Adventures in the Mouse House

60. Dry Store Room No 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum by Richard Fortey

I should have loved this - I love museums, academics, and popular science.

Really disliked his tone and the writing - for me he made the museum sound like, although it's full of fabulous collections and doing cutting-edge and important work, the people who work there are awful (I'm sure he's going for "loveably eccentric" but misses the mark and just makes them seem inept and creepy). Sounds like a place I wouldn't even want to visit, much less work.

The stories of casual sexism and sexual harassment in the past are all explained away by "it wouldn't happen now" and seem to be dressed up as funny anecdotes rather than a salutory lesson in why things are better now. That disturbed me quite a bit.

There's a blurb on the cover with Bill Bryson endorsing this book, which I find hilarious - to say this book doesn't compare favourably with Bryson's Short History of Almost Everything, which is one of the most inspiring general books about why science is awesome and important ever, is an understatement.


61. Her Last Breath by Linda Castillo

Another book with the ex-Amish detective set in Amish Ohio. I really liked the first three of these, but I think the novelty has worn off. I figured out who the killer was as soon as we meet them because they're presented the same way as the killer in the first book.

I still really like the detective, Kate Burkholder. She saves herself from the killer rather than waiting to be rescued.

62. Little Star by John Ajvide Lindqvist

From the author of "Let the Right One In".

The first section of this book is creepy as all hell. A washed-up Swedish musician is hunting mushrooms in the woods and finds a baby girl buried in a shallow grave. When he rescues her she makes a sound that isn't a cry but more like singing at a perfect pitch, so he and his wife raise her in their basement as they don't want anyone to find her and take her away. He's awful, his wife is depressing the girl and the way they treat her are really disturbing.

The rest is about disturbed youth getting together and perpetrating disturbed acts. It's still really well written but I thought it was a letdown after it all started out so well.