Review: Looking for Alaska

 Looking for Alaska was John Green's first novel. After reading The Fault in Our Stars I was so impressed I went and looked for more novels by him. As his first novel this book isn't even close to being as good as The Fault in Our Stars.

First, the narrator, Miles Halter is perhaps a bit of a doofus. He's not terribly smart, and goes to boarding school in search of "the great perhaps." He does get a change, with a new roommate ("The Colonel") who's a scholarship student from a poor family, and who pulls him into his orbit with Alaska, who's described as a gorgeous co-ed with a boyfriend.

Perhaps I come from too Asian a background to fully appreciate this story. "The Colonel" strikes me as very false. Someone from a trailer park, for whom the only way out is a university scholarship, but then goes ahead and smokes, drinks, and engages in pranks that could get him expelled from a wealthy private school? No Asian I know in that situation would do any less than Jensen Huang.

Similarly, the protagonist moves to a new school and promptly starts smoking and drinking, despite not enjoying either. In fact, every high schooler depicted in this novel smokes and drinks, frequently to excess. My kids would probably think these guys are idiots, and they wouldn't be wrong.

Eventually, the inevitable happens and someone in the book dies from driving while drunk. There's some redemption as the individual characters blame themselves for not stopping their peer from driving (in fact, they all helped the drunkard by distracting the authorities while they speed off from campus). Then they go right back to drinking and smoking. 

The deluxe edition of this book comes with works-in-progress chapters of the novel. Earlier versions of the novel has Miles sounding like Holden Caulfield. I guess that's where this novel starts from. I don't know why this book won such acclaim as a young adult (YA) novel. I'm glad John Green evolved and grew over time and became capable of writing The Fault in Our Stars. He really did get much better over time.

Review: The Fault in Our Stars

 Last year, I read Everything is Tuberculosis and came away feeling dumber for having read the book. Of course, I'd forgotten that the year before that, I'd bought The Fault in Our Stars during a kindle sale, and had actually read a couple of chapters of it and really enjoyed the voice of the author, and so came back and finished it.

Oh wow. The Fault in Our Stars is sensitive, well-written, well plotted, and emotionally touching in every way Everything is Tuberculosis is not. The story revolves around a cancer victim, Hazel Grace, whose diagnosis was a death sentence partially stayed through a fictional miracle drug. At a support group, she meets Augustus Waters, and the two fall in love.

I don't want to say too much about the novel --- the dialogue is smart, funny, and very characteristic of young adult novels, with that wry sarcasm you hear a lot. That makes everything feel real. The characters rib each other and angst about first world problems --- but because they have cancer or have had cancer you're more than happy to forgive them their foibles. Even the one asshat character has had a member of his family die from cancer.

Finally, after reading this book, the rave reviews for Everything is Tuberculosis makes sense. Cancer for these fictional characters is incurable. People in the book die from cancer. But John Green keeps making the remark in Everything is Tuberculosis that it is curable, we just need to spend money, and it's the inequity in the world humans have set up for themselves that makes Tuberculosis victims die from it. Clearly the heaps of praise for his non fiction comes from people who read and remember The Fault in Our Stars.

I still think Green's non-fiction made me dumber for having read it, but I'm now willing to forgive him that book since this book was so good.

Review: The Age of Diagnosis

 The Age of Diagnosis is written by a neurologist/psychologist.  It starts with a discussion of Huntington's disease, which is a genetic disease with no known cure, and goes through case study after case study as to why even though there's a non invasive definitive test, people don't get diagnosed for it. Apparently, people show up at her office thinking that taking the test is the responsible thing but looking for permission to not test.

Then she launches into discussions of much more controversial topics, especially topics like autism, which has had increasingly broad ranging diagnostic criteria, to the point where almost anyone could self-diagnose as being on the spectrum. The author is british, and when she spells out the criteria for getting a diagnosis (one thing I learned in this book is that self diagnostic tests are not accurate, and as many as 50% of people who self-diganose are mistakenly thinking that they're on the spectrum when they're actually not!), I'm astonished that the rates of autism have been going up so much. And then she reveals that a lot of the increase in diagnostics come from a small number of physician groups who have an incentive to diagnose more people as being autistic! Even worse than that, the highest functioning autistic folks presume to speak for everyone on the autism spectrum, and of course, the ones most afflicted with autism have a hard time even getting dressed, let alone speak up for their positions, which leads to huge amounts of conflict both within and without the medical and patient communities. (She doesn't mention the elephant in the room, which is that by writing the criteria for autism so broadly, the medical community has inadvertently armed the anti-vaccine folks, who're using the increased number of diagnosis to turn public opinion against vaccines!)

