The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman

The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

For some reason, I couldn't get through this at all the first time I picked it up, but it was no trouble this time and I flew through it. There is some belaboring in the examples of bird intelligence but overall pretty interesting.

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A Confession by Leo Tolstoy

A Confession by Leo Tolstoy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Tolstoy trying to figure out the meaning of life. Remarkably similar to my own experiences except I never got to be a successful sinful writer. Haha. I don't feel terribly satisfied with the end of his essay or my (same) current status. Hopefully, there's some step after this.

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What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah

What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Most of these stories were extremely well-written and powerful. She can do simple and powerful, and she can do crazy magical realism.

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Option B by Sheryl Sandberg

Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience and Finding Joy by Sheryl Sandberg
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is about going through and surviving grief, so in some ways, it came at the perfect time for me. I agree with so much she says about how grief feels and how friends and family should help.

I think part of the issue with this book might be that her view of grief is still pretty limited. She tries to include stories of the immense grief that other people suffer and especially those with less financial advantages than her, but it feels like she still doesn't totally get it in places. For example, while she acknowledges that not everyone can afford to keep their home, pay for childcare in the face of grief, etc. she doesn't meaningfully address these problems. And she appears oblivious to some things that are not in the mourner's control. For example, my friends can't afford to drop everything in their own lives to come help me. Nor do I have other family to step in. She's lucky in so many ways she doesn't even realize. She also only briefly touches on the effect of multiple tragedies on a person. She only briefly touches on the loss of meaning in life. (Maybe Tolstoy for that issue.) She doesn't even seem aware about the possibility of clinical depression hijacking grieving.

Finally, I get that she has to be positive to sell books and also so she doesn't drive people to despair. I get that if she wants to keep her job she has to still appear enthusiastic about her corporation's performance, but who actually cares? Why is this even in a book about grief? No really, who will care a 100 years from now that she worked really hard and made a lot of money? Someone might care that she wrote a wonderful book about grief that helped people, but the focus on the former makes the latter miss the mark a bit.

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What Happened by Hillary Rodham Clinton

What Happened by Hillary Rodham Clinton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Bit of a hodgepodge. More revealing of her personality than her other memoirs, but still not that revealing. Things are a bit out of order sometimes. Mostly a defense. She's frustrated. Most of us are.

She gives a really good summary of what the intelligence agencies have confirmed about the Russian interference in the US 2016 election, along with incredibly suspicious things that she noted that Trump and others in the campaign stated publically.

She was not very gentle with Trump, Putin, Senator Bernie Sanders, candidate Jill Stein, FBI Director James Comey, or television personality Matt Lauer (I refuse to call Lauer a journalist).

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Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is super interesting, but after reading it I am not any smarter than when I started.

"Blink is a book about how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instant - in the blink of an eye - that actually aren't as simple as they seem. Why are some people brilliant decision makers, while others are consistently inept? Why do some people follow their instincts and win, while others end up stumbling into error? How do our brains really work - in the office, in the classroom, in the kitchen, and in the bedroom? And why are the best decisions often those that are impossible to explain to others?"

I don't know!

The psychologist predicts whether a marriage will last has been scientifically studying it for years. The tennis coach who knows when a player will double-fault was an expert but just magically started seeing it without knowing why. The antiquities experts who recognize a fake at a glance had expertise but did so contrary to the science.

But even if you're an expert- don't trust your immediate reaction! All the politicians thought Warren Harding would be a great president and he was terrible. And there is the example of when police make huge instinct-based mistakes that result in them shooting unarmed, innocent civilians. We respond differently if we are subconsciously primed, a thing we fail to notice so we probably can't protect ourselves against.

The whole section on Coke and Pepsi seemed especially irrelevant and boring.

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The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy

The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The most important, most true, most amazing thing I have ever read. I wish I had read it sooner and often.

Death is one of the most important things humans must confront, but most of don't until and unless we must. Instead, we are caught by surprise. When I had to confront it the first time, I couldn't believe how unprepared our society had left me. There is a lot of information that would make us able to handle it with more grace and less pain. The Death of Ivan Ilych perfectly captures the ironic surprise of the most important event of our lives which we all know will happen but surprises us nonetheless.

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Hard Choices by Hillary Rodham Clinton

Hard Choices by Hillary Rodham Clinton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is a challenge to get through and should have been edited down significantly. Also, it is not really a personal memoir. No shocking revelations here or much personal material at all. It’s primarily a foreign policy book.

That said, it’s a great rundown of foreign policy events from 2008-2012 and sheds a lot of light on current events as well. Clinton gives specific examples around the world of different concerns that the players must weigh and that sometimes conflict: American values, promoting democracy around the world, promoting American economic interests, and promoting peace and security to name a few.

I marked all the countries she discusses at length in tags. But given the current climate, the Russian parts were of special interest to me. Seems like Putin and the Russians have a long list of reasons to dislike Clinton. Since this book was written well in advance of the election interference, the reasons are dispersed throughout the book.

Overall, I have to admire how knowledgeable she is about both foreign and domestic issues, how well she can communicate those issues, and how well she understands the importance of upholding our national values. It was also interesting to see how her disagreements with President Obama were presented in the book, with Obama being the more idealistic leader determined to adhere to these values even more than Clinton. She frequently defended less idealistic and more pragmatic options.



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South and West: From a Notebook by Joan Didion

South and West: From a Notebook by Joan Didion
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I get it. She writes beautifully. Her random jottings in a notebook are better than what most people will ever write in their lives even with edits. And I did enjoy meandering through the racist South of the 1970s. But seriously, what was that California/ Patty Hearst mess at the end?

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Orphans of the Sky by Robert A. Heinlein

Orphans of the Sky by Robert A. Heinlein
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Fun idea for science fiction and interesting religious metaphor. People aboard a generational ship forget everything about Earth, science, and technology, and as the areas with windows to the outside are shut off, they forget even that they are on a ship, but begin to think the ship is all of existence. It's a brilliant concept and I would have loved to see how StarTrek (STNG) would have handled it. Unfortunately, Heinlein's version is not very deeply thoughtful. The characters are not developed very deeply, the society is very primitive and extremely stubborn, and most disappointingly, the women never get revenge for all the sexism inflicted on them. The mutated humans are a fun twist, especially since Siamese twins Joe and Jim. While Joe-Jim is not treated with a lot of dignity by other members of the crew, they are accorded a fair amount of respect by Heinlein, at least relative to the other characters.

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