The Passionate Reader

This autobiography of a North Carolina neurosurgeon, includes long sections on his struggles with alcohol, with finding his adoptive parents, and his doubts about a loving God, that have little to do with the presence or absence of an afterlife. Out of hand, unlike many brain scientists, he dismisses any idea that free will does not exist- that our thoughts and actions are all simply neurochemistry at work.

On several fronts the author claims to have had a unique experience, including the near death experience, although it seems the only truly unique aspect was its cause and its duration- a rare E. coli bacterial meningitis, lasting a week. Others may have had similar experiences and chosen not to write a very profitable book about it. And he uses his knowledge and experience as a neurosurgeon to claim unique powers of insight, invoking quantum physics and the power of meditation techniques to lead to the only possible conclusion he sees about the universe- that there is a heaven.

I am not convinced. Like the old Scottish verdict “guilt not proven” in this case “existence not proven” the assertion leaves many questions unanswered. If there is a heaven, must there not also be a hell? The existence of some out of body ethereal experience when one’s brain ceases to function transiently is richly documented by many, but to conclude that it is eternal, outside of time, is altogether speculative.

It must be very comforting to be sure one is bound for heaven, but to me it is impossible to be certain. And in some ways, living with uncertainty actually seems preferable.

This is the second book with the same title that to me proves nothing. But maybe that just shows my own biases.

3/5

This edition was published in 1967 ten years or so after the first of several movie adaptations of the old classic story by the American novelist. I found it on my book shelf but I am not sure how it got there, and I realized I had not read it. I will not be seeing any movie with this story.

The preparation for a whaling trip out of Sag Harbour and Nantucket, takes up a quarter of the book as the narrator, Ishmael, outlines his reasons for joining the three year expedition on the Pequoid in search of valuable sperm whales for their oil, used mainly for lighting. The Viking invention of the crows nest outlook post and the myth of Jonah is included. The narrator is Ishmael throughout and women are barely mentioned.

Moby Dick, the unique white albino whale that has already removed one of Captain Ahab’s legs on a precious encounter, is introduced first only on page 176, and not seen again until thirty pages from the end. Captain Ahab’s obsession with getting revenge makes him miserable and angry. This reminded me of the great science book The Science of Revenge, even though in this case the perpetrator is nonhuman.

Of the 135 chapters there are several of utter gibberish uttered by sailors of different nationalities, that to me seem to have nothing to do with whaling or even sailing and containing far too many exclamation marks. There are many full page sentences. For example there ten dense pages of musing about the meaning of whiteness in history and cultures, written in old English.

Ahab’s single-minded determination to get revenge on Moby Dick, even as he walks with the assistance of whale bone prosthesis, eventually removed by Moby Dick results in his demise along with all of the mottled crew of the Pequot except for Ishmael, the narrator of this dreamy unrealistic tale.

One quote worth pondering: There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a practical joke, though the wit thereof he dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody’s expense but his own.”

I’ll admit to learning a lot about the ancient whaling industry, the anatomy of the differing species, the reproduction of whales, and primitive navigation at sea but that does not adequately compensate for the many pages of utter unrealistic nonsense in old English.

2/5

This edition

This fiction by the New York native involves a precocious boy with a mysterious illness who has survived four or five cardiac arrests by the time he is seven. An Indian doctor insets a pacemaker to save him but also diagnoses progressive fatal multi-system atrophy or Tay-Sachs disease. The very insecure religious mother takes him along with the doctor to Assisi to seek a miracle cure, and later to L.A. to find his missing musician father.

There is some very sloppy proof reading in that the real paediatric genetic Tay Sachs syndrome is equated to also true but completely separate Muli-System Dysfunction Syndrome and the prevalence is said to be rare or nonexistent in children- true for the latter but not the former. The three travellers clear a metal detector at Rome’s international airport on their planned return before visiting the Trevi Fountain where Colm once more has a prolonged episode of asystole but then miraculously recovers.

He longs to meet his deadbeat father but has a final asystolic episode after travelling to L.A. and just after finally realizing that he doesn’t need to or want to.

This is a very superficial silly plot with a seven year old expressing deep existential insights and unrealistic profound emotions, realizing that he is about to die. In the “Story behind the story” the author reveals that she has had several cardiac arrests as part of a mysterious illness but that does not excuse her muddled writing and the title is a simple lie. The neurosurgeon’s Alexander Eben’s later 2013 book with the same title must be better, and I am anxious to read it. I cannot recommend this one.