There's a bunch of other diseases discussed in the book, including breast and ovarian cancers (certain genetic mutations vastly increase your chance of getting both, and one way to protect yourself against those cancers is to have those organs removed, but then you have to trade that off against when to have the procedure because you want to maintain maximum optionality for having offspring), down syndrome (testing there has sufficient false positives to make the decision a hard one), long covid, lyme disease, and probably one or more items that I've forgotten about because I read this book in paper format and not on the kindle.

The book ends with a discussion of pyschiatric syndromes and psycho somatic disorders (which the author takes pains to note that a psychosomatic disability is just as real and painful to live with as one with physical manifestations). One of her concerns is that the diagnosis of having one of those boxes you in, and if you believe in that diagnosis enough, it becomes an excuse to not work on getting better in those areas. You start to believe in that instead of your own ability to induce positive changes in yourself!

The book left me quite a lot to think about even though it's short and easily finished in a handful of hours. Definitely worth your time.

Review: King Sorrow

 Stephen King (and his son Joe Hill, who wrote King Sorrow) books all have the same plot structure: there's a problem which the protagonist solves through some supernatural means. It works and empowers the protagonist, who takes it further, and then the negative side effects show up and gets worse and worse until he/she loses control of the situation, upon which the protagonist has to deal with the situation in which the solution becomes much worse than the original problem.

It's a simple plot structure, but within that structure you can tell a large number of stories and the nature of the plot structure if handled well draws you in and keeps you reading, provided that the characters themselves are compelling.

King Sorrow works on that structure, with the protagonists being 6 friends, one of which got into trouble because he did a good deed one day while visiting his mom in prison. To solve this problem, the 6 friends summon a dragon to deal with the evil-doers. The deal with the titular dragon in the novel is that the friends take turns choosing some deserving evil-doer a painful death via dragon.

Where the book rings false is that I have no problem in real life dealing with the kind of power Joe Hill portrays. In this case the side effect is innocent people dying but the reality is that when you look at the scale of damage certain folks like Vladimir Putin cause the kind of collateral damage described in the book wouldn't bother me whatsoever. Yet, Joe Hill makes this a central dilemma of the book, and the only person in the group of 6 for whom that doesn't bother is of course the villain.

The actual fantasy of the book is well done. I enjoyed the urban fantasy aspects, the references to the Arthurian mythos, the tie-in to the internet and trolling. I also admire how Joe Hill started the narrative of the book in the 1970s, and then advancing the narrative by decades to 2022 over time, allowing the protagonists to age and dealing with contemporary events and technological advancements. This integrates the novel with your know.

While this is unlikely to be close to the best novel you've read this year, it was good enough for me to keep reading it (though to be honest I had to take several breaks) and finish it within the library's 3 week return period.

Review: Notes on Being a Man

 Notes on Being a Man is Scott Galloway's open letter to his two teenage sons. It falls into the same genre of self-help books as Succeeding, and since they're both written by rich white guys who won the birth lottery, have the same attitude of excessive confidence and insufficient exposure to different lifestyles and alternative approaches to life.

Nevertheless, both are highly opinionated, and not afraid to call on BS, which means that they're worth reading, and entertaining while reading. In particular, Scott Galloway is one of the few faculty members willing to berate and publicly call out Universities as completely failing to serve their mission by turning themselves into exclusive clubs and aiming for a high rejection rate rather than attempting to educate as many deserving kids as possible.

As smart, talented, and hardworking as their parents were at their age, young people can’t get into the same-quality colleges, higher education having figured out a way to extract more money by artificially constraining supply, thereby forcing these kids to attend lesser places that are—wait for it—exponentially more expensive. (kindle loc 1600)

The top twenty universities could expand their supply—seats for incoming freshmen—50 percent within the decade. But they won’t, as the prestige that stems from scarcity is the ointment for irrelevance that most academics thirst for. (kindle loc 3189)

Rich people who got rich and get to pontificate a lot get to tell their life story. Galloway tells his with an unusual amount of humility --- he got into UCLA on appeal because his mom was a single mother despite having awful grades. He got hired as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley because he was a rower and the interviewer hired anyone who was a rower. As a selfish person he divorced his first wife for no good reason other than that he wanted to move to New York, having become a wealthy successful guy. Basically, his big skill was being able to give great talks, which shows that you can be successful as long as you can talk your way into other people giving you money.

