I realized that I forgot to write my monthly blog post last week. I have no excuse. It just slipped my mind. So, I’m back this week with my monthly reading for September, and I have a confession to make: I broke my promise and read two Wheel of Time books instead of one a month. I’ve come to the infamous “slog” in the middle of the series, but I’ve actually quite enjoyed it, and because Jordan refuses to resolve any plot lines at the conclusion of each installment, I’ve felt compelled to keep reading.
Other interesting reads this month include several excellent nonfiction books about the Soviet/U.S. space race, the history of the universe, and humanity’s immense efforts to solve problems that we’ve created.
As always, let me know what you think of these books, and if you have suggestions for further reading.
Regards,
Tonya
Numbers Don’t Lie: 71 Stories to Help Us Understand the Modern World by Vaclav Smil Rating: 4 of 5 stars
Recommendation: yes!
Review: I’ve read several other Smil books, and this one was probably the most approachable. It’s a collection of short -- sometimes very short -- essays about topics that are both very familiar if you’ve read Smil’s work, such as energy transitions and primary movers, and some that are seemingly out of left field, such as bicycles and transistors. It seemed to me like Smil, who is getting older, took all the random notes and odd thoughts he’s had over his career and compiled and expounded them in one place. It was a delightful read, and I enjoyed hearing Smil’s perspective on the wide variety of topics, but at times it felt like listening to an aged grandparent complaining about the state of the world and admonishing people for unrealistic optimism. Still, I enjoyed it and would recommend it.
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson Rating: 5 of 5 stars
Recommendation: yes, for those curious about the universe
Review: Whenever I read a Bryson book I feel like a grandfatherly English man, sitting in a winged-back armchair in front of a fireplace with a pipe in his mouth and bifocles on is reading to me. At least, that’s the voice I hear in my head. Bryson’s writing is so much fun to read. He takes complicated processes and scientific thoughts and explains them simply and engagingly. In addition to picking and elucidating vividly on the many processes that have produced the world we live in, his prose is delightfully fun to read. For example, “The upshot of all this is that we live in a universe whose age we can’t quite compute, surrounded by stars whose distances from us and each other we don’t altogether know, filled with matter we can’t identify, operating in conformance with physical laws whose properties we don’t truly understand.” I love books that make me think, and this one achieved that remarkably. The one thing that surprised me was that I was expecting Bryson to present a more or less chronological history of the universe on a large scale, but instead he focused more on telling the stories of the scientists and thinkers who discovered how the universe worked. I thought this approach worked really well, and allowed him to slip in interesting facts like this, “Indeed, if your pillow is six years old—which is apparently about the average age for a pillow—it has been estimated that one tenth of its weight will be made up of “sloughed skin, living mites, dead mites and mite dung,” to quote the man who did the measuring, Dr. John Maunder of the British Medical Entomology Centre.”
A Crown of Swords (Wheel of Time #7) by Robert Jordan Rating: 4 of 5 stars
Recommendation: if you’ve read and liked the others
Review: There are some things I really liked about this book, and some things that I didn’t. To be honest, I felt like the whole searching for the bowl of winds plotline was a bit of a side tangent that was unnecessary to the overall plot, but at least it was fun. Elayne, Nynaeve, and Mat’s story was definitely the best of this installment, and I enjoyed getting to learn about Ebou Dar. Rand is always interesting but often infuriating. Like, the whole book is pretty slow-paced and focuses mostly on political intrigues and people talking. Then, in the last 20 pages of the book, Rand decides to go take on one of the Forsaken, and there’s a flurry of activity and the book ends. The thing that’s most infuriating about this series is not the overly-detailed descriptions of customs, clothing, and people, but the infighting among the good guys. To be honest, the Forsaken are fairly incompetent bad guys, and most of the conflicts in the story are between people who are on the same side, or at least should be. I guess Jordan is trying to make a point there.
