pocketbard's reviews
533 reviews

Abundance by Derek Thompson, Ezra Klein

I’m fairly certain this is meant to be a hopeful book. The introduction, in which Klein and Thompson envision the world of 2050 as an abundant utopia, full of clean energy, ample housing, close connection, and marvels of technology like mass-scale desalination, certainly seems hopeful. But the more I read the book, the more I felt despair. Klein and Thompson make an excellent case for how the solutions of our past got us into the problems of the present. For example, in California, the many overlapping regulations around building new constructions mean that essentially nothing gets built. And so it is throughout many levels of government: we try to solve problems by adding new regulations, to the point where it’s almost impossible to DO anything. The few times recently where there have been major action – such as Operation Warp Speed to develop the covid 19 vaccine – have been done by pushing past regulations that otherwise would have needed to be followed. And, sure, it gave us the fastest vaccine development in modern history, which is great! But often regulations are in place for a reason, and ignoring them means that those reasons are also ignored. (For example, you can build a new development without an environmental impact assessment, but then maybe you discover that you’ve messed with the local environment.) “Getting stuff done” means making choices about what you’re going to prioritize, and no one wants their area to be the one that’s deprioritized, even if the other option is that the stuff doesn’t get done at all. Klein and Thompson seem hopeful that we are on the cusp of a new paradigm shift, much like the New Deal of the 30s or the neoliberalism of the 80s. I don’t know if I agree. All I see is abundant problems in massive institutions, and (understandably) no one wanting to say, “yes, I agree that I personally will be negatively impacted in order to get the wheels turning again.” Perhaps I’ll be wrong – check back in 2050 and see if we’re living in the post-capitalist eco-utopia the authors envison. 

Women and Girls on the Autism Spectrum, Second Edition: Understanding Life Experiences from Early Childhood to Old Age by Sarah Hendrickx

I like that this book was targeted at someone essentially in my exact situation. There isn’t a lot of information on women and girls with autism, given that most of the research was done on cis white boys. There’s been more research done in the past decade or so, which Hendrickx seeks to disseminate in this book, along with first-person accounts from a few dozen interviews. I thought the first few chapters were the least useful (as they were on the process of getting a formal diagnosis), and I didn’t necessarily remember enough of my childhood for the “childhood” chapter to be useful, but the chapters on adulthood and old age were interesting. And the later part of the book, in which each chapter delved into a particular aspect of life (such as social relationships, employment, and health and wellbeing, were generally quite good. (Albeit sometimes not applicable to me, such as the chapter on parenting.) All told, it was perhaps a bit more dry than some of the other autism books I’ve read, but made up for it by being highly targeted to my situation. I was especially interested in the section on how menopause might affect autistic women differently, and will definitely try to read up more on that. 

Ping by Andrew Brodsky

This book is about virtual communication (especially in the workplace), and how to use it most effectively. The title is a bit of a double-meaning: it’s both the act of reading out by virtual means (“I’ll ping you”) and also an acronym for the main framework of the book: PING (perspective-taking, initiative, non-verbal communication, and goals). While a lot of the information in the book is pretty intuitive once you think about it, one of Brodsky’s main points is that we often DON’T think about our digital communication – instead, we use whatever means is easiest, which doesn’t always mean it’s best for the goals at hand. How often do we send a dozen back-and-forth emails when a quick 2-minute phone call would resolve it? Contrarily, how many meetings have we been in that could have been an email? Brodsky notes that there’s no single best communication method; it all comes down to our goals. (For example: to develop rapport, you might want to use a “rich” mode of communication like video, while if you want to mask inauthentic emotions, you might choose a less-rich mode like email.) I appreciate this framing, because it allows the reader to choose an appropriate communication style even as technology keeps developing. In any case, a useful primer and I’m glad I read it, even if I didn’t learn a huge amount of new information from it. 

The Crucible of Time by John Brunner

This book grew on me the more I read it. It’s set on an alien world in which the predominant species comes to sentience shortly before (in astronomical terms) their system intersects with the spiral arm of the galaxy. The book takes place in seven vignettes, spaced generations apart through the species’ history, as they go through an ice age and the subsequent thaw, fertility crises, and more. It takes them from a fairly primitive species to a space-faring one in a way that is believable and gripping – you’re really rooting for them to succeed. The society they build is reminiscent of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s “Children of Time” (which was written 30 years later – I wonder if this book was an influence for it). Unlike our own civilization, which mostly builds out of inanimate objects, the people of Crucible of Time (and Children of Time) use living, organic creatures for their homes, vehicles, and tools. Also, even though the aliens are indeed very alien (creatures with mantles, tubules, mandibles, claws, and pads) and use very different terminology from our own, you really get a sense of what’s going on and what all the characters are feeling and doing. They feel very much like people, not aliens. All told, I thought this book was a fascinating thought experiment. Worth the read if that sort of scifi sounds interesting to you. 

