Book Review: If at Birth You Don't Succeed

I slowed down a bit, but not to fret - I'm still chugging away at my reading goal. 

6/33: If at Birth You Don't Succeed by Zach Anner. 

Two memoirs in a row! I had been intending to alternate fiction and non-fiction, but the fiction book I had was just too dense. 

This was rather better written than the previous, though the story order was slightly disjointed - lots of jumping backward and forward in time. It did make me literally[1] laugh out loud at parts (see: "With Apologies to Gene Shalit"), and moved me at other parts (his experiences with music and family were touching).  

As is often the case, this book could have been about 25% shorter. But take that with a grain of salt; Devo frequently thinks books could stand to be shorter. Or even made into pamphlets. 

If you want to watch, rather than read about, all of Zach's adventures, they're all on the Tube of You.

xo, 
Devo

[1] As Kory Stamper would say, "usage 1" - that is, actually "literally" and not "figuratively."

Book Review: As You Wish

5/33: As You Wish by Cary Elwes. It was alright; mostly I finished it because I, like many people, love The Princess Bride. I learned a few things (that William Goldman is a celebrated screenwriter; that Wesley and Inigo did their own sword fight), and enjoyed reading about how great Andre the Giant was. 

It wasn't well written, despite that "with" helper-author credit. Some of the turns of phrase made me roll my eyes quite dramatically. 

If you like The Princess Bride, give a go; it's not a taxing read. Then go watch the movie again. 

xo, 
Devo

Book Review: Word by Word

2/33: Word by Word by Kory Stamper. What a delight. Highly recommend. 

As a kid who sometimes read the dictionary for fun, who is now an adult linguist, this book checked off so many boxes for me. I loved learning about the process of writing a dictionary; I loved knowing that there are other people out there who care so deeply about style guides as I do; I loved her humor. I loved that even though she was quite obviously invested in the dictionary, and wanted it to be good and right, she didn't take herself or her fellow lexicographers too seriously. 

Here are some quotes: 

"[Old English] looks like drunk, sideways German with some extra letters thrown in for good measure." She's not wrong. 

"Adverbs look like everything else; they are the junk drawer of the English language (like so)." They're the junk drawer of every language, really. 

Describing a conference room: "...a small table, around which four editors can sit comfortably and six in introverted terror..."

xo, 

Devo

The orange books

Here they are, in all their glory: 

The great thing about a home library is that you can arrange it however you want; its sections and shelves can be as idiosyncratic as you. So as you can see, even though this is the orange book section, not all orange books are orange (and some covers-that-are-orange are not, in fact, "orange books"). Orange books are about facts (What If?, Do Fish Drink Water?), economics (Undercover Economist, Freakonomics, When to Rob a Bank, The End of Poverty, An Economist Gets Lunch), and data-driven ways to change your life or surroundings (Barking up the Wrong Tree, Predictably Irrational, Reality is Broken, Nudge, The Design of Everyday Things, The Power of Habit [1]). Somehow this categorization makes sense to me.

Guns, Germs, and Steel is on the outer edge of this category, as it's very orange and full of facts, but more of a "just so" ethnography than truly an "orange book."

(Maybe it's real, maybe it's confirmation bias, but pop economics books seem to get orange or yellow covers, nearly without fail. If you have one that's not orange, please tell me!)

What ways do you organize your shelves? Do you have peculiar arrangements like mine, or are they all nicely alphabetized by author?

xo, 
Devo

[1] The Power of Habit is out on loan, but rest assured, it's yellow and goes in this section. 

Book review: Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

The middle of this book is what most interested me; the other parts I found dull. In case you want to transgressively read as I did, here's the breakdown:

- Prelude: Skip
- Ch. 1: Skim (but don't entirely skip)
- Ch. 2: Read and try to understand. It's important foundational knowledge.
- Ch. 3-5: Yes, good, read the whole thing.
- Ch. 6: Meh, it's okay. Very speculative, so feel free to skim or skip the more boring sections.
- Ch. 7-8: A little repetitive, but asks some good questions.
- Epilogue: Skip

I like books that encourage me to ponder big questions and tackle big fears. What happens when we die? What is the nature of belief? And now this one: What does it mean to be human during the robot apocalypse? What scares you about the AI revolution?  

