Wednesday Reading
Dec. 2nd, 2020 08:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhThe Case of the Reincarnated Client - Tarquin Hall.The fifth book in the Vish Puri series, murder mysteries set in Delhi. This one, though set in 2016, mostly concerns a murder that took place in 1984 during the anti-Sikh riots that followed the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Puri's own father was a police detective at the time, and investigated the death of Riya Kaur, suspecting that she was actually murdered by her husband, who used the riots to cover up his own crime. Unfortunately Puri's father was never able to prove anything, and the case haunted him until his death. Now Puri's mother ("Mummy-ji") believes she has found the proof – in the form of recovered memories from a woman who claims to be Kaur's reincarnation. Puri's skepticism about the supernatural runs up against the impossibly accurate information Kaur's supposed reincarnation is able to provide.
Meanwhile, the government of India releases a surprise announcement that all paper money must be exchanged at banks for new paper money within the next 48 hours, or else it will become worthless. It's part of a plan to reduce the black market, but Puri finds himself both with a buttload of cash to exchange and no time to do so, and clues to a suspected money launderer.
Despite the seriousness of both cases, the Vish Puri books are always funny, cozy, and full of lots of food porn – especially street food. They're light mysteries, overall; a subplot concerns a bride who wants to know why her groom is such a loud snorer, for example. I didn't enjoy this one quite as much as I've enjoyed the previous books, unfortunately, but it's still a fun series that does a wonderful job at capturing the feel of Delhi.
(Also, I read this book while on a trip to India earlier this year, and it finally cleared up my confusion at why everyone refused to take my old cash!)
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
The Italian Boy: A Tale of Murder and Body Snatching in 1830s London by Sarah Wise. Nonfiction about a historical true crime case. The late 1700s and early 1800s saw the fantastical-sounding profession of "resurrection men": specialists in grave-robbery who stole fresh corpses to sell to doctors and medical schools, who needed them to practice surgery, study anatomy, and expand our knowledge of how the human body worked. The most famous of these Resurrection Men are probably Burke and Hare, who in Scotland in 1828 got tired of digging up bodies and decided to create their own instead. Eventually convicted of sixteen murders, Burke and Hare and their crimes became enormously famous.
Less well-known is that, a few years later, London had its own murderous Resurrection Men. In 1831, several of them shopped around the corpse of an dark-haired fourteen-year-old boy, until one of the prospective clients decided the body was just a little too fresh and detained the Resurrection Men until the police could be called. Ultimately the corpse was identified as that of an Italian beggar-child who had made money by displaying white mice – though, as Wise shows, there's an equal amount of evidence that he was just a regular English kid, and the popular identification of him as the "Italian Boy" probably has more to do with contemporary Londoners' romanticization of the attractively-exotic poor than anything else.
I love historical true crime because it's capable of being a fascinating window into a particular time and place, and Wise really delivers. She provides deep dives into topics like the rivalries between London's various medical schools, the functioning of the Smithfield Meat Market, the child trafficking between Italy and England for a constant flow of those "adorable" beggars, the inner workings of the Newgate Prison, and daily life in a poor suburb of 1830s London. If you're only looking for the details of a gorey crime, The Italian Boy is probably not the book for you. But if you, like me, are excited to learn the intricacies of the politics of police uniforms in 1820, than I highly recommend it.
The Italian Boy also had a lot more pictures than is typical for a nonfiction book, nearly one for every other page: maps, portraits, images from broadsheets, newspaper headlines, etchings of famous beggars, and more. It was a surprise, but a nice one.
The Fall of the Wild: Extinction, De-Extinction, and the Ethics of Conservation by Ben A. Minteer. A collection of six essays on the philosophical considerations involved in protecting wild species. I picked up this book because I'm hugely interested in de-extinction (the actual ongoing research to try and revive various extinct species through cloning and/or genetic engineering; the passenger pigeon is one currently closest to success, though the project on the woolly mammoth is probably more well-known), which Minteer is not a fan of. In general, I'd call Minteer a moderate for his views on conservation. Take the issue of zoos, for example. Several groups have called for their widespread closure, but Minteer doesn't go that far; instead, he points to the role of captive breeding in preventing the extinction of the California Condor or the Arabian Oryx, as well as the possibility of zoos inspiring visitors to become more involved in conservation. But he's not for massive deregulation or the too-close confinement of animals either.
Unsurprisingly, he's against de-extinction. His argument mostly centers on the idea that if humans know that we can 'fix' extinction, we won't try to prevent it as strongly. I don't find this convincing; it's not like de-extinction is easy, cheap, or simple, and I can't imagine extinction ever coming to seem unimportant, no matter how many technological fixes might exist.
But despite my disagreement on that issue, I very much enjoyed The Fall of the Wild. Minteer's writing is thoughtful, clear, and engaging, and he doesn't stick to theoretical philosophy, but tells multiple interesting stories. I particularly enjoyed his descriptions of Zootopia, a not-yet-built zoo in Denmark that will be an immense, wall-less, cage-less landscape where animals wander free and humans peek at them from hidden enclosures. The story of the relocation of 500 elephants from one nature preserve to another several hundred miles away, done via helicopter and trucks, was also fascinating. Minteer frequently refers to Aldo Leopold (an American conservationist from the early 1900s), whom he has modeled his thinking after. Leopold sounds incredible, and Minteer's summaries of his life and philosophy were a new area to me, but one I found very compelling.
