Category: Books

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“Bird Brain”? Thanks For The Compliment!

Regular readers here, and people who know me in general, know that I’m fascinated by UFOs (or UAPs as the government now likes to refer to them as) and the possibilities of alien life. So, you know I’m interested in a new documentary, The Age of Disclosure, which just came out and apparently once again suggests that governments and militaries have know they do exist for decades. What’s more, the U.S. and Russia at least (and possibly other countries like Germany and Britain) have recovered alien aircraft and are working hard to retro-engineer them to understand and copy the amazing technology. That’s almost old news by now. I’ve read that Secretary of State Marco Rubio not only confirms that but says he’s encountered extra-terrestrial intelligent life here. Sounds fascinating and I’ll be looking it up soon.

But to change gears, another thing that has long fascinated me is nature. Birds in particular are dear to me and seem fascinating in their variety and abilities, such as (to point out the obvious), flying. So I loved one of the books I read this fall, Gifts of the Crow, by Marzluff and Angell, two biologists who’ve studied “corvids” for decades.

Corvids is the scientific name for the Crow family, a range of birds that include familiar big, black birds like ravens, crows and their European cousins, the jackdaws, but also magpies and jays such as the Blue Jay. Yes, the familiar and colorful bird that became a baseball symbol is a corvid too; basically a small, colorful crow. I’ve long read that the Corvids are the smartest of birds, but this book confirms that and takes it to another level with its case studies. Anyone who reads it will not use the term “bird brain” as an insult again.

In a nutshell, among the things it highlights are their problem-solving abilities which, to be quite honest about it, surpass some humans; their incredible memories and apparent ability to pass along specific information to new generations; their love of playing; their learning capacity; their ability in some specific cases to seemingly understand a few words of human vocabulary (much like your family dog which learns commands like “stay” or “sit”) and even their very human-like ability to have emotions such as liking, disliking and feeling sorrow. Kinda makes you look at that crow flying by in a different light, doesn’t it?

Among the studies, crows have been able to figure out how to make and use tools. When some food they liked was put in a little basket deep inside a tall jar the bird couldn’t reach, when given some flexible wire strands, more than once the birds figured out they could bend the wire, make a hook and perch on top of the jar, lower the hook and pull upwards with their beak until the basket came out and fell out, giving them their food. Others quickly learned how to drop pebbles in a jar full of water that had food at the bottom, to cause enough water to spill out as to let them reach in and grab the food. Seems like we might have a slimmer but more intelligent class of kids if we made them get their school lunch in such fashion!

Jays given a cache of nuts or acorns to bury for winter have shown an almost infallible ability to recover them all weeks later, even when the ground is covered in snow, or items have been moved around in the scene to make it look different.

There are many records of crows and ravens seeming to just… play. Have fun. They’ve been observed picking up sticks, dropping them, to let the bird below catch it, then fly up and drop it for the other and so on. Some ravens learned how to peel big swaths of bark off trees and use it on windy days as a sort of sailboard; clinging to the bark with their talons as the wind pushes it along. Seeing the world like a bird but without having to expend energy flapping. You could charge people big money to do the same… oh, wait we do already!

There are many references to their ability to recognize and either bond with, or torment specific people for years. One scientist who climbed up to their nests and handled the babies (to band them, weigh them etc., not to harm them) found himself being chased … not only by the parent birds, but soon by other crows in the neighborhood. Astoundingly, this continued for years, even when the birds doing it were shown to be descendants of the originals. And, trying to change clothes or drive a different car didn’t help – the crows still knew!

On the reverse side, people who’ve been kind to them not only get a pass but frequently find the birds delivering them gifts! Many a person has seen a resident crow or raven they feed reliably fly in and drop something man-made, things like bottle caps or keys mostly, shiny and metal, by them. One can only assume the birds are trying to thank the people for their kindness and have the concept at least of natural vs man-made and figure we would like our own stuff better! Perhaps the ultimate example of that was a pair of magpies in Sweden who visited a house with a feeder kept well-stocked by the lady of the house. The man however, disliked them and would throw rocks at them. After awhile, the magpies learned to use the doorbell to get the woman’s attention! Apparently they saw people come and go and noted that when a human pushed that button, someone opened the door. But, they didn’t want to see that rock-throwing man, so yep, they waited until he went out and got in his car and drove before hitting the doorbell. They also gave her little gifts. The man though, was given a different “gift” – they routinely pooped on the window of his car. Not hers though. He tried changing parking places with her; the birds knew it right away and kept delivering to his windshield.

It’s a fascinating book, albeit one that’s quite boring and dry in places. A lot of pages are devoted to actual studies of the birds’ brains, even to the point of successfully giving them MRIs and talking at length about the synapses, thalamuses, hyper-palliums and so on. The short takeaway on all those sections is that the brains are structured similarly to human and monkey ones and occupy at least as much of their heads as do monkey and ape ones. One could almost say they are basically “flying monkeys” albeit a lot less intimidating that the ones in Oz. Unless you throw stones at them.

It got me thinking. Perhaps when the day arrives that a UFO flies down, lands on the White House lawn and opens its invisible door, it’s not going to be a little skinny “Gray” coming out. I think it might be a big, space-age raven.

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Space Hopping Back To The ’70s With Colin

As I noted a little while back, I’ve been keeping busy on a new writing adventure, which along with my daily music blog and my baseball one, has kept a good chunk of my free time occupied… so I’ve not been showing up here that regularly. But I thought it high time to check in and hope all you are doing fine and give a shout-out to a friend of mine and reader here who’s been busy writing too – Colin, aka Cee Tee Jackson. You might recall I looked at his book No Laughing Matter, that came from his scary heart attack incident a year or two back. Well now Cee Tee is back with a bigger, and largely happier book – A Space Hopper Killed My Hamster! (Spoiler alert – as you find out, a space hopper didn’t actually kill his hamster! Whew!)

It’s a series of posts about his life growing up in Scotland of the ’70s, fitting given that he is a co-organizer of the website Once Upon a Time in the ’70s. The 45 essays cover various memories of his ranging from his earliest memories as a child to being a happening young man enjoying the clubs and music scene of Glasgow with all things embarrassing and pimply thing in between.