What frightens me is what this author and many others seem pretty excited about: possible immortality and endless material wealth. I want to be more than just a consumer in the "Digital Athens" of the future. If (when) machines and algorithms take over all our jobs, I will be reduced to just a consumer of goods and services, and never be a maker or a contributor - and that sounds terrible. 

In my more hopeful moments, I speculate that humans will end up in the robot world like pets are in our world: living fulfilling lives, without understanding what is going on in the wider sphere. What does a dog care about linguistics and the large hadron collider? How could he? But a beloved dog has his needs taken care of, is lovingly interacted with, taken on walks, given stimulation appropriate to his understanding. I imagine that's what "being human in the age of AI" will be like - we won't understand what the robots are doing or why they're doing it, but it won't matter because we'll have fulfilling human lives still. 

During more hopeful moments, I think that. During less hopeful moments, I figure we'll either be exterminated or kept in a zoo, bored out of our minds and longing for freedom. But you can read this book and think through the scenarios for yourself - what frightens you?

Despite all that, what I love about Tegmark's book is its optimism. I may have misgivings and fears, but Tegmark is ready for the AI singularity and joyful about what it could bring to the universe. He writes cogently about the pitfalls and possible apocalypse(s), but doesn't dwell there. He's convinced that with planning and hard work, humanity can make sure it's a "good" AI that succeeds us as the smartest thing around. 

And Tegmark really wants a successor. He wants something out there to appreciate the universe, because, as he writes, "Galaxies are beautiful only because we see and subjectively experience them." His fear, it seems, is that humans will self-destruct or fail to create conscious AI and that there will be nothing and no one left to see and therefore create beauty out of the cold dark of space. 

This idea of beauty existing only when seen is one of several poetic ideas in Life 3.0. I'm also taken by the notion of a galaxy-level AI who thinks one thought every 10,000 years. It reminds me of Pratchett's Great A'Tuin, the world turtle. Its goals are known only to itself, and it moves at slow pace (it's a turtle, after all) through the universe - but what mysteries of consciousness it holds we can only imagine. 

It all comes back to Discworld in the end, really. 

xo, 
Devo

I am overwhelmed by the sheer number of reviews I could theoretically write, part III

The book *reading* goal has been going along swimmingly; the *writing* goal? Not so much. So here we have another installment of  Overwhelmed by Reviews. Let's get to it. 

1. Women Food and God by Geneen Roth.
I wanted to like this more than I did. I picked up a lot of good nuggets, to be sure, but overall, it was lacking. It had way more "women and food" and way less "God" than I was expecting - which, while not a bad thing, was kind of not the point. 

What I found most compelling was this notion: "When we realize that the stories we are haunted by are simply that - stories - we can be with what we actually feel directly, now, in our bodies." I live a lot in my head; I think many of us do, in the modern industrialized world. Our thoughts supersede our lived, bodily experience, and that can sometimes twist us all around. By learning to come back to our bodies in the present moment - rather than relying on the stories our brains tell us about how we felt about a similar situation in the past - we can ground our feelings and better understand them. 

2. The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean.
Another one I expected to enjoy a lot more than I did. Orchids? Some of my favorite flowers! Journalistic investigations? One of my favorite genres! Eccentric characters? Some of my favorite people! But it just didn't coalesce for me. It got bogged down in places by names and historical details (and you know how I feel about that), and didn't really ever seem to reflect on the wider ramifications or teachings that roaming the Fakahatchee swamp with an orchid thief might teach. 

But she was right about one thing, for sure: "The marvelous plant world. We are but visitors in it."

3. Irena's Children by Tilar Mazzeo.
This one was a surprise in the opposite direction: I loved it, against all odds that I wouldn't. One of my main reading rules is Do Not Read Things Involving Nazis. My reasons are two-fold: If well-written, I'll be extremely depressed and anxious; if poorly written, it's an annoying Heightens The Drama plot device. 