Knot of Shadows by Lois McMaster Bujold

Continuing on in the Penric series. This one is a… murder mystery? Dead people aren’t acting like dead people, and Penric et al have to get to the bottom of it. I’d probably call this mid-range in the Penric books – not at the top of my list, but far from the bottom. A few genuinely funny moments, but mostly just Pen bein’ Pen, and doin’ his thing. 

Practical Demonkeeping by Christopher Moore

A book club book, and definitely not one I would have read on my own. It’s definitely a product of its time: the setting, the crass humour, and the weird plot all read as very “early 90s” to me. It’s not a book you’d be able to write today, I don’t think. I can’t say it was truly to my taste. While I enjoyed some of the jokes, many others definitely didn’t age well. And even overlooking that, the plot was a string of… not coincidences, because everything is clearly set up in a way that you see what’s coming, but the setups are in-and-of themselves pretty serendipitous. I also had some major issues with the epilogue. On the other hand, I guess it’ll be good fodder for a book club discussion? 

Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling

hopeful informative

5.0

I first discovered Hans Rosling through his TED talks, many years ago. This book gave me the same feeling that watching those TED talks did: a sense of hope about the world, not due to pie-in-the-sky thinking, but due to the actual data about how things are now. Rosling’s thesis is that most people (especially those of us in rich Western countries) get all sorts of basic facts wrong about the world: How many people are living in extreme poverty? How many years of education do girls have compared to boys? How many children are there projected to be in 2100? How many people globally have received at least one vaccine? In all cases, Western people – even people who set public policy, even C-suite executives at global companies – get the answers wrong. But wrong in a systematic way: we see the world as worse than it is. We are stuck in a vision of the world that was true fifty years ago, in which there were two distinct spheres: rich nations where women had few babies, and poor nations where women had lots of babies. Today, most people in the world live somewhere in the middle, the global life expectancy is around 70 years, and most women have relatively few children (except for the few living in extreme poverty). The book goes through various cognitive biases – like thinking that trends will always continue in a straight line, or being drawn toward negative information – and explains how they lead to this distorted world view. 

 

Rosling is a “possibilist” who insists we must believe two things at the same time: things are bad, and they are getting better. The world has made tremendous progress in the last hundred years, and we can continue to make tremendous progress if we stay the course. Truly, I needed this book now, when the news is scary and countries are sliding to authoritarianism. Things are bad, yes. But globally, things are so much better than they were, and the trend lines are still heading in the right direction. I take great comfort in that. 

The Assassins of Thasalon by Lois McMaster Bujold

One of the better Penric books, and also significantly longer than many of the others. The story is good, there are some interesting plot twists, and we are reunited with some of my old favourite characters (like Bosha) and introduced to new ones (like Blessed Iroki). I enjoy all the references, large and small, to events in prior stories in the series. Only three books left in the series! 

Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Finally Make Time for What Counts by Oliver Burkeman
Did not finish book. Stopped at 28%.

 DNF at 28% (end of “week 1”). I was ambivalent about the author’s other book, Four Thousand Weeks, and I’m equally ambivalent about this one. Honestly, I think Burkeman would be proud of me for determining that I wasn’t enjoying this book and stopping midway through. The core message is good enough: human lives are finite, but our wants are effectively infinite, so by definition we will never get to all the things we want (or even “need”) to do, and the sooner we recognize this, the sooner we can relax into it and just do the things we actually enjoy. But as soon as he got into specifics, he lost me. The very first chapter is about how we can never get to the bottom of our to-do list. But I HAVE gotten to the bottom of my to-do list: the trick is in making sure your to-do list matches the amount of time that you have in which to do the things. Maybe I’m not Burkeman’s intended audience. I know there are lots of people whose challenge is “OMG how do I get to everything I want to do?!” Whereas my challenge has always been more along the lines of “how do I even figure out what I want to do in the first place?” Anyway, by about a quarter of the way through this book, I realized that Burkeman is offering answers for different questions than the ones I have, so I decided to put it down. Maybe it’ll resonate more for other people. 

Self-Care for Autistic People: 100+ Ways to Recharge, De-Stress, and Unmask! by Megan Anna Neff

informative

5.0

Traditional self-care advice doesn’t always work for autistic people, Dr. Neff argues, since autistic people have differences in sensory sensitivities, communication styles, and information processing. Neff is a therapist who both specializes in helping autistic people and who is autistic herself. The book has many short sections, and Neff encourages the readers to try to choose only a few things at a time, as opposed to getting overwhelmed by trying to implement everything. While the chapters are on the longer side, each individual section is very short and easy to read. A lot of it is stuff I already knew from a year and a half of deep-diving into the experience of autistic people, but it’s laid out well, and is an excellent primer / refresher for those who want everything in one place. I’ve definitely added it to my list of “books to permanently keep on my phone in case I want to reference them” list.