Author: thepassionatereader

I seldom read any science fiction, but recognizing that much of what would fit into that genre 30 or 40 years ago is now phenomena that we take for granted, (think of Google searches or IVF), I decided to have a go at this one recommended by a friend.

The protagonist, Ryland Grace a British middle school science teacher, comes out of a coma in a space ship named Hail Mary in some foreign solar system. A mysterious set of microorganisms called astrophage (never written in the plural) are eating solar energy at an astronomical rate causing the sun to cool rapidly, endangering not just life on earth, but the existence of the planet. In alternating first person singular narrative sections he is either on earth in captivity undergoing compulsory training or on the Hail Mary space ship on a one-way trip to Tau ceti to determine why it seems immune to infection with astrophage. He alone survives the trip but meets a peculiar spaceship from 40-Eridani with an intelligent five-armed sole pilot that he painstakingly learns to communicate with, using only musical notes without lyrics, and navigating by echolocation. As their friendship deepens, they realize that they are both on the same mission, i.e to save their home planets from complete destruction by the astrophage.

There is a lot of hocus pocus “science” which is the hallmark of science fiction, and the plot with encounters with alien life forms and grandiose themes of saving humankind from certain annihilation must have some broad appeal. In this one the plot is rather ingenious with lots of unpredictable twists and also incorporates many principles of relativity, true science, time warps, and the theory of panspermia to account for the evolution of life on multiple planets.

Much of the science is beyond my ability to understand (even the mechanics of Foucault’s pendulum and Fortran data conversion) or to refute, but some basic impossibilities stand out. For example, Ryland is able to carry on a long conversation even with an endotracheal tube in his trachea.

There are some great insights such as “Broadly speaking, the human brain is a collection of software hacks compiled into a single, somehow-functional unit. Each “feature” was added as a random mutation that solved some specific problem to increase our odds of survival.”

My limited capacity to suspend belief in the possible makes it difficult for me to enjoy this tale, even though I admire the expansive imagination of the author.

Having renewed and reaffirmed my dislike for the sci-fi genre with this read, I will avoid it for my remaining years without feeling guilty.

⭐️

Thanks, Allan M

This new rambling incoherent novel by a British author alternates scenes between London and Florence and between the liberation of the latter by the Allies in the Second World War and the early 21st century. It does provide readers with a detailed knowledge of the geography, history and culture of Florence.

Much of the focus is on hundreds of painters, sculptors and museums as interpreted by a knowledgeable British art historian who spends much of her time in Florence seeking to find art lost in the Tuscan hills during the war, and an eclectic group of English itinerant visitors, some of whom settle in Florence. There are endless discussions of hundreds of artists that I had never heard of and of their works. Amateurish spontaneously generated forgettable poetry is spouted by boozy would-be poets. Interspersed Italian words and phrases had me frequently looking up their meanings.

In places the narrative borders on magic realism as a parrot with an extensive and foul (forgive the pun) language dispenses advice, and quotes Shakespeare. One character talks to trees and gets advice from them.

Many of the characters are aspiring artists themselves and there is an over abundance of lesbians and gay men, even considering the known over representation of those in the creative artistic world. One elderly nymphomaniac couples with anyone she can still seduce. The sexual exploits are described in unnecessary detail -there is a lot to be said for leaving something to the reader’s imagination- and foul language prevails not only in the parrot’s talk but in the narrative of the characters who might be expected to have a limited vocabulary and in that of the author whose vocabulary one should think need not include vulgarity. The author seems to regard quotation marks as unnecessary grammatical nuisances and their absence makes the narrative of the characters difficult to distinguish from that of the author.

There is a distinct undercurrent of early feminism and societal acceptance of lesbianism. A perceptive nine year old girl asks why all the Florentine statues are of men.

There are many loose ends left dangling. I doubt that I am the only reader who waited in vain for some explanation of who the dead body buried on top of another body in a park by the boozy clients frequenting an East London pub in the 1950s was, or why he was killed and by whom.

There are a few interesting philosophical quotes:

“ A meager stain in the corridors of history, that’s all we are.”

“All artists are tortured by all they’re not, and by art that’s not theirs.”

I have no accurate estimate of the length of this novel as the Cloud Library book I downloaded has very unreliable pagination, but it must be over 550 pages judging solely by how long I took to struggle through it.

In spite of laudatory online reviews by others, I cannot recommend this novel for anyone except perhaps dedicated Renaissance art enthusiasts or art historians.

Thanks, June S.

⭐️

Although written in the first person singular voice of the girl, the note of the ghostwriter Lynne Barrett-Lee, makes it clear that most of the material came from copious notes scribbled by Chapman’s daughter Vanessa during endless hours of mother-daughter interviews. Lynne Barrett-Lee, to her credit, has converted it into the easy conversational prose of the teen narrator.

Sometime shortly before her fifth birthday, in the early 1950s, a girl was abducted from her home somewhere in rural Columbia or possibly northern Venezuela and, drugged and blindfolded, dumped in the jungle. No one came to rescue her but she survived, learning from a colony of monkeys that gradually befriended her. She also learned to communicate with them, and grew to think of herself as one of them. When she made contact with humans again, probably at least five years later, she had no name, no clothes, no language skills except body language, no sense of how old she was or how long she had lived in the jungle and almost no memory of her previous life as a human. She then went through a series of horrific experiences as a slave labourer locked in a brothel, then in a criminal gang house, and later still in a convent in the city of Cucuta. In between these stints she lived as an accomplished homeless street thief in that city. When the kindly neighbourhood woman who had delivered her to the convent continued to show affection for her after her escape, realizing the danger she was in and showing her the only affection she had any memory of except for that of the monkeys, they arranged together to get her to a safe family home in faraway Bogotá. This is where the story ends, but there are hints that a sequel will document her life from there to her present life as a Bradford, England housewife and mother of two.

This is by far the weirdest, most unlikely autobiography that I have ever read. It is so bizarre that some British so-called experts have claimed that it is a work of fiction rather than a true life story. But for me the details are so convincing that it seems even more unlikely that anyone could have imagined the developments she relates happening, though there may well be some faulty memories, the plague of all memoirs, and some embellishments woven in. And even if it were fiction, it would still be a helluva novel. But if anyone doubts the authenticity of the story, the matter-of fact interviews the very unassuming Chapman and her daughter give on Youtube should satisfy you that the basic facts are true. Still unconvinced? Watch the video of her as a an old woman gleefully, speedily, and seemingly effortlessly, like a monkey, climbing to the very top of the forest canopy, a feat no trained arborist would ever try.

