ASK Musings

Three Stars

Best for:
Anyone who likes fact / trivia books.

In a nutshell:
A sort-of history of Glasgow (Scotland’s largest city), as told via facts, figures, and trivia.

Worth quoting:
“ABBA’s mega-hit ‘Super Trouper’ is told from the point of view of a disenchanted touring musician staying in a hotel in Glasgow.”

Why I chose it:
I recently moved to Glasgow and want to learn more about it.

What it left me feeling:
Amused.

Review:
This book is absolutely fine. It’s hard to write a review, because it does what it says on the tin, but there isn’t much more to it. I assume the information is accurate (there are references), and a bunch of it was kind of interesting. Which is what I’m generally looking for in a book like this – pretty easy to read, and caused me to say ‘huh’ a few times.

The book is broken down into nine chapters, focusing on things ranging from places, crime, transportation, culture, sport, and food and drink. Basically, all the things. Of course in the chapter on war, they also have to include riots, because Glasgow is known for workers fighting back (as well as the occasional football dust-up).

I learned a few things for sure, and I’ll probably come back to this one. It was pretty easy to skim, which also meant that it was pretty easy to put down. But I’ll be holding onto it because I’m sure I’ll have a question about something Glasgwegian and will reach for this book.

Recommend to a Friend / Keep / Donate it / Toss it:
Keep

Four Stars

Best for:
People interested in how youth stardom, misogyny, and failures of the justice system can impact someone.

In a nutshell:
Singer Spears shares her story, from being a teen star and one of the most famous people in the English-speaking world, through the conservatorship that kept her under lock and key for over a dozen years.

Worth quoting:
“I accomplished a lot during that time when I was supposedly incapable of taking care of myself.”

Why I chose it:
As someone who consumed a lot of pop culture musings in my youth, I felt a bit like I owed it to Spears to hear her tell her story, when so many others had chosen to tell it without her input.

What it left me feeling:
Angry and a little sad.

Review:
I was in university when Britney Spears became a household name. For a few years I listened to her music, but didn’t follow her much after I graduated. But she was so very famous that I couldn’t help but learn about her career just by living in the world. And what I learned clearly wasn’t the whole, or even much, of the story.

Spears’s father was abusive. Not physically (well, I’d argue how he treated her while he controlled her as an adult was physical abuse), but definitely emotionally. Her family was not kind to her. It’s kind of a wonder she ended up doing as well as she did, considering the lack of support, along with how the media and society treated her.

Like others who listened to Spears over the years, I followed the case of her father’s control over the money and her body. I probably engaged in my own misogyny, judging her for outfit, parenting, hair choices. Also, I naively thought that the civil court system might actually be acting in her best interest if she really was suffering from some mental health issues. Clearly, that was not the case.

I felt a lot of anger towards everyone who failed and took advantage of Spears over the years. Controlling what she could eat, who she could see. I’ve seen this mentioned before, but there are a lot of very famous men who have acted much more erratically and were much more irresponsible, but none of them had their personhood taken away. None of them had their father saying they had to remain on birth control as a 30-something-year-old. And that fact that she was as famous as she was and still was put under this control, with no support, and really no evidence it was even necessary to start, let alone for 13 years, is pretty fucked up. What’s happening to people who don’t have her resources.

In the book she addresses some of the things that people still comment on – why she posts photos of herself nearly naked, or in a bunch of different outfits. It’s about regaining control of what she does and how she is viewed. I get it. She might be in her 40s, but she missed her 30s pretty much completely. She’s figuring out how to be a grown woman. I wish her luck, and I hope all those her failed her and took advantage of her can make some amends.

Recommend to a Friend / Keep / Donate it / Toss it:
Recommend to a friend

Three Stars

Best for:
Runners; those looking for some inspiration and motivation.

In a nutshell:
Author Tough runs, solo, across mountain ranges on five continents.

Worth quoting:
“The thing that I know for sure is that you are tougher than you think you are.”

Why I chose it:
I run.

What it left me feeling:
Impressed

Review:
I started listening to this book as I waited to start my fifteenth half marathon race. I though I would find it motivating, but really I was just overwhelmed by everything she was doing, so I switched to a podcast.

