What If? by Randall Munroe *****

What If? by Randall Munroe is the ultimate bathroom book for MythBusters fans. This is a collection of unreasonable questions given rigorous scientific answers. For example: What happens if the earth stops spinning, but the atmosphere does not? As with most such investigations, mayhem ensues.

This book is full of interesting observations:

“They say there are no stupid questions. This is obviously wrong.”

Hurricanes: “It’s not that the wind is blowing, it’s what the wind is blowing.”

In the question about swimming in the spent fuel pool of an atomic reactor. The author questioned a scientist. The answer was, “In our reactor? You’d die pretty quickly, before reaching the water, from gunshot wounds.”

Some sample questions:

What would happen is the sun suddenly switched off?

What is the farthest one human being has been from every other living person?

If you like science, this book by the author of the webcomic XKCD is a fun read. Knowledge of advanced physics is not required. Highly recommended for nerds, geeks, and young scientists.

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Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom ****

Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom is a memoir of the author’s visits with his favorite college professor, Morris Schwartz, during the professor’s last year of life. Morris Schwartz had ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). 

“ALS is like a lit candle: it melts your nerves and leaves your body of pile of wax…imprisoned inside a limp husk…the man frozen inside his own flesh.”

“Yet he refused to be depressed. Instead, Morrie had become a lightning rod of ideas. …He wrote bite-sized philosophies (aphorisms) about living with death’s shadow.”

 Mitch visits on Tuesdays and records these ideas.

The book contains some biographical glimpses of Morrie’s life. During the Vietnam war, he convinced the Sociology faculty at Brandeis University, where he taught, to give all male students As, so they would not lose their draft deferments. He regularly went to a church dance, mostly attended by much younger students, and danced solo as the spirit moved him.

Most of the book was aphorisms.

“Everyone knows they’re going to die, but nobody believes it. If we did, we would do things differently.” 

The lesson here is to make peace and forgive today, to treat each day and person as precious.

“Whenever people ask me about having children or not having children, I never tell them what to do. I simply say, ‘There is no experience like having children.’”

 “It is impossible for the old not to envy the young. But the issue is to accept who you are…now is my time to be seventy-eight.”

 “Money is not a substitute for tenderness, and power is not a substitute for tenderness.”

 “As his body rotted, his character shone even more brightly.”

 “Forgive yourself before you die. Then forgive others.”

 “Morrie borrowed freely from all religions.”

 This is a book of love and release and death and aphorisms. A short book of wisdom.

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Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes *****

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes received the Hugo Award (1959 short story) and Nebula Award (1966 novel). This is a science fiction classic on the subject of disabilities. The protagonist, Charlie Gordon, has an IQ of 68. Even after sixty years, this story raises important and interesting questions about attitudes towards disabilities and the value of intelligence at either end of the bell curve.

The story is about Charlie who starts with an IQ in the lowest 2% and receives an operation which puts him in the upper .001%. The first thing you might wonder is why these two points are not symmetrical? What does this say about our views of intelligence?

If you haven’t been exposed to this story (there is an Academy-Award-Winning movie Charly, and other adaptations), you might wonder whether you should read the short story or the novel.

The novel makes one improvement over the short story. In the short story, Charlie works in a factory with 840 people. In the novel, this is changed to a much smaller bakery where his relationship with the workers makes more sense.

However, the novelization required many additions which distract from the impact and clarity of the short story. The change that I found most disturbing is the addition of many social/psychological subplots. The short story is primarily about intelligence, while the novel raises the questions about the interactions between intelligence and autism spectrum disorder, and intelligence and the response to abusive parenting. Certainly, there is no correlation between ASD and intelligence… I found the novel confusing and distracting.

What does the novel add? In the novel, Charlie has an abusive mother and poor bowel control. The novel also adds two problematic sexual relationships. The novel implies that these issues are partially caused by low intelligence and cured by increased intelligence.

If you haven’t read this classic, I highly recommend the short story. It was widely anthologized (I found it on my bookshelf) and is available on the Internet (The Internet copy I found is not the original).

Publication history from Wikipedia

The short story was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (April 1959). It was reprinted in The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction, 9th series (1960), the Fifth Annual of the Year’s Best Science Fiction (1960), The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, 1929–1964 (1970), among others.