Overall a very intelligent and readable book if you're at all interested in the topic.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
Meanwhile, the government of India releases a surprise announcement that all paper money must be exchanged at banks for new paper money within the next 48 hours, or else it will become worthless. It's part of a plan to reduce the black market, but Puri finds himself both with a buttload of cash to exchange and no time to do so, and clues to a suspected money launderer.
Despite the seriousness of both cases, the Vish Puri books are always funny, cozy, and full of lots of food porn – especially street food. They're light mysteries, overall; a subplot concerns a bride who wants to know why her groom is such a loud snorer, for example. I didn't enjoy this one quite as much as I've enjoyed the previous books, unfortunately, but it's still a fun series that does a wonderful job at capturing the feel of Delhi.
(Also, I read this book while on a trip to India earlier this year, and it finally cleared up my confusion at why everyone refused to take my old cash!)
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
The Italian Boy: A Tale of Murder and Body Snatching in 1830s London by Sarah Wise. Nonfiction about a historical true crime case. The late 1700s and early 1800s saw the fantastical-sounding profession of "resurrection men": specialists in grave-robbery who stole fresh corpses to sell to doctors and medical schools, who needed them to practice surgery, study anatomy, and expand our knowledge of how the human body worked. The most famous of these Resurrection Men are probably Burke and Hare, who in Scotland in 1828 got tired of digging up bodies and decided to create their own instead. Eventually convicted of sixteen murders, Burke and Hare and their crimes became enormously famous.
Less well-known is that, a few years later, London had its own murderous Resurrection Men. In 1831, several of them shopped around the corpse of an dark-haired fourteen-year-old boy, until one of the prospective clients decided the body was just a little too fresh and detained the Resurrection Men until the police could be called. Ultimately the corpse was identified as that of an Italian beggar-child who had made money by displaying white mice – though, as Wise shows, there's an equal amount of evidence that he was just a regular English kid, and the popular identification of him as the "Italian Boy" probably has more to do with contemporary Londoners' romanticization of the attractively-exotic poor than anything else.
I love historical true crime because it's capable of being a fascinating window into a particular time and place, and Wise really delivers. She provides deep dives into topics like the rivalries between London's various medical schools, the functioning of the Smithfield Meat Market, the child trafficking between Italy and England for a constant flow of those "adorable" beggars, the inner workings of the Newgate Prison, and daily life in a poor suburb of 1830s London. If you're only looking for the details of a gorey crime, The Italian Boy is probably not the book for you. But if you, like me, are excited to learn the intricacies of the politics of police uniforms in 1820, than I highly recommend it.
The Italian Boy also had a lot more pictures than is typical for a nonfiction book, nearly one for every other page: maps, portraits, images from broadsheets, newspaper headlines, etchings of famous beggars, and more. It was a surprise, but a nice one.
The Fall of the Wild: Extinction, De-Extinction, and the Ethics of Conservation by Ben A. Minteer. A collection of six essays on the philosophical considerations involved in protecting wild species. I picked up this book because I'm hugely interested in de-extinction (the actual ongoing research to try and revive various extinct species through cloning and/or genetic engineering; the passenger pigeon is one currently closest to success, though the project on the woolly mammoth is probably more well-known), which Minteer is not a fan of. In general, I'd call Minteer a moderate for his views on conservation. Take the issue of zoos, for example. Several groups have called for their widespread closure, but Minteer doesn't go that far; instead, he points to the role of captive breeding in preventing the extinction of the California Condor or the Arabian Oryx, as well as the possibility of zoos inspiring visitors to become more involved in conservation. But he's not for massive deregulation or the too-close confinement of animals either.
Unsurprisingly, he's against de-extinction. His argument mostly centers on the idea that if humans know that we can 'fix' extinction, we won't try to prevent it as strongly. I don't find this convincing; it's not like de-extinction is easy, cheap, or simple, and I can't imagine extinction ever coming to seem unimportant, no matter how many technological fixes might exist.
But despite my disagreement on that issue, I very much enjoyed The Fall of the Wild. Minteer's writing is thoughtful, clear, and engaging, and he doesn't stick to theoretical philosophy, but tells multiple interesting stories. I particularly enjoyed his descriptions of Zootopia, a not-yet-built zoo in Denmark that will be an immense, wall-less, cage-less landscape where animals wander free and humans peek at them from hidden enclosures. The story of the relocation of 500 elephants from one nature preserve to another several hundred miles away, done via helicopter and trucks, was also fascinating. Minteer frequently refers to Aldo Leopold (an American conservationist from the early 1900s), whom he has modeled his thinking after. Leopold sounds incredible, and Minteer's summaries of his life and philosophy were a new area to me, but one I found very compelling.
Overall a very intelligent and readable book if you're at all interested in the topic.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-03 03:06 am (UTC)That's handy!
Minteer frequently refers to Aldo Leopold (an American conservationist from the early 1900s), whom he has modeled his thinking after.
I don't know that I know anything about him, and so will look him up. Thank you for the pointer!
no subject
Date: 2020-12-03 03:17 pm (UTC)That passager pigeon project is so cool thanks for the link! I appreciate that they want to restore not just the species but also it's ecological role