The Passionate Reader

The 70 year old Berkley professor is back with a detailed erudite (and at times very obscure) discussion about consciousness. Interviews with a wide variety of scientists, researchers, philosophers, psychologists, psychiatrists and mystics around the world, and liberal reference to the writings of Descartes, Hume, Kant, Joyce, Darwin, Proust, and James, the book is divided into four chapters titled Sentience, Feeling, Thought, and Self, with a long Introduction, a short Coda, and 37 pages of notes, bibliography, and index.

Early in the first chapter, deviating from the anthropomorphic medical model of searching for the site of sentience in the human brain, he provides convincing evidence of some at least rudimentary sentience, in « lower » life forms, including plants, and even bacteria and viruses.

The following chapters become so rarified and opaque as to lose me in many places. His efforts and those of others to lose ego completely by indulging in various psychedelics, and extensive meditation give them impressive insights, but that is not something I will ever try.

There is an abundance of sometimes astounding factual knowledge from the natural world, but I am left with the thought that much of the controversy is bound up in semantics and linguistics, that must have different nuances for different people and in different langages. Not his best book.

3.5/5

Thanks, Andra

This British/American journalist wanders the globe in search of cultures and practices that are both ancient and endangered. The ten here included are: ancient musical instruments of the Malian empire; Scandinavian coastline night watchmen; Incan bridge builders using plant fibres in Peru; pasta production on an Italian island using ancient techniques; mirror production in India; painting film billboards in Taiwan; informing bees of family developments in England; the only democratic job in Cuba (reading to cigar workers); making special soy sauce on a Japanese island; and mail sevice to an oak tree in Germany to facilitate romance.

There is a lot of history included in these stories, and a lot of folklore and mythology. Some of the practices cannot be justified as worth preserving in a threatened world; others are just silly. My favourite was the talking to bees as part of the family, as I grew up with a beekeeper next door, and they are indeed fascinating, but they certainly don’t hear our stories.

No one recommended this book to me but the title was intriguing. However much of it is really not worth reading.

2.5/5

Deep character development, a failed cross-cultural teen romance, the horrors of war, deep sea misadventures, the geography of the upper west coast of the U.S. mainland, an apparent murder mystery at sea and subsequent trial, and deeply entrenched racism are all part of this very well written novel.

The setting is the fictional Mystic Harbour on an island somewhere in Puget Sound, and most of the main action takes place as a consequence of the murder/accident at sea in 1954, with flashbacks to WWII. There are many plot twists to this and the outcome of the trial is not predictable until three pages from the end, but there are no loose ends except for the continuing bachelorhood status of the newspaper reporter/owner.

As an example of the intricate physical and emotional character development:

« The veins on his cheeks were broken and smashed flat and appeared as a sort of blue paste below his skin; his Adam’s apple bulged lie a toad’s. He looked to Ishmael, vaguely like an alcoholic scarecrow. »

« The heart of every other, because it had a will would forever remain mysterious. …..he understood this too; that accident ruled every corner of the universe except the human heart. « .

4.8/5

Thanks, Vera.

The authors of this novel are Christine Hobbs and Lauren Billing’s, longtime writing partners living in Los Angeles. I had limited access to books while on a cruise, and so read most of this one before the cruise ship pulled into Montreal port and I had to return it to the limited on board library. I then found it in the OPL and read the rest.

An amiable separation after three years of a marriage of convenience of college roommates is renewed when the man, now a Stanford professor returns with an unusual request to accompany him on a potentially very lucrative trip to a family wedding on a remote island, maintaining the illusion of a happy marriage, although they are worlds apart. He is the scion of a billionaire CEO of a food store chain and she a recently fired unemployed convenience store clerk, and medical school dropout. From there, the plot gets much more complex with hundreds of millions of dollars of family wealth and prestige at stake.

I won’t give away more of the intricate plot, but the pitting of love against money becomes central. There are a number of seemingly inevitable endings that fail to materialize, and layer upon layer of surprises.

One interesting quote: «; when you can afford anything, nothing becomes interesting and there is something sad about that. ».

