2018 Year in Review

In 2018 I read 60 books totaling 20,308 pages. This is a decrease from last year when I read 67 books. WHAT HAPPENED? That's pretty easy actually. In the midst of training for my spring marathon, I developed a rather wicked case of plantar fasciitis. So from February until early December I was unable to run. I gained a lot of weight and I was pretty pissed about the whole development. No more two hour training runs spent with my best good book pals. So this was a major blow to my reading goals. My 2017 breakup with Facebook has lasted all of 2018, but 2018 was also the year that Reading While the Ship Goes Down got it's very own Insta page. If you haven't given "us" a follow go check it out. It's mostly pictures of my books. And me with my books. And my books in airports or near lakes. It's peaceful. Bookstagram is the best kind of Instagram.

My average rating was 3.8 this year, up just a tad from 3.7 last year. I don't recall reading that many duds this year, but I also don't recall absolutely dying of love for a book like I did for The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, which I'm still not really over. You can read the review here. So without further ado, here's the rundown for 2018.

Longest Book: A Column of Fire by Ken Follett. While I'm not surprised, given that these Kingsbridge books of Follett's tend to be large, I don't really recall spending that much time with this book. A 927 pages, I think I should remember wondering why it was going on so long, but I don't. I remember mostly being annoyed at the replay of political and historical events and the attempts at making those suspenseful (oh no, will Guy Fawkes blow up Parliament?! - said no one ever after the actual events). Anyway, the fact that I loved both of the earlier books in the series make this book also win in a second category.

Biggest Disappointment: See above. What a sad turn for such a good series. Anyway, you can read that review here.

Best Book: A Man Called Ove by Fredrick Backman. I can always tell if I've really loved a book if I can't let it go after reading it. Sometimes that takes a few days, sometimes a few weeks. And it typically involves a Wikipedia rabbit hole and possible fan fiction or movie versions. And such was the case with A Man Called Ove. I googled. I watched the Swedish language film. I loved all of it, as I loved Ove, a crotchety old man who was served some of the worst turns life has to offer and still managed to be decent and love again.

You can read the review here.

Shortest Book: The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka. I've rarely read a novel length work quite like this one. It's more of a collection of stories placed together to detail the plight of a certain demographic into a cohesive sort of collective experience. It was odd and I liked and didn't like it in turns. But it ended up with a 4 star rating because it really managed to tell a story without any actual characters. A testament I think to the strength of the writing, and the topic itself.

You can read the review here.

Best Character: Danny Kahneman and Amos Tversky from The Undoing Project. This is a bit of a cheat since these guys are REAL PEOPLE, but they are so fascinating, and they changed the way we look at economics and psychology FOREVER! Two psychologists who thought that somethings that people claimed were true, were just not. And they were right. I loved The Undoing Project so much, I ended up reading Misbehaving by Richard Thaler, and then I realized I needed to go back to school and so in a couple weeks I astrt a certificate program in Data Analytics. Danny and Amos made me realize my brain still works.

You can read the review here.

Worst Book: Since We Fell by Dennis Lehane. To be fair, I also really disliked The Last Mrs. Parrish, but Dennis Lehane is supposed to know what he's doing and has written some really good books. This was not one of them. A meandering boring plot with too much exposition and then a completely unbelievable (not in a good way) ending. Boo.

You can read the review here.

Worst Character: Obviously this has to be someone from The Last Mrs. Parrish by Liv Constantine. You know, the book that basically says domestic abuse and serial rape are just punishments for horrible people, I just couldn't hang with that. Even if Amber Patterson was a terrible person. She was also a terrible character. She was all bad. There really wasn't a redeeming quality about her, which  made her painfully unreal and damaged the book further.

You can read the review here.

Honorable Mentions:  Oh man, I read some books this year that as a book didn't merit five star ratings, but as concepts or thoughts were really moving and helped develop me as a person. Including Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. (review here) and Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl (review https://readingwhiletheshipgoesdown.blogspot.com/2018/07/mans-search-for-meaning-viktor-frankl.htmlhere).

Goals for 2019: I've set my goal of 62 books for this year. It's above my 2018 level but not quite at 2017. I honestly don't know how this foot is going to hold up and if I'm not able to run... well I may be crying my eyes out somewhere because running is the thing I do for me. The way I make sure I've gotten enough exercise. So this could be a problem. I'm hoping not though and that I'm going to be back in 1/2 marathon shape in no time.

Will George RR Martin get around to publishing Winds of Winter (signs are pointing to yes!- check out this update), I'm not counting on it (I was similarly disappointed last year and even wrote that EXACT SAME SENTENCE in last year's review - AND the year before that, and the year before that) or I would have set the goal at 52. But if it ruins my reading goal for the year, I'd be okay with that. Having this as the final paragraph of my year in review is becoming kind of a comedy piece of its own. Anyway thanks for reading with me this year!