Nevetheless, the book is full of great aphorisms that are told well, and as someone who's a parent, would do well to heed:

The kid you have this summer is leaving… forever. The skinny boy with the lion’s mane who tiptoed into our room and, on first evidence of me stirring, would say, “Dad, let’s make a plan for the day,” is gone. It’s incredibly sad. A relative of his will be back next summer, but different. The compensation is that there will be new attributes you find hilarious and endearing. But still, sad. I put, mentally, a big sign above my boys’ heads: LIMITED EDITION, YOUR ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD SON, ONE SUMMER ONLY. (kindle loc 3200)

 Central to the prosperity and survival of our species is mothers and fathers who have an irrational passion for their kids’ well-being. To fill this role for people who aren’t your offspring is generosity toward the planet and species. I’ve never understood the idolatry of Steve Jobs. The world needs more engaged fathers, not a better fucking phone. (kindle loc 3764)

Of course, I'm biased. Whenever I read an author, I largely judge them by whether I agree with them. 

the United States is the best place to make money; Europe is the best place to spend it. (kindle loc 1582)

(The preceding sentences prior to my quote, however, I completely disagree with).

One of the criticisms I read of this book is that many of the issues Galloway talks about apply also to young women, or even non-white men. I agree. On the other hand, I think that criticism ignores the purpose of the book, which is for a well-intentioned father to leave notes for his son so that if they ever decide his stuff is worth reading (which seems unlikely if his sons are anything like mine), they will have something to refer to. (And they will have no excuse that their Dad didn't say anything or provide decent advice)

If there's any criticism I have about this book, it seems to me that Galloway has pretty low standards for being a father. He admits that he spent most of his kids' childhood traveling for work and focusing work rather than being there for them. He seems to think that the extent of a father's job is to show up for the kids' soccer games and providing lots of money (he flies his kids business class). I guess for a lot of people just becoming super wealthy is the big attribute that most people would want in a father.

The book  is worth reading because it's entertaining. I'm not sure I'd agree with Galloway, but hey, one person can only live one life, as as Pengtoh says, the best way to get to live multiple lives is to read a lot.

Review: The Escape

 The Escape won an award for the best Sports-related book of the year. It was on sale for $3 on Amazon (and the library didn't have a copy). The book is an autobiography of Robert Millar (now Philippa York), a professional cyclist in the 1980s and 1990s who transitioned to being a woman after he retired from the sport.

What makes the book unique is that rather than being ghost-written by David Walsh, it is written as a series of conversations between Walsh and York as they are journalists for two different periodicals covering the 2020 Tour de France. So the book goes from the 2020 Tour de France to older editions of the same race from Robert Millar's point of view, which sort of makes you think that the various editions of the Tour are largely similar, going over the same mountains with similar rivalries between the various participants.

This is not true, of course. Millar retired from cycling just as the EPO era was taking off. Before that, the drug of choice were steroids, which weren't actually very effective for endurance sports. So while York does admit that Millar did occasionally dope, she could claim that while cheating was rampant it didn't have much effect on the race.

Probably the best reason to read this book is to gain an understanding of how someone could grow up wanting to be a woman yet was gifted with a strong body that could reach the pinnacle of an extremely male-dominated and demanding sport, but at all points could still wish that he was a woman. Keep in mind that Millar did marry a straight woman and had 2 children!

Having said that, you get the feeling that Millar was such a completely different person from York (Walsh mentioned that no way would have wanted to drive around France with Millar!) that her perspective on Millar was maybe quite warped.

I am of two minds about this book. On the one hand, I think I would have preferred a traditional ghost-written autobiography. The way the book was written it felt constantly jarring to flip from a contemporary Tour De France to previous races. I feel like I gained a lot more understanding of what a body dysmorphic person feels. But I also got no special insight on what a professional cyclist's life was like. Millar's story was just too unique.

The book is short and a quick read so maybe you should just read it and judge for yourself.

Review: Jan Ullrich - The Best there Never Was

 I saw Jan Ullrich on the used book shelf at the library for $3, and at that price I bought it and took it home and read it.

The book is written in what I consider an odd fashion, with the author going over Jan's career coming out of East Germany's training system and then joining Deutsche Telekom as a budding pro. His successes and failures (which are well documented) were at this point in the book attributed to his upbringing and personality (the guy loved food and when he was in his off season was famous for wiping out the contents of his friends' refrigerators).