But on my longer runs I’ve been listening to the book, read by the author, and I found it fascinating. The idea of traveling alone as a woman, in secluded mountains, is also vaguely terrifying. I’ve traveled on my own before, but in Ireland, in big cities. I never really was far from someone who could help me if I needed it.

But author Tough? She just does it. She’s not flippant about security concerns; she’s just focused on her goal of traversing a mountain range on six continents. She runs carrying everything she needs on her back, resupplying in towns or from packages she’s sent to herself. Sometimes she makes errors – like not watching the path and running Wile E Coyote style off a small cliff, landing something like 8 feet below on the ground. And sometimes she faces situations the rest of us would find more than a little scary – like being confronted and repeated followed in the mountains in Morocco by members of the military.

The book didn’t inspire me to take up self-supported long-distance running or anything like that, but it did remind me of what I felt in that last half marathon I ran. I was likely sick when I ran it, and it was my slowest time ever. In the last six miles I walked more than I ran. But I did run some. And I finished it. I wasn’t dying, I was just uncomfortable. And I knew I could push through it. Tough’s message throughout is that we can do more than we think we can, and I appreciate that.

Recommend to a Friend / Keep / Donate it / Toss it:
Donate it

Four Stars

Best for:
People who enjoy novels that constantly move through time.

In a nutshell:
Emily didn’t die on 9/11, but everyone thinks she did.

Worth quoting:
N/A

Why I chose it:
BBC just turned it into a radio play, and when I heard the description of the book I knew I had to read it. It took awhile to find a copy, but I think it was worth it.

What it left me feeling:
Conflicted.

Review:
This book jumps back and forth through time, starting a week after 9/11, when Emily is leaving New York City. But we don’t get the full story of what happened that week until nearly the end of the book, which is a credit to Hooper’s ability to weave a story. We go back to when she meets the husband she eventually ‘widows’ in 2001, and forward to raising her daughter. In the present day, where her daughter is 13, we learn Emily might have breast cancer.

Author Hooper does a great job of creating a character who does a lot of extremely unlikeable things. She should be generally unsympathetic. However, I sort of get her, and was rooting for her. I don’t think I’d make any of the same decisions she does, and I don’t even necessarily think the decisions make sense. In fact, I think outside this book, if these actions were described I would be deeply concerned about the individual who took them.

I sped through this book. I cared about Emily even though she made some deeply disconcerting choices. I wanted good things for her and her daughter. But I also appreciate that Hooper didn’t just make her completely sympathetic, subject to fate. She’s not a victim; she makes choices. She finds herself in some shitty situations, but she makes choices. And they aren’t ones most people would agree with. But they make for excellent reading.

Recommend to a Friend / Keep / Donate it / Toss it:
Recommend to a Friend

Three Stars

Best for:
Those who like their science fiction without a ton of world-building

In a nutshell:
The Silo is a 130+ story underground bunker, housing 10,000 people. Juliette is a mechanic there who ends up discovering more about this world than she is meant to.

Worth quoting:
(Nothing jumped out at me.)

Why I chose it:
I thoroughly enjoyed the first season of Silo, which is roughly based on the first third or so of this book.

What it left me feeling:
Intrigued.

Review:
I know everyone has their own ratings, and for some, a three star review is almost like damning with faint praise. But for me, three stars is a decent book. And for me, this was a decent book. It did take me three months to finish though; I think there was just too much in it, but I understand the arc of the story that Howey wanted to tell in one go.

The premise of the book is fairly simple – in a place that may or may not be earth (and might be the US), a few thousand people live in what they call the Silo. The Silo is 130+ stories underground. There are no windows, save one projection of a small camera that shows the outside world, which is gray and bleak.

No one is allowed outside, ostensibly because the air will kill them. Which serves as a handy punishment – anyone who is said to have uttered the words “I want to go outside” is sent out to clean. Cleaning means wiping any accumulated dust from the one camera on the outside, and then basically dying from the elements.

The main focus of the story is Juliette, who is a mechanic who is asked the replace the sheriff, who was sent out to clean three years after his own wife is sent out. I can’t say more without spoiling it, but I will say that Juliette wasn’t wrong to be concerned about taking on that new world.

