Steeped in Science, Submersed in Story

I do love Department Q. This one is one of the better ones in the series, and it was enjoyable. Twisty turny investigation path, good characters, all the good stuff.

I've got to say that the structure of these novels is a lot like the TV show Criminal Minds. You spend a lot of time with the team working the case, but you also have interludes with the sociopathic/psychopathic villain. I suppose these interludes are to increase the urgency for the case -- you know that this cold case is not over and done with. There are related very bad things going on, and if they work quickly enough, they just might save a life. The down side is that we know who the villain is, and they're not fun to spend time with. I find the villains in both this series and the TV show a little, umm, exaggerated. And I don't like the interludes. I'd prefer the books without them.

BUT, nobody asked me how to write these things. And the finished book, with my favorite character Assad featured prominently, is interesting and fun. And I appreciated a bit of a twist at the end -- it didn't turn out quite the way I had figured. Or how other characters had figured. So that was why I say it's a little better than some of the other books in the series.

I got a free copy from First to Read.

This book has a little trouble hanging together. The first section is an exploration of her relationship with her dogs and their relationships with each other. I didn't know anything about the author before this book, so maybe those more familiar with her will make more sense of this. It is memoir, but without personal detail, somehow. Her husband is to be despised. I think. I'm not sure. Her dogs are definitely to be loved. Her live dogs channel the spirit of her dead dog. And then she breaks into scripture.

The second section is a strong defense of pit bulls. It centers on cases in which pit bull terriers are killed by state agencies on suspicion of being dangerous. This seems unfair. And then she follows up with a defense of dog fighting. This is a wonderful breed. And if you love this breed, you will let this breed do what it was bred to do, and fight. Why is Spanish bull fighting culturally valuable but Japanese dog fighting is not?

Okay, this is good for me because I never in a million years would have asked myself or anyone else those questions. Rich people's terriers are safe, poor people's are not. Dogs are killed without due process. Okay, I was with her. And then... what's so bad about dog fighting after all? Umm... really lost me there. I suspect there will be many readers who can't read this without throwing their copies against the wall. I got through it. And like I said, it's good to read something shocking once in a while. Oh, and then she sticks this in her argument for decriminalization of some dog fights: "To have the dog in you is to have Christ in your heart." Hmmm. Not sure I followed her there either. But she does point out the hypocrisy of certain humane organizations who rescue dogs from alleged dog fighting rings only to argue that they be put to death because they are bred (bred, not raised -- this justifies killing even the puppies) to be dangerous. I get that.

And then the last section is a meditation on the stray dogs of the cities of the world. This one actually makes a little sense to me, so that's great. She argues that how we treat stray dogs is tied to our humanity and our outlook on life in general. Her stories are very one-sided but again, make a little sense, at least.

There's almost no science or nature in this book, and I guess I initially picked it up because I thought it would be a little more grounded than it is. But not everyone is looking for broad factual stuff. One thing is for sure: this is an interesting read. A little scatterbrained, but very interesting. For me, it was only okay, which is 2 stars on goodreads and 3 stars most other places.

I got a free copy of this from Net Galley.

This story reminds me of harsh stroke modern art, or puppet theater or stylized dance/theater. It's well written and inspired by the historical character of Sai Jinhua, but every possible opportunity to increase the pathos of the story has been taken. In an effort to capture our western sympathies for this woman, a victim of fate, everything has been made as terrible as possible.

Instead of the historical story of being in a brothel as a late teen or 20 year old, this Jinhua lands there at age 7. The woman who runs it is so cruel that at the footbinding ceremony, she threatens to drop her pet dog into the kitchen fire because... because... well, I can't think of a reason besides just to prove to us that she is unimaginably cruel and unfeeling, a caricature. Jinhua's only meaningful relationships are with her father who is executed at the opening of the novel and with women who are either forced or hired to serve her, who are devoted to her. Jinhua is portrayed as so innocent and full of life throughout the novel that she becomes a caricature as well.

So the characters are exaggerated. But there's something to be said for a simplistic story told with exaggerated characters and action. It gives us a snapshot of China before and during the Boxer Rebellion. It is striking in its bold strokes, its melodrama. It is more art than history, but a work of art that will hold your attention while it lasts.

I got a free copy of this from First to Read.

I'm at a loss on how to describe this book in an efficient way. There are stories from Shaw's career as a transplant surgeon. They are mostly stories of failure, as if he's contemplating the ones that bother him over time. There are stories of the people he worked with in the OR. There are also stories of his personal life. All are told with a simple narrative style that is fairly engaging.

