Category Archives: Books

BOOK REVIEW: Quarantine in the Grand Hotel by Jenő Rejtő

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Quarantine In The Grand HotelQuarantine In The Grand Hotel by Jenő Rejtő

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon page

[Note: This book is published by Corvina Books, which is a Hungarian publisher that—among other things—specializes in translations of Hungarian literature (into mostly English and German.) I bought the book on a recent trip to Budapest. I mention these two facts because this seems to be an expensive and / or difficult to acquire work outside of Hungary. A cursory Amazon search brought up copies only at an exorbitant rate. In Hungary I paid 2500 forint (about $9 USD at the time), which I would consider on the high side of what the book is worth. It’s a good book, but it’s a 160-page pulp-fiction paperback novel written about 80 years ago.]

Quarantine in the Grand Hotel is a murder mystery set on a fictional resort in Indonesia (or thereabouts.) However, it’s not your typical dour mystery. It’s as much of a satirical humor novel as it is a mystery. I was hooked with the first paragraph, which reads, “When Maud returned to her room, she saw a man emerge from her wardrobe. Dressed in pyjamas and wearing a bright green lampshade on his head, the stranger beamed a friendly smile at her.” From that point, I had to know who the man in the pyjamas is and how he got there, and that information doesn’t come immediately or without false leads.

The premise is that the resort is quarantined and a murder takes place there (actually two murders.) It’s not a creative premise. The hotel setting allows the author to bring together an international cast of characters (suspects) some of whom would believably have secrets or be leading double lives. Where the creativity comes in is both in the humor, and in the skilled reveals. Rejtő used cliff-hanger chapter closings to good effect. He also plants false information, e.g. in the form of false confessions designed to protect loved ones that may or may not have actually committed a crime.

Rejtő (who wrote under the nom de plume “P. Howard”) was a Hungarian journalist and author. He wrote this and most of his books in the 1930s. He died in a forced labor camp in axis-controlled Soviet territory during World War II. He’d displeased the Hungarian Arrow Cross Militia (i.e. the Hungarian fascists) and was sent to a labor camp at the front.

I’d recommend this book for those who like light, humorous novels. If you’re a hardcore mystery fan, it might seem a little silly and ham-handed. If you are looking for a novel that offers insight into Hungarian literature, I don’t think this one is for you. The setting is not Hungarian, the major characters are not Hungarian, and I would hazard to say that most people wouldn’t know that this translation wasn’t written by a British, or other English-language country, author.

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BOOK REVIEW: How Pleasure Works by Paul Bloom

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How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We LikeHow Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like by Paul Bloom

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Amazon page

Paul Bloom’s book is about why we take pleasure in peculiar actions, proclivities, and objects. These are the pleasures that aren’t readily or directly explained by our evolutionary hardwiring. Evolution has programmed us to experience pleasure with sex and eating to encourage procreation and nourishment. In other words, those who experienced pleasure with sex had sex more often, and passed on their genes more successfully. Those who had a healthy appetite, ate more, became stronger, survived, and passed on their genes.

However, just because the pleasure of sex is readily understood through biology, doesn’t give us insight into the panoply of activities that people find pleasurable in a sexual way that have no value for procreation whatsoever. Bloom uses the example of masochism, but there are all sorts of kinky fetishes out there that one might also consider. It’s the peculiar pleasures that Bloom tries to explain. This is not to suggest that Bloom’s book is entirely about food or sex. He addresses each of those subjects with a chapter of its own, but they aren’t the sum total of the book. Both he and I, no doubt, rely heavily on food and sex because they are such fundamental pleasures and ones whose domains have blossomed far beyond the dictates of biology.

So what does the book address besides food and sex? It examines why people collect things that were once owned by famous people? Bloom sites a study showing that Joshua Bell anonymously playing violin in the subway in street clothes can barely garner a collective $32 in an afternoon, even having been passed by people who will pay $200 each to hear him later that evening as he wears a tuxedo in a concert hall, though playing the same songs on the same $3.5million violin. Why do we sit around watching television and movies? If any of these pleasures seem self-evident, I would encourage you to ask yourself why they should be? It’s by no means clear that we should value something more highly because of who previously owned it, and it’s certainly not clear why we should get value by watching others play act lives that seem more interesting than our own.

The theory that Bloom presents is called essentialism. It’s the idea that each of these things that give us pleasure represents the essence of something or someone in our minds. So a person who pay’s 500 times the going rate for a used guitar solely based on the fact (x-factor) that it once belonged to John Lennon is, according to Bloom, imagining that there’s some sort of essence of Lennon that rubbed off onto the guitar. Yes, the guy buying the guitar could be buying it entirely based on economic considerations, but the only reason there’s an economic benefit (economic rents in economist terminology) to be made is that there are people out there (many of them) who desire to possess a famous artist’s instrument even though it costs them far more than an equivalent guitar not owned by a famous person. Things become even clearer when one looks at an item like JFK’s tape measure—i.e. a mundane item that is not tied to the man’s fame. (Said tape measure sold for an absurd amount.)

