Saturday 3 August 2019

Book Reviews: June 16 to July 30

I finished 9 books in this period, so a bit over a book a week. These were the last books I read on my America trip, which did wonders for my reading rate.

Two Like Me and You - Chad Gibbs

Finished 16 June, ARC from Netgalley, review here. 3/5.

Ricochet - Kathryn Berla

Finished 27 June, ARC from Netgalley, review here. 2/5.

How to Lead When You're Not In Charge - Clay Scroggins

40881894. sy475 Rating: 1/5
Source: Library Borrowbox app
Date finished: July 1
Pages: 214

This is the second of three leadership ebooks I checked out of the library because Laidlaw has apparently got into my head, but unfortunately it was not good and I just rushed through it to tick it off the list. I know I'm not naturally authoritative so I was hoping to get help with that, but this was about leading when you haven't been designated the leader. In my defence, it did say it would help when you lack authority.

Unfortunately, it turns out the author is a pastor so it was full of Bible quotes and anecdotes scattered with the very occasional good point.



The Quiet at the End of the World - Lauren James

32716442. sy475 Rating: 4/5
Source: Library Borrowbox app
Date finished: July 7
Pages: 352

Teenagers Lowrie and Shen are the youngest people left in the world, born from IVF and living in a world where everyone else is 80+. Over a hundred years ago, a virus made humans infertile, and gradually everyone else died out. Now Lowrie and Shen have London to themselves and 300 other people.

The story is mostly told through the experiences of Lowrie and Shen, but there's also a lot of Lowrie reading through old Facebook posts by people living at the time the virus struck. These were very poignant and realistic, especially the posts urging people to sign a petition to make the government fund fertility research at higher and higher levels.


I really liked this book - I had loved Lauren James' The Loneliest Girl in The Universe - and it keeps making me think long after I finished it. I'm not sure what I think of how it ended but it's definitely worth a read.

The Martian - Andy Weir

18007564Rating: 5/5
Source: Library Borrowbox app
Date finished: July 11
Pages: 369

I LOVED this. It's about a guy who gets stuck on Mars after his fellow astronauts leave, thinking him dead, and has to figure out a way to survive there longterm until he can be rescued.

I loved this because it’s the only novel I’ve come across that felt like it was written for scientists. It wasn’t filled with equations but just little things like ‘I need to get twice as much hydrogen for water’. Weir could easily have made it a melodramatic survival story but he didn’t: every so often Andy would hit an obstacle and just methodically come up with a plan to fix it, which was fantastic. I loved how the book laid out the thought processes. Some of the book is told from the perspective of NASA as they try to get in touch with each other, and the book did that remarkable thing where I resented switching away from Andy’s perspective but then resented switching back! Brandon Sanderson is great at that. 

Funnily enough, when I went to the NASA festival in DC I asked a few of the NASA employees how they felt about it and apparently they all love the author and he spent loads of time there while writing it.


Communicate Like a Leader - Dianna Booher

32478576
 Rating: 2/5
Source: Library Borrowbox app
Date finished: July 19
Pages: 208

I didn’t love this book, as it was very corporate-focused, but it did give specific instructions throughout rather than waffling on, which I appreciated it. I did not appreciate the fact that a lot of the instructions were unfriendly to autistic people, being phrased as something like ‘Successful leaders can read body language’. I mean, quite possibly true, but phrasing it as something you do rather than something you are or currently have the ability to do would have been nicer.  











Alanna: The First Adventure - Tamora Pierce
13831

Rating: 4/5
Source: Bought for Kindle
Date finished: July 24
Pages: 274

This was a fun MG read, and I'm glad I picked it up after seeing it recommended on Reddit. It's about a girl who disguises herself as her twin brother so she can train as a knight.

I'm not sure what to say about it, really, except that it was an enjoyable, comfy read, with nice friendships and a fun school environment. I also found it very refreshing that it's very 'tell-y' - writers are always being told to show and not tell, but this story takes place over years so it frequently says things like 'Spring passed and Alanna learned how to do X' - it felt like an oral story and I actually really liked it.

It's weird how so many of the people whose struggles welike to read about are people who are already born into nobility, like Alanna, or who are born with magic instead of getting it through hard work.

(Also, something interesting - I've just started a Holly Bourne book. Holly Bourne has been raved about as an amazing YA writer but so far I'm super frustrated by the teenage girl voice, all oh my god he's so cute, like a sexy ferret - same reason I never read Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging, I don't want that overexcitable caling everything supercalifragilistic thing. The book reads incredibly young. Yet this book, which is for a younger audience since it's MG, wasn't like that at all. The characters behaved relatively young but weren't annoying. What gives?)


Creating Extraordinary Characters - Angela Hunt

18149115. sy475 Rating: 1/5
Source: Found on my Kindle app - might have been a free download at some point years ago?
Date finished: 28 July
Pages: 44

This is extremely short, so I'm embarrassed calling it a book but it was listed on Goodreads as one. This had the odd interesting point, but oh my god. The method for developing characters was .... *drumroll please* MBTI!