But the organization of the book lost me. He jumps to and fro in his life, back, forward, back again but not so far. But he never gives us the linear bio that's needed in the intro to allow him to do it. He had three wives (serially), and in one story when he referred to his wife, I literally had no idea which one he meant. Does that matter? It doesn't really make a difference in the story, but it was hard to keep track. He also had other family members coming and going with little intro. Over 200 pages in was when we learn he has kids, and he's spent some serious narrative time in that part of his life already. His first mention of his own cancer is almost passing. Wait a minute, did he just say...?!?

It's as if all his stories start in the middle, with no beginnings and very few endings. I was really lost, and it gave the impression that his family and personal life wasn't all that important, and yet he spent a lot of time talking about it. There are three titled sections of the book, but I couldn't figure out how the heck they were organized or why stories were in there. There's a random story about his sister's childhood concussion in the second story. I still have no idea why what or several other stories are even in the book.

So... if you're looking for some stories about life in the OR, especially in the early days of liver transplants, this is the book for you. Go for it. Just don't get hung up on making sense of the overall story line.

Got a free copy of this from First to Read.

I'm at a loss on how to describe this book in an efficient way. There are stories from Shaw's career as a transplant surgeon. They are mostly stories of failure, as if he's contemplating the ones that bother him over time. There are stories of the people he worked with in the OR. There are also stories of his personal life. All are told with a simple narrative style that is fairly engaging.

But the organization of the book lost me. He jumps to and fro in his life, back, forward, back again but not so far. But he never gives us the linear bio that's needed in the intro to allow him to do it. He had three wives (serially), and in one story when he referred to his wife, I literally had no idea which one he meant. Does that matter? It doesn't really make a difference in the story, but it was hard to keep track. He also had other family members coming and going with little intro. Over 200 pages in was when we learn he has kids, and he's spent some serious narrative time in that part of his life already. His first mention of his own cancer is almost passing. Wait a minute, did he just say...?!?

It's as if all his stories start in the middle, with no beginnings and very few endings. I was really lost, and it gave the impression that his family and personal life wasn't all that important, and yet he spent a lot of time talking about it. There are three titled sections of the book, but I couldn't figure out how the heck they were organized or why stories were in there. There's a random story about his sister's childhood concussion in the second story. I still have no idea why what or several other stories are even in the book.

So... if you're looking for some stories about life in the OR, especially in the early days of liver transplants, this is the book for you. Go for it. Just don't get hung up on making sense of the overall story line.

Got a free copy of this from First to Read.

I'm at a loss on how to describe this book in an efficient way. There are stories from Shaw's career as a transplant surgeon. They are mostly stories of failure, as if he's contemplating the ones that bother him over time. There are stories of the people he worked with in the OR. There are also stories of his personal life. All are told with a simple narrative style that is fairly engaging.

But the organization of the book lost me. He jumps to and fro in his life, back, forward, back again but not so far. But he never gives us the linear bio that's needed in the intro to allow him to do it. He had three wives (serially), and in one story when he referred to his wife, I literally had no idea which one he meant. Does that matter? It doesn't really make a difference in the story, but it was hard to keep track. He also had other family members coming and going with little intro. Over 200 pages in was when we learn he has kids, and he's spent some serious narrative time in that part of his life already. His first mention of his own cancer is almost passing. Wait a minute, did he just say...?!?

It's as if all his stories start in the middle, with no beginnings and very few endings. I was really lost, and it gave the impression that his family and personal life wasn't all that important, and yet he spent a lot of time talking about it. There are three titled sections of the book, but I couldn't figure out how the heck they were organized or why stories were in there. There's a random story about his sister's childhood concussion in the second story. I still have no idea why what or several other stories are even in the book.

So... if you're looking for some stories about life in the OR, especially in the early days of liver transplants, this is the book for you. Go for it. Just don't get hung up on making sense of the overall story line.

Got a free copy of this from First to Read.

This is a short read, but a good summary of where some green technology product development is now. There are basically 6 chapters:
-shale gas
-solar PVs
-grid-scale electricity storage
-electric cars
-LED lighting
-other stuff: other technologies, and military applications and development

Shultz and Armstrong are from Stanford and MIT, respectively, so the research that's covered here is pretty Stanford- and MIT-centric. They didn't wander far and wide looking for other research, but that's fine -- there's exciting stuff going on at Stanford and MIT. It's just not comprehensive.

I really liked how the chapters were organized. The main text is a summary of what the technology is used for and what's available now. Then there are break-out boxes for some available-now technologies, but also near-at-hand and on-the-horizon, helping us to look from current research to what may be available commercially in the near future.

