The Checklist Manifesto, by Atul Gawande

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Surgeon and science writer Atul Gawande’s previous books, Complications (on the role of intuition, the unknown, and other hard to quantify things in the practice of medicine) and Better (on the pursuit of excellence and why we often don’t reach it, focused on by not exclusive to medicine), are two of my favorite nonfiction books. I’ve read them both several times over and highly recommend them. Better in particular has wide-reaching implications and requires no independent interest in medicine.

The Checklist Manifesto, about why checklists are a good idea which can be used in many endeavors, makes an extremely convincing and well-documented case in favor of checklists. But unlike his previous books, which used specific cases to make larger points, this really is a book about checklists.

It would have been of far more general interest if it had been a book about the tension between set routines and individualism, and used checklists as an example of that. Instead, it’s the other way around. By the end of the book I had read the word checklist so often that it reminded me of my experience reading the book about Toni Bentley's ass.

Worth checking out from the library, but not something you’re likely to want to re-read.

Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science

Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance

The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right

Zahrah the Windseeker, by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

A completely adorable children's science-fantasy set on an Africa-derived planet in which Earth is a legend and most of the technology is biological. I am a complete sucker for biotech, not to mention science-fantasy, and the extravagant invention and playfulness of the world gives the novel enormous charm.

All the best books about plants are written by northeasterners, be they about pruning your office building or growing and maintaining the perfect personal computer from CPU seed to adult PC.

Zahrah Tsami is born with dadalocks - dreadlocks with vines growing in them. This marks her as potential trouble in her conformist culture, so she grows up quiet and shy, keeping her head down and trying to ignore the teasing from other kids. She gains the ability to levitate with menarche, but since she's afraid of heights she's reluctant to explore it.

But her best friend, the young radical Dari, persuades her to venture with him into the Forbidden Greeny Jungle, where he can explore and she can, maybe, learn to fly. He promptly gets bitten by a deadly snake, and the only antidote is the egg of the scariest creature in the very scary scary jungle... into which Zahrah ventures, armed only with a grumpy compass, a malfunctioning digi-book, and a talent she's afraid to use.

Though the prose is overly simplistic and sometimes clunky, the setting is so great, and the tone is so sweet and playful, that I read this with a huge smile on my face. It's also one of the few American children's fantasy novels with an African (ish) heroine, written by an African-American author, AND with a black girl on the cover, so it could probably use some support.

Zahrah the Windseeker

2/50 Dirty Girls on Top - Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez

[ms-mmelissa.livejournal.com]

Dirty Girls on Top is Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez's sequel to her highly successful debut novel The Dirty Girls Social Club. Dirty Girls on Top reunites the sucias (dirty girls), Rebecca, Sara, Lauren, Usnavys, Elisabeth, and Cuicatl, six affluent friends in their thirties who bonded in college and continue to meet up once a year in order to reconnect.

Dirty Girls on Top picks up five years after the first novel which ended (in typical chick-lit fashion) with all of the women on either a personal or professional high. But five years later problems have started to crop up. The girls are either being cheated on or are the ones doing the cheating and the novel (which switches around with the POV depending on the story they are following) shows how they work to get back on top.

While this is fun, easy-to-read chick lit (or rather chica lit) it also deals with issues such as domestic abuse, racism, rape, eating disorders (of both the overeating and undereating kind), machismo culture, homosexuality, sex (or the lack of it) and a whole host of other issues. It's actually refreshing to read a light-hearted novel that still manages to incorporate the kind of issues that most people deal with on a daily basis rather than one that just talks about shopping and getting a boyfriend (although Dirty Girls on Top is full of that stuff too).

It is also refreshing to see Latinas being portrayed as being from a diverse set of ethnic backgrounds and not as a monolith. The women, while all Latina, represent several different cultures. They are black, white, brown, biracial, Jewish, Catholic, Puerto Rican, Cuban, straight, gay, married and single. I can't think of any other book that has so many main characters that come from completely different social and ethnic backgrounds.

The one problem with Valdes-Rodriguez's book though is that she tries to cram too much in. While the girls are self-declared "best-friends" their actions (and the plot) don't reflect this at all. All six of them have separate story lines and few of them see each other outside of their once-a-year reunion. I found myself developing favourite characters and was annoyed when the narrative would jump to a different city and a different woman's plot line. Some of the women had problems and story lines nearly identical to the ones they had in the previous book which made their story lines predictable and frustrating.

Still, with that being said I still would highly recommend this book with the recommendation of reading The Dirty Girls Social Club first.

Tags: a: Valdes-Rodriguez, Alisa, chica lit