Orbital

Finished January 11

Orbital by Samantha Harvey

This exquisitely written book is short, just over 200 pages, yet one I took my time reading as the imagery she writes and the thoughts her writing provokes made me want to stop and think often, and reread certain passages. The novel was a Christmas gift chosen because it won the Booker Prize for 2024. 

It is set mostly in the International Space Station over 24 earth hours. There are four astronauts and two cosmonauts at the station and the story is told in third person, but giving us access to each of their thoughts at times. Sixteen orbits of the earth by the Space Station occur over the course of 24 hours, and the book is structured around these. 

We see their professional interactions and get a sense of the work that they engage in, both scientific and housekeeping. We also see their personal thoughts and concerns, sometimes in real time and sometimes through memories of interactions with loved ones. 

One of the things they observe on this particular day is a large typhoon moving over the Pacific Ocean as it heads towards people ill-prepared for the massive storm. Another is the launch of a rocket carrying four astronauts to the moon. 

I found it fascinating as the novel talks about the land moving beneath them, the countries and land masses sliding by, with the lights at night showing the presence of human life more than the land viewed by day. It gave me a new sense of our planet and its place in space. I was also moved by the human connections between these people thrown together through circumstance, and the disparate connections they had to people back on earth. 

This novel has taken its spot as one of my favourite books of all time. 

Animal Person

Finished June 6

Animal Person: Stories by Alexander MacLeod

This collection of stories focus on the behaviours that people exhibit when put into positions that are dark, startling, or threatening. The link back to our basic animal instincts is made real in these eight stories. 

Lagomorph goes deep into a person's connection to the family pet rabbit Gunther, going back to how he was acquired up to the circumstances of one particular day.

The Dead Want is the story of an untimely death of a young woman and the cousin that she was close to, from his point of view. As the family gets the news and must travel to the place where she is, we see how he goes over memories of their relationship, and then deals with the situation as a young adult, caught between family and other ties.

What Exactly Do You Think You're Looking At? is the story of a man who tries to create a connection by borrowing other people's luggage, looking through the contents and making up stories about the person it belongs to and the things he finds. Until the day that something doesn't go the way he expects it to.

Everything Underneath tells the story of a boy and his sister, close in age. They are snorkeling for the first time, and moving away from shore, together, yet apart. He is reminded of another incident recently where the two of them did something together that ended with an injury, and suddenly the link between the two events becomes clear and urgent. 

The Entertainer is a story that caught me immediately. It is told from several points of view. One of them is a young piano teacher, seeing her best student freeze during a performance, another is the student themselves, caught between conflicting parental pride in their accomplishments and a feeling of disconnectedness with the music and their hands. The third is a man in the audience, there with his wife, who is also struggling with a form of disconnectedness. As they come together, something happens that is beautiful. 

The Ninth Concession has a boy looking back on an incident with him and a friend that changed their relationship, that was as he thinks, the beginning of the end. He thinks about the differences between himself and his friend, the financial differences, the social differences, the experiential differences, and a difference that he hadn't been aware of until it became real.

Once Removed is a story about a young couple who have a planned visit to a great-aunt of his who lives in the same city. With the day's heat and humidity, she, Amy, suddenly feels no longer up to the long bus rides to get their with their small child, but he insists, as they'd promised to come and he knew his relative would have prepared. On the trip over, she reflects on how she felt, and why. The visit includes the elements that she expected, the meal and conversation, and photo, but also an unexpected element, a task for the aunt's friend. This opens Amy's eyes to new thoughts about the aunt and a connection that she hadn't expected. 

The Closing Date is about a connection between a family and a man at a motel. The family is waiting for the closing date on their new home, and for the moving truck with their possessions to arrive. The man has a plumbing van. The child's friendliness, and a need for professional help complete the connection. It isn't until late that they discover the unsettling truth.

McLeod is an excellent writer that makes his characters and situations real as if they were happening to people you know. A great collection.

