2017 Book Challenge - The Second Half of the Year

Well, I officially took a hiatus from my book challenge on June 30, 2017. Reading books and blogging about them was sucking up too much time. That said... it didn't stop me from reading!

Books that rounded out the rest of my year...
The Wealthy Renter - Alex Avery (non-fiction)
The German Girl - Armando Lucas Correa (novel)
The Angel of History - Rabih Alameddine (novel)
Writing Begins with the Breath (non-fiction)
The Dream - Oriah Mountain Dreamer
The Mermaid Chair - Sue Monk Kidd (novel)
Behind Closed Doors - B.A. Paris (novel)
Touch - Claire North (novel)

1000 Days in Tuscany - Marlena De Blasi (non-fiction)
Start with Why - Simon Sinek (non-fiction)
World Without Mind - Franklin Foer (non-fiction)
Procrastination - Rita Emmett (non-fiction)
Straight Talk on Your Money - Doug Hoyes (non-fiction)
How to Live Well without Owning a Car - Chris Balish (non-fiction)
Nickel & Dimed - Barbara Ehrenreich (non-fiction)
Debt Free Lifestyle - Christine Conway (non-fiction)
The Art of the Good Life - Rolf Dobelli (non-fiction)
Daily Love - Mastin Kipp (non-fiction)
Healing Back Pain - John Sarno (non-fiction)
Throw out 50 Things - Gail Blanke (non-fiction)
The Power of Moments - Chip & Dan Heath (non-fiction) 
Leaders Eat Last - Simon Sinek (non-fiction)


Books I started but did not finish - ran out of library renewals!

Juliet's Answers - Glenn Dixon (novel - did not finish)
The End of the Day - Claire North (novel - did not finish)
 Flow - Mihaly Csikszentmihaly (non-fiction - did not finish)
Vagabonding -Rolf Potts (non-fiction - did not finish)
The Reason you Walk - Wab Kinew (non-fiction - did not finish)
Distracted - Maggie Jackson (non-fiction - did not finish)
Simple Rules - Donald Sull & Kathleen Eisenhardt (non-fiction - did not finish)
 
Books I signed out from the Library in enthusiasm but didn't even get to...
Tell it Slant - Brenda Miller and Susanne Antonetta (non-fiction - did not start) 
The Sinner - Petra Hammesfahr (novel - did not start)
Emotional Agility - Susan David (non-fiction - did not start)

Books I am currently reading but that won't make the 2017 cut-off...
Indigenous Writes - Chelsea Vowel (non-fiction)
The Road Less Traveled - M. Scott Peck (non-fiction)

On the whole, I'm pleased with my reading for 2017. I had hoped to reach 100 books but... circumstances of life got in the way. I think I hit around 75 books, which is pretty good. I had a list when I started this... of books that changed the world. I stuck with that fairly well for the first 6 months but then... I followed the scent of books as they came my way. I still hope to read Gandhi.... and Thoreau... some day.

2017 Book Challenge - Hiatus

I had planned to read over 100 books this year, and to blog about it as I went. Unfortunately, life has gotten in the way. What with one thing and another, I am finding that the continuous, daily reading, note-taking and then blogging is too much of a time and energy drain at this point. I hope to pick it up again. I am still reading books... just not blogging about it.

War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy - Part 2

War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 176-181

June 25 to June 29, 2017 

Book 46 - War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy (1869)
 Part 2 - last 60%
Reading Time - many hours

I finished War and Peace!!! It took me 41.5 hours of reading but... it is done. It was a very, very good book and not at all like what I imagined it might be. The short chapters definitely make it digestible. And the characters are so intriguing and captivating. I didn't want the story to end... but end it did. I do have to say, the last 100 pages or so, the long philosophical musings, were a chore to wade through. Someone had suggested that I could skip that whole section but... I didn't feel like I would have completed the book if I had done it that way. So I wade through it. But if any newbie's out there want to read the book... for heaven's sake, skip the last 100 pages!

I know that I will read the story again some day. Now that I know the characters, I want to read it over again, to really get a sense of their development over time. At the same time, I want to read Tolstoy's other massive tome - Anna Karenina.... So perhaps that will come first.

An Unnecessary Woman - Rabih Alameddine - Part 1

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 175

June 24, 2017 

An Unnecessary Woman - Rabih
Alameddine

Book 51 - An Unnecessary Woman
Rabih Alameddine - 2013
 Part 1 - p. 1-291
Reading Time - 5 hours

A friend recommended this book to me. It's a fictional story about an old, divorced Lebanese woman. She loves books and translates English or French books into Arabic. But she doesn't translate books originally written in English or French. No, she translates books that were written in another language and then translated into English or French. So, she might translate War and Peace, but from an English translation. It's an odd choice but... she's a bit of an odd woman. And since it's her life, she gets to make the rules. After a translation is finished, she bundles it up and tucks the translation away into boxes.

Hers is an odd life and throughout the course of the book, we learn about her backstory - how she was married at the age of 20 and divorced a few years later. How she supported herself by working in a used bookshop for over 50 years. It is a bit of a sad, depressing story, but the end of the story lifts one up. She loosens up a bit and decides that she will allow herself to translate books originally written in English or French. She's stepping out a bit, living a bit more dangerously! The story is clearly a love story between the woman her literary work. She loves books and she loves translating. In the end, she allows herself to step outside of her own self-imposed boundaries and experience something new.

The London Cage - Lt. Col. A.P. Scotland O.B.E. - Part 4

The London Cage - Lt. Col. A.P. Scotland O.B.E.