1.5

This well researched historical novel by an American author paints Albert Einstein in a brilliant but very eccentric and unflattering light. As a human being in relation to his equally brilliant first wife, Mileva Maric and his first daughter Lieseril, whom he never met in the two years she lived, he was not only inattentive but at times cruel and unfaithful, carrying on an affair with Elsa who became his second wife. His failure to have her name even mentioned on the famous 2005 special relativity papers reflects the deep-seated misogyny of the times, as she did most of the mathematics, and Albert secretly ensured that her contribution was not acknowledged. In many ways this is like the omission of Rosalind Franklin on Watson and Crick’s The Double Helix more than 50 years later. Marie Benedict also wrote about that in Her Hidden Genius.

Mileva’s life is covered from growing up as an eccentric lonely Serbian girl, with a limp, obsessed with physics to her divorce in 1914, with a epilogue reflection on her life in 1948, all written in the first person singular.

The writing flows smoothly reflecting abundant self-doubt, anger and disappointment over his many slights. There is a lot of imagined conversation.

There may well be be exaggerated emphasis on Albert Einstein’s many faults but I really enjoyed this book. I look forward to discussing it at next month’s book club.

5/5

Thanks, William’s Court Book Club 2.

I thought I knew the geography of southwestern Ontario well enough to state that Strathroy was further from The Army Camp at Ipperwash than Tibury,, Windsor, or Chatham, but I should have checked. It is in fact closer, as a friend pointed out.

The author of this book is not the unpronounceable name cited on the cover, which is a collective word for the twenty some families, manly Nishnaabe natives, who contributed their stories. The real author or at least the person who pulled all of the stories together is Heather Menzies, a white Ottawa professor at Carlton University, of Scottish descent, as revealed only in the six page Afterword.

The camp on the shore of Lake Huron was expropriated by the Army from the Nishnaabe First Nations supposedly on a temporary basis in 1942, to be turned back over to the natives when the war was over.

As I spent one whole summer at Camp Ipperwash as a teenaged army cadet (Alpha Company), I probably have more interest in this story than most. But I was completely unaware of any of the tragic history, although I recall the geography reasonably; that will be more confusing for readers who have never been there. The army continued to use the camp and the adjacent Ipperwash Park to train cadets until 1994, and then continued to stall about turning it back over to the natives because of alleged concerns about unexploded ordinances, the same concern we were warned about 64 years ago as we prowled the camp and the adjacent Ipperwash Park.

When the frustrated natives justifiably confronted the army, the politicians and the police and seized control of the site in 1995, the result was a violent confrontation with Dudley George being shot and killed and many other natives injured. The first hand account of the police cruelty leaves no doubt that they were racially motivated.

The story is definitely lopsided with almost no criticism of the natives, who were certainly not united or blameless, and the narrative is short on the police perspective. This is not to condone or justify any of the horrendous and ongoing racist actions against the natives.

I did not understand why the white car with a flat tire was driven to Strathroy Hospital as Dudley George was dying in the back seat as there are much nearer hospitals in Chatham, Tilbury, Windsor and Sarnia.But the narrative is selective, at times incoherent and incomplete.

As a potent reminder of the widespread shameful and continuing mistreatment of our First Nations brothers, this book deserves wide readership, but a bit of balance should be added to avoid it being dismissed as just an unjustified native rant.

3.5/5

Thanks, Mike.

In this prolific Peruvian/Chilian’s novel, the world events over three generations of mainly Californian residents, but ranging from around the world, evolves with many complex characters, not the least of which is the Japanese gardener/lover of the title and one of the main characters. These include the internment of Japanese Americans in concentration camps during WWII, the escape from Nazi death camps and a prostitution enslavement ring by another character, and the emotional trauma of many characters. Included is extensive discussion of voluntary suicide by residents of a three-tiered California home for the aged as they contemplate their secret pasts and bleak futures. For all of the characters, faced with horrendous childhoods, marital fidelity in a adulthood seems to be an archaic custom not to be taken seriously in the pursuit of love and happiness. But there is no graphic sex nor vulgar language. There is not much discussion about the influence of religious dogma on the attitudes towards sexual fulfillment.

There are perceptive observations about how priorities and goals change as one ages, and the writing is superbly poetic. There are many deaths and the various reactions to it are varied and realistic.

My only complaint about this book is that there so many characters that it was difficult for this simpleton to keep them straight. The frequent time shifts don’t help in this regard. A list of main characters at the front would have been helpful as a reference, but would have run for more than three pages.

I have not read any of this novelist’s other works, but may do so in the future, if my own time does not run out first.

