Category Archives: Nonfiction

Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife

by Anna

By Mary Roach

SpookRebecca has read a fair amount of Mary Roach, but this is my first book of hers, and I have to say, I really enjoyed it! I don’t often like nonfiction, but she has such a juvenile sense of humor about it all that I really appreciated! Basically if anything has even a distant relationship to genitals or farts or such, she’ll be sure to delve into it.

In the introduction, Roach writes, “Simply put, this is a book for people who would like very much to believe in a soul and in an afterlife for it to hang around in, but who have trouble accepting these things on faith.” And I’d say that describes me to a T! She covers reincarnation, séances, ghosts, and near-death experiences, among others, and it is all fascinating. I’m not sure that I can sell this book any better than including the opening to one of my favorite passages:

Is it possible to dress up like a ghost and fool people into thinking they’ve seen the real deal? Happily, there is published research to answer this question, research carried out at no lesser institution than Cambridge University. For six nights in the summer of 1959, members of the Cambridge University Society for Research in Parapsychology took turns dressing up in a white muslin sheet and walking around in a well-traversed field behind the King’s College campus. Occasionally they would raise their arms, as ghosts will do. Other members of the team hid in bushes to observe the reactions of passerby. Although some eighty people were judged to have been in a position to see the figure, not one reacted or even gave it a second glance. The researchers found this surprising, especially given that the small herd of cows that grazed the field did, unlike the pedestrians, show considerable interest, such that two or three at a time would follow along behind the “ghost.” To my acute disappointment, “An Experiment in Apparitional Observation and Findings,” published in the September 1959 Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, includes no photographs.

Roach goes through an enormous amount of archives, in order to bring us the juiciest bits. In fact, I think that’s why I like it so much – reading this felt like gossiping with a good friend. If I have one little quibble, sometimes Roach’s research takes her into realms that are a bit much for me. Rebecca warned against the vivisection chapter in Gulp, and I’m here to warn against the ectoplasm chapter in Spook. I did not know what rumination was before I read this, and I’m not super happy that I know now.

Courage is Contagious, ed. by Nick Haramis

by Rebecca

CourageCourage is Contagious: And Other Reasons to Be Grateful for Michelle Obama
edited by Nick Haramis
2017

This is a book of seventeen short essays about the impact First Lady Michelle Obama had on people.

I was first attracted to the title of the book, because it really is true: it is a lot easier to be courageous when you see other people being courageous. I’ve been getting worn down by the current political situation and I was hoping to get some inspiration.

It was less an inspiring call to action as a warm reassurance that great people inspire greatness in others. This book is a demonstration of the importance of representation. Many of the essayists had only fleeting direct contact with Michelle Obama, and their stories are not so much about those meetings themselves as the impact those meetings had on their lives and their perspectives. As much as they write about how genuine Michelle was, the book celebrates Michelle as an icon who’s inspired millions. Some of the essayists had name recognition, some of them do not, but they consist of authors, artists, actors, activists, a couple of students not yet settled into careers.

I like and respect Michelle Obama, though she’s never been a particular inspiration to me. It was still heartwarming to see how she’s inspired others.

Simpson Testimony and Steele Dossier

by Anna

Oh, man! I’ve been on a kick of most excellent period-piece mysteries, but I had to interrupt it to focus on the latest, most crazy political controversy from the past couple weeks. After Senator Feinstein released the transcript of testimony from Fusion GPS CEO Glenn Simpson, I read two fascinating (and lengthy) twitter threads analyzing the transcript.

Elizabeth McLaughlin is a lawyer and CEO, and has a 60-tweet thread of her reading here: https://twitter.com/ECMcLaughlin/status/950884746082562048

Seth Abramson is a former criminal defense attorney and journalist, and his 200-tweet thread is here: https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/950800455797534720

The analyses are fascinating, and the quotes from both Simpson and Steele are completely bonkers! So, a quick rehash, which I’m going to put after a break, because it gets a bit involved. Continue reading →

fail, fail again, fail better by Pema Chödrön

by Rebecca

failcoverfail, fail again, fail better
by Pema Chödrön
2015

This was an elegant short book with two main sections: the first is a transcript of a commencement address that the author, an American-born Buddhist nun, delivered to the 2014 graduating class at Naropa University, and the second is a transcript of a follow-up interview that delves further into the topic.