All-in-all, a good little read and informative. Just don't expect it to be comprehensive. At 100 pages or so, it's couldn't possibly be. Most people will find something in it that's somewhat unexpected and novel, though.

Tim Flannery begins his climate update with, well, a climate update. Where are we now? We've started to see the consequences of global warming, and he focuses on things that are new since his 2005 book. Throughout this new book, he keeps referring back to the 2005 book. I didn't read that one -- my excuse, if I need one, is that I was in graduate school and reading nothing that wasn't astrophysics -- but I still found the comparison striking. His analysis emphasizes how much has changed in just 10 years, and it is sobering to think about how quickly we've gotten used to our new weather patterns and extreme events.

He does spend a portion of the book reviewing why fossil fuels are bad for us, which may interest some readers more than it did me. It was in this section that he sounds most sanctimonious and I was willing to grant him his conclusion before he started his argument, so it felt like a waste of space. But if people are looking to be convinced, this section was probably necessary.

The best part of the book was the reason for the 'Hope' in the title. He includes a survey of what tools are available to us now to start solving our problems. What alternative energies are available? Being developed? To what extent can they solve our problems? His chapters on geoengineering, blocking the sun or sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere to slow things because we can't get off fossil fuels fast enough, are intriguing. These chapters are the ones that are seldom included with this level of detail in other books. I really appreciated the new information here.

Flannery naturally has an Australia-centered outlook, but that only really mattered in his last chapter, when he's listing the ways that an individual can be an effective activist. All that depends on the political realities and the citizen activist groups available, and they're different in the US than in Australia. But the chapter still serves as inspiration for Americans, and we certainly have activist groups that people can get involved in -- the chapter is just unnecessarily detailed if all you're looking for is inspiration. For the rest of the book, we're truly talking about a global issue, so the country of origin of the author really doesn't matter much.

When I read the introduction to the book, I was feeling a little apprehensive that it was going to be more of an I-told-you-so than a useful, informative read, but that was not the case. Flannery has been working on climate-related issues for a while and has the advantage of experience and long-term analysis. Yes, he's a bit frustrated with the lack of progress. Actually, the rate of degeneration. Aren't we all? But the focus is on what we can do now. What's possible? What can be saved? I recommend it, especially with the December climate summit coming up.

I got a copy of this from Net Galley.

Firestein makes the point that, while failure's essential role in science advancement is obvious to scientists, it is not known to the general public. So he's set out to remedy that. He makes a very good point. And then in the pursuit of a neat picture, he over-simplifies things here and there, but I can forgive him for that.

Firestein's previous book, on how ignorance drives science (title: Ignorance), was more directed at explaining science as a process to the general public. While that is his stated audience for this one as well, I felt that it would be much more useful for students of science, teachers, and practitioners of science. There's whole chapter on what's wrong with science funding these days, and while I found that great as a scientist, I can't imagine many members of the general public are going to get excited about it.

So here's my advice: read it. If the current chapter you're on doesn't thrill you, move on to the next. The chapters are independent of each other, sort of mini-essays, variations on the theme of failure in science. It is not an argument that builds cumulatively. I really like Firestein's approach to science and explaining it, and I'd recommend it to most people I know even remotely interested in science.

I got a free copy of this from Net Galley.

I'm not sure what I expected this book to be, but it wasn't what I expected. The author is clearly an ecologist who has been in the business of protecting water resources, especially wetlands, in the face of development for a long time. As far as I can tell, this is a technical manual on how to do what she does for citizen amateurs.

The first part of the book is about what wetlands do and how to evaluate one. She imagines you're going out to a wetland and mapping its area of influence, its buffer, its extent, its flora and fauna, its geology. The information is really well organized. Just more umm, manual-like than I expected.

Then you have to lead a discussion of whether the development can go forward, given what you've learned. This is the hard part. She lists a bunch of really great questions you probably need to think about, then says that the answers aren't clear cut but you should at least discuss it. Ack. This was where I was hoping to learn something specific from her experience, but it isn't there at anything greater than an occasional summary remark. She tells more stories about the ridiculous questions people ask (exposing their ignorance) than she does about the answers she gave.

The final part of the book is about how hard it is to be an activist, and how you can keep your energy levels up. Really good stuff. But again, more manual-like than I expected.

So... it was a weird read. It will be a wonderful manual for people who want to be watershed protection advocated. But as a book to sit down and read, it isn't especially enjoyable. Depends what you're looking for.