Bloom discusses art forgeries to elaborate this concept of “essence” versus the intrinsic value (i.e. the beauty of the art.) There are many cases of paintings being sold for millions because they were believed to be painted by a certain “artistic genius” and then they become trash when it’s discovered that they were painted by a nobody—a nobody who’s genius was clearly sufficient to convince all the experts that he was some other genius for a while, mind you. If what we cared about was the beauty of the painting, its value would have nothing to do with its origins. In this example, it might seem to be all about rarity (a dead artist paints no more, and, thus, has a limited stock of paintings), but there is reason to believe that’s not the whole story.

We can see the value of these essences ubiquitously. There have been a number of blind taste test experiments that show that oenophiles (wine lovers/experts) can’t tell nearly as much about a wine’s delicate intricacies when they don’t have its label on hand. Famously, there was the CEO of Perrier who couldn’t pick his own company’s water out of a blind line up of waters, though insisting it was a superior product. (It took him five tries out of seven waters.) Even after that event there were people willing to spend twice as much for Perrier because it gave them some pleasure that was completely delinked from its taste or nutritional characteristics.

Bloom’s thesis is interesting, and he presents a lot of fascinating examples in this book. What the book doesn’t really explain is how come certain essences act heavily on some people and not at all on others. It also seems like a theory that begs for another level of explanation. Why should such essences exist, i.e. what is their root cause? The latter may prove difficult given the degree to which individuals vary in their peculiar pleasures from one to the next.

I found this book to be intriguing, and would recommend if for people with interests in the oddities of human behavior.

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READING REPORT: February 6, 2015

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I polished off three books this week. That’s not as impressive as it might seem; they were all slim volumes. I’ll do reviews on these books in the near future, but a few words about each will suffice here.

The first was Zen Mind, Strong Body; a book about which I had mixed feelings. It’s by a calisthenics expert named Al Kavadlo, who is a personal trainer, author, and YouTube phenom. On the positive side, Kavadlo is a sharp guy with many useful insights into bodyweight exercise and fitness in general. Additionally, Kavadlo eschews the snake-oil salesmanship that is rampant in the fitness world.

On the other hand, the book is basically a rehash of blog posts, and the “new / first time seen pictures” aren’t useful for learning the exercises because they’re mostly just the author standing in random places with his shirt off. Furthermore, there’s no such consolidating theme to the book as is suggested by the title. I think it just has that title (a take-off on DT Suzuki’s classic work on Zen) because “The Best of Al Kavadlo’s Blog Posts” doesn’t scream “buy me.” I thought a little extra value-added could have been provided for the people who paid for the book, but you will learn from it.

The second book was Quarantine in the Grand Hotel. This novel brings satire and humor into a locked-door mystery. It was written by a Hungarian author in the 1930’s, but remains a readable and enjoyable book.

IHaveNoMouthThe third book was the short story collection by Harlan Ellison that I mentioned I would begin this week. I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream consists of seven stories that are nominally in the genre of science fiction, but could also be classified as tales of the strange. This book was first published in 1967. Ellison writes stories in a readable style, though one that can sometimes be called “trippy.” If I were going to award a “book of the week” for the book that I found most engaging, it would be this one.

I only got a couple of chapters each into the Mo Yan novel Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out and the epic poem The Aeneid. The former is readable has a fascinating premise, but the latter–not unexpectedly– is a little more of a chore to read (but is a classic and seems worth the difficulties.)

Having finished off some nonfiction in the preceding week, I made room to resume reading a book that I started a couple of months ago entitled Why Do People Get Ill? A two-man team consisting of a psychoanalyst and a neuroscientist joined together to write this book. It examines the role that stress and the mind play in illness. Yes, things like germs (i.e. bacteria and viruses) cause illness. However, that’s not the whole story, and a couple of key questions remain. First, how come some people can be repeatedly exposed to causative factors and their bodies knock out disease leaving them asymptomatic. Second, how come others readily come down with ailments–sometimes even when they haven’t been exposed to causative factors. To put matters in scholarly terms, germs may be a necessary condition for disease, but they are rarely a sufficient condition.

WhyDoPeopleGetIll_Leader&Corfield

 

I didn’t do much yoga or martial arts specific reading this week. However, today I finally began The Pyjama Game, which is a book about Judō that I mentioned in one of my previous Reading Reports.

I purchased four books this week, all on Kindle and mostly on sale.  Those books, which I’m sure to be discussing and reviewing on later dates are:

TheThreeStigmata

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch: Because I’m a huge PKD fan, and this is said to be one of his best books–of his books that I haven’t yet read. This was in the Kindle Monthly Deals.

FirstHubby

First Hubby: This will be my first Roy Blount Jr. book, but I did enjoy him on that NPR game show (i.e. Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!) This was also a Kindle Monthly Deal as I recall.

Ikkyu_Berg

Ikkyu: Crow with No Mouth: This is the story of a Zen master who lived in Kyoto in the 15th century. He sounds like a fascinating man, and was also a skilled poet. This one wasn’t on sale, but neither was it expensive at the usual price.

TheElementsThe Elements: This book is a Kindle Daily Deal as I’m writing this. I love me some science. I did have to look through the sample pages before buying. Even though it was inexpensive, I was concerned that it might not have much usefulness on my black&white, base-model Kindle because the graphics are an important part of the book. However, it looked like there was enough text explanation to be worth the $2.00–even if the graphics don’t show up well.

