“We regret to inform you that because of unexpectedly extended duration of a teleconference, the vast majority of our household’s strategic supply of chocolate-covered pretzels was accidentally destroyed due to an equipment malfunction. An expert team is investigating the exact remaining amounts of this precious and rare resource, but preliminary findings cause considerable amount of skepticism regarding ability of the remaining supply to outlast the investigation.”

I’m still on Book Selection Probation, and so have been turning to the group for suggestions. This month, I’m going with Proust Was a Neuroscientist, suggested by my awesome sister-in-law. Since she’s smart, funny and obviously has fine taste in men, I trust her judgment.

The book, by Jonah Lehrer, discusses how the work of some artists seems to have predicted later scientific discoveries. For example, that Proust wrote about how tastes and smells evoke strong memories 90 years before a psychologist first demonstrated the same. Whether there is a causal link may be another story. I’m certainly no scientist, but it seems to me that artists may observe a pattern by intuition or long experience that may be later proven scientifically – which could only mean that the same original data is of interest to both parties and sometimes the outcome is bound to be similar, even if by chance.

The book sounds like an interesting exploration, and the author is apparently as bright as he is talented. I’d like to give it a go. Also, to save you the correction I got from my mother, Proust is pronounced “proost.”

I’ve been slow to get back to books because I’ve been trying to reduce the number of old, unread New Yorker magazines that are piling up in my dining room. I didn’t realize how much I relied on my metro commute to get me through those in a timely manner. As it happens, Bethesda to Metro Center five days a week is apparently roughly one New Yorker long. Especially if you skip the fiction. But the pile is a total waste and the magazine is just so damn good. I was thinking they should make it possible to buy a subscription for someone who can’t afford it, but would really love to read it cover to cover. Like, a New Yorker grant. I’d be into that.

• Proust Was a Neuroscientist website
• Read the New York Times review

I’ll ask for comments towards the end of June and plan to post something shortly thereafter.

• Would love to know what else you’re reading. Please comment below or…
• Join BookGraf on Facebook: Good books? Great company? No effort? Exciting typos? What’s not to like?

As always, any purchases of anything made through links on this site will generate a small donation to the American Cancer Society (via my Cancer is an Asshole campaign).

It’s been an honor to be a part of your life. Nurturing you, protecting you, teaching you, and above all, loving you endlessly.

You, brilliant, strong, funny, fearless you, have taught me so much about life, learning, love and family.

As quickly as you grow and as swiftly as each day passes, I’m trying not to waste one precious second mourning the passage of time, but to experience every moment we have together and look giddily forward to each day ahead. I hope they are many.

Thank you.

That is all.

(Photo taken at the USA Science & Engineering Festival, which took place in Washington, D.C. on April 28 and 29, 2012. Offspring has been talking about nothing but dancing robots ever since. And who can blame her?)

(OK, one more. Of dancing robots.)

But during this informal hiatus, I’ve been storing up new ideas, keeping an eye out for fun topics and coming up wiht some new themes. The thing that will stay the same? The assaholery of cancer, and the ongoing neck-punch we’ve been working on together all this time. And I am – as always – so grateful for your support.

Today, my thoughts are with a friend and her mother – a current cancer patient. Much love to you, my dear. As they say, 80% of life is showing up. You won’t regret it.

And so, on with the receipts:

Give cancer the finger:

Simply by shopping at Amazon, you can make a donation to the American Cancer Society at no cost to you!

Click through any of the Amazon links on this site (like this one), and you will be identified as coming from Nutgraf. Amazon sends me a small percentage of whatever you spend as “advertising fees.” I donate every cent of that fee to the American Cancer Society each month when Amazon pays me.

You can catch up with all of the mishegoss on the Cancer is an Asshole project page

It’s actually the same reason I put off reading The Hunger Games for so long. I read the first two pages and had to put it down for a couple of weeks because I just didn’t have the heart to read about bad things happening to children.

But when the group suggested and then voted for Behind the Beautiful Forevers, I more or less cheerfully went along for the ride. And I’m not sorry. Reading author Katherine Boo’s qualifications (New Yorker staff writer, Pulitzer Prize winner), I should have known it would be a winner.

This book isn’t a slick movie – full of redemption and glossy symbolism – nor is it a dry, academic bore-a-thon (no offense to academics – love you!).

What it is, though, is an engaging and lively look into the lives of some of the thousands of people living in shacks on an unused piece of land next to a large and shiny international airport and the flashy hotels that surround it. Some sort and sell recyclable materials, some steal, and sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference, really.