Because Internet

Finished July 1

Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language by Gretchen McCulloch

This book was fascinating. I've always been interested in language, poring over my mother's old linguistics textbooks when I was a kid, but this book brings a lot of linguistic theory into the now with its focus on how the internet changed the way we use language and the way that we communicate.

It sometimes looks back further at how other technology changed communication as well and looks at how societal change feeds the way language changes. For instance it looks at the telephone and how greetings were suggested and adapted for that new broadly adapted form of communication and compares that to the way that different pieces of the internet changed language and communication.

It looks at both formal and informal types of communication and generational differences between broad groups as the internet grew and changed and became part of everyday life. 

There was so much here in terms of ideas that made me think and bits of communication history I hadn't been fully aware of before. 

My favourite part was in the section on memes where the author talked about an embroidered piece that she made based on a common meme, that she then adapted to be more personal to herself.  She comments

Both memes and needlework are collective folk texts that spread because people remix and remake them. The words "text" and "textile" have a common origin, from a Proto-Indo-European root teks, "to weave." Writing and weaving are both acts of creation by bringing together. A storyteller is a spinner of yarns, and the internet's founding metaphor is of a web. If we go far enough back, before printing presses and cameras and photocopiers introduced the notion of faithful reproduction, all transmission is re-creation. Teks is also the root of the word "technology," which at one point meant a systematic treatise on an art or craft, or even a grammar, before it referred to a study of mechanical or industrial arts (a 1902 dictionary gives the examples of "spinning, metal-working, or brewing") and then to digital tech.

Since I am a needleworker, this really hit home for me. Since I also work with a lot of internet pieces, and have helped others navigate the internet as part of my job, this all connected for me. 

A fascinating look at language, social change, and human adaptation. 

The Songlines

Finished January 26
The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin, illustrations by Simon Pemberton

I've had this one on my shelf for a while, but Australia being in the news lately made my pick it up. It was a relatively easy read, with most of the book being a fictionalized version of the author's short time in the Australian outback among aboriginal people and those working with them. In particular it features a man whose parents emigrated from Russia, and who is working with aboriginal people to identify sacred places so the railway they are building can avoid causing more damage than it naturally will just by existing.
The idea of songlines as a birthright and a responsibility is made very clear, and I liked the way that the people were shown to be intelligent and with real character, not stereotypes. There was recognition of the struggles they are facing, and the harms done to them.
As the book progresses, when Bruce spends some time alone in a small outback town, stranded by the rain, he delves into his journals and notebooks and pulls out a bunch of quotes, anecdotes, and other passages that look at man's relationship to the world, to animals, to nature, to the idea of moving around as a way of life. This was also interesting, but these sections took more time to separate ideas and make connections.
My edition also had a very useful introduction by Nicholas Shakespeare that gave me background and context for the book, that made my reading more meaningful.

Montaigne in Barn Boots

Finished April 1
Montaigne in Barn Boots: An Amateur Ambles through Philosophy by Michael Perry

In this book Perry talks about his discover of Montaigne's writings, his affinity for many of his musings, and his own take on the philosophical ideas in Montaigne's work. This is an intensely personal book, as he talks about his own moments of doubt and his worries.
I've always enjoyed Perry's books, and this was no exception.
Perry has read Montaigne in translation, but also read many of the critical works about both Montaigne himself and his writings. He cites some of these ideas in his nine essays, as he delves deeper into the ideas of Montaigne.
His essay titles here illustrate the way he brings his own life into the ideas. In the first Reading Like a Chicken, where he talks about pecking his way around Montaigne gives us a glimpse into his approach to his philosophical reading. In Roughneck Intersectionality, he talks about the differences in background between himself and the philosopher and the things they have in common. In Confound the Fool, he talks about the unending quest for understanding human nature. In Shame, he reveals his own angst and failures around expectations and outcomes. In Marriage, he talks about Montaigne's unusual relationship with his wife, and his own marital dynamics. In Amateur Aesthetics he talks about his own cultural influences, the subjective nature of beauty, and about the importance of context. He says

