July 25, 2023     Just finished Nothing to See Here, by Kevin Wilson, which was on my wish list for years, maybe from a NY Times recommendation. A wonderful, quirky story which was just what I needed in my time away from work.

At the heart of the story, two close friends who couldn’t have less in common. Madison is wealthy, protected, full of confidence and ideas; Lillian is poor, ignored, alone, but bright and eccentric. Their lives mesh in as teens, and then separate abruptly. Letters keep their lives connected, until the troubled and abandoned twins of Madison’s husband brings their divergent lives back together, and draws Lillian’s life into a whole new trajectory. Fire and heat and love and connection are at the root of this surprisingly uplifting, funny and sad story.

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It’s been a stretch since I updated, and I see some satisfying and insightful reads among the entries in my reading notes. Here’s three highlights that got me from November to January:

January 15, 2023 Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver
Wow. A long haul, but just finished and so thankful for Kingsolver’s story, and touched by her acknowledgements too. It was special that both my daughter and I got the same book for Christmas, and have been reading it at the same time. I was worried at times, especially closer to the end, that it would end badly, and while that would make sense, it would be so terribly sad. I loved the characters Demon, and Angus, and June and so many others, though it was a challenge to keep track of them all.

The insights into this level of poverty and neglect were stunning, and Kingsolver does us all a service by bringing us there, into foster care (or lack of it), neglect, hunger, addiction, abuse. It’s easy to dismiss, an yet a persistent reality.

The final section, set in a detox centre in the city, probes the fascinating distinction—cultural, social, economical—between city life and rural, between sophisticates and hicks. Kingsolver mentions her Appalachian roots in the final pages, and clearly understands this distinction deeply. I’d never really thought about it this fully, and yet I’ve known the difference, intimately.

January 6, 2023 The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri
This was a sobering, clear and engaging read. The writing is strong and effective, but doesn’t call attention to itself. It pulls a person right into the world of the Indian immigrants to the US, into the ways of adjusting and sustaining themselves even as they have children who will both be at home with and resent the ways they preserve from home. I was pulled in from the start, and read it fairly quickly.
I loved how Gogol figured into the father’s life, and became the son’s name. Gogol’s own story is more tragic than I’d remembered, but I always enjoyed his stories….

November 10, 2022 Justin Gregg, If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal
I don’t remember where I learned about this book or writer, but it was a good read. Gregg is bright, and funny, too. His style is humble and thoughtful and easy to take in. His arguments are sobering, depressing sometimes, but they make all too much sense, especially today, with the absurd and distressing political and ecological crises we face. He’s analyzing and exploring why—for all the gifts of intellect, imagination, and comprehension humans have evolved to possess—we make such stupid and dangerous decisions, or avoid the wise and compassionate ones. By comparison, he explains how insects, chickens, crocodiles all seem masters of survival, and have what seem satisfying lives.

Among the human capacities he explores is our capacity for deception, for lying. We’re deceptive creatures. He examines how the US keeps dealing with fake news and deception, day to day, incident to catastrophe. Humans keep evolving, meanwhile, to lie and to believe lies—“to dupe and be duped.” He examines death and our sense of it, our comprehension of time, and also our social and cultural norms and biases—always comparing us to animals. He argues that our moral aptitude might constrain our behaviour and cause us to do harmful and destructive things to one another. “Animals, with their less sophisticated normative systems, are the ones living the good life.” (p154).

P190-192 tells of Capability Brown, England’s celebrated gardener, who managed to hook us all on the manicured lawn, “symbols of Americana” and of success, and yet these “monocular wastelands” are responsible for unimaginable waste and ecological damage. This is an example of what he calls prognostic myopia. This is the notion that we can imagine, but not really feel for the future. We seem hard-wired to base decisions on short term, immediate goals and needs. He refers to other thinkers I admire (e.g. Gladwell, Kahneman, and others), who explore human decision-making, flawed as it seems to be. Overall, “intelligence sometimes results in very stupid behaviour.” (227). We may be exceptional and complex creatures, but that doesn’t seem to set us up to evolve and thrive. Sad.