Author: thepassionatereader

I am probably in a minority of people of my era who had not read this American classic many years ago. It is not as long as the page number would suggest, as the 2008 edition I got includes a wordy but enlightening 70 page introduction by Robert Demott and I somehow got the large print edition. Most versions are 420- 620 pages. My education in classics has finally been updated. The Introduction puts the novel into context and carefully dissects the controversies surrounding it.

The interesting technique of alternating short almost entirely narrative chapters with long ones that contain a lot of dialogue greatly enhances the story. In the short chapters the author offers generic commentary about the plight of the dispossessed starving farmers like the Oklahoma Joads during the Dust Bowl year of 1939, and their desperate decision to go to California, with false promises of utopia. This is interspersed with biting commentary about the capitalistic factory farmers, and the possibilities of what might have been. In the long chapters, he details in granular detail what actually happens to the fictitious Joads as they, and thousands of others pursue their false dreams of jobs, homes, security and wealth in California, only to find the same capitalistic factory farmers offering them nothing. There is no doubt about the far left leanings of the author leading some to call him a communist.

With about 60 pages to go, I went to bed and had a deep REMS dream about how it would end and how the author would tie up all of the loose ends. But today, finishing the book, I realized that it doesn’t end- it just stops as the young lady just delivered of a stillborn, offers her breast milk to a starving man.

At least four times as long as “Of Mice and Men, the authour’s second most famous novel of the same era, which I also enjoyed, this one provides much more detail of the strife of the Americans during the Great Depression.

5/5

If you believe this self-appointed American influencer and motivational speaker trained as a lawyer, she has has helped many millions of people lead more fulfilling and happier lives using a few simple rules to incorporate into their worlds. And she claims to have the most popular podcast in the world, with 60 million followers. With a thin false veneer of modesty, she delineates those rules in this book. I am not one of the people who has benefited much, nor do I believe everything she writes, but I downloaded her book out of pure curiosity.

The central thesis of the book is to stop blaming others for whatever problems one experiences, stop trying to change the behaviour of others, and take responsibility for your own life- a kind of personal lazziase faire attitude, with a dash of stoicism.

Nebulous pop psychology is all pervasive, with quotes from more so-called world experts that she claims to know from her TED talks and world tours than I could keep track of.

None of the author’s immediate family, as she relates stories of their problems with numerous personal anecdotes, could be considered entirely mentally healthy, which may help explain why she got into this modernized Ann Landers field, instead of practicing law.

Two words hardly make a philosophy for how to live ones life, even if they do convey a profound truth. And in the world of relationship advice, this, in many ways is simply common sense, something that seems to be an uncommon commodity, at least in the world of the advice column gurus. In many ways the message of this book is synonymous with the AA Serenity Prayer: God grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change. Courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

I have been very critical of this book, but nevertheless acknowledge that there is an abundance of good advice and some keen insights into basic human nature.

3/5

This Dutch historian relates the stories of many forgotten altruistic individuals and some that are well-known. They include a Dutch resistance fighter in WWII, August Landmaster, Ralph Nader, Rosa Parks, the Quakers, suffragettes, and abolitionists like, Oludah Equiano, Martin Luther King Jr., and Wilberforce, Rob Mather of The World against Malaria Foundation, and Peter Singer the famous Princeton philosopher. What they seem to usually, but not always have in common is some sacrifice of lustrous careers to pursue altruistic goals that have had a greater impact with recruitment of others to multiply their effect. The author implores others to do likewise.

Those goals include fighting climate change, (Ronald Reagan had the solar panels on the White House roof, installed by Jimmy Carter, removed) ensuring food security, abolishing slavery, reducing racism, allowing women to vote. Also included is increasing protection from bioweapons, and reducing the risk of nuclear war. Beatrice Finn won the Nobel prize for her efforts against nuclear weapons, while Andy Weaver documented disassembly of nuclear weapons in a former Soviet republic.

Developing nuclear fusion and alternative energy sources, and guarding against runaway AI are also mentioned.

The emphasis in health care is on prevention rather than care with things like new vaccines and antimalarial nets. To that end, Doctors Without Borders, my favourite charity, is downplayed, but it seems to me that both prevention and treatment are desperately needed.

