Missing months

I remember falling and trying to stop myself from hitting the road face first.  I remember staying home almost two weeks, going from one doctor to another, and sitting in the sun in the late afternoons in September to try to dry out the open lesions n my forehead.  Since my eye was swollen shut for days, I attributed that as the reason I stopped reading and blogging.  Eventually, I researched concussions online to learn about becoming depressed.  So there we go ... it still is difficult for me to resume reading and posting reviews.  (Over $25 in library fines and missing books further evidences these doldrums.)

I'm not sure how in depth I can write about those books I managed to get through -- in random order:
Shrub by Molly Ivins; The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco (actually on the 2012 list); The Disappearing Spoon by San Kean (the perfect book for the months that disappeared); The Fiction Class by Susan Breen; and Intellectuals and Society by Thomas Sowell.

Let's do Shrub in short shrift.  We have a book swap in the small galley kitchen at work and I traded Fiction Class for Shrub.  I think Molly is witty and clever and can write extremely well and I figured that Shrub as an insider look at W as Texas governor would be tolerable.  Marginally so.  Only because I am a spy in the house of state politics and have had little regard for any of the governors who sat in the Capitol when I worked there, I am not disillusioned by the insider deals and self promotion of W.  His addiction to his father's reputation and money aligns with his legacy years at Yale and Deke.  I did not turn down a single dog-ear in the book and I will re-pot Shrub back on the kitchen shelf tomorrow, hoping to reclaim The Fiction Class to send to my daughter in law.

So on to The Fiction Class:  this book came north with Hammagrael as she visited to rake pine needles early in the month.  Ever so slightly reminiscent of We Have to Talk about Kevin, as the author is blunt about her contrary feelings towards her mother who is in a nursing home.  Both H and I have dealt with this; I could never ask her if her Mom gave her as difficult a time as Nan did me ... but then, that was her modus operandi forever.  The book was a page turner only to the extent that I kept reading Breen would be able to end the book spectacularly.  She didn't ... it was mundane and anticlimactic.

I loved The Disappearing Spoon and decided it could be the inspiration of a new Boticelli like game.  Make up names of make believe elements.  Not happy that promethium has been taken, but how about some of these:
A new noble gas called Kingdum
A new heavy metal called Led Zeppelum
New inert gases called Tedium. Boredum

I had more written down but can't find my list.  Like Kean's Violinist's Thumb and my desire to improve my understanding of biology since the 1970s, I hoped TDS would give me an aha moment for chemistry.  I love books that are histories of topics, Salt, Cod, 1492, and a perspective of science from scientists is interesting but won't necessarily improve one's Regents score.