Transcription: A Novel

Transcription: A Novel by Ben Lerner

The narrator goes to visit Thomas, aging academic who served as his mentor. Shortly before the interview, he ruins his phone by dropping it in water. He learns to navigate the world without the phone. Since that was to be his recording device, he has the conversation with his mentor without recording. Later he gives a talk and confesses to relying on memory and fabrication to write details of the mentor interview. The book then pivot's to Thomas's son, Max, and his family. Max's daughter refuses to eat. The family tries to be healthy and technology restrictive, but they will let anything go to get the daughter to eat. One time she does surprise them by eating a lot - only to throw up. 

The book explores our dependence on technology and the flakiness of memory. It is very short, though a bit pretentious.

Radio Treason: The Trials of Lord Haw-Haw, the British Voice of Nazi Germany

Radio Treason: The Trials of Lord Haw-Haw, the British Voice of Nazi Germany by Rebecca West

I felt the book was short and episodic. A later learned that it was expanded from four New Yorker articles. That explained things well. Lord Haw-Haw was a British voice for the Nazi Germany. When he was caught, he was tried for treason. He nearly was able to let away scott free. His defense was that he could not be arrested for treason since he was not a British subject. He was born in America and immigrated to Germany, becoming a German citizen at a time when the US was at peace with Germany. Alas, he had secured a British passport and renewed it right after hostilities had started. He was executed, but was able to get a reprieve for his wife.

Ava and Taco Cat (Ava and Pip Book 2)

Ava and Taco Cat (Ava and Pip Book 2) by Carol Weston

Ava is an 11-year old aspiring writer struggling through life as a tween. She names the cat they get from the animal shelter "taco cat" - a palindrome to go along with the palindrome names she and her sister Pip have. Her family regularly explores palindromes and word play. 

The cat takes a while to warm to her and the family. She uses her experience with the cat to write a story in school. This is picked up by the newspaper along with a picture of the cat. This leads the original owner to come and ask for the cat back. Despite others being reluctant to give up the cat Ava gives it up. Later the original owner returns and offers it back, giving the story a happy ending. The book even concludes with a long list of palindromes. There is plenty of fund word play worked in without being overbearing.

How We Learn: Why Brains Learn Better Than Any Machine . . . for Now

How We Learn: Why Brains Learn Better Than Any Machine . . . for Now by Stanislas Dehaene

Humans have an ability to learn. There seems to be some special innate ability to learn languages. Babies start learning language in the womb and "unlearn" phonemes that are not in their language. Learning is a key part of how society grows. Active learning is more successful than passive learning. Tech has challenges duplicating the learning process that brains undergo.

The author is very pro-education. Alas, the education institutions do not necessarily follow the best practices. Are these best practices even the best?

The Great Guide: What David Hume Can Teach Us About Being Human and Living Well

The Great Guide: What David Hume Can Teach Us About Being Human and Living Well by Julian Baggini

Here is an interesting exploration of Hume as a philosopher within his environment. The author explores various areas of Hume's life. Occasionally the buildings are still standing, but even those have often been repurposed. These biographical bits are intertwined with Hume's philosophy. This connection of thoughts and person is a great way to explore philosophy.

The Irrational Decision: How We Gave Computers the Power to Choose for Us

The Irrational Decision: How We Gave Computers the Power to Choose for Us by Benjamin Recht

The book explores the rise of algorithms for decision making. The results are not very positive. In a lot of cases, we use algorithms to make decisions because we can. Are they really the best way to make decisions? Not necessarily. Algorithms can only take advantage of the data they have. We can feed them more and more data but does this really help us? Algorithms can continue to steer us in weird directions with the apparent objectiveness hiding biases.

Fire: From “A Journal of Love”: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anais Nin, 1934--1937

Fire: From “A Journal of Love”: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anais Nin, 1934--1937 by Anais Nin

At the start it was somewhat interesting life inside a mind. Then it just got boring. It was hard to care for her life or whatever intimate thought or action she had.

