book review: ...

... it was so awful, I won't even tell you the title. A book I purchased from the Friends shop at the library, when I needed a supply to take with me while traveling in late September. This one only had about two hundred pages, but it took me two weeks to finish. It was so 'put-down-able' I thought I would never get to the end, while being so curious to know how things worked out, I could not leave it in an airport or seat-back on the airplane.

I cannot say if it was completely made up, a work of total weird fiction or if there is any truth to the tale. About a man with some remarkably good writing credentials who choose to drive across the country with the pathologist who claimed to have been in possession of Einstein's brain. The idea of this item floating about in a large Tupperware container as the drive from the east coast to California makes me a bit queasy, even now, just writing about it. If this is really true, and not a work of fiction, it is inexplicable. I cannot even begin to fathom 'why?'

According to the author, a man who was at one time an executive editor of "Outside" magazine, the man who was in possession of this unusual artifact just happened to be in the right place when Einstein deceased, and was assigned to do an autopsy. The doctor had a theory that brains of really bright people will be different, possibly larger due to higher intelligence, and he kept this body part in formaldehyde for many years until he decided to give it to Mr. Einstein's granddaughter living in sunny California.

 The author did quite a bit of research and talked to a number of people who he felt would have some valid pertinent opinions on this  subject. It is a phenomena in Japan, where people have both a reverence and fascination for all things to do with Einstein. A number of knowledgeable experts are quoted at length in the book, so it is obvious the writer had ample research and personal interviews to draw from. Still, the whole thing is so bizarre. I still have the book and would love to give it to anyone who thinks they might attempt to delve into such an unusual subject.

Now would be an excellent time to report I read a lot of things that, upon reflection, seem so worthless I do not bore  you with details. I occasionally pick up some tome at the used bookstore, or Friends of Library shop, or out of some random Little Free Library that is so terrible you never hear about it. Things that cause me to wonder with great amazement how that got past the editor to make it into print. Those you do see reported here are things I do recommend, found worth reading to the last page, rather than being set aside or returned to the library with the thought "I don't have to finish this. There is no report due, and I won't be graded" so I put it down and never pick it up again.