Some of the plot twists seem far fetched, there is overabundant very foul language by everyone, and very graphically described sex. In spite of this I kinda, sorta enjoyed this book.

4.0/5

I am currently on a cruise ship for which I did not adequately prepare reading material and have no access to the Ottawa Public Library or internet. So I am limited to the small library onboard. From that I first picked Samantha Irby’s Quietly Hostile but never ever read such filth, disguised as cheap standup slapstick, and abandoned it by page 80. Even the flawed New Yorker, Truman Capote, seemed preferable.

C’est In Breakfast At Tiffany’s, his first and favourite novelan enigmatic Holly Golightly, shares a brownstone apartment in NYC with a neighbouring aspiring writer, as he tries to figure out her background and how she earns a living. She frequently visits a mafia boss in jail and eventually flees the country-only the reader knows her destination. Her safe favourite location to dine is said to be Tiffany’s.

In Other Voices, Other Times, his second novel, here combined with his first, a New Orleans 12 year old boy, orphaned when his mother dies, travels to rural Missouri to stay with his father whom he has never met, only to be stymied by well-wishing but suspicious servants. What little plot there is then gets completely lost as it becomes bizarre ravings of disconnected characters and dreams that I can only conclude are the hallucinatory dreams of a drunken cocaine addict, at times overtly homoerotic, which I suspect they really were. The mystery to me is why any publisher would deem this trash fit to publish. Perhaps it related to the early success of Breakfast At Tiffany’s.

I will give Breakfast At Tiffany’s a reluctant 3/5, but can’t get beyond 1.5/5 for Other Times, Other Voices.

In contrast to his other books, Capote’s In Cold Blood is a very well written chilling true account of a multiple murder, although a bit fictionalized.

In this historical account of the air wars, General Curtis LeMay is pitted against Carl Norten, the Dutchman who almost singehandedly developed a bombsight, that aimed to allow precision accuracy bombing of enemy targets in daylight from 30,000 feet. In contrast, the carpet bombing of broad areas of cities without discriminating civilians from military targets, advocated and employed widely by LeMay was justified in his mind because it would end the war faster. The best examples of the devastation wrought by this is the Allied bombing of Dresden and LeMay’s B-29 bombing of Tokyo in 1945 which killed more civilians in one night than did the atomic bomb of Hiroshima.

Although LeMay’s indiscriminate bombing was not morally justified by today’s standards, he was widely praised, and reliable precision targeting only became a reality much later, with radar, heat sensing and GPS guided bombs, the horrors of all wars is starkly outlined in this book, and Carl Norton has never been adequately acknowleged for his efforts.

This is not the best of Malcolm Gladwell’s books nor the worst. It will be of interest mostly to military historians and planners.

3.5/5

One should not expect that this married openly bisexual writer of several novels would write a conventional romance and in this book nothing is conventional. She has been widely praised for her liberal and controversial views on religion, philosophy and sexuality, which also feature in this book.

A diverse group of potential astronauts at the Johnson Space Center, in the 1980s compete for various positions in the space shuttle program. Inevitably bitter rivalry but also romance develops, including an intense clandestine lesbian relationship greatly complicated by interfering relatives and a child.

There is pedantic endless self-analysis of ambitious insecure women as they compete for roles. One minute they are affectionate and the next they are consumed by biting sarcasm.

In the second half, sure enough, a deep philosophical outlook on religion through the words of one participant develops. This seems to be a way of discussing her own vaguely humanist philosophy of life. I cannot fault humanism generally, but here it is couched in contrived and unrealistic deep emotionality that seems artificial.

There is a valiant attempt to develop mystery as the shuttle develops life-threatening problems, but this seems highly unrealistic to me.

The overused literary device of time shifting does not benefit this story and I do not understand why it is used extensively. That and artificial unrealistic emotionality limited my enjoyment of this book.

3.5/5

Thanks, Goodreads

This is a delicious political satire from a native Neufie, told as only the Neufie co-host of This Hour Has 22 Minutes could.

