about the book is that the title "Empress of the Nile" seems a little over-reaching and there are some chapters that have nothing to do with Christiane Desroches but only with other aspects of Egyption hisgtory. Also, the book would have been better served if it had a lot more photos of the archeological digs and the rescue effort. Other than that, the book is an interesting read.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynn Truss

 Now, this is not my usual type of a book that I blog about. But, I loved it and anyone who obsesses about punctuation will find this book informative and entertaining. This is not a book about grammar but mostly about punctuation! The author writes in the preface that she did not think that the words "runaway" and "bestseller" would ever be associated with this book. But, they are. In the UK and the USA.

The cover illustrates beautifully what a difference a comma can make in the meaning of a sentence. You know how many books have a quote or a pithy statement on a page before the start of the book. This book has the following statement.

To the memory of the striking Bolshevik printers of St. Petersburg, who in 1905, demanded to be paid the same rate for punctuation marks as for letters, and thereby directly precipitated the first Russian Revolution.

I don't know how true it is that the demand for payments for punctuation marks precipitated the Russian revolution but it certainly sounds good to all the English grammar-sticklers. I am one. Not a good one though, and I keep The Little, Brown Handbook next to me while writing. I could blog about that grammar book in the future if I feel up to it. 

Anyway, back to the "Panda Book". This is not a grammar book and does not claim to be one. It is basically about the beef that Truss has with sloppy writers. There are chapters on apostrophes, commas, colons and semicolons and dashes. Truss includes sloppy punctuation examples, the most well-known may be the missing apostrophe in the title of the movie, "Two Weeks Notice." This is the sort of thing that grates on Truss's nerves like fingernails on a chalkboard. But then, commas are also often overused. Here, I am tempted to include a sentence that I loved from another book that I have blogged about, 
"A Gentleman in Moscow" by Amor Towles. Referring to a run-on sentence, Towles writes, "Here, indeed was a formidable sentence---one that was on intimate terms with the comma, and that held the period in healthy disregard." I wish that I could have written this sentence.

 

Truss is funny with a dry wit, just as the British can be. If not anything else, you will have fun reading the book. You might even learn some grammar faux pas that you might be able to avoid in your future writings. (That was a plural faux pas, by the way. If I were to be speaking, I would have said, "fo paz".)

Bright Objects by Ruby Todd

 I don't temember where I got the recommendation for this book. But, I must have since I had it put on Hold at my library and now that it is overdue, I am getting reminders from the library that I cannot renew it since it is on hold for someone else. Why is it overdue and still have not returned it? I will get to it.

The author Ruby Toddd has a PhD in writing and literature, and it shows! The writing is certainly Piled Higher and Deep.  The boook is 1% story and 99% atmosphere-building and emotion-describing. the background just goes on and on for pages. You feel like saying, "Please stop, already!". Often, I skipped paragraphs without missing the story-line. But, some people liked it. So, what can I say! Praise for the book on the back of the jacket include words like, - mesmerizing, profound tale of obsession, immence grace and beauty, gripping, thrilling ....

The story is tied to the arrival of a bright comet in the southern Australian sky. (The author is from Melbourne, Australia.) Sylvia's husband of two years, Christopher, is killed in a hit-and-run car accident at a time that coincides with the initial detection of the comet. Sylvia is convinced that the driver of the car that hit them was a local policeman who happened to also run his car into a tree not too far from the accident location about 15-20 minutes later. Sylvia is concinced that he did this on purpose to hide the damage to his car caused when he hit Sylvia's car.  Also, other potential witness claims not to recall anything and Sylvia is convinced that the witness was paid off by the cop. Sylvia is obsessed with trying to run her own investigation to bring justice, hence the suspense, and also deciding to end her own life when the comet reaches its maximum brightness, hence the "literary mystery that describes a profound tale of obsession".

Sylvia meets Theo St John, after whom the comet is named because he was the first astronomer to discover the comet. A parallel storuy that is woven with Sylvia's is that of Joseph, a local cult-leader, who is obsessed with the comet. Joseph sees the arrival of the comet as a devine sign that anyone who dies at the time of the maximum brightness of the comet will reach a higher dimension of the universe.

One does get sucked into the stories and wants to know how all this is going to end. I did and slogged through all the pages and pages of prose to reach the end of the novel. I guess, that is what an author wants. Would I recommend it? Meh. If you think you can get through the "literary prose", knock yourself out.

Damascus Station by David McCloskey

 I like novels by Mitch Herron who writes the Slow Horses series. So, I asked Google who else writes books like that and David McCloskey popped up. This is the first McCloskey book I borrowed from the library.

I think I will read others by this author. This is a pretty engaging story about CIA's actions in Syria. Apparently, McCloskey is an ex-CIA guy according to the book jacket. Also, he has endorsements by General David Patraeus (claiming this to be the best spy novel he ever read), ex-CIA station chief and a former Navy Seal and sniper wondering how CIA allowed this novel "to see the light of day". So, if these are all real endorsements that's pretty pursuading.

There are lots of CIA tradecraft descriptions to give the story authenticity. Forbidden love between a CIA agent-handler and his source seems to be a rarity in spy novels. But then , as usual, good guys are invincible and the bad guys are no match for the good guys. 

The story flows well and the book is definitely a "non-put-downer" once you start it. I wonder how close are the CIA-actions in this book to things that the CIA actually does. We all know how accurate their intelligence worked out before 9/11.