stellarexplorer: A Leap of Faith

This is my first public revelation of my reading, so much is provisional and experimental.

I read widely in nonfiction, with special focus on paleoanthropology, history broadly along with a special fondness for Big History (See Group: History at 30,000 Feet), medicine, natural history, physics, biology, and biography with a tilt toward scientist biographies. I'm interested in whether we can get some portion of humanity the heck off this planet into a viable way of living and out of harm's way. The last implies some romantic attachment to the survival of the human career, such as it is, which became ingrained in me in childhood. And frankly a preoccupation with the apocalypse which, especially in the dark of night, I am convinced is coming. Nonetheless, I am not otherwise morose, and if anything would point to intense curiosity and a joyful sense of wonder as two of my core traits. In fiction, I tend more to SF than fantasy, and read historical fiction, some classics, but relatively little contemporary fiction.

I would suggest that while I have been a member of The Green Dragon since 2009, the circumstances of my joining are my proudest LT moment. I was this Group's 2000th member.
In Post #146 I revealed my intention, and my successful ascension to the role was documented in Post 221. Ordinarily, I wouldn't mention it, but I am proud still, and outside of here, no one would have any idea what I was talking about!

Oh, and I love cheese.

Will be following! I read a fair amount of non-fiction to leaven my fiction reading.

I'm listing the last two years of my reading. The enumeration began around 2006 when I began logging my books, and it was too much of a chore to delete it one number at a time. Books without a date were not finished, though I intend to return to some of them

507. Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast 1/1/2015
508. Surrender On Demand by Varian Fry 1/1/15
509. Two Rings: A Story of Love and War by Millie Werber and Eve Keller 2/1/15
510. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow 2/14/15
511. Trader to the stars by Poul Anderson 2/28/15
512. Encore: a journal of the Eightieth Year by May Sarton
513. Entheogenic Visions: One Man's Exploration of Psychedelics by Stewart Allen Mosher
514. Psychedelic Healing by Neal Goldsmith
515. Being Mortal by Atul Gawande 4/18/15
516. Realms of the Human Unconscious by Stanislavsky Grof 5/5/15
517. Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons 5/15/15
518. Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson 7/1/15
519. Creative Aging: A Baby Boomer’s Guide to Successful Living by Vassiliadis and Romer 4/19/15
520. The Boys in the Boat 3/18/15 by Daniel James Brown. Good idea to add the James!
521. Aurora by KSR 7/22/15, whose books I love
522. No More Worlds to Conquer by Chris Wright 7/15/15
523. How Rome Fell by Adrian Goldsworthy 9/15/15
524. A Winters Tale by Mark Helprin 8/1/15
525. Seveneves by Neal Stephenson 8/8/15
526. All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr 9/5/15
527. Come to Me by Amy Bloom 5/30/15
528. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green 8/3/15
529. Plank: Driven by Vision, Broken by War. Brandon R. Brown.
530. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo 8/30/15
531. Complete Chronicles of the Emperors of Rome 9/3/16
532. Eagle in the Snow by Wallace Bream 10/24/15
533. Europe After Rome by Julie M H Smith 11/20/15
534. How Chinese Are You? Adopted Chinese Youth and their Families Negotiate Identity and Culture by Andrea Louie 9/19/15
535. Peak-Performance Living Joel Robertson 10/16/15
536. Great Courses: A brief history of the world. Part 1 by Stearns, Peter N. 9/22/15
537. Great Courses: Between the Rivers -- A History of Ancient Mesopotamia by Alexius Castor 10/12/15
338. Fatherland by Robert Harris 12/25/15
539. The Vital Question by Nick Lane 12/26/15

540. The Girl with All the Gifts by M R Carey1/1/16
541. Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny 1/15/16
542. The Guns of Avalon by Roger Zelazny 1/20/16
543. Sign of the Unicorn by Roger Zelazny2/09/16
544. The Hand of Oberon by Roger Zelazny2/14/16
545. The Courts of Chaos by Roger Zelazny2/20/16
546. A Very Dangerous Woman: The Lives, Loves and Lies of Russia’s Most Seductive Spy by Deborah McDonald and Jeremy Dronfield 3/3/16
547. Freedom by Jonathan Franzen 3/2/16
548. Genius on the Edge: The Bizarre Double Life of Dr. William Stewart Halsted by Gerald Imber MD 3/23/16
549. Maphead by Ken Jennings 2/12/16
550. Do No Harm: Tales of Life, Death and Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh 3/28/16
551. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North 4/11/16
552. The Lady Elizabeth by Alison Weir 5/22/16
553. The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Murkerjee 5/23/16
554. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins 5/1/16
555. Old Age: A Beginner’s Guide by Michael Kinsley 5/15/16
556. The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson
557. Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway. Authors: Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully 7/7/16
558. Benjamin’s Crossing by Jay Parini
559. Gloriana: The Portraits of Elizabeth I by Roy Strong 6/21/16
560. Time and Time Again: A Novel by Ben Elton 7/12/16
561. The Thirteen Word Retirement Plan by Stephen Nelson 7/10/16
562. Titans of the Seas: The Development and Operations of Japanese and American Carrier Task Forces During World War II by James and William Belote 7/25/16
563. Pacific Crucible: War at Sea 1941-1942 by Ian W Toll
564. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
565. The Magician by Lev Grossman

Currently reading:

In car: The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson
Nonfiction when not in motion: Pacific Crucible: War at Sea 1941-1942 by Ian W Toll (almost finished)
Top of queue: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
Current fiction book: The Magician by Lev Grossman

Favorite reads so far this year:

Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
Any elaboration will have to wait 8-)

Interesting list. I'm starring your thread.

I will be interested in your views on Sapiens*. I have noticed it several times on-line and in bookshops and wondered if it is an interesting read or simply an interesting concept. Your comments are eagerly awaited.

Thank you for starting your thread.

*The first work presented by "Touchstones" was, The Third Chimpanzee.

I thank all of you for jumping in and for your interest :)

>5 pgmcc: I listened in on some of Hariri's lectures for his Coursera course (as opposed to having diligently took the course). My initial take on him was that he was an effective popularizer of a fascinating body of big picture ideas. I'm sure the book will be stimulating conceptually. Apart from jumping into many issues that grab my attention about human beings and their history, I want to know how much the author himself is a rigorous thinker and how much an engaging story teller who may be willing to exceed the avaiable scholarship.

At a party I fully endorse not letting the truth interfere with a good story. But in a scholarly book....not so much.

>6 stellarexplorer: Your last sentence captures my concern about the book.

Thank you for your thoughts.

>1 stellarexplorer:

Do you still get free drinks here in the pub?

I've starred your thread. I do not read much non-fiction. I'm hoping you hit me with some book bullets along the way. :)

I am so pleased to see this thread!!!
:o)
It was a happy day for all of us when you became our 2000th member.

I am going to have to don my kevlar before reading your posts, though. I saw (not surprisingly) many of the books on my TBR stacks on your list. Especially the Zelaznys and the Murkerjee. And Sapiens, as well.

>5 pgmcc: The Third Chimpanzee is an amazing book. It's my favorite Diamond. Guns, Germs and Steel is also fantastic.

>8 suitable1: I dunno -- where's the bartender anyway? *Tries to make eye contact*

>9 catzteach: Thanks catz. I don't know whether you'll like them, but I'll be citing them!

>10 clamairy: those Zelazny's (which btw constitute
the First Chronicle of Amber) were a glaring omission from decades gone by for me. Good to get that rectified!

>10 clamairy: Oh, and Jared Diamond: right up my alley! Why is it that Eurasians established myriad technologies and acquired wealth in contrast to the fortunes of the intelligent people of New Guiniea? Guns, Germs, and Steel

>10 clamairy: & >12 stellarexplorer:

Guns, Germs, and Steel is on my shelf awaiting attention. It was strongly recommended by a work colleague.

>10 clamairy: >11 stellarexplorer:

My first memory of Zelazny and Amber was on a business trip in St. Louis in the early eighties. I had picked up a copy not realizing it was part of a series (don't remember which title) and devoured it quite quickly. When I got to the end I was, "What! part of this book is missing!" It stopped so abruptly that I was sure I didn't have a complete copy.
I, of course, got them all; they are still in a box here and haven't been cataloged. It's going to be a pleasant surprise when I finally see what I have.

Oh! I forgot. I'm also in the middle of PKD's Valis. And I have started In the After, thanks to claimary.

I have mini-reviews of my favorite reads of the year for the last several years. I think I'll post some of those over the next few days. Some nonfiction stuff I really found terrific.

Welcome!

I knew you would have read some interesting books! I'm curious about Sapiens, too, so look forward to your opinion. The Emperor of All Maladies is in my tbr pile. I've heard a lot of good things about it.

Have you read Tomorrowland: Our Journey from Science Fiction to Science Fact by Steven Kotler? He explores some interesting technologies. I only read about half the book though, because he lost me when he got into the psychedelics.

I added your thread to our Green Dragon reading journal master list, which is here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/213116

And I have some fresh buffalo milk cheese to contribute to this gathering. Enjoy!

>16 MrsLee: Thank you!

