Author: thepassionatereader

Federal election campaign open season begins this week, so I got this very up-to-date documentary about the last four years of rule by Justin Trudeau to educate myself and perhaps help me decide how to vote in October. The very experienced journalist author works as a senior writer with the CBC’s Parliamentary Hill Bureau, and previously worked for Maclean’s. It would be naive and unrealistic to expect any writing about politics to be entirely balanced and unbiased, and this certainly is not. There is little doubt that Wherry favours most of the programs and changes that the Liberals have tried to implement but he does not gloss over the problems that Justin Trudeau has encountered in his steep learning curve as a political boss-his failure to deliver on election reform, his farcical wardrobe display in Mumbai, his broken promises re the budget deficit, and his office’s apparent interference in the SNC Lavalin prosecution

There is a huge amount of interesting factual information as seen from the perspective of one with unusual access to all the major players whether they be the Ottawa pols or bureaucrats, their provincial counterparts, U.S. politicians, or business leaders. Just as one example, the controversy surrounding the SNC Lavalin prosecution is explained in terms that even I can now understand.

It appears that SNC Lavalin lobbying was almost entirely responsible for getting the Deferred Prosecution Act written into Bill Morneau’s 2018 budget. What is left unmentioned is that they allegedly have a mutually profitable business relationship with the billion dollar company, Morneau Shepell, a human resource company partially owned by guess who? Instead, the focus is on the apparent conflicts of interest, ego clashes, and differing legal perspectives between various people in the Justice Department, (unwisely combined with the Attorney General’s Office) and the Prime Minister’s Office staff. Why is Bill Morneau not held accountable for his part in this fiasco?

As is to be expected in any book rushed to publication (this one covers events up to June of this year) there are a few grammatical and spelling errors. And there is at least one factual error. In discussing and excusing Jean Chretien’s ability to deliver on only 37% of his 1993 election promises, Wherry says they faced a debt crisis half way through their four year mandate. That was clearly a crisis of their own doing.

To be a well-informed voter, I probably should now read a book about each of the other party leaders, but I am not sure I can stomach a book praising Andrew Sheer with his divisive, intolerant, vague promises on any number of issues, although he has no monopoly on ad hominem attack ads. My wife has pointed out that a number of candidates, in campaign flyers and newsletters fail to even reveal which party they belong to; it is as though they are running as independents. If our local Liberal candidate in Kanata-Carleton, Karen McCrimmon, is sure to win in October, I may vote for the NDP or Green Party, to increase ever so slightly their vote share. I am not, and never will be a partisan voter.

This is a very informative book that deserves to be widely read- with a grain of salt, before it becomes largely irrelevant by November.

It is back to school week, so I delved into this extremely dark debut novel by an ex-pat Indian now living in Texas, to learn a bit about the Indian caste system and its nasty consequences. The reality may be a bit less frightening than portrayed here but is nevertheless awful. In a remote Indian village, in the 1980s, the local economy seems to depend on a pedophile ring of upper caste men forcing all the low caste girls into temple prostitution, under the guise of satisfying the needs of the Goddess Yellamma. According to the Author’s Note, this widespread practice persists, and is tolerated by authorities in many remote parts of India. One such child is rescued from this life by an apparently altruistic wealthy upper caste gentleman aided by her mother and one grandmother, both retired temple prostitutes, but appearances are deceptive and none of the characters are really altruistic. The two girls that bond in the upper caste home over five years, then become separated with multiple tragic deaths in the Mumbai bombings of 1993 that impact both, only to be reunited in the last few pages. Family secrets, disputed paternity, deceptions, loneliness, and abandonment add to the complex, realistic plot. Longing for affection and parental approval that never develops is a recurring theme. The deep emotions expressed by the characters, and those that will be elicited from the readers, do not seem somehow to be extreme, given the pathos of the circumstances.

The writing is not at all lyrical in spite of some poems, and there are a few grammatical errors as well as abundant terms that will not be familiar to most English readers, but their meaning can usually be inferred from the context. Extensive use of the time shift literary device (between 1984 and 2007) seems hardly necessary and the chapters could be enjoyably read in chronological order, with some minor editorial changes.

This is not a fun read, but it is very engaging, well-written, and educational. But do not read this if you are at all prone to depression.

My wife assured me that I did not need to read the two previous Rosie books to appreciate this one by the hilarious Aussie novelist, narrated in the first person singular by Rosie’s socially inept husband, Don. But then she conceded that I would have found the many characters much easier to keep straight if I had read the other two books.

The characters are indeed a mishmash of social misfits, including Rosie and Don’s eleven year old son, Hudson, and his albino classmate named Blanche. Political correctness is pilloried as Don gets suspended from his job as a university genetics researcher for his apparently inappropriate characterization of racial differences in a lecture, only to find a calling as a high end cocktail innovator. Numerous social gaffes by several characters lead them to consider whether or not they belong on the spectrum of autism. The criteria for this now popular diagnosis are also mocked as several characters, including the narrator, self-diagnose the condition, even as they develop advanced social skills. The reader is left with the impression that almost everyone has some of the traits said to be characteristic of autism. They are all ‘autistic’ or ‘people with autism’ as the debate rages about which is the correct wording. At the most basic level, the serious message from this not-very-serious book is about being comfortable with who you are.

The characterization of school authorities and school psychologists as they work with parents to ensure that all children ‘fit in’ is also subtly mocked. In the past, when autism was not a well recognized condition, and the school psychologists were all amateurs known as teachers, we just considered those children ‘on the spectrum’ to be weird or social misfits. Now it appears that getting a diagnosis of autism is an acceptable explanation for all kinds of unusual behaviour and socially unacceptable conversations and actions. Perhaps I should seek a diagnosis of autism to justify my frequent embarrassing social gaffes.

I enjoyed reading this book, but I would recommend reading the previous two Rosie books, The Rosie Project, and The Rosie Effect, first, and in that order.