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 174

June 23, 2017 

Book 50 - The London Cage
Lt. Col. A.P. Scotland O.B.E.
 Part 4 - p. 161-195
Reading Time - 45 minutes

In the last section we have another big story about German reprisals against the Italians. A bomb had been set off in Rome that killed or wounded a number of German police officers. In retaliation for the 33 dead Germans, Hitler decreed that 10 Italians would be killed for every 1 German. That meant 330 Italians had to be rounded up and executed. Scouring the prisons, the Germans found over 200 "worthy" Italians. The rest were made up from Italian Jews. But... eventually, 335 Italians were executed (possibly a math error). During the war crimes trials, the courts decided that the Germans had been within their rights to execute 10 Italians for every German... and so the perpetrators were only tried for the 5 extra Italians. Scotland is obviously outraged by these miscarriages of justice.

The other interesting thing is that many of the war criminals were given death sentences which were later reprieved. Or they were given life sentences but then freed a few years later. It does make one wonder then, why someone like Rudolf Hess, who flew to Britain on some crazy diplomatic quest in May 1941, was imprisoned in England (and then Spandau, Germany) until his death. Alas... Scotland tells us nothing about Rudolf Hess.

The London Cage - Lt. Col. A.P. Scotland O.B.E. - Part 3

The London Cage - Lt. Col. A.P. Scotland O.B.E.

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 173

June 22, 2017 

Book 50 - The London Cage
Lt. Col. A.P. Scotland O.B.E.
 Part 3 - p. 107-160
Reading Time - 1 hour

In this section, we learn a lot about the Stalag Luft III escape attempt. Stalag Luft III was a POW camp for Allied airmen - mostly British, Canadian, Australian with a smattering from other Allied countries. The airmen constructed a tunnel out of the camp and about 80 men made it out before the Germans discovered the exit point. Over the next few weeks, most of the escapees were recaptured (except for two who eventually made their way back to England). Hitler and his deputies, in the aftermath of the escape had decided that an example needed to be made and ordered the killing of "at least half" of the escapees. As they were captured, the escapees were handed over to the Gestapo, driven down deserted roads and shot.

Scotland spends more time talking about the entire story than he does about how the information was extracted from German prisoners of war. His biggest regret seems to be that not everyone involved in the atrocity was captured and/or convicted. It is a sad story.

The London Cage - Lt. Col. A.P. Scotland O.B.E. - Part 2

The London Cage - Lt. Col. A.P. Scotland O.B.E.

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 172

June 21, 2017 

Book 50 - The London Cage
Lt. Col. A.P. Scotland O.B.E.
 Part 2 - p. 59-106
Reading Time - 1 hour

Much of the rest of the book concerns various war crimes against Allied soldiers. I learned about the Mass Murder at Paradis, where, during the spring of 1940, 98 British soldiers, who had surrendered were executed by the Germans.

There is an amusing story about a German POW who, after the war was over, grew bored with the slow movement of repatriation. He snuck down to Ipswich harbour, onto a Swedish boat and over to Germany. He spent almost a year in Germany but eventually came back because he had no papers. Sneaking back into England, he reported to the POW camp but no one believed him. Scotland eventually had a chat with him, and did believe him.

Scotland sounds like a rather grandfatherly character and yet... it was out of the Paradis crime that rumours circulated of harsh treatment meted out to the German POWs held at the London Cage. Given that his initial manuscript contained details of his non-Red Cross sanctioned methods... it is interesting to see him deny any ill treatment of his prisoners.

The London Cage - Lt. Col. A.P. Scotland O.B.E. - Part 1

The London Cage - Lt. Col. A.P. Scotland O.B.E.

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 171

June 20, 2017 

Book 50 - The London Cage
Lt. Col. A.P. Scotland O.B.E.
 Part 1 - p. 1-58
Reading Time - 1 hour

A "work" book this time... or rather, a "research" book. The London Cage was a secret interrogation centre for prisoners of war during World War 2. It was run by MI19, under the command of Lt. Col. A.P. Scotland. Results of the interrogations were used to prosecute war crimes suspects, particularly those engage in atrocities against Allied soldiers. Rumours abounded that the London Cage used coercive methods of interrogation amounting to torture, against the Geneva Convention. The London Cage wasn't on any Red Cross lists. It was a no-where place. After the war, Scotland kept some files and papers from his time at the London Cage and wrote a manuscript. It created quite a stir in Military Intelligence circles, as he revealed a lot of what went on in the cage. The final version of the book was published 7 years later and highly edited (sanitized).

We start by following Scotland as he works in southern Africa for a logistics company that supplies food to the German Army (this was between the Boer War and World War I). It ended up being easier for him to do his job if he was a member of the German Army and so he served with them for four years. Already he had a love for intelligence work and learned quite a bit about how the German Army functioned, information that he then took back and shared with the British.

Several years later, he ended up doing intelligence work during World War I, even making forays into enemy territory to gather information on troop dispositions. Given his excellent command of German, and his understanding of the German psyche, he interrogated a lot of captured Germans. After World War I, he traveled extensively and, during the 1930s, saw the rise of the Nazis as a foreshadowing of the coming war.

Night - Elie Wiesel - Part 2

Night - Elie Wiesel

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 170

June 19, 2017 

Book 49 - Night
Elie Wiesel (1972)
 Part 2 - p. 66-120
Reading Time - 1 hour

With the Russians approaching the camp in which Elie and his father were kept... the Germans decided to evacuate the camp. In the dead of winter. Elie had a foot wound and was in the infirmary but did not want to be separated from his father. Should they stay in the camp, with his father serving as an orderly and risk execution? Or should they risk the unknown march? They chose to march. Two days later, the Russians liberated the concentration camp with all of the remaining prisoners. How much of a difference that would have made. In choosing to march, Elie's father eventually dies. Had they stayed, he might have lived.

