Reviews of favorite books

Nonfiction: If Nietzche Were a Narwhal

9/25/2022

If Nietzche Were a Narwhal by Justin Gregg playfully asks if the tortured philosopher Nietzsche was too smart for his own good--and makes the case that Nietzsche likely would’ve been happier as a narwhal.
Read this book if you’re willing to see your place on the planet in an entirely new way.
I learned that many human traits are common to other animal species according to newer scientific research, including problem solving, awareness of death, emotions, social bonds, and language (about a small set of subjects among animals and including abstract concepts among humans).

From the book:

“Intelligence is not a biological fact. This idea of human intellectual or behavioral exceptionalism has no basis in science.”
“For humans, brain size is completely uncoupled from cognitive capacity. [And] brain size can’t tell us anything about intelligence in animals, either.”
“The illusion of intellectual superiority over your cat . . . is just that: an illusion.”
“[There’s] a mountain of evidence showing that not only is homosexuality not unique to humans, but it’s rather the norm for most animal species.”
“Human moral reasoning may be a bug and not a feature--an evolutionary spandrel that cropped up as our unique cognitive skills blossomed, but not itself a trait that natural selection selected for.”

Lest we think religion and law give us a moral edge:
“The history of our species is the story of the moral justification of violent acts resulting in the pain, suffering, and deaths for billions of our fellow humans who fall into the category of ‘other.’ “
“In contrast, most animal norms exist to maintain a social equilibrium that minimizes the need for pain, suffering, and death.”

The most impactful part of this book for me was understanding why, knowing we’re on a collision course with an ecological disaster, we can’t seem to stop our wanton burning of fossil fuels:

“Like all animals, our biology compels us to deal with the here and now, but unlike other animals, our decisions can generate technologies that will have harmful impacts on the world for generations to come [carbon emissions, nuclear power, etc.]”
“[Our] capacity to understand the future and even envision ourselves in it is competing with decision-making systems . . . heavily influenced by our problems in the here and now.”
“Our many intellectual accomplishments are currently on track to produce our own extinction, which is exactly how evolution gets rid of adaptations that suck. It is the greatest of paradoxes that we should have an exceptional mind that seems hell-bent on destroying itself.”
“Consider that a child born today is five times more likely to die in a global extinction event than in a car crash.”

Sobering facts delivered in an entertaining tone. Highly recommended reading for all humans.

Nonfiction (mostly): Every Father's Daughter

9/23/2022

I got Every Father’s Daughter from the library to read the essay by Jane Friedman, whose blog and online classes have been invaluable to me. Because I’m me, I started reading from the beginning.

In the foreword, Margaret McMullan tells the story of her own father and her quest for “a collection of intensely personal essays, written by great women writers telling me about their fathers and how they came to know their fathers” after her father’s death.

Some of the essays fulfill that mandate, but others were pulled from longer memoirs or novels. I got the impression those were included because the authors were “names” in the literary world. Two of the writers described their famous author fathers, one of whom wrote the introduction to the book, which gave the collection a cliquish feel--although the stronger essays made the book worth reading.

Barbara Shoup noted: “Life, like a good story, sets its own course. In time the ‘what ifs’ of your childhood fall away, the bits and pieces that brought you to the beginning of your adult life, combust, and begin moving you toward an ending you can’t imagine, but becomes clearer, inevitable, the farther you go.”

Johanna Gohmann, whose father developed Alzheimer’s said: “Losing someone this way--this subtle losing, piece by piece--is its own unique kind of sadness.” And: “His life stretches behind him full of heartbreaks and triumphs and mysteries that I will never really grasp. And through him I learn that understanding people and loving them sometimes have very little to do with one another.”

Lily Lopate attributed this to her writer father: “If you’re willing to roll up your sleeves and put in the time you can make words do anything you want them to.” He urged her to “write honestly, lean towards discomfort, attempt to delve into unresolved tangled territory and engage with humor.”

Jane Friedman’s father, “taught me to be true to myself, and to live life on my own terms . ..

My father died in December, 2015. I thought I’d thoroughly processed my tangled grief. I was surprised when I was up all night after reading the first few essays in this book, transcribing a poem about my relationship with my dad that took hold of me and didn't let go until I’d wrestled the whole thing into the writing notebook at my bedside.

This book was personally valuable to me (for the poem born of reading it, currently out on submission), but isn’t the book it could have been, due to the uneven tone and insular quality of the selections. I found many of the personal essays poignant; the other selections were less resonant for me.

Fiction Review: The Best of World SF

9/17/2022

The Best of World SF, edited by Lavie Tidhar is an anthology of twenty-six science fiction and absurdist fantasy stories.
Science fiction and fantasy published in the US is dominated by North American writers. I got this anthology of writers from around the world to expand my reading experience.
I loved some of the stories, found others mildly amusing, and a few were definitely not my style.

The collection begins with Immersion by French writer Aliette de Bodard. I struggled initially to follow the dual point of view, but once I understood the story world, I enjoyed the way the two narrative strands overlapped and collided. The poignant ending is a powerful indictment of the human desire to fit ourselves to outside norms.
Fandom for Robots by Vina Jie-Min Prasad of Singapore follows a sentient robot exploring fanfiction for a fictitious Japanese anime series. It’s a delightful commentary on online identity.
Chinelo Onwualu from Niger contributed What the Dead Man Said, a story about family secrets and forgiveness set in a far future where cities compete for the remaining humans.
Xingzhou by Ng Yi-Sheng of Singapore is a comical fairy tale of four grandparents: a Chinese rickshaw coolie (grandfather), a demon from India (grandmother), a hive intelligence (grandzyther), and a white fungus (grandniether), and how they transformed Xingzhou, the continent of stars.
Tade Thompson of the UK contributed Bootblack, the tale of an uneducated, epilectic Black shoeshine boy in the early 1900s who witnesses the arrival of a time-traveler from the future, as told through his statements to the police.
The Green by Lauren Beukes of South Africa tells the story of a “harvest operator” on an alien planet hostile to humans, serving a military-industrial complex intent on exploiting the planet. The alien biology is equal parts fascinating and horrifying.

At $32, this isn’t a book I love enough to buy, but it is one I’m glad I read.

Nonfiction: If Nietzche Were a Narwhal

Nonfiction (mostly): Every Father's Daughter

Fiction Review: The Best of World SF

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