Both sections were good, although I enjoyed the first part better. The commencement address was more elegantly written and more beautifully laid out and had a feeling of something in between poetry and prose. The interview delved more into Chödrön’s person life experiences and how they effected and were effected by her thoughts on failure.

The thoughts really come down to:

  • Failure is always possible but do not allow fear of failure to stop you.
  • It is important to acknowledge that a failure is a failure rather than pretending it isn’t, to either yourself or others.
  • Examine each failure to determine why it happened and allow it to be a learning experience without focusing on blame: either of yourself or others.
  • Failures range from minor to devastating but they are always external actions: you can fail, but you cannot be a failure.

None of these thoughts are particularly unique or anything I haven’t run across before, but they’re important and well worth being reminded of on a semi-regular basis.

This Book is Overdue by Marilyn Johnson

by Rebecca

thisbookisoverdueThis Book is Overdue: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All
by Marilyn Johnson
2010

I enjoyed this book but it also left me feeling kind of weird and antsy in a way that took a while for me to figure out. It’s made up of twelve chapters that are essentially stand alone non-fiction stories about some pretty amazing things that different librarians and groups of librarians are doing in the world right now. This is a direct counter to all those (generally upper/upper-middle class) people who write articles about how no one uses the library anymore. People are absolutely still using libraries, both in traditional ways and in new and innovative ways.

This book looks at twelve ways that librarians have done some pretty amazing things from innovations:

  • Having a real working library offering real world information and services staffed and resourced in an MMO RPG (massive multi-player online role playing game
  • Having mobile librarians working with mobile devices and hooked into real-time databases offering fact-checking and up-to-date information to protestors, counter-protestors and locals alike during massive protests.

to protecting traditional values:

  • Taking on the United States federal government in a massive silenced court case about reporting on the reading habits of their customers
  • Providing computer literacy training around the world to ensure people can access books in whatever form the library happens to have it in, physical or digital.

It’s fascinating and (as a library science grad) personally inspiring.

That said, it also made me feel just a bit antsy with the way the author put librarians on this pedestal of being amazingly altruistic in all ways. She is surprised by their human foibles and shocked when there’s a case of a librarian doing something wrong.

Like any career, librarians include some truly heroic people and some truly awful people, and a lot of people who are generally in-between. There is a strong culture of altruism in the career path, yes, but we’re not saints.

So definitely read this book and read about some extremely cool people who are doing or have done some amazing things. But also take a moment to read a more low-key blog post about your every day librarians as well.

 

March by John Lewis

by Rebecca

marchtrilogy960x510

March, books 1, 2, and 3
written by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin
illustrated by Nate Powell
2013, 2015, 2016

John Lewis is a g**d*** hero and every school child should learn his story and every adult should know it. That’s my take away from these books. I am embarrassed at how much of these events I didn’t previously know.

These books were both heart-wrenching and inspirational, made all the more so by the starkness of the story telling. Lewis is not specifically trying to be heart-wrenching or inspirational, he’s just telling the story. And the story is intrinsically heart-wrenching and inspirational.

John Lewis felt, feels, so strongly about achieving what is right that he knowingly walked into situations where he could be killed, refusing to physically fight back, and instead demanding that the world be better than it was through acts of faith and friendship in the face of hatred and anger. That takes levels of courage that I can’t really comprehend and yet want so much. He wanted to live and yet was willing to risk his life to accomplish something because, live or die, succeed or fail, just the attempt would be worth it.

That is a freaking hero.

These books are autobiographical and nonfiction. They give the reader a look at a specific part of history that often gets glossed over in the textbooks. But it’s important history, in part because it’s still ongoing. These events were only some fifty years ago and John Lewis is still alive and working today. And the issues he dealt with are still being dealt with today as well. These books make you think. They don’t necessarily tell you what to think, but they show you events that require thought.

So read them.

Read them now.

Something that gets to me about modern politics is how scared people are. Trump’s supporters want to cower behind a wall, protected from anyone and everything different from them. Trump’s detractors are terrified that he’s going to either kill them outright for being different or force them into a poor homogenous society cowering behind a wall. (I’m over simplifying, but I stand by the summary.)

John Lewis’s life is a testament against that level of fear. He could face fear and not let his warp who he was or change him into someone he didn’t want to be. Everyone should learn that lesson.

