April 2020 reading update (MM No.4)

Good morning, friends!

What’s new? What is the last cool thing you’ve read/watched/listened to/created?

As the month draws to a close, it’s time for the second edition of my reading update— I’ve covered a rather wild range of topics this time. Below this note, you’ll find…

1. Some major and micro-musings on my books from this month
2. A collection of links that made me think and/or smile
3. Full list of books; linked titles will take you to my notes!

Hope you find something thought-provoking here, and would love to hear if you have questions/comments/recommendations!

Cheers,

Maya

Musings

• The binary bias (the human tendency to simplify complex continuums into two categories, AKA black-or-white thinking, AKA all-or-nothing thinking): While itself not a new or unusual idea, the focus of several books on revealing the possibilities in the spectrum lying between what are often framed as dualities was particularly striking. The theme arose first and most powerfully in Dr. Holly Jean Buck’s After Geoengineering, which explores the whole range of options between using only technology or only ecology to address climate change, suggesting that we can establish a truly just and sustainable carbon removal society only by combining both approaches.
• This view was echoed by Mark Bittman in Animal, Vegetable, Junk, though more narrowly in the context of the food and agriculture industry. On a different note altogether, Dr. Carl Hart’s Drug Use for Grown-Ups dove into the middle ground between promoting addiction to and condemning “recreational” drug use, claiming that a healthy middle ground of responsible drug use is much more common than it seems, and that the binary view ultimately limits our human rights on several fronts.
• Finally, after this cluster of themes had formed, Adam Grant’s Think Again came around to define the phenomenon itself, explaining how such simplifications help us organize and relate to our surrounding world. After all, who doesn’t jack up the contrast on their photos before posting to social media?
• And more! In Good Reasons for Bad Feelings, Dr. Randy Nesse argues that an evolutionary view of psychiatry may lead to a deeper understanding of mental disorders, bridging the ground between a completely neurological, brain-based view and a psychotherapeutic one relying solely on life experience. Studying the wide array of cases in which psychological mechanisms work well— the reasons why low mood, anxiety, cooperation and the like evolved— can teach us much about the edge cases in which they go wrong. And in Göring’s Man in Paris, Jonathan Petropoulos— from his unique role as a historian focused on the Third Reich’s looting of art who has spent much time with former (??) Nazis— discusses the ethical gray areas that arise in telling the stories of art plunderers, and in the actual process of recovery and restoration the looted works.
• Okay, okay. I won’t go on. Moral of the story, binary bias is everywhere, and everything is a lot more complicated than it seems.

Micro-musings

• Hunger as a weapon: The Book Collectors’ story of the blockade of Darayya as an example of Bittman’s point in Animal, Vegetable, Junk; the Arctic terns in Migrations
• A fun triangle of themes between a series of novels I read: ← The Orchid Thief ← Native Americans → The Night Watchman ← boxing → Here Lies a Father ← Florida →
• Stories I really just enjoyed: The Orchid Thief (for a deep dive into the world of the plant-obsessed); Migrations (for a mysterious yet heartwarming dose of climate fiction)

Click me

• Cool nature things:
  • The vibrant colors on these birds is surprisingly not an honest signal of their fitness: “Elaborate feather microstructures allow male tanagers to enhance their colors, making them seem as if they are higher quality mates.”
  • Scientists at MIT are translating spider webs into music, using the vibrations that the arachnids use to navigate the structures. What an incredible glimpse into what the life-world of another species might be like!
  • A beautifully-illustrated guide to caring for house plants
• These visualizations really blew me away…
  • A real-time map of wind patterns across the country knew wind
  • How global wind patterns have shaped the architecture of our airports
• Try describing something using only the most common 1000 words in the language— not so easy!
• A digital time-capsule of social distancing graphics found around the world
• “A popular view has it that reading fiction can teach us empathy by making us understand that other people, including those who are completely different from us, are real. I believe the same possibility arises when we give a stranger our full attention. To be curious about another person is one of the highest forms of respect you can pay them.” (Sigrid Nunez)