4/5

Thanks, Mary M

This London Ontario novelist, playwright and screenwriter reimagines the real 1895 six hour train ride from Granville to Paris in this novel. The train became famous for its crash in Paris, and the author introduces close to 30 real or fictitious people many of whom were actually on it and imagines their diverse conversations. Only close to half way through does she introduce the anarchist suicide bomber who plans to blow it up. Other colourful characters include a few aristocrats including a secretly gay man getting his jollies in a semi-public area, some ordinary folk, and a pregnant girl who delivers as the train is about to crash.

There are more characters than most readers could possibly keep track of, but that does not matter as the beauty of the book is the characterization of the passengers, the geography, and the technology of the era. I quite enjoyed it.

4/5

Thanks, Alana

In this rather opaque and erudite treatise on decision-making, the Toronto based freelance journalist, who seems to be an exercise guru, and extreme sport devotee discusses the differences between exploration and exploitation with abundant references to historical figures, modern social sciences experiments and neurosciences findings. He clearly is mostly an explorer himself, pushing the limits of physical possibilities in a variety of endeavours.

The well-documented link between having the variant DRD4 gene and the urge to explore and seek new adventures, in multiple species not just in humans, discussed in Chapter 2, raises the age-old issue of whether or not free will exists- are all of our actions and decisions simply the result of chemical and electrical changes in our brains? This is never directly discussed.

Chapter 3 on The Free Energy Principle was the densest and least understandable for this simplistic thinker, but its “slope chasing”, “slope building” and “Wandt curve” concepts in decision- making are referenced repeatedly in the remaining 9 chapters.

Although I found the book a tough read in some places, I appreciated the perspectives he provides, both with respect to historical explorers and present day decision making, and learned a lot.

3.5/5

Thanks, Tony.

An old classic, this is my least favorite Steinbeck book.

Situated mainly in Connecticut and the area around Salinas, California before and up to the middle of WWI, the characters are diverse, but almost none are normal. The main character, Adam Trask, falls for the psychopathic killer (she is not the only one) Cathy Ames, who abandons her twins at birth to secretly run a house of prostitutes. It seems prostitution is everywhere and operating quite openly.

There is a lot of keen insight into human nature, the horrors of war and reflections about life, but the characters are almost without exception deeply flawed individuals, with emotional highs and lows of an extreme nature, and secret pasts that abound. The exception is Lisa Hamilton. The opaque and twisted emotions ascribed to characters often left me confused

There are some interesting quotes:

“To a man born without a conscience, a soul-stricken man must seem ridiculous. To a criminal, honesty is foolish.”

“It was well known that Lisa Hamilton and the Lord God held similar convictions on nearly every subject.”

The endless interpersonal strife and fighting somehow made this story unrealistic for me, and it is long with irrelevant long descriptions of such things as the weather, clothing, and physiologic responses to various emotions.

3.5/5

Total: 93

Fiction: 32. Murder mystery

Historical: 8

Humour: 3

Science fiction: 2

Mixed: 17

Nonfiction: 61

Medical: 8

Biography and autobiography: 9

Philosophy: 2

Religion: 2

Politics: 4

Unclassified: 37

Authors: Male: 50

Female: 43

Canadian: 21

American: 34

British: 10

Portugese: 2

Dutch: 1

Australian: I

Multiple Countries: 10

Obviously there is some overlap in all caregories.

This lawyer and lecturer in psychiatry at Yale goes to great lengths to argue that revenge is best viewed as an addiction, responsible for most violence and wars, and he is very convincing. He relates personal stories of coming close to becoming a criminal killer, and momentarily enjoying prosecuting many cases of criminal activity, in the adversarial justice system before becoming an advocate for an alternative.

The stories he tells of military, KKK members, and other extremist groups seeking revenge for real or perceived wrongs are chilling in the extreme, but with some recognizing their all consuming revenge addictions as the cause of self harm and reforming to become advocates for forgiveness. The best advocate I can think of for forgiveness is Anthony Ray Hinton, related in his 2018 autobiography The Sun Does Shine. The history he relates of the atrocities of Hitler, Stalin and Mao are all related back to horrendous childhood abuse, with subsequent indiscriminate mass killings that often had nothing to do with the original insult, but stayed in their brains as a revenge addiction that had to be satiated for fleeting relief. There is abundant scholarly research cited throughout, including the role of revenge seeking in the Capital attacks of 2021, and the dedicated revenge addiction actions of Donald Trump.

The neuroscience of revenge is outlined in detail and contrasted with that of the opposite, forgiveness, with the self-harm the former involves and the self-healing of the latter, but may be difficult for nonscientists to understand without anatomical sketches.

There is little distinction made between revenge addiction and pure sadism, and some of the many examples that he discusses blur the distinction. His proprietary Nonjustice System, while no doubt beneficial for many, seems to me to be a little overhyped.