And that was my week in books.

BOOK REVIEW: 999 ed. by Al Sarrantonio

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999: Twenty-nine Original Tales of Horror and Suspense999: Twenty-nine Original Tales of Horror and Suspense by Al Sarrantonio

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon page

999 is a collection of 28 short stories and one novella that are all in the genre of horror and dark suspense. The collection includes some superstar authors such as Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, Neil Gaiman, and David Morrell, but all of the authors are established writers and most will be familiar to readers in this genre.

I won’t go into each story in-depth, but will list and briefly describe each. A few of the stories stuck with me, while others were quite forgettable—so I’ll point out which were which. Your results may vary.

1.) “Amerikanski Dead at the Moscow Morgue” by Kim Newman: This is a Cold War Zombie story. It was intriguing.
2.) “The Ruins of Contracoeur” by Joyce Carol Oates: The family of a disgraced Judge move to a remote area to stay out of the limelight, and faceless monster sightings ensue. How bad could a Joyce Carol Oates’ story be? It’s solid and well-written. It wasn’t among my favorites.
3.) “The Owl and the Pussycat” by Thomas M. Disch: An “inanimate” stuffed owl and plush-toy cat converse about their wicked, spouse-abusing owner. Creepy, but not one of the strongest entries. The stories in this collection range from realism to far-fetched speculative fiction. This work is toward the latter end of the spectrum.
4.) “The Road Virus Heads North” by Stephen King: A mutating “killer” picture is obtained at a yard sale. This is among the stronger stories.
5.) “Keepsakes and Treasures: A Love Story” by Neil Gaiman: About a collector of the “exotic.” While Gaiman is my favorite author of this bunch, I can’t say this is story was among my favorites of the collection. I will say that it has some of the cleverest wording of any of the stories (as one would expect of Gaiman), but maybe that humor works at right-angles to the story. You decide.
6.) “Growing Things” by T.E.D. Klein: About a husband / Mr. Fixit and his following of advice columns on a growth. This is a short piece, but not among the more memorable stories. It’s innovative, but not the least bit intense.
7.) “Good Friday” by F. Paul Wilson: A vampire story set in a convent. A good story, but obviously not particularly innovative. However, if you like the idea of nuns battling vampires, here’s your story.
8.) “Excerpts from the Records of the New Zodiac and the Diaries of Henry Watson Fairfax” by Chet Williamson: A swanky dinner club that rotates hosts and each host tries to outdo the last in the presentation of “exotic delicacies.”
9.) “An Exaltation of Termagants” by Eric Van Lustbader: I’ll have to be honest; this was the least memorable of these stories. When I flipped back through to write this review, I found that I’d completely forgotten the piece. I think its lack of memorableness speaks for itself. It’s about an unappealing man and his sucky life that’s tied to his poor relationships with women. I think the problem is two-fold. First, it’s one of the longer stories in the collection. Second, unlike Joe R. Lansdale’s “Mad Dog Summer,” it’s a long short story without memorable characters or a taut story arc. In short, if you’re going to go long, you’ve got to give us characters we can either love or despise, and you’ve got to give us a pace that keeps us intrigued. This story does neither. I know it’s all subjective, but I think this collection without this story would be improved.
10.) “Itinerary” by Tim Powers: A mysterious caller asks the protagonist to tell an unknown woman caller that said caller “just left” in response to her inquiry. From there the story meanders into personal tragedy before bringing it all back together in the end. It was so-so. I liked the premise, but it didn’t have that x-factor in execution.
11.) “Catfish Gal Blues” by Nancy A. Collins: A river catfish mermaid story. This was a weird but highly memorable story.
12.) “The Entertainment” by Ramsey Campbell: Man thinks he’s checked into a hotel, but it’s really some sort of asylum. Not the most memorable, but not the least either.
13.) “ICU” by Edward Lee: Man awakes in an ICU, and is informed that he’s a gangster involved in pedophilia and other hardcore taboo pornography. Vivid and well-crafted.
14.) “The Grave” by P.D. Cacek: A young woman with a horrible mother discovers a grave in the woods that she’s never seen before. This one is eery and visceral.
15.) “The Shadow, The Darkness” by Thomas Ligotti: About a tour group promised “the ultimate physical-metaphysical excursion.” This paranormal story is just OK.
16.) “Knocking” by Rick Hautala: Remember Y2K? It was the idea that the entirety of the world of computing would come to a screeching halt because their little (inadequately programmed) computer minds would be blown by a date starting in “20?” This story is based on that notion.
17.) “Rio Grande Gothic” by David Morrell: A cop keeps finding shoes left in the same section of road, and eventually begins to wonder if someone isn’t trying to tell him something. This story does a good job of capturing one’s curiosity and keeping one’s attention.
18.) “Des Saucisses, Sans Doute” by Peter Schneider: This is one of the shorter stories in the book, and it’s also an almost absurdist dark piece. You may laugh or you may vomit, either way the writer had an effect.
19.) “Angie” by Ed Gorman: This story is white-trash gothic. It’s about a couple that are “stuck” with this kid, and are concerned that the child has learned their dirty, little secret and will turn them in. It was one of the stories that stuck with me most intensely. The unlikable character development is exceptional.
20.) “The Ropy Thing” by Al Sarrantonio: A couple of kids in a neighborhood assaulted by a thing that is… well, ropy (rope-like.) Not one of the better pieces, but it has the virtue of being short.
21.) “The Tree is My Hat” by Gene Wolfe: A man befriends an outcast on island in the South Pacific. It’s a solid piece.
22.) “Styx and Bones” by Edward Bryant: A cheating man comes down with a mysterious ailment. This is a well-executed story.
23.) “Hemophage” by Steven Spruill: Another vampire story, this one set inside a detective story.
24.) “The Book of Irrational Numbers” by Michael Marshall Smith: It’s about a guy from Roanoke, Virginia who is obsessed with numbers. As there aren’t many math short stories, if you are a big fan of math fiction you may find this interesting. The writing style is fun. If you aren’t a math fan, you may lose the story.
25.) “Mad Dog Summer” by Joe R. Lansdale: A man recounts a story of murder from his youth living in a rural community. This is one of the strongest stories in the collection. It’s also one of the longest, but the author does an outstanding job of keeping one’s attention throughout.
26.) “The Theatre” by Bentley Little: A clerk at a bookstore ventures into a forbidden floor above the store to find a creepy theater that will change his life. It’s a good, creepy story.
27.) “Rehersals” by Thomas F. Monteleone: I don’t know that I would have put this in the same genre as the other stories, but it’s an excellent story—and so I can see why the editor was eager to include it. It is speculative fiction, as opposed to being realist, but I wouldn’t count it as either horror or suspense. It’s about a man handling props in a community theater who is given glimpses into what his life could have been like if he’d stood up to his abusive father. It’s one of the best stories in the collection.
28.) “Darkness” by Dennis L. McKiernan: A man moves into a beautiful house willed to him by an eccentric uncle. The problem is that the lights in the house are so bright as to be an assault on the eyes—leaving not a shadow or dark space in the house. The lights are wired to be either all on or all off. It doesn’t occur to the nephew that the lights might be that way for a reason.
29.) “Elsewhere” by William Peter Blatty: This is the longest piece–a novella / very short novel and not a short story. It’s about a realtor who’s trying to sell a house that’s haunted. She brings together a writer and a couple “experts on the paranormal” to debunk the haunting so that the house will become salable. But everything is not as it appears.

