The Guns of August, Barbara W. Tuchman

The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman is a book that I have literally put off reading.  I'm not thrilled with war stories.  This one just kept getting referenced and I felt that if I was not familiar with it, I would require lengthy explanations and chiding to go read it.

Started: 2/21/2020
Completed: 2/28/2020
Recommendation: Mildly Recommended
Recommended By: This book was referenced in another book I had read, but I cannot remember which book

Words for which I sought help:

pederast -- a man who desires or engages in sex with boys

Review:

The prose is beautiful and insightful.  The mastery of all the components of the first 30 days or so of WWI is amazing.  Ms. Tuchman brings the humanity of the participants to the fore and really helps the reader understand what was happening.  I pretty much hate war.  That makes it hard to give this book more than a mild recommendation--the thing that holds it back from a better recommendation from me, by far, is the topic.

Know My Name, Chanel Miller

Know My Name:  A memoir by Chanel Miller is the story of a woman who was raped by a Stanford jock and her name was kept anonymous out of respect for her.  This is her story as she wants to tell it.

Started: 1/1/2020

Completed: 2/26/2020

Recommendation: Highly Recommended

Recommended By: 60 Minutes

Review:

This book is a hard read.  It is a difficult story and it is told without pulling punches.  The author refers to her own vagina as "a void in my body."  She does this to establish how the court system sees her and how she comes to see herself half way through the prosecution of her attacker.  Chanel Miller had a strong and moving statement that was released to the public and I remember reading it when it came out--how impressed I was!  Now, understanding all that is behind it, I am simply aghast.  This is a highly personal recounting of a sexual assault so it is hard to read, but it is worth the time.

Evicted, Matthew Desmond

Evicted:  Poverty and Profit in The American City by Matthew Desmond is a book that my wife saw and thought we should both understand how eviction is effecting America.

Started: 2/18/2020
Completed: 2/21/2020
Recommendation: Highly recommended
Recommended By: My wife

Review:

This is a hard book to read, pretty much nothing but sad.  Eviction is a horror.

These are individual stories.  This is a tiny fraction of the actual evictions that took place over the period the book covers.  Despite that, each story is characteristic of the broader issue and carries its own nuances.  These individual stories stand on their own, but as a spotlight illuminating a small subset, they give character to the whole problem.

Carrying the knowledge of what happens is hard.  It is our responsibility, however, as Americans.  Utah's Housing First seems like a good answer.  As important as healthcare, and maybe more important, housing issues need to be solved.  A cycle of evictions perpetuates a problem that could be stopped.

The Future of the Mind, Michio Kaku

The Future of the Mind: The scientific quest to understand, enhance, and empower the mind by Michio Kaku was a book that was mentioned in Science Daily.

Started: 2/13/2020
Completed: 2/18/2020
Recommendation: Mild Recommendation
Recommended By:  Science Daily

Words for which I sought help:

quartic -- involving the fourth and no higher power of an unknown quantity or variable

Review:

This book had a lot of material I had seen before and misses some of the more recent analysis on artificial intelligence.  This is a good overview, however, and it brings something to the game by offering a testable definition of consciousness.  I really don't like the idea of building artificial intelligence and then testing it to see what happens because it is so hard to contain.

Say Nothing, Patrick Radden Keefe

Say Nothing:  A true story of murder and memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe.  This book just kept showing up on the best books in 2019.  I am a bit Irish obsessed.

Started: 2/10/2020
Completed: 2/13/2020
Recommendation: Highly Recommended
Recommended By: Best books list

Review:

So, the Irish just seem to enjoy poetry in every day use.  Keefe quotes a description of the use of tear gas from a local newspaper in West Belfast as "...a kind of binding agent, a substance that could weld the crowd together in common sympathy and common hatred for the men who gassed them..."  Wow.

This book is sad.  That is to be expected of any book that talks about "the troubles."  I thought, at first, that it was very sympathetic to the IRA, but as the book progressed, I realized that the author had just given everyone an even hand.  I'm so used to thinking of the IRA in negative terms (as terrorists) that when they were treated fairly it seemed like they were being treated kindly.  That was a bit of a shock to my own biases.

I had no idea that the members of the IRA had given personal oral histories to Boston College.  I don't know how I missed the headlines, but for whatever reason, I was unaware.  It was odd to me how much detail the author had about the way that various people were thinking.  I kept double checking to be sure it wasn't a novel.  It isn't.  What an amazing work.

The Starless Sea, Erin Morgenstern

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern was recommended to me by one of my nieces.

Started: 2/5/2020
Completed: 2/10/2020
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: A niece

Review:

This book had a disorienting start, but I'm beginning to think that if the protagonist is confused, like I am, then it is easier for me to deal with the disorientation.

The author provides some insight into the nature of the book by saying, "[c]hange is what a story is, after all."  Picking up on that clue early, helps one navigate the whole of the book--this one will be about change and inflection points are caught around change.

This book features stories within the story and some have multiple endings.  This is the second book that I have read recently that features that kind of story and it is something to which several other books have alluded in my memory.  I have gradually found the concept understandable.

When I think of fantasy, this is not what I usually conceive--this seems more like literature to me.  I enjoyed the references to other books, wrapped in the book and I'm sure I missed some.  There is something to the bunny that I'm sure I missed and I imagine that the frequent references to cats (and, particularly not feeding them) that must tie into other books or story lines that I just missed.

I get the idea that dying and being reborn sort of comes from video games, although it seems clear that it is not a straight reference.  It seems like that to me because the reborn sort of have a similar context (though not the same context as you would get from a video game).  It is different from a spiritual rebirth because there is no sense of progress (for better or worse) along with the rebirth rather a sort of blip in continuity.

I like the idea of living outside of time and never thought of the impact of that on a story.  It is a well explored concept here.

Sandworm, Andy Greenberg

Sandworm:  A new era of cyberwar and the hunt for the Kremlin's most dangerous hackers by Andy Greenberg is a book about the current effort by Russia to sway the presidential election.

Started: 2/2/2020
Completed: 2/5/2020
Recommendation: Highly Recommended
Recommended By: I think that I read a review in the Washington Post.

Review:

This book reminded me of a much easier to read Cuckoo's Nest (which is referenced).  It is.  The story is not as compelling to a computer guy, but it is much better assembled into a story that is easy to follow.

Pretty amazing how thoroughly Greenberg reviewed the material and clearly explained all the convoluted and twisting details of a number of cyber attacks that were all linked back to Russia.  It is also threatening to think about how the internet now has access to things that (possibly) can no longer be run manually.

A Memory Called Empire, Arkady Martine

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine is the first book in the Teixcalaan series.  This book showed up on the best books of Good Reads and then kept showing up on the top 10 science fiction books of 2019.

Started: 1/28/2020
Completed: 2/1/2020
Recommendation: Mild Recommendation
Recommended By: Top 10 lists

Review:

I won't be reading the rest of the series.  The characters are flat and the story is not terribly compelling.  As the climax grew, I definitely got more interested, but as it played out, it was disappointing.  Some of the science fiction ideas were really cool and the central idea, the memory, is really a fantastic idea.  For that idea alone, it is worth the read, but that idea, having been presented, gradually loses its luster as the book continues.