>17 SylviaC: Thank you for adding me. No, I haven't read Tomorrowland - I must check it out!

I just finished In the After. The best thing about it was that I finished it quickly.

I have to mention, now that I am offering my reading comments, that when I don't like a book, I tend to be quite critical of it, and sometimes I feel like apologizing for being a curmudgeon. One of the things that bothers me the most are poorly executed, embarrassingly bad books that have received high praise elsewhere. One example is Mira Grant's Feed, whose awards I found frustrating and misplaced. But that's another topic.

In the After is not in that category, but the rejoinder is that it hasn't won awards. I will give no spoilers, but the book reads like something written by an eager but very inexperienced high school student. What appears to be intended to be as foreshadowing is actually telegraphing. There are few surprises. The book cannot rest on our interest in the protagonist, because she is insufficiently fleshed out to make up for the missteps that made me cringe.

If you read the reviews on LT, you will quickly find that many of the glowing responses are....not very sophisticated. For example, many of them give away plot points that are not revealed until the final chapters. So maybe this is a book best suited to readers of a certain age... (There I go again -- I'm not proud of being snarky, but when it comes to this kind of book, I'd have to make a monumental effort not to be. Brings out the worst in me. I apologize. Kind of.)

I won't spend more time on this here. Happy to discuss if anyone wishes. On to the next book!

>19 stellarexplorer: Oy. I wonder why the ratings were so high here on LT. I'll save that one for when I'm suffering from a cold and I don't want to read anything too complex. (Or maybe I'll wait until the next time I'm on a ferry and the noise and vibrations from the engines numbs about half of my brain cells.)

>20 clamairy: Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. I can only assume the high ratings have most to do with the age cohort of the raters. The only other possibilities I can imagine are that for some reason this book attracted readers who are easily satisfied, are excessively positively drawn to pacing alone, or that I am an extreme outlier in my own responses to reading.

>20 clamairy: >21 stellarexplorer: in general as you know all social media rates high, LT perhaps less so than some. But people normally read the types of books they expect to enjoy and hence 4.0 is about what I'd expect from an average book.

Then again I really enjoyed feed and thought it one of the best books I'd read that year. Not without faults, but they were easily overcome by the innovation of the plot, so what do I know.

>22 reading_fox: Many people liked that book, r_f. I was clearly among a minority group of those who rated and reviewed who felt the way I did. Admittedly, I felt strongly.

>19 stellarexplorer: I read this a couple of weeks ago. I enjoyed it. It was predictable, though.

I'm belatedly joining your thread and donning a bullet-proof vest in preparation! I too thought very highly of The emperor of all maladies.

I'm with you in sometimes being very hard on books I didn't like. I tend to go through and pick out all the things that annoyed me, as they usually outweigh the positives. So I will enjoy reading your similarly curmudgeonly reviews when you find it necessary to write them.

>24 catzteach: glad you enjoyed it, catzteach. Sometimes I wear a book as if it were a hairshirt!

>25 Sakerfalcon: Thanks Sakerfalcon. Not late at all, I just started doing this. But I'm glad you may understand if I am at times unduly annoyed by a book's shortcomings. Fortunately there are many I like as well!

I am going to talk about four books I read recently on the Pacific Theater of WWII, and the role of aircraft carriers in the conflict. I did not start out to explore these topics. In the way my nonfiction reading (and my inner life in general) often progresses, one thing led to another, and learning a little bit made me startlingly aware of how little I knew about other things I needed to know about. There were glaring gaps that needed to be filled! In short, my curiosity got hold of me and drove me.

It started with Midway. I had been quite taken with the Battle of Midway for many years, but in retrospect I had been enticed by the romanticization that has surrounded the battle ever since it was fought. Old titles like Miracle at Midway suggested a plucky and undermanned group of American soldiers who pulled off an improbable victory that changed the course of the war. That narrative, along with the notion of this vital and central battle that halted the aggressive tide of Japanese successes during the six months following Pearl Harbor, always grabbed my attention. My reading has largely cured me of the romantic view, left intact the notion that something very important to the remainder of the war did happen at Midway, and gotten me interested in the emergence of carrier warfare strategy and the primacy of carriers as a way of projecting naval power beginning early in WWII.

The Battle of Midway by Craig Symonds is a fine book. It is a comprehensive account of the battle itself, eminently readable, by an author with a firm grasp of events. It is an excellent introduction for someone who knows little about Midway, or who wants a military historical narrative. I hesitate to use the phrase "Where it falls short", because were it not for the next book I will mention, I would have left my reading satisfied, and I'd be recommending Symonds' book highly.

Shattered Sword is one of the finest -- if not the finest -- works of military history I've ever read.*{See next post} It is no ordinary military history, but rather a work of military analysis. The book has a purpose and it is not only to provide a lucid account of the battle, though it does that well. This is a book that for the first time in the western literature makes full use of Japanese sources. The authors' research uncovered the fact that western dogma about the battle had long been thoroughly debunked by Japanese scholars, but none of that work was accessible except in Japanese. In view of this, the approach here is to look at the battle from the Japanese point of view, considering Japanese strategy and decision-making at each step. The goal is to set the record straight by confronted the prevailing dogmata, and correct the misconceptions. While the American performance and American command decisions are part of the story of Midway, these have been told elsewhere. Parshall and Tully rewrite the history of this crucial clash in a way that is not only convincing, but is intellectually gripping as well. The reader can now make sense of Japanese goals, missteps, and calculations. I found it thrilling.

Shattered Sword emphasizes the role of aircraft carrier strategy in WWII. Carrier warfare was new, and both sides were elaborating the details of strategy. Principles such as the massing of forces, notions of attack vs defense, use of radar, fire control after being hit, etc were evolving rapidly. I am pursuing the evolution of carriers and carrier strategy further (or will be over time). Titans of the Seas was an excellent introduction to the carrier campaigns in the Pacific theater, primarily in a straight military history sense. In the fullness of time, I will move on to two other books on the topic, The fast carriers : the forging of an air navy by Clark G. Reynolds (1992) and The First Team: Pacific Naval Air Combat from Pearl Harbor to Midway by John B. Lundstrom. (2005).

Finally, I just finished Pacific Crucible: War at Sea 1941-1942 by Ian W Toll (2011). This is the first of a trilogy about the war in the Pacific --the last of which is not yet published-- and is a well-received broad account of the first months of the Pacific War, basically from Pearl Harbor through Midway. It is thorough, well-researched, and full of intimate details that bring the story to life, even for the reader familiar with the history.

An example, discussing the aviators who returned to Oahu with after their tremendous victory at Midway, yet with the heavy loss of many comrades:

"They plunged into their customary all-night bacchanals, but their carousing was more anguished than joyful. Some young men wept drunkenly for their dead friends; others brawled or vandalized hotel property. The MPs, shore patrol, and hotel detectives, were harassed at every turn. 'The routine of the returning airmen for the next few nights consisted of their tramping from room to room hunting for liquor, talking, arguing, fighting, and breaking the furniture... Some few were feeling tender enough to want to find a girl, but for the most part their emotions released in being just as mean as they could. I saw two boys who were good friends beating each other in the face with their fists, not trying to duck or box, until they both had black eyes and were crimson with blood. Another pilot tried to throw his smaller friend out of a window.'"

I'm taking a break from WWII for the time being, but that central conflict of the 20th century, completed well before my birth, will always be a part of me.

*I have to qualify that remark: The most masterly and sophisticated grasp of the war at large that I have read comes from Gerhard Weinberg's A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II. Of course the scope of that book is larger than Shattered Sword. Note the title.

I'm impressed by this stack of books you've read while on this particular, what would one call it, a reading tangent? Might I ask if you were reading fiction along with or in between these? And what made you pick up the first one? My husband started reading a bit of naval history because his father was serving in the Pacific from 1937 until some time in the mid 1950s. By the time my husband was interested enough in the period to ask questions his father had already passed on, sadly. So he started reading instead.

Not quite a reading tangent, I think. It's more like picking up the quilt I've made over time, and filling in more pieces, enriching my vision, weaving, adding, filling in gaps. And following the curiosity engendered by new knowledge as it informs the body of knowledge as it exists before. There are many topics that drive my curiosity and interest over a lifetime, and I come back to them over and over to add, broaden, learn more, order and structure what I've got in my head. In this arena, WWII is one of them. Military history in general is another. Warfare, human conflict, and the drive toward conquest is a third (or fourth and fifth!).

And, yes, always reading fiction along with it. I pretty much always have at least one fiction book, one nonfiction and one audiobook going at all times.

As far as picking up the first one, I assume you mean the micro pick up, i.e. books about Midway, rather than the macro, books about WWII? Because the second question is large and I'd have to trace something that has been part of my consciousness and effort to comprehend for much of my life. As far as Midway -- I only remember being intrigued by that battle for many years on a superficial level. I think it was originally part of the mental filing system I was creating, i.e. "The Battle of Midway slowed the Japanese advance, and was a turning point in the war" and "Midway was fought in June of 1942", etc. And as I mentioned above, I was suckered (as were generations) into the romantic narrative of the battle. But then it became more than that. So when a new book comes out about Midway, especially new scholarship, I'm interested.