The school days, the bullies, the not quite stellar attempts at sports, the family vacations, the Saturday morning TV shows, the Halloweens, the books and comics he enjoyed, through the morphing of his musical tastes and the great acts he saw play live at the Apollo (the Scottish Apollo, that is, not the New York shrine)… it’s all here. Colin’s writing is certainly endearing and relatable, him being in the first person and not embarrassed to admit every foible and folly from the adolescent “losing” his girl to a goof in a long RAF coat with a Yes album under his arm, to his foray into purple platform shoes.

I found it equally relatable, a real head-nodder and at the same time a fascinating look at a different culture. Many things reminded me of my own childhood – the love of rock and pop music (“consider the Seventies scene for a moment,” he writes, “has there ever been a decade that spawned such a variation of widely-appreciated sounds?” Exactly so, Cee Tee no matter which side of the ocean you were on) , some of the bands being the same, collecting sports cards, being less than a born-athlete when trying to play those favored sports, being dressed in nerdy clothes by Moms who had either no fashion sense or saw us as middle-aged Broadway actors, loving reading and so on. Then on the other hand there were lots of references to all things British that I wasn’t familiar with – some of the TV shows, their football and its stars… even the Space Hopper in the title. I’d heard of a Julian Cope song called “Space Hopper” but had no idea it was something of a popular toy over there… I gather a big ball you bounced up and down on. Sadly, I think we made it through his first 20 or so years with no mention of haggis… but the Scottish experience was still a bit different than the Canadian, which I am learning was a bit different again from most Americans.

A fun easy read, I thoroughly recommend it if you grew up or look back fondly on the ’70s or just if you’re curious as to what being young in Scotland was like back then. It’s available at a reasonable price in paperback or for an even more reasonable FREE as a Kindle download book on Amazon. Now that’s a value that makes those penny candies of 50 years ago seem over-priced, isn’t it!

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Golden Memories Of Childhood Books

Keith, over at the Nostalgic Italian website was nice enough to invite me to take part in his periodic series on childhood nostalgia. A fine topic that seems universally loved, no matter how different personal memories or tastes are.  for running this interesting feature and inviting me to be a part of it.  This time he asked us to remembering something that was as important as the toys to me growing up – books. This is what I came up with.

I feel fortunate I grew up in a household of readers, book-lovers. My Mom was a school teacher (although she pretty much gave that up to be a stay-at-home mom as my brother and I grew up) and loved books, read quite a bit. Even in her old age, she loved romance novels and Diana Galbadon fantasy books. She even read the hefty Harry Potter series by JK Rowling. My dad was more surprising to many. He dropped out of school at 14, more due to his family’s financial reasons than a disdain for education. He grew up speaking German but learned English when he came over here and taught himself a great deal reading. He built nice bookcases in our living room and filled them with books, fiction and non-fiction alike. He read anything from history epics to James Bond thrillers to ones of philosophy to books theorizing about extraterrestrials; probably where I got my fascination for UFOs from. There were series of books on foreign lands and even some novels that were considered on the “racy” side I’d eventually find out. He was walking proof that formal education isn’t necessarily equal to intelligence. Both of them had their flaws (we all do) but both loved reading and would often take me to the library or bookstores and for that I’m grateful.

Not surprisingly then, my parents got me reading pretty young. I can’t remember the exact dates or details, but most definitely I could read some basic things before I was near school age.

Like most kids my age, I would guess, the first books I remember having and learning to read (first having my mom read it and after awhile being able to myself) were various ones from the great, delightful Dr. Seuss. He had to have done more to promote literacy in young people than any other individual in the 1950s through ’70s. We had pretty much all of the “classic” titles in his collection; I’m thrilled when I go to my town supermarket now and see a big display featuring most of them, even in the same format and with the same covers I remember. Green Eggs & Ham was a real fave of mine, and I liked that rascally Cat in the Hat but of course the prize in that set was The Grinch. Of course I loved the TV version of it (still do) but it was amazingly fun to me back then to be able to read the words and see the still pictures Ted Geisel (aka, Dr Seuss) drew for them. I nearly picked those books collectively to feature but decided to go for something a little more unusual perhaps that were hugely important to me later, when I was … maybe eight to ten years old. The little Golden books, and in particular Weather : A Guide to Phenomena and Forecasts, and Birds : A Guide to Familiar American Birds. Both were small, pocket-sized ( just a shade smaller than a Reader’s Digest magazine as a reference point), had 160 pages and were published in the mid-’50s. And both let me develop a couple of interests I already had into real passions.

Ever since I was little, the changes in the weather, and especially storms always fascinated me. When the thunder rolled or snow blizzarded so hard you could barely see across the street, I ran to the window, not for cover. By the time I was about 10, I had a little weather set and kept records of the temperature, the barometer, the amount of rain we got day-by-day. I was quite the nerd apparently! But I loved that stuff and the Golden book was the one that made me understand it all. It described air masses, cold and warm fronts, how storms developed, tornadoes and hurricanes and how professionals measured it all and came up with forecasts. All explained with a lot of pictures and maps and in terms simple enough for a kid my age to understand, but not totally dumbed down. I swear that an average person who read through it twice might well have a better understanding of how weather works than a number of TV “weathermen” or “weatherwomen” I’ve seen on TV. It was a trusty reference book for me for years, probably until my parents split up and my Mom and I moved, when I was a teen. In no small part thanks to it, I even thought about becoming a meteorolgist. The amount of advanced schooling required for the degree and the probability of being sent to work in some remote northern locale ended up deterring me from that but to this day, I note the weather and try to see the weather maps online. I even took a training course a few years back offered by the Weather Service to be an informed weather spotter… basically if I see a wall cloud that’s rotating or nickel-sized hail falling, I can call into the weather office and report it and they won’t think I’m some total bozo without a clue.