Elie wrote this book so that all would remember what happened to 6,000,000 Jews in Europe. "If we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices".

And yet... even today, we have Syria. We have Rwanda. We have Somalia. We have Ukraine. We have Afghanistan. We have the USA. We have so many places were human rights are trampled underfoot. It might start out small... with a few restrictions on freedom... on civil liberties. But what starts small can eventually metamorphose into a monster. We must always remember. We must be vigilant. The Romanian Jews... and likely Jews throughout Europe, refused to believe that something so small could turn into something so awful. But it always starts out small and inconspicuous. We must be alert.

Night - Elie Wiesel - Part 1

Night - Elie Wiesel

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 169

June 18, 2017 

Book 49 - Night
Elie Wiesel (1972)
 Part 1 - p. vii-xxi, 1-65
Reading Time - 1.2 hour

This is a slim volume but a devastatingly powerful. Elie Wiesel was a Romanian Jew who was, along with his father, mother and three sisters, sent to Auschwitz Concentration Camp in 1944. Elie and two of his sisters survived the war.

The striking thing in the first part is the naivety of the Jews in Transylvania. Even when the Fascists seized power and let the Germans into the country, the Jews tried to keep up an optimistic attitude. It's the 20th Century after all. One foreign Jew who was sent to a concentration camp a year or so earlier managed to escape and came back. He warned them of what was happening... and no one believed him. They thought he was crazy. Such things couldn't happen in this day and age. Yet they did.

The other thing that struck me was how quickly human beings can adapt to cruelty. How quickly the virtues of kindness and compassion can be traded in for selfishness and self-preservation. Anything to avoid getting beaten yourself.

It is in this book that Elie recounts the story of a young boy who was hanged in one of the concentration camps. "Where is God? He is there... hanging on the gallows." I had always seen this interpreted, in Christian circles at least, from a Christocentric perspective. The unity of our human suffering to the suffering of Christ that is, in some way, redemptive. But that is reading too much of Christ into the story. For Elie... his belief in God hung in tatters on those gallows. Where was God? He was dead.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X - Malcolm X - Part 9

The Autobiography of Malcolm X -
Malcolm X

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 168

June 17, 2017 

Book 48 - The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley
Malcolm X (1964)
 Part 9 - 441-527
Reading Time - 2 hours

This last section is a lengthy Epilogue written by Alex Haley. It details his history with Malcolm X and the lengthy interviews and discussions that they had while Alex was crafting the book. It gives some behind the scenes information of what went into the book. For example, the whole Nation of Islam section was written while Malcolm was still a fervent member of it - hence the fanatical tone to it.

Haley takes us through the assassination of Malcolm X - apparently conducted by members of the Nation of Islam... although there are rumours that it might have been a government hit as well. Given that there were three major assassinations in the mid 1960s (Kennedy, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr) - one has to wonder at what was going on in the United States during that period.

Malcolm X, after he left the Nation of Islam, and began to think for himself, had huge potential to transform society. It is unfortunate that his life was cut short.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X - Malcolm X - Part 8

The Autobiography of Malcolm X -
Malcolm X

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 167

June 16, 2017 

Book 48 - The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley
Malcolm X (1964)
 Part 8 - 394-440
Reading Time - 1 hour

Malcolm, after his visit to Mecca, toured several countries in Africa and the Middle East. He states that "a country's moral strength or weakness is reflected in the attire and attitude of its women". He thinks that if everyone became Muslim, the problems of the world would be solved. I would say that this chapter (minus those few strange comments) is probably the best in the book. His thinking is more balanced and coherent than the "let's extol the virtues of Elijah Muhammed".


He comes to the realization that the African American problem is not civil rights but human rights. On the other hand, Malcolm advocates violence for blacks to get human rights... which seems a bit dangerous and I could see how people saw him as an inflammatory militant. After he came home he realized that many whites were unaware of their own racism - which rings true from my own experience here in Canada. He argues that the political, economic and social atmosphere in the States nourishes a racist psychology - which is intriguing.



Malcolm wouldn't have much time back in America to set up his organizations - he was assassinated in February 1965. So, in many ways, its unfortunate that his thinking never got to mature and develop too far beyond the militant stage.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X - Malcolm X - Part 7

The Autobiography of Malcolm X -
Malcolm X

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 166

June 15, 2017 

Book 48 - The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley
Malcolm X (1965)
 Part 7 - 332-393
Reading Time - 1 hour

The beginning of the end shows up in this section. People in the Nation of Islam are getting envious of Malcolm and starting rumours behind his back. Malcolm learned that Elijah Muhammed was not paragon of moral virtue that he appeared to be. Malcolm was suspended for 90 days and during that period he began to "think for myself". He decides to part ways with he Nation of Islam but soon learns that there is a death order out for him. Sounds kind of cultish (Alex Haley - the ghost writer called Nation of Islam a "cult"). Malcolm decides to go to Mecca to learn more about True Islam and has a transformative experience. He sees Muslims of every colour under the skin mingling together in true brotherhood. He realizes that white people are not the problem but racism is...

I came across one commentary on the book that says the autobiography is hagiography... which basically means it portrays the person as a a saint. It does rather read like that - and that is a bit tiring after a while.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X - Malcolm X - Part 6

The Autobiography of Malcolm X -
Malcolm X

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 165

June 14, 2017 

Book 48 - The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley
Malcolm X (1965)
 Part 6 - 271-331
Reading Time - 1 hour

One thing I learned... the "X" represents the lost African name of the believers of the Nation of Islam. But eventually it gets a little silly... like "James 67X" (the 67th James in the organization).