I am free to savor six kale chips and an episode of It's Okay to Be Smart then dive into a tub of Costco Cheese Balls and a four-hour Reno 911 binge-watch. "I now, and I anon, are two several persons," Montaigne once said, the upshot being, the "other people" necessary to achieve the cosmopolitan state of generative tension required for aesthetic fruition sometimes reside within the same body.

something I can definitely relate to. In Kidney Stone Wisdom, he compares Montaigne's experiences with the plague of kidney stones, and his own. While Montaigne talks about his ongoing experiences as a chance to strengthen his character before witnesses, Perry summarizes his less dignified response to the experience and expands it to include other bodily frailties more evident with age, and how some of these have provided edifying lessons.
In Meditating on Faith, Perry discusses his own experiences with religion, meditation and yoga. From his fundamentalist Christian upbringing to his introduction, via his wife, to yoga and meditation, he shows his questioning nature. He talks about the struggles with monkey mind, yet how

Whether it is due to having been raised in a large family or just general wiring, I am able to withdraw deep into my head in nearly all circumstances. As a shy person I sometimes go into public to write, which may seem counterintuitive but in fact self-consciousness is a catalyst for withdrawal. The presence of strangers compels me to lower the louvers and focus directly in on the task at hand.

He ends with What to Do, a summary of what he takes away from reading Montaigne. He says,

It seems that somewhere around my current life stage, people make one of two moves: Some stiffen, dig in their heels, and attempt to block the future; others reinvigorate life by blending it with the spirit of youth. I hope I will -- and I am working to -- bend toward the second. I am not talking here about the embarrassment of an oldster trying to vibe with the kids. Nor am I talking about abdicating principles. I am talking about offering a hand, opening new doors, and sometimes -- when new blood is best -- stepping aside and standing down. 

An edifying and satisfying read.

Farsighted

Finished March 1
Farsighted: How We Make the Decisions That Matter the Most by Steven Johnson

I really enjoyed the insights from this book and posted a couple of excerpts to friends as I was reading. He gave great examples of decision making, both personal and societal. His first societal example is the decision to bury Collect Pond, a source of fresh water, in New York City in the early nineteenth century. There was another option put forward, but the short-sightedness about the city's growth ultimately resulted in the bad decision. Johnson talks about how, although we often see ourselves today as looking at the short-term, we actually are able to make better long-term decisions today than we were then.
Johnson's first personal example of long-term decision making is also from the nineteenth century, and consists of a list found in Darwin's notebooks, on two facing pages in two columns, with one column listing reasons to marry and the other reasons not to. We know that he did marry six months later, so we know the decision he reached, which his also wrote at the bottom of the second page.
This idea of listing pros and cons is a much-used tool in making decisions. I've certainly used in in my own life at several instances. What Darwin's example doesn't show is the weight he gave each point in the list, the argument for which Benjamin Franklin gave in a eighteenth-century letter to Joseph Priestley about a decision he was making at the time. Franklin called this Moral or Prudential Algebra.
We have more tools available to us now, and we usually term these types of decisions deliberative decision making. The systems we use today are engineered to keep us from falling into preconceived assumptions.
A societal decision that is more present day that Johnson comes back to repeatedly through the book is the decision by the U.S. Government to go into the compound in Pakistan where they suspected Osama bin Laden was hiding. Johnson gradually shows all the different elements of information and decision making tools that were used in this case, how they were calculated and guarded against failure, and looked beyond the attack itself into outcomes and how they would manage different scenarios of those.
As he shows, these complex decisions have been shown to have several qualities: they involve multiple variables; they require full-spectrum analysis; they force us to predict the future; they involve varied levels of uncertainty; they often involve conflicting objectives; they harbor undiscovered options; they are prone to System 1 failings; and they are vulnerable to failures of collective intelligence.
This last point is important to understand. By definition, groups bring a wider set of perspectives and knowledge to the decision making process. But they are also vulnerable to their own set of failings: collective biases and distortions due to social dynamics. There are a number of tools designed to overcome such vulnerabilities.
Techniques such as making a full-spectrum map of all the variables and potential paths available; predictions about where those paths might lead, and weighing the various possible outcomes against the objectives. Johnson devotes a chapter to each of these three elements of decision making.
He then has two chapters: one on large social decisions, such as battling climate change, and one on personal decision making, such as those facing the characters in George Eliot's Middlemarch.
Literature, and real life both are used in many examples in the book, and this use of examples really worked for me in understanding the decision making process better.
I highly recommend this book.