This is perhaps the most memorable book I have read in years with a unique novel premise. I did not enjoy reading about millions of horrific deaths from revenge addiction, but that is a necessary part of his scholarly approach.

4.5/5

Thanks, Al D.

After more than 70 pages of absolute drivel of the 1930´s Milwaukee gangland Prohibition slang, with more names than I could keep track of, I was about ready to give up. But then the 86 year old American novelist, sorta, kinda began to make sense with a loose plot that has little to do with the previous nonsense, so I kept going, hoping it would get better. In one way, it did, with a more understandable plot line, but there was still a lot of loose ends and too many characters. The gumshoe Hicks is abducted onto a ship where no one is honest as he tries to bring back the Wisconsin cheeze King’s rebellious daughter.

At the halfway point of this verbose nonsensical novel, I did something I seldom do- I gave up and returned it to the library.

I will not count it as read when I calculate the books I have read this year, but I am rapidly losing faith in the books that many popular reviewers recommend.

Thanks, The New Yorker

Apart from the frequent and unnecessary use of a very foul adjective not appropriate for polite company, this is the hilarious and in places very serious account of the training and trained obstetrician/gynecologist’s experiences within Britain’s NHS in the 2000s. Burnt out by criticism from the public and particularly by politicians who fail to understand the dedication, the highs and the lows and the frustrations that all of us in medicine have experienced, he quit the profession, in 2010 and went into television production (and writing.).

Although his specialty was very different than mine there are enough similarities to make this an easy to understand book, and the technical details are adequately explained in abundant footnotes for the general public.

Of many, I can relate some stories like the ones he writes about.

#1. Dashing down the corridor to the operating room for an emergency Caesarian section with my hand up a lady’s vagina to push the baby’s head off the prolapsed cord.

#2. Attempting and failing to retrieve a foreign body (in my case a beer bottle) from a rectum. When we gave up the note of referral to the surgeon read « This Bud’s for you. ».

#3. Sleep deprivation. After being on call in house for 72 hours and getting almost no sleep I did early morning rounds with the head nurse and, noting an empty bed, asked what had happened to old Joe. She laughed and stated « According to the night nurse, you came over here four hours ago and declared him dead. ». I had no recall whatsoever of doing so. I can only hope that I was not mistaken on that occasion.

I can also relate to the many occasions when I was off duty (and now am peranantly) and asked to give advice about the illness of a relative or friend.

I greatly enjoyed this book, now a T.V. series.

4/5

Thanks, Tony

John Steinbeck. 1962. 223 Pages. (Papaerback.).

The long laudatory introduction makes it clear that this travelogue is not just travel, but greatly embellished with fictional details that suit the famous author’s personality and world view.

In the fall of 1960, the famous author sets out in a truck converted into a home on a cross country trek to explore America, with his beloved poodle Charley. He documents a very diverse country, often interacting with locals while trying to maintain anonymity. The result is a great snapshot of the country as it then existed, and no longer does. From the potato growing fields of Vermont to his beloved Montana and the racist south, he describes a very diverse country, with encounters with an equally diverse group of individuals, making philosophical comments along the way.

The writing is engaging and typical of his writing style.

Not as popular as his fictional Of Mice and Men, or his The Grapes of Wrath, both of which I quite enjoyed, this book is a great reminder of what America once was. I can only speculate about what he would have to say about what America has become. Unfortunately, he died at the age of 66 in 1968.

4/5

Thanks, Lois.

This is Vonnegut’s most famous novel. The title seems to be loosely based on the Dresden German prisoner of war camp, before Dresden was almost obliterated by Allied bombing. It is a very antiwar tale with the main character, Billy Pilgrim alternating between being the rich American optometrist in Vermont and flashbacks to WWII prisoner of war experiences, with hallucinations of capture by Thalfamadore extraterrestrials, trillions of miles from earth, where space and time dissolve into an amorphous unity and war is unheard of. There are seven genders in Thalmadore, all required to reproduce an individual.

There is a lot of foul language, and a lot of death and carnage. There is even an attempt by a beautiful female earthling to have sex with a Shetland pony. One must admire the author’s imagination.

Even though science fiction is not my favourite genre, I quite enjoyed this old classic. But I will not venture into any other Vonnegut books.

“And so it goes.”

4/5

Thanks, Lois

This is Vonnegut’s most famous novel. The title seems to be loosely based on the Dresden German prisoner of war camp, before Dresden was almost obliterated by Allied bombing. It is a very antiwar tale with the main character, Billy Pilgrim alternating between being the rich American optometrist in Vermont and flashbacks to WWII prisoner of war experiences, with hallucinations of capture by Thalfamadore extraterrestrials, trillions of miles from earth, where space and time dissolve into an amorphous unity and war is unheard of. There are seven genders in Thalmadore, all required to reproduce an individual.