I was surprised that Bill Gates is not mentioned and that Peter Thiel is included. I don’t think there is anything remotely admirable or altruistic about the latter. Some of the projects mentioned seem off the wall, such as space ladders and colonizing Mars, -too far out of the box for me.

The author alludes to some PDF files that of course are not included in the audio version.

A good read with lots of readily understandable information and an interesting perspective.

4/5

At an unspecified modern time, a female film photographer/carpenter from the southern Korean island of Jeju and an artist from Seoul work together and become fast friends. With a shared interest in a past massacre that is kept secret, they plan to memorialize it.

Snow becomes a symbol of burial and forgetting and everything about snowflakes is discussed in great detail from their intricate geometry, their chemistry, their gravity and their ethereal and ephemeral nature as they hit the earth and melt. Other white objects also feature prominently, including two talking parakeets, one of which dies, is buried, and then magically reappears.

It gets very confusing and difficult to distinguish reality from the tortuous dreams and nightmares of the principal characters.

There must be some reality to the largely forgotten random mass killings and torture of up to 100,000 citizens of Korea just before, during and for thirty years following the Korean War, under a dictatorship, for suspected communist leanings, with mass graves in a deep cobalt mine and under the runway of an airport.

There may be reluctance to pan the book of a Nobel prize writer and critics have described this one with such meaningless adjectives as ‘astounding’ and ‘profound’ but my adjectives to describe it are ‘confusing’ and ‘disjointed’.

2/5

Thanks, The Economist.

The girl on the train in a London suburb in July 5th to September 10th, 2013, certainly has a vivid imagination. At a momentary stop every day as she goes to work, she sees into the yards and houses of adjacent rowhouses, and conjures up complex life stories to fit the people she sees there. none of whom are faithful to their spouses.

There are endless twists and turns and multiple murders as she actually gets to meet those same people, none of whom could remotely be considered normal.

The intermittent relapses into alcoholism with blackouts and hangovers is very well discribed. A foreign-borne psychotherapist becomes a target of the psychological phenomenon of transference and succumbs to a sexual relationship with a patient.

It makes no sense to test the paternity of an early pregnancy of a deceased woman when the illicit relationship had begun less than two months prior to her murder.

There are some other inconsistencies as well, such as: «…you can taste the carbon monoxide rising from the street below. » Carbon monoxide is odourless and tasteless.

Readers, to have any hope of keeping the characters straight, need to pay close attention to the dates, times and characters of each of the short chapters as there are frequent time shifts, but only three narrators, always talking in the first person singular tense.

Not my favourite genre, but very well written.

3/5

Thanks, Vera.

Two American historians combine their research to provide intricate details of the three-way (four-way if you count the lesser influences of the French), multiple conflicts between the 1730s and 1780s that led to the United States Declaration of Independence. With borders and names of both states and countries that kept changing, it can be challenging to keep track of the geology. However, I did recall a few names of some well-known sites such as Tate’s Creek in Lexington, Ky, the Cumberland Gap in the Appalachian Mountains, Big Bone Lick and a few others. And many individuals such as Thomas Jefferson and George Washington are featured.

The legendary Daniel Boone who never missed an opportunity to fight an Indian and survived many harrowing encounters with a confusing array of different tribes with unpronoucible names, is central to the story. There is excruciating detail of cruel punishments meted out on all sides, with a scalping a common practice. The numerous treaties signed between white men and Indians were relatively meaningless as no Indian chief spoke for more than a small fraction of the native population and the white men broke promises with impunity, taking over more and more Indian territory.

Some of the detailed punishments must be embellished. As a medical professional, I find it impossible to believe that one man is said to be still breathing after both hands were severed, and then both legs were amputated and he was scalped before « breathing his last » as he was thrown into a fire.

The misogyny of the era is striking with women confined to producing large families, even when the men were out on months-long hunting tours or raiding Native encampments.

This is an exhaustively detailed account that provides much more informaton than most readers could possibly need to know; a professional historian could use it as a reference work. But is also a reminder of the cruel treatment of our native brothers that continues.

3/5

Thanks, The Economist.