Then you get into the later half of the book before the author brings up what was common in that era of cycling, which was doping with EPO. There's no question that Jan Ullrich was an enormously talented rider (his teammates described him going from getting dropped to beating them over 3 days during a training camp), and that everyone else in that era doped with EPO because there were no tests for it and the UCI simply set a hematocrit level that was acceptable, essentially giving everyone a license to dope up to the 50% mark. What I didn't know was that when the test was finally developed you could go back to urine samples taken from those years and it would definitely prove that Ullrich had EPO markers in his urine.

I have a controversial opinion about doping, which is that it should be allowed as long as the doctors and researchers involved documented and published what it did. The sport would change from being hero worship about bike riders to something like Formula F-1, where the true heroes are the engineers and mechanics rather than the drivers. I could definitely get behind a sport where the doctors and physiologists are the heroes getting paid multiple millions of dollars in salary and getting a share of the prize money. The contribution to medical science would be significant, and people would give up on hero-worshiping athletes simply for being genetically gifted. Of course, doping does distort the field --- the prize would go towards people whose bodies respond better to doping. On the other hand, none of the sporting events I've ever bothered to watch seem particularly big on "natural" human behavior anyway.

Anyway, this part of the book was badly written, I think partly because Dan Friebe probably assumes any reader of the book is a big fan of Ullrich and would know all the sordid details of his life already. I certainly didn't, so kept wondering why some irrelevant details kept coming up until the reveal of the doping scandal that ended Ullrich's career. The story all seemed pretty sad up to that point but then once you realized everyone in the Peloton was doping you found yourself wondering what was the point.

What was interesting to me was that Friebe indicated in the book that Germany became a big cycling country only after Ullrich won the Tour de France and Deutsche Telekom (later T-Mobile) became a world famous cycling team. I'd always thought that Germany was huge on cycling because I saw so many Germans on bike tours, but of course soccer was always more popular. In any case, apparently because of this Jan Ullrich got way more attention in Germany than even Lance Armstrong did in the USA during the period, which probably affected his mental health as well.

Anyway, the story of lost potential in the book comes across, as well as a note that while Ullrich never lived up to his potential, mental fortitude and discipline must have genetic components as well (and obviously many people will tell you we're all moist robots without free wheel), so overall Ullrich probably never had a chance despite his prodigious physical talent.

Review: LG Gram 17" Intel Core Ultra 7 258V Laptop

 With my ancient Dell XPS laptop feeling super slow in 2025, I decided it was time to acquire a new laptop. The Dells are no longer my laptop of choice, after they started emulated the Apple Touchbar even though Apple has already abandoned it as a stupidly bad idea. Thinkpads are no longer priced competitively, even as much as I love their touchpoint.

In the past, I've always bought the smallest, lightest laptop with a combination of portability and good battery life. But when I saw that the 2025 LG Gram 17" laptop was on sale for  $1000 during black Friday, I took a look at the specs and bought it, reasoning that I could try it for a month and see whether I liked it despite how big it would be.

The machine arrived and it's impressive how light it is. It weighs 3.22 pounds (or less than the 15 inch Macbook Air, and less than the 14 inch MacBook Pro, though slightly more than the 13 inch MacBook Pro). The 17" screen is huge, and runs at 2560x1600 resolution, with 2 USB C ports, 2 USB-A ports, a HDMI slot, and a headphone/mic jack. Because the weight is spread over such a large surface area, it feels a lot less dense than any of the other laptops I compared it against.

The keyboard feels great, and the processor is fast, especially if you turn off power savings mode. I tried several photo editing programs on it and they definitely work through photos quite a bit faster than my old laptop did. The touchpad was also pretty good --- it was big, did a good job of palm rejection, and very responsive. I still prefer having a trackball or mouse for fine great photo work, but for editing a blog post or writing e-mail this is a great laptop. It even has a dedicated numeric keypad for working on spreadsheets.

The battery life isn't as great as I was hoping for, given the relatively large battery and how the Intel 258V processor is supposed to have power efficiency in mind. It definitely qualifies for "all day" battery life, but don't expect more than an 8 hour day, and it will go much less if you're editing videos or photos. If you're writing in Microsoft Word you'll get much more than 8 hours. (Sad to say, modern web browsers are not power efficient!)

Sleep mode is usually where windows laptops do worse than Macbooks. To my surprise this laptop does a good job in sleep mode, losing about 5% overnight. This is more than good enough.

Needless to say, this is a great laptop. You wouldn't commute with it on your bike, but if you were doing a fixed based tour or on a hiking tour where luggage delivery delivers your baggage, it's definitely something worth carrying around. Color me impressed!