BUT. Irena's Children was as hopeful as it was distressing, as gripping as it was informative. It tells the tale of Irena Sendler, who herself was instrumental in saving many Jewish children from the Warsaw ghetto. More than that, though, it tells the story of the Polish Resistance, of the ordinary men and women who did extraordinary things in the face of terrifying danger and depravity. This line especially struck me: "[T]he draconian consequences [being shot for aiding a Jew] also meant, as Irena could not help but observe, that one might as well do more than just smuggle in vaccines. You could only die once."

The author was at pains to point out the human failings of Irena and her compatriots, not wishing to paint a superhuman picture of them and their accomplishments. This was well done, as it kept them real and understandable - people that can be admired and emulated. 

4. The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery.
What a delightful book - this was what I was expecting out of #2. The author described the world of the octopus in magical, informative ways. She also talked about the nature of intelligence and consciousness, the excitement at discovering hitherto unknown things, and shared a love for something that personally, I will probably never do - diving. Montgomery sums it up well with just six words: "There's nothing as peculiar as an octopus."

5. Jesus the Christ by James E. Talmadge.
The accomplishment I'm most proud of from last month is reading this 800 page behemoth. Small print, densely-set pages at that. While I didn't find every bit compelling (I really couldn't care less where exactly in the Middle East Christ's life took place, nor the debates surrounding it), there was a lot of interesting stuff packed in. I especially enjoyed the cultural and historical notes about the Jewish culture of the time. 

6. Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward. 
This was a sad memoir about a woman's experience with death in her Black community. She writes concisely about grief and loss, about poverty and powerlessness, about cycles of pain and degradation. 

***
Partially completed: 
1. On Edge by Andrea Petersen. A memoir of, as well as scientific look at, anxiety. It didn't really speak to my experience, and I found it rather boring. 

***
xo, 
Devo

Book review: Haldol and Hyacinths

As part of my book-a-week project, I've been keeping one-line reviews of the books in a notebook. For Melody Moezzi's Haldol and Hyacinths, it says, "Could have been more cohesive, but an interesting look at psychosis." And that's pretty much the entirety of my thoughts.

Jk. I'll give you some more words.

This memoir touches on a lot of things: anorexia, law school, religious devotion, Obama's election, care-givers, cultural identity, terrorism, family. I would have loved a longer memoir and more time devoted to (at least some) of these topics [1]. These and more were tantalizingly glimpsed and touched on, but I was left wanting more meditation on these facets of her life. Her Islamic faith in relation to her mental disorder, that would have riveted me. "...I learned that God cannot be found, only sought. ...I learned how such seeking trains us to love without restraint."

The focus was (reasonably) trained on her: her life, her thoughts in the psych ward, her hypomanic experience in Montana. Of course, it is her memoir and Moezzi can tell it however she pleases. But I would have liked more about her family's and husband's experiences coming to terms with a loved one having a (pretty severe) mental illness.

xo,
Devo

[1] Because of my interests, I'd prefer more on religion, care-gives, and family.

Book review: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

Three for three so far on choosing books - I've liked them all.  An un-vetted, saw-it-on-the-shelf-and-grabbed-it one is up next for the end of the month, so wish me luck.

***
I'm a little late to the party (like, I remember my mom reading this book when I was 8 or so [1]) but John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil was very good. It's interesting; it's weird. What more do you want out of a narrative non-fiction read?

There's a little something for everybody here: murder mystery--religious rites--high society rituals--public scandal--drag queens--lawyers--sports devotion--the South, writ large. I can't really think of a downside, other than it's a little dated, in terms of language and representation.

But here's the quote you need. It's the entire essence of the book:

She could hardly exclaim, "Isn't it wonderful!" because a plot involving sodomy, murder, and theft could in no way be described as wonderful. There was nothing in those horrid little stories that was even slightly discussable at a polite luncheon party.

xo,
Devo

[1] I definitely thought it was a spooky book, based on its title and cover. Spoiler: It's not.

Book review: When Breath Becomes Air

The second August book-of-the-week was When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi. It was so good (and I was so free) that I finished it Wednesday. It was a moving and bittersweet look at what makes life worth living in the face of imminent death. I cried at the end.