Malcolm did a lot of recruiting for the Nation of Islam and eventually got on the radar of the media. He engaged in debates with other mainstream Negro leaders (Malcolm himself uses the word Negro). "The white man is the enemy". The black man's original language was Arabic (that's a bit of a surprise - I would have thought they would have had Indigenous African languages - clearly historical accuracy is not big for them). Malcolm argues that the black people need self-respect - they need to lift up their own sense of values. Which makes sense... they need to be responsible for themselves and not wait for someone else to save them. Much of the section deals with the speeches of Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammed - which... after a while, become a little tedious.

Given, however, that these events took place 60 years ago... and America is still dealing with blatant racism against African Americans... one wonders if anything has really altered?

The Autobiography of Malcolm X - Malcolm X - Part 5

The Autobiography of Malcolm X -
Malcolm X

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 164

June 13, 2017 

Book 48 - The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley
Malcolm X (1965)
 Part 5 - 220-270
Reading Time - 1 hour

Malcolm gets out of prison and quickly becomes more heavily involved with the Nation of Islam. He is a convert and he buys everything that the group says, particularly its leader - Elijah Muhammed. A lot of the stuff that he says is pretty provocative. Black man is the Original Man. White man raping black ancestors. Black people remind white people of their guilt. Malcolm is such a fervent believer that he quickly becomes an assistant minister and eventually goes out and helps establish temples in other cities. He speaks quite harshly about women - "True nature of man is to be strong, true nature of woman is to be weak". His views of women are very misogynistic.

It's hard to take a lot of what he says seriously. A lot of this section is adulation of the leader, Elijah Muhammed who, apparently, can do no wrong in Malcolm's eyes.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X - Malcolm X - Part 4

The Autobiography of Malcolm X -
Malcolm X

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 163

June 12, 2017 

Book 48 - The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley
Malcolm X (1965)
 Part 4 - 155-219
Reading Time - 1 hour

We knew this was coming... Malcolm X ends up in prison for robbery. He is sentenced to 10 years. While there, his family gets involved with the Nation of Islam - a splinter group of Islam run by Elijah Muhammed. Malcolm X acknowledges that when he went to Mecca, the elders there were spitting mad at the Nation of Islam for twisting the teachings of Islam. Sooo... anyhow... Malcolm X gets converted and his life turns around. He starts reading as much as he possibly can about history and religion. He discovers the history of slavery in the United States and is appalled. Everything he reads about the world convinces him that the white man is the devil and has oppressed black, brown, red and yellow people throughout history. He joins the debating club in prison and tries to convert other black prisoners to Nation of Islam.

Malcolm X had an epiphany in prison and it turned his life around. One can't really argue with the success of that... he turned from "the personification of evil". What he turned into has yet to be revealed in the book... we shall see!

The Autobiography of Malcolm X - Malcolm X - Part 3

Autobiography of Malcolm X -
Malcolm X

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 162

June 11, 2017 

Book 48 - The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley
Malcolm X (1965)
 Part 3 - 98-154
Reading Time - 1 hour

Well... I've learned a lot about the seedier side of Harlem life in the 1940s. Malcolm X was quite a character who, by his own admission, lived by his wits. He tried everything - armed robbery, drug dealing, etc. He also seems to have been a bit of a misogynist - "all women, by their nature, are fragile and weak: they are attracted to the male in whom they see strength" (p. 108). Can't say as I really agree with him. On the other hand, he's being real... expressing how he sees the world. Throughout the course of this section, Malcolm gets deeper and deeper into trouble... he is on the run from all sorts of people, including the police and the chapter ends with him returning to Boston. I think, though, it's going to be a short-lived reprieve.

I really get a sense of the desperation in which people lived... particularly the African Americans. They really have been taken advantage of... as we have taken advantage of the Indigenous people in Canada. It's kind of sad... but what is the solution? I read a BBC Magazine article online that said, essentially, we are all inherently racist. We all look at the "Other" as different from ourselves, or our tribe, and shun them. If only we could see that we all belong to the Tribe called Humanity... things might be different.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X - Malcolm X - Part 2

Autobiography of Malcolm X -
Malcolm X

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 161

June 10, 2017 

Book 48 - The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley
Malcolm X (1965)
 Part 2 - 47-97
Reading Time - 1 hour

We learn quite a bit about Malcolm's time in Boston. He was only 15-16 years old but looked much older. He managed to get a variety of jobs, made some older friends and very quickly started associating with some of the big music names from the 1940s (Duke Ellington, etc). All because he was the shoe-shine boy at one of the big dance halls in Boston! I gather that Malcolm was quite driven... he wasn't going to just take whatever life threw at him, he was going to go out and seize it and make the most of it.

The book reads a bit like a Who's Who of that time - he drops a lot of names which are mostly meaningless to me. Musicians, hustlers, etc. So it's a bit hard to really get into the story sometimes. At one point, he was working as a sandwich boy on the Boston-New York railway run and discovered Harlem in New York. He was entranced and resolved to move there. One does get a very strong sense that Malcolm really has no time for white people... and that he regrets the many ways in which he, and other African Americans, tried to integrate into white society.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X - Malcolm X - Part 1

Autobiography of Malcolm X -
Malcolm X

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 160

  June 9, 2017 

Book 48 - The Autobiography of Malcolm X -
as told to Alex Haley
Malcolm X (1965)
 Part 1 - ix-xv, 1-46
Reading Time - 1 hour

This book is on my 2017 reading list! Hooray! I'm sort of reading whatever books I can easily get my hands on at the local library. I have some requests in with them but it can take weeks for some of the books to come in.

I really know nothing about Malcolm X. I know that he was a black rights activist and imagined he was something like Martin Luther King Jr. Turns out... he's nothing like MLK!!

