An Immense World, Ed Yong

 

An Immense World:  How animal senses reveal the hidden realms around us by Ed Yong

Started: 8/24/2022
Completed: 8/30/2022
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By:  I cannot remember, but I think it was an article in Philosophy Now!  It is equally likely that I saw something in The Atlantic.

Review:

This is an adventure book.  It is an adventure into the world of animals through their senses.  It is intriguing to think about how each different animal uses its senses and how senses that we would not normally consider (e.g. touch-taste) are fundamental to the way that certain animals view the world.  This information and the deep dive into it is, itself, interesting.  The further considerations of things like how we are polluting the world through senses that we either do not have, do not consider important, or have to a much smaller extent (e.g. echo location is possible for humans, but it is nothing like a bat's form of echo location) is draw dropping.  It seems like the human impact on the world is brutal any way you look (touch, taste, feel, etc.) at it.  I enjoyed the perspective and hope that the concepts of viewing the world literally through another creature's eyes is a concept that stays with me.

The War of the Poor, Éric Vuillard

 

The War of the Poor by Éric Vuillard

Started: 8/21/2022

Completed: 8/25/2022

Recommendation: Not recommended

Recommended By: Not sure...I thought that this book was mentioned by Thomas Picketty, but maybe it was the Man Booker prize listing

Review:

This is an eloquent and smoothly generated tale of a series of efforts over hundreds of years for the poor to overcome the rich.  Hint:  It still has not worked.  Vuillard is eloquent, but the story is sad and the links between tales thin.  I really did not enjoy it and will soon forget these men and what they tried (valiantly) and failed to do.

The Scandalous Hamiltons, Bill Shaffer

 

The Scandalous Hamiltons: A gilded age grifter a founding father's disgraced descendant, and a trial at the dawn of tabloid journalism by Bill Shaffer

Started: 8/22/2022
Completed: 8/24/2022
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody, just saw that it was coming out

Review:

What an interesting book.  It is amazing how much goes on behind the scenes where you least expect it.  In many ways a retrospective on interrelated lives always has a certain amount of interest, but it is easy to see how this became tabloid fare.  Shaffer did an excellent job of weaving the narrative through the connections (both loose and intense) and respectfully hid details when it appeared appropriate.  A good read and worth the time.

Notes From The Burning Age, Claire North

 

Notes From the Burning Age by Claire North.  Claire North is the pen name for Catherine Webb.

Started: 8/19/2022
Completed: 8/22/2022
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody, just enjoyed another book of hers, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August.

Review:

I felt like this book was basically a romance from the start.  It is.  It is much more complex than that and there are some very interesting philosophical points addressed (e.g., do the gods care about man, is war ever appropriate, why do we think that the information we have is important, etc.)  There is also some espionage.  And, of course, it takes place in a dystopian future.  This book, thus, defies categorization.  Having said that, it is a romance.  I did enjoy the layers and I really liked the way that characters developed from well explained beginnings.  This book was enjoyable for the rich experience of reading.  The various plots and their meandering through basically flawed people were far from uplifting.

The Indigo Girl, Natasha Boyd

 

The Indigo Girl by Natasha Boyd is fiction based on a true story.

Started: 8/14/2022

Completed: 8/18/2022

Recommendation: Recommended

Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

So, it turns out that the Indigo Girl is a relative (I am related through one of her sons).  Others in my family were able to tell me that she is the reason your blue jeans are blue!  This is a good story and it really portrays an interesting time in South Carolina.  Yes, there are slaves and this book is not going to make you feel good about it.  Though the main character is sympathetic, she is not the Southern propagandist raising heathens into civilization.  There is a decent argument for the reverse, but she is truly coming of age during this story largely without family support.  This does address the misogyny that was a fundamental part of everyday life for most of humanity and also represents some of the struggle against it.  It is a good read, but it isn't going to make you feel good about the South in the time before the revolution. 

Such a Fun Age, Kiley Reid

 

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

Started: 8/11/2022
Completed: 8/14/2022
Recommendation: Not recommended
Recommended By: New York Time Best Seller

Review:

I had trouble relating to the characters in this book.  The vague loss of direction, sort of finding one's self, is not something I really understand and it is not explained in this book.  It is expected, however, that one understands these characters as they search for themselves without really looking.  Maybe the story is that the characters were just shallow.  Anyway, I did not enjoy this book.

The Sewing Girl's Tale, John Wood Sweet

 

The Sewing Girl's Tale: A story of crime and consequences in revolutionary America by John Wood Sweet.  This is a true crime story written by a professor of history at the University of North Carolina who also specializes in sexual studies.  This story started around the first recorded rape trial in the United States.

Started: 8/5/2022
Completed: 8/11/2022
Recommendation: Highly Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

This is non-fiction, so I'm not sure that *SPOILER* is the correct title, but if you don't want to know the outcome, please don't read further.

The fact that we only know the protagonist from her time in the court room is both emblematic of how women's stories are lost and symptomatic of a paternalistic society.  Lana was raped.  The story of her rape, its outcome, the trials, the mobs, and the aftermath are all about the men in Lana's life, but not about Lana herself.  It is amazing how much Sweet has discovered and shocking how little of it involves Lana herself.

It is easy to forget that in revolutionary times, New York was what we would call a small town now (20-40K inhabitants, depending on the time frame).  That means that plenty of people we think of as notables (such as Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton) were well known and even related to people in this story.  If you were overwhelmed by the city and didn't want to go "into the country" you would go to Philadelphia for a break (an even smaller city) and "only" a day away.  It is also easy to forget that Broadway was mostly homes for the middle to lower class at this time and had no sidewalks.  It was common place for people to die under the wheels of a cart or at the mercy of a "crazy" horse.  With no air conditioning and the enormous stench of night soil (feces) as well as all that horse manure, people would go out in the evenings for a walk along the river (which offered a fresh breeze in those times).

It is also hard to remember that sexual mores were undergoing change and that, in the long run, only those who had the most isolated existence would begin to meet what was considered properly chaste.  Women and girls who had to work, however, were out among the people and thus subject to men's inappropriate address almost constantly.  I cannot imagine a world in which people simply could not survive without marriage and where death of a spouse had to result in an immediate search for a replacement.  This is just the way things were at the time and doubly so for women who were underpaid (as they still are) and could not reasonably support a family without a husband and, in many cases, without children working for the family as well.  Finally, the age of consent was 10.  Good Lord.

A Brief History of Equality by Thomas Piketty

 

A Brief History of Equality by Thomas Piketty is an economist I truly respect.

Started: 8/2/2022
Completed: 8/5/2022
Recommendation: Highly Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

This is a briefer version  of Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century with a little addition for Trump's reign.  I enjoyed this tight read, but it was largely a recap for me.  Highly recommended for anyone who finds a 1,000 page tome a little daunting.

How to Read the Air, Dinaw Mengestu

 

How to Read the Air by Dinaw Mangestu

Started: 7/31/2022
Completed: 8/2/2022
Recommendation: Not Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

To begin with, this is a study of deeply flawed characters.  I find none of them compelling.  It is a look at enormous narcissism and reframes everything into personal benefit for all of the characters.  The characters lie, hit, and even try to kill one another.  It looks like each character perceives the world from self-interest and denies almost anything that threatens to intrude on that self-interest.  The narrator seems to twist and invent the story he is telling as he tells it, so one wonders if this isn't some amount of projection from the narrator, but regardless it is a deeply unhappy tale.