I find it hard to believe that any sequel documenting Chapman’s later life or the 2014 TV film (I couldn’t find it) could possibly be as mesmerizing as this debut gem.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thanks, Vera and Sheila J.

This is the first of now more than 20 international spy novels by a Memphis writer, some of them with Tom Clancy, and it is now a film on Netflix with Ryan Gosling and Billy Bob Thornton, released in Feb. 2022.

The young Gray Man hero of the title is a former CIA agent who then branches out on his own as an assassin-for-hire to do whatever dirty work anyone will pay him to do, whether it is to off politicians or to silence those about to expose corrupt acts of corporate bigwigs and government agents.

By a third of the way in, I found myself unrealistically hoping someone would succeed in killing him off early so I would not have another 250 pages to read. After 200 pages, I had had enough and finished him off myself by stopping reading about him (in spite of being given the book as a gift). I’ll admit to some curiosity at that point about how much sillier the story could get so I scanned through the remaining pages only to find more of the same senseless cruelty, and violence. The Gray Man’s feats in escaping capture by equally unscrupulous government and corporate security forces are unrealistic to the point of being silly. Dozens of killer squads from around the world with endless supplies of various lethal guns and grenades cross international borders unimpeded. The tight time lines of his many narrow escapes are features of numerous thriller novels, designed to build tension in readers to keep them engaged, but here they are particularly weak and transparent.

I realize that many readers enjoy this James Bond-ish flavour of fiction just as many enjoy unrealistic murder mysteries on TV or streaming services, but the only way I could get as far as I did with this one was to consider it as a spoof of the whole spy thriller genre. I generally avoid novels that turn violent villains into heroes, unless it is realistic historical fiction. There is enough violence and cruelty to deal with in the real world aftermath of history and present day world events to never have to expand it into the fantasy world of fiction.

⭐️

Thanks,

Andra via Cratejoy

Pursuing somewhat similar lines of research as that which Suzanne Simard details in her Finding the Mother Tree but in different ecosystems around the world, this British mycologist provides a masterpiece of science that is bound to change the way you think about fungi and a lot of other things. It shines a wider light and more global perspective on them, ourselves, and all living matter rather than the sharp focus on their relationship to trees in Finding the Mother Tree.

Wide-ranging is too narrow a description of topics Sheldrake covers. From our philosophical definitions of the self, consciousness, brains, thinking, decision-making, bargaining, and intelligence, and the dualism of mind and body, he challenges readers to reconsider what they believe. Lichens composed of interdependent fungi, algae and some bacteria and even viruses invite reconsideration of the definition of a species and the boundaries of the self.

The list of astounding abilities of fungi cited is long. Here are a few. Kerosene fungi thrive in the fuel tanks of airplanes! Fungi are being used commercially to manufacture leather, furniture, clothing, packing and building materials stronger than concrete, from dead wood that otherwise would rot and emit carbon dioxide. Antiviral and antibiotic compounds manufactured by fungi include penicillin and are used to kill the virus largely responsible for bee colony collapse disorder. Many fungi can alter their metabolism to break down toxins we send into our environment, including plastics, cigarette butts, petroleum products, pesticides, and herbicides like glyphosate (Roundup). They appear to bargain and negotiate with plants in what by analogy looks like buying and selling on a stock exchange. They may have been involved in the origin of life on earth via panspermia of spores from other planets. Some destroy the back half of cicadas, infect the remaining body and drop spores as the cicadas continue to fly around. They have systems of electrical signalling that somewhat resemble brain messaging. By producing alcohol and the universally available hallucinogen psilocybin they can kill or control the behaviour of insects and historically have altered human history and cultures. These are just a few of the surprising facts presented. Yet most people think of fungi only as mushrooms from grocery stores, as nuisances that spring up overnight on the lawn, or as the agents for domesticated decomposition of sugars for making alcohol, bread and cheese and the rotting of wood structures, if they think of them at all.

“Imagine the puzzlement of an extraterrestrial anthropologist who discovered after decades of studying modern humanity that we had something called the Internet. Its a bit like that for modern ecologists.”

Sheldrake cites another astonishing finding that is discussed in relation to the navigational abilities of fungi. Flatworms who have learned to navigate a maze, but have then had their heads severed regrow a new head and can still “remember” how to navigate the maze. He asks more questions about fungi than he answers, but his infectious enthusiasm for learning more about them will rub off on the reader of this book. He seems to recognize the boundaries of our linguistic descriptions in characterizing their complexity.

Charles Darwin is quoted as defining intelligence as the ability to adapt to the environment so as to ensure survival. By this perhaps flawed definition, Homo sapiens is a far less intelligent species than most fungi.

I have only one minor criticism although I may well have missed other problems. He cites the discredited Canadian psychiatrist Abram Hoffer as one of many experts he relies on for information, but I am not sure if the information attributed to him is problematic or not.

The only reservation I have in recommending this eye-opening book for everyone is that it may be a bit of a struggle for some with no background science education, but if so, it would still be a worthwhile struggle. I rate it as one of the best science treatises I have ever read, if not the absolute best.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thanks, AAD, my s friend and science guru.

My daughter generously sends me a couple books every month from an online subscription site called Cratejoy. They have a great variety of products from clothing, food baskets, and kitchen gadgets, to tools and craft hobby kits. I gather that you can subscribe for variable time periods and have the products sent to anyone. I have no idea who decides what books I get or what criteria are used in selecting them so it is always a surprise when they arrive. But they are never recent publications by famous authors so I suspect that they are chosen from a list of discounted books that publishers want to clear from their overstocked warehouses. In recent years publishing houses have moved to an on-demand business model, reducing the need for warehousing space, but older books still take up shelf space. I think she just sends them a list of book genres that she knows I like. This interesting arrangement exposes me to cultures and books that I would otherwise never look twice at and I appreciate that. This scholarly erudite history from an American anthropologist arrived along with a similar vintage fictional international spy espionage thriller.

