Three Stars

Best for:
Anyone looking for a book on mindful living that isn’t primarily about meditating a few times a week.

In a nutshell:
Former Buddhist monk Koike shares his thoughts on ways we can stop thinking (or, I’d argue, stop overthinking, as his suggestions do require a fair bit of though) and ultimately live more peacefully.

Worth quoting:
“[B]egin by being considerate, thinking of our listener, so we don’t cause unnecessary stimulation or stress for the other person.”

“If we’re truly sorry about something, we should think about the best way to ease the burden on the other person rather than merely apologizing or making an excuse for our own comfort.”

Why I chose it:
It caught my eye in a bookstore. Also, my life has recently been a bit stressful, and I was looking for something other than ‘meditate more’ in terms of mindful living.

Review:
CN: Fatphobia

I am ambivalent about this book. There are some aspects of it that I think are insightful, interesting, and helpful; there are some aspects that I find a bit naive and possibly even detrimental if followed. In some of those instances I believe I understand what Koike is getting at, but I’m not sure he’s portraying a very realistic approach to living.

But first, the good. The book opens strongly, laying out what Koike sees as ‘thinking disease.’ He pulls in concepts of Buddhism and suggests that many of the ways we act in life can be seen through the prisms of desire, anger, and uncertainty, and we should seek to limit our experience of these. Throughout the book he does connect many concepts that I might not have associated with one of those three emotions to them, and it’s an interesting concept

The main approach for Koike is is that we must develope our senses, defined as speaking, listening, seeing, reading and writing, eating, discarding, touching, and nurturing. I found the speaking and listing sections to offer the most practical insight. The other sections, while not necessarily bad, just didn’t speak to me as much.

There were parts, however, that did frustrate me. In the writing section he says we shouldn’t ever write anything negative, and only write about things we’ve enjoyed (lol sorry but what). This is an example of how at times he seems so dedicated to the idea of peace that he sees no value in examining or interrogating things that might not be awesome. The section on eating also somehow ended up being an icky little chapter on dieting, and in the section where he discusses relationships (‘nurturing’), the example he uses of a discussion to have is about a wife being upset that her husband is fat. Amazing how fear of fatness works its way into everything, even a philosophy book on mindfulness.

Another part that I found a bit naive was the way he speaks about money, and people wanting to have some. He definitely is talking about the dangers of hoarding money, and references billionaires, but also he seems to ignore the idea that one might need to save some money so one can pay for one’s bills and housing.

As I said up top, there are parts of this I like. I started reading it during the end of my football (soccer) season, and as a goal keeper it can be hard at times to maintain focus when so much action is happening at the other end of the pitch. Some of the tips in here helped me to focus more on the match and my movements in it. I’m also actively working on incorporating some of what he shared in the speaking and listening sections. But I’m not sure I could fully recommend this to others.

Recommend to a Friend / Keep / Donate it / Toss it:
Despite the middling rating, I probably will keep it.

Four Stars

Best for:
Anyone who works in higher education, or anyone who has or plans to attend higher education, or anyone who lives in a society with higher education in it.

In a nutshell:
Author Connell explores what universities do, how that has changed, and why that is not great.

Worth quoting:
“It is vital to recognize that universities and schools themselves are highly active in making inequalities.”

“Universities themselves have become increasingly complicit with market ideology.”

Why I chose it:
I work in higher education administration in the UK.

Review:
For the last few years I have worked in higher education administration. I am what you would call ‘professional services staff,’ which means I’m not an academic, and I don’t teach anything. Instead, I do some of the background work that keeps the university going. I’m not as critical as security staff or cleaners, but I help keep things running smoothly for the staff who do things like manage admissions, or provide counselling and mental health support to students.

I have also gone on strike twice for a total of four days in the last five weeks. So things aren’t great.

My line manager is fantastic, but I withdrew my labor in solidarity with colleagues who are facing stress, overwork, low wages, and stress (so important I said it twice). One the first day I went out on strike, I started reading this book, because I wanted to be reminded of what a good university could be.

This book is extremely well-organized and well-researched. Connell starts with reminding us of what the research aspect of a university looks like – who does it, why it is done, and how it contributes to knowledge. She also looks at a larger question about what is truth – is it truth once it is a peer-reviewed journal? What if that journal is part of a system that essentially forces researchers to buy access to research, and looks at research through a very western lens? She then looks at learning and teaching, the other big component most of us think about when we think about universities.

She then gets into some areas that maybe don’t get as much coverage, like the workers themselves, and not just the academics, but the people who work in the cafe, or maintain the buildings, or support the students in other ways.

