My Nerdy Friend

The Widow

I found this book in a give-away pile at my friend’s cabin on BC’s Sunshine Coast, and had heard (possibly good) things about it, and if fit my current need for some light reading. Turns out it was a really enjoyable book.

The book embeds multiple mysteries, including who was behind the disappearance of a young toddler and what became of her, was the death of the prime suspect in the case an accident, and is the wife of the now-dead suspect delusional or manipulative. Each time you think you know the answer to any of these mysteries, you almost immediately start to doubt your instinct. It’s a very well-written book, telling it’s story from the perspective of four main characters; the wife of the suspect in the abduction, the mother of the toddler, the reporter angling for a break-through story, and the detective who is loath to give up the case he never managed to solve.

Rating: Borrow it, and if you like to keep books then buy it.

No Time for Goodbye

Well, I have some catching up to do! It seems I am about 3 books behind which unfortunately means the next three entries will be a bit hastily written.

I read No Time for Goodbye for book club #1, my group of 5, and the general consensus was that it was an enjoyable holiday read. The main character, Cynthia, comes home from a party in her teens to find that her mother, father and brother have disappeared. Twenty-five years later, someone is stirring up the past to make it look like her family is still out there somewhere and are now tormenting her and her husband and daughter. It’s a nice little mystery, albeit somewhat, but not overly, predictable. We had an interesting book club discussion around when we all figured out what was actually going on. I love finding out the different details that we each pick up on when we read the same book. I guess that’s part of what books clubs are about…

Rating: Borrow it for vacation.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Parts One and Two

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is the script book for a play written by Jack Thorne, based on an original new HP story by Thorne, J.K. Rowling, and John Tiffany. The book picks up where the seventh HP book left off, with Harry and his friends in the future, seeing their own children off on the Hogwarts Express. It primarily follows Harry’s youngest son, Albus Severus, who, to his horror, winds up in Slytherin House where he then befriends Scorpius Malfoy, son of the notorious Draco.

For some people, I suspect the story brings up feelings of nostalgia for our long past Hogwarts heroes but I’ve never been a big fan of heavy-handed sentimentality. I’m glad we’re revisiting characters that we loved, but I would have liked to see the story move into new territory. (For the record, I had the same complaints about Star Wars.)

Warning! Spoilers follow!

I also dislike time travel as a plot device because so many people get it wrong, and this book is no exception. The two examples that stood out the most for me:

1. Harry yells at Albus and threatens him with the map in timeline 2, but then references it in Act 3 Scene 11, in timeline 1 when the map should not have been “in play”, so to speak.
2. The kids undo the tasks in the wrong order. If they had gone back and undone the lake task first, that would have removed timeline 3, and Voldemort with it. Plus, by undoing task 2 first, they are technically undoing it while in timeline 3, which would have residual impacts on timeline 3, and not timeline 1.

You might think this is nit-picking, but it’s the fundamental problem with time-travel plots. Whatever you do in the past, affects and alters the  future, creating a new timeline, and what you do next happens within the new timeline, even if you travel to the past again. Time-travel is not interchangeable with magic. Just saying.

Rating: Skip it, unless you are highly nostalgic for the Harry Potter gang. Then at least keep some salt nearby because you’re going to need a grain or two.

Book 1 – The Widow

Well, now that the book-per-week is (finally) over, I thought maybe I’d track what I read in a year just as a matter of course. Reading whatever I want, without trying. This is the beginning of that. Plus, I really just liked keeping a record of what I read and I’d kind of like to keep that up. A Year of Not Trying gives me an excuse to keep it up.

So, the first book I read was the Widow. I borrowed it from a friend after a weekend spent at a cabin where a group of us did a book swap. This was an easy, indulgent read. It’s the story of a 3 year old girl who goes missing, told from the perspective the several key players in the quest to find her: the detective, the widow of the recently deceased prime suspect in the abduction, the mother and the reporter who stops at nothing to get the inside scoop. It jumps back and forth in time, leading you eventually to the “big reveal”. Not entirely predictable, but not entirely surprising either, it’s really just enjoyable escapism.

Rating: Borrow it, then pass it on.

I love reading, and a year ago, I embarked on a challenge to read one book a week for a full year. At that time, I wrote this introductory paragraph:

The challenge: to read a book a week for a year. Honestly, I have been undecided about it (which bodes poorly), however considering I can lock in 18 books, give or take, through book clubs, it seemed cowardly not to go for it. At least to see how long I can go. 

