July 2015. We're back

So, after a long hiatus I am back in the book club business. After our trips and various dramas of the summer.

Yonatan: On the Move: A Life

Sacks, Oliver

A great new autobiography by the famous doctor/scientist/london jew Oliver Sachs. Now facing death from a rare cancer he writes about his adventurous life in a new light. I hope that it will appeal to you at least out of interest of all the great men he has known.

Noam: Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs

Mann, Sally.

This is really for both of you, a memoir about her life in the South, written by a photographer and illustrated by her pictures. I have had my eye on it for you for some time. I think that you will both enjoy it.

Dalia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (The Chronicles of Narnia)

C. S. Lewis

As you may or may not know I am putting together a library of great children's books in hardcover for Dalia. Daci said that she has enough infants books to stock a public library so these are for the future. I am using a guide to the best 50 children's books of all time and buying them at one a month in the nicest illustrated editions I can find.

She already has Charlie and The Chocolate Factory and Alice in Wonderland at our house, by the time I am finished she will be 4 and have at least a copy of all the classics.

March 2015 renewing the posts

The past few months:


It has been a while since I have written any posts here, and there has been a short gap in the book sending, but now we have a new member of the Platt book of the Month club and I will begin getting a book for Dalia every month so she will have a whole library when she is ready.

I don't get books for Gil, he has access to my Amazon account and seems to be on a book of the week program.

March's choices:

Dalia:

I am sure that Daci and Yoni already have books but I will keep these coming, we have also kept all those books we read and reread to our children, an almost complete set of the Berenstain bears etc...

Noam:  The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer.

I think that both Noam and Catie will enjoy this, soon to be a film staring Helen Mirran.

Yonatan: The Fantastic Laboratory of Dr. Weigl: How Two Brave Scientists Battled Typhus and Sabotaged the Nazis

A combination of microbiology and fighting Nazis, what could be better, strongly recommended by Noam.

October 2014

Noam: A time for Gifts.

Patrick Leigh Fermor

Noam I bought this for Yoni last month and I think that it is time for you to read it. It won't cure your wanderlust that's for sure. This guy, who was a huge hero in the second world war, after getting kicked out of school at 17 in 1932 decided to walk across Europe. This isn't really a trip that you can make anymore though many have tried. I say that because the world has become so much smaller and the differences between nations have become so much smaller. Anyway he walks like a tramp some of the time and because of his contacts, social status and gift for languages he ends up sleeping in a lot of palaces. A great book, thought by many to be the best modern travel book. Bear in mind that he wrote it 50 years after the trip so he is able to see some of it through the hindsight of history.There are two others, just let me know when you want those.

Yoni:

City of Thieves: A Novel

Benioff, David

This is one of those great finds, a book I picked up at a book sale because the author had a Jewish name. I couldn't put it down, honestly, it deserves all the reviews on Amazon, Judy is reading it now.

When I finished it I read a book about the siege and most of the stuff here is true. Of course, there is a Jewish connection. I think that Daci will enjoy this as well.

July 2014

Noam:

The Remedy: Robert Koch, Arthur Conan Doyle, and the Quest to Cure Tuberculosis

Goetz, Thomas

I know you like books about diseases, TB is really the king of Bacteriological issues. Though Selman Waksman (yes MOT) developed the first useful treatment in the 1950's TB remains along with Malaria as the most destructive infectious disease, though in the past, it was often related to creativity. I hope that this book will shed some light on the subject. It is certainly the disease with the most literary heritage.


Yonatan:

A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924 

by Orlando Figes 

I have refrained from getting you guys history books, this does look a little daunting at first. I read this last year and I have to say it is really readable. This period in history is mostly misunderstood and the scale of events is truly momentous. Don't worry I won't send books on the Balkans any time soon.

June 2014

Noam:

In the Sanctuary of Outcasts: A Memoir (P.S.)

See Yonatan's book from last month, the story about the leprosy asylum in S. Louisiana. I keep hearing great things about this book, I hope that it appeals to you as you like both microbiology stories and Louisiana history.

Yonatan:

Midnight in Europe: A Novel

 The new Furst book came out on Tuesday, you will get it on Saturday!

May 2014

Yoni:

In the Sanctuary of Outcasts: A Memoir (P.S.) Paperback

by Neil White

My good friend Marc Kahn from Tulane recommended this. The true story of a white-collar criminal who finds himself befriending the last remaining patients of the last remaining "leper-colony" which is of course in South Louisiana. Probably a disease you will never see but an intersting window into a lost medical world (thankfully).

Noam:

The Paris Architect: A Novel Hardcover

by Charles Belfoure (Author)

Ok, as you know I would happily drop everything and move to Paris. In addition this a book about Jews, the holocaust and an Architect. It has your name written all the way through. There should be a fair amount of architectural detail hidden  throughout.

April 2014

A fun month I think (if you think  the history of TB is fun)


Noam: 

Why Knot?: How to Tie More than Sixty Ingenious, Useful, Beautiful, Lifesaving, and Secure Knots!