Lurking, starred the thread and I expect to learn much from your diverse selections!

>30 stellarexplorer: For me, interest in WWII has a very clear beginning. I ran into an old friend of my parents at a yard sale. I'm not sure how we discovered that connection, but he was a veteran and we were both looking at the books there. He picked up a copy of Here is Your War by Ernie Pyle and told me I had to purchase it and read it. Usually that sort of recommendation doesn't bode well for me, but this one ended up with me seeking out and purchasing all of his books, then going on to find and purchase others from that era which Pyle had recommended.

Finished Valis by Philip K Dick. Is this a work of brilliance? It's possible. A better person might have had the patience and discernment to decide. I had trouble navigating an inpenetratable obscurantism that spreads through the pages like a plague. Gnostic preachings, archaic theological exegeses, rambling philosophical didacticism...very tough going. Not just because it was obscure or even difficult, but mostly because it was tedious. Might a good editor have been called upon?

I wouldn't be the first to suggest that PKD's books make better movies, despite his fertile imagination, penetrating questioning and infectious paranoia. Anyone who has Amazon Prime and has yet to watch the Amazon original production of The Man in the High Castle has a delicious treat in store.

A challenging question is What is Valis About? I'll give it a rough back-of-the-envelope attempt, no doubt insufficient. It's about a character and his alter ego, who is the author Philip K Dick by another name, and his struggle with his sanity. Or it's about the character and his understanding of the gap in history that followed the fall of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE, only to have history really resume in 1974; this character has mastered a wealth of ancient wisdom including the Gnostic texts from Nag Hammadi. It's about a supra-human technology that reorients people with rationality against the predations of our irrational world. It's about a psychotic refugee from the drug culture who's trying to keep his bearings even in the face of the senseless deaths of friends.

If that sounds good to you, and you're a patient and persistent reader who is willing to try to separate the wheat from the chaff, have at it. There are morsels of good in there.

There's a band called Valis that I like. Former guitarist for The Screaming Trees. Yup, the name is from this book.

”I had trouble navigating an inpenetratable obscurantism that spreads through the pages like a plague."

I think this is my new favourite sentence. It is so perfectly descriptive of many putative works of brilliance.

I read the entire Valis trilogy this year. The other two volumes, The Divine Invasion, and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer are more of the same wrapped up in separate narratives. In other words, it's a very loosely connected trilogy. Thematically, they pound the same nail using different types of hammers, (man, I love an opportunity to mix bad metaphors ;).

The added wrinkle here is that the Valis trilogy is a re-write of an earlier novel; Radio Free Albemuth was first written in 1976 but was not published until 1985, after PKD's death. Radio Free Albemuth was later turned into a film. I have not yet read that book or watched the movie - but I plan to do both before the year is out. I just needed a break after forging through that daunting trilogy.

>35 SylviaC: Thank you Sylvia. You made me laugh.

>36 ScoLgo: That's very interesting ScoLgo. I can't quite tell how much you liked the trilogy or not though. But it's good to know that the others are cut from the same cloth.

>33 stellarexplorer: Sweet cheeses! I believe I shall pass on the PKD. The Amazon series sounds quite inviting, though.

>37 stellarexplorer: Out of the three books, I liked Valis best and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer least. Being a bit of a PKD fanboy, I'd give the trilogy an overall - having deducted at least a full star for the overly repetitive nature of the narrative. The cathartic spilling of his paranoiac thoughts actually came across rather powerfully for me. I am not myself an overly paranoid person so getting that glimpse into Dick's mind was fascinating. But the storylines themselves were not all that thrilling.

>38 clamairy: By all means don't miss streaming the Amazon production!

>39 ScoLgo: Thank you ScoLgo. I find Dick's paranoia all too familiar and nostalgic -- like trying to talk down a college friend from a bad drug experience. How swiftly flow the years...

This is going to be on the confessional side. We all have had reading that embarrasses us a little.

I heard about this book from two friends, one of whom served as editor. It had been a serial, recently turned into a single volume work.

I started it and within a page or two I was pretty certain I would not be a happy camper in the end. The writing was breezy, YA, not especially beautiful. But then...I was drawn in to it. The tropes are favorites of mine. Groundhog Day, Replay, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, Life After Life, etc. Person goes back and relives life. Pretty irresistible. Maybe it appeals to my own semi-obsessive tendency to pointlessly replay irrevocable choices made decades ago -- Anyway, it became hard to put down. I clearly wanted to see where it was going, and I grudgingly became attached to the characters. The term "guilty pleasure" kept resounding in my mind as I was reading. Finished it in a day. Made me happy, abundant imperfections notwithstanding.

The Unusual Second Life of Thomas Weaver.

Added bonus: Kindle edition $2.99

So here you are! I'm happy to have this quick check-point for your reading.
How I wish that you could have met my daddy! He flew a B-24 in the Pacific theater at the end of the war. (He had just graduated from the glider program when the army ended it (thank God! The casualty rate was appalling), so he was able to go back into training for however many months it took to teach a pilot to wrestle a B-24.
Anyway, I must say that I refuse to feel guilty about guilty pleasures. So there. Enjoy!

For myself, I don't believe in feeling guilty about my pleasures. If anyone else wants to judge what I enjoy reading, it's more of a problem for them than for me.

>42 LizzieD: Thank you for stopping by LizziePeg! How I wish I could have met your daddy! He must have been a brave soul, or a man with a firm sense of responsibility, or both.

>42 LizzieD: >43 SylviaC: You are both totally right. I aspire to become more free

>42 LizzieD: >43 SylviaC: >44 stellarexplorer: For some of us the guilt thing is not a choice.

>45 clamairy: :-! Yeah.

I'm glad to see someone else who appreciates Replay. I am now a bit intrigued by The Unusual Second Life of Thomas Weaver.

>45 clamairy: I have two teenagers. All my guilt is reserved for parenting, so there's none left over for my reading choices.

>48 SylviaC: *snort* Sadly, that guilt (or what ever we call it) doesn't disappear. I'm still woken up in the wee small hours of the morning by the worries associate with things I did when my guys were small.

>47 jillmwo: I definitely appreciate Replay. Really a fun read, offers a wealth of permutations. If that book has some appeal and you haven't read it, you might consider The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August. It's a different approach, nicely crafted.

>48 SylviaC: I'm pretty resigned to the idea that no matter what you do, they'll one day be talking about you to their therapist. My older goes back to college Saturday.

>51 stellarexplorer: Yup!

Finished The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson

The book is an overview of the development of the computer and the digital world that has developed around it. Isaacson starts with Babbage and Lovelace (I notice a number of LT readers have recommended the graphic novel The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage which I have not read), and the story of Lovelace's vision of the potential power of computers long before they existed is a central theme throughout the book. Isaacson touches all the expected players and developments including Alan Turing, John von Neumann, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, Larry Page, IBM, INTEL, who invented the electronic computer?, who invented the personal computer?, who invented the internet?, etc. Yes, Al Gore gets some exoneration here, and credit for the (legislative) role he did play.

I thought it was a good survey, if the topic interests you. There are many little-known individuals who made major contributions. He gives ample attention to the lesser known developments in the 1920s and 30s, not only to more recent developments. If there is one overarching conclusion drawn, it is that innovation is rarely the work of a lone genius working in isolation. It requires the collaboration of many minds, and comes to little without those who can actually bring a great idea into the world in a practical way.

I am sitting by the water reading Under Heaven, while playing Bach violin sonatas from my phone to a Bose Bluetooth speaker

Later, a fine Hermitage Syrah, cheese and lobster.

Picture as new profile pic

>54 stellarexplorer: Lovely!!! I'm envious. But what about the local wines?

Good question...not to cast aspersions --- I strongly support local production in general --- but what I brought is special. And also there is a similar Croze-Hermitage by the same producer for less than half the price. I tried and liked them both, but didn't drink them side by side for a fair comparison. That is today's chore ;)

I love syrah. (What's not to love?) Enjoy! :o)
(But when the wine you brought with you is all gone, do some tasting of the local stuff if you have time.)

Sounds like a fine selection to me of both book and vintage...

>58 clamairy: You make me think how fortunate I am, even though I live at the other end of the country from the Winelands, in the wide variety of "local stuff" here -- from one step above plonk to vintages that regularly take top honours in French and other international competitions.

>53 stellarexplorer: read the Thrilling adventures. It's fun, a bit silly, but well produced. The author came to speak at my work, which was also well received.

>54 stellarexplorer: That sounds like a perfect day!

>52 clamairy: That sounds like a lovely day. Under Heaven is my favorite of Kay's novels.

>32 MrsLee: My grandmother was a few years younger than Ernie Pyle and from near his hometown. She saw him once in a general store and was very proud of that. My dad now has a few of her Ernie Pyle books in his collection.

>60 hfglen: You are fortunate - some of those South African wines are terrific!

>61 reading_fox: I may have a look, because I am interested in the duo. Thanks R_F

>62 Sakerfalcon: It was - and the great thing is that today is more of the same!

>63 LibraryPerilous: Enjoying it with small reservations, but it certainly takes you long ago and far away!

