My Nerdy Friend

Book 26: Children of Earth and Sky

Book 25: Eligible: A Modern Retelling of Pride and Prejudice

This book was a clever choice by Sharl, a fellow book club member. Two of us in the club are big fans of Jane Austin, as I’m sure I mentioned in my Pride and Prejudice post, and once upon a time we decided to pick a Jane Austin novel to read as a group. We settled on Persuasion, primarily because it was the only one that neither of us had read yet, and let’s just say it is not the book that is going to make Jane Austin fans out of people who dislike period pieces. But despite likely ruining her forever on Jane Austin, Sharl agreed to read the great Pride and Prejudice prior to seeing the theatre production. While it is possible she didn’t hate the book, I feel pretty certain that it’s not in her top 10 list (or top 100).

With that in mind, this modern retelling of P and P was Sharl’s latest pick. I was pleasantly surprised to find that this modernization was extremely enjoyable, well thought-out and even quite funny. Sittenfeld has brought the story into the very modern world of millennials, although the main characters are actually in their mid- to late-40s. In fact, this was the biggest disconnect for me, that the ages of the eldest Bennett daughters don’t align with their behaviour. Otherwise, Sittenfeld has done a very clever job of crafting a story that takes all of the Victorian drama (girls running off with boys to whom they are not married, daughters with no prospects because of the inheritance laws of the time) and transposes it into relevant and believable modern-day drama. And all the while she manages to maintain the magic of the romance that blooms between Elizabeth and Darcy.

I thought things got a little out of hand at the end, with a reality show play that didn’t really resonate for me, but then again I am not much of a watcher of reality TV.

Rating: Borrow it, even if Pride and Prejudice is precious to you.

Book 24: The Illegal

Interestingly, The Illegal turned out to be a pseudo-fantasy in that it takes place on current-day earth, but in the made-up, neighouring, island countries of Freedom State and Zantoroland. The protagonist is a black long-distance runner who is living as an illegal resident in Freedom State after escaping a corrupt government regime in his Zantoroland home. He ends up on the run from an inordinate number of people  including the police who are rounding up illegals to deport them, his running coach/agent who only wishes to profit from his race victories, a corrupt Zantoroland government who has kidnapped his sister for ransom, a tenacious wheelchair bound reporter and a determined teenage prodigy film-maker.   I’m actually pretty sure there were more, but that sentence was getting overly long. In addition to being chased, he also manages to acquire an equally mismatched group of friends along the way who provide him with support and refuge.

There are lots of reasons to dislike this story. The coincidences are a bit unwieldy. The good and evil characters lack subtlety. The parallels to apartheid or, say, any number of societies that simultaneously fear and oppress minority cultures, are a little too in-your-face. The pace of the story starts like a marathon and ends like a sprint. However, I still liked it. In the end, I chose to just enjoy the story and ignore any morals, if delivering morals were even his intent. The story is a feel-good story where the good guys win and for that reason alone, it’s likeable enough. But it’s also well-written with good characters, which is a bonus.

Rating: Borrow it. I don’t see needing to read it a second time.

Book 23: The Dinosaur Feather

I really liked this book. At it’s heart, it’s a murder mystery, but the murder takes place at the Institute of Biology in Copenhagen and the victim is a professor of biology specializing in the evolution of birds.  So there’s lots of science. Parasitology, palaeoornithology, palaeobiology.  I mean, who doesn’t love palaeobiology! Seriously. I’m not being ironic here…

This alone would make for a thoroughly enjoyable read for me. But in addition to a hearty dose of evolutionary science, the book also offers up unusually detailed back-stories on several of the main characters, through which we find that they are all, in some way, broken or flawed. Their flaws help us to understand the paths they are on, and the difficulties they face in coping with the world. My one complaint about these kinds of deep revelations is that, as outsiders with a view into the lives and interactions of all of the characters, we know when someone should open up and be vulnerable (because we know who they should open up to). And isn’t it frustrating when they don’t do what we know they should!

In the end, it wasn’t perfect. Some things were a bit too much of a stretch of the imagination, and as usual, people not equipped to do so took risks they never should have. But overall it was a satisfying conclusion, and worth the read.

Rating: Borrow it, then lend it to friends.

Book 22: Linchpin

I generally dislike business books. Often, the salient points can be summarized in a dozen pages, and the rest of the book just feels like filler, restatements of the same points, over and over, because you can’t sell a 12-page book. Linchpin began as no exception, except that in this case, the message was compelling enough for me to overlook the repetition (which there is a lot of, don’t get me wrong). Certainly, in the early chapters, I found the book extremely tiresome, and a little patronizing in its use of cutesy terms like “Lizard Brain” (another thing I dislike).

I stuck with it, however, because I agreed to read it with a woman I am mentoring, and I am glad that I did! By the time I was done reading, something had clicked for me. The point of the book is to illustrate ways to become a “linchpin”, an indispensable employee who is highly sought-after, and to call out typical impediments to that goal. Lofty, but I believe misguided. Very few people are ever truly indispensable, and I’m betting you aren’t one of them. However, in attempting to achieve linchpin status, the book argues for a different way of approaching your work, and your life. In essence, the book challenges the reader to match your passion to the job you have to do, and to do it with ingenuity and creativity. The result is a work of art that you have produced, to be given as a gift to your boss, your co-workers, the world. For me, this means doing the best you have to give, for yourself, so that you feel proud of what you are giving.

