Stranger than Fiction

The book I chose for the 2022 NONFICTION READER CHALLENGE in the category Social History is Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art, by Rebecca Wragg Sykes, 2020. I checked the definition of ‘social history’ on Wikipedia to make sure I was on the right track: “a field of history that looks at the lived experience of the past.” This definition certainly suited this book, which I was planning to read anyway because I am very interested in archaeology and prehistory. As the title indicates, the book focuses on what is known about aspects of Neanderthal life – how and where they lived, what they ate, and what is now known about their culture. Almost everything most people think they know about Neanderthals is wrong. In the last two decades more has been discovered about their lives than in the previous century, and it is all fascinating. Instead of the unintelligent club-carrying thugs of the Stone Age, the Neanderthals were adaptable and extremely creative, being able to fashion delica...

For the first book of the 2022 NONFICTION READER CHALLENGE , I read Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries , by Kory Stamper, 2017, in the category Language. Kory Stamper is a lexicographer for Merriam-Webster dictionary and writes about her experiences there by focusing on different words she has worked with and how they reveal peculiarities of the English language. In particular, it is quite a challenge to write a definition of a word, and she describes this in detail that is both fascinating and funny. She also reveals a lot of information about how a dictionary is created and updated, reflecting the changing nature of language. Each chapter focuses on one word (which is also the title of the chapter) to illustrate how it reveals some aspect of working with language. For example, the chapter “Irregardless” is subtitled “On Wrong Words” (and I was surprised to find out that she proves irregardless is not a wrong word!). The chapter “Bitch” is “On Bad Words;” “Nuclear” is ...

  At the beginning of 2021 I decided to join the Nonfiction Reader Challenge 2021, which I read about on the book blog Book’d Out. I decided to become a “Nonfiction Know-It-All” by reading 12 nonfiction books, one in each category listed on that website. I also read other nonfiction books, which I reviewed on this blog, but the ones for the Challenge (in this order) were: 1. Biography: The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper (Hallie Rubenhold) 2. Inventions: Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time (Dava Sobel) 3. Food: Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil (Tom Mueller) 4. Indigenous Cultures: From Black Land to Fifth Sun (Brian Fagan) 5. Wartime Experiences: The Norman Conquest (Marc Morris) 6. Oceanography: The Sea Around Us (Rachel Carson) 7. Travel: Neither Here Nor There (Bill Bryson) 8. Disease: The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, The ...

The final book I read for the 2021 NONFICTION READER CHALLENGE in the category Published in 2021 is Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters , by Steven Pinker, 2021. Steven Pinker is a cognitive psychologist at Harvard University and has written 8 books for general audiences on topics such philosophy, social relations and language. Being interested in language and how it develops, I’ve read his books The Language Instinct and The Sense of Style . I found that his writing is coherent and thought-provoking, so I wanted to try another theme and “rationality” seems particularly appropriate these days when it does, indeed, seem scarce. His book is structured in such a way that each chapter builds on the ideas and information in the previous ones. He starts with a focus on the ways that ‘rationality’ can be defined, and how it is evident or lacking in human beings. His examples include many logic problems, with explanations of why so many people cannot solve the pr...

The book I read for the 2021 NONFICTION READER CHALLENGE in the category Hobbies is Garden Bird Behaviour: How to recognize and interpret everyday bird activities, by Robert Burton, 2005. I originally bought this book to learn more about the habits of some common birds in my garden – coal & marsh tits, sparrows, blackbirds, crows, (European) robin, and occasional newcomers. This book, however, gives information in areas common to all birds (e.g., “Birds try to choose food that gives a good return of energy for time spent gathering it. The basic rule is: not too big, not too small, but just right. For instance, Spotted Flycatchers prefer to hawk for medium-sized insects, such as hoverflies and blue-bottles.”). This guides readers to find out information by observing birds themselves. So it’s a beginner’s guide to bird-watching. Burton writes from a very personal viewpoint – the birds he observes, the seasonal changes that affect the birds’ behavior, and the memories he has of ...

The book I read for the 2021 NONFICTION READER CHALLENGE in the category Essay Collection is Visiting Mrs. Nabokov and Other Excursions , by Martin Amis, 1993. I’ve never been interested in essay collections. Maybe I had to write too many essays throughout school and university. But any time I read a review of an essay collection that sounds interesting, I check it out in a bookstore and put it down again. So to find a book for the ‘essay collection’ category of this Reader Challenge, I decided to browse the essay shelf in the library. First the title caught my eye, and then the first sentence of the blurb on the back: “Fuelled by innumerable cigarettes, Martin Amis provides dazzling portraits of contemporaries and mentors alike: …” then follows a list of the people mentioned in the separate chapters. I was familiar with the author’s name, but had never read anything he wrote. Conversations with different people (of different levels of interest for me) sounded like something I cou...