The birds book had a similar effect on me, and I probably got it around the same age. I’d always loved nature, and back then our family often watched shows like Wild Kingdom . I was fascinated. When my Mom put out a bird feeder in the birch tree in our front yard, near the living room window, I soon became enthralled by the creatures. The color, the vibrancy, the variety… I’d spend hours at times in winter adoring the tiny, busy chickadees, admiring the occasional neon-red Cardinal that dropped by, seeing the goldfinches and being amazed how the dazzling yellow June ones and the more subdued olive-and-brown January ones were the same birds! All the while, I thought the bold, loud and ultra-colorful Blue Jays were just about the best. How great for me my favorite baseball team chose them as their name and symbol!

Anyway, when something unfamiliar showed up in the yard, I was always wondering what it was. What it ate, where it came from, that sort of thing. The Golden book helped me do that. Now, it was only 160 pages, so it probably only covered about 140 or so species; a small sampling of the over 700 types that inhabit the U.S. and Canada. But most of the ones I saw regularly were in there, or if not, were close to ones that were shown. Soon I knew a Slate-colored Junco was that little blackish sparrow eating seeds on the ground and those green-headed ducks I’d see on every pond and creek were Mallards. Robins – check. Starlings – check. Red-winged Blackbirds – check.  The book showed them, told a bit about them in a paragraph or two, and even had a little map to show where you should expect to see them. It also made me see birds that I wanted to see but hadn’t – man, who can look at a Pileated Woodpecker, the one the cartoonist based Woody on, the size of a crow with a flaming red crest on top of its head, and not be in awe? I would venture out to parks and woods to look for some of those magic creatures, and in time saw most of them. Soon of course, I wanted to know more and got a full field guide (as it happens, also a Golden one, but a much more scientific and complete one, over 400 pages with pretty much every bird on the continent shown) that could tell me all those species and how to tell them apart, but it was the little beginners one that got me to that point. I found one in a used store not many years ago, and of course bought it. Why wouldn’t I?

If I wasn’t nostalgic for my childhood, I wouldn’t be writing this for Keith… and if you weren’t for your own childhood, you wouldn’t be reading it.

My brother at those ages liked the Hardy Boys. Nothing wrong with that, but I guess I was always more fascinated by what really was than what could be in a pretend world. Thanks to the creators of that Golden series for helping me understand the basics and become even more fascinated with every bit I learned.

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Reviewing The Library

I just finished reading The Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson. Re-reading actually, as I’ll get to later.

Bryson’s one of my favorite authors, an American grumpy old man who’s lived most of his life in Britain and is redeemed by being a keen observer of human behaviour, interesting things to write about and above all, a sharp sense of humor. Anyway, …Little Dribbling is a great travelogue in which he traverses his adopted land from end to end and finds both folly and glory in the landscape and the people. Well worth a read. Here’s what I had to say about it in 2020.

Obviously, I had read the book before but I seemed to lose my copy so when I saw a used copy quite cheaply, I grabbed it and started reading. After only a couple of pages, it seemed entirely familiar to me but it was a fun read, so I had no objection to re-reading it. Now, of course, since I liked reading it, there was no problem but it did occur to me that I could have known in advance. Since 2016, I’ve kept a little database of all the books I read, with short capsule summaries of them and a star-rating. If I pick up a book and think “hmm – have I already read this? And if so, did I like it… is it worth looking at again?” I could refer to that file of books and quickly remember if I had or not, or at least if I had in the past eight years or so. But I seldom remember to look at that database!

Anyway, I am in awe of some of my regular readers who read several books per week – Keith, the Nostalgic Italian for instance who seems to post reviews of ones he finishes weekly if not more often. I just am not that fast or prolific a reader. But the list of books is now well past 100 and hopefully approaching 200 some time soon. Kind family members helped me put together a new set of four or five waiting to be consumed.

So I got thinking, of all those books, which have I enjoyed the most? So I went through and came up with my personal Top 10 for both fiction and non-fiction and will list them here. Obviously, it’s entirely subjective, limited to books I’ve read in that time span (which are outnumbered by ones I haven’t, roughly 50 million to one I imagine) and my own subjective ratings. Not to mention, I graded many the same so it becomes even more complicated to pick the “best”. But I’ll try to do that and merely say if you’re bored and looking for a good read, these might fit the bill. I won’t describe them, but if you’re curious, you can look them up on something like “Goodreads” or else leave a comment and I’ll try to elaborate a bit. Some I’ve linked to reviews I already posted of them.

FICTION :

10 Before We Say Goodbye (Toshikozu Kawaguchi)

9 The Decent Proposal (Kemper Donovan)

8 Shotgun Love Songs (Nickolas Butler)

7 Liberty (Garrison Keiller)

6 How To Stop Time (Matt Haig)

5 The Midnight Library (Matt Haig)

4 Where the Crawdads Sing (Delia Owens)

3 Standing In the Rainbow (Fannie Flagg)

2 To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)

1 Peyton Place (Grace Metallious)

NON-FICTION :

10 Life & Times of The Thunderbolt Kid (Bill Bryson)

9 The Big Year (Mark Obmascik)

8 Road to Little Dribbling (Bill Bryson)

7 Imminent (Luis Elizondo)

6 Hillbilly Elegy (JD Vance)

5 The Soundtrack of My Life (Clive Davis)

4 Blink (Malcolm Gladwell)

3 Freakonomics (Levitt & Dubner)

2 Outliers (Malcolm Gladwell)

1 The Tipping Point (Malcolm Gladwell)

So there you go, a few suggestions to pass a dull winter’s day, and I think I may have given myself a few more books to look at again!

*By the way, in case you’re wondering I will say as much as this about #6 on my non-fiction list. I don’t really like Vance’s politics that much and put it there not as a political statement, but rather because I found it an interesting memoir and description of Appalachian America that was well-written. It certainly is an eye-opening account of what it is like in that part of the country or to be from that region.

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Paging Fox Mulder : The Truth Is In Here, According To Elizondo

I read a lot of books that I enjoy and many that might me stop and think. Few make me stop in places and think “Wow! Mind blown!” but Imminent by Luis Elizondo is one those few.