The broader issues of the book explore authority, class hierarchies, and knowledge. What do people deserve to know? What is reasonable for the government to hold back? Anything? And who should be trusted with power?

If you’ve seen the TV series, there are some differences in the book. I also didn’t expect the book to cover the same ground as the TV series so quickly. And because I’ve seen the show, the characters now are the actors in my mind, which is a bit limiting.

I did enjoy this, and will be reading the next book soon.

Recommend to a Friend / Keep / Donate it / Toss it:
Keep – my partner wants to read it.

Four Stars

Best for:
Fans of the series – you should really read the first three before you read this one.

In a nutshell:
The best octogenarians out there are back to solve another crime – this one hitting closer to home.

Worth quoting:
N/A (Audio book)

Why I chose it:
I tore through the first three of these books and couldn’t wait to read what these folks are up to next.

What it left me feeling:
Content

Review:
Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron and Ibrahim are back. Oh how I’ve missed them. They live in Cooper’s Chase, a retirement community in England. The book begins with the murder of Elizabeth’s husband’s friend Kuldesh, which obviously draws the team in. I won’t share more at risk of spoilers.

What I have enjoyed so much about these books is the character development, and we get even more in this one. This book has some funny moments, but also a lot of heart and some real rough moments as well. I love media that isn’t focused on people finding partners or raising children; I love books that talk about friendships, and especially friendships among older people. I’m sure I said this in my last review, but I feel like older characters are often left out of media, or are mentioned only as grandparents, not people with full and independent lives.

Osman does a great job not just of spinning a twisty, turning plot that one probably won’t guess but that isn’t still totally out of left field. But more than that – he gives us characters that we care about and root for. Complex, interesting characters.

Recommend to a Friend / Keep / Donate it / Toss it:
I recommend the audio book, because Fiona Shaw (who you may know from Killing Eve, or Harry Potter, but who will always be the Headmistress from the Pileforth School for Girls featured in Three Men and a Little Lady to me) does a fantastic job reading it.

Four Stars

Best for:
Runners looking for a meditation on running.

In a nutshell:
Author Murakami, better known by most for his novels, shares how running impacts his life.

Worth quoting:
“People sometimes sneer at those who run every day, claiming they’ll go to any length to live longer. But I don’t think that’s the reason most people run. Most runners run not because they want to live longer, but because they want to live life to the fullest.”

“I’m often asked what I think about as I run. Usually the people who ask this have never run long distances themselves. I always ponder the question. What exactly do I think about when I’m running? I don’t have a clue.”

Why I chose it:
I’m a runner, and this book has come up a lot.

What it left me feeling:
Content.

Review:
This is my second running book I’ve read this year. As mentioned in my previous review, I’ve been running for many years – nearly 15 years at this point. Sometimes I’m running slow and easy, sometimes I’m pushing myself to build up some strength. On off days, I’m lifting and stretching and rolling. I’ve only taken a handful of breaks in those times – usually due to injury, and once because I just stopped, and that non-injury-related-break was definitely when I’ve felt at my lowest.

I don’t always love running, but I’m always happy that I ran, and I think Murakami captures this feeling. He says he runs to help him write. For me, I need to move regularly otherwise I am scattered and all over the place. Running helps me focus. Yes, it keeps me fit to a degree, but I think the impact on my mental health is more pronounced. And while I am active in other sports (specifically football / soccer), running is a constant for me.

Murakami focuses most of the book on a couple of seasons of running. He and I differ on our approaches – he trains by running every single day; I used to run every single day, but since I’ve gotten a running coach, it’s more like 4 times a week. He talks about runs that go well and runs that don’t. He talks about the feelings, the specific thoughts when he’s running races. He runs further than I do – he does marathons, I’m only doing half marathons – but both involve so much time alone, outside, in all kinds of weather. It’s solitary but not lonely.