This is a good collection of stories. Some are better than others, but the best are extraordinary. I’d highly recommend it for anyone who likes horror, dark suspense, or the macabre. Within that genre, it’s an eclectic mix of stories in form, substance, and style.

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The Non-shopping Firang

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20140316_160803With the notable exception of books, I hate shopping. There are few endeavors more painfully tedious to me than wandering through stores looking for clothes, tsotchkes, knick-knacks, bric-a-brac, widgets, or doo-dads. I do go shopping, in part because I like to eat, and in part because societal conventions require that I wear clothing (you’re welcome.)

 

Were I not married, I’d be a complete fashion nightmare because I have only three questions when shopping for clothes. 1.) Does it look like it fits? 2.) Does it look comfortable? 3.) Is the price reasonable? (i.e. given that I’m a cheapskate for which stylishness and/or trendiness mean diddlysquat.) If the price of two shirts of the same size is identical, I will buy the one that’s closest to the cash register–or which will otherwise get me out of the store the quickest.

 

You’ll note, I didn’t include the question: “Does it match?” Correct. I’m not even sure I know what that means. If it’s a shirt, it matches pants because you wear them together, right? A shirt would not match another shirt, unless one could wear one over the other? If you can’t wear the two items at the same time, they definitely don’t match, but that doesn’t come up often. (I know all the bits that need covering, ergo, I can succeed at picking a group of garments that covers all the essential anatomical area.)

 

I also didn’t include “Does it look good?” It had to look good to someone–they made the damn thing. Who am I to say my taste is better than theirs? I think we’ve already established that I know not thing-one about being fashionable. Now, if it has feathers or a cape, I wouldn’t buy it on the grounds of lack of functionality (have you ever gotten your cape caught in an elevator or escalator?), but I don’t judge on taste. There but for the grace of my wife, go I… looking like non-sparkly Elton John.

 

So where am I going with this, you may ask? What’s intriguing is that, despite the fact that I hate shopping, I get asked if I want to be taken to a market, mall, or commercial district about four times per day (fyi, that’s roughly the number of times I go shopping per annum.)

 

Imagine a white person walking down the sidewalk wearing a t-shirt and sweatpants, said person has a full duffle-bag on their shoulder that is long enough to accommodate a standard size yoga mat when rolled up. Where is this person going?

A.) He /she is going to the yoga studio.

B.) He /she is going to a gym.

C.) He / she is going to a martial arts studio.

D.) There isn’t enough information to determine between A,B, or C.

E.) He /she desperately wants to go shopping.

 

If you answered “D” you’re a keen and astute observer. If you answered A, B, or C, you have drawn a reasonable conclusion, but did so too quickly and without sufficient information for that degree of specificity.  If you answered “E,” you drive an autorickshaw (tuk-tuk) for a living.