And why wouldn’t it? The government having a top secret panel of psychics who’ve had their sixth sense enhanced and nurtured, used to the point of finding terrorists? That’s merely a side dish to what he tells of. Science having the ability to teleport things… but right now, only molecular, tiny things like single atoms? Still only a tiny tip of the iceberg. Admissions by highly trained, highly regarded governmental officials admitting that Brian Clarke seems correct? Turn that page!

You might remember that in the last book I reviewed here, But What If We’re Wrong, I noted that it included something of a debate between highly-regarded physicists (and oddly, Big Bang Theory guests) Neil Degrasse Tyson and Brian Clarke over how good our current scientific knowledge is. Tyson seemed to suggest we can understand everything right now, we’re mentally all-knowing.  Clarke believes we still don’t understand many things. Even gravity might not exist as we think it does. Well, Imminent says many highly placed scientists are in his court, because we have evidence of our “laws” of physics being “broken” routinely. But not by us earthlings.

Craft that break the laws of physics… or else, a  few minds he references suggest ones which conform to theories of physics, but in ways we can’t begin to fathom. Vehicles that would require approximately ten times the capacity of the entire power grid of the U.S. to run. Ones which can find and utilize wormholes to travel in time. Hydrogen fusion for energy. It’s beyond my understanding of science, but maybe I shouldn’t be upset with myself. It seems beyond the understanding of science of our most brilliant scientists.

Imminent is basically two books in one – one, the mind-blowing part, looking at things that we seem to have confirmation of regarding extraterrestrials and UAPs (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, or what used to be referred to as UFOs) and their extraordinary capabilities here on Earth. The other part, dull in places but informative, details some of the extraordinary bureaucratic red-tape in place trying to prevent the public… and even some U.S. presidents (sorry W, Barack)… from finding out the truth. About things like extraordinary capabilities we know are being demonstrated right here, like craft that can fly five times faster than our fastest fighter jets… and then stop on a dime. Or make a 90-degree turn without slowing at all or banking. Apparently it would take a “blackbird” jet 100 or more miles to arc from due north to due east. These things can do it in 100 feet or less. Or drop right into the ocean from upper levels of the atmosphere, not make any waves and continue “flying” at thousands of MPH under the water. Those types of maneuvers, if even possible, would cause any aircraft we constructed to disintegrate into a myriad of debris and kill any human, or other animal inside. But these aren’t human, are they? Decorated high-ranking military and Pentagon officials have testified before Congress about recovering “beyond next generation” craft and “non-human biologics inside.” Craft that can penetrate “no fly zones” with the greatest of ease, and disappear if confronted. And ones which are seemingly obsessed with our nuclear capabilities, and testing to see if they can activate or deactivate them from above. And yes, if you have the time and patience, Luis even gives you some links to government papers to find online and try to make sense of, but which say exactly that.

Such things sound like science fiction of the cheap pulp variety no less. But the claims are coming from people who should know. Elizondo himself was the head of a Pentagon study looking at the issue of UAPs and highly-placed within the Department of Defense. Those qualifications are verifiable. The Department of Defense verify his credentials. Equally believable, are people like Chris Mellon, a former Deputy Secretary of Defense and the late senator Harry Reid, and others with similar credentials who fully back Elizondo’s claims. Elizondo eventually quit the Pentagon in order to be able to speak more publicly about the issue and has been largely responsible for the military eventually allowing release of the now-famous “Tic Tac” and Gimbal videos the navy took of UAPs that were tailing and at times seemingly menacing their ships and jets off both coasts, verifying them to be authentic.

To say Elizondo is frustrated is an under-statement. He says what he can disclose in the book is only a fraction of what he’s come across in his Pentagon work and he’s scared… not of personal ramifcations to himself, even when UAPS have crashed his BBQ parties. But he is scared as hell of anything, known or unknown that can best us that easily scientifically and can come and go anywhere they please with impunity, including over our weapons facilities, pose a major national threat to security. He likens it to Pearl Harbor, where the Japanese planes were seen on radar, but the technicians thought it was nothing – either a bad “read” or maybe their own friendly planes up and out to see the sunrise that they weren’t aware of. He doesn’t want people to be caught unaware this time.

Not all seem to agree, not surprisingly. Ever since the famous “Roswell Incident” of 1947, the American military and government has done its best to downplay the various sightings and occurrences and discredit those who report them. The tide is slowly turning, but there are many within the walls of Congress and the Pentagon who are doing their best to hold back the tide, according to him. It’s fascinating yet dull at the same time reading about the hoops he and his colleagues have had to jump through to try and retrieve even the scantest of documents and bits of evidence of , as a certain TV show used to say, knowing “the truth is out there”… already. It’s just hidden in camouflage. It’s also a little confusing trying to keep track of so many acronyms and abbreviations. We know “CIA” and “FBI” for instance, but “OUSD”, “AATIP”, “NRO”, “SASC”… the list is endless.

Aliens, black-op style government programs… and Blink 182 to boot (you’ll have to read it to see how they fit in!).If you were a fan of The X-files or are remotely interested in what the chances are there is life – intelligent, advanced life at that – beyond our little blue ball in the galaxy, Imminent is a book you should check out. It’s going to change the way you view the universe and our place in it… imminent-ly.

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But What If Chuck Is Right?

The first thing you notice about Chuck Klosterman’s But What If We’re Wrong? is that the cover seems to be printed upside down. Which within a few pages, seems to make sense since the book essentially asks if anything we currently assume we “know” is correct, or will be seen as such a few centuries down the road. Maybe gravity isn’t what we think. Maybe Shakespeare wasn’t an especially gifted writer. Maybe octopi are smarter than we are. Maybe many eight-limbed sea creatures are actually called “octopusses”. Why are we so sure?

After all, it wasn’t all that long ago in terms of mankind’s history that people were sure if you went for a long enough sail, you’d sail right off the edge of the world into oblivion. Or, as he points out, that until Newton got banged on the head by an apple about 350 years ago, gravity didn’t “exist”. Or at least, it didn’t exist in our understanding. People had noticed that if you drop a rock off a roof, it would fall, but they assumed that was because the rock simply desired to be on the ground. If it wished to be up, it would just have floated around. Not surprisingly then, one of his first premises is a grabber – maybe we’re wrong about gravity.