I borrowed this ebook novel when I had nothing better to do. It is set in the 1970s Arkansas, although written by a Brit. By 20 pages in, I was thoroughly confused- there are several children missing including a one-eyed boy named Patches, who thinks he is a pirate. A school photographer becomes a prime suspect and several graves are eventually found. Then suddenly Patches is driving with a girl to the photographer’s home which has been burned down.

This is written entirely in short sentences which seem like follow no logical sequence, with what to me seem to be numerous spelling and grammatical errors. There is no time sequence given for the disjointed bits of dialogue.

After 74 chapters and only 200 pages, I gave up trying to follow a plot if there is one. For me this book reads like the too vivid imagination of a schizophrenic. It seems that everyone who has reviewed it disagrees, but so be it.

I am not counting this book as one I read nor will I give it a rating as I only read less than 1/3 of it.

Thanks, but no thanks, Kirkus Reviews.

For me this was a quick fill-in as I await another book that I will pick up at the library tomorrow. These authors, one an Indigenous Canadian professor of anthropology, the other a Canadian/British researcher do a good job of introducing readers to both ancient and modern Indiginous cultures of North America, although there is nothing about the Māori cultures of Australia and New Zealand.

They document Sequoyah’s development of his syllabary in Cherokee in North Carolina in 1821, allowing Natives to record their stories of torture and displacement in detail. Pauling Johnson, of the Six Nations Reserve, in late 1800s became a remarkably famous poet and writer. The Beothuk of Newfoundland, introduced to us as murdered to extinction, may still exist or at least many of their genes may, as genetics may soon prove. The remarkable Standing Bear and Sitting Bull defeat of Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn is related by the writings of people actually on site, rather than from the viewpoint of the white man. Various other Native traditions and practices are discussed in variable detail.

The narrative is interspersed with abundant colourful photographs and artwork. This makes the pagination seem bizarre and inconsistent with many pages of narrative lacking any page numbers at all.

This culture is so foreign to me as to make me question some of its continuing value, but as one observer aptly put it one cannot discuss the future intelligently without knowing where we have been in the past.

A good intelligent discussion.

4/5

This light read by the Neufie musician, actor, and writer is filled with humour that is could only come from a true Newfoundlander. The stories of his adventures as he travels the world as front man for the famous band The Great Big Sea, seem to surprise him as much as they entertain readers.

Some of the episodes get serious such as when he shares his thoughts on parenting. He seems to have a bit of the imposter syndrome and is stunned and awed by the famous musicians and Hollywood actors and musicians whom he meets and befriends, including Anne Murray and Russel Crowe.

A great reprieve if you have been reading heady stuff lately as I have.

4.5/5

Thanks, Kirkus Reviews.

This is the first nonfiction work by the Indianapolis author of several novels, including the best-selling The Fault in Our Stars. He is also a self-confessed depressive and suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder.

In the first few chapters, he details how tuberculosis was viewed in the Middle Ages, including as an enhancer of feminine beauty, via weight loss and pallor, or as a stigmatized spiritual punishment. It was also regarded as a gift of the talented poets, writers and musicians, many of whom died of tuberculosis in their youth.

Following the discovery of the responsible bacillus by the disgraced Dr. Koch, attitudes changed slowly, but there was little effective treatment and a lot of ineffective treatment recommendations, until the late 1940s.

Much of the later part of the book concerns the continuing inequality of modern treatments in the era of multidrug resistance, and the huge toll that tuberculosis continues to extract in many countries, still killing more than a million people per year. The difficult choices of where to invest in health care include a Chilean physician who had to chose between feeding four thousand starving Haitians and developing treatment for multidrug resistant T.B. at home. Such difficult choices about the »social determinants of health » feature  prominently in much of the book.

This is a very intelligent and thoughtful detailed analysis with bundles of information, and an interesting global and very human perspective. It is written in simple language that almost anyone should be able to understand. I am going to recommend it for our book club’s discussion.

5/5

Thanks, Isla.

This book by a peripatetic Miami journalist is by far the most informative nonfiction that I have read this year so far. Wide-ranging and scholarly, (31 pages of Notes and Index) he traces the. dismal history of the environmental movement from its beginnings to 2025. Much of it concerns the work of the brilliant and abrasive Princeton enviromental lawyer, Tim Searchinger, and his frequently counter-intuitive but factual science.

