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Synagogues and books
Mar. 20th, 2010 08:30 amI finally got a chance to go to Kol Ami the other night. It turns out that they share a Methodist church, which made it a bit confusing for purposes of finding the place. But I was not late, and it was very nice. People talked to me; it's a smaller congregation; and it's exceedingly musical. It might be a little more staid Reform than I would like, but I think it's easier to feel a kavanah in a small staid place than a large one, so there's that. There were a lot of kids running around, and even a decent number of teens, so yay for that.
Still, I couldn't help but think, "Wow, there's a lot of het people here. That's weird."
I've just finished two incredibly good books and one incredibly good short story. The short story is found in Clockwork Phoenix 2, which I had purchased a while ago, but not read. It's called "Hooves and the Hovel of Abdul Jameela," and it's the first modern fairy tale that I've read that could be a fairy tale from long ago and far away. It's this amazing story that perfectly balances plot, characterization, and theme into a perfect gem. Very good, as is most of the rest of the anthology. The story is up for a Hugo, and I hope it gets it.
Book one is N.K. Jesmin's The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. Outcast girl gets summoned to The Royal Court to compete to be her grandfather's heir. Sounds trite, but there's so much more to it than that. It's...wow. I won't say that you don't know where it's going, but it spins some somewhat familiar grounds into different ways. Plus, gods! And universal metaphysics! Which I will now proceed to judiciously filch from.
I'd heard about the book back during Racefail '09, IIRC, and I've been waiting for it to come out ever since. Well worth the wait and well worth the price. Definitely on the shelf for re-reading.
Book two is getting a lot of well-deserved press. It's Rebecca Sklootz's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. It is a non-fiction book that I could not put down, which almost never happens. It's the story of Henrietta Lacks, who had her cervical cancer cells biopsied and turned into the world's first immortal cell line. It's the story of the Lacks family, who thanks to race and lack of education, had their lives spun around like tubes in a centrifuge because no one would take them seriously. It's about privilege. It's about the ethics of biologics. (Which, if you're interested, are also regulated by the FDA.The biolgics, not the ethics. As least not any further than we're told to by the FD&C.) And it's about writing the book. It's amazing, and it's wonderful, and it's eye-opening.
I swear, this should be required reading for every science major in the country. If you work in any sort of scientific work, I think that there's a tendency to either talk over the average person's knowledge, or to dumb it down into misunderstanding. It's somewhat hard, once you know the jargon and the meanings, not to use the shorthand that you know. And this book is a clear explanation of why it's important to bring that educational gap.
But tILoHL is also just a really interesting story. I was told in Bio201 about HeLa cells, and that they came from a woman called Henrietta Lacks. And that was it. I'd wondered a bit about the hows and whys of it, but I never went much further than that. And wow, there was a lot behind that.
Good stuff. Go and read. (Sorry about the lack of links; my computer is having trouble loading pages and some programs that use the internet. It doesn't seem to be a virus, and it's not all pages, just some of them. I really wish I knew what was going on.)
Still, I couldn't help but think, "Wow, there's a lot of het people here. That's weird."
I've just finished two incredibly good books and one incredibly good short story. The short story is found in Clockwork Phoenix 2, which I had purchased a while ago, but not read. It's called "Hooves and the Hovel of Abdul Jameela," and it's the first modern fairy tale that I've read that could be a fairy tale from long ago and far away. It's this amazing story that perfectly balances plot, characterization, and theme into a perfect gem. Very good, as is most of the rest of the anthology. The story is up for a Hugo, and I hope it gets it.
Book one is N.K. Jesmin's The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. Outcast girl gets summoned to The Royal Court to compete to be her grandfather's heir. Sounds trite, but there's so much more to it than that. It's...wow. I won't say that you don't know where it's going, but it spins some somewhat familiar grounds into different ways. Plus, gods! And universal metaphysics! Which I will now proceed to judiciously filch from.
I'd heard about the book back during Racefail '09, IIRC, and I've been waiting for it to come out ever since. Well worth the wait and well worth the price. Definitely on the shelf for re-reading.
Book two is getting a lot of well-deserved press. It's Rebecca Sklootz's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. It is a non-fiction book that I could not put down, which almost never happens. It's the story of Henrietta Lacks, who had her cervical cancer cells biopsied and turned into the world's first immortal cell line. It's the story of the Lacks family, who thanks to race and lack of education, had their lives spun around like tubes in a centrifuge because no one would take them seriously. It's about privilege. It's about the ethics of biologics. (Which, if you're interested, are also regulated by the FDA.The biolgics, not the ethics. As least not any further than we're told to by the FD&C.) And it's about writing the book. It's amazing, and it's wonderful, and it's eye-opening.
I swear, this should be required reading for every science major in the country. If you work in any sort of scientific work, I think that there's a tendency to either talk over the average person's knowledge, or to dumb it down into misunderstanding. It's somewhat hard, once you know the jargon and the meanings, not to use the shorthand that you know. And this book is a clear explanation of why it's important to bring that educational gap.
But tILoHL is also just a really interesting story. I was told in Bio201 about HeLa cells, and that they came from a woman called Henrietta Lacks. And that was it. I'd wondered a bit about the hows and whys of it, but I never went much further than that. And wow, there was a lot behind that.
Good stuff. Go and read. (Sorry about the lack of links; my computer is having trouble loading pages and some programs that use the internet. It doesn't seem to be a virus, and it's not all pages, just some of them. I really wish I knew what was going on.)
