Apotemnophilia

Apotemnophilia: Information, Questions, Answers, and Recommendations About Self-demand Amputation by Gregg M. Furth


My rating: 2 of 5 stars
A short book on the etiology and presentation of what is now called Body Integrity Identity Disorder, a condition analogous to Gender Identity Disorder where a person feels that their real and proper body is not the one they have, but one missing a specific limb. Thus self-demand surgical amputation of healthy limbs, and occasionally just self-amputation full-stop.

Disappointingly poorly written as a technical matter. Twice as long and half as informative as some of the medical journal articles I've been reading, though I will give them credit for the extensive reproduction of comments and subjective impressions from BIID patients that you really can't get in the medical literature.

Also, the primary author is a Jungian, and I am really, really not, so there's that. You start going on at me about psychic archetypes, and I'll nod along, sure, because I have a literature degree and I appreciate a good narrative as much as the next girl. But in the pragmatics of neuropsychological research? You've got me for about two pages, then we're done.

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Eifelheim

Eifelheim by Michael Flynn


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
In 1348 aliens are stranded in an isolated medieval village, while in modern times a physicist and a historian investigate the mystery of that disappeared village.

Hrm. Just . . . not quite. A book all about clashing paradigms – alien science with religious natural philosophy, narrative history with theoretical physics, the short modern mystery novella with the slow medieval tale of aliens and the Plague. And it just never came together in that elusive way we call 'gelling.' Lots of neat cosmological metaphors, some pretty writing, but ultimately just bits and pieces instead of a working whole.

Still, the historical research is pretty cool, and I was both discomforted and interested in the bedrock literalness of medieval religiosity – the aliens want to go home to the stars, so of course the answer is to save them. But in terms of a book, if it's scifi does the Middle Ages, I prefer Connie Willis's Doomsday Book.

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