>64 stellarexplorer: Haha. One of the reasons I like Under Heaven best of Kay's work is that it's largely free of the couple of things about his writing that bother me—my small reservations, if you will. :)

Hope you have a lovely reading day!

>65 LibraryPerilous: diana, oddly when I look at your library it erroneously says "no books shared with other members". I wonder why - is that due to a setting you have on your library? Or am I doing something wrong?

>66 stellarexplorer: I'm showing we share 127 books. It must be my settings. I have some of the connections aspects turned off, although I can't find now where those settings are to see which ones I've unchecked.

Yes, I see the shared books. (I actually have all my fiction turned off for the purpose of finding member connections because my SF was biasing everything over my nonfiction). But you have no member connections -- and the message I quoted above. It must be something about your settings. ( see "Members with diana.n's books")

>68 stellarexplorer: Ah, I misread your post. I turned off connections when I was dumping TBR titles into this account. I've since moved those titles to a separate account.

I'm still not having luck finding where those settings are. Oh well.

ETA: Oh, apparently, it just is in the connections edits per collection. I'd thought there was something fancier I'd done.

>69 LibraryPerilous: Well be that as it may, thanks for dropping by!

I finished Under Heaven, my first read of a Kay novel. I liked it quite a bit. I had numerous critiques, especially in the first half of the book. By the end these had reduced to quibbles, fairly insignificant in the face of the pleasure I took in this world. I was really able to dwell immersed in the Tang Dynasty with minimal disruption from sharp or irksome authorial missteps. That is an important mark of a good book for me. Another is that I tried to start a new audio book, and even though UH had been a dead tree book, I found I was not yet ready to enter a new fictional realm. I'm still living with this one. Quite pleased.

I am now starting Sapiens, and in the car The English Girl by Daniel Silva. The former has been on my list for a while, and I watched some of the lectures from the Coursera course by the author, so I have some idea of the focus of the book. The later is my first by this author, recommended by my step m-I-l, who claims to know the author distantly. She is not always reliable but sometimes on the mark, so I don't know what to expect.

Finished Sapiens. A lot to chew over. This book is subtitled "A Brief History of Humankind", but it's an odd sort of history. It is history, but it's also a polemic. I say that as a description, not a criticism. Much of what he says is worth considering. Or reconsidering. But that's not what you expect when you pick up a standard work of history. Analysis, addressing controversies, even trying to draw pertinent lessons, yes. But here the author wants your attention very badly, because he wants you to hear his account of the human condition. He believes it's important, and he's not wrong about that, whether you agree with him or not.

I wanted to write about the book today, but life took over. It may be Wednesday before I'm able to give a real description, and some reactions.

72> I'm intrigued by that book, so will look forward to your reactions.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

This is not an easy book to present or review. It dissects so many parts of human life and culture, that it would be complicated to discuss on that basis alone. And yet one comes to feel that Harari addresses history largely in the service of offering deeply-held critiques and challenges that unfold over the course of the book.

Let me just mention that the hardcover first U.S. edition is an admirable physical specimen. Most notable to me is the feel of the paper. I don't know the accurate words to describe it, but it may be a premium glossy high-lustre paper that feels extremely comfortable to handle.

This book fits clearly into the emerging area of historical study some call Big History. It concerns itself with the broad sweep of the human career. Not quite as broad as the view of David Christian who doesn't limit himself to the human part of the story, but broad in that Harari starts with our proto-human ancestry and concludes with a consideration of a potential trans-human future.

Let's be clear: I found no original scholarship here. Harari hews to familiar if wide and inclusive intellectual terrain. He owes a great debt to people like Jared Diamond, David Christian, and numerous authors who have come before. The Cognitive Revolution, the Agricultural Revolution, civilization, modernity. Science and its overthrow of the belief that was no more to discover about the universe. The interplay between science, capital and government. And on.

This is not a criticism. Harari is an articulate and forceful purveyor of ideas. Sometimes he fails to make clear the distiction between scholarship and his own opinions, but for the most part he can be forgiven; his playing fast and-loose can be frustrating (eg. the chapter on the Agricultural Revolution is titled "History's Biggest Fraud"; "having so recently been one of the underdogs of the Savannah we are full of anxieties over our position, which makes us doubly cruel and dangerous"; "the leading project of the Scientific Revolution is to give humankind eternal life"), but it often feels like quibbling in the face of the questions he raises. Or alternatively, one tends to agree but knows inside that there is less certainty in his assertions that he lets on.

Harari spends a lot of time on the notion of human success being due to what he calls inter-subjective phenomena, meaning fictions we agree upon, like money or countries but unlike electrons. He wants to remind us of how much of what we take for granted about ourselves and the world -- and which has resulted in our numerical proliferation and material aggrandizement -- is in a deep sense imaginary. He emphasizes the (familiar) dark side of the Neolithic (and post-Paleolithic in general): longer hours, disease, the false lure of acquisitiveness, etc. He suggests that happiness ought to be the barometer of how we live. Are people happier now than they were before giving up the migrant hunter-gatherer life and becoming sedentary participants in civilization? (Acknowledging however that there's no going back) He is forceful in his criticisms of religion and government. His account of money, capital and banking is especially cogent. He emphasizes repeatedly our insensitivity to the emotional harm our practices have on animals.

This book is meant to challenge, to be a cautionary tale. There is a dark -- but not necessarily unfair -- thread running through the text. About our potential future as powerful beings: "Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don't know what they want?"; and "But since we might soon be able to engineer our desires too, the real question facing us is not 'What do we want to become?', but 'What do we want to want?'. Those who are not spooked by this question probably haven't given it enough thought."

In the end, this is a thought-provoking book. He may not be right about everything, he may blur the lines between scholarship and interpretation, but his critiques are well worth considering. For a thorough introduction to Big History, I prefer David Christian's Maps of Time. For a challenging critique of the human past and future, this book must be reckoned with.

Hmm. Don't think I'll rush out to find that one, but I might get around to it someday. In general, I like to have a clearly drawn line between fact and opinion.

I should have sold it better ;)

>75 SylviaC: Isn't there a similar wiggly line in Jared Diamond's books?

>74 stellarexplorer: Excellent review, stellar. I've had this one on my Kindle ready to go since Spring, but I think I'll keep waiting for crappier weather. (Hopefully that means November at the earliest!)

I think I let my curmudgeonly inner critic take some of the glow off an imperfect but still quite good and worthy book. The result may be a bias in the negative.

Also, this topic is in my wheelhouse more or less, and so I have less of the "aha" experience than I think someone who doesn't spend so much of his/her life on this material might.

>78 stellarexplorer: I've been suffering from a bit of stress-induced memory loss over the last couple of years, so though I've been through Diamond's books and listened to many hours of David Christian's lectures I'm sure this book will garner at least a few "ahas" from me. Or, at the very least, jog my squishy memory.

(Edited so touchstones will load properly.)

Fun fact: of my LT "100 Top Similar Libraries", 70 of them own Guns, Germs and Steel

>77 clamairy: Yes there is, and sometimes I don't mind it, but other times I do. I found it excessive in The World Until Yesterday, to the point that I couldn't finish it. I liked Collapse though, and Guns, Germs and Steel, except for his use of a circular argument that just made me mad.

>81 SylviaC: I understand. Much to my dismay I just realized I have The World Until Yesterday sitting unread somewhere in this house. I completely forgot that one even existed.

>74 stellarexplorer: I hope you posted that review for the book, it's terrific. I don't intend to get it, having read several similar topic tomes recently, but just the two questions you mentioned at the end enchanted me.

I find myself doing a write-up on some books I've read here in the GD, then using that, but taking out much of the personal gripes for the review. Not that I don't believe gripes should be in a review, I like them.

>83 MrsLee: Thank you Mrs. Lee. I did post the review. But I realize one must tailor one's review for the intended readership. I think many of my gripes would be less important to the general reader who is deciding whether to give the book a try. I myself am something of a paleoanthropology and history of civilization nut.

>81 SylviaC: I think you have put your finger on something. Many of the Big History writers, despite their enthusiasm for this (relatively) new approach, find there a substantial substrate for analysis and the drawing of conclusions. I'm not sure why they are reluctant to be clear about the distiction. There's nothing wrong with offering the conclusions one has drawn as long as you don't dress them up as established fact.

You remind me, at the very least, that Maps of Time sits unread in my library. (Don't you love how Treasure Island is the first book to come up with Touchstones?) I will, I will read that first before I consider *Homo-Sapiens*. You do make that one sound intriguing to me.

>84 stellarexplorer: "There's nothing wrong with offering the conclusions one has drawn as long as you don't dress them up as established fact."

Exactly. I want them to have theories and draw conclusions, because a list of facts with no interpretation would be pretty dry, and not very enlightening. But I want to know which points are facts, and which are theories.

I have completed Sixty: A Diary of My Sixty-First Year, but will write about it together with When Breath Becomes Air. I am finding they make contrasting bookends. Each deals in different ways with meaning and mortality. Should finish soon.

>87 stellarexplorer:
In the context of your post I am pondering the meaning of your last sentence.
:-)

>88 pgmcc: The perfect comment! :) Ten points!