The farm subsides throughout the world are thoroughly trashed as is the biofuel industry. There is throughout detailed science that includes the regenerative farming movement with all of its limitations, and the start-ups that include genetically modified crops, vegan fads, meat substitutes derived from meat or plants, fertilizers, deforestation, methane production from belching and farting cattle and efforts to scientifically increase the efficiency of photosynthesis.

The perspective is global and although the science is erudite, most of it should be understandable by anyone with a high school education.

I occasionally volunteer at a small ecofriendly regenerative farm and was a bit surprised by the limited impact he claims this movement could have, but the science seems irrefutable. That land is not free is a recurring theme, making efforts to increase yields of crops mandatory, while decreasing farm acreage and increasing forested land cover.

«The key, as always, will be to get the incentives right- so farmers can make more money, by making more food with less land: forests are worth more standing, and storing carbon than logged and burned… »

Much of the book seems like a doom and gloom documentary, but he ends up with some optimism and a plea for each of us to do our part.

5/5

Thanks, Book Browse.

The action takes place entirely in June and July 2019, except for the dragged out last 27 pages which extend to March, 2022.

The dysfunctional family is a stable frequent feature of many novels, and this thriller is certainly no exception. A immature 16 year old with a narcissistic mother marries, her mother’s lover, a pedophile almost three times her age who then abuses their daughters. Then she meets a feminist podcaster who was born on the same day as her in the same hospital. They begin a series of podcasts about her experiences, hiding the fact that the podcaster is herself married to an intermittent binge drinker and a cocaine addict. From there, it gets even weirder and more unrealistic. Faithful to the title, readers are made to feel compassion for the apparent victim until much later when she is shown to be a serial lier and murderer in disguise.

There is endless emotional turmoil and none of the characters are remotely normal.

I have not read any of this London, England’s other 21 books nor am I likely to.

3/5

Thanks, Goodreads.

I seldom give up on a book once I have started into it, but I came close with this one. Supposedly about Britain, the Neolithic era and ancient axes it is humourless, and meanders from the earliest hominids around the world, from archaeologic axes to diets, boats, funeral rites and mystical religious beliefs. It takes 160 pages to get to Britain, and then initially several hundred thousand years before the Neolithic era (approx. 17000 to 7000 BCE), at a time when Britain was not an island. In the first two parts readers are introduced to prehistoric cultures over a vast time frame and from many parts of Europe, Asia and Africa. Chapters include discussion of cannibalism, pollens, antlers, wild and domesticated plants and animals, and geological formations, with names of places, different types of stones, and archeological controversies that are confusing and of little interest to me.

I had to take a break to refresh my memory of the mechanics and reliability of radioisotope dating of different materials, with an internet search, a scientific method referred to extensively but never explained. My eyelids frequently interfered with my reading and then I would lose my place and reread several paragraphs before discovering the error.

The author seems to assume an intricate knowledge of not only British but worldwide geology with more stone types than I could keep track of. I’ll admit to learning a significant amount about the gradual transition of peoples around the world from hunter-gatherer societies to a farming way of life. Some of the farming thousands of years ago reminded me of my childhood on a family farm, laboriously picking stones off cultivated fields, but never identifying what type of stones they were.

The diagrams and maps are generally confusing although the photographs of some cites are interesting.

The 14 page Epigraph goes a little way to redeem this hopelessly disjointed and detailed book. In it the author discusses modern dilemmas, disagrees with Yuval Noah Harari and Jared Diamond about the domestication of plants and animals, disparages industrial farming and enslavement of animals, and touches on the challenge of climate change. But it has nothing to do with Axes or Britain.

This book represents a failure of the author to identify a target audience, if there is one. The only one I can think of is perhaps a few dedicated archeologists, who could use it as a reference.

1.5/5

Thanks, Tom.

This book by a local (Merrickville area) tree specialist of Irish descent, is divided into 30 short chapters, all related to the remarkable biology of trees. From the ucalyptus trees that in are in danger of spontaneous combustion starting forest fires in California to the remarkable sounds of trees emitted below the frequency we can hear, and the communication between and among species, the science is interesting and dense.