The chapter in which Crirch discusses the Canadian traitors Wayne Gretzky, Bobby Orr, Kevin O’Leary and Danielle Steele as they cozy up to Trump is full of biting sarcasm, but also serious and unique insights.

The13 page chapter on the CRCT, Canadian content and innumerable historical TV shows drags a bit, and the penultimate chapter where Santa gets detained by border agents as he drives the sleigh over the sky border is just silly nonsense, but perhaps appealing to toddlers.

One quote will demonstrate his delectable humour: “He said that he had a map of Canada on his behind, so that every time he bends over, Quebec separates.”

No one recommended this short book to me but I am glad I found it and am pleased to recommend it to everyone.

4.5/5

The first part of this memoir is almost entirely composed of short clipped factual sentences about growing up in poverty in India. As the story of her remarkable life unfolds, she is tormented by mixed feelings about her egotistical, volatile, abusive and unpredictable mother and her alcoholic absent father. She experienced several doomed relationships, become a qualified architect, a briefly lauded movie star, and then found her niche as a writer of both fiction and nonfiction, writing the Pulitzer Prize winning novel “The God of Small Things which got her out of poverty. She then became a vocal activist against the injustices and cruelty of modern Indian society.

She eventually seems to come to appreciate her mercurial mother’s values more than would seem approriate, and mourns her death.

The writing style is certainly engaging and makes the book readable and enjoyable. A couple of quotes: “…. I have concluded that I grew up in a cult. A good cult, a fabulous one even, but a cult nevertheless, in which the outside world was a fuzzy entity, and in the inside world, unquestioned obedience and frequently demonstrated adoration of the Mother Guru were the basic requirements for membership.”

“She [her mother] had learned early what a powerful weapon physical vulnerability could be if it was properly deployed.”

I think my wife enjoyed this book more than I did, but I nevertheless give it a.

3.5/5;

Thanks, Vera.

In this double biography, Carlton University professor, and author of ten books of history, tries to rehabilitate the lives of the mothers of Winston Churchill and of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In my opinion she fails to do so.

She conveys a lot of information about the culture and times, and I learned a lot of history. However, the superficial aristocratic world that both women grew up in leaves a lot to be desired. Vain Jeanie Churchill spent recklessly on herself, was extremely promiscuous, while one of her husbands, the father of Winston, probably died of tertiary syphilis. Sara Delano Roosevelt was a control freak, unconcerned about the poor around her and for much of her life, opposed to any of the social programs that made her son’s New Deal famous.

The numerous affairs that almost all of the characters engaged in, including FDR, make it seem that marital vows were only for others, and not applicable to the rich and famous, and they seem to be just accepted and even expected by the author.

With my background, I wondered if Jeanie Churchill had Fitz-Hugh-Curtis syndrome (gonococcal perihepatitis) and the passing mention of FDR’s kidney problems following a bout of scarlet fever make it likely that he had post-streptococcal glomerulonephritis which may have contributed to his death from a hypertensive stroke years later. The latter is speculative.

I did not enjoy this book, although I learned many details of history.

3/5

Thanks, Kit.

An older but still good Bryson nonfiction book. His eccentricity lies in part in his habit of asking questions that few if any others had thought to ask, and then attempting to answer them with deep scholarly digging into archaeology and history. In this story, he first relates the history of establishing a home, and then tours the remodelled rectory that is his home, and documents what might have gone on in different rooms, over eons of time and around the world, in similar rooms, or those of wealthier Brits.

At times the discussion is tangential to the topic of rooms; in the 32 page chapter on the drawing room, he delineates the origins of many similar names, discusses the eccentric characters responsible for designing many elaborate houses and furniture and barely mentions the rooms.

The chapter on cellars really has nothing much to say about cellars and is mainly about building materials, from stucco, brick, iron and steel.

There must be a lot of exaggeration. A surgeon claims that he performed 200 amputations in 24 hours or one every 7 minutes and 15 seconds.

Not as good as A Brief History of Almost Everything, but still very informative and entertaining.

3.8/5

Thanks, Mike.

