Eduardo Santiago

Too surreal for me. Or maybe just not surreal enough? It felt incomplete, like the mutation elements weren't explored to any interesting degree. Characters were simultaneously flat and shallow. Cringey white privilege: two instances of shark guy going batshit, destroying property and/or inflicting harm on others. Cops are called, oh, no problem, just go home and recover.

For a while I thought <spoiler>it was an allegorical exploration of dementia: loss of personality and control, helplessness in the face thereof</spoiler>. But no, the final third of the book strongly suggests otherwise. Those parts felt jarring and inconsistent with the first two thirds, <spoiler>in which the mutating characters lose all traces of humanity including human memories and behaviors. The Lewis-and-Margaret bits do not add up</spoiler>.

There's also an uncomfortable degree of <spoiler>mommyhood worship, to the point where I wondered if the author is a rabid religious antiabortion nut job. (I haven't bothered to look her up to find out). The Epilog was creepily saccharine</spoiler>. Maybe I'm overthinking it, but there was just a disturbing vibe.

Writing was lovely. Lyrical at times. Not enough to salvage the book.

Horrifying all the way through. Written in third person—because first person would be preposterous—but it's a deeply intimate third person, heavily focused on Alice's decaying mind and thoughts... and awareness. That's where the book shines: its merciless brutal spotlight on Alice's inner state. Her knowledge of what awaits her but helpless ignorance of when and how. Loss and frustration and courage, and then only nothing. The reader watches a beautiful mind fade then vanish. Most chillingly, she (rightly) plans her exit strategy early on... but then, understandably, waits too long. There is no escape for her or her loved ones.

A thoughtful exploration of Gift Economies, asking us to remember that every one of us is the product of infinite gifting: not just from our families and loved ones but from countless organisms stretching back and back. Remembering this helps us feel thankful, which in turn helps us remember our responsibility to give back wherever and however we can. (Kimmerer says it much more eloquently and convincingly than I can. Please read and reflect.)

A mixed bag with high standard deviation. The good essays were thoughtful, informative, inspiring, delicious, crushing, or all of the above. A few others were mediocre: rococo, convoluted, impenetrable. Probably meant more for poetry-type people than science-type people. And a couple were just flat-out wacko, with astrology and space aliens and magical thinking nonsense. Can't really recommend it but I won't add a rating.

I doubt that either author intended this as a case study in intergenerational trauma and avoidant attachment, but there were few moments where those didn't feel front and center. N. Vo's story, from parental abandonment in childhood through war and exile and integration in a new country, med school hazing, and deaths of loved ones, forms a sobering complement to his daughter C. Vo's memoir of indecision, insecurity, and longing.

The alternating-voice gimmick is more effective than it has any right to be. Either memoir, taken on its own, would be powerful. Interwoven as they are, they're heartwrenching.

Probably a great introductory read for new allies. Chugh covers all the fundamentals of our cognitive biases and offers evidence-based suggestions for overcoming them. She won't cure a nazi MAGgot, but that's not her goal: she's aiming for those who recognize the problem but aren't sure how to help. To use her terminology, turn believers into builders.

Sad news is, the book was published in 2018.

Started off sappy and contrived. Kept the momentum.

Abandoned, ch.3. Weird. I can't figure out his target audience: half of it is introductory-level language, suitable for a curious learner like me, the other half makes reference to terms and names and concepts with no explanation whatsoever. I've found good nuggets so far, but nothing that really teaches me about Buddhism. Just basic live-a-good-life stuff, only preachy. And with rather more reincarnation and karma bullshit than I can take.

Chilling. Infuriating. Bleak. And, aside from the neurologically impossible dream gimmick, all too plausible. Much of the book's context -- surveillance state, corporate data mining, prisons-for-profit, detaining innocent people without charge, Zimbardoesque sadism of those with power -- is well entrenched today. Lalami merely adds Philip K. Dick to the mix and shows us the next logical step.

Complex characters and relationships, portrayed with feeling. They felt real. Story flow is a little jumpy but deliberately so and, once you get used to it, effective. Keep going.