Kalanithi meditates on many things: dying, living, medicine, literature, family, cancer.

Regarding medical school, he writes, "You would think that the first time you cut up a dead person, you'd feel a bit funny about it. Strangely, though, everything feels normal." This is exactly the content I signed up for - astute, somewhat jarring, insider thoughts on a process I never intend to experience. There is no way I'm going to be a surgeon or coroner, and thus a vanishingly small likelihood that I'll ever cut into somebody (dead or alive). But I'm infinitely curious, and interested in what makes people go, biologically as well as psychologically. When Breath Becomes Air is a good window into a mysterious world.

There was, of course, a lot about death: presenting it as a doctor, accepting it as a patient, rejecting it as a young person, trying to understand. He writes, "The fact of death is unsettling. Yet there is no other way to live." Like many others, Kalanithi comes to realize that we're all dying, just some faster than others. And that's okay. The trick is to live life while you've got it to live, or, "knowing that even if I'm dying, until I actually die, I am still living."

xo,
Devo

Book review: In Defense of Food

The first August book-of-the-week was In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan. I had a certain visceral, anti-elitist reaction to it, but overall a good book worth reading. 

Or, you could just read the 7 word manifesto prominently printed on the cover and call it a day: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

Still here? Then let's do quotes.

"If you're concerned about your health, you should probably avoid products that make health claims. Why? Because a health claim on a food product is a strong indication that it's not really food, and food is what you want to eat." As he points out later on, for something to have a claim it has to have a package, and packaged food is generally less good for you. I do appreciate that he breaks down why industrialized, packaged food is not healthy - I've heard all my life that processed food is bad, but never really understood why. It seemed like a lot of bougie nonsense, just another excuse to sell me overpriced vegetables and and ridiculous health smoothies. 

But I understand a little bit better now, and can see how processed food is food made easy - and like so many things in life, easier is not always good. In fact, slower and harder is often better for us in the long run than faster and easier: meaningful work is better than endless leisure, exercise is better than bingeing Netflix, learning to fail is better than always succeeding.

"...Culture, which at least when it comes to food, is really just a fancy word for your mother." Parts of this approach I agree with: knowing what to eat and how to eat it (as passed down from mother to child) is how we survived, not a fad. Don't give up on the traditional ways/foodstuffs of eating in order to stay on trend. On the other hand, when he advocates for eating "like your great grandmother," I have to question. Do you know what my Southern forbearers were eating? Because it sure wasn't vegetables - it was bread and meat soaked in lard. 

"But who knows what else is going on deep in the soul of a carrot?" I love this line. It's a good summation of his point that food is more than the sum of its parts, and we don't really know what nutrients or configuration thereof makes us go. So just eat foods, as straight from the dirt as you can get them (or at least, combined with other foods that are also straight from the dirt). 

And finally, the favorite quote of my memento-mori soul: "Don't eat anything incapable of rotting." 

xo, 
Devo

Book review: To Be a Machine

Don't bury the lead: It's a good book, you should read it.

To Be a Machine by Mark O'Connell is my favorite kind of non-fiction: narrative, episodic, ethnographic without all the pretentious academic words, free from dates and timelines. It's full of topics relative to my interests (death, language, religion), rooted mainly in journalism, and has some existential reflections sprinkled throughout for zest.

O'Connell is not a transhuman evangelist, nor a naysayer, simply a curious doubter. He wants to know what makes these people go, what drives their zeal and powers their ultimate optimism. In his search for understanding, he covers such diverse topics as cryogenics, body mods, the robot apocalypse, and running for president. Each fascinating subjects, and tying them together under the narrative of transhumanism gives us interesting context to further think about these complex topics.

Cryogenics becomes a meditation on religion and medicine: O'Connell describes the act of freezing your body in hopes (faith?) that science and tech will one day be able to resurrect you as a perfect, healthy being "the hopeful thanatolgy of cryonics."

