I Am a Strange Loop by Douglas R. Hofstadter

I Am a Strange Loop by Douglas R. Hofstadter
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is a little uneven but it has three basic ideas: 1) the relative size of souls from small mosquitoes all the way to the most compassionate, selfless humans, and 2) the ability to share one's soul closely in great detail or largely in a general way, 3) consciousness arises from conscience.

Leaving aside the issue of animals for the purpose of this review I believe in the equal treatment and honor of all humans as the basis for good and my conception of goodness itself or God. On the flip side, sociopathic cruelty towards any human is evil and I am not open to relativism. In other words, I completely reject #1 and embrace #3.

The book itself feels like it jumps from these three topics sometimes accompanied with logic puzzles or personal stories without actually persuasively tying these topics together. It wasn't a bad read though, it definitely gets your brain going and introduces some new things to think about.

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Secrets of the Heart: Poems and Meditations by Kahlil Gibran

Secrets of the Heart: Poems and Meditations by Kahlil Gibran
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Allegories and poems about philosophy and religion. They vary in quality and interest. Mostly I liked the misanthropic hermit at the beginning. He's like a jerky Buddhist. I also liked "John the Madman" about the difference between real Christianity and false Christianity. There's a story about saving Satan and mermaids judging mankind. A lot of the mostly Christian philosophy (but also Muslim and Buddhist philosophy) resonated with me, but I didn't feel like I gained any new insights.

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Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Pérez

Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Pérez
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Every now and then I read a book that changes the way I see the world. This is one of those.

Of course, I am aware of some of the things mentioned in the book because I am a woman. I am well aware of the relative danger I face while walking around at nighttime as opposed to a man, but there is so much more than those types of observations here. The author explores so much in the world of data that my entire perception of moving through the world has shifted.

Absolutely everything seems different. I'm even looking at the headrest in my car with wonder and confusion. I'd give this book 10 stars if I could.

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Pale Ride by Laura Spinney

Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World by Laura Spinney
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've read a few books about the 1918 flu this year, and this was an excellent overview ofthe history, science, and changing culture of the time. It was entertaining, well-written, and not overly dark considering the topic.

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Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke

Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I thought this had interesting concepts about an alien invasion and I even liked the inversion of time, memory, and religion, but I didn't think it was executed all that well.

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The Story of a Marriage by Andrew Sean Greer

The Story of a Marriage by Andrew Sean Greer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

There are some beautiful sentences and thoughts in this book, but let's not forget that the narrator doesn't necessarily know everything about the world or about love. She knows a very particular love- her one love. She misses another kind entirely. Therefore, I object to many of her ideas. For example, this seems completely wrong to me: “A lover exists only in fragments, a dozen or so if the romance is new, a thousand if we're married to him, and out of those fragments our heart constructs an entire person. What we each create, since whatever is missing is filled by our imagination, is the person we wish him to be. The less we know him, of course, the more we love him. And that's why we always remember that first rapturous night when he was a stranger, and why this rapture returns only when he's dead.”

Of course, it's exciting to meet someone and they are constructed entirely of your hopes for who you want the person to be. A new person is exciting anyway. But what if you're blessed to be married to someone who turns out to be so much more than you knew, so much more than you knew any person could be? What if in your darkest life moments you turn to the person you're married to and see a beacon of light? What if you let that person make you better too. Love isn't just rapture. Love is that which would make it easy to give your life for the other person.

So in general, I object to Pearlie's "love" for a shell of a character Holland. Of course, we can never completely know another person. But Pearlie never gives us something to admire about Holland. You can only really love children without reason in my opinion. I don't care about Holland, I don't believe Pearlie's deep love for Holland, and Holland is observed from such a distance that he didn't persuade me either.

There's more than a love story going on here, war, torture, and race issues, but nothing about it in particular spoke to me.

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The Gold Bug by Edgar Allan Poe

The Gold Bug by Edgar Allan Poe
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I like that it appears to switch from horror to mystery.