This Canadian/British/Taiwanese author provides a personal family history intertwined with the troubled history of the island of her ancestors, including the experiences of her grandfather, a fighter pilot in the shrinking Chinese Nationalist army in the civil war, pre 1949.

There are some brief perceptive comments about global warming, seismic activity, industrial development, biodiversity, and sea water rising as they pertain to the shores and the volcanic activity of Taiwan.

The pathos of excessive nostalgia permeates this story. Although looking back may be important to see the way forward, too much of it can paralyze you.

A book that does not fit neatly into any one genre, this one may have bits of useful information for historians, and be of interest to diverse Chinese folk, but provides little new of interest for reasonably educated others.

2/5

In this novel by a British NGO who worked with Syrian asylum seekers in Greece, a young Syrian, Nuri, refuses to join his father’s business and becomes a beekeeper instead. When the civil war breaks out, he is forced to become a refugee, fleeing with his family to Turkey, Greece, and ultimately Britain.The narrator is Nuri and the story is entirely related in the first person singular.

Flashbacks provide a vivid picture of that horrible experience. But they also confused me as his PTLD dreams and nightmares seem to occur at random and I found it difficult to distinguish them from the reality and profound vulnerability he experienced. It seems that his wife has suddenly gone completely blind as a hysterical response to the trauma of the bombing.

I suspect this plot would be easier to follow as a written work, but it does expose the horror of what millions of people experienced in 2015-16.

3.5/5

Thanks, Goodreads & Book Browze.

I cannot recall ever reading a book with more interesting and erudite information about geology, evolution, paleontology, physics, anatomy, chemistry cosmology, life, and humanity’s place in the world. Not only is it highly informative, Bryson’s perspective is insightful and unique. His vast knowledge of many subjects is sprinkled with humour while he outlines the extreme improbability of our existence, and the uncertainty of any future for us as a species.

I was already a fan of Bryson having read The Body: An Owner’s Manual and A Walk in the Woods, but this is by far his most important and best work.

This book may be confusing and dense for some nonscientists but it is worth the effort to read it. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

5/5

Thanks, Goodreads

This historical novel by an English writer covers a turbulent period of British history from the 1640s, 50s, 60s and 70s. This includes the beheading of King Charles I in 1649, the turbulent and violent Parliamentary rule by Oliver Cromwell and the roundheads thereafter until 1660 when monarchy was restored under Charles II of Scotland.

The title refers to the prolonged search for the killers of the king, as they scattered around the world. The Great Fire of London in 1666 and the complicated first English Civil War between 1642 and 1646 are all described in detail.

Most of the plot is concerned with the vengeful search for General Edward Whalley and his son-in-law, Colonel Wm. Goffe who flee to what is now New England and are moved around surreptitiously in hiding by a variety of Puritanical compatriots who seem to all be convinced that they are doing God’s work and tote and quote bible verses extensively. The date of the second coming that they predict from reading and interpreting passages from the book of Revelations passes without Christ’s appearance to the consternation of many.

Some of the geography and a few street names were familiar to me, having lived in New Haven for three years; at one point it was considered to be a separate colony from Connecticut.

This audiobook narrator did not do a great job of conveying the imagined conversations of female characters.

This book may be of great interest to dedicated history buffs, and provides a vivid picture of the era.

3/5

This indigenous Cree writer, residential school survivor and lawyer, goes on a rant about the gross injustices that indigenous people have endured since the arrival of white men in what is now Canada. She is also the author of Five Little Indians; that documents extensive and systematic abuses in great detail.

About the only part of this story that I was not familiar with is her discussion of the white paper of the Pierre Trudeau government, presented by then junior minister Jean Chretien that shamelessly recommended that all special considerations for native art, culture, writing, and land ownership be eliminated and that they should simply be assimilated into the white man’s culture.

There is no recognition in this screed that indigenous people themselves seldom speak with one voice, nor any mention of the special problems that Inuit people have endured.

Not much new here, but a stark reminder of our shameful past.

3/5

This is the debut novel of an Afghan writer, who now lives in Toronto. It traces the lives of a host of Afghani refugees living in Virginia after fleeing from the Russian invasion, and their partly futile attempts to maintain a distinctive Muslim culture.