Petit, Philippe
(that's the guy why walked the high wire in between the twin towers.
If he doesn't know how to tie a knot who does?

I know you love all sorts of outdoorsy stuff and I read really good things about this book.
I myself still remember how to square lash from camp. It is probably a good life skill.


Yonatan: Less fun but very interesting;

The Remedy: Robert Koch, Arthur Conan Doyle, and the Quest to Cure Tuberculosis

Goetz, Thomas

I have been waiting fo rthis to come out for a while and I am ordering myself a copy. TB remains along worth Malaria as the most destructive infectious disease, though in the past, it was often related to creativity. I hope that this book will shed some light on the subject. It is certainly the disease with the most literary heritage.

March 2014

Boring choices this month though one may be useful and the other will raise your blood pressure:

Yonatan:

The White Coat Investor: A Doctor's Guide To Personal Finance And Investing

Dahle MD, James M

I know that you are a careful planner and both of you believe in saving. This book was written for all income levels of doctors from residents up to practising physicians. I know  you have a financial advisor but another perspective can't be bad.

Noam:

Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

Fink, Sheri

As you live in NO, I think that this book is important. Your Mother is  reading it now and it is making her angry, which means it must be a good book. The absolute inability of the richest country in the world to think through a problem quickly and get help to its citizens within hours instead of days is a stain on the history of the US. If this had happened elsewhere, it is safe to say that people would be in jail but all we got was "well done Brownie!" The physicians involved had to make choices normally reserved for military situations during a battle. An improtant book.

February 2014

February 2014.

Yoni, Noam and Mark: Gary Shteyngart 
Little Failure: A memoir.

I loved his previous two books. We were driving down to NOLA to visit Noam and Catie when we were listening to his interview on Fresh Air (well worth finding the podcast BTW). This is very slightly embellished autobiography. It is,of course, his personal story but so much of it will resonate with us  that you should find it immediately appealing.
Immigrants and the children of immigrants: MOT : middle school crisis : fears and therapy : Parents demanding educational excellence, I think you both get the point by now.

If you want to read the novels let me know, I enjoyed them both.

January 2014

Noam: What a plant knows.

This is an introduction to the increasingly popular and interesting science of plant senses, the book explains how plants react to stimuli and whether they are really "feeling" which is as much a philosophical question as a biological one. They tried to call this field plant neurobiology, but as plants lack an organized Neurological system, the real neurobiologist got upset. A remarkable introduction and so much of this has been found out in the past 20 years. If you want more of this you need to get into some real cutting edge science, but I was stunned to find out that there are 16 different photoreceptors in Arabadopsis, and that plants do have memory. In addition the BRAC gene found in breast cancer is also present in plants and a mutation in the gene that in humans causes deafness but stopping teh growth of sensory hairs in the ear canal, in plants stops root hair growth

Yonatan:  Dark Star Alan Furst

I know you loved the first one in the series. You know I love reading books in a series so here is number 2. Let me know how long we should go between installments.

December 2013

Yoni and Noam,

My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel 

by Avi Shavit.

Forgive me for sending you both the same book but I just finished it and I could not put it down. It has had incredible reviews, and it is a remarkable view of a remarkable country.
This is Israel, written by a liberal Israeli who has access to both the rich and famous and the poor and dispossessed. It is a nuanced story, way beyond the crap put out by the Jewish establishment and the crap put out by the Arab fellow-travellers.
This includes both the critical history and the author's view of the future. This is subtle, sometimes contradictory but wonderful complex stuff and yet very readable.
By the time you finish this book you will have a much greater understanding of the situation in  Israel than you could get from anywhere else.

November 2013

It is Two for one Month (books with appeal to boys and girls)

For Yoni, The Goldfinch: Donna Tart. I have yet to read this..But, I am listening to the serialization on the BBC, I will read it, honest.
Anyway it is an exciting fast paced but literary novel and I think it will appeal to both of you, so it is a toofer.

Noam:
 The Accidental City: Improvising New Orleans : Lawrence N Powell. No, of course I haven't read it but it has very high reviews and is an accesible , yet scholarly work on the founding and growth of your new home town.

October 2013

Yoni: Alan Furst: Night Soldiers.
This guy is very popular now, and rightly so. I just finished a book of his set in Paris immediately prior to the second world war. This is the first in the series. Set mostly in Paris and roaming through Middle Europe. People work for both sides, they try and do the right thing which may mean they end up working with the bad guys every now and then, I think that you really will enjoy this.
p.s. I also sent you the new Jhumpa Lahiri book, that is for Daci.


Noam: Jarrod Diamond: Guns Germs and Steel. I have read this and you will enjoy this very much. How geography and inventions and of course microbiology have changed the course of human events. That's not to say that great leaders have no role but apparently geography and a number of critical quantum leaps in technology perform the real historical movements.

September 2013

Yonatan: Alexander Fleming, The man and the myth.
Yoni, first an apology. I had to buy this second hand from the UK it might take a week to arrive.
This will make you the king of ID for a while. This well thought out book describes the "accident" that led to the discovery of penicillin and takes an approach which proves that it cannot of been an accident but a well thought out set of experiments. It goes on to describe the great showman that Fleming was taking the Nobel prize and all...