In Ascension

In Ascension by Martin MacInnes

A marine biologist explores algae that survive deep under the ocean. She is later recruited to be part of a space mission where the algae will help them to survive. The ship eventually goes back in time, maybe even seeding life on earth. The tone of the novel reminds me of the movie Oblivion. The novel spends much of the time covering the biologist and her family. It goes back to the history of Rotterdam to explore her family origin as well as details in the relationship with her parents and sister. The algae could survive but needed to merge with others to grow to help populate the earth.

The Savage Detectives

The Savage Detectives: A Novel by Roberto Bolaño, translated by Natasha Wimmer

This long novel covers a group of bohemian pseudo-intellectuals that refer to themselves as "visceral realists". There is a character that has a name very similar to the author that is mostly him in real life. We hear about this character, but not much from him directly. We go into detail about the other characters. At first it is a fairly straightforward narrative about the visceral realists in Mexico. Then it turns in to a few first-person vignettes by individual people from periods spanning most of the 20th century across much of the world from Latin America and the United States to Europe, Israel and Africa. The stories somewhat tie together, but are not much of narrative. The end returns to a narrative and a journey to escape a pimp and find a long lost poet, with an ending of them finally finding her, but losing her as she dies in a shootout. The characters are generally artsy miscreants. They do what they want regardless of how it fits in the world. Sex and drugs abound. They dislike the literature "establishment". I don't feel a whole lot of sympathy towards them.

The Other Bennet Sister

The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow

I have unsuccessfully tried to read Pride and Prejudice, but have never got anything out of it. I did have much more success with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. This book, however, while having some of the tone of Jane Austen books, was easily accessible. Perhaps it is the "modernization" that does it. I was able to sympathize with Mary and follow the experiences. Maybe it was the application of modern sensibilities into centuries old characters that did it. The book follows the life of the "other sister". She is more intellectual and doesn't fit in well with the cultural life and ideals of the day. She eventually finds love, rejecting a wealthy suitor in the process. This is so 21st century.

The Bee Sting: A Novel

The Bee Sting: A Novel by Paul Murray

A "small town elite" Irish family is having money problems. They ran the car business in town and were among the wealthy. However, the business is doing poorly and everyone's life is falling apart in different ways. The father, Dickie, never really had his heart in cars. It was his father's business and his brother was supposed to take it over. However, the brother in a car accident, and Dickie ended up coming back from University to marry his brother's girlfriend and run the business. The daughter, Cass,  is ready to go off to college, but is struggling with family's less wealthy state and is not doing well. The son ponders running away and selling videogames. Eventually grandpa comes back and he thinks that will help things. Alas, it is never quite so simple. The book goes on for a long time and explores the history and disfunction the family. Both the daughter and Dickie have environmental concerns. Dickie decides to build a giant bunker with a friend to help survive the apocalypse. Dickie also had a tryst with a former employee who recorded the encounter and is trying to blackmail him. There is plenty going on - perhaps too much. I could almost care for the characters.

And Then There Were None

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

Ten people with hidden nefarious pasts are on a remote island. They start dying off. Nobody can identify who the murderer is. Eventually it is down to two people. One woman ends up killing the last guy and then after seeing a gallows hangs herself. A nursery rhyme frames the story as people are knocked off one by one. After they are all dead, we hear from the authorities who have no idea what caused them to kill each other. Finally we hear the conclusion via a message in a bottle. A judge had set everything up to punish the unpunishable. He even faked his on death (via gunshut) early in the process. He then continued managing the deaths. After everyone died, he commited suicide, but staged it to look like the documented death. This is a classical story that I found even better when listened to earlier in dramatized form.