A vital part of our toolkit right now. Beautifully expressed, thorough, well researched, EMPOWERING, feminist, humanist, sensitive, and mature. Ms. Sandwich has an interesting relationship to crying—she does so more than any person I've ever met or heard of—and has used this superpower for good, by learning about it and sharing her findings. She looks at crying from so many perspectives: evolutionary, cultural, anthropological; across the world and over historical time. All the arts: literature, music, visual, even (swoon!) kintsugi. The book is not only readable and entertaining, it's hella informative and possibly even useful as reference: I'm debating buying my own copy (this one is Library). [UPDATE: I ordered myself a copy]

Am slightly irked that she inserts occasional "telepathy" and "Aquarius" bullshit, because otherwise this is solidly science-based. No fine-detail citation notes (another minor irk) but a respectable two pages of sources. Unfortunately (another irk) the sources are long URLs printed in Comic Sans so my OCR won't grok them, and the list is not available online anywhere I can find. Since this is not a peer-reviewed scholarly publication, I won't dock points, just kvetch.

Personal note, of interest to probably zero people other than me: a remarkable number of independent serendipities came together within a very short time span to inspire me to read this book. The catalyst that primed me was this sentence: "It is also the right hemisphere that is responsible for the peculiarly human ability to express sadness through tears." Just one throwaway sentence in the oh-so-dense [book:The Master and His Emissary] which I've been slowly reading the past month, but a sentence that—like so many other sentences in this book!—made me stop and wonder: is that really a uniquely human ability? Ms. Sandwich addresses that within the first TEN PAGES, impressing the hell out of me. Next factor was seeing friend J. mark this as to-read on GR. Next, the death of someone I cared about. And two more that are not mine to share. These coincidences are not the meddling of some stupid sky-god, they're simply the random workings of a wonderfully chaotic Universe, which IMO makes them even more worthy of deep awe and wonder.

Personal note 2: her music playlist did nothing for me, but Leontyne Price's rendition of Libera me from Verdi's Requiem never, ever fails to dampen my eyes.

Supremely niche; reading it was a worthwhile exercise, but I'm hard pressed to think of anyone I'd recommend it to. Think of it as an evening or two spent with a rambling great-aunt reminiscing about her childhood. Parts of it were informative, especially the tales she relays from her elders: people who lived in 1840s New Mexico. Other parts were dry and skippable, yet others insightful, tender, infuriating, sometimes even fascinating. The author comes across as a kind, thoughtful, generous, intelligent person but it's really hard to read some portions with a modern sensibility: favorable treatment of cattle ranching, unironically complaining about homesteaders invading "her" lands while also lauding that "the Indians were rounded up and put into reservations." A powerful humbling reminder that I, too, have made—and still make—moral choices that I should be, and am, ashamed of.

Tender. At least the first two-thirds; after that, there's some tension, uncertainty about motivations and story direction and outcome, and you'll have to read for yourself. I'll just say this: the book ends satisfactorily and was quite enjoyable to read.

The mythology is complicated but fun overall. Nice worldbuilding. And the supernatural stuff is really just setting -- backdrop for the real story, which is about oppressed minorities and the self-righteous nazi bullies who terrorize and kill them; about living in hiding, about the suffering of loss; about the suffering of remorse.

Our brains are a complex amalgam of systems with different, sometimes conflicting, priorities and values. This is not controversial. What Schwartz seems to be doing is imposing a homunculus model on top of this, one where each "part" is its own little person that you can talk to and will talk back. This, to me, feels weird. It takes a much better imagination than mine. Fortunately, most people seem to fit that category, and I can see how this could be a wonderful approach toward healing. Those of us who are aphantasic, and with no inner voice, and who firmly believe that there is no such thing as a capital-ess Self, I guess we're stuck with meditation. There are worse fates.

Unrated, because I Just Don't Get It, but I will try to mindfully recommend this to my more normal friends.

(Side note: I read this in response to a conversation with friend K. who had just read it. IFS sounded like something that a therapist had tried with me for several years, unsuccessfully, much to the frustration of both. This book has given me a greater understanding of what s/he was trying to accomplish, and my current awareness of my limitations helps me understand why that did not and could never work. Too soon old, too late smart.)

Started off simplistic in language and style, like a fireside story for a younger audience... but once she got her voice, WOW. Remarkable person, remarkable storyteller. Courage, integrity, principle, there were moments I came close to tears.

We need people like her. One way to make that happen, I think, might be to gift this book to young adults. There's a lot of context they'll never understand, but much more that they will, because not that much has changed in fifty years. Last I checked we still have racism, misogyny, corruption, political power plays, and way too many white males.

Favorite quote: It is incomprehensible to me, the fear that can affect men in political offices. It is shocking the way they submit to forces they know are wrong and fail to stand up for what they believe. Close second: I have not given up—and will not give up until I am compelled to—my belief that the basic design of this country is right. What is essential is to make it work, not to sweep it away and substitute—what? Something far worse, perhaps.