Into the Water - Paula Hawkins

For a final book of the year, Into the Water by Paula Hawkins did not disappoint. I had read and liked, for the most part, Girl on the Train a couple of years ago  (you can read that review here). Despite not liking the main character in that book, Hawkins writing was strong and the plot was well laid out. 

The same can be said for Into the Water. While it may suffer from a few too many narrative voices, Into the Water is a double murder mystery. 

Nell Abbott has died in the drowning pool, a bend of a river where witches were once sentenced to death and drowned. Nell has a bit of a fascination with the spot and the women who have died there, Lizzy Seaton, a young 16th Century girl condemned for withcrafter, Anne Reed, a murderous wife, Lauren Townsend, a distraught and spurned mother, and finally Katie Whittaker, a young classmate of Nell's daughter, Leena. (I listened to the audio of this one, I never know quite how to spell names).

Nell's sister, Jules has arrived in town to take charge of her 15 year old niece, Leena. Jules and Nell were estranged and the circumstances were not good. But that's nothing compared to all the baggage people in this town are carrying. 

Illicit affairs, old grudges, twisted senses of protection - it's all there in this small town and it all works to first mask and then unravel the mystery of Katie and then Nell's death. Hawkins piece-meal deals out her facts and hints like a miser and then in a rush develops the secrets into plot twists. I was entertained even after I had figured it all out, until I hadn't. So that was fun. 

I'm glad to have made my reading goal. Especially because a bad case of plantar fasciitis kept me off the running kick that has fueled the last two years of my audiobook consumption.

4/5 Stars. 

Ploughshares Fall 2018 - Edited by Ladette Randolph

Somewhere in the middle of the second story of this Edition, I thought, "man these are really long stories this time around." Flipping to the front - "Longform Essays and Stories." Yes folks, I am super observant sometime.

Though long, I thought the Fall 2018 Edition of Ploughshares was a strong entry.

The edition kicks off with The Blue River Hotel by Stephen Henighan of a Canadian-Guatemalan man who spends time in Guatemala teaching students about the country and living sort of a split life between who he is in Guatemala and who he is back home with a completely uninterested and un-invested fiance. This starts to all slip when he meets a young enthusiastic grad student. I really liked the portrayal of living two lives in two completely separate places.

Endlings by Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum follows Dr. Katya Vidovic, a physician treating women (girls) with eating disorders at an inpatient treatment facility. The back and forth from Katya's past in war torn Zagreb. Unlike the main character in The Blue River Hotel, Katya does not go back and seems to have written off that part of her life entirely.

Up next was the devastating A Death in the Family by Billy O'Callaghan told through the eyes of a young girl as her family watches her older brother slowly die. This was a heart ripper.

I also enjoyed Andrew Bienen's Fort Wilderness about a Disney themed breakup. This George guy cannot get his affairs in order and commit already. 

The Man on the Beach by Josie Sigler Sibara imagines what would happen if a young boy encounters Hitler on the beach in Argentina. I really liked the contrast set up by Sibara between what a young boy sees and what he understands as an older man. 

Lastly for fiction, I enjoyed Positive Comments by Owen King. Two dysfunctional siblings perform one kind act together. 

For non-fiction, I also really enjoyed Allen Gee's tribute to James Alan McPherson in Old School . I've never read any of McPherson's work, but that didn't matter. Gee's rendering of McPherson is so full that I felt comfortable with the characters. I've added some of McPherson's work to my TBR pile.

In a world where Jamal Khashoggi was intentionally targeted and killed by a ruling Prince, the translations of Georgi Markov, Prostitution and Wastewater are timely. Markov was also assassinated by his government for his own criticism of the communist regime in Bulgaria. It makes you wonder how much if any things have changed.

4/5 Stars.

Child 44 - Tom Rob Smith

This book came out quite a while ago and honestly I only picked it because it's narrated by Dennis Boutsikaris and after finishing Every Note Played, I wasn't quite ready to leave his voice. I knew nothing about the book, the plot, or even the true life events which inspired them. I'm not above reading novels about countries in which the author has no experience (I have read all these German detective Bernie Gunther novels by Phillip Kerr, who is British and liked them) but I do take them with a grain of salt because it is immensely different when you read a novel by a native of that country.

That being said, I read Child 44 with a quiet sort of fascination as it details not only the actions of a methodical and sadistic serial killer but also the casual cruelties of Stalin-era police abuses and political paranoia. And honestly the parts about the Soviet apparatus and why it made it so difficult to hunt for a serial killer were more interesting than the crime facts itself because honestly, the brutal killing of children is not really something I like to read about. 

