{"id":13746,"date":"2022-01-26T10:00:43","date_gmt":"2022-01-26T16:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/?p=13746"},"modified":"2022-01-25T21:58:34","modified_gmt":"2022-01-26T03:58:34","slug":"my-book-of-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/2022\/01\/my-book-of-2021\/","title":{"rendered":"My book of 2021"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve done a LOT of reading in the past year, but nearly all of it was on the Internet. I only got through two hard-copy books. One, The Story of the Titanic As Told By Its Survivors<\/em><\/a>, arguably doesn’t count because it’s a re-read from 1997. It’s a compilation of four men’s work \u2014 second-class passenger Lawrence Beesley; Col. Archibald Gracie, who compiled a breakdown of who was in which lifeboat before he became the third survivor to die; Second Officer Charles Lightoller, excerpted from his autobiography; and wireless operator Harold Bride, in a long New York Times<\/em> article.<\/p>\n

That leaves one book, but one so good it made my favorites list after I plowed through it in a day. It’s called She Wouldn’t Change a Thing<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by Sarah Adlakha.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m a sucker for time travel in general, but also what-ifs, change-one-things, and knowing-then-what-I-know-nows. The Back to the Future<\/i> trilogy is but one entry in this category; there\u2019s also Frequency<\/i>, \u201cQuantum Leap,\u201d multiple episodes in the \u201cStar Trek\u201d franchise, and the Apple TV+ series “For All Mankind”<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In She Wouldn’t Change a Thing<\/em><\/a>, a\u00a0<\/span>39-year-old woman wakes up as her 17-year-old self and must decide whether she will change one thing that would result in the life she knew never happening. The official synopsis describes it<\/a> as “Sliding Doors <\/i>meets Life After Life<\/i>,” but I thought of it as sharing DNA with Peggy Sue Got Married<\/i>, a chunk of the 1970 novel Time and Again<\/i><\/a>,<\/i> and a tiny dash of Cloud Atlas<\/i>. The author was a psychiatry resident at the University of Iowa<\/a> and a UI-based character makes an appearance. Regardless of what other works it brings to mind, it\u2019s an engrossing book that plumbs the depths of love, choices, destiny, and metaphysical ethics.<\/p>\n

My deep research into Iowa schools<\/a> illustrates the fickleness of history: Careers, friendships, and entire family lines exist and do not exist<\/i> based on the outcomes of school consolidation processes, especially between 1956 and 1965. One cannot marry one\u2019s high school sweetheart if he\/she went to high school 15 miles in the other direction and they never met. In both the time stream and a road trip, divergences can come at many points, often set in motion long before our protagonist meets the moment.<\/p>\n

And that’s how branches in the multiverse are born. Right, Spider-Man?<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve done a LOT of reading in the past year, but nearly all of it was on the Internet. I only got through two hard-copy books. One, The Story of the Titanic As Told By Its Survivors, arguably doesn’t count … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13746"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13762,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13746\/revisions\/13762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}