A reread of The Correspondent for my book club. Also read Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt, an excellent book. Mad Mabel was great!! For my Banned book club, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, beautifully written but a hard read. We did have a good discussion. Next book for our banned club Yellowface. I picked up from my library today The Calamity Club.
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I’m still waiting for a copy of Berg’s Life at my local library. Now, I’m even more interested in reading it!
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I agree. No More Tears was both horrifying and enlightening. It was a worthwhile read and has stayed with me.
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I hope you enjoy Life: A Love Story. if you like audiobooks, it was very good in this format.
I just started reading The Violence - My Family’s Colombian War by Adriana E Ramirez. It is off to a griping start. The book was recommended here but I can’t find my notes as to who to credit for this fascinating recommendation. Sorry.
NO MORE TEARS is a book everyone needs to read.
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I have read and enjoyed No More Tears but I also spent a few years working in the pharmaceutical world and can vouch that I was aware of situations similar to several of the anecdotes: the way they described sales incentives, the reports that went into new drug applications, and more. It’s a situation of everybody does it I’m afraid.
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That’s what I assumed, and that’s why I said it’s so scary.
RE: No More Tears
I also worked in the pharma world (as did my Hubby), albeit not in Sales. While I, too, knew about pharma incentives and physician-targeted Marketing efforts and the constant struggle to keep them reasonable and legit, I was horrified by the willingness to lie and compromise patients’ safety by covering up the efficacy and safety results. That was new news to me that I learned from the book.
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Re: No More Tears
In my world it wasn’t exactly hiding things it was a matter of presentation. Anyone working with presentations knows the array of data can be arranged to give different impressions. There was a lot of that going on in my company. It was all there and legit but turn a table sideways or workshop a submission and it looks completely different. I was young and in low positions so I mostly did what I was told but I can look back now and see what was going on. When I left the R&D world I moved to sales and I got to see that side of things as well. There was a huge earning gap and the big producers had far more access and perks. I can now see what was likely happening there as well.
Fortunately my company wasn’t selling oxy, harmful replacement parts, or anything in those categories so we were not dangerous to people in that regard. However, there were possible side effects being understated, etc. Let’s just call it creative writing.
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Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space by Adam Higginbotham. This book is incredibly interesting and detailed in the descriptions of the various aspects of NASA and the politics of space.
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The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is an impactful story, one I immensely enjoyed.
A Pair of Aces, 59 Minutes, So Far Gone, and now A Far-Flung Life. They’re so different from each other. Keeps my mind out of “rut reading” as I did when younger!
Reading Following the Bend: How to Read a River and Understand Its Nature by Ellen Wohl. I found it while browsing the nonfiction-nature category on Libby, and thought I’d give it a try.
No More Tears is now pushed up on my TBR list.
This past week I read Amy Tordoff’s debut novel ALL,WE HAVE IS TIME. A fantasy novel about a man and a woman traveling in time during the past centuries. It was similar to V.E. Schwab’s award winning The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. It was a delightful read but not as well written as Schwabʼs novel.
I also finished THE REST OF OUR LIFES by Benjamin Markovits. The plot centered around a 55 year old named Tom Layward. He is dealing with life crises from the conflict of his wife’s affair 12 years ago, career and declining health challenges. I thought it was a somewhat depressing read.
I am currently reading THE PARTING GLASS by Gina Maria Guadagnino. It was one of the books from the American 250 Challenge. It is a captivating historical fiction about the relationship between the upstairs elite and the downstairs servants. The plot is about two brother-sister Irish immigrants. The girl is a lady’s maid to the daughter, and her brother is the groomsman of the household. A 3 way love triangle exists among the characters. An interesting aspect of the book is at the beginning of each chapter. Each chapter is centered around a rule from the manuscript THE DUTIES OF LADIES MAID.
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Carole - I finally finished Higginbotham’s Challenger this week. It was very comprehensive and I was more interested in the references than usual. Have you also read Midnight in Chernobyl? I’m considering it . . . just need a bit of a break from disaster stories for now.
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@Lynne_G The Parting Glass sounds really good - right up my alley!
I just started The Daffodil Days by Helen Bain. It is a historical fiction account of the final year of Sylvia Plath’s life. The story is organized in reverse chronological order and told through several narrators - i.e., people she interacted with during her time in the English countryside.
I don’t remember where I heard about the book (just published in June). I am enjoying it and not sure if it will be helpful (I’ve only read 4 chapters) but I’ve been keeping track of all of the characters mentioned so far.
I tried Too Old forThis but didn’t finish- too absurd and not funny to me. I just finished Women of Nantucket and really enjoyed that one- historical fiction about the fire of 1846-well fleshed out characters and interesting social conventions apropos to today’s society. Now I’m reading Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips and it’s rather sad about the bonds of family in Russia; it gives a good picture of the landscape also.
Lady Tan’s Circle of Women. I choose this for our book club. I am loving learning about this time period in China.