What I'm reading ...

I have started The Incredible Unlikeliness of Being: Evolution and the Making of Us by Alice Roberts, my next book club book.An interesting change of pace and topic. Here’s the blurb:

Alice Roberts takes you on the most incredible journey, revealing your path from a single cell to a complex embryo to a living, breathing, thinking person. It's a story that connects us with our distant ancestors and an extraordinary, unlikely chain of events that shaped human development and left a mark on all of us. Alice Roberts uses the latest research to uncover the evolutionary history hidden in all of us, from the secrets found only in our embryos and genes - including why as embryos we have what look like gills - to those visible in your anatomy. This is a tale of discovery, exploring why and how we have developed as we have. This is your story, told as never before.

All the Light We Cannot See - by Anthony Doerr

Overall, I thought that this was an excellent book. I found the story engaging and well paced. I was having trouble putting the book down well before the end. The characters were well drawn and quite believable. Telling the story from essentially three viewpoints, but not being totally strict about this, worked well. Initially I was confused about the fragmented timeline, but, in due course, I found the non-linear presentation of the story increased the drama. The ending was not rushed and most loose ends were tied up.

When I read a novel, I like to learn something about the world. In this case, I gained some insight into the lead-up and outbreak of war in both Germany and France, which I found very interesting. The thing, that marred the book for me, were some [what I believe to be] factual errors:

• In 1942, a German office puts down his ballpoint pen. Biro patented the ballpoint in the UK in 1938 and they did not come into widespread use for another decade.
• In 1974, someone in France dials a number in Germany. In the UK, we did not get direct-dial for international calls until 1978; it seems unlikely that France was 4 years ahead.
• In 1942, Etienne is very excited about the radio broadcasts he has heard. He comments that he had even heard from a station in Pakistan - a country that came into existence 6 years later.

The book won the Pulitzer, so what do I know?