My Nerdy Friend

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.

Book 16: The Emperor of All Maladies

The Emperor of all Maladies is, quite simply, a fantastic book. Titled as a “Biography of Cancer”, I can think of no better description. The book describes the path of cancer knowledge from the earliest presumed documented case of breast cancer in 2500 BC to 2010, the year of publication. It is a story that is fascinating, scary, hopeful and sometimes disturbing (I’m looking at you, radical mastectomy). It definitely clarifies the field of cancer diseases and helps to answer some of my questions about why some are so responsive to treatments while others are not. I also have a much better understanding of the genetics involved, and what people mean when they talk about “markers”. Don’t be fooled, I’m still no biochemist!

A little known secret about me is that in Grade 11 Biology, I did a science fair project where I gave cancer to earthworms by painting them with distilled water in which I soaked the filters of smoked cigarettes. I was lucky enough to be allowed to prepare and observe slices of my worm-tumors under the electron microscope at Peterborough’s Trent University. What 16 year old dreams of anything less?? This project instilled in my a passing but (so far) life-long interest in cancer – enough to read the headlines but not enough to change the trajectory of my career. This book has filled in decades worth of gaps in my knowledge and re-inspired that interest.

Rating: Buy it!

Book 15: Thing Explainer

First, I have to state up front that I am a very big fan of Randall Munroe. I first became acquainted with him through his internet comic strip xkcd, through which he has revealed himself to be brilliant and funny at math, science, computers, programming, and romance (it turns out he’s a rocket scientist for real, so there you go). I never miss a new comic post, and I devour anything and everything he writes. I say this because I think it’s important to know how much I WANT to love everything he does.

Thing Explainer is an interesting concept in which Randall attempts to explain 50 some-odd complicated things using only the most commonly used 1,000 words in the english language (ten hundred words, if you abide by his rule, where the word “thousand” doesn’t make the cut). I believe this book was inspired by an xkcd comic in which he explains the Saturn V rocket in this way (the comic is here, if you are interested.  – I highly recommend reading it!)

While I enjoyed parts of Thing Explainer almost as much as the Saturn V comic, I did have a few problems with it. First, some things explained in this way were actually harder to understand, for example the internal organs of the human body. In this case, the actual words for things were generally easier to understand than the simple words versions (such as “brain” instead of “thinking bag” and “stomach” instead of “food bag”), and this become something of a distraction.  Second, the novelty wore off long before I got to the end of the 50 or so things explained in this way. Third, and most irritating, the diagrams were fascinatingly complex, with lots of simple words to explain them, which meant the print was extremely tiny, so much so that I was forced to break out my Sherlock Holmes style magnifying glass in order to read them. The most frustrating page was the Colors Of Light where a significant portion of the text was printed on a graduated grey background that was difficult to see even with my Holmesian magnifier. Way to make me feel extra old, Randall!

On the other hand, there were some things explained that I thought were genius. I particularly enjoyed the Pieces Everything is Made Of (periodic table), Tall Roads (bridges) and Sky Boat with Turning Wings (helicopter). If I had to do it over, I would probably savour this book a couple of pages at a time over several weeks. During the day, in bright light, and perhaps in e-book format to enable zooming in.

Rating: Buy it if you love Randall like I do. Otherwise, read the Saturn V comic. If you liked it, buy the book. If you wondered what the point was, skip it.

Book 14 – Transgression

My son picked this book out for me as a Christmas gift because it “sounded interesting”. And it really was. It is two stories in one; a story of forbidden love between a French girl and a German soldier in 1941 and mystery involving a washed-out cop living in Paris, Ontario (yes, there really is such a place) who comes across a severed finger in a field and must race the OPP to find the body that goes with it and solve a murder.

The writing is interesting. At first it seems kind of child-like, with short, simple sentences and lots of detail left out, but then it starts to feel like the style of writing is done purposefully, to put you in mind of the staccato kind of way that life unfolded during the war – every day is hardship, any moment can bring news of the death of loved ones, each minute tick by while you wait for news that someone missing has been found.

I found this book to have many parallels to “All the Light We Cannot See” and in many ways I like this one better. I think the characters were richer, and the element of the mystery worked as a hook to keep the story interesting and moving forward with purpose. For me, it was more entertaining and satisfying than All the Light, but less prosaic, perhaps.

I have noticed that I am about a week ahead on my book-a -week timeline, with another one that I will finish in a day or two, but this is actually very good because my next book after that is a weighty tome about the history of cancer. Gotta keep mixing it up with the science books!

Rating: Borrow it. Or buy it and lend it out.