 

For a while, I thought that this was just blatant ignorance, as all forms of racism are. Could these drivers truly not fathom–despite all evidence to the contrary–that I (i.e. whitey) spent my time doing things other than shopping? Did they really think that my days were divided between counting infinite piles of cash and spending it on crap for which I had no real need?

 

Then I realized that it was tenacious hope that drove these inquiries, and not biases. I came to this conclusion as I was watching a few of the recent Superbowl ads. If I don’t get enraged at Madison Avenue, I can’t really get mad at the aforementioned driver. Advertisers and that driver are both just trying to persuade me that something that I don’t need and have no interest in is somehow pursuit-worthy.

 

The driver knows that I’m going to yoga or kalari or a funeral (or wherever the evidence might suggest I’m headed at the moment), but they’re just holding out the thin hope that I can be diverted from that funeral to go buy some gee-gaw from which they can obtain a commission. In a way, they’re like the guys (or girls, to be non-discriminatory) who hit on a person who is way out of their league. It takes a lot of confidence to suffer repeated crushing rejection with such low probability of success. There’s a guy in the building where I get both my haircuts and Tibetan thukpa, who invites me into his carpet shop every single time I enter the building–despite the fact that the first 100 times I’ve shown zero interest. As long as said persistent wooer doesn’t resort to stalking, it’s kind of endearing. (Of course, it’s a thin line into stalker territory, and then it becomes instantly intolerable.)

 

There’s another reason I’ve discovered I shouldn’t hold this persistence against the drivers. That’s that they’re stereotyping isn’t without basis. Most of my expat compatriots do love themselves some shopping. I’m very curious about the root of this behavior. I suspect that it’s the vestigial evolutionary programming of hunter/gatherer behavior carried over into people who don’t like to get their toes muddy, to have to touch anything “icky,” or–in general–to be outdoors.

 

However, I’m a little out of my league, because I only have this compulsion to shop for books. I’m sure that’s residual hunter / gather behavior, but there’s a goal that can be understood. Through book shopping, I’m searching for a kind of nourishment–not the kind that ends hunger pangs, but the kind that’s an assault on my stupidity. I still don’t have a theory for how this applies to Hello Kitty stickers, Chia Pets, a second (or 403rd) pair of sneakers, or any of the other inane crap the people really–but unbelievably–purchase.

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BOOK REVIEW: The Key Muscles of Hatha Yoga by Ray Long

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The Key Muscles of Hatha YogaThe Key Muscles of Hatha Yoga by Ray Long

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon page

This is a handy anatomy reference for yoga teachers and practitioners. The bulk of the book describes major muscles, or—when relevant—muscle groups. For each of the key muscles it gives the insertion, origin, innervation, agonists, synergists, and depicts the muscle in color drawings. The book also shows typical yoga postures in which the muscle is engaged or stretched. This gives one some idea of how the muscle is affected by changes in attitude and state of contraction.

True to the title, this isn’t a general anatomy and physiology book for yoga. It specifically deals with the muscular system. That being said, it does have some opening matter on the skeletal system, the various types of joints, and other fundamentals that one must understand to grasp how muscles create movement and change bodily alignment. It also has a few brief chapters at the end that deal with important issues like breathing and bandhas. However, if you’re looking for a book with substantial coverage of the anatomy and physiology of breath or nervous system activity, you’ll likely need to look elsewhere. The book also addresses the concept of chakra, which seems out-of-place in an otherwise scientific book, but it will be appreciated by those who view the body in that way and is easily enough ignored for those who want a strictly scientific presentation of material.

While the book is limited in its focus, it does a good job of giving a lot of information in a concise fashion. The graphics are easily interpreted and one can readily distinguish the muscles in question. I found the book to be well-organized and easy to use.

I’d recommend this book for any serious yoga practitioners, particularly teachers and those who need to be concerned about the minutiae of movement and alignment.

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BOOK REVIEW: The Martian by Andy Weir

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The MartianThe Martian by Andy Weir

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Amazon page

If you like suspenseful science-fiction, humor, and are fascinated by science, you must read this book. I’m not kidding.

The premise is a simple cast-away story, except that it takes place on Mars—an environment in which a human can’t last for seconds without a lot of properly functioning technology. Astronaut Mark Watney is left for dead when a severe storm blows in, impaling him with a piece of metal, knocking out his vital statistics monitor, and blowing him into a drift. Having lost visual contact with Watney, showing no vital statistics, and facing the toppling of the crew’s escape vehicle by high winds, the mission commander decides that she can’t risk the lives of the entire crew to cart Watney’s body back home. The thing is; Watney isn’t dead.

The book is a rollercoaster ride of highs and lows associated with events that nearly kill Watney—either in an instant or by making his long-term survival impossible. The botanist / engineer must figure out how to survive for four years (until the next Mars mission is due—if it doesn’t get cancelled) with less than six months of supplies. (The mission was supposed to be one month but was aborted in the first week, but there were five other crew members whose rations were left behind.) If you think Tom Hanks had it bad in Cast Away, imagine having to produce food on Mars.