Now he doesn’t propose that a rock dropped from above isn’t going to fall, ten times out of ten, but merely that our scientific understanding of the phenomenon may be flawed… and he backs that up with some complicated theories from top-notch scientists who reference things like space-time continuums and alternate universes which reminded me that high school was a long time ago and even then, I only got “C”s in physics! To make matters worse, he admits that when Brian Greene tried to explain it to him, patiently… twice… he didn’t understand it either. He talks to Greene and to Neil Degrasse Tyson in the book, two scientists mostly known to ordinary Joe Six Packs like me through their guest appearances on TV’s Big Bang Theory. Which was one big takeaway of that portion of the book – that the scientific jibber jabber Sheldon spouts on the show are actually based on real things physicists are working on – super symmetry, multiverses operating simultaneously and so on. The other big takeaway is that to simplify, Greene believes we still have a lot to learn and many current scientific “facts” may be proven wrong; Tyson on the other hand suggests that everything can be explained by advanced math and since we have a good grasp on that, we’re now right about everything. At least science-wise. I have to say that while I didn’t understand most of the concepts, it seems to me reasonable to assume we’re still learning and some of our ideas currently may seem laughably dumb in two hundred years, akin to fears of boating off the corner of the globe.

Thankfully he doesn’t spend the whole 200+ pages on physics. He quickly references Moby Dick ,for instance. He points out that when Herman Melville wrote it, he was immensely proud… but soon became distraught because it barely sold and those who did read it tended to attack it in debates and reviews. It was seen as a bad, flop of a book. Fast forward a hundred or so years and as he sees it, any list of the Great American Novel starts and finishes with it. It’s certainly considered one of the finest pieces of literature ever to come from the New World. The book is the same; people’s opinions and evaluations of what makes great literature have shifted. (I might add, though he didn’t point to it, much the same is true of the movie It’s a Wondeful Life, a flop and almost a career-killer for Jimmy Stewart at the time, but since being found by cable TV decades later in the ’80s, now ranked as an essential holiday classic for the ages.) From there he tries to ponder what the future generations will view as the great novels and writers of our time. An interesting idea, and he’s probably right that the opinions of the 23rd Century will be different than ours now. Salman Rushdie might be viewed as excessively wordy and pompous for all we know, Danielle Steele might be seen as the great voice of our century. Who can say with certainty? He ponders the subject and considers the most likely answer to who will be remembered and revered will be no one we know now, someone with a very limited following writing somewhere like the “dark web.” Of course, his own logic seems to fail him at times. While not specifically mentioning “political correctness”, he points out that until the start of this century, “best of” retrospectives seemed to concentrate mostly on White males, but that’s been changing in the past 20 years or so. Now lists of “bests” seem to be more inclusive of other races, and of females. He thus jumps to conclude that the greatest writers of the here-and-now will necessarily be non-White, visible minorities and probably transgendered, somehow assuming that the current shift in attitudes is permanent despite arguing that most opinions of culture tend to be rather transistory and change from decade to decade.

Chuck was a writer for Spin and something of an expert in pop/rock music, so he also tries to establish what the future will remember of “rock”. It’s a lengthy chapter, which among other things tries to distinguish between “rock & roll”, “rock n roll” and “rock” (deciding that April Wine’s “I like to Rock” is the ultimate “rock” song of all-time, but not the ultimate rock n roll or rock & roll song) He notes that we remember composers like Beethoven and Mozart but have forgotten equally talented contemporaries of theirs and figures that is how the future will remember “rock”. One or two names will live on while most others, often equally-talented, will be long forgotten. He examines the Beatles and even though they have been in all likelihood the most influential and successful purveyors of it, suggests they may not be remembered because we seem to have a bias for remembering great individuals instead of groups or collectives. Canadians art lovers might counter with “Group of Seven” – probably the best-known and loved homegrown visual artists but known by a collective name rather than seven individual ones – but I digress. He comes down to suggesting maybe Chuck Berry will be remembered as an embodiment of the spirit of rock, or maybe Elvis Presley or Bob Dylan will be. There he makes the interesting point that if the future will remember Dylan, it will think of rock as being more political and astute than it really is; if Elvis is, it will be seen as even more about superficiality and performance over musicianship or substance than it is. Of course, he hedges his bets and also suggests maybe Journey will be the one artist remembered. But wait, Steve Perry fans, don’t get too excited… he doesn’t think it would be on their merit but because of that one song used in one TV show.

He expects future anthropologists will study TV most closely of all our forms of entertainment and pop culture (a questionable assumption), and makes the leap to assume that they will anoint The Sopranos as the finest thing ever to appear on that medium, because, it seems he thinks that. Ergo, the song that plays at the end of the series, “Don’t Stop Believing” will be held in special reverence and assumed to be the epitome of music of our lifetimes. Although he also points out in a rare display of humor, that he may be wrong and future university courses may instead obsess over every episode of Three’s Company instead.

He notes that our opinions of presidents keep changing and predicts once everyone old enough to have voted for Ronald Reagan dies, future political scientists will point to him as a terrible leader and wonder how he ever got elected – without that grandfatherly charisma to look back on and remember, they’ll see him being in charge of an economy that was in bad shape and got worse for most Americans, see his deregulation as harming the nation and draw no ties between him in the White House and the collapse of the USSR a year later. He figures that seismic bit of history will be attributed to the Soviet Union being a society built on 19th Century agrarian cultures not suited to the modern world. Which led into one of the more interesting topics he studies in it – if the USA can survive. And if it falters, will it be because the Constitution is seen as being infallible and eternal even though drafted in a totally different world which had no concept of nuclear weapons, terrorism, or even the polarization of politicians we see today. What if we’re wrong about the Constitution being the answer to keeping the country united and running properly?