The robot apocalypse becomes a chance to ponder the root of humanity. O'Connell reminds us that we are animals, though animals perhaps capable of bringing about our own species-wide destruction. The last mass extinction we engineer may very well be our own. He writes, "The fundamental risk was not that superintelligent machines might be actively hostile towards their human creators, or antecedents, but that they would be indifferent. Humans, after all, weren't actively hostile toward most of the species we'd made extinct over the millennia of our ascendence; they simply weren't part of our design." That is, we might be terrifyingly successful at making robots in our own image.

As a religious person who's big into death acceptance, I must admit that transhumanism is not for me. As O'Connell notes, transhumanists don't seem to value (or even recognize) certain ineffable, unquantifiable aspects of personhood. They argue that death acceptance is being "deathist" - trying to make peace with something that is ultimately awful. This flies in the face of a lot of what I care about: people are more than the sum of their parts. Creativity and beauty can be found in weakness and chaos. Death is not something to be feared, merely the next great adventure. And though he's not religious, I think O'Connell agrees with me: "If life had any meaning at all, my instinctive belief was that its meaning was animal, that it was inseparably bound up with birth, and reproduction, and death."

***

Bonus: Here's an excerpt from the book, as published by the author in the New York Times: "600 Miles in a Coffin-Shaped Bus, Campaigning Against Death Itself"

xo, 
Devo

Book review: Walkable City

Full title: Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time. I do love me some non-fiction, but boy howdy their titles can be a bit much.

So here's the thing. I fully expected to love this book and instead found myself...rather irritated. I'll even admit to irrationally irritated, so let's explore that in a little more depth. Why would I, a happy pedestrian and general disliker of driving, be irritated by a book advocating more walking?

Maybe it's the fact that I'm not terribly fond of large cities, and am not convinced, like Speck is, that they can save us. I think there's more to life than consumer goods - the restaurants, bars, clothiers, and farmers' markets that Speck argues are so integral to and appealing about city life. While fun and nice to have around, I value other things. Like playing outdoors. Walking through the woods. [1] Having family and friends visit, and being able to afford a place big enough to put them up.

But more than "Devo's not a city dweller" - I recognize and embrace the fact that many people love Metropolis, more power to them - I think Walkable City does little to address the elephant in the room: employment. It may be argued that this is out of the book's scope; after all, it's a book about walking around a city, not about jobs. True. But if America is to be "saved," as brought up in the books very subtitle, Americans need jobs. And if they're to live in the heart of downtown - where Speck argues the most transiting [2] can happen due to multi-use zoning and tight density - then people must have jobs that will pay for those high-priced (he cites figures 2-3X the amount of the same square footage in the suburbs) apartments/homes.

Basically, people have to be able to work downtown if you want them to live downtown and not drive. That's all well and good for the "creatives and millenials" (his wording, not mine) who've managed to find livable-wage-paying telework, but that's not everybody. What about the schoolteachers, the maintenance and security personnel, the civil servants, the shopkeepers and the restauranteurs? How do they live within transit distance of their jobs, on salaries that aren't known for their magnitude?

Which brings us to parking. Speck discusses parking at length, and I certainly agree with him that in order to make driving more painful (and thus transit more appealing and viable) an excellent way to do that is to make it difficult to park. And in the true heart of a downtown, maybe that's reasonable - in the places where it's more businesses than apartment buildings, more banks than homes. However, and it's a big however, until the jobs-that-pay-well-enough-to-afford-city-prices-and-are-within-transit-distance-of-home appear, people (such as myself) will need to commute by car to a job. This means we need to put our cars somewhere when we come home. And paying $100/month for a parking permit for a lot (rather than free street parking in a neighborhood) is not viable.

Okay, so. That was a lot of rant, which might make you think I'm some sort of car-loving fool. That is not the case. I dislike driving or riding long distances. I'd love to be able to walk everywhere I want to go, as I did in college. I think decreasing our dependence on oil would be a massive positive step for our economy, foreign relations, and planet. I enjoy strolling through the tree-lined streets of my neighborhood and looking at all the weird, old architecture (both things Speck says contribute to walkability).

But jobs, man. Jobs. And affordable housing. I think those are big impediments to the walking urban revitalization Speck's advocating. Unless people can find work downtown that pays well enough to afford apartments downtown, it's not going to matter how many trees or bike lanes you put in.

xo,
Devo

[1] And while yes, as an adult I can safely pedest my way about the city enjoying myself, I don't want to let a 10 year old roam around like that. Out in the country? Sure.