This book taps into the visceral feeling that works so well in the movie Gravity (but Weir does more homework on the science.) For tension, it’s hard to beat being adrift in space, utterly isolated from one’s species—or any species for that matter–and knowing you will die when your resources run out.

The main character, who is the only character for the first six chapters or so, is intensely likable. Mark Watney is funny, intelligent, self-deprecatingly humble, and can confidently problem solve in the midst of any crisis. If there’s a critique of the realism of this story (as sci-fi goes it is extremely realistic), it’s that Watney is preternaturally skilled at adapting to complete solitude. However, I don’t deduct for this, because if it showed him at the depths of despair that someone in his circumstance would inevitably go through, it wouldn’t be nearly as pleasing a book to read. If you’ve read a lot about sensory deprivation and / or what happens to prisoners over long stints in solitary confinement, I’d suspend the disbelief that might come from that knowledge and just accept that Watney is exceedingly good at saying, “Pity-party over. It’s time to make this work.” In short, humorous Watney is just a lot more fun to read than would be a despondent astronaut.

I think I’ve been clear that this is an outstanding book, and everyone should read it. I guess if you absolutely hate science (of any kind–because there’s botany, biology, physics, chemistry, engineering, etc. all rolled up into this book), you may find that it’s hard to stick with the glut of scientific / engineering discussions coming at you. Still, you shouldn’t hate science that much—what the hell is the matter with you. Weir writes in a readable style and the reader doesn’t get awash in minutiae. (For example, Watney even names the unit kilowatt-hour/sol [sol=a Mar’s day] the “Pirate-ninja” to make it more palatable and humorous.)

Read it. You’ll like it. Also, don’t wait because the movie is supposed to come out in the Fall.

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READING REPORT: January 30, 2015

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Welcome to my second weekly dispatch on what I’ve been reading. Owing to my weird approach to reading, I tend to finish books in clusters, and this week I polished off the novel The Martian, the horror short story anthology 999, and three nonfiction books (Principles of Tibetan Medicine, The Key Muscles of Hatha Yoga,  and How Pleasure Works.) The only one of these that I’ve completed a review on is Principles of Tibetan Medicine, but reviews of the others will be in the works in the upcoming week(s.)


The star of my completed pile was Andy Weir’s The Martian. It’s a spectacular science fiction read that’s engaging from beginning to end. Readers who love science will find it particularly fascinating and well-researched. For the yogis and yoginis out there, Ray Long’s book on muscles as applied to Hatha Yoga is well-organized, easy to follow, and easy to use.

 

The completion of several books this week creates openings in what fiction and poetry I’ll be reading on Kindle in the coming weeks. Drum-roll please… I will be starting the following books this week:


MoYan_LDWMO

1.) Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out by Mo Yan: Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize for Literature back in 2012, and this 2006 book is about a benevolent land owner who is killed on orders by Mao Zedong, and is subsequently reincarnated as a series of farm animals.


 

IHaveNoMouth

2.) I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison: The title of this collection of short stories is also the title of the most prominent piece in it. The 1968 Hugo winning story is a post-apocalyptic tale of artificial intelligence run amok.


 

Aeneid

3.) The Aeneid of Virgil: I’m overdue to read this epic poem by the famous Latin poet written during the first century B.C.


 

In nonfiction, I made an impulse purchase this week that I’m about half way through reading. It’s called Zen Mind, Strong Body and it’s by Al Kavadlo. I’m having minor buyer’s remorse, not because it’s a bad book, but because it turns out to be a collection of blog posts, and so I could have probably gotten all this for free by digging around the world wide web a little. (Moral: always read the fine print on the dust jacket. I wouldn’t mind, but it was a bit pricey for rehashed blog posts.) Kavadlo is a personal trainer and advocated of calisthenics and advanced bodyweight exercises, and he has many interesting ideas on both mind and body. It has provided some interesting food for thought, but I don’t really need the hundreds of pictures of the author with his shirt off.

ZenMindStrongBody



 

I’m about halfway through Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s latest book, Antifragile, and would like to make some headway on that in the upcoming week. While I’m a fan of Taleb’s work, I’ve gotten bogged down in this one because it keeps going and going and going on about a rather simple concept–i.e. that some things become stronger or more robust when exposed to stressors. I’m not sure the book needed to be this long. I suspect that Taleb is the kind to throw a world class tantrum if an editor took a hatchet to a word of his writing–and now he has the following to make it work. He’s a smart guy and raises many excellent points, but he seems like a major prima donna. At any rate, maybe he’ll surprise me in the second half with something novel and interesting–in lieu of endless restatement of his (admittedly fascinating) thesis.

Antifragility



 

I also started a book a few weeks back called Zen and the Brain by James H. Austin that I’d like to get back to. It examines what science has to say about the practice of meditation from the perspective of a neuroscientist who’s also a Zen practitioner.

Zen&Brain



 

At the end of last year, I did a post about the Book Riot 2015 Read Harder Challenge. It’s a sort of scavenger hunt for readers. There are 25 categories of books, of which one is supposed to read at least one book each. If you can count the same book for several categories (I don’t see why not as long as they fit the description) then I have so far covered seven categories. (Not bad for the first month of the challenge.)

