Alien Earths: The New Science of Planet Hunting in the Cosmos by Lisa Kaltenegger
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The author is an astrophysicist originally from Austria who is now affiliated with Cornell University and the Carl Sagan Institute specializing in exoplanets. The book is written for the average reader, not scientists. Much of the beginning is taken up with a primer on how the galaxy and solar system and Earth formed, then does the same with the origins of life on Earth. Any long-time fan of the television show Nova has seen or heard it all before, but it is good background for the main topic of life on other planets. She peppers the book with digressions about her favorite rock songs or coffee or gushing over scenery at the conferences she attended. I could do without that. The meat of the book, a description of the various best candidate exoplanets along with their desirable characteristics, is saved for well into the second half, and is too sparse for my taste. Even so, I found that part worth the wait. Although there no great revelations, the style is very readable and the topic fascinating, so I enjoyed the book.

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From time to time I point out annoying trends in language. My bugaboo today is the phrase “step foot.” This term has only become common recently. See the graph from Google N-grams below. It’s only in the last 20 years or so that it’s been popular.

So what’s wrong with it? It’s redundant. The word step includes the meaning of foot. You don’t step with your head or shoulder or belly button. It’s like saying “bite teeth” into something or “think brain” of an idea. When I was growing up I often heard people use the term “set foot,” which is fine because you can set lots of things, so foot is needed. They might also use the word step by itself, e.g. “When I step into the room…” They mean the same and make grammatical sense. I suspect that some people with poor language skills got confused as to which to use and simply conflated the two to make “step foot.”

Of course, people know what you mean if you use “step foot” but you’ll sound more intelligent if you say set foot or just step. That’s my language lesson for today.

November Road by Lou Berney
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book won a Silver Dagger award as the best thriller that year. I can’t agree. The plot is preposterous. Bad organized crime guys in New Orleans supposedly arranged for the assassination of JFK. Then they proceed to try to kill off every one of their minions involved in the deal. The person they send to clean up the mess in Dallas is a charmer named Frank Guidry. Then another thug is sent to take him out. The book becomes a long chase scene across the country. I hate crime books where the bad guys kill their own people. That just is so inaccurate it’s ridiculous. No one would ever work for them or join a gang. Yes, I have experience in law enforcement, so I know. It’s all about loyalty to the gang. No one is ever expendable unless they turn state’s evidence.

At this point in the plot I ran into another problem: from then on this book is too much like another Berney book I recently read, Dark Ride. I really liked that one, but I realize now it was mostly a copy of this one, at least the second half. The main character develops a kind heart for a damsel in distress with two kids in a perilous domestic situation and proceeds to disregard his own safety to make sure they are safe. Basically antihero becomes hero. In both books there’s plenty of bloodshed, which I don’t consider a good point, but its much more excessive in this one. If I’d read these in the other order I might have reversed the ratings, but I doubt it. I do like the author’s writing, but this plot is even less plausible than Dark Ride.

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Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This was a book club choice so I gave it a try. The first part is a lengthy detailed account of life in the Nazi death camps during WWII. I read as much as I could stomach, but it’s too horrible to read it all. If I was a Nuremberg prosecutor, I’d force myself to read it, but, fortunately, I have a choice, so I skipped to the second part. Frankl lays out his ridiculous theory he calls logotherapy. I won’t spell out the problems with it. You’ll either buy it when you read it or see the flaws for yourself.

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A Fatal Inheritance: How a Family Misfortune Revealed a Deadly Medical Mystery by Lawrence Ingrassia
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The author is a member of a large family that has Li-Fraumeni Syndrome (LFS). That rare condition is the presence in the family genes of a specific genetic mutation on what is known as p53. The result is that many family members have cancers and die young. There are treatments for the various cancers that arise, but not for the presence of the defective gene itself. This book describes the discovery of the mutation and how it works, or doesn’t, to allow cancer. I say it this way because p53 is not a cancer-causing gene, but a cancer-fighting gene. The mutation prevents the gene from fighting any number of cancers that might arise in the body from other causes, such as environmental ones. There are many stories in the book of families with this syndrome and how the cancers brought about so much sadness and suffering, so it’s not for the faint of heart. The author is a former editor and the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, so the book is well-researched and well-written. It is an easy read in one sense but a hard read emotionally. He is one of the family members who did not inherit the faulty gene, but he has experienced the loss of many of his family members and watched them suffer through the surgeries and chemo and radiation treatments. Apparently to this day, even many oncologists are unfamiliar with LFS. The book is worth reading for those with a curiosity about medical progress or cancer.

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