The book I read for the 2021 NONFICTION READER CHALLENGE in the category Self-Help is The Artist’s Way for Retirement , by Julia Cameron, 2016 (subtitled It's Never Too Late to Discover Creativity and Meaning ). Although I don’t read – or need – self-help books, I needed to find one for this reading challenge. And this book seemed to offer some ideas that I could use. Cameron is an artist who has also written many books about creativity and the creative process. I had heard about her book, The Artist’s Way (written with Emma Lively), but have never read it. She explains that it “spelled out, in a step-by-step fashion, just what a person could do to recover–and exercise–their creativity.” Although I didn’t feel that my creativity needed to be “recovered,” it could certainly be “exercised” more vigorously. But before I looked into getting that book, I learned about this one and decided it was more appropriate for me since I was approaching retirement. In the introduction, Camero...

In the category Disease for the 2021 NONFICTION READER CHALLENGE , I read The Great Mortality: An intimate history of the Black Death, the most devastating plague of all time by John Kelly, 2006. It was particularly interesting to read about a pandemic during the Covid-19 pandemic. The plague is now often referred to as the Black Death, but it was known to Europeans at that time as The Great Mortality, which Kelly calls “the greatest natural disaster in human history.” In the introduction, he mentions writing about a patient who had AIDS in the early 1990s [ in a previous book ] , when there were no effective treatments, and writes, “A hallmark of a pandemic disease is its ability to destroy worlds, not just individuals, but it was one thing to know that, quite another to witness it.” And, he adds what was at that time “newly emerging illnesses such as Ebola fever, Marburg disease, Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, SARS, and avian flu.” So, adding the Covid-19 virus brings this up to ...

This book by Maria Balinska (2008) is, as the title states, about bagels. Why was I interested in reading about such a seemingly ‘modest’ food item as the bagel? First, I am a born and bred New Yorker, and fresh bagels from a bagel bakery had always been a part of my personal cuisine. Since living in other countries and travelling through other continents, however, I haven’t been able to find anything similar to a New York bagel. Either there is no equivalent at all or an item referred to as a bagel is merely a white roll with a hole. No comparison. However, I have been in places that claim to be the ‘birthplace’ of the bagel, but – curiously – they don’t sell anything resembling it now. Second, I am interested in the history of food and of foods. For example, I’ve read about chocolate, olives, olive oil, food in prehistory, beer, salt – but I was excited to find a book about the bagel. There are many myths surrounding its creation, so I thought I would find out the truth in this b...

  The book I read for the 2021 NONFICTION READER CHALLENGE in the category Travel is Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe , by Bill Bryson, 1991. I had read a number of books by Bill Bryson, and had enjoyed them very much.   His book on the English Language, Mother Tongue: The English Language , and on American language and culture, Made in America, were both very funny as well as informative. Another informative and readable book is A Short History of Nearly Everything. I also enjoyed his book, Shakespeare , even though I felt there were some unsubstantiated claims made in it. So I thought it would be a good idea to choose his travel book, recounting his 1990 trip through Europe from Hammerfest, Norway to Istanbul, Turkey. The trip he takes retraces the travelling he did with a friend when he was a student. Perhaps because this book was written about 30 years ago and both travel and Europe have changed so much since then, it was rather disappointing as a travel boo...

The book I read for the 2021 NONFICTION READER CHALLENGE in the category Oceanography is The Sea Around Us , by Rachel Carson, 1961 (with an updated bibliography and introduction in the 2018 edition). I had to pick a book for this category, even though it’s not a subject that I would normally choose to read about. I’m more interested in aspects of the ocean where it meets land – islands and coastal areas, for example. The first book I ordered was The Boundless Sea by David Abulafia; the subtitle is ‘A Human History of the Oceans,’ and that seemed to combine my interests with the topic of oceanography. Unfortunately, that book (paperback version) is more than 1000 pages, and with the other activities that occupy my time, I didn’t think I’d be able to read this within a month. So, it’s still on my to-read list, but I then chose the book by Rachel Carson, which I had heard of as being ‘a classic.’ And it’s much shorter than 1000 pages. I know a bit about Rachel Carson, but more in co...

The book I read for the 2021 NONFICTION READER CHALLENGE in the category Wartime Experiences is The Norman Conquest , by Marc Morris, 2012. I learned about the Norman Conquest when I was in school and know the date 1066. But schoolchildren in Britain probably learn more about it than I did in the United States. At least that’s the impression I got from the introduction.   In referring to the Bayeux Tapestry, Morris writes, “perhaps the most famous and familiar of all medieval sources, at least in England, where we are introduced to it as schoolchildren, and where we encounter it everywhere as adults: in books and on bookmarks, postcards and calendars, cushions and tea towels, key rings, mouse-mats and mugs.” I have heard of this tapestry (which is really an embroidery), but never learned about it in school. It is familiar-looking to me, but I have never studied it closely. That has now changed. After reading this book, I have a new interest in this incredible piece of work and...