More than a little laudatory about the early thirteenth century Mongolian warrior and his conquest of vast areas of the world, there is far more detail about the man and the primitive tribal culture of the time than most readers would ever want or need to know. At one point his descendants ruled an area larger than North America and western Europe combined, stretching from Moscow to near Vienna to the Arab peninsula and most of East Asia and China. It is perhaps appropriate to praise his brilliant and innovative military tactics, his treatment of vassals, levelling of hierarchies, and his tolerance of divergent often primitive religious practices including Buddism, Hinduism, Taoism, Judaism, Muslimism, and Christianity. One such strange practice was the peculiar divination practice was scapulancy in which divine guidance was provided by “reading” the shoulder bones of sheep. It is harder from this distance in time to appreciate the culture of endless tribal plundering and slaughter. Women were treated as little more than slaves, sex toys used for bargaining, and the source of offspring, although in later generations, women became placeholder regents of the homeland while the men fought and plundered on distant frontiers.

I got totally confused in the middle chapters in which his sons and grandsons with unfamiliar names cruelly raided ever greater areas with equally unfamiliar names, killing thousands of the natives in cruel ways. Despite feuding with each other over the title of Great Khan, they did maintain some of the old man’s positive innovations such as instituting widespread use of paper money to facilitate commerce, and universal primary education for all children. And the most famous grandson Khubilai Khan, immortalized by Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem as Khubla Khan, conquered most of China, Tibet, Vietnam and Korea, but was inept at sea and failed to take Japan. He is also described as fat, gouty, and self-indulgent, with long episodes of drunken debauchery. All of the Khans were prone to this vice usually drinking fermented mare’s milk to celebrate their conquests and some added hashish and opium from their loot in Afghanistan. Although the Mongolian Empire survived for another century after Khubilai Khan’s death, it ceased to expand and depended increasingly on peaceful coexistence and international trade with its neighbours. It gradually shrank when the epidemic of the plague disrupted their trade routes and travel to loot, and the families split into murderous warring factions vying for the title of Great Khan.

In the last section, much of the basics for later western cultural development from astronomy, law, mathematics, architecture, finance, communications, agriculture, and even music is attributed to the Khans, perhaps with some dubious connections. Marco Polo, following in the footsteps of the Mongolian Empire, did much to capitalize on the groundwork in international commerce that the Khans had established, but is barely mentioned.

The details provided in this book can be overwhelming. I don’t really care that 1219 was the Year of The Dragon, 1221 the Year of The Horse or a dozen other “Year Of The…” designations. Although I admire the dedication and scholarship of the author, his attempts to make Genghis Khan into a hero are not entirely convincing, even if some rebalancing of the historical perspective is needed. There are bits of interesting history here, but I have trouble believing that anyone except perhaps occasional history professors or Mongolians keen on researching their past would enjoy this deep, dark, detailed and incredibly dry book.

⭐️

Thanks,

Andra via Cratejoy.

This short, selective memoir by a middle-aged Connecticut novelist, teacher, and screenwriter is a collection of disconnected philosophical musings about her past life, marriages, travels, family life, and interactions with others, including several well-known entertainers and other writers. With no chapter divisions, it is divided into retrospective reflections mostly only one to four pages long.

There is nothing very profound here, but there is an abundance of quirky wise observations delivered in flowing conversational prose that is easy to read. As I read on, however, I was struck by the excessive nostalgia, self-analysis, doubts, and introspection that seems to a common feature of autobiographical writing of creative artistic types. This is the author’s fourth memoir, which speaks volumes about the emotional roller coasters that such literati apparently enjoy riding and sharing. Who in the twenty-first century keeps volumes of daily journals unless they expect to exploit them for commercial gain or in a vain solipsistic hope to be remembered forever?

One typical quote: “It may be that when we no longer know what to do that our real work begins and that when we no longer know which way to go that our real journey begins.” This one reminded me of one attributed to John Lennon: “Life is what happens while you are planning something else.”

A bit disappointing. ⭐️⭐️

Thanks,

The New Yorker.

The title of this long novel by the late Rodney William Whitaker (aka Trevanian) refers to an other-worldly tranquil mystic state of mind that defies accurate description in any language, something which some people experience temporarily and unpredictably. Nicholas Hel, a Russian/German stateless youth aspires to and experiences this ineffable state which he describes as like becoming one with the grass and the yellow sunlight, growing up in China at the end of WWI, then living in Japan during and after WWII. He eventually becomes an international pariah assassinator-for-hire and a champion GO player. GO strategies become a metaphor for life.

The unique combination of talents and insights that the polyglot (six languages) Nicholai Hel acquires seems totally unrealistic, if reflected upon, but is somehow made to seem quite possible and even natural. He teaches himself the Basque language in three years of solitary confinement, in Japan from a dictionary and a children’s book. He also develops a paranormal proximity sense to allow him to sense who or what is nearby without any other sensory input. But the Naked/Kill weapons made from everyday household items do seem a bit too gimmicky and Bond-ish. Many of the international dark schemes also have a distinctly Ian Fleming flavour with Nicholai Hel as a James Bond. Considered in one way, the whole story could be as a sendup of the James Bond genre or perhaps that of Robert Ludlum’s Jason Bourne series. Hel even treats sex with his numerous lovers as a competition of wills to see who can hold off orgasm the longest.

The graphic description of postwar deprivation, starvation, and desperation in Japan along with unique perspectives on the superficial and snobbish attitudes of the occupying forces which totally lack any elements of this oriental Shibumi are written in beautiful insightful prose.The description of the horrors of the American carpet bombing of residential areas of Tokyo is unmatched by any pacifist rant and not likely to be included in most western history texts.

The description of the complex world of underground terrorist groups with flexible loyalties made me go back and check a few times to determine who was working for whom. The overriding control of groups and governments seems to lie with The Mother Country, allegedly part of the CIA, but in fact controlled by OPEC. No politicians are discussed by name, but the intrigue includes the Palestinian-backed Black Septembrist’s assassination of Jewish athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, the PLO, the Camp David Accord, and earlier postwar conflicts between Russia, China and the U.S. in Japan. Above all, apparently deeply compromising documentation about the JFK assassination is the ace card held by Nicholai Hel as he blackmails the Mother Country people.

Hel seems to view almost all cultures except for the traditional Chinese and perhaps that of Basque revolutionaries as primitive and shallow and heaps scorn on American and most European and Russian world views.

There are many memorable quotes: “…he learned that, in diplomacy, the primary function of communication is to obscure meaning.”

Of a Russian prison guard in Japan: “He was sure this man was no common Russian soldier, despite his appearance of Slavic intellectual viscosity.”

I found the 65 pages of description of dangerous, technically demanding spelunking of Hel and a flamboyant, uninhibited, lewd Basque separatist poet near the Spanish/French border very confusing and unrealistic.