The book starts with a cat and a woman in Ukraine in the 1930s, during the famine sparked by forcing everyone onto collective farms. People are starving and dying. And a woman, somehow, still owns a cat. The cat is let go when the woman lets go on her desire to live. But a boy living nearby sees the cat and makes a plan with his brother to trap and eat it. During their trip into the woods, the braver older brother is struck by a man and taken away. 

We then jump to twenty years later. The "Great Patriotic War" is over and Leo Demidov is a ranking MGB officer who is tasked with finding an alleged spy. In tracking down the spy he is forced to confront the banality of evil existing in his duties as well as the shaky foundations upon which his investigations and executions have been based. He also must convince a grieving family that they cannot speak about the murder of their five year old son, because murder does not exist in Soviet Russia. It cannot. People have no reason to murder, being housed and fed, so any suggestion of murder is the spreading of anti-soviet sentiment.

Trapped within this circular reasoning, unable to name and investigate the murder, Leo goes so far as to threaten the family into silence. He is then asked to denounce his own wife, which he refuses to do, and is demoted and sent to a remote outpost. Upon arriving at the outpost he comes upon two children similarly murdered. He must then decide to what length he is willing to go to investigate the murders and to catch the killer. 

The events of the book are loosely based on the most notorious Russian serial killer of all time, Andrei Chikatilo, who evaded capture for decades as he killed as many as 56 women and children. He was convicted and sentenced to death for 52 of these murders in October 1992 and executed in February 1994. He was arrested several times over the course of his killing spree, but bungled investigations and shoddy police work led to his release and continued destruction until he was finally arrested in November 1990. 

Chikatilo's mug shot.

Everyone you care about in this novel has a sad and complicated back story that informs their decisions, and I really liked how the author teased out each of these issues in time. I may have to read the next book in the series to find out what happens to Leo later on.

4/5 Stars.

Sword Song (The Saxon Stories #4) - Bernard Cornwell

This series continues to be a delight for me and I'm surprised it's been so long since I finished book 3, Lords of the North. You see, I listened to the first three books on audio and although I've never seen the man, I have a complete voice crush on the narrator of the first three books. So when Sword Song was not available in audio I thought I'd wait and see if my library got it in. It didn't. So then I finally got around to requesting the kindle version of the book, and it popped into my queue so here we are.

I had forgotten a lot of the plot from Lords of the North, but thankfully my review of that book (read it here) was uncharacteristically detailed regarding the plot. 

Sword Song picks up with Uhtred manning his burh at Coccham. It's part of a series of defensive cities designed by Alfred to protect Wessex. And Uhtred is doing a good job because when it's military related, everyone knows that Uhtred knows his stuff. He's living happily with his wife Gisela, the daughter of the Viking king of Northumberland. They have two children and all is well. Which means that things for Uhtred are about to get a little bit worse. 

A report arrives that the Thurgilson brothers have taken the city of Lundene (London) and along with Haesten (a thoroughly unthankful a-hole who Uhtred would have been better off to let die) they intend to make a play for all of Mercia and Wessex. 

Alfred is smart but he's also kind of an a-hole so he marries his sweet daughter, Aethelflaed, off to Uhtred's butt kissing insecure cousin Aethelred, who somehow accepts that being less than the King of Mercia is an okay trade for being Alfred's man in Mercia. Alfred is trying to strengthen his position, but in order to do so, he extracts a promise from Uhtred that Uhtred will deliver Lundene as a wedding present to his cousin and Alfred's daughter. Oh Uhtred, he's always making these crazy promises.

In the meantime, the brothers, Sigefrid and Erik, along with Haesten, conspire to convince Uhtred that HE could be King in Mercia, if he only joins forces with them and convinces Ragnar to come down from Northumbria to join them. Uhtred considers because honestly he gets not respect, but ultimately Uhtred is more loyal than Alfred or anyone else give him credit.

So Uhtred comes up with a plan to take Lundene and in the meantime Aethelred takes out his insecurities on his incredibly young wife by beating her for perceived indiscretions with other men. Uhtred is NOT having that. He may be very violent and understand pillage and rape in the context of war, but hitting your wife is not acceptable behavior to Uhtred. 

So it's no surprise that Aethelred's insecurities lead to Aetheflaed being in the wrong place at the wrong time and being kidnapped by Sigefrid. Uhtred has to come up with a plan to rescue her or all of Wessex, Mercia, East Anglia, etc it's all royally F'd. And I'll just stop there.

The thing about these stories is that it's basically non-stop action and I really like the writing. And Uhtred is just a great character, but so is Father Pyrlig. So there's so much to like about these books. I even read it to myself in the narrators voice. So all was not lost. And now I can get the 5th book (also not in audio format from my library :()

4/5 Stars

Every Note Played - Lisa Genova

It's 11 p.m. and I have one hour left to go in this audiobook that has continually crushed me through each chapter. Do I stay up and listen to the last hour or go to bed and leave the last hour for my commute today? Of course I stayed up, my sleep regulator (my husband) is out of town and book choices always turn into "one more chapter" affairs.

