Book 4 - Neither Here nor There

I was first introduced to Bill Bryson with his book "A Short History of Nearly Everything". It may have been the first science history book I read and now this is one of my favorite genres. Here is a list of science history books I have read (or listened to the audio book of) since:

1. A People's History of Science by Clifford Conner
2. The History of Money by Jack Weatherford (science of currency)
3. The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins (highly recommended)
4. The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes (should be mandatory reading for everyone)
5. The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond (should be mandatory right after previous one)
6. Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond (interesting in parts but you can skip it)
7. Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne (Good but Greatest Show on Earth is better)
8. The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking
9. The Alchemy of Air by Thomas Hager (If you think climate change is bad, our negative impacts on the nitrogen cycle are just as scary)
10. The Demon Under the Microscope by Thomas Hager
11. The Monkey's Voyage by Alan de Queiroz

My second Bill Bryson book was "A Walk in the Woods". This was a delightful book about his failed attempt to walk the entire Appalachian trail.

"Neither Here nor There" was my third Bryson book and probably not as good as the other two (although I've read them at different times in my life so its hard to be sure). The writing details his attempt to recreate a trip through Europe that he took as a young man shortly after high school. Most of the descriptions are about his newer trip as an older man, with occasional recollections of the 1st tour. It is one of his 1st books and also contains more vulgarity than the other two I have read (which I don't mind of course and actually found it to be quite humorous). I think that it is meant as a different style of travel book that doesn't just list places to go and sights to see, but offers a frank impression of city styles, cultural attitudes, and the ability (or lack of) to inspire awe. Though the book was not as fun as the other Bryson works I have read, it did make me want to travel and experience some of the same sights and sounds. Furthermore, since his trip took place in the early 90s, he had no cell phone to call for directions or help or to instantly connect with his family back home. He also had no internet for trip planning and relied on finding vacant hotel rooms only after reaching his destination. Both ideas seem so out of place in today's society, so foreign to our current thinking, that the story imprints an antiquated sense in the mind of the reader. Events that took place so relatively recent feel like a different age, a different generation, a time so long ago that history books have almost forgotten it. These are "back in my day..." stories, stories told by your great grandfather.

Book 3 - Then We Came to the End

Then We Came to the End is set in an advertising office just after the dot com crash in the early 2000s. But this is not what the book is about.

The story is related from a 1st person plural point of view, from the collective. Everything is about us. We heard the boss has breast cancer. We knew that Amber was sleeping with Larry. We figured Tom would be the first to be let go. I rather enjoyed it. It certainly gave the author a lot of freedom to jump around without much continuity interruption.

The telling of events skips back and forth through time, in a Catch-22 style narrative (as described by other reviewers since I have yet to read Catch-22). Along this ride, the interests and fears of each character are revealed mostly through casual meetings in the office and in the manner of "I heard from Amy, who heard from Jim...". The author skillfully navigates through these fragmented anecdotes with liberal usage of nested quotations and mixing tenses within a single paragraph. For instance, the story will open up using the past perfect ("Benny had said"), followed by a switch to strictly past tense ("Roland looked"), incorporating present and future tenses within the lines of conversation between the players involved in the story. For me, it did what I imagined the author intended; it took me smoothly through the different timelines, making me feel that I was traveling into each characters head.

Ultimately, this story is about the camaraderie that develops in an office setting (which I believe to be transferable throughout any set of human interactions). As the proverbial walls are falling down around this group of office administrators, copyrighters, and graphic designers, each member of the team looks to find a balance between preserving their dignity and preserving their job. After each character's inevitable layoff, many lament about losing not just an income, but the sense of belonging to a community. Between the two parts of the book, there is an interlude describing how the partner in charge of the office is dealing with a diagnosis of breast cancer. It makes a great transition in the story to the personal and emotional problems faced by each character as their world crumbles around them.

Book 2 - The Periodic Table

Primo Levi was an Italian Jewish chemist that lived through the Holocaust. This is a collection of short stories, mostly autobiographical, that each have some relationship to a different chemical element. The stories mostly involve interaction with that element, but ultimately ties in motifs that relate to that specific element. For example, in the chapter named Iron, Levi talks about strong personal bonds, connecting your soul with the earth, and developing a strong mind and body. 