>87 stellarexplorer: I'm very curious to hear your thoughts. I'm waiting for When Breath becomes Air through OverDrive. Thought it might help me deal with, well... you know. If I love it enough I'll probably buy a copy for my kids to read eventually. I don't think either one of them is ready yet.

>88 pgmcc: Haa!

>90 clamairy: yes, I think I do understand. I can't put it down, actually, it's only a matter of finding the moment to pick it up. I read half of it yesterday. I should fin... complete the book by this weekend at the latest -

>91 stellarexplorer: I am glad you clarified that point.

>92 pgmcc: Within the constraints of reasonable predictability...

Change of plans. I'm going to write about these separately. Their aims are too different that I think the comparison, with the one exception cited below, doesn't do justice to them.

Sixty: A Diary of My Sixty-First Year by Ian Brown.

Mr Brown is an accomplished Canadian journalist, who undertook the titled project. I'm going to be brief. What is best in this book is his writing. He is a good wordsmith. His sentences are easy on the ears(or eyes?). Many of the poems he offers are welcome and apropos, especially those of Philip Larkin, to whose work I now realize I must give more attention. The memoir succeeds at conveying a sense of the changes that attend aging -- often supplemented by the author's medical researches ("My heart changes too. My aging heart has a harder time speeding up than it did...The walls of my arteries are thicker and less flexible, while the space within the arteries has expanded slightly as well. As a result they can't relax as well while the heart pumps, which in turn leads to increased blood pressure.)

The enduring voice in this book is of a man in late middle age trying to come to terms with what is declining, but failing in his task. He will not go gentle into that good night, if only because he is busy banging his head at his misfortune. He is beset with regret at goals not accomplished, honors not won, self-esteem not sufficiently gratified. One commiserates with him, for his is not the wisdom devoutly to be wished at 60. Might he be a little further along in his personal evolution at this point? Surely I am being judgmental. We should respect his honesty: he admits his shortcomings openly before us. And yet there is something essentially immature, I think, in this account. Much could be redeemed by cultivating one indispensable attitude: gratitude. I struggle to find the gratitude for all life has given him at 60 that suffuses the work of Paul Kalanithi, whose life came to a premature end at 37. I know a book to recommend to Mr. Brown.

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalinithi.

The author was a young neurosurgeon who learned he had metastatic terminal cancer when he was 36, just finishing his training. Throughout his life, Kalinithi sought to understand what it meant to live a meaningful life. This book represents the work he did, in his final year of a life cut tragically short, to convey as much as he could of what he learned. In the process, he shows us the dying that is part of living, not shrinking into the avoidance of death that is so prevalent in our faux-immortal culture that glorifies youth and vitality.

This is a beautiful work, a remarkable accomplishment were he not so ill, and yet no doubt not possible without the felt immediacy of his situation. Kalinithi managed to grieve, to fear, to lose, and still to love, to have courage, and to face reality with open eyes and steadfast clarity. He put a lifetime of thought and struggle with ideas into this book, and it fails him to try to summarize, other than to say that he squeezed every bit of meaning and purpose he could muster into his life and his remaining time. His love for his wife, his friends and his service through doctoring helped to sustain him. And in no small measure so did his infant daughter, conceived after his diagnosis. In his words, and though these are his final thoughts in the book, I think it is worth quoting them here because they will tell you much about him and about whether this is something you may want to read:

"There is perhaps only one thing to say to this infant, who is all future, overlapping briefly with me, whose life, barring the improbable, is all but past.
That message is simple:
When you come to one of the many moments in life where you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man's days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing."

I am much the better for having read this.

>95 stellarexplorer: I've been curious about that book. I just placed a hold on it at my library.

>94 stellarexplorer: Thank you for the painfully honest review. This sounds like one I need to avoid.

>95 stellarexplorer: Paul Kalanithi's book sounds exceptional, and reading what you wrote made me tear up...
(Your comment about "shrinking into the avoidance of death" is cutting a little close to the bone here.) I am hoping to receive my digital loan of this one some time in the next month or so.

I go back to World War Two again and again. I will go out on a (thick and secure) limb and offer that WWII was the central and essential event of the 20th century, one with which I will surely grapple for all of my days. There could be no end to what might be said about all that. It almost feels like part of me lives there, though I was born well over a decade after the fighting ended. Of course, the war never really ended for so many, and that is why I read memoirs of those years: memoirs of soldiers, of politicians, of escaped prisoners, and especially of Holocaust survivors.

Leap Into Darkness: Seven Year on the Run in Wartime Europe by Leo Bretholtz is of the last category, although the author eluded the Nazis and the camps, though only barely. His story begins in 1930s Vienna, when as a seventeen year old, he leaves his mother and two sisters -- with family encouragement -- as conditions deteriorate for Austrian Jews following the Anschloss. He narrates his next seven years as a fugitive, narrowly escaping capture and death many times, and yet finding help in the midst of unimaginable cruelty. In one terrifying episode, he tells of incarceration in Drancy, the French holding area of unspeakable conditions, until he is loaded into the train to Auschwitz. In an improbable act of courage and desperation, he pries the window bars apart just enough to allow him to jump blindly as the train of the doomed rumbles on through the night, Bretholtz cheating probable death.

Holocaust memoirs are always an effort to heal, to bear witness, to speak of what was done for the millions who perished. Bretholtz' book, coauthored with Baltimore Sun columnist Michael Olesker, is also well written. It is factual and not overly sentimental, but spares no one. He particularly objects to an attitude he observes in recent years in Austria, namely that the Austrians were Hitler's First Victims. Bretholtz insists they were his First Embracers, and his account is persuasive. If this kind of literature calls to you, Leap Into Darkness is a good choice. There are more erudite accounts; those of Primo Levi and Eli Weisel are well-known. And this is not a memoir of life in the concentration camps. But it is a powerful story of suffering, loss and ultimately of survival. I challenge anyone to finish the last pages with a dry eye.

>98 stellarexplorer:

Reading Elie Wiesel's Night just about destroyed me but... I think I may have to keep an eye out for Leap Into Darkness.

Thanks.

>98 stellarexplorer: I have recently gotten into memoirs. This one sounds like one I would like to read.

Alas, my library does not have a copy. I'll have to look elsewhere.

>98 stellarexplorer: Do you think your interest and acute awareness of the holocaust has been partially responsible for your fascination with apocalypse literature? We spoke of the thin veneer of civilization being ripped away, and though that happens during all wars it seems that it was more apparent and widespread during WW II. I'm speaking not just of Nazi's treatment of the Jews, but of the Japanese and their vile treatment of the Chinese in Nanking and of their POWs in general.

>101 clamairy: it's a great question, and I'm working on it!

>101 clamairy: Thanks for a great question, clammy. It's a tough one, because it's not always easy to trace influences that go back to one's early years. I suppose if one recalls definite memories that link two things, maybe it's not so hard. But for me I have many memories and not the crucial links between apocalyptic lit and the Holocaust. I'm tempted to think that I gravitated to apocalyptic fiction before I was able to connect it to the Holocaust. But it also seems natural to think the two could be connected.

I do recall beginning to learn about the Holocaust around age 10 -- I think it was then that I saw a powerful and disturbing film that showed many emancipated dead bodies being dropped into trenches using bulldozers. And over the next few years I learned a lot more.

On the other hand, I recall reading books -- and importantly writing short stories for school -- between ages 13 and 16 many of which were organized around the theme "The technical prowess of humanity far outstrips its emotional maturity". My stories were generally organized around themes of disaster arising out of human failure, or of escape from peril. In sixth grade I organized a school initiative to learn about and confront pollution. I invited an oil executive to class and exposed the weakness of his explanation of what the company was doing to fight pollution ("A new generation of smokestacks"). I also reported my school to the authorities for air pollution from burning trash. The principal didn't think that was cute. I was clear that disaster was looming. I gave a talk to the class, estimating that humanity had approximately 8 more years left before pollution would make life unlivable on Earth.

So I find it hard to connect the threads. The only things I know for sure is that I was attuned early in life to the possibility of apocalypse; that my interest in promoting space exploration took on the concept of alternative environments for humans to create survival zones off-Earth for a rump population as human life on Earth was at risk; that I was acutely aware of the fall of all empires in history. I wouldn't be surprised if consciousness of the Holocaust played a role in all this, but not in a simple traceable way. I think. Thanks again for the question, which made me ponder.

>103 stellarexplorer: Thanks for taking the time to answer me. I did read it the morning after you wrote it, but didn't have time to respond.

Thanks for asking, and reading! :-)

Year of No Sugar

Picked this up on a whim during a rare moment when I found myself in what I find to be a very disagreeable place: a shopping mall. The rest of the family was involved in a form of consumerism I don't relish. I went into Barnes and Nobel. Sugar is my bete noir -- I have trouble resisting it, and if I don't eat it, I can manage my weight and my lipids. If I do eat it, not.

This book is the memoir of one family's year-long project to eat no added sugar, to avoid the scourge of The Toxin Known As Fructose. Not to belittle it -- I agree with a lot of the reasoning, which I will not delineate here.

