Quick Book Review: Pieces of Light by Charles Fernyhough (DNF)

This is a non-fiction book about memory and recent research into memory. I love non-fiction about memory. In fact, in my study of Experimental Psychology, I chose some extra courses on the topic. That was a while ago, so I’m not up-to-date any more. So this sounded like a great book for me.

And really, it was. But, I’m sorry to say, I lost interest with the book. The sub-topics were interesting enough, for instance, how people pull together bits of general information and bits of memory to make a coherent story about something that happened in the past. I thought the idea was fascinating that you don’t just remember something, but you actively “make something up” from what you know/remember – and how you tend to remember only what is important to you. This is how you can remember something almost right, but not quite. Or how siblings can have different memories about the same event.

The problem with the book, for me, was that the author made it almost into a memoir. He uses (and tests) memories from himself and describes them in some detail (and to which degree they correspond to the reality – e.g., places he remembers and revisits in the current time). Also, other people’s stories are told in some detail.

All this detracted too much from the (for me) interesting phenomena that were being described about memory. That is, the personal evidence going with this phenomena was too detailed for me and not interesting enough to keep me reading. Maybe I’ll try again some other time, but for now, my interest in the book (though not the topic of the book) has waned a bit.

Book description from publishers: “How is it possible to have vivid memories of something that never happened?

How can siblings remember the same event from their childhoods so differently?

Do the selections and distortions of memory reveal a truth about the self?

Why are certain memories tied to specific places?

Does your memory really get worse as you get older?

A new consensus is emerging among cognitive scientists: rather than possessing fixed, unchanging memories, we create recollections anew each time we are called upon to remember. As the psychologist Charles Fernyhough explains, remembering is an act of narrative imagination as much as it is the product of a neurological process. In Pieces of Light, he eloquently illuminates this compelling scientific breakthrough via a series of personal stories—a visit to his college campus to see if his memories hold up, an interview with his ninety-three-year-old grandmother, conversations with those whose memories are affected by brain damage and trauma—each illustrating memory’s complex synergy of cognitive and neurological functions.

Fernyhough guides readers through the fascinating new science of autobiographical memory, covering topics including imagination and the power of sense associations to cue remembering. Exquisitely written and meticulously researched, Pieces of Light brings together science and literature, the ordinary and the extraordinary, to help us better understand the ways we remember—and the ways we forget.”

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Rating: Did not finish

Number of pages: 320 (I read about 100 pages)

First published: 2013

I got this book: from Harper for review

Genre: non-fiction, memory

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Quick Book Review: Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely

Rating: 4/5
Number of pages: 320 (my Dutch copy)
First published: 2008 (this Dutch edition, 2008, Volkomen onlogisch)
Genre: non-fiction, psychology
I got this book: from the library

The workings of the human brain are always interesting, especially for me, as I studied Psychology. In this book, Dan Ariely describes situations in which we humans behave irrationally usually without being able to help ourselves.

In 15 chapters he describes different kinds of irrational behavior illustrated by research that he has carried out over the years to investigate people’s actions when in a choice situation. I recognised lots of these situations but I also know I am aware of at least some of them and sometimes don’t act quite so irrational as Ariely wants me to believe.

But hey, when buying an item (say, a pen) that cost $25 in one shop, and $18 in a shop 15 minutes away, would you travel the 15 minutes for the cheaper deal? Probably. However, when buying a suit that costs $455 in one shop and $448 equally far away, we don’t bother. Still, the difference is $7 in both cases. It’s all about relativity. This is described in the first chapter.

The second chapter deals with anchors: if subjects had been offered to do a certain task for a small reward (e.g., $0.10), they were happy to do another task for a little bit more money (say, $0.25). But subjects that had been offered much more for the first task (say, $1) would not do the other task for $0.25. The idea is that once you have an idea of the value of something (the anchor), you use that knowledge to decide whether something new is worth it.