[2] "Transit" to include walking, biking, streetcar-ing, busing, lightrailing, etc.

Book review: Rosemary

You guys! I read a biography and didn't hate it!

This one has been on my TBR for a while now, so when I spotted it at the library, I nabbed it. Nothing like the secrets of the rich and famous coupled with questionable medical practices to intrigue me.

Okay, so full disclosure, I skimmed some parts. That's the benefit of being an adult, after all. Nobody can force you to read the boring parts. But all in all, this was a quiet, interesting look at the Kennedys, centered around their learning disabled/mentally ill eldest daughter, Rosemary.

From what I could gather, it seems like Rosemary had a learning disability, and later developed a mental illness (maybe schizophrenia? maybe bipolar disorder? something that manifests later in life) - possibly all of this coupled with epilepsy. It was heartening to read about her time in Montessori school, but the rest of her life seemed pretty bleak. Or at least frustrating and difficult. I can hardly imagine belonging to an over-achieving family like the Kennedys and not being able to keep up.

The writing was not particularly striking, no moving or stand-out turns of phrase, but the pace was quick and not too mired down in extraneous historical tangents.

xo,
Devo

Three books, three sentences, III

The Way of The Stranger: Encounters with the Islamic State by Graeme Wood - I want to be informed about current events, but not the 24-hour sensationalist news cycle. Books such as this one are a good alternative. Discusses ISIS as an institution with reasons (religious and otherwise), rather than simply a monster that cannot be understood and nor dealt with.

The Motion of Puppets by Keith Donohue - Miracle of miracles, a fiction book! Pretty, evocative prose doing a riff on Orpheus/Eurydice. Got kinda bored at the end.

Born a Crime by Trevor Noah - Yes, that Trevor Noah. Funny, interesting, taught me about a place of which I know very little. Never a dull moment, in his life or the book.

***

I'm at 931 books read - only 59 to go for our 1,000 party.

xo,
Devo

Eccentric book pairings

You know, sometimes I'm really glad that libraries have self-checkout, because my book pairings, they tend to get a little odd.

Exhibit A (not preggo, don't get excited)

I seem to have two modes: pink and frilly vs. black and serious.

Mini review of top left, What to Expect Before You're Expecting: It's comprehensive, I learned some interesting things, but I didn't love the tone. It was a little too jokey and precious. But if you're looking to have a baby, you could do worse off than getting this guide. If nothing else, it provides comprehensive reassurance that you're probably fine and probably normal.

xo,
Devo

Book review: A Call to Mercy

This is a great book. I read it as a daily devotional for several weeks, and intend to buy a copy.

It's broken up into sections, each dealing with a certain "mercy." (I'm not Catholic, so please forgive if I get some of the terminology wrong.) Sections on visiting the sick, praying for the living and the dead, tackling doubt, etc. Each section had an intro, Mother Teresa's own words, testimonies about her actions by people who knew her, and then questions about how to practice that mercy more fully in one's own life, plus a prayer.

I really liked reading it one section per day - any more would probably have been overwhelming and lessened the impact. Because the real point is to take her messages to heart, and put into practice these acts of mercy. Not just to read about it and think, "Oh, what a great woman she was." Mother Teresa was a great woman, she did many kind and compassionate acts, and was an example of exquisite faith. But reading about her life and goodness is meant to inspire action not just praise.

I've thought of some ways to try to practice mercy in my daily life, to those in my community, and would love to hear what you are inspired to do if you read this book.

***

Oh, I also read recently How America Lost Its Secrets, about the Edward Snowden case. It was interesting, mostly, though could have been 100 pages shorter.

xo,
Devo

Book Review: The Cyber Effect

A good, if somewhat alarmist, book. I would have excised about 100 pages, but then, that's how I feel about most books.

Her basic gist is that there needs to be more regulation and oversight online, especially for children and teenagers. And while I'm sympathetic to the plight of parents, trying to monitor their children's online interactions, I don't think the situation is quite as dire as she makes it out to be. Get a filter. TALK to your children, keep up a dialogue about online harm and what's happening in their cyber life. Then trust them. If you're talking, things can only get so bad.