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Alternate Side by Anna Quindlen ***

Alternate Side by Anna Quindlen is the story of Nora Nolan, a New Yorker. “Some people immediately fell in love with New York [City], and other people said they could never live there.” Nora is in the former group. This book is about “the City,” as New Yorkers refer to Manhattan. The author alternately worships New York City and chronicles the sad lives of characters who share her passion.

Nora has a career, first as a museum director, and later as a foundation director. Her husband works in finance. Her daughter Rachel went to Williams, and her son Oliver went to MIT. They are twins. They live in a single-family Victorian on a dead-end block. The people who own homes on the street form a closed community. They share a December party and May barbeque. They meet each other when they walk their dogs. They each have their own nannies and housekeepers, but they share a handyman.

Aside from their superficial interactions, they all have very private lives. When a neighbor attacks the handyman, the polite façade crumbles. The handyman is hospitalized and sues. This injustice makes it impossible for everyone to continue to pretend that they all belong together as they divide in favor of the neighbor or the handyman. This event stresses both the marriages and the community. As a non-New Yorker, I find this story very sad.

If you are a proud New Yorker, I imagine you’ll love this book. If you are not a New Yorker, this book might make you feel good about your choice.

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Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell *****

Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell is a historical novel of a native girl, Karana, stranded on a Channel Island 1835-1853. This is read by fourth graders in California. The book includes death and disasters, native American crafts, and friendly animals. Throughout this, Karana has a peaceful and optimistic attitude.

Death and disasters

The story opens with otter hunters visiting the island and killing Karana’s father and most of the able men. The tribe emigrates to the mainland, but Karana and her brother are left behind.  Her brother is killed by wild dogs. Her island is hit by an earthquake and tsunami.

Native American crafts

Karana builds several canoes, a shelter using whale bones, spears using sea elephant teeth, bows and arrows, a skirt of cormorant feathers, baskets, cooking pots, and candles from small fish. She eats seeds, fish, roots, and abalone.

Friendly Animals

She tames two wild dogs, four birds, a fox, and an otter. Her pattern is to first treat animals as resources or threats and later to befriend them. By the end, all the mammals and birds are considered friends.

Gender Roles

Karana was very clear about gender roles (“The laws of Ghalas-at forbade the making of weapons by women”), but she broke all these taboos in order to survive. However, she remains feminine to the end. When she is rescued (18 years later), she prepares…

“I…bathed in the spring and put on my otter cape and my cormorant skirt. I put on my necklace of black stones and the black earrings…Below the mark of our tribe (on my face) I carefully made the sign which meant I was unmarried.”

 She was very clever. “I heard a shout…The men he left…did not answer, nor did the men on the ship, so I was sure that he was calling me.”

If you are interested in a pleasant history of Californian natives, this the perfect read.

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Rules of Civility by Amor Towles *****

Rules of Civility by Amor Towles is set in 1938 Manhattan. The narrator, Katherine Kontent, comes from a blue-collar family in New Jersey. Her friend Evelyn Ross comes from an upper-middle-class family in Indiana. Why is that important? This is a story about class and mobility. The third main character: Tinker Grey, as disclosed in the Preface, is well-off in 1938, and destitute in 1939.

One of the central themes of this book is class mobility. Do you have to be born in the upper class to belong? Can people from modest roots enter to upper class through luck or talent? Tinker personifies luck and Katey is talent. Neither makes the jump.

Even though class mobility seems beyond the grasp of our characters—no one enters or leaves the upper social strata—Katey moves up financially. However, lest the reader might take this an optimistic view of possibilities, Katey is absolutely brilliant…so brilliant that everyone recognizes her talent. Others who less talent (Tinker’s artist brother, and Evelyn Ross) do not fare as well.

On an egalitarian note, most characters lived their life happily, even Wallace who died in the fighting Franco, Dickey who made paper airplanes, and Eve who moved to Los Angeles.

The book includes much clever writing. The kind of writing that is so clever, it takes the reader out of the story.

“[The rich had] dogs that were better bred than I.”

“The indistinguishable…were satisfied to express their individuality through which Rogers they preferred…Ginger or Roy or Buck.”

“[He took care of me after the auto accident because] You break it, you’ve bought it? Right?”

If you’d like a delightful book of life among the very rich and those that enter their circle, this is the book for you. The style and dialogue are optimistic and everyone, rich and poor, are allowed to pursue happiness in their own way.

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