Malcolm grew up pretty much dirt poor. His father died when he was 6 and by the time he was 13, his mother had been committed to a mental institution and he and his 7 siblings were split up between various foster homes. He blames the welfare system (run by whites) for destroying the family. Early on, one realizes that Malcolm has some pretty negative views of white people and white culture. He also admits that many blacks try to fit into the white system, try to integrate. It reminds me quite a bit of our relationship with Indigenous people up here in Canada. Us white people really have no clue of the Indigenous experience... none whatsoever... no matter how many First Nations friends we have. We don't have a clue. And it is the height of hubris to think that we somehow understand their situation.

Malcolm's options were fairly limited growing up in small-town Michigan. He once told his Grade 8 teacher that he wanted to be a lawyer (he was one of the smartest kids in the class). His teacher told him that it was "not possible as a Nigger". Malcolm then moved to Boston to live with his older half sister.

Malcolm sounds like a really "with-it" kid. He was very independent and a mover and a shaker. He wasn't going to take anything lying down and he learned a lot from his experiences. Reading about the situation of African Americans in the 1930s and 1940s... I wonder how much the situation has really changed in America?

Brave New World - Aldoux Huxley - Part 5

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 159

  June 8, 2017 

Book 47 - Brave New World
Aldous Huxley (1932)
 Part 5 - 189-231
Reading Time - 1 hour

This book was actually a really easy read and I whipped through it. The end of it was a bit of a surprise. The Savage watches his mother die in a hospital and then loses it while watching some Deltas receive their daily dose of soma (happy pills). Bernard and a friend of his appear and all three are detained. Bernard and his friend are sent to an island somewhere in the world (basically jail)... while the Savage retires to some deserted part of Surrey, England. His solitude doesn't last long though and hordes of people descend upon him. The book ends with him hanging himself. Kind of depressing... I hope Bernard and his friend made out better on the island. While the three were detained, the Controller has a discussion with the Savage... and therein we learn that science and art, along with Truth and Beauty, were sacrificed for happiness... It makes me wonder at the US motto... Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Is happiness the be-all and end-all? Is pleasure all that it's cracked up to be? If we're always told that we should "be happy", but we aren't, it's not wonder that there are so many depressed people out there.

The second part of the book has a follow-up - Brave New World Revisited, where Huxley looks back on the book from a vantage point of 20 years in the future. I'll read that later... For now, it's on to the next book.

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley - Part 4

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 158

  June 7, 2017 

Book 47 - Brave New World
Aldous Huxley (1932)
 Part 4 - 142-188
Reading Time - 1 hour

Well... our hero, Bernard, is the Savage's guardian and his esteem takes a big boost. Everybody wants to meet the Savage but... eventually the Savage refuses to cooperate and Bernard's status takes a big hit. The Savage, whose name is John, is quite disillusioned with the Brave New World. He had found a book back in his village of Shakespeare and reads it with avid fascination. Somewhere along the line, he has picked up some old world morals and this new world is just one big shock to his system after another.

This book does give me glimmers of The Hunger Games trilogy... the shallowness of the Brave New World folk. And sometimes, I get a glimmer of today... how we too are wrapped up in shallow pursuits of beauty and youth, games and status. Entertainment that has no depth to it... how we get lost in the television in the evenings, watching other people live their dreams (vacations, property renovations)... living vicariously in many ways. 

Brave New World - Aldoux Huxley - Part 3

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 157

  June 6, 2017 

Book 47 - Brave New World
Aldous Huxley (1932)
 Part 3 - 87-141
Reading Time - 1 hour

Everyone is Happy in the Brave New World. Happy thanks to soma, a drug that puts them in a jovial state (or sends them into dreamland). Much better than alcohol because there's no ill effects afterwards. Our friend Bernard is in trouble with the Director of the centre where he works. He isn't behaving like he should outside of work... he is not behaving with infantile decorum but being "different". He's threatened with transfer to a centre in Iceland if doesn't shape up. Unfortunately, the Director while signing a permit for Bernard to visit the Savage Reservation, reminisces about his own trip there when he was younger and how the woman he went with disappeared. Bad mistake Director!

Bernard has a date planned with a co-worker, Lenina, and he takes her on a visit to the Savage Reservation. It's a fenced off area in New Mexico that has "savages" (basically Indigenous people and others who aren't tweaked like the folk outside the wall). While there, they find the lost woman and her (gasp) son. Bernard realizes that this woman is the Director's woman-friend and that the son is the Director's son! People in a Brave New World don't live in families and since they are decanted from a bottle (rather than born), the idea of a mother and father is abhorrent to people. Bernard is a smart guy and gets permission (from the Controller) to bring the woman her son back to civilization.

When he gets back to work, the Director has decided to send him to Iceland but... Bernard brings in the woman and her son (this is front of a bunch of Alphas) and... well... the Director resigns immediately. He's been accusing Bernard of being weird and... my goodness... here he got a woman pregnant and has a son by her!

Holy... it's a weird world!

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley - Part 2

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 156

  June 5, 2017 

Book 47 - Brave New World
Aldous Huxley (1932)
 Part 2 - 37-86
Reading Time - 1 hour

Apparently this Brave New World is built upon consumption and stability. The goal is to have very stable individuals and thereby create a stable world. Consumption is key... all humans are expected to consume things... the more, the better. It kind of reminds me of our own society in which consumption is becoming the be-all and end-all. We are no longer citizens... we are consumers. In Brave New World... people are brainwashed (in their sleep as children) to believe that it is better to buy a new thing than to mend an old thing. That isn't so far off from today... where we are faced with the planned obsolescence of everything from TVs to blenders to smart phones.