La Sombra del Viento

La Sombra del Viento (El cementerio de los libros olvidados nº 1) by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

In English this is known as The Shadow of the Wind. I tried to listen to it all in Spanish. At 3x speed, I wasn't grasping much. When I moved it down to 1.5x, I could hear and understand most of it. It felt I was understanding most of the words, but not quite grasping the meaning. I have trouble with gothic novels in English and trying a long one in Spanish was too much. A lot dealt with Penelope and her story along with many books and the writers that were discussed. If it were shorter, I would have slowed it down more to try to grasp it better. But with something this long, even 1.5x speed felt much too slow.

Murder at University Park

Murder at University Park: A Novel by Cheryl Miller Dellasega

The protagonist is on the tenure track in a college town. If she does not get tenure, she is toast. Her husband has a nice accounting job in town and there are no other prospects for her locally. Alas, her department head is a jerk and a womanizer. A specific study is his claim to faim. She receives some data which indicates that the study may be flawed. She enlists an IT friend to help trce it down. Then the friend ends up dead. The friend had almost no family and little standing in town. The police seemed to think that she committed suicide by consuming some drugs. The protagonist really wanted to find out more, but she was mostly on her own in the investigation.

Sometime later, she is at a party with the department head and another high-ranking guy in the department. They are among the last to leave. As they are leaving, the very drunk department head sexually assaults her. She and the high-ranking guy push back and the head falls down. He seems injured but implores them not to call ambulance. High-ranking guy encourages them to comply and they leave. The next day, department head shows up dead in the snow and high ranking guy becomes interim department head.

Later, interim head drives with protagonist out to a remote vet. On the way back, he confesses to having killed IT girl by sneaking some of the medications his psychiatrist wife has access to (and replacing them with look-alike pills so nobody would notice.) He was the one that planted the fake data and just wanted protagonist to report it rather than going to IT girl. The dead department head had stolen his work and he had plotted this revenge. Just in time, the dog in the back lunged, the guy swerved and crashed into an oncoming vehicle and he died instantly, with her coming to many days later in the hospital.

After all the events, a woman is taken from another department to head up the department. The protagonist's husband gets a job in Seattle. The kids are nervous, but the boy sees that there is a space museum there. (What? Museum of Flight has an exhibit, but that is pushing it.) She interview for a position at University of Washington. It seems that good has won out.

Then there is a final bit that the woman who ended up heading the department at the end had whacked the original department head with a terra-cotta warrior to kill him. This makes this seemingly "good person" the one that had actually committed murder in cold blood. So much for the good ending. So the moral is university people are vicious killers, especially the women? The protagonist had also witnessed this killing and never spoke up about it. Even in the 1990s, this is extremely heartless. This all seemed to bring down the story a notch.

Allies at War: How the Struggles Between the Allied Powers Shaped the War and the World

Allies at War: How the Struggles Between the Allied Powers Shaped the War and the World by Tim Bouverie

There are many books on World War II. This book tries to provide new insight by focussing on the interaction of the allied leaders as they battle against the Nazis. Churchill and Roosevelt behaved like competitive siblings. They had similar ideologies, but looked at things from different viewpoints. America advocated for "freedom" of colonies. The British identified the hypocrisy of Americans doing this when they treat their black soldiers as second class and have nearly wiped out their Indians. The war was taking place next to the British, so they were much more involved. The Americans were more concerned about the Pacific. Roosevelt was willing to cave to Stalin's demands. In retrospect this helped enable the Soviet position in the cold war. Stalin was eager to do whatever he wanted regardless of agreements. The position of China was also interesting. They were somewhat propped up by America, yet not fully trusted.

The books is quite long and does provide a different approach. Since the focus is on allied deliberation, the actual battles are afterthoughts. The Axis powers are merely supporting characters. These deliberations among "frenemies" ended up having heavy influence of the post-war world.