-Collection of short stories: 999: New Stories of Horror and Suspense

–Author of a different gender: Tears in Rain (Rosa Montero) and Principles of Tibetan Medicine (Tamdin Rither Bradley) [Both females]

–Science-fiction novel: The Martian

–Collection of poetry: Leaves of Grass

–A book recommended for you by someone else: The Key Muscles of Hatha Yoga

-A book originally published in another language: Tears in Rain  (Spanish)

–A book published in 2014: The Martian (Some might dispute this as it was self-published in 2011, but not picked up by a publisher until 2014.)

BOOK REVIEW: Principles of Tibetan Medicine by Dr. Tamdin Sither Bradley

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Principles of Tibetan MedicinePrinciples of Tibetan Medicine by Tamdin Bradley

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Amazon page

Full disclosure: let me first state that I’m a scientific-minded person and skeptic by nature, and if you’re expecting a review by a true believer, you may be disappointed.

A couple of questions may arise from the disclosure above. First, why do I feel I need to make such a commentary? Well, because this is a book about a system of medicine (i.e. gso-ba rig-pa) that developed within a country that was isolated for centuries and in which every aspect of knowledge was infused with and influenced by religious belief—both pre-Buddhist and Buddhist. Because of this, while some of the advice offered is surely sound, some of it is—from a skeptic’s point of view—bat-shit crazy. For example, there are herbal and dietary preparations to aid in digestion that may be completely sound and reasonable, and then there is the idea that Zombie spirits (one of 18 types of evil spirits) cause constant shivering.

The second question is, “If I’m not a believer, why read the book and review it?” For one thing, as I indicated above, I don’t think that just because the beliefs behind the “theory” of this system of medicine are baseless, it means that there is nothing in the book that is true or of value. The theory is that there are three kinds of energy (Loong, mKhris-pa, and Bad-Kan) and that excesses or deficiencies cause health problems. But it’s a 2500 year old system of healing; certainly they learned a thing or two in the process. It’s quite possible that they have learned things that scientific medicine has not. (Consider for example, Tibetan Buddhist monks have repeated and verifiably demonstrated capabilities—i.e. consciously controlling autonomic systems, that Western medicine would have thought impossible.)

The analogy that I always use is with kid’s Christmas presents. Parents hide the presents, and tell the kids that if there’s any tampering with them the kid won’t get anything but a lump of coal (you say that was just my parents?) Anyway, the kids find the packages, but are afraid to invasively tamper with them. Therefore, they feel the heft of them, they shake them, and they listen to said shakes. From that limited investigation, they develop a theory. The theory may be spot on, it may be completely wrong, or over several gifts it’s probably a combination of wrong and right. However, the question of whether the present does what it’s supposed to (i.e. bring joy) is not closely connected to the child’s theory, because it’s based on the parent’s observation of what the kid likes. That, my friends, is why systems of healing that are based on notions that are empirically wrong sometimes produce good results.

Second, while I’m a believer in science, I don’t always believe that Western medicine (rooted in science as it may be) consistently does a good job. Part of this is the fault of economists, policy types, as well as lazy patients who’ve created a system in which medicine only pays off if it can cut one open or give one an expensive medication. This leaves room for alternative systems of medicine that may not be so scientific, but that allow for the fact that changing patient behavior is often key to improving health.

I’ve taken a long time to get to the actual review, but I thought the reader should know from whence this reviewer was coming. The book is a little under 200 pages long. Its 11 chapters are logically oriented, and it’s easy to navigate the book. The author writes in a readable style, and jargon and foreign terminology aren’t a problem. It doesn’t have an index, but each chapter is broken up into many smaller subunits–so finding what one is after shouldn’t be hard.

The chapters cover the history of Tibetan Medicine, the nature of gso-ba rig-pa, the theory of Tibetan Medicine, causes of illness, human anatomy and physiology (not of the physical body as we know it), common diseases and illnesses, treatment techniques involving changing diet and behavior, medicinal treatment, representative case histories, and the nature of the Tibetan Medicine physician.

It’s not clear who the target audience for this book is. It’s not a self-help book as the implication is that the patient should see a doctor of Tibetan Medicine and not self-prescribe. Furthermore, while the book provides a good overview of Tibetan Medicine, it’s not an all-inclusive description by any means. The book seems to have been written primarily to make individuals aware of Tibetan Medicine and to give enough insight into the system that readers can differentiate it from Traditional Chinese Medicine or Indian Ayurvedic Medicine, both of which display similarities and differences.

I’d recommend this book if you’re interested in alternative approaches to healing, or if you’re interested in Tibetan culture in detail.

View all my reviews

READING REPORT: January 23, 2015

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If I were a kid today, I’d be diagnosed with ADD in a heartbeat. I rarely read one book straight through. However, I read a lot, and that means I switching from one book to the next–reading a chapter at a time. I do try to read no more than one book of a given type/genre at a time–often unsuccessfully, as you’ll see. With this in mind, I thought I’d experiment with a weekly post on what I’ve been reading that week.