A World of Kindness

Finished August 19
A World of Kindness from the Editors and Illustrators of Pajama Press

This book raises funds for Think Kindness and illustrates what kindness looks like. Nine illustrators works are included here, some from other books put out by Pajama Press, and some original to this work. The actions shown here include waiting one's turn, helping others, being gentle, being polite, apologizing, sharing, and comforting.
The pictures are well chosen to convey the actions, and show diversity. A great addition to any collection.

The Pier Falls and Other Stories

Finished May 22
The Pier Falls and Other Stories by Mark Haddon

This collection of nine stories takes the reader to many places.
The title story tells in slow motion of the collapse of a pier at an English seaside resort, from the beginnings of the final structural failure to the cleanup months later. We see the victims and the emotions.
The Island, the second story, is one of a fairytale world, a story by a naive young woman of a fantasy that turns into a nightmare.
Bunny, the third story is set in a house on a London estate where two misfits in society connect with each other in a meaningful way.
Wodwo, the fourth story, is of a family consisting of an older couple, the three children, the children's spouses, and two of the grandchildren, coming together for Christmas where they get an unexpected visitor, whose presence precipitates a crisis that has lasting effects. It follows one of the children through the next year.
The Gun tells the story of a man looking back on an incident from his childhood that was a turning point for him, as he is at another turning point in his life.
The Woodpecker and the Wolf takes us to science fiction where we are on a small colony experiencing the emotions, physical effects, and behavioural changes that her and her companions undergo when they are so far from earth and trying to deal with unexpected problems that arise.
Breathe is another story of family, one where a woman returns to her childhood home after years away, finding that things are not as she expected, and trying to make things right, but learning that the person who needs help is not who she thinks it is.
The Boys Who Left Home to Learn Fear tells of a team of men travelling through jungle to try to determine what happened to a previous team of men who haven't returned as expected.
The Weir is the story of a lonely man, recently separated from his wife who finds himself risking his life to try to save someone unexpectedly and then finding that nothing turns out as he expected.
All of these stories have strong emotions, things said and things unsaid. Not all of them have satisfying conclusions, but they all make you stop and consider.

The Empathy Exams

Finished September 3
The Empathy Exams: essays by Leslie Jamison

This collection was the winner of the 2011 Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize. It is a collection of essays about our interactions with others, about how we communicate about ourselves, how we feel about that communication, and how we react to others' communication.  The opening quote sets the tone: "I am human: nothing human is alien to me."
The book begins with the title essay and is about the author working as a medical actor who has been given a script and a specific protocol including a followup checklist and who evaluates doctors on their empathy with patients. The task is interspersed with her own medical issues.
* Devil's Bait is about the author's exploration of Morgellons disease including the attendance of a conference.
* La Frontera is about a visit to Mexico, partly for a literary gathering and includes Tijuana, Mexicali, and Calexico.
* Morphology of the Hit is about her experiences in Nicaragua where she taught Spanish to kids, was punched in the face and had a broken nose as a result, and includes the follow-up to this with the police.
* Pain Tours (I) has three parts. La Plata Perdida is about a visit to the silver mines of Potosi, Bolivia. Sublime, Revised is about the reality TV show "Interventions" which is about trying to stop addicts. Indigenous to the Hood is about going on a gang tour in L.A. which is led by ex-gang members.
* The Immortal Horizon is about the Barkley Marathons, an extreme marathon race held in the Appalachians, inspired by a prison breakout.
* In Defense of Saccharin(e) is about sentimentality, sweetness, and artificial sweeteners.
* Fog Counts is about her visit to a minimum security prison in Fayetteville visiting Charlie Engle.
* Pain Tours (II) has three parts. Ex-Votos is about Frida Kahlo and her pain as a result of a streetcar accident at the age of eighteen. Servicio Supercompleto is about Joan Didion's account of the El Salvador civil war, looking at the contents of a grocery store as inspiration. The Broken Heart of James Agee is about Agee's book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and looks at labor, hunger, and guilt.
* Lost Boys looks at the murder of 3 boys in West Memphis in 1993, the three teenagers that were convicted of the crime, the trilogy of films that covered the case, and the subsequent release of the men years later.
* Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain looks at how women express their wounds, society's reaction to that expression, individual reaction, and what it means.
The book also includes an interview with the author.