Never over the top, Boo still tells the hard truth. People die. Some of them horribly. Some work and scrape to provide and find that when they get just a small bit ahead of the most abject poverty, they are struck down by circumstance, whim or ill will. Often a really rich stew of the three. The system is broken – and leans heaviest on those with the least resources – wearing them down or grinding them up – the dispensables. They all face enormous challenges which are laid bare here, but not glorified.

Says friend L: “Her images are so real and so strong that they are seared into my brain, although I don’t want to spoil it for others by listing them here. The book shook me up both personally and professionally.”

My mom said that she can’t imagine how Boo reported this in such detail. In the epilogue, Boo explains how she researched and wrote the book – a necessary addition, since all I could think of during the whole tale was what an enormous amount of reporting must have gone into it. She spent years interviewing, observing, researching, and generally making a study of the lives of the people she portrays. Excavating details, polishing them, confirming them and them deftly snapping them into place to create a cogent narrative. This is a heroic feat of attention, energy, patience and organization. And it’s to all of our benefit that Boo is willing to undertake it and able to execute it so well.

• Behind the Beautiful Forevers website
• Read the Washington Post review

• Would love to know what you’re reading. Please comment below or…
• Join BookGraf on Facebook: Good books? Great company? No effort? Exciting typos? What’s not to like?

As always, any purchases of anything made through links on this site will generate a small donation to the American Cancer Society (via my Cancer is an Asshole campaign).

Now, let the gnashing of teeth begin.

This really irked me:

“We know folks have been upset with us,” says [spokesperson Leslie] Aun. “We get that, and we are sorry. We hope that people don’t turn their backs on women. If you don’t give to Komen, that’s someone who’s not going to get a mammogram.” She adds, “We fill so many gaps for women—we gave 700,000 free screenings to uninsured women last year, many of them impoverished.”

From Komen Kills Major Lobbying Day, Urges People Not to Abandon Women

They just don’t get it. And now I have to do some math just to be a jerk.

Komen claims they made 700k mammograms possible last year. During the same year, they took in $400 million. So, in essence, they paid $571.43 per mammogram.

A quick Google search found out-of-pocket mammogram prices generally between $100 and $250.

Using that $250 figure (in an unprecedented act of generosity on my part), I’m going to go ahead and say that they are actually preventing about 700k mammograms per year. *

* I know this is a severe oversimplification. But seriously. They impugned my commitment to women’s health and fighting cancer. 

And so, it is with great pleasure that I submit this month’s donation to the American Cancer Society in honor of the Susan G. Komen Foundation.

Here are the receipts:

Tell cancer to shove it:

Simply by shopping at Amazon, you can make a donation to the American Cancer Society at no cost to you!

Click through any of the Amazon links on this site (like this one), and you will be identified as coming from Nutgraf. Amazon sends me a small percentage of whatever you spend as “advertising fees.” I donate every cent of that fee to the American Cancer Society each month when Amazon pays me.

You can catch up with all of the mishegoss on the Cancer is an Asshole project page

Behind the Beautiful Forevers looks really promising. It describes itself as “a landmark work of narrative nonfiction,” and is described by others as “brilliantly written, fast-paced” and “intensely reported.” Author, Pulitzer Prize winner and New Yorker staff writer Katherine Boo spent more than three years following the lives of people in a Mumbai slum. The Washington Post review opens with “This is an astonishing book,” and goes on to describe a story that comes vividly to life, and results in “a searing account, in effective and racy prose, that reads like a thrilling novel but packs a punch Sinclair Lewis might have envied.”

Okay then.

• Behind the Beautiful Forevers website
• Read the Washington Post review

I’ll ask for comments in mid-April and plan to post something shortly thereafter.

• Would love to know what you’re reading. Please comment below or…
• Join BookGraf on Facebook: Good books? Great company? No effort? Exciting typos? What’s not to like?

As always, any purchases of anything made through links on this site will generate a small donation to the American Cancer Society (via my Cancer is an Asshole campaign).

Here are the receipts:

But Thea, you’re probably thinking, how can I get in on the unprintable action? I also want to punch cancer in the pie-hole. Well, you can.

Tell cancer to shove it:

Simply by shopping at Amazon, you can make a donation to the American Cancer Society at no cost to you!

Click through any of the Amazon links on this site (like this one), and you will be identified as coming from Nutgraf. Amazon sends me a small percentage of whatever you spend as “advertising fees.” I donate every cent of that fee to the American Cancer Society each month when Amazon pays me.

You can catch up with all of the mishegoss on the Cancer is an Asshole project page