The author documents some proven medicinal discoveries of compounds of arboreal origin, but makes outrageous claims, or at least unproven ones for others. This reveals a profound lack of any understanding of medical standards of proof of benefit. Of arboreal aromatic compounds she claims «They stimulate smooth muscles…dilate small arteries…open the lungs to refine breathing…lower blood pressure… inhibit the excess secretion of hydrochloride acid by the stomach… improve the flow dynamics of red blood cell… bring nasal vasoconstriction which makes it more difficult for airborne viruses… to enter respiratory pathways. » Just how does that work? I have no doubt that some of these benefits are real but also no doubt that none of them have been proven in a carefully blinded trial. In several places she claims that various tree products have anti-cancer effects. Tidewater trees « should be a man’s best friend because they hold a solution to prostate cancer. »

The writing is poetic and there is no doubt about the author’s good intentions. But there is also a self-satsified smugness to it. She unabashedly claims to be the first person to publish on tree aerosols. The groundbreaking discoveries of Suzanne Simard relating to fungal tree communication in Finding the Mother Tree are discussed but Simard is never mentioned in the text or cited in the short suggested reading list or the Index.

There is a lot of useful, interesting information in this book, but the lack of acknowledgment of other scholar’s contributions, and unfounded medical claims spoiled the reading for me. I look forward to what others have to say about it at our July book club meeting.

2.5/5

Thanks, Williams Court Book Club Two.

This book by two Brooklyn opinion writers and podcasters is not a bad book, but it is not a great one either.

It starts out with a short unrealistic utopian vision of the world of 2051.

Much of the book is concerned with the possibilites and potental of the U.S. economy to deal with such problems as the housing shortage, the climate crisis, health care, technology, and pandemics, with the emphasis on the inhibiting role of governments at all levels. There is a distinct right wing emphasis on the burden that excessive and often conflicting government regulations play. This is most evident in the contrasting results of the housing problems of California and Texas.

They note in passing that per capita, the U.S. has « twice as many lawyers as Germany and four times as many as France….In 1967 there were three cases per 100,000 directed at enforcing federal laws. By 1976 there were 23. By 2014, there were 40. »

The role of government in working with industry in developing Covid vaccines is appropriately praised, and held up as an example for other innovations particularly in dealing with climate change with a pull rather than a push approach.

This book is very much concentrated on the U.S. with little recognition that other counties even exist. It is dry, humourless, wordy and longer than the above pagination would suggest. In the ebook version there are many duplications of page numbers. The hardcover is 304 pages, not counting the extensive Notes and Index.

3/5

Thanks, Goodreads.

The autobiographical tale of this New Zealand lawyer/UNdiplomat/Facebook executive, is filled with easily anticipated disillusionment and entirely unpredictable personal crises including a nearly fatal childhood shark attack and a equally serious amniotic fluid embolism with her second delivery.

She was idealistic to the point of naivety, and left her job at the UN in 2011 to join Mark Zuckerberg and Cheryl Sandberg as a senior policy advisor at Facebook, hoping to assist in making the world more connected. Attending many conferences of world leaders and billionaires, she arranged many meetings with presidents and prime ministers, on behalf of Zuckerberg.

The unstated goal was always global growth without regard to human rights or morals, working deviously with the Chinese and with fatal consequences for thousands of Malaysians to collect data on their citizens. They planned and launched a program specifically to prey on teenagers susceptibility to emotional insecurity. The annual Davos World Economic Forum farce is seemingly almost entirely a show of power and wealth with no consideration of morals.

Both Mark Zuckerberg and Cheryl Sandberg are portrayed as ruthless amoral workaholics whose demands on underlings bear no relationship to the people described in Cheryl’ s book, Lean In. The author’s complaints about sexual impropriety of a co-worker was ignored and lead to her firing in 2017.

Not a pretty picture of corporate America, and global tech companies, nor anything to instill confidence in any government’s ability to rein in the excesses of the AI-driven tech, this book is timely but quite pessimistic.

I joined Facebook to publicize books for sale and later to publicize my blog of book reviews, (ThePassionateReader. Blog) but delete the vast majority of postings, ads, friend suggestions, videos, etc., which some AI thinks I should look at, without a second thought. Perhaps even this limited engagement is not justified.