Review: The Housekeeper and the Professor

 The Housekeeper and the Professor is Yoko Ogawa's novel about a housekeeper who cleans the house for a former math professor who's lost the ability to form new memories a la Memento or 50 First Dates. Like in Memento, the professor solves his problem by writing notes to himself. He still has a good fundamental grasps on Math and loves number theory, so educates the housekeeper (who doesn't have a good math background) on basics like prime numbers, perfect numbers, twin primes, and Euler's identity.

The novel is basically a literary person's idea of what would make a Math person happy with a novel. It's discussion of Math is shallow (for instance, the housekeeper never gets an explication of Euler's identity), and there are lots of little factoids but no real explication of number theory. There's even a discussion of Andrew Wiles and Fermat's Last Theorem, but again, no broader explanation of what it is.

Ultimately, the story is about the housekeeper, her son, and the professor (nobody is named in the novel), and his past history, and it's supposed to be a feel good slice of life novel. Unfortunately, it uses the same schtick as Memento, which is such a superior story that this novel feels dumb instead. Fortunately, the novel is short but despite that I found myself thinking that I wasted my time and should have rewatched Memento instead.

Review: Codex

 Codex is Lev Grossman's book about a rare book hunt in Manhattan by an investment banker who was roped into doing this prior to a transfer to London. It is full of unlikeable characters (except on very sympathetic researcher), and is chock full of interesting facts about medieval books that nevertheless fails to interest me.

I have no idea why I kept reading it despite the lack of interest. The protagonist, for instance, doesn't seem like the kind of person who would unpack books themselves rather than hire a task rabbit. While hunting for this rare book, he encounters an attractive young scholar, and they develop a relationship. Yet in the final section of the novel when he has a chance to bring Margaret along he doesn't for no reason other than for the author to finish off the novel with some sort of a moral.

Lev Grossman's novels are not generally very good --- the Magicians, for instance is a much better TV show than the books would indicate. I cannot recommend this book to anyone.

Review: A Marriage at Sea

 A Marriage At Sea is Sophie Elmhirst's retelling of the story of Maurice and Maralyn Bailey, who survived a 118 day ordeal in a liferaft/dinghy combo that they used to escape after their sailing yacht (a 31' sloop). Elmhirst is not a sailor, so the book is lacking in nautical details. For instance, despite the notation that they day dreamed about their next boat during their days cast adrift, there's nothing about why they decided that a ketch would be better than a sloop-rigged boat, despite their sloop having already successfully crossed the Atlantic, and the sinking of the Auralyn was not due to its sail configuration.

The book is short and moves quickly, rapidly getting past their respective childhood, meeting, and marriage. The Baileys are quite experienced sailors, and they proceeded with their plan in incremental steps, building their own boat, selling their house, and taking shorter sails before committing to the longer journey to New Zealand. Maurice even applied for a job in New Zealand (their original intended destination) before setting forth.

Elmhirst clearly disliked Maurice Bailey. Her descriptions of him are never flattering, and she never notes how unusual it was in 1973, that the man attributed his survival to his wife. (And Maralyn Bailey did a lot, including a stint where she was nursing him back to life while keeping the liferaft operational as it was leaking and they had to pump it back up several times a day) What was even more extraordinary was that Maralyn Bailey didn't know how to swim!

Needless to say, their rescue (after 7 boats passed them by!) was a world-wide sensational story, with the story rights and press rights paying for their much bigger second boat and a second book, which wasn't a success because their second expedition succeeded. (Given that they'd already made it across the Atlantic once it was quite probably that making it to Patagonia wasn't as big a challenge as New Zealand would have been) And of course, today with modern equipment (and a Garmin Inreach Mini) such an expedition would not have resulted in 117 days cast adrift. (The author did note that Maurice didn't even have a radio onboard as he wanted complete isolation from the outside world)

The book doesn't overstay its welcome, and made me curious as to what the original book written by the Baileys was like (it's out of print). Chances are, the story is so compelling someone will make a movie out of it and that original book will get reprinted. I enjoyed it!

Maurice wasn’t quite able to grasp that it wasn’t the voyage itself that had made their last book an attractive commercial proposition, but its failure. No one would have suggested they write a book of their travels if they’d arrived safely in New Zealand. No one wants to read the story of an adventure going right. (kindle loc 2066)

Review: The Sexual Evolution

 Way back in the 2000s, during a club ride, Dick Matthews turned to me at lunch and said, "I don't think I've ever seen a D rider eat! Maybe they treat eating the way the rest of us treat sex --- it has to be done in secret and in private, and nobody can see you do it."