The author uses the techniques of time shift and of geographic shifts around the world from the post-WWII orient to the 1970s Europe and America to great effect in bringing convergence and unity to the story. The description of powerful computers that keep track of everyone and everything with no allowance for privacy is prescient, considering that the book was published in 1979.

This is not my favourite genre of fiction, but the very inventive prose and unique insights kept me engaged if not riveted to the end. 3.5 stars.

Thanks,

Andra

Set in lawless Manhattan in 1845, shortly after a fire destroyed much of the lower island, this is a carefully researched thriller/murder mystery by a native New Yorker. A cadre of untrained and corrupt rogues is recruited as New York’s first police force. They have poorly defined job descriptions and little oversight, amidst the influx thousands of starving Irish during the potato famine. A 10 year old street vagabond tells the narrator, the newly-minted cop, Timothy Wilde, endless lies about why she was covered in blood when he found her. Multiple murders, dark political intrigue involving the Boss Tweed/Tammany Hall Democratic machinations, brothel owners, child prostitutes, narcotic addicts and animosities between Protestants and drunken Irish Catholic immigrants complicate the very complex plot.

The twisted period dialect and lingo in short meaningless conversations between too many characters to keep track of makes the going difficult for most of the story. Strange names such as Deadeye, Fang, Ninepin, Matchbox, Hammer, Zelenograd the Rat, Bird, Silkie Marsh, Valentine, Moses Dainty, and Hopsrill abound.Young do-gooder Mercy Underhill does not seem to fit in with the other debauched characters until her dark side is exposed in Chapter 21 of 27.

There are some notable quotes. “Riots are farmed, and when they bloom, the farmers get to smash their fists into an entire city.”

“For God to make something young and perfect and then crush him. Why go to the trouble? Stupid people imagine God thinks like they do….but I cannot believe that God is stupid.”

The absence of any virtues in any of the devious lying characters, even the clergymen, seems unrealistic. Many injuries in street brawls that should be fatal appear to never impede the characters’ ability to continue fighting. The bodily reactions to various emotions, except possibly for facial expressions, defy anatomical or physiological explanations.

As in many tales in this genre, oblique hints and false leads will confuse readers until late in the story when the most unlikely characters are revealed as the the mysterious child murderers.

This is the first of three novels featuring Timothy Wilde, clearly modelled after Sherlock Holmes. I have not read any of the sequels, but I can predict that Mercy Underhill will return to New York and hook up with Timothy Wilde in one of them.

Fans of this genre will enjoy this tale. Me, not enough to read the others in the series. Two stars.

Thanks,

Andra via Cratejoy

I would never have read this novel were it not to be discussed at our book club next month. Narrated in the first person singular by a fictional 18 year old German recruit, it is set on the front line at an unspecified site somewhere in France in 1917-18, as the Allies were slowly overpowering the German forces. It seems, in part, to be based on the author’s real-life experiences in those trenches where he was wounded in 1917.

There is heart-wrenching pathos as the narrator tries to console his comrade, the dying Franz Kemmerich with what they both know to be lies. Discussions of battles with rats and lice and the disadvantages of killing the enemy with bayonets vs spades only covey a small part of the horrors of war. One after another of his compatriots dies a horrible death from wounds, infections or exposure, while almost starving and dreaming of going home and courting girls.

On leave, the narrator discovers that his mother is bedridden with cancer and that he will never see her again after he returns to the front. The observation, first attributed to Aeschylus that “In war, the first casualty is the truth” is borne out in many places, most notably when the narrator swears to the mother of one of his fallen comrades that her son died instantly and painlessly. The observations made by many that surviving soldiers can never discuss with civilians the horrors they have seen and experienced in battle holds true here as the lies about the conditions at the front pile up. Perhaps the biggest lie of all is the German high command report late in the war that the title is based on.

Some of the reflections about war revealed in the narrator’s musings about captured enemy soldiers are truly profound: “A word of command has made these silent figures into our enemies. A word of command might make them into our friends. At some table some person whom none of us knows signs a document and then for years together that very crime on which the world’s most severe condemnation and severest penalty falls, becomes our highest aim….Any noncommissioned officer is more of an enemy to a recruit, any schoolmaster to a student, than they are to us. And yet we would shoot at them again and they at us if they were free.”

The writing flows smoothly in short pithy sentences and phrases. Although written from a German perspective, the narrative is not biased and is loaded with universal truths. Even though the descriptions of the horrors of war are the most graphic of any that I have ever read, I found the story magnetically engaging and enjoyed reading it. I will long remember it. But I have no desire to see the movie adaptation of 1930 or the TV one of 1979.

I have long been interested in neuroscience, so when my dear friend and former colleague at Western, Al Driedger, posted an article about mirror neurones, those clusters of brain tissue that facilitate development of empathy, at least in humans and bonobos, on his Brianworms site, which covers anything and everything scientific, Iasked him if he knew of any studies of them in psychopaths. He referred me to this book by a Georgetown professor of psychology and neuroscience.

After personally experiencing both acts of incredible altruism and of satanic cruelty at the hands of complete strangers, she switched her studies as an undergraduate in medicine to the world of psychology to research these extremes of human behaviour. She reviews ad nauseum the familiar problematic studies of Stanley Milgram at Yale and Philip Zimbaldi at Stanford demonstrating the ease of inducing cruel behaviour in some but not all normal volunteers in experimental situations given some incentives and authorization (and authority in the form of a uniform in the later case). We did not need these studies as real world examples such the unapologetic defence raised by Adolf Eichman at his Jerusalem trial already existed. It is a tribute to the increased oversight by Institutional Review Boards now that no such questionable studies would now be allowed on any campus in Western Europe or North America. Yet such cruelties, and worse, persist with the help of seemingly unsupervised government agencies such as the CIA.

In later reflections on theses and other studies, however, Marsh points out that unlike Eichman, many participants in these studies expressed anxiety and remorse about the doling out of what they thought was torture to strangers. Many volunteers distressed by watching others being tortured even volunteered to take their place. Thus, sadism and altruism are shown to both be alive and well. Generic and environmental factors influencing where people fall in this spectrum are then explored with a review of twin and adoption studies. Distinctions are made between psychopathy and psychosis, and reactive aggression and proactive aggression, the latter being characteristic of psychopaths and much more determined by genetic influences.