Another thing that struck me in these books was how evil some of the white people were. It’s generally not covered in text books, but it’s still historical fact—and not even all that historical. But there were just ordinary citizens who were also monsters and they raised their kids to be monsters. They went out of their way to kill, spread misery and spew anger.

It has occurred to me before that there is a level of cognitive dissonance in this type of violent racism, that clearly shows that the racists know themselves to be in the wrong and lying to themselves. True-believer racists go the white-man’s-burden route. But by violently trying to create a society that they consider to be natural, they demonstrate just how unnatural it really is.

These books also got me thinking about how methods change and evolve in every war as both sides learn how best to attack and defend. In the 1960s, the civil rights leaders made being jailed work for them by overfilling the jails and refusing to pay bail, forcing the cities to take the expense.

Unfortunately, racists have evolved since then and have turned the jail system into a for-profit venture and they benefit off the number of black bodies they imprison.

I’m reminded of the story of Jesus turning the other cheek. It’s often seen as purely an act of humility, but that’s because not many people know the cultural implications of Jesus story. Left and right hands were seen very differently, as were open handed slaps and backhanded slaps. Jesus wasn’t merely submitting to being slapped again, he was changing the situation so that the person slapping him faced a very different set of options.

I’m not sure what the modern version should be, but I do know that it needs to change with the times.

And a final thought:

One of the things that I find difficult with any civil rights movement is that I can never do enough, and so I become paralyzed and wind up doing nothing. But Lewis makes the point with this story, the story of his life and the lives the people he worked with, that no one person can do everything and that’s okay. Because you do what you can, don’t do what you can’t, and rely on others to do what they can. Civil rights, all politics for that matter, isn’t a single sprint: it’s a marathon and a relay. You work together and you go for the long run, and you pass the baton back and forth. You have some wins and you have some devastating losses, but hopefully over the course of years and decades you wind up with more achievements than setbacks. And that is a message that is always important, but especially important in today’s political scene.

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

by Rebecca

61unm4weinl-_aa300_Between the World and Me
by Ta-Nehisi Coates
2015

So 2016 proved to be a bit of a wake-up call for me in terms of politics and social justice. We have some serious problems in the US, regarding unjust inequality of human respect and public safety in addition to inequalities of income, access to education, access to healthcare, and access to overall opportunities.

I’ve come to the realization that it’s a sign of just how sheltered I’ve been that 2016 was a wake-up call rather than just another demonstration of what the world can be like. It was time and past for me to expand my horizons and get out of my comfort zone.

Ta-Nehisi Coates is only a couple of years older than me and this book is about his experience with being black in a white society. I’m white in a white society and thus a lot of racial issues are nearly invisible to me. I am not at all the intended audience for this book: he writes it as a black man to his black son about his experience with the way their blackness is seen by society. It is beautifully written and it’s an honor to be be allowed to read this somewhat intimate letter from a father to his son about his fears and hurts and anger.

It reminded me of Why Are They Angry With Us?, another book I highly recommend, but while that book was academic and intended for a general audience, Between the World and Me is very personal and intended for a specific audience of one, possibly expanded to include all young black men.

I’m glad I listened to it as an audio book rather than trying to read it as text. Coates reads it himself, which I always appreciate in audio books. But the real benefit of audio books is that they don’t stop unless you actively push the pause button. I found it a difficult book to hear but that very difficulty is what makes it all the more important that I listen.

 

The Good Death

by Anna

By Anne Neumann

The_Good_DeathThis book was way more depressing than I’d anticipated, and I already knew it was called The Good Death. Author Ann Neumann was inspired to research and write this book after she spent a year caring for her dying father. After he passed, she wondered whether he’d had a ‘good death,’ and what that even means in our world. I was interested to read it, of course, because I have some questions about that, myself.

I was looking for a more personal, introspective look at what death means in our lives and how we judge other people’s death, but Neumann is a journalist, and quickly veers off into wider-scope political and institutional controversies around end-of-life care.

After a brief personal introduction of Neumann’s inspiration, the book begins with looking at end-of-life “comfort care,” and how the health care and legal industries define the boundaries of palliative care vs. medical intervention. Because her father had mentioned it as he declined, she discusses assisted suicide, analyzing the arguments made by advocates and protestors. This leads Neumann to further explorations on forced feeding, capital punishment, and disability activism. There are clear linkages between the topics, but the book feels a bit loose and tangled as a whole. It asks a lot of questions and inspires a lot of thought on difficult topics, but doesn’t reach many conclusions.