When an Americanized teen from a family who became rich strays with a boyfriend rather than accepting an arranged marriage, and then is found drowned in a canal, an investigation ensues, with anti-Islamic and pro-Islamic sentiments reaching a fever pitch. I won’t give away the plot from there, but the whole community becomes irreversibly polarized.

Unfortunately it takes about 150 pages to reach the critical event with many two or three line pages of comments by friends, neighbours, and relatives, as the author builds up the sympathy for the family that seemed to have fulfilled the American Dream, before crashing. A similar number of short pages after the event, including from investigative reporters, an attourney, and police details the deep divide within the closely-knit community of immigrants.

I picked this book up from the OPL for my wife who had it on hold, but read it before her. I almost abandoned it after 125 pages, but in the end will give it a

4/5.

Thanks, Goodreads.

I was between books, catching up on a long article in the current New Yorker about Trump’s unpardonable abuse of pardoning power for his criminal friends and supporters when my wife arrived with this book from the William’s Court lending library. It is written by by Trump’s estranged niece who provides this already outdated, and deeply troubling warning documentary.

As she reviews the sordid history of slavery, the Jim Crow era atrocities, the unprecedented theft of Native’s lands and the political responses to these crimes, no one, not even Barack Obama, escapes from her scorn when they condone or pardon those responsible. But in a latter chapter she does describe Obama as the best president since Lincoln.

The history of white supremacy from the establishment of the republic to the present day is abundantly documented with many laws, customs, and individuals implicated in maintaining it, some overt and some covert.

The COVID-19 epidemic and the bungled Trump administration to it plays an important part in this discussion, as the book ends about April, 2021, at a time of continuing uncertainty.

I found the last couple of chapters where she continues to rant about the past of American culture but offers little concrete suggestion for how to move forward other than advocating for reparations to Black Americans, to be a bit vague.

This book is clearly outdated by the 2024 reelection of Donald Trump, something that the author seems to never have seriously considered, but must deeply regret. And it is very U.S- centric with barely any other country even mentioned.

3.5/5

This is the British tree scientist’s debut scholarly comprehensive (and partly incomprehensible to me) work. In eight chapters she details how trees have shaped water, soil, fire, air, fungi, plants, animals and us over the long course of evolution.

She praises Suzanne Simard’s When The Forest Breathes, then harshly criticizes her Finding The Mother Tree, for anthroporphizing trees, although she does the same herself in numerous references to the hundreds of trees she discusses with their Latin names. I loved both of Simard’s books, which are less rambling, equally enlightening with respect to the interactions of trees and fungi, and more poetic.

There is much emphasis on the numerous aromatic compounds produced by trees to facilitate propagation and protect themselves, and a lot of detail about the evolution and genetics of trees, the details of which I would challenge any nonscientist to recall.

Although the writing tends to be choppy with some of it of questionable relationships to trees, there are also flashes of brilliance and she is perhaps unparalleled in her vast knowledge of trees.

For example: «Ripening time is nothing more than the tree equivalent of calling a taxi. »

3.5/5

Thanks, Al

Thanks, Al.

I loved this Swede’s A Man Called Ovi, but not his Beartown and have not read any of his other numerous novels. This is his latest.

In this novel set in an unspecified town and at unspefied times, a group of teens is featured because one of them has become a famous artist with one particular piece of

painting worth millions because he painted it when he was only 14 and then died young.

However, the teens are all insecure, obsessed with dying, and crooks, breakin artists, stealing cars and fighting. None are remotely normal and the families are all dysfunctional or nonexistent. Like the characters, the time lines also seem to vary without any logic or sense of continuity.

Stilted conversations and disconnected stories are so prevalent that I completely lost interest. To be fair, there is no explicit sex, with just a hint of homosexual attractions and abundant foul language. I completed my reading of it only by taking it with me on my iPad and reading while exercising on the treadmill in the gym over several days.

I will not be tempted to read more Bachman.

2.0/5

Thanks, Goodreads.