Very interesting was the chapter on social values. If you have a social relationship with someone, you don’t want him to pay you for helping him to move a sofa. But if you have a business relationship with someone, you’d not accept them expecting you to work for nothing or a reduced amount. Fantastic example: a group of laywers was asked whether they’d reduce their fees for poor pensioners. They were not willing to do this. Then they were asked if they would help them for free, and the lawyers were happy to do that. As a social favor, they would help the poor pensioners happily for free, but when money was mentioned, they were not willing to reduce their fees.

And so the book goes on with examples of irrational behavior and real-life as well as laboratory examples. It was easy to read and on the whole, very interesting. However, in the end I had had my fill and it became a bit more of the same.

But overall, a very good insight in our human behavior. It may not be rational, but between us, we’re pretty consistent and the marketing people know how to use that information to their advantage. Don’t worry, we’re all the same.

Book Review: MWF Seeking BFF by Rachel Bertsche

This book is popular with some of my blog friends, and it seemed like a fun book to read myself. Who couldn’t do with more friends? I hoped to be inspired in finding a new friend or two.

In this memoir, Rachel Bertsche is looking for new friends. She has moved from New York to Chicago and wants to find one or two best friends that she can do all the fun things with that she did with her friends from New York – friends that she has known since college.

But at 29, in a job where she doesn’t meet many people, it’s hard to know where to start. She decides to “date” one woman every week for a year, and hopes that meeting 52 new people will lead to a few new friends.

First she relies on friends and colleagues recommending new people to her, but later she writes an essay in the newspaper about her search for a friend that gets a lot of responses, potential new friends. Much later still, she tries  online friend-dating services. She meets up with many different people and some of them “stick”, others drop off because there wasn’t a click or because they have no time for yet another friendship.

Bertsche quotes research that suggests people should have around 150 friends and acquaintances (people you’d stop to talk to in the streets). She has 130, so there is room for another 20. I have not done the calculation myself, but I can’t imagine I have that many.  At college people used to be surprised at how many people I knew, so maybe I know more people than I think. Do I count people I knew in England and online people who I’d love to meet?

I found the book inspiring in the sense that it made me reflect on my circle of friends and acquaintances. When I met a new woman the other day, and we didn’t stop chatting, I wondered if and how we could be friends. I also arranged to meet another friend, when I usually wait for her to contact me – I’m pretty poor at maintaining friend relationships. So, the book worked for me in that way.

On the other hand, the stories of 52 “friend dates” – and some more of Bertsche’s life happenings around it – started to get a little stale after a while. Admittedly, some of the dates she summarizes very briefly, but overall, it was just a bit too much of the same. A chapter at the end of the book with tips to make new friends would have been nice, if only a summary of what was mentioned throughout the book.

In all, I liked the book a lot for its inspirational power – it made me start to think and act upon friendship and that is useful.

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Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Number of pages: 356

First published: 2011

I got this: bought it from a US online book retailer

Genre: non-fiction, memoir

Book Review: Norse Greenland by Jared Diamond

This e-book is an excerpt from a longer book by Jared Diamond, Collapse, and deals with medieval Greenland and the Norse settlement there. The subtitle of Norse Greenland is A Controlled Experiment in Collapse.

Norse Greenland: What it is about

For almost 500 years (from around 900 AD to 1400 AD), about 5,000 Europeans, mainly Icelanders of Norwegian ancestry, lived on Greenland, in two settlements, a few hundred miles apart from each other.

Jared Diamond discusses the factors that led to the demise of the Norse society in Greenland. He argues that there is no single factor per sé, but a combination of factors that was important here. For instance, the temperature was mild (relatively speaking) when the settlers arrived, but 400 years later, the temperature had dropped significantly, making it hard to grow enough grass for their cows (who spent 9 months a year indoors, living off hay that was harvested at the end of the short summer). But also, having successfully lived in Greenland for several hundred years, the settlers did not want to change and adapt to their changing environment. For instance, they did not adopt any of the ways of the Inuit, who had much better means of surviving the harsh climate.