She does weave personal stories throughout, initially from her experience caring for her father and later as a volunteer with Hospice, and those parts were the most interesting to me, her witnessing the ends of different lives, but also the least deeply explored. I imagine that the journalism experience that benefits her when untangling legal documents and political arguments perhaps hobbles her in more personal reflection.

I was glad to read it because it inspired me to really explore some of my assumptions around life and death, but I finished the book feeling that everything was just in a bit of a mess, and there was no clear way to fix things in the future.

—Anna

DCEagleCamOn a more cheerful note, I am completely entranced (possibly to an unhealthy degree) by the DC Eagle Cam, live-streaming an eagle family of two adults and two eaglets nesting in the National Arboretum. The adults are such good parents, and the eaglets are completely precious and growing quickly!

Why Are They Angry With Us?

by Anna

By Larry E. Davis

Why_Are_They_AngryThis is a short book of autobiographical essays on race by a colleague of my mother’s. I picked up her copy while visiting over Christmas, so I have no idea how widely available it is, but I highly recommend it. Davis has a fascinating way of breaking down extremely complex and emotionally-charged issues of race into underlying theories of causes that can be more directly addressed. He calmly and clearly lays out factual counter-arguments to many of the arguments that, per the title of this book, attempt to blame black people for their own social inequality.

The title comes from a question that struck the author as a young boy: if we (himself and other black people) were the slaves, then why are they (white people) angry with us? This led him through decades of studies in psychology and sociology. His central hypothesis in this book is that it mostly comes down to cognitive dissonance. Basically, people want their way of thinking and their behavior to align with each other, so much so that they will force one or the other to change in order to align, if necessary. So, if your way of life depends on exploiting others, but you still very much want to consider yourself a decent person, then you begin to think that the exploited person somehow deserves it, which then leads to all sorts of racist stereotypes.

The encouraging aspect of this is that it seems to work both ways: if you can successfully change either the behavior or the thinking, the other will eventually change, too, in order to stay aligned. His example of that is when the Civil Rights Act made it illegal to discriminate based on race, behavior (slowly) changed to follow the law, and then thinking changed afterwards (even more slowly). It reminded me of something that the host from one of my favorite podcasts, Yo, Is This Racist?, said (paraphrasing): “I don’t think I can stop people from having racist thoughts; I just want to make it unacceptable to ever verbalize these thoughts.” According to Davis’ theory, making racist talk culturally unacceptable could go a long way toward making racist thought disappear as well.

—Anna

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up

by Rebecca

tidyingupThe Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing
By Marie Kondo
2014

This book was amazing. I have now recommended it to virtually everyone in my family and am passing it around so they can all read it and you should read it too. It’s joining The Art of Learning as one of now two nonfiction self-help books that I really enjoyed and was impressed by.

Marie Kondo is kind of crazily obsessed with tidying and organizing. (Her family members are clearly saints for having put up with her trying out different methods.) But it makes the book pretty funny in addition to useful and interesting as she writes about what methods she’s tried and the ways in which they did and did not work.

Kondo’s actual method, the one she’s describing in the book really does work, and I love that she takes the time to show how she came up with the method and how and why it works. Not only is the theory something I find generally interesting, it also makes it possible for me to modify the method for my own use. Because I don’t have the time and energy to implement her massive 6-month reorganization bonanza, but working bit by bit, as I feel inspired does work.

Despite it not being a particularly long book, it took a while to get through because I would get inspired to just start tidying. It’s surprisingly fun to do and the results leave me feeling all pleased and happy with myself.

While there are a lot of specific suggestions about how to really work her system (so go and read the book!), the basic premise is that you should keep the stuff you love and get ride of the stuff you don’t. The first part of her method is to spend time looking through your possessions and identifying all the things that you love. It’s amazing how much stuff I had because I had it and had no reason to get rid of it. I had a lot of clothing due to inertia rather than enjoyment. While reading this book, I wound up with several large bags and boxes of clothing and books to donate and now am left with a room with a much higher concentration of things I love, because there’s less dilution with things that I just sort of have.

I highly recommend this book. You don’t have to follow her advice, but at least read the book and see if you’re interested in trying it out. Because I have been working through my stuff and it has been fun to do and I love the results.