I got a free copy of this from Net Galley.

Ernest Lawrence, the nuclear bomb program, and accelerator science are all linked inextricably in history. Lawrence was a talented experimentalist, a gifted lab manager and talent scout, and a spell-weaving salesman. Before him, most science was tabletop experiments with budgets pulled together from universities and private donors. Afterward, large collaborations funded by government funds were the norm in physics.

Hiltzik does a wonderful job of capturing Lawrence's personality and priorities in this biography. He traces how he made fast friends and attracted acolytes, while eventually alienating many talented scientists because of his need to be in control. He also tracks Lawrence's disdain for all things political and how that very disdain led to the Rad Lab in Berkeley being a bastion for conservative politics -- if no protests or left-wing associations are allowed, right-wing associations dominate. Nuclear science and national security were knitted together by Lawrence's hand, and he seemed surprised that politics would invariably come along for the ride.

Lawrence was both loved and hated. He invented the cyclotron and accelerator science. He also was an unabashed champion of not only the Manhattan project but the super H-bomb that was developed afterwards. He encouraged and mentored young physicists and not only stopped speaking to old friends but ordered his Rad Lab staff to stop speaking to them at seemingly slight provocation. He could get people excited about his next project, could convince them to empty their wallets, even when his predictions were, ummm.... uber optimistic at best.

The biography holds together well. There is a lot of politics in it, especially through the test ban and super bomb debates, but that was a dominant theme of Lawrence's later life. The author has some elitist dismissals of all schools non-ivy that alienated me early in the book, but those mostly went away after the first 60 pages or so. I found his tone informative but not too judgemental throughout most of the book. The author is clearly a fan of Lawrence's, but it's a good read.

I got a free copy of this through Net Galley.

The author has really taken her time to craft the characters in this story. It centers on two generations of a family. The parents, immigrants to New York from Bangladesh, have survived war and the tearing apart of families and friendships, and at some level cannot sympathize with the small troubles of their children. The daughters, Ella and Charu, are searching for their identities in every way, including sexual, familial, and religious, as they are on break from college.

Toward the end of the summer that occupies the first part of the book, things fall apart rather rapidly. The daughters' best friend, Maya, poisons herself, and the father has an affair. The family is a victim of small-time homegrown terror. The father's best friend tells him that he has lost his way, and the next thing we know, we're in Bangladesh with the family.

This is an intriguing part of the modern immigrant story -- the ability to go back and visit the old home as Americans. The description of Bangladesh and the story of its history drew me in. The characters explored their stories, old and new, shared and individual.

The book has room for the characters to grow and change, to experience what Charu calls midirected love and then to back away from it. The young women do mature quite a bit, although they still bear the quick tempers of youth. Ella, in particular, finds a new identity that she had been hiding from. The ending is hopeful without being a happily-ever-after or an unmitigated tragedy. The author has clearly taken a great deal of care with crafting this narrative, and I appreciate that as a reader.

This is a beautiful story, and I heartily recommend it. It's not for the overly conservative (there is sex, there is weed), but then, very few novels are.

I got a copy of this from First to Read.

This is an amazing story. An immigrant without papers when he's four, Dan-el tells the story of his upbringing. He is on the wrong side of some unjust laws. His is on the right side of some incredible luck. Others help him to be the success he is. And he is smart and works hard, making those people's efforts both effective and worth while. It's a great story and I recommend it widely. It's a good read and not preachy. He tells the full story of a full life, although he is understandably frustrated by the extra layer of anxiety constantly surrounding him regarding his immigration status. There seems to be, more or less, a happy ending here.

But we all need to think about what this story means. It's remarkable because it's so unusual. He beat the odds, but the odds are still bad. Individual actions are so important, as evidenced by his experience. But couldn't we do better as a society? I'm glad his story is out there. Not many are in the position to share stories like his. I hope it helps to educate us as a people and that we can do something about it.

I got a free copy of this from First to Read.

The chapters in this lovely story alternate between the voice of Emily Dickinson and her fictional Irish maid, Ada Concannon. Their voices feel authentic for the most part, and their relationship brings out their best characteristics. Also, the historical details of Emily Dickinson's Amherst, her family, and her relationship with her sister=in-law Susan Dickinson are wonderful.

But I must say that the plot launched into a dramatic adventure halfway through that was wholly unexpected and shone the spotlight necessarily on Ada rather than Emily. I guess I wasn't expected rape and murder in a book with this description, especially since that seems to take more of a free hand with the fiction part of historical fiction than I'm usually comfortable with. It seemed unnecessary and almost annoyingly distracting. Was it a good story? Sure. Was it believable in the historical context? Uh, no. Yes, sexual assault happened at that time -- of course it did. But its aftermath and how the different characters handled it felt unlikely in several places.