Not for me. Too poemy. Too much praise-the-gods bullshit. And, for a book that claims to be feminist, there sure is a lot of importance placed on beauty. Abandoned, p.50

First things first: the whole concept of "ghosts" is embarrassingly silly.

That said... I enjoyed the hell out of this book. The ghost gimmick is key to the story, but the focus (har!) is always on the protagonist. Her dealing with the ghosts, personally and culturally, involves complex moral questions and I loved how Emerson developed (har!) these issues, how her character struggled and grew. I loved the supporting characters, loved Emerson's pacing and well-sustained level of tension: it was hard to put the book down.

Jumbo levels of improbability, and not just the ghost thing: dialog; some of the personal interactions; high body count; and oodles of perfect-timing serendipity. Still totally worth reading. Grab a Suspension of Disbelief pill or two—or even a handful—and prepare for some thoughtful fun.

"Chilling" is probably not the right word. Would you prefer "horrifying"? Vaillant paints a bleak picture of Earth's future, one shaped by greed and negligence.

The book loosely centers around the week of May 3, 2016 in Fort McMurray, Alberta: fire start, then Everything Is Fine, followed quickly by panic, chaos, terror, disbelief, struggle, shellshock, adaptation, and misery. War, essentially; war that will be coming for most of us. These parts of the book will feel hauntingly familiar to my friends and neighbors in Los Alamos, especially the part where Vaillant writes "[this or that] was—how many times can one say this?—unprecedented." We've lived through that: Cerro Grande (2000) was unlike anything else before; Las Conchas (2011) likewise; and the next one is simply unimaginable as I write this. I don't mean that in a good way.

It's not just the Fort McMurray fire, though: the most impactful parts of the book are the contexts that Vaillant provides. He writes a rich history of atmospheric science, what we know, when we learned it, and HOW we learned it. The scientists and dabblers who, through curiosity and determination and cleverness, figured out the nature of oxygen, carbon dioxide, combustion. The ones who sounded the alarm about CO2 in the nineteenth century, then with increasing urgency in the early and mid and late twentieth. And the subhuman oil executives who squashed those findings.

One of Vaillant's recurring themes is the Lucretius problem (which I'm more familiar with as the Black Swan problem): humans have a poor ability to imagine and plan for events beyond the ordinary. He writes about pyrocumulonimbus: everyone in New Mexico is familiar with these, but apparently they were only formally identified in 1998. He writes of fire tornadoes, which are even newer. He notably does not write about the next unexpected megafire effect, but we can be sure that one future day there'll be another shocking development in fire behavior. I am infinitely grateful that my children will never see what that is.

A wild ride -- the book, that is, not just the boat trip. Fedarko is a master storyteller: he zigs and zags through history, prehistory, geology, climate, politics, personality, and of course boating, and he makes every one of those enjoyable reading. Good levels of tension all throughout, making it hard to stop reading. Exquisite prose, often poetic. Long, descriptive sentences: I would not want to be the audiobook narrator for this one! I read it aloud and often had to gasp for breath midway through a sentence. But I never felt annoyed by that; only delighted.

Part One was irritating, often to the point of being grating: a shallow, self-absorbed, successful, privileged, hyperdramatic white woman has a midlife crisis, ditches commitments and responsibilities, starts lying pathologically to her partner and child, and becomes infatuated with a prettyboy two-thirds her age. Do I really need to keep reading this? No--said my friend A.--I didn't care for it either, but there are almost-redeeming aspects later on. I trust A. So I made it through Part Two, in which infatuation becomes obsession and the drama escalates with anxiety on top.

Part Three, thankfully, was a big improvement: mature, intelligent themes of adult relationships. Frank conversations and redefinitions and accepting of responsibilities and life challenges. (This is not the same as saying that the protagonist navigates the process of growing up; I will let each reader decide on that). New sets of problems and of course drama, but more fulfilling this time. I'm glad I kept going. Can't say I enjoyed the book as a whole, but it did spark good conversation. Unrated because I don't really have the right.

"Someone asked me yesterday what hope looks like," muses Camille Dungy partway through her breathtaking book, _Soil_. Reflecting on bulbs planted in the fall; on anticipation; on efforts that may take months or years to yield results--if they do at all--she responds: "My garden."

