At Home by Bill Bryson

At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book was interesting and entertaining but wanders way off topic in every chapter. It's supposed to be an explanation of the wheres and whys of domestic things say, a room just for sleeping, or a dining table. The bulk of each chapter is just interesting history and sometimes really only trivia of the era. Towards the end, he doesn't even make a pretense at explaining domestic things anymore and simply titles a chapter on Darwin's revelation of evolution "The Attic." I couldn't find any connection.

Also, it wouldn't let me flee my other current read Moby Dick, as the lighting section of the book spent a fair bit of time describing spermaceti and a later chapter explained how the novel Moby Dick itself was a product of the scientifically descriptive era in which it was written.

There are so many interesting gems though. Here's a favorite quote:
“Over the course of his life, Harvard had acquired books at the rate of about twelve a year. Jefferson, over the course of his life, bought books at the rate of about twelve a month, accumulating a thousand every decade on average. Without his books, Thomas Jefferson could not have been Thomas Jefferson. For someone like him living on a frontier, remote from actual experience, books were vital guides to how life might be lived…”

Another gem [[[spoiler alert!!!]]] is that the buttons on the back of the sleeve of a jacket are useless and always have been!



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How to Fall in Love with Anyone by Mandy Len Catron

How to Fall in Love with Anyone: A Memoir in Essays by Mandy Len Catron
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a quick enjoyable read. It's a mix of essays, memoir, and science research about love. Due to the memoir-like focus, it suffers from a feeling of incompleteness. I would have especially liked to have read more about the personal experiences of married couples, both in love and out of love, with the same kind of candor that Len Catron discussed her two significant relationships. Also, the book suffered from a little repetition in the essays. But overall, entertaining and thought-provoking.

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Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was cute though a bit uneven. There were some difficult to understand concepts crammed in the beginning and then just softballs throughout the second half.

For a good physics introduction (which I think was the goal here) I'd recommend Brian Greene's The Fabric of the Cosmos instead. It's a little old now, but you can follow it up with The Hidden Reality if you need all the up-to-date physics as well.

Nonetheless, I can't dislike a short physics book, and this one definitely still taught me some new things. It got a little philosophical at the end which I also enjoyed. Plus I'm a fan of the author as a personality and science advocate.

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Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There's a lot of Stoicism, which I enjoyed because it strangely resembles Buddhism- and I like both. There were some great thoughts about coping with the idea of death, which he revisited throughout the book. There's also a lot of Marcus Aurelius's Hellenic religion, which I thought was really interesting because his relationship to paganism is so similar to the relationship a lot of Christians have with Christianity.

There was a lot of repetition which I enjoyed less, and at certain point, I started to lose some interest in his aphorisms. This might be my fault for reading this over five days, instead of just reading a few meditations a day for a longer period of time (as my husband suggested).

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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My version had all 12 stories from the original The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which is the third volume in the Sherlock Holmes series. The stories are all easy and fun and provide enough information that you can sometimes guess the conclusion, which makes them especially satisfying. You can fancy yourself as clever and crafty as Holmes himself. And yes, I just used the British expression "fancy" because of all this reading.

1. "A Scandal in Bohemia" A surprise! And a bit feminist.
2. "The Red-Headed League" - Somewhat obvious but fun.
3. "A Case of Identity" - So sad, and feels unresolved in a way.
4. "The Boscombe Valley Mystery" The mystery revolves around whether a son murdered his father. Interesting.
5. "The Five Orange Pips" - Anti-racism! 
6. "The Man with the Twisted Lip" - Kind of funny, but not a great story about poverty
7. "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle" - Not my favorite.
8. "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" - Creepy story about the death of a sister.
9. "The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb" - Woah, intense! A little scary.
10. "The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor" Bride disappears! Okay story.
11. "The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet" - Good one about son accused of stealing a coronet.
12. "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches" Great but somewhat predictable story. I love how Watson concludes this one.

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The Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonigal

The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It by Kelly McGonigal
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A strong compilation of the science of willpower but the author didn't explore societal consequences very deeply, so it felt like a more surface-level self-help book. Also, author refused to write a conclusion so the book felt unfinished. Even a simple summary of the information would have been better than just suddenly cutting off the book after her last topic.

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John Adams by David McCullough

John Adams by David McCullough
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I love this book, the author, and the subjects John Adams and his wife Abigail. It might have benefited from a little editing for greater brevity but otherwise a perfect book. My favorite parts were all the beautiful quotes about morality from Adam's personal journals.

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Design Your Future by Dominick Quartuccio

Design Your Future: 3 Simple Steps to Stop Drifting and Take Command of Your Life by Dominick Quartuccio
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The thing that interested me most about this book is that it isn't purely academic. Though the author is reading the relevant research, he is also actively living the advice he gives: he hires coaches, attends seminars, meditates, travels, and has changed the course of his life and business to pursue things he is passionate about.

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Friday by Robert A. Heinlein

Friday by Robert A. Heinlein
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Okay, sometimes I display bad taste. This is a good example. This book is bad because the main character is a woman and she displays a very cavalier attitude about gang rape. This can be attributed to any number of causes: 1) perhaps Heinlein just doesn't understand female anatomy and women's emotional lives, 2) perhaps Heinlein wanted to display what a superhuman badass spy the main character is, 3) just trashy writing so as to kick up some publicity bad or otherwise to sell books? And I tried to forget this initial disaster except the main character goes on to completely forgive one of the rapists. Ugh, too much.