Book-Review-The-Martian

Fiction: The novel that I’m currently reading is Andy Weir’s The Martian. This book is gripping. It’s considered to be one of the best–if not the best–science fiction works of 2014, although it was self-published in 2011. This is a great example of a book that couldn’t get published despite being spectacular, and which will now make a bazillion dollars. It also explains how a 2014 novel is set to have a big budget movie adaptation come out in late 2015. This book is like the movie Gravity set on Mars, except that it’s smarter.  It taps into that visceral fear of what it would be like to die alone in space–not in a flash but with time to know you are going to die. An unlikely, but plausible sounding, set of circumstances result in astronaut Mark Watney being left for dead on the surface of Mars. But, of course, he’s not dead. Watney has to be creative to figure out how to live for four years in hopes that the next manned Mars mission will go forward as planned. It’s a roller coaster ride between him thinking he will surely die and him coming up with clever solutions. If you are into science, it’s particularly intriguing. I’m about 20% of the way through.

 

Foreign Fiction: I’ve also continued to read a Hungarian novel called Quarantine in the Grand Hotel by Jenő Rejtő. This is a silly (in a good way) locked-door murder mystery. I picked it up in Hungary over the holidays, and will probably finish it in the next week or so. (I’m about 2/3rds of the way through, and it’s only a 160 page book.) It’s short, highly readable, and humorous.

I also read a chapter from The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes by Jamyang Norbu. A number of authors have picked up the mantle of Sherlock Holmes from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  (Not to mention TV shows and movies.) This book is published in India by a Tibetan author who imagines Sherlock Holmes traveled to India and Tibet after he was believed to have been killed (along with Professor Moriarty) in Switzerland. (Going over the falls as depicted in the second Sherlock Holmes movie featuring Robert Downey Jr.) There are three parts to the book: India, Tibet, and Beyond. I’m in the last couple chapters of the first part, most of which takes place in Bombay.

 

Short Stories: I’m about 85% of the way through 999: New Stories of Horror and Suspense. This is a collection of short fiction of horror / dark suspense. It features authors such as Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Eric Van Lustbader, and David Morrell.  All of the  works are short stories except for a novella/short novel by William Peter Batty. The novella is the last piece, and I’ve just started part II of it.

999_Horror&Suspense

 

Martial Arts: I just finished Dr. Anthony Catanese’s The Medical Care of the Judoka, but I posted a review yesterday so I won’t get into that book. My next martial arts book will be The Pyjama Game by Mark Law, but I haven’t yet begun it.

 

Yoga: I’ve been reading two books related to yoga this week. I just finished Chapter 2 of Coulter’s Anatomy of Hatha Yoga. This chapter dealt with the anatomy and physiology of breathing. This book is an excellent resource for yoga teachers, but it’s pretty dense–which may explain why I’m only on Chapter 3. Not only does the chapter give general information on respiration, it also provides information specific to various yogic breathing methods such as abdominal, yogic, thoracic, paradoxical, and diaphragmatic.

The second yoga book I’m reading is Singleton’s Yoga Body, which is a history of yoga postural practice (asana practice). This book presents a controversial thesis, which is that postural practice (asana) wasn’t really a part of mainstream yoga until quite recently, and that it’s as much a product of what happened in the Western world in the early 20th century as it is a result of Indian yogic traditions–if not more. Having finished the first three chapters (about 30% through), I’m not sure whether I buy his argument or not. He has some documentary evidence on his side, but I know there is also a proclivity to equate the current era in which everybody documents laundry day with the past in which many people were much more secretive. It’s also often not true that the most vocal are not the mainstream. He may be correct, but he has yet to wow me. (Part of his argument is people like Max Muller and HP Blavatsky found hatha yoga [the style which most emphasizes posture] to be the domain of conmen and beggars.)


AnatomyHathaYoga_CoulterYogaBody_Singleton

 

Miscellaneous Nonfiction: I’ve got about 70 more pages to finish in a book called How Pleasure Works by Paul Bloom. As the title implies, this book is about the science of why people get pleasure from various things from food to sex to freaky sex to art to music, etc. The primary thesis is that there are hidden essences that are the source of pleasure. The chapter I just finished talked about an interesting study in which violinist extraordinaire Joshua Bell went into a subway station and played his $3.5million violin, and barely netted $30–even though there were people passing him who’d paid $200 to hear him in his tuxedo at a concert hall later that evening. The chapter also talked about art forgeries, and how some art is valuable when it’s associated with a famous painter and worthless when it’s a forgery by a presumably equally skilled forger (I say equally skilled because these individuals have been able to pass their work off to experts as a painting by a famous artist. In some cases, they weren’t forgeries but rather originals in the style of the famous artist and submitted as an unknown work found in a basement somewhere.)

HowPleasureWorks

 

I also finished the letter “B” in the book The Painted Word  by Phil Cousineau. This book is organized like a dictionary, except that it only contains certain English language words that the author finds particularly intriguing, and it gives background on usage and how the meanings have migrated. If you love language, you’ll find this book much less painfully boring than I have made it sound.

Painted Word

 

That completes the books I’ve been reading over the past week. I did purchase two books this week, but they’re far down the queue to be read. One is the graphic novel The League of Extraordinary Gentleman by Alan Moore, and the other is Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse.