Kent Haruf - Plainsong (Picador, 1999) ***

You can only admire the humanity of this book. It describes the lives of several families living in the town of Holt, Colorado. One story is about two boys growing up with their father and increasingly absent mother. The other is about the teenage girl getting pregnant and deciding to keep the baby. 

Haruf tells the story with a lot of compassion, bringing to life the confusion and self-determination of adolescents, not knowing where to go or what to do, but at the same time feeling old enough to make major decisions. 

It is sweet, but not essential. 

Ron Newby - Tribalism - An Existential Threat To Humanity (Lulu, 2020) *

"Tribalism" is a collection of insights on the broad topic of human evolution leading up to today's global challenges. It is bacly written, badly published, possibly not even corrected for mistakes ... and if you want to see the picture that illustrates the text, you get the full URL so you can check yourself on Wikipedia. 

The book goes into a lot of detail on irrelevant facts that have nothing to do with 'tribalism'. I can understand that Newby is shocked in a way by the upcoming nationalism and tribal ingroup behaviour, but his book does not shed light on the problem itself, let alone on the solutions. 

The topic obviously deserves better. 

Salman Rushdie - Quichote (Penguin, 2019) ****

This book by Salman Rushdie is easy to recommend. He takes on the story of Don Quichotte and wonderfully transforms it to the current madness of our world, exemplified (and amplified) by the United States. Apart from the high level of readibility of this novel, there are so many layers in the book that it is also a very intellectual pleasure. Don Quichotte was the first novel in the strictest sense, revealing the stupidity and otherworldly character of medieval chivalric romances. Rushdie takes on this aspect by doing the same with our capitalist world that is dominated by greed and entertainment. 

The main character does not even exist. He is the fictitious character in the book written by one of the other characters in the book: an Indian spy-novel author who is trying to come to terms with his past and family, especially his estranged son and sister. To make matters even more complicated, Quichotte creates his own Sancho Panza as a magic creation of his own imagination, a son that he never had, and amazingly enough, this creation of the imagination starts living his own life in the book, dissociating himself fully from his "father". 

The modern Quichotte is of course no longer influenced by chivalric romances but by trash TV. 

It is a book about everything in our modern world: globalisation, racism, capitalism, religion*, TV, pharmaceuticals and the opioid crisis, nationalism and in the process he shows his credits to world literature: Alice in Wonderland, Moby Dick, Pinocchio, Lolita, ...

The writing is excellent, but even more impressive is the carefully structured fabric of all the different stories gradually unfolding, with situations and dialogues that encourage to keep reading. 

On top of that, the characters are real, rounded characters, with their flaws, their evolution, with challenges to overcome and with gradually new perspectives and emotions on things. Even if the novel is very political and intellectual in its concept, Rushdie also manages to make the emotional connection between characters and reader. 

*"God, Sancho decided, was the Clint Eastwood 'Man With No Name' type. Didn't talk a whole lot, kept his thoughts to himself, and every so often he was the high-plain drifter riding into town chewing on a cigar and sending everybody straight to hell". 

Sarah Rose Cavanagh - Hivemind - The New Science Of Tribalism in our Divided World (Orion Spring, 2019) ***

Sarah Rose Cavanagh is a professor of psychology at the D'Amour Center for Teaching Excellence at Assumption College, Massachusetts. 

"Hivemind" explores the concept of how groups can think and act with a collective consciousness, and she starts with the example of the beehive. She then moves on to see which type of 'neural synchrony' also exist in humans, and apparently close friends and romantic lovers show reaction similarities in fMRI scans. 

She takes a look at how in our current society, the traditional cohesion makes place for new human hives, through the use of social media (and its resulting fragmentation, and often radicalisation of viewpoints) and the increase of nationalism and conflict. She ends her book with seven lessons to be learned from bees and to be transposed to our society: and many of them appear to be obvious: use social media for connection, embrace the power of the collective, but temper it with dissent and innovation, regulate your emotions, build more inclusive ingroups (we are more bonobo than chimp), listen to people's stories, build and support architectures of serendipity. 

She brings an interesting perspective on the big debate about nationalism and group mentality.

Francis Fukuyama - Identity - Contemporary Identity Politics and the Struggle for Recognition (Profile Books, 2019)

World-renowned political scientist Francis Fukuyama became famous with his book "The End Of History". In my quest for understanding nationalism and tribal responses to things happening in society, I have read a number of books on the topic, including this one. 

He starts with the ancient greeks, with Plato and Socrates, coining the term "megalothymia", the desire to be recognised as superior, usually used by the elite in predemocratice societies. The term 'isothymia' would be the desire to be recognised as being equal, which has been a noble goal for democratic societies, even if not yet achieved. But people want to have some pride and dignity. The American declaration of independence asserts that "all men are created equal", but the discussion remain about the qualifier "all men". Does that include women, slaves, workers, immigrants, ...

He gives a big picture of how people need identities, but can be part of different groups. He recommends that basic democratic rights and citizenship are based on a "creedal identity", next to a more cultural, ethnic and religious identity. This "creedal" identity is based on the core values of a liberal democracy in terms of pluralism, voting, justice, respect ... The danger is the upcoming nationalist movements in many countries, which may lead to autocracy, dictatorship and intolerance to minorities. It creates a conflict which makes the opposing parties even more strongly convinced of their own identity. He advocates for a new contract between citizens and the state, and this interestingly also includes the secularisation of education. 

Fukuyama is a sharp analyst, and despite his start with the ancient Greeks, his book is full of modern day examples, too many to mention, but relevant to sharpen our own thinking. 

Julian Barnes - The Only Story (Penguin, 2018) **

"The Only Story" is a story about love, about the love of a 19-year old with a much older woman. The narrator looks back on his life and reminisces about how his 19-year old self navigated this relationship, including dealing with his parents, the tennis club, the husband of his love. 

I am a fan of Julian Barnes, and I normally appreciate his style, his sensitivity and his capacity to make his plot come to life, but somehow I could not relate to any of this in "The Only Story". The narrator is totally uninteresting, and so is his love. I can understand that the narrator takes on a cynical view of his younger self, but still ... I read it and wondered why I should spend time on such uninteresting characters. 

You can't win every time ...

Carlo Rovelli - Helgoland (Allan Lane, 2021) ****

Over the years, I've become a great fan of Italian physicist Carlo Rovelli, whose books on physics are always a joy to read. Rovelli is a great writer too, because he understands the lack of knowledge of his readers, and because he knows the stories behind the great discoveries and debates in physics. "Helgoland" is the name of the tree-less island where Werner Heisenberg retreated at the age of 23 to stop suffering from hay fever, and where he came up with the concept of quantum physics. And through the history of physics, and the relevant moments in the lives of its scientists, Rovelli adds questions of a more fundamental philosophical nature. If all these theories are correct, what does this mean for us? If all matter can be divided and divided and divided until nothing is left but relationships, where does that leave us?  If everything is relative, also to the subjective 'I' that does all the measurement, where does that leave consciousness? 

Despite all the advances made, our reality remains a big mystery. And to Rovelli, that by itself appears to be a joy. 

Tony Tanner - Thomas Pynchon (Methuen, 1982)

As a Pynchon fan, this book is almost compulsory reading. It helps to give some perspectives and interpretations of what is happening in Pynchon's novels. Trust me, it does not offer any clues to fully understand Pynchon, which is not the point, but at least it gives some fresh ideas and background facts that help clarify some things. 

Tanner's analysis dates from 1982, so the novels discussed in this short book, are "V", "The Crying Of Lot 49" and "Gravity's Rainbow". Some of Tanner's insights will make you want to read these novels again. 

Enjoy!

Heidi J. Larson - Stuck (Oxford University Press, 2020) ***½

This book's subtitle is "How Vaccine Rumors Start - And Why They Don't Go Away", and it could not be a more appropriate one to read in these times of covid. Heidi Larson is the person who should know. She is Professor of Anthropology, Risk and Decision Science and Director of the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Her book is not on corona, but about vaccine hesitancy and organised anti-vaccine movements across the globe. 

Because vaccines will always have risks, there will always be rumours, benign or not. The key question is for the scientists and health policy makers to keep the dialogue open, to explain, and to listen to concerns. The old hierarchical structure of educated scientists, doctors and politicians telling people what to do no longer works (if it ever worked). People find their own evidence, meaning that the conversation, the debate should be organised differently. 

Larson gives a sweeping overview of vaccination over the centuries and across the globe, including the devastating impact of religious beliefs (evangelists, islamists, ...) to block vaccination in developing countries. The fact that you vaccinate people who are not ill, and that companies get money for this, and that this is organised by a government you do not really trust, is the perfect cocktail for rebellion. But she also gives examples closer to home, like the measles outbreak in the United States in 2015 among children who had visited Disneyland. Even if the measles vaccine is among the most used and tested around the world, it suffices that small groups of people do not vaccinate to give the virus a chance to regain power. 

Luckily, as we see now in many countries, people have common sense, and the majority of people are willing to be vaccinated voluntarily. It would be good to have her opinion now with the corona virus crisis still dominating our lives after two years of combatting it. 

Yasser Abdel Hafez - The Book Of Safety (Hoopoe, 2013) **½

Having read and appreciated the books of Naguib Mafouz and Nawal El-Sadawi, Yasser Abdel Hafez is the third Egyptian author that I read. In "The Book Of Safety", the narrator works for the government, and interviews prisoners about their activities, including Mustafa Ismail, a university professor turned master thief. The latter also blackmails the people whose houses he breaks into, and has written "The Book Of Safety", a kind of manual for thieves. 

The novel is not bad, but very slow in its progress. There is an insufficient sense of anticipation and tension about how the narrative will enroll. This is not necessary by itself, if the writing itself is strong enough to keep the reader's attention. As it is, the approach and plot are original, but somehow it is not very memorable. I can recommend Mafouz and El-Sadawi. 

Peter Godfrey-Smith - Metazoa - Animal Minds And The Birth Of Consciousness (William Collins, 2020) ****½

When does consciousness arise in animals? As of which point can we say that there is such a thing as consciousness? Zoologist Peter Godfrey-Smith has published books on the fascinating lives of the octopus, but in "Metazoa" he gradually works his way up the food chain to establish the different kinds of knowledge plants, microbes and animals get from the outside world and from themselves. 

Starting with the chemical reactions between cells and their environment (through ion channels), he explains how matter and energy start creating senses and brains: "these arrangements are not the causes of mind, they are minds. Brain processes are not causes of thoughts and experiences; they are thoughts and experiences". Because living things need energy to exist, they are in constant interaction with their environment to pick up signals, and to ingest nutrients. 

He gives a brilliant example of having a basic consciousness and a sense of self. Even the simplest animals have to be able to identify whether what they feel - through antenna, feelers, skin, or other - is the result of a predator touching them, or whether it is the result of their own movement touching something. At this stage the animal can discern between "self" and "other", as a prerequisite for survival. 

Godfrey-Smith is a great narrator, and his personal knowledge of marine biology, and especially on the octopus, is impressive and fascinating. Whether he's writing about corals, shrimp, crabs or other sea creatures, he brings it to a different level than just describing life under water. It is all about our brain, our experience, our sense of self, our mind. 

Joseph Henrich - The WEIRDest People In The World (Allan Lane, 2020) *****

If you did not know, but W.E.I.R.D in the title stands for "Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich & Democratic". It's the kind of bias that we find in pscyhological studies. Henrich is the chair of the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. He explores how Western culture developed differently than other cultures, with diverging responses and perspectives on things, but he goes a step further too: by evidence from anthropology, economics, history, religion, law and psychology, he gives a sweeping picture of why the West has become what it is today, how it has evolved, and become dominant across the globe. 

One of the more eye-catching analyses are his statistics on the Catholic church's prohibition of first cousin marriages in Europe as of the fourth Century. This resulted in a seismic shift in village growth, and horizontal mobility. Men had to move to other places in order to find a wife. This led to a more individualistic approach instead of a collective one. It meant that other values became dominant, that commercial exchanges and rational arguments became more important than kinship and generational ownership. That hierarchy of clan elders was replaced by more citizen representation. This simple fact, also led over the longer term to the diminished power of the Church itself on society. Even today, countries with the highest kinship values are often the ones with the lowest levels of democracy. This holds even true in countries like Italy, where high cousing marriages in some provinces in the 20th Century still have effects in lower election participation in the 21st Centruy. Participatory and representative forms of government are the result of societal changes that abolished first cousin marriages. It seems far-fetched at first hearing, yet the evidence and the statistics that Henrich presents are solid and compelling. 

This evolution changed society over centuries and led to the intellectual, technological and political progress we have witnessed in the West. Henrich describes and explains this change. He does not judge or pontificate that the West is best. 

Obviously all this has its effects on policy, and how to address the differences in culture for people living within the same country. Migrations and subcultures require different approaches, and in international politics one has to be aware that what works in some countries, will not necessarily work in others. This is obvious, but Henrich offers us the insights and some of the tools needed to be aware of it and to work with it. 

The book is an eye-opener, and entirely original in its broad scope and synthesis of so many disciplines. 

Martin Amis - Inside Story (Jonathan Cape, 2020) ****

"Inside Story" is not really an autobiography of Martin Amis, even though the non-fiction book is about his life, but then primarily about other people than himself. The main character is his friend and soulmate Christopher Hitchens, who died of pneumonia as a consequence of his oesophageal cancer. Other people who drive the narrative are Amis's father Kingsley, and the authors Saul Bellow and Philip Larkin.

As you can imagine from Amis, the book is extremely well written, often narrated around situations - and like with Knausgaard - the dialogues and minor details are possibly invented to make for more identification with the context. Amis's natural sense of cynicism is omnipresent, but is balanced by and equally deep sense of love and compassion for the people he loves. You can only admire Amis for his incredible patience and dedication to continue to spend time with the dementing Bellow (watching "Pirates Of The Carribean" together), who no longer knew who he was, and the time invested to remain by Hitchen's side till the end. 

In between, Amis comments on life, society, and of course literature. And there are the stories of love and lots of drinks and partying. Amis balances and structures his book with the craftmanship that he uses for his novels. Despite the deep sense of loss, the narrative remains entertaining. 

I admire his candour, his authenticity and the quality of his writing. Even if you're not a fan of Amis, this book is easy to recommend. 

Rebecca Wragg Sykes - Kindred - Neanderthal Live, Love, Death And Art (Bloomsbury, 2020) ****

As archeology evolves, we know more and more about the Neanderthal, who lived next to our human ancestors roughly between 400,000 to 40,000 years ago. Rebecca Wragg Sykes brings them back to life in this wonderfully written book "Kindred". She gives an overview of 160 years of research into this species of hominins part of whome eventually interbred with homo sapiens, and then disappeared from the world. Wragg Sykes gives an overview of the more than 100 archeological sites where remains of Neanderthal were found, reconstructing their tools, their way of life, their hunting, their migrations. They appear to have been much more evolved than generally depicted in less scientific publications. And even more than archeology, genetic research on Neanderthal DNA opens up new ways of identifying them, and understanding our intimate relationship with them. 

While giving a deep view into our common past, highlighting a raw, tough but pristine world of untarnished nature, she also keeps up the mirror of an entire species driven to extinction, as it could well happen with homo sapiens. 

Next to the myriad of scientific factoids and insights into our deep past, many questions remain, and it is fascinating to see how much has been discovered in recent years, making us hope to get even more answers in the years to come. 

Anil Seth - Being You - A New Science Of Consciousness (Faber & Faber, 2021) ****

Anil Seth is Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex. In "Being You", he gives us an update on where cognitive science stands today, trying to unravel how our mind works, and - as the title suggests - what it means to have the impression that you exist as a single conscious being. He starts with the physiology of our brains, and he explains how consciousness can be measured, and how current measuring systems are used to determine whether patients in a coma are in a permanent vegetative state or not. He expands on how our perceptions are formed, often based on a blueprint that we have on the world around us. Even if he goes very far in his description that our reality appears to be a "controlled hallucination". Granted, our brain does create perceptions that are not always correct, and there are schemata in our minds that help form our perceptions, but if I kick a ball to you and you kick it back, there must be some objective reality to make the interaction possible. Another element that I think is insufficiently explained, is the power of emotions to create a personal narrative, and hence to determine levels of consciousness. Many of the perception and logic of our brain can be replicated in AI and machine learning, but there is only one thing that will give any "self" the energy to think, infer, perceive, deduct and act ... and that's the hungry, lustful, fearful, emotional self that makes things move for the self. In short, you need a body to be fully conscious.  Seth does not sufficiently explore this aspect, as if we are all rational beings. 

Despite this remaining questions, it is one of the clearest and most comprehensive books on consciousness that I have read in the past years. 

Michio Kaku - The God Equation - The Quest For A Theory Of Everything (Allen Lane, 2021) ****

Michio Kaku is professor of physics at the City University of New York, and one of the co-founders of the string field theory in theoretical physics. In "The God Equation", he describes the wet dream or the holy grail of all theoretical physicists: to find a unifying theory that combines quantum physics with Einstein's relativity theory and other astronomical theories, so that all the forces of the universe can be explained by one comprehensive set of rules. 

Kaku is a wonderful writer, who takes even non-physicists like myself by the hand to introduce them to the weird world of modern day physics. The strength of his narrative is that he also talks about the people, about how for instance Heisenberg and Pauli differed in their opinion from Niels Bohr. "After his talk (at Columbia University in 1958), Bohr stood up and said: 'We in the back are convinced your theory is crazy. What divides us is whether your theory is crazy enough'". It is fascinating reading, and one of the many popular science books I have read on physics, but it remains totally incomprehensible. It is hard to imagine what some of the theories may actually mean. What is a universe with 11 dimensions? What does it mean that there are multiple universes? And will we ever reach them through wormholes? 

In the end, the questions remain. But the journey to find the answers is by itself fascinating. 

Ronald F. Inglehart - Cultural Evolution (Cambridge University Press, 2018) ***½

In May of this year, professor Ronald F. Inglehart passed away. "Cultural Evolution" is his last book, a sweeping overview of his "World Values Survey" that he founded and that gives insights into the values of people in more than 100 countries over several decades, and often even more. 

In the 70s he wrote "The Silent Revolution" about the intergenerational change of values between parents and their children. The data in this book clearly show that people's values are largely shaped by their economic situation. People who live in survival mode, will be more focused on their in-group, more nationalist and more intolerant to other groups. People who do not live in a survival mode, have a more tolerant view on other people. Inglehart looks at intergenerational differences, democratic differences (such as the possibility for 'Self Expression'). He analyses religion and its impact on values, the different situation of ex-communist countries with Latin America, Asia and the Middle East. He also sees income inequality in countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom as some of the reasons for the rise in populism and intolerance. The evolution is not linear but evolves in jumps. 

The great value of this book is also somehow its weakness: there is a graph on every page, with fascinating differences of how countries score on different values based on their economic, democratic or religious situation, but at the same time this somehow does not make for fluent reading. Nevertheless, the book is hopeful for humanity. We can only hope that the trends towards more democracy and more equality will continue for all of us. 

Brian Clegg - Dark Matter & Dark Energy (Icon Books, 2019) ***

If there's anything enigmatic in moder physics, it's the nature of dark matter and dark energy, both the topic of this book by science writer Brian Clegg. 

The book ends with the following sentence: "It might seem that as this book draws to a close it has been a study of epic failure. We still don't know what dark matter is or even if it exists. We still don't know what dark energy is, and the cosmological constant is a factor of 10¹²⁰ away from prediction. We are, appropriately, still in the dark". After having explained all the current theories about dark matter and dark energy, we have to concede that there is a lot we do not know yet. And in a way that's a delight. With the speed of scientific development of the last century, we can only hope to get a better understanding about the great mysteries of our universe (and other universes?). 

An insightful, accessible and humble book. 

Ocean Vuong - On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (Penguin, 2019) **

One more novel I did not finish. It starts quite well. Then it becomes boring. Not original enough. Not enough unexpected angles. Not enough narrative power. Too many emotional and psychological digging and not enough action or structural tensions. And maybe it's a personal thing too. As a heterosexual man, I find it extremely difficult to put myself in the position of a gay lead character who has feelings for another man. Somehow it just does not work. And the writing was not strong enough to overcome that hurdle. 

Denis Johnson - The Largesse Of The Sea Maiden (Vintage, 2018) *

I did read this book. I am sure I did. I have it now in my hands, and I do not remember what it's about, nor whether it was any good. The fact that I do not remember anything about it, means that 

1. I must be wrong and I never read it in the first place or 
2. I read it but forgot it completely because it was not memorable at all, to the extent of having been wiped from my memory, if it ever got into it. 

But now I can exclude the first option. The book has been read, considering its physical state, and it must have been read by me, because my wife always writes her name in any book she finishes reading, and this book has clearly not been read by her. 

So be it.