January 2013

I had originally discussed this concept with Yoni, who asked me to pick fiction over non-fiction. On his recent visit home, Noam expressed an interest in popular science reading..

Noam:
The mold on Dr. Florey's coat.
The history of the discovery of Penicillin and its later development has long been an interest of mine. It is a truly fascinating story because the well known version is clearly a fabrication and the real workers, for the most part, went unrewarded while Fleming the great showman, was lauded throughout the world.  Others, before Fleming had noticed the effects of certain molds on bacteria and Flemings original paper does describe this effect in some detail but clearly the chemistry was too much for him. There is no doubt he was a great microbiologist, he had after all discovered lysozyme earlier but the amount of adulation poured on hime was out of all proportion to his single paper with an observation which had already been made by Lister and others. /rant

This book describes the real work, isolating the strains which produced the most antibiotic, purification and scale-up to mass production told in an extremely entertaining way.


Yonatan:

Sea of Poppies by Amitav Gosh.
I told you that there would be a lot of historical fiction:-
It is the eve of the opium wars and a strange collection of people are washed ashore after their ship sinks. Not only are the characters well drawn but there is a wealth of information about the true heart of darkness of the Great British Empire.
I just happened upon this book on a display at the central library and loved it. There is a sequel which is every bit as good.


Enjoy...

December's Books:

Yonatan:

Intuition: 

Allegra Goodman.

A great tale of academic dishonesty in a Harvard lab, which takes place just about the time we lived in Boston.

This is a great novel by a truly great novelist. Apparently it is a rather thinly disguised account of a true case concerning David Baltimore but I  can't comment on that. The story is quite believable and the interaction of all the characters is close to life. I know you don't remember but when I was at HMS I really felt that people did not make eye contact in case you stole their ideas out of their brains. I never worked on anything this critical and was never tempted by raw ambition to fake anything. Honestly if it is such important work the chances of someone trying to repeat your experiments is so high that exposure is inevitable.

Noam:

Sharpe's Tiger

Bernard  Cornwall

I thought you could do with some swashbuckling fiction. This is, in my opinion, second only to the Aubrey-Maturin series in historical fiction. We follow the adventures of rifleman Sharpe, through a number of wars ending with the Napoleonic wars in Portugal and beyond. Our first destination is India where he is posted after enlistment. This book is a little more wild than the later ones of which there are 24!(I just finished the last one). Many of these were made into PBS specials with Sean Bean  as Sharpe. This one was never dramatized, I am guessing the sets would have been too expensive. It has some similarities with the crazy adventures of the Flashman series but this one is more historically accurate and gets more down to earth. On the minus side there is less sex in Sharpe.

November's books

Noam:

The Namesake: A Novel Jhumpa Lahiri.

I have always enjoyed novels about the immigrant experience and this is an excellent example. There is a great amount of common ground between all immigrants, in particular, the Indian immigration to the United States has been one of highly educated people with clear parallels to our own experience. I know what we did seems pretty commonplace, but my life on three continents has had its challenges and it does sometimes seem like an incredible journey. 

This quote from Lahiri's  Three continents is close to my heart:

"In my son's eyes I see the ambition that had first hurled me across the world. In a few years he will graduate and pave his own way, alone and unprotected. But I remind myself that he has a father who is still living, a mother who is happy  and strong. Whenever he is discouraged, I tell him that if I can survive on three continents, then there is no  obstacle he cannot conquer. While the astronauts, heroes forever, spent mere hours on the moon,  I have remained in this new world for nearly thirty years. I know that my achievement is quite ordinary.  I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first.  Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have travelled, each meal I have eaten, each person  I have known, each room in which I have slept.  As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination." Amazingly appropriate isn't it! Please read the book before you see the movie, which is also good. Yonatan: Jupiter's travels.

Noam received this a few months back so I won't repeat the blurb. I thought that with your recent interest in motorcycles this might inspire you, though I don't see anyone in our family crossing the Sahara by bike anytime soon!

Noam really enjoyed this, as did both of us.

