Review: A Long Time Comin'

A Long Time Comin' by Robin W. Pearson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A Long Time Comin' is a story about family and the ties that bind and blind our journeys through life’s trials and tribulations. This author sure has a gift for clever untangling of truth - for that artful slow reveal you are yearning to see.

Central to this story are 1.) Evelyn, who is forced onto the road of self-discovery by a betrayal, and 2.) Evelyn’s cantankerous grandmother -- crusty old Beatrice. The reader cannot help but love them both.

The chapters are chockfull of insights on the complexities of multigenerational family dramas. You will connect immediately with the Agnew crew as every character is masterfully developed and rendered fully human and fully flawed. Anchored in Scripture, peppered with modern-day struggles, and flavored with Southern gentility, charm and grit -- as Pearson’s debut novel, she has complete control of her narrative. So impressive.

We all have baggage (!) and the Agnew are no exception. As the family suitcase gets unpacked, chapter by chapter, the reader is reminded that families are a lot like music, with some high notes and some low notes, to make a beautiful song.

“Granny B yanked Evelyn from her wading pool of sentimentality and threw her unceremoniously into the deep end of indignation.”

If everyone had a Granny B in their life, I’m convinced the world would come to its senses!

Two thumbs up for “A Long Time Comin’”!

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Review: Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert M. Sapolsky
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The worst in men; the best in men. He covers it all in this astounding tour of the biology of human behavior. The scope of Sapolsky's scholarship is breathtaking and there is no way this humble review can do it any justice, but I'll try.

A professor of biological sciences and of neurology and neurological sciences, Sapolsky has spent more than three decades studying the physiological effects of stress on health. His pioneering work includes ongoing studies of laboratory rats and wild baboons in the African wilderness. He's the real deal.

A chunk of this book is devoted to the discussion around a good stress response (running from a predator) versus repetitive psychosocial stress caused by modern life. This section was easy to take in and interesting, too..

I liked the way he backed into his deterministic view of human behavior, even though I am not entirely in this camp. Just before a human takes decisive action, we have to stop and wonder why this action or that action. What sparked it? He asks the reader to consider what happened just seconds before - neuroscience explains how previous similar situations are in fact stored in the shadowy circuitry informing the ultimate decision. He asks the reader to consider what happened minutes or days before this action - hormonal fluctuations account for A LOT, setting a stage for the action. He asks the reader to consider what happened days to months before and so on and so forth, until the reader is directed to childhood and gestation and genetics. And more. Your head will spin. Mine did.

I was very impressed but I was not entirely convinced. Especially because it all points to the absence of free will. And, to the extent that we are to be changed or made better by reading this book, we'd have to choose that change. Yet, without free will, we can choose nothing at all. If life is going to unfold in one way or another due to combinations of some genetics, some events, and some brain chemistry, doesn't that make the knowledge imparted in this book just a big tease?

Does knowing all of the precise ingredients of a particularly complicated recipe means that you know exactly what's on your plate? Ingredients impact each other and the sum of them can be more or less than expected, right? Admittedly, I am out of my depth in this book and it deserves a second reading. I wonder if my recipe for personhood, behavior, and decision-making will allow it?

The most interesting take-away for me? This:
"Agriculture makes people dependent on a few domesticated crops and animals instead of hundreds of wild food sources, creating vulnerability to droughts and blights and zoonotic diseases. Agriculture makes for sedentary living, leaving humans to do something that no primate with a concern for hygiene and public health would ever do: namely, living in close proximity to their feces. Agriculture makes for surplus and thus almost inevitably, the uneven distribution of surplus generating socio-economic status differences that dwarf anything that other primates cook up with their hierarchies." This is the first time I ever read words throwing down on agriculture. If agriculture was a "wrong turn" for humanity...well, there's no bouncing back from that now.

This is a book I'll return to often. The delivery is spry and often downright amusing. Fun facts, like rich people are less likely to stop for pedestrians entering a crosswalk/intersection and PMS is not a thing experienced universally by women (along with detailed accompanying explanations) make it a worthy read. Finally, the man is living a wildly interesting life. You don't have to agree with all of his conclusions to have multiple jaw-dropping moments of discovery.

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Review: Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life

Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life by Nir Eyal
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The subject of this book - how to maintain your traction in life without continually getting distracted by the electronic pings and pulls - is obvious. Most of what Eyal has to say is common sense and much of it you've heard before.

He walks the reader through time-boxing and owning the day by filling the white space in your planner responsibly, before you get trapped in front of a screen. A good reminder. Many proposed solutions to managing smart phone rabbit holes were actually apps on the smart phone itself, which was a bit disconcerting. On the other hand, yes I did check out all those apps (!)

The most powerful chapter in this book is #30. I read and reread this chapter. He talks about the importance of self-determination. He talks about the undernourished psyche and pins this as the reason so many continually turn to electronic escape. When something is missing in your life, you might overdo screen time. It is a symptom of a bigger issue. I think this is the most important take away.

This author actually connected distractibility itself in young people to Western schooling where kids do not have the autonomy to make their own choices. He explains that children give up control of their attention when it is always managed by an adult and that it is this conditioning which contributes to the chronic surrender to distraction. Without a life that supports and nourishes autonomy and intrinsic motivation in a child, that child is growing a predisposition to distraction.

The research cited in chapter 30 was compelling and the most interesting thing I've read in a long time on the roots of attention deficit issues in modern times.

A useful book!

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Review: We Have Always Lived in the Castle

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was Shirley Jackson's last book. In it she creates two very weird characters: Constance and Merricat. Naturally, they are creepy, as are their circumstances in life. Jackson wields all of her favorite blunt instruments of creepy -- evil townspeople, blood lust, greed, mental illness and persecution of the innocent. She had a real knack for shining a light into the darkest corners of humanity while keeping the circumstances surrounding this almost droll.
Phrases like this are spoken while buying a loaf of bread: "I wished they were dead. I was never sorry when I had thoughts like this, I only wished they'd come true."

This is a quick and easy read and a diverting tale. Because I favor relatable fiction, even very old, relatable fiction, I can't rate this as a favorite. However, Ms. Jackson's pen perverts the standard storyline so thoroughly, all while revealing (with distinction!) the many gnarled hearts you'd never want to love, that I must tip my hat to this empress of the perverse. Well done, well done.

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