On Page 186 of The Sexual Evolution, I came across this passage:

The taboos that we often find associated with sex in most cultures are instead attached to eating among the Trobriand peoples. Eating is always done alone, usually at home, and with one's back turned toward any others who may be present. It is considered very rude to eat in front of others, and those who are spotted eating suffer embarrassment.

When it comes time for selecting a mate, Trobriand courtship is pretty standard. Couples spend time together talking and having fun; they have sex, of course, and spend the night with each other. To signal their interest in marriage, the woman stays in the man's home after sunrise, instead of scurrying home before breakfast, as usually expected. If the young man's mother accepts her son's choice of bride, she brings them a cooked breakfast and --- gasp! --- they eat together. The sharing of a meal together signifies the consummation of the marriage, and the married couple will eat together for about a year. At that time, the marriage either dissolves or is declared permanent, but either way, they go back to eating separately.

Maybe I should stop writing now --- if the quotation above doesn't get you to read this book, why would you bother reading anything else I have to say about this book? Ok, Nathan Lents, the author of the book is a professor at CUNY and identifies as gay. He has an agenda when writing this book, which is to show that the development of sexuality amongst animals is widely diverse, and the current political agenda to fix gender into 2 is artificial and has no backing in nature.

To do this, he first turns to the animal world, and describes, for instance, the bluegill sunfish, which have 2 sexes but 3 (or maybe even 4, depending on how you count) genders. There's the female which lays eggs, then there's the large male that builds a dwelling (which usually exists amongst other sunfish dwellings, and the more central dwellings are considered more desirable since the eggs that get eaten by predators will tend to be the ones at the periphery) to attract the female to lay eggs. Then there's the small male, which in its early years basically hangs out and when the large male is distracted, sneaks in to fertilize the eggs a female may have laid. The small male grows to become a medium sized male (and never becomes a large male), and those actually try to cohabit with a large male as a cooperator, helping chase away predators in exchange for some fertilization rights. This illustrates the author's contention that gender roles can be different (these are all in the same species), and there's nothing binary about gender roles even when the actual sex is binary.

There's a huge exploration of various animal behaviors, which is fascinating and full of fun reading all in its own right. The author draws example after examples of birds exhibiting homosexuality, forming same sex dyads in many cases, and he offers hypothesis as to why that is so. The exploration of great apes and the comparison between the common chimpanzees and bonobos (which many people are no doubt familiar with) also illustrates the concepts.

The book is not divorced from politics. Frequently the author will note that societies run by females are naturally much better for everyone, even the males. The example of the Silverback Gorilla is that even though the dominant male essentially gets the harem all to himself, he had to do so by fighting (and killing) his way to the top, and most males never get there. Even after he gets there, he will eventually be disposed of by an up and coming new alpha, so his life is harsh as well. By contrast, life is much better amongst the bonobos, with everyone sharing in food and getting plenty of sex. (The author does note that the bonobos evolved in an environment where food sources were plentiful)

Then there's the exploration of human sexuality amongst many cultures, of which the Trobriand is just one of many discussed and explored. You sense that the author feels sad that of all the cultures to win the globe it's really sad that the most repressive sexual cultures of the Abrahamic religions were the ones that dominated.

In any case, the book is dense, takes a long time to read, not because it's badly written but because there's so much stuff here to learn and think about. In retrospect I should have just bought the kindle version instead of being cheap and checking out this book from the library. Recommended!

 

Review: Grunt

 In truth, this review of Grunt should be marked a re-read, since I'd read it before but had forgotten to write a review. In this book, Mary Roach in her inimitable style explores the various scientists/engineers who work for the military and design the equipment.and procedures that are used by the men (and women) in uniform.

Mary Roach shies away from the sexy and fun stuff like weapons and armor, but goes for the weird stuff like penile reconstruction surgery for victims of IEDs. This made me a bit queasy to read about so you need to have a strong stomach.

There's also stuff like noise reduction and hearing loss (which makes sense), submarine rescue (which is pretty astonishing, but apparently those rescues using a diving bell like apparatus did happen successfully!).

The book is enjoyable to read and like all of Mary Roach's books worth your time without a lot of fluff. Recommended.

2026 Book Reviews

 Non-Fiction

• Science Under Seige
• Cosmos
• Grunt
• The Sexual Evolution
• A Marriage At Sea
• The Escape
• Jan Ullrich - The Best That Never Was
• Notes on Being a Man
• The Age of Diagnosis

Fiction

• Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance
• Codex
• The Housekeeper and the Professor
• The Fault in Our Stars
• Looking for Alaska

Graphic Novels

• Batman by Grant Morrison

Re-read: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Mainteneance

 One of the perils of reading books to your kids in an effort to mold their tastes is that while they might not take to the reading, you're going to get sucked in and re-read the book. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was something I started reading to Boen in an effort to get him to stop reading easier books. I got him a couple of chapters into it and to my surprise it was surprisingly easy reading --- the thing about having done many bicycle tours by this point in his life, the touring aspects of the book were completely comprehensible and enjoyable for Boen.

