Peter Mendelsund, What We See When We Read ** 1/2

Yeah, what do we see when we read?

If I said to you, "Describe Anna Karenina," perhaps you'd mention her beauty. If you were reading closely you'd mention her "thick lashes," her weight, or maybe even her little downy mustache (yes--it's there.) ... But what does Anna Karenina look like? ... What does her nose look like? ... How did you picture her before I asked? Noseless?

It's a great question, but unfortunately What We See When We Read doesn't provide much insight into the answer. The author successfully problematizes the issue -- that is, he demonstrates how mysterious the process really is -- and he knows that it relates to the broader question of how we comprehend the world ("The practice of reading feels like, and is like, consciousness itself: imperfect; partial; hazy; co-creative"). It all just makes me want answers!

Andrea Barrett, Archangel ****

Andrea Barrett has a gimmick. As the New Republic put it in their review: "As surely as Woody Allen writes about anxious intellectuals and John le Carré writes about spies, Barrett writes about scientists." Her stories always revolve around a professional or amateur seeking to understand the natural world around them. They usually take place in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century.

Barrett's focus on science and scientists makes her stories unique and gives her characters the attractive qualities of intelligence and curiosity. The stories always inspire me to develop new interests and pay attention to the world around me. On the other hand, they do tend to repeat the same themes. The five stories in this book all deal with an insecure protagonist torn between loyalty to an established scientist and a new theory rejected by that scientist.

My favorite story was "The Ether of Space," which is also the messiest story. Somehow its ideas kept swirling around in my head after I finished it. Objectively, "The Particles" is probably the best story, with an action-packed ocean disaster to complement its story of scientific rivalry.

Norman Rush, Subtle Bodies ** 1/2

I am a major fan of Norman Rush's previous two novels, Mating and especially Mortals. Subtle Bodies is a less ambitious work, and it also manages to be less successful.

Ned travels to an estate in the Catskills to memorialize the recently deceased ringleader of his group of college friends. The friends have grown apart over the years, and Ned ponders what it was that brought them together in the first place. His wife Nina joins them, providing an outsider perspective on the group.

Rush's greatest strength is creating full-bodied educated characters who think just as much as they feel. He also captures the subtleties of relationships well. Subtle Bodies retains these strengths: Ned and Nina's marriage is realistically supportive (if a bit schematic), and the friends' nostalgic reminiscences about college shenanigans feel genuine. But the characters are caught in a contrived plot. I didn't believe any part of the present-day action.

Mark Miodownik, Stuff Matters ***

Miodownik is a materials science professor at University College London. The book takes a look at several materials that appear in a photo of the author drinking tea on a rooftop: steel, glass, plastic, and so on. Miodownik includes personal stories, to make the point that we all have relationships with these materials even as we typically ignore them.

The book was entertaining, and I learned a variety of cocktail-party facts about the ubiquitous materials. (For example, stainless steel has a thin, self-repairing coat of chromium oxide, which prevents it from rusting and also makes it tasteless and ideal for cutlery.) However, I was hoping to learn about materials science a little more deeply.

Karen Russell, Vampires in the Lemon Grove ****

These stories invest their fantastical premises with surprising emotional resonance. The collection is full of wild beasts like vampires, scarecrows, women turning into silkworms, equine former presidents, and magical tattoos, but I remember the feelings more than the fantasy. The strongest stories are metaphors for self-empowerment.

Russell's stories are very traditional in structure, in fact they often felt like variations on stock "creative writing program" narratives. She's such a strong writer, though, that they transcend all of the genres they partake of.