But honestly, with the amount of crying I did in the last chapter of Every Note Played, I'm glad I didn't try to arrive at my place of employment looking the way I looked when I finally turned out the light at midnight. 

ENP tells the story of Karina and Richard - estranged spouses, talented pianists, parents to a single child who has chosen sides in an ugly breakup of the family. Richard is a famous concert pianist, travelling the world to perform with symphonies. Karina gave up her own dream and possible career at the piano to raise their daughter in suburban Boston. There's so much resentment and misplaced anger in this story that it's hard sometimes to live in the heads of the characters.

Chapters alternate from Richard to Karina's points of view as we learn that Richard has been diagnosed with ALS, a debilitating motor neuron disease which has no cure and no real treatment. As we move through the stages of grief with Richard and then Karina as the disease slowly affects more and more of Richard's functions, the characters are forced to reckon with their past relationship and the resentments and disappointments they harbor for one another. 

I found myself more frustrated with Karina than with Richard through a lot of the book. I think she unfairly blamed him for things (not that he didn't deserve some blame) that were actually her issues. But, Genova knows her craft and in the end.... well. It's just a really good book, so go read it.

4.5/5 stars. 

Born to Run - Bruce Springsteen

There's a reason he's called "The Boss" and in this thoughtful, entertaining and sometimes moving memoir, Bruce Springsteen shows why he's a rock god, a respected philanthropist, an honest man, and a just genuinely decent human being. 

Born to Run chronicles Springsteen's life from his complicated childhood in Freehold, NJ to his sixties. There was so much information contained in these pages (that's illustrative, I actually listened to the audio version, read by the man himself) that I didn't know. 

While in college at Ohio State University, I worked student security at the basketball arena and was often lucky enough to be working during concerts and their sound checks. This would have been back in 2002. I remember after seeing Bruce Springsteen do nothing more than perform his soundcheck that I had just witnessed something real - a sense of "rock and roll" that evoked wistful looks in the eyes of my parents and basically anyone who had experienced the rock revolution of the late 60s and early 70s.

Don't believe me? Go read Corbin Reiff's list of top 10 Springsteen concerts and know that he's totally correct when he says:

To try and describe a live Bruce Springsteen performance with the woefully inadequate word “concert” is absolutely foolish. Throughout the years, many a writer has tried and failed to put into broader language what takes place at these sometimes two, sometimes three, and sometimes even four-hour revues, and only a very select few have succeeded. Jon Landau, the venerated ‘70s rock critic and Springsteen’s present-day manager, came perhaps the closest when he wrote after a 1974 gig in Boston, “I saw rock and roll future, and its name is Bruce Springsteen.” That night, Springsteen made Landau feel the way he would make so many millions more feel in the years and shows that followed. “On a night when I needed to feel young, he made me feel like I was hearing music for the very first time. (link here)

He can't read music. He was in his 30s before he finally made it big. He's very insecure. He's struggled with depression. And most importantly, he's totally upfront and honest about all of this. 

That this book is lyrically told should be no surprise to anyone, since Springsteen has been writing music and lyrics almost his entire life. He sees songs in everyday lives and makes them into music. He arranges phrases and words and imbues them with feeling and knowledge. It's a pretty rare form of alchemy. 

Rock God

I've obviously been listening to more Springsteen than usual during the duration of this audiobook - including some of his newer stuff I was totally unaware of. It is not hard to know 1984's Born in the USA - it was a level of rock stardom even The Boss was never quite able to obtain again. So now, this newly minted Springsteen superfan (me) has been listening to Tracks, and Wrecking Ball on repeat. (Honestly if you overlooked 2012's Wrecking Ball like I did, go back and give it a listen. It's awesome. Springsteen himself thinks it's his most perfectly made record). Yeah yeah all the old stuff holds up, but the new stuff is amazing as well. Go back and listen to Thunder Road and Badlands and Born to Run and convince yourself you can tell it's from the 70s. It's timeless.

I loved everything about this book. Told with a beautiful honesty and self-deprecating grace that is not usually seen in a star of Springsteen's caliber, Born to Run left me with a profound gratitude for the music and the musician.

5/5 Stars. 

No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks - Ed Viesturs

Ed Viesturs may not be the most talented writer in the world, but his accomplishments more than make up for the lack of flowery language and stunning prose. Viesturs doesn't need stunning prose, he's stood atop the 14 most stunning vistas in the world. 