The Secret Purposes

Finished May 18
The Secret Purposes by David Baddiel

This novel is set in Konigsberg, Cambridge, the Isle of Man, and Auschwitz, most of it during World War II. The main story follows Isaac Fabian, son of a rabbi, who rejects his religion and becomes a communist while at university. He also marries outside his religion, to Lulu, a woman he meets at university.
As Hitler's persecution of Jews grows more blatant, Isaac and Luly emigrate to Britain, on their way to their final destination of America.
While living in Cambridge, working menial jobs to get by, the British government begins rounding up Germans, including Jews, and interns them on the Isle of Man. Lulu manages to escape this fate, but Isaac does not and the two are separated even more than the couples where both are interned.
While Lulu struggles to make ends meet and look after their daughter Rebecca, she also looks for ways to work towards Isaac's release. Isaac, meanwhile, adjusts to his life in restricted quarters, angry at the lack of understanding of a government that would round up Jews as suspects of possible German espionage.
June Murray, a translator at the Ministry of Information is also struggling with the government's view of Jews, and makes it her mission to find the proof she knows exists of the terrible suffering that the Jewish people have undergone by the Germans. Her unauthorized trip to the internment camps brings her in contact with Isaac and makes her more personally involved than she intended.
Again with an historical novel, I learned much I didn't know about historical actions. While I knew there were internments, I hadn't realized that the British interned German Jews as well. Some were living in poverty like Isaac, but the experiences varied widely, and some were working in their fields and well respected before their internment. There is much to ponder in this novel, from the nature of ethnicity and culture, to the outcomes of fear during wartime, to individual human behaviours and motivations. This is an intense book, that looks at an experience seldom talked about.

In the Orchard, The Swallows

Finished April 18
In the Orchard, The Swallows by Peter Hobbs

This short novel is intense and poetic. In northern Pakistan, the young son of the owner of a pomegranate orchard, sees a girl his age when he is taking the fruit to the local village market and offers her a choice fruit. Thus a friendship begins. When an opportunity arises as a result of a neighbour's wedding celebration, the boy brings the girl to see the beauty of the orchard, and the two fall asleep. Their relationship is discovered by her father, a powerful government representative, and the boy is seized, tortured and imprisoned without trial.
Fifteen years later, the released young man, physically fragile, makes his way home, and is discovered, and taken in by a kind man who lives near the village. As he recovers, he returns to the orchard again and again, revealing his story, discovering the fate of his family and the orchard he loved, and learning of the kindness and violence of his fellow man.
The writing in this book is beautiful, the story intense and moving. This is a book to savour and think about, and read again.