Now, depending on how you count them, I have finished 51 (or 49) books. This is short of my goal of 52 book, but still impressive. There were times that the challenge was easy and times that it was extremely exhausting. On reflection, I doubt I would do it again; the expectation of a book a week is just too much to be relaxing and enjoyable. However, I do think a reasonable ongoing goal for me is at least 2 books a month. More important to me going foward is to simply be able to be more selective about what I read.

A few observations from the past year:

1. I started to choose reading over watching TV (at least until I became addicted to The Good Wife in April and Parks and Recreation in October).
2. I read some books that I have been neglecting/avoiding.
3. I purposely chose shorter books over longer ones, which on one hand meant I picked books I might not otherwise have read, but also meant I defered books that were on my “must read” list.
4. I read book 1 of four separate trilogies but not books 2/3. Three in particular I wanted to complete, but didn’t because they were long books to read  (see point 3). These were The Three-body problem, Leviathan Wakes,  and Ancilliary Justice, and I expect I’ll go back and finish them. I also didn’t finish the Mr. Mercedes trilogy, but that’s because the first book was just plain bad. I gleefully re-read books whenever I had a good excuse, again just to be able to finish a book quickly and stay on schedule.
5. I neglected heavy-reading science books (although I did manage to fit in 3 of them). This was the most significant negative impact of the reading challenge, because I really love science reading. I’ve got some backlog to make up for now.
6. I chain-read, meaning I didn’t take any time off in between books. I generally take a break between books because I like to let things just sink in, and in some cases I simply need a few days to recover if the book was particulary powerful. Guy Kay’s Children of Earth and Sky was especially hard to just move on from.
7. Writing a blog post about each book just upped the ante in terms of level of difficulty, but ultimate this turned out to be a good thing. Although I procrastinated a lot, writing gave me the chance to reflect on each book and helped make up for the lack of a break between each one.
8. I believe I read much faster now than when I started. Interestingly, people who read less frequently and/or who read slower had a difficult time believing that I read books quickly versus speed-read by skipping words or sentences.

The complete year-long book list:

11-Nov-15 book 1 – Ancillary Justice
18-Nov-15 book 2 – The Flicker Men
25-Nov-15 book 3 – Something Wicked This Way Comes
2-Dec-15 book 4 – How to Teach Physics To Your Dog
9-Dec-15 book 5 – The Three Body Problem
16-Dec-15 book 6 – The Sisters Brothers
23-Dec-15 book 7 – Leviathan Wakes
30-Dec-15 book 8 – A Street Cat Named Bob
6-Jan-16 book 9 – Pride and Prejudice
13-Jan-16 book 10 – What the Body Remembers
20-Jan-16 book 11 – To Kill a Mockingbird
27-Jan-16 book 12 – Go Set A Watchman
3-Feb-16 book 13 – The Dispossessed
10-Feb-16 book 14 – Transgression
17-Feb-16 book 15 – Thing Explainer
24-Feb-16 book 16 – The Emperor of All Maladies; A Biography of Cancer
2-Mar-16 book 17 – The Paris Wife
9-Mar-16 book 18 – The Big Short
16-Mar-16 book 19 – Big Little Lies
23-Mar-16 book 20 – Practical Demonkeeping
30-Mar-16 book 21 – The Martian
6-Apr-16 book 22 – Linchpin
13-Apr-16 book 23 – The Dinosaur Feather
20-Apr-16 book 24 – The Illegal
27-Apr-16 book 25 – Eligible: A Modern Retelling of Pride and Prejudice
4-May-16 book 26 – Children of Earth and Sky
11-May-16 book 27 – The Robber Bride
18-May-16 book 28 – Sharp Objects
25-May-16 book 29 – Generation Loss
1-Jun-16 book 30 – Death Finds a Way
8-Jun-16 book 31 – A Captain’s Duty
15-Jun-16 book 32 – They Left Us Everything
22-Jun-16 book 33 – Ready Player One
29-Jun-16 book 34 – The Seveneves
6-Jul-16 book 35 – Lamb
13-Jul-16 book 36 – looking for alaska
20-Jul-16 book 37 – f**k it Do What You Love
27-Jul-16 book 38 – Montana 1948
3-Aug-16 book 39 – Mr. Mercedes
10-Aug-16 book 40 – The Art of War
17-Aug-16 book 41 – Station Eleven
24-Aug-16 book 42 – why does E=mc2? (and why should we care?)
31-Aug-16 book 43 – Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
7-Sep-16 book 44 – How to Age
14-Sep-16 book 45 – Frankenstein
21-Sep-16 book 46 – An Illustrated book of Bad Arguments
28-Sep-16 book 47/48/49 – Schrödinger’s Cat Trilogy
19-Oct-16 book 50 – Beasts of No Nation
26-Oct-16 book 51 – Cold Case Vancouver
2-Nov-16 book 52 – N/A