No Shortcuts to the Top details Viesturs quest to climb the world's 14 highest peaks, all without the use of supplemental oxygen. In doing so, he took on no shortage of personal risk, and I'm not just talking about the possible loss of life or limb that climbing these beasts necessarily entails - but personal sacrifice. Ed grew up in a middle class family in Rockford, IL, fell in love with the idea of climbing tall peaks after reading Herzog's account of the 1950 ascent of Annapurna, and so moved out west to pursue this hobby while completing undergrad and eventually going to vet school.

Despite becoming a veterinarian with a job, Viesturs still felt pulled to the mountains. Unable to pursue both pursuits at the same time, he made a difficult choice - left the practice of vet medicine and focused on climbing full time. In the mean time, he lived in basements, worked construction and odd jobs - all to make his mountain climbing dreams a reality. 

It appears to be an endeavor he's suited for. Indeed, medical tests have found his lung capacity and oxygenation are above average, allowing him to climb these peaks without the assistance of bottled oxygen.

No Shortcuts begins with Ed's most dangerous climb, his ascent of K2 in 1992, during which he ignored his instincts and continued with a summit bid even though the weather did not appear to be on his side. It's a story he details more thoroughly in his book about K2 (read that review here). However, that climb remained his touch stone as he later started to imagine being able to climb all 14 8000m peaks. It's why he failed to reach the summit twice on Annapurna before finally bagging the mountain in his final ascent of his Endeavor 8000 project. 

Meticulously committed to safety, Ed has been a reliable presence during other mountaineering disasters and a motivational speaker for corporations, sports organizations, and the general public. He manages to make one of the riskiest human endeavors seem doable (not by me, but probably by other people who like to push themselves to the limits of their physical and mental capacities). He also is a Rolex ambassador, because the dude is dope. 

Ed painfully recalls the 1996 Everest disaster that claimed the lives of so many and has been so well chronicled in Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air (review here) and the 2015 film, Everest. It's a tragedy that claimed the lives of his friends Scott Fischer and Rob Hall, both of whose bodies he had to pass just a few short days later on his way to the top of Everest. 

I'm certain this climbing 8000m mountains is not for me. But I'm glad someone like Ed Viesturs is around to share his triumphs and his preparation. Easily the greatest American climber of all time, Ed is known not just for his climbing feats, but also for being an all around likeable guy and selfless human being. He was willing and did give up several of his own summit bids to assist climbers in need. He's exactly the kind of athlete that inspires with both his skill and attitude. 

4/5 Stars. 

Love and Ruin - Paula McLain

When I read The Paris Wife, I was living in Evanston, IL and had been obsessed with Hemmingway's The Sun Also Rises for some time. It was the first book I examined critically. My junior year term paper was all Lady Brett all the time. My husband and I both listened to Farewell to Arms while training for the 2010 Toronto Marathon. I have read or re-read basically everything else Hemmingway. So I was ready for The Paris Wife and I really liked McLain's voice in telling Hadley Hemmingway's story. I may have actually named by own Chicago-born daughter after Hadley. 

So I was nervous that maybe lightening wouldn't strike the Hemmingway brides twice in Love and Ruin. But thankfully, I was wrong. I really enjoyed McLain's portrayal of Marty Gellhorn. She reminded me a lot of Beryl Markham in McLain's Circling the Sun (you can read my review of CTS here). Marty, like Beryl, chafed at conventional expectations of womanhood. They both excelled in male-dominated fields. They both wanted adventure and career and to felt seen. These are all very modern aspects of my own life as a woman, but fortunately I live in a decade where having all these things and being a mother are not entirely out of the question (but also not a given). 

Marty, though madly in love with Ernest, does not want to be tied down by motherhood in a way that would limit her opportunities. It's not as if Ernest Hemmingway was going to be home with a toddler while Marty was a war correspondent. Above all else, Marty seemed to be committed to being her own true self, and there is so much to admire about that.

Ernest and Marty

The strong Marty chapters are interspersed with, what I thought were, unnecessary chapters from Ernest's third person voice. I thought this detracted from the overall story. Perhaps McLain felt Ernest was not coming along so well in the book. I was hardly ready to feel sympathy for him after his bizarre behavior with Hadley and Pauline Pfeiffer in The Paris Wife. 

I also have a bit of a weird feeling about the book because I've read a lot about Marty Gellhorn and I know that she was adamant that she not be treated as just Ernest Hemmingway's third wife. I think her phrase was about being a "footnote" in someone else's life. She was an amazing war correspondent, a novelist, and an interesting person in her own right. And, probably to Marty Gellhorn's consternation, this book ends, abruptly I'd say, right after her relationship with Ernest ends. It's a disservice to the bulk of work she performed and wrote after her divorce from Hemmingway, and the name she made for herself independently through the later decades. I would have loved to stay on the journey with her through her years in Korea and Vietnam. So I found the timeline of the book to be a bit of a betrayal to the heroine. 

Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics - Richard Thaler

Finishing this book was a race against time to get it back to the library, but I made it. And I'm so glad I got to soak up even the last pages. This book took a long time for me to read because the concepts were mostly new and I took notes throughout. 

A few months ago I read The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis  (you can read that review here) and his discussion of Prospect Theory as first explained by genius psychologist Amos Tversky and his partner, Nobel laureate Danny Kahneman. This book exploded in my brain. It awakened a curiosity for behavioral economics and decision making I didn't even know was there. It spoke to concepts I grapple with daily in my work adjusting and reserving claims and I simply had to know more. 

I suppose I've always been a curious person. I really enjoy the act of learning. I've spent fully 22 years of my life in formal classroom settings. But having a full time job and trying to love and nurture two tiny humans can sometimes leave little room for exploration and discovery into new interests. So between The Undoing Project and Misbehaving, my curiosity is born anew and I'll be starting a new certification program in January, largely in response to the way my mind has reacted to these books. And to me, that's probably the very best thing about books and their power.

Richard Thaler took a risky approach to economics. In Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics, Thaler details his humble behavioral beginnings in economics when a list on a blackboard kept taking him back to things that were unexplained in current economic theory, things that broke the rules, things that didn't make sense. Thaler stumbled upon Kahneman and Tversky's work and sought them out, finding kindred spirits. Their collaborations are briefly touched upon in The Undoing Project. And from there Thaler forged ahead, gathering like minds to explore the incongruities of human behavior and economic theory - the misbehaving. (You may have caught Richard Thaler's brief appearance in the movie The Big Short based on the Michael Lewis book where he appears next to Selena Gomez in a casino - review here).

He made enemies. He made friends. He made an entirely new field of study within economics. And our world is better for it. We are not all economists. We are not all rational beings. Instead we often act irrationally. Become incomprehensibly attached to objects through ownership. Coming to value what we have far above the true value of the item. Econs don't do this. But humans do. And to understand the economic and market system in which we live, we must take these things into account. Doing so gives us a much better descriptive model from which to work and predict. 

Thaler does a great job making these theories accessible. I'm not making the mistake of believing I now could practice or completely understand the field of Behavioral Economics, but I do understand the broad brushes and my life is just plain better for having read this book.

5/5 Stars. 

K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain - Ed Viesturs

I knew once I read Jon Krakauer's "Into Thin Air"  (you can read that review here) that I would never have the desire to climb crazy high mountains. Don't get me wrong. I like mountains. I prefer them to oceans. I think they're beautiful. I want to ski down them. I want to watch the snow line move down them. I want to climb to the top of ones that I can get all the way up and down in a day. So the idea of spending a couple months for the right window to risk my life and limb to get to the top just isn't in my blood. But it is in Ed Viesturs blood. And you can tell in his writing that it always will be.

In K2, Viesturs details the many triumphs and tragedies that have taken place on the slopes of this beautiful and unforgiving mountain. Beginning with the most recent (to publication) 2008 tragedy and then going to the beginning and forward. It's good that Viesturs is coming from a place of knowledge in writing this. He can compare and contrast the equipment and tactics used by the various parties to discuss what went wrong and what might have gone wrong. All in all, it seems he's lucky to be alive, when so many others have tried to make it to the top of all 14 8000-ers and met their fate on one or the other. Viesturs closest call may have come on K2 and so he understands the dangers - obvious and hidden lurking on the mountain. 

I'm going to pick up a copy of his "No Shortcuts to the Top" next, but I'll probably switch to the printed version (I listened to the audio version of this one) because I want to see all the pictures of these mountains I'll never have the courage or desire to see in person.

4/5 Stars.

Into Thin Air - Jon Krakauer

NOTE: I found this review in my Goodreads profile from March 30, 2011. Having just finished K2 by Ed Viesturs (you can read that review here) I thought I should post this review for context on the blog. 

I really enjoyed Krakauer's narrative voice in "Under the Banner of Heaven" and again I enjoyed it in "Into Thin Air." His tone is conversational and straightforward. I thought Banner was a slightly more polished book than Thin Air, but it was more a matter of seeing the writer developing his craft over time. One of the criticisms of Krakauer is that he jumps around in chronology in a way that can be confusing. I've never had that problem with him, but I noticed more in this story that he tended to jump around. 

Some critics of the novel also claimed Krakauer was too hard on some people and too light on himself. While I never think Krakauer will get the proper journalistic distance from this subject matter that may be necessary to tell the story, I did find that he was more than willing to accept and note his own failings in the events leading up to the tragedy. 