4.0/5

Thanks, The Economist.

I thought this New York Times writer and critic was going to write about the pros and cons of having a child in modern times. But I was completely wrong. This subject is mentioned only briefly about thirty pages from the end. She has one planned four year old with a peculiar disorder called Beckwith- Wiedmann syndrome born by Caesarian section and one younger one. As the grandfather of a three month old grandson I never expected to have and have not yet met, (he lives 4746 km away) I thought this would be an interesting read. He was also born by C-section.

But this is all about the extremely complex care in modern obstetrics and the sometimes lunatic fringes of home birthing, with their anti-doctor biases, and equally controversial and contradictory advice of so-called experts in parenting. These processes are aided immensely by extensive social networking and so-called influencers, who seldom know what they are taking about.

It seems peculiar to me that the obstetricians at least in the U.S. are now recommending extensive early screening for genetic diseases for everyone, using sampling of fetal cells from the mother’s blood. This is irrespective of whether or not the parents would opt for abortion if serious defects were found. This at a time when access to abortion is being progressively inhibited in the United States. Echoes of eugenics.

I cannot comprehend the complexity of modern child birth nor of child rearing as well as any mother can, and fortunately do not now need to. But this is an informative and easy read, although I suspect it is more applicable to the U.S. than to Canada. I am sure my daughters living there would find it useful.

4.0/5

Thanks, The New Yorker.

2022. 279 Pages. (Paperback.).

Written by the Venezuelan/American fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace before Trump was reelected, I could not help but think that he may now be in danger of being deported back to Venezuela. He is certainly no Trump fan, but the book now feels a little outdated with Trump’s reelection, although many of the devious tricks autocrats use to obtain and maintain power have already been deployed by Trump in the last five months.

He makes extensive use of the acronym 3P autocrats, i. e. those using populism, polarization and post-truth to maintain power.

The author quotes extensively from four books that I quite enjoyed among others: Francis Fukuyama’s The Origins of Political Order, Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny, and Bill Browder’s Red Alert and Freezing Order.

This is a deeply researched pessimistic screed about global politics that will make many readers and committed small-c democrats despair about the future, the exact opposite of his obvious intention, of making them engage with politics. To be fair, in the penultimate 15 page chapter, he outlines five processes we must use to counteract autocracy, couching all of them in the military term Battles. But I could not think of any of them as actionable on an individual level. In the Afterword, he argues for ranked-choice voting and for wide use of citizen’s juries.

There is little humour and the book is dense with facts. One very apt quote that caught my attention: “ With the practices and institutions that protected society from disinformation in tatters, practitioners of the dark arts of post-truth find themselves kicking penalty shots without a goalkeeper to stand in the way.”

It is perhaps smug, but I take comfort in the fact that Canada is never mentioned in any negative way.

I admire the scholarship, learned a lot, but am left pessimistic without any obvious remédiable action on an individual level. I cannot recommend it except for those with political aspirations, political scientists, or those already wielding political power.

3.5/5

Thanks, Alana.

An very embellished memoir of an impoverished childhood in Brooklyn and then back in Limerick, Ireland, during the depression and up to his return to New York in 1949 at age 19.

The poorly educated Irish were opposed to anything English, especially his father who was from the north. Throughout he lived in extreme poverty with a father who drank every cent he made, and he got almost no education. Sexual awakening in his early teens led to some bizarre fantasies and self-gratification, with no understanding of human anatomy, physiology, or reproduction.

The title refers to his mother’s devout practice of placing ashes on the forehead as a Catholic ritual, not cremation, although several children died of mysterious illnesses.

No one captures the unique dialogue and culture of the Irish, the all-pervasive influence of the Catholic Church, and the limited understanding of life of a growing child in the way the late this author does. Ten year old Frank, at his confirmation: “Priests and masters tell us Confirmation means you’re a true soldier of the church and that entitles you to die and be a martyr in case we are invaded by Protestants or Mohammedans or any other class of heathens…. I want to tell them I won’t be able to die for the Faith because I’m already booked to die for Ireland.”

There is a movie based on this book that I have not seen, but my friends are unanimous that it is not as good as the book, which is just beautiful.

5/5

Thanks, Vera.