Noam: Shaman: At his request

http://www.npr.org/2013/08/28/214525930/shaman-takes-readers-back-to-the-dawn-of-humankind

August 2013

Two science books this month, fiction for Yonatan, History for Noam

Yonatan: Berlin Wild. I read this about 15 years ago. I see now that it is out of print so I have sent you a "very good" second-hand copy.
There can't be many novels connecting scientific research and the Holocaust but there is at least one.
Boy survives in Berlin, through his association with a research lab. A little far fetched perhaps?
I loved this, I was amazed to see it out of print.

Noam: Deadly Companions: How Microbes Shaped Our History.
It is hard to find you a book on the history of Microbiology that I have read. Most of those are either too technical or so out of date as to be useless. This seems a lot better though. There are a number of books explaining the historical effect of microbiology (think the black death, and Jared Diamonds Guns, germs and History) It is from 2007 and does go into SARS etc. I think that you will find it just technical enough and not written for idiots but easy enough to read so that it is not written for academics.

July 2013 (a bit late)

July 2013:
Yoni Sacred Games by Vikram Choudry
I was amazed when I first read this exciting Indian detective novel. It presents a side of India which is rarely discussed and only now is being written about. This book was an opening to his work and since this novel I have read everything he has written and much modern Indian fiction besides. It is a longish novel, but can be read quite quickly. I hope you will enjoy this as much as I did. If you enjoy this then it's fast forward to "a suitable boy" by Vikram Seth the longest novel written in English!

Noam: A walk in the woods Bill Bryson. this is of course, a result of our recent visit to the Smokies. In his usual style Bryson begins with the optimistic aim of walking the whole AT. He tells the story in a way which could be likened to listening to Ian and me chatting about something we did when we were younger, but done brilliantly by Bryson. I know you will love it.

June 2013

Noam:
Len Deighton, Bomber.

This is a rather straightforward story, told with outstanding skill of the everyday horror of fighting a war. The book details a single bomber mission over Germany and the crew who must risk their lives to complete it, This book struck me all the more as you and Yoni , in another age, would have been in this position. The sheer fear of the raid and the crews "who don't come back" every night. Even in what is still seen as a just war, on an individual basis, there is an internal struggle with fear as much as an external one with the enemy. Deighton is a master story teller you will really enjoy this. The companion volume, fighter is out of print I will bring you my copy in June.

Yonatan
FatherLand.

I read this about 15 years ago and found it really chilling. ON the face of it it is a simple detective story but the plot is set against a Germany that won World War 2, where Hitler is now an old man and America never entered the war (a bit like the isolationists and  Pat Buchanan wanted to happen). The story twists and turns as details emerge from history which have been suppressed by the totalitarian government. There are a number of novels which use this theme, but this is by far the best.

May 2013

Noam: the double helix (new annotated edition).

Noam, you asked for non-fiction history of science, and this is the mother of them. The real story of the discovery of DNA structure, by 2 young researchers, in Cambridge. This is how real science used to bE done before anyone really knew anything and there were huge gaps in our knowledge. I think there  is an essay by Aaron Klug in this edition, about the role of Rosalind Franklin.

Yoni: Master and Commander

Well, you knew we would get there eventually if you like this one the box set will have to wait for your birthday! These books kept me mesmerized for a whole year, I could not put them down. I will probably reread them all. They are without a doubt the best historically accurate  adventure fiction ever written. I am not the only one who thinks this either, half the most famous current authors think so as well.

"Patrick O'Brian's acclaimed Aubrey/Maturin series of historical novels has been described as "a masterpiece" (David Mamet, New York Times), "addictively readable" (Patrick T. Reardon, Chicago Tribune), and "the best historical novels ever written" (Richard Snow, New York Times Book Review), which "should have been on those lists of the greatest novels of the 20th century" (George Will)."

April:
Noam- why e=mc2 and does anybody care
Brian Cox
This guy is great, he frequently does a BBC radio show and is hilarious, and he works at CERN. Which in itself is rather remarkable. This is a great book which I honk that you will really enjoy.

Yoni: the hare with amber eyes
I first heard this guy, who is a famous potter, as a podcast from Jewish book week. This is his family story, partly about the very rich Jews of Vienna, partly about the holocaust but it is really a great story.

March

Noam, Berlin Noir:

The Bernie Gunther Trilogy by Philip Kerr
It is 1936 and we are in Nazi era Berlin, the olympic games are about to start, the Jewish population is waking up to a new reality.  Detective fiction at its very best...
The trilogy spans the war years and gives a grimy and bleak picture of life in wartime Berlin for ordinary people.  These are wonderful books, it took the author, Philip Kerr, another 14 years before he wrote the next one in the series. I read them a few years ago, loved the dark picture as he paints the struggle of an otherwise decent detective.



Yoni
Going Postal:

No explanations needed: There is a new TV series on Amazon prime for 9.90, read the books first. Discworld is a wonderful place.