Recent Reads

61. Sex Criminals, Vol. 3: Three the Hard Way
This graphic novel series should be great, but it's hit or miss for me. I continue to enjoy the art, the character development, the premise, the diversity, and the sex positivity of this series, but the story didn't move forward at all in this volume. Very meta, and while that is cool, I need more. The weakest installment so far. Rating: 2 stars.

62. The Blue Hour
3.5 stars

This children's picture book is hard for me to rate. The art is visually stunning, and I could look at these pages for a very long time. Simply beautiful. The text however is dull and boring. Given that this is about the the magical twilight hour, I expected more from the text. Now, I loved reading Goodnight Moon to my nephews when they were little, and they loved it too, and in no way would I say that the text was amazing, so maybe the reason I found the text so lack luster with this one is that I was missing a wee one in my lap to read aloud to. I'd give the art 5 stars, the text 2, and will round up because this one is worth picking up for the art alone. Rating: 4 stars.

63. The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic - and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World
Book blurb: In a triumph of multidisciplinary thinking, Johnson illuminates the intertwined histories and interconnectedness of the spread of disease, contagion theory, the rise of cities, and the nature of scientific inquiry, offering both a riveting history and a powerful explanation of how it has shaped the world we live in.

At 20.0% An interesting side effect of reading about cholera is that I'm constantly thirsty.
At 40.0%: Unlike Jon Snow from GOT, this John Snow knows something!

I listened to the audiobook which is wonderfully narrated by Alan Sklar.

Oh the things we take for granted in this part of the world: clean water (well, maybe not in Flint), sewage pipes, epidemiology and the understanding of disease pathways. It's easy to forget that much of the world is not as lucky, and that not that long ago cholera outbreaks wiped out a significant percentage of the populations affected.

I love narrative non-fiction books that combine science, medicine, history and still read like a thriller. Over the past several years I've become fascinated by contagious diseases, their origins, how they spread, how we reduce (or not) the mortality rates and this book is another piece of the mosaic. I was fascinated, educated, horrified, and filled with admiration for the two men, one of science and one of the cloth, who solved the puzzle of the cholera outbreak in London in 1854. Each and every one of us living in an urban area today owe a debt of gratitude to these two men.

There are so many topics covered in this one book, and I really enjoyed reading about and pondering the implications of the sheer number of humans on the planet and what might be in store for us. The only reason I docked a star was because there was quite a bit of repetition and the epilogue contains the author's opinions on bio-terrorism and nuclear policies, both of which while important seemed completely out of context in this book. Better editing would have resolved these issues. Rating: 4 stars.