After reviewing the arbitrary, often-changing and subjective points-based DSM criteria that are nevertheless necessary for researching psychopathy and for developing research and treatment guidelines, she moves on to the studies showing that teens with psychopathic tendencies lack the ability to experience fear or identify it in others. This is associated with distinctly smaller and less metabolically active deep brain structures called amygdalae that may be the site of those mirror neutrons, on functional magnetic resonance imaging, although she never mentions ‘mirror neurones’ as such. Thus my question to Al was partially answered. And these anatomical abnormalities in turn are largely genetically determined, and not just correlated with psychopathic behaviour, but appear to be causative in that they are absent in those reactive violence-prone sensitive individuals who nevertheless experience fear, identify it in others, and express remorse and guilt.

I seemed to attract psychopaths in my professional past. I vividly recall one very charming rogue who had the courtesy to call to cancel his upcoming appointment without rebooking, only to hear his name the next day in the news-a Canada-wide warrant had been issued for his arrest, for attempted murder if I recall correctly.

The author devotes 30 pages to review the evolution of mothering care and alloparenting with the species variability from loggerhead turtles with no maternal behavior whatsoever to some mammalian species with maternal behaviour only for their biologic progeny (sheep) to rats with maternal care for other rat’s offspring, to dogs who adopt and fiercely protect babies of other species, to humans like the author who care deeply about even abandoned baby turtles on a Florida beach. I was reminded of my summer of care and feeding of a young Great Horned owlet that my brother and I had unintentionally scared out of the nest, raising her, feeding her and giving her aviation lessons from greater and greater heights until she took off from the peak of the barn roof, over the horizon, never to be seen again, leaving us saddened.

Evolution and multiple unique functions of oxytocin in modulating behaviour in mammals and the differences in altruistic anonymous kidney donors’ and psychopaths’ brain anatomy and physiology come next. The dedicated altruists, acting on instinctive compassion are shown to have larger and more metabolically active right amygdalae than average. What goes on in the left amygdalae?

The last two chapters largely forsake the detailed scientific brain imaging and chemistry studies doled out earlier to discuss and recommend possible ways of increasing individual and group altruism- no less interesting and with great insights, but more nebulous. She quotes two of my favourite writers and thinkers in this section-Stephen Pinker of The Better Angles of our Nature, and the Australian philosopher Peter Singer.

This is a fascinating well-organized and informative book that I greatly enjoyed reading.

Thanks,

Al

Although I now often abandon books that I am not enjoying reading or learning anything useful from, I occasionally read ones that I know in advance that I will not like. I think it is important to once in a while leave my echo chamber, or as some prefer my ‘thought bubble’, and read books written by people with very different religious, economic, and political viewpoints from my own and with different outlooks on life. In part this is to critique what I may find as faulty logic but more importantly it is to try to understand where they are coming from. Such was the reason for my reading of George Wills’ The Conservative Sensibility which I reviewed on February 20, 2020 and this one- and the Koran, which I have read but will never review, as I still value having my head attached to my body.

The title of this rant by a devout member of the Eastern Orthodox Church after abandoning Catholicism comes from a warning by the exiled Russian dissident Aleksander Solzhenitsyn. In Part 1, Understanding Soft Totalitarianism, other writers, cultural observers, and thinkers whom I admire, such as Eric Blair (better known as George Orwell), Hannah Arendt, Aldous Huxley, Edward Snowden, and Robert Putnam (he of Bowling Alone fame), are quoted extensively to bolster the argument that ‘Soft Totalitarianism’ created by leftists, intolerant agnostics, Social Justice Warriors (SJWs), and the thought police of the ‘woke’ culture, dedicated to the ‘Myth of Progress’, are threatening to our democracies and freedoms. According to the introduction, visionary persecuted ex-Soviet immigrants are uniquely capable of seeing these trends developing in America. There is certainly an element of truth to these assertions and the suppression of free speech on campuses and the dramatic recent increase in political polarization, particularly in the U.S., are frightening trends.

The documentation of the extent of the intrusion of the surveillance state, aided by both corporate and government agencies is truly alarming to those of us who value privacy. However there is no definition provided of either freedom or liberty, and no discussion of the capacity of the conservative right to wield equally abusive power over whole populations. Who has the freedom and right to authorize Texans to spy on their fellow citizens and report those seeking abortions for monetary rewards? Apparently, a right-wing conservative Catholic governor does. There is no mention of the extreme intolerances and cruelty meted out in the name of religion in the past, from the Crusades to the Salem witch trials, even the invasion of Ukraine by a devout Putin, in part to unite the quarrelling Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox churches, and from a different religious zealotry, 9/11. The truckers and anarchists recently occupying downtown Ottawa, desecrating national monuments and denying residents there the basic right to enjoy peace and quiet or even open their shops, invoked ‘freedom’ as the reason for their illegal activities. Whose freedom?

In the six chapter Part 2, which is loaded with dogmatic advice on How to Live in Truth, in one titled Families Are Resistance Cells, the author praises the rigid parental indoctrination of young children in their own one true religion that he observes in a persecuted Czech Catholic family. But this widespread practice is viewed by Richard Dawkins as a form of child abuse, restricting the child’s later capacity for independent thinking, ensuring that they develop a myopic world view. In The Gift of Suffering, the need for suffering as a test of one’s true faith is backed by quotes from Dostoyevsky and one from Soren Kierkegaard that I suspect is used out of context. The stoicism of the author’s flavour of Christianity seems more akin to the dour one adopted by Malcolm Muggeridge late in life than the tolerant, almost cavalier, forgiving Catholicism of Graham Greene. The advise for Western Christians to start forming secret underground cells now seems a little alarmist or at least premature to me. The worst threats in western democracies to religious freedoms that I am aware of are Donald Trump’s failed attempt to prohibit Muslim immigration to America and Quebec’s more successful but deplorable (in my opinion) prohibition of the wearing of religious symbols by public servants.

There is throughout this informative book a vague undertone of paranoia on the part of the author and his apparently beleaguered righteous fellow believers. They seem to feel, and even to welcome and revel in a perverse victim mentality that effectively shuts out any consideration of dissenting opinions as just part of the evil societal trends they are up against with their unique knowledge of The Truth, as revealed only to them by their God. The quoted dissident statement that “when a people become accustomed to living in lies, shunning taboo writers, and conforming to the official story, it deforms their way of thinking” cuts both ways.

I appreciated reading this book more than I thought I would when I chose it and perhaps more than my harsh take on it above would suggest. There is a need to take seriously some of the warnings from persecuted ex-Soviets that he interviews exclusively. (Ironically, he reports on no interviews with American church leaders whom he is claiming to write on behalf of.) But take those warnings with more than a grain of salt. The the lessons I learned were certainly not the ones the author wishes to impart to readers.