We also meet Bernard Marx, a rather stunted Alpha who is different than the others (people speculate that he had some alcohol dumped in his bottle when he was a fetus). Because he is shorter, he is treated as different and feels different. He's a bit of an odd duck to be sure and reminds me a bit of 1984's "hero". It's a Brave New World and Bernard doesn't fit in... wonder what will happen to him.

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley - Part 1

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 155

  June 4, 2017 

Book 47 - Brave New World
Aldous Huxley (1932)
 Part 1 - vii-xxi; 1-36
Reading Time - 1 hour

Another book on my 2017 Reading Challenge list. I'm pretty sure that I had to read this book in high school but... honestly, I don't really remember much of it... or anything of it.

There is a fairly long introduction by Christopher Hitchens and then a Preface by Huxley himself, written a few decades after the original publication of the book.

The first couple of chapters take us on a tour of a Fertilization and Incubation centre... from the introduction of sperm to egg, all the way through to birth of an infant from a bottle. There are 5 castes of humans - Alpha, Betta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon. And while the fetuses are in-vitro (in bottles), they are tweaked so that when they are decanted (born), they may be stunted Epsilons or high-caste Alphas... and everything in between. We learn that the lower cast embryo cells are forced to subdivide into more and more buds so that 16000+ infants can come from one fertilized egg. Essentially, you end up with 16000+ identical humans - ideal for staffing a factory or something. We learn that the infants are brainwashed in their sleep. We learn that sex is open and free and that young children are encouraged and expected to engage in sexual activity. It's a weird world... that's for sure! In these first few chapters, we meet what appear to be some of the main characters in the book.

War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy - Part 1

War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 154

  June 3, 2017 

Book 46 - War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy (1869)
 Part 1 - first 40%
Reading Time - many hours

Well... War and Peace... go figure. This book is on my 2017 Reading Challenge list although... I had thought I might postpone it to next year but... I was on a trip and I had the free Gutenberg version on my e-book reader and so I started reading it.

A couple of things... I always thought War and Peace would be a long and tedious read but... it is surprisingly readable. Go figure! The chapters are quite short... 12-30 pages in my e-book reader which is nothing.

I do have to say... the first section was very hard going... trying to keep all the characters straight in my head. There are so many of them that come flying at you, and with their unfamiliar Russian names, that it's a bit overwhelming. I did a bit of research and found that the BBC had done a recent mini-series on War and Peace. So I kept looking up the actors for the different parts... and trying to figure out who were the main characters so I could focus on remembering them! That definitely helped. I wanted to know, for example, what a Hussar uniform looked like.

BBC cast of War and Peace

Some people don't like the War scenes in the book and are tempted to skip over them. I, on the other hand, found them quite enjoyable. But then I've read a fair few novels about the Napoleonic Wars - particularly Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe series which follows the adventures of a British rifleman as he fights his way through Portugal and Spain with Wellington's army. In that way, it's nice to get a Russian take on the war. Being interested in WW2 history and the insanity of Hitler's attempt to invade Russia in 1941... and how the German Army was devastated by the Russian Winter and the Russian Army. I know that Napoleon also tried the same thing in 1814... or was it 1812? Anyhow... I'm hoping that the book will cover some of that.

There's no way I can write about each chapter or sections of this book. It would seem to be more helpful to focus on the characters. I've heard that the characters change quite a bit throughout the book. Right now... I'm liking the Rostov family... and Prince Andrew's family. Pierre just annoys the heck out of me. He is so indecisive and weak that I just want to shake him by the scruff. I know some people really identify with Pierre... but that's not me. I rather like Nicholas... and Prince Andrew. Natasha is good too as is Princess Mary.

The blogs on this book are going to come interspersed with other books... I'm reading them concurrently and can't wait until I finish War and Peace to continue with the blogs!

The Believing Brain - Michael Shermer - Part 6

The Believing Brain - Michael Shermer

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 153

  June 2, 2017 

Book 45 - The Believing Brain - From Ghosts and God
to Politics and Conspiracies - How We Construct Beliefs
and Reinforce them as Truths
Michael Shermer (2011)
 Part 6 - pages 280-344
Reading Time - 1 hour

Two last chapters.... Geographies of Belief. A cute story about Christopher Columbus and how he was really convinced he had discovered a cross-Atlantic route to India even thought nothing in the New World remotely resembled India. His belief shaped how he saw the world. Basic point is we are not as rational as we like to think (we are not Mr. Spock). The author argues that the only way to avoid the pitfalls of our highly non-rational brain is science.

There is a final chapter on Cosmologies of Belief - we start back with Galileo and how he was trying to get people to accept the helio-centric vision of the solar system. And then a bunch of stories about other astronomers... it was a bit of a hard slog... even though I like astronomy.

His final thoughts are this... science has a null hypothesis. Basically... we formulate a hypothesis and assume it is false. The evidence has to satisfy us to 95-99% certainty. The burden is on people to prove something... not to disprove it. Fine... but I really think this could have all been said in an essay not a massive tome like this book. I probably should have stopped reading after the first chapter but I kept hoping that I'd get something out of it. Did I? I suppose.... the conservative/liberal moral values chart was helpful. Glad to say I am DONE with this book. And I will leave Michael Shermer to his hobby horse. He kept referencing Skeptic Magazine (which he publishes) and kept referring to talks he's given and YouTube videos he's done. All well and good but after a while it got a bit tedious. And this is from me, a scientist.

