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