I enjoyed the book on this reading, even getting into the section on the various philosophers that I'd always tried to zip through as fast as I could. What's interesting for me on this reading was the considerable emphasis on academic life. At no point do we get any motivation from Pirsig's narrator as to why he spent all that time teaching. It's quite clear that after his nervous breakdown he was capable of holding on to other jobs like technical writing.

Another aspect of the book that comes to mind was how uninterested Pirsig's narrator was in systemic answers. At the time of publication the United States was comparatively wealthy compared to the rest of the world, and hence the narrator had the luxury of assuming that physical well being could be taken for granted. In the current political environment that's not quite possible, and the book provides no solutions and even seems to try to move away from seeking such solutions.

To the extent that craftsmanship has become devalued in modern society in favor of an ever bigger emphasis on the use of AI to achieve goals with minimum effort, it's quite clear that the book failed to influence society in a better direction. I suppose it's too much to expect a book, any book to influence society to any such extent. One can only fantasize about a society that takes the tenets described by the book to a greater extent.

Review: Cosmos

 Boen was resisting learning math, so I bought him Cosmos, A Spacetime Odyssey and we started watching it together. Bowen got really into it, and I bought him Cosmos: Possible Worlds as well, and all that reminded me that I owned the original Carl Sagan book and then I read that as well.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that my interest in science and decision to become a scientist was driven by the original TV series. I will say that there's an elegance and sense of wonder conveyed by the Cosmos TV shows that I do not find in other documentaries. Xiaoqin's been watching various PBS series, and nobody comes close to Carl Sagan or Neil Degrasse Tyson as hosts. Their enthusiasm for science comes right through.

Not only is Cosmos a science documentary, it's also a history of science documentary. I love the episode about Clair Paterson fighting the oil/gas industry to make leaded gasoline a thing of the past. The obvious parallels to the failed climate change accords is stark. It's also how prescient Carl Sagan was about the need to popularize science in this parable about the library of Alexandria:

The permanence of the stars was questioned; the justice of slavery was not. Science and learning in general were the preserve of a privileged few. The vast population of the city had not the vaguest notion of the great discoveries taking place within the Library. New findings were not explained or popularized. The research benefited them little. Discoveries in mechanics and steam technology were applied mainly to the perfection of weapons, the encouragement of superstition, the amusement of kings. The scientists never grasped the potential of machines to free people.* The great intellectual achievements of antiquity had few immediate practical applications. Science never captured the imagination of the multitude. There was no counterbalance to stagnation, to pessimism, to the most abject surrenders to mysticism. When, at long last, the mob came to burn the Library down, there was nobody to stop them. (kindle loc 5565)

 Obviously, I'm very happy to see my kids being exposed to the influences I was when growing up. I'm really sad that the US is trending to become an anti-science society as warned by Carl Sagan. But as long as we can find scientists who're willing to stand up and explain to the general population why this stuff is relevant I can hold out hope that as the consequences of ignoring science become more and more obvious we can have a return to sanity. One thing that the scientific community has completely fallen down on is its failure to reward and award prestige to the people doing the important work.

For the newer TV shows, I found Possible Worlds to be less interesting --- it has quite a bit more speculative stuff, and I didn't feel like it was as strong about science history. Nevertheless both kids watched both shows and it was a good use of my Google video credits. Recommended!

Review: Science Under Seige

 Science Under Siege is the account of the authors' experience working as researchers in both climate science and vaccines, both of whom have suffered death threats (both authors have needed police protection at their houses), widespread industry attempts to discredit them and attempts to intimidate them (not to mention online smear campaigns and publicity aimed at causing them to lose their jobs).

As you can imagine, this is a depressing book to read, and it took me many days and multiple pauses because it was distressing. The book points out that there are several actors that have to get rid of the professional science/educated class in order to achieve their goals (which are largely to retain their wealth):

• plutocrats (rich people)
• petro-states (Russia, the Arabic states, and obviously oil producing states such as Texas, Alberta)
• propagandists (who make their money off being paid by the above as well as by hawking alternative medicines)

It's very interesting to me that after hearing Carl Sagan and Neil Degrasse Tyson continually dispasraged by science snobs, these are the first two bona-fide scientists who referred to Carl Sagan as "great." I agree with them. In a world where the public has little to no science education in school (even in Singapore, the science education was abysmal), TV shows like Cosmos was what got me into science and enthusiastic about science. Science communications and education is essential or the electorate will lose their support for science, given how much more powerful these other agents of society are.