April 2021 books

• Deep — James Nestor
  • Nestor takes us on a metaphorical dive into the ocean as it relates to humans, by means of a literal quest into the world of freediving. Overall, though, I didn’t find the stories or science he covered particularly interesting or new.
• After Geoengineering — Holly Jean Buck
  • This is the climate book I’ve been searching for without knowing it existed: Dr. Buck calls out the spectrum of climate interventions between exploitative technology and nature-cures-all, diving deep into the technical and philosophical weeds of it all. My interest in this topic made the book a slow, dense, and incredibly rewarding read, and short hypothetical “sketches” of future worlds interspersed between the policy talk made it all the more worthwhile (and complemented the wild choose-your-own-adventure/disaster introduction, which you should read even if it’s the only section you do!).
• The Book Collectors — Delphine Minoui
  • Journalist Delphine Minoui shares the story of a group of Syrian rebels in the city of Darayya, who, in the midst of civil war and lock down, find themselves curating their town’s first public library. This is a harrowing account of a community facing some of the worst violence imaginable, but their library comes to be such a beacon of liberty, the opposite of the repression and censorship of the regime, and truly an epitome of a paradise built in Hell. Minoui tells the stories that must be told.
• Drug Use for Grown-Ups — Carl T. Hart
  • Dr. Hart sets out to defend two bold claims in this book. First: so-called recreational drugs (including opioids) do not have negative effects or lead to addiction in the majority of cases, and can in fact be beneficial when used responsibly. Second: a benign government does not have the right to limit the use of mind-altering substances by functional adults in their pursuit of happiness any more than they do alcohol, tobacco, guns, or sex. I started out skeptical but open-minded, and Hart’s expertise in drug-use research, seemingly-authentic personal anecdotes, and thorough citation of the literature drew me in. I haven’t quite decided how fully I support his ideas, but he made a strong case, and I’ll definitely be more critical of the media’s portrayal of drug use and research in the future.
• The Matchmaker — Elin Hilderbrand
  • What am I going to do when I run out of her books? In what idyllic love stories will I lose myself? This wasn’t my favorite, but a nice mental vacation nonetheless.
• The Night Watchman — Louise Eldrich
  • A combination of how I was reading this (sporadically, on my phone) and the short, disjointed chapter structure made this hard for me to get into, but it’s a testament to how intriguing the exposition was that I kept coming back.
  • Coincidentally, themes from Animal, Vegetable, Junk (see below) came up in the early chapters— the government pushing industrial agriculture practices over more nutritious, sustainable traditional ones, and offloading surplus corn products to make up the difference. I like how the interplay between fictional and informational depictions of the same concept, how they emphasize and reinforce and complement the idea in my mind.

  “The only way to fight the righteous was to present an argument that would make giving him what he wanted seem the only righteous thing to do.