One thing I especially related to was him talking about how, as he gets older, his body just doesn’t do things the same way. He’ll train the same or harder and struggle to complete races in times he previously hit with ease. At the moment I’m training in the hopes of once again running a sub-2 hour half marathon (something I have only done once out of 14 races, and about 10 years ago), but it’s hard. I’m not old, but I’m older, and things ache more. Injuries appear more often. I might reach my goal; I might not. But I’ll keep running.

Recommend to a Friend / Keep / Donate it / Toss it:
Recommend to a Friend

Three Stars

Best for:
People who enjoy a mixture of history, true crime, and ethical discussions.

In a nutshell:
Author Katwala explores the creation and first two decades of the ‘lie detector’ (polygraph).

Worth quoting:
N/A

Why I chose it:
I like books like this usually – it feels like a subject Patrick Radden Keefe might have taken on.

What it left me feeling:
Educated.

Review:
In this book, author Katwala looks at the creator of the Polygraph, John Larson, who was a medical student interested in how one’s breath and blood pressure were impacted when someone knowingly told a lie. He eventually developed a machine that could allegedly detect these changes and tell when someone was telling a falsehood.

(He also used it as a very effective dating tool. The very first person Larson used it on in an official capacity was a sorority woman nine years his younger who he ended up marrying. I know people meet at work, but that seems to be a bit out of order.)

The book is told mainly through a couple of different cases from the 1920s and 1930s where it seems like the person is guilty, but the results of their polygraph tests are not conclusive. One is a man who might have paid people to kill his wife; another is a man who might have killed someone who was informing on him to the police. The stories themselves are interesting enough; bringing the polygraph into it makes them more complex.

In the US, polygraph results are not admissible at the federal level. But we have all seen Law & Order, right? People offering themselves up to take a lie detector test so that the police will stop investigating them. Or, conversely, we’ll see suspects refuse to take one, and people start to wonder why, and question their innocence.

The story follows as the polygraph gains popularity even though it cannot be used in federal cases. At one point Larson brings in someone named Keeler who takes over the work and sells it as much more infallible than it is, and seeks to make money off it, selling it to shopkeepers to test their employees to see if they’re stealing.

Here’s the thing though – the polygraph doesn’t really work. It definitely cannot definitively detect lies. And its use is ethically questionable at best. Larson sees this and speaks up; Keeler does not, though we get a sense with one of the later cases he’s involved in (one that ultimately results in someone being put to death) that he has his own doubts.

Overall this book was interesting and well-researched, but didn’t spend as much time as I would have liked on the ethics of the polygraph. The final coda was also deeply disturbing; it discusses how countries are making use of AI to detect lies. One claimed an 88% accuracy rate. Super! Unless you’re in the 12% and are telling the truth but the machine says you are lying.

As an aside: I listened to the audio version and I found the narrator’s pronunciation choices frustrating. I think part of it is the author is British so the narrator used some British pronunciations despite the narrator having a US or Canadian accent, which doesn’t quite work but I kind of get it. However, much of this book takes place in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I grew up, and the narrator consistently mispronounces the names of cities. That’s not hard to look up, so I’m confused as to how that got by the producers.

Recommend to a Friend / Keep / Donate it / Toss it:
Donate it

Four Stars

Best for:
Those looking for ways to process and manage fear.

In a nutshell:
Zen master Nhat Hanh shares thoughts related to processing, confronting and addressing fear.

Worth quoting:
I took so much away from this book, but some highlights:

“When we climb the hill together, we don’t need to make an effort; we enjoy every step.”

“Each of us is life without limit.”

“We cannot remove violence with hatred and anger. We can only remove violence and fear with compassion and love.

Why I chose it:
I really enjoy Nhat Hanh’s writing. Also, I can always use some help in the fear department.

What it left me feeling:
Calm.

Review:
I find reviewing books on spirituality and mindfulness a bit challenging because I think they are such personal experiences. Like most books, people will take away different things based on what they need and what they are feeling at the moment.

What I can say about this book is that I found Nhat Hanh’s stories and way of writing about fear to be beautiful and meaningful to me, and I know that the many different exercises included will be helpful on my journey.

I think his writing is accessible and easy to understand but still gets me thinking, and that’s just what I need.

Recommend to a Friend / Keep / Donate it / Toss it:
Keep