Now, maybe I'm naive. I did go to hippie school after all, and didn't particularly have an online presence until I got to college. Introversion is not a new thing for me, and I was remarkably uninterested in breaking the rules as a child and teen - so if my parents had said, This internet filter is the way it is, I probably wouldn't have tried to circumvent it.

BUT.

Talking is key. (That's why we have so much talk therapy, after all.) Even surly teenagers respond when there's a culture of trust and support.

Finally, change your passwords. The hackers are out there.

xo,
Devo

Book review: Too Big to Jail

This was another project book, read to make myself feel smarter. And like the previous project book, The Big Short, I understood rather little. But hey, I tried.

Too Big to Jail is the answer to the question raised by TBS: Why wasn't anybody really prosecuted in the wake of the 2008 financial collapse? The author answers that, in great detail, full of charts and numbers and statistics. Not much of that sunk in, because of who I am as a person.

But I do still have a couple questions. One related to Shakespeare, also because of who I am as a person.

1) Very few *actual people* were punished. (Despite the fact that a corporation in the US is legally a person - or at least sort of a person - they can't actually be punished like a person, because, well, they're not.)

Which leads me to Henry V, when the king is talking to his soldiers in disguise. One soldier says, "if his cause be wrong, our obedience to the king wipes the crime of it out of us." To which another adds, "But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath/a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and/arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join/together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at/such a place;'" Henry, of course, is not for this because he's the king. He doesn't want to be responsible at the judgment day for the souls of all the soldiers killed in his war. It's rather a hefty load.

But what if he should be responsible? Or more to the point, what if the head of a corporation should be held accountable for the wrongdoings of his employees? Might that encourage stricter oversight and better corporate culture, if those at the top knew they could be liable for the crimes of their corporation?

This plan is not without flaws, of course. May well violate "innocent until proven guilty," for one thing. Also might be the wrong lever to get the desired change, for another. But I think it's worth considering. Personal responsibility, rather than diffuse liability, is always a good motivator.

2) Why in the WORLD are corporate re-offenders not more heavily punished? WHY?

For more of an overview and less of a Shakespeare reference, here's my friend's take on the book.

xo,
Devo

Book review: Grave Matters

sew me a shroud
build me a box
put me inside

dig me a hole
carry me there
lay me down soft
cover me up

visit me sometimes

The internet is forever - so where better to put what I want done when I die? 

***

Grave Matters by Mark Harris is a great book. Though it does lead you to think about your inevitable demise, so if that gives you the squick, I guess don't read it. Or do, because death is coming for us all, no use denying it. 

The book does just what it promises in the subtitle: takes you on "a journey through the modern funeral industry to a natural way of burial". You first read about the modern American funeral. The embalming description can get a bit graphic, so skip that if you're squeamish. The rest of the book is not at all like that, so don't worry.

Despite being obviously anti traditional funerals, he writes respectfully and informatively about them. He even mostly avoids any disparaging, though I detect the barest hint of reproof here: "Embalming restores a lifelike appearance to the deceased. Refrigeration does not, which may only matter if you expect the dead to resemble the living."

Harris then goes on to describe 7 "greener" alternatives. Each option is described with a specific death as the narrative focus, but he doesn't skimp on the details. It's not just holding hands and fol-der-ol, but prices and difficulties and contact information. The end of each chapter has a summary, with a section of what, how, cost, and laws. I would argue that there's really more like 4 options - cremation, the sea, at home, or the natural cemetery, but each story of his 7 subdivisions is poignant, raw, and informative. 

I'm sort of surprised he doesn't mention body donation as an option. Perhaps since there's less of a "memorial" component? Though I think that donating your body to science/the body farm (no pictures) would be a perfectly green option. 

Tl;dr: read this book, consider your death, tell your loved ones what to do with your body. 

xo, 
Devo

I am overwhelmed by the sheer number of reviews I could theoretically write, part II

What have I been reading and not blogging about? Lots. So you get short reviews (short views? shrews?) based on what I can remember. Nothing deep here, so if that's what you want, move along. I'll try to be more dedicated in the future.

