Dr. Bookworm
gonzo book reviews
These are my riffs on books: old and new, fiction and non- fiction. Enjoy and let me know what you think!
Cathy Luh
Climate Change and Me
In December of 2015, torrential rains caused parts of the St. Louis area to be evacuated. Bill and I were on vacation and saw it on TV. “We made the national news,” I exclaimed. I was dismayed when we arrived home. A great swath of the wall-to-wall carpeting in our basement had been soaked in that…
Overcoming that “La La La, I Don’t Want to Hear About It” Feeling About Climate Change
Wildfires! Floods! Hurricanes! Heat waves! Droughts! And each catastrophe a record-breaker! Weather news these days sends me into a tailspin of despair and anxiety. And guilt. What is my duty? Do I have to give up air-conditioning to keep the planet from self-destructing? Would I? Reading science journalist Madeline Ostrander’s 2022 book At Home on an Unruly…
Mom, Dad, Mah-jongg and Me
Every night, the sharp rap of mah-jongg tiles being discarded and the clatter of tumbling tiles being “washed” echoed throughout our small apartment compound. The sound carried as every window was open to let in the breeze in sub-tropical Hong Kong. I was only six in 1953, but I already knew that the native Cantonese…
We Need Books and Books Need Us
In his 2021 novel Cloud Cuckoo Land, Anthony Doerr masterfully fits disparate people – across centuries, across continents, across planets – into this story of how humans respond to the fall of empires, to environmental degradation, to civilizational collapse. Twining throughout these episodes or escapades, like a vine girding a tree or like an evocative sound…
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Dr. Bookworm 