I often draw upon books that I read for personal pleasure for ideas for Big Questions. I read a book a week, sometimes more, and with so many to choose from the ideas I glean can be all over the map. As I sit here intending to create the blog for this week's BQ I am struck by the wide range of topics and genera's of the books I have read recently, and how their topics are all over the map!
For example, I just finished a book called Dark Matter by Blake Crouch. In this book the hero is a physicist who works on the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, especially the aspect that every decision we make creates an infinite number of possible alternate realities. He creates a machine that allows himself and others to go into a quantum state and experience the other realities, with the annoying side effect that every time he makes a decision, both he (presumably the original one), and another one of himself is created. Ultimately there are hundreds of him trying to kill each other so they can be the only one to claim and live with his original wife and son, whom they all love (because the original one did). You can watch this one on Apple TV+ if you like to see it on the screen.
Another is called Midnight at Soap Lake, by Matthew Sullivan. The author is a past instructor at Big Bend Community College in Moses Lake, which is just down the road from Soap Lake, Washington. He is also a friend of my cousin, who recommended the book and was also an instructor at Big Bend. Anyway, the story involves a spooky and scary story about the mysterious death of a young woman from Soap Lake, and the discovery of the murder by the key character in the story, a woman whose husband is studying the very peculiar biology of Soap Lake, a stagnant body of highly salinized water whose healing powers for things like skin diseases and the like is legend. I have heard about this magical healing power all my life, although I have not dipped my toe into the waters. The "bad monster" in the story is called TreeTop, so naturally I expected some chemical like Alar that the company Tree Top was accused of using on apple trees 30 years ago to make an appearance, but there is no such connection in the book. The story includes a discussion of the diversion of the Columbia River into irrigation canals in central WA and the unintended effects this caused on the hydrology of the region, a topic I am well familiar with. It is well written and has a good pace, and I recommend it. He also wrote Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore, which takes place in Denver, and also deals with a suicide and a couple of murders, if you like that sort of thing. It was a bit gory in places.
I'm waiting for the next installments of the Three Pines series by Louise Penny, and the Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman, both due out in September. The Thursday Murder Club's first book is about to be released as a series, with big name stars in the key roles. I'm hoping it lives up to my imagination as I read the book.
OK, so what I thought might be fun, as a sort of alternate to typical BQ topic is to talk about the books we read, why we like the ones we like, and what turns us off the ones we don't like. Hey, this is summer and we all like to read escapist novels in the summer, right? Well, I do. you can bring your book with you for all of us to see. If you want.
See you on Friday.