And look, MBTI is fun, and it doesn't matter that it's not scientifically accurate for a character. But this author put an incredible amount of faith in them, saying things like you know who to pair romantically by them having the opposite MBTI letters, and generally treating them as true. Like just so much, this was her main point. Also, she threw in a bit in the middle about villains thinking they're doing the right thing like ~'Millions of women think unborn babies can't feel pain'. Damn, is this a writing book or pro-life propaganda?


Because Internet - Gretchen McCulloch
36739320. sy475 Rating: 3/5
Source: Bought for Kindle (and expensive it was too)
Date finished: 30 July (the day I had a timezone shift having arrived in Ireland from America the afternoon of the 29th and finished the book in the early hours of the 30th Irish time)
Pages: 336

This was interesting but a bit of a disappointment unfortunately, having followed the author on Twitter for ages. I was expecting it to be more example-based or at least about specific internet language, but the first few chapters were about dialects and the usefulness of the internet for linguistics in general. She's enthusiastic about internet linguistics because it's the first time we've had an easy source of informal writing (formal writing: books etc, formal oral: speeches, informal oral: chatting) to analyse. 

I did like the later chapters, which went into specific internet things like expressing tone of voice with punctuation, emoji, and memes. For example, she looks into why young people send a message for each thought or 'utterance' (rather than using periods like with sentences) and old people use ellipses or dashes, and concludes that it's from postcards, and that people have always written with these pauses. Her history of the internet was also interesting, charting movement between Usenet, MSN, Myspace, Facebook and Instagram.

 I didn't feel like I got particularly deep insight into memes and it was a bit repetitive talking about how they're about ingroup/outgroup dynamics). I also am not sure how supported some of her conclusions were. I know she is a trained linguist so she knows a lot more than me about that, but she'd say some things like 'so this must be because X' without really having done a causal experiment. However, she did have a long list of sources at the end that weren't mentioned in the text so I couldn't see them at the time and that judgement may be unfair.

Visit to DC


(I wrote this over a long time, largely on the bus to the airport to leave DC. It's just a chronological recap of the weekend. Be warned: I complain in it and don’t make an effort to be interesting. Let’s say it’s the heat exhaustion talking.)

Saturday morning
Awake dark and very early at 4.08 am to get a 4.30 taxi to the airport for my 6.10 flight.

I can’t generalise because this is the only internal-American flight I’ve taken, but wow United Airlines are utter crap – I wasn’t allowed to check in online because I had a ‘Basic Economy’ fare and wasn’t checking bags. Apparently this marked me as a threat, but I mean, I was only staying one night – why would I need more than my schoolbag?

I tried to check in on a machine in the airport but the Poors Klaxon (well, the Basic Economy flashing lights) went off so an employee had to come confirm I was ok. Never mind that Basic Economy is a category they’ve invented to reduce service on a flight that cost nearly $200 – Ryanair treats you better than that for a tenner.


Aaanyway, after I got through the long security line I didn’t have a long wait for the flight. I went to the shop to get an iPad charger because I cleverly forgot the charger for my navigation, communication and photo-taking device, and the cashier asked me if I’d like to ‘support the troops’ with my purchase. I was just like ... no thanks. They did pre-boarding first, which I didn’t go up for because of the aforementioned Basic Economy fare, then suddenly it was the Final Call.

The plane was fine although tiny – only 12 rows with four seats in each. Not really any more cramped than the flight from Dublin, and a lot shorter (1 h 25 mins).

In DC
I got off the plane and stepped into a wall of heat. I’d been warned about it, but it was actually quite nice to get off the frigid plane into. Then I got the 5A for ~45 minutes to DC proper, which, thankfully, is apparently only a few square miles in area.

NASA Festival
I actually got really lucky – I walked towards the National Mall and walked right into the last day of a big NASA festival celebrating 20 July 50 years ago when the Moon landing happened. It was really cool, NASA are very good at science communication (apart from when they asked me if I know what exoplanets are and I was like ... I do have most of a science degree) and PR, and I was pleased to discover while talking to the stall staff (all actual NASA employees) that THE MARTIAN, the book that got me interested in space exploration again, is considered very accurate apart from the storm at the start and people at NASA love it. So I’m impressed I enjoyed the NASA event so much despite my concern about climate change and feeling that NASA should be joining forces with NOAA and devoting as many of their people as possible to dealing with that instead of building expensive spacefaring devices.


When I said I was a geneticist, the guy I was talking to said to please figure out a solution to radiation in space, like splice cockroach DNA into humans or something - it’s fine on the ISS apparently because of the magnetic field but not in deep space. Talking to him was really cool – talking in a problem-solving way.