book 51 – Cold Case Vancouver

This book is a collection of unsolved murder cases from Vancouver’s past, ranging from the 1940’s to 2005. The case stories provide an interesting look back on Vancouver’s somewhat sordid past, and remind the reader of how unsafe Vancouver was, particularly for women, children, immigrants and gay men. I did think the author tended to rush a bit through individual cases, leaving some gaps in the narrative that the reader is left to fill in for themselves. Also, because these are all unsolved cases, and are still considered open, Lazarus was unable to interview active police officers about the files, which could have enriched the content. Instead, she has to rely on newspaper reports, and interviews with friends and family of victims, and with retired detectives. While still making for interesting reading, the cases do miss something from the lack of first-hand police details.

Rating: Borrow it, particularly if you grew up in Vancouver.

book 50 – Beasts of No Nation

I’ll get straight to it: I  hated this book. Its the story of a Agu, young boy (age unknown, but perhaps around 8?) who is kidnapped by a warlord in an African country that is in the middle of a brutal civil war. Agu is forced to be a soldier for the rebel group and to perform unspeakable acts of violence against the innocent villagers of his country, all the while being starved, tortured and raped by the warlord who captured him. It was horrifying and disturbing, and did nothing to help me understand the issue or how to take action to change it.

I am actually not entirely sure what I am supposed to do with this book, other than wish I had never read it.

Rating: Skip it. You should probably skip the movie, too.

book 47/48/49 – Schrödinger’s Cat Trilogy, Robert Anton Wilson

Confession: I bought this book years ago, thinking it was “In Search Of Schrodinger’s Cat” by John Gribbin, a book about quantum theory and reality that I keep lending to people and losing. When I realized it was definitely not the John Gribbin version, I decided to keep it and see if one day I might actually read it. Well, I finally picked it up as part of this year long reading challenge, and it actually turns out to be a science fiction trilogy, loosely based on 3 different models of quantum theory. (The fact that it’s actually a trilogy means I am counting it as three books, even though they’ve all been bound into a single volume. It’s a bit of a cheat, but I’m taking it. So there.)

• The Universe Next Door is based on the many worlds interpretation of quantum theory, where it seems the characters in the book occasionally “drift” between universes. Or not. It’s kind of hard to tell.
• The Trick Top Hat is a story in which the characters are connected through the principle of non-locality. When their cross paths they become joined in quantum entanglement. At least, this is what I read in a review. It is also moderately pornographic. In one scene, a character volunteers at a sex clinic where she gratifies herself using a machine that consists of the amputated penis of another character who underwent gender transformation surgery. I kid you not.
• The Homing Pigeons is based on the Copenhagen interpretation, wherein the observer causes the collapse of the quantum probability wave. At least, this must be what it’s about, because by process of elimination it’s the only remaining theory.

Seriously this pseudo-trilogy is one of the strangest books I have ever read. To be fair, The Universe Next Door was actually kind of intriguing, and I didn’t dislike it (which doesn’t mean that I understood it). But the other two … wow! Totally weird.

Rating: Skip it. Unless you absolutely have to “see for yourself”, in which case you can have my copy if you want it.

book 46 – An Illustrated book of Bad Arguments

When I was in university I took a course on logic which ended up being about logical arguments. I loved it, but, although I retained a few things (begging the question, ad hominem), I have since forgotten lots of it. This book provides a perfect synopsis of 19 logical fallacies, along with cute little illustrations to help with comprehension and memory.

What I enjoyed while reading the book was trying to come up with an example of each fallacy. I started out trying to pick events in the current presidential election, but this proved to be WAY too easy, so I went a different way …

1. Argument from Consequences- “You must agree with the pipeline project, otherwise what? You want us to all go back to living in caves??” Popular with people who don’t know how to construct a logical argument but desperately want you to believe their proposition.

2. Straw Man- “You say evolution is true, so you obviously believe we all evolved from apes!” Popular with anti-evolutionists and fear mongers.

3. Appeal to Irrelevant Authority- “Acupuncture works because it has been practised by ancient Chinese medicine for thousands of years.” Popular with new-age medicine and therapy practitioners.

4. Equivocation- “The sign said ‘fine for parking here’, and since it was fine, I parked there.” Popular with husbands when arguing with their wives.

