Hello everyone. Welcome back to Bibliophilia Book Reviews. In this post, I will be doing a wrap up of all the books I read in September. This month I read five books. It was a rather slow reading month I’ll admit, and unfortunately I did not like two of those five books. Here are my thoughts on all of them:
1. NONFICTION: Unmasked by Paul Holes
This book is the memoir of the retired cold case investigator Paul Holes and his relentless search for the Golden State Killer. I enjoyed this book, and the chapters in which the author relates how the Golden State Killer, previously known as the East Area Rapist (EAR), attacked were engrossing. However, there were things about this book that I didn’t like; one, the author starts the book with another case, one that he doesn’t go back to until the end of the book when he had already caught EAR and living in Colorado. I understand that the Golden State Killer case wasn’t the only case that the author worked on throughout a lifetime working as a law enforcement officer, but it is the most prominent one and the one that the book is about. All others are barely mentioned. So I thought that starting this book with a different case altogether was a rather weak beginning. I should say here that, by saying this, I am not trying to detract from the importance of catching the perpetrator of this second crime, just that for storytelling purposes I felt that this beginning was rather weak. I also didn’t like that solving cold crimes wasn’t really the author’s job description and he worked on this case mostly behind his bosses’ back and on his own time, so the subtitle is a bit misleading as well.
On the other hand, I thought that this book did a really good job at portraying how criminals affect not only the lives of their victims and their families but also that of the officer trying to catch him and his family. People don’t always acknowledge it but being the partner waiting for your spouse to come home from work is not easy, and this book portrays that spot on. I Liked This Book But I Will Probably Not Read It Again.
2. LIBRARY BOOK: A Taste for Poison: Eleven Deadly Molecules and the Killers Who Used Them by Neil Bradbury, Ph.D.
The eleven deadly molecules this book talks about are: Insulin, atropine, strychnine, aconite, ricin, digoxin, cyanide, potassium, polonium, arsenic, and chlorine. And what struck me about it is that most of the cases the author mentions regarding each one of these deadly molecules are contemporary. Poisoning is usually something you think about as being past its heyday given that other forms of killing such as guns and rifles are more easily at hand than substances such as polonium. But no, poison is still readily available in plants and other natural substances; most people just don’t think twice about it. Plants are such a common thing of our daily lives that most of us don’t think much about them but look twice and you’ll notice that some plants, and/or the substances they produce, are quite efficient killers. Others still are just available at your local grocery store. Like bleach. But I think that the word of caution that the author gives us here is very important: It’s not the substance at fault; it’s the person who uses it, whether to kill or to heal. A disturbing thought about this book though is that most killers featured in this book were doctors. Yikes. I Really Liked This Book And Will Probably Read It Again. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in this topic.
3. BOOK CLUB BOOK: What If? Serious Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe
This book is one of the two that I did not like this month. I read it for one of my book clubs, and I was sorely disappointed by it. Though I admit I had my doubts as to whether I would like it or not, but the purpose of this challenge is to read books I usually wouldn’t read, and this book did do that. However, it was not for me. I do not have a background in physics, and all the mathematical calculations this book talks about passed me by. Had I not been reading this book for a book club, I would have DNF’d it.
4. CLASSIC: Mythology by Edith Hamilton
This book is a classic in the topic, and after reading the newest retelling of Greek myths published in 2021 by Charlotte Higgins last month, I decided to try my hand at this one. And I liked it more than Greek Myths: A New Retelling, despite the fact that the author of Mythology doesn’t entirely stand out of her narrative, and every chapter is prefaced by her opinion of the myths (and the authors she takes them from). I did not like this all that much; she is especially demeaning to Ovid despite having no other choice but to use him in retelling some myths and every time she does, she makes sure to let us know about it in a negative fashion. I gave this an I Liked It But Will Probably Not Read It Again rating.
5. The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
This book is the second book I mentioned earlier that I did not like this month. It was disappointing to say the least and that is unfortunate because it started out so good. It had potential. I know a lot of people like(d) this book, but I was not sold on it. The book starts by relating the political situation of the Dominican Republic at the time when Oscar and his sister Lola’s relatives were living through the Trujillato, and how it affected them year later when they were living in New Jersey with their mother. For starters, I did not like the narrator. Though he is a fresh voice at the beginning of the book, I thought that he was utterly insufferable at the end. I know that Yunior was supposed to be Oscar’s opposite in everything; especially and specifically in how he always got the girls while Oscar never got any. But eventually, I got tired at how many times we were told that Yunior cheated on Lola because he couldn’t “keep it in his pants”. Boy, if this is all you got going for yourself, you need help. And he still has the audacity to call Lola when she moves on and ask her why. Boy, ya ain’t so special.
The other thing I did not like was that we barely spend any time with the titular character. The book is more about his family’s story than about him. And how it is cursed with fukú. This whole plotline becomes pointless with Oscar’s death BTW (no spoiler here) because nothing good comes out of it. For example, (spoilers) his mom’s cancer comes back, and she dies not long after he does. Maybe I missed the point, but I didn’t get why Oscar goes back to Puerto Rico to die. Yes, he’s in love and he wants to experience the physicality of love but why the futility? Oscar’s relationship with Ybon didn’t seem genuine to me and I couldn’t see why it worth dying for. He meets and falls in love with her in a second, it just didn’t seem real. And then he dies for it, what the hell? I Did Not Like This Book. There are better books about the Trujillato.
That is everything for this month. Thank you so much for reading. Next month, I will still try to read as many books for my reading challenge but I will also try to catch up on my series. There are several that I need to finish.