It’s a complicated book, and a bit frustrating in places, but thoroughly interesting. It really gets one re-examining our carved-in-stone beliefs and opinions (which are so ingrained we don’t even see them as “opinions” but as “facts” instead) . It made me look backwards a little at all the changes that have taken place in my lifetime and wonder what will lie ahead in the next 50 or so years. I mean, when I was a child, there’s no way I would have believed that here in 2024, most people would carry a little flat playing card-sized thing in their pocket that could play almost any song they want to hear, watch university lectures or Asian porn in high-definition, call up most of the books in the library and let them read from it, let them send a note instantly to someone on a different continent and have in the process made the whole huge “landline” telephone network obsolete. Yet, here we are in 2024 and people complain their tenth generation I-phone only has a 30 megapixel camera and needs rebooting every few months.

To me, it would seem the only constant is change. But then again, …”but what if we’re wrong?”.

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A Limey In Las Vegas? Fry Traverses The U.S.A.

I like travelogue books, particularly those with a sense of humor…Bill Bryson’s made a pretty good career out of just that. So I was particularly curious to read Stephen Fry‘s In America, which I finished recently. Mind you, it was published in 2008; I just hadn’t heard of it and by and large hadn’t heard of him before .

Fry’s a middle-aged British comic who decided to come to the U.S. to visit all 50 states and film it for a British TV show. The book outlines his adventures, most of them occurring in places he got to by driving an authentic London cab around… which doubtless drew a lot of odd stares on the highways! So, starting in a Maine lobster-fishing port in fall, he worked his way up and down and around the land, ending months later at the fish market in Seattle before flying to Alaska then Hawaii.

It’s an interesting read because he not only sees a lot of the quintessential American places and tourist attractions – the Gateway Arch, Mount Rushmore, the National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, Arches monument, the Golden Gate Bridge and so on – but also because he talks to a lot of ordinary Americans. Making it all the more interesting is, obviously, he’s a foreigner so we see the country through outside eyes. This is something I can relate to, being a Canadian by birth, but the differences between home countries is greater when there’s that ocean between them. For example, probably nothing surprises him more than college football … or rather the religious fervor fans view the sport with (which was eye-opening for me too when I first spent time in Georgia). He attends an Auburn – University of Alabama game and gapes in wonder at being almost unable to drive to the stadium because of all the tailgaters… six hours before the game started! “It is like some vast refugee camp. A refugee camp where everyone has beer, food, television, electric light, a sound system, barbeque sauce and (of course) more beer.” He’s floored by the beauty of the Utah Arches and desert scenery (“nowhere on earth looks anything like this”) but appalled by … well some things that are tough for most to take, like the homeless problem in so many cities. He loves a junior rodeo in Oklahoma but hated Waikiki Beach in Hawaii, but found solace there by hanging around with singer Jack Johnson’s wife on a more remote part of the island hearing about a school she helps run there. He enjoys a visit to the Ben & Jerry’s plant in Vermont; all the more when they let him blend some of his own ice cream.

Also high on his list of things he did not like was Atlantic City. This makes for some historically fascinating perspective; nothing there bothers him more than Donald Trump, his omnipresent appearance in the city and his casinos. Recall this was 2008… long before Trump the businessman became Trump the presidential candidate. He suggests whipping him with scorpions for the tawdry buildings he’s put up and for taking the name of “priceless mausaleum of Agra, one of the beauties and wonders of the world” and applying it to his gaudy, tacky casino – the Trump Taj Mahal. You can be a fan of President Trump or a foe but either way, it made an interesting couple of pages getting the perspective of an outsider about him when he was just a rich, loud executive and reality TV show face.

Fry was perpetually disappointed with the homogenization of American cities – the same fast food drive-thrus, Gap and Target stores and uniform strip malls from coast to coast – which I think is a sentiment quite a few Americans share. Thus he loved Asheville, a city with lots of small shops and not so many national outlets; loved the fish market in Seattle ( one place where he could find “real” bread and cheese, not to mention fresh seafood) but didn’t care much for the rest of the city, home of blustering  American icons Microsoft and Starbucks. Yes, Fry could be a wee bit condescending at times, and was almost unabashedly politically correct, which becomes tedious in a few spots. He’s appears appalled that there are a couple of older Black ladies working for a White woman at an estate he visits in Georgia but more appalled that they – the staff ladies – seemed happy to be there. I say “almost unabashedly politically correct” though, since he does refer to northern Natives as “Eskimoes”… and sneers at those who try to use other terminology. He says ones he’s met describe themselves as “Eskimo” so why should he differ?

He is baffled by the religiosity of the masses, mocks people who believe in Sasquatches, doesn’t like the diet of most Americans and finds the cities largely bland and lacking character. However…and this is a big “but” … he also mentions that most of the Americans he met coast to coast were friendly, had genuine smiles and were welcoming to strangers, more than he’s experienced in his own land. That made him love the country far more than when he began his journey. Which is a pretty good final impression for any country to leave with a visitor.

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This One Stops Time

This week I have two fellow bloggers to thank for this one – as usual John from the Sound of One Hand Typing, who suggested the writing prompt (“book reviews”) and also Keith, the Nostalgic Italian who is a prolific reader and led me to this particular one, writing a full-length review of it a couple of years back.

The most recent book I finished reading was Matt Haig’s How To Stop Time. Arguably it fits the book itself, as it seems I could be reading it hungrily for an hour or so at a time and it would feel like just a few minutes had passed. It’s quite good and thought-provoking indeed.

About two years back, I read Haig’s Midnight Library, and thought it was quite excellent too, that one dealing with a depressed young woman who essentially got the chance to go and briefly step into alternate realities and see her life as it would have been had she made different choices. Ultimately she realizes she probably was just where she was meant to be after all.

How to Stop Time is equally interesting in concept. Its protagonist, Tom (much of the time) has a secret. A secret so big, he has to have a secret identity. You see, this rather mild-mannered English high school teacher is old. People figure he’s middle-aged… he has one or two gray hairs popping in. But he is old. Not “he saw the Doors play live” old, a fan of Shakespeare old. Not because he liked reading Shakespeare’s plays, because he was a friend of Shakespeare’s and The Bard once saved him in a brawl. He was born sometime in the 1500s. Tom however, has a different metabolism, to say the least and ages slowly. Very slowly. Problem is, back when he was young, people in the Middle Ages village thought it was unnatural (well…) and thus deemed his mom a witch and quickly killed her off as such. Tom soon learned that he was going to be deemed a freak should others figure out that he, more or less, never got older. So his life was spent moving from place to place, hoping to not be recognized.