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Ligeia by Edgar Allan Poe

Ligeia by Edgar Allan Poe
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read this a few times wondering what I was missing. I don't know. Possibly it's just not that great?

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The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe

The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The type of thinking demonstrated in Poe’s conclusion is not an insubstantial part of my life philosophy.

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The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe

The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I decided to read this because my funny and wise husband posted this tweet on Monday: "The external world could take care of itself... It was towards the close of the fifth or sixth month of his seclusion, and while the pestilence raged most furiously abroad, that the Prince Prospero entertained his thousand friends.” 

This is the perfect short story to read right now though it may not currently have its intended emotional effect.

The whole story is available for free here: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1064

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Villette by Charlotte Brontë

Villette by Charlotte Brontë
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I loved it but I'm traumatized by the feeling that Charlotte Bronte does not like Lucy Snow. In contrast, I love Lucy Snow with all her little stiff curmudgeonly ways. So what does that say about me? And what does that say about whether I would like Charlotte Bronte, that I side with her fictional antihero over her?

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The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill

The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I loved this story, just loved the magic and the sorrow and the hope-- it's strangely very 2020 despite being written some years ago. Beautiful writing about love. I recommend it for adults and children alike. And high praise- the story reminds me a bit of Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea series.

But (I am so harsh but) so much of the story depended on the old- no one told anyone anything trope.

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The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio

The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Took me nearly 4 months to get through it because it is so long. It's a good quarantine read as the main characters are themselves in a bit of a quarantine bubble. There are a hundred stories of varying quality, but some of them were cheerful and bawdy. The tenth day of stories was a bit of a bummer though as things got even more misogynistic and cruel towards the end, especially with the husband that tortured the wife for years and is presented as wise for doing so.

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The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a good introduction to systemic racism in America as it exists currently. While it does discuss politics it very evenhandedly explains the forces that have led both the right and the left to contribute to the broken system. It's not a complete history nor does it cover all the relevant legal concepts that contribute to the system but it's a strong and persuasive introduction. It's also excruciatingly sad.

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Attachments by Rainbow Rowell

Attachments by Rainbow Rowell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this even though I typically don’t enjoy whatever genre this is: romance, women’s lit, whatever. I liked all the characters and their friendships and their little struggles. I also live in Nebraska and have become obsessed with local news this year, and the characters work at a local Nebraska newspaper.

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Normal People by Sally Rooney

Normal People by Sally Rooney
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I became very invested in the characters even though I low-key hate Connell. (I don't think I was supposed to hate him? I think I'm supposed to love him a little? But I definitely don't.) The writing carried me along and I barely put it down until I was finished.

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Wayside School Gets A Little Stranger by Louis Sachar

Wayside School Gets A Little Stranger (Wayside #3) by Louis Sachar
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Not as good as the first two but nice to see the adults’ lives progress.

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Britt-Marie Was Here by Fredrik Backman

Britt-Marie Was Here by Fredrik Backman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've become a Frederik Backman fan, and this is the 5th book I've read by him, but it is by far my favorite. Yes, he has a grumps-with-a-heart-of-gold theme that he repeats over and over. However, he really succeeded in created a nuanced imperfect character with Brit-Marie who experiences life as realistically as I've seen in a while. Most books I would change this or that about but this is a pretty nearly perfect story. Backman makes it look easy, but judging by all the many books I've read, it definitely isn't.

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A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon

A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was both funny and deep though it ended in kind of a silly way.

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The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich

The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal by Ben Mezrich
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I am torn about how to review this book. Yes, of course, it's as badly written as everyone who read this 10 years ago says it is. And it's ridiculously disgustingly sexist- and it appears to be the author pushing this sexism more than it being a reflection of the subjects of the book. The thing is, 10 years ago, we didn't know that Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook would contribute to the destruction of democracy. While it's not necessarily accurate, it at least lets us see what Eduardo Saverin thought of Zuckerberg at a younger age.

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