The details in the book are pretty telling, where the one of the authors were accused of making money off selling vaccines even though their vaccines were given away for free for no commercial return. And obviously climate denial has been a thing for ages. The authors do point out that despair is not an appropriate reaction --- that's what the opponents want you to do --- is to give up and do nothing. They also point out that mainstream newspapers like the New York Times have in recent years gone from caring more about accuracy and correctness to only caring about "balance." As a result, the lab leak theory (which apparently does not have much support from real scientists) for COVID19 was given more credence than it should have been.

The end of the book has the authors showing off their geek creds by analogizing their battle against misinformation and anti-science with the plot of The Lord of the Rings --- except in this case they're not expecting the white wizard to come in and save them.

On reflection, ultimately the reason science will eventually win is that nature doesn't care whether you believe in scientific theories. The consequences of ignoring climate science is already being felt today, and the consequences of not getting vaccinated are going to be pretty severe as well. The American public that has bought into anti-vaccine and anti-climate propaganda are going to be in for a very painful few decades.

You should read this book. It's not going to be fun reading but it's essential.

Review: Batman by Grant Morrison

 Grant Morrison won Eisner Awards, so I had high expectations of his Batman book. I came away quite disappointed --- clearly, I've aged out of the audience for this. The first thing is that the collection is badly organized, so you're getting fragments of the story out of order or with connecting stories taken out. That made it quite challenging to stay engaged and interested throughout the reading.

The second issue is that you've got someone introduced as Bruce Wayne's son. By the middle of the book you realize there's no way Bruce Wayne is a secret identity --- everyone seems to know that he's Batman! At no point do we ever get the feeling that Batman is competent. He seems to be bewildered, reacting to events rather than anticipating them.

Then there's the mystical stuff involving Ra's al Ghul and his daughter, and that storyline was never very attractive to me. I checked this book out of the library and am glad I didn't pay money for this.

Books of the Year 2025

 I read 72 books this year, which is more than my usual count, probably because I started reading more graphic novels again, which tend to read fast. The best book I read this year was probably Twitter and Tear Gas. If you want to understand why the civil rights movement and the labor movement won, while "occupy wall street" and the "arab spring" failed, this is the book to read. Zeynep Tufekci's writing is worth reading wherever you can find it. It's rare to find a book where I regretted checking it out from the library instead of buying it, and this book is exceptional. Other exceptional non-fiction were Abundance and The Woman Behind the New Deal. I will admit that I treated those two books as escapist fiction into a world where the American people actually elected leaders who could do good things.

The best fiction I read this year was Exhalation, but of course that was a re-read, so it shouldn't count. The best novel that was new to me was probably Norwegian Wood. It got me to read more Haruki Murakami, though that binge didn't last. A runner up would be A Widow for One Year.

The best graphic novel I read was Flashpoint. It's an excellent story and very much worth your time, even if you're not normally into superheroes.

I only got through one Audio Book this year, The Power Broker. It's well worth your time and you should read it in conjunction with Abundance to see how the American system went from being capable of doing amazing feats of construction in New York City to being barely able to build a toilet for $1 million in San Francisco. It's not for bad reasons, but you still wish that the pendulum hadn't quite swung all the way.

Here's to another year of great reading!

Review: Very Far Away From Anywhere Else

 I remember reading Very Far Away From Anywhere Else as a teenager and finding it very moving. It was sort of a teen romance story, but without any external drama, or even an unrealistic ending. I worried as I re-read it as an adult that it would be one of those stories that didn't age well, but I shouldn't have worried --- this is Ursula Le Guin, and the story is timeless.

Owen is a nerdy, introverted kid with aspirations for MIT and big ideas. He doesn't have any friends and is alienated from his own parents since they don't understand him but have expectations for him that he doesn't want to live up to.  He meets Natalie (or rather, finally notices her, since they're in the same classes) one day on the bus and they finally start to talk and get to know each other.

Their relationship develops but encounters the uncertainty and mixed-upness that teenagers would have, except in this case Natalie is much more mature than Owen, and knows what she wants out of life and Owen doesn't.

I won't spoil the ending for you --- it's a bittersweet ending and not the usual saccharine endings that most Americans would expect. The book's a short read, and well, if you're anything like the kid I was when I was 16, it will haunt you for years.