• Animal, Vegetable, Junk — Mark Bittman
  • First impressions: Interesting, but not revolutionary— but the sweeping scale of Bittman’s quest to define a just food system, spanning all of human history across the globe, is making me excited for what’s to come.
  • This book reminds me a lot of what Augustine Sedgewick did with Coffeeland, but from a much wider point of view— and I’m not sure Bittman’s comprehensive portrait of the exploitative, imperialist nature of modern agriculture is any more effective than what you can learn from the more in-depth understanding of a single supply chain in the landscape.
  • Bittman’s proposed path forward (in short, doing it all: systemic and individual change, technological and ecological solutions…) and integration of the food industry with social justice also recalled many themes of Holly Jean Buck’s After Geoeingineering, but here I believe the focus on agriculture did provide an essential, added degree of insight.
• The Orchid Thief — Susan Orlean
  • Orlean takes us on a wild, colorful ride into the world of the plant-obsessed. Her strong presence as a character herself in the book makes her subjects more relatable, and she offers the occasional surprising, thought-provoking insight amidst the drama. For instance, early on in the book, she notes: The world is too big, and too easy to get lost in— so “the reason it’s important to care passionately about something is that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size… it makes the world seem not huge and empty, but full of possibility.” Orlean revisits this theme at the conclusion, describing how the orchid growers she’s met form a family, giving its members a way to be both individuals in the world while also part of a concentric circles of others, eventually including the whole world. Our passions, then, allow us to be a part of something big without losing ourselves.
  • I challenged myself not to take extensive notes while listening to this one, to enjoy the language and story for its essence in the moment, and Orlean made this hard but worth it! Her creative, clever descriptions of setting (Florida, always fomenting, the last frontier) and her responses to it (having to rethink her ordering of the universe) were a joy to come across, and I didn’t want to forget them— but listening uninterrupted allowed me to get caught up in the flow of the narrative and bizarre characters in a way I usually do not.
• Such Small Hands — Andrés Barba, transl. by Lisa Dillman
  • This novella reads like a poem, simple and stark and dark in portraying the simultaneous cruelty and innocence of children, and the painful desire for acceptance. Gave me The Queen’s Gambit vibes at the beginning (minus the chess…).
• Think Again — Adam Grant
  • Adam Grant expounds on the value of changing your mind. Like so many popular psychology books, much of the bottom line of his message feels somewhat self-evident, but it’s always cool to see it within a new framework, in the context of the latest science and clever anecdotes. I’m sure I’ve got much to learn about understanding how much I have to learn.
  • I do feel like this is basically a book form of The Story of Us, a series of articles by blogger Tim Urban, who’s quoted briefly… at points, Grant’s language and diagrams feel uncomfortably familiar. I spent a solid few months last year working my way through the web series, and highly recommend.
• Here Lies a Father — McKenzie Cassidy
  • Picked this somewhat randomly from a recommendation list of short novels, and was pleasantly surprised and quickly intrigued by the story. Cassidy’s clean, simple language allowed for uncomfortable tension to take center stage through revelations about not only the narrator’s late father, but the hidden lives of the entire cast of characters. But at about the half-way point (far too soon to be effective), you realize there’s nothing really mysterious actually going on, and it becomes annoying to read yet another familiar tale of the flawed human condition.
• Good Reasons for Bad Feelings — Randolph M. Nesse
  • An attempt to shed some light on the confusion of mental disorders from a more comprehensive point of view, complementing the recent hyperfocus of psychiatry on neurological and genetic factors with behavioral, cognitive, and social ones by taking an evolutionary perspective.
• Migrations — Charlotte McConaghy
  • The first fiction audiobook I’ve listened to in a longgg time, and I think I’ve learned to pay attention much better than I remember! I’m sure the narrator’s soothing, lilting Irish-Australian accent doesn’t hurt, either. The story itself is captivating, too, honest and ambiguous in a very real way, and I’m quickly drawn into the world McConaghy creates that is so uncannily similar to ours; a depressive and dark future too close to possible; and that also makes me very sympathetic to the cast of characters. Our narrator is contemplative, introspective, and self-critical in a way that I admire, for some reason, and has a sharp sense of humor that leads to some unexpected, perfectly-timed laughs. Overall, a great listen with a heartwarming end, and well worth the hype.
• Why Did I Ever — Mary Robinson
  • Another spontaneous pick from the list of short-ish novels, and it’s… different. An unfiltered, wild, somewhat satirical glimpse into the mind of a woman in 2000s LA, to whom it seems like the world just won’t give a break. Would probably have appreciated this more if I hadn’t been zoning out so much, but the format (a perpetual string of paragraph-length diary entries) made it easy enough to alternate skimming with engaging. A neutral experience, overall.
• Göring’s Man in Paris — Jonathan Petropoulos
  • A biography of Bruno Lohse, an art dealer for one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi Party and convicted war criminal, Hermann Göring. This account delves deep into the moral muck of the post-war art world, and doesn’t shy away from the questions that still linger on what it means to be complicit with war crime, even with respect to writing this biography as accurately of a story as possible. Petropoulos’s self-conscious commentary on his own and Lohse’s motivations over the course of their interactions heighten the complexity an already-fascinating tale, bringing our awareness to the lens with which the tale is being told.
  • Seems to be an example of the approach discussed by Justin Farrell in Billionaire Wilderness, of how studying the perpetrators of inequality and injustice (ex. the ultra-wealthy, or in this case, the Nazi art plunderer) can yield new insights (versus a focus on the ones being wronged); and also highlights the barriers to doing so— the empathy wall, social barriers of access, intense privacy by the elite.
• Of Wolves and Men — Barry Lopez
  • Barry Lopez treats his subjects with the utmost respect, capturing the spirit and animism of his wolf collaborators and conveying their individual and collective experiences with both scientific rigor and humility. Similarly, he conveys the unique relationship between indigenous people and wolves with explicit openness and engagement with the audience when biases and assumptions may be challenged. Lopez thus allows for a new narrative to take root, one with the potential to reach beyond the conventional, limited colonial view of native people and the natural world.
  • In all honesty, some of the middle sections were too gruesome and disturbing for me to read fully— those chapters describing the massacre of wolves and humans during colonization, the practices and savagery of the hunters… but they are things that need to be known, or at least known unknowns. And the executors of these acts are lucky to have been portrayed by Lopez’s unfailingly humanizing pen.
• The Code Breaker — Walter Isaacson
  • So very excited to read this one! Walter Isaacson takes on the oft-told tale of the age of genomics, but as he tends to do, uses this focus to convey much broader themes of humanity. Zoning in on the role of Jennifer Doudna, Isaacson explores ideas ranging from the value of curiosity and competition in science to the ethics of being human, captivating his readers by showcasing the shockingly normal people involved in it all.
• Luster — Raven Leilani
  • The last audiobook novel I listened to was so good, I had to try another. Luster was quite a different sort of story than Migrations, but it was sharp, witty, and entertaining; with a similar tinge of disturbing darkness; offering its own form of cultural criticism on race, class, and sex. Great narrator, as well— Ariel Blake. Gotta keep track of the good ones.

    “I believed, like a Catholic or a tortured artist, that the merit of a commitment correlates directly to the pain you endure in its pursuit.”

• [Billionaire Wilderness](https://mayasheth.github.io/2021/04/27/billionaire-wilderness) — Justin Farrell
  • A completely spontaneous choice off the “New” shelf at the library, but thought this topic could mesh well with some of my other readings on the abhorrent land practices of rich Americans. It turned out to be a far more nuanced, rigorously-researched work exploring the nexus of wealth, philanthropy, and conservation.
• Minor Detail — Adania Shibli, transl. by Elisabeth Jaquette
  • Originally published in Arabic, the translation of this striking novel about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was nominated for the International Booker Prize this year. The language is stark, tense and brutal at the beginning, before shifting to a more rolling, flowing narration. The style of writing contributed so much to the experience of reading that it’s makes me curious how much of that came from the original text versus the translation.
• Life’s Edge — Carl Zimmer
  • After reading a few non-fiction books guided by very structured outlines, I was at first taken aback by the lack of blueprint in Zimmer’s work. But as I continued, I found his masterful blend of first-person narration, science, history, and not just a few philosophical questions to be even more effective in building up his ideas, as I was reading to discover the next thing, rather than to confirm what I’d just been told. I was especially excited by the last chapters describing the research in prebiotic chemistry, or the origins of life, which has surprising relevance to some of my own work!