I don't believe I have any kind of perspective on whether or how to criticize any of the actions of the actors in this book. You can never really know what you would do, at high altitude, having not slept in over 48 hours. I think Krakauer does a wonderful job of identifying all the things that went wrong, and will continue to go wrong with the inherently dangerous business of climbing the world's highest peak. When ordinary people attempt to do the extraordinary, it is no wonder that failure can have such far rippling effects. 

So many of the climbers on the mountain that day showed equally great feats of human strength, and human weakness. 

4/5 Stars

Love Warrior - Glennon Doyle

Once upon a 2012, I had a baby and was overjoyed and terrified and tired and emotional and in the midst of a fog of sleep deprivation stumbled across Momastery, a blog started by Glennon Doyle Melton where everyone was encouraged to tell the truth. Life was hard. Being a new mom was hard. And on Momastery, it was okay to say all these things.

After 12 weeks of maternity leave I headed back to work as a lawyer and my Momastery friends were there when I checked back in from time to time. In 2014, we became thick as thieves again as I endured and cherished and outlasted and relished another 12 week maternity leave. But then I went back to work, and we moved and I stopped checking in with my friends. 

Last year though, when I broke off my toxic relationship with Facebook (it was bad for me honey) I was happy to find Glennon there on Instagram being Glennon. And her kind words, her fierce determination, her all encompassing love was a reminder of those spaces on Momastery where I'd once found refuge in my post-partum malaise.

Well you know what? That beautiful human, Glennon Doyle wrote a big book about herself and her messy past and her constant work and love and Love Warrior was everything I'd always hoped I could wrap up into a beautiful gift of Glennon. So it was a lovely book to read, full of those things that I really enjoyed from Matthew Kelly's Perfectly Yourself (you can read that review here). I'm wondering now, did Glennon inspire MK to write "Do the next right thing" or "You can never get enough of what you don't need"? Was I listening to G all along?

Yes it's a memoir about Glennon's life but Glennon doesn't ever just tell you about her life, she tells you the lessons she's learned, and if you're lucky enough, you can learn those lessons too, without all the pain. 

So rather than detailing Glennon's story (she really tells it the best), I'll leave you with some of my favorite Glennon nuggets from the book. 

Grief is nothing but a painful waiting, a horrible patience. Grief cannot be torn down or scaled or overcome or outsmarted. It can only be outlasted.

We need a church that will teach us about loving ourselves without shame, loving others without agenda, and loving God without fear.

Faith is not a club to belong to but a current to surrender to.

Happy reading Warriors!

5/5 Stars. 

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine - Michael Lewis

Yikes. You know it really sucks that a bunch of Wall Street a-holes created mortgage backed securities and in order to continue to feed their machine, bundled riskier and riskier mortgages together, and then decided to sell portions of those bonds over and over again in a way that nearly bankrupted the company. And with their giant government bailout they turned around and gave themselves big fat bonuses in amounts greater than average Americans will see in their entire lives. So yeah, The Big Short is infuriating.

But... as with anything Michael Lewis, it's so damn well written. I mean, I have an English literature degree, there's no way I should understand and be able to speak intelligently about collateralized debt obligations, but I can. So thanks Michael Lewis. 

This book takes a deep dive into the origin and abuses that led to the financial collapse of 2007/2008 and the following recession. It's a hard look at the people on the inside of Wall Street that care only about making money for themselves and had no qualms about what their actions might do for the rest of America. And it applauds without glorifying the individuals who figured out the system was on the brink of collapse and bet against it. Everyone was asleep at the wheel on this one and it could absolutely happen again. Which is probably the worst part. 

I watched the movie after reading the book and it's very well done. I don't say that often.

4.5 Stars. 

Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging - Sebastian Junger

If Junger did exhaustive research in preparation for Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, it doesn't really show in the text. I liked the premise, and when he started to delve into facts and figures the book felt grounded, but then it drifted into anecdotes which seemed to be given as much weight by the author as the empirical evidence. And that would be fine if this was a straightforward memoir, but instead, Tribe operates as an uncomfortable mix of memoir and topical thesis that never feels quite confident in its own message.

Listen, I agree, today's culture seems to be lacking in connection. Look no further than the things people are willing to say to each other behind the relative anonymity of internet comment sections. And smaller tribes. tribes on the brink of survival seem to form more cohesive units. But that type of intensity is necessarily temporary. Why does America seem to have more than its fair share of PTSD diagnoses? Junger suggests it's the contrast between home life, the lack of cohesive communities, and a little bit of fraud that can account for this. But again, where this information comes from and whether it's empirical evidence or Junger's opinion isn't really clear (maybe it's spelled out in the notes section at the end, but by that point, I just didn't care). 