The Believing Brain - Michael Shermer - Part 5

The Believing Brain - Michael Shermer

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 152

  June 1, 2017 

Book 45 - The Believing Brain - From Ghosts and God
to Politics and Conspiracies - How We Construct Beliefs
and Reinforce them as Truths
Michael Shermer (2011)
 Part 5 - pages 228-279
Reading Time - 1 hour

Now we're into politics... and the distinction between liberals and conservatives. Basically... there is a difference in moral values. Liberals emphasize harm/care and fairness/reciprocity while conservatives emphasize in-group/loyalty, authority/respect and purity/sanctity. This is actually a very helpful thing to have it laid out so clearly.

Maybe I missed it at the beginning of the book but... what is "belief". For me... belief is an idea, a theory of how we are and how the world works. It is not the same as knowing. In many respects we can say that a lot of our scientific theories are simply beliefs as well. Up until now... all the evidence supports the belief... and until it is proved false, it works. Which makes me wonder... if someone wants to believe in God... and the evidence works for them... then that's their belief. They have a theory that God exists... and unless something comes along to disprove that theory.... I don't know... but that's just how it seems to me.

On the other hand, our brains want us to be right so we interpret information to confirm our beliefs. Hindsight is 20/20 so after the fact, we can find all sorts of indicators that we're shocked that we missed. The author goes into a long section on cognitive biases that shape our beliefs.

The Believing Brain - Michael Shermer - Part 4

The Believing Brain - Michael Shermer

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 151

  May 31, 2017 

Book 45 - The Believing Brain - From Ghosts and God
to Politics and Conspiracies - How We Construct Beliefs
and Reinforce them as Truths
Michael Shermer (2011)
 Part 4 - pages 164-227
Reading Time - 1 hour

A trio of chapters that cover Belief in God, Aliens and Conspiracies. We are apparently hardwired to believe things, so belief comes first and reasons second. Religiosity is, in large part, genetic. Naturally, the author does not believe in God, as it is impossible to prove that God exists from an empirical scientific point of view. He also argues that a highly advanced extraterrestrial would be indistinguishable from God. Which makes sense. If we dragged Noah forward into the 21st century... he might think he was surrounded by "gods".

As for aliens and abduction stories, the author basically dismisses them as bunk. He repeats his theory that belief comes first and then we look for evidence. Which I think isn't all that different from the scientific method. Many scientific theories are based on a hypothesis... "I think this is what is happening"... and then we test for evidence to support or disprove the theory.

And then there are conspiracy theories... like the assassination of JFK and 9/11. He claims that the conspiracy theorists have their pattern-detection filters wide open and that there is no screening. Unexplained anomalies lie at the heart of conspiracy theories. It's almost like... don't confuse them with facts, their minds are made up.

At this point, I am just plodding through this book... and it is a hard slog. The author repeats himself and his primary theory quite a bit and it's a bit tedious.

The Believing Brain - Michael Shermer - Part 3

The Believing Brain - Michael Shermer

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 150

  May 30, 2017 

Book 45 - The Believing Brain - From Ghosts and God
to Politics and Conspiracies - How We Construct Beliefs
and Reinforce them as Truths
Michael Shermer (2011)
 Part 3 - pages 111-163
Reading Time - 1 hour

This section left me in the dust. A whole chapter is called The Believing Neuron and it is a bunch of fairly detailed information on cognitive neuroscience. A few tidbits I picked up... dopamine is a belief chemical... which means that ideas can be as addictive as substances. Creative people tend to find new patterns and generate more ideas than others... partly because of dopamine it seems. Belief comes quickly and naturally... skepticism is slow and unnatural.

Another chapter dealt with Belief in the Afterlife. The author doesn't believe in an Afterlife... in part because he says it is not scientifically provable. Everything for him comes down to science. He says it is natural for us to believe we have a timeless and eternal essence... so the belief comes first and then we look for reasons to support that belief. All of the near-death experiences, he says, can be put down to misfiring electrical impulses in the brain and oxygen deprivation. I'm not sure I like this author... he takes all the mystery out of things!

The Believing Brain - Michael Shermer - Part 2

The Believing Brain - Michael Shermer

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 149

  May 29, 2017 

Book 45 - The Believing Brain - From Ghosts and God
to Politics and Conspiracies - How We Construct Beliefs
and Reinforce them as Truths
Michael Shermer (2011)
 Part 2 - pages 56-110
Reading Time - 1 hour

This section was fairly interesting. The author talks about Patternicity - how our brains are set up to see patterns in things, even if we are wrong. It's a leftover from our days in the savannah when... if we heard a rustle in the tall grass, we needed to quickly make a decision as to what caused the rustle. If it was just the wind... no worries. But if we thought it was the wind and it was a tiger... that's bad. Better to err on the side of caution and interpret the rustle as a tiger. Better to be wrong and safe rather than be wrong and dead! Our brains are set up as believing engines, as recognition machines. We have a tendency to find meaningful patterns in both meaningful things and in meaningless noise. Our default is to assume that all patterns are real. People believe weird things because of an evolved need to believe non-weird things.

Some things can make us more susceptible to superstition though... if we feel we don't have control over our life and if we are in danger... we tend to be more superstitious. We don't like uncertainty, so we will gain it perceptually. Rather than saying "I don't know what caused that".... we will create certainty... "a ghost caused that".

We also tend to ascribe agenticity to things. There is a difference between an inanimate force (like a tornado) and an intentional agent. We tend to infuse patterns with meaning, intention and agency. We figure that a ghost did it... or aliens... or a secret government conspiracy... or God... or whatever. We tend to believe that objects, animals and people contain an essence. Ask a bunch of people if they would accept a heart transplant from a murderer... and... most would say "no". We have a belief that something of the murderer lingers in the heart.