Emotional Vampires at Work

Finished April 5
Emotional Vampires at Work: Dealing with Bosses and Coworkers Who Drain You Dry by Albert J Bernstein

This self-help book takes a look at personalities, behaviours, and culture in the workplace. Rather than look at why people behave the way they do, this book emphasizes how to recognize certain behaviours as potential problems for you at work, and offers ways to deal with these behaviours.
First, the author offers a quiz that helps you to identify your own behavioural tendencies so that you know your weak points and can modify your reaction to others' behaviour to allow for these, or at least think about them before you act. The author encourages slow thinking, rather than the fast thinking that is more reactive in nature. By taking the time to look at a situation, think about who certain actions benefits, why someone is telling you something, and what your options are, you can act smarter and more productively.
He categorizes five types of emotional vampires. These are more extreme than difficult people, often because they have strong personalities that can draw you in. These five types are Antisocials, Histrionics, Narcissists, Obsessive-Compulsives, and Paranoids. He acknowledges that many people may show some aspects of these behaviours, including yourself, but the key is that most of us recognize those behaviours in our selves, and thus have a level of self-awareness that protects us from acting to an extreme. The emotional vampires do not. They have several aspects of one of these types of behaviours, but don't seem themselves in these descriptions, and react badly if you try to show them how they do. For each of these types, the author describes traits, shows how these might manifest themselves in different general senses, and talks about strategies to still have a productive workplace while dealing with these people. He also talks about how an organizational culture can take on these traits if the people at the top are emotional vampires.
All readers will recognize some people they have worked with at some point in their lives, or that they know in their personal lives. They key to dealing with these people is not to take things personally, but think with care about who benefits from their actions, protect yourself, and leave the organization if necessary.
An interesting read.

Summerland

Finished August 1
Summerland by Elin Hilderbrand, read by Erin Bennett

This novel takes place over one summer, beginning with a warm June evening, graduation day for Nantucket High. As usual, there are a few parties, and one of them is on a beach. But leaving that party Penny Alistair drives her boyfriend Jake Randolph's jeep, with her twin brother Hobson (Hobby) in the back along with a friend Demeter Castle. Something was driving Penny to drive recklessly and the trip ended in a crash, with Penny dead and Hobby in a coma. Jake and Demeter were wearing their seatbelts and escaped injury.
Zoe, the single mother of Penny and Hobby is devastated. Zoe is an easy-going mother, often more like a friend to her children. She works as an private chef and a caterer and lives in a small house on the beach. Jake's parents Jordan and Ava have a marriage that has been growing apart, especially since the death of Jake's little brother from SIDS. Ava has immersed herself in sadness, a sadness that Penny was drawn to, spending more and more time lately with Ava. Jordan is the owner and editor of the local newspaper, a newspaper that has been in his family for generations. It is a big part of his life, and why he refuses to leave Nantucket, even though Ava has wanted to return to her native Perth, Australia for years.
This accident and its aftermath drive Jordan to pull Jake away from Nantucket, giving in to Ava's wish to return to Perth.
Demeter feels strongly about her role as outcast, overweight and with few friends. She wants badly to be part of the crowd, and particularly wanted to be close to the very popular Penny. What did she say to Penny that night on the beach, and did that lead to Penny's self-destructive actions. Demeter's parents, Al and Lynne, don't seem to see her issues for what they are and are only too happy to ignore signs of unhappiness. But things won't stay hidden, and Demeter's alcoholism eventually comes to light.
We see these stories from many points of view: Zoe's, Jake's, Jordan's, Demeter's, Ava's, Hobby's, and Lynne's. I liked this aspect, seeing how different views changed the story. Everyone has secrets, and sometimes the secrets affect the lives of those around them. An interesting story about a group of normal, flawed human beings and the emotions that drive them.

The Power of Habit

Finished June 23
The Power of Habit: why we do what we do and how to change it by Charles Duhigg

This fascinatiing book looks at the nature of habits, explaining how habits work, why habits never really go away (but can be changed), and what goes on in our brains around them.
The basic structure of habits is the habit loop. Some sort of cue leads us to a routine or habit, that leads us to some sort of reward. The chapter on creating new habits led me to begin a habit I'd been unsuccessful at instilling in myself until now, flossing my teeth daily. I decided to start with this simple habit, and see how well this habit creation worked before starting some other, potentially more difficult, habits. I've found it worked very well. It also talks about how bad habits can be replaced with new, better habits.
The book doesn't only look at personal habits, it also looks at habits in terms of organizations, and in terms of society. It shows us how corporations use the study of people's habits in influence marketing and directed marketing to increase purchase of products. It also shows how societies are influenced, and changed by habits and by sudden changes in habits.
There is an appendix that walks the reader through the process of identifying the routine, reward and cue to a habit you want to change, and how to effect that change.
Just knowing how habits work and how others try to influence our habits can make us less susceptible to that influence. Awareness of both the process and one's own habitual behaviours is the first step in making changes.