There is a lot of foul language, and a lot of death and carnage. There is even an attempt by a beautiful female earthling to have sex with a Shetland pony. One must admire the author’s imagination.

Even though science fiction is not my favourite genre, I quite enjoyed this old classic. But I will not venture into any other Vonnegut books.

“And so it goes.”

4/5

Thanks, Lois

I am not sure what to think of this Scot’s dystopian novel. It is very well written and engaging. The narrator is a mentally ill insecure office worker with a very tragic background, who gets drunk frequently and imagines a life with a rising star singer who is himself a rogue. I won’t give away more of the plot except to reveal that she gets some counselling and towards the end finds some happiness and acceptance of her tragic past.

3/5

Thanks, Valerie H.

In this Irish novel by an Irish writer, a small backward coastal town gradually learns to welcome the advent of electricity. The narrator is an insecure teen at the time, doubtful about the all-pervasive control of the Church, but unsure of his future. There is the dramatic story of a lady deserted at the altar, and a man who seeks her forgiveness more than 50 years later. And the equally all-consuming infatuation of the narrator with the beautiful daughter of the town doctor. Neither romance ends up in the way one would expect in such a novel.

The quirky characters and the universal insights into human nature are what make this novel enjoyable. The plot, such as there is, is of lesser importance. The writing is lyrical in the exteme with some sudden contrived similes and metaphors that make no real sense: « She herself had been unwell all her life, she’d say out loud she could die at any moment; it was a gambit that worked until she was 104,and God caught on. »

I quite enjoyed most of this book, but it’s language is a bit too flowery for my liking in places.

4.0/5

Thanks, June.

In this novel by a Laotian/Canadian, a single day passes as the employees of a small nail salon run by the author in an unspecified city at an unspecified time discuss a wide variety of topics. Narrated by the owner, they speculate about their own lives and that of their clients, including their love lives with some quite profound and some quite amusing observations. Much of this is in a language that their clients can’t understand. The owner is said to be a former boxer, missing one finger, which adds a layer of mystique to the observations.

I read the author’s previous novel How to Pronounce Knife and didn’t particularly enjoy it, but this one is a gem- light but fun. As someone who has never set foot in a nail salon, I suspect that it will be even more popular with most women, who frequent such shops. It justly has won the 2025 Giller prize.

4.8/5

Thanks, Vera.

Followers of The PassionateReader.blog may be wondering if I have abandoned it, but I have just been reading this laudatory door stopper biography of the title American right-wing pol who could nowadays be considered a master «influencer », using any excuse like watching the Canadian curling Olympic trials to take a break.

From his aristocratic birth in 1925, to his death in 2008, the life and influence he wielded is documented in exquisite detail. He used his remarkable oratory skills and writing to maximum benefit to push for the right wing agenda in American political life. The book documents his interactions with a host of friends and enemies alike, with more than a hundred household names. These include in no particular order, McGeorge Bundy, E. Howard Hunt, Sylvia Plath, Wm. Sloan Coffin, Ayn Rand, George McCarthy, Alger Hiss, Dean Acheson, Whittaker Chambers, Henry Kissinger, T.S. Elliot, Robert Penn Warden, Adam Clayton Powell, Booker T. Washington, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., John Kenneth Galbraith, Arthur Schlesinger, John Birch, David Niven, Charle Chapman, Ronald Regan, Marshall McLuhan, Dag Hammarskjold, Truman Capote, Spiro Agnew, George Romney, Gore Vidal, John Mitchell, Daniel Ellsberg, Richard Nixon, Ronald Regan and Oliver North.

Self-assured to the point of cockiness, he was a segregationist and racist, and a Red-baiter willing to believe many outlandish conspiracy theories and was willing to overlook the criminal activities of many of his friends, including the Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt.

The homosexuality of some opponents is mocked and used to maximum benefit, with insinuations of sexual deviance sometimes advanced to discredit opponents.

The accomplishments of many Democratic politicians including JFKs handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis (not even mentioned) are given short shift while Carter’s fumbling of the Iranian hostage crisis is criticized, but the illegal intervention of the Iranian Contra affair is not.

This book amply documents the massive influence that one handsome, skilled orator and writer can have on diverse political events and as such should be taken seriously, but not in the way that the author seems to want it to be.

Next, a break for a lighter novel.

3.5/5

Thanks, The Economist.