But let's say you just ignore that whole thing, which is tough, but let's say you do-- what a fun meandering sci fi book! It's fun to see what Heinlein predicted right or wrong, though he still has the opportunity to be proven right. The difficult-to-obtain futuristic library technology described by Heinlein is completely ours these days. In Heinlein's future it's easy to travel the galaxies, but expensive, whereas in real life we're not even close. IVF and even 3-parent IVF is already real, though specific genetic modifications to the embryos are still just on the horizon. (Crispr/Cas9)

And I like Friday/ Marge/ whatever her current identity is. I like how she's an unstoppable badass and a needy emotional mess at the same time. (Except when it comes to rape?)

Anyway, worth reading if you can compartmentalize feelings about fiction and enjoy trashy fun.

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The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr

The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I haven't read Karr's memoirs yet, but this instructional book was more satisfying because I had recently read or reread many of the memoirs she mentioned. I feel an urgent need to read more of the ones she uses as examples.

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An American Sickness by Elisabeth Rosenthal

An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back by Elisabeth Rosenthal
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Everyone read this book!! It's about the medical and pharmaceutical industries, and it was written by a doctor. It's not a liberal or conservative book. It's the most educational and relevant book I've read all year.

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The Oregon Trail by Francis Parkman

The Oregon Trail by Francis Parkman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I don't care that he didn't finish the Oregon Trail because I was sufficiently bored that I was glad he just called it quits and went home already. My interest in this book was of the silly childhood variety from playing the computer game of the same name. For that reason, my favorite parts were the parts where they pursued and killed buffalo. I know! I'm ridiculous. The various different Native American (First Nations?) tribes were in themselves super interesting and I think Parkman did try to differentiate between their traditions and culture, but I think he was significantly handicapped in this by his old-timey bias.

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Why Read Moby-Dick? by Nathaniel Philbrick

Why Read Moby-Dick? by Nathaniel Philbrick
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I saw this book on a recent (first) trip to Nantucket. This certainly makes me want to read Moby Dick and after previous attempts, I thought nothing could make me want to read it. I will give it one more try...


Dubious.

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The Tanakh

Tanakh by Anonymous


Technically, I read the Old Testament, not The Tanakh, but it's the same books in a different order. It took me 6 months to finish.

As a rule, I don't rate or review Holy Books but I'll mention a few things that stood out to me. The Torah/Pentateuch is pretty tightly organized compared to the rest. The rules in Leviticus particularly grabbed my attention, which I wrote more specifically about in my Torah "review."

Much of the rest of the Old Testament is wars and God getting angry for his worshippers breaking rules, especially marrying those of other religions. A few notable exceptions: Song of Songs is very romantic, Jonah is the stuff of great adventure books, and the locusts are as scary as a Steven King novel.

The Christian order leaves a bit to be desired by ending on Malachi. The order of the final Jewish book is either uncertain or was not precisely set but ending on Chronicles is maybe a little better with the rebuilding of Jerusalem.

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Dispatches by Michael Herr

Dispatches by Michael Herr
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Really powerful nonfiction account of the Vietnam War. Intense.

Though by no means the central point or theme of this book (which was something like war is hell) the problems of the free press struggling against direction from business, government leadership, and the military is notable particularly because of our current political problems.

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The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan W. Watts

The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety by Alan W. Watts
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book makes sense if you're familiar with the practice (not just the idea) of meditation. But it's still too hippy-dippy, fluffy, and imprecise for me.

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Beyond the Sling by Mayim Bialik

Beyond the Sling: A Real-Life Guide to Raising Confident, Loving Children the Attachment Parenting Way by Mayim Bialik
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I like Mayim Bialik so I really wanted to like this book. I believe in some of the attachment principals, though my kids sleep in their own beds in their own rooms, they seem mostly content with it. When my kids were babies, I did pretty much take the approach that "their wants are their needs" and they're developing well now.

But there were some serious problems with this book. Most notably, she casually mentioned she decided not to vaccinate her children. This is a problem. Unlike most other parenting decisions vaccination is not a decision that affects just you and your family, it's a societal issue because many vaccines work through herd immunity, especially for the immune-compromised children. So for example, her unvaccinated children could infect a child with cancer that isn't able to get the vaccines while fighting cancer. Also, she is a scientist, so we have to assume she based this on some relevant information the rest of us somehow missed? Way to implant doubt without actually providing something to back it up. As it happens, I looked into an entire class about vaccines when I had kids, with a lot of the relevant research and studies provided. It made clear to me the need for vaccinating and vaccinating according to the doctor-specified schedule.

Also, elimination communication sounds totally unnecessary. Potty training is not a huge deal that you need to suffer for years over it.

Finally, we see a little bit of how she viewed her marriage at the time the book was written and it did seem reasonable healthy based on her description, but then they got divorced the same year this book came out. Obviously, a lot of people treat divorce as private, but when you're writing a parenting book/ memoir it does seem especially relevant. Were there other things going on that she didn't share? Or did the marriage end specifically because of differences or problems arising from attachment parenting?



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The End of Poverty by Jeffrey D. Sachs

The End of Poverty by Jeffrey D. Sachs
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a good book and it shares with us Sach's wealth of experience in international economics. The problem for me is that I read Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty first, and that book changed the whole way I look at politics and international development- it was mind-blowing. Sachs suffers from the comparison with kind of run-of-the-mill recommendations.

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