The areas of the book that stuck with me most were the chapters on privilege, and how universities are often complicit in just reproducing the exclusivity of the world (think Harvard, sure, but really any university that is striving to be at the top of the league tables or high up in the US News & World Report rankings); and the chapter on the university business. The latter especially hit close to home, as I have a visceral reaction to students being referred to as ‘customers,’ and I feel like that happens where I work. I know that they usually only mean it as a sort of best phrase to use when they want to talk about ‘customer service,’ but still. It’s icky to me to treat a university as a corporation or business. I also hear loads of discussion about KPIs and metrics and yes, I understand that its good to know how your team is doing in terms of, say, response times to student queries, but at times it all feels much closer to working in a company than in a public service organization.

Throughout the book Connell clearly discusses what she sees as problems with the current system, and really the only place the book doesn’t quite live up to my hopes is in the last chapter. The penultimate chapter is great, where she provides loads of examples of historic universities (and some contemporary ones) doing things genuinely differently and interestingly. But the final chapter, where I’d love to see some concrete steps and suggestions, isn’t as fully formed as I’d like. But that doesn’t leave me disappointed; it just is motivating me to think more deeply about what I’d like to see where I work, and what collectively we should expect from our institutes of higher learning.

Recommend to a Friend / Keep / Donate it / Toss it:
Recommend to all my work colleagues. I’d keep a copy at my desk but we hot desk now. I hate that.

Four Stars

Best for:
Anyone who has been exposed to fatphobia (e.g. all of us) and who wants to work on unlearning it, via book with a lot of heart but also a lot of humor.

In a nutshell:
Comedian Sofie Hagen is a fat woman working to help other fat people to love themselves while also targeting the reasons why fat people might not love themselves: the gross fat bigotry that is evident pretty much everywhere one looks.

Worth quoting:
There are a lot, but because I listened to the audio book while out and about I didn’t write them down. One of the downsides of audio non-fiction for me.

Why I chose it:
I have an Audible UK subscription and this was one of the suggestions.

Review:
I love a humorous memoir. It’s one of my favorite genres of books, but I also can find it a bit challenging to review. Especially this one, which is mixed in with a lot more activism and education than the typical memoir. But let’s give it a go!

Sofie Hagen is a comedian, and she is fat. And she has learned to love herself in a world that tells people that there’s something wrong with being fat. However, as others in fat activism spaces have also pointed out, yes, loving one’s self is good, but the problem is with society, not individuals. Loving one’s self does not make airplane seats accommodating, or clothing options magically appears in physical stores. Accepting and appreciating one’s size does not stop other people from being assholes to you.

There is so much to like in this book, but one part I especially enjoyed were her interviews with other fat activists with different perspectives from her own. She interviews fat Black people, disabled fat people, and others, and she has them record their own part of the interview, so we get to hear their voices. That’s pretty cool.

I found myself laughing out loud many times, but was also drawn into Hagen’s overall personality and the joy that comes through as she tells her story. I could see myself listening to this again, because I think there’s a lot here that I want to properly take in and think about.

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

Four Stars

Best for:
Fans of Icelandic mysteries. People who don’t want to be totally in the dark but still want to be surprised.

In a nutshell:
Detective Inspector Hulda Hermannsdóttir is widowed and closing in on retirement. Early on she receives some surprising bad news, and is given the OK to look into a cold case.

Worth quoting:
N/A

Why I chose it:
I loved the Dark Iceland series. This is an unrelated trilogy by the same author so obviously I had to get it. Bonus: the main character is a woman in her 60s – how often do we get that?

Review:
Hermannsdóttir is clearly a complicated woman. She’s a widow, works as a Detective Inspector, lives alone, and is closing in on retirement. When she finds out her retirement has been moved up, she decides to look into a closed case that she suspects wasn’t correctly solved. Asylum seeker Elena was found dead and one of Hermannsdóttir’s colleagues ruled it a suicide. Hermannsdóttir disagrees.

The book follows her exploration of this possible crime, but also her investigation into another one – a man suspected of pedophilia who was hit by a car, possibly intentionally. At the same time, Hermannsdóttir is considering pursuing a new relationship, the first since her husband’s death many years prior. There’s a lot going on here.

I’m not going to go into a lot more detail so I don’t spoil things, but as usual, Jónasson paints a very good picture. This book reads a bit like Arnaldur Indriðason’s books, in that there are what might potentially be related stories woven throughout, and the reader isn’t entirely sure who is being discussed in those chapters. I love that style of writing.

