Wednesday, July 12, 2023

Unraveled Wednesday: 7/12/2023

I'm joining Kat and fellow Unravelers with more of the Forget-Me-Not Hitchhiker. It's what I've been working on most of this past week in hopes of finishing it, but the ball of yarn that is left to knit may be imbued with some sort of magic. I keep knitting and knitting, but it never seems to get any smaller. I'm betting it will run out someday but today is not that day.

I've also been working on the Hitch on the Move, but it looks pretty much the same except it now has a few more triangles. 


I read two books last week, one interesting and informative and one that was a disjointed mess. The interesting and informative one is Wonder Drug: The Secret History of Thalidomide in America and Its Hidden VictimsWonder Drug is a horrifying and tragic tale of greed and negligence. In 1960, a New Drug Application for thalidomide crossed the desk of Dr. Frances Kelsey, an FDA Medical reviewer. The drug was touted as a new miracle drug for a range of ailments, including morning sickness, touting it as “completely atoxic, safe for everyone, children and pregnant women included." Kelsey refused to approve thalidomide, due to the lack of safety data and shoddy research. Except that Cincinnati-based chemical company William S. Merrell was busy distributing thalidomide to an estimated 20,000 women in the US through the free samples given to more than 1,200 doctors. Thalidomide had not been approved by the FDA, so Merrell was asking doctors to perform "clinical trials" on their patients. This is not at all how clinical trials are run, and the whole scam was marketing by Merrell.

The author tells this sad tale of medical scandal through research and interviews with patients and those affected. Merrell escaped without any penalties, but this did force a change to the FDA’s rubber-stamping patent approval process. There are clear villains and heroes in this book, and it makes for an illustrative and chilling read.

The disjointed mess was Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper ClubIf I viewed it as a light bit of entertaining fluff to read in the summer, it might have been okay, but overall there were too many things I disliked to consider the book light and entertaining. I enjoy stories about food and family, but sad, tragic, and appalling things happened too often for this to be a cozy novel. Many of the characters felt flat, especially the selfish and always disagreeable Florence. Another character, Brenda, is described as a "sexually liberated local pariah". That's pretty much what she is, and I couldn't understand what she was adding to the story. The timeline of the novel extends from 1934 to the present time, and each chapter changes time and point of view which made it difficult for me to always understand what was happening when. Due to some of these jumps, the reader does have a good idea that something terrible is going to happen. I could barely pay attention in the intervening pages just waiting for tragedy to strike. I really disliked how the author simply disposed of a primary character just a few pages from the end of the book. I enjoyed Stradal's prior novels, but this one is too disjointed for me to recommend. Two and a half stars rounded down.

What are you making and reading this week?

12 comments:

  1. Love both of your knitting projects Bonny. And Hitch on the Move still has me intrigued. I almost bought the pattern the other day, but I really want/need to finish what I'm working on first. A friend of mine has a sister who is a thalidomide baby. Well, she is an adult now - older than me, but her right arm ends at her elbow. She is one of the lucky ones.

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  2. both of your projects are fantastic! perfect summer knitting! I love the review of your less than wonderful book, I'll steer clear of that one for sure :)

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  3. I am just in awe at Martina's ingenuity of the construction of Hitch on the Move! (and the name is spot on!) I managed to do a couple more triangles last night while Steve watched something he wanted to... thank goodness for knitting!

    Thank you for your update to the Supper Club... I am going to bail on that book (while I am still on the waitlist!) But I will replace it with the thalidomide book!

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  4. I think there must be something in the Hitchhiker pattern that makes the yarn last forever (or at least seem to). I'm sure you will finish this one eventually, though, and it's going to be amazing!

    I knew about the devastating effects of Thalidomide but was not aware of how it ended up being taken, and that makes it even more of a tragedy.

    I've primarily been focused on spinning this week, though I did knit a bit on my Mas Vida shawl last night. Spinning time is great time for reading, though, and I've been thoroughly enjoying The Garden of Evening Mists. Just got Yellowface from the library this morning, and it's up next!

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  5. I am in complete agreement with you on the Supper Club. "Disjointed mess" perfectly describes that one!!! I just . . . can't believe I read the whole thing. (I think I kept expecting it to pull together somehow, but it just never did.) One of my childhood playmates . . . was a "Thalidomide kid." My little friend taught me a lot about what kids COULD do even if it their bodies didn't quite look like mine, which was a good lesson for me to learn early on. My mom used to get weepy over the "thalidomide kids" -- because there were a lot of them in my age cohort in my geographic area. (There must have been a couple of doctors in on the "testing" in my town.) It is a heartbreaking story.

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  6. Well, I'm reading Supper Club and I'm going to have to finish it... because it was my choice for a book club read! We're going to meet at a supper club for the discussion, so at least I have that (and an old fashioned) to look forward to.

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  7. Replies
    1. Thanks, Cathy! It's got all of my favorite shades of blue in it.

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  8. The color of the Forget-Me-Not Hitchhiker is amazing! When the yarn finally does finish, it will be stunning. I was almost pulled in by the cover of Supper Club (I am definitely a judge-a-book-by-it's cover girl), but seeing your review and a couple of others on it made me decide I don't need to give it my time.

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    1. Thank you, Amber! All I've done is knit the Hitchhiker; the dyers at Wollmeise get all the credit for the color.

      YMMV with Supper Club. I enjoyed reading about prime rib platters and old-fashioneds, but the book just didn't live up to the cover for me!

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  9. Supper Club was a "buzzy book" we discussed with Fiction Matters in May and it was interesting to see how varied the reactions were. Generalizing a bit, but it seems that only the folks who were from the midwest loved it. I enjoyed the experience of listening to it with my sister and SIL when we traveled to Thomasville together in April; there were a few times we'd press pause on the recording to say "wait, WTF?" and then we'd discuss... This month's selection is Yellowface and I expect a much different discussion :-)

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  10. Your hitchiker and the hitchhiker- adjacent wrap are both very pretty. I have met several of those magic balls of yarn over the years. How do they do it? The book about Thalidomide sounds a little like the opiods and the Sackler family.

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