Eugene weekly., December 13, 2018, Page 16, Image 16

Winter Reading
off show. In one fun fact, Ramakrishnan writes of his first
graduate student Bil Clemons, whose late uncle Clarence
was a long-time saxophonist in Bruce Springsteen’s E
Street Band, a role now taken
up by Clemon’s younger brother
Jake, while Bil now runs a lab at
Cal Tech. At one point, the author
writes of an experimental setback
that “looked like it was giving Bil
the finger.”
In an Oregon connection,
another of the Nobel winners
worked in the Santa Cruz lab of
Harry Noller who got his Ph.D.
at University of Oregon. — Carol
Cruzan Morton
J. Michaels Books
160 E. BROADWAY, 541-342-2002,
JMBOOKS@MINDSPRING.COM
Milkman: A Novel by Anna Burns.
Graywolf Press, $16.
The Overstory by Richard Powers.
Norton, $27.95.
The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai.
Viking, $27.
k The Books of Earthsea: The Complete
Illustrated Edition by Ursula K. Le Guin.
Illustrated by Charles Vess.
Saga Press, $59.99.
k Weather Woman by Cai Emmons.
Red Hen Press, $16.95.
k The Alehouse at the End of the World by
Steven Allred. Forest Avenue Press, $17.95.
Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover.
Random House, $28.
These Truths: A History
of the United States
by Jill Lepore. Norton, $39.95.
All You Can Ever Know: A Memoir
by Nicole Chung. Catapult, $26.
California Landscapes
by Richard Diebenkorn
and Wayne Thiebaud. Rizzoli, $60.
I Should Have Honor:
A Memoir of Hope
and Pride in Pakistan
by Khalida Brohi. Random House, $27.
Most books about Pakistan
usually have some sort of terrorist
or Islamic slant to it, painting it as
some godforsaken country. Khalida
Brohi’s book avoids this pitfall. In a look at honor killings
in Pakistan, Brohi doesn’t damn the country for a tradition
that has affected her family (her uncle killed her cousin for
falling in love with a man she wasn’t promised to). That
could be because, in the book, she reflects on feeling shame
about writing of honor killings in an application to study
in Australia. Pakistan was full of rich culture, intelligence,
beauty and humanity; it was more than a shameful tradition.
Brohi does condemn the tradition of arranged marriage.
However, she honors Pakistan and the rural village of the
province of Balochistan, where her parents were married
at a young age; she honors Kotri, Sindh and the villagers
there. She doesn’t condemn the people, because they’re the
key to eradicating the tradition through education. Once
educated, her father refused to honor his own father’s
request to submit his first-born daughter (Brohi) to an
arranged marriage. But, as Brohi says in the introduction,
her father did so because he wanted to offer another way of
life for his daughters. Moved by her cousin’s murder, Brohi
at 16 went on to form a nonprofit that aims to empower
women in rural and tribal areas in Pakistan. It’s clear she
has honor. — Henry Houston
S EASON ’ S G REETINGS
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December 13, 2018 • eugeneweekly.com
21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval
Noah Harari. Spiegel & Grau, $28.
21 Lessons for the 21st Century is Yuval Noah Harari’s
third book in which he shines light on terrorism, inequality,
religion, ecological collapse and the current state of
national and global politics. Harari’s bold observations,
which he develops from in-depth study of human history,
are clever and insightful. Nationalism is a theme that Harari
continues to circle back to while addressing reasons liberal
democracy is in crisis. This book fluidly connects the
biggest problems we face as a society in this century while
offering suggestions that could help us avoid a future we
don’t want to endure. The book takes some broad sweeps
on big topics like technology, the education of our youth,
and the beliefs we hold on to in order to create meaning in
our lives. It’s a fascinating read with engaging questions
and ideas worthy of considering. — Carrie Mizejewski
The Formula: The Universal Laws
of Success by Albert-Laslzlo Barabasi. Little, Brown
and Company, $29.
If at first you don’t succeed, try again. Big data has
rediscovered this proverb and teased out a handful of
“immutable laws” that govern success — defined as
rewards we earn from the communities we belong to.
In other words, “success isn’t about you, it’s about us,”
writes Albert-Laslzlo Barabasi, a researcher who studies
complex networks such as the World Wide Web, genes
and disease, and neurons in the brain. In sports, college
acceptance, wine ratings, ace pilots, academic research,
drug approval, calling center performance, art, music
and business teams, success is a community response,
influenced by individual and hidden network dynamics.
Sure, there’s a core skill or talent, but there are other
factors, some of which can be controlled somewhat. Those
personal action steps are a core appeal of the book as tools