National Art Gallery – the Classical part
I won’t lie, I really appreciated that this building has A/C, especially after climbing the many steps to get in. They also let you sit down on sofas in a room near the entrance, which was handy. They made me wear my schoolbag on one shoulder, which apparently protects the art, though I can’t see how, and it’s certainly not good for my back.

For some reason, the only art I could find was Dutch and Flemish. I swear these places are like mazes.


The Capitol
Next stop: Congress. It’s a really nice building, with sprinklers around the place that I walked right into so as not to die from the ~37 C heat. I did kinda hope I might bump into AOC but alas, no luck. Rudely, Congresspeople don’t seem to hang around for my Saturday tourism.



With how hot it was, I definitely wanted to get into this lake. I satisfied myself with walking through the sprinklers.

I lay under this tree and thought about that Washington bit in Hamilton where he talks about giving up power and lying under the shade of your own tree

Have I mentioned yet that I love how flower-filled America is?

I attempted to go to the National Botanic Gardens but when I got to the entrance and it said go around the other side ... look, it was hot out. Also skipped the Library of Congress and White House but I shall survive.

The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum
There was a very long line to get in, probably because of the NASA event and the 50-year anniversary (the Smithsonian was holding a party for it that night), and I was dying standing there (have I mentioned it was hot yet?).
I swear my face is like a weather warning in itself.


So I was glad when a conversation started between me and the girl behind me, who’s from North Carolina and doing an internship in DC. Amazingly, our conversation continued the whole way and we ended up spending my whole time in the museum together! We met up with her friend at the restaurant and had a fascinating conversation about Native Americans, Irishness, and autistic and deaf culture. Her friend uses sign language (simcomming) while she speaks, which was awesome! And she’s Cherokee-Irish, which I didn’t even know was a thing and was fascinating to talk about. She talked about extra school they go to learn their heritage and culture and I realised summers in the Gaeltacht are that for us!


Sadly, most of the museum was locked away because of construction.
I also noticed for the first time the International in the ISS’s name. I think the idea was in my head that the US and Russians are still fighting over space, so that was nice.



The Air and Space museum held an event that night to celebrate the 50-year anniversary and I feel bad for not going to it, but I did not want to be out in an unknown city at 2 am so I just went to the hostel around 6 pm.

The Hostel
It was my first time in a hostel alone (so not on a school trip) and I wasn't expecting luxury but damn it was very minimal for something that cost $73. Maybe my hostel-cost meter just isn't calibrated. They also opened my door in the morning telling me to check out when it was more than an hour before check-out time, which made me uncomfortable. There was one very nice thing about it: they have two locations and when I accidentally went to the wrong one, the guy working there walked me over the 10 minutes to the other one! He's my age and studying computer science. Also, it was very close to the city centre - maybe 7 minutes on the metro with 20 or so minutes of walking. Not that walking was particularly easy considering it was 37 C and DC was the hottest place in the country when I visited!



I had a frustrating experience trying to order food. I'd barely eaten all day so I was bloody starving. I tried to order from DoorDash or something but I couldn't because my debit card didn't have a zip code(????????), then I tried somewhere else and the system wouldn't let me order a sandwich plus fries so I just got large fries eventually which tided me over. My rumbling belly and I watched that delivery tracker like a hawk.

Sunday
My goal for Sunday was just to go to the Natural History Museum and maybe the Native American museum. I couldn't find the NHM for a while and it was too damn hot to not be somewhere with AC so I went to the National Gallery's modern art section. It had some nice pieces but some that really just made me think ... how the hell did this get in here? Truly some utter crap, overly proud of itself for ~redefining the rules of the genre~ by putting in zero effort and delegating the job to their three-year-old. Also, just one of the paintings I came across wasn't allowed to be photographed, and I have no idea why that one. Is that inconsistency meant to be art in itself? Who bloody knows.

Who knew you could just delegate art to your toddler and get it put in the National Gallery?

It's a bedsheet. But because it's not rectangular it is apparently daring and exciting. If they were going to make me banjax my back by carrying my bag on one shoulder they could have at least had better art (okay okay I put my bag in the cloakroom to avoid that shh).

Have some nicer art as a palate cleanser - I found out I really liked Georgia O Keeffe:



And this was okay I guess, so I'm not shitting on all abstract art:




After a while of that I found the NHM and after queuing and going through the security scanners (every museum had these, sigh) I was in. Unfortunately, I forgot it closed at 5.30 pm so I didn't go around fast enough, but I did see some nice things.

This elephant is actual size and I couldn't get over how big that is.



This thing about being on an ocean planet made me feel reverent:



This statue:



The mammal hall:



The gems:



Leaving DC

I appreciated that the building for the Housing department (or something like that) was interestingly designed:



This really stupid airport ad (this alone should be reason enough to abolish capitalism):



And finally, the view out of the plane:



Overall I'm glad I went, and proud I managed the heat!