Along the way, he finds there are some others like him, and they have a secret organization. Forget the Masons, the Albas are the “it”. People hundreds of years old, looking fairly spry, ruled by one even older Alba who had the wisdom and years of connections to provide them with new identities, false Ids, get them jobs…but ruled their day to day life. His main rule was keep moving, and don’t fall in love. You can’t have a 300 year old man who looks 23 fall for a similarly aged girl… in a couple of deccades, people would recognize she was now middle-aged, but he was still the same old 23 year old (maybe 24 by now) with movie star looks. People would talk. And the boss wanted more than anything to avoid “talk”. Being discovered.

Predictably, for the second time in about 400 years, Tom falls in love. And his lover finds out his secret. Will his loyalty be to her (and one other Alba friend whose life he’d saved centuries earlier) or to his all-knowing, all-powerful boss?

It’s really a page-turner … and that’s from a guy who isn’t the biggest novel reader. Typically I go for non-fiction. But when fiction gets me thinking this much and wanting to keep reading , that goes out the window. Would I want to live into the centuries? On the one hand, I could see the world. Feel like learning to play the cello? What’s stopping you – you have all the time in the world! On the other hand, always looking over your shoulder, listening for gossip about you and worse, knowing anyone you love will probably die off in what to you is a span of “months”? A tough trade-off.

“How to Stop time”. Recommended. Read it, then wait for the apparent forthcoming movie.

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O. Henry, More Than Just A Chocolate Bar

On my music blog (A Sound Day) I had several guest writers talk about songs that had a good philosophy for life in them. They came up with some great ideas, like a country tune, “Humble and Kind” whose title kind of says it all, or the Monty Python laugh-along “Always Look On The Bright Side of Life.” Although performed in a rather ironic way in a comedy movie, the sentiment actually helps a lot if you put it in play routinely! I opted for Steve Winwood’s “While You See A Chance (Take It)”. When opportunity comes knocking, you’d better be ready to answer the door and hope that you didn’t leave the “do not disturb” sign on it last night! I’ve never been one to take many big gambles; psychologists probably would call me “risk aversive.” But I’ve taken a few big ones in my life, like moving thousands of miles away from home, and every now and then take much smaller ones. One came to mind last week. A simple one that didn’t change my life and only had three dollars on the table, but it was worthwhile. I read a book I knew nothing about.

There was a table of final clearout items at the local bookstore a few weeks back, and nothing seemed to be priced over $3. I ended up grabbing a music bio which was great and a book of the best short stories of O. Henry. I’d heard the name O.Henry before, and not just at the chocolate bar stand of the grocery checkouts. But I knew nothing about him. In fact I was surprised to find that he was American, and wrote mainly in the 20th Century. If I had guessed prior, I might have thought he was more a contemporary of Shakespeare. So I glanced at the book, saw that it had dozens of short stories in it – always a good entry point to a new author; if the story stinks, you’ve only wasted time reading a few pages instead of several hundred – and figured, “why not?”

I got around to reading it in the last couple of weeks, and was somewhat impressed. Turns out this guy was famous and quite well-paid in the early 1900s and spent a lot of time not that far away from me, in Texas. He also was a New York denizen and wrote stories of the city from there. That in itself was rather unusual and cool; not that many writers go back and forth between tales of the Old West, cowboys, Indians, ranches and pretty senoritas from south of the border and then shift to ones of what were in the day, the most modern, cosmopolitan tales of romance and nightlife. Authors like John Grisham and Stephen King are very good and experts in their own genres (legal thrillers for John, horror for Stephen) but I find I am most interested in them when they turn a corner and write something different, like about growing up in the rural south for the former, or baseball or even the act of writing itself, for the latter.

It turned out I even knew one tale in it, “The Gift of the Magi”. From scanning his titles available, I’m probably not unique in that… it seems his most famous one. In it, a young couple are poor and find themselves without money to buy gifts for one another at Christmas. So, you guessed it, she goes out and gets her long, beautiful hair cut at a wig place to make money and he sells his gold pocketwatch, his proud inheritance. She buys him a platinum chain for the watch; he buys her an expensive hair brush and hair care kit. Seems like it might have been adapted into one of the less spooky Twilight Zones.

Anyhow, to my surprise, I actually enjoyed the ranch stories more than the city ones. I wouldn’t have expected that, as I never was much of a fan of Westerns in movie form. But his stories were populated by colorful characters and just seemed a little less predictable than the others. Both types contained quite a few entertaining, at times thought-provoking little stories. And most had a surprise twist ending. Turns out long before M. Night Shymalan made us jump in surprise when we realized why Bruce Willis could talk so well with the child who sees dead people, O.Henry had found that a secret of a memorable story was to hit the reader with an ending they didn’t see coming.

So, not a life-changing book for me, nor an event of huge consequence. But just one more little chance taken that worked out well. And a reminder once more for you just as much as me, as Mr. Winwood sang “while you see a chance, take it!”.

How about you? From a book you wouldn’t have usually picked up to a holiday in a brand new continent – have you taken any big risks that paid off? Or even tiny ones that stand out in your memory? Sometimes the biggest risk that pays off is just getting rid of that “do not disturb” sign!

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It Changed My World…And Bored Me A Little Doing So

Great… and yet bad at the same time? Maybe so, when it comes to one milestone book at least. Let me explain.

One of the most prolific readers I know is Keith, aka the “Nostalgic Italian.” He often posts little reviews of the books he reads (or listens to on audio while commuting) and not long ago he  asked if people felt compelled to finish reading a book that they began reading even if it wasn’t really interesting them. I was of the opinion, no! Time’s too short and too valuable to just spend it reading a book you’re getting nothing from.