The project herein was specifically not to eat added sugar, or any added fructose, which is an element of table sugar or sucrose. It is not about low carb or paleo or anything else. I was intrigued at first. I then found that I did not need or want a whole book on this family's year. It's probably a worthwhile effort --the avoidance of sugar -- at least for me. But not a worthwhile read. The author is funny and breezy, but the topic rapidly became tedious to me. I am sure someone would like however. Make sure you are really interested in reading about this experience.

Just got a copy of The Plot Against America, which I am starting now. Seemed timely.

>107 stellarexplorer: Seemed timely.

Political commentary is frowned upon in these parts. :-)

>107 stellarexplorer: I hear ya!

>108 pgmcc: Not this oblique kind. ;o)

>108 pgmcc: >109 clamairy: I was deliberately careful to leave it open to interpretation. Who knows? It is possible to interpret this reading material and it's timeliness as a statement of admiration for the content of both. See? Onblique works!

I must say that I haven't read Roth in a decade. I've generally liked his work a lot, but find him to be a little arch. Not this book. I'm only in the first chapters, but he's played it straight, and it's awfully well written.

>109 clamairy: & >110 stellarexplorer: "Obliqueness!"; the Politician's friend, right up there with "Ambiguity".

;-)

ETA: If you know what I mean.

Indeed. It is useful to have a way of staying within the rules, and to have a way to prevent people from objecting to anything substantial you may have said!

Adding obliquely that I'm finding the book to be a tonic!
:--)

>113 stellarexplorer: Be careful there, though. Your nose (or at least the nose on your emoji) appears to have doubled in length already!

>110 stellarexplorer: I really did not enjoy American Pastoral, but I haven't heard too much about this one.

The nose was just to keep people honest :---)

A horse walks into a bar. The barman says, "What's with the long face?"

>116 pgmcc: I'd love a stiff drink and the chance to pour out my sorrows. But I'd be in violation of the rules of the group. :----)

I have finished Philip Roth's The Plot Against America. It's not my intention to make comments about it that are highly political, especially as regards current events. Nonetheless, I'm wondering what guidelines there are in The Green Dragon for honoring the no-politics injunction when discussing or reviewing a book with inherently political themes and content? I do not intend to be a rabble-rouser, but do want to record my reading and impressions.

>118 stellarexplorer: I believe discussing something that is in a book is not a problem. Making political statements or getting into political rows is what people in the Green Dragon would like to stay away from.

Of course, this being a pub full of free thinkers I am happy to be out voted on this...but I will demand a recount if I lose. :-)

Ok...but speaking entirely theoretically now, what if one's reading of said book made one feel that parallels to contemporary events were so salient, so unavoidable for any reader, that no accounting of that book at this moment could in a fair way avoid drawing out some of those parallels? My own notion of this would be to draw out those parallels with a very light hand, allowing the reader to turn these over in his or her own mind.

>120 stellarexplorer: That would work. :o)

I am fairly new here, and found your thread, I now have so many book bullets, that I'll need a new bookcase to house them. I'm deep into reading about Pearl Harbor this month and appreciate your reviews. Thanks.

>122 Book-Dragon1952: Thank you, Book-Dragon. I'm honored that you've read what I wrote! And I'm happy for any comments or feedback you may have.

The Plot against America by Philip Roth

I picked up this book after the election, with the vague notion that it might be timely, and might speak to the fear of authoritarian governance that the long campaign aroused. Naturally, the book had its own agenda, and had not set out explicitly to meet my own. I might have been satisfied with a vivid fictional political narrative about US civil liberties under siege. But as a proficient and skilled writer, while Roth concerns himself with the larger social world, the life of his story resides in the intimate details of his characters.

The book presents an alternate reality in which Charles A. Lindbergh wins the 1940 presidential election with a populist, isolationist, America First campaign message, one of collaboration with Hitler, that veers into a darker story of a political language that unleashes prejudice and anti-Semitism that roils uneasily just below the surface of American society. Roth handles this adroitly, with impeccable research into the public personae of men like Lindbergh, Walter Winchell, and New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia.

We experience the gradual abrogation of American freedoms through the eyes of the adult narrator Philip Roth, who reflects from a distance on the terrifying experience of his boyhood self, nine years old when Lindbergh takes office. The heart of the novel is the story of young Roth and his small but brilliantly depicted world of Jewish life in Newark, New Jersey. Caught in a maelstrom of political depravity, and leavened with no small measure of family peculiarity, Roth confronts his terror and confusion. His elders offer little consolation, as they too struggle to cope with this unprecedented threat to their formerly anchored American lives.

I found the book indeed to be timely. Civil liberties ought never be taken for granted. There is no time like the present for an incisive reminder.

>124 stellarexplorer: Guess I just took a direct hit on that one. (But I might wait a while. As Legolas says upon Gandalf's fall in Moria "For me the grief is still too near.")

>124 stellarexplorer: >125 clamairy:

Me too. This book has been on my library e-list for a while but I'd say it just bubbled to the top.

>124 stellarexplorer: Well done with your review. I think you pitched it perfectly in terms of the political content.

>127 Sakerfalcon: I concur. I read books dealing with religion sometimes and have to dance this dance as well. :)

>120 stellarexplorer: what if one's reading of said book made one feel that parallels to contemporary events were so salient,

I have been reading several old classics, even older than Roth's books, and have been struck by how salient they are to many recent events. I read H.G. Wells' The Sleeper Wakes, written in the 1890s, and it detailed all the things that the Occupy Wall Street protesters were complaining about. I think time moves on but things stay the same in as many ways as they change. This is an occupational hazard for anyone reading any book.

>124 stellarexplorer: I like your post on The Plot Against America. I have had it on my shelf (on my shelf = somewhere on my eleven bookcases, or on the floor, or in one of the boxes) and your comments have pushed me in the direction of hunting it out and putting it high on Mt. TBR.

Cool. Thank you guys for reading it. There is something timeless and perennial about political propaganda illustrated in the book. Reminds me a little of the famous PT Barnum maxim, "you can fool all of the people some of the time, and..."

>131 stellarexplorer: I amended that maxim for my wife on an occasion she needed some support. I modified it thus:

You can fool all of the people some of the time, and you can fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time...but you can try.

:) Yes.

The Rook by Daniel O'Malley

This is the kind of book that makes me feel extremely curmudgeonly. It's highly rated on LT, though I did not read the reviews before writing this. Promising premise: women wakes under mysterious circumstances, having lost all memory of her identity and previous life. But she finds a letter in her pocket with emergency instructions. The previous inhabitant of her body knew she had an enemy, and that the result would be that she would awaken in this state of amnesia.

This was the highlight, and it is unfortunate that the momentum and attention created were not maintained. This might have been an edgy story of sustained tension and an emerging battle for survival and identity-seeking. But it is not. It is something roughly in the "Urban Fantasy" realm or thereabouts, and things rapidly morph from a convincing thriller into a corny and jocular tale of the paranormal that does not seek to be taken seriously.

Let me put my bias up front: I don't care for parody and humor if done in a way that prevents me from buying into the reality of the book-world. Do you like razor-teethed henchmen? Skinless sacs of sentient fluids? Multi-spinal villains who cannot be stopped by the severing of a single vertebral column? Some of these inventions are creative, but in totality they are more in fun, and I found it quite impossible to maintain any suspension of disbelief at all.

Another insurmountable difficulty for me was the matter of the back story. This is a book in which the amnesiac protagonist needed to bone up on truckloads of history: her own, that of all her potential collaborators and enemies, and the intricacies of the centuries-old organization in which she was a major figure. Massive info-dumps in the form of letters from her previous self were frequent and tedious. Perhaps she might have discovered these things in some other way? The previous identity becomes in large part a vehicle for conveying information in a mechanical way that lacked subtlety, and further interrupted immersion in the ongoing narrative.

This is not to say that I didn't enjoy it at all. The central conceit, woman with partial self- and historical knowledge attempts to soldier on in the face of danger, still had some charm. But ultimately this was not enough to carry the story. The whole thing had jarring elements of parody and silliness that made it impossible to take seriously. Crediting the author, one can only assume this was the spirit in which it was written. But it didn't work for me, and the promising start made that a disappointment.

Interestingly, the "Will you like it?" tool predicts with high confidence that I "Will not like this book".

>134 stellarexplorer: What???!! Now I feel sorta bad, but that is the sometimes the way it happen in here. Some of the things that you hated about it were the things I liked best. It's goofy! My favorite X-Files episodes were the tongue-in-cheek ones that poked fun at show. Many of the purists hated those. So it goes.

So what have you moved on to?

>134 stellarexplorer: Well, you did warn me. "It's pretty much fluff", were your words, I think.

But to be fair, historically it is on books like these that I have most frequently differed with people with whom I've otherwise agreed. For example, I am not a big fan of Terry Pratchett, Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan books, James Schmitz, and other practitioners who reside in the parody/satire wing of SFF. I do LOVE Neal Stephenson, and he can be outrageously funny without disrupting the narrative or the suspension of disbelief, so it's not that I don't like humor in my reading.

I guess I prefer my SFF straight-up. Oh well.

Now I'm working on a yearly "favorite reads of the year" email I send to friends and family. It's a set of short reviews of my favorite five fiction and five nonfiction books. This year I expect most will be adaptations of things I've already posted here.

