Under a White Sky, Elizabeth Kolbert

 

Under a White Sky:  The nature of the future by Elizabeth Kolbert is a climate action book.

Started:  1/21/2022
Completed: 1/24/2022
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

This book takes a look at a variety of different efforts to deal with climate change.  None of it, really, is going to stop/solve climate change.  Rather it is a look at methods of coping with the impact of climate change with some nod to doing something to try to reduce the impact of climate change overall.  Repeatedly, scientists greet Kolbert and talk about the insanity of doing nothing about it.

Kolbert argues that this is a story of people trying to fix problems people caused.  Frankly, however, people are so omni-present and have such a huge impact on the world that people probably, one way or another, caused all the problems at this point.  So, it isn't simple "problems people caused" (although that is what she highlights), it is all the problems for the whole planet.  One wonders if it is even remotely possible or whether we will skitter and twist before the whole thing collapses on us.  Hubris is the word that describes our future and, sadly, our past.

Passing, Nella Larsen

 

Passing by Nella Larsen is a book set in the 1920s that was written in the same time dealing with issues of race, sexuality, and gender.

Started: 1/20/2022
Completed: 1/21/2022
Recommendation: Highly Recommended
Recommended By: A list of books to help understand the condition of African Americans.

Words for which I Sought Help:

abstemious -- not self-indulgent, especially when eating and drinking

Review:

The character descriptions are simply amazing and I have to include, "...amazing soft malice..." as one of the best.  This book is not at all what I was expecting from the descriptions I had seen...I do not agree that it is helpful in understanding the condition of African Americans.  I think, rather, that this is simply a book about people--flawed people--who find themselves in challenging circumstances.  Yes, the need to "pass" as white is unique to African Americans and doing so at the time was its own difficulty.  I cannot know whether this is still an issue, although I hope that the need or even the desire to "pass" has been put behind us as a culture.  The writing is clever, intriguing, and even transporting.  I have read other books written in the time period and find that this is easily one of the best regardless of subject matter.  Well worth the read and the time is exceedingly well spent.

Cloud Cuckoo Land, Anthony Doerr

 

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr just gets all kinds of rave reviews.

Started: 1/15/2022
Completed: 1/20/2022
Recommendation: Highly recommended
Recommended By: I saw the author interviewed on CBS Sunday Morning and listening to him speak, got me interested in reading both his books.

Words for which I Sought Help:

lacuna -- an unfilled space or interval

Review:

Wow.  This is a remarkable book.  Story within story as you might expect from the author, but the way the same basic life inhabits multiple characters and how they impossibly interact is wonderful.  The way that Doerr has woven this story to life is the kind of thing that you look at from a distance and try to find a seam.

I like that Doerr does not shy away from looking at both the good and the bad within people and companies.  It is rather amazing that he can find common character traits and then show how these traits are both helpful and not.

When We Cease To Understand the World, Benjamin Labatut

 

When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut was short listed for the Booker Prize.  Adrian Nathan West did the translation and Adam Barr did the narration.

Started: 1/14/2022
Completed: 1/15/2022 (Did not finish)
Recommendation: Not Recommended
Recommended By: Man Booker Prize

Review:

I am honest with myself.  I read to learn and I read to escape.  Reading in detail how cyanide kills--detail to include how the Jews were massacred is beyond what I can do.  I appreciate that there are people who still do not know this in detail.  I do.  I cannot read it again. 

How Democracies Die, Levitsky and Ziblatt

 

How Democracies Die:  What history reveals about our future by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt.  What happens with a couple of Harvard professors start thinking about the political future?

Started: 1/8/2022
Completed: 1/14/2022
Recommendation: Mild Recommendation
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

This is an interesting book talking about some of the criteria that can be used to identify a democracy at risk.  The fact that Trump pushed all the buttons while the book was being written and the advice was that the Republican party should reform itself and the Democratic party should provide space for that is remarkably difficult to follow.  The Republican party has been the primary abusers of democracy and started the abuses (by the authors' own analysis).  The thought that the Democratic party should just move to the side and hope that the Republican party decides to reform is hard to fathom.  As long as the Republican party is getting what they want with the current process, they will continue to work the way that they are.  I recommend this book for the analysis, but not the conclusions.

A Trick of the Light, Louise Penny

 

A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny is the next book in the Chief Inspector Gamache series.

Started: 1/1/2022
Completed: 1/8/2022
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: My Parents

Review:

Louise Penny delivers again, but, in general, this book was a little disturbing as one becomes increasingly invested in the characters and the characters show complexity which is uncomfortable.  I particularly did not like the ambiguity of the ending.  It feels like someone is telling Penny to make this book a cliff hanger, so she sets up 5-6 subplots that all hang at the end of the story along with a couple more that get an interesting start.  Penny does not need to hook me, so leaving the book partway through when I know I'm likely to read the next seems unnecessary.

Rationality, Steven Pinker

 

Rationality:  What it is, why it seems scarce, why it matters by Steven Pinker is an effort by a Harvard cognitive psychologist to understand rationality.

Started: 12/25/2021
Completed: 1/1/2022
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Words for which I sought help:

Waving a bloody shirt -- a pejorative phrase, used during American election campaigns in the 19th century, to deride opposing politicians who made emotional calls to avenge the blood of soldiers that died in the Civil War.

Review:

So this is a review of a lot of material that I have read elsewhere (Kahneman's studies and the work of Freakanomics).  It is also a review of concepts that I understand fairly well (basic statistics, logics, and Bayesian probabilities).  It is nicely packaged, however, and there are fantastic anomalies and descriptions that help illustrate the points well.  Beware, however, if you are religious or a support of Homeopathy.