Of course, the issue there is how to gauge that. Many books I’ve ended up liking started a little slow, so the question becomes how far does one go before knowing it’s going to be a dud? For me, the answer seems to often be around 50 pages in. Less than that, if it’s not totally awful (and if it was, it’s unlikely I would have picked it up to begin with), may be too soon to really give you an accurate impression. Much more than that and I’m wasting time. Besides, once you hit about ¾ of the way, you’re probably then going to want to know the ending, even if it’s not a compelling story, right? This is on my mind because I just gave up on one book, for now at least, that was one that was very inspiring to me years ago. One which defined my generation and showed that it was OK to break the “rules” of serious writing. It’s alright to have illustrations with your fictional prose, OK to have random appendices and things of interest on the page along with the story. There’s no law that says your characters have to be larger than life nor that says the strict genre formats must be yours. Of course, as you may have guessed, I’m referring to Generation X, by Douglas Coupland.

Coupland didn’t actually first come up with the phrase “generation X” – for example, Billy Idol was in a band with that name a full decade before the book came out in 1991 – but he did popularize it and drop the identity on all of us born between the mid-’60s and early-’80s. (Since then we’ve turned over “youth” to the Millennials, who in turn have given way to Gen Z, those born too late to have any memory of 9/11). The book became a best-seller and seemingly a guidebook for “my” people.

I can’t remember when exactly I first read it, nor even if it was the first book by Coupland I went through. He quickly became a popular author and all of his releases in the ’90s at least were omni-present, not only in bookstores, but department stores, even record shops at time. Michael Stipe of R.E.M. is among his many fans. The covers were bright and eye-catching, the books at times in unusual sizes. All adding to the cool factor.

His books resonated with me. The characters seemed ordinary, like people I might know. Most of the stories were not “big” – there were no huge explosions, no superheroes battling costumed super-villains or trying to knock an asteroid headed for the earth off its trajectory, no tales of Mafioso or lives of the ultra-wealthy. royals. To many a traditional editor, it may have seemed they lacked plot. But there were often little doodles in the margin to illustrate his points and in the case of Generation X, a little pseudo-dictionary of new terminology to fit our age group. Of those, “McJob” probably became the most famous and widely-used : “ a low-pay, low-prestige, low-benefit, no future job in the service sector. Frequently considered a satisfying career choice by people who have never held one.” I didn’t grow up with many people who didn’t have at least one of those in their young lives. It was nice to see a book with characters I could personally relate to, ones who weren’t super-wealthy, super-villains or even super-memorable from the outside.

It validated me as an aspiring writer. I felt I could write, and I had some stories to tell, but I was intimidated by the books and magazines about writing I came across. They all, to a point of predictability, rolled out the same “rules” one “had to” follow if one wanted any chance whatsoever of being published, let alone noticed. Your book had to have a clear choice of genre – Western, romance, murder mystery etc. Each one of those had their own rules, guidelines … how many words (usually about 60 000), length of the chapters, plot outline. If your a murder mystery person, don’t try to make your book funny. Do have your murdered victim someone no reader is going to care too deeply about, but make sure they’re not so despicable the readers won’t care to see the killer brought to justice. And it must be solved by some unlikely amateur sleuth, not a professional P.I., let alone the police. In a romance, an exotic setting was recommended, and the hero has to win the heroine twice…once, then lose her because of some conflict (usually to another not-quite-equal suitor) before finally prevailing. And so on. I’ve read some good books that follow those descriptions, but my problem was … I didn’t want to write any like that.

I wanted to write about people I felt like I knew or could relate to, people in basically ordinary lives but having interesting things happen in their own little way. I wanted some comedy, some drama, maybe some romance. Put it all in a blender. Coupland suggested to me that I could do so, but what’s more, there were others like me who might find value in such work. That was an important change in mindset for me. As a sidenote, I met Douglas once and was able to tell him that. He thanked me and said that meant a lot to him.

He’s gone on to write a slew of books since. I’ve read quite a few, and thoroughly enjoy most. Honestly, most I’ve come across outdo his first Some are fiction, like The Gum Thief, which takes place mostly within a Staples big box store. Or Eleanor Rigby … oh yes, another thing he likes to do is draw from pop culture and give it relevance to the characters (which isn’t very fictional when it comes to most people if you think about it.) Others are non, like Souvenir of Canada, parts 1 and 2, which are basically like pop culture dictionaries of Canadiana big on photos (like me, he’s from the Great White North). Some seem to blur the lines and mix the two… Polaroids from the Dead has sections describing what the L.A. neighborhood OJ Simpson lived in was like and a report from a Grateful Dead concert but also ten short stories of fiction. Try selling an old-school publisher on a book like that. But yet, he did and it works.

But back to Generation X. It was widely credited for giving our part of society its stereotyped behaviors – being “Slackers”, not caring much about our jobs, being vaguely dissatisfied with everything but not ambitious enough to rebel against the system and change things, jaded about relationships because of rampant divorces we saw as we grew up. Certainly some are, or at least were true of some of Generation X (the cohort) as shown in Generation X, the book. But as I slogged through this for the first time in many years, I found it more and more tedious. I frankly didn’t care about any of the three main characters, Dag, Claire and Andy, three slackers who’ve dropped out of mainstream society to live in a nearly abandoned neighborhood in the California desert, eking out a living working at a bar and spending most of their days drinking, eating junk food, staring at the sky and telling each other stories about space colonies where everyone works at a 7-11 and gets fired by it or people who crack at work or else Yuppies who are “Androids who never get jokes, and who have something scared and mean at the core of their existence like an underfed chihuahua, baring its tiny fangs and waiting to have its face kicked in or like a glass of milk sloshed on top with the violet filaments of a bug barbeque.” And yes, they talk like that in the book.

It’s been said of the TV show Friends, perhaps it was so popular for so long because it was about Gen X-ers, adored by Gen X-ers but also by other ages as well. They all had McJobs somewhere along the way, they were all a little jaded by things their parents had done or they’d experienced, and as one of them pointed out they were all prone to hang out at a coffee shop on a weekday at 11 in the morning. But they were all likable in their own way, and all had aspirations. They felt their lives had meaning and could get better. That’s something that can be cheered for.

So… a book that undoubtedly began at least a little change in the world of publishing regarding what can or cannot be done, inspired other young writers and was nearly profound in changing my way of thinking about my own capabilities. That’s an important book by my estimations. But, honestly, not one I particularly want to read anymore.

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