The Believing Brain - Michael Shermer - Part 1

The Believing Brain - Michael Shermer

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 148

  May 28, 2017 

Book 45 - The Believing Brain - From Ghosts and God
to Politics and Conspiracies - How We Construct Beliefs
and Reinforce them as Truths
Michael Shermer (2011)
 Part 1 - pages 1-
Reading Time - 1 hour

Another book that is not on my reading list but that looked intriguing. This book seemed like a natural follow-up to the Nonsense book by Jamie Holmes. The premise of this current book is that beliefs come first and explanations follow later. Beliefs form for a variety of reasons in a variety of environments. Our perceptions about reality are dependent on the beliefs that we hold about it. We look around us and find patterns and then infuse them with meaning based on our beliefs. Even more so... we look for and find evidence to confirm our beliefs. The tricky thing is... we form models of the world and think that they are the absolute truth but... there could be other models that explain the world equally well.

The author is a self-acknowledged Skeptic... and doesn't believe in otherworldly forces. No angels, no ghosts, no God, no aliens. Which makes me wonder... based on his own arguments... if he doesn't believe in otherworldly forces then naturally he won't look for evidence of them... he won't be able to seeing them. It's kind of a circular argument for him... but I'll see what else he has to say.

He does tell an interesting story about some researchers who pretended that they had had an auditory hallucination (heard voices). They were admitted to psych wards where they acted perfectly normally. The psych ward doctors interpreted their normal behaviours as evidence of crazyness because the doctors believed that the patients were crazy. What you believe is what you see...

He gives three personal stories at the start of the book - one of a guy who heard a voice from the Source, one of a Dr. Collins who went from atheist to theist, and one for the author himself, how in his teens he converted to Christianity and then left it. I don't really think that his story is a great example of a believer becoming a non-believer. Someone who is a believer for a few years doesn't have the depth of belief as someone who has been a believer since childhood. I have to admit the author is annoying me and I've been stuck on reading the next section for a couple of weeks now... we'll see if this blog can get me going again. I'm hoping it gets a bit more general... we'll see.

Burn your Mortgage - Sean Cooper - Part 1

Burn Your Mortgage - Sean Cooper

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 147

  May 27, 2017 

Book 44 - Burn Your Mortgage -
The Simple, Powerful Path to Financial Freedom for Canadians
Sean Cooper (2017)
 Part 1 - pages 1-216
Reading Time - 4 hours

I bought this book as an e-book and read it pretty quickly. Sean Cooper was in the news last year after paying off his mortgage in 3 years. He had bought a bungalow with a basement suite in the Greater Toronto area (I think). He lived in the basement and rented out the upstairs (more rent). He worked several side gigs in addition to his regular job. He also biked to work and used transit during the winter months. Basically, he saved every penny that he could and threw it at his mortgage.

This book is a summary of his advice on how to burn your mortgage. I know some people might think that in this age of ultra low interest rates, it makes no sense to pay off your mortgage faster but... we are on the same path as Sean. Our mortgage rate is 2.99% interest... which is nothing but... interest rates will go up at some point... And a piddly 1% rise in interest rates for us would mean a 12% jump in our mortgage payment. That's a big jump!! Our goal (in line with Sean's) is to pay off our mortgage ASAP. We're not big believers that a mortgage is "good debt". Any debt is bad...

Now... as to the book. A lot of the stuff in the book is very familiar to me, having read Gail Vaz Oxlade's books over the last few years. There are many different tips on how to save money... brown bag a lunch, take transit, buy a used car instead of a new car, etc. For someone who isn't conversant with the material from other sources, it's probably a very useful read. I'm glad I bought the book (always want to support people like Sean) but not sure I'll be reading it again.

Nonsense - Jamie Holmes - Part 4

Nonsense - Jamie Holmes

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 146

  May 26, 2017 

Book 43 - Nonsense - The Power of Not Knowing
Jamie Holmes (2015)
 Part 4 - pages 155-233
Reading Time - 1 hour

Uncertainty can be useful... it can generate innovation. But... our education system doesn't teach us that. The author says that the Western education system is obsolete. Rote learning prepares workers for a world that no longer exists. Lectures in university are as good as reading a text book. We don't teach students how to approach a problem that doesn't have a single right answer. We don't let students know that it is safe to feel confused and to fail. Because... in the real world... things fail all the time! But if... when things fail... we blame others - we are less likely to learn for next time. If, on the other hand, we take responsibility... we are more likely to improve. But... if, when things go well... we are too self-congratulatory... that can lead to errors later as well. When things go wrong... we tend to debrief and figure out what went wrong and how to do better. But, less commonly, do we debrief when things go right... That is of critical importance... we need to know what went right... we are always learning. We always need to be open to being challenged... and to finding a new and different answer.

When we look at something... and if it is close to some category of what we have in our minds... we put it there. But that means we stop scrutinizing it. We look at, say, a candle, and think... it's for burning and making light. But... it has many other uses. If you were really desperate... you could use a candle taper as a shoelace. How? Just break off the wax and free the wick. The trick is to break things down into their most basic component parts. And to identify the key features of an object. Objects can have 32 types of features (weight, height, taste, length, colour, texture, composition... etc)... but when asked to describe an object, people generally miss two thirds of the features of an object!

The author ends with a story from Jerusalem and a school called Hand-in-Hand. The school has mixed classes of Arab and Jewish children, taught by both an Arab and a Jewish teacher. The students are bilingual and there is a direct correlation between bilingualism and creativity. Bilinguals have a better ability to focus, a capacity to inhibit previously acquired information, and an ability to hold information in the mind. Being bilingual makes us think harder. We are comfortable with linguistic ambiguity and are able to get unstuck more easily. Prejudice... no surprise... can be a traced to a general cognitive outlook characterized by a hunger for certainty. We need to be comfortable with contradictory ideas... because the world is an uncertain and changing place.