I also said "I suspect that some male readers won't be as amused or enthralled as I was."

Hmm. Now that one is puzzling to me. How does gender figure into this, do you think? I am oblivious to what I may have missed here.

I wish I could pin it down, but it has more to do with similar books I've read in the past and less to do with any one thing in particular about this book. I felt that few of my reading male friends* would enjoy it as much as I did.

*A small group in real life, sadly.

Ok. Let me know if you figure out anything more specific.

I'm on to the next one after I finish my favorites of the year email. Thanks to this thread, I only have to write reviews for four out of the nine books I'm including.

I have a huge stack of books by my bedside -- all over the house, actually -- that I want to get to. I need my life to stop getting in the way of my reading!

>137 stellarexplorer: Humour is so subjective that I find it really hard to tell whether someone else will find the same things funny. I don't read a lot of humorous fantasy, although I do enjoy Pratchett and loved the Rook. But a friend recently read some Robert Rankin and quoted me the bits she found hilarious, but I was left unmoved.

>137 stellarexplorer: For example, I am not a big fan of Terry Pratchett, Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan books, James Schmitz, and other practitioners who reside in the parody/satire wing of SFF.

I have heard good things about the Vorkosigan books here on LT and they are on my wishlist because of that. I hadn't realized they are parody/satire though. Not that I would mind necessarily, but I thought it was serious SF. Does anyone care to elaborate?

>143 zjakkelien:

There is a lot of humor in the Vorkosigan books, but I don't consider them to be parodies or satire. Most of the primary characters are "different" in some way and that causes both funny and serious problems for them.

>143 zjakkelien: suitable is no doubt right, so let me amend what I said to indicate that there is something about the humor that makes it hard for me to enjoy those books, or to take them seriously as space opera. It's a stretch to call them parody or satire, probably.

Based on past history, it is no doubt best to conclude that it's me. It's an idiosyncrasy.

>144 suitable1: >145 stellarexplorer: Thanks! There is a difference between a book that has some humor in it, or a book that is almost based on it. I've read both, but I am not always in the mood for blatant humorousness. It's good to know which category this one falls in!

>146 zjakkelien: it's either deja vu kicking in, or PTSD, but I have gotten myself in trouble in the past by voicing my reactions to some humor in some books. {wonders whether will have to bang head against wall. Again.} Many people love the Vorkosigan books. Since you mention which category they are in, I have to say that for me it's the latter, or at least straddling the line. But again, it's definitely me.

>147 stellarexplorer: Well, I'll try them one way or the other. I'll try to remember posting something about it here once I do, but that could be a while...

>148 zjakkelien:

I always recommend Cordelia's Honor as a starting point.

>142 Sakerfalcon: ”But a friend recently read some Robert Rankin and quoted me the bits she found hilarious, but I was left unmoved.”

Maybe it’s just me, but I find quotes in general to be less effective as compared to reading the same passage for myself within the original book or article. Even if a quote makes perfect sense on its own, somehow it rarely does much for me without that greater context.

With humorous quotes in particular, I think often it's not just the words themselves that are funny, but rather the general atmosphere created by the author's writing style and the repeated patterns of humor. I think quotes lose something when you take them out of their native environment...

(Some, but not all, of these are repeat reviews from earlier in the year. This is copied from my yearly email to friends and family)

Favorite Reads of 2016


Nonfiction



Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

This is not an easy book to present or review. It dissects so many parts of human life and culture, that it would be complicated to discuss on that basis alone. And yet one comes to feel that Harari addresses history largely in the service of offering deeply-held critiques and challenges that unfold over the course of the book.

Let me just mention that the hardcover first U.S. edition is an admirable physical specimen. Most notable to me is the feel of the paper. The premium glossy high-lustre paper feels extremely comfortable to handle.

This book inhabits the emerging area of historical study some call Big History. It concerns itself with the broad sweep of the human career. Not quite as broad as the view of David Christian who doesn't limit himself to the human part of the story, but broad in that Harari starts with our proto-human ancestry and concludes with a consideration of a potential trans-human future.

Let's be clear: I found no original scholarship here. Harari hews to familiar if wide and inclusive intellectual terrain. He owes a great debt to people like Jared Diamond, David Christian, and numerous authors who have come before. The Cognitive Revolution, the Agricultural Revolution, civilization, modernity. Science and its overthrow of the belief that there was no more to discover about the universe. The interplay between science, capital and government. And on.

This is not a criticism. Harari is an articulate and forceful purveyor of ideas. Sometimes he fails to make clear the distinction between scholarship and his own opinions, but for the most part he can be forgiven; his playing fast and-loose can be frustrating (eg. the chapter on the Agricultural Revolution is titled "History's Biggest Fraud"; "having so recently been one of the underdogs of the Savannah we are full of anxieties over our position, which makes us doubly cruel and dangerous"; "the leading project of the Scientific Revolution is to give humankind eternal life"), but it often feels like quibbling in the face of the questions he raises. Or alternatively, one tends to agree but knows inside that there is less certainty in his assertions than he lets on.

Harari spends a lot of time on the notion of human success being due to what he calls inter-subjective phenomena, meaning fictions we agree upon, like money or countries but unlike electrons. He wants to remind us of how much of what we take for granted about ourselves and the world -- and which has resulted in our numerical proliferation and material aggrandizement -- is in a deep sense imaginary. He emphasizes the (familiar) dark side of the Neolithic (and post-Paleolithic in general): longer hours, disease, the false lure of acquisitiveness, etc. He suggests that happiness ought to be the barometer of how we live. Are people happier now than they were before giving up the migrant hunter-gatherer life and becoming sedentary participants in civilization? (Acknowledging however that there's no going back) He is forceful in his criticisms of religion and government. His account of money, capital and banking is especially cogent. He emphasizes repeatedly our insensitivity to the emotional harm our practices have on animals.

This book is meant to challenge, to be a cautionary tale. There is a dark -- but not necessarily unfair -- thread running through the text. About our potential future as powerful beings: "Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don't know what they want?"; and "But since we might soon be able to engineer our desires too, the real question facing us is not 'What do we want to become?', but 'What do we want to want?'. Those who are not spooked by this question probably haven't given it enough thought."

In the end, this is a thought-provoking book. He may not be right about everything, he may blur the lines between scholarship and interpretation, but his critiques are well worth considering. For a thorough introduction to Big History, I prefer David Christian's Maps of Time. For a challenging critique of the human past and future, this book must be reckoned with.


Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway by Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully

Shattered Sword is one of the finest -- if not the finest -- works of military history I've ever read. It is no ordinary military history, but rather a work of military analysis. The book has a purpose and it is not only to provide a lucid account of the battle, though it does that well. This is a book that for the first time in the western literature makes full use of Japanese sources. The authors' research uncovered the fact that western dogma about the battle had long been thoroughly debunked by Japanese scholars, but none of that work was accessible except in Japanese. In view of this, the approach here is to look at the battle from the Japanese point of view, considering Japanese strategy and decision-making at each step. The goal is to set the record straight by confronting the prevailing dogmata, and to correct the misconceptions. While the American performance and American command decisions are part of the story of Midway, these have been told elsewhere. Parshall and Tully rewrite the history of this crucial clash in a way that is not only convincing, but is intellectually gripping as well. The reader can now make sense of Japanese goals, missteps, and calculations. I found it thrilling.

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee

I remember hearing in medical school that “Cancer isn’t one disease; it’s a thousand diseases.” Cancer is a vast topic medically, culturally, historically, intellectually. What an achievement to approach this expanse with such mastery and economy.

This volume overflows with the long history of theories of cancer, all doomed to failure because only the advent of modern genetics offers the tools to conceptualize the mechanisms involved. Mukherjee illustrates the martialing of weapons brought to bear: surgical techniques, the slow evolution of chemotherapies, epidemiology and its contribution to prevention, public policy and the War on Cancer. The story is one of promise and frustration, each innovation less successful than we hope. Written at any earlier moment, this book must end in sober dissatisfaction. But Emperor of All Maladies culminates in the felicitous joining of genetic understanding with targeted immunotherapies. Cancer may now be addressed at the level of its fundamental causes. The reader departs with the justified hope that a turning point has been reached. Yet Mukherjee is careful to respect this protean and malleable affliction. We are at last arming ourselves with potent weapons in an ancient war. But the opponent is strong and crafty, and will not be easily defeated.

The book deserves all the accolades and awards it has received.








Do No Harm: Tales of Life, Death and Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh

Staying with the medical theme, here is a delightful and somewhat irreverent tale of neurosurgery. Marsh’s short book reads like an apology. You can’t be a neurosurgeon without contributing to disaster, that you were trying to help notwithstanding. Marsh is sorry. He spent sixteen hours delicately dissecting away the brainstem tumor of an unfortunate man, and just at the threshold of cure, Marsh nicked a microscopic blood vessel and the man’s life is destroyed. To add to Marsh’s guilt, he visits a nursing home years later, and spies this man sitting motionless in a corner.