This second selective collection of reminiscences by the noted British neurosurgeon details his adventures as he approaches and enters full retirement. As I read both of his books, I conjured up various adjective to describe the complex persona of the author-as he portrays himself. Here, brilliant, skilled, articulate, pioneering, kind, athletic, adventurous, altruistic, sensitive, sentimental; there, short-tempered, cynical, agnostic, impetuous, curmudgeonly, introspective, insecure, adulterous, guilt-ridden.

He chose to continue with limited practice and teaching in Nepal, Ukraine, and Sudan after retiring from British academia. His keen observations of medical practices in Nepal include a fine discussion of the unrealistic family expectations and demands with threats of litigation, combining with practitioners’ pecuniary motives and competition all leading to rampant over-investigation and futile treatments including widespread use of decompression craniectomies (removal of much of the skull to allow the brain to swell) for hopeless stroke victims, and is spot on. When the practitioners’ hubris and reluctance to bear bad news to relatives is thrown into the mix, the result is bad and needlessly expensive health care. His description of the polite but impoverished Nepalese with volatile dispositions and unique customs and culture is a great introduction to a country that was entirely foreign to me.

The title seems to refer equally to the patients admitted to the neurosurgery ward and to his own often fatal errors practising in that rarified field. He refers to one patient as “one of the larger headstones in my inner cemetery.”

Chapter titles seem to have been chosen almost at random and often have little to do with their subject matter. For example, only eight of 31 pages in a chapter titled “An Elephant Ride” even mention elephants. The “Mind-Brain Problem” chapter is mainly a discourse on swimming and exercise. The “Memory” chapter is a combination of his family history and his experiences in a remote Tibetan general medicine clinic. But his plea for wider availability of medical assistance in dying in the last “Neither Sun Nor Death” is eloquent and compelling.

One further quote that I can’t resist passing on: “The best way to deceive others…is to deceive yourself.”

Like him, I chose to retire at age 65, but, unlike him I never continued any practice in a foreign impoverished country. I knew I would not miss the almost daily decisions I had to make that often determined the future of others, but like him, I felt lost for a while. He expresses this feeling superbly as facing “a frightening void, little different from the death preceded by the disability of old age and possibly dementia with which it would conclude.” At this remove, an admission of my own is in order. I can now relate that I became depressed. It was not that I had no hobbies to keep me busy but rather, having spent years growing and nurturing the possibly delusional belief that my work over 40 years was important and beneficial to others, I felt entirely useless and irrelevant. But pigheaded independence ensured that I would never seek help.

Recently, out for breakfast with friends, all of us ranted about our personal experiences with the inefficiencies, absurdities, waste, and inane rules and regulations promulgated by government and hospital bureaucrats and overseers hobnailing the real providers in our health care system. But none of us could match the vehemence and eloquence of Henry Marsh in this task.

This chronicle, much of it about agonizing deaths from brain tumours, is realistic and informative but depressing and not for everyone, although written in easily understood plain English. I have watched two colleagues and my first secretary die slow painful deaths in their forties from brain tumours, and in spite of that, quite enjoyed reading it because of its raw reality.

Thanks,

Goodreads.

A senior British neurosurgeon and the subject of two documentary films relates touching selective anecdotes from his long career. He exhibits unusual empathy and understanding of the fears of all patients undergoing brain surgery. Far from the arrogance of many surgeons in elite fields, he demonstrates remarkable humility, acknowledges his mistakes and the severe limitations of what heroic surgery can accomplish He seemingly reserves his condescension for his junior trainees, but he doles out scathing scorn for bureaucratic hospital and government administrators enforcing rules that usually only benefit themselves and complicate the work of front line caregivers. Of long retained NHS records he notes “The greater part of the notes….consist of nursing charts recording the patient’s passing of bodily fluids on previous admissions…. There must be tons of such notes being toted around NHS hospitals everyday in a strange archival ritual which brings dung beetles to mind, devoted to the history of patients’ excretions.”

The several page description of his tender interactions with his dying mother brought to mind the discussions in Shep Nuland’s memorable book How We Die. Like most neuroscientists he rejects any duality of body and mind-consciousness-soul in line with most modern philosophers. According to his agnostic beliefs, our minds are the natural result of neurochemical reactions and electrical activity in our brains.

The timely description of his altruistic work in Ukraine gives readers a peek into the primitive state of medical facilities and practices there, doubtless worse now. I was a bit disappointed that apparently none of his patients who progressed to brain death were referred for organ donation, which is only mentioned briefly once. It is usually, at least here, the responsibility of other physicians to get consent for that, but it is quite proper for attending neurosurgeons to raise the possibility with the family. How a neurosurgeon who failed in pharmacology got appointed to work with the complex of organizations assessing new drugs is never made clear.

The writing is in plain language that does not require a medical background to understand, although including an anatomical diagram of the human brain would have made that easier for non-medical readers.

The chapter titled Angor Animi, filled with anecdotes from his training as a junior house officer (here we were called residents or housestaff) brought back many memories, some sad, some hilarious. Just one for the record. Often on call from a Friday morning until a Monday evening as a senior resident, I caught what little sleep I could in the attached hospital residence quarters. At one point while reviewing the patients on 5 East at 7 a.m. with the head nurse. I enquired about where terminally ill old Joe had gone as his bed was empty. The nurse roared with laughter and told me that, according to the night nurse, I had gone to the ward at 2 a.m, declared him dead, and filled out the death certificate, a visit sleep-deprived me had no recollection of. Now neither housestaff nor surgeons are allowed to work such gruelling hours, although I learned a lot in such circumstances. Like the author, as a student, I also learned a lot about human relations and medicine working in a longterm psychiatric hospital with demented patients.

Even with almost no experience in neurosurgery, I can readily relate to the stress and challenges of dealing with the critically ill or dying in the midst of uncertainty, looking for that elusive balance between honest realism and leaving some room for hope, and I quite enjoyed this book.