1. The Professor in the Cage by Jonathan Gotschall. 
My copy has a skull with a broken jaw for the cover, rather than this step-right-up-ladies-and-gentlemen poster look. Personally, I like mine better - much as I love the circus, it's the stark skull imagery that grabbed me. [1]

Enough about covers. It's a good read, interesting and well-thought-out. The comparisons of sports and aggression to their parallels in the animal kingdom are compellingly argued. Do I think you should go join a cage fighting gym for the thrill of it? No. But it's a good read. 

2. The Shift by Theresa Brown. 
Quite the tone *shift* from the last book - this one is about saving people rather than beating their brains out. A bit repetitive in parts, but I think that's part of her point: nursing work is hectic and full of minutae. Contains this gem: "It makes sense that if you crossed the heedlessness of a firefighter with the anarchism of a punk rocker the result would be a person acutely aware of life’s randomness." Convinced K to read it on the basis of that quote alone. 

3. The Speechwriter by Barton Swaim. 
What a name, right? Sounds like just the kind of person you'd expect to be a speechwriter. [2] It was, eh. Okay. I'm not sure why he insisted on never naming "the governor," when it says clearly on the jacket flap who he was working for and when. 

4. Don't Sleep, There are Snakes by Daniel Everett. 
A classic anthro-linguistics text that I can't believe I hadn't read til now. [3] Interesting and well-reasoned, though it gets a bit dry in the heavily linguistic parts. It's a good overview of a radically different cultural mindset (The Pirahã, the people he works with, don't count, talk about the dead, and don't have recursion - all stemming from *spoiler alert* an overriding "immediacy of experience" principle. His reasoning about how that principle extends influence into linguistic, cultural, and religious spheres is solid.)

5. The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. 
Awesome. Will change how you think and live, or at least it did me. Writing-wise, I liked how he used two case studies per chapter to fully explore and tie the concept together. The Febreeze story is especially cool.

6. Wonder Show by Hannah Barnaby. 
The only fiction book in this roundup, this is another entry in the circus-cum-fairytale subgenre. (The other one that comes to mind is The Night Circus, and maybe Eyes Like Stars, which has a little Shakespeare thrown in for good measure. And sure, a subgenre can consist of three books if I want it to.) Due to liking both of those things - circuses and books written with a fairytale feel - I liked this book well enough. It was lyrical and quick, with intriguing (if not terribly well fleshed out) side characters. Don't read if sideshows give you the squick.

7. All Who Go Do Not Return by Shulem Deen. 
What a title. [4] The author's journey from ultra-orthodox Judaism to atheist and secular. It's a sad book, for while we see why he couldn't stay in the skverer neighborhood (so conservative they make regular conservative look downright sinful), it's still heartbreaking to watch his marriage disintegrate and his faith be lost.

***

Partially completed books, unlikely to be finished:

1. Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management, because I cannot resist a ridiculous reference book. This is a Victorian era tome - and I mean TOME. My copy weighs in at 1,112 pages, about 2/3 of which is food and cooking related. Its advice is entertaining and verbose, but c'mon. It's a reference book, of course I'm not going to finish it.

2. The Places In Between by Rory Stewart. Premise: Scotsman decides to walk across Afghanistan, right after the fall of the Taliban. Execution: not as exciting as that description.

3. Queen of the Road by Doreen Orion. Was almost entertaining, but I found the narrator grating and entitled.

4. Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. Everybody says you should read this book. Shmeh. It's long, it's dry. Maybe when I really feel the need to ~know~ something, I'll try again. Also, it's title always makes me think of these other titles: Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things and Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie - The first is a linguistics classic by George Lakoff, the second a YA novel I read ages ago.

***

BAM. Til next time.

xo

Devo

[1] Don't judge a book by it's cover, they say. Pshaw, I say.

[2] I leave all interpretation of that remark to you to figure out.

[3] Check out that verb tense wrangling! It was a tricky bit of work.

[4] For those keeping track, #1 wins cover, #3 wins author name, and #7 wins title.