One thing I do appreciate about this book is the exploration of Hermannsdóttir’s career, and how being a woman in a profession full of men has been held back, her male bosses keeping her from moving up the ranks as quickly as lesser qualified men. It’s frustrating to read but good to see discussed in a novel (especially one written by a man). I’m looking forward to reading the second book (it’s a trilogy!), which I may have already purchased.

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

Four Stars

Best for:
Anyone interested in a health care worker’s perspective on the first couple of months of COVID-19. Anyone who just wants to feel a little more rage at government failure.

In a nutshell:
Hospice physician and author Clarke shares her experiences – and experiences of patients and their families – during the first few weeks of COVID in England.

Worth quoting:
“In a major trauma, it is effective logistics, more than anything else, that saves lives.”

“It is abundantly clear that our patients were no one’s priority. No one in power had properly considered them.”

“Those residents — the very old, the very sick and people with disabilities — are precisely the population most at risk of dying from COVID. Yet far from being cocooned, as the government promised they would be, they are being incarcerated with COVID.”

Why I chose it:
I used to work in Public Health emergency management in the US. We had plans, though they relied on the federal government to have their shit together. Watching the UK national government, led by wildly inept elected officials, flounder and fail repeatedly, I am interested in learning as much as I can about exactly why and how they could have failed so dramatically, in the hopes that they don’t fuck up the response to the next pandemic.

Review:
As I type this in March 2022, two years and a couple of days after the government finally said maybe people should, like work from home for a bit if they can, there are zero restrictions related to COVID in the UK. I don’t even think we have to stay home if we test positive. I mean, they’d like us to, but not needed. Tests are free (like the only thing this government did right), but that ends at the end of March too. Masks are recommended on transit, but even that’s not required. You could also get on a plane and come here without proof of a negative test. Hospitalizations are on the rise, cases are higher than ever even with fewer people testing. It’s not a good look. But it’s not surprising because, in case you couldn’t tell from the first parts of my review, I think that England has royally fucked up the entire response to this disease.

I think Clarke agrees with me, at least regarding the parts that are in her purview. She kept a diary of the first few weeks of COVID in England, and this book is a compilation of that, experiences of some people who survived COVID, family members of those who did not, and people who were impacted health-wise in other ways; e.g. having to delay or defer treatment for other deadly illnesses like cancer.

England locked down too late, and at one point accounted for something like 10% of COVID deaths despite having less than 1% of the world population. And part of that is because of how England treated people who were in care homes. The staff in those facilities weren’t treated like proper health care employees, and so didn’t get the PPE they needed. At the same time, people were discharged from hospitals to care homes without COVID tests, so COVID was basically forced into these care facilities. It’s disgusting and should be a national disgrace; instead the government is still boasting about their world-beating whatever.

Not that I imagine you need it, but the book provides such a human face to what turned into statistics, especially for those of us like me who so far have been lucky enough to both avoid getting COVID and avoid any of my friends or family getting seriously ill from it. We learn of the experience of someone who had to be intubated, and also the discussions that took place within hospice and when people were definitely dying. It’s not an easy read, but it is a book I couldn’t put down. It gives me hope in the sense that individuals are determined and care so much, but it makes me despair at how utterly so many of the people elected to serve us have failed.

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

Four Stars

Best for:
Fans of Icelandic crime fiction.

In a nutshell:
A young woman is found dead on a sidewalk, apparently having jumped from the balcony of a home. Or did she?

Worth quoting:
N/A. I just raced through the book.

Why I chose it:
Four years ago I picked up the first in the Dark Iceland series at the Iceland Airport. I immediately tracked down the rest of the books, and then read what I thought was the final (fifth) book. In a bookstore this weekend, I wandered over to the J section in Crime and saw there was a sixth!

Review:
I enjoy these books. They aren’t formulaic but they aren’t totally absurd either. Yes, there are often twists, and sometimes they are ones that I didn’t see coming, but also that are specific enough that it might be hard for anyone to see coming. That said, I always find them interesting.

Ari has gone from a new officer in the first book to the Inspector in charge of police in the town in the final one. We’ve followed his relationships and the birth of his son. He’s not the most complicated person, but he is interesting enough. The star of these books, however, is the way Jónasson writes about small town Iceland. Even in the spring, there’s a sense of claustrophobia, but not in a bad way. The people are mostly pretty typical, but they also all know each other, which makes keeping secrets a bit of challenge. Things are connected, and not always in the ways a reader might predict.

In this particular book, there are a couple of different storylines, which may or may not be related. Plus, Ari’s ex is visiting with his son, so there’s a slight romance angle as well. I believe this is now the final book in this series, as he Jónasson has moved on to create a new series (the first two books I’ve also recently procured). It’s a decent enough wrap-up to the books, and I’m glad I got another chance to see how Ari would handle a case.