5. False Dilemma- “Did you complete the work assignment, or did you leave your brain at home?” Very popular with me 🙂

6. Not a Cause for a Cause (post hoc ergo propter hoc and cum hoc ergo propter hoc for you Latin lovers out there)- “Whenever I wear this sweater, our hockey team wins, therefore I will always wear this sweater on game day.” Popular with sports enthusiasts and players who insist on growing horrifying grizzly-adams beards during playoff season.

7. Appeal to Fear- “If you don’t believe in God then you will burn in the fiery pit of HELL for all of ETERNITY.” Really popular with fundamentalists.

8. Hasty Generalization- “4 out of 5 dentists recommend Crest toothpaste, which means it’s the best.” Popular with commercial advertising firms.

9. Appeal to Ignorance- “There was this strange light in the sky that moved around in a weird way. I don’t know of anything that moves like that, so it’s obviously a UFO.” Popular with Ufologists. And yes, that’s actually a thing.

10. No True Scotsman- “If you support the killing of unborn babies, you are not a true Christian.” Popular with organized religions.

11. Genetic Fallacy- “The sling is the best way to carry a newborn baby, because our ancestors used to carry their babies this way when they worked in the fields.” Popular with ‘natural’ childbirth proponents.

12. Guilt by Association- “The candidate wants to deport all Muslims. You know who else deported religious groups? Hitler!!” Popular in politics, especially election campaigns. It’s shocking how many new Hitlers we have out there.

13. Affirming the Consequent- “The flu makes you throw up, and I was up all night vomiting, therefore I have the flu.” Popular with self-diagnosticians.

14. Appeal to Hypocrisy (Tu Quoque)- “You say eating animals is immoral but you are wearing leather shoes, so apparently it’s not really true.” Popular with anti-vegetarians.

15. Slippery Slope- “If we let gay people marry, next thing we’ll have people wanting to marry their farm animals!” Popular with most anti-social movements.

16. Appeal to the Bandwagon- “It must be awesome, because everyone else is doing it.” This is what made your mom ask if you would also jump off a bridge just because all your friends did it. Mom was right in this case.

17. Ad Hominem- “She would make a very bad president because she’s a very nasty woman.” Popular with Donald Trump.

18. Circular Reasoning- “The bible is true because it’s the word of God, We know this because the bible tells us so.” A popular one from Sunday School.

19. Composition and Division- “You like beef, potatoes, and green beans, so you will like this beef, potato, and green been casserole.” Popular with my mother, but oh, soooo wrong.

Rating: Buy it. Or get it as a gift (thanks Ken!)

book 44 – How to Age

This might be the most important book I read during this past year. Anne Karpf challenges our way of looking at ageing (and death) as something to be avoided by aggressively pursuing youth and proposes that we are simply setting ourselves up for greater disappointment when age does finally catch up, as it must inevitably do.

Karpf argues that we have created a prejudice against our future selves and in doing so, we demonize all elderly people (that is, anyone older than we currently are). One way in which we have done this in modern times is to medicalize ageing and death, citing that since 1951 nobody in the USA has died of “old age”. In fact, it is illegal to cite “natural causes” under cause of death on death certificates in the USA. This leads to the false belief that ageing can be vanquished and we see old people as unforgivably failing to do so.

More importantly, she offers compelling arguments that embracing and celebrating your ageing leads to a fuller life and greater happiness. She provides many examples of people “learning new tricks” at ages that we might consider to be “old dogs”, as well as examples of people completely redefining the direction of their life at the age of 50, or 60 or even 70 or 80! These people keep changing and learning, not because they think about how much or how little time they have left, but because as long as they do so, they are learning and are fulfilled. What a wonderful way to look approach life. Not that it’s never too late to start something new, but that the expression “it’s never too late” doesn’t even exist!

On a personal level, the book has me thinking about some of the ways in which my friends discuss our middle age. “You don’t look 50” is a common one, to which I now feel obliged to respond “Yes I do, because I’m 50 and this is exactly what 50 looks like”. I also need to give some thought to what should be reasonable boundaries around grooming and appearance. Am I upholding a philosophy of a positive lookout on ageing if I dye my hair (god, I hope the answer to this one is yes)? And what about facial hair removal? Botox? Surgery? I suspect the answer is in finding a balance between feeling good about how I look and requiring that I look younger than my actual age.

I’ll leave this post with one of my favourite quotes from the book: “People who cannot look ahead as they grow older back into the future so all they see is the past” – Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

Rating: Buy it, and a copy for all of your friends (I just did). And live well.