It felt like O'Connor was looking to fabricate the ultimate answer to why Dickinson never left the house in her later years. And she had to believe it was something traumatic, so she introduced trauma into a life that, as far as we know, had nothing of the kind. It feels like it disrespects Emily's lifestyle -- that only a trauma survivor would be allowed to live this way. All the drama felt misplaced.

Okay, so I didn't like the plot. All that said, I honestly enjoyed the book. The writing style was engaging and Emily's preoccupation with words and observing the world while not quite being in it felt true. I like that in a historical novel.

I got a free copy of this from First to Read.

Celebrating nonfiction reading and telling the stories of science is a very good idea, and the short selections in this book are good choices. The stories are biographical -- very little story-telling time is spent on the math and science, but that's understandable and makes sense. I'm a little confused as to what age these are aimed at. Early on, the author explains several basic concepts, like the Pythagorean theorem and some basic history notes with great pains, so I assumed it's aimed at young readers. But later on, the author clearly assumes that the reader knows not only who Columbus was and when he sailed the ocean blue (fair enough), but also that Newton invented calculus, which seems odd to me. The tone of this assumption can sound really condescending and off-putting if the kid who's reading doesn't know that.

There are a few other things that bothered me about these stories. There seems to be little distinction between myth and history. She speaks of the doings of the god Apollo in the same tone as the real ancient Greeks. And mythical history stories are repeated, such as Archimedes running through the streets naked shouting Eureka and Newton basing his gravity theory on the fall of an apple. Maybe I'm too much of a stickler to be disappointed in these things, but I felt the overall level of history scholarship of the book was basically at this level. Also, many of the stories ended abruptly, and the author did not bother to really point out the inaccuracy of the historical findings she describes -- a tiny statement that E=mv^2 was basically the same as the later E=mc^2 is one example. Ummm... well, sort of. But not really. That's a super loaded comparison, and it's just left there at the end of the story. The really strange 2-sentence summary of the beginning of Islam and its characterization as more business than religion was particularly troubling. Kudos for the inclusion of history other than European. I'm not crazy about the execution.

Some of the recurring ideas are good here, such as the theme that geniuses take ideas that seem unrelated and compare them to come up with something new and useful. Great! Also, she discusses the importance of observation and experimentation without really using either word. I cringed a little when she said about the roundness of the world that it is one thing to have a theory and quite another to have proof... Scientists have been trying to straighten out the general public's idea of what a scientific theory is for a very long time and this won't help.

Also, I have to say that many of the stories had strangely abrupt endings.

So I guess I'd recommend it with some caveats. Teachers in the know will be able to read these stories and supplement them with correct information, finishing the seemingly unfinished stories in this collection. But it could be done better. It can probably be done better by Hakim herself, given a little higher standard for solid truthiness and finishing the story that's been started.

I got a free copy of this ebook from NetGalley.

Krause has been a significant figure in the study of natural sounds for many years, and in this book he reviews where the field has come from and discusses where it might be going. Part of his story is what soundscapes are... the collective sounds of places, not just isolated calls here and there. He tells the story of how these soundscapes have changed over the last 40 years. He also tells the story of how sound collection has changed over the same time period. The technology has become better, more portable, and data is easier to store. There is still lots of room for human innovation in how to process and organize the data, interpret what it means, and act in accordance with it. Also, he calls us to pay attention to sound in our lives and in our conservation efforts. The sounds of a place can tell us how healthy it is. We just need to learn to listen.

I was reminded of a couple other books while I read. One is the recent [b:War of the Whales: A True Story|18774982|War of the Whales A True Story|Joshua Horwitz|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1404192843s/18774982.jpg|26680076], which is a particular story of sound beneath the sea. Our navy makes a lot of noise, and it affects whales (and other marine life) -- the book is a dramatic example of the importance of Krause's field. The other I was reminded of is [b:The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light|16131044|The End of Night Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light|Paul Bogard|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1352226197s/16131044.jpg|21956974], which is a call to remember how important darkness is to our own health and well-being as well as nature's. It reminds us to pay attention to how we light the night and how that affects our experience of nature. In that it is an unconventional aspect of nature to write about and focus on, but that it is important and easy to change with small steps, I thought it was a similar call to action and summary of a field.

I got a free copy of Voices of the Wild from NetGalley.