Pig: King of the Southern Table

Pig: King of the Southern Table by James Villas and Lucy Schaeffer

Pigs are important part of the southern diet. Nearly every part of the pig is used in some way. BBQ is understood to be pork (thus leading to Texas and it's beef BBQ not being considered "southern"). The book includes some introduction to the history of pigs and the south followed by hundreds of recipe with all sorts of different ways to cook the pig and its various parts.

Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas--Not Less

Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas--Not Less by Alex Epstein

Alex Epstein argues that we have a moral obligation to support  fossil fuels in order to have humanity flourish. He argues that while emissions can impact the climate, the damage they cause is overshadowed by the gains humanity receives. Most of the argument to reduce carbon focuses on the harm without looking at the positive. If there were no positives, there would be no justification for using fossil fuels at all now. However, there are positives and we don't have any alternatives that can provide the benefit they provide. There is also confusion on adoption of policies, with some of the best non-carbon energy sources (nuclear and hydro) being attacked, while intermittent sources like solar and wind are subsidized. The climate research framework and reporting is willing to bend the facts to support an anti-fossil fuel agenda. The focus is on harm rather than benefits. Even as weather and climate related deaths have plummeted, reporting declares any incident as being climate change related. There is very little reporting on positive response to increased temperatures. Estimates of negative impact are also significantly underreported. Many advocates are seeking to eliminate any human impact rather than doing what is best for people.

It is easy to see the hyperbole and inconsistencies of climate change. Every heat wave of forest fire is declared to be a symptom of climate change (even if the problem had nothing to do with climate.)  Plastic straws and shopping bags are replaced by paper ones. Electric cars are mandated instead of gas. These are "swap in" solutions that may be a little less convenient, but feel better for the environment - even if they actually require more energy to produce. "Others" are encouraged to skip fossil fuels. We have low flush toilets that may need to be flushed a few times, high efficiency dishwashers that require more handwashing and other "improvements" that have limited value. 

If we really want to reduce energy use, we need to reduce it. The cheats are not going to cut it. We need to allow cities to be built in a way that people can walk instead of drive. We need to be "smaller" and produce less waste. If we are not willing to use less energy, then making changes is just rounding errors. Wind and Solar are "green", but they require disturbing the environment with their placement and the transmission lines needed. They also need backups, which can require moreland and possibly fossil fuel.

The books simple argument is that we should focus on what is best for humanity. With that model, fossil fuels are required. No other fuel is close to providing similar benefits. Others may have some limited benefit, but all have challenges. Things get a bit slow in the middle of the book, before the end presents ways to argue the point. 

Myth Conceptions

Myth Conceptions by Robert Asprin

Skeeve is an apprentice Wizard who tried to get a job as a court magician. He and his demon mentor (who is posing as his apprentice) are able to convince them to hire him. Then they realize the kingdom wants the wizard to help defeat some enemies. He eventually meets the enemy army and finds the only reason they are fighting is due to debts they have. Instead of fighting, Skeeve helps make them disappear, making everyone happy without a fight. The plot is simple, but the way they go about it is what brings the fun.

The Romans: A 2,000-Year History

The Romans: A 2,000-Year History by Edward J. Watts

The author Roman empire had a start date around 800 BC to the fourth crusade in the 1200s AD. He argues that Rome had a continues political system for the 2000 years, even as it moved the base from Rome to Constantinople. The "Byzantines" considered themselves to be Romans, with only us in the future retroactively adding different names. However, he sacking of Constantinople put an end to this continuous government. Despite going through many different rulers and types of government, a common history could be traced. The changes were incremental rather than revolutionary. 

The book is not poorly written, but it is too long. The coverage is focussed on the times that we have the most data. It rockets through the early history, then slows down as it goes through more popular events. IT would be better served by shortening the narrative to have a large scale overview.

Beach Read

Beach Read by Emily Henry

A woman writer goes out to a beach town to occupy her deceased father's old house and escape her writer's block. A male writer is also in the town. They had been in college together, and were attracted to each other but thought the other one didn't like them. They fall for each other after a bunch of ups and downs. They also try to write books in each other's style. They also find out more of each other's backstory, including his in-process divorce and her dad's affair while her mom had cancer treatment. IT is a very typical light romantic comedy.