Some of the details in the story rang true for me. When I returned from deployment, I remember feeling anxious and disconnected. Over time it faded, as Junger states is normal. I also found certain statements particulary interesting: 

"Unlike criticism, contempt is particularly toxic because it assumes a moral superiority in the speaker."

American Indians, proportionally, provide more soldiers to America’s wars than any other demographic group in the country.

roughly half of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have applied for permanent PTSD disability. Since only 10 percent of our armed forces experience actual combat, the majority of vets claiming to suffer from PTSD seem to have been affected by something other than direct exposure to danger.

It was better when it was really bad 

Interestingly, when I visited St. Petersburg in 2004, standing in red square next to a Burbury store in which I could afford nothing, I asked my tour guide how life had changed for him after the fall of communism. "I liked it better before," he said. "You had nothing, but everyone had nothing." Perhaps there was a shared sense of community through shared hardship.

Anyway, this was thought-provoking and interesting. But it just missed the mark for me.

3/5 Stars. 

438 Days: An Extraordinary True Story of Survival at Sea - Jonathan Franklin

I'm often fascinated by stories of survival. Who isn't really? An a few years ago when I read Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken about Louis Zamperini I couldn't get over the amount of time he had lived upon a life raft only to be washed ashore in enemy territory and kept as a prisoner of war. Wow, 46 days on a life raft I thought, that's unbelievable. So when I saw the title for Jonathan Franklin's book, 438 Days, I wasn't quite sure this was a work of nonfiction. But, well... human beings are pretty amazing. 

438 Days is how long Jose Salvador Alvarenga survived while his disabled fishing boat drifted from Costa Azul Mexico all the way to the Marshall Islands. This staggering distance is so large as to be so unbelievable, it's no wonder people initially thought him the creator of an elaborate hoax. 

Alvarenga had always been a bit of a wild spirit and so his survival on raw fish, turtle and sea bird meat is not completely strange (but still a bit stomach churning). Also at his disposal was the numerous dregs of garbage floating in the Pacific Ocean. A sad commentary of our current waste practices and pollution of the world's oceans. Alvarenga's crew mate was not so lucky, Ezekial Cordova survived far longer than I would have in similar circumstances, but he mentally gave up and died from sickness and starvation. 

Alvarenga's physical needs aside, it is the endurance of his spirit I find the most impressive. It reminded me a lot of the discussions in Andy Weir's The Martian (you can read that review here) in which they examine why Mark Watney had the ideal personality to survive so much time alone. Alvarenga had some of that creativity and curiosity as well. 

I'm curious as to where Alvarenga goes from here. To survive such a tortuous experience and then try to put your life back together is an arduous task and I hope he continues to succeed. He'll face certain challenges, but if he can survive on a boat for 438 days adrift at sea, perhaps a few more decades on land are manageable. 

4/5 Stars. 

Perfectly Yourself - Matthew Kelly

I saw author Matthew Kelly speak at our church earlier this year as part of Dynamic Catholic's Living Your Life With Passion and Purpose series. I came away from that event feeling re-energized about my relationship with God and the things I could do with the limited talents and time I have here on Earth. 

Perfectly Yourself was this year's Best Lent Ever book and I didn't read it at the time so I thought I'd pick it up now and use it as a boost of adrenaline to get me back in that space I was in following the February program. On the whole, this book was not as dynamic and energizing and Matthew Kelly's live presentation. I did take away some very good nuggets of trying to attain a more perfect version of myself, but overall I found the book repetitious to the point of tedium in some places which made it a much slower read than its 210 pages would suggest. 

I'm really glad I read the book because I believe some of the things I picked up are going to be life-long lessons - or at least life long language that I apply to lessons. For example:

When work is approached in the right way and with the right frame of mind, it helps us to become more perfectly ourselves. Who you are is infinitely more important that what you do or what you have.

Um yes, possessions mean nothing, work titles can mean nothing if WHO you are is not a person worth knowing, or not being value added. 

I also liked this nugget from St. Augustine:

Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you. 

It's not enough to pray. You have to put in the work. I think this message is lost a lot today, about putting in the work in order to see results. People want the easy fix, the magic pill. There is no magic pill. Results in any arena require work. 

And lastly, Kelly makes a distinction early in the book which I have thought a lot about over the last month - the difference between happiness and pleasure. Pleasure is the feeling you get from a good piece of cake, or a entertaining movie, a moving song. But it's not happiness. Happiness is not a thing that can be sought an attained. Happiness is a by-product of living your life in a way as to try to be perfectly yourself. Happiness is sustaining and life changing and deep. Pleasure is momentary and shallow. So now when I find myself doing something or saying yes to something, I want to make sure that I know whether my motivation is for pleasure, which is perfectly fine, so long as I'm not looking for it to fulfill my need for happiness.

3/5 Stars.