The next month: Saturday and Fever Pitch

Noam: fever pitch by Nick Hornby
On the third of September 1967 I was a bar mitzvah. Something else momentous happened that day; I went to my first Arsenal match. Robert took me and Kenny, I was hooked from day 1. This was in the days when you could stand and the crowd was packed in and could sing and chant. This was clearly another religious experience. It also had a whiff of violence, people would regularly get hurt at every game. I never got involved with any violence (obviously) but I certainly did see some, mostly driven by alcohol. I lost my fanatical interest around 1972 when I went to Israel but they were a great few years. When being a great club involved training players not buying them worldwide. Reading this may help you understand the fanaticism.

Yoni: Saturday by Ian Mcewan.
This book does not have a bit of me in it but it did make me think a little differently. A neurosurgeon (violence averse just like most of us) and the violence which transforms his family. I took this to Israel expecting it to read like atonement, all upper class twerps and a kid that needs a smack around the head. It was nothing like that at all and I think you will love it, all be it rather English.

Month 2

Month 2

Noam:
Jupiter's travels: I thought a long time whether to even let you know of this book's existence because once you read it you are going to want to go get a bike license and ride round the world.
Please wait a few years!. The story of a guy and his trusty Triumph bike and the round the world journey he takes, without cellphones or sponsorship. I actually went out and looked at books about crossing the Sahara on a bike after I read this but luckily it looked rather dangerous. It certainly gives you wunderlust. You remember that I had driven a bike across parts of Europe and that this might be considered the next step, but as you read you will see how skilled he is at getting the machine fixed as it has a tendency (as old British bikes do) to break down all the time.
You should both enjoy this one.


Yoni:
The adventures of Goodnight and Loving. About as fiction as they come without being science fiction!
The adventures of a bored English lawyer as he travels the globe encountering different and interesting people. Well written and very funny, there is a philately tie-in and a Texas tie-in (which you might guess from the title. I can't remember how I found this (you are getting a second-hand copy as it is no longer in print) the author is well known but not for farce comedy such as this. But I loved it from the first few pages and amazingly your mother did too. It probably won't make you want to collect stamps, but there is always a chance!
Enjoy.

Month 1-July 2012


Yoni: Changing Places by David Lodge


I first read this book in Gottingen in 1982. I was working for six weeks at the forest institute of the University of Gottingen. We heard a BBC radio 4 book show about the book and amazingly they had it in stock at the university bookstore. I enjoyed this book on a number of levels, firstly, I was just getting involved in real academic life and the central theme is one of publishing and tenure. On another level there is a theme of comparing life in the United States and England which, as you can imagine, I also found interesting (I always assumed that we would come here on post-doc). It is very funny and there is a chance to learn about the trends in literary criticism and semiotics which may make for useful conversation one day. The Jewish character is funny and well crafted. Many of Lodge's campus novels (there are 3 in this book) have the same cast dropping in and out but this one really features Morris Zapp, who is supposed to be based on the real Jewish intellectual Stanley Fish. I hope you enjoy it.


Noam: Enemy Coast Ahead: Guy Gibson


Growing up in post-war England almost everybody's Father (including your Grandfather) fought in WW2 my generation was brought up on its heroes and Guy Gibson loomed larger than most. Of course, some of this was just wartime propaganda but not Guy, he was the real deal as his autobiography shows. The combination of scientific development (by Barnes Wallace) and heroism by Gibson and the other RAF personal lead to the ability to strike at huge dams deep in Germany. They actually managed to destroy two of them with the innovative "bouncing bomb" (the real effect on German industrial production is now disputed). But they managed and what has become clear to me after recently revisiting the movie "The Dambusters" was how young they all were. Sometimes when my medical students are moaning to me about something trivial I am reminded of these pilots and crew members, their average age was 21, and they put their lives on the line for a daring mission. I am not saying that my generation or yours would not do the same thing if tested by war, but their achievements were remarkable. Lets hope we are never tested in the same way. BTW I also made the Airfix kit of the bomber which amazingly is still being produced.

Welcome to the Mark Platt Book of the Month Club.

Here is the idea:- Every month I will send each of my older sons a new book, something that really left an impression on me when I first read it.
I have decided not to use much non-fiction, simply for the fact that I don't think that either of them has the time to read too much non-fiction. I will be posting the  reasons for my choices