_Soil_ is not a gardening book. You need not have a green thumb to enjoy it, although you may be inspired to try once you dive into it. You won't learn how best to plant irises, or where or when, but you may gain new perspectives on why to do so and on how meaningful a garden can be. You may also pick up some valuable historical knowledge, or pause once or twice to admire a beautifully crafted sentence. Dungy identifies as a poet, and her prose shows evidence of it. Her paragraphs are deliberate, rich in imagery and meaning and insight, rewarding the careful reader.

The narrative begins in 2013, with Dungy and her family moving from Oakland to Fort Collins. Her vision for their yard -- pollinator-friendly, with a large variety of native flowers -- is a far cry from the herbicidally sterile lawn the previous owners left them. It will take work and time for soil to heal, for columbine and blue flax to come in, and for insects and birds to start visiting. "Changing our environment from homogeneous to diverse is rewarding. But the process can be slow."

Woven all throughout are threads of memoir, history, art, literature, biography, language. The word dandelion being removed from a kids' dictionary, perhaps replaced by blog or chatroom. The etymology of the prefix "eco." Slivers from the lives of Mary Cassatt, Thomas Nuttall, John Muir, Anne Spencer. Tales of privilege and of lack. The history and chemistry of neonicotinoids. And, significantly, Dungy herself and her family and their lives: their Covid experience; breathing smoke-saturated air while wildfires rage nearby (sound familiar?); moments of learning and imperfection and growth, in and around and away from the garden. "It is difficult to survive, much more difficult to thrive, without a community on which to depend."

Dungy's efforts -- and hope -- are rewarded. (This is not a spoiler: from the beginning she writes of the purples and golds and magentas, whites and browns that thrive in her garden and in her life. She has a finely tuned awareness of color). The book is about the journey, and it's a lovely one.

Disappointing, but I'm not going to rate it because I did get a few important reminders, most particularly the need to stick with N-Back: I sort of drifted away from practicing it a few years ago, then picked it back up in response to this book and, yeah... I better make it a habit again.

What really bugs me is that he's heavy on anecdote, light on solid data. Two examples: for remembering numbers he introduces and recommends a system of his own invention instead of the canonical Major system; and although he acknowledges the aphantasia spectrum, many of his recommendations for memory systems are "this is what I use", and are visualization-based. No references to published research, no accommodations for different types of memory.

Short and easy to read, and reinforces the Sleep well, Eat well, Exercise well mantra, and has other useful info so sure, if you find a copy go ahead and read it, but don't go out of your way to find it.

Not only informative but beautifully written, too, with gorgeous sentences and lively spirit and tension and clear-eyed compassion and the slightest touch of sardonic humor. Impeccably researched and ingeniously organized. REALLY ingenious: Immerwahr repeatedly takes the reader on what seems like puzzling tangents, and each time ties those tangents into the main theme in alarming and sometimes disturbing ways. It's almost like a legal thriller.

I was born in a U.S. colony and spent almost my entire youth there. A close friend is a legal scholar with several publications on territorial law. I thought I was well informed on U.S. colonialism and empire... oh, I had no idea. I learned soooo much from this book, not just about colonialism but about technology, culture, standards, music, health. This is a masterpiece, I can't recommend it enough, and it breaks my heart that all my friends are going to see the title and think, eh, sounds dry.

I was soooo looking forward to this.... but it's a big nope. The introduction is a long, tedious tirade and then it just gets weird: magical thinking (plants with their own "distinct wavelength", animism, mysticism, overuse of "sacred", everything natural is benevolent); meaningless word salad ("Still, we manage to create a poetics out of that which wishes to destroy us and the planet") indistinguishable from the wonderful Bullshit Generator [ https://sebpearce.com/bullshit/ ] only much much longer. The kind of book where I expect "hegemony" to appear any moment. The content is not helped by the writing, which is choppy and staccato.

There are nuggets of actual information, on Jamaican geography, extractive mining, flora and fauna, but not enough to make it worth the slog. Not enough to be useful. Abandoned, p.41 (two pages into chapter two).

Exquisite writing, both in terms of language and emotional power. Many sentences I had to pause to savor. Peters is a gifted writer and empath.

It is impossible to say much about this book without revealing spoilers, so here's a quick safe rundown of key points. First, Peters got the tone right. There were many angles she could've taken: misery porn, rage, handwringing. The way she crafted it was moving and effective. And second, I really want to talk about some aspects of the book, so please just read it and let's chat over coffee or a walk?

Not what I was expecting. The preface and the scholarly essay appendix are suitable for adults but the main text and artwork seem incongruously targeted toward grade schoolers. Simple declarative sentences. Illustrations that feel like they came out of a Chamber of Commerce brochure. Unrated, because I am not the target audience.