Norse Greenland: What I thought

As I have a particular interest in the lives of the Norse in Greenland, I loved this book, soaked it all up. The writing is a little dry, and you need a certain interest in the topic, or in the wider topic of medieval societies, or the collapse of societies in general, in order to appreciate the book.

My interest comes from a novel by Jane Smiley, The Greenlanders (1988), which follows the lives of several generations of Norse Greenlanders while their society is in decline. I loved this novel and have been interested in the topic ever since. Smiley did a lot of research and her novel is based on what was known 30 years ago about the settlements in Greenland. Diamond has used newer research information but from what he describes about the settlements, I think the novel by Smiley is not too far off and still makes an interesting read.

Norse Greenland deals with the Viking expansion over Europe, the discovery of America around 1,000 AD by the Greenlanders, the climate in Greenland, rules of society, influence of Norway, trade with Europe, non-Viking inhabitants in Greenland (by the way, the Inuit were not native, they arrived in Greenland hundreds of years after the Norse did!), geographical issues, lack of resources such as wood and iron.

The book investigates the causes of the collapse of the Norse society in Greenland, and ends with the interesting footnote that the 450 years that the society did survive is still longer than the English-speaking society has survived so far in North-America!

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Rating: 4.5 stars (out of 5)

Number of pages: 113 (ebook)

First published: 2005

I got this: from the Publishers, Penguin, for review, via Netgalley

Genre: non-fiction, history

Book Review: Still by Roelof Bakker (Ed.)

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This book is the result of a project by photographer Roelof Bakker, who took a series of photographs of an abandoned London town hall. He then asked 26 known and lesser known authors to write a short story based on one of the photographs.

I had only read novels by four of the authors, but all have had several novels published or won prizes with their debut writing.

The length of the stories differed from 2 pages to 5 or 6 pages. The book itself was very well presented, with heavy paper and very good quality photographs.

I loved some of the stories and was indifferent towards others. Some I didn’t understand at all. In all cases, it was fascinating to see how each author had been inspired by a photograph (shown before each story). Some of the stories stayed quite close to the scene depicted while others strayed far away from the abandoned building idea.

My favorite story was a surprising academic report from time in a very far future, looking back on the First Digital Age (2000-2037) by James Miller. This was a satire of how academics take hold of just any piece of historical information and try to make sense of it in connection to other known information. For instance “Scolars have identified the three wise men [from the Nativity] as Freud, Lacan and Jung.” All this with a fine list of footnotes. I chuckled through this story.

Another great surrealistic story was that of Claire Massey, in which a woman recalls her ballet lessons at the age of seven, during which she made the discovery of a faulty mirror, that made her scared of mirrors for life.

Some of the short stories recalled a place or object that the authors knew in the past, and these read more like memoirs than stories, which I liked less.

Overall, this was a beautiful book with great pictures and some very good short stories.

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Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Number of pages: 188

First published: 2012

I got this book: received for review from the author

Genre: short stories, photography

Extra: Link to publisher’s website

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Book Review: Choose the Life You Want by Tal Ben-Shahar

Subtitle: 101 Ways to Create Your Own Road to Happiness
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Number of pages: 304
First published: 2012
I got this book: from The Experiment via Netgalley (ebook)
Genre: non-fiction, self-help

Choose the Life You Want: What it is about

This is not the sort of self-help book where you are asked to do many exercises which will tell you some great truth about yourself or that help you forward in life. Rather, the book lists 101 choices that you can make at a time of decision. Once you realise that you have a choice at any time in your life, in your day, in your present, you can act.

An example, choose between Procrastinate or Just do it! Easy to say, but the book adds some tips: just carry out that unpleasant task for 5 minutes. Usually that is enough to get you started and you’ll Just be doing it after all. Another example of a choice: Remain indifferent or Help and contribute. A study found that the well-being of people who help other people is higher than those who do nothing. So, by helping others you are helping yourself. Being aware of this will improve your own life.

