Natural Causes: an epidemic of wellness, the certainty of dying, and killing ourselves to live longer

Prolific political activist and investigative journalist Barbara Ehrenreich has here taken on the--in her view misguided--culture of obsessive "fitness" and keeping people alive at all costs. She challenges some of the evidence (or lack thereof) and precepts of preventive medicine, mindfulness, and the belief we have control over our bodies. But she also ponders some interesting developments in understanding cell biology--especially those we consider dysfunctional, like cancer--such as the scientific quandary of why our immune systems sometimes turn against us. The review from the New York Times sums it up well:
"Nothing in modern life prepares us for the leaving of it. We treat aging as an outrage or, worse, as a sin. In our addiction to betterment, we’ve replaced “health” — an absence of sickness — with the amorphous “wellness” and a flurry of overtesting, fad diets and pointless “alternative” treatments."
At age 76, Ehrenreich has decided that she is "old enough to die." That means no longer subjecting herself to unnecessary exams, tests, and treatments.  “Not only do I reject the torment of a medicalized death, but I refuse to accept a medicalized life.”
With a PhD in cellular immunology, she is certainly qualified to offer an informed opinion on these matters.
Additional reviews from The Guardian, the Washington Post, The Atlantic and Kirkus.

American by Day

Can't remember where I heard about this book but I am glad I read it. This is a sequel to Derek B. Miller's Norwegian by Night, a Dagger Award winner eventually published in a dozen languages, featuring the same protagonist, Chief Inspector Sigrid Ødegård of the Oslo police. Miller is American, but married to a Norwegian woman and they live in Oslo. He has a rather impressive academic and real world resume including a PhD in international relations from the University of Geneva.
Sigrid has recently been involved in shooting a man to death and, although the shooting was ruled as justified, it has left her questioning herself. She takes leave to visit her father and finds out from him that her brother, Marcus, who has lived in the United States for 20 years, has gone missing. Moreover, Sigrid's father, has already bought her a plane ticket to go to the U. S. to find him.  So she does. But in some ways that is the least of the story, for this is a look at America from a European point of view, in particular our culture around guns and individualism and race. The characters are fascinating,  provocative, and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny. It seems like an odd combination of philosophy, humor, mystery, and literary fiction...but it works.
It's 2008 in the run-up to the Obama-McCain presidential election. Set in sultry late summer upstate New York, which as Sigrid dryly observes is still south of Venice, Sigrid has her suitcase stolen within minutes of arriving at her brother's empty house, which is now occupied by a prostitute who claims Marcus gave her the keys when he left. Sigrid teams up with local sheriff Irv Wylie, and his deputies, especially Melinda, who comes to look at Sigrid as a sort of mentor. Wylie has a master's degree in divinity so takes a somewhat different perspective on law enforcement and the world than your run-of-the-mill small-town sheriff. Marcus' disappearance coincides with the death of the woman he was dating, Lydia, an African American professor at the same small university where Marcus was working as an adjunct. Marcus made the 9-1-1 call and was there when Lydia fell to her death from the 6th floor of an office building still under construction, so he is suspect #1.  Wylie is having to tread very carefully because the Black community is up in arms about the police shooting of a 12-year-old Black boy--Lydia's nephew-- and the powers that be want this case solved quickly and seem less concerned about whether they get the right culprit. Needless to say, Sigrid feels she needs to reach Marcus before the police do if he is to have any chance of staying alive.
Not only was I impressed with the craft, the perspective, and the characters, but I also admire how Miller seemed able to cross the gender gap and authentically present a woman's point of view. I will definitely go back and read Norwegian by Night and maybe The Girl in Green as well. Reviews for this book from The Guardian, the New York Journal of Books, Kirkus, and Publishers Weekly.

Little Fires Everywhere

This book by Celeste Ng has received so much press that I am not sure what I can add. Among other things, this is about a collision of cultures, as embodied by the two main female characters: affluent suburbanite Mrs. Elena Richardson, who has always followed the rules and believes good planning can prevent catastrophes, and unconventional artist Mia Warren, who makes up her own rules and has a child but has never had a sexual relationship. Reading the book felt like watching a train wreck in slow motion. The book starts with the culmination, i.e, the Richardsons' house in Shaker Heights burns to the ground. The rest of the book tells us how this came to happen. According to the New York Times, this is a literary device Ng employed in her first book as well. Kirkus enthuses, "This incandescent portrait of suburbia and family, creativity, and consumerism burns bright." While an advertisement for the first planned community of Shaker Heights offered "protection forever against depreciation and unwelcome change," when Mrs. Richardson rents a small duplex she inherited from her parents to artist Mia and her teenage daughter Pearl, change will overrun the rules. As Kirkus summarizes, "Mia and Pearl live a markedly different life from the Richardsons, ...making art instead of money ...; rooted in each other rather than a particular place ...; and assembling a hodgepodge home from creatively repurposed, scavenged castoffs and love rather than gathering around them the symbols of a successful life in the American suburbs..." Several reviewers have said the book's central theme is motherhood, for example, the Huffington Post asserts, "This story does a deep dive into what it means to be a mother, what qualifies as competency, who gets to decide, and raises so many more questions around the essential role of being a mother. " (see also: The Independent, The Guardian). I would disagree. Although I think the issues surrounding motherhood motivated many of the characters' actions, they are still not the core of the story. Rather it seems to be more about the relativism of right and wrong or the ambiguity of morality.
One of the aspects I found most striking about the story was the vivid visual imagery and examples of creativity Ng employed when describing Mia's work. One has to imagine Ng must be somewhat of a visual artist herself, or at least an avid afficionado, to provide such detail.
 Like the review in the Washington Post, the review from The Guardian was decidedly lukewarm. I am singling it out for a couple of reasons. It pretty much echoed my own reaction, which was, this is beautifully written, but the characters did not engage me. Also because, when the reviewer says, "After all, my experience of reading this book was perfectly pleasant. But the world in which I read it would be indistinguishable from the one in which I didn’t. This is a variety of novel that unnerves me, because it’s extremely well done and yet I didn’t warm to it. So what’s my problem?"--I was reminded of my reaction to Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See--I was the only person in my book group who did not absolutely love it. Additional reviews of Ng's book in The LA Times, The Times (UK), Publishers Weekly, The Chicago Tribune, the Denver Post, the Seattle Times.
There is an interview with Ng and some questions to consider for the book group on Ng's website.

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

A memoir by J. D. Vance that does much to explain the mind set of a significant portion of the American population--the Scot-Irish immigrants to the Appalachians, who have become colloquially known as hillbillies. As always, when you look beneath the surface, the picture is infinitely more complicated and Vance spares no sympathy when calling out the dysfunctional and corrosive aspects of this culture. There is also no question that he loves the people he came from at the same time. His maternal grandparents joined a wave of immigration from Kentucky to the Rust Belt just after WWII, Ohio in Vance's case, looking for paying work and better lives. But they moved in such large numbers that their culture remained intact rather than being assimilated. They still often think first of violence as a way to solve problems, and blame others for their problems. Often fiercely loyal to family and country, they can also be abusive and embody the worst of learned helplessness mentality and behavior, including addictions and welfare dependence. Once exclusively Democratic, now they are largely Republican. Vance, a statistical anomaly for having "escaped" and become financially successful provides his personal and political (conservative) views about the problems facing this culture and America at large. Understanding this story offers insight into the current state of American politics. There is an excellent review in The New York Times, more at Kirkus and The Guardian, and this aptly titled article from the National Review, "What Hillbilly Elegy Reveals About Trump and America."