The stories are set up in chronological order, starting from his early life in Piedmont, how he became a chemist, life before the war, a single story on his experience in the concentration camp (he has a separate book dedicated to that topic), and dealing with life after the war. There are a couple fictional stories, Lead and Mercury, in the middle that I think were my favorite, probably because of all the fiction I have been reading lately. There are also a few stories that deal with life as a working chemist. Most other books I've read about chemistry deal with the science and maybe extreme personal strife of the man or woman behind the chemistry. Rarely do you read about the everyday struggles and little victories for an individual either learning or plying their chemistry trade. Levi explains it thusly:

"... but that in this book I would deliberately neglect the grand chemistry, the triumphant chemistry of colossal plants and dizzying output, because this is collective work and therefore anonymous. I was more interested in the stories of the solitary chemistry, unarmed and on foot, at the measure of man, which with few exceptions has been mine: but it has also been the chemistry of the founders, who did not work in teams but alone, surrounded by the indifference of the time, generally without profit, and who confronted matter without aids, with their brains and hands, reason and imagination."

I found it hard to read the prose quickly or in long sessions. The writing is beautiful and not altogether difficult to digest. The stories are rewarding in the end, taking you into a spirit of humanity that no longer seems to exist, at least to someone with my limited experience (maybe if I lived a life less hidden sheltered from the atrocities humankind is capable of, I would not be describing in such a way). However, at only 250 pages in paperback, this book felt longer than any of the later Harry Potter books. I finished the Cixin Liu book early and started this right away, thinking that I would get onto a 52 book pace. I was ultimately knocked down from my lofty thoughts and had to push it just to finish this one by my designated Friday, taking almost 3 weeks to complete it.

I've also fallen behind in my reviews. I did have a lot of commentary on this book, but I'm now two books past it and those thoughts have faded. Maybe this will drive home the notion of prompt review postings. I hope so. I'm looking at it as an essential part of this process, but my actions don't match up.

Book 1 - Dark Forest

I finished 2015 by reading a couple sci-fi books back to back. The second one was the first part of a trilogy by Chinese author Cixin Liu, translated to Remembrance of Earth’s Past. I liked the first book (The Three-Body Problem) okay, but wouldn't say it was spectacular. This one, though, was glorious. I've put a quick spoiler-rich review below. I finished this one a bit early and should continue at this place to build up a good buffer, but I sense a slow-down with this next book. We shall see.

Society is doomed. How do we handle it? Mostly badly.

**Spoilers**

The end of the first book leaves Earth in despair. It has been learned and publicized that a fleet of warships from our neighboring star system are on their way towards us. Accelerating to 10% of the speed of light followed by a long deceleration to match the speed of our sun, Earth and the other planets will take the alien invaders over 400 years. Given our increasing rate of scientific discoveries, we should be able to match and exceed their technology before they reach us. However, our enemy has created a technology that can completely obstruct any attempt to remove the shroud between our current knowledge and the secrets of the universe that exist below the atomic level. Without this knowledge, our technology is destined for an impassable roadblock.

In this book, society becomes split. Some think we can blow by this roadblock (we can't). Others believe it is impossible and we are doomed. More think a representative part of society should flee earth in search of other habitable locations (and that they should be part of it of course). This last idea is soon outlawed and deemed unfit for any plan for salvation. The strategy adopted for the first 20 years or so, is to keep working the problem in somewhat blinded hope.

The book deals mainly in discussing, through the various characters, how we should respond to the knowledge of our own demise. Superficially, we all know that humanity will eventually die out. It could be in 100 years due to nuclear weapons or biological warfare, or in 200 years after dealing with a runaway greenhouse effect brought on by global warming, or in 1,000 years by an uncharted comet impacting our planet, or in 1,000,000,000 years when the sun gets hot enough to boil off our oceans. Why do react differently when we know the exact date? Especially when that date is 17 generations away. We have kicked every other problem our species faces down the road, why would this one change our behavior? I have strawberries right now, why should I care about the honey bee becoming extinct?

Stories in the present, near future and 200 years down the road are all superb. An excellent study of human nature, some cool scientific ideas, and a great ending.

There's always a bigger fish.