The book is organised such that each of the 101 choices is followed by a quote from a famous person that is pertinent to the choice, whereafter there is a brief explanation of the choice and a real-life story illustrating the choice.

Choose the Life You Want: What I thought

If you read the book all in one go and plan to take all these options into account, you’ll go mad. But what you can do, is look through the options and choose one or two that you want to work on in the next few weeks. Then make sure you recognise situations where there is a choice to be made, and act upon your new resolution.

I think the book is useful as a dip-in/dip-out book that you can use when you have a dilemma, or simply when you feel your life could be enhanced. I’m not a self-help person myself, I hardly ever read self-help books but I think this book is very handy, as you can take it or leave it just as much as you want. It makes you consider how you are dealing with things in your own life and how changing how you handle them might improve things.

The choices are clever but it sometimes feels like several choices could be grouped under one higher-level choice. However, as the writer says himself, by having more choices listed, you can approach your dilemma from different angles. I do think 101 choices is probably overkill for one single person, but there will always be a number of choices that are relevant to each person to use in their own life.

I liked this book!

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Book Review: How to Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran

Rating: 3 (out of 5)

Number of pages: 308

First published: 2011 (UK, this USA edition 2012).

I got this book: from Harper Perennial (HarperCollins) for review

Genre: non-fiction, memoir

How to Be a Woman: What it is about

From the publisher’s website: “Though they have the vote and the Pill and haven’t been burned as witches since 1727, life isn’t exactly a stroll down the catwalk for modern women. They are beset by choices, uncertainties, and questions: Why are they supposed to get Brazilians? Why do bras hurt? Why the incessant noise about having babies? And do men secretly hate them?

At a time when more than 70 percent of American women don’t consider themselves to be feminists, award-winning writer Caitlin Moran offers a provocative, funny, and much-needed polemic on feminism and the state of women today.

Moran interweaves her funny, common-sense observations with scenes from her own life, from her terrible thirteenth birthday (“I am overweight, have no friends, and boys throw gravel at me when they see me”) through the riot of adolescence to her life as a writer, wife, and a mother. With rapier wit, Moran slices right to the truth—whether it’s the workplace, strip-clubs, love, fat, abortion, popular entertainment, or children.”

How to Be a Woman: What I thought

OK, I am a feminist. I haven’t really consciously thought about it much recently, but reading Moran’s book, it turns out most of us are, so I am, too!

That’s good to know. Now, the book doesn’t start well for me. I was really looking forward to reading it, but starting off with menstruation, bodily hair, breasts and bras? I wasn’t interested. I know I’ve got it all, I don’t need to be reminded.

Really only when the book started to mention fashion (followed by babies), I started to get interested, because Moran had some sensible things to say about this, of the kind where you want to write in the comment section: “Me too! Me too”. (But the book didn’t have a comment section, as it’s made of paper, so no one will see what I write in it, least of all Caitlin Moran.) Anyway, then it finally became interesting for me.

It’s amazing I even lasted until the Fashion chapter, as it’s about 2/3rds down the book and I really wanted to give up much earlier. Why I lasted this long? Maybe because it had some funny bits. Laugh out loud funny bits. It wasn’t funny at all time, but it had some great moments.

What I also liked is how Moran argues that feminism isn’t about burning bras and being allowed to work (etc.), but about wearing underwear that fits (rather than being too small and sexy, for the unlikely occasion that today is the day that you’ll meet that guy and you end up undressing – as if he cares about your underwear anyway! He’s just happy to have got you into bed!) and about the right not to work if that’s what you and your family prefer.

What I didn’t like? Maybe the personal accounts were too long for me. I didn’t know Moran before this book so I didn’t have this “nice woman, let’s read her book and find out more about her” kind of attitude when I started the book. I knew it was funny, and that is was about women, but not much more than that.

It didn’t make a lasting impression on me, but some women may find this an inspiring book.

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