How the Dead Dream

Finished December 30
How the Dead Dream by Lydia Millet
Admittedly I don't know if I would have picked this up if I hadn't got it as part of my Indiespensible subscription. And it has been on my shelf for quite a while (it was the first Indiespensible pick back in 2008) so I finally decided to put the ones I haven't read yet in a pile with the oldest at the top and begin reading.
Here the main character is T and we follow him from his childhood through his life. He is a loner, the kind of guy who stands back from his life and watches. He struck me as being a man slightly on the autistic scale in the way he doesn't respond emotionally sometimes, like he doesn't recognize what others are feeling. He does make breakthroughs though and these make him more empathetic and he recognizes that he viewpoint has sometimes been flawed. Animals are his weakness, from his own dog, to endangered species.
He has trouble connecting with other people and while he tries not to hurt people's feelings, he doesn't always know how to do that. He went from being a child and man who seemed removed to being a man who saw injustice and the need to change. A very interesting read.

Annoying

Finished December 5
Annoying: the science of what bugs us by Joe Palca and Flora Lichtman
This science is a fairly new field and the authors gather information from a number of disciplines to try to figure out how to define 'annoying' and figure out what sorts of things annoy us and why.
From cell phone conversations to personal grooming, they look at the wide variety of annoyances in our lives. Taking us from the symptoms of Huntington's disease to the emotional response to music, from the taste of chili peppers to the chemistry of skunk perfume, these researches investigate every sideroad in their efforts to understand the annoying.
I found it fascinating to see what annoys, what doesn't and how some people are more susceptible. A great beginning to a new field of study.

This Book Will Not Save Your Life

Finished October 7
This Book Will Not Save Your Life by Michelle Berry
Not only is the title true, but it won't make your life happier either. This is a sad book about a dysfunctional family, the Swamps. The story is told in sections with different points of view, each telling some of the family history and taking the story a little further along.
It begins with Sylvia Swamp, the youngest daughter at 28, being transported by ambulance from the hospital to a veterinary hospital for a scan. At more than 700 pounds, she doesn't fit into the hospital's equipment. She begins to reflect on her life and what brought her to her current state.
We next hear from Sylvia's mother Ruth. Ruth is narcissistic, and becomes addicted late in her first pregnancy to the book Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care. She refers to it for every question she has in her life, struggling to fit its contents to her situation. At the same point she discovers the book, she also discovers a magician who works out of a local hotel. He becomes to her all that her husband isn't and she puts a lot of energy into that relationship at the expense of her family.
The next speaker is Sylvia's older sister Sadie, named by her father after his favourite dog. Sadie both wants to be like Ruth and doesn't want to be like Ruth. She loves her sister Sylvia and hates her. Sadie struggles with her life throughout, having a difficult adolescence.
Finally we have Benjamin, Sylvia's father, a man who seems almost an afterthought, a piece of furniture. He seems a man that things happen to, rather than a man who makes things happen. However, we learn that he does make things happen sometimes and they often have a lasting effect on him and others.
This is a book where things are not always as they seem, where life isn't fair, and where books won't save your life, not even if they are Dr. Spock's.