So I mentioned delight? Yes, Marsh is modest and self-effacing. Brain surgery is NOT brain surgery. It is instead a manual skill, like plumbing, with a life at stake. The essence of brain surgery is not the operating, but the judgment about whether to operate. It is an ever-present possibility that the surgeon will confront a damaged and disabled patient in the recovery room. The first line: “I often have to cut into the brain and it is something I hate doing.”

This book is gripping, and I consumed it rapidly. I could almost become the surgeon tunneling carefully through the darkness, judiciously avoiding vascular land mines, and emerging after tense hours in the middle of the brain, face to face with a monstrous malignant adversary.

Do No Harm shines light on a world unknown to most readers. Marsh lives in a realm of peril and disaster and sometimes spectacular success. Remarkably, he tells us about it with humor and humility, and no small measure of humanity.



When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

The author was a young neurosurgeon who learned he had metastatic terminal cancer when he was 36, just finishing his training. Throughout his life, Kalinithi sought to understand what it meant to live a meaningful life. This book represents the work he did, in his final year of a life cut tragically short, to convey as much as he could of what he learned. In the process, he shows us the dying that is part of living, not shrinking into the avoidance of death that is so prevalent in our faux-immortal culture that glorifies youth and vitality.

This is a beautiful work, a remarkable accomplishment were he not so ill, and yet no doubt not possible without the felt immediacy of his situation. Kalinithi managed to grieve, to fear, to lose, and still to love, to have courage, and to face reality with open eyes and steadfast clarity. He put a lifetime of thought and struggle with ideas into this book, and it fails him to try to summarize, other than to say that he squeezed every bit of meaning and purpose he could muster into his life and his remaining time. His love for his wife, his friends and his service through doctoring helped to sustain him. And in no small measure so did his infant daughter, conceived after his diagnosis. In his words, and though these are his final thoughts in the book, I think it is worth quoting them here because they will tell you much about him and about whether this is something you may want to read:

"There is perhaps only one thing to say to this infant, who is all future, overlapping briefly with me, whose life, barring the improbable, is all but past.

That message is simple:

When you come to one of the many moments in life where you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man's days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing."

I am much the better for having read this.



FICTION



The Plot Against America by Philip Roth

I picked up this book after the election, with the vague notion that it might be timely, and might speak to the fear of authoritarian governance that the long campaign aroused. Naturally, the book had its own agenda, and had not set out explicitly to meet my own. I might have been satisfied with a vivid fictional political narrative about US civil liberties under siege. But as a proficient and skilled writer, while Roth concerns himself with the larger social world, the life of his story resides in the intimate details of his characters.

The book presents an alternate reality in which Charles A. Lindbergh wins the 1940 presidential election with a populist, isolationist, America First campaign message, one of collaboration with Hitler, that veers into a darker story of a political language that unleashes prejudice and anti-Semitism that roils uneasily just below the surface of American society. Roth handles this adroitly, with impeccable research into the public personae of men like Lindbergh, Walter Winchell, and New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia.

We experience the gradual abrogation of American freedoms through the eyes of the adult narrator Philip Roth, who reflects from a distance on the terrifying experience of his boyhood self, nine years old when Lindbergh takes office. The heart of the novel is the story of young Roth and his small but brilliantly depicted world of Jewish life in Newark, New Jersey. Caught in a maelstrom of political depravity, and leavened with no small measure of family peculiarity, Roth confronts his terror and confusion. His elders offer little consolation, as they too struggle to cope with this unprecedented threat to their formerly anchored American lives.

I found the book indeed to be timely. Civil liberties ought never be taken for granted. There is no time like the present for an incisive reminder.

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

This was my first Franzen. I’m generally not a heavy consumer of contemporary mainstream fiction. But this worked for me. Despite myself, I had to admire Franzen’s confident narration and well-drawn characters. The writing is crisp and while the book doesn’t move at thriller pace, it’s never slow. Sometimes I look back on a book and see the flaws I ignored while reading. Here, I kind of miss these flawed people. I’m left with grudging admiration for Franzen’s accomplishment.

Game of Thrones by George RR Martin

What is this doing on this list? Note first that I am not suggesting you read it. Nor am I going to say anything descriptive about it. If you haven’t heard of it, skip the rest. I never read this book, despite being aware of it for two decades. I’d heard warnings about excessive length, stodgy writing, simplistic morality, irksome archaisms.

But then came the HBO series, with its fine acting, lush settings and compelling action. For the viewer, the vivid images created by the show now make a fresh read almost impossible. This may be a good thing. Roy Dotrice is fabulous narrating the audiobook, and the writing becomes quite secondary to the story itself. Listen to it, and enjoy another iteration of the series you already love.



The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North


The trope in the book is an old favorite; I'm a sucker for lives relived. I thoroughly enjoyed it. This novel had that delicious "can't put it down" feeling. Not perfect, not impeccable prose, but carried out cleverly with a compelling plot. Half the fun in the “lives relived” scenario is envisioning solutions to the many and odd problems that arise. The rule of unintended consequences strongly applies! Definitely recommend.

Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay

Under Heaven is my first read of a Kay novel. It’s quite a beautiful work, rendering a convincing, captivating account of ancient China. Some would call this historical fantasy, but the fantasy elements were so subtle that I am as comfortable calling it a work of historical fiction. The writing was lovely and sure, the protagonist a man worthy of respect and love. By the end numerous critiques had reduced to quibbles, fairly insignificant in the face of the pleasure I took in this world. I was immersed in the Tang Dynasty with minimal disruption from sharp or irksome authorial missteps. When I tried to start a new book, I found I was not yet ready to enter a new fictional realm. I'm still living with this one.

>137 stellarexplorer: ...most will bee adaptations of things I've already posted here."

So, has it been a worthwhile leap of faith?

>152 pgmcc: Touché. I think. :)
I've invested a lot of energy in this yearly project for a long time. Previously I wrote all my reviews at the end of the year to send out to my....readership. ;) It was a huge improvement to select them from ones I'd already written here. At least for six of the ten books. Next year I imagine I'll have done all ten in advance, and they are more fresh when composed at the time of the reading.

Plus, I love the feedback, the interaction, and inquiries such as yours.

So, YES!

>151 stellarexplorer: I really enjoyed your reviews, and now have to read them all. I already own 3 and have one on order so not too many to buy.

>154 Book-Dragon1952: Thank you so much for saying so, Book-Dragon. And for reading them!

>153 stellarexplorer: I am glad you found the thread worthwhile. I remember your concerns when you were dipping your toes in the water.

I am glad you took the plunge as I have enjoyed your posts. I look forward to following your 2017 thread.

I am delighted with your review of Under Heaven - I too have only recently delved into GGK, and have this one in the TBR pile. Glad to know that it is as beautifully written as I have found others of his to be. I particularly loved A Song for Arbonne.

>156 pgmcc: >157 Darth-Heather: Thank you both for reading and for your suggestions

>151 stellarexplorer: Beautifully done! I hope you'll be continuing your reading thread in 2017!

Thank you Jill. I labored over it, and it feels good to hear that you enjoyed it!

Just got The Food Lab. OMG it's wonderful, especially if you like cooking science and pictures!

>161 stellarexplorer: ACK! Don't tempt me. Is there a lot of food porn? Any melting cheese perhaps?

Oh there's food porn, glossy pics to titilate, but this guy seriously does the experiments. (In other words, the pictures are great but you should really read the stories too!) Like trying something 5 different ways to see which way REALLY comes out best. For instance, he'll cook a steak at 5 different temperatures. Or cook one on the grill, flipping only once, and others flipped every 30 seconds, 1 minute, a minute and a half, to test the injunction to only flip once. (SPOILER ALERT: more frequent flipping leads to a tastier more evenly cooked steak.) Received opinion not accepted here.

I bought this book after I found his beef stew recipe online, and -- I am not exaggerating! -- made the best beef stew of my life, guaranteeing that my son will continue to come home on college breaks!

That beef stew was shockingly good. At the risk of sounding like a prominent US politician and getting myself banned from this Group for political referencing, that beef stew was so great, I couldn't believe how great it was.

Here's the link, in case anyone wants to enjoy it:

http://www.seriouseats.com/2016/01/food-lab-follow-the-rules-for-the-best-all-am...

>163 stellarexplorer: That looks quite good! (The recipe & the book.)

>163 stellarexplorer: You really know where to hit a girl, don't you? On the wishlist it goes.

The stew sounds great, but also takes a lot more dishes than I'm willing to wash. I'm happy with my beef stew, I do many of the things he suggests, but with fewer pots, etc. I will try browning in steak size pieces though. Usually I do cubes, cooking only a handful at a time, and I get a good brown and such, but the steaks sounds faster.

If you like something more behind your cooking than just the experience of a fine cook, this book may be it.

Btw MrsLee, if you don't want to do everything he suggests in the beef stew, just make sure to add the Umami Bomb. And I learned how much better it is to brown a large piece of beef and cut it into stew-sized pieces after.

>166 stellarexplorer: Yes, that Umami Bomb sounds great. I'm going to make a list of prominent Umami flavors and put it in my cupboard for easy reference. I made meatballs with mushrooms and a wine/bone stock/cream sauce for today's snacking, keeping his recommendation of 3 Umami flavors in mind. Fabulous.