I do not have the admirable patience and determination of a good friend who, in the last year, completed reading everything that Marcel Proust ever wrote. I have more and more frequently abandoned reading that I am not enjoying. I started reading two different books recently (Anthony Doer’s Cloud Cuckooland and Ann Patchett’s This Precious Life), having read their previous novels, but abandoned both less than half way through when I realized I was neither enjoying the experience nor learning anything useful from them. But this debut novel by a Black woman from Chicago’s poor largely black south side is a gem that I devoured in two days and will long remember. She was inspired to start writing it on election night in 2008 with Obama’s victory

In small town fictional Ganton, Indiana in 1997, a bright but poor black 17 year old gets pregnant and is forced by her dysfunctional family to give the boy up for adoption. She later is the only one of them to prosper, getting a scholarship to Yale and then marrying an equally-ambitious and bright black corporate executive and moving to downtown Chicago. But her marriage is strained in 2008 when he wants to start a family and she finally confesses to him that she already has a son that she misses terribly. I won’t give away more of the complex, twisted plot, which morphs into the thriller genre in the last half, then back to deep pathos in the last few of 40 chapters as all the diverse clues come together and many of the characters are reconciled with each other.

The deeply ingrained cruel systemic racism reminded me of that depicted in Jodi Picott’s great novel Small Great Things.

The plot line is somewhat unpredictable but realistic and complex and the main characters are entirely believable, though most are flawed Many readers may feel that for a poor black girl from the Midwest with a teen pregnancy in her past, receiving a scholarship to Yale is unrealistic, but I can assure everyone, from personal experiences there that it is not. In fact the plot is so realistic that some readers may start to question their own parentage -are they adoptees with nefarious relatives concealing their true origins? I know of at least two acquaintances who were adopted by their grandparents as siblings of their biological mothers, a practice that was and probably still is much more common than acknowledged.

I have only one very minor quibble, an obsession of mine. Veins are described as pulsating in anger, with “blood pumping through veins” -when will novelists realize that arteries but not veins pulsate?

An engaging must-read. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.

In this collection of 50 short essays on a wide variety of topics, the writer and thinker now living in Indianapolis reflects on everything from the banal like Diet Dr. Pepper, teddy bears, and Monopoly, to the profound like the Internet, CNN, smallpox vaccination, and viral meningitis.

All of the diverse topics are rated on a 1-5-star scale in this rambling, very relaxing discourse. His observations of the relationship of modern human beings to each other and to the rest of nature (hence the title) are delivered by the author, in the audiobook edition I listened to, in flowing, lilting sentences with clear enunciation and no accent that I could identify. Hundreds of diverse bits of often obscure background information from history, science, literature, philosophy and many other fields are interspersed with numerous anecdotes from his personal troubled past, including as a bookseller and as a trainee chaplain in a children’s hospital. These expose his own eccentricity, intelligence, brilliance- and vulnerability. His description of the absolute despair and sense of worthlessness during an episode of severe depression, delivered with gravitas in a rich baritone monotone is vivid and heart-wrenching. There is a vague introspective negativity to many of these musings that may turn some readers off, but also a lot of undeniable truth and positive reasons to celebrate the only life any of us have.

There are so many wonderful quotes:

“No bright line between imagination and memory”

“Most promises featuring the word always are false.”

“I am the Vice President of anxiety and the President is missing.”

“Disease only treats people equally where our social systems treat people equally.”

Unlike many writers conveying such vast amounts of information and unique perverse perspectives who can seem arrogant and condescending to their readers, Green comes across as humble and even genuinely self-depreciating, and insecure.

This book was Goodreads pick as the best nonfiction book of 2021. The audiobook edition narrated by the author, including a recording of the call of the now extinct Hawaiian Kawaii bird, is probably the best way to experience this sprawling discourse. The Goodreads choice is richly deserved in my opinion. Highly recommended. To mimic his ending of each essay, I give The Anthropocene five stars.

First a comment about the title. Not the author’s fault, but coupling the word civil with war has always struck me as the ultimate oxymoron. A more precise use of the English language would be to call it civic war?

In this alarmingly pessimistic but timely and perhaps realistic book, the Toronto-based writer and thinker presents five richly documented what-if possibilities, from trends already established, that would lead to civil war and chaos in the nation to our south. These range from presidential assassinations to secession of states from the union, failure to address climate change, increasing political polarization and the outbreak of widespread violence. With a combination of a vivid imagination, dozens of little-known indisputable facts, and interviews with politicians, political scientists, historians, psychologists, academics, military leaders, and radical racist conspiracy theorists like Richard Spencer, the possibilities are made to seem realistic, and the outbreak of civil war to seem almost inevitable. He presents no time line, but makes it clear that he thinks the disintegration of the nation is imminent.

The recent alarming developments in Canada that he could not have foreseen even last month when the book was published clearly show that we are not immune to similar developments.

He claims that although “[the founding fathers] created the greatest democracy and the greatest economy in the world”, their worshipped constitution is now a deeply flawed document that fails them in the modern world and that the most dangerous job in America is to be president. The unnecessarily heavily armed police and the military brass often align with and encourage right wing antigovernment extremist organizations, as some police in Ottawa did recently.

One great quote among many (with respect to potential assassins): “Social alienation comes with anger at their lot in life.”

The last section delivers the hopeful possibility that they can yet avoid all of the dire predictions he presented earlier, but, with what came before, that seems like whistling in the dark past the graveyard.

I have a few quibbles. The writing is largely in short alarmist-toned sentences and phrases. He describes the U.S. as the longest duration democracy in the world (debatable) and the richest country in the world. Perhaps it is the latter by total GDP, but certainly not by GDP per capita. The few maps and diagrams are so small as to be useless. He leaves the (probably unintended) impression that some radioactive material in the hands of antigovernment extremists is equivalent to them possessing nuclear bombs. The pagination in the ebook edition is all off and the book is at least two or three times as long as the page numbers indicate.

A sobering read that I didn’t enjoy at all but an important cautionary warning to anyone who values democracy.

Thanks,

Din

Although this is described as a novel, the two main protagonists, Palestinian Bassim Aramin and Jewish Rami Ehanan are two real men who fought on opposite sides of the Israel-Palestine conflicts but who then formed a real organization called Combatants for Peace. Refusing to assign blame to either side of the eternal conflict, they seem to prefer a two-state solution, but are open to any workable one. They and others also belong to the Parents Circle, a group of Israelis and Palestinians who have had their innocent children killed in the conflicts. Bassim’s 13 year old daughter was shot by a rogue Israeli soldier in 1997; Rami’s 10 year old daughter was blown up by an Islamic suicide bomber ten years later. It is not clear how much of the details of these deaths are real, as the New York author takes a lot of liberties in attributing characteristics and thoughts to the two men although much of the plot, such as the travel of the Palestinian Bassim to Bradford University to study the holocaust seems real.