The Global Forest

Finished August 11
The Global Forest by Diana Beresford-Kroeger
Beresbord-Kroeger is a botanist and medical biochemist and an expert on medicinal, environmental, and nutritional properties of trees.
This book links that knowledge with a poetic style to celebrate trees, mourn losses, and educate the reader. Told in short chapters that echo traditional storytelling, Beresford-Kroeger shows how trees are a part of the larger environment, giving examples of how they interact with other plants, insects, animals and man. She shows how trees help each other out, and explains the role of mother trees in a forest. She tells us how they breathe, providing us with the oxygen we need and converting or storing our waste carbon. She shows how the trees green chlorophyll echoes our own red hemoglobin in function and movement through the living. She shows how they provide food, shelter, medicine, and comfort to other living entities, including us. The connections she explains are eye-opening. She makes several arguments for change in how we treat these important elements of the earth, and hopefully we are listening.
A wonderful lyrical read, although it did have me reaching for my dictionary from time to time for scientific terms and other wonderfully new words. The short chapters offer just enough to ponder upon before going on the the next one.

Mistakes Were Made

Finished June 17
Mistakes Were Made (but not by me): why we justify foolish beliefs, bad decisions, and hurtful acts by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson
This book has been on my to read list for a while, and a couple of chapters were reading in a recent HR course I took, so when I saw it as I was weeding a section at work, I grabbed it. And what a wonderful read it was.
The authors looked at what they saw happening: people dodging responsibility when things went wrong, public figures unwilling to take responsibility when they made mistakes, people blind to the hypocrisy they exhibit to others, and went after the reasons behind them.
Making mistakes affects our feelings about ourselves and we are wired to lessen that feeling of cognitive dissonance. We do this by standing by our decisions, making excuses and explanations, and expanding the blame to others (i.e. he started it). Often this means that others lose respect for us, and we exacerbate the initial mistake. As they did the research they discovered that knowing about the phenomena doesn't mean you are immune to it, but at least being aware means that you can choose to stop when you see yourself going down that road.
They talk about many instances of this from false memory syndrome, to wrongful convictions, from mistakes in the workplace to marital relations. I recognized myself, and the society I live in.
One example is to do with the criminal justice system. "But from our vantage point, the greatest impediment to admitting and correcting mistakes in the criminal-justice system is that most of its members reduce dissonance by denying that there is a problem. ... Doubt is not the enemy of justice; overconfidence is." To me this is portrayed in two recent situations. The first is that of Canadian pathologist Charles Smith whose errors from 1982 to 2003 in blaming parents and other caregivers for children's death has resulted in a public inquiry into more than 220 cases and countless lives ruined. Another example is the G20 in Toronto last year, in which there were blatant examples of miscarriages of justice and violation of human rights and yet the authorities are still denying the need for a public inquiry and the police have closed ranks, refusing to admit publicly than any of them did wrong.
A similar thing occurs in marriage "While happy partners are giving each other the benefit of the doubt, unhappy partners are doing just the opposite." In unhappy couples, one partner doing something nice is explained as a fluke or due to some outside circumstance, whereas mistakes are signs of malice and embedded flaws.
The book looks at how we self-justify, showing that we minimize our own actions or their effects whenever possible, and make excuses when we can't, driving us further away from an honest accounting and resolution.
This book should be required reading, particularly for those in a position of power or authority.

Identity Economics

Finished May 20
Identity Economics by George A. Akerlof and Rachel E. Kranton, narrated by Sean Pratt
Grabbed this book from the new book shelf at work as I needed something to listen to on my commute.
It was interesting, but I am glad I have a degree in economics, as some of the terminology was definitely subject specific. It talked about a relatively new aspect of economics that uses individual or group identity perception to predict behaviour. Some types of identity are generally fixed (race, gender), while others are temporary and may change over time. Standard economics says that people would choose economic behaviours that would be of most benefit to them, but that doesn't always happen. Identity economics shows that how a person identifies themselves influences their behaviour (one example: they want to do what the rest of their peer group is doing so they fit in). The authors use examples from work, school, and home to show different ways this happens. They also show examples of both fixed identity and temporary identity and how behaviours can change over time.
It was quite interesting and can explain a lot of things that don't seem to make sense otherwise (like election results ;->) It made me think about things in a different way.