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

Four Stars

Best for:
Fans of The Good Place. People who want to be better.

In a nutshell:
TV writer and Creator of The Good Place shares what he learned about moral philosophy during that show, breaking it down using funny analogies and stories.

(Note: My review may have some spoilers for The Good Place. If you’ve never seen the show, I suggest you fix that immediately.)

Worth quoting:
“[F]or a meritocracy to work — for a society to properly value and celebrate the hard work and individual success — the people within the society need to start from the same point of origin. Otherwise, the cream isn’t rising to the top — the people who were the closest to the top already are rising to the top, and the whole concept of meritocracy crumbles to dust.”

“For people deeply invested in the way things are, any change would mean confronting decisions they’ve made that created or sustained the troubling reality.”

“When we do something good, we want credit, dammit. We want a little gold star.”

Why I chose it:
The Good Place is 100% my favorite television show of all time. Like, it’s not even a competition. Part of that is because I studied moral philosophy in graduate school (I actually squealed when ‘What We Owe to Each Other’ showed up in an early episode, and ran to get my copy to show my partner) and part of that is because it’s forking hilarious while also being extremely thoughtful. When I saw this book, I knew I had to order it and read it immediately.

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Review:
What a book. What a delightful, optimistic, educational, funny book.

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Alright, so Michael Schur, who created a Good Place that I really hope exists, has taken what he learned about philosophy from that experience and written an interesting and easy to understand book about moral philosophy and ethics. It is a VERY fun read, which is impressive, since it covers virtue ethics (Aristotle), deontology (Kant), utilitarianism (Mill and Bentham), Consequentialism (Scanlon), and Existentialism (Sartre and Camus).

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Plus it includes some nice, deep burns of Ayn Rand. Those are always welcomed.

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Schur starts with the easier stuff (“Should I punch my friend in the face for no reason?”), introducing different concepts slowly, so the reader can get used to one and see how it applies in a situation. By the later chapters, when we’re dealing with more intense stuff (e.g. can you keep supporting a person or company that does bad things and also makes things you love, aka the Chic-fil-a Conundrum), he brings together multiple theories to see what they would say about the decisions we could make, and opines on why some options might be better than others.

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I especially appreciate his take on the ideas of what we owe to each other, because he talks extensively about how what we owe does depend on who we are and where we are in our lives. He has a running thread about a 27 cent tip on a $1.73 cup of coffee. He rightly points out that to someone who doesn’t have a lot of money, that 27 cents is generous. But for someone like him, who is extremely privileged and has a lot of money, he should be giving more. Doing more. He owes it to society. As do people with even more wealth and privilege than Schur like, say, Jeff Bezos.

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Obviously I loved this book, so why isn’t it 5 stars? Well, let’s get back to the Chic-fil-a Conundrum. Because part of the book — not a huge part, but definitely at least a chapter — is devoted to Peter Singer. Now, I have read some of Singer’s work in the past, and I found a pre-CBR review I wrote of one of his works that I obviously didn’t assess critically. I should have done my homework, because that guy is a mess. He’s definitely … consistent, but that consistency leads him to support eugenics. Dude is SUPER ableist, to a deeply disturbing degree. Which is a big bummer, because he also happens to have some interesting ideas about where we should target charitable giving.

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Schur references this a bit in a footnote (a footnote that comes in ten pages into the section on Singer), but basically makes it sound like he almost respects how hard Singer sticks to his beliefs even as they lead to some despicable outcomes (making Singer a pretty big failure from a virtue ethics perspective). Schur even suggests that people don’t like Singer because he makes us feel bad about our own actions. I mean sure, probably that factors in it a little. But mostly its the eugenics. And apparently Schur even wrote the introduction to one of Singer’s books? COME ON BUDDY. Like, I know it’s a bit meta, but writing a book about moral philosophy and choosing to include one of the more problematic living philosophers isn’t great. I’m sure there’s another philosopher he could have included for that section.

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Some other bits of note:
This book has a lot of footnotes and those footnotes are GEMS. I love a book that takes a moment to redirect the reader to a footnote, and that footnote says something like ‘Todd notes that Sartre would also say that addiction is a choice. Mike notes that Sartre needs to cool it a little.’

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I wish this book had been available to me before I started grad school because honestly, Schur described Kant and the categorical imperative in 10 pages better than many philosophy professors. Like, seriously, if I could go back and take my moral philosophy course exam again, I think I might crush it.

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