The story is divided into no chapters but short sections numbered 1-500 then back down to 1, ranging from one phrase or photo to several pages, with seemingly random interspersed treatises on ornithology, and many other random topics. Many of these disconnected sections contain erudite bits of history from around the world, quotations from ancient or modern poets, philosophers and historians and trivial snitches of supposedly factual scientific data that have little or nothing to do with the main plot. What has the average volume of water in a backyard swimming pool got to do with this story? It is as though the author is trying to showcase his vast knowledge of history, philosophy, science, the arts and mathematics, the discipline from which the title derives. At the very middle are two ten page first-person-singular autobiographic sketches of the two men with heartfelt impassioned pleas for dialogue, understanding, and compassion rather than revenge even for the killers of their compatriots and family members. These sketches are separated by a one page explanation from the author about how they met.

Rami’s gripping account of the horrors of the ‘67 Yom Kippur war in the Sinai Desert emphasize the futility of all wars. The discussion of the spin, rumours, and outright lies that circulate to explain the senseless killing of the innocent presents the timeless truth that ‘The first casualty of war is the truth’.

There are some memorable quotes:

“The only revenge is making peace.”

“The hero makes a friend of his enemy.”

“The greatest jihad …..was the ability to talk”.

I confess that I frequently flipped forward to see how many pages were left. This touching story would have been much more enjoyable if it was half the length.

Thanks,

Jeannie

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I

Before starting into this one, on someone’s recommendation, I read part of Johnathan Franzen’s new novel Crossroads. But after less than 100 pages of 580, I abandoned it and returned it to the library. It is the first of a proposed trilogy and although it flows smoothly, I found what I read a bit unimaginative and could not reconcile myself to reading this, perhaps for the rest of my life, particularly when this little gem was sitting there beside me. Kudos to anyone who wades through Crossroads.

This little book (what distinguishes a book from a booklet?) is also part of a series, the latest by an American astrophysicist and professor at Barnard College, all of them about black holes.

Time becomes dilated and space is warped as you approach the event horizon on the edge of a black hole then fuse completely as you cross it toward the singularity of nothingness, or into a parallel universe within the black hole. (Astrophysicists debate which of these alternatives scenarios fit the data.)

Comparatives, such as before/after, above/below, heavy/light, and place and dimensions become meaningless words to those steeped in the lingo and mathematics of astrophysicists. Black holes are nothing, yet they have mass, spin, and charge and gobble up stars, galaxies- and visitors. She could have added that they apparently have measurable dimensions. And if you, the intrepid visitor, cross the event horizon where the escape velocity exceeds the speed of light, the information you glean (qubits in astrophysics lingo) may or may not escape in the form of Hawking radiation. Perhaps it is our linguistic limitations that make such paradoxes seem foreign and difficult to understand. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, (which would logically lead to the conclusion that even interstellar space cannot be entirely free of matter) is likened to the difference between a lone musical note and one within a chord.

The existence of black holes was ‘proven’ with the aid of a huge radio telescope on April 9, 2019, although the resulting image is partly white.

The major remaining big efforts in this rarified field are to reconcile relativity with quantum mechanics and Hawking radiation from black holes. And Hawking radiation comes as monogamous entangled quantum pairs (those qubits) that can be separated and then communicate information over vast distances faster than the speed of light because they are complementary like the two parts of a broken wishbone. How black holes which supposedly are nothing and from which nothing can escape transmit Hawking radiation Is a paradox which left me confused; I doubt that I was the only one.

I recall how puzzled I was as a child on first learning that the largest volume within of all atoms is a nothingness, a void. But such facts that challenge our intuitions are the mainstay of most physical and chemical sciences and are exemplified best in astrophysics- and most ably explained in this beautiful little book. Although I have read numerous books on relativity and cosmology, I cannot claim even a rudimentary working understanding of them; reading this book provided a useful upgrade to my understanding. I would also need a major upgrade to my mathematics schooling to clear the fog further.

The author’s infectious enthusiasm for her subject overflows into her writing and off the page on to the reader. And the reader’s imagined attempt to travel to the event horizon and beyond of any one of billions of supermassive black holes in the known universe is like a plot line in a wild sci-fi novel.

I greatly enjoyed reading this book; confusing in places, enlightening in others, and literally otherworldly, it is stuffed with great analogies, paradoxes, and apparent contradictions.

Thanks,

Andra, via Cratejoy.

This is a modern memoir of a well known Detroit sports writer who took over management of the Have Faith orphanage in Port Au Prince, Haiti following the 2010 earthquake. Adorable, self-assuredly-cheeky three year old Chika was left there and the childless Albions basically adopted her and subsequently, sparing no money, took her to Detroit and around the world looking for a cure when she enveloped what all the oncologist told them was an incurable brainstem cancer known as a Deep Intrinsic Pontine Glioma (DIPG). She nevertheless died at age seven, in 2017. Ingeniously, he uses what appears to be magical delusions or even hallucinations of posthumous interactions and conversations with her to explore what her short life meant to him, and only late in the narrative admits that these postmortem connections were “all in my head.”

It is never made clear which flavour of Christianity he adheres to but the Albions both pray daily, and he never expresses any doubt about his God’s benevolence in spite of the contrary evidence of the cruel fate dealt to Chika. He seems to subscribe to the questionable religious explanation for the cruelties of life proposed by C.S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain. And with the extraordinary futile measures they undertook to prolong her life including having a feeding tube surgically inserted into her stomach, this book provides support for Ernest Becker’s thesis in his The Denial Of Death that humans are uniquely irrational when it comes to thinking about and dealing with death.

The pathos is extreme. Although it is never easy to know when it is time to give up hope and yield to fate, especially when children are nearing death, I found the measures undertaken by Albion to be irrational and unrealistic. I am well aware of ethical debates about such measures as inserting gastric feeding tubes for individuals who are clearly dying within a few weeks, often having debated such ethics in my career, although I am no longer required to participate in such agonizing decisions.

I will not be reading Albom’s most famous memoir, Tuesdays With Morrie, about his visits to a dying man, anytime soon, as I have read enough about death to last a long time. But I have been thankfully spared the need to care for dying close relative children, and will refrain from judging those who have had to endure this painful experience.

There are a couple of memorable relevant quotes:

“Sometimes life throws a saddle on you before you are ready to run.”

“One of the best things a child can do for an adult is to draw them down, closer to the ground, for better reception of the voices of the earth.”

The next book I read will have nothing to do with dying. This is a well-written easy-to-follow one-day short read, but not a pleasant one.

Thanks,

Andra