Against Democracy

Against Democracy by Jason Brennan

Democracy enables everyone to have a say. This is both a feature and a bug. Everybody has a vote, but not everybody has a clue as to what they are doing. Many frequently vote against their own best interests - often because they don't have any idea how their votes impact them. They would be better off if they did not vote. It is not worth the investment to become more knowledgeable. Encouraging people to become involved and vote generally makes things worse. (As a thought experiment, how would Black activists feel if we could wave a magic wand and make all Black voters vote in all election? ... if it had the side effect of always having them vote for MAGA Republicans?)

The author explores different types of voters. "Hobbits" are uninformed. "Hooligans" are highly partisan and passionate, but generally clueless.  "Vulcans" dispassionately analyze and choose what is best. A nation of Vulcans would produce great results, but alas we have mostly Hobbits and Hooligans. People are often attached to a particular party and favor people that way and will even vote if out of their best interest.

Other systems may provide better results. Epistocracy is a potential system where the most knowledgeable rule. We could provide additional votes for those with more education or who have passed a civics test. Or we could randomly pick from among the people that had shown basic knowledge. (Though there are questions on how the demonstration of knowledge can be made - one proposal is to have that democratically produced. People often have a strong idea of how they should act, they just don't necessarily act that way.)  There are other ways that could also be explored that would be improvements on democracy. Is there a will to adopt anything better?

Triumph of the Yuppies: America, the Eighties, and the Creation of an Unequal Nation

Triumph of the Yuppies: America, the Eighties, and the Creation of an Unequal Nation by Tom McGrath

The yuppies came to prominence during the 1980s. The term was not the first one to be used to describe the group, but it was the one that stuck. They sought out money in the corporate world. Yuppies focussed on career first and would work long hours and eschewed starting families. They worse suits and preferred living in the city to the distant suburbs. This led to gentrification and popularity of trendy urban eateries and health clubs. They tended to be socially liberal, yet fiscally conservative. They supported Reagan and led to Democrats pivoting away from New Deal policies. 

The Yuppies were self observant and self deprecating. Marketers would cater to them. Near the end of the 80s, they had run their course. The wall street crash of 1987 was an event that triggered the end. Culture started to turn against the yuppies and they started to raise kids and move out to the suburbs. Since then, history has continued to go through different faces as young people flock to cities to earn huge amount of money, only next time they were casually dressed tech bros.                                                                           

The book is an interesting cultural history, but feels a bit thin.

The Last September

The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen

Things are violently changing in Ireland. There is a revolution going on. However, the English aristocracy still has their social activities to attend to. They ponder going elsewhere, but like where they are. In the end, things turn violent, with death and the final official end. It has a "Jane Austen in the time of war" feel.

The Hard Crowd: Essays 2000-2020

The Hard Crowd: Essays 2000-2020 by Rachel Kushner

The author grew up in San Francisco and went to see concerts and things there. She rode around in a motorcycle. She was involved with labor and other figures. It was not super interesting.

Every Valley: The Desperate Lives and Troubled Times That Made Handel's Messiah

Every Valley: The Desperate Lives and Troubled Times That Made Handel's Messiah by Charles King

Handel's Messiah has become one of the most famous classical works. It's Irish debut at a charity function was very well received. After that, it faded in popularity before it boomed again. The book focuses mostly on the background of the time and characters involved. Handel had leaned into playing for his audience. He took elements of popular opera, but made them accessible in English. Scriptural stories were also understood. Oratorios were an alternative to the high production costs of opera. The book also delves into the history of one of the early stars of his opera. She was a popular actress, but then had a scandalous personal life due to an affair and distance from her playboy husband. Years after things calmed down she was ready to make a comeback with Handel.