Everything is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection by John Green

I am not sure when, but I read or heard Ryan Holiday refer to this book as short and important. So on my travels to referee soccer, I listened to this one at the end of March. The audiobook is narrated by the author.

It starts by Green telling of his visit to a tuberculosis (TB) hospital in Africa where he met a boy named Henry, a name the African shared with the author’s son. He then goes on to use Henry’s experience to explore the history of TB. That history is both surprising and horrifying. But the book is not all gloom and doom. The author illustrates some ways we can address this deadly but treatable disease.

The author’s voice is soothing and easy to listen to. This helps a lot with such a hard topic. In the end I found the book extremely well written and even a little uplifting.

My rating: 4/5

Future Boy: Back to the Future and My Journey Through the Space-Time Continuum by Michael J. Fox

I came across this book in my local library’s weekly newsletter back in November. I loved this movie as a teenager (and still do!), so I was excited to read about its making as told by its star. I finally borrowed it and read it back in March. Yeah, I’m a little behind in posting my book reviews.

Fox tells the story of how he came to be cast and his experience on the set of Back to the Future. He was who the producers wanted for the role of Marty McFly, but he was under contract for the TV show Family Ties and wasn’t available. Another actor was cast and shooting started. It did not go well. The producers again approached their counterparts as Family Ties. An agreement was made that Fox could do both if he did them at the same time. So for about a month, Fox burned the candle at both ends filming a weekly TV sitcom and a blockbuster movie. Crazy!

Fox also tells about some of the other details of his time on the set, how he got there, and how it affected his life. He is his kind to all he talks about it in the book. It is a quick and easy read. In fact this is my only complaint about the book. It was over too soon. I wish he told us more.

My rating: 4/5

Every Day I Read: 53 Ways to Get Closer to Books by Hwang Bo-Reum, Translated by Shanna Tan

I came across this book in a newsletter that my library sends out each Saturday morning. It outlines the latest books in all formats available there. This one interested me largely due to its subtitle. Books about books and reader really appeal to me.

This one is a series of essays originally written in Korean. They are fairly short and cover a variety of topics from Read on a Train to Use a Timer to Visiting the Library. I found some of the translation choices clunky. A few of these may be because the book is in British English.

Overall, I appreciated what the author is doing here. And it is wonderful to see the reading life from the context of another culture. However, I found the translation a little off putting. It was good enough, but I would love to see a native English speaker write a similar book.

My rating: 3/5

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius translated by Gregory Hays

Over the years, I have heard about this book many times. Most recently it was from Ryan Holiday. He raves about how this book (and this translation in particular) changed his life. I finally decided to give it a go.

Essentially it is the thoughts of the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius. It was never meant to be published. He used it to think through things and remind himself of the kind of man he wanted to be. It reads mainly as a kind of list of aphorisms.

This book is unique. It is a glimpse into the thinking of an actual Roman Emperor. But I just couldn’t get through it. It was interesting, but very repetitive. I also appreciated the translator’s introduction and how it gave context. It really made the writing accessible to the modern reader. Maybe too accessible. It didn’t sound that surprising or out of the ordinary. That’s part of what made it so amazing and so dull. About three-quarters of the way through the book, I just couldn’t bring myself to pick it up any more and abandoned it.

My rating: 3/5

Here We Go Again: My Life in Television by Betty White

Each April my book club reads a memoir or biography. This year, we selected this book. Betty White has been a beloved TV personality since before I was born. She started back in the 1950s with shows like The Betty White Show and continued into the 21st century in roles on comedies like Hot in Cleveland and a Super Bowl commercial. It was a joy to learn about how involved she was in the rise of television.

She starts with telling briefly of her youth as an only child of very loving parents in Los Angeles. She learned her loved of all animals from them. From there she tells of her love for performing and getting started in TV. As she grows in the new medium, she tells of only a few relationships, one of which becomes a lasting marriage. She continues until the time of the book’s publication in the 1990s. Remarkably, she had nearly thirty years more in TV after the book was published.

This is a quick, easy, entertaining read. While it has Betty’s trademark wit throughout, it also has poignant moments of relationship and loss. I thoroughly enjoyed learning more about a woman who has been a part of most of my life. It made me miss her presence all the more.

My rating: 4/5

Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen

This is yet another book that I likely would never have read if it weren’t for my reading club. In April, we read a biography or memoir. While I was a fan of Bruce Springsteen in the ’80s, I had never heard of him before that. After that, I didn’t really follow him. So I was kind of “meh” about reading this book going in.

It is a little slow and choppy in the beginning part where he is talking about his childhood and family. The language is very poetic and flowery with similes and metaphors all over the place. Essentially what you would expect from such a prolific and successful songwriter. And the storytelling leaves gaps that seem to be expected to be filled in by the context but for me did not quite work. It left me feeling a little lost from what he was trying to say in places. But when he starts on his independent life and starting to make music for a living, it really hums! I listened to the songs as he mentioned them in the text. It felt a bit like having a soundtrack to the book.

Springsteen is a real poet and storyteller. He really gets to the heart of the human condition and shares it in a way that really connects with the reader and listener. While he doesn’t “tell all”, he is very open about the things he struggled with, particularly his mental health. He really did feel like an NJ working man who just happened to make it big.

My rating: 4/5

Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe

Before the recent Academy Awards ceremony, the nominated short documentary The ABCs of Book Banning was available to watch in its entirety (you can watch the trailer here). The premise of the short film was to give banned books to school kids to get their thoughts on why they might be banned. It is well worth watching and is available on Paramount+. Gender Queer was one of those banned books, so I decided to read it myself.

The book is a memoir in graphic novel form. In it the author tells eir story of growing up with gender dysphoria and coming to understand that e was nonbinary and asexual. I have to admit that the whole transgender and nonbinary controversy is a little challenging for me. As a cishet man, I honestly don’t understand it. That’s part of why I read this book. But I don’t need to understand it in order to allow others to be themselves.

This book was exactly what I was looking for. It gave me a glimpse at the life of one real person who lived through the confusion of dealing with gender dysphoria and how e came to understand who e was. It was both educational and transformative for me. I now feel I have a better understanding of what this issue means and how it can be addressed with compassion and understanding. I still don’t completely get it, but this book was an excellent start on my growth in this area.

My rating: 4/5

Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

For Black History Month (February), my book club read this book. The author is a former host of the Daily Show on Comedy Central. It is the story of his growing up in South Africa, both during and after apartheid there. It was educational, funny, and at times emotionally challenging.

Each chapter tells of a part of his life. These include a wide variety of experiences. There was the time he pooped on the floor of his house as a small boy because it was raining outside and he didn’t want to go to the outhouse. He once spent a week in jail for borrowing his step-father’s car without permission due to it having no proper title. Most emotionally and in the final chapter, he tells of how his step-father shot his mother in the head and left her for dead.

Throughout the book, he made me laugh. He also made me feel deeply for the people, like himself, that struggled through apartheid in South Africa and the challenging times afterward as the society adjusted to the new reality. But most of all, this was the story of a boy who loved his mother deeply and experienced the many ins and outs of growing up in a difficult time, coming out of it a wise and compassionate young man.

My rating: 4/5