It’s a different approach than trying to do a particular job as well as you can within the bounds of what you’ve been given to do. It means seeing beyond the limits of the task at hand and adding something of yourself to the work. And that work is then given as a gift, without expectation of reward or compensation (beyond what you already are paid to do the job, of course). You do it simply because that’s how gift-giving works.

This idea of treating your work-product as a gift creates an important distinction. It means you aren’t trying to please your boss, in return of gratitude or accolades. It means you are trying to please yourself. I like this. It changes the game to something over which you have complete control. If people reject your gift, so be it. Give them something different the next time, just like you would with any gift.

Rating: Borrow it and take notes.

Book 21: The Martian

Andy Wier likes space and astrophysics as much as I like quantum physics and math, but he’s done something much more impressive with his hobby. He has taken a collection of potential boring factoids about space (how much water does a cubic metre of soil need to be viable, how many litres of oxygen does a person need to breath per day, how many 2 square-metre solar panels does it take to recharge a couple of 9,000 watt-hour batteries in 13 hours of available light)* and turned them into a compelling, one-man story of survival on Mars. And what’s more, anecdotally speaking, he has made readers wish (WISH!) they understood the math better.

Resisting the temptation to launch into a lengthy article about what’s wrong with the way we teach math to children, I’ll just say maybe all we need are more books like this. Where survival isn’t about blowing stuff up but about how to “science the shit” out of a bad situation by using the things at your disposal in ingenious ways. Maybe kids would care more about learning to add and divide if the context is about being an astronaut who has to survive on a hostile planet by calculating your food reserves down to the calorie.

But beyond the thrill (for me) of the abundance of math and science, my absolute favourite part, without a doubt, was Mark Watney’s quest to recover Pathfinder and the little Sojourner rover. I remember the excitement of the Pathfinder landing on Mars in 1997. Sojourner, it’s cargo, was the first Mars rover and it sent back to earth the very first pictures taken from the planet’s surface. It was small, only about 1.5 x 2 feet, which I thought was so amazing that I drew a to-scale sketch of it on my white-board at work and made all my coworkers come by to admire it (the rover, not the sketch). The idea that someone could travel to Mars in the future and recover the rover for real makes me happy beyond words. And that’s how this book made me feel.

Rating: Buy it!! Own a copy and give it to your kids to read.

*answers: 40 litres, 588 litres, 14 panels

Book 20: Practical Demonkeeping

I’ve been procrastinating. One of the challenges of the book-a-week challenge is the lack of any down time in between books to simply sit back and savour my enjoyment of the book I just finished. Sometimes I become so absorbed into a book that it almost becomes part of me (or, more accurately, I become part of it) and it takes a few days to find my way back to earth, and reality. I am particularly susceptible to book-absorption with fantasy novels*, which this book is. I don’t know if that’s why I’ve been procrastinating, but it sounds good, doesn’t it?

This was a cute, fun little story, which you can pretty much guess from the cover. But I was pleasantly surprised to find Christopher Moore occasionally channeling Douglas Adams, one of my favourite authors of all time. Every now and then I could detect some definite under-tones of Hitchhiker’s Guide, which, frankly, made me a little sentimental. Actually, maybe I should read Hitchhiker’s Guide next? (For the twentieth time.)

I have to thank my friend Erin for recommending this one. I will definitely be reading more Christopher Moore. “More Moore”. Ha! I like it!

*I’m looking at you, Guy Kay!

Rating: Borrow it. If you like him, buy it and start your collection.

Book 19: Big Little Lies

Book 18: The Big Short

Book 17: The Paris Wife

I have struggled with writing the entry for this book. I finished it a week ago and have since moved on to book 18 without yet being inspired. I think the problem I have with this book is that I have no feelings about it one way or another. I liked it, didn’t love it and didn’t hate it. She’s a good writer, not great and not bad. The story is okay, not captivating and not boring.

I spent the first half of the book feeling like it was a redo of Zelda. I liked Zelda, but what I loved was that it took place during the same time as the movie Midnight in Paris, which is one of my favourite movies, so throughout the book I kept looking forward to cross-overs with scenes from the movie. The Paris Wife didn’t have this same appeal for me, because Zelda had already achieved it. Is a way, I wish I had read The Paris Wife first, because I think it’s the better book of the two.

Admittedly, things picked up in the second half and the story really started to flow for me, but I felt is not quite worth the effort it took to get there. I read it to the end for two reasons; I rarely stop reading a book I’ve started unless it’s REALLY awful and it’s a BBCE book so I am extra-committed.

It is possible that if you are a bigger fan of Earnest Hemmingway, this book might really resonate for you. Hemmingway’s wife is an admirable woman, with great strength of character, and Hemmingway comes across as less of a jerk than what I understood about him before reading the book. Also, apart from The Sun Also Rises (which I probably should have re-read first) and the Old Man and the Sea, I haven’t read any of his books and none of them have made my reading wish list.

Rating: Skip it, unless you haven’t already read Zelda, in which case borrow it.