The Path of Daggers (Wheel of Time #8) by Robert Jordan Rating:4 of 5 stars
Recommendation: yes, if you’ve made it this far, you’re committed and might as well continue
Review: The first third of this book finally resolves one of the main plots from the previous 3 books, as Elayne, Nynaeve, and company finally fix the weather, but the rest of their plotline is just travelling… Mat, disappointingly, is not in this book at all despite his cliffhanger ending in the previous book. Nynaeve, after finally marrying the pinnacle of manhood, Lan Mandragoran, is mostly sidelined as well. We get a lot of Aes Sedia machinations and infighting as Egwene tries to get the Aes Sedai to respect her in her new position, but this just isn’t super interesting to me… Finally, Rand is dumb, dumb, dumb, and doesn’t listen to the people he should and stop when he's ahead, instead deciding to inflict more emotional and other trauma on himself and his followers, because he is now alarmingly arrogant, as he insists on reminding anyone who disagrees with him that he is “THE DRAGON REBORN!” Yeah, he needs to be taken down a notch. After writing this, I’m wondering why I still gave this book 4 stars…. I guess I still really like living in this world, and following these characters even when they do infuriating things. I guess that shows that Jordan’s worldbuilding skills are phenomenal, and he’s able to create characters that are so compelling I’ll willingly keep reading even when they do dumb things, and I guess there’s something to be said for that.
Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future by Elizabeth Kolbert Rating: 5 of 5 stars
Recommendation: yes, it’s quite revealing
Review: Kolbert examines the extraordinary—and often expensive—efforts humanity is pursuing to solve problems that we’ve already created. From invasive species to collapsing coral reefs and climate change, humanity has become the predominant force in our world that shapes nature. In fact, Kolbert argues in this book that nature as we conceive it no longer exists, as humanity’s influence is now so large that we dictate what parts of the natural earth get preserved and how. She makes the case that if we’re going to be the predominant driving force altering the environment, we should do it consciously, and try to do it well. Kolbert interviews experts who are trying to reverse some of humanity’s biggest screw-ups, while simultaneously trying not to create new issues. The range of topics is wide and various including invasive Asian carp in the Mississippi, breeding climate change-resistant coral for the Great Barrier Reef, and geo-engineering to mitigate the effects of climate change. It’s a fascinating read for anyone wondering about humanity’s impact on the earth. Highly recommend.
Two Sides of the Moon: Our Story of the Cold War Space Race by David Randolph Scott and Alexei Leonov Rating: 4 of 5 stars
Recommendation: yes, for any space and/or Soviet nerds out there
Review: Working on reviews of NASA for the past two years, I’ve become a bit of a space nerd. I say a bit because there are some genuine space nerds that far surpass my level of nerdiness. Still, this was far and away the best book I’ve read about space yet. It’s kind of a combined memoir of a U.S. astronaut, who became one of only 12 people to walk on the moon to date, and a Soviet cosmonaut, who became the first person to conduct a space walk. The two men became friends when they worked together on a mission that involved a Soviet Soyuz docking with a U.S. Apollo capsule in orbit. This was during the middle of the Cold War, so the combined mission, and the fact that the two superpowers were able to work companionably on something as complex as a space mission was a big deal. The two men lived fascinating lives, and the best part of the book is definitely reading their old space stories. Leonov’s description of the first ever space-walk is particularly riveting consisting of several near-death attempts when his spacesuit inflated so much he couldn’t fit back in the airlock, when the spacecraft spun out of control for several orbits, and a crash-landing in the Siberian wilderness that saw them surviving -40 degree weather and fending off wolves. While this may sound like a plot to a Tom Cruise action thriller, it’s all real! So cool. Scott’s description of the Apollo 15 mission was equally riveting, but luckily involved fewer life-and-death moments. I also really enjoyed learning about the Soviet space program, which I had previously known very little about. Highly recommend for anyone interested in space or just wanting to hear two old space explorers describe their great adventures.
Mommy Corner
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| We went to Colorado Springs for the Labor Day Lift Off. Every Labor Day, about 50 hot air balloons all take off from Memorial Park. We went all the time growing up, and now that we're back in Colorado, I get to share it with my kids. They were super impressed. |
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| Chloe, Maya and Daddy built a bridge while we listened to stake conference at home. Thank goodness for broadcasts. It was so much better than attending in person. |
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| The coolest part is watching all the balloons blow up and take off around you. |
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| Great Grandma Honey went with us. So much fun. |
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| I didn't get a good shot because there were so many people, but everyone was excited about Sylvester Puddy Cat, Tweet Bird, and Tom and Jerry making an appearance at the end. |
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| Chloe loves doing the monkey bars at school. She actually has some pretty gnarly calluses on her hands from them. It's so fun to watch her practice something and get really good at it. When the school year started, she couldn't do the monkey bars at all, and now she's an expert! |
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| Maya loves spinning at the park. |
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| We went to Broomfield Days, and the girls had a lot of fun on the inflatables. We enjoyed the parade as well, and since we were seated at the beginning of the parade route, we got a ton of candy! Like, a full grocery bag of candy... |
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