I am not posting any book reviews this week, as I have not read any recently that warrant the effort. I subscribe to no daily newspapers, but get two weekly magazines online and two monthlies. So I am just posting my musings about those, not as any kind of academic assessment, but as a tentative guide to what some readers, if at all like me, might expect to get from them.

The Atlantic: (online, monthly). This very informative magazine has a distinctive U.S. focus, but covers some international topics in each issue. The publishers maintained a strict neutrality with respect to coverage of U.S. politics until the Trump era, and then carefully explained why they came to overtly oppose his agenda. Long reviews and opinion pieces cover diverse topics from changing race relations, gender issues, and income inequality, to background in-depth analysis of historical trends, often with unique perspectives. The poetry and fiction stories, often written by creative writing gurus frequently leave me confused and disappointed. The book reviews are often very lengthy and some of the books chosen will be of very limited interest. But I usually read most of each issue, and learn a lot.

The Economist: (online weekly). As befits economists, this extensively researched magazine with a British flavour follows an unvarying format, starting with the very-up-to-date section called The World This Week that reports world news from as late as 24 hours before publication. That is followed by Leaders, Letters, United States, The America’s, Asia, China, Middle East and Africa, Europe, Britain, International, Business, Finance and Economics, Science and Technology, Books and Literature, Financial Indicators, and an Obituary, always in the same order. If you are interested in the challenges facing dictators anywhere in the world, the trends in the economy of any country, or the latest scientific discoveries, you are likely to find relevant information here. There are abundant, sometimes contrived, charts and graphs, and, as one would expect, a lot of predictions. The writers seem fond of quoting members of various think tanks but seldom reveal the inevitable biases of the thinkers. Political leaders and parties are invariably described as being somewhere on the right/left axis, as though that somewhat outdated distinction explains where they stand on every issue. There is never any doubt that economic growth measured by such figures as the GDP is the acme of human achievement. And some of the science and technology described is so complex, especially if it involves astronomy, that I despair of ever understanding it. Given the poor track record of economists in predicting anything, the frequent predictions need to be regarded with enlightened scepticism. I can’t declare that I read it cover-to-cover, but I may get through 75% and I enjoy reading it. There are rarely any spelling, grammar, or syntax errors, although I am jarred by oft-used “But although”, which seems to me to be a redundancy.

Harpers: (monthly, paper, not sure why I don’t get the e-edition). It is unabashedly iconoclastic and critical of mainstream political and philosophical trends (some would label its focal point as ‘far-left’). I enjoy the contrarian essays as a counterbalance to some group-think ideas taken as the gospel truth not to be questioned, in other publications. It’s reports are perhaps less research-based conclusions, and more an appeal to use careful logic to reach sound conclusions about all manner of social ills, political issues and day-to-day problems. The iconic one page Index masterfully shows the absurd inconsistencies and unintended consequences of a great variety of political actions and laws as well as our daily capacity to make irrational decisions. The last page, Findings, documents some very bizarre conclusions from the world of science, including all of the social sciences. The artwork on display is often abstract and leaves me unimpressed. I probably only read about half of most issues.

The New Yorker: (online, weekly). O.K. skip the first few pages, Goings On About Town, detailing the latest shows, night life possibilities, dining fads, art exhibitions, etc, unless you live in NYC or are planning a trip there. Designed carefully to appeal to urban liberals, the long essays on politics, social issues, and science discoveries are very informative and well researched. I am concerned that the recent endless Trump bashing may be helping him label the facts as fake news and thereby appeal to his base- he probably regards any negative publicity from his fellow privileged wealthy urbanites as an asset. The famous cartoons are scattered throughout the articles and some are hilarious. The choices for long book reviews often puzzle me, but I start in to all of them anyway, looking for hidden treasures. The poems and fiction pieces seldom appeal to me, even with the option of listening to the author’s read them. I probably read an average of 60 % of most issues.

Which magazine would I give up if time constraints dictated less reading? Probably Harpers. But I would still read at least the Index and Findings in each library copy. I suppose I could give up all of my subscriptions and just take up residence in the library.

A brilliant, intense Brit now at Western University in London Ontario, documents, in layman’s terms, the work he and his teams have undertaken to explore the boundaries of consciousness and what it means to be alive as a human being. Using a variety of innovative neuroimaging techniques that have garnered worldwide attention, they conclusively show that some people with no other means of communicating that they are alive, thinking, and capable of diverse emotions, are in fact, aware, are still “in there,” locked in a body unable to communicate by any of the usual means.

But the techniques are not foolproof and occasional patients in a “persistent vegetative state” who repeatedly do not show any responsiveness or awareness of their surroundings, using the most advanced technologies to communicate, later evolve into a state approaching mental normality. Family members, it seems, often are the best judges of who is aware in this Gray Zone after devastating brain injuries, even if they misinterpret what they are seeing. And the possibility that the comatose unresponsive individual is listening, understanding, seeing feeling, smelling, etc. should be the default assumption of everyone who cares for him or her.

This work is fraught with ethical, legal, and philosophical dilemmas with no easy answers which the author acknowledges. Like almost all modern neuroscientists, Owen seems optimistically confident that computer-brain interfaces will in the future vastly enhance the quality of life for those whose brains seem unable to communicate with the outside world, but all such predictions are, at best, guesses.

The discussion of the limitations of advance directives is insightful. How could I possibly know that I would want my family to help me die given the endless possibilities of the exact injuries leading to my non- communicative state, until I am actually there? Many patients in a persistent vegetative state communicate, via technology, that they are quite happy, have a good quality of life, and do not want to die.

As I read of this work, I feel grateful that I was never involved in the decisions about donors for organ transplantation, only working with recipients and potential recipients. Donors who fulfill criteria for brain death present few of the ethical problems that the later practice of DCD, (donation after cardiac death) pose. In this practice, someone who does not fulfill criteria for brain death, but for whom the decision has been made to withdraw life support and donate organs after their hearts have stopped beating, may become a donor. How can all involved be sure that the non-communicative person did not want to continue living? At least the transplant professionals are not directly involved in those decisions. I do not envy those professionals and family members charged with making such difficult decisions.

The discussion of societal consciousness, group consciousness, or “cosmic consciousness” reminded me of another London, Ontario professional, Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke, a nineteenth century psychiatrist who developed a theory of cosmic consciousness that never caught on. His biography by my late friend, Dr. Peter Rechnitzer, was a fun read.

The writing is clear and easy to understand even though it is absolutely humourless and less than lyrical. I think this book will be of continuing interest to philosophers, ethicists, and neuroscientists (and those of us who aspire to be at least amateurs in those fields). And kudos to my alma mater for having recruited him away from more prestigious institutions. Thanks, Maria Moore, for the suggestion.

One of my favourite novelists is back with another great story set between 2013 and 2022. It is told in the first person singular by Adam James Coryell, a Toronto teen who dreams of becoming a writer. But instead he is pushed into an unhappy though very lucrative career as a professional golfer by his high school phys-ed teacher and a grumpy Swedish university professor of kinesthesiology; the latter is forever banished to Adelaide because of a rather hilarious deficit of social skills. He simply has “no filter.” The description of him reminded me of Fredrick Bachman’s A Man Called Ove.

The central premise is that a series of detailed body measurements, when fed into an algorithm developed by the professor, can predict which sport any subject will be best suited for and likely to excel in, a perhaps weak proposition, (well, a seven foot tall lanky teen’s sport of choice is easy to predict), yet Fallis makes it seem logical. I won’t reveal the consequences of the narrator’s career in golf, but there are lots of adventures around the world, eccentric characters, an attempted kidnapping, a tragic death, and a tender sweet romance. Anyone who thinks modern novels are enhanced by graphic descriptions of explicit pornographic sex scenes needs to read this story to be disabused of that premise- there is really no sex at all here, except for vague hints of some teenage groping. There are endless double entendres, witty quips, and lots of dry humour in the lush fluid prose. The discussions of the joys of writing with various luxury fountain pens with different vintage inks are a little over-the-top but will resonate with some writing aficionados. I once owned a Montblanc and enjoyed writing with it immensely.

I can readily relate to the difficulties of getting books published. Like the main character, I had the contract with a publisher for my second book cancelled because the publishing house went broke, in my case after all the hard work of writing, editing and design had been done. As a non-golfer, I probably missed some nuances of the game described here, but I am confident that most golfers will love this story.

The implied serious advice here is to pursue your dreams rather than what others think you should do or what seems easy or most lucrative. In this respect, this book conveys a more profound message than any of Fallis’ previous comedic novels. And that advice must resonate with the author who found the work he loves in his 40s after a variety of less fulfilling jobs.

There are so many great quotes that I chose to publish two. “Sure, watching paint dry is boring. But if golf were the only other option, it wouldn’t necessarily be an easy call.”

“If you want to make a small fortune, start with a big fortune and become a novelist, or open a book store, or better still, both.”

I am not sure where to place this book in the lineup of seven Fallis novels, all of which I have enjoyed immensely. But it is near the top, maybe on a par wth The Best Laid Plans. And I hear that Angus McClintock may make a comeback in a future Fallis novel.

This book, appropriately written before the unpredictable events of 9/11, by a professor of history at the University of Toronto, addresses one of my favourite topics- the lack of predictability and the apparent randomness of everything that impacts our lives on this mediocre small rocky chunk of matter orbiting a medium-sized hot star on a small spur of a medium sized spiral galaxy. That may seem too bleak, cynical and pessimistic but is not nearly as bleak, cynical, and pessimistic as many of the predictions that have fortunately not yet come true in this documentary about our species inability to accurately predict almost anything. Wilson acknowledges that we all need a vision of the future to plan in the present- this documentary is not about the everyday personal planning for the future of ordinary individuals, but about those who set themselves up as experts in predictions for all of us, especially those who claim to have religious revelations about the Rapture, the Apocalypse, the Second Coming, and the end of the world. He acknowledges that he only deals with this from the perspective of largely Christian Anglo-American history, but the long history of predictions that have been proven false is dealt with in a scholarly, mocking, and often comical manner. And the escape clauses used by prophets to explain their apparent failures and retain or even increase their following when the date of the predicted calamity passes uneventfully are quite ingenious. But their secular Enlightenment philosopher compatriots did no better than the religious fanatics in predicting the future.

Much of the history of religious predicting involved, and continues to involve decoding the meaning of the bizarre events described in the Old Testament Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelation, using strained arithmetic calculations that had to be recalculated when the timing proved wrong and the millennial reign of Christ did not develop on schedule. John Napier invented logarithms in the sixteenth century to identify the Beast in the Book of Revelation. According to Wilson, as of the time of writing at least eight million Americans continued to believe that the Second Coming would occur in their lifetime. Many of the millennialists in the Middle Ages were simply delusional megalomaniacs. It seems to me that the simple flawed mathematics that they used to predict the future in most of history has now been replaced by complicated computer algorithms, but should we expect them to be much more accurate? Are the confident tech gurus equally delusional?

The predictions of utopia as envisioned by the Marquis de Condorcet or dystopia as exemplified by Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and George Orwell, are discussed and their consequences were horrific, including the Reign of Terror following the French Revolution, the acceptance of eugenics leading to The Holocaust, and the Soviet Gulag, although George Orwell’s writing was intended as a forewarning.

I have childhood memories of being confused and skeptical listening in on discussions between my devout Baptist parents and my maternal uncle, an ordained minister of the Pilgrim Holiness church, about whether the Second Coming would occur before or after the millennium.

Wilson has some good advice for would-be prophets. “It is a good idea to avoid specifics such as the date of the end of the world. ….should someone get it right, there will be no one around to appreciate the call anyway.” And if you can backdate your predictions to make it seem like you predicted what has already happened, so much the better. Or pick a date well beyond your lifespan, if you are unconcerned about your posthumous reputation.

This is a clever fun book, as relevant now as it was when it was written.

.

In the aftermath of 9/11, the residents of a fictional small town in the Berkshire mountains of southwestern Massachusetts struggle to deal with new anxieties, economic priorities, and the intrusion of a new rich family fleeing the uncertainty of NYC. Although the attacks of 9/11 are always in the background, much of the story just relates to the deteriorating economic, political and cultural prospects of small town New England locals from about 2001 to 2015. There is nothing predicable about the plot, but there are few surprises either and this is not a thriller or mystery novel. It’s beauty is in the wonderfully alive, realistic, and sometimes deeply flawed characters, including a remarkable depiction of the teen angst and confused ambiguity of a girl growing up in that environment and time; that evokes shades of the Occupy Wall Street movement. The writing is direct and eloquent with characters’ differing deeply-held political beliefs conveyed with keen insight but little judgement.

Much of the conflict is between the struggling poor locals and the super-rich newcomers from NYC, and some details are left to the reader’s imagination. Did the town cop actually shoot and kill the angry, poor, unemployed resident protesting his new enforcement of parking regulations? There is an abundance of very foul language that will be offensive to some readers (do not read this one aloud in sensitive mixed company), but it does not seem out of place in the talk of the struggling, unemployed and poorly educated locals with dim prospects for any advancement, and a paranoid distrust of the rich, powerful, and authoritative outsiders. Marital infidelities, drunkenness, and family conflicts round out the picture of the struggling locals.The subtle ways of exerting control over fellow citizens and the balance between individual freedom and state security are delicately dissected.

There are some loose ends. The class-action law suit which occupies much of the first thirty four pages is barely mentioned thereafter and is never brought to a close, and the low-life petty Manhattan thief that narrates those pages detailing the atmosphere there in first few days after 9/11 is never heard from again. But these are minor quibbles.

I lived in New England for three years in the 70s and enjoyed visiting the small towns of Massachusetts and Connecticut, which may have helped me relate to this story. But the small town depicted could equally be fitted into parts of rural southern Ontario, where I spent my first eighteen years, (even though I was oblivious to most of the intrigue) but the politics would be a bit different.

A great timely novel with a potent message for our times, highly recommended.

This very dystopian modern sci-fi is far removed from the usual choices for my reading. But when I checked at the local library, none of the 19 books on my want-to-read list were available, so I checked it out, recalling that I once enjoyed Eric Blaire’s 1984, and Animal Farm, and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.

In this disjointed fable, a Stanford neuroscientist develops a complex machine, a magnetoencephalogram, which, while a subject is under the influence of injected drugs, captures the exact neuronal maps of the memories they are recalling, developing a memory catalogue. Initially, she aims to use this to assist demented patients to retain memories. Inevitably, the technology falls into nefarious hands and is used, along with a sensory deprivation tank to deactivate one set of memories and activate a different set to control people’s past and future experiences. Time becomes just a confusing, fragile, unnecessary variable of limited significance, as people remember the future, lead multiple past lives, and alternate between many different lives experienced at the same time: they lead parallel lives on several different memory tracks. A race ensues to keep the apparently infectious implantation of false memories under control but False Memory Syndrome becomes epidemic.There is a mass False Memory Syndrome outbreak in Manhattan as a 40 story building suddenly appears overnight. Eventually the theft of the technology by the Russians and Chinese lead to nuclear war annihilation.

There is a thin veneer of plausible science to this story with a heavy load of pseudoscience superimposed. The use of sensory deprivation in tanks of warm buoyant salt water will resonate with some readers and meditators extolling the spiritual experience of temporarily disconnecting from anything material, but few would like the drug-induced near-death or actual death experiences necessary to switch memory tracks. This is said to be mediated by massive release of dimethyltryptamine from the pineal gland. This natural plant hallucinogenic is actually present in our bodies (unknown source) in trace amounts and some scientists postulate that it may mediate the hallucinations of near death experiences, and may even be involved in ordinary dreaming.

Other bits of science seem far-fetched, such as the SQID (superconducting quantum interference device), and the travel of memories through wormholes in space-time to enter microscopic black holes. There are intimations of resurrections and reincarnations.

It is hard to criticize a work of this nature for factual errors when all facts become suspect, but one New York headline reported on Amor Townes death, describing him as a prominent architect. (Perhaps he switched memory tracks from or to that of a novelist.) And one character is said to have choked with pain as the supercooled air he inhaled travelled down his esophagus!

I did not enjoy this book and cannot recommend it, although I suspect many sci-fi aficionados will enjoy it, and it may well become a staple of the genre.

.

This somewhat outdated scholarly treatise is subtitled A Natural History of the Wind. The late Lyall Watson had a reputation for taking an iconoclastic viewpoint on everything he ever studied and certainly did so with this erudite extensively researched book. There are excellent chapters on the physics and geography of winds that explain the terms in common usage for describing winds- jet stream, trade winds, monsoon, chinook, Gulf Stream, hurricane, tornado, cyclone, typhoon, polar vortex, fronts. The physics of conventional layers of the atmosphere and the various types of clouds of great interest to aviators and meteorologists is explained in terms that anyone can grasp, and that are still accurate 35 years later. It is when Watson strays into the metaphysical realm, treating the atmosphere and winds as part of a living and breathing super-organism, Gaia, James Lovelock’s concept of Mother Earth, that the discussion becomes ephemeral, scientifically questionable and difficult to follow.

The chapter on the biology of wind is the best discussion of the early findings of organic compounds, and even intact viruses, bacteria and fungi in the mesosphere one hundred miles above earth. It is especially interesting, and leads logically to the panspermia hypothesis of the origin of life that Watson clearly endorsed. This posits that life began somewhere in vast interstellar or even intergalactic space, rather than in the earthbound primordial soup that most evolutionary biologists propose as the necessary milieu for life to begin. The panspermia hypothesis has been criticized, but had its advocates including the late Fred Hoyle and Stephen Hawking, and is still very much alive (pardon the pun) in some scientific circles.

When Watson swerves into the psychology of wind and claims to document very dramatic effects of ordinary winds on human physical and mental heath, the science does not stand up to even cursory examination, and correlation is confused with causation. And the Philosophy of Wind chapter becomes a tedious delineation of the names and attributes of winds from writers and philosophers from many generations and cultures- very esoteric but tiresome.

The list of 400 names, for winds in many languages from around the world is a useful guide and a testament to the breath of knowledge of the author.

There must be many more modern treatises on wind in the academic literature of atmospheric scientists, but there are probably none that integrate the science with the human experience as thoroughly as in this book. I have mixed feelings about recommending it, but certainly learned a lot by reading it.

This screed by an ex-Muslim, ex-Syrian, American psychiatrist has been lauded by many conservative Americans and others obsessed with the threat that Islamic beliefs pose, including Geert Wilders of the far right anti-immigrant Dutch Party For Freedom. Like Ayana Ali Hirsi’s Infidel, and her Nomad, it is part autobiography and part an expose of the inherent evils and consequences she sees in all Islamic belief systems. The author relates the cruel practices, fear and intolerance of others in Islam to the hardscrabble existence of pre-Islam Arab bedouins who lived in constant fear of dying of thirst or starvation, and raided and killed or were raided and killed. Her experiences as an abused child in a misogynous polygamous society are heart-wrenching.

The prayers recited five times daily by all devout muslims denigrate Christian’s and Jews. It is disheartening to realize that in the twenty-first century hundreds of millions of people regard the Prophet as beyond reproach and then read that he married a six year old girl, consummated the marriage when she was nine, and after killing more than one hundred Jews, married one of the widows the next day. But then, is it much different than the cognitive dissonance of secular Americans’ who worship Thomas Jefferson who fathered several children by one of his slaves? And the author is simply wrong to assert that Allah’s “repugnant qualities are not to be found in other gods….” as anyone who has read Deuteronomy in the Jewish and Christian Old Testament should realize. Therein, the god of Jews and Christians ordered his faithful to commit theft, rape and genocide.

For a trained atheistic psychiatrist, it seems odd that Sultan does not engage in some analysis of the state of mind of the Prophet and some of the radical modern Muslims. As he is described, any number of labels from the DSM IV manual would seem applicable, and some scholars have suggested that, like Paul on the road to Damascus, he may have suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy to account for his sudden bizarre religious visions.

Sultan does make a clear distinction between Arab and non-Arab muslims, the latter being spared the Arab cultural influences that come from a long history of desert deprivations. She seems to imply that non-Arab muslims, not familiar with the Arabic language, are often unaware of the meaning of the prayers they recite daily and that they may present less of a threat to western culture and democracy than do Arab Muslims. But to depict all members of any world religion as all good or all evil ignores the extreme diversity invariably represented. The numerous Muslim colleagues, friends and patients I have known, including many Arabs, are either ingeniously adept at hiding their contempt for me and for western secularism, or else I am extremely naive, if they really are as devious and evil as Sultan would have me believe.

The writing is a bit repetitive and preachy, and the logic of the arguments is difficult to follow at times. There may well be an urgent need to sound a note of caution about the dangers inherent in accepting Muslim beliefs as a part of western societies, but the alternative of isolating the believers to ramp up their radicalism by mutual reinforcement is not very attractive. Better to engage than isolate.

The fire that damaged or destroyed more than one million books at the Central Library of Los Angeles on April 29th, 1986, is central to this expansive discussion of the role of libraries throughout history. The story starts off slowly with the author’s personal love of libraries and books, but the second half comes alive with colourful characters, unsolved mysteries, and perceptive insights into the changing role of libraries around the world.

Perhaps the most controversial character was the young itinerant Harry Peak, a flamboyant gay, veteran liar who was accused of staring the fire, boasted about it to friends, then denied any involvement and changed his alibis so many times that arson investigators were never able to charge him, although most believed he had set the fire. But the philandering Charles Lummis, appointed as director of the L.A. libraries could challenge him for the role of most eccentric man associated with the library, as could the Reverend Clark Smith, the cigar-chomping, foul-mouthed evangelical pastor of a nondenominational nearby, now defunct, megachurch.

This book is arranged in a somewhat confusing non-chronological order, with chapters skipping from one decade to another, seemingly at random. There are some unhelpful fillers and some hyperbole such as the author’s overly sentimental angst about burning a useless book. But there is also an abundance of interesting information such as the longstanding erroneous assumptions that have plagued arson investigations over many decades, and have led to wrongful convictions and even wrongful executions for murder by arson. And new to me was the legality of selling “air rights”- the seven-story library, for several million dollars, sold the rights to the air above it to developers of nearby properties who could then build skyscrapers much taller than they would otherwise be allowed.

The Little Free Libraries Association has set up 60,000 free libraries around the world, not counting the unregistered ones such as one my granddaughter has set up on her front lawn.

There are some deep insights, mostly of a nihilistic nature such as this: “The idea of being forgotten is terrifying. I fear not just that I, personally, will be forgotten, but that we all are doomed to be forgotten- that the sum of life is ultimately nothing; that we experience joy and disappointment and aches and delights and loss, make our little mark on the world, and then we vanish, and the mark is erased, and it is as if we never existed.” Perhaps true, but a very egotistical poor excuse to write a book.

Modern librarians, who are generally portrayed as dedicated altruistic public servants, will appreciate this book, but it will not interest many others.

Greek mythology has always seemed confusing to me with gods too numerous to keep track of, in various disguises, always playing nasty tricks on mortals. There seem to be endless seductions and wars with the most brutal genocidal fighters always being the heroes. So when a member of the book club recommended this fictional account of a Homeric fictional account of the possibly completely fictional Trojan War, I already had major reservations. The story is told from the viewpoint of Briseis, the princess captured and enslaved by Achilles in the sacking of the Trojan city of Lyrnessus. The story, as told here, is not even compatible with that related in Homer’s The Iliad, part of which tortured me as required reading in high school English and Latin classes. I was thoroughly confused when Briseis, while still a slave of Achilles started talking to Helen of Troy, long before the capture of Helen by the Greeks in the final sacking of Troy and the slaying of Hector by Achilles. Perhaps I am just too unfamiliar with all the different versions of the myths, but I thought Helen was captured from Sparta by Paris, son of Priam and remained a slave in Troy until it’s final downfall.

Possibly because of the many layers of fiction, the author seems to feel that a reasonable geographic setting is really not necessary. It is not clear whether the thousands of fighters travel on foot, by horseback, in chariots or by ship to the sites of various battles, but they seem to return daily to the coastal Greek camp. The boundaries of this encampment of the Greek king Agamemnon, where Achilles, Patroclus, Nestor, and Odysseus also are based, are unspecified, although there are endless rows of huts, thousands of fighters, a big hospital, a hierarchy of personnel and craftsmen, and stables, chariots and ships- all apparently within hearing distance of the many battlegrounds. And I do not recall reading about the homosexual relationship between Achilles and Patroclus in the previous iterations. The wily old Nestor listening to the wounds of returning soldiers for the sound of escaping gas indicating what would now be called gas gangrene from Clostridium perfringens infection, is the only interesting feature from a medical viewpoint.

The extreme sadism and cruelty of various characters is described in details that made me cringe in horror. The story as told here is supposedly the story of the war from a female perspective, and without exception the females are depicted as sexual toys, good only for pleasure and as bargaining chips for loot, bought and sold, less valuable than the horses and the shields of battle. Oh, and as reproductive machines to produce warrior sons.

Where was the copy editor? There are at least six instances where the words ‘who’ and ‘whom’ are used incorrectly; some sentences lack any verb, and a scratched eyelid scrapes an iris! At least she could have checked out ophthalmic anatomy.

We have not yet discussed this work at our mixed booked club. I am anxious to hear why my brilliant nuclear physicist friend recommended it, but I doubt that he will convince me of its literary value.

An investigative reporter documents the meteoric rise and equally rapid downfall of a Silicon Valley startup. The appropriate subtitle is Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup. Elizabeth Holmes, from early childhood, professed a desire to become a billionaire, and dropped out of Stanford after two semesters of chemical engineering to found Theranos, achieving her monetary goal in her early twenties.

The basis of the promise to investors was to use minuscule blood samples obtained from finger pricks to measure many components related to hematology, biochemistry, microbiology, toxicology, and endocrinology, with rapid reporting. The vision included using the revolutionary technology in the military, doctor’s offices and even making it available to anyone willing to pay for tests with stations in public spaces such as retail pharmacies. Holmes succeeded in pitching this new technology to pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Novartis, the retail pharmacy giant Walgreens and the Safeway grocery chain. Venture capitalists piled in with billions of dollars, driving Holmes’s net worth to over four billion dollars. The company attracted praise and investment from George Schultz, Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn, General James Mattis, the Waltons of Walmart fame, The DeVos family of Amway fame, Bill Frist, Robert Murdock, and Carlos Slim, among other household names. Holmes was featured on the cover of Fortune magazine, and was flattered in The New York Times, Time magazine, The Wall Street Journal and The New Yorker. She dressed, talked and acted like a female Steve Jobs, and befriended the Clinton and Obama families with several visits to the White House.

.

The problem was the technology simply didn’t work much of the time or was unreliable and could not provide consistent results, as could have been predicted by anyone expert in laboratory medicine. But the lab was staffed by bright chemists, computer scientists and engineers with no training in medicine. The coverups included using venipuncture samples run on conventional laboratory analyzers, diluting samples to run though those machines (predictably decreasing accuracy), and even faking results. No one seemed to be familiar with the elaborate regulations applicable to running a medical laboratory; many patients got alarming results requiring extra tests and expenses.

The president, Ramesh ‘Sunny’ Balwani, who was also Elizabeth Holmes lover and roommate, is portrayed as a paranoid ruthless ruler who isolated parts of the company from each other, enforced secrecy and fired anyone who raised concerns about anything at all. Turnover was always high and morale low. Lawsuits abounded with threats to anyone who expressed concerns and private detectives hounded deserters.

The author, employed by the Wall Street Journal, between assignments, received a tip about the problems from a lab medicine blogger and began a rigorous investigation in 2015. Robert Murdock was heavily invested in Theranos, and owns News Corp, the parent company of The Wall Street Journal. To his credit, despite threats from Theranos lawyers, he refused to break the firewall between the editorial and reporting arms of The Wall Street Journal to prohibit, delay, or alter the publication of Carreyrou’s bombshell front page report; that story and others that rapidly followed was largely responsible for the crumbling of the castle built on quicksand that was Theranos.

It is probably too much to expect that a Wall Street Journal reporter would expand on this frightening story to speculate about what it says about the greed inherent in unbridled capitalism that drives people to lie, cheat, and swindle investors, and flaunt the law, and he does not do so. But his investigative reporting was daring and the story is told in a fair and balanced way. However there probably are many other companies, whether in Silicon Valley or not, with equally corrupt practices- they just haven’t been exposed yet.

Besides an HBO documentary this year, the Netflix movie adaptation of this story, in the planning stages, is to star Jennifer Lawrence as Elizabeth Holmes. I may have to watch it.

This is a timely read as the trial of Elizabeth Holmes and Sunny Balwani on multiple counts of fraud is set to start next week, with possible twenty year prison sentences. But it seems to me that the most lenient sentence should at least include restitution charges sufficient to keep them in poverty for the rest of their lives.

At the very least, this tale should be seen as a powerful argument for better protections in law for brave corporate whistle-blowers.

‘The Departure Lounge’ is the name the author gives to the New Jersey home of her increasingly demented mother and her equally demented second husband at the turn of the century. Money appears to be no issue with a large staff of caregivers, but they prove incapable of preventing crisis after crisis, necessitating many emergency trips from Federico’s home and family in Halifax, to New Jersey. The chaos she finds on those visits provides the bulk of the story narrated here. It alternates between being hilarious and terrifying, with insights into the pre-morbid quirky personalities of both of the geriatric subjects, and into the ambivalent relationship between mother and daughter.

A second ill-considered marriage in their 80s, opposed by family on both sides is certainly not unusual, but when both the bride and groom are high society alcoholics with unrecognized early dementia, the results are disastrous. When Mrs. Huber falls down drunk, the paramedics “recoiling from her 90-proof breath” deliver her to the hospital where she “sat bolt upright on the gurney and yelled ‘I demand an autopsy’ before passing out again.”

There is much to be learned from this memoir. It is not easy for any family member to deal with a parent’s mental decline in an objective way. Clearly, all concerned would have been better off by somehow getting the old folk into an appropriate assisted living environment. But they refused as often is the case. The failure of medical professionals to recognize and declare mental incompetence is also common. Family members go on guilt trips about locking parents up against their wishes. Sibling disagreements and conflicts abound. The result is unnecessary risk, stress, and expense for everyone. I hope that if/when I need to be institutionalized, I will still have enough insight and common sense to not resist. Better still however would be to, like most of my relatives who have died, remain mentally competent and physically independent until my last week or day or hour of life.

This wealthy family seemed to think that their problems could be solved by throwing more and more money at them, hiring more and more caregivers and professionals, but it just doesn’t work that way. The hired staff often did little but collect cheque’s and steal jewellery.

I am not sure that the mother’s dementia was due to the Alzheimer’s disease or a stroke that was finally diagnosed. As an alcoholic with erratic eating habits she would certainly be at risk for Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome and some of her conversations seem to be the very convincing confabulations characteristic of that syndrome. Armchair diagnosis is so much fun and so easy!

There are some great insights into the complicated process of growing old. My favourite quote is “The real curse of old age is not the looming grave; it’s outliving your friends.”

Like Elizabeth Hay’s All Things Consoled , this memoir could be a very depressing read. Fortunately, the author manages to sprinkle it with a hefty dose of humour that makes it very enjoyable and thought-provoking.

This spy thriller, sitting on a park bench, deserted and a bit stained, with no one around, invited me to sit down and read a bit of it; then I rescued it from the threatening rain and put it on the bottom of the pile of books to be read. This is #17 of Mariani’s now 18 spy novels, all featuring ex-SAS operative Ben Hope, repeatedly coming out of retirement for one last assignment. This is the only one I have tackled, or ever will.

The diverse list of characters includes an elderly billionaire French industrial tycoon, his niece, her expert code-breaker ex living in Moscow, their 12 year old daughter, a group of ruthless Russians trying to take control of all humanity by using secretly coded brain implants to program people’s thoughts, a conspiracy-theory nutcase, and, of course, Ben Hope, the James Bond-like master spy. The extreme importance of a missing1957 coded cipher to the modern plotters, the central thesis for the entire plot, is never made clear. The idea of controlling behavior with brain implants is interesting but hardly new, already being used medically in some branches of neuroscience; the complete control of us with brain-computer interface devices is the dystopian fear of many imaginative futuristic Artificial Intelligence gurus (and fiction writers) who warn us about being overpowered and made zombie slaves to machines that are smarter than we are.

The plot is extremely complex, with lots of interconnections and unpredictable twists, but the feats of the spy are very unrealistically heroic. He never misses a target even when shooting a pistol over his shoulder while dragging a wounded man through a dense forest in the dark (covering seven kilometres in 90 minutes). There is an oversupply of gratuitous violence and extreme cruelty. The car chase makes James Bond’s automotive exploits seem like a tame scenic drive through a park on a Sunday afternoon.

Obviously many readers enjoy the over-the-top unrealistic action of Scott Mariani’s thrillers, as he has sold more than 2 million books in his native Great Britain alone. But at least I did not waste money on this one. I prefer my spies to be more realistic, or at least to be pursuing something that is of obvious importance.

I am not sure what differentiates a book from a booklet, but regardless of that distinction, this little volume with the subtitle of Twenty Lessons From The Twentieth Century is a gem from a well known Yale Professor of History. Without ever mentioning Donald Trump by name, he goes where most others have feared to tread by making direct comparisons between him and his tactics of securing power with those of Hitler, Stalin and a variety of other power-hungry dictators. Short chapters include advice such as Defend Institutions, Beware of one -party States, Be Wary of Paramilitaries, Believe in Truth, Investigate, and Listen For Dangerous Words. These words of caution seem so common sense and obvious that they may seem trite but he uses abundant examples from history and from Donald Trump’s own words and actions to show how often they are ignored, and the dire consequences. Don’t ever assume that it can’t happen here.

A good little history lesson and a great note of caution.

This memoir about the love-hate relationship of the author with her difficult parents (a miserly artist mother and a dour, strict, even cruel, school-teacher father) and the emotional toll of looking after them in their final years of physical decline and dementia will remind many readers of their similar experiences with losses and missed opportunities. But there is little here that could be considered a profound insight into human nature and the story lacks the wickedly morbid humour of fellow Canadian Meg Federico’s 2009 memoir, Welcome to the Departure Lounge, dealing with the same subject matter. I read the latter years ago and will reread it and review it in a few weeks.

The family dynamics, with competition for recognition and affection, the resentment of siblings perceived to be parental favourites, or resentment for not doing their share in caregiving, and the eccentricities that inevitably develop in some members of a large extended family, make for interesting reading that are easy to relate to. I easily related to the description of the culture of small town western Ontario; although Hay never divulges an address, I could fairly accurately pinpoint on a map where the family lived in Renfrew, Wiarton, Guelph, Owen Sound, Mitchell, London and Ottawa, having lived in Owen Sound, London, and Ottawa and visited all the other towns and cities.

In this family there seems to be an excess of hugging and kissing, perhaps to compensate for deeply ambiguous true feelings. And it is apparently easy for all the family members to take offence at what others do, don’t do, or say or don’t say, with easily bruised egos, insecurities and low self-esteem. The author declined, unwisely in my humble opinion, to engage in ‘therapeutic lying’ when her demented mother repeatedly asks where her husband is or if he is joining them for a walk several months after his death. See the late Oliver Sacks’ discussion reproduced in the March 4, 2019 issue of The New Yorker for a compelling argument for compassionate lying in such circumstances.

Hay never acknowledges taking liberties with the dialogue, but, unless she lived with a hidden recorder, the nonsensical ranting of her demented mother, among other dialogues, must be paraphrased. Likewise, she claims to recall events from her life as a two-year-old, although studies show that accurate memory recall by adults never includes anything before age 3.5.

There are probably many older readers like me who develop anxiety reading about the descent into dependency and dementia, wondering if that lies in their future. Perhaps that is, at least in part, why I am ambivalent about recommending this book, even though it is very well written. At the very least, common experiences such as those narrated here, provide a powerful argument for liberalizing advance directive and right-to-die laws.

I recently rediscovered a few of the late Sir John Mortimer’s books that I had read years ago. This is not so much a book review as a character review: Rumpole of the Old Bailey, who repeatedly tries to convince Hilda, his wife, She Who Must Be Obeyed, that he is not a ‘character’. With more than 20 books of short stories featuring the bewigged Rumpole, it is surprising that I recently met several people who had never heard of Rumpole nor the expression ‘she who must be obeyed’, a term for a domineering wife that is plagerized from an earlier novel by Henry Rider Haggard.

Horace Rumpole is a criminal law attorney at the Old Bailey courthouse in London. His antics before judges and in Chambers, as well his love-hate relationship with Hilda, (he frequently ‘escapes from domestic bliss’ to drown his sorrows with a bottle of ‘Chateau Fleet Street’) show off quintessential British humour at its best, and fellow attorneys, solicitors, clerks and judges are almost as eccentric as the curmudgeonly Rumpole. Loaded with irony and abundant puns, Rumpole’s speeches before judges often result in acquittal of the most obviously guilty hardened criminals, based on unpredictable twists in the narrative of the crime as the evidence unfolds. And the criminals also come to life, often as quite likeable characters in their own right. The description of a man accused of manslaughter is typical. “His beaky nose and tuft of receding hair, combined with a paunch and long, thin legs, gave him the appearance of a discontented heron.”

Years ago, I read the unauthorized biography of John Mortimer by Graham Lord, and was disappointed to read about his turbulent personal life with affairs, a secret romantic fixation with a gay fellow barrister that resulted in his expulsion from Oxford, a bitter divorce, and an unacknowledged illegitimate son. Perhaps these experiences lead to his ability to develop the the eccentric characters that populate his stories, and seem to reflect his own eccentricities.

Vera is adamant that Rumpole in books is far better than in the films, but for non-bibliophiles, the Rumpole as portrayed by Leo Kern in the long-running BBC series is pure gold that will force chuckles out of the most dour viewers. Your chance to vote-Rumpole in books or Rumpole on film?

Pick up any Rumpole book for a summer day at the beach or cottage and you run the risk of missing out on any activities that the rest of the family may be engaged in, as you chuckle to yourself.

In this strange novel, translated from the original Portuguese, a car driver in an unspecified city in an unspecified country, in an unspecified year, suddenly goes blind while waiting at a stop light. A stranger drives him to his home, then steals his car and then also goes blind. In short order, everyone of their contacts also go blind, leading to a rapidly expanding colony of quarantined blind folk in an an abandoned mental institution- with one unexplained exception. Starvation, treachery, thievery, rape, killings and filth ensue as everyone in the whole city goes blind except for the one devious woman. In the last four pages, the characters progressively, one after another, suddenly regain vision.

This is supposedly a surreal allegory and a vivid bitter parable, but to me it comes across as a weak excuse to depict the worst traits of human beings under unimaginable stresses. The description of starving people covered in excrement, looting, robbing, raping, and killing each other serves no useful literary purpose as far as I can tell.

Without intimate knowledge of rules of Portuguese grammar and punctuation, I cannot determine whether the author or the translated is more to blame for breaking all the elementary rules of English grammar and punctuation. There are three page paragraphs with dialogue from multiple characters without quotation marks, run-on sentences that make up a full page, strings of short clauses in place of sentences, and questions with no question marks. Apparently breaking the rules of grammar was something the author was proud of and reviewers rewarded it with a Nobel Prize for literature in 1998. But I found it just annoying.

Only understood if at all, perhaps from the perspective of the author who was a member of the Portuguese Communist Party, is the following description of speeches of a group of the blind:…. “extolling the virtues of the fundamental principles of the great organized systems, private property, a free currency market, the market economy, the stock exchange, taxation, interest, expropriation and appropriation, production, distribution, consumption, supply and demand, poverty and wealth, communication, repression and delinquency, lotteries, prisons, the penal code, the civil code, the Highway Code, the telephone directory, networks of prostitution, armaments factories, the armed forces, cemeteries, the police, smuggling, drugs, permitted illegal traffic, pharmaceutical research, gambling, the price of priests and funerals, justice, borrowing, political parties, elections, parliaments, governments, convex, concave, horizontal, vertical, slanted, concentrated, diffuse, fleeting thoughts, the fraying of the vocal cords, the death of the word.” (My autocorrect refuses to let me write the Highway Code without the capitals!)

Thanks, Andra, but this one is going to the William’s Court lending library. Obviously many people appreciated it, but I was not one of them.